Stick

by Andrew Smith

  He looked sad. Paul looked anxious. And Mrs. Buckley looked like she always did.

  Perfect.

  I hugged my brother. Except for that time when he was in ninth grade and ran away from home for four days, we had never stayed in separate houses for more than just single-night sleepovers, and, in our family, those were rare occurrences.

  “I love you, Bosten.”

  “Love you, Sticker. I’ll see you Saturday.”

  “Yeah. See you.”

  “Hey,” he said as I started to turn away. “That was the best.”

  “Sure was.”

  My suitcase felt especially heavy as I walked up the steps toward Mrs. Lohman and Emily. Bosten climbed in the back, and Paul got in the front seat next to his mom. In an instant, that fancy sports car roared away up the road toward Pilot Point.

  * * *

  Just about the first thing I had to do when I got inside the house, after taking off my new shoes, was explain to Emily and her parents what the Sex Wax shirt was all about. Mr. and Mrs. Lohman didn’t approve of it at first, but when I told them everything I could about surfing, they seemed to accept it more easily.

  “I wouldn’t recommend you try wearing that around school, Stick,” Mr. Lohman said.

  “Or my dad.” I tried to smile. It was a grim smile, a bad news smile.

  I didn’t really want to think of school or Dad at the moment.

  And anyway, I didn’t get what the hang-up was on a word. Evan told me that one time he’d worn his Sex Wax shirt to Disneyland, and they wouldn’t let him in unless he turned it inside out, so nobody could read the word “Sex.” They said it was offensive. Bosten and I had never been to Disneyland, but after hearing that from Evan, I thought that maybe they had rules about the color of your underwear, too—just like Dad.

  But before we sat down to dinner, I opened my suitcase on the floor of the Lohmans’ mudroom and pulled out the hockey puck–shaped pack of Sex Wax I had, just so they could smell it, and see what surf wax was used for.

  I showed them my wetsuit, too. But I didn’t tell them about peeing in it.

  I felt like an explorer, coming back from Africa with rare and exotic trophies.

  Mr. Lohman said Sex Wax smelled so good he wanted to take a bite out of it for dessert.

  He laughed when I told him how I’d tried that one time, but I almost threw up, and then it took about half a day to get the wax off the back of my teeth.

  * * *

  In all the years I’d known the Lohmans, it never came up about how the boys of the McClellan family didn’t sleep in pajamas. Well, it didn’t, that is, until Mrs. Lohman and Emily walked into the guest bedroom to tell me good night. Emily’s mom carried a glass of milk and some cookies for me.

  That’s when they found out about the “no pajamas” thing, I guess. Because I was standing there, wearing absolutely nothing more than a pair of white (of course) briefs, about to climb into my own, private guest bed that smelled so nice, just like the conditioner Emily had used on my hair that day we took a bath together.

  And Mrs. Lohman looked like she suddenly discovered a school of live electric eels in her panties. She said, “Oh my gosh!”

  She then immediately dropped the cookies and the glass of milk all over the floor, while her arms became frantically occupied, flailing like she was drowning or something, pushing Emily behind her so she wouldn’t be able to look at me.

  My feet were soaked from the milk. There was broken glass and soggy cookies all over the floor, and Mrs. Lohman turned so red, holding Emily behind her with both her hands like she was protecting her daughter from a vampire.

  “Stick! I am so sorry!”

  Horrified, trying to keep her eyes averted, she began backing out through the doorway.

  “It’s no big deal, Mrs. Lohman,” I said.

  I bent down and started picking up pieces of cookie, glass, and plate.

  It really was no big deal, but I wasn’t about to tell Mrs. Lohman that her daughter and I had seen each other completely naked before.

  Like Emily said, her mom probably wouldn’t understand.

  Emily giggled.

  Her mom got mad. “Close your eyes, Emily!”

  Yeah. Telling Mrs. Lohman about our bath was entirely out of the question.

  Like, forever.

