by Nancy N. Rue
“Look, Red, if you stuff it you just end up having more to explode with–”
“I said no.”
“It’s not like you have AIDS or something.”
I whipped my head around to look at him and saw the gleam in his eye. But it wasn’t the same. It was a big brother thing. An “I better get her to talk or Lou’ll make me hang out with her for another week”–that kind of look. I went back to bouncing my heels against the wall and watched a row of old-looking wooden boats bob in the water. Green algae climbed up the outsides of their cabins, and gulls perched on their vacant masts. Their sails waited, wrapped and roped, to be let out. I felt like that–like I just wanted to unwrap and go with the wind.
“Okay,” Rocky said. “I’ll talk.”
“You do that,” I said.
I folded my arms halfway around myself to cross him out, but he didn’t go anywhere. He stretched out on the wall so that he was squinting up at the sun and me.
“Look, the little Weezer’s messed up,” he said.
How could she be messed up? She’d had the Father of the Year her whole life.
“She was only three years old or something when Lou and her mom got divorced. And he says he wasn’t that much of a dad before that.”
I grunted.
He opened his eyes and closed them again. “I better let him tell you about that if he wants.”
“I don’t care,” I said, only because not talking never worked that well for me.
“Yeah, you do. Why don’t you admit it? You want to be part of the family, and every time you get close she messes it up somehow.”
He opened his eyes again and held onto me with them, so I couldn’t look away. “If you want her to stop messing things up for you, you have to get to her.”
I was interested in spite of myself. “You mean like get back at her?”
“Nah. You’re better than that.”
“I don’t think so.”
He sat up and pointed at me. “I get a question for that.”
“Why?”
“It’s our deal, and what I want to know is–”
He wiggled his eyebrows, and I tried to smack him but he got me by both wrists and grinned into my face even as I pulled myself back.
“I want to know if you ever rode your Big Wheel down a set of stairs when you were a kid.”
I stopped struggling. “What?”
“Just answer the question.”
“How do you know I even had a Big Wheel?”
“Didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“And did you ride it down any steps?”
I got one hand loose and covered my mouth.
“You did, didn’t you?” he said. “I knew it.”
I let out a big old sputtery laugh into my palm before he pulled it away from my face.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Okay–me and my mom lived in an apartment over my grandparents’ garage, and this one day, I pulled my Big Wheel out the door when my mom was drawing a pair of shoes, and I thought, ‘I’m gonna do this,’ and then I did.”
“How many stitches did you have to have?”
“Eight. Right here.”
He let go of me so I could pull back my bangs and bend my head for him to see the scar by my hairline. He rolled up the leg of his jeans and revealed one twice that long below his knee.
“You had a Big Wheel too?” I said.
“Yeah, but this is from riding a scooter down the–well, you know those wooden walkways through the dunes?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged.
“No way!” I said.
“I got drunk one night when I was fifteen and stole a scooter from your dad’s shop and rode it all the way out to the beach and down the steps on one of the walkways.”
I felt my eyes popping like a frog’s. “Did you get arrested?”
“No, the cops didn’t find me. Lou did.”
They popped even farther.
“It happened down by his house, and he heard it and came out, and that’s how we met.”
“So–what did he do?” I said.
Rocky looked down at his hands. “He said I had two choices. I could either go to jail after he called the cops and my life would be pretty much over, or I could do everything he said and start a whole new life.” He looked at me. “Like that was a choice, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “He does that.”
“So he made sure I wasn’t dying from my injuries, and he patched me up and called my mom–who couldn’t have cared less–and he talked to me all night about stuff and–here I am.”
“Why did he do that?” I said. “He didn’t even know you.”
“That’s just who he is. It’s like he gets how it is to be a complete screwup, and he doesn’t want it happening to any other kid.”
Oh. So basically, I was just any other kid.
And then something else clicked in my head. So this was what Rocky owed Lou for. No wonder he was still hanging with me. He’d have to babysit me until I was in college to pay that off.
“So,” Rocky said cheerfully, “do you hate me now?”
“Huh?”
“Do you want to ditch me because you know I’ve got something ‘wrong’ with me?”
“I want to ditch you,” I lied, “but that’s not why.”
Rocky blinked at me. “But isn’t what I did worse than anything you’ve ever done?”
I went stubbornly back to the silent treatment. I could feel him watching me.
“It is worse,” he said, “but I figure I’m too good of a person to try to get back at a ten-year-old, so why aren’t you?”
I shrugged.
“If you want my advice–” he said.
“I don’t.”
He scooted himself next to me and swung his legs in time with mine, as if I hadn’t just basically told him to buzz off.
“I say be so nice to her, she doesn’t know what’s going on.”
I gave him a look. “Have we met?”
“I’m serious. You can totally do this. I’ve seen you in action with people, like in the sushi place–you’re like…a soda.”
“A soda.”
“You know, like, all bubbling over. Giggle, giggle, giggle–”
“Okay, okay–” I did Lou’s eraser thing with my hands. I had to get him off this subject. “I so get a question for that. Is your name really Oswald?”
