Mayday

by Karen Harrington

  So my beat-up look was just as obvious as it had been the day the plane crashed. My face was changing colors like a mood ring. And maybe Grandpa didn’t think it was a big deal because he and I still hadn’t looked at each other directly since that awful day in the kitchen when I’d seen him, well, you know. The thing with the waterworks.

  So I put my towel back over the bathroom mirror.

  Mom said my changing face was a good sign. I was healing.

  A good sign?

  No way.

  Not a good look for a guy about to attend the West Academy for the very first time.

  That morning, it was cold. I could see my breath against the window as I watched my old school bus cruise past my house. I stood at the window like a dog waiting for its owner to come back home.

  Pathetic.

  Maybe I didn’t want to ride the bus. Maybe I didn’t want to run like a maniac down the sidewalk. I told myself I was glad I wouldn’t have to see mustard balls hurled my way. Or unpredictable seventh graders calling me Wayne-a-Pedia. Or annoy Carl, the bus driver.

  Because plane-crash bonus number twenty-seven: I had a new Carl now. Grandpa. Grandpa was going to drive me to and from school. And it was going to drive me crazy.

  We got into his old truck. His “everyday car,” as he called it. No way I’d get to ride in the Car.

  “Don’t leave any of your pencils behind,” Grandpa said.

  I gave him a look. What?

  “You used to do that all the time when you were little,” he said. “Leave your things all over the place.”

  I would not comment on all the Grandpa stuff lined up on my bathroom counter. I would not.

  “Who ironed those pants?” Grandpa asked. “They need an exact crease.”

  I looked at my pants. They looked fine to me.

  “I’ll teach you the correct way later.”

  So this was how my new ride to school would be. Another opportunity to disappoint Grandpa. Do more things wrong. Great.

  Maybe I could figure out how far away the school was from our house. I could walk. I’d probably do that wrong, too.

  The West Academy looked less like an academy and more like a doctor’s office. A one-level brick-and-glass building. We all wore the same uniform: white shirt and navy pants. From the neck down, I could pretty much pass for every other kid there.

  And it wasn’t really within walking distance from Cedar Drive. Unless I wanted to start walking to school before the sun came up.

  Double great.

  I walked into my first class. No one noticed me. They were all so busy being talented or special that I barely registered a nod from the guy in front of me.

  I walked into my second class. Only one guy spoke to me. “Hey, what happened to your face?”

  I pulled out a note card. I’d pre-written several responses to speed up communication.

  Studying the effects of zero gravity. Dangerous experiment.

  “Oh, you’re that airplane guy,” he said. “They told us to expect you.” He turned around and put his head into a book.

  That was it. Everyone at West was white shirt, navy pants, head down, get the lesson done, and go be super talented. There wasn’t even a cafeteria. So there was no need to worry about where to sit.

  Where had this school been my whole life?

  My yellow-green-bruised, pink-scarred face didn’t cause kids to run screaming down the hallway or even render a head tilt.

  I allowed myself to be happy. Hopeful, even.

  I felt like I fit in. I mean, it was great. A fresh start.

  Almost.

  At the West Academy, I had to attend for only half a day. I got to leave at noon. At the end of that first day, I attempted a smile at a group of pretty girls in ponytails. I later found out they were a trio of champion gymnasts.

  They recoiled with the kind of agility you’d expect from pretty gymnasts: in perfect head-tilt, mouth-open unison.

  True story.

  After school, Grandpa picked me up.

  “Next stop, voice doctor,” Grandpa announced. Mom had found “the perfect voice specialist” for me. His name was Dr. Pajaczkowski, and he made me spend an hour making small sounds and breathing deeply. It hurt to practice, but that was what I was supposed to do if I ever wanted to have a normal voice. Or eat my favorite foods.

  Grandpa and I sat in Dr. Pajaczkowski’s waiting room. There was a sliding glass window behind which an older lady in a brown sweater sat. Her sweater reminded me of 14A.

  While I waited, Grandpa read magazines and I learned that the kid across from me was named Denny Rosenblatt. Not because I had psychic powers but because Brown-Sweatered Receptionist called out, “Denny Rosenblatt.”