  I didn’t really have any option but to just stand there. I was barefoot, and there was milk and shards of glass everywhere around me.

  “I guess I should have told you that me and Bosten aren’t allowed to wear pajamas. At Aunt Dahlia’s, she even let us eat breakfast in our underwear. It’s no big deal at all.”

  That’s what Emily would have said, too, if she wasn’t laughing so hard.

  “Stick! Don’t you move, sweetie. I don’t want you to cut your feet. Now, you stop trying to pick up that mess. I’ll be right back.”

  She spun around and pushed Emily out into the hallway, but I could see Em poke her head around her mother’s hip and smile at me once before she was completely protected from my inappropriateness and ushered away to her own room.

  From somewhere down the hall, I heard my best friend’s voice calling out, “Good night, Stark McClellan. I’m glad you’re back home.”

  I kind of liked the way Emily said my name.

  Mrs. Lohman came back, out of breath and flushed; and as she had ordered me to, I hadn’t moved one inch away from my spot on the floor, standing with my feet in the middle of a slick of milk that I would much rather have drank than worn.

  “Here, baby, sit. Oh! I am so sorry!”

  She really was kind of going overboard.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, and Mrs. Lohman carefully, gently, toweled off my feet. And, yes, I felt bad about thinking how her doing that to me felt really, really good.

  “Too bad about those cookies,” I said. “You make the best cookies in the world.”

  She looked up at me.

  I thought she was going to cry.

  She even dried in between my toes.

  Definitely overboard.

  “Oh. I just don’t know what to do. I never knew the first thing about having a boy in the house. Please, forgive me, Stick.”

  The way she said “boy” sounded like some kind of disease.

  “It’s no. Big. Deal.”

  Mrs. Lohman pulled the covers down from the bed, then she scooped up my scrawny legs in the crook of her arm and slid them between the coolness of her wonderful-smelling sheets. She lifted my head, fluffed two pillows behind my shoulders, tucked the sheets down between the mattresses as tight as any mummy or papoose was ever wrapped, and then gave me a kiss, right on top of my head.

  “I am so sorry.”

  Overboard.

  And drowning.

  Then she said, “I’ll bring you some fresh cookies and a glass of milk. Just don’t go anywhere.”

  Apparently, she believed boys could just vanish at will or something.

  And why would I want to, anyway, if Mrs. Lohman was bringing back some of her cookies?

  * * *

  I couldn’t sleep.

  And I couldn’t make my head be quiet.

  So I rolled onto my left side. I trapped it all in.

  Tried to starve those animals.

  * * *

  Mom and Dad

  never wanted us.

  * * *

  Me.

  Bosten.

  Especially me.

  I was the reminder

  of everything

  that was

  wrong.

  But Bosten came first

  and paid the most.

  * * *

  He did the math.

  * * *

  Things don’t change you.

  And it doesn’t just happen.

  * * *

  I felt stupid for crying.

  I could have cried a thousand times before then.

  But I felt so small and alone,

  and I wanted to steal down the hall

&
nbsp; so I could put my hand on Emily’s face

  or rest my head in her mother’s lap.

  I wanted to have Aunt Dahlia hold me so tight

  and so relaxed

  like there was nothing at all between our hearts.

  * * *

  I wanted

  I wanted

  mother.

  * * *

  I dreamed of climbing

  through the window

  of Saint Fillan’s room

  carrying a flame.

  * * *

  In the morning

  my chains had not come loose.

  * * *

  I think Mrs. Lohman half expected me to show up at her breakfast table in my underwear. She was still nervous and embarrassed about what had happened in my room the night before. I could tell by the way she kept her eyes down, like she had to concentrate on counting the exact number of times she whipped frantic clockwise circles with the wire whisk in a bowl of pancake batter.

