The Not-So-Boring Letters of Private Nobody

by Matthew Landis

  “What’s that?” Oliver asked, nodding toward her computer.

  “It’s the historical society website. They have a little paragraph about our soldier Private Stone, but we’ll need to go there in person to see the whole collection of letters and stuff.”

  “What’s happening right now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This.” He tapped her screen. He tapped her paper. He tapped the screen again. “You’re on task. Actually, you’re ahead of task.”

  “I told you. I need a perfect score on this project.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  Oliver wasn’t sure how she didn’t get what he didn’t get. “Why are you working so hard to get the lowest passing grades possible?”

  Ella turned and looked at him like she had outside the main office two days ago. Like she was inspecting him.

  But this time he failed whatever test she thought made him deserve a real answer.

  “Just because.” Ella went back to her screen and ran a finger along the words. “Okay. Raymond Stone was born in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1842 to William and Eliza . . . had a sister named Rachel . . . his family owned a wheat farm.”

  Oliver jotted down the boring facts. “Looks like we’re off to an exciting start.”

  “In September of 1862 he enlisted with the 68th Pennsylvania Regiment in Philadelphia and died on July 5, 1863 at Gettysburg of dysentery. What’s that?”

  “It’s basically diarrhea,” Oliver said. How heroic. Killed by his own poop.

  Oliver stopped writing. “Wait—the 68th? That’s wrong. He would’ve enlisted in the 104th.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because”—Oliver puffed out his chest a little— “that’s my reenactment regiment, the 104th Pennsylvania Volunteers—based on the actual regiment raised from our town. Soldiers joined local regiments, so Stone couldn’t have been in the 68th way down in Philly. He would have enlisted in the 104th.”

  “That’s not what the website says.”

  “Then the website is wrong.”

  Ella shrugged. “Then I guess you can tell that to the historical society people when we see them on Friday.”

  Oliver sighed, but it came out more like an ugh.

  And then he ughed again.

  —CHAPTER EIGHT—

  THE UNINVITED LUNCH GUEST

  “You’re acting weird,” Kevin said. He forked kimchi into his mouth and raised one eyebrow at Oliver.

  “What do you mean?” Oliver asked.

  “You’re staring at your food instead of eating it.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “About what?”

  Oliver filled him in on the Ella situation.

  “That’s weird,” Kevin announced without taking his eyes off his phone. “Really weird.”

  “I know,” Oliver agreed. Kevin was basically the closest Oliver had to a friend. They ate lunch together every day. Well, not really together—Ollie was usually examining an epic battle, and Kevin was usually checking the comments on one of his weird Wattpad stories—but at least across from each other.

  “Check it out.” Kevin flashed his screen. “Remember that Wattpad story I wrote last week, ‘The Tyrannical Toothbrush’? It’s up to three hundred reads and forty-seven stars.”

  “Nice,” Oliver said. “Which one was that?”

  “A power-hungry toothbrush launches a bathroom coup and institutes a rather harsh social order based upon each tool’s perceived usefulness.”

  “Right.”

  All of Kevin’s stories were kind of like that: incredibly strange.

  “I think there’s a story in your situation,” Kevin said. He air-typed for a couple seconds. “How’s this: It’s the year 2090 and the world is on the brink of nuclear war. To keep the peace, the United Nations creates a fight-to-the-death tournament where the winner gets to blow up whatever country they want. China wins because of martial arts and stuff, but before the missiles launch, this thirteen-year-old American girl, who everyone thought was really stupid because she almost failed middle school, hacks into the system and makes the missiles blow up over the ocean.”

  “Sounds pretty weird.”

  Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to try and talk to Kevin. Oliver reached for his book.

  “Hey.” Ella put her cafeteria tray down next to Oliver. He looked up at her in surprise, but she started talking, like she belonged right there at their table. “I was thinking we should start learning about Windows Movie Maker after school today.”

  “Windows Movie Maker sucks,” Kevin said.

