This is no surprise because it’s last period and the kids who already did sheep eyes have been bouncing the lenses like Super Balls in the hall all day. But some of the girls still cover their mouths like they might puke, and two boys pound their fists on the table like waiting for a meal, which is disturbing. “You want me to get it?” Kelly asks, and I nod. She slips down from the high stool, then carries the eye back carefully on its tray and sets it on the table between us. We look down at the eye, and it stares up at us. It’s a brilliant, perfect sailing-on-Lake-Minnetonka blue.
“I—I’ll be right back,” I say, and bolt out of class. I can feel the stares behind me, and I hear Mr. Bauer say, “Don’t worry about him. He’ll catch the purple bus.” I run through the empty hall and down the ramp, past the mural we did with the visiting artist last year. We all got to paint a tile, and when we put them together, it was one big picture of sailboats on the lake. I chose a solid blue one. I didn’t want to screw anything up.
I push out the front doors and throw up on a snowbank.
“Great,” I say to the puke. I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and turn both hands into fists, but there’s no one to fight but me. I kick the snowbank, and it’s ice and hurts my toe through my shoe. I was just starting to be invisible again. After six weeks of being that kid, seeing our family picture from the church directory on TV (Mom made Dad go on picture Sunday), and hearing the whispers in the stores, always the same words: “trolley…drunk…Vietnam…What did you expect?” I wanted to scream, You don’t know what you’re talking about! You didn’t even know him! It was just starting to fade, at the edges. But I had to do something so stupid like puking from a sheep eye to bring it back.
Mom taught me whenever I feel out of control to just be quiet and listen. Something about sound grounding your body. She used to do it with Dad, back before us. When he had more problems. So I try it. I hear the wind. The flag flapping on the pole. A bird in a tree, tossing its voice up and down like the branch it’s bobbing on. Then the grind of a school bus, turning in the long driveway. I listen to it chug closer. It pulls up right next to me. Number 243. It’s my bus. Rodney pulls the handle, and the door smacks open.
“Hey, little man!” He takes off his neon-green sunglasses. “What are you doing out here? It’s like, thirteen degrees!” I shrug. “Get in here!”
I climb the steps and sit in the front seat. The bus is warm and smells weird, but not bad weird, maybe like cinnamon. A dramatic song is blaring on the radio. Rodney takes a sip from a big thermos. He’s wearing his jean jacket and his shirt half unbuttoned, and about five cross necklaces. Some kids asked him last week if he was cold, but he said he’s committed to fashion. “Want some tea?” he asks. I shake my head. “You like this song?”
“I’m kind of sick of it.”
“Yeah. She can sing, though. You’re more into rap?”
“Not really. I like Metallica.”
Rodney nods, and his one dangly silver earring swings. “A metalhead. I dig. So, what’re you doing outside with no coat and no backpack? You didn’t get kicked out, did you? Stay in school, man!” He points his thermos at me. “Do whatever you can! I got kicked out one too many times, and look at me.”
“But you’re the coolest bus driver. Everyone thinks so.”
“They do? That’s so rad. But still. Stay in school. You’re a smart kid, I can tell. What’s your name?”
“Justin.”
“Yeah, Justin. You could be a lawyer with that name. Or a doctor. You wanna be a doctor?”
“No. I just threw up looking at a sheep eye.”
“Oh man. You got Bauer?”
“Yeah.”
“He still talkin’ about that purple bus?”
I laugh. “Yeah.”
“Those sheep eyes are foul. I don’t blame you.”
I shake my head. “I wasn’t grossed out by the eye. It’s just…This is gonna sound weird.”
Rodney sets his thermos down. “I love weird!”
“It was just…seeing something dead. It reminded me of my dad. He died. So…”
Rodney clamps his huge hand on my shoulder. “That’s heavy, dude. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.”
“I never knew my dad,” Rodney says.
“Really?”
“Nope. Never did. Wish I had, though. Some things I’d like to ask him. Did you know yours?”
I nod. “Yeah. Mostly I did.”
