Trout and Me

by Susan Shreve

  Trout looked at me as if I’d lost my brains.

  “I mean it must’ve, right?”

  “Of course it hurt,” he said. “It killed.”

  “Then why did you do it?” I asked.

  Trout shrugged as if my question were too foolish to answer.

  “I suppose you’re wondering what it means. Everybody asks me how come I have a question mark instead of like a flower or a knife or some kind of dog or cat or stupid bird.”

  I nodded, although I was still thinking about Fart Fun and hadn’t gotten around to wondering what the question mark meant. It didn’t even occur to me that a question mark would mean something.

  “So guess,” Trout said.

  “I can’t. I’m a bad guesser anyway,” I said. “Just tell me what it means.”

  “It means, who knows what’s going to happen with me around. I’m a big question mark,” he said, shoving my shoulder in a friendly way. “Get it?”

  “Right,” I said. “I get it.”

  He gave me a funny look. “Do you really get it?”

  “Sort of,” I said, which was a lie.

  The bell was ringing for recess and it was raining, which meant that recess would be in the gym, so I told Trout to come along with me and he could meet some of the kids in the class, since he’d only been at Stockton Elementary for a couple of hours.

  “Did you have a lot of friends in Georgia?” I asked Trout as we headed to the gym for recess.

  “Not a lot,” he said. “Hardly any except a girl named Josie, who smoked. But we move so much I don’t have time to make friends.”

  “And will you be moving from Stockton soon?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I never know.”

  “I bet kids remember you after you move even if you didn’t get to know them,” I said, taking a sideways look at his face. But from the right side, it was difficult to get the full picture of his chin.

  “How come?”

  “Because of the question mark, dummy,” I said. “I don’t think a lot of kids have one of those. At least none I know. None I’ve ever known.”

  Trout gave me a funny look, his eyebrows high on his forehead, his lips a little wrinkly, as if he were trying to decide what to say.

  “You know what?” He began watching me carefully, for my reaction, I guess.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “Tell me what.”

  “If I didn’t have a question mark on my chin, I’d be invisible,” Trout said. “No one would even know I was here.”

  “Invisible” is a word I’ve thought about a lot. It’s something I’d like to be, especially at school. Especially last year in the fifth grade, and the year before, and the year before that, since I have such a bad reputation. Anytime something happens in my presence, I’m the one blamed for trouble. So it’d be great not to be seen at all.

  “Ben? Absent again,” the teacher would say during roll call.

  “Yup,” the class would say. “Absent again.”

  And there I’d be, sitting at my desk chewing bubble gum, sticking it on the bottom of the chair, my feet up on the desk, my baseball cap on backwards.

  But no one would know. I’d be able to see everyone perfectly, but they couldn’t see me when I stuck my foot into the aisle, and Ms. Percival tripped on it and knocked out her front teeth, so she had to have fake ones.

  Invisible, I’d simply walk into homeroom and stand on my head and dump Mary Sue Briggs out of her chair and throw a few water balloons, maybe one just over the teacher’s desk, splashing water all over his grade book. Then I’d jump on top of the desk and do a dance, knocking the spelling tests on the floor, kicking the tulip pot so the dirt spread over the social studies projects.

  “What’s going on?” the teacher would shout as everything was flying off his desk. “This is crazy.” He’d scramble on the floor picking up the spelling papers. “Something insane is going on here.”

  But of course the teacher couldn’t see me, so what could he do? I’d take the sports jacket off the back of his chair, put it on, and race around the classroom. The only thing anyone could see would be a sports jacket sailing around the room all by itself.

  Invisible sounds swell and I told Trout.

  We were walking back into the classroom after recess, standing at my locker while I got my math book.

  “I’d like to be invisible sometimes,” I said. “It sounds cool.”

  He shrugged. He was rummaging in his book bag for something and took out a long silver tube like toothpaste with a black X on it.

  “Invisible cream,” he said. “Try it.”

