If it weren’t for Mrs. Weinstein, Yeti Shok Jok, now a multimillion-dollar corporation, might never have been born.
I don’t know if either of John Maynard Keynes’s parents ever did anything quite that supportive, but mine have certainly had their moments.
I wouldn’t say the next morning was one of them, however.
“I’ll see you after school!” Mom said, blowing me a kiss as she drove off to her Pilates class, for which she was late, and which was in the opposite direction of the school.
So she couldn’t give me a lift, she said, when I tried to give her the same story I’d told Dad about my flat.
“Your bike doesn’t have a flat tire,” Jenny said as we trudged to the bus stop together. Mom and Dad might have fallen for the flat-tire excuse. But I’d never been very good at pulling anything over on Jenny for very long. Maybe because we’d spent so much time swimming around in Mom’s uterus together. “Your bike’s not even in the garage. What happened to it?”
That’s when Cody Caputo, whose timing could not have been more awful, happened to ride by on my Yeti Shok Jok. It looked good, still shiny black, with no major dents. At least he hadn’t been abusing it.
“Hey there, ginger saps,” Cody called as he whizzed past.
Jenny sucked in her breath.
“Dave,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “You told me that everything was going to be fine. But everything is not fine, is it?”
She did not stop haranguing me on this subject until the bus trundled up.
I wasn’t worried, though. Because Cody wasn’t on the bus. He was on my bike. This meant I didn’t have to worry about whatever Cody was going to do to me next for at least a half hour.
I’d forgotten that while Cody might not be on the bus, his cohorts would be. That’s how Jenny got her first-place gymnastics medal stripped from around her neck first thing by Austin McFeeley, who tossed it to Rick Cardoza.
Rick shrieked, “Ew, I can’t believe you touched it! Now you’ve got gingivitis!”
“You guys.” Jenny’s face was very red. “Give it back. Now.”
“Yeah, you guys,” I said. I could tell my face was red, too. And not just because people were saying I had gingivitis. I didn’t have any friends on the bus who would let me sit by them. I’m a bit of a lone wolf, which is why I like bike riding so much.
By lone wolf, I mean I don’t have any friends. Except, as Jenny pointed out, Rajit, who lives in Mumbai.
The bus driver didn’t improve matters much by yelling, “You! With the red hair! Sit down!”
Only I couldn’t sit down, because every person with an empty space on the seat next to them kept saying “This place is saved” and putting their backpack there whenever I came near.
“Keep it away from Shrimp Newburg!” Austin screamed.
Jenny’s medal went flying over both her head and mine.
It was like a nightmare. I was starting to wonder if I’d even woken up yet. Maybe I was still in bed. I especially wondered this when a large number of people on the bus started chanting, “Shrimp Newburg, Lobster Newburg, Crab Newburg.”
I really ought to have just claimed a fever and stayed home.
Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, a huge fist shot up into the air. It closed around Jenny’s award, then came down.
“Here,” Amado Garcia said, holding Jenny’s medal out toward her.
She looked down at his palm, which was about the size of a soccer ball.
“Th-thanks,” she said, and nervously plucked up her medal, then dropped it back around her neck and darted to the seat some of her friends from the gymnastics team had saved for her.
“Redheaded kid!” the bus driver yelled, giving me the evil eye in his rearview mirror. “Sit down!”
The nightmare wasn’t over—but it had definitely taken a turn for the better. Austin and Rick had sunk down into their seats and were staring at Amado in astonishment. Amado, in turn, was looking at me like I was a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of his shoe. There was no one sitting by him, of course, because he was so gargantuan—and new—everyone was already afraid of him. Even more afraid of him than they were of Cody Caputo’s gang.
And that, of course, gave me an idea.
Inspiration often appears from out of nowhere, kind of like stars over the golf course. What made Mrs. Weinstein buy that rickety old dirt bike for Aaron? What made John Maynard Keynes buy up all those pesetas?
Who knows? The fortunate thing for all of us is that they did.