“Well, that’s a blessing.”
* * *
From outside, where the wind’s blowing so hard it’s rattling our loose window, this looks like the perfect scene. Just Phuc and me playing Mario and eating microwave popcorn for lunch. Except the game keeps freezing and I can’t stop thinking about how I should fix that window, to help out, but I have no idea how. Should I just stick some cardboard in it? Fold up a cereal box?
The game freezes (again).
“Try blowing in it,” Phuc says. I take the game out (again) and blow in it (again). Then I blow in the Nintendo (again), pop the game back in, and turn it on. Mario runs across the screen. “Yeah!” Phuc says, shaking his controller. “We’re back!”
I sit back down on the couch. “Dude. Sorry my Nintendo’s so crappy. It’s super old.”
“No worries.”
“And sorry I only have one game. Maybe we should go to your house.”
“No way. I love it here. It’s so peaceful.” Phuc has three little sisters, but they’re so loud it feels more like seven. “No one’s begging me to play My Little Pony. No one’s trying to brush my hair with a Barbie brush. No one’s shrieking for no apparent reason. You got it made.” Phuc looks over at me. “I mean—I didn’t mean you got it made, like…”
I shake my head. “No, it’s cool. I get it.” We keep playing, up through the worlds. “Sometimes it’s like, too quiet though,” I tell Phuc.
“Yeah. Where is everyone?”
“Murphy’s at work and Mom’s at church.”
“On Saturday?”
“Yeah, she’s at church a lot now. When she’s not working. She’s on some committee. Then she does a ministry. I forget the name of it.” Mario takes the vine up above the smiley clouds. My favorite part. It makes me feel like I’m on a different planet, which, if your dad gets killed in a ridiculous way in front of a crapload of people and it’s all over the news, is a pretty awesome way to feel. “Then Sundays, obviously.”
“Huh. I didn’t know she was that religious.”
“She’s not. Or she wasn’t before. I don’t know.”
Phuc shrugs. “There’s worse things. Like barfing when you see a sheep eye.”
“Shut up. How’d you hear about that?”
“Dude. Everyone heard about that.”
“Great.”
“No one cared, though. I mean like, it wasn’t a big deal. All the girls were like, ‘Poor Justin. He’s been through so much, and now he had to see a sheep eye. Boo-hoo.’ ”
I pause the game, pick up a couch pillow, and smack him as hard as I can. He smacks me back. We get into a war, and it feels good to hit and throw and sweat and yell and run. Maybe I should take up boxing. I need some kind of hobby, because sitting in the apartment by myself all the time is making me crazy. And when I say “crazy” I mean it. Yesterday I had a whole conversation with Axl Rose (I had to do her part, since she’s a cat) just to break the quiet.
* * *
“Mr. Olson!” the nurse calls when she walks me into Grandpa’s room. I walked all the way here, which was far and cold, but it’s better than being home alone all day while Murphy fries chicken and Mom switches church from Epiphany to Lent. Even if it does smell like spinach and medicine and the lady who sits by the front door always tries to hold my hand.
“You have a Sunday visitor!” the nurse says, and turns Grandpa’s wheelcha
ir from the window toward me. He smiles sweetly while the birds he was watching keep flitting around behind his head like a Disney movie. His bed is perfectly made with a tan blanket and flannel pillowcase and a throw pillow featuring a wood duck. Maybe they’re trying to convince him he’s up north at the cabin instead of in a nursing home. We told him about Dad, obviously, but we didn’t know if he understood, so we told him a bunch more times. Then we stopped telling him because it just seemed mean.
“Hi, Grandpa,” I say. “I’m your grandson, Justin. Larry’s son.” He nods politely. He lifts his hand up from his lap, then sets it back down. He shrugs a little. “Grandpa, can I look at your pictures? The old ones of Dad? In the book?” He blinks at me, which I decide means yes. I pull the photo album out of the top drawer, where it sits next to a row of socks under a sticker that says SOCKS, which seems unnecessary. I sit on Grandpa’s bed with the book on my lap. Dad labeled all the people for Grandpa when his mind started to wander off. I slide my finger across Dad’s handwriting, blocky and wide, and realize he’ll never write anything again. A grocery list. A birthday card. A letter to me at college.
