“Gee, thanks!” she chirped happily. “Enjoy!”
Zach gave her a little wave as he turned in the direction of Hot-Cha. As he walked through the mall, he suddenly felt sick to his stomach.
“You're my twenty-fourth piercing today, so don't worry about a thing,” the bearded man at Hot-Cha told Zach. “It only hurts for a year or so. Ha-ha! Just kidding.” He laughed long and hard as he sterilized his instrument.
The blood was pounding in Zach's ears. He wondered if it would come spurting out when the guy stuck him. Hey, what if they can't stop the bleeding? he wondered.
“Did a bunch of kids with hair like mine come in here before?” he asked, his voice quivering a little.
“Not that I can remember,” the guy said with a crooked-tooth smile. “There were a bunch of guys in here before, but I don't remember them having hair like yours.”
Zach shrugged. Okay, maybe they'd come in here first, and then gotten their hair done. He'd probably just missed them.
“I can't remember much anymore,” the bearded man was saying. “Not since my second breakdown. Ha-ha!” When Zach didn't laugh along with him, the man said, “Don't get nervous, kid—I'm just tryin' to loosen you up, get you laughing a little.”
“Oh. Ha! Yeah,” Zach said, trying his best. “Should I close my eyes? I guess I should close my eyes.”
“Honest, this'll only hurt for a minute.”
“Am I gonna bleed?”
“Just a little.”
“Oww!”
“There. See? Beautiful. I never miss.” The guy put down the instrument, which was kind of like a hole puncher for putting holes in paper. He took a little steel bolt and fastened it into Zach's ear. “It'll keep the hole open while it heals,” he explained, dabbing it with a disinfectant that made Zach wince.
“Don't you have a little diamond stud or something?” Zach asked hopefully.
“I've got 'em for sixty-five dollars,” the man said.
“Sixty-five dollars?!”
“Oh, you probably want one of the cut-glass kind. I'm all out of those. Sorry.”
Great. Just great.
“Have a look at yourself, kid.” The man turned Zach's chair to face the mirror.
Zach contemplated himself. Okay, he looked like a freak—but at least the hair looked a little better with the earring to match. All he needed now was a tattoo to complete the whole image.
The trouble was, Zach still didn't feel like the guy in the mirror. It was more like putting on a Halloween costume or something. Like a disguise.
“Man, I've still gotta get used to it,” he told the bearded guy.
“It takes a while,” the man agreed, nodding wisely and taking Zach's last fifteen dollars. “See you next time.”
“Sure,” Zach said with a little wave. Under his breath, he muttered. “Not if I see you first.”
He came out of the shop and checked himself out in the mirrored pillars that flanked the mall's promenade. Yeah, the look was startling, all right. Spiky blond hair, big metal bolt in his ear, the new pair of wide-leg skateboard jeans his parents had bought him last month, and his huge designer T-shirt. All he needed to top if off was one of those tattoos Brian said he was going to get.
“Ha! Yeah, that'll be the day. He'd never go that far …” Suddenly, a horrifying possibility entered Zach's mind—what if he did? The thought of getting all the needles it took for a tattoo made Zach get goose bumps all over. He hated needles worse than anything!
Zach headed for the mall exit. He guessed he'd missed his buddies, but he didn't mind walking home alone. It would give him a chance to check out the reactions of the people he passed on the street.
He took one last look at himself in the mall's plate-glass windows. Overall, he thought he looked pretty silly. The one thing he kind of liked was the earring—and even that should have been a diamond, not a steel bolt. The bolt was just for widening the hole. It didn't really look like jewelry.
Oh, well, it was too late to turn back now. And at least he'd be down with his friends.
“Besides,” he told himself, “it'll all be worth it, just to see the looks on Mom and Dad's faces!”
5
His mother and father did not give Zach the exaggerated reaction he was hoping for. His mom raised one eyebrow and said, “Well, well.” His dad just shook his head in disgust, muttering something Zach couldn't make out.
