by Lenore Look
And now Johnny Astro.
“If this is the greatest toy ever made, you should show-and-tell now,” said Pinky, “before we get to school, or we’ll never know what you wanted to say.”
It made perfect sense. I could hardly wait anyway. I pulled the box out of the bag.
The gang read the box.
All jaws dropped open.
All tongues fell out.
“That’s just the box,” I said. “Wait till you see it in action!” I fingered the edge of the cover.
“Open it,” Sam pleaded. “Open it.”
I held my breath.
I wanted to open it. I wanted to show the gang the most fabulous toy ever made. I couldn’t wait.
Whoosh. I lifted the cover. An old smell of fun and excitement filled our noses.
Then whoosh. The bus rounded a corner.
And we rounded in our seats.
And when we all sat back up . . . Johnny Astro didn’t look the same. There were a few pieces . . . missing.
They were not in the box.
They were not in the bag.
Or in the aisle.
Or under the seats.
They were nowhere to be seen.
I was not even sure which pieces were missing. But there were a few empty spaces in the plastic package where there should have been parts.
“OH NO!” I cried. “MY DAD’S GOING TO KILL ME!”
The noise on the bus went round and round. It was so loud that my voice got lost. No one turned around. Even the driver’s eyes, which usually lift into her mirror whenever there is an extraordinary outburst, did not shift.
I swallowed. I blinked. I did my best not to cry. The wheels on the bus went round and round. I bounced up and down. But then a tear rolled down my cheek. Then another. And another. Before I knew it, I was crying full blast. Crying is really great. Everything is better afterward . . .
Except when the next stop is school.
And when you walk into class, you find a substitute teacher.
“Alvin Ho,” called the sub. She was taking attendance, which is where most of my troubles usually begin with subs.
I opened my PDK. I needed an escape route.
“Alvin,” the sub called again.
“Here,” answered Flea.
“You are Alvin Ho?” asked the sub.
“No, ma’am, I’m Flea,” said Flea. “That’s Alvin.” She pointed at me.
The sub looked at Flea and then at me, over the top of her glasses. “He can answer for himself,” she said.
“No he can’t,” said Flea.
“Why not?”
“He just can’t,” said Flea. “He’s Alvin Ho.”
The sub’s eyebrows arched like two unconnected bridges. “I will have no funny business in my classroom today, is that clear?” said the sub.
Flea nodded. Then her lips curled in, which meant that she had more to say. “Alvin talks normally at home,” Flea continued, “but at school he only talks with his eyes.”
“Oh?”
“Just watch his eyes,” said Flea.
I rolled my eyes, not on purpose, they just rolled on their own like a couple of loose pearls from my mom’s necklace the time I borrowed it for show-and-tell.
“Oops,” said Flea.
“Is this a joke?” asked the sub.
“No, ma’am.” Flea shook her head.
The sub looked puzzled. “No one mentioned a special-needs student. . . .”
“Alvin’s not special,” Flea explained matter-of-factly. “He just doesn’t speak in school.”
The sub fixed her gaze on Flea. Then she locked her gaze on me. It meant that I needed to be on my best behavior.
Fortunately, I’ve had lots of practice in good behavior. I knew what to do. I kept my eyes low. I kept my hands in plain sight. I stayed in my seat.
Then show-and-tell began.
Jules showed a pox scab.
“Ah, that’s nothing,” said Eli. So then Eli showed his. It was redder than Jules’s.
But it wasn’t redder than Hobson’s, which was crimson.
But that was nothing compared to Esha’s, which was practically still oozing.
Then everyone began raising their shirts and lowering their pants to see who had the biggest and ugliest scab of all. It was fabulous!
Then the substitute said that that was enough of the scabs. But some of us had taken off so much of our clothing by then that it took a while to get it all back on.
Then the dreaded moment came.
“Alvin,” said the sub. “Do you have a show-and-tell?”
I froze. I avoided eye contact.
I held my breath. I sucked in my gut. I clutched my PDK.
“His show-and-tell met with some misfortune on the bus this morning,” said Flea helpfully. “So it can’t be shown.”
“Misfortune?” said the sub. She gave me the stare that said I wasn’t yet finished with misfortune.
So, slowly, I pulled out the box.
“Johnny Astro!” gasped the sub. “I had one of these. It’s the best toy in the world! It really f lies! You can fire it up, send it into orbit and bring it down again. It is absolutely spectacular!”
The class went silent. No one moved. No one even breathed.
The sub got very quiet. She wiped her eyes. “Nothing else like it was ever made,” she sighed.
Then she smiled at me.
And I smiled back just a little. Maybe it is even a gentleman’s rule to smile back when a lady smiles at you, but I don’t really know, I can’t remember.
For a sub, I guess she was okay.
As for show-and-tell, it was the best thing I had ever brought in. Everyone wanted to play with me at recess.
“We’ll get it up in the air in no time,” said Pinky, carrying the box out to the playground. “I’ll hold it while you fix it.”
I nodded.
Then we lifted off the cover. The missing pieces were back! But they were wrecked.
