by Lisa Graff
I swallowed the rage down.
Instead, I turned to Fallon. “Are you okay?” I asked. Which was a stupid question, because it wasn’t like she sat on a firecracker and her butt exploded. She sat in a pile of mashed potatoes. She wasn’t bleeding. She didn’t need a bandage. She needed a washing machine.
Fallon was swallowing down her own chestful of rage, I could tell just by looking at her. Her face was red and blotchy. She looked like she might cry, even. Her hair, if it was possible, looked even frizzier than it had three seconds ago. She took a deep breath. She turned to look at me, eyes purposefully not on Jeremiah.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s eat lunch.”
“But—” I started. She had potatoes on her weird plaid skirt. Smooshed all into the fabric, probably seeping over the hemline onto her leg.
“I said,” she snapped—and it was the first time I had ever seen her even the slightest bit angry—“I want to eat lunch. I’m fine.”
Well, what was I supposed to do? I sat.
I set my tray on the table, still trying to control the fire in my stomach, while Jeremiah and Stig just laughed about the potatoes, like it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Noah pretended he was super interested in something at the bottom of his backpack, and definitely did not look at me. Fallon worked on yanking her plastic utensils out of their package. Spork, knife. Individual salt and pepper. She pulled each piece out calmly, slowly, like there wasn’t a wad of potatoes mucking up her skirt. But her face was still red. Her scar was purple. And her hands were shaking, just a little.
I tried to ignore that boiling rage on my insides. I tried so hard. Because obviously Fallon didn’t want me to do anything, and she was the one with mashed potato on her, so that’s what I knew I should do—nothing.
I curled my hands into tight fists.
“Where did you even get that stupid skirt?” Jeremiah said to Fallon. She slowly opened her container of chocolate milk. “You know it looks dumb, right?”
“It’s a shame you think that,” Fallon told him. I had to admit, her skirt was particularly weird today. Like something you’d have to wear at a private school, only it didn’t exactly fit her very well. The waist was rolled over at the top, and she was wearing a piece of rope as a belt. “I think it would look really nice on you.” She took a swig of milk. “It would show off your legs.”
If you hadn’t been able to see her—her red face and her shaking hands—it would’ve been really funny, Fallon telling Jeremiah he’d look nice in a skirt. But from where I was sitting, it wasn’t so funny.
You could tell Stig didn’t know from funny, though, because he hooted like it was hilarious.
“Shut up,” Jeremiah told him.
Noah was still searching inside his backpack for who-knows-what.
“If you want,” Fallon said, sticking her spork into her mashed potatoes, “you can come over sometime. My mom has some blouses that would really bring out your eyes.”
“You’re so lame,” Jeremiah shot back. Which was pretty much the lamest comeback on earth, but when you were a bully like Jeremiah, with lackeys who’d do whatever you asked them to, I guess you didn’t have to be too witty with the comebacks.
Anyway, I could already tell this wasn’t going anywhere good. “We should go,” I whispered to Fallon. “I’m not really hungry anyway.” But she just shook her head and dug into her potatoes, glaring at Jeremiah the whole time.
So it wasn’t like I was going to leave her there or anything.
“You’re ugly.” That’s what Jeremiah said to Fallon next.
Fallon took another bite of potatoes. “Aw, shucks,” she said, batting her eyelashes. “I didn’t know we were writing each other love poems yet. It seems like that shouldn’t be till the fifth date at least.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. My toes were tingling now. I had to do something.
While Jeremiah stared at Fallon, confused, I decided what I needed to do.
Fallon was halfway through her potatoes already. “Well, here’s one for you then,” she said. “Just so we’re even.”
With my hands hidden under the table, I slooooowly began to push my tray, through the metal weave of the mesh top. Invisibly. So you couldn’t see it was me.
“You have the brains of a wet turkey,” Fallon said with a smile. She was clutching her hands to her chest, like a lovesick girl in a romantic movie. All swoony.
I inched the tray closer to Jeremiah’s lap. Closer. Mashed potatoes with gravy. Open container of milk. Glops of meat loaf. Closer and closer I pushed the tray. The key was doing it so slowly that Jeremiah wouldn’t notice it moving.
“And the wit of a dead sloth,” Fallon said.
Closer and closer.
“Whatever,” Jeremiah shot back. Which was a terrible comeback, again. But I bet he was so busy thinking it up that he still hadn’t looked at the table. He still hadn’t noticed the tray.
“I’ll write it down for you,” Fallon said with a smile. “In case you forget it. You can hang it in your locker.”
And then, just as the tray was two inches from perfect topple territory, Fallon—without even looking my way—picked up her spork and smashed it handle-first into my arm through the tabletop.
“Ow!” I shouted. I pulled my arm out from under the table.
The tray remained untoppled.
“What was that for?” I hissed at Fallon.
She snatched her lunch tray off the table. “Let’s go,” she told me.
“But—” I said, my eyes darting back to my own tray. I’d had him. I’d totally had him, and Fallon had stopped me.
Jeremiah and Stig and Noah just kept looking at us, one to the other, clearly confused.
Heck, I was confused.
“I said,” Fallon told me, standing up, “let’s go.”
