No Sad Songs

by Frank Morelli

My heart bounces around a few times and it feels like I’m swallowing wool. Crap. I should have thought my story out a little better. But who shows up at school thinking they’ll be under interrogation during second period? I try to stall.

  “Again, is there something I’ve done wrong, Officer? I can’t see how damaging my own—”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard about the incident that took place on Montgomery Street last week involving a child.”

  “What incident?” I ask. I figure my best chance at playing it cool is to play it dumb.

  “Come on,” he says. “It’s all over the news. The kid got hit a few blocks from your house.” He shuffles through a few pages in his folder. “You’re the Gabe LoScuda that lives at 2020 Maple Street?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you mean to tell me you know nothing of this incident that happened only blocks from your house?”

  “Oh,” I say. “Yeah. The kid with the broken arm, right?”

  “Among other things. He’s okay, but that’s not the point.”

  Officer Patterson’s demeanor stirs up faster than a squall at sea, and suddenly I can tell he’s not screwing around with me. I guess since they sent him here without a partner he has to put on a one-man good cop/bad cop routine.

  “We take this stuff pretty seriously, kid. And since you live in the neighborhood and your car fits the description given by witnesses, I need to do my job.”

  “But I didn’t hit any kid,” I squeeze out between my teeth. I’m suddenly aware that my jaw is sore and tight. That happens when I grind my molars—when I’m nervous as hell. “I swear, I don’t—”

  “Look, I believe you,” Officer Patterson says, and he’s back to being the good guy again. “The garage, right? Besides, you don’t seem to fit the profile of the person we’re looking for.”

  I don’t know what to say so I force out a quick, “Thank you,” as I hold back the impending sobs.

  “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. LoScuda. You’re free to go,”

  Free to go? Did he really just say that? Suddenly, I can feel my legs again and I remember to breathe. I waste no time popping up from the conference table, gathering my things, and heading for the door. But I can feel Officer Patterson’s cold stare on the back of my neck and, as I reach for the door, he says, “So, you never did tell me. Did you ever get the side of the garage repaired?”

  “Oh, uh, yeah,” I say. “Not a lot of damage. Just a few scrapes.”

  “Your uncle do it?”

  “No, I took care of it. After my car, same process of sanding and painting, right?”

  “That’s right,” he says. “Well, I appreciate your time Mr. LoScuda.” He rises from his chair and strides over to me. “If you hear anything or remember anything else about this incident—anything at all—I want you to give me a call, OK?” He hands me a business card with his name and number and a big, official-looking policeman’s badge printed on it. I slide it in one of my folders and escape to the safety of the hallway.

  “Yes, Officer. I will. Definitely.”

  Phew. Freedom. And here I thought this whole situation would drag on forever. Like I’d become this crazy-bearded fugitive, constantly on the lam, hiding out in drainage ditches and seedy motels, and painting the Trans-Am a different color each week to stay one step ahead of the law. In reality, all I had to do was fire off a shitty paint job, a few barely credible alibis, and miss half a class period and I’m in the clear.

  I turn the corner out of the administrative corridor and I’m back with the regular population—with all the prisoners, my classmates. I must have walked this particular hallway at this particular time of day at least a thousand times in my four years at Schuylkill. Only this time feels different. I can’t put my finger on it at first, but the further I walk past opened backpacks and crowds of sophomores, and people jiggling locks on lockers, it becomes obvious. Instead of blending into the background like another speckle of beige paint on the vomit-colored walls—instead of floating by unnoticed like a ghost—all eyes are focused directly on me; the center of the freaking universe. And people are talking, in whispers but still loud enough to make out a stray remark here and there.

  “That’s him,” one says.

  “Gabe LoScuda?”

  “Yep.”

  “Badass.”

  As I stroll past the guidance office and the school’s mammoth trophy case, my feet feel lighter and my steps more assured. A group of freshman girls giggle up ahead. They stare in my direction and pretend to point at something else when I notice. They burst into giggles again, and I can tell right away that word has spread fast like it always does at Schuylkill High. It’s like the second Officer Patterson crossed the threshold to Mastro’s classroom and decided to throw me under the heat lamp, he somehow tripped the ignition on the rumor mill (which I hear is stored under the locker room toilets) and the gossip just flooded the hallways from there.

