The Saturday Boy

by David Fleming

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “It won’t give you bad dreams?”

  “Why would it do that?” I said. “I’m not scared of Dad.”

  “Sad dreams, then. I think it would give me sad dreams.”

  “I’m not you.”

  Mom looked hurt all of a sudden. Her face scrunched up as if she might cry and she pulled her bathrobe tight like she hoped it was armor or something, like my words would bounce off but they didn’t. They stuck in her like arrows.

  “Let me just—give me a minute to change.”

  Mom went into her bedroom and closed the door. I stayed in the hallway. I felt bad that I’d hurt Mom’s feelings but I also felt kinda powerful. Maybe that’s why Budgie did what he did and said the things he said—because he liked how it made him feel. I wanted to feel powerful, too, but not this way. I didn’t want to be like Budgie. I could hear my mom crying in her room and I even took a step toward her room before turning around and going back to mine.

  16

  MY EYES FLEW OPEN at five-sixteen in the morning. I felt electric. I thrummed. My fingernails were even glowing, I swear. And it wasn’t because Christmas was less than a week away, it was because tonight was opening night. Instead of dancing sugar plums, my head was filled with visions of red carpets and paparazzi. Violet was with me, on my arm, smiling and laughing. Her dress was a candy apple red.

  I thought about how I’d bow during the curtain call. How low should I go? And should I include a dramatic arm sweep? And with those things on my mind—how was I going to catch all the flowers I knew would be thrown my way?—I also thought about the very real possibility that the audience might demand a speech so I started to put together a list of people to thank.

  I went through the day with my head in the clouds and before I knew it there were only ten minutes until curtain and I was in costume. I looked around the room at everybody, at Scrooge and Cratchit, the ghosts and Violet and Tiny Tim. They seemed calm. I wondered if I seemed calm to them. I hoped I did but the butterflies that were once in my stomach had been eaten by things that were bigger and much more ferocious and I was pretty sure that if everybody was quiet they’d be able to hear them chewing.

  When there were five minutes until curtain Scrooge and Cratchit left the green room to take their places onstage. I wondered again why Mr. Putnam called it the green room. It wasn’t green. It was just a regular old classroom that happened to be across from the backstage door to the auditorium.

  I wanted to sneak in and peek through the curtains to look for Mom. We hadn’t said much to each other this morning and the little we did say had nothing to do with what had happened last night and I felt bad. I wondered if she felt bad, too. She probably did. My stomach flipped. The butterfly-eating beasts dug their claws in and hung on. What if she was still upset? What if she was so upset that she decided not to come?

  Suddenly I had to know if she was out in the auditorium but the play had already started and there was nothing I could do. The house lights were down and the stage lights were up and if I tried to peek now I’d be seen by the entire audience. I’d simply have to wait. I chewed my fingernails. I tapped my foot. I kept picturing a completely full house except for an empty seat in the front row with a little white sign on it that said “Reserved for Annie Lamb” in fancy writing. It was driving me crazy.

  It had to be my turn to go on now. It just had to be.

  I crossed the hallway and slowly opened the backstage door. Budgie was standing just inside.

  “Close the door, Lamb,” he whispered loudly. “You’re not on yet!”

  “Are you sure?”

  He pushed me back into the hallway and pulled the door closed behind him. I looked at him. He was wearing a dark blue sweatshirt and dark pants, which made his sneakers seem awfully white.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be wearing dark shoes?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to wait in the green room?”

  “Yeah, but nobody came and I was getting nervous,” I said. “I thought maybe you forgot.”

  “I didn’t forget! It’s not even the second scene, moron!”

  “But—”

  He gave me a shove and turned around and went backstage again. I didn’t go back in the green room like I was supposed to. I paced the hallway instead. Back and forth. Waiting. Budgie didn’t come back out. Maybe he forgot. Then I started to think that maybe he was doing it on purpose—that this was his revenge for telling everyone his real name.

