Pack of Dorks

by Beth Vrabel

  I chewed my lip, thinking of Lucy Wolf limping off alone. “Then what?”

  “Huh?” Sam asked.

  “Then what?” I repeated. “If the scapegoat goes off on his own, can he make his own pack?”

  Sam looked at me, startled. “Why would a wolf want to be on its own? I mean, he should just deal with it. Being the scapegoat is a stinky job, but it’s still important.”

  “No. He should go off on his own, form his own pack with other scapegoats, and be awesome.” I crossed my arms.

  “A pack of scapegoats?” Sam half snorted, half laughed, which reminded me of Tom. I scowled at him. Sam stuck out his tongue, The Goblin shushed us, and we both started to laugh.

  We still were laughing when we walked back into Ms. Drake’s room. She gave us one of her dragon looks so we tried to pull it together, but when Tom made a sniffy, snorty, snobby noise as we walked by, it set us off all over again.

  When I finally made it into my seat, I could hear Becky’s whispers and see from the corner of my eye that Tom was glaring at us, but it didn’t bother me. Much.

  You know how sometimes things aren’t really all that funny, but something about it strikes you as hilarious and so you end up smiling all day about nothing and looking sort of freakish but you can’t stop doing it? That’s how the rest of my day went.

  I had a stupid happy smile plastered to my face all day, even though it meant that Tom, Becky and Henry had to work twice as hard to be jerks. They even got some people who aren’t quite popular but not quite dorks to join the Everyone Hates Lucy Club. I guess seeing me happy was to blame for the recruiting effort.

  When Amanda Frankston waited in the hallway bus line with her arms tightly crossed and her face grimacing, I didn’t think it had anything to do with me. Amanda’s always angry, and I was still smiling, imagining a pack of scrawny scapegoat wolves. Plus, I was trying really hard to ignore Henry, who was in the bus line next to us. I angled my body away from him, which also put my back to Amanda. So it took me awhile to tune into her grumbling behind me.

  Amanda was about a foot taller and wider than anyone else in fourth grade, and her frizzy, too-thick hair made her head look like a little mushroom on top of a boulder body. She was talking to April, who, when I finally caught on and glanced behind me, looked like a rabbit cornered by a dog. April is tall, but in this stretched-out-taffy thin way. Standing next to Amanda, even April seemed dainty, small, and more than a little scared. While Amanda never had actually broken bones or punched someone’s face in, the potential always was there, just under the surface of her too-broad, always-clenched fists.

  So there I stood, smiling to myself about imaginary wolves, taking way too long to realize that Henry was laughing in his mean, not-really-funny-actually-just-mean sort of way and everyone in my bus line and his were staring at my stupid smiley face.

  Amanda’s voice rose. “What’s wrong with her hair? That chunk at the top of her pony tail is standing straight up!” Amanda’s laugh was meaner than Henry’s. “Didn’t you know you’re supposed to wash all your hair, Chunk Head?”

  Henry joined in next. “What’s all over her shirt? Is that snot?”

  “Maybe she forgot to put on clean clothes?” Amanda huffed. “Hey, Chunk Head, wearing jeans that are too small isn’t the same as wearing capris!”

  I probably should’ve spouted back a comment about Amanda’s own fashion sense, which was, to put it kindly, challenged. She was wearing black mesh sport shorts and a black T-shirt. At least she matched. And at least her clothes were clean.

  I thought of Molly, sweet and smiling this morning in her new outfit. I thought of Mom trying to smooth out my hair but being distracted by Molly smiling. Then I thought of Molly spitting up all over my shirt. For a second, I was so mad. So mad at both of them.

  Very softly I heard another voice behind me. “I think her hair’s pretty. And I like her T-shirt.” I knew how hard it had to be for April to stick up for me. How much easier it would’ve been not to.

  “What do you know? You think boogers are a tasty treat,” Amanda practically shouted, and everyone in both lines laughed.

  “Yeah,” came a nasally, pitchy laugh. “Lucy looks like a Corythosaurus!”

  “Shut up, Sheldon,” Amanda snapped.

  But Sheldon is incapable of not sharing his dino facts, I guess, even when faced with our class’ T-Rex. “They’re called the helmet lizard, for this fin-like lumpy crest on top of their heads. Their faces are duck-billed and they stood on two legs. Corythosaurus were herbivores and . . .”

