by Jeff Strand
I pour the concoction onto the plates and announce that dinner is served.
Blake picks up his fork (yes, his fork has a tiny bit of dried food I stuck to one of the tines) and gazes at his plate. I doubt he’d want to eat this even if it was prepared properly. Dinner is going to be pure agony for him. I love it.
“Looks scrumptious,” says Blake.
I smile. “Doesn’t it?”
He scoops up a bite and pops it into his mouth. As he chews, I can see that he thinks it’s utterly disgusting. Will he dare to be rude enough to say something? I mean, your manners would have to be astonishingly poor to speak ill of a meal your generous host prepared for you.
Blake swallows with some effort. “Mmm,” he says.
Of course, the downside to my plan is that I have to eat this too. I take a bite, and it’s even worse than I thought. I choke it down without gagging. “I sure do love macaroni and cheese,” I say.
“Me too,” says Blake, taking another bite. A bead of sweat trickles down his forehead. “Yummy.”
“Would you like some ketchup?” I ask, holding a bottle toward him. “It’s kind of watery, but still good.”
Mom takes a bite of her dinner, chews for a second, and then sets down her fork. “Rod!”
“What?”
“You completely overcooked this. You can’t serve this to a guest. And it tastes like you mixed the cheese packet with water instead of milk.”
I can’t believe it. I thought Mom would eat my cooking without complaint. I’ve made plenty of terrible meals on accident, so I never imagined that she’d embarrass me in front of my own cousin.
She stands up and collects all three plates. “I’m sorry, Blake,” she says. “He usually makes it better than this.”
“I thought it was perfectly fine,” says Blake.
“You don’t have to be polite in this household,” Mom informs him. “That was inedible. C’mon, Rod, you know better than that.”
It would appear that my plan has backfired.
“Sorry,” I say. “I never claimed to be a master chef.”
“It’s macaroni and cheese. An eight-year-old can make macaroni and cheese.”
“I don’t know about that,” says Blake. “I was involved in lots of macaroni and cheese–related mishaps when I was a preteen. One time for St. Patrick’s Day I added green food coloring, and I got it all over my shirt. Food coloring doesn’t come out of clothing very well, and my mom was hopping mad. So don’t give Rod too hard of a time over this.”
“Well, Rod isn’t eight.”
“Fair enough,” says Blake. He looks at me. “I tried.”
My face burns with anger and shame. All I wanted was for Blake to go “Bleaarrrgh!” and spit it back onto the plate. Was that so much to ask?
“Now what are we supposed to eat?” Mom asks.
Blake shrugs. “Pizza encore?”
“No, no, we’re not doing pizza again. I’ll make something else.”
“What about Chinese? My treat.”
“You’re not buying us dinner again. Chinese sounds great, but you’re not paying for it.”
“I insist.”
“Absolutely not.”
The task of ordering and picking up dinner falls on me, though Mom doesn’t go so far as to make me pay for it with my own money. I do a lot of deep breathing during the drive. A lot of deep breathing.
12.
I stare at my bedroom wall.
I can’t be certain, but I think Blake moved all his posters about an inch onto my side. It’s not enough that I can prove he did anything, though the subliminal impact is there. As soon as I stepped into my room, I thought, He messed with the posters again.
I’m not sure when he would have done it. It would’ve taken a while to move every single poster, and I don’t think he’s been in my room unattended tonight. He’d be taking a huge risk of getting caught. Still, I’m almost positive that his posters take up one more inch wall space than mine.
This must be part of his plan to make me doubt my sanity.
I should draw a line on the wall in case he does it again.
No, that’s something that somebody who doubts their sanity would do.
I’ll just be on high alert for the sound of pushpins being pulled out of the Sheetrock and stuck back in again. I’m not saying that Blake won’t drive me insane, but if he does, it won’t be with my posters.
