13

by Jason Robert Brown

  “So you did it?”

  “Well, I told them it sounded like a dumb idea.” Lie. “I just wanted to go home.” Lie. I shrugged. “Brett’s a pretty hard guy to refuse.”

  Patrice’s funny look took on a harder edge. “You know, he’s not God, Evan.”

  For some reason I laughed. I mean, I knew she was right. But on the other hand, she was also wrong. Around Appleton, Brett was as close to a human deity as there was. Anyway, by that point I was really sorry I had started the story, but with Patrice leaning back on the kitchen counter, waiting, I had to finish.

  “So a minute later, we saw headlights coming and all of us pretended to beat the crap out of Eddie. Then we ran for the hedges—the girls, too.”

  Patrice’s eyes went wide. “Did the car stop?”

  I nodded and just blurted out the rest of it. “Eddie really played his part, too. He held his stomach, moaned and said, ‘My stomach. My face,’ and stumbled off to his house. Then the guy in the car followed Eddie up the path asking if he could help. By that point, Eddie couldn’t take it anymore. He started laughing and ran like a maniac toward the woods. Next thing I knew, we were all hysterical.”

  The microwave went ding. Patrice ignored it.

  “What did the guy in the car do?”

  I pulled out the bag of popcorn. “I don’t know, he was all ‘You rotten kids!’ or something. We were too busy cracking up.”

  Patrice wrinkled her brow in this way that made her look a little bit like Mrs. Eckfeldt, my second-grade teacher at PS 194. “Why were you cracking up?”

  Even though I had told Patrice everything, I had left out something crucial: how it all felt. The truth was that once we started to pretend to beat up Eddie, it was exciting. And when the car actually stopped and the guy got out to help? It was a rush. Just because it’s a stupid prank doesn’t mean it’s not fun. It felt good to be one of the gang, feeling like we had pulled something off.

  “I guess it was pretty stupid,” I said.

  “You think?” Patrice asked. Before I could respond, she took the popcorn from me and poured it into a bowl. “Oh, this is all burned! It’s ruined.”

  I was starting to get really annoyed at her—I mean, who needed a schoolmarm for a friend? On the other hand, part of me knew she was right. The prank had been stupid. And as much fun as it turned out to be, I had really gone along only because I felt I had to. In any case, I didn’t want the whole afternoon to be ruined. What I needed right then was to smooth things over. So I took two brownish pieces of popcorn, stuck them under my nose, and curved up my lip to make a popcorn mustache. Pretty dumb, but it broke the tension. Patrice giggled. Then she took a piece and threw it at me. Hit me right on the forehead.

  “You’re an idiot,” she said.

  I didn’t know if she was kidding or talking about the prank. But I laughed.

  “You too!”

  Then I threw my mustache right back at her, and next thing I knew, we were having a giant burned-popcorn fight, laughing our heads off. Cleaning up a few minutes later, we were both careful not to mention Brett or the prank. But later on, we sprawled out on the ratty couch in her rec room to watch the movie with a fresh batch of unburned popcorn. I felt like I had to get something out of the way.

  “You know, I think I can get them all to come to my bar mitzvah. That’s cool, right?”

  I brought up the subject right when Gene Kelly was doing this fantastic dance number around a bunch of lampposts, hoping I could slip in the news without Patrice noticing.

  “Huh?” she said.

  “Brett and the gang,” I said. “I think I’m going to invite them.”

  Patrice paused the film. Suddenly Gene Kelly was frozen in space, an umbrella upside down in his hand.

  “If that’s what you want,” Patrice said. “But they’re just gonna act stupid and ruin the whole party.”

  I sighed. When I was with Brett and his gang, I had fun. When I was with Patrice? I got lectures.

  “What is it with you and them anyway?”

  Patrice leaned back on the couch. “Ask Lucy and Kendra. It might surprise you to know that we were friends when we were younger.”

  I couldn’t quite picture that. “What happened?”

  Patrice shrugged. “The minute we hit middle school, I suddenly didn’t wear the right jeans. Or say the right things. I didn’t smoke. It was mostly Lucy. She shut me out first, and Kendra and the others followed right along.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s crazy.”

