Sink or Swim

by Bob Balaban

  “That would be awful!” Sam says. We turn the corner at Maple and Euclid. We’re almost at his house.

  “It sure would,” I answer. “And here’s why it’s so unbelievably important to keep his visit a secret.” I lower my voice. “Stanley told me Aunt Harriet doesn’t want anybody to know about it, but she has a really weak heart. And if she ever found out that he was up here, and what he was doing? She would probably have an attack or something.”

  “Wow,” Lucille says, clearly impressed. “He must really trust you, Charlie.”

  “I’m one of his kind, guys. He knows he can count on me. He says that’s why he sought me out: he knew I would never let him down.”

  “This is so exciting I can hardly stand it!” Lucille shrieks. “It makes Forbidden Planet look like Sesame Street.”

  “This is our best friend’s relative we’re dealing with here, Lucille,” Sam explains. “It’s not a movie or a TV show. We have a life-or-death situation on our hands. Get a grip.”

  “You’re right,” Lucille says softly. “I’m awfully sorry.”

  “Where is Stanley now, Charlie?” Sam asks.

  “He’s off looking for the antidote. He wouldn’t tell me where. He can’t tell anybody. I promised to bring him breakfast first thing in the morning, before school. And he promised he wouldn’t go around stealing food anymore. And getting me into trouble.”

  We turn onto the Endervelts’ block.

  “Uh-oh, look who’s here.” Sam points to my mom’s beat-up red pickup truck. It sits smack in the middle of Sam’s driveway.

  We are so busted it isn’t even funny.

  My mom storms out of Sam’s house, followed by Sam’s two unhappy-looking parents. “Let’s go, Charles.” Mom must be really mad. She never calls me Charles.

  She yanks down the tailgate in the back of the truck and I crawl in. “I’ve been scared to death. Where on earth have you been, Charlie?”

  “I can explain,” I begin.

  “I certainly hope so,” my mom says through clenched teeth. She hops into the front seat next to my dad. My father just sits there staring silently out the window. My parents don’t say another word to me until we’re home.

  One we’re settled in the kitchen, my mom really lays into me. “First of all, we know you weren’t working on your English project because we called Mrs. Adams.”

  I sit at the kitchen table, staring at the floor, while my mom stands at the counter, making her famous high-fiber blueberry muffins. My dad stands next to her, helping stir the batter and looking really serious. “She says you handed in your project days ago.”

  “What? You talked to Mrs. Adams?” I practically shriek. “That is so embarrassing. Nobody’s parents ever call their teachers.”

  “I’m really sorry, honey, but when I got to Sam’s, you weren’t there. Mrs. Endervelt said you told her you were at Lucille’s house working on your English project. So I immediately called Naomi Strang, and when she told me you were at Sam’s house working on your English project, we didn’t know what to do.” Mom pours the batter into a greased muffin tin.

  My mom and Lucille’s mom talk to each other ten zillion times a day. If a fly buzzes in Naomi Strang’s kitchen, my mom hears about it two nanoseconds later.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on, honey. We’re worried about you. Is there something you want to tell us?” Mom asks, sticking the muffins into the oven. “Whatever’s on your mind, just say it.”

  “You will never be punished for telling us the truth,” my dad says. “I hope you know that, Charlie.”

  If only I could tell my parents. But I can’t. The lives of thousands of creatures depend on it.

  “I can’t tell you,” I finally say.

  “Why?” My poor dad looks so confused.

  “Because I made a promise that I wouldn’t. I feel terrible, but you don’t want me to go around breaking promises, do you guys?”

  Mom thinks for a while before she answers. “I guess not. But we don’t want you to go around keeping secrets from us, either.”

  “I don’t know what else to do. It’s nothing bad. I swear. I’ll tell you when I can. You’ll understand, I guarantee. Are you still mad at me?”

  Mom shakes her head. “Your father and I aren’t angry. Just disappointed.”

  • • •

  Much later that night, after I’ve finished my homework and gone to bed, Dave finally tiptoes into our room. He was helping his favorite girlfriend, Janie, with her trig homework.

