“Genius,” Manny mutters, stroking his chin.
“I know, right? Those Girls Scouts are really smart.”
“I mean me, Donuts.” Manny tugs me on the arm and lifts me upright. “In due time, we will be a well-oiled machine. But first we must prepare.”
* * *
Manny sits next to me on the cracked beige couch in the middle of his living room as he stacks his candy stash across the carpet. Nestlé Crunch, Snickers, Sour Patch Kids, Swedish Fish … every variety in neat little piles. The only thing neat in his apartment.
His place has a staleness to it, and I don’t mean the tortilla chips in the cabinet. The kitchen table covered in junk mail, the bathroom strewn with magazines and hairs on the tiled floor, and in Manny’s room, a brown futon in the corner instead of a bed. The air, the smell, is like an old shopping center.
His piles in order, Manny turns to me. “Tomorrow morning, we begin.” He reaches for a Snickers and raises it high. “Like all generals and space invaders and lovebirds about to enter into battle, we must prepare. Before our candy invasion, we need to stock our ammunition, as well as confirm and rehearse our strategy.”
“Wait, why do we need to rehearse? Haven’t you been selling for a while?”
He huffs. “Yes, but not in public like those Girl Scouts. That is what we need to discuss. We will need to adopt a strategy that I am not altogether familiar with. Until now, I have sold candy in secret, or as secretly as possible while still pulling in over fifty dollars per day. But my underground operation, like any scalper’s operation, takes too long. It will not fit our needs. It will not fit the massive scope of our endeavor.”
Manny must sense the confusion on my face. “Scalping, Donuts, is a covert business. It is illegal. Money is slipped under the rug, exchanged via sleight of hand. Due to the hush-hush-ness of the business model, sales are not maximized. No ticket scalper sells thousands of tickets outside a venue. The risk is too great: getting handcuffed and tossed in a cop car. Merchandise can move, but it jogs; it does not sprint, does not fly. The only way to have our social status truly blast off is to let our merchandise fly. In the open. Legally.”
“How do we do that?”
“We fund-raise. Like those Girl Scouts.”
“But it’s not a fund-raiser.”
“Sure it is. If you give something a name, everything changes. For instance, how is dating life since I dubbed you Donuts?”
I freeze. “Fantastic,” I mutter.
“So you concede the point.” He chuckles. “Names mean everything, my good friend. Why do you think I obsess over an old wrestler and wear this perfect T-shirt?”
“Because you don’t like to do laundry.”
“Well, yes, but the real reason is because nicknames can be controlled. Now everyone knows me as Mr. Perfect.”
“Not really…”
He puts out his hand. “I admit that everyone does not recognize my name—yet. But it will pay off by the time we reach high school. The same is true of our candy sales. It is best not to wait until eleventh grade to decide that popularity is suddenly important and ditch your old friends. Too much controversy, too much phony bologna. But now, while there is still time for our reputations to season, to bloom, to marinate—”
“I get it.”
“Good. Now, as long as we name our candy operation, we are in. The name does not even have to mean anything; it just needs to exist.”
“So what will we be called?”
“It does not matter, that is my point.”
Borrowing from those bulldozing Girl Scouts, the first thing we do is make our business look more official, an official fund-raiser for the good of the community, and nothing’s more official than a business name: M & D’s Date Foundation.
“M & D’s Date Foundation is a fine name,” he says, “but it is reckless and irresponsible. We cannot have our names or initials attached to this in any way. The name does not matter, only this.” He gestures to his candy stash. “Now, Donuts—and we are not selling donuts, just so we are clear—we must organize our inventory and make an official color-coordinated order form, like the Girl Scouts. The last thing we want to project is disorganization. Reflects badly upon the whole business.”
“Roger that.”
“This is business, not a spy mission, so easy on the ‘Roger that.’ And in business, feelings get put aside for the good of the company. Are we clear on that?”
“Ten-four,” I tell him.
He takes a deep breath.
“I’m kidding, Manny, it’s not a spy mission. Over and out.”