  And yet it wasn’t crazy. Spending a day with Kendra and Lucy made it all too obvious that Patrice didn’t fit in with them. But looking at Patrice, still filled with hurt and anger, I wished that I could do something to fix it.

  “So?” Patrice said. “Wanna finish the movie?”

  I pressed the remote, and Gene Kelly swung around the lamppost and splashed in a puddle. He made it all look so easy.

  The week before the start of school went by in a blur. What started as a day at the quarry with Brett and his gang turned into a whole string of plans that took up a lot of my time. Eddie, Fudge, Kendra, and Lucy were his main gang, but there were five other kids—Ryan, Nicole, Bridget, J.D., and Seth—who came along sometimes. Mostly we hung around Calvi’s, playing video games and eating ice cream, but there was also a night at the movies, a state fair, and a minor league ballgame. All this in addition to my daily trips to Cranston to suffer with Rabbi Weiner. So I guess I just didn’t have a whole lot of time to see Patrice, and the couple of times we did get together, it was awkward. I mean, we tried to pretend that everything was the same as it was before I had started to hang with Brett: We went to the library, we sat in her basement and watched movies. We had some laughs, but every time I had to leave, she could tell I was going to hang with the kids she hated, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t stop the hurt from showing. She also couldn’t stop the rants about how stupid or how mean they were, or how they were going to ruin my bar mitzvah. So I guess I took the easy way out. I’m not exactly proud of it, but after a few days, when I saw Patrice’s number on my caller ID I stopped picking up. At first she just called more. Then it tapered off. She got the point eventually. After a couple of days, she stopped calling entirely.

  A few days before school began, I found myself sitting in Pam’s living room addressing bar mitzvah invitations. To my amazement, I had a group of kids to invite. Here was my list:

  Brett Connelly

  Eddie Jones

  Malcolm “Fudge” Venter

  Lucy Abendroth

  Kendra Peterson

  J. D. Canaday

  Nicole Willis

  Seth Ashley

  Bridget Keller

  Ryan Ritchie

  Patrice DeCrette

  I got out Pam’s old white pages, looked up their names, and copied each name and address as neatly as I could onto the fancy envelopes my mom had bought for the occasion. After that, Simon and I walked down the block to the mailbox. But this strange thing happened when I opened the slot to drop in the invites. The first ten envelopes slid right on down the chute, but I just couldn’t mail Patrice’s. It was like it was glued to my hand. Not literally, of course, but suddenly my heart was pounding and I was frozen. I mean, how awkward would it be if she came? She hated them. They hated her. Why put myself through that on the most important day of my life?

  And then I had this really terrible thought. What if Brett and his gang found out Patrice was coming and then refused to come themselves? I remembered Lucy and Patrice’s exchange at Calvi’s the first time I had seen them together. Then I remembered how Eddie had made fun of Patrice at the quarry. And then I had the final thought—the biggie. I mean, I was still way too pissed to talk to him, but what if Dad came to my bar mitzvah anyway? What if he walked into the basement of the Methodist church and no one was there except for my mom, Pam, Patrice, and the rabbi we found online?

  I closed the mailbox, slipped Patrice’s invite back into my pocket, then ca
lled for Simon and ran home.

  And then, before I knew it was happening, it was Labor Day, and summer vacation was over.

  6

  MY SCHOOL back in New York was a gray brick building in the middle of a city block. The nearest blade of grass was two blocks away in Central Park. But my new school, Dan Quayle Middle School, looked a lot like I imagined a typical American school would—a redbrick building on the outskirts of town, surrounded by three sports fields and a big digital scoreboard. Pretty impressive. On the first day of school, there was a green and white banner hanging over the main entrance that read WELCOME QUAILS!

  The night before my first day, I was pacing around Pam’s little house, pretending not to be nervous, when the phone rang.

  It was Brett. “Stick close to me tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll smooth things out for you.”

