by Beth Vrabel
Soon we were throwing the ball back and forth, both of us pushing further, making each other dodge and jump. Jeff pointed to a tire he had swinging from a tree branch. “See if you can get it through the middle.”
I did, on the second try. Jeff whistled low.
“Boys!” Mom called. “The bread’s burning.”
“Diane,” Jeff said over his shoulder, “you didn’t tell me your boy had an arm.”
Soon I was heading over to Jeff’s place or his shop after school most days. We’d chug milk from the carton and head outside to throw the ball. Sometimes Landon would show up, too—Jeff throwing the ball and the two of us rushing for it. Within a couple weeks, Mom was joke-whining that Jeff only dated her so he could play football with me. But I could see that she was smiling, too. Eventually, Mom had said I had to finish homework before playing ball. So we just ended up always hanging out at Jeff’s from after school until bedtime.
Then, one day, Jeff brought home a flier for the Ashtown Bruins Boys’ Club Football League.
I made the team.
Coach Abrams made me quarterback.
“Your boy’s got a great arm,” Coach had told Jeff after tryouts.
Miss Peters kept me after class. “You’re not working to your full potential, Noah.”
I shook my head. “I aced the first test.” I wasn’t bragging. It was true. I only got one wrong, and no one got it right, not even Rina. In the five weeks since school started, Miss Peters had given two quizzes, and I had aced those, too.
Miss Peters nodded, her ponytail swinging. “You are. But in class you’re not sharing your ideas. You know what Mr. Anderson said about good citizenship? Participating is part of being a good citizen.”
I felt my stomach boil. How could she talk to me about being a good citizen, when she put me in a group with Brenna and Mike? The two of them couldn’t make it clearer that they hated me. Sure, Mike couldn’t pull off the same meanness in the classroom that he did in the hall—bumping into me, trashing my locker, calling me names. But, in class, he and Brenna sat with their backs to me, whispering like they thought I was trying to cheat by overhearing them get the problems wrong. I just doodled in my notebook instead.
I gritted my teeth and didn’t look at her. Miss Peters held out her hand. “Give me your notebook.”
Reluctantly, I handed it over. She flipped to the last page I had open. In between slashes and boxes, there were numbers.
“These are correct. And very, very different from your small group’s conclusions.” She pointed to a specific number. “This answer? Twenty-one? That’s right. Your group submitted 401. A bit of a difference, wouldn’t you say?”
Her fingernails were clipped short, squared at the unpainted tips. I shook my head slightly, thinking of how Mom always kept her nails pointed, long, and painted.
“I broke you up in small groups today so you could problem-solve together, each of you bringing something to the decision-making. There is a reason I put you with Mike and Brenna, Noah. They aren’t as confident as you in math. They need a leader, someone who can not only get the answer right, but show them how to reason through it. You could be that leader, Noah.”
I pulled the notebook out of Miss Peters’s hands and closed it. “I’m going to be late for my next class.”
Miss Peters sighed. “Noah, you’ve got to step up a little. Take some ownership. Don’t you want to be a leader?”
My teeth, they were going to crack, I clenched them so hard. But I couldn’t grind out the memory.
“You own it out there, man!” Landon’s arm slaps across my shoulders. “Go Bruins!”
The rest of the team rushes us, answering Landon’s cheer. My fist pumps into air, the cheers from the bleachers washing over me.
“Our MVP … Noah Brickle!” Coach Abrams dumps a cooler of orange Gatorade over my head, my grin so huge I couldn’t help but taste it. Coach leans in close, the stubble on his cheeks brushing against my ear as he whispers, “What would we do without you, kid? You’re leading this team to the championship. I can feel it!”
Mom clapping so hard, cheering so loud, she’s about to fall off the bleacher. Jeff sitting beside her, hands linked behind his head, nodding and smiling like I’m the greatest thing ever. Like he’s proud.
“No,” I told Miss Peters, “I’m no leader.”
“You’re wrong, Noah,” she called as I walked out. “You’re just not ready.”
