Danny's Doodles

by David Adler

  “Daniel.”

  It’s Mrs. Cakel. She’s calling on me.

  “Well, what’s the answer?”

  The answer? I don’t even know the question.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’ve been dreaming all afternoon.”

  I haven’t been paying attention, but I’m not dreaming. This Rent-A-Pet business is not a dream. It’s more of a nightmare.

  Mrs. Cakel walks to my desk. She looks down at me and says, “I’m teaching a science lesson on magnets. I asked if a magnet would stick to your desk.”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, would it?”

  “It would stick to the metal legs but not to the wooden top.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “And Danny, for homework, since you missed the lesson, write a one-page report on magnets.”

  A report!

  Extra homework!

  I blame Calvin for this. But it doesn’t matter who I blame. I’m the one who has to do the report.

  The bell rings. It’s time to go home and write about magnets.

  I gather my books. I just take the ones I need for homework and leave the others in my desk. That’s not what Calvin does. He doesn’t want to think about which ones he needs, so he takes them all, and lots of times, when he gets home, he doesn’t look at any of them. Lots of times he doesn’t do the homework.

  “Daniel, I want to speak with you.”

  Mrs. Cakel said that.

  What did I do now?

  I take my books and go to Mrs. Cakel’s desk. Calvin comes with me.

  “I only asked for Daniel,” Mrs. Cakel says.

  The school day is over. I don’t think she wants to see any more of him until tomorrow. Maybe she doesn’t ever want to see any more of him. It’s okay being Calvin’s friend, but I wouldn’t want to be his teacher.

  Calvin tells her, “Danny and I walk home together.”

  She gives me a large envelope.

  “Evan broke his ankle.”

  I knew that. He was absent.

  “This is his homework. I think you pass his house on your way home.”

  I smile and tell her we do, that we’ll bring Evan the homework. Mrs. Cakel doesn’t smile back. She’s not a smiley person.

  As we walk out of the building, Calvin tells me, “It’s just not fair. I dream of missing school, a whole day with no work. Evan is living my dream, but the Cakel ruins it. She sends him stuff to do at home.”

  Calvin says, “I wouldn’t do homework if I were home with a broken ankle. I wouldn’t do homework if I were home with a broken toe or finger or arm. I wouldn’t do homework if I were home with laryngitis or bronchitis or any itis-titis disease.”

  I’m sure that’s true.

  We get to Evan’s house, and I ring the bell.

  “Hello, Danny,” his mother says as she opens the door. She’s holding Evan’s baby sister who was born while we were in third grade. We’re in fourth grade now.

  “This is Calvin,” I tell her. “He’s also in our class.”

  “Hello, Calvin,” she says. “Evan is in his room. He’s waiting for you.”

  We follow her up the stairs to Evan’s bedroom. He’s lying on his bed, on lots of pillows, so he’s more sitting than lying. His right foot is a big white plaster cast. At the foot of his bed, on a stand, is an enormous television set. Evan is holding a remote.

  “Wow!” Calvin says. “That’s some big television.”

  “My parents rented it so I’d have something to do while I’m home.”

  “You see,” Calvin says. “You can rent just about anything.”

  He tells Evan his Rent-A-Pet idea.

  Evan says, “I want a cat, but my parents say I’m not ready to take care of one, but do you know what?”

  That’s another of those rhetorical questions, the kind you don’t answer.

  “Cats take care of themselves. You don’t walk them. They make potty in the house, in a litter box. You don’t have to bathe them because they lick themselves clean. And they’re easy to feed. You just open cans of cat food and dump it in a bowl.”

  That does sound easy.

  “Here’s what you do,” Calvin tells him. “Ask your parents to rent you a cat from Calvin and Danny’s Rent-A-Pet. You’ll have one for two weeks, and you’ll prove you can take care of it.”

  Evan says, “I’ll ask them while they still feel bad for me because of my ankle. Since I fell off my bike and broke my ankle, my parents have let me have just about whatever I want.”

  That’s how he broke it!

  I’ve fallen off my bike lots of times, but I never broke an ankle or leg or anything. Once I fell with my sunglasses in my pocket. I fell right on them, but they didn’t break. I guess I’m lucky.

  Evan asks us about school. He even asks about Mrs. Cakel. He misses her.

  Calvin asks, “How can you miss the Cakel?”

  “I got used to her rules. That was easy. But I can’t get used to lying in bed all day and watching television.”

  “Watching television all day sounds easy to me,” Calvin says. “I could get used to that.”

  Evan shakes his head.

  “Television is like cake,” he says. “If you had boxes and boxes of cake and could eat as much of it as you want, at some point, you’d be full and not want anymore. Right now I’m full of cartoons and comedies and game shows.”

  Calvin looks at me and says, “You’re smiling. What do you think? Could you ever have too much cake or television?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer. “But for once, I’d like to be the one to decide when I’ve had enough instead of my mother saying, ‘That’s your last piece of cake. You’ve had enough. Turn off the TV. You’ve watched enough.’”

  Calvin says, “My mom never tells me I’ve had enough cake. She has a job at the bakery. She’s the one who uses a hypodermic needle and shoots jelly into jelly donuts.

