13

by Jason Robert Brown

  He leaned forward on his crutches. “I bet the city is really amazing. Is it like in the Storm Front episode when Silik and Archer go to Manhattan to stop Hitler and they end up resetting the Temporal Conduit?”

  I felt bad about the crutches, but this guy was too weird for words. My eye caught the clock over his head. “Well, listen, it’s been great talking to you, but I’m late for lunch.”

  “Oh, you’ll be fine,” Archie said. “Just tell them you were walking me to the nurse’s office. You can always use me as an excuse. Whenever you don’t want to do something or you get in trouble, just say, ‘Sorry, I was helping out my friend who has muscular dystrophy.’ Gets you off the hook every time.”

  I swallowed hard. “I appreciate that.”

  “And you don’t even have to tell me,” Archie went on. “I’ll back you up. You’re my friend.”

  I blinked. I was? We had only just met!

  “Yeah,” I stammered. “Okay. That’s great.” The doors to all the classrooms along the hallway closed as class started. “I really have to get going.”

  If Archie heard, he didn’t let on. He just clumped closer.

  “Here’s the thing,” he said. “Since we’re friends now, I was thinking that you should get me a date.”

  I looked around to see if anyone was playing a joke on me.

  “With Kendra Peterson,” he went on. “Can you make that happen?”

  “I’m sorry?” I said.

  Archie moved even closer. “You know, a date. Like to a movie. Or IHOP?”

  “With Kendra?” I had to make sure I had heard right. “The head cheerleader? She’s going out with Brett, the most popular boy in the whole school. You’ll never get near her.”

  Archie rolled his eyes. “They’re not going out. They haven’t done the tongue.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That’s the rule—you’re not ‘going out’ until you do the tongue,” Archie said. “And Kendra won’t let Brett do it.”

  “I’ve never heard of this rule,” I said skeptically.

  “Well, I guess in New York City, you’re all too busy being chased by muggers to worry about these things, but that’s how it works out here.”

  “Listen, if she won’t let Brett”—I felt ridiculous even saying it—“do the tongue with her, why would she let you?”

  Clump, clump. He was standing as close to me as he could, his wild frog eyes glaring into mine. “I’m glad you asked.” He turned to one side, then the other, checking to make sure no one could hear him. “This morning, in biology class?” He waited, building up the suspense. “I’m just sitting there, right? Being invisible, as always. And I look up, and Kendra’s staring at me. So I’m like, whoa, what’s that about? And before I could do anything…”

  Silence. The sound of chalk writing on a blackboard in the classroom next to us. “What? Before you could do anything, what?”

  Archie grinned—no, more like he beamed—and he said, “She smiled at me.” He stepped back in triumph. He raised his eyebrows knowingly. “She likes me.”

  My head was starting to hurt.

  Archie said, “So I was thinking that you could get me a date. I mean, you’re new here and everyone likes you.”

  “That’s because I haven’t done anything stupid yet!” I said. More like yelled. This was getting a little bit scary. “One wrong move and I’m exiled to the Loser table for the rest of the year.”

  Archie wasn’t listening.

  “Or hey, wait a minute!” he said. “Maybe it’d be easier if I just sit next to her.”

  Now I was really confused. “When? At lunch?”

  Archie shook his head. “No! At your bar mitzvah!”

  I nearly fell over. Seriously. Flat on my face. Down for the count. Then Archie’s face twisted into this sick sort of grin. “I can always just ask your mom if I can come.”

  See what I mean about the Higher Power punishing me for what I had done to Patrice?

  “What?” I said.

  Archie stared me down. “I mean, your mom’s not gonna tell the little crippled kid he can’t come to the party.”

  Suddenly there was nothing charming, quirky, or even sad about Archie. Disease or not, this was hard-ball. If he came to my bar mitzvah, I’d be doomed. Brett and his gang would never come!

  “But here’s the thing,” he was saying. “This is a two-way deal. If you get me a date with Kendra, I’ll do something for you. Get you and Patrice back together.”

  That pulled me up short.