  My heart didn’t just drop. It plummeted.

  That was it. That had to be it. It wouldn’t matter if I forgot to let Violet lead me off or I didn’t project enough because Budgie was going to make sure I missed my entrance altogether. I’d be humiliated. Mr. Putnam would be furious. It’d be the perfect revenge if it weren’t about to happen to me.

  I had to do something. I couldn’t just stand there and let Budgie do this to me. I would have preferred anything to this—a wedgie, an Indian rope burn, or even the dreaded French cuff, but no. Leave it to Budgie to figure out a way to cause maximum embarrassment with the least amount of work. I went to the backstage door, cracked it, and peeked in. I expected somebody to be there but the wings were empty. If I was going to do something I had to do it now. Without stopping to think about it I slipped inside and carefully closed the door behind me.

  I moved to a dark corner in the wings and stood like a statue. My heart slowly climbed up out of my shoes and I found that now that I was backstage I wasn’t worried about missing my entrance anymore. I’d just stay here, listen to the play, and when it was time for me to go on I’d just go out and do my scene. I’d embrace Violet and remember to project. I’d let her lead me offstage into the wings and presto!—Budgie’s plot would have been thwarted. It was actually kind of perfect.

  I smiled in the dark, picturing Budgie gnashing his teeth, stomping his feet, and shaking his fists in frustration. In fact, I was so busy imagining that I almost didn’t notice when he came back. He was standing at least as still as I was and if he hadn’t moved I was pretty sure I wouldn’t have seen him at all.

  But Budgie wasn’t gnashing his teeth or stomping his feet or even shaking his fists. What he was doing, and doing gloriously, was picking his nose. He was two knuckles in at least, digging with his finger so far up one nostril I was surprised it wasn’t coming down the other side.

  I blocked the laugh as it was coming out, clamping my hands over my mouth as hard as I could. My shoulders shook. I tried swallowing the laugh but that only made me have to burp. It literally felt like something was going to burst.

  “You’re not on yet!” Budgie hissed. “Get out of here!”

  I wanted to answer him but was afraid of what sounds would escape if I put my hands down so I shook my head instead.

  “You idiot! You’re going to wreck everything! Go back and wait in the green room!”

  Budgie came at me like he was going to grab me but I didn’t want to be grabbed. I didn’t want to go back to the green room. I didn’t even want to wait in the hallway. I tried to duck out of the way but there wasn’t a whole lot of room and he got a handful of my shirt.

  “Get off me!” I whispered as loud as I could.

  “Shut up!”

  “Let go!”

  “Dork!”

  “Moose!”

  I made a fist, swung, and punched Budgie right in the eye. It was the first punch I’d ever thrown at an actual person. Budgie stumbled back a few steps, then stopped and looked at me. Something had changed. The world around us suddenly felt smaller. I looked at my hand still clenched into a fist at the end of my arm—this part of me, this weapon that I never knew I had had done something I never thought I was capable of. Budgie had made fists of his hands as well. Both of them.

  “Wait, Budgie! I’m sorry! Budgie, wait—”

  But he didn’t.

  His first punch hit me in the ear and my head sang with pain. Budgie just hit me, I thought. This is a fight. Holy crap, I’m in a fight! I
threw up my hands in time to block the second punch but the third landed square in my gut and pushed all my air out. Then our legs tangled up and we toppled over backward and my head hit the floor so hard I saw stars. We rolled and I ended up on top of him. He wiggled underneath me, grabbing at my shirt, trying to throw me off. I held his wrists so he’d stop but he yanked one loose and punched me in the mouth.

  “Stop! Hitting! Me!”

  I struck him with each word. Then the dam burst and I couldn’t have stopped even if I wanted to. At some point the cracks just became too wide and too numerous and I ran out of stuff to fill them with. Besides, in a strange, horrible way it felt good to let go. So I let go. And from my head to my heart to my hands it all came out.

