The Accidental Genius of Weasel High

by Rick Detorie

She said she’d had a discussion with my dad about me wanting to earn extra money to buy a camcorder, and the possibility of me working part-time for her, and, well, she had some good news.

  One of her regular clients, an older lady named Mrs. Grubnik, would like someone to come to her house once a week to do light chores. The job paid ten bucks an hour, which would work out to about thirty per week.

  “Hmmm,” I said, “are we talking about a mysterious old lady who perhaps lives in a creepy old house? And might those chores include hosting séances, changing her mummy’s bandages, and tossing raw meat to the creature in the cellar?”

  “I don’t think so,” said my mom. “The chores are probably more along the lines of vacuuming, changing lightbulbs, shoveling snow—that sort of stuff.”

  “Oh. I guess I might be able to do it,” I said, trying not to sound too disappointed.

  “How about Wednesday afternoons?” she asked. “You could take the bus to her house after school, and I’ll pick you up from there at about six.”

  It took me about half a second to think it over and agree to do it. Then I said, “Do I need to take anything with me?”

  She paused at the door and said, “Well, because you never know what you might find in an old house like that…”

  Whoa, is my mom cool or what?

  She’s always kidding around, but she’s real subtle about it, you know?

  I don’t think my mom was always cool, or funny.

  Back when she was in college, she was a very serious artist and dancer. She studied something called batik, which is a fancy way of dyeing fabric with wax. It used to be popular with hippies and other people who are too cheap to put real art on their walls.

  But what my mom really loved to do was dance. She was real good at something called Modern Interpretive Dance. It’s sort of like ballet, but more jiggly.

  Then, when she married my dad, who’s a lot older than her, and they bought this farm, she stayed home to raise Kelly and me. But it’s not like she gave up this terrific dance career or anything.

  One time, when I thought it would be a good idea for her to get out of the house for a while, I checked the Help Wanted ads, but the only dancing jobs available around here involved poles and laps, if you know what I mean.

  After she took a carpentry class, she started building stuff for us, and eventually, for the neighbors, too. So now she’s a professional handyman. She drives a pickup, wears overalls, and is into power tools.

  On Career Day at my old school, while the other parents told us all about their jobs as law clerks and party planners, my mom brought in a chain saw and fired it up in the classroom.

  The mask was my idea.

  ENTER THE BEAST

  This morning, after finishing all my chores in the chicken coop, the kennel, and the barn, I invaded the kitchen with a fierce kind of hunger.

  It’s too bad that nothing worth eating was anywhere to be found. Sure, the cupboard was filled with all kinds of cereal, but not one of them was frosted, chocolate-flavored, marshmallowy, or even close to being “magically delicious.” Instead there was a lot of “high fiber” stuff that, between you and me, looks, smells, and tastes like critter kibble. Trust me, I know.

  Then in stomped Kelly, who plopped her backpack on the chair by the door. Mom was right behind her.

  “Kelly, have you had breakfast yet?” asked my mom.

  “Yes, Mother,” said Kelly. “I had some ibuprofen.”

  Kelly was sporting her new look this morning. Lately she’s been wearing a plastic thing under her hair that makes it look like there’s a little speed bump on top of her head. I think she ordered it from an infomercial.

  As they left the room, I heard my mom say, “Now, Kelly, breakfast is the most important…”

  I checked in the refrigerator, and miracle of miracles, in the freezer was one solitary fudge bar. It was left over from last night. And it was Kelly’s.

  Hey, I had no choice.

  I was hungry, and, as you heard: “Breakfast is the most important something or other,” so I started to remove the wrapper, and:

  Or she’ll what?

  She has no power over me. Not now. Not anymore.

  Although, I do admit, she used to, and I mean BIG-TIME.

  When we were little, my big sister Kelly was a total thug. She once held me down and threatened to let loose a giant loogie on my face if I didn’t submit to being her slave.

  And so I was her slave for a while, and did all the usual things that three-year-old slaves do, like:

  But the worst thing she ever did to me was make me dress up in a bunny costume to help her sell lemonade at the front gate of our farm.

  I was too young to remember it, but if I could remember it, I’m pretty sure I’d never forget it.

  “Or you’ll do what,” I asked her, “make me wear a hot, itchy bunny suit on the side of the highway in the middle of August?”

  “I’ll tell Mom you let the dogs in the house the weekend she and Daddy went to New York,” she said.

  “Big deal,” I said. “I shampooed the carpets afterwards, and besides, that’s ancient history.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Kelly. “Was it ancient history last week, when I saw you hitchhiking home from school?”

  Uh-oh, busted.

  Now she had me.

  Never mind that it was freezing cold and I had a ton of stuff to carry and it was a little old lady driving and it was just that one time. It would kill my mom if she found out.

  So I gave in to Kelly’s threat and gently returned the fudge bar to the freezer, giving it a little good-bye kiss.

  As soon as she left the room, I sprang into action. I removed the fudge bar from the freezer, tore off a corner of the wrapper, and tiptoed over to her backpack. I unzipped the back pouch, dropped the fudge bar inside, and re-zipped it.

  Mission accomplished.

