The Accidental Genius of Weasel High

by Rick Detorie

  It was another typical evening at the Pace home.

  I was on the couch in the den, fast-forwarding through that morning’s Price Is Right and taking notes. My mom was at the desk searching for recipes in her cookbook. My dad was in the next room grading papers.

  Suddenly, there was a huge crash, and the house shook like it had been struck by a meteor. And into the room burst Kelly.

  “My life is ruined!” She sobbed. “It’s just one big rotting whale carcass on the beach of broken dreams!”

  That was a new one, and not a bad one, at that.

  My mom handed her a box of tissues. “What’s wrong, Kelly?”

  “R-R-Robby M-M-Markowski,” said Kelly, her voice cracking with emotion, “isn’t t-t-taking m-m-me to the junior d-d-dance.”

  Then she blew her nose so hard, the tissue flew across the room and landed on my knee.

  “Oh,” said my mom, “I didn’t know that you and Robby had agreed to go together.”

  “Well, we never actually talked about it. But I’ve been real nice to him lately, so I just assumed he’d ask me.”

  Robby Markowski? Let me tell you what a loser Robby Markowski is. Last summer he got caught boosting a Hannah Montana coloring book at the dollar store.

  “But he asked Amber Toppler instead!” wailed Kelly.

  “Hey,” I said, pointing to the tissue perched on my knee, “are you going to do something about this?”

  “Don’t you torment me, Larkin!” she shouted. “Make him stop, Daddy, please.”

  My dad was standing in the doorway. “Larkin, stop tormenting your sister,” he said.

  “I’m tormenting her?” I said. “She’s the one who dropped the booger bomb on my leg.”

  Kelly moved over to my dad and rested her head against his chest.

  “Now, now, princess, it’s not the end of the world,” he said.

  “Thank you, Daddy, that’s very comforting.” She looked up at him and continued, “I feel so much better now, thank you.”

  Watch out, here it comes…

  “Do you know what would make me feel a whole lot better?” she said. “If I could have my bedroom completely redecorated.”

  “Kelly, we just did it six months ago,” said my mom.

  “I know, mother, but that was so last year!”

  “No to that,” said my mom.

  “Okay, then,” said Kelly, “how about a kitty? I’d so love to have a cat, and I promise I’ll take good care of it. Cross my heart.”

  “Now, Kelly,” said my mom, “you know about your father’s allergies.”

  “But what if I kept it only in my room?”

  By that time, I’d had enough. I flicked the booger bomb off my knee, put on my headphones, cranked up the music, and watched as the three of them played out the entire scene. Wordlessly.

  I later found out that they’d decided to let Kelly have one of the barn cats, and it would be restricted to her room. The cat would enter and exit her room, which is on the second floor, by way of a ramp which my mom would build on the outside of the house.

  And guess who gets to help her build it?

  That’s right: yours truly.

  TEN THINGS THAT BUG ME ABOUT MY SISTER

  10. She goes ballistic whenever I touch her stuff.

  9. She leaves the stuff I’m not supposed to touch everywhere.

  8. She borrows my stuff without ever asking.

  7. She rolls her eyes at everything I say.

  6. She and her friends giggle whenever I pass by.

  5. She pasted little heart stickers all over my skateboard.

  4. She put lime gelatin in my favorite shoes.

  3. She posts dorky pictures of me on the Web and forwards them to her friends.

  2. She always gets her way.

  1. Actually, everything about her bugs me. Seriously.

  THE COWARDLY LION

  I miss Brooke.

  We haven’t hung out together since the ice-skating incident. Sure, I’ve run into her at school a few times, but I didn’t know what to say to her, so we wound up saying, “Hi! How are you? Good.”

  I’d called her a few times but didn’t leave a message because I didn’t know what to say.

  “Hi! How are you? Good.”

  Yesterday I was looking for some batteries for my camera, when I came across a picture of me and Brooke in the third grade when we played the rainbow in our class play.

  The one thing that really sticks in my mind about the play was the scene where Joey Bernucci and the other monkeys found the magic key and were about to unlock The Box of Ultimate Happiness. At that very suspenseful moment, Brooke coughed, and I yelled across the stage:

  Yeah, sure, I knew you’re only supposed to say “Bless you” when somebody sneezes, but she was so cute, I had to say something.

  Anyway, the audience thought it was pretty funny.

  I thought about phoning Brooke to tell her that I’d found the rainbow picture, but that seemed like a pretty lame reason to call.

  No, I needed to come up with something that would really get her going and make her laugh.

  And then it hit me.

  I remembered reading somewhere that when he was ten years old, actor Robert De Niro played the Cowardly Lion in his school play The Wizard of Oz.

  Brooke knows who Robert De Niro is, and everybody knows his famous line from Taxi Driver, so I decided to tell her about my idea for a video.

  I called her home phone instead of her cell.

  Her mom answered.

  “Hi, Mrs. Wallace, is Brooke there? This is Larkin.”

  “Oh, hi, Larkin. Just a minute.”

  She sounded real friendly, even though I’m pretty sure Brooke had told her the news: “Guess what, Mom? Larkin Pace thought I was his girlfriend, and he was serious! Can you imagine such a thing?”