  “That’s such a great job,” Evan says.

  He makes his hand into a pretend gun and shoots it.

  “Bang! Bang!” Evan says. “I’m shooting jelly.”

  Calvin says, “Mom brings home messed-up cakes and broken cookies from work and almost forces me to eat them. She tells me it would be a waste to throw them out.”

  I tell Evan, “If you’re tired of television, maybe you should read. I can loan you some of my baseball books. I’ll bring them tomorrow.”

  I give him the homework envelope.

  I’m ready to go, but Evan keeps talking. I guess he doesn’t want us to leave. At last, Calvin and I say good-bye.

  On our way home, Calvin says, “Maybe I should break my ankle and stay home from school.”

  That sounds like one of those things kids say but don’t really mean. You don’t respond to those things. They are like rhetorical questions. Who would intentionally break his ankle so he could miss school?

  Calvin might.

  He has strange ideas.

  “You don’t want to do that,” I tell him. “Breaking a bone can hurt, and it could keep you from running real fast. You’ll hit the ball but won’t be able to beat the throw to first base.”

  “I don’t play baseball.”

  “You might be running for another reason. You might do something so wrong that Mrs. Cakel will chase after you, and because you broke your ankle, she’ll catch you.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want that.”

  We’re in front of Calvin’s house. I say good-bye to him. I walk home, and all the way, I worry that Calvin will intentionally break his ankle.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Dad says when I walk in the house.

  I wait.

  No surprise.

  “I’ll give it to you after dinner.”

  Dad smiles. But that’s it. He doesn’t even
hint what he’s giving me after dinner. I have no time to think about it. I have lots of math and history homework to do and a report on magnets.

  Believe me, when I do the math homework, I’m tempted to just make up answers. But I don’t. I’m not Calvin.

  I answer all the history questions.

  Did you know that Benjamin Franklin gave George Washington his gold-topped walking stick?

  Did you know that George Washington had slaves? In his last will, he freed them all. I know he waited until he died to free them, but for his slaves, that was a great thing. They were free. Where Washington lived, most people left their farms and houses and slaves to their children, like the slaves were just another “thing” they owned. And Washington left money for any of the slaves who were too old or too sick to take care of themselves.

  Some history is interesting.

  I research magnets on the Internet.

  Did you know that magnets are not attracted to all metals? They don’t stick to aluminum. Magnets stick to the metal nickel but not to the five-cent nickel. That’s because the coin is mixed with copper, and magnets don’t stick to copper.

  I write the magnet report on my computer and set the font at fourteen so I quickly fill one page.

  Mom calls me to dinner—fried fish with parsley, french fries, and broccoli.

  Broccoli pieces are like small trees, and Mom makes me eat at least three small trees.

  Dad asks, “Are you wondering about the surprise?”

  Of course I am.

  But I think Dad’s question is rhetorical, so I don’t answer.

  “It’s a unicycle,” he says. “It’s in the garage.”

  “Hey, I’ve always wanted to ride one of those.”

  “I know.”

  Dad works at a bicycle and exercise equipment store. That must be where he got it.

  A tricycle has three wheels and is easy to ride. A bicycle has two wheels and is not so easy to ride. A unicycle has just one wheel. I wonder how difficult it will be to ride a unicycle.

  “Go ahead and look at it,” Mom tells us. “I’ll save you some dessert.”

  Dad and I go to the garage. On the way, he tells me that his boss gave him the unicycle. He had two in his shop for a few years, and they have not sold. People look at them, but they don’t buy them. He thinks keeping one would be enough.

  Dad opens the garage door.

  There it is, just one wheel, pedals, and a seat.

  “Try it first on the grass,” he says, “so you won’t hurt yourself when you fall.”

  When I fall?

  Why does Dad think I’ll fall?

  Dad takes it outside. He stands it up on the front lawn. He holds it there and tells me, “Get on and try it.”

  I climb on. There’s nothing on the unicycle to hold on to, so I hold on to Dad. I stretch my feet down to the pedals.

  “Let go,” I tell Dad.

  Dad lets go.

  I fall.

  I try it again and again and keep falling. I don’t know how anyone can ride one of these things.

  Dad holds it for me. I get up, sit on the seat, and put each foot on a pedal. Dad counts to three. At three he lets go. I pedal, but before I can get the unicycle to move, I fall.

  “That’s enough for today,” Dad says.

  Enough? All I did was sit and fall. But Dad is right. It’s enough. We take the unicycle into the garage again and go back in the house. Mom and Karen are still in the dining room eating oranges and grapes. That’s dessert, navel oranges and seedless green grapes.

  “How did it go?” Mom asks.

  “It’s not easy,” Dad tells her. “Danny needs to work at it.”

  Karen tells me, “You also need to learn how to juggle. That’s what people do on a unicycle. They juggle.”

  Karen tosses an orange to me. I catch it. She tosses another one, and I catch it too. She tosses me a third one. I drop the first two and catch the third.

  “That’s not juggling,” Karen tells me. “That’s bungling. That’s goofing. That’s noodling.”

  “What’s noodling?”

  “I don’t know what noodling is, and I don’t know what you just did.”