  I looked at the tube, which was half empty, took off the top, and smelled it. It had a kind of sharp, acid smell and the cream was pale pink.

  “What does it do?”

  “Try it.”

  “Not unless you tell me what will happen.”

  “Like if you put it on your eyebrows, your eyebrows will disappear.”

  “Forever?”

  “Until you wash it off. Here.” He took the tube and squeezed it into his hand and rubbed a little on my forehead. “Go check the mirror in the boys’ room.”

  I got the rest of my books and headed to the boys’ room, Trout on my heels. The bathroom was very bright, but I couldn’t see anything on my forehead when I looked in the mirror, not even the faintest pink.

  “It didn’t work,” I said.

  “Wait.”

  “Now? Don’t we have to go to class?”

  “Just wait and maybe your forehead will disappear. Or maybe you’re just not the invisible kind of kid.”

  So we went to math and I had forgotten the invisible cream by the time my math test was handed back with a fifty-six in red across the top and a note at the bottom from Ms. Becker: “Dear Ben, Do you ever do your homework or study for tests?”

  “Ben?” Ms. Becker called out.

  And I was just thinking, Great, now she’s going to call me to the front of the class and tell everyone I got a fifty-six again and didn’t try and wasn’t smart, so I looked up at her and her face turned something like purple. She’s old, and purple isn’t a good color for her.

  “What?” I said, forgetting to be polite. And what good would it have done anyway?

  “What is on your forehead?”

  I looked over, and Trout had an expression of boredom on his face.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Certainly you know. You put it there to be amusing, I’m sure, and distract the class.”

  I reached up and touched my forehead. It was kind of hot and burning, but I hadn’t noticed. By this time the class had jumped out of their seats in spite of Ms. Becker and run up to the front of the class to look at me. Ms. Becker asked everyone to sit down, which they didn’t, and to stop laughing, which they didn’t, and I was sent to Mr. O’Dell’s office.

  I went. In fact, I was glad to get away from Ms. Becker and have a chance to tear up my math test and toss it in the trash in the boys’ room, where I went first to check what had happened to my forehead.

  Across my forehead, in bright red letters, was written ASS.

  “So thanks a lot,” I said to Trout.

  “I’m really sorry,” Trout said sweetly. “I didn’t know she’d be so mean. What happened in the principal’s office?”

  “I washed it off before I got to the principal’s office and told him my sister’s boyfriend had given me some magic cream and I used it on my forehead without knowing what it would do and how stupid that was and how sorry I was,” I said. “That kind of stuff. I go to Mr. O’Dell’s office so much I’ve learned how to suck up and he’s pretty dumb.”

  “Are we still going to be best friends?”

  “We were never going to be best friends,” I said. We were headed out of the building on our way to meet Meg, which had been my plan before Trout arrived at Stockton Elementary.

  “Then friends?”

  “Maybe,” I said. But already Trout was the most interestin
g boy I’d met since I came to Stockton when I was five years old, so it was pretty much sealed that we were going to be friends.

  Usually Meg walks home from the high school by Main Street, stopping at the pharmacy to see our mother, who’ll be standing behind the counter mixing up pills, and sometimes at The Grub, where the high school kids go after school to smoke and drink Coke floats and hang out and play music. Often I go to The Grub with Meg as sort of a pet. That’s how her friends think of me. Toy baby brother. Pet brother. I don’t mind it.

  Max is always outside The Grub leaning against the wall of the brick building, listening to the music coming through the window, smoking with some of his friends.

  So on Trout’s first day of school I took him to The Grub with me. I really didn’t have a choice. Already he was attached. I couldn’t strip myself away.

  “Are we going to your house?” he asked as we headed down the front steps of the school.

  “We’re meeting my older sister at a place called The Grub,” I said.

  “Do you drink?” Trout asked, falling in step with me.

  “Nope.”

  “Do they serve beer at The Grub?”

  “Just hamburgers, Cokes, that sort of thing,” I told him. “The kids who go are underage. You know. They can’t buy alcohol.”

