by Lisa Doan
“It was the usual,” I said.
My mom turned to my dad and stared at him. It was the code stare for informing him that she wished she had a daughter to share things with because boys, who then grew up to be husbands, never share anything.
My dad raised his hands in the air and said, “How is this my fault?”
My mom flipped through my schedule. I’d stuffed it at the very bottom of my backpack, but Mrs. Musselman doesn’t believe in privacy for children, so she just dug it out.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “What is group? Group of what?”
And here we go.
“Well,” I said, trying to sound casual, “group is for … talking.”
“Talking about what?”
“I don’t know.”
My mom waved my schedule at my dad. “What the heck?”
My dad shrugged. “You always say we men don’t talk enough, maybe the school finally decided to do something about it.”
“Seriously,” my mom said, “what in the world are you talking about in this class?”
I had to tell her or she would never give up. Once my mom decides she’s going to know something, she transforms into a relentless she wolf. When she goes on the hunt, we’re just her helpless prey. “Well,” I said, “today the Nile crocodile was suddenly turned into a great guy because he once stole a box of Thin Mints from Suvi Singh. Now the girls in my group think he’s full of emotions like the guy in Vampires Have Feelings Too.”
“What?” my mom asked.
“That’s what I thought—what?” I said, glad to see that my mom shared my outrage. “How is it possible that my nemesis has suddenly been turned into a likable vampire?”
“Who is the Nile crocodile?” my dad asked.
“Terry Vance,” I said. I was a little surprised he had forgotten, considering how much I talk about him.
“Oh,” my mom said, “I thought Terry was the deathstalker scorpion.”
“That was two years ago,” I said.
“Chadwick,” Mark said, “for one thing, Lance Stalwart is just an actor. He’s not a real vampire. For another, you can’t have a sworn enemy until you’re old enough to join the military and have access to tanks and missiles.”
None of that sounded right.
“The guy pushed you out of the locker room in your underwear. It was just a prank,” Mark said.
That happened to be only the last prank Vance had pulled on me. We’d had gym together the year before and I always made it a point to be in the middle of a crowd while we changed clothes. It was kind of like the safety of the herd on the savannah—everybody knows it’s the ones at the edges of the herd or trailing behind that get picked off.
One day, Mr. Johnson had held me after class to work on my bank shot. Why he didn’t want to wait until I got taller I will never know. By the time he realized that it was totally hopeless and let me go, I was way behind everybody else. I cautiously cracked the locker room door and peered in. It was empty. Relieved, I threw off my gym uniform. Ten seconds later, Terry leapt from behind a mesh bag of basketballs and shoved me out of the locker room and into the hallway. Then he also held the door shut so I couldn’t get back in. I stood there in my underwear while the nurse told me to grow up and Myra Claybrook’s mom called me a creep.
Afterward, I thought of some witty replies I might have thrown back at the ladies, like, “Is my invisibility cloak not working again?” or “Who moved the locker room?” At the time, I just stared at them like my brains had liquefied and drained out of my ears.
“That was just the last thing,” I said to Mark. “There have been many, many things. Remember? My hair? The deadly sandwich?”
“Ha! The hair, that was so hilarious,” Mark said.
And there was the problem with talking about the crocodile—it just reminded people about me standing around in my underwear. Or it reminded them of my bald spots after the camping trip. Or it reminded them of me throwing up in class after I ate my whole chicken salad sandwich and then found an anonymous note taped to the bottom of my Ring Ding that said, “Your sandwich was out in the sun all morning—hahaha!” (I was sick for days.)
Every crime had been investigated but never solved. I knew who did them all, but I couldn’t prove it. My mom and dad said I couldn’t blame every single thing that happened to me on somebody else. They said I was getting old enough to take personal responsibility. I asked them how I was responsible for massive hair loss when all I did was shampoo my hair in a camp shower. They didn’t know.