“Is this seat taken?” I summoned all my courage to ask Amado Garcia.
He sighed, looked up at the ceiling of the bus, then scooted over a fraction of an inch to make room for me on his seat.
“The name’s Newburg,” I said, flinging myself on the seat beside him. “David Newburg.”
“Really,” Amado said. “I did not get that your last name was Newburg.”
Then he lowered his sunglasses and sank down in his seat, pretending to be asleep.
But I persisted.
Because, like Jenny said, when you have a wish, you have to work to make it come true.
“Why’d you help my sister like that?” I asked.
Amado straightened and lifted his sunglasses, his gaze flying toward Jenny. All you could really see of her was her coppercolored ponytail bobbing up and down above the back of her seat as she chattered excitedly with her friends.
“That’s your sister?” he asked, in tones of astonishment.
People always say this. But if you asked me, Jenny and I look a lot alike. Except for the ponytail, of course.
“We’re fraternal twins,” I explained. “Identical twins are always the same sex. And you didn’t answer my question. Why’d you help her?”
“I don’t know,” Amado said, lowering his sunglasses again with a sigh. “I guess I don’t like it when guys pick on defenseless girls.”
Defenseless! Jenny? Now I knew something else about Amado, besides the fact that he was an Aaron Weinstein fan and that his mother had named him my beloved:
He was nuts.
“Jenny placed first in the Kirkland Ranch tumbling invitational last night with her front walkover roundoff back handspring,” I informed him. “That’s the most competitive event on the middle school gymnastics circuit. Jenny could probably cut off the circulation to someone’s carotid artery using her thighs if she wanted to.”
Instead of this information making him less interested in Jenny, as one might expect, it only caused Amado to sit up straight again and stare harder at her through his sunglasses.
“Really?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. This kid was certifiable. Oh, well. You have to work with what you have. “It’s just too bad about those guys back there—and Cody Caputo—making her life such a misery.”
“Caputo?” His heavy dark brows knit. “Isn’t that the basketball coach’s name?”
“Yeah,” I said. This was a troubling development. Amado seemed already to have been sucked in by the Highland Estates Panthers. “You thinking of going out for the team?”
Amado shrugged and sank back down again. “Like I have a choice,” he said. “Look at me. Coach Caputo showed up at my house last night with two pizzas. He was practically begging my mom to let me play.”
I felt my dream crumbling all around me.
“Oh,” I said. “So . . . I guess you’re on the team now.”
“I don’t like to commit to things until I’ve checked them out for myself first,” Amado said. “So I’m going to wait till I’ve been to a few practices to see what it’s like.”
This cheered me up a little.
“Well,” I said. “That’s good to know. Because Coach Caputo’s kid—”
Amado held up one of his giant hands. “No,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me? I said I like to check things out for myself. I’m not interested in gossip. I don’t play that game.”
I considered this. I sure wouldn’t want some new kid listening to gossip a
bout me. Ginger Dave. Shrimp Newburg. The kid who always ends up taped to the urinal.
On the other hand, everything I had to say about Cody Caputo was one hundred percent true. I had proof.
“Fine,” I said. “But the coach’s kid is the bully who’s been bothering me and Jen at school. Yesterday he put a sign on her back—I won’t even tell you what it said, it was so offensive. That’s what I was in the office for when I met you yesterday.”
“I thought you were in the office because someone dumped you in the garbage,” Amado said, lowering his hand. “That’s what it looked—and smelled—like to me, anyway.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, that was Cody, too. After I tried to cannonball him in the gut for what he did to Jen. Then he stole my official Yeti Shok Jok BMX racer—”
“Wait a minute.” Amado stared down at me. “You have an official Yeti Shok Jok BMX racing bike. An Aaron Weinstein Yeti Shok Jok BMX racing bike?”
“Yeah,” I said. I knew I didn’t look like the type to have a Yeti Shok Jok . . . a scrawny, redheaded, freckle-faced kid like me.