In English comp, Ms. Edwards crossed her thick arms and glared at each of us. “We’re adding a new section. Instead of continuing with personal narratives, which some students seem to feel is repetitive, we are now going to focus on small moments.”
“Yessss!” Rina hissed from the front row as everyone else groaned. Rina’s hand shot in the air.
Ms. Edwards ignored her. “Write about a time when everything suddenly became clear for you. A moment when you knew what you had to do in order to solve a problem.” My mind went blank. Problem-solving isn’t exactly a strong suit of mine.
Ms. Edwards’s chair creaked as she shifted in her seat, ignoring Rina’s hand waving in the air. But Rina didn’t stop, and swung her arm like it was a flag. A squeak bubbled out from her. Ms. Edwards finally took a long breath. “Rina, is there yet another way you’d like to alter my curriculum?”
Rina bounced in her seat. “I was just going to suggest, Ms. Edwards, that our small moments be very different from our personal narratives.”
Ms. Edwards glared at Rina over thick glasses.
After English, both Rina and I stopped at our lockers before heading to Mr. Davies’s science class. “Congratulations,” I said to her.
She grinned, shoving her fluffy hair back into a ponytail. “I know, right! Death to the personal narrative! Onward with the small moment!”
“They’re basically the same thing.”
Rina slammed shut her locker door. “Nonsense! I have achieved victory!” She peeked over at my locker. “Less trash today.”
“Yeah.” I rooted around. “I can’t find my science folder, though. So, um, is your small moment going to be getting the small moment into the curriculum?”
“Sneaks!” some kid—a sixth grader by the look of him—shouted as he passed by. When I stood up, he scurried down the hall. Great, Landon and Mike’s nickname was catching on.
“Nope.” Rina’s grin stretched further and she kept on as if the little twerp hadn’t said anything. “My small moment was establishing the school newspaper.”
I groaned. “You’re keeping up with the paper?”
“Yep.” Rina leaned in, her hair tickling my ear. “And I’m recruiting writers.”
I couldn’t help smiling back at her, even though my science folder—which had been in my locker that morning—had vanished. “No way. I have enough of a target on my back.”
Rina smiled. “We’ll see.”
I still was smiling as I went into Mr. Davies’s class, though I knew chances were small that he’d believe someone stole my folder out of my locker.
CHAPTER EIGHT
At the end of the day, I took what was becoming my usual seat in front of Miss Dickson’s desk in the lobby. “Can I call Jeff? I’ll just walk to the Shop.”
Miss Dickson twisted her lips and shook her head. “When we have after-school detention, Noah, we wait for a parent or guardian to pick us up. It’s in the handbook.”
“Yeah, but detention is over. Can’t I save him the trip? I walk to the Shop every day after school.”
Miss Dickson ignored me.
I threw down my bag on the chair and slumped in the empty seat beside it. Just then, Mr. Anderson came out of his office. “Back again, Mr. Brickle?”
“After-school detention,” Miss Dickson broke in. “Seems we can’t remember to turn in our science folder.”
“Someone took it out of my locker!” My fingernails dug into my palms. I don’t know who I was angrier with—Mr. Davies for not believing me, Miss Dickson for her digs about it, or me, for l
etting both of them bother me.
A buzzer pealed through the office. I looked up at the security camera footage to see Jeff waiting by the door. Miss Dickson pressed the button to open the doors.
“Detention, Noah?” Jeff asked in his low, quiet voice as he strode in. He had circles under his eyes. The rag he used to wash his hands was shoved in his back pocket. I wondered how many customers were left fuming so he could get me this time.
Mr. Anderson crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow at me. “We were just about to discuss that,” he said to Jeff, though his eyes stayed on me.
I opened my fists and flexed my fingers. “Someone has been going into my locker. Trashing it. This time, they took my folder. It was there this morning, with my work in it.”
The principal stared at me for a long moment. “Did you share this with Mr. Davies?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged. “He doesn’t believe me.”
“You must have given him some reason to think you’d be something other than truthful.”
Jeff cleared his throat. His mouth pressed into a hard line. “Which assignment? The branch diagram of rock life cycle?”