  Denny Rosenblatt and mother of Denny Rosenblatt went behind the door. Mother of Denny Rosenblatt must have been very happy to be there because she was smiling the whole time. Denny Rosenblatt looked happy, too, which was nice because he reminded me of those kids who got picked on for no good reason. You know that kid with curly hair who is kind of small for his age, carries a band instrument, and has a hard time finding a place to sit on the bus? That was Denny.

  But Denny also looked like that kid who would let me sit next to him on the bus. Let’s face it. I was always looking for that kind of kid. We’d probably both get picked on, but if we sat together, who would care?

  Ten minutes later Brown-Sweatered Receptionist called, “Wayne Kovok.”

  “Ten-hut, Kovok,” Grandpa said. “Don’t keep people waiting!”

  Did you know that the military shout ten-hut is an abbreviation of the word attention? It’s thought that shouting Attention! doesn’t get troop attention. The phrase ten-hut does. Guess who has told me that fact since I was four years old? Guess who thinks I’m like my dad, who always keeps people waiting? I’ll tell you who. Someone with a name that rhymes with Sand Paw!

  I grunted at Grandpa.

  I went behind the door and sat in a white room with a white linoleum table and waited for Dr. Pajaczkowski. On the walls of the exam room, there were all kinds of pictures of the vocal anatomy. Tongues. Vocal cords. Tonsils. The whole enchilada of the human mouth. It looked fascinating. It also looked pink and gross.

  “How’re we doing today, Wayne? Feeling better?” Dr. Pajaczkowski said. He walked into the room with a file and a smile.

  I hummed at him.

  “Open wide,” Dr. Pajaczkowski said.

  We did a series of exercises that involved me “making good use of airway management.”

  How long until I can talk? I wrote to him.

  “When you can pronounce my name, I will pronounce you healed!” Dr. Pajaczkowski said. “But for what you’ve experienced, you’re doing well, Wayne.”

  If the sound of heavy breathing and trying to whisper the sound e is good, I guess I was doing well. My voice sounded ridiculous. Like a zombie with a sinus infection.

  “You’re really doing great, Wayne,” Dr. P said. “I want you to remember that more than sixty percent of communication is nonverbal. You can still be heard.”

  You can still be heard if someone is looking at you. But what if he doesn’t look at you until he wants you to go and be useful in another room? Or what if he doesn’t even notice that you’ve run away from his New Year’s Eve party? You can’t be heard then, Dr. P.

  Through the office walls, I heard someone singing. And I guess I used some of my nonverbal communication with my right eyebrow, because Dr. P said, “Oh, you hear that? That’s the sound of progress!”

  When I came out into the hall, I saw the face of progress. Denny Rosenblatt stood there singing. When he saw me, he instantly stopped and looked at me the way everyone did now, only with a little extra… something. With a curious head tilt, a scrunched-up nose, and a chin rub. His nonverbal communication was loud.

  “Secret ninja fight?” he asked in a whispery voice.

  I flashed him my all-purpose note card about my zero-gravity experiment.

  “I’d go w
ith the secret-ninja story,” he whispered, and then smiled.

  Grandpa and I rode the elevator back to the ground level with the Rosenblatts. I hated that elevator. Solid mirrors from ceiling to floor. I studied my shoes and listened as Denny sang about cheeseburgers to the tune of the “Happy Birthday” song.

  “I want a cheeseburger, please. I want a cheeseburger, please. I want a cheeseburger, pul-EEZE. I want a cheeseburrrgerrrrr. Pleeeeeease!”

  “Denny, try to talk,” said the still-smiling mother of Denny Rosenblatt. “It’s the strangest thing. Denny can sing perfectly, but he stammers a little when he talks.”

  “I s-s-stutter a lot,” Denny said. And then he broke out in song, “It’s all about air management!”

  Denny Rosenblatt had a good singing voice. There was no trace of stuttering when Denny Rosenblatt sang. Dr. P was right. Denny was the voice of progress.