“Aw, man–”
“Come on. Dish.”
“Yeah,” he said, out of the side of his mouth. “Oswald Kenneth Luke.”
“What’s your last name?”
“Luke.”
“Oh.”
“Why?”
“I was hoping it was something like Snodgrass.”
“You are so dead.”
I squealed and scrambled to my feet and took off down the wall with him hollering behind me–hoping he would catch me. But when he did and got me into one of his half nelsons or whatever they were, I was sadder than I was before I admitted to myself that I liked this boy who could never like me that way. I liked him a lot. He made me feel like I could be nice to anybody.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
My “nice” lasted until we got back to the shop. Lou and Weezie were waiting for me in Lou’s office, and even from outside the window, Weezie looked like she was about to have a molar extracted.
I stiffened up to run, but Rocky gave me a poke and, after giving him my own hairiest eyeball, I went in. “Nice” must have left with him because I couldn’t even make myself smile.
“Could you have a seat for a minute, Jess?” Lou said. “Weezie has something she wants to say to you.”
I bit back all the smart remarks that crowded onto my hamster wheel and perched on the edge of a chair facing them.
Then we all sat there in silence until I was about ready to claw the paneling. Weezie finally mumbled, “I’m sorry I told everybody you had ADHD.”
No, you are not! I wanted to say. I
nstead, I got out, “I thought we weren’t supposed to say we were sorry if we didn’t mean it.”
Weezie looked at Lou. He didn’t say anything. She squirmed. I enjoyed it.
So much for nice.
When it was obvious Weezie wasn’t going to come up with an answer, Lou said, “That’s true. I do say that. Are you willing to give Weezie a little more time, Jess?”
“She can have all the time she wants,” I said.
Lou looked like he was going to say something, but he pressed his lips together and stood up. There wasn’t a twitch within a hundred miles.
Why, I wondered, was I suddenly feeling guilty when I wasn’t the one who had done something wrong? For once.
Nobody brought it up again that evening. I did see Lou talking to Weezie out on the deck when I was doing the dishes, and then she came in and said, “You can have the bedroom tonight.”
I was glad. I needed to get to RL. It was the only way I could figure out how to get off the hamster wheel. And I wanted to– because being back on it after being free of it for a while made it feel crazier than ever, and I was tired of crazy.
I waited until I heard them start their Scrabble game in the living room before I pulled the book from between the mattresses. It opened easily in my hands, like it had been waiting for me.
Before we get to this next part, let me tell you about tax collectors in Yeshua’s time.
Were we talking IRS? If so, all I knew about it was that every time we got something from them in the mail, my mom either screamed at somebody on the phone or pulled the covers over her head, depending on which Phase she was in. Marcus said his father wasn’t that crazy about them either.
People had to pay taxes just like they do now, but the collectors back then were allowed to charge people more than they really owed so they could keep the extra money for themselves.
“Not fair!”
Exactly. Naturally, there was a lot of fraud and corruption and these guys were pretty much hated. People talked about sinners and tax collectors like they were the same thing. Which most of the time they were.
I wondered what all this had to do with the story, but I’d figured out by now that RL always had a reason for everything it said. I was liking that.
So, moving on. Yeshua went out of a house where he’d just healed a bunch of people, and immediately he had a run-in with some Pharisees on the street about where he got off thinking he could do what he was doing.
I kind of knew what a Pharisee was from somewhere, but I didn’t ask to make sure. I wanted to get on with the story. Maybe later.
Yeshua saw a guy named Levi–
Levi? Seriously?
Levi was collecting taxes. What does that tell you?
Bad guy.
Right. But Yeshua said, “Come with me.” And Levi did. He just left his entire tax collecting career and went with him.
This was the second story like that. Yeshua must have been kind of like Lou: When he told me to do something in that low-quiet voice he used, I did it, much as I hated to. Even Weezie did it. So maybe I could see how they all just dropped everything and followed this Yeshua person. I knew I would do it in a heartbeat.
Levi gave a huge dinner party at his house for Yeshua. All the people Levi normally hung out with were there–other tax collectors, shady types.
Maybe drug dealers? Gangbangers? Kids who got drunk and rode their motorcycles down steps?
The Pharisees and professors went to Yeshua’s followers.
That would be Simon and that crowd, right?
Yeah. The Pharisees said, “What’s up with this? Why’s he eating with criminals and losers?” When Yeshua heard about that, he said, “Let me ask you something: who needs a doctor–healthy people or people who are sick and in pain? See, here’s the thing–I’m here to invite the people you think are ‘outsiders.’ I’m not here to hang out with those of you who think you already have it all. What I’m about is bringing these messed-up people into a whole different life. A life that’s for real.”
I couldn’t read any more because the page was blurry. It took me a minute to realize that it was because of the tears in my eyes. So–if Yeshua was into “outsiders,” could I get invited to that party?
I closed the book and dropped it in front of me. What was I thinking? This wasn’t about me. And it was fiction–it wasn’t even real.
I ran my fingers across the carved-out RL letters on the front and the other initials someone–maybe even a lot of someones–had also etched into it. It sure seemed real to me. Maybe it had to these other people too. And if it wasn’t, what else did I have?