  “You’re friends with Patrice?”

  It was sort of hard to believe, considering she hadn’t hung out with him all summer. At least, not since I’d arrived. Archie shrugged. “Oh, yeah, from way back before I got so sick. Also she feels sorry for me, so I take advantage of that. Like I said, I can get you two back together in no time.”

  “There’s nothing to get back together,” I said. “Patrice and I weren’t really such great friends to begin with.”

  Archie didn’t buy that for a second. “Oh, please,” he said. “Until you met Brett and the rest of those idiots, I saw the two of you together practically every time I looked out the window.” He leaned closer. “I can fix things. Patrice likes you.” He leaned even closer. “I mean, she likes you.”

  I saw a teacher looking through the window of her classroom door. “Archie, can we talk about this later?”

  “So you’ll get me that date with Kendra? You will, right? You’re gonna do it, right?”

  By that point, Archie was so worked up that his chest started to heave a little bit and his leg shook. Then, behind me, someone spoke.

  “Archie, are you all right? Do you need help getting to class?”

  I turned to see a middle-aged woman with bright red hair and cat’s-eye glasses standing at the other end of the hallway.

  Archie transformed instantly. His eyes softened, his posture loosened. He was suddenly a typical sweet twelve-year-old boy.

  “That’s okay, Mrs. Kincaid. Evan’s helping me.”

  Mrs. Kincaid smiled. “Well, get a move on, you two. Evan, that’s a very kind thing to do. Thank you.”

  I stammered, “Of course, Mrs. Kincaid.”

  As she walked off, she said, “Welcome to Appleton!”

  The minute she was out of sight, Archie was grinning.

  “You know what I could’ve done just then?” he said.

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “I could’ve flopped on the floor and told her you pushed me.”

  Did this kid have any limits? I must’ve gasped. Or turned white. Because suddenly Archie was giggling like a wild man.

  “You should see yourself! Don’t people joke around in New York? I wouldn’t do that to you—you’re my friend. You’ve got to relax.”

  “Okay,” I choked. By that time I was leaning against a locker for support.

  “But remember,” Archie said, “good things can happen if you help me.”

  I was desperate to get away. Practically dying.

  “Archie, listen. I’ve really got to go. We’ll talk, okay?”

  I began to walk away, fast. But ten feet or so down the hall, I heard a loud thud. When I turned there was Archie—on the floor, twitching and gasping like a freshly caught fish. Ten thousand thoughts rushed through my head at once. Had I done this to him somehow? Was he going to tell people I had pushed him? Was I his last-ever hope for happiness at that miserable school? Was he really in trouble?

  “Hold on!” I cried. “I’ll get the nurse!”

  I was maybe ten steps down the hall when I realized that the gasping had stopped. I turned, expecting him to be dead, and instead he was propped up on his arms smiling impishly at me.

  “Just imagine that on the dance floor in the middle of your bar mitzvah!”

  “Archie!” I said.

  His eyes narrowed. “Just get me that date!”

  With that, Archie got himself up on his feet. It took forever. He couldn’t just stand up. In
stead, he had to brace his feet against the lockers, then walk forward on his hands until he was upright. Halfway through, I made a motion to help, but he stopped me with a glance.

  “I’ve got it.”

  Once he was on his feet, he moved down the hall without another look. I was calculating in my head: What happens if I say yes? How do I get Kendra to go on a date with him? She’s Brett’s girlfriend! Or she will be soon. But what happens if I say no? If Archie tells my mother I didn’t invite him, all of a sudden he’s gonna be at the house every night eating dinner with us. And what if, oh my god, what if he really does come to the bar mitzvah and does the crazy fake seizure?

  A little too quietly, I said, “I’ll try.”

  Archie looked over his shoulder. “What?”

  “I said I’ll try, okay?”

  You should’ve seen the grin the spread across his face—so hopeful. Like for the first time in years that someone had agreed to help him. I felt pretty good about myself, to tell the truth.

  “I knew you would,” he said, and sort of snorted.

  And DINK clump, DINK clump, he was off down the hall.

