I take out my math book and turn randomly to page 239. The directions spill to page 243. Five pages of directions for one problem.
Mr. Morgan flips to the comics. Then he unwraps a turkey sandwich on white bread and takes a bite. A Three Musketeers bar is on the table next to him. He didn’t buy it from me. The whole scene depresses me and I get this black-and-white feeling back again, for good reason. The gray weather. The cold air. Cold desks. Cold Mr. Morgan. Pages 239 to 243 of my math textbook. The sound of Mr. Morgan’s newspaper crumpling. The comics I can’t read. The black-and-white lunch I can’t eat. I feel like the only man left on the planet. I gotta get outta here.
The newspaper crinkles as Mr. Morgan kicks his feet up. “Get some work done,” he says again. “Mrs. Q and your other teachers told me there’s plenty to catch up on.”
“They’re lying, Mr. Morgan. Just like Mr. Softee and his detention thing. He said teachers hate detention because it’s time-consuming.”
Mr. Morgan chuckles. “Well, he’s lying. I like the free time.”
“Told you he’s a liar.”
He shakes his head, muttering, “I can’t believe Mr. Soffer said that teachers—”
“I wanna get outta here. I need to get outta here.”
“Calm down,” he says, turning a page of the newspaper. “Use this time wisely.”
“I feel like I’m in prison. This is torture. We learned in government class that torture is illegal. Seriously illegal. Are you aware that what you’re doing is illegal?”
He yawns. “I’m not aware of that.”
“You should be. I can sue you for war crimes.”
“War crimes? This isn’t a war, Denny.”
“We’ll let Mr. Softee be the judge of that.”
“Well, that sounds like a fine plan,” he says, folding up the paper.
He has a point—my idea is terrible, because as Judge Judy would say, “It holds no water”—but I don’t appreciate his sarcasm. “You know what, I wish they’d fire you.”
He smirks. “For what? War crimes?”
“And other stuff. For one, you’re not—what’s that word Mr. Softee used—oh yeah, progressive. You’re not progressive enough.”
“You don’t even know what that means.”
Another good point.
“Listen, Denny, your project, it could use a bit of touching up, but it’s well done. I’m proud of the work you did with Sabrina.”
She did the work, not me. Sabrina did it all.
Sabrina. I find a girl with the type of face you want to come home to, and I ruin our home. I have to tell her. And I have to tell Manny. I have to tell them everything.
“Can I go to the bathroom, Mr. Morgan?”
“Your dad should be here any minute.”
I hope the traffic is bumper-to-bumper, as heavy as he is. I hope he gets stuck in the middle of the highway and doesn’t show up. Then he’ll get blamed instead of me. I’ll tell Mr. Morgan that my dad never even meant to come. That cutting class and cutting meetings runs in the family. That it’s a proud and storied tradition dating back to the days of those mischievous Pilgrims, but I hear his heavy breathing all the way down the hall.
“He’s here,” I mutter.
“How do you know?”
“Those wheezing noises aren’t coming from the heater.”
“Well, great, let’s go then.”
“Go where?”
“Mrs. Q’s room.”
“What? Why?”
He shrugs. “Change of scenery; I get tired of being in the same room. It should be a nice change of pace for you, too. I hear you haven’t been there in a while.”
* * *
In a black business suit, Mrs. Q doesn’t say “aloha” to me, and I don’t say it to her, and my dad says nothing. Not “hey” or “hello” or even “thanks for interrupting my day.” All he does is nod, which makes me uncomfortable, so I sort of laugh again, but only in my mouth. I’m not sure my dad hears it because I pretend to clear my throat to mask the noise. You know, like when you’re in class and accidentally fart, so you slide your chair or cough a few times so everyone will think that was the noise they heard instead of the fart.
Yeah, that never works.
And neither does my dad’s attempt to sit down. He takes a deep breath, rolls up the sleeves of his wrinkled brown dress shirt, and tries to shimmy himself into an armrest desk, but he doesn’t fit.
