“He quoted an authority,” Bradley finally said when it became clear no one else had anything good to say. “That always improves an essay.”
“But not when the authority is a dictionary,” Melissa objected. “That is so dull and trite.”
I kept waiting for Chelsea to say something nice, since I’d said something nice when she read what she’d written, but my essay was so bad, she probably couldn’t think of anything. My plan to spend all of seventh grade making a good impression on her was off to a really slow start.
Lunchtime came and my list was still just a blank piece of paper.
My lunch money was in my pants pocket, not my backpack, so if I hadn’t been in pain, I could have bought something to eat. Instead, I just sat moaning at our table in the cafeteria while Luke talked about Holly, who he’d seen in the lobby when he went to the movies Friday night with Ted and some other kids from his social studies class. I had spent Friday night at home playing a computer game on-line.
Then Luke started to practice counting to ten in Korean with Ted, who was taking some kind of test with him in taekwondo at the end of the month. I was thinking, Is it my imagination, or is being left out of absolutely everything a bad thing? So I didn’t notice Mr. Kowsz limping across the cafeteria toward us carrying something until he was almost on top of us.
“I happened to be walking through the lobby on my lunch break and met your grandmother, Rideau. She brought this in for you,” he said to me, handing me my backpack. He sort of jerked his head toward the cafeteria door. I looked and saw Nana standing there. She started waving at me. She’d gone home and changed into one of her real estate agent suits, high heels, makeup, and jewelry. She’d done her hair.
Mr. Kowsz leaned toward me a little bit, as if that were enough to make what he then said to me confidential, which it wasn’t. “Your grandmother looks very familiar to me. I’m wondering if I know your grandfather. Is he still working?”
“He’s dead,” I told him.
I’m absolutely certain that for just a second that old coot smiled. Then he tried to look sad and told me he was sorry to hear that. If I had been him, I would have left after that. But he hung around, cleared his throat, got kind of nervous, and said, “Has he been dead long?”
That was a question I’d never expected to hear from him. “I don’t know,” I said. “He died before I was born.”
“Really?” Mr. Kowsz replied. He looked over at my grandmother and gave her a smile and a little wave.
My mouth dropped open, which made the wires and brackets that had been tightened that morning rub against the inside of my mouth so suddenly that my eyes started watering again.
“She’s not really that good-looking,” I wanted to shout after Mr. Kowsz as he sort of hopped back across the cafeteria toward Nana. “She dyes her hair.” But all I could get out was a little squeal, the way you do when you’re trying to scream in a dream.
“Oh, Kyle, man,” Luke said as we watched the two of them leave the cafeteria together. “Mr. Kowsz is going to hit on your grammy.”
“Moo Kowsz is going to be your new grampy,” one of the other guys added.
“Are the items on your list really the worst?” the author of Happy Kid! had asked. “Or do you just think they are?” I’d have to say that as far as Mr. Kowsz becoming my new grampy was concerned, we were definitely talking about the worst. The absolute worst.
CHAPTER 7
When my mother got home from work that afternoon, I told her she owed me another dollar. I showed her the chapter in Happy Kid! about recognizing negative thinking and explained that I’d kept a list of every negative thought I’d had all day just the way the book said I should.
“Oh, Kyle, that’s wonderful! It’s the most positive thing you’ve done in over a year, maybe more.”
“There isn’t anything on the list, Mom, because I’m not negative. Everything that happened today was bad.”
Mom pounded the kitchen counter with her fist. You would have thought she’d just found out I’d been selling stolen goods or something.
“Do you think I want everything that happens to me to be so awful?” I asked her. “I would love to find out that I’m negative and that things really aren’t all that bad. But how are leaving my backpack in Nana’s car and having Ms. Cannon chew me out for being irresponsible and not having my homework anything but bad? Oh, and by the way, she thinks you shouldn’t be making orthodontist appointments for me during the school day.”
“What?”