  Then they probably had a big laugh, and Brooke’s mother probably made some pot stickers, sort of Chinese dumplings, because for a non-Chinese lady she makes the best pot stickers in the world, and they probably ate them and spent the rest of the evening talking about what a dork I am for thinking Brooke was my girlfriend.

  I suddenly felt kind of sad, because I realized that I would never again have any of Brooke’s mom’s pot stickers. It was all very sad. Bordering on tragic, really.

  “Hi, Larkin,” said Brooke.

  “Hi, Brooke,” I said, “I’ve been meaning to call you.”

  “Oh?” she said.

  I took her pause to mean she wanted me to say something next.

  “Uh, yeah, you know Robert De Niro, don’t you?”

  That didn’t sound right, so I tried to explain what I meant.

  “I don’t mean know him know him, not like he’s a friend of the family or an uncle on your father’s side, not that he couldn’t be an uncle on your mother’s side, too. I’ve met all of your relatives, except for the cousin who lives in Cincinnati and has one green eye and one blue one, and in my opinion, they’re both really good. The sides, I mean, not the eyes. Though I bet the eyes are probably good, too.”

  I was really messing things up. That didn’t even make sense to me, and I’m the one who said it.

  “Hold on, Larkin,” said Brooke. “I’ve got another call.”

  I could hear her cell phone ringing in the background.

  “Hello?” I heard her say, “Oh, hi!” Her voice suddenly got all smooth and sexy. “Nothing. What are you doing?”

  She was talking to a guy! I could tell!

  “Larkin,” she said to me, “I have to take this call. Talk to you later, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, and I clicked off.

  This was bad. Really bad.

  THE AMY FORDYCE PROJECT

  Last night I lay awake and rehearsed what I was going to say to Amy Fordyce today. I planned on asking her to go with me to Friday night’s basketball game.

  I had decided that if Brooke was going to be dating other people, then so would I. Two could play at this game. />
  Actually, four, if you count Brooke, her date, and my date and me.

  And Amy seemed like a good choice. She’s smart, she’s good looking, and she’s not that much taller than me.

  My problem is that I have trouble talking to girls I don’t know too well.

  I’m okay at first, as long as I’ve planned out what I’m going to say. But after the conversation gets going, my mind starts to wander and I tend to lose focus, mainly because I’m thinking stuff like:

  But I decided to do my best and play it cool when I saw her after health class today.

  Why did she have to ask me a question I didn’t know how to answer?

  Crash and burn!

  TO MARKET, TO MARKET

  I was out in the yard raking leaves, while Miss Sadie was inside asleep on the couch watching the movie The Big Sleep.

  It’s been “Miss Sadie” ever since last week when Mrs. Grubnik told me to call her Sadie. I did at first, but it felt weird to call an old lady by her first name, so I settled on Miss Sadie.

  Hey, Larkin, you might ask, why are you raking leaves in March? Didn’t those leaves fall off the trees last November?

  That’s because, according to Miss Sadie, it’s pointless to rake leaves in the fall, because over the next few months, they’re going to blow into your neighbor’s yard anyway.

  So I was raking her neighbor’s leaves.

  After I’d finished raking, Miss Sadie asked me to go to Big Al’s Market to buy a few groceries she needed. She gave me some money, a list of what she wanted, and had me take a rusted old wagon that she kept under the back porch.

  I asked her why she didn’t get one of those two-wheeled carts that people take to the store, and she said, “Those things are death traps! If you get a bunch of old people together, wheeling those wiry things this way and that way, you’ll be lucky to get out alive.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  At the store I found everything on her list, and got into the “Ten Items or Less” line.

  Then this happened:

  I’d like to add one more thing to the “Ten Things I Hate about Being 14” list: Grown-up ladies with big bosoms are kind of scary.

  A KITTY FOR KELLY

  On Saturday morning, my mom and I put the finishing touches on Kelly’s cat ramp.

  It was awesome, if I do say so myself.

  The ramp extended up the side of the back porch to the porch roof, then to Kelly’s bedroom window, where mom had installed a cat door.

  I asked Mom if we were going to paint it, but she said, “No, because we’ll probably be dismantling it before the paint dries. You know how your sister goes through pets.”

  It’s true. Kelly will act all crazy in love with a pet, but before you know it, she’s bored with it, and I’m the one taking care of it. First it was Lola the parakeet, then the turtles Scooby and Dooby, then Pixie the teddy bear hamster. Pixie lasted the longest, about four months, because that’s how long it took Kelly to dress poor little Pixie in every doll outfit she owned.

  As I was putting the tools away, Freddie rode up on his bike.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey, who?” I asked.

  “Hey, you,” he replied.

  He asked me what I was doing, so I showed him the cat ramp. He didn’t seem too impressed.

  “I was wondering if I could use your mom’s table saw,” he said. “It’s for my wallet collection.”

  Freddie makes wallets out of duct tape. He’s made about a million of them. Well, maybe not a million, but it seems like that many. Some are pretty simple, but others are real complicated with flaps and accordion-type folds, and pockets for keys and cell phones and stuff.