  So I let her off the hook. I wore the shorts Aunt Dahlia had bought for me, and some clean socks, with a plain, white T-shirt, so she wouldn’t have to stare at that word that got people so weirded out. And when she finally braved a cautious glance at me from her mixing duties and saw how I looked, I could almost feel the wave of relief, just like a big, fat swell past the craggy point of the jetty, lifting me up and making me forget about the terrible night I had just spent, not sleeping in that bed upstairs.

  “Emily!” She bellowed out to the space that was her house. “Your friend’s ready for his breakfast!”

  And something about the way Mrs. Lohman said that made me feel a lump in my throat.

  I wanted to hug her.

  But I didn’t.

  * * *

  Emily came downstairs, wearing slippers and yellow pajamas that had rabbits on them. She looked so soft and warm. I wondered what it would be like to sleep with her. And I mean just sleep, too, not anything else. But just thinking about that made me wonder what other things might be like, too.

  I looked down at my hands on the table.

  I didn’t feel very good.

  Everything was different.

  Before I knew it, Emily came over to where I was sitting and put her hands on both sides of my face and lifted it.

  People don’t touch me.

  But I could put up with Emily doing it.

  “You look terrible,” she said. “Like a raccoon. Look at your eyes!”

  I wondered how anyone could look at his own eyes.

  “Let me see,” Mrs. Lohman said.

  Emily’s dad put his newspaper down and leaned over so he was practically chin to chin with me. “You do look a little dead from the neck up, son.”

  “I didn’t sleep much last night,” I said.

  Then Mrs. Lohman grabbed my head and looked me square in the eyes. She laid her palm across my forehead. Her eyes filled with worry.

  “You poor baby.”

  And the way she said it wasn’t just, like, “Oh, I’m concerned you might not be feeling well.”

  It was more like, “Your parents are splitting up. You don’t have a family. You were born wrong. There’s something missing. And, by the way, you might have a cold, too.”

  “You’re burning up,” she said. “You poor baby.”

  I had pretty much had enough of being pouted over and touched at that point.

  I sighed.

  I wished I could be back at Aunt Dahlia’s on the Strand.

  “We need to get you back to bed.”

  I smelled pancakes burning.

  I wished it was my house instead.

  Mrs. Lohman put her hand on my shoulder and scooted my chair out so I could stand up. I guess I did feel a little dizzy and cold, but I hadn’t slept, either, and my head was still full of that awful noise.

  “Aw, I’m sorry, Stick,” Mr. Lohman said. “I was going to take you and Emily down to the pier to do some fishing today.”

  He sounded sincerely disappointed.

  It was weird. I mean, people caring about how I felt.

  Mr. Lohman owned a little store by the pier that sold tackle and snacks, and he liked to take us fishing off the float.

  “Maybe you’ll feel up to it tomorrow,” he said.

  I nodded, and Mrs. Lohman began leading me out of the kitchen, toward the stairs.

  “Fred, shut that off,” she said, pointing Mr. Lohman toward her griddle.

  Emily swooped in ahead of us as we went up the stairs. She opened the door to my room. I had already made the bed, and when her mother saw it, she groaned a little disappointed moan in the back of her throat.

  But that was also a rule in my house. We couldn’t come out of our rooms in the morning without making our beds first. And tucking our shirts in.

  Emily peeled the covers down off the bed and stood there, watching as her mother led me across the perfectly clean floor where she had dropped the milk the night before.

  “You step out of the room while this boy gets into bed,” Mrs. Lohman instructed.

  And as she went out into the hallway, before turning her back to the door, Emily gave me a wry look that said nothing really mattered, anyway.

  Emily.

  I slipped my shorts off and nearly collapsed onto the sheets. Then Mrs. Lohman carefully pulled the socks from my feet and tucked the covers over me. She brushed her hand across my forehead again and gave a sympathetic and cooing “Awww, now…”

  She snapped my shorts flat and smooth with a flick of her wrists and folded them around my socks. “We’ll bring you up some breakfast, sweetie. Here. Why don’t you take that shirt off? You’re about to melt, I think.”

  I sat up in bed.

