The Saturday Boy
David Fleming
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from comic books, it’s that everybody has a weakness—something that can totally ruin their day without fail.
For the wolfman it’s a silver bullet.
For Superman it’s Kryptonite.
For me it was a letter.
With one letter, my dad was sent back to Afghanistan to fly Apache helicopters for the U.S. army.
Now all I have are his letters. Ninety-one of them to be exact. I keep them in his old plastic lunchbox—the one with the cool black car on it that says Knight Rider underneath. Apart from my comic books, Dad’s letters are the only things I read more than once. I know which ones to read when I’m down and need a pick-me-up. I know which ones will make me feel like I can conquer the world. I also know exactly where to go when I forget Mom’s birthday. No matter what, each letter always says exactly what I need to hear. But what I want to hear the most is that my dad is coming home.
David Fleming
THE SATURDAY BOY
For a mouse,
a monkey,
and a bear.
1
IT WAS A RAINY and cold morning and the bus was late and so was Budgie.
I tried not to think about how cold and wet I was so I thought about superheroes instead. One of them had a cape and could fly. The other had mutant superstrength. There was a burning city and people fleeing in the background and everything.
* * *
“Your reign of terror ends here, Richter!”
“That’s what you think, Captain Glory! See how you like my earthquake strike!”
Richter clenches his hands over his head and brings them down, striking the ground with enough force to fling Captain Glory into the side of a building like a rag doll. The building shudders and bits of brick and mortar shake loose and fall to the ground. A fire hydrant breaks free from the asphalt, rocketing skyward on a great jet of water, and is lost in a haze of dust and smoke. In seconds, everything is drenched. The fire hydrant lands a block away with a loud CLANG!
Richter advances on the fallen Captain Glory, trapping him in the shadow cast by a city in flames. Captain Glory struggles beneath the rubble but can’t free himself. Water from the broken pipe rains down as Richter raises his fists a second time and… and…
Sneezed.
Then he noisily wiped his nose on his sleeve while Captain Glory just lay there shivering in a puddle.
* * *
After that all I could think about were wet superheroes. And then cold ones. So I stopped thinking about superheroes altogether.
Budgie usually wasn’t late because Budgie’s dad dropped him off every morning on his way to work. Budgie’s dad drove a big, silver spy car with leather seats that heated up when you pressed a button and on days like this he’d let me and Budgie sit in the back until the bus came if we promised not to touch anything. It was hard though because there were a ton of buttons in the back of Budgie’s dad’s spy car. One time Budgie said it had an ejector seat but when I asked him where it was he wouldn’t tell me. Not even after I offered him the crumble cake from my lunch box. Not even after I gave him the crumble cake from my lunch box. Now I don’t believe there was ever an ejector seat. I bet there wasn’t a button for a smoke screen, either. Or an oil slick. Sometimes I don’t like Budgie that much. Sometimes I’d just like to punch him one.
I looked off down the street through the rain. No bus. Then I looked off down the street in the other direction. No Budgie’s dad. Man, I could really go for some heated spy car seats, even if it wasn’t a real spy car. I could go for heated spy car seats even if I had to sit with Budgie, who always smelled like eggs and sometimes punched me in the leg for no reason. I could go for heated spy car seats because I was cold and starting to shiver.
A car pulled up next to me but it wasn’t a spy car. It was a minivan—a boring old minivan with boring, old, nonheated, regular backseats. It beeped at me so I moved over and stepped right into a puddle and now my sneakers were filling up with water. Now I’d have to dry my socks and shoes on the radiator and sit at my desk with cold pruney-raisin feet and probably miss recess. The window rolled down and I heard someone say my name.
“Derek?”
It was Budgie’s mom. Budgie was in the backseat laughing and holding his belly as if his guts were about to pop out all over the car. His face was red and wobbly. He looked like a big tomato.
Budgie’s mom got out of the car with an umbrella and came around and opened the door and I got in. I was dripping water everyplace like I was melting and my book bag was soaked and probably my books were, too.
Budgie laughed so hard he farted.
“Derek?” Budgie’s mom asked.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing in the rain?”
“Waiting for the bus,” I said.
“Derek?” Budgie’s mom asked.
“Yes?”
“It’s Saturday.”
2
INSTEAD OF TAKING ME home right away, Budgie’s mom drove to the ice rink to drop Budgie off for hockey practice because they were already running late. On the way, Budgie’s mom called my mom on her cell phone and told her about me and the bus stop and said she didn’t see how I could have gotten ready for school and left the house and been standing at the bus stop in the rain for so long without anybody noticing and that she wasn’t judging, she was just saying.
“I know it must be difficult, Annie,” she said, “given your, well, you know—your circumstances.”
But Budgie’s mom didn’t know. She was just one of those people who said they did. I got the feeling that sometimes the people who said they knew everything actually knew way less than everybody else. If that was true, then Budgie’s mom was some kind of reverse genius.