I nodded. For some stupid reason, the corners of my eyes stung. I had covered the small kitchen table with work yesterday. Jeff had sat with his bowl of chili on his lap, asking me questions about how the rock layers illustrated evolution. It had been kind of cool, I guess. Felt like I was teaching him every time he asked a question. After he washed his dishes and went to have a smoke on the porch, I rewrote the assignment, adding in some details Jeff had seemed surprised to learn. I was still working on it when he went to bed.
Now Jeff turned to Mr. Anderson. “My kid, he did the work. And it was good. I looked it over this morning. His folder was in his backpack.”
Mr. Anderson didn’t say anything for a long moment, letting those two words—my kid—bounce around my skull. “I’m afraid I can’t intervene without talking with Mr. Davies. I won’t undermine one of my teachers.”
Jeff made a humpf noise the same time I did. “Come on, Noah.” Jeff opened the door for me. “We free to go?” he asked Miss Dickson.
“He served his time, so yes.” She put a wrinkled hand to her bubblegum mouth. “Oh! Didn’t mean to offend.”
“Of course not,” Jeff replied, his voice steady.
When we got to the truck, Jeff sat shaking his head, staring ahead toward school. I jumped when he slammed his hands into the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered.
Jeff mopped his hand across his face. “Noah, don’t.” He shoved the key into the ignition, grinding the gears a second. “I’ll get you a lock.”
Right as Jeff shifted back into drive, I grabbed the wheel. “Hold it!” I yelled.
Jeff slammed on the brake.
“Look!” I pointed to the patch of woods across from the school. “There! Do you see her?” I unbuckled and ran from the truck before Jeff put the car in park. I heard his footsteps thud onto the blacktop just behind me.
His hand curled around my elbow, locking me in place, as the bear stepped out of the woods, thrashing her head back and forth. She was about forty feet in front of us, the bucket still pinned around her head. She rose a little on her back legs and slammed down on her front, then shook her head again.
“She knows we’re here,” Jeff said in a low voice, right into my ear. “But she can’t see us.”
“We have to help her!”
The bear backed up at the sound, then turned and ran back through the woods.
“Come on!” I pulled away from Jeff, but his grip tightened.
“And do what, Noah?” He dropped his hold on me and raked his hands through his hair. “She’s not going to let us get near her. Even if she did, do you really think we’re going to get close enough to pull that thing off her head? And that she’d just thank us and be on her way?”
Something about Jeff’s calm reasoning ignited me. I stepped backward from him. “So we do nothing? We just let her live like that?”
Jeff moved closer to me. “No, man. We call the authorities.”
“Like who?” I looked around, like someone would appear. “We’re the only ones here.”
“The people in charge. The people whose job it is to take care of animals. We have to trust that they’ll do it.”
A sound—I guess it was sort of a growl—ripped out of me. “Yeah, cause that helps! It’s been days. She’s got to be suffering!” I wanted to throw something, punch someone, destroy anything. But the only person in front of me was Jeff.
He took another step toward me, slowly, like I was the wild animal. “Maybe the people in your life, the ones who should be taking care of you, aren’t doing a knockout job. But, Noah, you’re a kid. This—” He gestured toward the woods where the bear had disappeared. “This isn’t your job. It isn’t your doing.”
Jeff’s soft, cautious words punched the air from my lungs. I shook my head, fast. “This isn’t about me!” My voice cracked on the last word. And then I was crying, like a stupid baby. Bending my legs and ducking my head and pulling my hair and crying.
Jeff’s arms wrapped me. I clutched myself harder, not leaning into him at all, but he didn’t let go.
A long time later, or maybe it was just a few minutes, we made our way back to the truck. The doors still hung open. Jeff bent to pick up the keys from where he had flung them onto the pavement. We sat in the cab without talking. Jeff scrolled through a page on his phone and called the animal control number, being transferred again and again, until he talked with someone about the bear. “Yeah,” he said. “A bucket, wedged on its head.” Pause. “Yes. I said bucket. Bucket.”