  Emily came back into the room as I was slipping my T-shirt over my head.

  Then Mrs. Lohman said, “I think I better call your—”

  Who?

  Who would she call?

  My mother was gone, and Dad? Dad just wasn’t the person to call in these kinds of situations.

  “No!” I said. I let my shirt drop on the floor. It was already damp, and Mrs. Lohman, eyeing me with concern and hurt, picked it up instantly.

  “I’ll wash this.”

  “Please don’t call anyone, Mrs. Lohman. Please. I’ll be fine.”

  She pulled the covers up to my shoulders and I leaned back on the pillows.

  “I’ll bring you some breakfast, baby.”

  The way she looked at me made me feel horrible, like I wanted to cry or something. And as she left us there, Mrs. Lohman said, “I suppose we can wait and see how you’re doing this afternoon.”

  “Thank you.”

  Emily slid a chair across the floor and sat down, right next to my face. So close, I could smell her hair.

  “Don’t you want to have your breakfast?” I said.

  “I’ll have it in here. With you.”

  “I’m sorry about this, Em.”

  “Don’t be dumb.”

  “I wasn’t sad until last night. I guess I am being dumb.”

  “Well. Stop it.”

  “Okay.”

  She brushed her hand through my hair. She never did that before, not like this. I closed my eyes.

  “I wish I could make you feel better.”

  “You are.”

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  “Em?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What were you going to say?”

  “Uh. Are you going to the pier with your dad today?”

  She laughed. “That wasn’t what you were going to say, Stark McClellan.”

  “I like that now.”

  “What?”

  “When you say my name.”

  “Well. That’s your name. Your name has always been your name. And, no, I am going to stay here with you. I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too, Em.”

  Mrs. Lohman appeared in the doorway, carrying a tray with pancakes and juice and milk.

  I said,
“Don’t drop it.”

  Mrs. Lohman smiled. But I could tell she kept worrying about me, and about my parents, too.

  “I’ve never had breakfast in bed,” I said.

  “Well, I hope this makes you feel better, sweetie. You just tell Emily if there’s anything you need.”

  Emily stood out of the way while Mrs. Lohman put the tray down across my legs. “I’ll be right back, Stark McClellan. I’m bringing some for me.”

  Then she flew out of the room.

  “Is that something new?” Mrs. Lohman said.

  “Huh?”

  “Calling you Stark McClellan.”

  “Oh.” I shrugged and took a mouthful of pancake. “She’s just joking around.”

  * * *

  I didn’t get better.

  Emily sat there with me all day, too, like she said she would.

  I woke up in a sweat in the early afternoon, when Mrs. Lohman was downstairs talking to my father on the telephone.

  I didn’t care what they said, just knowing what was happening made me feel worse.

  Emily wiped my forehead with a cool, wet washcloth. It felt like when we took our bath together.

  “Are you feeling any better?” she whispered.

  I shook my head.

  I pushed the covers entirely off of me. I was soaked, but I immediately began shaking from the intensity of the sudden cold.

  “What are you doing?” Emily sounded annoyed. She stood up and grabbed the covers, to pull them back across my shivering bones.

  I grabbed her hand and held it steady. I flattened her palm on my chest and pinned it there, just watching her. I don’t know for certain what I was thinking. I was so sick and feverish and I only wanted Emily’s cool hand to touch me.

  And I wanted all the noise in my head to go away.

  Emily waited.

  She didn’t pull back. She kept her hand on my chest.

  I felt my heart through her.

  “My mom’s coming.”

  She picked the sheet out from the folds and twists in the bedclothes and draped it over me.

  “Okay?” she said.

  I closed my eyes and nodded.

  Mrs. Lohman came through the doorway.

  “He woke up,” Emily said. “He was too hot.”

  I could hear Emily’s mom as she took a seat on the chair next to me. Then she wiped my face and forehead with the cool cloth. I opened my eyes.

  “Your father said I should call him back if I think you need to go to the doctor.”