Budgie laughed at me all the way to the ice rink. Weird squeaking noises came out of him as he held his belly and I kinda wished his guts would pop out all over the car. He was going to tell everyone at school, I just knew it. By recess time on Monday, they’d be calling me “ducky-boy” or “puddle-duck” and they’d quack at me when I passed them in the hall or something. Monday was going to be bad. Maybe I could get a cold before then.
At my house, my mom waved to Budgie’s mom from the doorway but Budgie’s mom drove away without waving back. Because she had to drive me home she was going to be late for her hair appointment and if she was late for her hair appointment they might cancel it altogether and if that happened then her whole day would be ruined and it would be the end of the world. I might have left something out but that’s mostly what she told me.
Mom leaned against the washing machine in the mudroom and tucked her hair back. Normally her frizzy curls were tied back in a ponytail or a braid because of work, but this morning they were wild and free. When she asked what she was going to do with me, I suggested she give me a dollar. She smiled at that, which made me happy. Mom didn’t smile much anymore. Well, she did but most of the time it was like something was missing. You could tell.
“What happened this morning?”
“I don’t want to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s stupid,” I said. “I—it’s embarrassing.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. It’s me.”
“You won’t laugh?”
“Why would I—of course not!”
“I thought it was Friday.”
“When?”
“When I woke up this morning. I—hey! You said you wouldn’t laugh!”
“I’m not!”
“You are! You’re totally laughing at me!”
“I am not. I’m… snickering.”
“Well stop.”
“Sorry.”
> “Because it’s not like it never happened to you.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. Please continue.”
“When I woke up you were still sleeping and I didn’t want to bother you because I know you’ve been working a lot lately. So I got myself ready. And I went. By myself. So you could sleep. It was really very thoughtful of me.”
“Yes, it was, Piggy, very thoughtful. And I’m sorry.” She poked my belly and tweaked my nose—a thing she used to do when I was little. “I’m sorry it rained on you, and I’m sorry you caught Budgie’s mom in a bad mood when you were just trying to do something nice for me.”
“Apology accepted,” I said, tweaking her nose in return.
“And you shouldn’t worry about me like that when I’m sure you have big, important eleven-year-old things to think about instead, right?”
I shrugged. She was right. I did have important eleven-year-old things to think about. Lots of them. But they weren’t going to stop me from worrying about her sometimes. I didn’t tell her that, though, because as much as she didn’t want me to worry about her—I didn’t want her to worry about me.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “Buttloads.”
“Really? Buttloads? You’re going with that?”
I told her I was.
She hugged me tight, told me she loved me and to run upstairs and towel off and put on some dry clothes so I wouldn’t catch a cold. I found an extra-fluffy towel in the linen closet in the upstairs hallway. It was in the middle of the stack and when I pulled it out the whole thing toppled over. I tried to put them back the way Mom had but it didn’t look the same. Finally I just shoved them up on the shelf in a pile, closed the door, and went to my room to dry off.
The first thing I did when I came through the door was go up on my toes and touch the model P-51 Mustang fighter plane that hung from the ceiling so it would swing back and forth. I did the same to the Hawker Hurricane so it looked like the two planes were fighting. Man, if I had a big fan I’d turn it on so it would look like all my fighter aircraft models were flying around in a huge air battle. Every time I pictured it, though, the Apache helicopter always won.
The Apache is my favorite because it’s like the one my dad pilots. He surprised me with the model the last time he was home and we built it together. Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I stare up at it and pretend it’s a real helicopter, and me and Dad are in it flying top secret missions and battling the forces of evil to save the world. And we have cool code names and sunglasses. Before he left we hung the Apache helicopter model right over my head so it would be the first thing I saw when I woke up. That was a long time ago.
* * *
On Monday Mom drove me to school because I missed the bus and by the time I got there everybody knew about what happened on Saturday. I put my lunch box and my jacket in my cubby in the hallway and looked through the little window in the door. I could see Budgie and the rest of the class doing the morning assignment. Budgie must have noticed me in the window because he looked up from his work and smiled.
“Hey, Saturday boy!” he said as I opened the door.
I didn’t say anything. Instead I went to my seat and sat down and looked at the whiteboard. There was a sentence written on it that read, “Gracie, my dog, ate her dinner.”
There were other words, too. Words like “subject” and “verb” and “appositive”—names of things I was supposed to identify when diagramming the sentence. I opened my desk to get a pencil so I could get started but I couldn’t find one. I looked around the room but everybody was busy and it was very quiet. They’d all be done soon and Ms. Dickson would come around to check our work, only I wouldn’t have any work to check and then what?
She’d make an example of me is what.
Ms. Dickson loved making examples of me. One time she made me come to the front of the class and sit in an empty seat right next to her desk for the whole day. Then there was the time she caught me with a note and I had to write “I will not write notes in class” over and over on the whiteboard while she went on teaching. I bet this time she’d put me in the stocks and have the class throw tomatoes at me. She had a good imagination when it came to stuff like that.
