The Saturday Boy

by David Fleming

  It wasn’t fair. On any other day I bet he didn’t even take the time to chew but today he didn’t even open his lunch box. Now not only did I not get my revenge but also since the shrew thing didn’t happen there was nothing to make everyone forget about the diarrhea thing so I was going to have to deal with being called “squirt” for the next week or so. The worst thing, though, happened in the middle of word study. I opened my desk to get a pencil sharpener and found the shrew right on top, which startled me so much I screamed.

  10

  I COULDN’T WAIT for the day to be over. All I wanted was to be at home and away from school but I had play rehearsal, which meant I’d have to stay even longer. Plus, Violet was going to be there and even though she was one of the only ones who didn’t laugh or make fun of me or scream or pretend to faint or anything, she’d still been there and seen the whole thing and that was kind of embarrassing. Maybe if I didn’t talk about it then neither would she.

  She was sitting in a seat in the front row of the auditorium reading a book. I sat on the stage. Mr. Putnam had forgotten something and had gone to get it and it was uncomfortable sitting there with Violet in the empty auditorium and not saying anything. I decided to say something but when I opened my mouth I swear I thought different words were going to come out.

  “I don’t really have diarrhea.”

  Violet looked at me. I could feel my face turning red.

  “Then why did you say you did?”

  Budgie’s face popped into my head. I didn’t want it to but it did and now it was taking up all the room and I couldn’t think about anything else. I felt myself getting angry so I jumped down from the stage and took off up the aisle.

  “Where are you going?” Violet yelled after me.

  I didn’t answer her. Instead I went out into the hallway. It was quiet with all the kids gone and my footsteps seemed really loud as I paced back and forth. I wasn’t really watching where I was going and I slipped on something and fell down. When I got up and looked around I found that I had stepped on a Magic Marker. I blamed Budgie. If he wasn’t such a fat jerk none of this ever would have happened. I wished I’d never even met him. I picked up the Magic Marker and took the top off.

  * * *

  “What’s a ‘doosh’?” said Mr. Putnam behind me. “And who’s Budgie?”

  I blinked. The wall in front of me was covered in Magic Marker. Someone had written bad words about Budgie over and over again in big letters. There was something in my hand and I didn’t have to look down to know what it was.

  I wished I could just disappear. I closed my eyes tight and counted to ten but when I opened them I was still there. The words I’d written about Budgie were still on the wall and the Magic Marker was still in my hand. I handed it to Mr. Putnam.

  “Do you know your way to the principal’s office?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Go there please. I’ll be along in a minute.”

  “Mr. Putnam?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He just looked at me. Then he nodded and went into the auditorium and I was alone in the hallway again. I looked at what I’d written. It wasn’t very nice. I’m not even sure Budgie had been this mean. I licked my finger and tried to rub off some of the Magic Marker but nothing happened. At the very least I was going to be back here with a sponge and a bucket until the late bus came.

  * * *

  I gave the lady at the front desk my name and told her I was there to see Mr. Howard. She picked up the phone and pushed a button and said a few things and then hung up and sort of nodded her head at the door.

  Mr. Howard looked up from his desk when I came in. His bald head was so shiny I swear I could see myself in it. He also had a little beard that he was always petting like it was a guinea pig or a hamster or something. There was a candy jar on his desk, only instead of peanut butter cups or red hots it was full of paper clips. I wondered if that meant he kept candy in his paper clip dispenser and, if so, where he might be hiding it.

  “Derek?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Would you like to tell me why you’re here?”

  “No sir.”

  “Derek?”

  “Yes sir?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I wrote something.”

  “What was it?”

  “Something bad.”

  “Where?”

  “Um… the wall.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I was mad.”

  “You think you were mad?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Who were you mad at?”

  “Budgie.”

  “And what did Budgie do?”

  Mr. Howard put his elbows on his desk and looked at me and waited for me to answer. Budgie hadn’t really done anything except hurt my feelings and that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to write what I’d written.

  “Nothing,” I said. “He didn’t really do anything.”

  “Then why did you write it?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  Mr. Howard stared at me. He petted his beard. After a minute he stood up and went to the door and opened it.

  “Show me,” he said.

  * * *

  On the way back to the auditorium we ran into Mr. Putnam. He stopped and we stopped and Mr. Putnam and Mr. Howard started talking. Unfortunately they were talking about me and what I’d done to the wall. Mr. Putnam even had the Magic Marker with him and he handed it to Mr. Howard, who looked at it and shook his head. I stood there wishing I could turn invisible like Fadeout or that I had Opaque’s mutant ability to cloud people’s minds. At this point I’d have even settled for Mysterion’s lame Cloak of Obscurity. I didn’t have any of those things, though, so mostly I just stared at my feet and felt bad.

  The afternoon didn’t get any better. In addition to scrubbing the wall clean, Mr. Howard said I’d have to stay after school every day for a week and scrub marker off all the walls, even in the girls’ bathroom. Then he had me apologize to Mr. Putnam for wasting his time and Mr. Putnam said maybe the next time I decided to act like a hooligan I should first consider who might be affected by it. And if that wasn’t enough, then Mr. Howard made me call home and tell Mom what happened, which was the worst part of all.