And Dad was always writing because he couldn’t keep thoughts in his head very long. He’d walk into a room and forget why he was there. He’d set alarms but couldn’t remember what to do when they went off. Once, he came home from the grocery store so mad because he couldn’t remember one single thing he was supposed to get. So Mom went to the paper shop and got this really expensive stationery with his initials on it, in curly writing, like a wedding invitation. And guess what? It worked. He used up the whole pack in a week. But how did Mom know to do that?
I wipe my tears off with the back of my hand and start reading the names to Grandpa. He smiles, hearing them. I get to Dad’s birth, and narrate his life out loud. “There’s Larry as a baby. There he is at school. There he is playing hockey. He played defense, right, Grandpa?” Grandpa nods. “High school graduation. There he is in his uniform.” I stare at Dad, smiling, clean-cut, ready. I turn the page, and he’s with Mom, holding baby Murphy. Dad’s hair is longer. He’s got a mustache. He’s still smiling, but his eyes are different. I flip the page back and forth, back and forth. Grandpa watches me. There’s only a couple years missing between them, but I guess that space holds a lot.
I keep going. Murphy on a tricycle. Murphy holding me up like a trophy with my head flopped back. Murphy playing T-ball. Me in a baby swing. Me going to kindergarten. Murphy and me at the beach. “Look, Grandpa! Look at you and that walleye!” I turn the book around to show him. He’s standing tall and straight like a pine tree next to Dad, holding a yellow-spotted fish with both hands. The fish is probably two feet long and its top fin is spiked up like a punk rocker. But Grandpa looks away, like either the dying fish or the dead son is too painful.
I turn the book back around and see a picture I never noticed before, of just Mom and Dad. It’s a little blurry, and the colors are faded. They’re watching something. Mom is maybe calling out to someone. Dad is smiling. And in the very far bottom left corner, they’re holding hands. In one way, the words are true: “trolley…drunk…Vietnam…What did you expect?” And in another way, they’re not.
“This is so bogus,” I tell Murphy. “Why can’t Mom get the groceries? It’s nine-thirty on a school night. We’re gonna look like orphans.”
Murphy laughs and slams his car door, then kicks it, which is the only way to get it to shut all the way. “It’s not a big deal,” he says. “It’s just the basics.” We walk toward the lit-up store, even though I’d rather stay in the dark parking lot, like a little criminal. “You ever heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs?” Murphy asks.
“No, but I bet my social worker would be into it. You should ask her.”
“Ha. We learned it in psychology class.” Murphy is bonkers about his psychology class. We walk through the automatic doors, and Murphy jerks a cart free from the line. It clangs and a woman looks over at us. I give her a sticker smile.
“It’s a triangle,” Murphy tells me. “At the bottom is your basic needs, right? Food and water. Shelter. Then it goes up from there.” He pushes the cart toward the dairy section, where a cow smiles down at us from the brown wall. I bet they don’t smile in real life, though. I bet they kick.
“Then safety’s the next level, then love and belonging,” Murphy says. He actually says “love and belonging” out loud like that. In his regular voice. Then he starts jogging, getting up speed, and rides the cart! I walk fast to catch up, but Murphy stops in front of the yogurt. “Then it’s self-esteem, then self-actualization at the top,” he tells me.
“What’s the point?”
“The point is, you have to get your basic needs met before you can think about smart stuff like philosophy and physics and whatever else is in your head.” He taps my forehead. “Bread comes first.”
“What’s ‘self-actualization’?”
“Achieving your full potential. That’s why it’s a triangle. ’Cause all the masses are stuck at the bottom, trying to get their basic needs met. Not that many make it to the top, like you.”
“I’m not at the top.” I think of Mitchell poking me in the ribs and calling me a loser. Probably I’m at safety.