  I wondered if Denny could pronounce Dr. P’s name in song.

  Denny tried to speak to his mother, but the word want seemed stuck on the way out of his mouth. He caught me staring at him, and then he pointed to my face and sang, “What happened in your experiment exactly? What happened with zero gravity?”

  All I could do was shrug and grunt while we waited for the elevator door to open.

  “Kid’s messed up,” Grandpa said.

  Mrs. Rosenblatt stepped out of the elevator with Denny, then pulled her son close like she was protecting him. From me. From Grandpa. I realized she thought Grandpa had called Denny messed up. If you think we had a very uncomfortable walk to the parking lot, you would be correct.

  “A cheeseburger sounds good,” Grandpa said. “You like those shakes at Sonic.”

  Man, he was reading my thoughts again in his weird Grandpa way. Yes, a cheeseburger did sound good and I did like those shakes at Sonic. But I really didn’t want to hang out with Grandpa. Maybe that sounds mean, but drinking a shake was probably on the long list of things I did that annoyed him. I didn’t have a choice, though.

  Grandpa drove to Sonic and ordered a vanilla shake for me and a cheeseburger for himself. Man, the smell of the juicy cheeseburger was pure torture. I had to keep myself from drooling. Then we went to the pet store to buy food for Hank Williams. Hank Williams ate more solid food than I did.

  If you want to know, I hated that fact. My clothes were loose. My stomach growled all the time. Last week, I had a dream about chasing a life-sized doughnut.

  True story.

  And then, did you know I was blamed for Grandpa eating a cheeseburger? I couldn’t even drive, yet I was still responsible for the two-patty, double-cheese, heavy pickle lunch that Grandpa heaved into the toilet when we got home.

  Mom scowled at me and said, “How could you let him eat a cheeseburger?” Like I could stop him from doing anything. I wrote back to her on my notepad: Why can’t he eat a burger?

  “How was school?” Mom asked. “School was good?”

  I shoved the paper in front of her again. She didn’t respond, so I wrote: What’s wrong with him?

  This made her face change. Her eyes turned down.

  I knew that look. The worried face. The face that was worried about Grandpa, who was sad about Uncle Reed, which led to thoughts about the crash and finally a thought about the missing flag. Do you know what? I hoped that when we found the flag, it would be one less reason for Mom to be sad. One less.

  “Well, I think he might be coming down with a cold. And also, he got a message today about Reed and…” She didn’t finish. She rubbed her finger over one of the frames on the Wall of Honor.

  You know that saying “There’s an elephant in the room,” which means there’s a subject no one wants to talk about?

  Yeah, I’d looked up the phrase a few years back when a teacher tossed it out in class and it made me curious.

  Lately, any mention of Uncle Reed was the ultimate elephant-in-the-room kind of topic. Like the largest elephant to ever walk the planet, which, if you want to know, was an African elephant weighing thirteen and a half tons. My sixth-grade social studies teacher said that was equal to 165 grown men.

  True story.

  For a minute, I imagined 165 people inside our house on Cedar Drive. No way they would all fit.

  So both of us stood in the hallway and listened to Grandpa get sick. This is not what a person who is retching wants you to do.

  Grandpa came out, said, “At ease,” and headed for his room.

  Mom reached to touch my face in the mom way again.

  “Should I change your bandages?” she asked.

  And I backed up and got my face away from her hand and ran my head right into the Wall of Honor. My great-grandfather, RB Dalton, fell off the wall. I caught the frame before it bounced.

  Mom took me by the shoulder and ushered me to the kitchen, and we both drank strawberry smoothies. That was when I saw the basket. Another big basket of muffins on the counter. Apple cinnamon.

  More food I couldn’t eat.

  “Yeah. Those. Those were on the porch. From Sandy’s mother,” Mom said. “I talked to her. Sandy wants to know if she can come over. She also suggested that you could come to one of Beatty’s school games.”

  I shook my head. The mirrored reflection I feared most was in Sandy Showalter’s blue eyes.

  “Are you going to call her?”