  Mom was quiet on the phone. When she gets like that it means I’ve let her down and she’s disappointed in me. I didn’t like that. One time Budgie said that disappointing your parents was worse than making them mad because if your parents got disappointed too much they could stop loving you.

  “I’m really sorry, Mom,” I said.

  “Me too.”

  “You still love me, though, right?”

  I heard Mom clear her throat but she didn’t say anything. There was just more quiet.

  “Mom?”

  “Of course I still love you, Derek. I’m just…” she took a deep breath and let it out.

  “Disappointed?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I said I was sorry.”

  “I know,” she said. “Listen, I have to go now, Derek. Don’t miss the late bus, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. “And Mom? Mom?”

  I was going to tell her that I loved her again so she wouldn’t forget but she wasn’t there anymore. I really, really hoped Budgie was wrong.

  * * *

  Aunt Josie made a Mexican stew for dinner that had red chiles and pork in it and I only knew that because that’s what she’d told me when I asked what was wrong with the chicken. I didn’t remember ever having pork before but by the way the smell punched me in the face I didn’t think I’d like it too much. Or at all. During dinner I made sure to fill up on tortilla chips so I wouldn’t be able to finish it. Aunt Josie looked at me like she knew what I was doing but didn’t say anything.

  “I’m full,” I said. “Is there anything for dessert?”

  “I thought you were full.”

  “W
ell, I’m a little bit full. I saved some room for dessert.”

  “There isn’t any.”

  “Not even a Chocolate Ka-Blam?”

  “No,” said Aunt Josie. “But if you’re still hungry you could finish your carne adobada.”

  “My what?”

  “Your stew.”

  I looked at the stew and the stew looked back. It seemed angry.

  “I’m full,” I said. “Can I be excused?”

  “Fine,” she said. “But no TV.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Because of what happened at school today. Your mom asked me not to let you watch TV.”

  “For how long?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know—one hour, two hours…”

  “Dude, I think you’re in a little more trouble than you realize.”

  “But that was at school! I can’t get in trouble twice for the same thing can I?”

  Then I remembered what Mr. Putnam said about my actions affecting other people and I wondered if this was what he’d been talking about.

  “I don’t know, Derek. She’s pretty mad.”

  “I thought she was disappointed!”

  “She’s mad and disappointed.”

  “She can’t be both!”

  “You need to talk with her about it, Derek,” said Aunt Josie. “She just asked me not to let you watch TV.”

  “But that’s not fair!”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Writing on the wall was something you chose to do. Nobody was holding a gun to your head.”

  “Why would someone hold a gun to my head?”

  “It’s just a figure of speech,” said Aunt Josie. “Listen, I’m just doing what your mom asked me to do.”

  I went up to my room and shut the door and flopped down on my bed so hard the springs creaked. I could feel the frown on my face. It was deep—like someone had carved it there.

  After what seemed like a long time I got down off my bed and went to my desk. The drawing I’d done of Castle Budgerek was sitting right on top. I picked it up and studied all the little details—the flamejobs on all the bumper cars and the cool expression on Budgie’s face as he caught mad air off the half-pipe. I’d even drawn scales on the piranhadiles, which hadn’t been easy.

  I remembered how long it had taken me to do and how impressed Mom had been and how happy it had made her. Then I thought about how she wasn’t happy anymore and how she was angry and disappointed instead and it was my fault for making her feel that way.

  Suddenly I was crushing the drawing in my hands, crumpling it into a ball and throwing it on the floor. I stomped on it over and over again, then dropped to my knees and ripped it into a million pieces and threw them into the air. The next thing I knew, Aunt Josie was holding me. There were pieces of the torn drawing in her hair that reminded me of snowflakes. I heard someone sobbing. It was me.

  11

  MY EYES OPENED in the morning before the alarm went off and I lay there looking up at the Apache helicopter. I took a deep breath and counted seventy-six Mississippis before letting it out. I wasn’t looking forward to today. Not one bit.

  Mom was in the kitchen when I got downstairs. She put frozen waffles in the toaster oven and we talked a little while waiting for it to ding. She didn’t say anything about yesterday, though, and if she wasn’t going to bring it up, then neither was I.

  When the waffles were ready, Mom got the peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff out of the cabinet and brought them to the table. Then she filled her mug with coffee and sat across from me, blowing on it a little before taking a sip.

  “What happened yesterday?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Derek.”

  “I got in trouble.”

  “I know that,” she said. “What happened?”

  I took a knife and spread peanut butter on one waffle and Fluff on the other and then pressed them together like a sandwich. I took a bite and chewed slowly. I didn’t want to tell her it was all Budgie’s fault because she was probably sick of hearing about him but I wasn’t going to lie to her, either.

  “Budgie called me a loser and said our castle was stupid,” I said. I expected her to sigh or roll her eyes when she heard Budgie’s name but she didn’t. She looked troubled instead.