But Murphy smiles. “Yes you are. You’re our monk on a mountaintop.”
We keep walking. No one’s around, but I keep my voice low anyway. “Murph? I’m sorry you have to do this. I’m sorry you’re grocery shopping with me instead of out with your friends. And I’m sorry you have to work at KFC.”
Murphy smiles. “I like hanging out with you.” He turns the cart into the cereal aisle.
“That’s not what I meant. Can I get Lucky Charms?”
“Sure.” I get the biggest box because Murphy won’t notice. In fact, he’s watching all the cereal boxes roll by, in a blurred rainbow. “It’s different now anyway,” he says. “Most of my friends don’t…” He shakes his head like trying to chase away whatever thought’s trying to land in it.
Then he speeds the cart up again and takes the corner on two wheels.
* * *
The only good thing about the girls in pink and red sweaters arriving to pass out the heart-o-grams is that we have sixty seconds less of geography. I know I won’t get any heart-o-grams, so I keep searching for Mali in my book so I can write it on the worksheet. It’s insane. Why can’t we just study out of the book? And then, after we write all the countries on the worksheet, we have to color them in with colored pencils. Like we’re in third grade.
“Justin,” a pink girl says, and drops three heart-o-grams onto my open book. They cover all of sub-Saharan Africa.
Three? Oh man. Did my mom hear about heart-o-grams somehow and send them? It’s too embarrassing. My stomach’s flipping around, which makes it even more embarrassing, because why do I even care? I open the first one. It’s in Phuc’s serial-killer handwriting and says, What’s up, loser? Your friend, Phuc. I smile. The next one is in perfect cursive and says, Hi, Justin. We miss you at book club. Hope you’ll join us soon! Mrs. Peterson. I miss book club too. But going back would violate my very strict rule of doing nothing that reminds me of Dad, who checked out all the book club books at the library and read them at the same time as me. So, nothing I can do. The third heart-o-gram is not from my mom. It says: Hey, Justin. Happy Valentine’s Day! Love, Jenni.
* * *
When Mom gets home from work, I’m sitting alone at the kitchen table with only the oven light on, and I’m staring at the pizza that has three minutes left. My stomach’s growling and I’m thinking about how after the pizza comes out, I still have to wait for it to cool. I should’ve started sooner. I didn’t think the oven would take so long to preheat.
Mom gets confused and thinks I’m sad and starts fluttering around like she does when I’m sick, turning lights on and back off and asking if she can get me anything and am I thirsty and how was my day and
did anything happen?
“Do you need to talk?” she asks. “Did something happen?”
“You already asked me that,” I tell her.
“What?”
“If something happened. You asked me twice.”
She sits down and reaches her hand across the table, then inches it back, like remembering that twelve-year-old boys don’t hold their moms’ hands anymore. “Well, did it?”
“No. Mom, I’m just hungry. Chill.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t work late. You’re on your own too much. It’s not right.”
“I like being on my own,” I lie.
“Still.”
“And we need the overtime.” The oven buzzes. Finally. I start to get up, but Mom beats me to it and I let her.
“Where’d you hear that?” she asks.
I roll my eyes. “I live here. In the bedroom at the end of the hall? With Murphy?” She mom-glares at me, which looks like a real glare but isn’t. “Have some pizza,” I tell her. “Or at least give me some before I starve to death.”
“Okay.” She dishes the pizza out onto paper plates and pours Mr. Pibb into two cups. I blow so hard on my slice that I spit on it, then eat it too soon and burn the roof of my mouth.
“I do have a situation, though,” I tell Mom when my stomach fills up enough that I can think straight. She raises her eyebrows. She’s trying to be cool so I won’t scare off. Like when Grandpa tried to teach me to clean fish. “We have these stupid things at school. They’re called heart-o-grams. So a girl sent me one, but I didn’t send her one because I didn’t know she was sending me one.” Mom nods, slowly, like I just gave her instructions for saving an entire planet and all of its living creatures. I laugh.
Like Nothing Amazing Ever Happened Page 2