“She told me that in front of the whole class,” I said.“Wait. There’s more. We had to read our essays out loud in English class, and everybody hated mine. Then I found out at lunch that Luke went to the movies last weekend with a bunch of kids from his social studies class I don’t even know. Gym classes start this week, and today was my day to have gym instead of health and living. I was the only boy in the locker room wearing briefs instead of boxers. It’s as if some announcement went out over the summer telling everybody to make the switch, and I didn’t get it. I looked like a freak. I don’t know what went on in Spanish because I don’t understand Spanish. And then in science—”
“Honey, calm down. You know and I know that things just weren’t that bad. You were able to eat lunch with Luke—that’s a good thing. And underwear is nothing to get all excited about. I will buy you some boxers before your next class. As far as Spanish goes, would you like us to get you a tutor?”
“No! No, no, no!”
“Kyle, get a grip on yourself. You’re just blowing everything all out of proportion.”
“Oh, yeah?” I exclaimed. “Here’s something I’m not blowing out of proportion. Moo Kowsz is after Nana. And I’m not the only person who thinks so. The guys at lunch said the same thing.”
For a few seconds Mom stopped jabbering about how I couldn’t tell what was going on in my own life. I think maybe she was stunned. Then she asked, “ ‘After Nana,’ as in he wants to ask her out?”
“What other kind of ‘after Nana’ is there?”
Mom made me tell her every word Mr. Kowsz had said and how he looked and how Nana looked.
“This is wonderful!” she exclaimed.
“How can you possibly get that out of what I just said?”
“Do you know how many years it’s been since your grandmother has had a date?” Mom asked me. Then she started jumping up and down and shouting for Lauren so she could tell her the whole thing.
“Get a grip, Mom,” I told her. “You’re blowing this all out of proportion.”
Dad stayed calm when he heard about Nana and Mr. Kowsz. Too calm.
“Trotts is the gateway to hell,” I reminded him, “and Mr. Kowsz is the gatekeeper! You have to do something to stop them from seeing each other. How much more embarrassment can I take?”
Dad laid his hands on my shoulders and smiled sadly. “Don’t worry. You’re going to find that there is no limit to the amount of embarrassment you can take. And by the time you get to be my age, you’ll be so used to being embarrassed, you won’t even notice anymore.”
“That’s something to look forward to,” I said. “But what am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
“Try to remember that there are no documented cases of people dying of embarrassment. You can live a long and healthy life while being totally humiliated.”
After dinner I went upstairs to do homework. I hadn’t been able to get much done after school because I was so sure that the telephone was going to ring any minute and Nana was going to announce that Mr. Kowsz had asked her to go to bingo with him or something. I still had plenty of stuff to do that I hadn’t even pulled out of my backpack yet. I worked for almost an hour, then reached into my backpack for my social studies book. Instead Happy Kid! came out.
I looked at it and thought how funny it was that Mom had bought it for me, because she really needed a self-help book herself. I ought to find her a book called Get Real! It could be filled with passages like “You’re happy to
have your mother-in-law go out with a guy who patrols middle-school bathrooms for evildoers as if he’s some kind of undercover agent? Get real!” “You think it’s just fine to be wearing the wrong kind of underwear in front of absolutely everybody? Get real!” Yeah, Mom needed a book that would wreck something for her the way Happy Kid! had wrecked the first day of school for me.
The stupid thing was just sitting there in my hand. What does a person do when he’s holding a book? He either puts it down or opens it up. I’d been doing homework for an hour, and almost anything will distract a person at that point. So I opened the book up and read a page.
Something to Look Forward To
Okay, sometimes things really don’t go the way you want them to. That’s no reason to go nuts and get down on the whole world. Sometimes you have to wait for what you want. In fact, most times you have to wait for what you want. Just think of it as something to look forward to.
“Ahh!” I shouted and slammed the book shut. Something to look forward to. I had just said those very words to my father.
