The Misfits

by James Howe

  Yeah., and maybe I’ll sprout wings and fly

  Addie:

  She’s funny.

  Skeezie:

  Ha, ha.

  Bobby:

  And you’re blushing.

  Skeezie:

  Shut up!

  Bobby:

  So, Addie, since we’re talking about the future, I want to make a toast.

  Skeezie:

  Can’t stop making speeches, huh, Bobby?

  Joe:

  What’re you going to toast, Bobby, fabulous us?

  Skeezie:

  He’s toasting the future, Jade du Soleil.

  Bobby:

  I’m toasting both. To the Gang of Five: May we all sprout wings and fly.

  30

  IF YOU are the sort who wonders what becomes of the characters in a story after it’s over, I will clue you in to the future.

  Joe will end up living in New York City and he will be a famous writer. Mostly what he will write about is his own life, including what it was like growing up gay in the little town of Paintbrush Falls, New York. The name he will be known by is Joe Bunch.

  Skeezie will wait five or six years and give Hello-mynameisSteffi a call. They will end up getting married and having five kids. Together, they will buy the Candy Kitchen and bring back the jukebox. The place will become known far and wide for its great food and fast service. He’ll call her Steffi; she will never call him anything but Elvis.

  It will take Addie awhile to figure out what she wants to do. After getting three college degrees and spending some time traveling, she will end up teaching social studies in middle school. She will get her students all worked up over questions of right and wrong. Her teaching methods will be a bit unusual, which will result in her getting canned from the first school where she teaches, but she’ll stay at the next school until she retires and she will be named Teacher of the Year a record seven times. Many students will be influenced by her. Some will even go into politics.

  I guess I am the first one Addie influences this way, because I will go into politics, too. Years from now, people like Kevin Hennessey and Brittney Hobson will open their yearbooks and say, “You know who that is? That’s Senator Robert Goodspeed. I went to school with him.”

  But that’s all a long way in the future. Right now, Addie and Joe and Skeezie and me, we’ve got to make it through seventh grade. And you know something? We will. I swear on a stack of pancakes.

  READ ON

  FOR SKEEZIE'S SIDE OF THE STORY!

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  When Your Dad Leaves, Part of Your Mom Leaves, Too

  So I get home after hanging out at the Candy Kitchen with my friends, and my mom is waiting, already furious at me, and I haven’t even done anything yet.

  “You were supposed to be home thirty-seven minutes ago,” she goes.

  “It’s just five,” I say.

  “It’s five thirty-seven. If you wore the watch I bought you, you would know that. And you would also know that I have to be at the store in twenty-three minutes. I needed to talk to you, Skeezie. You said you’d be back in time so we could talk. And I need your help with supper for the girls.”

  “I’ll make supper for the girls, geez. Since when don’t I make supper for the girls?” It’s true. I could have my own reality show: Underage Chef.

  “Fine. But we still need to talk.” My mom is in the bathroom off the kitchen while she says this, tossing back a couple of drugstore-brand aspirins and sighing after she closes the medicine cabinet and catches sight of her own tired face in the mirror. “God, I look old,” she says. I have to agree, although I know enough not to say it out loud.

  My mom used to look like the kind of mom your friends would meet and say they couldn’t believe she was your mom. She used to be young and pretty. She used to look happy. Now she looks old, and if she is happy, I guess I don’t know what that looks like anymore.

  “So talk,” I say.

  “Right. In the two minutes I have before I have to leave. Okay, Mr. I Won’t Wear a Watch . . .”

  “Because you bought it at the dollar store and it broke.”

  “Whatever. In the two minutes we have together, here’s what I have to say. You’re not in school, we can’t afford a vacation, and I need help because there’s stuff around the house that needs fixing. I need you to get a job, Skeezie.”

  “I know. You’ve only told me, like, a hundred times. But I’m thirteen. What kind of job am I going to get? And besides, what about my unpaid job as full-time nanny to your snot-nosed daughters?”

  “That’s just helping out. And talk nice.”

  “Yeah, well, who’s going to cater to Megan’s every wish if you and me are both working all the time? Who’s going to hear her snap her fingers?”

  (I do not pause to consider that finger snapping may run in the family.)

  My mom puts on her lipstick like it’s the last thing she wants to do. “For god sakes, Skeezie. I’m talking about a part-time job to bring in a few extra dollars. You keep half, give half to me for the house. You want to keep listening to the back door banging every time we forget to latch it? You like having to use the plunger every other time we go to the john?”

  “Okay, okay,” I say, deciding not to point out the lipstick she just got on her teeth. “But there are child labor laws. You never heard of those?”