He shoots me the stare of death. “This is serious, Donuts. And this probably goes without saying but I will say it anyway: you are not permitted to tell anyone about our operation. Nobody. Not a single soul.”
“Wouldn’t dare. Too embarrassing.”
Aside from that, and what I don’t tell Manny, is that I don’t think you should tell anyone about anything big you’re working on because when you fail, they know. Someday, if I ever get a job interview, or plan to write a book, or decide to take over the donut business nationwide, I’ll just do it, without telling anyone. I mean, I’d rather live an incognito life where no one knows me, what I want, or who I want. I want to be a masked man—but one who doesn’t draw any attention for wearing a mask.
“Seriously, I need you to focus. Your job is to quantify our merchandise. Can you handle that?”
I nod.
“Good, now count up everything on the carpet and mark it down on the sheet. From there, we shall devise our order form, inventory on the left, with pictures for those too lazy to read, and on the right a grid with boxes to either check off or X out. We must be consistent with the markings, so which do you prefer: a check or an X?”
“I’d say an X, but I’ve never had one.”
Manny squints, then groans. “Ah, a joke: you have never had an ex-girlfriend.”
“Good one, huh?”
“This is business, hardly a time for laughing matters. And not usually a time for gifts, either, but…”
A brief smile, the beginning of a blush. Manny darts for his room and returns with green Christmas wrapping paper haphazardly taped to a large box.
“It is nothing special,” he says, now fully blushing. “Well, I think it is special and I hope you do, too. I hope you are intelligent enough to appreciate it.”
“Manny—”
“JUST OPEN IT!” He covers his mouth with his hands. “I did not mean to yell. The suspense of this moment seems to have bested me.”
I tear away the paper to find a large white box.
“I made it precisely like mine,” he says. “Same care. Same craftsmanship.”
I pull open the box. A backpack. He got me a backpack.
“Go ahead,” he says, “test it out. The code is on the back of the lock.”
I throw him a puzzled look, but I soon see what he means. The backpack has all the trimmings and trap doors one can expect out of an Emmanuel “Manny” Templeton creation: a combination lock at the zippers, newspaper separation at four levels, Velcro, fasteners, pouches, and a key lock for the bottom compartment … It’s not a backpack; it’s a vault. Unsure whether to hug him or punch him, I settle for a thank you.
He nods. “This will come in handy during our candy sales. And we have quite a bit of selling to do. Our goal will be to make two thousand dollars.”
“Two thousand dollars!”
“Indeed, one thousand for each of us. Not in sales, but profit. We must hurry. With the dance less than two months away, quite a few of the babes, honeys, beauties, sweeties, and/or sweetie pies are already committed to groups and are thus off the market. So back to work. We must clean this up before my mom comes home.”
“She still doesn’t know about your candy sales?”
“Negatory, kemosabe. And I plan on keeping it that way.”
“Does she know about your grades?”
“Another negatory.”
�
��Your attendance?”
Manny ignores me and gets up to go to the bathroom, leaving me with my new backpack and a carpet full of candy to count. As I pile pouches of M&M Peanuts on top of one another—sure to be a bestseller, especially in winter when they’re less likely to melt—I can’t help but think how it was supposed to be different for Manny. Given his math skills and mile-wide vocabulary, he was supposed to earn straight A’s and a free ride to a private school and fancy college, join their debate team, and then become a slick businessman or lawyer. But Manny is not even on track to graduate from middle school. Out of the 180 days of school, he shows up for 90. Not a day less, certainly not a day more. His magic number of 90 is just enough to keep him on the school roster, just enough for Manny to pass his major tests, just enough to keep child protective services away. Not enough, however, for him to earn many credits.
When I said that I don’t do homework, I meant that I rarely do it, like once every other week. Manny, though, never does it. Ever. Our English teacher a few years back, the one who introduced Manny to the concept of formal versus informal language in essay writing, was so sick and tired of Manny wasting his potential that he told him, “If you don’t do your homework, I swear I’ll pull off your fingernails with the back of a hammer and nobody will be around to hear you scream.” He was fired.