I looked around and saw Ms. Dickson two rows away and steadily closing in. Luckily she was old and didn’t move very fast. One time Budgie told me that if you listened carefully you could hear her creak when she walked, but I didn’t believe him. At least I’d never heard any creaking and I’m a pretty good listener.
I searched through my desk. Where was my pencil? I was starting to think maybe Budgie had taken it so I’d get in trouble. I tell you, if I had some knockout drops and rope and a whole bunch of itching powder I’d fix his wagon real good. Or I could just tape a big bug inside his underwear.
Then I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. It was the new girl and she was waving her hand at me. I think maybe she’d said something, too.
“Hm?”
“I said do you need to borrow a pencil?”
Her name was Violet and she sat in the row next to me. She wasn’t like the other girls in my class. I couldn’t tell you how, exactly, she just wasn’t. The other girls were screechy and chirpy and traveled in flocks. But not Violet.
“Pencil?”
“Oh, just take it!”
Pencil? Yes! Pencil! And it didn’t even matter that it was girly with cupids on it or that the eraser was all pink and heart-shaped. I didn’t even care if everyone saw me writing with a girl’s pencil. I’m using a girl’s pencil! I got out a piece of paper and wrote so fast and hard that the point broke off.
“Derek!”
I jumped. Ms. Dickson had snuck up on me.
“Well this is interesting,” she said. “I think perhaps we should share this with the rest of the class.”
Ms. Dickson took my paper to the front of the class. I looked around the room. Everybody was looking at me and for once it wasn’t because I’d spoken out of turn or started babbling on about superheroes. This was different. This was the good kind of being looked at.
Then I looked at the whiteboard and so did the other kids and then they were looking at me again but this time they were looking at me the way they usually do. Then they started laughing. Ms. Dickson had erased the sentence about Gracie and her dinner and written a new one in its place. It read, “I’m using a girl’s pencil.”
And then, to my horror, she had me come up to the front of the room and diagram it.
3
THAT DAY AFTER SCHOOL I went to my hideout. But not right away. I went home first and had a snack but I was still angry so I didn’t really like it as much as I could have even if it was a Chocolate Ka-Blam and Chocolate Ka-Blams were usually my favorite.
My hideout was in the loft in the garage. I’d stacked up a bunch of boxes so you couldn’t see me from below, and if I pulled the ladder up, then there was no getting to me at all. I was totally safe. Except for the time I saw a fiddleback spider. That time I didn’t really feel safe at all. That time freaked me out and I didn’t go back for a month.
I had a milk crate to sit on and an old coat that I could put on in case I got cold. There was a skylight pretty much right over my head so I could read the comics that I kept in a plastic box. They were all alphabetized and individually wrapped. Sometimes instead of taking them out of the box I’d just run my fingertips along the top of them and listen to them rustle together.
They were treasures. Mine and my dad’s and even some of his dad’s—Red Vengeance number one, for example. Also Gumshoe Comics number fourteen featuring the first appearance of Guttersnipe, and issue twenty-three of The Marvelous Magpie where her secret identity is revealed. These weren’t just classic issues. They were frickin’ epic.
I opened the box and got out a comic and tried to read but couldn’t even though it was my favorite issue of The Exilers. Instead I sat on the milk crate and felt mad about things. I felt mad that Ms. Dickson had put my sentence about Violet’s girly pencil on the bo
ard where everyone could see it and I felt mad that everyone saw it. I felt especially mad at Budgie because whenever he got the chance after that he’d put on this high, girly voice and ask to borrow my pencil. Then when we were playing dodgeball during gym class he asked me if I had hearts on my panties and when I told him I didn’t wear panties he pulled my pants down.
Mom said I should turn the other cheek and be the bigger person and that Budgie only acts that way because there’s sadness in his life that makes him scared and insecure. I didn’t know if that was true and even if it was that still didn’t make it okay. So I sat there for a long time not reading comics and just being mad. Then I remembered I had some paper and a pen in the box and I got them out and started writing.
Dear Dad,
How are you?
Today was really good.
Ms. Dickson put my sentance on the board because she thought it was the best one. In gym class we played dogeball and I didn’t get out once. I even caught the ball when Budgie tried to get me out and everybody cheered. They carried me around on their sholders and everything. It was cool. Coach even said I could be a pro so you don’t have to worry about me. I’m doing fine. I can take care of mom with dogeball money.
Love,
Derek
I was in my hideout for so long that when Mom finally called me in for dinner the sky had started to change colors. It wasn’t really daytime anymore. But it wasn’t really nighttime, either. It was that weird, quiet place in between.
Me and Mom had spaghetti for dinner and by the time I was done eating and had gotten ready for bed and watched the new episode of Zeroman I’d pretty much forgotten all about Budgie and Violet’s girly pencil and the underwear incident. But once I got in bed and turned out the light I wound up staring at the Apache helicopter for what seemed like forever.
The Saturday Boy Page 1