by Lisa Doan
It was a long ride home. My mom wasn’t convinced that I had attacked Terry Vance, but she wasn’t sure what to do about it. My dad said I was scrappy for taking on a much bigger kid and winning the fight. It all ended when my dad said, “Look! There’s not a scratch on him! Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee!” My mom responded by gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white and asking my dad to justify violence of any kind, which he failed to do. Then they talked about the cobalt stain on the carpet.
* * *
Suspension had its high points. Most important, it gave me some decompression time from Terry Vance’s mind games. Without having to constantly look over my shoulder, I realized I had been on a twenty-four-hour high alert. I slowly began to relax.
I found I liked having the house to myself, especially the kitchen. I could make myself a BLT sandwich with extra mayonnaise and minus the LT whenever I wanted. There was nobody conducting surveillance and saying, “Easy on the bacon, kiddo!” My mom called to check on me almost every hour for the first two days, so I just had to make sure I wasn’t chewing when I answered the phone.
My only mistake in managing myself was the morning I made a mug of dark roast coffee to go with my bacon-and-mayonnaise sandwich. I had been wanting to try coffee for a while and there was the Keurig machine sitting on the counter, just staring at me. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. After I drank about half the cup, my skin felt like it wanted to leap off my body and run down the street without me. I paced the house in a caffeine frenzy, opening closet doors and walking the halls until I somehow ended up in Mark’s room. He calls his room the inner sanctum and I hadn’t snuck in there for over a year. It looked pretty much like I remembered, as if a general of the armed forces lived there.
Everything Mark owned was in its place and lined up with military precision. His closet was organized by pants and shirts and then by color. I was looking through his books when a shelf collapsed. In my panic to get everything back the way I found it, I stumbled upon something no person should witness. My brother, Mark, the King Kong football player, wrote poetry. Worse, it wasn’t even poetry about a forest or a flower like we had been forced to read in school. Every poem was titled “Cheryl.”
CHERYL
Your brown eyes are like a hundred stars
Almost like you came from Mars,
Your mind is deep and impossible to know,
That’s why our love will always grow.
I treasure the few words you say
Even when they are mostly “Yay.”
Or your favorite word, “Whatever.”
It makes me love you forever.
There was more. Cheryl was compared to various planets, the sun, the whole universe, a comet streaking across the universe, the ocean, a summer day, a winter day, a bonfire, and, for reasons only known to Mark, he’d written a poem that was meant to be sung to the theme song from The Big Bang Theory.
I had to wipe all of it out of my brain. I threw water in my eyes to try to unsee it. I tried to file it in the part of my brain that never remembers stuff, like putting my name on papers or putting down the toilet seat.
There was something sickening about knowing Mark’s secret life of verse, like I had peered into the deepest regions of his mind that should have stayed dark forever. Then it occurred to me that knowing it wouldn’t be half as sickening as him knowing I knew it. I ran back to his room five times to check that I had really gotten it back to the way he’d left it.
After the coffee wore off, I started to calm down about it. After all, there were two other people living in the house. They could get blamed for reading the poems. They’d probably be the number-one suspects. I had let my dad take the rap for picking out all the marshmallows from the Lucky Charms more than once. Even if Mark realized somebody had been in the inner sanctum, there was no actual way to trace the break-in back to me.
Mark came home that afternoon and went to his room. I sat frozen in my chair, waiting for the sound of footsteps pounding down the hall. Nothing. It was a close call, but I got away with it. I vowed I would never drink coffee again. (FYI, Keurig machine—you’re gonna kill somebody one of these days.)
I noticed that when you only have homework to do and don’t have to sit through class, you can pretty much be done by noon. With all that free time on my hands, I supposed I couldn’t be held responsible for turning on the television. Technically, we were only allowed to watch one hour of television per day during the week because my mom said that mindless television can take over your whole life. She seemed to be right, because I found a show called Mission Almost Impossible on the Reality 24/7 network, and within ten minutes I was totally hooked. There was a whole marathon starting with the first show and then a new episode every day at two o’clock. Fifty contestants were given an almost impossible task and then whoever couldn’t do it got eliminated until there was just one winner who took home two hundred thousand dollars.
That first day I watched a full eight hours before I had to switch it off. (Binge watching—now I get it.) They were down to three people. My bet was on Hank Kraussner from Virginia, a favorite from the beginning. In the last round, they were sent to Mexico and had to eat tacos that had been marinating on a hot beach. The guy who got eliminated had dropped out in under an hour and run away shouting, “I don’t care about the money, where’s the toilet?” Hank just wolfed down those tacos and held his butt closed. He was killing it.
Rory came over every day after school, sneaking in the back door. He never showed up with any good news. In group, Terry had told everybody he had been bullied. The story immediately spread through the school, mainly thanks to Jana, who had streaked through the halls like a bolt of lightning to tell Marilee Marksley. Terry was now the courageous spokesperson for a grassroots campaign to end bullying. The nickname Nile crocodile had not caught on, though half of the kids at school now called me Bullywick. The other half called me Chadbully.