So what could I do? I followed her.
“You two are both turd faces!” Jeremiah shouted at our backs as we left the cafeteria. Only he didn’t say “turd faces.”
I could feel everyone’s eyes boring into me.
“Where are you going?” I called to Fallon as we entered the hallway. We were both still holding our lunch trays, and she was walking so fast, I was practically running to keep up. “Why did you stop me back there? I was totally about to mess with him.”
Suddenly Fallon spun around to face me. Only I hadn’t known she was going to spin around, so I nearly careened right into her. My milk sloshed out of its carton. “I didn’t ask you to do that,” she told me.
“But I did anyway,” I said. “What’s the big deal?”
“I was fine,” she said.
“I just thought he could use a lapful of lunch food,” I said. I was confused. Why was Fallon so mad? All I was trying to do was stand up for her. I was trying to be her friend.
“So what would happen then, huh?” she asked me. Her face was redder than it had been before. It was like I’d made her more upset than Jeremiah had. And that didn’t make any sense. “He’d still be a jerk, he’d just be a jerk covered in milk.”
“That’s kind of the point,” I said.
Fallon didn’t say anything, only stood there, in the hallway, looking around her like she didn’t know where to go.
“You’re covered in mashed potatoes,” I reminded her. It wasn’t usually the sort of thing you needed to remind somebody, but she seemed to have forgotten. “You should go to the bathroom and try to clean it off. I’ll wait for you.” She was still just standing there, clutching her lunch tray. It was weird. I didn’t like it. “Then we can go to the library and look stuff up on the Internet or something.”
She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. Her voice was small. It sounded weird coming out of her mouth. Fallon was not, I realized, a quiet girl.
“Um, okay,” I said slowly. I didn’t really know why a
person wouldn’t be able to go to the library, but I wasn’t exactly going to argue about that right now. “We can go somewhere else then. We’ll find another lunch table. Or go to the blacktop.”
Fallon shook her head again. “No,” she said. Quiet, but insistent. “Not that. I can’t go . . .” She darted her eyes away from me. “I don’t like to go into the bathroom at lunch. There’s always girls in there. This same group of them, doing their makeup and stuff. I don’t . . .”
She didn’t need to tell me any more.
“Okay,” I said. I wanted to put a hand on her shoulder, or something, to calm her down. But I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do. How was I supposed to know what to do? “Well, but you can’t walk around with mashed potatoes all over you. Why don’t you wait here and I’ll get paper towels from the boys’ room? I’ll be right back.”
“No, it’s okay,” Fallon said. She’d stopped shaking. “I know where we should go.”
So that’s how we ended up outside Ms. Emerson’s room. Which is pretty much the last place I wanted to be.
“Why here?” I asked. I already had to see Ms. Emerson a million times a day. I definitely didn’t want to make it a million and one.
“She has a sink,” Fallon said, peeking in through the window of the door, still clutching her lunch tray. “And I know she’ll let me use it. I have her for social studies, and she’s nice.” That was when I started to think that somehow the mashed potatoes had made Fallon go insane. Could mashed potatoes make you go insane? “Good, she’s there,” Fallon said. “Come on, let’s go in.”
“Wait, no,” I said, tugging on her arm so she’d stop trying to open the door. “Ms. Emerson is awful. There must be another teacher you can go to.”
“She’s not awful,” Fallon told me. “I like her.”
“She hates me,” I said.
“So you stay outside then. I’m going in.” And just like that, she left me standing in the hallway.
I guess I could’ve left. Gone to the library by myself, or gone back to the cafeteria, or even worked on my Book of Thoughts inside the boys’ room, if I’d wanted to. But I hadn’t told Fallon I was going to leave, and what if when she came out, she wondered where I’d gone?
I waited.
It took fifteen minutes. Or longer, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have a watch. Anyway, I stood there, in the hallway, holding my stupid lunch tray, not doing anything. I didn’t even finish my lunch. I wasn’t hungry. Every once in a while I’d peek through the window. Ms. Emerson was helping Fallon at the sink, handing her paper towels. She didn’t look like a wrinkled old crone when she was talking to Fallon, but I knew better. Anyway, I felt pretty weird staring at the two of them through the window, so mostly I stared at my feet. Whenever someone walked by and looked at me funny, I acted like I was opening the nearest locker.
When Fallon came out, she said, “You’re still here.” And she seemed happy about that. She smiled at me. Her face wasn’t red anymore.
I smiled back. “Still here,” I said.
“So”—she looked around her—“where should we go?”
“The library?” I said.
“Sure.” I tossed my lunch tray in a garbage can in the corner, and we took off down the hall.
“By the way,” I said. “I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“How you got your scar.” Fallon tilted her head to the side, watching me. “When you were born,” I told her, “you had a Siamese twin. Joined at the nose. And when they separated you in the hospital, you were left with a giant scar.”
Fallon’s smile grew even wider. “I like that one,” she told me.
The rest of lunch wasn’t too bad, after that.
• • •
When the final bell rang, it was time. I made my way through the gym, outside to the ball field, where intramurals were meeting. One foot after the other. Slowly. Very slowly. The walking was hard. The thinking about it was harder.
