Tito the Bonecrusher

by Melissa Thomson

  It was Brain.

  “Do you need help looking?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “For your workbook?”

  I had totally forgotten.

  “Oh, I, uh…”

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Not really. We kind of … My mom said that my dad … You know that paperwork and tax stuff with Walker Stewart? I guess he lost the case.” Aside from Mom and Louisa, Brain was the only person I ever talked to about my dad. It’s not my style to go blabbing my business to anyone who will listen.

  “What does that mean?” Brain asked.

  “It means they thought he was, like, guilty,” I said.

  “No, I mean, what happens now? Does he have to pay a fine? Does he have to serve time?”

  “Uh, the second one,” I said. “He’s going to miss Louisa’s graduation.” It’s funny how sometimes you don’t even realize that words make pictures in your head until the pictures change. It used to be that when I said Louisa’s graduation, I could picture myself in the hot sun with a bunch of people listening to Louisa talk about how smart she is. But when I said Louisa’s graduation to Brain on the phone, I pictured Louisa roaring “Get out!” at me, and then telling me I was the last person who would ever be able to help.

  “What are we going to do? We have to do something,” Brain declared.

  “I don’t know,” I told her. “Louisa said there’s nothing we can do. She said especially not me.”

  “Oh my God, Spaghetti-O, that is like the total opposite of what Tito the Bonecrusher would say,” Brain responded immediately.

  And she was right about Tito. His catchphrase is “Never quit trying!” He started saying it because of some really sad fan letter he got from a kid, and now that he’s an action star, he says it at least once in every movie. Usually when he’s about to break down a door or something.

  “When everyone else thinks we should quit trying”—Brain said the words everyone else like they were cuss words, because she hates being like everyone else—“that’s when we definitely need to do something.”

  “Whoa. You’re right,” I said. “We have to do something.”

  “For sure,” Brain said.

  There was a silence.

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “But we will think of something.”

  She sounded confident. And Brain is practically a genius, so I trust her. She’s probably even smarter than I am when it comes to thinking up ideas.

  “Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I said to Brain before we hung up.

  “Obviously,” Brain replied.

  And that was it. One thing I appreciate about Brain is that she doesn’t try to ask me about my feelings or anything mushy like that.

  * * *

  After an awkward dinner with Carl and Mom that Louisa refused to join, I sat in my room thinking about what Brain and I could do. I thought maybe we could speak to the judge directly, or wiretap Walker Stewart, my dad’s former boss, in case he confessed that he was the one who did the illegal stuff, not my dad.

  The phone rang again. I figured it was Brain calling back to say she would bring my backpack to school the next day. I ran into Mom and Carl’s room and answered the phone.

  It was Dad.

  The call went like this:

  “Hello?”

  “This is the Federal Correctional Institution, South Florida. Is this Oliver Jones, Louisa Jones, Carl Wyatt, or Diane Wyatt?”

  “This is Oliver.”

  “Please hold for Daniel Jones.”

  Click.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hi, Spaghetti-O. Did your mom talk to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault. This isn’t fair at all.”

  “It’s not fair, I know.”

  “This isn’t right.”

  I didn’t have anything else to say, really. I couldn’t think past the fact that Dad hadn’t done anything wrong.

  Dad said a few more things about how disappointed he was and how he had been hoping this wouldn’t happen, but honestly, I was only half listening.

  I had taken the cordless receiver from Mom and Carl’s room into my room, and while Dad was talking, I was sitting on my bottom bunk, looking at my laundry hamper in the corner of the room.

  One time I had to clean my room before Mom would let me go to Brain’s house, and I was in a real hurry, so I just stuffed everything into the hamper. Clean clothes, dirty clothes, stuffed animals, even some old food wrappers. It was amazing how much stuff I could push down in that hamper without it overflowing.

  Any feelings that came up while Dad was talking, I just stuffed them down into myself like my insides were a hamper. It worked amazingly well. Even when it sounded like Dad was crying, I didn’t get upset. In fact, I didn’t feel a thing.

