Maybe I felt a little bit of pride.
I definitely felt a little bit of pride.
Okay, I felt a ton of pride.
Grandpa concluded his speech by talking about Reed Dalton, his brave son who served our country for fifteen years. Uncle Reed would have liked all the things Grandpa said about him. You know the way the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when you sing the national anthem sometimes? You feel connected to something larger. Well, that’s how it was right there at Sonic, believe it or not. Reed was my uncle and I was connected to him. Really connected. I wanted Uncle Reed to be in the car with us. And Mom riding beside him. All of us, having shakes at Sonic together.
Somewhere in my strange brain, I caught a glimpse of the lost flag. Maybe it was all the patriotism, but I would have sworn I could see it flapping in the wind, waiting for me or Liz Delaney to find it and call it what it was. Miraculous. And me, handing it back to Mom. Grandpa smiling and nodding. Maybe today was the day it would be found.
The Sonic manager, who now had little imaginary American flags floating around his head, interrupted Grandpa’s memorial moment and said, “So, where is Specialist Dalton now, sir? When he comes home, I’ll give him free Cokes and burgers for life!”
The small crowd cheered.
Grandpa became silent as a rock.
All the animation in his body left him. All the confidence of his voice went away.
He quietly said, “My son rests heroically on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery.”
The thirteen-and-a-half-ton elephant in the room had jumped into the backseat of the Car and come with us to Sonic.
Stupid Todd. Stupid spilled drink.
Every good thing that had happened vanished in two seconds. Man, the day had had more highs and lows than a roller coaster.
Todd handed Grandpa the special yellow cloth, then opened the car door for him.
We didn’t talk on the ride home. We kept the top down on the Car, and the cold wind rushed in. Two planes entered my sight path, one heading east and the other west. Two passengers in two separate 14A seats crisscrossing the sky. I supported them both until my arms could no longer stretch. I couldn’t help it. Now when I saw planes, I had to do something.
Have a good trip.
Grandpa didn’t seem to notice or care that his grandson was holding the victory arms position. Maybe he did think I was messed up.
I don’t have to tell you that the day ended with me in my same old, dingy Goodwill shoes. As soon as the Car came to a full stop in our garage, I ran to my room to retrieve my skateboard. And then I grabbed the scarf, the shemagh, that Uncle Reed had given me last Christmas. I wrapped it around my neck. I thought it might conceal my scars if I got accidentally trapped in a pink playground spaceship again.
“Hey, you have an appointment later. Be back promptly,” Grandpa said to me as I flew out the front door.
I headed up toward the perfect streets of the Estates. I chased after that free-floating feeling I’d had earlier in the day when the tug-of-war inside me had loosened. I even ditched my skateboard in someone’s yard and ran and ran in my stupid Goodwill shoes until one of the soles came loose and all I could hear was flop, flop, flop.
It didn’t matter. The feeling had outrun me, and I couldn’t catch up. We forgot to play poker later. Well, he forgot. I didn’t bring it up.
CHAPTER 15
If I was going to run, I was going to get better shoes. Really good shoes.
Did you know that track star Jesse Owens wore Adidas and he won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics?
I wrote to Denny Rosenblatt: If Adidas were good enough for a champion, they are good enough for Wayne Kovok.
And Denny e-mailed back: Come to the mall. My mom works there.
The day before, Denny and I had sat in the waiting room of Dr. P’s office and gotten to know each other.
As it turned out, Denny was really easy to be around.
I wrote to him: You sing really well.
So he sang-talked, “What really happened to your face?”
And I wrote: plane crash last December in East Texas.
Denny Rosenblatt looked me over good. Like Mom examines a melon before deciding to buy it or not.
“Wayne on a plaaaaaaaane,” he sang. “You have a story.”
I shrugged. Story of a nerd.
Do you know how two people who can’t talk properly have a conversation?
Answer: In a way that resembles some kind of secret code, that’s how.