  Maybe I should’ve stood up for April the way she had for me, but I couldn’t seem to move. Even when the bus pulled up and everyone else got on, I stood there. The driver had to honk his horn before I moved. I took a seat next to April, but she just stared at the window.

  Chapter Eight

  I trailed a step behind April after we got off the bus, trying to think of a way to thank her for sticking up for me without actually making her think we were friends. I know that’s horrible of me and makes me just like Becky, but it’s true. If everyone saw that I was friends with April, I’d have zero chances of ever digging my way out of this Tom and Becky thing. I mean, I hadn’t figured out how to make myself popular again, but I knew hanging out with April was not the way to do it. Making friends with other residents of Dorkdom would be like settling. It’d be like accepting that this is where I belong.

  Still, when April turned left to go home and I kept walking straight to my house, I called out, “Bye, April!”

  She didn’t even wave.

  Great. Now even dorks hated me.

  Grandma’s old clunker car was in our driveway. The garage door was open, and I could see my mom’s van wasn’t there.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked Grandma as soon as I opened the screen door.

  Grandma was sitting on the couch, one ring-heavy hand resting on Molly’s belly. “Well, hi, and how do you do to you, too,” Grandma snapped. She didn’t look up from her book, a paperback with a muscled man holding a fainting woman bulging out of her dress on the cover.

  “Okay, fine. Hi, Grandma. How are you? What are you doing here?” I didn’t mean to sound so snappy, but I guess a big part of me was hoping to come home and find Dad waiting to go for a walk. I wanted to come home and have something be like it used to be. But then I remembered. Molly’s appointment with the heart doctor was today. “Is it Molly? Is her heart all right?”

  Grandma put the book down on her lap, bending the spine. She squinted up at me through her smudged glasses. “Molly’s fine. I’m more worried about you at the moment.”

  “The doctor said her heart’s okay?” I asked again, still standing in the doorway with my book bag.

  “Come in the house and shut the door,” Grandma snapped. “Molly’s fine. The doctor had good news. It looks like the heart murmur they saw at the hospital when she was born is going to close just fine. Her heart’s strong. I told your mom and dad I’d babysit my granddaughters while they went out for dinner to celebrate.”

  I breathed out slowly. The bricks I didn’t know had been piled on my chest dissolved. Molly’s heart was fine.

  But Grandma still stared at me like she was searching for a tick. “I’m more worried about you,” she repeated.

  I shrugged off my book bag and plopped onto the couch. “I’m fine. What’s for dinner?”

  “It’s four o’clock, Lucy. Respectable people don’t eat dinner until seven.” She smiled then and piled a few pillows around Molly like a nest. Then she hoisted herself up. “I’ll make some popcorn. You find some chocolate.”

  We feasted on popcorn and the chocolate Mom had hidden in the cupboard since Easter. It was a little chalky, but still delicious. Grandma’s popcorn is the best. It’s regular microwave popcorn, with a drizzle of melted Nutella and peanut butter. I felt bad for poor Molly, who woke up to just a bottle of disgust-o milk.

  For a long time, the only sound in the living room was the munching
of popcorn and the turning of Grandma’s paperback pages. I worried about getting chocolate smudges on my library book but figured Sam and I were the only ones who would ever actually check out wolf books from The Goblin and risked it.

  “So, what’s up with you, squirt?” Grandma asked. I realized I hadn’t heard her pages turn or popcorn chewing for a while.

  I shrugged.

  “Listen,” she said, and closed her book. “No one stares at a picture like that without having something bothering them.”

  I realized my library book was open to the page where the pack is attacking the scapegoat wolf. I sighed. “Things are sort of crappy at school.”

  “Kids giving you a hard time?” Grandma asked. Her voice was gruff.

  I nodded, angry at the way my eyes were about to spill over with tears. I didn’t want to cry because of stupid Amanda and stupid Sheldon. And especially not because of even stupider Henry or Tom. And never because of Becky.

  Almost like Becky knew I was thinking mean thoughts of her, the phone started ringing with her daily guess-who-hates-you-now call.