  I’m still awake because I can’t stop thinking about how cousin Stanley is on a death-defying mission to save the mutant dinosaurs of Crater Lake from extinction, and I can’t even get it together to learn how to swim. “Hi, Dave,” I say quietly. “I’m up.”

  “I noticed.” My brother looks at me and scratches his head. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

  He comes over and sits on the edge of my bed. “What is it, little bro?”

  “I’m in trouble with Mom because I lied to her.”

  Dave reaches over and turns on my night light. “What did you lie about?”

  “I told her I was going over to Sam’s to study tonight. Only that’s not what I was doing.”

  “What were you doing, Charlie?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “How come?”

  “Promised I wouldn’t.”

  “Who’d you promise?”

  “Can’t say.”

  I would love to tell Dave all about Stanley and his amazing quest, but my brother is the world’s worst secret-keeper. He can’t even keep what he’s giving you for your birthday to himself. He doesn’t mean to ruin surprises. It’s just not in his nature to hide anything from anybody.

  “I see your problem.”

  “I just feel so yucky when I lie, Dave. Especially to our parents.”

  “Lying is never a good thing, little bro. But I’m sure you had a perfectly good reason. And it’s not like you were doing anything wild or crazy. . . . You weren’t, right?”

  “I don’t do wild and crazy things, Dave. You know that. I’m just this incredibly boring mutant dinosaur who can’t get anything right. I’m amphibious and I don’t even know how to swim.” I turn over on my side and stare glumly at the wall. “I’m such a loser.”

  “You keep telling yourself you’re a loser, and pretty soon you’ll convince yourself you really are one. And then you know what? You’ll really be one, Charlie. And that would be a shame, you know?”

  “Yeah. Right. Because I’m so terrific and amazing.”

  “No,” Dave warns. “Because positive thoughts can build mountains and doubts can quickly tear them down.”

  Dave is always saying stuff like this to me. He says it’s empowering. Basically it gives me a headache. He gets a lot of his material from The Karate Kid. He tried to make me watch it when I was nine. I fell asleep after the first three nanoseconds. It’s his favorite movie. It’s all about this kid who learns karate from a Zen master named Mr. Miyagi who goes around saying stuff like “Hope flies in on wings of despair” and “Inner peace will slay your outer dragon,” and other expressions that I totally do not comprehend.

  Dave hung the poster for the movie over his bed for inspiration. Sometimes he even talks to it before he goes to sleep. I myself prefer the original lobby card from George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead starring Duane Jones and Judith O’Dea, which hangs over my bed. I never talk to it. I’m afraid it might say something back to me and I would jump out of my scaly green skin.

  Dave reaches up and puts his arm around my slimy shoulders. “You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re kind, you’re unique. And I’m getting pretty tired of sitting around and listening to you telling yourself what you can’t do. Start telling yourself what you can do for a change.”

&nbs
p; “Thanks for the advice, Dave. It’s . . . uh . . . it’s very helpful.” I do not feel one iota better. But I can’t tell Dave that, or he’ll never stop talking. I yawn an enormous, fang-filled, seaweed-smelling yawn and stretch my stumpy arms.

  “Great!” My brother reaches over and carefully pats the top of my cranial ridge. “’Night, little bro.”

  “’Night, Dave.” He goes into the bathroom to wash up.

  Balthazar pokes my stomach with his big brown nose and rolls over onto his back. I reach over and tickle his pale pink belly gently with my claws, and quicker than you can say “sometimes being twelve is like flying a single-engine airplane over the Rocky Mountains blindfolded without a parachute,” I fall, exhausted, into a deep and troubled sleep.

  11

  DON’T LOOK NOW

  “SORRY I’M LATE, Doris. I can’t get this darn collar to close.” My dad races into the kitchen while Dave and I finish our egg-white omelets and gluten-free toast. Dad grabs his coffee cup and sticks out his neck, and my mom gets his shirt buttoned in about two nanoseconds. Dad sits down next to me and shoves a blueberry muffin into his mouth. Balthazar sits under the table eagerly licking up the crumbs at my dad’s feet as they fall to the floor.

  “Honey?” Mom clears her throat. Dad just sits there chewing and sipping his coffee. “Wasn’t there something you wanted to say, Fred?