  He seemed disappointed.

  He was walking along beside me, his hands slipped into the pockets of his jeans, the sleeves of his sweatshirt rolled up, when he asked me about pills.

  “Pills?”

  “Yeah, pills.”

  “You mean like drugs?”

  “Yeah, drugs. But not street drugs. These are the kinds of drugs you get from the doctor for dumb and dumber kids who’re in trouble in school.”

  “Well, I should be taking those pills,” I said, walking down Main Street in the direction of The Grub. “I’m always in trouble.”

  “For bad grades?”

  “Bad grades, bad behavior, you name it.”

  “I get in a lot of trouble too,” Trout said.

  I wasn’t surprised. Anyone could tell that Trout was that kind of kid.

  “I’m supposed to take Ritalin. That’s what the doctor in Kansas gave me to take in third grade,” he said. “You know about Ritalin?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Well, it’s a pill.”

  I knew all about Ritalin. When I was told I had learning disabilities, Mr. O’Dell told my parents that everyone thought I should take Ritalin and my mother said no, I would not be taking Ritalin or anything else. She was a pharmacist and knew all about pills and I was her son and she would be making her own decisions about me. My mom can’t be pushed around, especially about her kids.

  “So what’s Ritalin?” I had asked my mom on the drive home from O’Dell’s office.

  “Medicine to make you calm down so you can study,” my mother said. “And that’s something you’re going to learn how to do without medicine.”

  The subject of Ritalin came up again in fifth grade and my mom hadn’t changed her mind. But so far, even now, I haven’t learned how to calm down and study. At least according to my teachers.

  “I’m supposed to take Ritalin so I can concentrate in school, whatever that means,” Trout said. “The teachers in Kansas said I had to take the stuff because I was a ‘cutup’ with learning disabilities.”

  “Learning disabilities?” My heart leapt up.

  “Yeah. Dyslexia,” Trout said. “You know dyslexia?”

  “I’ve heard of it.”

  I knew dyslexia very well. It’s one of the things that’s supposed to be the matter with me. I reverse my letters and can’t write very quickly and am especially slow on the standardized reading tests, which I hate.

  “How did the teachers know you had learning disabilities?” I asked.

  I wasn’t planning to tell Trout about my own learning disabilities, but I had this sudden feeling of lightness just to know that he had the same troubles I do. Sometimes at Stockton Elementary, I’ve felt completely alone, even by the time I got to fifth grade and my lisp had almost disappeared.

  “I couldn’t read,” he said. “I still can’t, and don’t even want to read most of the time, since school is so boring. But that’s why they gave me Ritalin, so I could learn to read.”

  “Does it help?”

  “Who knows?” Trout shrugged. “I throw the pills in the toilet.”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help myself.

  “And what does your father say about that?”

  He looked at me with exasperation.

  “He doesn’t know, of course. If he knew, he’d tie me to a chair and stick the pills down my throat.” He opened his mouth, gagging, stuck his finger down his throat. “Like that,” he said.

  We turned into The Grub. I knew Trout was impressed when I just breezed past the high school boys leaning, as they always did, against the brick building. I high-fived Max, opened the door of The Grub, and walked in as if I owned the place. A bunch of kids were waving to me, calling me by name. “Benjamin!” they shouted. “Hey, Benjamin.” That’s what Meg calls me. But I’m Ben to my friends.

  “So, buddy,” Max said to Trout as we walked by him. “What’re you doing with that splotch on your chin? Gangrene?”

  “Can’t you tell a question mark when you see one?”

  Max laughed. “A question mark. Very funny. I like that. So you got a tattoo and you’re still a baby.”

  “Right. A tattoo at six, buddy,” Trout said.

  We had Cokes and hung around Meg and her friends, and Trout loved it since Meg’s friend Shoshanna leaned her elbow on his shoulder and ran her fingers through his thin, silky hair. He kind of wiggled, embarrassed at first, and then he got a funny smile spreading all over his face.