  “Ignore it,” Grandma said. We didn’t speak until the phone stopped ringing.

  I felt Grandma’s heavy hand on top of my head, but just for a second. Then she swiped my popcorn bowl and scooted closer beside me, munching on the few peanut butter-covered kernels that remained. “Kids can be jerks.” (Well, she used a different word than jerks. But I’m not allowed to say that word.)

  I nodded. “You can say that again.”

  So she did. I laughed a little, and she smiled wide for a second. Then her hand weighed down my shoulder for a minute and suddenly I was crying.

  She let me carry on for a little bit, then said, “The thing is, Lucy, they don’t know they’re being jerks. And they won’t know until they’re a lot older. I was the biggest jerk you could imagine when I was your age.”

  “You were?” Maybe I was surprised at first, but after thinking about it for a bit, it was pretty easy to imagine Grandma as an angry Amanda-like kid.

  She nodded. “I made life horrible for a lot of people who didn’t deserve it.”

  “Why?”

  Grandma shrugged, sending her beaded necklaces rattling. “Because I could.” She sighed. “It made me feel better, stronger, to make other people feel weak.” She pointed again at the picture of the scapegoat attack. “I guess it’s not all that unusual.”

  “But it’s stupid,” I snapped. Just because animals do it, too, doesn’t make it okay.

  “Absolutely stupid,” Grandma agreed. She shifted a little and glanced over at Molly, who was back asleep. “So, how’d they find out?”

  “Find out what?” I asked, confused.

  “About Molly.” Grandma’s voice was quiet and gruff again.

  Again I felt anger rush through me. “They didn’t,” I said. “It’s not about Molly. Believe it or not, it’s about me.” I slammed shut the book, popped off the couch, and stomped as hard as I could to my room. I didn’t even come out when Mom and Dad returned an hour later. I just pretended to be asleep, all through their happy cooing to precious Molly and her whole, healthy heart.

  “Rise and shine! It’s a beautiful day!”

  I pulled my blankets over my head and rolled away from my open door and Mom’s smiling face. “Go away. It’s Saturday.”

  “A bright, sunshiny Saturday!” I heard her humming down the hallway and soon smelled coffee brewing and bread toasting. I don’t like toast, and while coffee might smell good, it tastes like liquid earwax. Or at least how I think liquid ear wax would taste. I’ve never tasted ear wax, though I guess I could ask April if it tastes like coffee. When her nose is empty, she moves on to her ears. Then I remembered that even April wasn’t talking to me at the moment, and I buried myself under my blankets again.

  Whoosh! The blankets were rudely yanked back and my window blinds pulled up. Bright sunshine and cold air hit me.

  “Huzzah!” Dad yelled. I groaned. “Up and at them, Lucy bean!”

  “What is wrong with you and Mom today? It’s Saturday! The day we sleep in!”

  Dad answered with a tickle attack, his fingers tapping the little triangle inside my shoulders and making me laugh even though I was still mad. He’s very good at making people laugh when they want to be angry instead. “Your mother and I have made a decision. A decision to be happy! And we’re starting today.”

  “I made no such decision.” I yanked the blankets back from the foot of my bed.

  “As your parental units, we’ve decided on your behalf.”

  “Staying in bed will make me happy.” My head fell back in the perfect fluff of my pillow. Now if Dad would just go away.

  “Not today! Molly slept for four hours straight last night. A new record! I’ve never felt so refreshed! We’re going to seize the day!”

  “Stop yelling!”

  “No!” he chirped.

  “Grrr!”

  “That’s the spirit!” Dad clapped his hands and whistled.

  With a huge sigh, I sat up and planted my feet on the floor. “Fine,” I grumped. “I’m up.”

  I’ve got to admit: when I made it to the breakfast table and saw that Mom had arranged orange slices in a flower pattern and Dad had made a smiley face with egg eyes, bacon smile, and a toast triangle nose, I started to catch some of their happiness bug. Not that I’d share that with them yet.

  “So,” I said, eating the bacon smile first, “now that I’m up, what do we have to do today?”

  “Be happy,” Mom said simply and sat beside me. She was holding Molly and patted her rump gently. Molly blinked slowly from where she curled against Mom’s chest. I leaned over and kissed her nose, and she smiled again. Her smile was pretty awesome.