“I found them in the back of the bus,” said Flea. “And put them back in there for you.”
“Don’t worry,” said Eli, whose father fixes cars. “I can fix anything. My dad showed me how.”
“I can do origami,” said Sam. “I’ll make you a new balloon!”
“Here are some Band-Aids,” said Eli, peeling a dirty one from each elbow.
“And I’ve got spray paint at home if you want to come over after school,” said Nhia.
I opened my PDK. There were instructions for surviving practically every disaster except a Johnny Astro disastro. That’s the problem with PDKs, you never know what you’re missing until you are missing it.
“Alvin,” said Flea, putting a hand on my shoulder. “People will think you were careless, but you really weren’t.”
“It was an accident,” said Nhia.
“Yeah, an accident,” echoed Eli. “It’s a good thing that it wasn’t your dad’s.”
My heart sank like a dead battery.
And I don’t think I really need to tell you what happened next.
my dad is not only a gentleman, but he is da man, which is a lot like being da dad, which means he can handle quite a lot.
He can eat wasabi without crying.
He can watch a scary movie without flinching.
He can carry a big heavy rock straight across the yard and set it right where my mom wants it.
And he can carry it back again if my mom changes her mind.
When he’s had a bad day, my dad can play the piano like crazy until he is his old self again . . . or if he’s had a truly horrible day, he can curse a wild blue streak like William Shakespeare.
“Sorrow on thee, thou spongy onion-eyed hugger-mugger!” my dad might say. Then he’d write it down. Or “Clean thine ears, thou lumpish bum-bailey!” Every time he thinks of a new curse, he writes it on a little piece of paper and puts it in a tin. Cursing like Shakespeare always makes him feel better.
That’s my dad. He’s da man. He can ha
ndle just about anything.
So right after school, I put Johnny Astro back where it belonged.
And I slipped in between Calvin and Anibelly, where I belonged, and we waited with Lucy by the window for our dad to come home.
“Are you sure Dad said it was yours?” asked Calvin.
“Maybe we should just have your funeral now,” Anibelly whispered sadly.
But I was in luck. When our dad finally stepped through the door, he was in an unusually cheerful mood.
“Hi, everyone!” he said cheerfully.
Silence.
“What’s up?”
Silence.
“How ’bout some more fun with Johnny Astro today?”
No one said anything. My dad whistled across the living room. Cheerfully, he reached for Johnny Astro.
Cheerfully, Johnny Astro came down. “Really Flies,” said the box. “. . . FLY YOUR SPACE CRAFT ANYWHERE.”
Then my dad opened the box.
His whistling stopped.
His breathing stopped.
His feet stopped.
Then he staggered backward.
“WHAAAAAAAAAAT IS THIS?” he wailed. “Johnny Astro, what happened to you?” he cried.
Then he really cried. He put his head in his hands, and his shoulders went up and down.
Carefully, I put my arm around my dad.
Crying is really great.
Everything is better afterward.
Usually. But this was not usual. This was the best toy ever made.
“WHAT BOOTLESS TOAD-SPOTTED BLADDER DID THIS?” my dad howled. “I’LL SEE THEE HANG’D!”
Gulp.
“WHAT HAPPENED TO MY JOHNNY ASTRO?” he screeched.
And my mom rushed in to see what was going on.
“ALVIN?” my dad bellowed.
My chin quivered. My face wrinkled.
“Dear, you know Alvin can’t speak when he’s frightened,” my mom said calmly.
“This isn’t about speaking,” my dad said. His teeth were clenched. “It’s about respecting other people’s things!”
I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t. I had to save it for when things got really rough, which I could see was coming faster than a meteorite falling from the sky and aiming straight for me.
“Maybe it was an accident,” squeaked Anibelly.
“An ACCIDENT?” howled my dad. “How can an accident happen on the TOP shelf ?”
“Maybe he needed a good show-and-tell,” said Calvin. “And the accident happened on the bus.”
“WHAAAAAAAT?” roared my dad.
It was time. I began to cry. Crying is really great, it is a good way of softening the blow coming to you. And it helps if the tears run off your chin and you slobber a little and your eyes get puffy and you are a real mess.
“Oh, Alvin, you poor thing,” said my mom, which really helps too. She put her arms around me. If lightning struck, it would hit her first, which is probably one of the rules of being a mom.
“This is more than an accident,” said my dad. He held up the newly repaired and heavily bandaged Johnny Astro.
“Maybe the guys tried to fix it at recess,” said Calvin.
My dad turned seaweed green.
Then he turned sea-foamy.
Then he turned pomegranate, then grapefruit, then orange. Normally I like orange. It is the color of tigers and sherbet and sunsets and mango. But I did not like this orange. It was danger-alert orange, which is only helpful around construction sites.
Anibelly and Calvin stared with their mouths wide open. Getting busted is the best spectator sport around our house, except when you’re the one getting busted.
“My Johnny Astro . . . ,” my dad wailed. He put the cover back on it and hugged the box sadly. Then he marched off to the piano, like he always does when he’s had a hard day, and played like a wild savage beast.