“You like it?” Zach asked, taunting them to tease a reaction out of them. For once in his life, he actually wanted to get yelled at, and they wouldn't even give him the satisfaction of acting annoyed!
“It's not important whether your father and I like it,” his mother said calmly. “It's whether you're happy with it. You're the one who's going to have to show up at Amherst Academy looking like that.”
“Like what?” Zach demanded.
“Zachary,” his father warned. “Don't push it.”
“Why don't you tell me I have to get rid of it?” Zach asked, half hoping they would.
“Of what? The hairdo?” his father said. “Oh, no. You chose it, now you can live with it. It doesn't bother us one bit.”
“Not one bit,” his mom echoed.
Cheese whiz! Zach thought, sighing. Thanks a lot! He turned and went upstairs, shaking his head.
As he got to the top step, Zoey came out of her room. Seeing him, she let out a scream worthy of a grade-B horror movie. Then she backed into her room, slamming the door behind her.
Zach heard the lock turn in the latch. “Zoey, it's me!” he called to her. “Open up!”
“Z-Zach?” He heard her quaking voice from behind the door.
“Yeah. Come on now, it's not that bad!”
She flipped the lock and slowly opened the door—just a crack, so she could peek through at him. She quickly let out a terrified squeak and shut it again.
“Zoey!”
“Okay, okay.” She opened the door, wider this time. After looking at him soberly for about five seconds, she suddenly burst out laughing. “Zach, what did you do to yourself, you dummy?” she asked. “Omigosh! You look so gross!”
“I do not! Shut up!” Zach shot back, feeling the sting of tears come to his eyes. Not wanting to let her see him cry, he stormed into his room and slammed the door behind him.
No sooner had he collected himself than Zoey came in. Her face had changed now, from amused to angry. “Hey!” she said, narrowing her eyes at him. “Where'd you get the money to do all that stuff to yourself? And don't tell me mom and dad gave it to you, either!”
“I, um, I had some baby-sitting money left over … ,” Zach fumbled.
“Yeah, right,” Zoey said. “You never saw a dime you didn't spend.” And then something dawned on her. “My piggy!” she cried. Wheeling around, she sped back across the hall into her room.
“Zoey, wait—!” he called after her, and sprang off the bed, hoping to prevent total disaster.
She was shaking the piggy when he came into her room. Hearing the coins inside, she began to calm down.
“You see?” he told her. “It's all still there. I told you.”
She stopped shaking the pig, and stared right at him. “Oh yeah? That's what you say. But I've known you too long, you sneak!” She twisted open the bottom of the bank and quickly counted the money, her jaw hardening. “Aha!” she cried in furious triumph. “There's forty dollars missing. You thief! I'm telling!”
“No! Wait!” he ordered in a hoarse whisper. “Don't tell. I only borrowed it—I was going to pay it right back!”
“Sure you were.”
“I was! With interest!”
“You must think I'm stupid,” Zoey told him.
Man, she always saw right through him! “Okay, okay, don't believe me,” Zach said miserably, plopping down on her bed. “Go ahead, tell them. My life's already a total wreck. You might as well light the match and set the whole thing on fire.” He was surprised to find himself crying real tears, right in front of her.
The s
ight of him blubbering like that must have really shaken Zoey up, because she just stood there. Her mouth was wide open, ready to call in their parents—but she kept silent, stunned by his outpouring.
“Go ahead,” Zach continued through stifled sobs. “I deserve it.”
“Well,” Zoey said, “maybe you could make it up to me.”
Zach sniffed. “How?” he asked, totally humbled.
“You know what I really want.” Zoey was staring at him.
“You mean … ?”
“I want skateboarding lessons,” she said. “For me and Lorena. A lot of lessons. And they'd better be good.”
“How many lessons?” Zach asked.
“Let's see … I think I'm entitled to, oh, say, two lessons a week for two months. Starting tomorrow.”
“What?!”
“Take it or leave it.” She crossed her arms and waited for him to decide.
Zach smiled through his tears and put a hand softly on Zoey's shoulders. “You drive a hard bargain, kid,” he told her.
