by James Howe
“No. Were we supposed to?”
“Well, I know he wanted to speak with you.”
“With us?” Addie asks. “Why? Are we doing something wrong?”
“Oh, my,” Mrs. DePaolo says, blowing little puffs of air into her cupped-up hands. I’m definitely right about the cold blood. “I don’t think you are, no, of course you’re not. It’s just that the question was raised, I believe, about ... oh, I shouldn’t get into this, honestly. I think you kids had better talk to Mr. Kiley a.s.a.p., okay? Until then, why don’t you hold off putting any posters up?”
A whole bunch of kids pass by. They’re looking at us and at the poster Addie is standing there pinning to the wall with her one hand.
“Good luck!” Brittney, a.k.a. Mother Teresa, calls out in a cheery voice.
“Thanks!” Addie the leper calls back.
Kevin Hennessey shouts sarcastically, “Save the whales!” and both Addie and I check out the dolphin on the poster as Mrs. DePaolo shushes Kevin and tells him she hopes she doesn’t see him in the office today. The office is Kevin’s second home.
Pretty soon, Addie and I are sitting across the desk from Mr. Kiley, who I notice is wearing a flag pin in his lapel. I am wondering if he has always worn this or only since Addie’s refusing to say the Pledge, when I further notice that his tie does not go with his shirt. It bothers me. This is the curse of being a tie salesman. I figure I am doomed to go through the rest of my life noticing whether ties and shirts go together and being bothered if they don’t. I think maybe I should quit my job.
Mr. Kiley has been talking and I am tuning in as he says, “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Addie is perched on the edge of her seat, projecting her upper body at a sharp angle. She looks like one of those adjustable desk lamps.
“This is so unfair,” she is saying. “It’s more than unfair. It’s not right!”
Mr. Kiley opens his hands wide, palms up, fingers splayed. Adults use this gesture often, especially when talking to kids. They think it means, Look how honest and open I’m being. Look how hard I’ve tried. I feel just rotten about it, but I’m absolutely helpless to do anything more than I’ve already done. What it really means is, Conversation’s over.
“But I don’t understand,” Addie replies to Mr. Kiley’s hands. “We met with Ms. Wyman on Thursday. We told her that our party was going to represent the voice of minority students. She didn’t tell us then that we couldn’t run.”
“I repeat: Ms. Wyman spoke to me after school on Friday and made the very good point that both parties state in their platforms that they represent all students, which includes minority students. A third party claiming to represent minorities is redundant at the very least and might justifiably be seen as promoting special rights. We don’t want that sort of thing here at P.F.M.S., dowe?”
“I hardly think that giving minority students a voice is the same as asking for special rights. Besides which, political parties can have the same goals but achieve them through different means. Isn’t that true?”
Mr. Kiley nods his head sympathetically. “That’s a good point. Look, Addie, I appreciate your passion. I really do. You’re a bright girl and you have strong feelings about right and wrong. That’s good. But there is a system in place and it works. Let me encourage you to work within it. If you want to make changes, get involved in the parties that already exist. Talk to the candidates about your concerns and make sure your voice is represented.”
“Right,” Addie says, “like they’ll even listen to us.”
“Us?” Mr. Kiley says. “Who do you mean? Other than DuShawn, I don’t know who on your ticket is a minority, Addie. I’m not sure you know yourself what you’re attempting to do here. Between this third-party business and your refusing to say the Pledge, I can’t help wondering if what you’re really after is getting attention. If that’s the case, there are better ways to go about it.”
Mrs. DePaolo’s head is in the door. “Announcements,” she says.
Mr. Kiley excuses himself and minutes later Addie and I are walking down the hall with posters tucked under our arms and late passes clutched in our hands, as classroom after classroom pledges its allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands.
We stop at our lockers so we can cram the useless posters in. “I can’t believe Kiley accused me of just wanting attention,” Addie grouses. “What an insult! I’ll bet he never would have said that if I were a boy.”
“He was talking to me, too,” I point out.
Addie shakes her head. “Mostly he was talking to me. And did you notice what he brought up at the end there? I’ll bet this is really about my refusing to say the Pledge. He doesn’t like it, and Ms. Wyman just can’t stand that I am disobeying one of her little rules. She’s all rah-rah self-esteem so long as the self you esteem is the one she approves of. That is so hypocritical.”
“You’re right,” I say, “but what can you do? Wyman and Kiley have power and we don’t.”
“And that’s another thing,” Addie goes on, slamming her locker door. “Why do adults get to have all the power? Mr. Kiley and Ms. Wyman both say, ’Work within the system.’ But it’s their system! Kids should have power, too. If the student council really meant something, we would have power!”
“So I guess it’s not so bad that the Freedom Party’s out of business,” I say, “seeing as how the student council doesn’t have any real power, anyway.”
“Who said we’re out of business? We just have to come up with another raison d’être. And when we do, it had better have some teeth in it.”
Just then, Kevin Hennessey pops his head out of Ms. Wyman’s homeroom, holding a bathroom pass in his hand.