  God looked down from the heavens and smiled on me. Truly I was one of the Chosen People. Without Brett, I would’ve taken my first terrified steps into that building alone only to be completely ignored. But with the quarterback by my side?

  “Hey, come meet the Brain,” he called out as he guided me down the main hall. “He’s from New York! That’s right, the Big Apple!”

  I was in. The cool new kid. And you should’ve heard some of the questions.

  Like: “Hey, New York. You ever been where John Lennon got shot?”

  Or: “I hear you guys don’t have any trees!”

  Or: “How many times have you been mugged?”

  I didn’t care what they asked, I was just happy to have made it. The road was clear from here on out, because Brett was by my side.

  First-period homeroom was in Room 421, a big room with blue walls and thirty desks, neatly arranged in rows. A poster on the far wall read HOOSIERS LOVE TO READ!

  Walking in, I saw most of the kids I had invited to my bar mitzvah. Ryan and Eddie sitting together in the third row, laughing about something. Lucy and Kendra were whispering in a corner. Near the front, Nicole was joking around with J.D. and Seth. Bridget was leafing through a magazine near the back. Then Brett swooped in behind me and began introducing me to other people whose names I had been hearing over the past month. Just like in the halls, everyone seemed psyched to meet the new guy from New York. It was like I was a rock star for a day. This one kid started asking which Starbucks Tina Fey liked to go to and what she liked to drink. As if I knew. Luckily, Brett saved me.

  “Over here, Brain,” he said.

  A minute later, I was at a desk at the back near Eddie and Ryan—a seat of honor, too, right next to the QB himself. No doubt about it: I was floating. All due respect to Steve and Bill, but back home I never hung out with a kid as cool as Brett. I took a long look around the room. Nice new friends, nice new school. Who’d have thought it? Maybe life in Appleton would work out after all.

  “Yo, what is a bar matzah?”

  Then again, maybe not.

  I had been so busy lapping up my newfound coolness, I hadn’t seen Fudge come in. But suddenly there he was, holding my bar mitzvah invitation by its edges like it was covered with armpit sweat. The mail in Appleton was fast, apparently.

  “A party,” I said, then quickly added, “It should be a blast.”

  Eddie wasn’t so convinced. He grabbed Fudge’s invite and narrowed his eyes.

  “I got one of these on Saturday.” He looked at me. “You mean it was from you?”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said, and pointed at Fudge’s invite. “See my name? Evan Goldman.”

  Eddie looked mystified. “I thought your name was the Brain.”

  “Oh, check it out,” Brett said. “I saw one of those fancy envelopes on our dining room table the other day.”

  I swallowed. “So you haven’t opened it?”

  Apparently not. Brett took Fudge’s card and pointed to the last line.

  “What is this stuff anyway?”

  “That’s Hebrew,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

  Ryan looked concerned. “What’s up with that? Are you an Arab or something?”

  “No,” Lucy said, walking over. “He’s Jewish. My mom says this is some creepy Jewish thing where we all have to get baptized.”

  “It’s not—it’s just a party,” I protested. I was starting to flush.

  “Isn’t this in like three weeks?” Brett was working hard to manipulate his mental calendar. “Because I’ve got football.”

  “No, I checked, there’s no game that day,” I stammered. “It’s just a party.”

  Fudge wrinkled his brow. “In the basement of a church?”

  “Oh, come on, you’ll have a great time!”

  I felt like I was about to cry. After a grand entrance, I was suddenly like a week-old banana turning black in the fridge.

  “Well, I gotta talk to my mom about this,” Brett said, sounding dubious.

  The teacher walked in. Mr. Hertz was a big fat redheaded guy with a huge mustache. “Okay, here we go!” he barked, and all the kids jumped into their chairs. I sat down hard in mine, thoroughly depressed. And things were about to get worse. Just after Mr. Hertz closed the door, it popped open and Patrice ran in.

  “Sorry, sorry!”

  I hadn’t seen her in a week or so. She had clearly gotten dressed up for the first day of school and looked prettier than I had ever seen her. But as she skittered across the room to a desk next to the window, I heard Lucy and Kendra giggling. I knew, and Patrice knew, that they were laughing at her.