  Later that evening, when Kelly got home from school, she was so mad she was foaming at the mouth, and it was all because the fudge bar in the backpack had melted into a sticky mess all over her learner’s permit. Just as I had planned.

  She had a big slobbery meltdown and said, “There’s a big bucket of angry eyeballs hanging over my head and each one is telling me that my life is a disaster in the making!”

  “Talking eyeballs?” I said.

  Then she ran crying upstairs and slammed her bedroom door so hard that a picture frame in the hallway fell off the wall and broke, and now I have to pay to replace it.

  $10.99 plus tax!

  There goes my monthly budget.

  But you want to know something?

  It was totally worth it.

  LUNCH WITH FREDDIE

  I was in the cafeteria having lunch with Freddie, and as usual, we weren’t talking much because we hardly ever do. So I asked him what kind of cracker sandwich his mom made for him today, and he said, “Pickle.”

  Let me explain something here.

  When he said pickle, that doesn’t mean his cracker sandwich has sliced pickles between two crackers. What it does mean is that his mom squirted pickle juice on crackers and put the crackers between two slices of bread. That’s what they call a cracker sandwich at the Schnase house. Sometimes Mrs. Schnase puts ketchup or mustard or butter on the crackers. She once tried honey, but it made everything too gooey.

  Freddie’s family does a lot of weird stuff like that.

  His mom once saw a chef on TV bake some bread in clay flowerpots, so she tried it. She made the dough, put it into a flowerpot, baked it in the oven, and served it to Freddie and his dad for dinner. But the problem was, she’d used an old flowerpot that wasn’t clean and still had dirt and old roots and stuff in it. His dad got mad and yelled at her, and ever since then the only thing she cooks is Lean Cuisine.

  Another thing his mom does is wash her car in her pajamas. Every Saturday morning, if the weather’s nice, Mrs. Schnase can be seen in the driveway, soaping up the Subaru in her pj’s and fuzzy slippers.

&nb
sp; Freddie likes to wear his pajamas a lot, too, but only in the house and under a bathrobe. Lately, though, he’s been wearing his bedroom slippers outdoors, and even to school. He says it’s because they’re comfortable, and there’s nothing in the dress code that says he can’t wear them.

  He also wears baggy pants, but not saggin’ like the other guys. He wears them way up high with a belt, like some old guy who’s wandered away from the rest home.

  If Freddie keeps dressing like that, he’s never going to get a girlfriend. Unless, I guess, she’s kind of weird like him. They’d never be able to go out to a nice restaurant, because Freddie will only eat at places where he can watch them fix his food. That way, he says, he makes sure they don’t spit on it or mess with it in any way.

  So anyway, Freddie and I were in the cafeteria having lunch when I spotted Dalton Cooke across the room. He was going from table to table, eating food off other people’s trays.

  I took out my camera and started filming it.

  “Why are you doing that?” mumbled Freddie.

  “Because it’s right out of The Miracle Worker,” I told him.

  “Remember that scene when Patty Duke as, you know, Helen Keller, went around the table and was eating whatever she wanted off her family’s plates?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Freddie, The Miracle Worker, 1962, directed by Arthur Penn, it’s a classic! Remember that scene where Patty Duke first realizes the sign for water?”

  Freddie looked at me like I was crazy or something, so I acted out the scene for him.

  “You mean you’ve never seen The Miracle Worker?” I asked him.

  “No,” said Freddie, “and why would I want to see a movie about people who eat other people’s food?”

  By then, Dalton was at our table.

  He poked his finger into my chicken taco and sneered.

  Then he picked up a portion of Freddie’s cracker sandwich, examined it, grinned at Freddie, and took a big bite.

  Whoa! I thought his eyes were going to roll back into his head. He made a choking sound and spit Freddie’s sandwich onto the floor.

  “What’s in that thing, used toilet paper?”

  “That’s right, Dalton,” I said as he staggered off. “Why don’t you come back tomorrow? We’re having dog-hair burritos!”

  “No, we’re not,” said Freddie, all serious like. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  MEET THE NEW BOSS

  My mom picked me up at school on Wednesday and took me to meet the lady I was going to be working for: Mrs. Grubnik.

  She seemed like a nice old lady, especially when she was talking to my mom and calling her “Diane, dear” and telling her not to worry about a thing, because she and I would get along just fine. Stuff like that.

  But as soon as my mom left, she turned to me and said, “I’ll have none of your nonsense around here. Do we understand each other, young man?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Yes, ma’am.” Though I wasn’t sure what particular nonsense of mine she was referring to.

  Then I started thinking maybe she’s like Santa Claus or the CIA, and has spies following me around.

  Her house didn’t seem haunted, but it looked old and smelled old. Kind of like gravy. And it was quiet. Real quiet. I didn’t see a radio or a TV anywhere, and there were no animals in the house. The place really needed a dog.

  She led me through the house and explained what my chores would be.

  In the room she called the sunroom was her “art collection.” She has about a million tiny statues of weird-looking chubby people with big heads who are dressed like the kids in The Sound of Music.

  She called them figurines and said they were off-limits to me. I was not to touch them.