  Dad finally gets the hint, spits out a mouthful of coffee, and nearly chokes on his muffin. “I understand you’re going through some difficulties, Charlie.” He wipes his mouth with his napkin. “And, well, your mom and I . . . we were teenagers once ourselves, as hard as that may be for you to believe, and we know it can be quite a difficult and a challenging time. So . . .”

  “Get to the point, Fred,” Mom mutters under her breath. She hands Dave his lunch. He winks at me as he scoots out of the kitchen like a rat deserting a sinking ship. Great timing, Dave!

  My dad swallows the rest of his muffin in one large gulp. “I want you to know your mother and I have given this a lot of thought, and after much discussion . . .”

  “Your dad and I are going to be driving you to and from school for a while, honey,” my mom finishes.

  “It’s not that we don’t trust you, Charlie,” my dad says. “It’s just that—”

  “We don’t trust you, Charlie,” my mom interrupts.

  I slurp down my glass of OJ with my long pointy tongue and try not to panic. “I get where you’re coming from.” What am I going to do now? I have totally got to bring the poor creature his breakfast before I go to school because (A) I promised, and (B) if I don’t, he’ll just go out and steal more food, and I’ll be in even more trouble.

  “We called the Endervelts and the Strangs and said we’d be happy to drive Sam and Lucille, too. They’ll be here any minute. Isn’t that nice?” My mom pours my dad some more coffee.

  “Yeah. Great.” When everybody sees my parents driving me to school like I’m eight years old, I will never hear the end of it. I might as well just paint a sign on my back that says SHOOT ME NOW and get it over with.

  The doorbell rings. My friends are here. “Let’s go, sweetie!” My mom tosses her apron onto the counter. “Don’t forget your backpack, Charlie!”

  How could I forget it? I’ve got the creature’s breakfast crammed into it: three jars of peanut butter, a loaf of bread, and all the canned tuna fish I could carry. It is so heavy I can barely hoist it onto my shoulder. I told Stanley I would meet him behind the rock outcropping at the corner of Cedar and Lonesome Lane on my way to school today. What do I do now?

  My parents each hold one of my arms and escort me out to the driveway like a convicted felon.

  “My mom says I can’t go to the Junior Scientists of America Jamboree in Wapakoneta, Ohio, next summer if I don’t shape up,” Lucille whispers as she helps me into the back of the truck.

  “I’m under house arrest,” I whisper back.

  “Like we didn’t notice,” Sam says quietly as he climbs into the truck.

  “Seat belts on, everybody!” my mom yells. We lurch noisily down the driveway and head for school. None of us wants anybody to see my parents driving us, so we scrunch way down and don’t say a word the entire way.

  When we get to school, we jump out of the truck and slink across the courtyard toward the front door, praying that none of the nine trillion Stevenson Middle School students pushing their way into the building will notice us. As if.

  My mom shouts above the roar of the crowd: “Wait a minute, sweetie!”

  It gets dead quiet as four hundred curious eyes turn to watch her get out of the truck and walk slowly up to me with outstretched arms.

  My knobby knees grow weak at the horrifying possibility that my mother will kiss me good-bye in front of the entire Stevenson Middle School, grades five through eight. I can feel my score on the popularity chart plunging to record-breaking low levels with every step she takes until at last she stands before me. “You forgot something, honey.” Everything turns into slow motion as she throws her arms around my massive neck and plants a big sloppy kiss on me. And then the entire middle school bursts into a round of spontaneous applause as she walks off, hops into the truck with my dad, and drives away like nothing happened.

  As we enter the school lobby, Craig Dieterly and a bunch of Banditos and One-Upsters amble over to gloat.

  “Cute, Swamp Thing, real cute!” My nemesis tries to tickle me under the chin, only fortunately he can’t reach that high. “Does Mommy know her itty bitty baby monster is a thief and a liar?”

  “Come on, Dieterly!” Lucille exclaims. “Charlie’s innocent and you know it. There’s no hard evidence.”

  “That’s what you think, Strang.” Craig Dieterly smiles malevolently. “There’s been a new development in the case.”