We waited for the receptionist who looked like 14A to call our names. I tried to smile at her every time I had an appointment. I admit that a sense of guilt washed over me when I saw her. She reminded me that I had ignored 14A. She reminded me that you never knew if the person you were sitting across the aisle from was trying to have the last conversation of her life and would it have hurt you to say something nice about her quilted tree skirt?
So I liked talking to Denny. Denny and I wrote notes. Mostly, Denny wrote questions and I tried to answer them. By the time they called my name for my examination with Dr. P, I’d written out the short but sad biography of Wayne H. Kovok, right down to the plummet to the ground. I showed him Internet photos of the crash. I confided that I was searching for Uncle Reed’s flag. It was a relief to tell someone that secret goal.
And Denny sang a secret of his own.
He was terrified of speaking in public, which I could have guessed. But he was about to be forced to speak in public. His bar mitzvah was coming up, and that meant reading out loud in front of his entire synagogue.
Yeah, that is a tough one.
“Do you think God has a sense of humor?” he whispered.
I’ve never thought about it.
“I do,” Denny said. “Why else would he look down on a person with a three-syllable, multivowel name like Rosenblatt and give him a speech impediment? I’ll tell you why. Because he likes to laugh.”
Maybe.
“People laugh at me all the time. I get shoved into my locker when I talk.”
Sorry. I didn’t know what else to say. Except that whoever shoved him was a jerk.
“Just try to say Rosenblatt at your next appointment. Just try. I mean, someday Dr. P will pronounce you cured, Wayne. But I’ll still stammer in English and Hebrew.”
I’ll still have this scar.
Denny studied me. “But you’ll have a cool story about how you got that scar. I’d rather have that.”
Did you know “rosen” means “rose” in German? Not a bad name.
“Yeah, I did,” he sang. “Do you know how Moses makes his coffee?”
How?
“Hebrews it! Get it?”
Funny.
“I’ll tell your grandfather that joke when he comes back from the restroom.”
I wouldn’t.
Grandpa did not tell jokes. And from what I’d observed my whole life, he didn’t get jokes, either.
Denny stammered the joke out, and when he landed the punch line, he had a huge grin on his face.
“I don’t get it,” Grandpa said.
“Because Moses is Hebrew and he brews coffee,” Denny explained. Denny attempted to act out the joke by pretending to hold a coffee mug. I should have stopped him, but I was cracking up inside. Watching Grandpa’s expression was funnier than any joke.
“I know how to make coffee, son,” Grandpa said, then opened his newspaper. I glanced at Grandpa, and he winked at me. An actual wink! Which meant he was yanking Denny’s chain. Which was funnier than any joke.
Denny shrugged it off.
Since the accident, I didn’t think anyone understood my new language. But writing notes to Denny changed that. I thought he was solid, you know? Someone who would pick me for his Bear Ball team. Or I would pick him first. We would both probably be horrible at Bear Ball, but so what. Misery loves company. We’d be horrible together. The two leftovers.
Twenty-four hours later, I asked Mom if I could go to the mall
with Denny after school.
“That’s great,” Mom said, handing me a wad of cash. “You need to get back to normal. Hop in the car.”
You? Drive?
“Yeah, my doctor said I can drive now. Or do you want Grandpa to take you?”
No!
“Do you think Denny would like one of these muffins?”
There was a new basket of Sandy Showalter muffins on the counter. Cranberry orange. Sandy and I were communicating through the giving and receiving of baked goods. Here’s how it went. Her mom dropped them off. I texted Sandy.
Dearest Sandy,
Can I compare thee to a lovely poem? Or even to a garden gnome?
Sandy texted back that she hoped I was feeling better. (No mention of how hard it was to find a word that rhymes with poem!)
Do you know how many times we had this muffin-to-bad-poetry-text exchange? Six times! That can’t be normal.
There are no love songs about baked goods.
I looked it up.
I wrote on my notepad and passed it to Mom: No muffins for Denny.