I figured I must have read the passage wrong, so I picked up Happy Kid! again, planning to try to find that same page and check it out. I didn’t actually have to look at all. The book fell open wherever it would, and I looked down.
Something to Look Forward To
Okay, sometimes things really don’t go the way you want them to. That’s no reason to go nuts . . .
There it was, the same page.
I had spent enough time watching the Sci Fi Channel to be able to tell what was going on. The book’s binding wasn’t too tight. Not after all this time. No, the book was sending me messages. Wasn’t it? Or was that just too crazy to be true? Maybe not. Because if there was a creepy book with superpowers anywhere in the area, wasn’t I the most likely person to get stuck with it?
“Something to look forward to”? How could that be a message for me? What could I possibly have to look forward to?
Maybe . . . Chelsea? Talking on the phone with Chelsea? Walking in the halls with Chelsea? Going to the prom with Chelsea? Okay. That would be cool.
Over the next couple of days the book fell open to the exact same “Something to Look Forward To” spot whenever I held it by its spine and let it flop open on its own. It wouldn’t go away. But if that chapter was a message for me, what was it supposed to mean?
I couldn’t get it out of my mind. After a while, I started noticing things happening that I thought might relate to the passage in the book.
On Thursday afternoon, while Lauren was setting the table for dinner, she asked my mother—again—to buy her a car.
“No,” Mom said without looking up from where she was chopping a lot of green peppers and onions, even though she knows I hate them.
“Okay, then. Can I take yours to the movies tomorrow night?”
“Why don’t you take your brother with you?” Mom suggested.
“What?” Lauren and I both shouted.
“Tomorrow is Friday. Maybe Kyle would like to go to the movies, too.”
I should never have told my mother about Luke going to the movies without me. I should never tell my mother anything. I wanted to go to the movies with Luke. With Bradley. With a group of guys. With Chelsea! But with my sister?
“You only allow me to drive with one other teenager in the car,” Lauren said. “I want that one other teenager to be Jared.”
“Shouldn’t your boyfriend be driving you to the movies instead of you driving him?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t want her riding with Jared,” my mother objected.
“None of my friends have to follow these insane rules about having to have their driver’s license for three months before they can have other teenagers in the car with them and another three months before they can have more than one,” Lauren complained. “And my friends all have cars. What are we, Amish or something?”
“Lauren, dear, don’t make fun of people who don’t have your access to electricity, cosmetics, and zippers,” Mom said.
Car fights can go on for hours at our house. Days even. I started to head back up to my room, when all of a sudden I realized something. “A car is something you need to wait for, Lauren. Think of it as something to look forward to,” I said.
“I’m seventeen years old. I’ve looked forward to it long enough,” she yelled at me.
“I was just pointing out that you shouldn’t go nuts and get down on the whole world because you can’t get what you want right away. And now that I’ve said that, I’ll be on my way.”
“Oh, wait, Kyle,” Mom called when I had almost made it out to the hallway. “Do you want a ride to the movies Friday night?”
“He can’t sit with us,” Lauren said. “Not that he’d want to because we’re not going to see anything about depressed superheroes or geeks saving the world.”
“That’s supposed to be some kind of slam about Master Lee II: The Undead, isn’t it? Well, it’s not coming out until November,” I told her. “And, no, I do not want to go to the movies Friday night. I plan to finish the book I’m reading for social studies then. It’s an excellent book.”
“Oh, honey, you can read another time. Are you sure you wouldn’t enjoy getting out of the house?” Mom insisted.
“No, he wouldn’t. He loves it here,” Lauren said.
“She was talking to me!”
“Kyle, you’ve got to get out of this house,” Mom said. “It’s not healthy for you to be here all the time by yourself.”
“If I had a car, I could take him places,” Lauren offered. “Except not to the movies.”
“I don’t mind being here,” I said. Though I did. The place was driving me crazy.