My last day of suspension was on a Friday, and Mission Almost Impossible ended with more questions than answers. The show closed with all three contestants hanging off a cliff in the Philippines trying to get a bird’s egg. If teachers put this many cliffhangers into their lesson plans, I would be on the honor roll.
I racked my brain on how I could see what happened next on the show. Maybe I could try to get suspended again? No, that was just the reality-show addict talking. Download it on my phone and somehow hide it? Probably not—Mrs. Musselman, who doesn’t believe in privacy for children, checked my phone on a daily basis. Snapchat had been operational for all of three hours before it got deleted. Convince my mom to finally fix the DVR? Possibly, though I would have to make a strong case and probably throw educational value in there somewhere. It might take more creativity and cunning then I actually had, but it seemed like the most likely idea. I had to give it a shot. It would kill me if Hank won and I wasn’t there to cheer him on.
* * *
Rory and I strategized my reentry into the sixth grade.
“You need to be humble,” he said. “Like politicians are when they get caught lying. They just say, hey—I misspoke, sorry ’bout that. And then everybody has to forgive them because they apologized for their supposedly terrible understanding of the English language.”
“But I didn’t misspeak. I got framed.”
“You got yourself into a feud,” Rory said. “Like the Hatfields and McCoys. You can’t win a feud, they just go on and on. And by the way, who feuds about a crayon? Who does that?”
Rory knew perfectly well that who does that was me and Terry Vance. He might be right about it just going on and on, but I couldn’t give up the idea of winning. I had too much skin in the game to walk away now.
“Just lay low and let it blow over,” Rory said. “Sooner or later, somebody else will do something weird and then the whole school will be talking about them instead of you.”
“Everybody is still talking about me?”
“Well, it’s hard
not to, what with your face being on the S.A.B. flyers.”
“The what?”
“The Students Against Bullying flyers,” Rory said. “It’s turned into a real movement.”
* * *
My mom leaned on the kitchen counter. “I’m sure you’ll be happy to get back to school. And your arteries will be happy to get off the bacon.”
I hadn’t been aware that my mom had been monitoring the bacon situation. There wasn’t much you could get past her—I wondered if leaving the pan in the sink had tipped her off. To get her mind off it, I said, “I’ve been meaning to mention, I really believe it’s time we got the DVR fixed, or if not, then we should just get a new one. I hear they’re very inexpensive these days.”
I held my breath and watched how that announcement would fly.
“Why do you need a DVR?”
And here we go. I was about to give the speech of a lifetime. I took a deep breath and said, “There’s so much culture on during the day. But before I talk about the amazing culture, I will point out that I only know that because I only watched one hour of it and then did not watch one hour at night so didn’t break any house rules. Now, back to the culture—”
“What show were you watching?” she asked, spraying down the counter and wiping it with a paper towel. She furiously scrubbed at the purple Kool-Aid stain that we all knew was never going to come out.
“Uh, it’s a show called Mission Almost Impossible,” I said. “What it’s really about is mental discipline and overcoming the odds, which I think is a great example to me as a youth in my formative years.”
My mom put down the spray bottle. “Is this some kind of reality show?”
“It is, in fact, real,” I said smoothly. “Just as documentaries are real, which we can all agree are highly educational.”
“Chadwick, don’t be ridiculous.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you had seen Hank hanging by his fingernails from a cliff in the Philippines!”
Mark had walked into the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and drank milk out of the carton while my mom had her back to him. He pointed the carton at me. “Sitting home watching reality shows is not cool. Grandma does that,” he said. “Remember how she got obsessed with Love Is in the Air? She just gave up trying to be a contestant last year. Very uncool, Chadwick.”
“Oh really?” I said. “Well, poetry is uncool also.” (That was a mistake, because now I had connected myself to the inner sanctum break-in.)
Mark whipped his head around and stared at me. I looked out the window like I had never said anything.
“No bickering,” my mom said.
I heard the front door slam. My dad came in and eyed my mom with the spray bottle in one hand and paper towel in the other. He casually slid his briefcase over the purple stain on the counter. “Wow,” he said, looking everywhere but the counter, “the place looks great.”
We had all gotten into the habit of trying to cover up the purple stain after my dad told us it made my mom talk about getting new counters that we couldn’t afford. My dad always complimented the look of the room as a distraction maneuver.
My mom used her spray bottle to slide my dad’s briefcase back in his direction. She stared down at the purple stain and said, “It’s still there.”
I got my dad his after-work Diet Mountain Dew so he could relax. Then I tried to make my case to him about the importance of finding out who would win Mission Almost Impossible. Once I started talking about the actual challenges, he started to get really interested.
“It’s a reality show,” my mom said, as if reality shows were some species of highly dangerous animal.
“What’s the prize?” he asked me, casually sliding his briefcase back over the purple stain.
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” I said.
“It’s a reality show,” my mom said again, staring down at his briefcase.
“Well, I for one would like to know if Hank claims victory,” my dad said to my mom. “It also occurs to me that if we finally fixed the DVR, I could record football like I used to. That way, if I get dragged to your mother’s house for Sunday dinner, I won’t miss the game.”
“Dragged to my mother’s?” my mom asked.