So I put on a baseball cap and let Mom drop me at the mall. At least the cap shaded the L-shaped mark across my face.
“I have to go get something for Grandpa, anyway. Be back in a couple of hours.”
What?
“Something for his stomach.”
What’s wrong?
“He’s just rattled, you know. Still worried, I suppose.”
No one had told Mom about the Flee’s appearance at our door, and I wasn’t about to upset her with it. I’d already gotten in trouble again for the most recent cheeseburger, which I didn’t understand. Grandpa outranked me in every way a person can outrank a seventh grader. How could I stop him from anything?
I found Denny standing where he’d said he’d be. Next to Elegant Engravings, his mother’s mall kiosk. It was located directly across from a candle store.
“Heelloooo!” he sang.
“Hi, Wayne,” Mrs. Rosenblatt said. “You two have fun.”
You spend your time here? I wrote.
And Denny whispered, “What? The entire mall walks past her kiosk every hour. I watch it.”
We got my new Adidas pretty fast. The brand-new white rubber soles squeaked on the shiny mall floor.
Squeak. Geek.
Squeak. Geek.
Squeak. Geek.
I had the old Goodwill shoes in a bag. I ditched them in a trash can near the food court. Even though the new shoes made embarrassing squeaks, at least they were one-owner shoes with zero miles on them and no history. They were just waiting to go somewhere new.
Don’t call me a complete dork, but that made me feel great. Like it was a fresh start. New shoes for a new me at a new school. For the first time in weeks, I had hope.
There we were, walking and not talking, but being as normal as a kid with a beat-up face and new shoes and a guy who sing-talks could be.
This is the part of the story where, were I in a horror movie, scary music would warn the audience that something bad was about to happen. Why can’t real life come with a sound track? I would like to be warned about potential danger.
Do you know what I considered potential danger?
Sandy Showalter. In person. Sure, I wanted to see her, but I wasn’t ready to be seen by her.
I ducked behind the giant panda standing outside Panda Palace. That panda could hide a soccer team. Denny Rosenblatt followed me behind the panda and sang, “What’s wrong?”
I wondered how rude it would be to tell Denny to go away. Not blow my cover. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even write it down. So I just grabbed his sleeve and pulled him away from the food court.
“Wayne!” Denny sang.
I pointed to my eyebrow.
“Ohhhhh!” Denny spun around and scanned the mall. “You need a disguise,” he whispered. “I know the guy at Sunglass Stand. Wait here.”
He ran over to Sunglass Stand, a little kiosk fifteen feet from Panda Palace.
I think he tried on every pair. Every pair! He thought he was so hilarious. He tried on Hello Kitty sunglasses. Sunshine sunglasses. Dollar-sign sunglasses. Every stupid kind of sunglasses you could imagine, and he cracked up each time he turned to look at me.
Do you know what kind of sunglasses he brought back to me?
Do you want to know?
Aviators.
Aviators!
Grandpa Dalton aviators.
I should have told him not to get that style. But at least they covered a good part of my face, including two of the three butterfly bandages. I put on the aviators and stepped out from behind the giant panda.
“Wayne?” Sandy Showalter called out. “Is that you?”
Sandy was with a girl with dark hair and a frown to beat all frowns.
I waved back. And then I put my hand up to the place where my left eyebrow used to be. The baseball cap and sunglasses did a good job of hiding it, but the scar going down my cheek was on display. There was no hiding it now. I wished I’d put emu oil on it like Rama had suggested.
Emu oil makes hair grow back faster and scars heal.
I looked it up.
But, you know, I just couldn’t get past putting bird grease on my face.
Sandy Showalter had spotted me and that was that. Once again, I had that burning wish that the floor would drop out from underneath me and help me disappear along with my misery.
“Hello,” Denny sang.
“So, are you on American Idol or something?” Frown Girl asked, and then laughed. And I could see that maybe she was like one of the kids at Denny’s school. Kids who shoved him into lockers. And it made me wonder what Sandy was doing with her.