And it wasn’t funny. But it was funny, hearing it like that. I couldn’t help it, I laughed into my fist. And then the corner of Jeff’s mouth twitched and he made a choking sound into the phone. “Yes, officer, I know. It’s no laughing matter.” He hung up and we were holding our stomachs and letting our chuckles fill the cab.
“It is kind of ridiculous, I guess,” I said.
“You know,” Jeff said, “I have noticed a ton of buckets in people’s yards on the way to the Shop.”
“It’s this ‘Bring Back the Bruins’ thing, with people dumping energy drinks on their heads.” Soon I was telling Jeff all about the fund-raiser, about Brenna and Landon, about the trash in my locker, about Rina getting her small moment. All of it came tumbling out, Jeff nodding as I spilled, maybe asking a question here or laughing at something there. When I told him about Landon shutting me out, he pressed his mouth together, but didn’t say anything.
“I guess,” I kind of muttered, “this bear’s problem is my fault.”
“How do you figure that?” Jeff asked, an edge to his voice.
I shrugged. “The buckets are part of raising money for the football league. And I’m the reason it … ”
Jeff sighed. “Bit of a stretch, don’t you think?”
I didn’t answer, just told him about Rina’s newspaper goals.
Next thing I knew, the sun was setting and we were still driving around in the truck. “Hey, you missed the turn,” I said as Jeff drove right past the Shop.
He laughed. “Dude, we’ve driven pass the Shop about sixteen times. Glen’s not even bothering to wave anymore.”
“Why’d you do that?” I felt my face flame.
“I like talking to you, Noah. Didn’t want you to stop.” Softer, he added, “My dad, he used to just let me talk, too.”
I sucked on my bottom lip, suddenly not having anything more to say.
CHAPTER NINE
I glanced behind me the next morning, as buses lurched to a stop and kids streamed into the school. No one looked over here at the edge of the woods. Quick as I could, I unzipped my backpack and pulled out a plastic grocery bag. I dumped the contents at the edge of the woods and darted back toward school, cramming the empty bag back in my backpack and hoping the bear found the apples and hunks of beef jerky before any other animals did.
“Noah!” Miss Dickson singsonged as I entered school that Friday. The sea of kids parted, giving me nowhere to duck. “Mr. Anderson wants to see us in the office!”
“Already?” I sighed.
“Maybe it’s something good,” Rina piped in. I hadn’t realized she was just behind me.
“Whatever.” I pushed through the office door, Rina still on my heels.
“Relax.” She smiled. “I’m not following you. I just have my own business with Mr. Anderson.”
“You realize you willingly go to the principal’s office almost as often as I’m forced to do it, right? I think you have some sort of sickness.”
Rina grinned, flashing her white teeth and crinkling her hazel eyes. “I’m wearing him down. Mom said I can’t make all of the newspaper copies on her printer any more—too much of an environmental impact.” She rolled her eyes. “So Mr. Anderson is going to give me carte blanche to the teachers lounge and its mega copier.” She crossed her arms and popped up her chin, taking long strides toward the principal’s office.
“Carte blanche?” I repeated.
“It means blank check.” Rina shrugged.
“You know, maybe more kids would read your newspaper if you used words they could read.”
Rina paused and I bumped into her from behind. She turned around, her mouth puckered like Landon when he tries to solve math equations in his head. “Good point. You’re going to be an awesome reporter.”
I laughed. “Yeah. No way.”
Mr. Anderson’s shoulders rose almost to his ears; that’s how big his sigh was when he saw us. “Rina.” He twisted his neck back and forth like he was prepping to spar. “You might as well hear this, too, since you won’t stop pestering me about it.” Rina grabbed her reporter’s notebook from the front pocket of her backpack and flipped to a new page. She glanced over at me and wiggled her eyebrows in a told-you-so sort of way.
Turning toward me, Mr. Anderson continued, “Your bear was spotted a handful of times over the past few days. I called the Department of Natural Resources again this morning. They haven’t caught it yet, but they’re making progress. Thought you’d like to know.”