  “You are in so much trouble it’s crazy, Charlie Drinkwater.” Rachel Klempner smiles gleefully. “It’s so exciting I could burst. It’s like I’m living inside of my own personal CSI episode and I am never ever going to change the channel as long as I live.” She is practically salivating.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “They found a star witness,” Craig Dieterly says. “You’ll never guess who.”

  Sam, Lucille, and I exchange a worried glance.

  “My mother. She saw you sneaking around Beautiful Bites yesterday afternoon carrying a carton of those pies right after the robbery. She was on her way to work at the hospital. She’s a volunteer nurse on alternate Tuesdays. What do you have to say to that, Mr. McSlimy?”

  Oh no! She must have spotted Stanley and thought it was me. I don’t blame her. Even I can barely tell us apart.

  Sam pulls himself up to his full four feet eleven and a half inches. “I say prove it, Dieterly.”

  “I say don’t waste your breath, tubby.” Amy Armstrong doesn’t even bother to look up as she applies a perfect coat of smelly lacquer to her beautifully shaped nails. “Craig’s mother is telling the truth. Last year Mrs. Dieterly received a letter of commendation from the American Medical Association. And they don’t send letters of commendation to liars. So there.” Amy Armstrong tosses her head and I am practically blinded by the sunlight reflecting off her golden curls. Then she laughs her adorable laugh and for one brief moment I almost forget how insincere she actually is.

  “I didn’t do it,” I say. “I was home watching TV at the time of the break-in. I have witnesses.” I point to Lucille and Sam.

  “Your two loser friends would say anything to get you out of trouble and you know it, Mouse Breath.” Craig Dieterly snorts. “They don’t count.”

  “That’s not very nice,” I protest.

  “We’re interesting.” Amy Armstrong blows on her nails. “We don’t have to be nice.”

  “That’s right,” Norm Swerling chimes in. “And after Craig’s mom talks
to Principal Muchnick, they’ll be dragging your tail off to juvenile detention so fast you won’t know what hit you.” He cracks his gum for dramatic emphasis. I’m not exactly sure what juvenile detention is, but it doesn’t sound good.

  “What’s Muchnick got to do with this?” I ask.

  “Haven’t you heard?” Rachel Klempner says a little too eagerly. “Principal Muchnick wasn’t happy with the police investigation, so he started his own inquiry into the matter.”

  I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my very ample stomach. Now that an actual credible witness thinks they have seen me committing the crime, how will I ever get anyone to believe I didn’t do it?

  Craig Dieterly pushes me against the wall and starts twisting my shirt collar. “I didn’t do it . . . I swear . . .” I struggle to catch my breath. “This is all . . . a terrible . . . mistake.”

  I spot Mr. Arkady watching us from the far end of the lobby. Norm Swerling says Mr. Arkady keeps a special coffin in his office for occasional daytime use when the sun gets too bright. Norm Swerling will basically say anything about anybody as long as it isn’t nice.

  “Are you calling my mother a liar?” Craig Dieterly pushes his big stupid face right into mine. “You take that back right now, or else I’ll—”

  “Or else you’ll vutt, Meester Dieterly?” Our science teacher glides on over and intervenes. And not a moment too soon.

  “Oh, never mind.” Craig Dieterly skulks away. As he passes he murmurs to me, “Teacher’s pet.”

  “Mr. Drinkvater.” Mr. Arkady stares into my eyes intensely. “Let’s have a leetle chat, shall vee?” He beckons me to follow him with a long, crooked finger. “Come vitt me.” He swoops gracefully up the stairs to his office. I follow him, trying not to trip over my flippers and my eight-foot tail.

  Maroon velvet drapes cover the windows and block out every shred of daylight in Mr. Arkady’s inner sanctum. Row after row of small dead rodents and snakes floating in formaldehyde-laden glass jars line the shelves. Stuffed ravens stare peacefully down at us from their concrete perches. I settle into an enormous chair that looks like it’s made out of old bat wings and rat tails. It reminds me of a Bela Lugosi movie I saw when I was seven called Murders in the Rue Morgue. I like this place. I feel at home here. Mr. Arkady studies me closely. “How are tinks goink, yunk lizard?”