Each time something happened, everybody told me to let it go. Someday, I would let it go. I would become a wildly rich agent for NFL stars, and Terry would be an out-of-work plumber. I would drive my Porsche convertible with a Super Bowl champion in the passenger seat past his beat-up plumbing van and wave. The scales of justice would have balanced. Then I’d be happy to let it go.
* * *
The next morning on the bus, I wondered if I were actually still asleep in my bed. Early morning dreams can challenge everything you know is true about the world while still seeming totally real. Terry Vance was sitting with Jana, Carmen, and Bethany.
They were deep in conversation. Rory was near the back of the bus, but I slipped into the seat behind Jana and motioned for him to move up.
“My dad used to be the chief mechanic at the Chrysler dealership. Until the accident,” the crocodile said. “A Jeep Cherokee fell off the lift and crushed all his fingers. They couldn’t be fixed so they had to be surgically removed. Now my dad runs his own repair shop, but he doesn’t make very much money. His whole career was wrecked.”
“Terry,” Bethany cried. “That’s so tragic!”
“Tragic,” Terry said, nodding. “That’s me.”
I leaned over to Rory. “Did you hear him? He’s really playing up this tragic stuff.”
Rory whispered, “You should’ve told Jana that your dad’s fingers got crushed by a Lamborghini. That would be more impressive than a Jeep. But it’s probably too late now—you’d just look like you were copying Terry.”
Rory was right. I should have thrown my dad in front of an expensive sports car. Then I would be surrounded by Jana and her friends.
“He’s not anything like Lance Stalwart,” I said loudly into the air.
Terry turned around and said, “What do you care what I’m like?”
“I don’t care what you’re like,” I said. “I’m just pointing out to Jana that you’re not like Lance.”
Terry smiled. “Pointing it out to Jana, are you? You don’t care to point it out to Carmen and Bethany? Or anybody else? Just Jana? Got it.”
Got what? What did he get?
I began to get a sinking feeling that what Terry Vance had just got was that I liked Jana Sedgewick. I didn’t know what he’d do with the information, but I was fairly confident that it would not involve helping me in any way.
* * *
That afternoon, as I lounged in math class, Jana’s voice boomed out of the loudspeaker. “Hello,” she said. “Testing one-two-three. Jana Sedgewick here. The sixth graders are in charge of planning the fall dance, so I nominated myself as chairman of the dance committee and it was seconded by Principal Grimeldi. As the duly elected chairman, I’m recruiting volunteers to help me plan the best dance ever. Meet me in the cafeteria after school to be a part of this exciting opportunity. Over and out.”
Joining the dance committee had possibilities. Even if I never got up the swagger to say anything past “hey,” my face would be lurking in front of Jana’s face at least two times a week. The dance committee might even be considered an overlap clique. She was already seeing me in group, so this might be enough lurking for her to get so used to me that she fell into liking me.
But would it be cool for a guy to be on the dance committee? Planning a dance sounded more like a girl thing.
Then I decided that was exactly why I needed to join. There would be no guy competition whatsoever. There would be no Terry Vance han
ging around like a tragic, stupid vampire. I’d be working closely together with Jana on an important project, a perfect opportunity to tiptoe to the front of the herd while nobody was looking. We might even end up with a lot of inside jokes that nobody else got. Adorable nicknames, perhaps? The Chadster? Jantastic? The possibilities were pretty endless. I felt my swagger making a comeback.
I thought I could use some backup, though. Invading the foreign land of an all-female dance committee would be a high-risk maneuver. Rory was the perfect wingman—a guy, but not a guy interested in Jana. Or a guy who girls found interesting.
I sprang the idea on Rory during lunch.
“Join the dance committee? That is totally lame!”
I knew Rory would resist, but I had come prepared to smash his arguments to pieces. “Your parents are making you do an extracurricular activity this year,” I said. “What’s your plan? Every single sport has a tryout. A TRYOUT. Like a test where you will be judged.”