  “I heard he spent the weekend in jail.”

  “He’s cute.”

  A bunch more giggling. Wow. This is actually kind of awesome. Gabe “Freaking” LoScuda: celebrity. I’m almost to class feeling pretty good about my change in luck—about my dashing mastery over the ability to change a potentially horrible situation into a dream.

  Then the best thing of all happens.

  “Hey, Gabe.”

  It’s a girl’s voice and it’s followed by a scented trail of baked vanilla cookies that makes me melt. I turn around.

  It’s her.

  “Uh … oh, hi Marlie,” I say. And that’s it. I’m basically out of words. This celebrity crap is no easy business. Thankfully, Marlie saves me from stuttering all over her. I guess that’s the kind of perk you get when everyone knows you.

  “Heard about your little run-in with the law,” she says. “Everything alright?”

  “Oh, yeah. No problem. No problem at all,” I say, and I stick whatever chest I have out as far as I can. I probably look like a deformed chicken hawk right now, but Marlie doesn’t care because I’m a bona fide badass. So I decide now’s the time to really lay it on thick. “Yeah, I just told that pig that before he comes sniffing around he’d better have his story straight. Had to let me go. I thought the dude was gonna cry.”

  She laughs. Marlie freaking laughs. I didn’t know it was possible for me to do or say anything that would ever make a girl like Marlie smile, let alone laugh. But here she is cackling like an idiot in front of me—and all I had to do was lie to the police.

  I tell John all about it over lunch.

  “You should have seen me,” I say. “Ladies drooling over me like I was made of chocolate or something. I’m a stud, John. A stud.”

  John rolls his eyes and does a quick pan of the lunchroom. Everyone is still staring and it’s pretty clear that I’m the topic of conversation at most tables. About time. Only took four years, right?

  “So you got your fifteen minutes,” John says. “Who cares?”

  “Me! I care! And you should too, John. Marlie knows my freaking name, man. She talked to me. Prom is back on in a big way.”

  “Right. If you’re not in prison by then.”

  “What do you mean, in prison? I told you already. I’m off the hook. Patterson basically said so.”

  “For now, Gabe. But that doesn’t mean he won’t dig something up. You’d better … what’s that phrase you always say to your Grandpa?”

  “Keep your nose clean?”

  “Yeah. Exactly. You’d better blow that big, freaking schnoz of yours very carefully until this is all over.”

  “Whatever,” I tell him. “I’m just raging against the dying of the light.”

  John shakes his head. “Ben dan,” he says under his breath, which in Mandarin roughly translates as “stupid egg,” but really means nothing more than “dumbass.”

  Gabe LoScuda

  English 4A – Personal Essay #4

  Mr. Mastrocola

  November 21

  It Emits a Bronx Cheer
r />   I’ve never been the popular kid, or the most athletic kid, or the smartest kid. Never held up a trophy after the big game. Never read a paper in front of the class or had a piece of artwork displayed in a hallway. Never even won a perfect attendance award.

  I’ve always been the kid on the periphery; the kid with his toes hanging just over the boundary line waiting for Coach to send him into the action; the kid who blends in with the background.

  Not famous.

  Never famous.

  So forgive me if my judgment falters in those rare moments when an opportunity for true recognition—or any recognition—stares me in the face. Forgive me if I lose myself in the pursuit. I’m surely not the first.

  But do me a favor: remind me about Emily Dickinson. She wrote:

  Fame is a fickle food

  Upon a shifting plate

  Whose table once a

  Guest but not

  The second time is set.

  For I’ve learned that lesson too many times—but never in such a Dickinsonian a fashion as in Mrs. Lackey’s class.

  “I want this,” I remember shouting from two aisles away.