  That’s my sister, Karen. The English language does not have enough words for her to use to make fun of me, so she has to invent new ones.

  I pick the two oranges up off the floor.

  I can’t ride a unicycle and I can’t juggle. I don’t feel real good about myself. I take the three oranges and go down to the basement to practice.

  Just so you understand—I know how to juggle. I just need to keep one orange in the air as I move the other two from one hand to the next.

  I know how to juggle. I just can’t do it.

  First, I try to hold all three oranges. That means one in one hand and two in the other. Maybe that’s the problem. They’re too big. I can’t hold two in one hand.

  I throw up one orange.

  I threw it up too high. It hits the ceiling, falls, and hits my head.

  I try again. This time, I don’t throw it up so high. I quickly throw up another orange and try to catch the first one while I move the third orange from my right hand to my left.

  Bam!

  An orange hits my head again.

  I can’t do this.

  Maybe I should try juggling something smaller, something easier to catch.

  Eggs.

  No, not raw eggs. Hard-boiled eggs. We always have lots of hard-boiled eggs in the refrigerator. When she goes to work, Mom takes them for lunch.

  But I won’t juggle eggs today. I’ll do it tomorrow.

  It’s Tuesday morning, and I remembered to bring baseball books for Evan. With the extra books, my bag is really heavy.

  I wait for Calvin in front of his house. I always wait for him. If he doesn’t hurry, we’ll be late.

  His front door opens.

  Now this is what gets me so angry. He comes out as if he’s not late at all. He slowly locks the front door and even more slowly walks to me.

  “Let’s go,” I tell him. “We don’t want to be late again.”

  “Again? We weren’t late yesterday. We were on time three days last week.”

  “And we were late two days,” I tell him.

  “Being on time is a bad habit,” he says. “That’s what’s wrong with the Cakel. She’s encouraging us to form too many bad habits.”

  I don’t argue with Calvin.

  “Look what I printed.”

  He stops and takes some papers from his book bag. They’re signs advertising Calvin and Danny’s Rent-A-Pet.

  “I thought we would tack them on trees on our way to school. But since you’re in such a hurry, we’ll do it on our way home.”

  He gives me one sign to look at.

  “I’ll read it later,” I say and fold it and put it in my pocket. “Right now, we have to get to school.”

  We walk, and I tell him about the unicycle and the trouble I had riding it and trying to juggle.

  “Juggling is easy,” Calvin says.

  He stops, takes three cookie mistakes from his lunch, and juggles them. He catches one in his mouth and eats it. He catches another in his mouth and eats that one too. He catches the last one in his hand and gives it to me. I eat this one.

  Calvin can juggle!

  Sometimes he amazes me.

  Calvin says he’ll teach me how.

  We start walking again. We get to school, and the playground is empty. We’re late.

  I dread going past Mrs. Cakel on my way into class. She won’t scream at me. She won’t say anything. She’ll just squeeze her eyes together and wrinkle her nose like she just smells something bad.

  I hurry through the hall. Calvin doesn’t. He stops at the water fountain and takes a drink.

&nbs
p; “Go ahead,” he tells me. “I’m still thirsty.”

  I hurry past Mrs. Cakel. I sit, take out my notebook, and begin to copy the homework assignment from the board.

  “Hello, Mrs. Cakel.”

  It’s Calvin. He smiles as he slowly walks past her and into the room.

  Have you seen that cartoon on television where a dog is chasing a cat and the cat climbs a tree and the dog can’t get it? The dog looks real angry in the cartoon. Smoke is coming out of its ears. Well, that’s how Mrs. Cakel looks, like smoke is coming out of her ears.

  Cats and dogs! That reminds me of the sign I folded and put in my pocket. Mrs. Cakel is writing something on the board. Her back is to me. I take out the sign and unfold it in my lap.

  The headline says, “Dog for Rent.” Then it describes the dog, a miniature collie, and the dates it’s available.

  Where did Calvin get a dog?

  The sign also has lots of words about all the animals Calvin and Danny’s Rent-A-Pet will board and rent. At the bottom are two telephone numbers. One is Calvin’s cell phone number. The other one is my telephone number, only I don’t have a cell phone. It’s my house phone. It’s my parents’ and Karen’s number too.

  Someone might call my house, and Karen will answer it. She’ll say, “We have an annoying ferret you can rent. It’s name is Danny.”

  You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Whenever I’m watching a show she doesn’t like and won’t let her change the channel, that’s what she calls me, an annoying ferret.

  If Mom answers the phone, she would say, “We don’t have any animals here. Animals are dirty.”

  I don’t know what Dad would say, but I do know I’ve got to get my telephone number off the signs.

  “Danny, do your work,” Mrs. Cakel calls out.

  I look up. Her back is still to me. How does she know I’m not doing my work?

  I’m not like Calvin. I don’t want to upset Mrs. Cakel, so I do my work. All through the rest of the morning, I look right at Mrs. Cakel, like I’m concentrating on whatever she’s saying, only sometimes I’m thinking about Calvin’s rent-a-pet business. No, that’s not right. It’s not just Calvin’s business. It’s mine too, and that’s the problem.