Mrs. Q offers him her chair. He waves her off and tries to sit on top of the armrest desk, but the desk tips forward and the chair’s back legs become airborne until the whole thing almost capsizes. He steps off to allow the chair to come back down, but then he gets right back on until the desk tips forward again. It’s like one of those little kid rides in which you put a quarter into a bull or a horse or an elephant and ride it forward and back, up and down, forward and back, up and down.
“I think I’ll stand,” my dad says finally. A fine idea.
I take a seat, my dad standing over me. Mr. Morgan and Mrs. Q sit across from us. Her room has changed a bit since I last blessed it with a visit five weeks ago. Her decorations have matured, no sign of the Learning Zone; instead, there is a new rules poster—“Three strikes and you’re out. Batter up!”—and some new math slogans: “Math is everywhere, math is life. If you say you don’t like math, you’re saying you don’t like life. That’s a problem. Solve it!” … “If you don’t have time to do it right, you must make time to do it over” … “Try math; odds are you’ll like it” … “Math = Success. Go figure.” Get it? Like, in math, you figure things out?
Eeesh. She’s still got a ways to go.
Mrs. Q calls the meeting to order. “Thank you again, Mr. Murphy, for coming in.”
A nod, and then, “Thank you for having me,” and it’s already sounding too much like a guest on a late-night talk show. Tell me about your latest movie, I assume is next. Roll the clip. Tell me about your love life. Sip from your mug. Cue the bombshell.
Cue it.
“Well, Mr. Murphy, as you know from the message I left on your machine, Denny has, uh, struggled a bit in math class, and struggled, to a large degree, to show up for class.”
I try to switch topics a bit and play the talk show guest for all it’s worth: “I have struggled in math, Mrs. Q, and may I express my appreciation toward you and Mr. Morgan for organizing this important meeting of the minds and—”
My dad waves me off. “I’m sorry, what did you say about that message?”
“Oh, I—I assumed you got it…” Mrs. Q says. “I left it about a month and a half ago.”
“About a month and a half ago. A month and a half ago.” He keeps tasting those words and it doesn’t seem like he likes the taste. “A month and a half ago. A month and a half ago…”
He looks down at me like I’m beneath him, which I am, because he’s standing.
Given that I’m on trial, I can’t help but think of Judge Judy and realize that none of these accounts mean anything without written proof, and I’m just about to proclaim She lacks evidence but Mrs. Q reaches for a navy blue attendance book. “Denny is, well, very active and needs a lot of support to excel in his classes. For starters, he needs to come to class.” She flips to the back of her book. “He’s only been to … hold on, let me see here … yes, four of my math classes this marking period. This is his attendance record if you’d like to take a look.” My dad leans over, nods at her notebook, then nods at me. “And when he is in class he has difficulty focusing and he can be a distraction to his peers. I know he’s … recently been through some difficult times. I was sorry to hear about his loss—your loss. I was—am, sorry.”
My dad grunts but doesn’t speak, so Mrs. Q continues: “I’d like to see him do well, but he hasn’t taken the work seriously. He’d much rather interrupt the class and play around.”
Once it’s clear that Mrs. Q has concluded her opening statements, my dad turns to me. “Well, son. What do you have to say?”
W
hat do I have to say? That’s a terrible question. It’s not as bad as asking “What do you have to say for yourself?” but it’s still pretty bad. I mean, what can I possibly say to make anyone feel any better? The worst part is that my dad doesn’t even want me to say anything. But I know that if I don’t open my mouth, he’ll keep pestering me just for show until I do. I don’t know what to say, so I say that: “I don’t know what to say.”
He leans over and it looks like he’s going to whisper in my ear, but he doesn’t whisper, he yells.
“YOU DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY?”
“No.”
He takes a breath, lowers his voice. “But your teacher, Mrs. Um…”
“Q,” Mrs. Q says.
“Right, Mrs. Q tells me you have a lot to say in class. A whole lot to say. You don’t have anything to say now?”
“No.”
“Nothing at all?”
He’s getting pretty worked up and is beginning to sound like a bull, breathing loudly through his nose like a backward sniffle. “Nothing at all, Denny? Nothing at all? We’re not leaving here till you say something.”
“Actually, I do have something to say. To Mrs. Q.” I turn to her. “Mrs. Q, after picking up all the garbage in the hallways like Jean Valjean, I now know how difficult your job is, and how much more difficult I made it for you. I’m sorry.” Mr. Morgan furrows his brow, so I explain: “Jean Valjean had a harder life than I do, much harder, I know. Most people do, including Mrs. Q.” Now it’s her turn to look confused. “It’s a play, Les Misérables, and there’s this guy who—”
“I’m familiar with the play,” she says.
“Of course. Forgive me. Anyway, I realize now how hard I’ve made it for you to teach. I now know what it’s like to argue with the animals in this school. I’ve been picking up trash, you see. It’s been difficult, but it was only fair. I’m not complaining about it. I shouldn’t have been selling candy in the first place.”
“WHAT ARE YOU, A CANDY DEALER?” It seems my dad’s volume switch is stuck on loud. “DON’T I GIVE YOU AN ALLOWANCE?”
“Yes, but it’s only a dollar and—”
“YOU SPOILED BRAT! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I—”
Mr. Morgan jumps like a heroic lumberjack savior to rescue me from annihilation, throwing out a two-by-four for me to grab on to for dear life. “In English, Denny has done some good work as of late.” Then Mr. Morgan must tire of rescuing me, as he yanks that two-by-four from my hands. “But Denny couldn’t stop laughing today in English class.” Okay, that’s enough. “And fell asleep in the hallway.” O-kay. “And is now in danger of failing my class.” Got it. “And is in danger of repeating the grade.” Yup, got it.
“Wait, you’re Mr. Morgan?” my dad says. “Mr. Life Is Good, right?”
This is the first time I’ve seen Mr. Morgan blush. “Well, I—”
“I’ve seen your work sheets. And what Denny’s done with them.”
He nods, his face reddens. “I’ve seen them, too.”
“Okay! It’s true!” I blurt out. “What’s done is done. I’m not proud of it. Any of it. But I promise, Mr. Morgan and Mrs. Q, that I’ll bloom in the very near future.”
My dad grimaces. “You’ll what in the very near future?”
“Bloom,” I say. “I’ll bloom.”
“Bloom?”
“Yes, bloom. It’s from Leo the Late Bloomer,” I explain.
“Leo the Late—what are you talking about?”
I stiffen. What am I talking about? That was Mom’s and my favorite book! He doesn’t even know what books Mom used to read me. He doesn’t know anything.
“I know what I’m talking about,” I say slowly, so that I don’t seem upset.
His chest swells. “No, you don’t know what you’re talking about! You haven’t said anything at this meeting!”
“Well, you don’t say anything at home!” I thunder. “You didn’t even mourn for her! You just watch TV all day and night and you never talk about her. You never even cried, not once! You didn’t care! You still don’t!”
I don’t mean to say that. I really don’t, especially with Mrs. Q sitting next to us. My dad’s face gets really red and he makes this weird noise that sounds like “hul.” Then he looks over at Mrs. Q and apologizes for my “inappropriate behavior.”
“Inappropriate?” I fire back. “Suddenly it’s inappropriate to have a conversation? It’s ridiculous to open up in a meeting? I’m sorry, gods and goddesses of your respective subjects, but I thought this meeting was about opening up and getting to the bottom of things, was it not?”
“I don’t … well, yeah … but I—” Mrs. Q stammers.
I turn to Mr. Morgan. “I thought we came here to reflect, did we not?”
He shakes his head without moving his head. The movement is in his owl eyes.
“I came here to reflect, Mr. Morgan. I wish the same of my dad.” I don’t see my dad’s hand swinging down until all I hear and feel is a thump and my head is a foot to the left. I think I bit my tongue and in front of me there are little white lights that look like stars. Mrs. Q gasps. My hand flies up, but it doesn’t know where to go, whether to rub my head or hit him back. So it sorta hangs there, like I’m stretching my shoulder. It’s funny, this in-between position, like when you try to shake someone’s hand and they want to give you the fist bump so you end up fist-shaking them instead. But right now I don’t see the humor in this shoulder stretch, with Mrs. Q touching her face and Mr. Morgan’s owl eyes now looking like the biggest-owl-in-the-forest’s eyes. He grunts—Mr. Morgan, I mean, like he wants to say something but doesn’t know exactly what to say, and I understand because I feel the same way, except my hand is still in the air.