Manny was promoted, even though he failed the class. Manny didn’t pass many of his classes last year either, but Mr. Softee doesn’t believe in holding kids back if they lack only eight or fewer credits. So he pushed him through.
In order for Manny to graduate, there’ll be after-school and summer school and makeup projects and parent meetings with the social worker. And when they get home, there’ll be punishments and threats of grounding Manny for life, but what’ll that do? He never wants to leave the house anyway, except to go with his cousin Kenny to Costco to load up on food merchandise. (The same cousin Kenny who has now volunteered to make color copies of our order form. For a price. For a profit. Some swell family he’s got. And some dent in my wallet I’ve now got. Adios, two years of allowance…)
I stare at the Snickers bars in front of me and count them as fast as I can. No way I want to be here when Manny’s mom gets home. I hate to be Denny Downer, but I’ve seen her entrance before and it ain’t pretty.
In elementary school, when Manny smelled, which was fairly often since he almost never washed his favorite “Nobody is perfect. Except me” T-shirt, his mom held her nose and walked to another room. When she came home and found him lying on the couch, she kicked the couch, which meant that Manny should do something more constructive or else get off the damn couch so that she could lie down. When Manny’s report card arrived in the mail, she took one look at the D’s and F’s before she ripped it to shreds and ordered Manny to pick it up. I saw all of this go down as far back as preschool, when Manny used to pee in his pants so often that when he woke up from a nap and his pants weren’t wet, he threw his arms in the air, jumped up and down, and yelled, “Yes, I never pee myself! NEVER!” On most days, his mom had to come drop off clean clothes, and when she saw him sitting in a pool of his own urine, she gave him an ice-water stare and wouldn’t leave until hot tears ran down Manny’s bony cheeks, until his face turned fire truck red, until he begged for forgiveness and swore that it would never, ever happen again. Our teacher, Mrs. Shaffer, suggested that Manny’s mom store a pile of clothes at the school so that she didn’t have to come in all the time.
But she wouldn’t hear it. “The last thing I need is a child who thinks it’s okay to urinate on himself. This boy needs to grow up and he better do it soon. No more diapers, no more change of clothes, and no more night-lights. My boy is still afraid of the dark. Can you believe that?”
I could believe it. I’d seen it. Not for a few years now, but Manny used to sleep at my house, especially after Manny’s dad left. His mom used to drop him off for days at a time. For a break. That’s the only explanation she ever gave. She needed a break.
“Well, are all of the goods accounted for?” After Manny emerges from the bathroom, and after he checks my candy count (twice) to make sure I haven’t pocketed any merchandise, he wipes his hands on his shirt, pushes my new backpack to the side, and sits down next to me. “You should depart,” he says. “My mom will be home soon. You should not be here when she arrives. The candy, too, must go. She cannot see this.”
“Probably a good idea, Manny.”
He nods. “My mom, unfortunately, is not like yours is. I mean, was. I mean…”
His sentence lingers there for far too long. “She’s not a tense, Manny!” I don’t mean to get so upset but I’m at her funeral again, listening to the priest’s CliffsNotes, his references to her in the past tense, and my shirt is getting sweaty and my face is red and the paint-chipped walls of Manny’s apartment are closing in like a vise and my mom isn’t a tense. Never was. Never is. I mean … is, present, present tense, presently … Manny is making this hard for me, and I know I’m probably overreacting, but I can’t help it and don’t want to help it and I’m already stuffing armfuls of candy into my new bag.
“I am sorry,” Manny says. “Really, I am, I did not intend anything by it. She was good to me, too, you know.” You can tell he means it. His face is scrunched up and he’s shaking his head, but my eyes are about to leak—not cry, just leak—and I don’t like letting other people see when they do that. I scramble for the front door and open it. I don’t want to turn around but it’s rude not to say goodbye.
“Thanks for the bag, Man—” I tell him. It’s all I can get out.