  8

  IN NEW YORK, a bad day was a cab tearing through a puddle on a rainy day, dousing you with dirty water. Or getting stuck on the subway back from Shea after the Mets lost in the bottom of the ninth. Or having to spend the afternoon at Bloomingdale’s shopping for pants with your mom. Annoying, but basically harmless. Apparently, a bad day in Indiana involved destroyed friendships and being threatened by the neighborhood psycho. After shaking loose of Archie, I ran to the cafeteria as fast as I could, but by the time I got there, they were just pulling up the food trays. I ran to the counter anyway, but the lady behind the cash register shooed me away.

  “We stop serving at twelve thirty-five on the dot,” she said.

  I glanced at the clock. It was 12:37.

  “What’s a couple of minutes?” I said. “I need to eat.”

  The lady smiled. “And you can tomorrow. By twelve thirty-five.”

  Conversation over.

  I turned and took in an entire lunchroom full of seventh graders throwing milk cartons, eating cookies, gossiping, and joking. I vaguely recognized some of the kids I had met earlier in the day, but Brett was nowhere to be seen, and neither were any of the other kids in his clique. I didn’t know where to go.

  Except there was Patrice, sitting by herself at a table near the door. And she was staring right at me. But then she turned away, buried her face in a notebook, and began to write furiously. I remembered seeing a whole stack of those notebooks on her bookshelf: her diaries, where she recorded every slight that had ever been directed at her in her twelve years of miserable existence on this earth. I didn’t have to think too hard to wonder what she was writing about now.

  Even so, I almost walked across the room and asked if I could join her. I felt just that weird and lonely. But then Archie clumped up, collapsed in the chair across from her, and took a bag lunch out of his knapsack. With nowhere else to go, I plopped down at a mostly empty table in the middle of the room, opened my own knapsack, and grabbed Of Mice and Men, the novel we had been assigned for English. Not that I had any desperate urge to get a head start on my work, but with no food and no friends, I had to do something to keep myself from shriveling into a depressed ball and blowing away. But even though the first few sentences were good, I just couldn’t concentrate. I felt too hungry and alone to read. I riffled through the front pocket of my knapsack, grabbed my cell phone, even though they weren’t allowed in school, and wrote a text to Steve:

  HELP! I’m stuck in a universe of freaks! Call me!

  But when I pressed send, the stupid thing wouldn’t go through. Just as I was about to try again, I felt a strong grip on my shoulder.

  “Hey, hey! You know the rules!”

  Suddenly I was staring into the face of an insanely muscular bald guy. Clearly a phys ed teacher turned lunch monitor.

  “The phone!” he said.

  Argument was pointless. I handed it over.

  “Pick it up tomorrow in the assistant principal’s office with a note from home.”

  No phone. No way to contact my New York friends. No way to contact anyone! Totally depressed, I put my head down on my knapsack. Which is when I finally caught a break. That’s because I felt something soft under my right temple. Curious, I looked inside the knapsack. Squashed underneath my new biology textbook was a brown bag.

  My mom had packed lunch!

  I turned it upside down over the table. Out spilled a turkey sandwich that looked like it had been run over by a truck, a small bag of baby carrots, and a box of raisins. Not much. But at least it was something. With the turkey smashed beyond recognition, I started in on the raisins and just sat there, waiting for the rest of the gang to show up. They didn’t. And when I crumpled up my lunch bag to throw it away, I felt something else: an envelope with a note in my mom’s squiggly handwriting.

  To my brave young man on his first day of school. I am so proud of you. Love, Mom.

  There were still ten minutes left to lunch. But there I was, sitting by myself in a giant cafeteria with an empty box of raisins, trying not to cry.

  “About time you showed up, Brain!”

  Fudge threw his shirt at me. The locker room smelled like feet.

  “Where were you guys?” I asked. “I looked for you during lunch.”

  Eddie laughed. “You didn’t actually go to the cafeteria?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said stupidly.

  Fudge grinned. “Lunch is at the parking lot, Brain.”