  2

  WHAT’S NEXT

  Mom said Louisa and I could stay home from school the next day if we wanted to, but we both said we wanted to go. Louisa didn’t want to risk a single point on her grades, and I was hoping Brain and I could start planning how to help Dad.

  But we didn’t have a chance to discuss it until after school, when we were at my house to do our homework. Brain was on my bottom bunk with her math book and tablet, and I was on the floor trying to find the list of questions our teacher, Mrs. Thumbly, had given us for a social studies assignment.

  “Maybe we can tell the judge that my dad didn’t do anything wrong,” I suggested.

  “I don’t know,” Brain said. “If the judge didn’t believe your dad, I don’t think he would believe a kid.”

  “Maybe we can write a letter pretending to be Walker Stewart and say he was the one who did everything wrong, not Dad,” I offered instead, pulling a crumpled paper from my backpack that had something—grape jelly?—on it.

  “Mmm-hmm,” Brain said.

  Mmm-hmm meant she was now totally focused on her math homework and had no idea what I’d just said. Brain loves schoolwork, and it’s like she goes into a trance when she’s solving math problems. There was no way I was going to snap her out of it, so I grabbed my social studies paper and Brain’s phone and climbed up onto the top bunk to call Granny Janet.

  Granny Janet, Carl’s mom, is my step-grandma, and she’s the second-meanest grown-up I know. She has long fingernails like painted eagle talons, and she says whatever she wants, even cuss words.

  Granny Janet picked up after one ring. “What do you want?” she said.

  “Hi, Granny Janet, it’s Oliver,” I began.

  “I know who it is,” she said. “What, you don’t think I have caller ID? What can I do for you?”

  “Oh, um…” I hesitated. “I am doing a report for school … on someone special in my family. And I picked you, because you are very special to me, Granny Janet.” That wasn’t true. First of all, we were supposed to pick an older relative, but Granny Janet wouldn’t like it if I called her old. Second of all, I picked Granny Janet because she was the easiest person to get on the phone. Both Grandma Olivia and Grandma Darlene had passed away. My mom’s dad, Grandpa Bo, lived in Texas and worked too late for me to call him on school nights, and my grandpa on my dad’s side was … Well, no one knew where he was. My dad never talked about him, my mom said not to ask about it, and Louisa thought Dad had never even met him.

  Anyway, that’s why I called Granny Janet.

  “It’s supposed to help us better understand ourselves,” I told her.

  “This is what you’re learning about in school? To call people in your own family? And the tuition at that cuss-word place is how much?”

  “Um, we also learn to do presentations on something we are passionate about,” I said.

  Granny Janet snorted. “I should write a letter to that headmaster to tell him what I think of this school he’s running. Teaching you to make phone calls and understand yoursel
f. You can’t put ‘I understand myself’ on a résumé, now can you, Oliver?”

  “Um, probably not,” I mumbled. I didn’t know what a résumé was, but I didn’t really want to know, either. “I just … I have five questions. I’m supposed to ask you about your past, present, and future.”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Granny Janet?”

  I heard her sigh loudly. “This is a ridiculous assignment, but fine. Go ahead and ask your questions.”

  The first question I had come up with was about Granny Janet’s childhood. “Did you grow up poor?” I asked. Granny Janet is rich, and I’ve noticed that most adults who are rich can’t wait to tell you about how they grew up poor.

  “Heck no, Oliver, my father owned a newspaper and three gas stations. We weren’t poor. Next question.”

  I wrote three gas stations, always rich on my paper underneath the first question. Then I asked two questions about Granny Janet’s life as a grown-up, and one question about stuff she likes to do now. The last question was about the future: “What are you looking forward to next in life?”

  “Well, I’ll have you know that less than three weeks from now I am receiving a major award in front of all my friends. It’s at a dinner gala. I donated the most money to a charitable foundation.”

  Charity stuff, I wrote on my paper.