I backed out of the room and left my dad to it. In about a half hour, they would land on the conversation about the Kool-Aid stain and new counters. My dreams of a DVR were over.
* * *
My first post-suspension bus ride did not go how I thought it would, but I supposed I had been overly optimistic when I imagined I would get the silent treatment.
Jana said to Rory, “Friends don’t let friends bully.”
“Just say no to bullying,” Bethany called.
“Hey, Chadwick,” Carmen said, “did you know that bullies are really cowards?”
The rest of the kids on the bus turned to see if I did know that while gravely shaking their heads.
It was hard to believe that anyone could look at me and think bully who pushed a kid’s face into a locker grill. Rory and I had never even thought of throwing punches at each other. Both of us were terrified of getting hit in the face. The last time I had a physical fight was in kindergarten, over who had the right to water the lima beans on the windowsill. I got clocked by Mary Henswell and went home crying.
I had to report to the principal’s office before I could go back to class. Mrs. Jennings waved me in with a smirk. As I walked by her desk, I glanced down at her keyboard, as if to say, “Still searching for that elusive letter?”
“It’s good to see you, Chadwick,” Principal Grimeldi said. “I trust you’ve taken the past week to reflect on your actions.”
I figured the principal would not be impressed to find out that I had spent my suspension week watching a reality show, eating a pound of bacon, freaking out on caffeine, and trying to unsee Mark’s love poems, so I said, “Yeah, I’ve done a lot of reflecting.”
“And I hope your parents have located a therapist by now?”
I had forgotten they were supposed to do that. I didn’t want my mom and dad to get in trouble for not getting me help, so I said, “Uh-huh. Dr. Silverstein is great.” Hopefully, she wouldn’t find out that Dr. Silverstein was my dentist.
“Excellent. And have you brought the letter of apology you were to write to Terry?”
I reached into my backpack. I hoped my apology would get by her—I was pretty sure she expected something longer. But to be fair to myself, I really couldn’t be expected to write a whole novel for a crime I didn’t even commit.
Principal Grimeldi unfolded the paper.
Sorry dude.
“That is not sufficient,” she said, pushing the paper back to me. “At least one paragraph, please. Bring it with you to our next meeting.”
“Can it be a short paragraph?” I asked. “Technically, a paragraph could be one sentence.”
“Make it a proper apology, no matter how many sentences it takes,” she said. “Now, I planned to change your schedule, as you and Terry are in the same group. However, I thought it over and decided that tensions between you probably won’t be resolved by avoiding each other and the best venue for talking is group, after all. Terry is agreeable; in fact, he has handled this situation with surprising grace. But I must stress that you are not to display any aggression toward Terry or in any way make him uncomfortable. Do I have your word?”
I couldn’t believe it. While I was kicking back, watching a reality show with a plate of bacon on my lap, Terry had been busy brainwashing the principal. I should have known that when you’re in a hundred-years’ war with a crocodile, there’s no such thing as a day off.
“Absolutely,” I said.
CHAPTER NINE
Mr. Samson said, “And the question of the day is: What has been the most traumatic event of your life? I’ll go—six years ago, I proposed to my girlfriend. She stared at me down on one knee and said, ‘You can’t expect me to marry an elementary school teacher. I mean, what kind of vacations coul
d we afford? And look at the size of that ring. You’d need a magnifying glass just to show it to people.’”
Mr. Samson looked off into the distance and said, “It was at that moment when I realized she wasn’t madly in love with me, like I thought. She married a chiropractor three months later. They’re probably vacationing in the Caribbean as we speak. Who’s next? Yes, Bethany?”
“Robbed.”
“Are you talking about the nominations again?”
“Yup.”
“Anything else you want to say about it?”
“Nope.”
“Righty then,” Mr. Samson said. “Jana?”
“Mr. Samson,” Jana said, “I am no stranger to trauma. Only yesterday I realized that, although I have worked tirelessly, nobody has thanked me for all my efforts to make our dance the best fall dance ever. No, they are all just going to go and enjoy it without a thought as to what actually goes into planning such an event. I am not asking to be thanked, but a thank-you would be nice.”
Mr. Samson sighed. “Thank you very much for planning the dance, Jana. It will be the highlight of my social season. Your turn, Chadwick.”
I had already prepared what I was going to say to make sure it was good. Since I was probably on my way to failing Spanish, I couldn’t afford to fail group too. One class that went bad would be easy to explain to my parents. I would go with the tried-and-true “the teacher hates me” explanation. I had already prepared what I was going to say about Spanish, “el profesor me odia,” figuring that saying it actually in the language would make it more believable. But two teachers hating me would be harder to pull off. That would be the kind of thing where my mom would say, “Two teachers hate you? I better go talk to the principal about all your hateful teachers.” Then the truth would come out—my Spanish teacher didn’t hate me, she just hated my inability to speak Spanish.
“Besides being framed for two crimes I didn’t commit,” I said, staring at Terry, “I’ve been traumatized by amateur love poems. I’ve done everything I can to unsee them but they are burned into my brain and will remain a haunting memory until I’m old enough to be senile.”