  Brett poked his head around the corner. “Come on, you freaks! I want to get out there already!”

  Fudge and Eddie pushed past me to get outside. I quickly changed, dumped my clothes in an empty locker, and ran behind them, up a ramp and onto the football field. I don’t think I’d ever actually been on one—not one that was regulation size, anyway. It was the real deal, a hundred yards long. And curving around it was a track. Stenciled in the center of the field was the name of the football team: THE QUAYLE QUAILS.

  By the time I got outside, Brett and the rest of the guys and girls were stretching. Next thing I knew, the gym teacher walked up. Guess who? The guy who took my cell phone. Just my luck. But if he recognized me, he didn’t let on. Probably collected about fifty cell phones a day.

  “All right!” he said. “The first few phys ed classes are going to be about working off some of that summer flab. Conditioning, my friends! So we’ll start with laps. Slow and steady! I’m looking for endurance here! Get moving!”

  I stood up. In New York, phys ed was kickball in the park. Was I really going to have to spend an entire period running? A minute later, we were going around the track. For half a lap, everything was cool. I took it light and easy. Endurance, after all. But then I felt a whack on the back of my head. Brett passed me, laughing.

  “Pick it up, Brain! The girls are kicking your butt.”

  “But he said to take it slow!” I said.

  Wrong answer.

  Another whack on the head. This time Fudge cruised by, cracking up. I turned my head just in time to have Eddie slap me in the nose.

  “Oh, dude, sorry!”

  Brett turned back and yelled. “Come on, Brain! Move it!”

  What happened to slow and steady? Ugh. I pumped harder, thinking of the cliff at the quarry. Was this another test?

  We went around once. Twice. I’d almost catch up to Brett, but then he’d suddenly step on the gas and he’d be halfway around the track ahead of me. Fudge and Eddie were almost as fast. They’d slow down, then scamper off like a couple of rabbits, looking back and laughing.

  Fine, jerks, I thought. I can do this.

  I pushed hard off the balls of my feet and started driving forward as fast as I could. And amazingly, I began to catch up—even with the guys running full out. I passed Eddie first. Then Fudge. Then bam! I was right up to Brett! Wheezing, my eyes tearing from the wind, my heart pound
ing out of my chest, I lunged forward and passed him!

  And he stuck his foot out and tripped me.

  I flew off the track right into the Q of Quails and curled up in a ball with scraped knees and my hands pocked with gravel. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Is that Goldman?” That was the gym teacher “Get up, Goldman!” But I was immobile.

  Then I felt something squeeze under my back. Suddenly I was in the air. Brett had picked me up.

  “It’s all right, Coach, I’ll get him in to the nurse! Looks like he went down hard!”

  I saw the gym teacher give Brett a thumbs-up.

  “Good man, Connelly!”

  I walked stiffly down the hall, with Brett supporting me.

  “What was that about?” I asked. “You didn’t have to trip me!”

  Brett seemed to be keeping himself from laughing.

  “I didn’t trip you, Brain. You were just running too hard out there. You gotta learn to take it easy.”

  My body hurt. I didn’t want to have to explain this all to the nurse, either. It was my first day!

  “This way, dude.”

  Brett pushed open a door and guided me inside. But it wasn’t the nurse’s office, just an empty classroom, one of the science labs.

  “What are we doing in here?”

  Brett checked to make sure nobody was in the room, then grabbed a chair and propped it against the door so no one could get in.

  “Gotta talk to you, Brain.”

  “Wait a second,” I said. “Aren’t we going to the nurse?”

  Brett smiled. Suddenly he was back to being the likable guy I had met at Calvi’s a few weeks earlier. “You don’t need a nurse. I got us out of gym because I need you to help me out.”

  I have to say that I was pretty surprised. One minute the guy is taunting me, the next he’s asking for help? Besides, how could I, the new kid in town, help the Savior of Indiana?

  Brett pulled a chair next to mine. “You’re gonna need to get us into the movies on Friday night.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “The Bloodmaster, dude. We all wanna go see it on Friday at the mall, but it’s rated R.”