  I’d tossed the packs of Garbage Pail Kids back in their box and placed the bottle of invisible ink back on its peg-board rack. Then I bolted past an endcap like I was rounding second base and pulled up in front of Mom and Dad.

  “This is what I want,” I repeated.

  “Gabe, I told you. Nothing disgusting.”

  Mom remembered the last time we’d come to Edmund’s Toy & Hobby with the promise of one toy for me. I picked a mad scientist’s laboratory called The Monster Lab. The box contained a clear, plastic vat, a fake skeleton about the size of a pencil, and a bag filled with this rubbery concoction you’d form into organs and stick to the skeleton. Then you’d toss the whole thing in the vat with a little baking soda and some vinegar and watch your creation disintegrate faster than Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator. Mom hated it, which literally doubled its awesomeness.

  “Besides,” she continued, “we’re here to buy toys for the Christmas drive. This is not grab bag day for Gabe.”

  “But, Mom,” I groaned, “I’ve wanted one of these forever.”

  I made sure to really drag out the ‘r’ in “forever” just to be extra whiney. Parents always fall for that crap. Even at age nine I knew that.

  Mom grabbed the item from my hand and held it up to the light so she could read the comically small fine print through the windowpanes that were her eyeglasses. “It says right here ‘Ages 10 & up.’ So, no.”

  “For one lousy year? Come on, Mom. I’m not a baby. And it’s not even that disgusting.”

  “It says right here on the tag: ‘Emits a Bronx cheer.’ That sounds pretty disgusting to me, Gabe.”

  Just then my father wheeled around a corner with about twenty board games stacked in his hands—from his waist all the way up to his nose. He sighed and then slid them mercifully into Mom’s cart.

  “Look at what your son picked out for himself.” Mom dangled the object in front of Dad’s face with two fingers like it was a soiled diaper.

  “A Whoopee Cushion? No, Gabe. You’re not sticking that thing under my ass every time I try to sit down. Pick something else.”

  “But I don’t want anything else.” I could feel the tears start to burn at the corners of my eyelids.

  “Good,” Dad said. “There’s plenty of kids out there that do. So help your mother and I find a few more good, non-farting toys so we can get the hell out of here and catch the Monday night game.”

  Dad never did like shopping, and when he was forced into it there was really no way to communicate with the guy. He was like a rodeo bull, charging through stores without direction or purpose until he could toss the rider—usually Mom—and retreat to the comfort of his barn.

  He handed me the Whoopee Cushion and I dragged my feet the entire way back around the end cap to replace it with the other novelty items. It was almost on the rack, too, when another idea crossed my mind. One that neither Mom nor Dad could ever hope to stop.

  I moved a few items on the shelf in front of me so I could get a good view of Mom, Dad, and the shopkeeper from my toy store bunker. None of them were watching, all lost in their own simple tasks. I unbuttoned my jacket and slid the Whoopee Cushion down between my belt and my stomach. Then I buttoned back up and grabbed an R/C car off the shelf—probably the crappiest one they had. I carried it back over to Mom and Dad.

  “Think the less fortunate children will like this?” I asked in the voice of a winged cherub. Mom and Dad smiled because apparently they’d done something incredibly right in raising this angel son of their’s. The Whoopee Cushion shoved down my pants told a different story.

  Like any nine-year-old boy would, I brought the thing to school the next day to show off to all my snot-nosed, little friends. Of course, John had first looksee, being my best friend and all.

  “And when you sit on it,” I told him, “It blows a fart louder than King Kong after a chili dinner.”

  “Right in front of everyone?”

  “Yep! That’s the best part,” I told him. “Then everyone thinks you dealt one.”

  We started to laugh uncontrollably, the way little kids do when they think they’ve uncovered the world’s entire supply of humor in a one-dollar piece of inflatable rubber. Mrs. Lackey jumped up from her desk and glared at us.

  “Are you gentlemen finished with your work?” she asked.

  “No, Mrs. Lackey,” I said.

  “Then get back to it. Only ten more minutes until reading group.”

  I folded the Whoopee Cushion up under my desk and slid it in my cigar box with the rest of my pencils and supplies. John was still smirking in the seat beside me.