  I tried not to look at Patrice too closely, but as Mr. Hertz took roll, I saw her eyes drift to Fudge’s desk. As luck would have it, my invitation was sitting right there. Watching her read it, my stomach sank. The truth is that ever since I hadn’t been able to drop her invite in the mailbox, I had felt torn. In a perfect world, Patrice would come to my party and have so much fun, she’d end up doing the hora with Lucy. But in real life, her presence would infuse the whole party with a giant chunk of weird. So even though I had half planned to mail her invite eventually, it was still at home on my desk.

  Now she tried to catch my eye, but I turned away just in time and shouted “Here!” when I heard my name. It didn’t matter, I reminded myself. Patrice wouldn’t want to be at a party with all the cool kids anyway. Besides which, we weren’t really even friends anymore.

  Right?

  Miraculously, the next two periods were both classes without Patrice. Brett was in English with me, Eddie was in everything with me, and the rest of the kids were around in various combinations. Now that the subject of my bar mitzvah had been broached, it seemed like everyone was basically pretending that it had never come up. I was desperate to ask people if they were going to come—Brett in particular—but I knew I had to ride it out a little.

  The period before lunch, I was at my locker in the main hallway, alone for the first time all day. Then I realized that someone was standing behind me. I turned.

  There was Patrice.

  She was staring at me with a fierceness I had seen before only when she gave Lucy the evil eye.

  I turned back to the locker. I fiddled with my lock. I waited.

  But she didn’t leave.

  I turned to face her, expecting her to finally say something, but she just kept staring at me. There was so much going on in her face, I couldn’t tell if she was sad or angry or happy to see me or just tired.

  I tried to make things right. “Look, Patrice,” I began. “I wanted to invite you. In fact, I have your invitation at home on my desk. Seriously.”

  Her face sort of crumpled in on itself. Her eyes got hard and sad. This wasn’t going well.

  “I just forgot to mail it,” I said, panicking. “So I’ll give it to you after school, all right?”

  The irises of her eyes turned to ice. “You’re a liar,” she said. Suddenly she was crying. Then she was running away.

  I called her name, but the bell rang, so I didn’t know if she heard me or not. All right, I thought, if she wants to be dramatic about it, then fine. Sure I should’ve m
ailed her invitation, but I had done what I thought was right. Patrice would get over it. It wasn’t that big a deal. After all, it was just a bar mitzvah. Everything was working out for the best.

  Except.

  The more I think about it, the more I think that betraying Patrice is what led to what happened next—like some Higher Power decided to balance the scales. As the second bell rang, I threw my backpack over my shoulder and started to run to lunch. If I hadn’t had to tie my shoe, maybe it would have all happened differently. But no, right there, while I was on one knee rushing to get my laces tied, with no one else around, I heard the sound that would define my next few weeks.

  DINK clump. DINK clump. DINK clump. DINK clump.

  There he was. Archie, on crutches.

  Our eyes met. I was surprised. I guess I had assumed that he went to a different school, one for kids with special needs.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s up?”

  Archie smiled.

  “So,” he said. “I hear you’re having a party.”

  7

  ARCHIE DIDN’T sound like a normal person. First of all, he spoke very slowly, almost like he was stuttering. Then, when he finally did get a sentence out, his throat made this raspy, choking sound, and his voice bounced up and down, sometimes even within a single word. He didn’t say “party”; he croaked “Pa” and then he squeaked “irrrr” and finally belched out “ty.” Like everything else about Archie, it caught you off guard.

  “Huh?” I said.

  “You’re having a party, right?” he repeated. Pairrrr-ty. “Everybody’s talking about it.”

  He had a wide grin, and his eyes were set way off to either side of his head, froglike, and he was a little pudgy. Sort of sweet looking, and with the crutches kind of defenseless, like a penguin. And the crutches weren’t like the wooden ones that fit under your armpits like I used when I busted my foot skiing in fourth grade; these were heavy-duty aluminum things with cuffs for his arms to go through.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s just a, um, bar mitzvah.”