  My confusion and frustration about Budgie and why we weren’t friends anymore caught him on the forehead. The trouble I couldn’t seem to stay out of connected with his jaw. Everything I’d been keeping bottled up for so long—every cheek I’d turned and every time I’d held my tongue were a flurry of punches about his head. And finally, all of my anger and sadness, all of the unfairness that I’d been feeling, and all of the complete and total suckiness over what happened to my father, became a single blow—a hammer fist that found its way past Budgie’s flailing hands and straight onto his nose.

  There was a crunch and beneath my hand I could feel Budgie’s nose shift.

  I stopped. My breath whooped in and out and I could feel hot tears on my cheeks. It was suddenly very quiet. I slowly turned, shading my eyes from the spotlight that Budgie and I seemed to be in the middle of. I swallowed and lowered my hand. The auditorium was quiet. The spotlight was bright and hot and Budgie squirmed underneath me. I waved. Just a little.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  That’s when Budgie flipped me over and it started raining knuckles.

  * * *

  Teachers seemed to swarm in from everywhere. They came up from the audience. They seemed to spill from the wings. I think I even saw Señora Cruz drop from the ceiling on a rope like a commando. Budgie got pulled off of me. He was still kicking and thrashing, yelling words I don’t think even grown-ups were supposed to know. I sat up and the room swam around me.

  “Derek? Derek, are you okay?”

  Mom. There suddenly. Holding me.

  “Derek, honey? Oh, your poor face! Are you all right? Derek, say something.”

  “Ow.”

  Mom helped me stand and we walked offstage into the wings and through the backstage door. I leaned on her. My head hurt. I must have bitten my tongue when my head hit the floor because it was bleeding and now my mouth tasted like pennies. Also one of my teeth was loose. I wiggled it with my tongue.

  “We’re leaving. Where are your things?”

  “We can’t just—wait, why are you crying?”

  “You were right about him, Derek. I’m sorry I ever—sorry I ever doubted you,” she said, her voice catching a little. She took in a deep breath and let it out shakily. Her face was bright with tears and I could feel her arm trembling where it lay around my shoulders. She was holding it together. Barely. “Are your things in here?”

  “What about the play? I didn’t do my scene yet.”

  “You’re hurt.”

  “But Mr. Putnam always says the show must go on.”

  “I hate to tell you this, honey, but I think it’s going to have to go on without you.”

  “No!”

  I stopped walking and ducked out from under her arm. I couldn’t believe it. How could she do this? She knew how important this was to me. She’d even helped me put my costume together by turning an old pair of my pants into the knickers I was wearing. The silver foil buckles on my shoes had been her idea also. Now that I thought about it, she’d actually done more for the play than I had. I mean, all I did was memorize five words.

  “Derek.”

  “No! I wanna go on! I wanna do it!”

  “Come stand in the light. I need to check your pupils.”

  “Stop it!”

  “But you’re hurt.”

  “No I’m not!”

  “Sweetheart, you’re bleeding.”

  “So?”

  “I’m just trying to protect you.”

  “From what? My life?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know,” said Mom. Tears ran down her face, slipping out each time she blinked. She tried to wipe them away with her hands but there were just too many. “All I know is that seeing you and Budgie up there fighting like that… it was awful. I was horrified. If I was any kind of mother I’d have done something so that it never would’ve happened in the first place.”

  “You couldn’t have done that,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because nobody can see into the future.”

  “You’re right. You can’t see the future. That’s why the world is a monster, Derek. It gets its teeth in you and just… shakes until—until there’s nothing left. And a lot of times you don’t even see it coming. Is it so wrong that I want to protect you from that—even a little?”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” I said. “What teeth?”

  “Think of it this way,” she said. “If you find a baby bear in the wild what should you not do?”

  “Mess with it.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because the mama bear is probably close by.”

  “And?”

  “Mama bears are very protective of their babies.”