Denny Rosenblatt had the good sense to shrug. The four of us stood there and waited for someone to say something, which normally would have been me, Wayne Kovok, sealing up the cracks of awkward silences.
Did you know that the emu is a flightless bird that looks like a small ostrich? And that, speaking of birds, it’s really not accurate to say someone “eats like a bird” if they just nibble at their food? Most birds eat 80 percent of their body weight, so if someone is eating like a bird, they are probably at a buffet.
I waited for Sandy to recoil. I waited for her to give me that look. That Anibal Gomez, what is wrong with your face look. It was the longest wait of my life. She took an eternity to scan me.
Do you know what? Her eyes were still as kind as they’d ever been.
Her kindness made me uncomfortable.
Did you know that emus can’t fly but are fast runners and eat grasshoppers, caterpillars, and small rodents?
I had the good sense to write Sandy an epic note: Hi.
“Your texts are funny,” she replied, smiling.
I’d made her smile. I was still a person who could make Sandy Showalter smile.
Do you know how good that felt? For something like six seconds, I smiled back.
Frown Girl ruined it.
“Who are you and what happened to your face?” Some people are human smile erasers. Frown Girl was one of them.
And you won’t believe it, but Denny Rosenblatt launched into song. He sang the brief, recent biography of my life.
“Wayne was on a plane. Wayne was on a plane and the plane crashed. Oh yeah. It crashed. He was slashed. He survived. Lost his voice. But rejoice! We’re looking for it. Yeah. Now he has new Adidas. Don’t know if he likes fajitas.”
True story.
I’m telling you that the singing didn’t bother me too much. He got the facts out pretty well. He got it out faster than I could have written it down on my notepad.
Frown Girl said to Sandy, “I’m going to get a Coke. Text me when you’re done.”
What bothered me was the sudden realization that Sandy Showalter’s friend didn’t know who I was. And if she didn’t know who I was, sort-of-boyfriend to Sandy at most, receiver of sympathy muffins at least, then that was because Sandy hadn’t told her. And I knew Sandy talked to other girl
s. She was the one who’d told Mysti and Rama that I could call her. Yes, I was no girl expert, but I knew a little bit about how girls operated behind the scenes.
Was I kidding myself? Were the muffins just orbs of baked pity?
I wanted to sprint Jesse Owens–style out of the mall. I stood speechless in front of Sandy Showalter with my heart suddenly pounding and my deodorant failing.
Did you know the emu is believed to be a survivor of prehistoric times and their eggs are emerald green?
“I’m doing horrible in Spanish,” Sandy said.
Did you know that emus are strong swimmers?
“Want a Dr Pepper?” she asked.
She headed toward the food court, and when I remembered I had feet, I moved, too.
No one cares about stupid emu facts, Wayne!
My stupid new shoes squeaked against the shiny mall floor. And all I heard echoing in my head was
Geek.
Geek.
Geek.
Sandy got tired of me after just three slurps of Dr Pepper.
“Gotta go. My mom’s waiting for us! Bye!” she said.
I knew what that meant. I knew girl-speak for This is lame.
Maybe I should have retreated right then, but I didn’t. I stayed and watched the back of her head and that perfect golden hair of hers disappear into the crowd. I locked the image of her smile in my brain, though.
Denny and I trolled the mall together, and I tried to step on my toes so that my shoes wouldn’t herald my geekdom.
“I shouldn’t have started singing. It was dumb.”
It wasn’t dumb.
“I feel stupid.”
Let’s go back to your mom’s store.
“Let’s keep walking,” he whispered.
No more walking.
“Come on,” Denny said.
We found a bench outside a store called Claire’s, which Denny called a “target-rich” environment of girls he could never talk to. But I wasn’t looking at anything but my superbright shoes. I thought about how nice it would be to run down my block in these new shoes. How I needed to run again. Maybe in the middle of the night like I did on New Year’s. When the streets were all mine.
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