  “They’re collectables,” she said. “Do you know what ‘collectable’ means?”

  “Sure,” I said, looking around the room. “A collectable is something that collects a whole lot of dust.”

  I don’t think she appreciated that remark.

  The first thing she had me do was replace the burned-out bulbs in her chandelier. The whole time I was doing it, she stood next to the ladder and kept yelling, “What you break comes out of your pay! Remember that, Mister Smarty-Pants!”

  After that, she had me replace the plastic hooks on her shower curtain.

  Then it was time to clean out the hall closet.

  Mrs. Grubnik said it was her intention to empty out the entire closet and give everything that was in it to charity.

  Yeah, well, it didn’t exactly work out that way.

  Every single item I pulled out of the closet, she had me put back in, “because,” she said, “it’s something I’ll probably need sooner or later.” We’re talking about stuff like six umbrellas, three pairs of rubber galoshes, a ukulele, a pith helmet, a box of incense, a pink plastic walrus, an Elmer Fudd mask, a 1967 telephone directory.

  Okay, that I did convince her to toss.

  At one point a framed photo fell off the top shelf, and I caught it just before it hit the floor.

  “Be careful!” she shrieked. “Do you know who that is?”

  I wiped the dust off the glass, thinking it was probably a picture of Mr. Grubnik, but I saw right away that it wasn’t.

  “It’s William Holden,” I said.

  “You know who William Holden was?”

  “Sure,” I said, “he was a big Hollywood star, one of the greats. He was in Bridge on the River Kwai, Stalag 17, Sunset Boulevard…”

  Then I looked straight at her and said, “You’re Nora Desmond! You used to be big.”

  Mrs. Grubnik’s eyes opened up real wide, and she said:

  She was real impressed and wanted to know how I knew lines from an old movie like Sunset Boulevard. So I told her my life story: how my dad teaches an American cinema class and how he brings home lots of movies—new and old—and how I’ve seen most of them and can remember tons of dialogue.

  I also told her that I’m going to be a movie director one day, and my girlfriend Brooke is going to star in my first feature film.

  Mrs. Grubnik and I spent the rest of my time there talking about old movies.

  She told me she remembers the first movie she ever saw, Too Hot to Handle, the one with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy.

  She said she’s always loved movies and that seeing a favorite movie you haven’t seen in a while is like visiting with an old friend, only better, “because a movie will never tell you you’re looking old, or ask to borrow money for new dentures.”

  You know, for a mean old lady, she’s pretty cool.

  SIZE MATTERS

  I was having a math test today and needed my lucky shirt, but I couldn’t find it.

  It’s an old shirt that I bought at the beach. It says: “Oh, yeah? The voices in my head are telling me I’m not crazy!” I know it’s kind of lame, but that shirt’s gotten me through tests, quizzes, and even an oral report called “Dental Hygiene for Dogs,” which featured a slideshow of me brushing and flossing one of the Buddies’ teeth.

  Well, I finally found it in a pile of dirty clothes in the laundry room.

  While there, I checked my height against the measurements on the door frame to see if I’d grown any since last week, which was the last time I’d checked.

  No change.

  I’m beginning to worry that I’m never going to grow. My dad said that he didn’t get his first real growth spurt until he was eighteen, but I’m worried I might never get a growth spurt.

  I’m afraid I might take after my mom’s side of the family or, worse, one day I might find out I was adopted, and my real parents are tiny circus people.

  It’s something I worry about.

  I THOUGHT YOU WERE HER

  Brooke’s mom dropped us off at Meadowbrook Ice-Skating Rink for the afternoon. The plan was that we were going to take the bus home. The bus goes right by Brooke’s house, but I have to take the bus all the way to Post Road, then walk another mile back to the far
m.

  Brooke’s a pretty good skater and she has her own skates. I’m a really bad skater and I have to rent.

  After I got my skates from Hector, the skate-rental guy, and sat down to lace them up, a lady in a baseball cap started asking Hector a lot of questions. The main thing she wanted to know was Meadowbrook’s policy on “crack the whip.”

  I was never a part of one, but I remember when I was a little kid and used to watch the big kids form whips on the ice. That’s when everybody joins hands and skates around in a big circle, faster and faster until the person on the end loses control and crashes into the wall. Awesome.

  “No, ma’am,” said Hector to the lady in the baseball cap, “that’s not allowed here at Meadowbrook anymore.”

  “Good!” said the lady. “Because it’s a dangerous practice that encourages violence and antisocial behavior. If you allow those whips, before you know it, fights will start breaking out, or even worse, a hockey game!”

  “Actually, ma’am,” said Hector, “we have hockey games here every Tuesday and Wednesday.”

  “Well, that proves my point exactly,” said the lady.

  It wasn’t too crowded on the ice. Brooke did her fancy moves out in the center, while I hugged the wall and gave the evil eye to any little kid who skated better than me—which happened to be all of them.

  I eventually let go of the wall and managed to skate along with the crowd and not kill anybody. Or worse, embarrass myself.

  In fact, I was doing pretty well until the “Ghostbusters” song started playing. About half of the skaters let out a cheer, while the other half scrambled to get off the ice.