My dad learned to play the piano when he was about my age. So now when he plays, he sounds like Brahms even though his fingers are as thick as bratwurst. As long as he was playing I was okay. And the longer he played, the more okay I was going to be, because as we all know, music is medicine. The more you take, the better you feel.
Finally he stopped. “Alvin needs piano lessons,” said my dad. “It will keep him busy. It will give him confidence. It will change his life.”
My dad paused. “It might even give him a good show-and-tell,” he added.
And so it was decided that I would take piano lessons, which was really marvelous! I was expecting a grounding, but instead, I was going to face the music.
“Thanks, Dad!” I cried.
My dad said nothing.
I wanted to say something else, something that would make my dad feel good for taking it easy on me. But I didn’t know what else to say . . . until I thought of something.
“Someday when I’m old and beastly and have sausages for fingers, I will play the piano just like you, Dad, instead of punishing my kid for destroying my Johnny Astro.”
Hair grew on the backs of my dad’s hands. He looked strangely beastly again. I think he needed more music to smooth his soul.
piano lessons were a splendid idea except that every Wednesday after school, when I could have been doing something really useful like taking a bath or vacuuming my room or sharing my sticks and toys with Anibelly, I was to go to Miss Emily’s house—alone, without Lucy, without Anibelly, and worst of all, without my Firecracker Man gear or PDK. I might as well have been completely naked!
Now, Miss Emily was no ordinary piano teacher. She lived at the very end of the street where the trees hang low.
And the grass grows tall.
And shadows stretch like inky tentacles across the road.
And her house looks like a face that sags sadly to the right.
“Go straight to Miss Emily’s,” my mom said. “She’s expecting you. Don’t stop anywhere.”
I might not have had a problem going to Miss Emily’s—that is, if we lived in a normal town. But we do not. A lot of famous dead people live here. And when you are famous, you don’t get buried like a regular person under a stone that has your name and telephone number on it. You have to stay in your house to give tours.
The way to know where a famous dead person lives is to look for a sign on their front lawn that says it is their house. For example, at the other end of our street, away from the end where Miss Emily lives, there is a big white house with a sign that says “The House of Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Mr. Emerson was famous for writing essays, which is to say he got famous for doing a lot of English homework.
Mr. Emerson died a long time ago, but he still lives in that house. On Thursdays he sweeps his walk. It is very creepy. But his is not the only house like that. There’s the “Orchard House, Home of the Alcotts,” where Louisa May Alcott leads tours and shows where she used to write stories at a small desk. I’ve taken the tour with my family. She is definitely a dead author still in her house.
“Calm down,” my mom said when we were in Orchard House. “She’s an actress dressed up as the author.”
I don’t think so. It wasn’t a show at all. It was for real. You could just tell that she had always lived in that house. And her next-door neighbor, Nathaniel Hawthorne, who was also famous for writing stories, is another dead author still in his house. He has a sign outside that says “Wayside.” We didn’t make it over there after touring Orchard House that day on account of I was scared so stiff I had to be carried home.
So in a normal town I would not have a problem going to Miss Emily’s. But this town is not normal.
And Miss Emily’s house is not normal. There is a sign on her front lawn. So halfway there, I stopped dead in my tracks. I couldn’t bear to get any closer.
“Boo!” said a voice.
“AAAAAAAAAIEEEEEEEEEE!” I screamed.
It was Jules. It is hard to go anywhere without going past Jules’s house, as I’ve mentioned. And Jules was in the bushes out front.
“You going to piano l
essons?” asked Jules.
“Maybe.”
“Looks like you were headed straight to piano lessons.”
“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not,” I said.
“No one walks this way except to go to piano lessons,” said Jules. “I see ’em coming and I see ’em going. Mostly they come. Only the lucky few ever go.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t really know,” said Jules. “There are only rumors.”
“What rumors?”
Jules looked down the street both ways, then whispered, “You know the witch with the yummy house who fattened the kids?”
I nodded. I sure hated that witch who fed Hansel and Gretel to fatten them and then tried to shove them into the oven. She was the most evil witch in the world, worse even than the one who gave Snow White the poisoned apple, on account of she had kept Hansel and Gretel in a cage, which, as everyone knows, could mean years of therapy for them.
“Just learn your scales,” Jules said. “But don’t eat anything if she tries to feed you. You don’t like brownies, do you?”
Gulp. Brownies are my weakness.
“Brownies are her specialty,” Jules continued. “You’re not going to last very long if you like brownies.”
I gasped. Then I turned and dashed home.
When I arrived in my yard, I was in luck. Anibelly was digging with my sticks and Lucy was doing yoga ball next to her. Lucy puts a ball on top of her front paws, stretches out in the down-dog position and touches the tip of her nose to the ball. She can hold the pose until the squirrels come home, or until Anibelly is finished digging holes.
“Anibelly,” I shouted. “Come with me, and bring Lucy too.”
“Okay,” said Anibelly. “C’mon, Luce.” Anibelly is fantastic. She always comes when I ask and she never questions why until she has figured it all out, which usually takes a while.