  “What’s the name of the foundation?” I asked.

  “I can’t remember,” Granny Janet said. “Kids Something. They raise money to help kids, or people, or whatever. It’s the foundation of that movie actor, Tony Skullwrecker. He has some sort of local connection.”

  “You mean Tito the Bonecrusher?!” I dropped my pencil.

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  “Can I go to the dinner?” I asked in the same breath.

  “For Pete’s sake, Oliver, it’s three hundred dollars a plate, and they only sell them by the pair.”

  “Six hundred dollars just for two PLATES?” Rich people spend money on the strangest things. I had been trying to understand them ever since my mom first started bringing me to her housekeeping jobs, and every time I think I’ve figured them out, they do something else that boggles the mind. “How much does the food cost?” I wrote $600—2 plates in my notes.

  Granny Janet sighed so loudly into the phone I had to pull it away from my ear.

  “Plates means tickets, Oliver,” she said slowly, like she was talking to a turtle. “It’s two tickets for six hundred dollars.”

  I crossed out plates and wrote tickets.

  “How’s your father?” Granny Janet asked me.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “I don’t really like to talk about it.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Granny Janet said. “I wouldn’t want to, either. And if anyone tries to get into your business, just tell them to shove it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, anyway, thanks for the interview, Granny. You were a big help.”

  “I sure was,” she agreed, and hung up.

  That was just like Granny Janet. She was getting to meet Tito the Bonecrusher, and she didn’t even know who he was. Whereas I had been obsessed with Tito for as long as we had been watching wrestling with Dad, which was probably when I was about five days old. We had seen literally every Tito video together, from his lucha libre days at Arena México to his third, and final, UWE Championship. Dad said my first words were “Lucha! Lucha! Lucha!” But Mom says that’s not true.

  “Granny Janet is going to a fancy dinner with Tito!” I exclaimed to Brain. “Can you imagine? And she doesn’t even know who he is.” Rich-people stuff is almost always wasted on rich people, if you ask me.

  “Hmm,” Brain said, standing up from the bottom bunk and walking over to my desk with her tablet. “What’s the name of the event?”

  “Um, Kids Something,” I told her. “My granny couldn’t remember. Probably has to do with Tito’s foundation.” Granny Janet had said it was for helping kids, and Tito’s charity, the Number One Fan Foundation, is all about helping kids.

  Since we didn’t know the name of the fancy dinner, Brain googled Tito Bonecrusher, Number One Fan, Haselton, Virginia. The first hit that came up was Tito’s Wikipedia page, talking about the anonymous kid whose fan letter had led Tito to start the Number One Fan Foundation. And the fact that Tito’s former manager and movie sidekick, The Germ, is from Haselton. The Germ is the most famous person to come from Haselton, other than a writer named F. T. Robards, who writes long, serious books for grown-ups, and some lady who won big on Wheel of Fortune.

  Brain kept scrolling till she found the link for the Number One Fan Foundation Gala: May 11 at the Empire Hotel.

  The event web page said that the purpose of the gala was to raise money for the Number One Fan Foundation. Then it said: “The Number One Fan Foundation proudly welcomes both hometown hero Gerald ‘The Germ’ Casper and the #1 action star in America, Tito the Bonecrusher!” There were two boring pictures of Tito and The Germ; they were dressed in suits and smiling wide. Other than the fact that Tito was wearing the mask he always wears, they looked like two regular business guys. I prefer the action shots where they look extremely dangerous.

  “Tito is coming here to raise money for the Number One Fan Foundation?” I asked. “How did we not know about this? Aren’t your parents going?” I would have thought Brain’s mom and dad would be all over this. They love fancy, expensive things.

  Brain shook her head and pointed to something on the left side of the screen. “No way. The gala is being sponsored by Fluff Cream and Designer Mart.”