  “Be happy doing what exactly?” I asked, moving on to making my egg face a Cyclops.

  “Let’s take a walk,” Dad said.

  “Yes!” I squealed. Finally!

  But then Mom said, “Great idea! Let’s go to the park. Maybe you’ll see some friends there, Lucy.”

  It took a lot of work to keep that smile on my face. But as much as I wanted to just take my usual wandering walk with Dad, I saw how determined Mom was to be happy and couldn’t suggest she and Molly stay home.

  “Are you sure?” Dad said softly. “It’s T-ball season. I’m sure we’ll see a lot of families at the park. Are you . . . ready for that?”

  “Yes,” Mom said firmly. I wondered what that was about.

  I didn’t have to wonder for long.

  As soon as we got to the park, other moms flocked to Molly’s stroller like Sheldon to a dinosaur exhibit. “The baby!” they shrieked in this annoying stretched-out voice. “Aaaahh!”

  And then they’d lean in and look at her round little face, at her narrow eyes and her flat nose, and at her pink little mouth and the soft double chin. I didn’t understand at first, the face the moms made. I thought maybe Molly had spit up or something, because the moms all reacted the same way. They stopped mid-coo and bit their bottom lips. Their breath left in a wobbly gasp, and they stopped just short of touching Molly. They looked at Mom and their eyes got wet.

  At first, Mom kept her decision to be happy. She smiled brightly and said Mom things such as, “She’s almost two months old already!” and “Our little sweetie-pie! It’s her first time at the park.” But the other moms just nodded and said, “How are you doing? How is everyone adjusting?” I could hear Mom’s teeth grinding behind her smile.

  “What’s wrong with them?” I whispered to Dad, who wasn’t even trying to be happy any more.

  Dad looked at me for a long time, and I didn’t think he was ever going to answer. Finally, he knelt so we were eye to eye. “They’re noticing that Molly has Down syndrome.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s it?”

  “Yeah,” Dad sighed and stood again. “That’s it.”

  “But she’s still a baby. I mean, they wanted to see a baby. She’s a baby.”

  Dad stared at me f
or another minute and then said, “I love you, Lucy.” It was one of those times when someone says they love you and you feel it more than hear it.

  By the time Mrs. Chester dashed over—April’s baby brother stationed on her hip—Mom was losing it. “Let’s go,” she whispered to Dad.

  But Scrappy, wearing a baseball uniform and glove, darted around his mom and ran toward us. “April’s friend!” he yelled. I think that meant me. “Hi, April’s friend! Are you here to watch me play T-ball?”

  He kept right on yelling until he was right beside us. “It’s a type of baseball. I’m awesome at it. I might be the best baseballer ever. Is that why you came to the park? Because of how awesome I am at T-ball? Did April tell you?”

  Scrappy’s brown eyes were so big and so sure and so stinking happy that I wasn’t at all surprised when Dad said, “Yup. That’s exactly why we’re here.”

  “Knew it.” Scrappy nodded. “Mom,” he called over his shoulder to Mrs. Chester. “April’s friend and April’s friend’s parents and April’s friend’s baby are here to watch me play.” He skipped back to the field.

  Mrs. Chester laughed as she approached us. “You’ve absolutely made his day,” she said.

  Then came the moment we all dreaded. Mrs. Chester leaned over the stroller and looked at our Molly.

  “Good morning, precious!” she said, her voice just as happy, just as strong, as before. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Then she looked at Mom and Dad and said, “Congratulations on your baby girl!”

  I looked at Mom. She wasn’t working to be happy any more. Dad wrapped his arm around her and squeezed. To Mrs. Chester, he said, “Thank you. That means a lot to us.”

  Mrs. Chester nodded and ran a finger under Molly’s soft chin. “April’s over on a blanket by the baseball diamond,” she said to me. “Why don’t you run on ahead while I talk baby with your folks?”

  I walked slowly, but too soon I was standing in front of April. She was sprawled out on the blanket, coloring book open in front of her and a bag of cheesy crackers spilled out beside her. I knew she saw me—I put a big shadow over the superhero she was coloring—but she didn’t look up. Just behind her, one of her brothers was lying flat on his back, sound asleep.