“Yo, Blubber!” he calls out. “You better get a ladder if you’re gonna kiss Godzilla!” He laughs as if he actually finds this funny and goes off down the hall, shaking his rear at us.
“He is such an idiot,” Addie says, and this gets us both to laughing, which is good because inside I’m still stinging from being called Blubber. It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve been called names, it still hurts—and it still always comes as such a surprise that I never know how to respond. Or maybe I do, but I’m afraid.
As soon as we get inside Ms. Wyman’s room we put a lid on our laughter because she’s got this look on her face like she has been sharpening her knife and fork and just waiting for our livers to arrive. When we hand her our late passes, she does a quick change into her muffin-baking self, all gooey smiles, but then two seconds later, after Jimmy Lemon pokes me and I tell him to watch it, she makes a personality U-turn and tells me in a tone as tough as stale fruit leather that I’m creating a disturbance and she will not tolerate disturbances in her homeroom.
It is only the third week of school and Ms. Wyman needs a vacation.
In my opinion.
It is on this day that I have my major brainstorm, and when I look back at it, I think it should have occurred to me the minute Kevin Hennessey called out, “Yo, Blubber!” And then I think it should have occurred to me the night before at Joe’s house when he and Skeezie and I were sitting around shooting the breeze. Or the time we found that word on Joe’s locker. Or the first time I was ever called Fluff. Or one of a thousand other times. In other words, I should have had this major brainstorm a long time ago, but that is not the way life works. Life works like this: You are on the receiving end of all sorts of stuff, but you do not see it clearly. Then all of a sudden you see something happen to somebody else, and the light-bulb goes off over your head.
It happens at lunch.
Addie is filling Skeezie and Joe in on what went on that morning and is so worked up she doesn’t even notice the Skeeze swap his box of raisins for her chocolate cake. He starts scarfing it down before she can say anything. I detect this out of the corner of my eye, since I try to avoid watching Skeezie relate to food in an ingestive manner. If his eating habits were a movie, they�
�d be rated R for violence.
Addie, the anti-Skeeze, spreads a napkin on her lap. “What we have to do is come up with a new platform,” she is saying. “Something Ms. Wyman can’t dispute. Not that this is really about politics. It’s all about Ms. Wyman and her need for control. And revenge.”
“Ooo, Cruella De Vil,” Joe says, and it is hard to know whether he means this as an insult or a compliment. Cruella is one of Joe’s favorite movie characters. Back in second grade he even called himself Cruella. For about a week.
Addie ignores him. “Well, revenge is a paltry weapon when confronted with the arsenal of truth.”
Skeezie stares at her with an open mouth, which, given the state it’s in, I wish he wouldn’t. “Do you make that stuff up on the spot?” he asks Addie. “Or do you stay up nights writing your own material?”
“I can’t help it if I have a brilliant mind,” Addie says, “and that is my cake you just ate.”
Skeezie lets out a belch, a loud, lingering, wet one.
Joe turns and looks at him, disgusted. “Couth,” he says.
“Thank you,” the Skeeze gives back, looking mighty pleased with himself. “Thank you kindly.”
I figure all serious conversation has been derailed, and I am right, except that something happens just then that we might not have picked up on if we had been busy knocking our heads together over the new Freedom Party platform. It is the something that gives me my major brainstorm.
“D-d-d-daryl,” I hear. “H-h-how ya d-d-d-doin’, D-d-d-daryl?”
“S-s-s-s-stop it, K-k-k-k-k-kevin!”
Kevin Hennessey’s laughter is as blunt and heavy as a boot while he watches Daryl Williams slink away from the table his ridicule has forced him to vacate. Gripping the edges of his tray of half-eaten food, Daryl’s knuckles turn white and his shoulders hunch up in a desperate attempt to hide the look of humiliation burning his face.
“What a dweeb!” Kevin Hennessey goes, and jimmy Lemon laughs like Kevin is the funniest guy since Robin Williams.
“That’s our raison d’etre,” I hear myself saying.
The others turn and look at me, and in that split second before I explain, this amazing feeling comes over me. It’s a Twilight Zone sort of feeling, like I’m about to pass from one dimension into another. And you know? That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I am about to stop being a get-along kind of guy and turn into somebody who makes a difference.
14
“NO MORE names,” I say.
Addie goes, “What?”
“That’s our platform and that’s our party,” I explain, getting excited. “The No-Name Party.” Ideas are rushing at me like water out of an open hydrant.
The Skeeze, wiping chocolate off his mouth with the back of his hand, says, “What are you talkin’ about? The Lame-Brain Party? I don’t get it.”
“That’s because you’re the lame brain,” I tell him. “No offense, Addie, but you’ve been looking at the wrong minority the whole time. DuShawn even said it.”
“Said what?”
Joe chimes in, “He said we were the ones who had to watch our butts, not him and Royal and Tondayala Cherise.”