  “You are beyond rad,” Shoshanna said, pulling his hair. “What’d you say your name is?”

  “Trout.”

  “Trout. That’s a funny name. What’s your last name?”

  “Trout.” They both laughed then and Shoshanna gave him a huge hug.

  “You are beyond cool, Trout Trout. Beyond heartbreak.”

  “Knock it off, Shoshanna,” Meg said.

  “He loves it,” Shoshanna said. “Don’tcha, Trout Trout?”

  Trout shrugged.

  Later Trout told me that he thought Shoshanna was a maniac. His words. And wasn’t it amazing, he asked me, that a fifteen-year-old girl, even a dumb and crazy one like Shoshanna, thought he was good-looking?

  But later Meg told me that she hated what Shoshanna had done by teasing Trout, since anyone with sense ought to have noticed that a boy like Trout with a question mark on his chin had problems.

  “What kind of problems do you think he has?” I asked, walking home with her after Trout had left for home. “I mean, he’s got learning disabilities, but so do I.”

  “Who doesn’t have learning disabilities?”

  “You don’t,” I said. “You were born smart.”

  Which is when I told her about invisible. Not the invisible cream, but what Trout said about being invisible.

  Meg thinks a lot. That’s something I like about her. She doesn’t say things “off the top of her head,” as my mother would say, meaning that Meg thinks before she speaks. So I knew that she’d have something important to say about invisible.

  We were on Acorn Road, where Ms. Percival lives with her mother, Mrs. Percival, in a dark brown house. I like to walk fast on Acorn, hoping not to see Ms. Percival. I don’t care about seeing her mother.

  Meg was quiet for a while. She and Max had had a fight. Max had asked was she going with him to the Spring Dance and she said no, she wasn’t going to the Spring Dance unless he stopped smoking, and he said, “Eat your heart out, Megsie.” She threw her arm around my shoulder and walked away, telling Max she’d never speak to him again. She’s said that to Max quite a few times and I keep hoping she’ll keep her promise, but she always forgets.

  So it was just the two of us hunched toget
her under her green crocodile umbrella, our bodies bumping into each other in that way I love, as if it’s just us alone in the world together and we’re best friends and we’ll never get any older than we are now.

  “So tell me what Trout said about invisible.”

  I repeated what I remembered.

  “‘If I didn’t have a question mark on my chin,’ Trout said, ‘I’d be invisible. No one would even know that I was here.’” I looked up at her. “Like that.”

  Meg looked thoughtful.

  “I think invisible would be fun,” I said.

  But she was thinking. I knew better than to keep talking while she was thinking, so we just walked along Tabor Lane, down Arch Street behind the movie theater and the ice cream store, across Bark, down the alley that’s behind our apartment building, and in the back door.

  Belinda was sitting on the stoop behind the apartment, pulling double bubble gum in a long string from her mouth. She took it out as we walked by and stuck her tongue out at me.

  That’s the kind of relationship I have with Belinda. Megan too. Which is why the only friend I have in the apartment building is Meg.

  Meg and I got the mail in the entry hall and walked up the steps, and it wasn’t until we got into the apartment itself and Meg was taking out the package of chocolate chip cookies and gallon of milk she’d gotten at the market that she spoke.

  “I think Trout must be miserable.”

  “You think so?”

  “Imagine feeling invisible,” she said, pouring us both a glass of milk, tearing open the package of cookies.

  “I did imagine. It felt great. Invisible, I could get away with anything.”

  “Maybe for you,” Meg said, sitting at the kitchen table. “I don’t think it feels that way to Trout.”

  “How come?” I asked.

  “If you’re invisible, then no one knows you’re there. Isn’t that right?”

  “Right.”

  “Which means you don’t matter because you don’t exist.”

  “I didn’t think of it that way,” I said.

  “But I bet Trout does. I bet that’s why he has a question mark on his chin. At least if people don’t see him, they see the question mark.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess that’s true.”