But Aaron Weinstein hadn’t looked like the type who could do a 360 when he pulled off his first one, either, considering his body cast.
“But they only made a limited number of those,” Amado said.
“Three thousand,” I said. “I know. And up until yesterday, when Cody Caputo stole mine, I had one. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Because I saw you wearing an Aaron Weinstein shirt, and you know one of Aaron’s mottos is ‘Dudes should always help another dude in need.’ I figured if you and I kind of paired up, we’d—”
“What do you mean, paired up?” Amado asked suspiciously.
“I’m a dude in need,” I said to him. I hoped I was doing this right. I’d never had a friend before. I didn’t know how you asked someone to be yours, really. Jenny had been a little sketchy on the details. “You can see that I’m . . . well, of slightly smaller frame than most of the rest of the kids on this bus. And I have coloring of the reddish variety. There are some people who attend Highland Estates who feel this makes me a freak of some kind. And they torture me about it daily. They’re the ones who stole my bike. I want the torture to end. And I want my bike back. I think you can make this happen. Frankly, Amado, I need you. I need . . . well, a protectionist.”
“What’s a protectionist?” he asked bewilderedly.
“Protectionism,” I explained, “is the theory or practice of shielding a country’s domestic industries from foreign competition by taxing imports. Most economists argue against it in favor of free trade, as protectionism harms many of the people it’s meant to help. But in my case, I can only see it as beneficial.”
Amado stared down at me some more. “Are you one of those Asperger’s kids?” he asked, not unkindly.
“I don’t like labels,” I said. “The point is, ever since I got the bike, Cody’s had it out for me. I need someone like you in my corner to protect my assets.”
“Like a bodyguard,” Amado said.
“Exactly,” I said. “What do you say? Are you in?”
Amado shook his head slowly. “I don’t know,” he said.
The bus was rounding the corner to school. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to bear whatever taunts would be waiting for me.
Treat making friends the way you did getting that bike you wanted, Jenny had said. Make it like a job, not a wish.
Oh, right. I’d almost forgotten.
“Oh,” I said. “I’m willing to pay you, of course. Five dollars a day.”
He frowned. “That’s not exactly what I—”
“Ten,” I said.
“It’s not the money,” Amado said. “It’s just that I’m new here. I didn’t have any friends where I used to go to school because everyone there judged me by the way I looked. That’s why I left. I told you—I don’t like gossip because for a while I was the subject of a lot of it, even though it was all lies. I don’t want to walk right into the same thing here. Do you know what I mean?”
I stared at him.
“Yeah,” I said, my eyes filling up with tears as the bus pulled into the circular driveway right next to the flagpole. “Yeah, I do know what you mean.”
It was hard to keep from crying right there on the bus, but somehow I managed not to. I didn’t want to cry because I was afraid of what was going to happen to me when I got off the bus. I didn’t want to cry because I was so disappointed by Amado turning me down. I wanted to cry because I was so disappointed in myself. I couldn’t believe that, for a while there, I’d been as bad as Cody: I’d been judging Amado by his looks. I’d thought just because Amado was big, he wouldn’t mind being someone’s protectionist, their paid thug.
Just like Cody Caputo thought just because I was small, I wouldn’t mind being a pushover, someone’s punching bag.
Well, the days of being Cody Caputo’s victim were over. Just like Amado, I was going to make a new start.
And I was going to do it the way Jenny had said to. Not by wishing it would happen. Not by paying someone to make it happen for me, either, or trying to make people think I was cool because I owned a cool limited-edition bike.
I was going to work at it the way Amado was working at it, by transferring to a new school and starting over. The way John Maynard Keynes defied his critics and saved the U.S. from plunging into another Depression after World War II. The way Aaron Weinstein went from doing bunny hops in his driveway on that rickety old garage-sale dirt bike to doing barrel roll transfers at the Summer X Games extreme sports competition.
Just thinking about these great heroes gave me the courage I needed to step off the bus, walk straight up to Cody Caputo—who was doing some frankly quite pathetic 180s in front of a small crowd of people near the bike rack—and say, “Cody. That’s my bike. And I want it back now. So hand it over.”