“Right,” I go. “And, Joe, you said not every minority is visible, remember? Think about it, Addie, what makes a minority? It’s numbers, right? The majority is the larger percentage, the minority the smaller.”
“Wyman would be prouda you, man,” says the Skeeze, ridding his fingers of unwanted chocolate crumbs by dragging them down the front of his shirt. I swear, his eating is some kind of performance art. He could charge admission.
“Whatever,” I say. “The point is that being a minority isn’t only about the color of your skin or your religion. It’s about not fitting in, being on the outside.”
“Like us,” Addie goes.
“And Daryl, who Kevin just called a dweeb,” I point out. “Think of all the names we’ve been called over the years.”
I grab a pen out of my back pocket and start writing down all the names I can think of on a napkin. There are eighteen, then seventeen when I realize I’ve written “Fluff” twice.
“Wow,” Joe says, “that’s almost as many as me.” He starts rattling off his list and I’m writing so fast the napkin begins to shred. He’s got twenty-six by the time he’s through and those are only the ones he can think of off the top of his pink-streaked head.
“What about you, Skeeze?” I ask. “What names have you been called?”
Skeezie starts rocking back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “Wop,” he starts with, “greaser, greaseball, slimeball, guinea ...” His list ends up at sixteen, four of which are put-downs of Italians, which doesn’t even make sense because Skeezie doesn’t have an ounce of Italian blood in him.
It’s Addie’s turn and now we’re all into it, weirdly competing with one another for who’s been called the most and the worst names. There are some we’ve all been called. Addie comes up with only eleven, three of which have to do with her height, five with her brains, and three what we call “all-purpose.”
Our final tally covers three napkins. This is what we’ve got:
BOBBY
TOE
SKEEZIE
ADDIE
Fat Boy
Faggot
Wop
Beanpole
Fatso
Fag
Greaser
Skyscraper
Fatty
Gay
Greaseball
Big Mouth
Blubber
Fairy
Slimeball
Show-off
Pork Chop
Queer
Guinea
Know-it-All
Dough Boy
Girl
Dummy
Brains
Dweeb
Sissy
Geek
Einstein
Nerd
Wimp
Schizo
Dweeb
Spaz
Wuss
Hooligan
Nerdette
Lardo
Pervert
J. D.
Godzilla
Lardass
Freak
Freak
Loser
Lardbar
Mutant
Ree-tard
Fluff
Homo
Dweeb
Roly-Poly
Dweeb
Scuz
Dork
Dork
Dork
Geek
Nerd
Loser
Loser
Geek
Tinkerbell
Twinkletoes
Tinkywinky
Joanna
Josephine
JoJo
Jodi
Joannie
Loser
Skeezie whistles. “Impressive, man. Are we awesome or what?”
We high-five it around the table, acting like this is a big joke, but we all know it isn’t. Then another idea comes to me. I grab a clean napkin and write, Dweeb. Then I draw a big circle around it and a slash through it, so it ends up looking like this:
“Here’s what we gotta do,” I go on. “We take all these words and write each one on its own sheet of paper. Then we put a circle around it and a line through it and then we put them up all over school.”
“And what do we say about the Freedom—I mean, the No-Name Party?” Addie asks.
I can’t believe I have an answer for this. It’s all coming to me, without my even having to think about it. “We don’t say anything,” I go. “Not at first. That’s the beauty of it, see? Ms. Wyman won’t even know there’s another party in the running. Nobody will know. We’ll keep the suspense going for a couple of days and then we’ll hit the walls with posters for the No-Name Party. How’re they going to stop us then?”
Addie is practically jumping up and down, she’s so excited. She looks dangerously close to hugging me. “It’s
brilliant, Bobby,” she says.
“There’s a name for this,” Joe gives. “Teaser advertising, I think it is. I love it! It’s so... subverted.”
“Subversive,” says Addie.
“Show-off!” goes Joe.
“Twinkletoes!” Addie goes right back at him.
They both laugh, and Skeezie says to me, “I think you should run for president, man.”
“Yeah, Bobby,” Addie joins in, “this is your idea.”
“No way,” I tell them. “I’m not getting up in front of the whole school and giving a speech. I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, okay?”
They can see I mean it, so they let it go. Then the Skeeze asks, “But how are we gonna convince DuShawn to go along with this?”
“Are you kidding?” Addie asks. “He’s probably got a longer list of names than any of us.”
We all nod, because what do we know, and Addie says she’ll talk to him right after lunch.
Meanwhile, I’m having the biggest brainstorm yet. “Wait a minute, you guys, we have to have a slogan, right? What do you think of this: Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will break our spirit.”
I’m looking at them now, waiting for them to laugh, I don’t know why, and they’re looking at me like that’s what they expected, too, that I’d come up with something funny. But what I’ve come up with is something other than funny. Something even better than funny. What I’ve come up with is the truth.
15
MONDAY NIGHT we’re back at Joe’s house, printing up names on his computer and drawing red circles around them and red slashes through them. Every time we put a slash through one of those names, it’s like we’re casting a vote for our own party.