  “I’m sorry, sweetheart. He shouldn’t have said those things,” she said. “You know your castle’s not stupid, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “What do you mean, you guess?”

  I shrugged and stared at the waffle sandwich on my plate. I could feel Mom looking at me, waiting for me to say something.

  “I guess it’s not stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid. It’s the most creative thing I’ve ever seen,” she said. “You two put a lot of thought into that castle and you should be proud. I know I am.”

  She smiled. I smiled, too. Then she frowned.

  “But what I’m not proud of is what you did yesterday. Writing on the walls is called vandalism. People can go to jail for that.”

  “But Budgie—”

  “But nothing,” she said. “Look, Derek, I hate to say it but Budgie is going to keep on being Budgie. If you want to be his friend, then you need to figure out a way to not let him get to you.”

  “You mean be the bigger person, right?”

  “I just mean you should find a way to live in the same world as Budgie that works for you—preferably one that doesn’t land you in the principal’s office.”

  Mom was still talking while I got my book bag and put on my sneakers but my mind was spinning so I wasn’t really listening. Had she really said I didn’t have to be the bigger person anymore?

  “So you understand, right?” she said.

  “Understand what?”

  “That because of yesterday the TV is going to have to stay off for a while.”

  “What? For how long?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “But what about the Zeroman special episode?”

  “I’m sorry, Derek, but you should’ve thought of that before doing what you did.”

  “Nobody does that!” I blurted.

  “Derek, stop. You’re making it worse. Stop and think.”

  “No! It’s not fair! It’s Budgie’s fault! It’s always Budgie’s fault!” I could feel myself getting angry. I couldn’t stop.

  “Then why isn’t he the one staying after school for a week? Think about it.”

  “Stop telling me to think about it!”

  Mom’s mouth dropped open and her face went white. I don’t think I’d ever yelled at her like that before. It was like I had slapped her. Then I noticed something else—the book I’d been putting in my backpack was no longer in my hand. It was lying on the counter where it had hit the drying rack with enough force to scatter silverware across the countertop and onto the floor. Mom stood up and went past me, her footsteps getting faster as she left the kitchen. They got even quicker as she went up the stairs and by the time I heard her bedroom door close she was practically running.

  * * *

  I didn’t want anyone to sit next to me on the bus that morning. I didn’t want to have to look at anyone or hear or smell them so it figured that as the bus filled up, who should sit next to me but Edwina Stubbs—the biggest, loudest, smelliest girl in school.

  “Move in,” she said.

  I pulled my book bag onto my lap and moved over until I was smashed up against the wall. Our arms were touching.

  “I said move over!”

  “I did!” I said. “There’s no room left!”

  She made a harrumphing sound that reminded me of farm animals, then she wiggled around in the seat and started talking real loud to someone who was at least two rows back. Somehow her book bag ended up in my lap, so not only was I totally squashed but now I was buried as well.

  I tried to get comfortable but couldn’t. It seemed like every time I moved—even a little—more of Edwina Stubbs would fill the space like she were a pudd
le. I closed my eyes and imagined her as a boneless, flesh-colored blob. In my mind, the Edwina puddle oozed down the fifth-grade hallway, absorbing the slower kids while the others ran screaming. By the time we got to school I imagined she’d absorbed the whole town and everyone in it.

  “Hey! Quit trying to steal my bag!” she said, snatching it from my lap.

  “But you’re the one who put—”

  “If anything is missing,” she said, making a fist and holding it up to my face, “you’ll get this. Got it?”

  “We’re gonna be late.”

  “Got it?”

  “Just get off the bus.”

  “I’m watching you,” Edwina said.

  With that she oozed into the aisle with the other kids and stood in line waiting, tossing an occasional nasty look back my way. I sat with my book bag in my lap and planned to stay there until the driver kicked me off, suddenly feeling that being threatened by Edwina Stubbs was going to be the best thing that was going to happen to me today.

  I wasn’t wrong.

  Ms. Dickson gave us a pop quiz I wasn’t prepared for. At lunchtime I realized I’d forgotten to bring mine. Then at afternoon recess I got hit in the face with a kickball during a game I wasn’t even in. The nurse said she hadn’t seen a nose bleed like that in a long time like it was some big accomplishment but when I asked if I’d get an award or a plaque or something she just laughed.

  That was Tuesday.

  Wednesday wasn’t much better.

  And all I’m going to say about Thursday is that I was nowhere near Barely O’Donahue when the hamster bit him.

  It didn’t matter to me that Friday was rainy and cold. It didn’t matter to me that Budgie took my hat on the bus, and the fact that I thought Montevideo was a movie rental place and not the capital of Uruguay only seemed to matter to Ms. Dickson. As far as I was concerned, all that mattered was that it was Friday and the school week was finally over.

  When I got off the bus it wasn’t really raining that hard anymore and by the time I got home it had stopped completely. Water filled the holes in the empty driveway. I let myself into the house and hung up my jacket and kicked off my shoes and dropped my book bag in the corner.