  “Exactly,” Mom said. She was crouched down in front of me and looking in my one good eye. The other one was pretty much closed from all the punching. “And right now the world is messing with my baby bear. So if I’m the mama bear, what am I going to do?”

  “Rip the world’s face off?”

  “Yes, I—no. But what I am going to do is roar. This mama bear is going to roar so long and so loud the world will think twice before messing with you again. And I’m going to stand up and roar every time I think you’re in danger no matter what it is or how old you are. The world makes us all grow up so fast and I just want… I want you to be a baby bear—my baby bear—for as long as you can, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “And I’m sorry for thinking you’d want to leave after what happened with Budgie back there. You’re a lot tougher than I give you credit for sometimes. Your dad would be—well, he’d be very proud you didn’t give up.”

  It hurt to smile but I didn’t care.

  “Derek, there you are. Are you okay?” said Mr. Putnam.

  “My mouth tastes like pennies.”

  “How are they?”

  “Okay I guess.”

  “You must be Derek’s mother,” he said, putting his hand out. “I’m John Putnam.”

  “Annie Lamb.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Annie. Would you mind if I borrowed Derek for a little while? We’re going to take a mulligan and start again.”

  “But he’s just been in a—yes. Yes, of course. Borrow away.” Mom hugged me tight and kissed my cheek and smiled, whispering in my ear, “Good luck, baby bear.”

  “Actors don’t say ‘good luck,’ Mom.”

  “Oh, they don’t, do they?”

  “No. They say, ‘Break a leg.’”

  “Considering what just happened I’m not going to do that. Is there anything else you can say?”

  “Dancers have been known to say, ‘Merde,’” said Mr. Putnam helpfully.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s French,” Mom said, giving Mr. Putnam a look.

  “Does it mean good luck?”

  “It means poop,” said Mom.

  I burst out laughing. I tried to stop because it hurt my face but I couldn’t.

  “He’s all yours,” said Mom.

  She gave me another quick hug and told me she’d be in the front row. Then she went through the backstage door and into the theater. Mr. Putnam had me go back to the green room and this time I stayed until Missy Sprout came to get me. I took my place onstage. I sai
d my lines. I embraced Violet and remembered to let her lead me off. I even sneaked a little wave to my mom as we disappeared into the wings.

  17

  “WHO WAS YOUR FAVORITE person in the play?”

  Me and M om were driving home. It was dark, and snow was blowing around outside the windows. I was still thinking about how Mr. Howard had come backstage after the play and when he was done congratulating everybody he took me aside. He told me he was proud of me and that I had showed a lot of character, pun intended. I beamed. I couldn’t help it. Then he’d said we were going to have to talk about what had happened but not until after vacation. I still beamed. Only a little bit less. I fogged up the window with my breath and wrote my name in it.

  “You were.”

  “I was?”

  “Of course you were.”

  “What about Scrooge?”

  “Didn’t care for him.”

  “What about the ghosts?”

  “Nope. No way. You were by far my favorite. It was really neat seeing you up there, Derek, and I’m so proud of you I could burst.”

  I smiled, looking out the window at the passing neighborhood. Christmas lights blinked in the trees and around front doors and along fences. Light-up icicles dangled from gutters. Robot Santas waved from front yards. In one yard, the two deer I thought for sure were fake suddenly bolted away when the garage door opened and light splashed out into the driveway. They were beautiful, crossing the next- door neighbor’s yard in three big leaps and disappearing into the woods. My heart raced. I’d seen deer at the zoo before but this was way better. I was still thinking about them when Mom pulled into our driveway a few minutes later.

  “Notice anything different?” asked Mom as she turned off the car.

  “No, I—hey, you put lights up!”

  They blinked and winked in the bushes next to the door and they flashed where they wound up the light post. The last time my dad was home for Christmas he’d gotten up on a ladder and run colored lights all along the gutters as well. That was a couple years ago though, and because Mom was afraid of heights we hadn’t had them up there since.