Actually, if he did move all his posters, there’ll be separate holes in the wall one inch from where the corners of each poster are now. I walk over to the center of the wall and pull out the pin in the upper left corner of a poster featuring a raccoon and the caption “Stick ’Em Up!” (Presumably, the raccoon looks like a bank robber wearing a mask. This doesn’t seem to be a clever enough visual for somebody to translate into poster form, but I won’t judge.)
There isn’t an extra hole in the wall one inch away.
I check the lower left corner to be sure.
Nope. No extra hole. In fact, it looks like Blake considerately used the same holes from the posters of mine that he took down.
Fine. Maybe he’s not performing slight rearrangements of our decor in an attempt to make me question my sense of reality. That doesn’t mean he’s not a jerk.
“What are you doing?” a voice asks behind me.
(Spoiler alert: The voice belongs to Blake. You probably guessed that, but if even one of you reading this said, “Wow, I bet there’s a major plot twist about to be revealed regarding the identity of the person who asked what he was doing!” then I’ll consider my attempt to draw out the suspense a success.)
I turn around. “Oh, hi, Blake.”
“Why are you messing with my poster?”
“I’m not,” I say, quickly squeezing my hand closed, which isn’t something I recommend when you’re holding a pushpin. Fortunately, I’m composed enough not to wince in pain as the pin jabs through my tender flesh.
“Yes, you are. It’s flopping over.”
“Don’t tell me what to do in my own room.”
“I wasn’t,” says Blake. “I was asking a question. You got all bent out of shape when I touched your posters, so I assumed that you’d respect mine. I already offered to take them down.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I walked in here, and there was movement behind the raccoon poster. I thought there might be a centipede behind it or something. I figured you didn’t want a big bug slithering back there, so I took out two of the pins so I could check to be sure. Turns out there’s no centipede. Good to hear, right? Centipede juice doesn’t come out of posters well.”
“Centipede juice?”
I nod. “It’s what you get when you squish a centipede. I thought that if you saw your poster moving, you might slap it. So I did you a favor.”
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t.”
“Well, like I said, there wasn’t anything back there, so I guess it was a hallucination on my part. That happens sometimes.” I stick one of the pins back in the corner of the poster.
“Was there blood on that pin?”
“Nope.”
“Is there blood on your palm?”
“Nope.”
“I think there is.”
“I think maybe you should worry about your own palms.” I replace the second pin. “Whammo. Good as new.”
“Did you say whammo?”
“Yes. And I’ll say it again.”
Blake is quiet for a moment. “Well, let me know if you have any other centipede sightings. Working as a team, I’m sure we can defeat the centipede menace.”
Blake leaves my bedroom.
I wonder if he did that trick where you smear toothpaste on the wall to fill in the holes made by pushpins.
I decide not to check.
• • •
I d
rive to school every morning. I assume I’ll have to tell Blake, “Sorry, dude. Looks like you’re taking the bus,” but Mom has to sign some paperwork at the school, so she’s driving him today.
Fortunately, we’ll only share two classes—third-period English and seventh-period biology. Oh, and lunch. I hope he’ll make some friends before lunch so he won’t want to sit with me.
For my first two classes, it’s a completely normal day. I can’t remember if I said this before, but I’m a pretty good student. I pay attention in class, and when Mr. Gellbar springs a pop quiz on us, I’m confident that I got at least a nine out of ten.
When I sit down in English class, I’m glad that my assigned seat is in the middle of the room with classmates to my front, rear, left, and right. The one vacant seat is in the back. Blake won’t be sitting next to me.
Blake walks in as the bell rings. I was sort of hoping that he’d get hopelessly lost in the labyrinth, but I guess somebody gave him directions.
Ms. Mayson, who looks like she’s about eighty, but also looks like she could, if necessary, beat up the entire class like she was in a kung fu movie, walks to the front of the room with Blake. “As you know, we have a new student today. He’ll be joining us while his mom and dad are doing missionary work in Ecuador. