by Gary Paulsen
I was trying to find my black jeans and figure out which shirts I’d pack. Dig out the old sleeping bag, too. I wondered how much spending money I’d have to bring.
I heard the front door slam and my father’s voice call out, “Helllllllllooooooo …” I stopped moving and I held my breath.
Dad was home.
I peeked out my door and down the hall. I had a perfect view of the kitchen.
Mom must have heard Dad. And learned how to telekinetically transport herself, because she was immediately standing in front of him in the kitchen.
She wasn’t wearing a happy face.
“Hi, honey,” Dad said absentmindedly as he shuffled through the pile of mail on the counter, and therefore did not notice her clenched jaw. Or fists. “What a trip. I’m beat. Oh, and that new dry cleaner you took my suits to last time is a moron.”
“Michael, you treat this house and family like a hotel and staff members. You never do the laundry or handle the dry cleaning yourself, you haven’t gone grocery shopping or cooked in years and you have never once cleaned the cat box. And then you undermine my authority by giving Kevin permission to go to a concert I’d already said no to.”
“We have a cat?”
“Yes! His name is Teddy.”
“When did this happen? Last week when I was in Philly?”
“Three and a half months ago when you were … gone. Like you always are.”
Is he always gone? I wondered. Yeah, I guess he is. I mean, he’s traveled a lot for work for as long as I can remember, but once I heard that Dad didn’t even know we had a cat, I realized that he’d been gone nearly all the time lately and that, even for this family, he hadn’t been paying very much attention to us when he was around. He was always frowning at his PDA or reading reports or …
Wait. Just. A. Minute. Here.
Come to think of it, I hadn’t been paying much attention to Dad or what he’d been doing lately either.
JonPaul once dared me to bite down on a wad of tinfoil. Being an idiot, I did. The same shock and pain and nausea zinged through me now when I realized how … detached Dad had become.
We’ve always taken it for granted that Dad goes on tons of business trips; Sarah scoops the little soaps and shampoos and shoeshine cloths out of his shaving kit, and Daniel has more pens and badge holders than any fifteen-year-old kid on the planet. That’s really all I think of when Dad crosses my mind these days—the junky stuff he brings home for us and the work he’s always preoccupied with between flights.
I couldn’t remember the last time Dad and I had hung out and watched a ballgame on television together or when all five of us had sat down at the dinner table or … well, anything much more than hellos in the hallway and notes to each other on the fridge about schedules and—in Daniel’s and Sarah’s cases … and Mom’s and mine … and now Mom and Dad’s—fighting with each other in the kitchen.
Everyone was so busy—work, school, part-time jobs and friends—and I guessed … I guessed we’d just gotten used to doing without Dad.
Man. You miss a little in this house, you miss a lot.
I was still staring at the floor, trying to make sense of what was going on in the kitchen, when I heard my mother blow her nose. She didn’t have a cold. She didn’t suffer from allergies. She must have been crying. This was really bad.
My dad started talking, but I couldn’t hear anymore; I was frozen in place in the doorway of my bedroom, clutching a pair of jeans.
I looked and saw Sarah standing at the bathroom door, her flatiron for her hair in her hand, and her mouth wide open. She too had heard everything—the bit about our cat, and Mom crying. Daniel was in his doorway, his head cocked, listening.
Sarah unplugged the iron and jerked her head at me as she passed me in the hallway. She snapped her fingers at Daniel.
We moved, unnoticed, past the kitchen, where my parents were standing in the middle of the floor silently looking at each other. Sarah led us out of the house and down to the curb, where she’d parked our/her car.
We all climbed into the car with jerky, unnatural movements like we’d recently been cut out of full-body casts and hadn’t yet become reacquainted with our full range of motion. Sarah sat back in the driver’s seat and took a deep breath, staring out the window at Mrs. Ebeling unloading groceries from her car two driveways over. Daniel sat next to Sarah in the front, looking down and picking a blister off his thumb like it was the most important thing that was going to happen all day. I sat stiff and tense in the backseat as if I was being graded on posture.
“Well,” Sarah finally said. “That was … ugly.”
I grunted, and Daniel made a sound that I couldn’t decipher.
“In Dad’s defense,” Daniel finally piped up, “Teddy’s not the friendliest cat who ever lived. I can see how Dad wouldn’t have noticed him, because Teddy’s always hiding. Most of the time you can only see his tail, and that’s if you know where to look. Or,” he added slowly, “if you look at all.”
“That’s the thing, Daniel: Dad doesn’t look.” Sarah was still studying Mrs. Ebeling as if the secrets of the universe, or at least of our family, could be found by determining the most effective manner of bringing groceries into the house. “And besides, the cat is not the problem; Dad not knowing he exists is merely a symptom of what’s wrong with this family.”
“How long have you known things suck?” We all asked each other the same question at the same time. If it hadn’t been so sad, I’d have been impressed.
“A few months,” Sarah admitted. “I asked them about it last week, but they said everything was fine, that they just had normal family issues to work through.”
“When he went away for over a week for the third time in a month.” Daniel was still working on that blister.
“About twelve minutes ago,” I said. “But I also realized, about eleven minutes, fifty-five seconds ago, that I am beyond dense.”
Sarah and Daniel nodded.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
Sarah glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Oh, god, Kevin, you look horrible. Put your head between your legs and take deep, slow breaths. And don’t barf in my car.”
“Our car!” Daniel and I roared together at her.
She looked startled. Then mad. Then she started to laugh. Pretty soon she was laughing so hard I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying.
Then I realized she was laughing and crying.
Daniel and I were too.
I didn’t understand what had just happened. Everything had been going so well. I mean, I guess not, but …
9. A GOOD LIE SHOWS YOU THE TRUTH
The next day, I just didn’t feel like myself. Sure, I watched Tina during class and at lunch and in the hall and on the way to the bus, and she was still so pretty that she made my heart twist.
I met with Connie and we discussed whatever it was she was talking about; it’s easy to be a good listener and make people think you’re part of the conversation if you just say “What did you do then?” a lot, because that way they think you’re paying attention, impressed with them. I think I said yes to something she had planned for next Monday at six-thirty in the evening, but I’m not sure what it was.
I even let Katie corner me in the hallway after school and go over her outline again because she’d changed seven words since the last time she’d shown it to me and she wanted to make sure I approved. And I agreed with her that apathy was going to ruin this society. Or something.
JonPaul and I walked home together. He’d been wearing a motion-sickness band around his wrist because, he said, he was queasy all the time. He had a portable, disposable heating pad wrapped around his midsection because he thought his lower back was going into spasms. He lifted a pants leg so I could see the Ace bandage he’d wrapped around the ankle he swore was strained. And he carried a packet of wet wipes to scrub down his desk chairs and locker handle. He showed me a face mask in his backpack. “I’m just glad it’s not cold
and flu season,” he whispered, “or I’d have to wear it. I’m just carrying it for security.”
It was only Thursday and I’d only been ditching class for four days, but I was getting homesick for my regular routine.
I’d somehow staggered through a long and weird day, but when I saw Auntie Buzz through the kitchen window as I got home, I headed straight over to Markie’s house for my babysitting gig without even dropping my stuff off in my room first. I wasn’t up for watching Buzz’s demo reel or hearing about the friendly-faced Buddha she needed for the Tibetan prayer room she was designing.
The now EpiPen-free Markie is a sheer terror.
I never feel right about trying to get out of babysitting, though, because his parents always seem so worried I’ll say no and sound so grateful when I say yes. I usually dread it, but the day after the Kitchen Scene, I was glad. And I hoped his folks would stay out really late. Because I didn’t want to run the risk of seeing my folks. For the first time, Markie looked good by comparison.
His parents call him precocious; I looked it up, and it does not mean the personification of an ear-splitting, nerve-jangling, head-pounding, exasperating plague that makes you long for deportation from your own country.
Little kids smell funny—like blue cheese and day-old socks and dog butt. Markie smells like all that, plus he’s so freaking hyper and chatty that I know why his parents make such a fuss about “date night” just to get away from him once a week.
Sarah thinks they go out to romantic dinners and take ballroom dance lessons or see black-and-white foreign movies with subtitles and deep meanings. I’m pretty sure they park their car in the empty lot behind the bank and just sit there enjoying the silence. As well as checking off the boxes on their countdown to when Markie turns eighteen and leaves home.
The only good thing about spending the afternoon and evening with Markie was that I wouldn’t have to think about what was going on with my folks.
On top of having a weird smell and the attention span of a fruit fly, that day Markie rushed me at the front door with a buttload of disgusting questions. Like he does every single time I come over. He must save them up for me.
“Dutchdeefuddy, where do farts come from? What are boogers made of? Have you ever tasted pus?”
Oh yeah, and he has this habit of beginning every sentence with the word dutchdeefuddy. Which does not mean anything. In any language I can find on the Internet. I finally decided that it must be like shalom or aloha and has as many meanings as necessary.
I always have to fight the urge to put Markie in a cardboard box in back of the furnace in the basement, securely closed with duct tape. Tied with stout rope. And swaddled with some sort of soundproofing material.
But that kind of babysitting doesn’t get a guy paid. So I sighed and answered his questions. Like I always do.
“Farts are made of methane produced during the digestion of food in the small and large intestines. Boogers are the thickened or dried mucus that the cells in the nasal cavity need to function. And don’t taste pus. Ever. It’s a terrible idea. Kind of like the time I told you not to shove baby carrots up your nose and then eat them.”
Then, grossed out by my efforts to educate a young mind, I sent him outside to play with the kids next door. When I looked out the window a few minutes later, Markie had seemingly cloned himself and there were fifty, sixty, I don’t know, hundreds of him running around the yard. I shook my head to clear my vision and made a careful head count.
Three. Three small children plus Markie. They were just moving so blazing fast that they looked like a crowd. Sounded like one too. I bet Hell sounds a lot like a bunch of little kids shrieking.
The only solution was storytime. Little kids are suckers for stuff like that. And it quiets them down like a tranquilizer gun.
I rounded them up, dumped some dry cereal in a bowl—because you can always get on top of the situation with little kids by offering treats—and put my creative powers to work.
“Well,” I began, “once upon a time, there was this guy. He was a … pirate-magician-dragonslayer-quarterback-sailer-musher-trapper who owned a carnival. He lived in suburban hedges waiting to find tiny soldiers for his army of puppy-sitters, who don’t have bedtime and can eat pizza for breakfast with potato chips and chocolate milk. He recognized them by the balloons they tied to their clothes.”
I was just getting into the story and wondering how it was going to play out, because I’m such a good storyteller that I’d fascinated myself, when the four kids jumped up, squealing for balloons. I blew up balloons until my cheeks ached and I was light-headed from oxygen deprivation. I tied the balloons to the kids’ arms and sent them outside. Thing 1, Thing 2 and Thing 3, along with Markie, sat quietly under the lilac bush, and I congratulated myself. Mary Poppins, eat your heart out.
Then I read the World section of the newspaper to see if there were any international military developments I needed to catch up with that would inspire me in my plan to make Tina think I would be a terrific boyfriend.
Eventually, though, Markie’s friends got called home for supper and I was looking down at one grubby kid with a limp balloon trailing behind him.
“Dutchdeefuddy, play with me.”
“Why don’t you watch a video?”
“Bo-wing.”
“How about getting out some of your toys?”
“Bo-wing.”
“All of them?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, you could—”
“Dutchdeefuddy?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s a ’vorce?”
“A what?”
“Mommy’s getting one. What is it?”
It was like looking at a tiny me.
What the sweet screaming monkeys was in the water in this neighborhood?
“Is it bad?” Markie asked.
I sighed and wondered what to say and if anything was going to go right for me that day.
“Well, Markie, it’s not good.”
His little face looked so miserable I wanted to kick myself. See? This is why I lie. When I lie, everyone always looks happy.
I thought of all the things I could tell him: ’Vorce is just another way to say his dad’s a superhero—the very one I’d told the story about earlier—going off to save puppies and kittens; his parents will probably patch things up; or ’vorces aren’t that bad, everyone’s having them, don’t be a baby and let it get to you.
I squatted down and looked him in the eye.
“A divorce means, well, that your mom and dad aren’t going to be married anymore. But … you’ll still be a family. Just different.”
“Daddy’s leaving again, isn’t he?” he asked.
“Yeah, probably.”
“Oh.”
Yeah, oh; that’s about the only response there is to news like that. Smart kid.
Then Markie said something that completely blew me away.
“Dutchdeefuddy, I want to be just like you when I grow up.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause when I asked everyone else about the ’vorce, they didn’t tell me the truth. But you did.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
“Uh-huh, ’cause now I know.”
Well, sure, every kid should have a full working knowledge of ’vorces, I thought.
Then Markie said the second most astonishing thing ever.
“You’re my dutchdeefuddy.”
“What does that mean, anyway?”
“Best, most favorite buddy. In the world forever.” He slipped his little paw into my hand and looked up at me with the sweetest smile I have ever seen in the world forever.
All those times, I’d thought he was babbling, and here the kid had been telling me how much he liked me.
“Thanks, Markie, you’re my dutchdeefuddy too.”
Maybe the truth, in small, preschool-sized doses, wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.
Markie, holding my hand and swinging his fee
t as he sat on a kitchen chair, looked pretty calm.
The opposite of how I felt.
Maybe Dutchdeefuddy was on to something.
10. A GOOD LIE CAN TURN ON YOU
I’d gotten home late from babysitting the night before. I hadn’t told Dutchdeefuddy’s parents about our talk. I was feeling about as wiped out as they looked. Romantic dates, right. My guess was that they’d been in a lawyer’s office.
When I got home, I avoided my family. Or they avoided me. Every door in the house was closed, with someone behind it. Alone. Even the door to the basement was shut, which meant that either Mom or Dad had camped out downstairs rather than share their room with each other. And Buzz didn’t swing by our kitchen on her way up to her apartment to say hi like she always does.
I didn’t sleep well, thinking about Markie and his parents. About me and my parents. About me. About how I lie to everyone. All the time. About everything. The only totally truthful thing I’d said lately was when I’d told Markie his folks were splitting up. And that had seemed to go a lot better than anything else had.
It was Friday morning and I figured I’d pushed skipping classes about as far as I could, but since the week was mostly shot, I’d take this one last day. I’d make it an even week and start fresh on Monday.
I chewed a granola bar as I walked to school and thought it might not be a bad idea if I dropped back from a 10 to a 5 in the lie department. Before things started getting out of hand.
Not that I expected they would, of course—I still had everything under control.
I’d start by telling Katie the truth about my health and begin doing my part on the assignment. We had until next Friday; I could easily make it up to her. No sweat.
I caught her in the hall by the front doors before the bell rang as she headed toward homeroom.
“Hey, Katie, I gotta come clean with you: I’m not really sick. I was just trying to get out of doing the project,” I blurted.