  Now she begins to cry, and I immediately feel guilty about the lipstick, even though I had nothing to do with putting it there. “What about mom labor laws?” she chokes out. “I never knew that when I went into labor with you I’d never get out of it!”

  “If Dad hadn’t left . . . ,” I start to say.

  “Stop right there! If your dad hadn’t left, we might have killed each other by now. It’s a lose-lose, Skeezie, so let’s not go down that road, okay? Let’s just leave it. And now I’ve got to leave. Our two minutes of quality time is up. Please. Find something, anything, just help me out here. Talk to Bobby. He works to help his family out.”

  I hate it when she does that. Brings in my friends as role models. It’s so stinkin’ unfair.

  She glances in the mirror, yanks a tissue off the top of the toilet tank from the crocheted box she made back in better times, and wipes the lipstick off her teeth. And what can I say, she looks so sad and even older than she did two minutes ago that I tell her, “Okay, Mom. I’ll get a job. I’ll help.”

  I feel older now, too.

  The back door slams. And as soon as she hears the car start up in the driveway, Megan shouts from her bedroom, “What’s for supper? I’m starving!”

  I hate my dad so much I want to punch the wall. I look into the bathroom mirror, half expecting to see my mom still there, but what I see is my own skinny face with its most recent acne acquisitions and an expression I don’t even recognize. I don’t like the me that’s looking back.

  “Spaghetti!” I shout.

  “Again?”

  Jessie, who’s five and not nine-going-on-twenty-five like Megan, appears out of nowhere, grabs me around my legs, and squeezes real hard. “I love spaghetti!” she says, like it’s “I love you!” I wish my friends could see this moment of Jessie hugging my legs, but not what went before it. I don’t want them to see that. I don’t want them to see the me I just saw in the mirror.

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  SIMON & SCHUSTER CHILDREN’S PUBLISHING

  WWW.SIMONSAYSKIDS.COM

  BOOKS BY JAMES HOWE

  Teddy Bear’s Scrapbook (with Deborah Howe)

  A Night Without Stars

  Morgan’s Zoo

  There’s a Monster Under My Bed

  There’s a Dragon in my Sleeping Bag

  The Watcher

  Horace and Morris but Mostly Dolores

  Horace and Morris join the Chorus (but what about Dolores?)

  BUNNICULA SERIES

  Bunnicula (with Deborah Howe)

  Howliday Inn

  The Celery Stalks at Midnight

  Nighty-Nightmare

  Return to Howliday Inn

  Bunnicula Strikes Again!

  TALES FROM THE HOUSE OF BUNNICULA

  It Came from Beneath the Bed!

  Invasion of the Mind Swappers from Asteroid 6!

  Howie Monroe and the Doghouse of Doom

  Howie Monroe and the Screaming Mummies of the Pharaoh’s Tomb

  SEBASTIAN BARTH MYSTERIES

  What Eric Knew

  Stage Fright

  Eat Your Poison, Dear

  Dew Drop Dead

  PINKY AND REX SERIES

  Pinky and Rex

  Pinky and Rex Get Married

  Pinky and Rex and the Spelling Bee

  Pinky and Rex and the Mean Old Witch

  Pinky and Rex Go to Camp

  Pinky and Rex and the New Baby

  Pinky and Rex and the Double-Dad Weekend

  Pinky and Rex and the Bully

  Pinky and Rex and the New Neighbors

  Pinky and Rex and the School Play

  Pinky and Rex and the Perfect Pumpkin

  Pinky and Rex and the Just-Right Pet

  EDITED BY JAMES HOWE

  The Color of Absence: 12 Stories about Loss and Hope

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places,and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First Aladdin Paperbacks edition May 2003

  Text copyright © 2001 by James Howe

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster

  Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  All rights reserved, including the right of

  reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.

  Designed by Ann Bobco

  Cover design by Russell Gordon

  Cover Photograph by Laura Hanifin

  The text of this book is set in Meta Book.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Howe, James, 1946–

  The misfits / by James Howe.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Four students who do not fit in at their small-town middle school decide to

  create a third party for the student council elections to represent all students who

  have ever been called names.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-83955-9 (hc.)

  ISBN-10: 0-689-83955-3 (hc.)

  [1. Schools—Fiction. 2. Elections—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Teasing—Fiction.]

  1. Title.

  PZ7.H8377227 Mg 2001

  [Fic]—dc21 00-066390

  ISBN-10: 0-689-83956-1 (Aladdin pbk.)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-83956-6 (Aladdin pbk.)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-442-44942-8

  1210 OFF