“Well, I mind,” Mom said. She shouted it, actually. “I cannot stand seeing you here alone any longer! I don’t want to hear that you have too much homework. You think of something you want to do, or I’ll think of something for you.”
Lauren looked from Mom to me and said, “Like what?”
“I’ve been thinking that maybe Kyle would like to do something at the new Teen Center,” Mom suggested.
“Oh, Mom, nobody goes there,” Lauren objected. “Please. I can’t have it get around that my brother has been going to the Teen Center.”
Mom smiled at me. “There’s always the youth group at the church here in town. I’ve met the woman who runs it many times, and I know she’d love to have you join them.”
Both Lauren and I screamed, “No!”
“Taekwondo!” I shouted. “I’ll do taekwondo!”
“Get me a car, and I’ll drive him there,” Lauren offered.
“What is going on in here?” Dad asked as he came in the back door. “I can hear you guys shouting out in the yard.” He dropped his briefcase on the kitchen counter and sighed. “You know, I used to come in here after a hard day of work, and these sweet little creatures would come running up to me shouting ‘Dada!’ and throw their arms around me. Where did they go?”
“Dada!” Lauren shouted as she threw her arms around him. “Kyle is doing taekwondo, and I’m getting a car.”
She had that only half right. I was going to do taekwondo, but owning a car was still something Lauren was going to have to look forward to.
After the way my mother had carried on about me doing something after school, I thought she’d shove me into the car and have me in a taekwondo class that very night. But no. Three more days passed, another school week had started, and I still wasn’t enrolled at Goldman’s Taekwondo with Luke and Ted.
And Chelsea.
“Your mother talked with my mother about it for forty minutes on Saturday,” Luke said on Monday. “What’s left to know?”
We were in art class, which was sort of like a study hall with pictures. Each day Mr. Ruby gave us a little lesson on some kind of cartooning, which seemed to be the only kind of art he did, and then carried his own sketchbook over to the window and left us to do pretty much whatever we wanted so long as we pretended to be drawing and didn
’t make enough noise to attract teachers from other rooms.
“My mother spent an hour and a half this weekend on-line doing research on how to choose a martial arts school,” I told Luke. “I kept telling her she was wasting her time because I was going with you or I wasn’t going at all, but nothing would get her out from in front of that monitor. She’s planning to stop at a store after work today so she can buy a book on the subject. Then she’ll have to read it. And then she says we have to make an appointment with Mr. Goldman so the two of us can meet him and discuss his educational philosophy.”
“All my mother discussed with him was his fee,” Luke said. “You know, once you finally sign up for classes, you’ll still have to meet with Mr. Goldman for a couple of private lessons. He’s got to show you how to do the kicks and tie the belt on around your dobok and give you a talk about self-control, being humble, and what he’ll do to you if you hurt anybody.”
“Oh. Well, that’s something to look forward to. I hope.”
That was when it hit me. It was so obvious. The message in Happy Kid! wasn’t about Lauren having to wait for a car at all. It was about Chelsea. It was about me waiting to be with Chelsea—at taekwondo. It was about taekwondo being something I could look forward to.
I was practically jumping up and down on my stool, thinking, Yes! That is something I can look forward to! when I caught a glimpse of Mr. Kowsz looking in at us through the classroom’s open door. I accidentally made eye contact with him, and he smiled at me. I gasped, my hand slid across my paper, and the superhero I’d been drawing was left looking as if he’d thrown himself on a long spear.
“Luke! Mr. Kowsz just smiled at me,” I whispered.
“Uh-oh. His head looks just like a skull when he does that.”
“I’ll get rid of ol’ Moo Kowsz for you,” Jake offered without even looking up from the cartoon he was drawing of a guy putting out a fire without a hose . . . or a watering can, either. His right arm flew up in the air, and he gave Mr. Kowsz the finger. Mr. Kowsz whipped out his detention pad.
Happy Kid! Page 7