Rory looked like I had just plunged his hands into a campfire. What he had failed to mention in group was why he was so against trying out for anything. In the third grade, he had played the web in Charlotte’s Web, the musical. First, he had stared out into the audience like he was frozen in time, which had been okay since he was the web. Then he had tipped over in a dead faint and had to be dragged offstage by his feet. He didn’t even have any lines, but he said that all those eyes staring at him in the darkness of the auditorium made him feel like he was taking some kind of unholy test and if he failed he would die. The next day, he started a notebook to keep track of things that might make him faint. Tests of any kind, ranging from dental X-rays to team tryouts, were in the notebook.
“Well,” he said, “planning a dance would technically fulfill my parents’ outrageous demands. So wait, there’s no kind of dance committee quiz, tryout, exam, speech, or essay?”
“Nope.”
Rory rubbed his chin. “What about snacks?”
“Sure,” I said, making a metal note to give Rory the granola bar in my backpack before he announced to Jana that he had been told there would be food.
“No to tests and yes to snacks,” Rory said in a thoughtful tone.
Rory was in.
* * *
After school, the cafeteria was empty except for a group of girls at the big center table. And the Nile crocodile. Seriously? First he’s getting sympathy from Jana in group, then he’s sitting with her on the bus, and now he’s joined her dance committee? He should be out robbing convenience stores, not getting involved in after-school activities. It was a stealth move by an apex predator.
My whole plan for dance committee was to quietly trot to the front of the herd. Now Terry was right in my way. On top of that, I would have to make sure I didn’t eat anything near him or put anything in my hair. I’d have to always remember to check my chair to make sure I wasn’t about to sit on something. Lurking was enough pressure—now I had to employ all my skill at evasion to make sure I didn’t end up falling prey to one of Terry’s pranks and looking like an idiot in front of Jana. How could I get rid of him?
The only glimmer of hope I could see was that Suvi Singh was there, too. She had already shown herself to be a person who was not fooled by Terry and had remained unconvinced of his similarity to Lance Stalwart.
Carmen looked up from the table at me the way she does, like I’m transparent and she’s looking at the wall behind me. “The chess club is in room 101,” she said.
“We’re here for the dance committee,” I said, wondering if I should be flattered that she thought I was smart enough to play chess.
“Oh,” she said, though it sounded more like, “WHY?”
Rory and I sat down.
Terry Vance caught my eye and winked. That could not be a good sign. What did it mean? I glanced at Rory, but as usual he was not paying any attention. He was smelling a spot on his shirt.
I tried to look at the crocodile without him knowing I was looking.
He winked at me again.
“Where are the snacks?” Rory whispered, having suddenly noticed the lack of a buffet.
I threw him my granola bar. Vance was sending me some kind of message. He was probably trying to scare me into leaving. I wasn’t going to do it. Not this time, crocodile. I had gotten a taste of swagger over the summer, and I was doing everything I could to hang on to the last shreds of it. Jana Sedgewick, the girl of all girls, was at stake.
“Everybody,” Jana said, “settle down. We have a lot to cover. First, we need to decide on a theme. We need something totally inspiring.”
My whole strategy had depended on casually lurking my way to the front of the herd with a minimum of talking. Talking, as I knew from past experience, could pretty swiftly lead to saying something stupid. But now that Terry had shown up, my plan had to change. I had to take a bolder approach. Terry looked like he was about to say something about the theme, but I decided to beat him to it.
“How about Guardians of the Galaxy?” I said in a rush. “Or Star Wars? Or we could go totally retro and do Star Trek.”
Rory gave me a thumbs-up. Jana stared at me like I had vomited in class again. This was exactly why I had planned on not talking. I had to think of something to save myself. “Or,” I said, “we could play music from the Bombtastics, who I totally love.”
“Who are the Bombtastics?” Suvi asked me. “What song would I know?”