  And do what, Mom? Breathe into the phone?

  “Well, Grandpa could drive you to the game. Or, hey, your dad.”

  Never going to happen.

  “Well, send her a note or something and thank her. Want me to tell you something about girls?”

  Nope.

  Mom said, “The thing about girls is that if you don’t keep in touch, they will think you don’t like them. So decide how much this is worth to you. It might feel good to go and do something normal.”

  I gave Mom a thumbs-up. Normal. Got it. Wayne Kovok is nothing if not normal.

  “Why don’t you take Mr. Darcy for a walk?” she asked.

  I grabbed Mr. Darcy’s leash and shook it, which always gets him up and running. He ran into the kitchen, and I latched the leash onto his collar.

  The door clicked closed right as Mom said she loved me.

  Did you know that the French word for bad is mal? So half of normal is bad.

  The Latin origin of this word, normalis, is translated as “made from a carpenter’s square.” So if something is made by a carpenter, and there are different carpenters in the world, then not every square is going to be normalis. That is the variable in the science experiment of life. If I had a voice, I would shout, Not everything is normal!

  New topic.

  Did you know that pilots sometimes use water towers to aid in navigation? Most small towns paint the town name on the tower, and if a pilot lacks a GPS system, he can get his bearings by reading the towers. One town in South Carolina painted its tower to look like a giant peach. In my town, we are known for giant shopping malls, bad drivers, and intense summer heat. Maybe our tower should have flames and an advertisement for women’s jewelry.

  Here’s a Jeopardy! question: This seventh-grade dork thinks too much about water towers.

  Answer: Who is Wayne Kovok?

  I wondered if I could put a towel over my face and my thoughts. I mean, who thinks of these things?

  I lay down on the sidewalk to clear my head. Even though the concrete was freezing, it was not my dog’s latrine, thank you very much! It was outside where I hoped there was zero chance I would be doing something in violation of the correct Grandpa code. I waited for a plane. Good old Mr. Darcy snuggled against me. I ferried six planes over Cedar Drive. They all made it. They all survived to live another day. Just like me.

  DATA

  Non-aircraft Flight 56 debris found in East Texas since the crash:

  Suitcases

  A Bible

  A gold wedding ring, ripped in half

  A travel guide: What to Do in Dallas?

  A charred teddy bear

  A Minnie Mou
se lunch box

  Assorted clothing and shoes found hung in nearby pine trees

  CHAPTER 13

  Two days later, Grandpa picked me up late from the West Academy. So late, in fact, that I’d sat on the outside steps and watched three planes, a thick bank of clouds, and the trio of gymnasts go past me. The gymnasts all waved to me in perfect unison. Word had definitely gotten around that I’d survived a plane crash. In second-period science, the teacher, Mr. Clark, said, “Wayne is pretty special. The odds of surviving a plane crash are pretty low.”

  Everyone in class had turned to look at me.

  Special Wayne.

  I really needed a fact shield at that moment. I could have blurted out, Did you know your lifetime odds of dying in an airplane crash are about one in eight thousand? Did you know your lifetime odds of dying in a car crash are about one in one hundred?

  So please turn around and focus on Mr. Clark instead of me.

  I registered their looks as equal parts pity and curiosity.

  I was trying not to care what strangers thought of my look. Trying and failing.

  “I’m late,” Grandpa announced as I got into his truck, as if it weren’t obvious.

  I thought being on time was a virtue! I guess Daltons can be late, too. Ha!

  “Your mother’s at an appointment, so I’ll drop you at home before I head to the store. Unless you want to go to the store?”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe you want to play poker later? Your mother thinks I should teach you,” he said.

  Why?

  “So you’ll know how to play,” he said.

  Okay.

  Great. Another opportunity to feel dumb around Grandpa. I made a mental note to talk about this with Mom. She was still on a quest for me to learn “man things.”

  Once I was in the house, I began composing what I thought had the potential for a poetic text to Sandy. I was attempting to take some of Mom’s advice.

  Dearest Sandy,

  Roses are red. The sky is blue. The muffins were yummy. How is school?