With the book hugged to my chest, I curled into a ball and closed my eyes. “If you’re real, Yeshua,” I whispered, “help me.”
I didn’t wake up the next almost-afternoon without ADHD. I knew that the minute I moved in the bed and my phone, my flip-flops, and the RL book all tumbled off onto the floor. But I did feel different somehow–like maybe I ought to give “nice” a try. Yeshua was decent to people it was hard to be even halfway decent to, and Weezie was definitely in that group. It was the only way I could think of to “follow.”
She and Lou were in their usual spot on the couch when I went out to the Everything Room. The second Weezie saw me she stopped whatever long story she was telling Lou and took a sudden interest in her glitter-pink manicure.
He grinned at me. “It’s Rip Van Winkle.”
“I know, right?” I said. “I’m starving. Do you guys want me to fix you some breakfast?”
“We already ate, like, two hours ago,” Weezie said to her fingernails. “Can you even cook anyway?”
“Weezie,” Lou said. He used his “sit down” voice.
Which I appreciated, because it took me a minute to figure out how to be nice to that question.
Weezie stuck her lip out, and Lou turned to me. “You really like working with food, don’t you, Jess?”
“I guess so, yeah,” I said.
“You did a great job in the restaurant yesterday. I was impressed.”
I blinked. Did somebody just pay me a compliment?
“So now that she’s up, can we go down to the beach?” Weezie said.
Lou shook his head. “We’re about to have the mother of all thunderstorms. How ‘bout we do a little shopping, maybe watch a movie?”
He looked at me. I glanced at Weezie, and for a second I thought she might have a hamster wheel in her head too.
“I’m fine with shopping if you are,” I said.
“I’d rather watch a movie,” she said.
Lou put his hand on her forehead. “You feeling okay, Weezie?”
“Yes. Why?”
“If you don’t want to go shopping, you must be sick. You sure you don’t want to go to the outlet mall?”
It looked like it was killing her, but she said, “I want to watch a movie.”
“Great,” I said. “Anything’s fine with me. Except a Shrek movie. I’ve seen all of them twenty times.”
“I was thinking Shrek the Third,” she said.
“That’s cool. I’ve only seen that one ten times.”
Lou looked from one of us to the other and then said, “Shrek the Third it is. I’ll make some popcorn.”
“With butter,” Weezie said.
“No butter and you know it. Except for pancakes.”
“Aw, man,” I said.
Weezie’s eyes went into their little dashes. “That’s okay. Butter’s not good for you.”
“Then I can definitely live without it,” I said through my teeth.
It couldn’t have been as hard for Yeshua to have dinner with the tax collectors as it was for me to be nice to this kid.
But I kept at it. When Weezie got bored with Shrek the Third just as I was getting into it and she announced that she wanted to go shopping, I was dressed and ready to go. When she whined because she would rather go to the mall on Levi– even though it was pouring down rain–I volunteered to stay behind. When Lou said no, and
she pouted, I whispered to her that I was really sorry. Because I was.
I never had a worse time shopping than I did that day. We went in every tween store in the mall and looked at girly jewelry and cutesy clothes and shoes that would have given my mother a heart attack no matter what kind of Phase she was in. I actually missed my mom that day. When she was in a No-Bed Phase, she loved to shop, and she always knew where to go for the best stuff. Weezie’s taste was, as Mom would have said, all in her mouth.
Yet even though we ate lunch where Weezie wanted to eat and yawned through what Weezie wanted to talk about and bought what Weezie wanted to have for supper, which was coconut shrimp again–being nice about all that became easier somehow. Once I got over gritting my teeth so I wouldn’t blurt out, “Are you just the most selfish chick on the face of the earth?” it sort of became like a game to see how frustrated I could make her by not arguing with her. I discovered that she did not like Lou using his too-quiet voice on her. She clearly didn’t want him even a little bit mad at her, so there was no way she was going to blow. But she wanted to, I could see that, and it made me feel kind of smug about my sweet self. Rocky, I decided, was right.
But then there was that moment after supper when she said she wanted to play Scrabble, and I said I’d just watch, and she said, “You just don’t want to play because you–” and then she stopped and bit her lip and looked like she was going to cry–at that moment I had this weird feeling. Like I knew how she felt.
So I said, “I do want to play, but I’m not that good at it and I don’t want to mess it up. This is a you-and-your-dad thing. I’ll just go read.”
“Stay, Jess,” Lou said. “It’s stopped raining. Let’s go down on the beach and watch the moon rise.”
“That’s not fair!” Weezie wailed.
“Who ever promised you fair?” Lou said. “Get your shoes on.”
She gave me a black look, and I didn’t even enjoy it.
In church the next day, Weezie sat on the other side of Lou with her arms across her chest and her lip extended like a foldout sofa. She actually kind of reminded me of myself.
Rocky gave me a nudge. “You didn’t do the nice thing?” he whispered.
“Oh, yeah, I did,” I whispered back.
He grinned at me. “You’re good, Red. You’re really good.”