THE LADYBUG
We are nine years old. Manny’s mom is on her first break.
A camouflage shirt, a strip of black paint under each eye, a walkie-talkie in one hand and binoculars in the other, Manny is ready for battle, is ready for our mission: to spy on my neighbor, Allison Swain.
Standing beside me, he orders, “You go around back and I will stay in the front. Call me when you see the Ladybug.”
“Right, Ladybug … Wait, who’s the Ladybug again?”
“You forgot already! You are such a boogiebrain! Allison Swain’s code name is ‘Ladybug.’ We agreed on that, remember?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “Now go around back and make sure your walkie-talkie is turned on this time.”
“Roger that.”
“You do not have to say ‘Roger that’ until we start.”
“Oh, right. Roger that.”
“What did I just say!”
“Not to—sorry, Manny.”
He shakes his head.
“Manny, wouldn’t it be funny if your name was Roger. You know, Roger that…”
He shoves me in the back. “Move, soldier!”
I race around the side of Allison’s house, toward the backyard. The latch on her gate is old and rusted, and the grass in her backyard is thick and sharp. The plants, all vines and garter snakes, are alive and breathing. They slither from the porch to the back fence. Thankfully, they don’t eat me as I pass.
The high grass makes my legs itch. I want to scratch them but I can’t because Manny gave his orders, so I dive behind a bush. And land on a pinecone. It digs into my knee like shards of broken glass and I can’t help but scream. My walkie-talkie booms with static. “Come in, Eagle One! This is Fox Three, over!”
“Roger that, this is Eagle One,” I grunt, rubbing my knee. It looks deformed.
“I think I heard a girl screaming!” he shouts. “Was that the Ladybug?”
“Uh, yes, I think so, yes.”
“Confirm your location, Eagle One.”
“Uh, behind a bush, on top of pinecones, over.”
“Any sign of Ladybug?”
“Not yet. What about you, Manny?”
“My name is Fox Three,” he grumbles.
“Right, sorry.”
“No sign of Ladybug from my present location,” he says. “Let us rotate counterclockwise. You should be at two o’clock in fifteen seconds. Over.”
“Wait, what? What time?”
Manny sighs loudly into the walkie-talkie. And then again. It sounds like this: “Haw. Ha. Haw. Ha,” which reminds me of Darth Vader. I tell him that.
He sighs again and, in his best Darth Vader voice, says, “Eagle One.” Haw. Ha. Haw. Ha. “I am your father.” Haw. Ha … Loud, hacking coughs and then Manny’s voice: “Move to your left, quickly, Eagle One, and keep your head down. Run to the side of the house and call me when you see something. MOVE, EAGLE ONE, MOVE!”
* * *
“Nothing is happening,” I grumble into my walkie-talkie. “It’s getting late, Manny, and I don’t see her.”
“Her name is Ladybug, and mine is Fox Three.”
“Well it’s almost time for dinner, Fox Three. My mom’s making chicken with bread crumbs and the Ladybug isn’t here.”
“My mom’s—I mean, your mom’s chicken is delicious. She is quite a force of good in the kitchen. Perhaps you can stow me away in one of your kitchen drawers. I shall be a stowaway, stowed away in your mom’s kitchen.”
I don’t answer because I don’t know how.
He continues. “But first we complete our mission. Which rhymes with ‘kitchen’ but has little else in common.” He stifles a laugh. “You see, I brought a secret weapon. It is foolproof, even around you. Heard of a stink bomb?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I call it the ‘missile’ for short. I brought it just in case. So we can smoke Allison out of her house, like in cowboy movies. Whoever sees her first, wins.”
“I’m on my way, Fox Three.” I sprint toward the front of the house.
“That is preposterous, Eagle One!” he shouts. “You will not come near me.”
“Already on my way, Fox Three.” I leap over a bed of yellow flowers, running as fast as I can.
“Retreat, Eagle One. I am warning you.”
“I can see you, Fox Three.”
“You are standing right in front of me, you ignoramus.”
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