The first thing I saw, when I got outside, was a group of kids, all guys, sitting on the benches that lined the field. My new teammates, I guessed. I took another step. Bend the right knee, bend the ankle, set it down, shift the weight, left leg up. And repeat. Made my way over.
I was almost all the way there when I noticed Noah Gorman, sitting on the very end of the bench.
Noah Gorman. Great.
He was staring at his sneakers, looking about as angry as a person can look. I guess I must’ve just been standing right in front of him, watching him—which, okay, was kind of weird. Because after a few seconds or so of that, he noticed I was there and lifted his head up and said, “What do you want?” in about the least friendly way you can say such a thing.
“Are you on the team?” I asked him. I didn’t mean to say it not-friendly. It just sort of came out that way.
He glared at me. I swear, glared. Like he’d been taking lessons from Annie Richards. “Looks that way, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Ah!” came a booming voice behind me. “Our old pal Trent!”
I turned around, even though I didn’t have to. I knew who it was already, without even looking.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here.” It was Mr. Gorman himself.
I’m pretty sure my mouth was hanging open. I couldn’t help it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him. Which, okay, was sort of a stupid question.
Mr. Gorman laughed at that. “I’m coaching intramural baseball, Trent,” he said. Big smile. Like a wolf. “The real question is, what are you doing here? You joining the team, son?”
I looked around. Everybody on the benches was staring at me. Everybody.
And that’s when I heard it, from right behind me. The sharp, distinct CRACK! of a bat hitting a ball dead-on.
So I flinched. So what?
“I . . . ,” I said. I took a step back. “I . . .”
My arms had gone clammy. That fast, and it had happened.
“I . . .”
“Trent?” Mr. Gorman asked me. He looked genuinely confused. Lowered his clipboard to look at me and everything.
“I messed up,” I said. It was hard to swallow. Hard to breathe. “I didn’t mean to come here.”
Mr. Gorman was not looking less confused.
“I’m supposed to be at Movie Club,” I said. And with that, I took off. Back toward the gym. Walked off that field as fast as a person can walk without sprinting.
I missed sprinting.
• • •
When I showed up at Fallon’s house, she didn’t even ask what had happened. She just opened the door and let me inside. Her father barely looked up from his eggs.
Anyway, Little Big League was a pretty good movie.
TWELVE
There was one good thing about Jewel Annabelle Hoffsteader Zimmerman, at least. Apparently just her being born made Dad and Kari so tired that they couldn’t even contemplate doing anything else, including spending time with the three children Dad already had. So for almost a whole month, I didn’t have to think of a single excuse for missing out on dinners at St. Albans, or weekends at Dad’s either. Doug and Aaron got out of it, too, without even trying.
I didn’t hear anyone complaining.
I guess I technically didn’t have to go to Movie Club all that time, but I went anyway. I figured Fallon would be upset if I didn’t go. After a while we got sick of baseball movies (which I didn’t know was possible, but I guess it was), so even though there were lots more baseball movies left in the world, we moved on to other types. Mostly Fallon picked the movies, because she was very opinionated when it came to those things, and arguing with her was the pits. But I didn’t too much mind most times. The Princess Bride and Coraline were good. I could’ve lived my whole life without watching Little Women, though.
Anyway, Dad must’ve final
ly remembered he had sons, because one Saturday morning, three days before Halloween, I was stuck in the car with Aaron and Doug, heading over to their place Whether I Liked It or Not. (You can guess if I liked it or not.) I thought Mom might give me a break, but she said when it came to meeting my baby sister, she wouldn’t hear any excuses. That, she said, was a thing you just did.
If you asked me, she was only excited to get all us boys out of the house. She said she hadn’t made it to book club in a thousand years.
• • •
The baby was a poofed-up pink jellybean of fuzzy fleece, lying in a motorized baby-rocking thing in the living room. That was the first thing we saw when Dad opened the door—the pink baby in her pink motorized rocking thing, with Kari perched on the edge of the couch, cooing at her.
We went over to examine the baby. I’m not sure any of us cared too much about babies, but it just seemed polite.
“Wash your hands, will you?” Kari told us. “Before you get too close. We don’t want to give Jewel any germs.”
Jewel. Like she was the most precious thing in the world.
• • •
“So what do you think?” Dad asked when we were all sitting around the table eating turkey sandwiches. (Aaron and I made the sandwiches ourselves, because Dad said now that we had a baby in the house, we all had to “pitch in.” Doug had to vacuum the living room while we were on sandwich duty, though, so I think Aaron and I won.) Well, Kari wasn’t eating, because she was rocking Jewel, who also wasn’t eating, because she was screaming. She did that a lot. You’d think it would be impossible to hold a conversation with a screaming baby in the room, but spend more than an hour with a month-old infant, and suddenly you’re a pro.
“What do we think about what?” I asked, chewing on my sandwich.
Dad laughed. “About your sister.”
“Oh.” I swallowed. “She’s fine.” She looked like a fat pink grape with arms, but I didn’t think that was the kind of thing you were supposed to say.
Under the table, Aaron kicked me. “She’s beautiful,” he told Dad.