  “It does?” Ella did a quick head-whipping motion to clear the tangled hair from her mouth before shoving in a chicken sandwich. Oliver watched it disappear in three bites. It was extremely impressive.

  “It’s the worst editing software ever created.” Kevin glanced up, like he’d just noticed someone new was there. “Oh—we were just talking about you. I’m using your plan to almost fail seventh grade as a template for a short story. The working title is ‘The Reluctant Hacker.’ Don’t worry—I won’t use your real name.”

  “You were talking about me?”

  “Uh,” Oliver said, “I just filled Kevin in a little—about why we need to get a perfect score.”

  Ella shrugged. She unwrapped her second sandwich and crunched the tinfoil into a tiny ball. “What about iMovie? Mr. Carrow brought that up too.”

  “Yeah, iMovie is good,” Kevin said. “Do you have a Mac?”

  Ella nodded. Her cheeks were too packed with chicken to speak.

  “Then you’re good to go.”

  She swallowed and looked at Oliver. “Are you in the play?”

  “No.”

  “Jazz band?”

  “No.”

  “Baseball?”

  “I’m not a ball sports kind of person.”

  “So can we go to your house after school?”

  “Uh . . . Okay.”

  “Do you walk or ride?”

  “Walk.”

  “All right.” Ella stabbed seven tater tots onto a fork and shoved them into her mouth. “Let’s meet at the bus loop.”

  “Uh . . . Okay.”

  “Romance,” Kevin said. He darted his eyes between them. “The story needs romance. How about this: The tournament champion is secretly in love with Ella’s mom, who’s from America. He can’t lose the tournament because the Chinese government will kill his family. But if he wins, they’ll nuke his girlfriend. Now that adds some tension.”

  Ella studied the peas dying of dehydration on her tray. She did not pick up her fork. “What are you going to change my name to?”

  “How do you feel about Cleopatra?”

  “Sure.” Ella looked over at Oliver’s unopened pack of Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets. “Are you going to eat those?”

  “. . . No.”

  “Can I have them?”

  Oliver passed them to her. “Did you skip breakfast or something?”

  “No.”

  Oliver watched her down a Krimpet in a single bite. “Do you always eat this much?”

  “Yeah.” She must have read his mind, because she added, “My parents are obsessed with gluten-free, sugar-free, taste-free stuff. Plus I have a high metabolism.”

  “My mom says I have the metabolism of a Peruvian weasel,” Kevin said. “I looked it up—doesn’t exist. But it made for a good story called ‘The Peruvian Weasel’ where a young weasel is taken hostage by a clan of gophers and brought to Patagonia. He works in a mining camp, escapes during an earthquake, and makes his way back to Peru to find out his wife remarried and his kids hate him. It’s got over four hundred likes on Wattpad.”

  “Sounds cool,” Ella said.

  Kevin examin
ed Ella over his phone. “Yeah—it is cool. Now if you can get Mrs. Mason to agree, I don’t have to spend any more Resource choking on her old- lady perfume.”

  “Is that why you were at her desk on Monday?” Oliver asked. It felt weird asking Kevin about something that mattered. But whatever. Ella had started it.

  “Yeah. I was trying to get some extra credit by showing her my Wattpad stuff. But she said it doesn’t ‘align with the school curriculum’”—he air-quoted this part—“and so I’m stuck doing these horrible argument-writing exercises with her twice a week. It’s as awful as it sounds.”

  The hulking guidance counselor who babysat seventh-grade lunch announced over the mic that it was time to clean up.

  “Meet you in the bus loop,” Ella said, picking up her tray and leaving.

  “Uh, okay.” Oliver watched her go, wondering how in the world he’d arrived at this moment.

  “She’s not that weird,” Kevin said.

  Oliver looked at him. “Are you serious?”

  “I thought she was cool.”