  “I dare you to set that thing off during reading group,” he whispered when Mrs. Lackey rededicated herself to grading the stack of papers on her desk. I shook my head and went back to doing my work.

  A few minutes later, Billy Wetzel tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a crinkled up piece of paper. I opened it.

  “Gabe is going to set off the whoopee during reading.” – John

  Freaking John. Even at nine years old he knew how to get what he wanted. Now that everyone was counting on me, I couldn’t let them down.

  At one o’clock, Mrs. Lackey rose from her desk and said, “Group One, please bring your textbooks over to the reading table. I’ll meet you there in just a moment.”

  I grabbed my reader from under the desk with one hand and smuggled the folded up Whoopee Cushion inside the front cover with the other. Then I rushed over to the reading table and grabbed a seat between John and the head of the table—Mrs. Lackey’s seat. Quickly and deftly I fumbled my pencil off the edge. It rolled under Mrs. Lackey’s chair. Perfect.

  “Oops,” I said. “Let me get that.” I dove under the table with the Whoopee Cushion in hand and had it blown up and set on the chair before anyone, even John, had noticed. It was all just a waiting game now.

  “Now, Group One, please open up to page two-eighty-three in the textbook,” Mrs. Lackey said as she stepped closer and closer to the table, closer and closer to her chair. “We’ll be reading a selection from Aesop’s Fables today,” she said. Closer and closer. Bending. Crouching. “The story is called—”

  FRRUUUMMMPH!!!

  The Bronx cheer had been emitted, and it had been emitted loud and true. The echoes reverberated far past the ears of reading Group One, past the other members of the class startled from their seatwork, and out into the vacant halls to echo some more off the cinderblock walls.

  Mrs. Lackey’s face turned blotchy and pink, like an Easter egg gone horribly wrong. The members of reading Group One burst into hysterics for a brief moment until Mrs. Lackey shot them down with her teacher’s stare. Then she popped off her seat like it’d suddenly caught fire and she stared down at the booby trap sitting there laughing back in her face.

  “Which one of you did this?” she shrieked.
/>   Nobody answered. We all just shrank a few inches in our chairs.

  “Which one of you little monsters is responsible for this?”

  Still silence. Nobody was willing to take the blame—especially me. My heart was beating so quickly I thought it was about to explode, but I remained silent.

  A droplet of sweat rolled down the side of Mrs. Lackey’s face and her ears burned red under her platinum curls. When it was clear there would be no confession, she reached down with an unwilling hand and hoisted the Whoopee Cushion up between her thumb and index finger—the way Mom had in the toy store—as if she were holding a dirty diaper. She looked at it closely, then spun it around and my heart dropped.

  There’d be no confession that day because no confession was required. I had already seen to that myself earlier that morning when I’d scrawled my name in black magic marker across the back of the Whoopee Cushion. Hey, I didn’t want to lose it after all I’d gone through to acquire it.

  The letters G-A-B-E stared at me and I knew I was dead meat.

  Mom waited for me on the porch when I got off the bus that day. The look on her face told me the school had already called. Thankfully, Dad was still at work.

  The worst part was that Mom didn’t have much to say. At least if she had shouted and screamed and told me what a rotten kid I was, I wouldn’t have felt so bad. But her silence told me that she was beyond disappointment. Like, I’d have to do an awful lot going forward to make her see me as the angelic, little cherub she had in the toy store just the day before.

  “You’re going to write Mrs. Lackey an apology letter,” she said—one of the only things she did say. “And you’re going to explain to Mr. Edmund why you thought it was acceptable to steal from his shop.”

  I wrote the letter that evening and delivered it to Mrs. Lackey the next day. It went something like this:

  Dear Mrs. Lackey,

  I’m very sorry I for placing a Whoopee Cushion on your chair.

  It made a really loud noise and people laughed.

  That was not nice.

  I will never play jokes like that in class ever, ever again.

  Everyone makes these bathroom noises.

  They are nothing to laugh about.