  Brain’s dad, Mr. Gregory, owns a company called Apparel Warehouse, and Designer Mart is their biggest rival in town. Brain and her mom aren’t allowed anywhere near Designer Mart or anything that has anything to do with Designer Mart. When I first met Mr. Gregory, he lectured me for twenty minutes on how the owner of Designer Mart is a swindler and a crook. And that was when I was six years old.

  “Well, I guess I better write my report about Granny Janet,” I said.

  But Brain wasn’t listening. She had started writing frantically on a piece of notebook paper.

  This was typical Brain. If she needed to get some idea out of her head, she stopped everything and scribbled her thoughts until they were all on paper. After a few minutes, Brain shoved the paper in front of my face. There were words, numbers, arrows, dollar signs, and a bunch of exclamation points.

  “What the heck is that?” I asked her.

  “That,” Brain said, “is how we are going to help your dad.”

  3

  A BIG BELIEVER IN SECOND CHANCES

  On her scribbled-up paper, Brain had made a three-step plan to get my dad out of jail and back to Virginia in time for Louisa’s graduation.

  First, we would earn six hundred dollars and buy two tickets to the Number One Fan Foundation Gala.

  Second, we would go to the gala, meet Tito the Bonecrusher, and ask him one question: How do you break someone out of a federal prison?

  “Tito will know the answer,” Brain said. “He said so on Hollywood Tonight.”

  That was true. In every movie he’s done, Tito has had to get someone out of a bad situation: out of a laboratory, out of a space dungeon, out of a Wild West lockup … The list keeps growing. And in an interview about a year before, Tito had said that after all the research he’d done for his movies, he could rescue anyone from a bad situation. “I take my research very seriously,” he’d told the host of Hollywood Tonight. “I interview security teams, study building schematics, and talk to experts.” He said there was always at least one way, and usually two or three ways, to help someone escape from a secure facility if you really wanted to. “But I would never break the law in real life!” Tito assured the Hollywood Tonight host.

  “Hmm,” I said.

  “Tito will know the answer!” Brain repeated, sounding confident.

  “But Tito gets those people out illegally,” I said, “not by talking to judges or lawyers or anything.”<
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  “Exactly,” Brain said. “By any means necessary.”

  Which led to the third and last step of her plan: I would go to Florida and, using Tito’s plan, rescue Dad so that he could keep his promise to Louisa.

  “Tito’s solutions are usually just a couple of steps, really,” Brain said. “Bribe the right person, prop open the right door … you know how it works.”

  “But if it were that easy in real life, wouldn’t people do it all the time?” I wondered.

  “Not everyone has access to Tito the Bonecrusher,” she pointed out. “But we will. And he will help us.”

  She was right. Helping people in bad situations was what the Number One Fan Foundation was all about. Tito had promised in front of an arena full of people to help kids who needed help. He promised. I was there, and I heard him.

  I felt a buzzing of energy, and not in the bad, itchy-in-my-bones way that I’d felt after finding out that Dad had to go to prison in Florida. A good buzzing of energy, like when something important is missing and you look for it everywhere, and then you find it just in time. I had been waiting months for people to help my dad—the lawyers, my mom, even Walker Stewart—but no one had. Now the people who were going to help him were Brain and me. And Tito.

  * * *

  Brain and I got right to work on figuring out how to make the money for the tickets, and we knew we would have to use some of the signature moves we had recently developed from our extensive knowledge of Tito the Bonecrusher. The five signature moves are:

  #1 Project confidence: Act like you know what you are talking about, even if you don’t. Act like you are sure you will get what you want, even if you aren’t. Tito does this all the time in his movies.

  #2 Be extra friendly: If you treat the other person like you are their very best friend in the whole wide world, they are more likely to do what you want. You might even do them a little favor so they think you’re really generous. This is how Tito’s sidekick, The Germ, gets information from people.

  #3 Take what you need without anyone noticing: I know it sounds like stealing, but “Sometimes you have to do what’s wrong to do what’s right.” That’s what it says on the poster for Time Crusher 2: Out of Time, which is my fifth-favorite Tito the Bonecrusher movie.