Zoey smiled, satisfied, and Zach grinned back. All in all, considering what had happened, he thought he'd gotten off pretty easy.
Sure, he'd be beholden to Zoey and her friend Lorena for the next two months—but things would have been a lot worse if she'd told their parents. He was already a disobedient troublemaker and a liar in their eyes—all he needed was for them to find out he was a thief!
Zach finally got the reaction he wanted on Labor Day, when the whole family went to visit Grandma and Grandpa Halper and all the Halper cousins. The adults groaned and moaned, and gave him lectures about his future and about being a sheep blindly following the herd and about the evils of “pop culture.”
“He's gonna be just like Seymour,” Aunt Belle said, shaking her head and clucking her tongue.
“You mean, 'Skeeter'?” Uncle Fred asked sarcastically. “That's what he calls himself these days, you know—what kind of a name is that, 'Skeeter'? It's short for mosquito, isn't it?”
Zach loved his uncle Skeeter, his mom's younger brother. “The retro-hippie,” she sometimes called him, but she always smiled when she talked about him. And every week they talked for a long time on the phone.
“Mosquito? Why would he name himself after a mosquito?” Aunt Belle wondered.
“What can I tell you?” Uncle Fred said with a shrug. “He lives out there in Los Angeles someplace and never gets a job. I don't know how he lives.”
“Anyway,” Aunt Belle said with another look at Zach, “this one takes after him.”
Zach remembered the time Uncle Skeeter came to stay with them for a week, when Zach was only five. Skeeter hadn't been too grown up to play with him. It was like being with a very big kid, Zach remembered. Hey, if he reminded them of Uncle Skeeter, that was okay with him.
Zach tried to ignore their muttering and the looks they were giving him. Taking a hint from Uncle Skeeter, he concentrated his attention on the little kid cousins, who obviously thought Zach was the coolest thing on wheels.
“How do you make your hair stick up like that?” little cousin Marcella wondered.
“Did it hurt when they stuck a hole in your ear?” cousin Nicky asked. “I'd be too chicken to let anyone do that to me.”
“You're so brave!” Marcella said, gazing at him with open admiration.
Well, it had taken guts to do what he'd done, Zach thought proudly. He'd gone in alone, too, without his friends there to support him.
Yeah, brave, that's me, he thought, almost believing it.
The next morning he was still thinking about his heroics as he stood in front of the bedroom mirror, getting ready for his first day at Amherst Academy.
Zach still thought the haircut looked ridiculous on him. But the stylist had assured him it was way cool, and the little kids all liked it—except for Zoey, who didn't count—so he guessed it looked okay after all.
All in all, Zach was feeling pretty good about things, considering that he was going to a new school, where everyone else knew one another, and he didn't know one single solitary soul.
Gazing at himself in the mirror, he held his hands out to either side, pretending he was skateboarding. Today, with his grounding over, he'd go right over to Moorehead Park after school to see the guys. They'd compare haircuts and earrings and first days of school. He wanted to let them know he was still one of them, even if he did go to a different school now.
Zach struck another pose—as if he'd just pulled off an amazing stunt on his board and was basking in the applause of the crowd. That's when he heard Zoey laughing and clapping behind him.
“Whoo-oo!!” she catcalled, mocking him by striking a pose herself. “There he is, Mr. Cool himself!”
Zach was about to say something nasty. But then he thought, No, I'm the mature one. I'll just let it go by, like it doesn't bother me. And he did, chillin' as he walked past her toward the front door. “Yeah, that's right,” he said. “I am Mr. Cool.”
“Let's go, you two. Mom and I have to get to work!” Dad called from the car.
Zoey got dropped off first. She still went to good old Coleridge Elementary. Zach shook his head as he watched her walk up the steps with her little girlfriends. Zoey doesn't know how lucky she is, he thought. Zach still had great memories from his years at Coleridge.
He wondered if Amherst would be any better than Brighton. Everyone always said it was a better school. And when he let himself think about it, Zach was kind of excited about working on the high-tech, cutting-edge equipment Amherst offered.