My voice was shaking. So were my knees. I jammed my hands into my jacket pockets so he wouldn’t be able to see how badly my fingers were trembling.
“Oh, you want it back, do you?” Cody asked, grinning, as he flew past me on my own bike. For a few seconds I thought he was going to ram me with it, and I stepped back instinctively. This caused everyone to laugh. “Well, come on then, Ginger. Come get it.”
Everyone laughed some more. There was no way I was going to be able to get my bike out from under Cody Caputo. He was just too big.
“Aw, what’s the matter, widdle baby?” Cody asked as he circled by on a second pass. “Is Shwimpy Newburg gonna cwy?”
More laughter erupted.
This was horrible. I was never going to get my bike back.
I needed to face facts: Some men are heroes.
I, David Newburg, am not.
Those posters in the cafeteria, the ones that said “You Can Achieve Anything If You Try!”?
Those posters lied.
Then, as Cody Caputo passed me a third time—faking me out, like he was going to try to ram me—a miracle occurred. Or at least I thought it was a miracle. Something bright and shiny was thrown into his spokes—my spokes—jamming the front wheel, and the bike came to such a sudden stop, Cody was thrown over the handlebars into a heap at my feet.
The bright shiny thing was attached to a blue ribbon. The owner of the ribbon pulled on it, and the shiny thing shot from the spokes of my bike and back into the hand of its owner.
My sister.
“Cody,” Jenny said, pocketing her gold medal. “Why do you always have to be such a jerk?”
Everyone gathered in the circle around us laughed. Only for once not at me. They were laughing at Cody.
It was kind of funny. Cody had such a surprised look on his face.
“I told you,” I said to her. “He lacks a conscience. But you don’t have to be like this, Cody. People would actually like you—instead of just being so afraid of you that they do whatever you say—if you’d act a little nicer to them.”
I stepped over him and picked up my bike. Jenny had bent the spokes a little
with her medal, but I wasn’t mad. I was pretty sure her medal was bent, too. She’d sacrificed it, and all for me.
Maybe you could achieve anything if you tried.
Cody stared at us for a few seconds from the heap into which he’d sunk. Then, with a shriek none of us expected, he exploded.
I’m not sure whom he intended to come after, Jen or me. But he never reached either of us. Because Amado, who’d apparently followed Jenny from the bus, reached out one of his long arms, caught Cody up by the collar of his shirt, and said, “Hey. Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s not nice to pick on people who are smaller than you?”
Cody, his feet dangling a few inches off the ground, looked up at Amado and said, “Hey, man, put me down. This isn’t cool. We’re on the same team.”
“Not yet, we aren’t,” Amado said. “And to tell you the truth, right now I don’t know if we ever will be.”
Everyone in the crowd said, “Oooooh.”
“What’s going on out here?” A tall man broke through the crowd. It was Coach Caputo. The kids who’d gathered to watch what they’d been hoping would be a fight now scattered, fearing they’d somehow be implicated.
“Dad,” Cody cried. “Thank God you’re here. Make him put me down!”
“Hi, Coach,” Amado said calmly, still holding Cody in midair. “I was just explaining to your son here that, based on the fact that I just caught him stealing another kid’s bike and trying to beat up a girl, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to join the Panthers. I don’t play on teams with people like that.”
Coach Caputo did something amazing then. He looked at his son and said, “Cody. Is this true?”
“Of course not,” Cody cried. “I was just borrowing that stupid kid’s bike. You know him, it’s that weirdo Shrimp Newburg, he’s the one who’s always trying to get me in trouble—”
“Which is why you stole his bike and dumped him in the trash yesterday?” Jenny asked. “And stuck a nasty note to my back?” She turned to Coach Caputo. “My brother gave the vice-principal the note. Dr. Bushey probably didn’t show it to you because he didn’t want to make you upset.”
What You Wish For Page 6