I had no idea what song anybody would know, so I stared into space as if I were mulling over the Bombtastics’ greatest hits before deciding on the very best one.
“The Bombtastics were the premier boy band,” Jana said. “It was the breakup of the century and it destroyed lives.”
“You don’t look that destroyed,” Suvi said.
“She’s destroyed on the inside,” Bethany said.
So, I supposed the Bombtastics wouldn’t be the thing Jana and I had in common. It occurred to me that since Jana had red hair, she was probably Irish. We could bond over our love of Ireland. “How about Irish music, which is also good.”
“What’s Irish music?” Carmen asked.
“Well,” I said, “it’s music from the great country of Ireland. I think there are bagpipes involved.”
Suvi looked at me like my mom sometimes does—a mix of disappointment and deep concern for the workings of my brain. “Traditional Irish music pulls from a variety of historical periods, everything from Gregorian chant to Baroque.”
“I was thinking,” Jana said, ignoring my bid for Irish solidarity and Suvi’s history lesson, “of a Hawaiian theme.”
“Hawaii is so romantic,” Bethany said.
“We could paint a big sunset for the back of the gym,” Carmen said.
“And put plastic palm trees everywhere.”
“If we can get ukulele music, we can have a hula dance off with prizes.”
Jana turned to Terry, who had swiveled his chair around and now stared solemnly out the window. “Terry,” she said, “what do you think?”
I rolled my eyes. I was pretty sure Terry didn’t even know Hawaii was a state.
Terry said, “It’s a brilliant idea. It’s just…”
“Just what, Terry?” Bethany asked.
“We had planned to take a vacation to Hawaii right before my dad’s accident and we had to cancel, so the whole thing ended up doubly tragic. I will never surf the magical shores of Waikiki.”
I snorted. I couldn’t help myself. Like Waikiki would ever let in Terry Vance!
“Oh my gosh,” Bethany said, “your dad lost all his fingers and you couldn’t go on vacation?”
“Forgoing a vacation is not unusual in the American workforce,” Suvi said, “though studies continually point out that it is detrimental to productivity. For myself, I am vigilant about scheduling time for frivolity.”
What the heck was frivolity? Was it some kind of board game?
“We didn’t know about Waikiki,” Jana said to Terry as if Suvi and her frivolity were talki
ng in another room, “otherwise we wouldn’t have brought up such painful memories.”
“It’s okay,” Terry said to the girls as he turned his chair to face them. “If I have any flashbacks to the day we were supposed to go, that day when our plane took off without us, I know you guys will be there to support me.”
“Flashbacks!” I cried.
Everyone at the table was silent. Rory leaned over and whispered, “It’s when you remember something and it’s so real it’s like you’re reliving it.”
“Technically,” Suvi said, “it’s a vivid memory that comes on suddenly, usually associated with trauma.”
I looked around the table. I could not believe that Jana, Bethany, and Carmen were buying these stupid stories. I couldn’t tell if Suvi was or not, she was too fixated on all the facts she knew. I felt like I needed to bring a rational perspective to the conversation.
“One time, my family was supposed to go to the Jersey shore and that got canceled because my brother had strep throat,” I said. “I never had any flashbacks about it.”
Rory nodded. “I remember that.”
Jana stared at me silently. She leaned forward and said quietly, “Are you actually attempting to compare the magical sands of Waikiki to the Jersey shore?”
I was. But clearly that was a mistake. “No?” I whispered back.
The rest of the meeting was spent hammering out the details of who would do what. Suvi would shop around for prizes that were cheap, but didn’t look cheap. Bethany and Carmen would find tropical decorations and make posters to put around the school. Rory and I were supposed to paint an inspiring sunset for the back of the gym. As dance committee chairman, Jana would manage the budget, decide on refreshments, and supervise the subcommittees. Just as I hoped Terry would be assigned to the subcommittee of “mop the gym floor,” he nominated himself as vice chairman and Jana’s personal assistant.