  —CHAPTER NINE—

  THE FIRST GIRL TO ENTER OLIVER’S ROOM OTHER THAN HIS MOM AND SISTER AND COUSIN NATALIE

  Oliver squinted in the blazing afternoon sun as he and Ella cut across the baseball outfield toward his subdivision. Some construction guys were taking down the giant WELLER GROUP, INC. sign that had been up during the school’s two-year renovation (which for some reason hadn’t involved putting in air-conditioning). Some hilarious person had spray-painted streamers and a string on the company’s red diamond logo so it looked like a kite.

  It was humid. Oliver was sweating. He was also scrambling to get a grip on this rapidly evolving situation. He didn’t have friends over, ever. Which made having a girl over even stranger.

  “So I have a sister,” Oliver said. “Addie. She’s in fifth grade. She’s probably going to annoy you because that’s her second-best skill. Her best skill is playing the piano. Her teacher has these recitals all the time and they’re like the worst way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I’ve tried a thousand things to get out of them but nothing ever works. My parents say that families are supposed to support each other. I get it, but the recitals are still terrible.”

  They reached the tree line and Oliver led the way down a narrow dirt path that dumped them in between two backyards. At the sidewalk they turned left and walked down the street that ended at Oliver’s house.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” he asked.

  “A sister, but she’s older.”

  “Like, high school?”

  “College.”

  “Oh. That’s cool. Does she drive you around and stuff when she’s home?”

  “She’s usually busy.”

  At the stop sign they crossed the street to Oliver’s driveway with the old silver minivan parked right in the middle. It was easy to spot because of the oldness, but also because of the two rear-window stickers: a giant keyboard on one side, and a cartoon Civil War soldier on the other, above the caption WORKING IS FOR PEOPLE WHO DON’T REENACT THE CIVIL WAR.

  “Just to warn you,” Oliver said as he punched in the garage code, “my mom might act funny. I actually have no idea what to expect. Not because of you.” Oliver stopped at the mudroom door. “It’s just that I don’t have friends come over a lot.”

  “What about Kevin?”

  “Kevin doesn’t come over.”

  “But you guys are friends.”

  “Uh, I guess.”

  “You sit together at lunch.”

  “I know. The point is, just don’t worry about my mom. She’s really nice, but super nosy and up in my business lately. Sometimes she forgets I’m not in Addie’s grade.”

  They went through the mudroom and into the kitchen. A bowl of Cheez-Its and a plate of sliced apples sat on the breakfast bar next to a Capri Sun pouch.

  “What’s this?” Ella asked.

  Oliver wasn’t exactly sure what she was asking. “After-school snack.”

  “Is it always like this?”

  “Um, sometimes we have trail mix.”

  “Can I have some?”

  “Sure.” Oliver got another Capri Sun and they sat on opposite sides of the counter eating snacks. Ella ate more than eighty percent of the food.

  “So this is ready for you every day when you come home?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s pretty cool.”

  “Uh, I guess.”

  “Consider yourself—at home!” sang Oliver’s mom. “Consider yourself one of the—” She danced into the kitchen still wearing her blinding orange Home Depot apron. “Oh—hi.”

  “Mom, this is Ella.”

  “Ellaaaa,” Oliver’s mom said, like Oliver had brought home a long-lost relative. “Ella . . . nice to meet you.”

  “Thanks for having me, Mrs. Prichard.” Ella stood up and shook Oliver’s mom’s hand. “I hope you don’t mind that I invited myself over. We have to work on a project.”

  “Mind?” She laughed. “Of course not, honey.” Her eyes darted between Oliver and Ella. Her smile was downright sinister. “No—no, I don’t mind.”

  “And thanks for these snacks. I was starving.”

  “Then let me get some more.” She went to the pantry and took out the Costco-size bag of Cheez-Its. She was wearing a ridiculous smile and kept stealing glances at Ella, like she was trying to make sure she was actually there. Oliver wanted to crawl into the dishwasher. “Oliver, you didn’t mention a project. What’s it about?”