But his parents hadn't sent him to Amherst for the education. No, they'd sent him there to separate him from his best friends in the world! They didn't deserve the satisfaction of seeing him get excited about it.
He got out at curbside in front of the school, and his parents called, “Good luck!” Zach ignored them. Hitching up his backpack, he turned away from the car and didn't look back as it drove off.
The first thing he noticed about Amherst Academy was that nobody, not one person, looked anything like he did.
He searched everywhere in the crowd of students milling around in front of the school. Most were dressed preppy style. Obviously, some kids still let their parents choose their clothes. “A lot of geeks and no freaks,” Zach muttered to himself unhappily.
The next thing he noticed was that he was drawing stares from some of the kids. They were looking at him with a mix of curiosity, amusement, and disgust—as though he were some weird new insect who was going to be sharing a classroom with them.
Great. This was going to be just great.
Zach decided that the best thing to do was ignore them. He went up the steps and into the main hallway, where a big sign said PLEASE TAKE A SEAT IN THE AUDITORIUM.
Zach sat in the back row, where he got a good view of the rest of the student body as they filed in. He hadn't realized just how much of an outsider his “new look” would make him here. He'd done everything to fit in with his old friends. But he didn't go to school with them anymore. These kids were the ones he was going to have to fit in with from now on. And he looked all wrong!
The auditorium was filling up fast, and the seats around Zach were soon occupied. On his left was a fat kid with thick black glasses and braces. Boy, thought Zach. Three strikes against him. Poor guy.
“Hi!” the kid said in a squeaky voice, giving Zach a smile full of metal. “I'm Benny Santangelo. Seven-four.” He stuck his hand out, and Zach took it.
“Zach Halper. What do you mean, seven-four?” The kid looked to be about five foot two.
“My class,” Benny explained. “What's yours?”
“Oh. I don't even know,” Zach replied. “Let's see here …” He fished out his program card. Benny took it and looked it over.
“Lucky us!” he said, pointing to a number at the top right of the card. “We're classmates!”
“Great,” Zach said, trying to force a smile. He was sure the kid was going to want to sit next to him, and eat lunch with him, an
d be his new best friend. Heelllppp!!!
The kid to the right of Zach said hello to Benny. “This is Zach,” Benny told him. “I forget your last name.”
“Halper,” Zach said.
“Hi. I'm Bernard.” The kid stuck out his hand for Zach to shake. It felt like a cold, dead fish.
Bernard was about a foot taller than Benny, but they both had exactly the same glasses. The piece of tape was even in the same spot—although Benny had actually used a Band-Aid on his.
“Pleased to meet you,” Zach mumbled, then swung around to look elsewhere.
Bernard, seeing that Zach was ignoring him, started talking to Benny. Zach listened to them jabber about the fact that they were both taking Algebra 1A and Geophysical Science. Benny told Bernard he'd lost ten pounds over the summer, and Bernard said he'd grown six inches. The two boys made a date to play chess after school.
Zach sat there, rolling his eyes.
Brian Jeffers was right, he thought. This place is nerd heaven!
6
Zach trudged through his first classes like a robot. He said hi to the few kids who said hi to him. The others he ignored. He could hear them whispering behind his back. Zach was feeling worse than ever about his new look—the hair, the stupid bolt in his ear, and especially his wide-leg skater jeans.
These kids have probably never been on a skateboard in their lives, he decided. Amherst didn't have much of a sports program.
But, boy, were the kids here ever smart! Zach really had to listen hard to keep up with what was being taught, even on the first day of classes. He could see this wasn't going to be a free ride to the honor roll, like at Brighton last year. Amherst was a very serious place.
He struggled through the morning—math, scienee, and Spanish—and made his way to the cafeteria for lunch.
Things began to look up the minute he smelled the food. Real food! Not school cafeteria variety: two weeks old, overcooked, and underseasoned. Zach got himself some yummy-looking lasagna, fresh salad, and a side of cooked apples.
He scanned the big room for a free seat next to a friendly face. But the only face he recognized was Benny's.
Skateboard Renegade Page 3