If there was ever an appropriate time to curse at my dad, this feels like the moment. The curse would pale in comparison to his thump, which means they’d sort of cancel each other out and I’d still be the victim and we’d both be wrong. But Mrs. Q is here and my mom taught me never to curse around women, so I try a different method.
“You look upset,” I tell him, my voice steady despite the storm inside me.
He blinks. “I what?”
“It’s just an observation,” I say coolly. “You look upset.”
His mouth twitches. No, his whole face twitches. He looks like some old-school robot about to self-destruct and explode into smithereens. I want to keep watching, I have to keep watching, but Mr. Morgan stands up and yells, “Enough!”
And you know, when Homey don’t play that … he don’t play that.
And my hand is still in the air.
And my dad is crying.
LOSING
I have to tell him in person. It’s only fair. A day after the meeting of the minds, I meet Manny at the Warehouse and try to break the news.
“Such a jokester, you are,” Manny chuckles. “A regular court jester, this one.”
“No, Manny, I’m serious. I’m sorry.”
“What is this? Are you scammer-hating? What am I missing?”
“I’m not kidding. Chad took it.”
“Chad with the crazy calf muscles even bigger than Mr. Perfect’s?”
I nod. “He took it. All of it. About seven hundred dollars.”
“Uh-huh. Right. Where is the hidden camera?”
“I promise, I’m telling the truth. He jumped me in the halls and stepped on my face and took it from me. I swear, I’m telling you the truth. It pains me to say it. The truth hurts and this truth really hurts, but I have to give it to you, I have to tell you because we are or were business partners, and I really am very, truly, very, very sorry.”
Manny’s face tightens as the possibility of the truth sets in. He hits the floor as if a drill sergeant said to “drop and give me twenty,” but instead of doing push-ups Manny grabs my shoe, hikes up my pant leg, and tears into my sock. I feel his fingernails scratching against my ankle. There’s no money there. Nothing left.
“Manny, I’m telling you, it’s gone. I’m so s
orry. We’ve come so far and worked so hard, but there was nothing I could do and there’s nothing I can do and I’m sorry.”
Manny adjusts his glasses. “This is beyond flabbergasting,” he mutters, slowly getting to his feet. “Flabbergasting. Simply flab-ber-gast-ing. Flabbergasting.”
Shoeless and sockless, I try to give him a hug. A man hug. A chest bump. A Star Trek handshake. Anything to prove we’re still friends. That we’ll survive the dance together. That our friendship will last beyond this.
“You are on your own,” he says, shoving me aside.
* * *
Friendless and broke, I’d wander the halls alone for the rest of the day, but everyone in the whole school is herded to the gym like a pack of mindless cattle. The basketball team is holding a pep rally in the gym today before their last game against Monroe Middle School. Pep rallies. Really big deal. Like the crowd is really gonna change how the team plays the following day. Like a player’s gonna drive to the hoop, leap between two defenders, and realize, Oh yeah, there were so many happy cheering faces at that pep rally. And only then does he decide he wants to make the shot.
“Flying Dogs! Go Flying Dogs!” Allison shakes her pom-poms as the speakers blast our official school song of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and everyone barks. Like, really barks. Pep rallies … I’m telling you, the worst. A bad use of time. Bad music. Barking. And everything’s for show.
Sabrina’s standing next to me, leaning on the railing on the top floor of the gym—which the school uses for extra seating but never really needs because nobody comes to games or cares about pep rallies—so we’re alone, and she’s looking at me, waiting for an explanation, and I can no longer be all for show.
I owe it to her. I can’t be as lame and phony as this pep rally.
I watch Allison do three cartwheels and a backflip. Her face flushes as she gains her balance and raises her pom-poms. “Go, go Flying Dogs!” Barking fills the gym.
“Denny, what’s wrong with you? What happened to you?”
She tilts her head and looks at me the way my mom did when she knew I was keeping something from her. It makes me feel like I’m walking through a full-body scanner at the airport. Which is fine. Because I need to tell the truth. To everyone.
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