  “The Civil War,” Ella answered.

  “Oh! Ollie loves the Civil War!”

  She put the new bowl of Cheez-Its down right in front of Ella.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Prichard.”

  “Call me Mrs. P, honey,” she said.

  “Okay. Thanks, Mrs. P.”

  “We should get started,” Oliver said, grabbing his book bag. It was time to get out of there, before his mom and Ella got too chummy. He headed for the basement— his room. Ella grabbed the bowl of Cheez-Its and followed him.

  Oliver flicked the switch at the top of the stairs and took his time on each step. He was nervous. Why? Because the basement was his Civil War man cave? No. That was something to brag about. It was something else.

  “This is my room,” he told her. “I don’t usually have people down here. Definitely not girls. You’re the first, actually, other than my mom or sister. And my cousin Natalie. Last Christmas she drank the adult eggnog and got really sleepy.”

  Ella put her book bag on the couch Oliver’s uncle had given him when they’d moved. “Wow,” she said. “This is really awesome.”

  Other hand-me-down furniture filled the finished basement: A coffee table and TV from an aunt formed a sort of living room area. Bookshelves that G-Pop built took up most of the back wall, along with a giant wooden desk—also built by G-Pop—which was hilariously large and dangerously heavy.

  “Where did you get all these flags?” Ella asked, examining the Civil War regimental flags hung like wallpaper.

  “eBay. There’s a lot of Civil War people on eBay.”

  “You really like the Civil War.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why?”

  Oliver looked at her sideways. Nobody had ever asked him that before. He thought for a beat.

  “I like that it’s infinite.”

  “Like, big?”

  “Yeah.” He’d never said this out loud. “It’s like a giant mountain of information. Most people can see the famous peaks, but only from a distance. Climbing it is a lot different. When you’re on the mountain you learn all sorts of really interesting stuff that other people don’t know.”

  “That’s a really good metaphor,” she said. “Give me an example.”

  Was she messing with him? Oliver watched her f
or a second. Her face looked totally genuine. He relaxed.

  “Okay. So you know General William T. Sherman—the guy famous for ending the war sooner by marching through the South and basically burning everything in sight? He was bipolar—like he had really, really bad depression. So bad that he was actually relieved of command during the first year of the war. His wife nursed him back to health with food and Shakespeare, and he returned to the army six months later.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Ella said. He could tell from her voice that she was thinking about it and actually interested—that she didn’t just want him to shut up. “You wouldn’t expect that, for someone who went on to do something so important in the war.”

  “I know,” Oliver said. “I mean, how cool is that? That somebody who was such a train wreck wound up ending the bloodiest war we’ve ever fought?”

  “It’s like the war is full of secrets or something.” Her eyes wandered to the farthest corner of the basement. “Why do you have a bunk bed?”

  “Uh, Addie and I shared a room in our other house. It was really small.” Oliver pointed to the door beside it. “There’s a bathroom, there, if you need.”

  “How long have you lived down here?”

  “Since last year when Addie started getting serious about piano. It gets really loud.” He put his hand awkwardly on the TV. Was he supposed to sit on the couch? His bed? No, not the bed. Yikes. He didn’t know much about having a girl in his room, but that seemed like the opposite of a good idea. And anyway, which bunk—top or bottom?

  Ella solved things by sitting on the couch and opening her MacBook on the coffee table. “Okay, YouTube. Teach me iMovie.”

  Oliver sat. Not too close. Probably too far. Was it weird to scoot closer? Who knew these things.

  By the time Addie stomped into the house an hour later and started banging out scales on the piano, they’d covered the video editing basics. Music was a cinch too; the hardest part was finding a website to convert a YouTube music video to an audio file without also downloading a ton of spyware.

  “She’s pretty good,” Ella said. Addie had finished her warm-up scales and moved on to a song so annoyingly familiar that Oliver sometimes hummed along by accident.