  “Why do you need a table saw?” I asked.

  “I want to cut the heads off a few big nails to use them as hinges and weights for some flaps I designed.”

  “Okay,” I said, “the saw’s in the barn.”

  “I thought it was in the tool shed,” he said.

  “No, the shed was getting too crowded.”

  “But aren’t the cats in the barn?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but don’t worry. None of them are allowed to use the power tools,” I said. “Although the day before yesterday, I did catch Pixie the hamster messing with the belt sander.”

  “No, forget it,” said Freddie, shaking his head. “I can’t be around cats.”

  This was a new one for Freddie. He’d never been afraid of cats before.

  “Why not, Freddie, are you allergic or something?”

  “No, and I can’t tell you why. Can you bring the saw out here?”

  “You want me to drag that big heavy thing out here all by myself?”

  Just then Kelly poked her head out the window and shouted:

  I ignored her.

  “Freddie, why don’t you just get some headless nails at the hardware store?”

  “Mahz well,” he sighed. “If you don’t want to help me, I guess I’ll have to. Can you lend me five dollars?”

  “LARKIN!” she yelled again.

  “When I’m good and ready!” I yelled back. “But why do you need to borrow five dollars, Freddie? You’re rich! You get fifty dollars a week allowance.”

  “Because I don’t have any money on me, and it would be easier for me to go to the hardware store from here,” he said, “instead of going all the way home first.”

  “Oh, all right,” I said. “Wait here.”

  I was mad.

  He gets all that money every week for doing nothing, and yet he’s always broke. What does he spend it on? Duct tape?

  I went up to my room and took a five-dollar bill from my secret stash. Kelly saw me when I passed by her bedroom door and followed me down the stairs and out the door.

  “Hi, Freddie,” she said. “I see you’re still buying your clothes at Good Will.”

  Freddie didn’t say anything.

  I handed him the money. He tucked it in his shirt pocket and rode off.

  “So now you’re paying your friends to get lost?”

  “Shut up, Kelly,” I said.

  For the first time, I noticed the basket she was holding.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s a basket, stupid.”

  “I mean, what’s that in the basket?”

  “It’s a soft warm sweater that I’m going to wrap the kitty in.”

  “Kelly, that’s my sweater.”

  “Oh, Larkin, Larkin, Larkin, it’s always all about you and your stuff, isn’t it? Maybe it’s about time you stopped obsessing over your silly material possessions and started focusing on the things that really matter in life, like love, peace, and understanding.”

  “I hate you,” I said.

  “Hate you back!” she sang. “Now, put down the Hater-ade, and let’s catch us a kitty cat, shall we?”

  She turned and strode towards the barn.

  Twenty minutes later I was in the hayloft, using a tuna-flavored kibble to try to coax the cat Kelly had selected off a roof beam.

  I looked down at Kelly below me, holding the basket forward in case the cat fell, and for a second or two, I felt like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, peering down the zigzaggy staircase inside the bell tower.

  “What if I fall?” I said.

  “You I don’t care about,” she responded.

  I managed to grab ahold of the cat’s tail, and ever so gently, I pulled her towards me. She panicked and tried to jump into the hayloft, but instead landed on my face.

  “Ow! Ow! Ow!” I yelled into the cat’s belly.

  Somehow I was able to find the ladder and climb down.

  Kelly pried the cat off my face as I gasped for air and spit out a load of cat fur.

  “Oh, my poor traumatized widdle baby,” said Kelly, wrapping the cat in my sweater. “Mommy’s gonna take real good care of my widdle kitty-widdy.”

  She carried the cat out of the barn.

  I sat there on the floor for a little longer, then yelled, “You’re welcome!”
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  VIVE LA PRANK!

  This morning I saw Dalton standing around in the school parking lot with two members of his posse, Omar and Mack—or as I call them, Squishy and Stinky.

  It had taken a while, but I’d finally convinced Dalton not to do the stunt he’d wanted to do (toss me off the roof while attached to a chain of backpacks) and instead do a less dangerous prank in our French class.

  “Hey, Barkin’ Face,” he yelled. “Get over here.”

  He’d spotted me.

  I walked towards them.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “We may be way cool, but this area is designated Loser Friendly.”

  Squishy and Stinky laughed like they’d never heard that one before.

  “Okay, whatta ya got to report?” he asked.

  “So far, everybody’s signed on, except for Bethany Weaver,” I said.

  Bethany could be a problem. She sits in a desk up front and she’s one of those “Teacher, you forgot to give us homework” types.

  “So, what are you gonna do about that?” asked Dalton.

  “I’m going to talk to her at lunch today.”

  “Good boy,” he said. “I know you’ll get it done.” He reached over to put a “friendly” Vulcan death grip on me, but I backed away just in time.

  Later, while waiting in the cafeteria for Bethany, I thought about Mr. Asher Bivic, our French teacher.

  He’s totally weird.

  He’s supposed to be teaching us French, but half the time we can’t understand what he’s saying in English. And when we can understand his English, what he’s saying doesn’t make any sense.

  He speaks with a very strange accent. It’s not French, or even Canadian. I think he’s from one of those countries that went out of business.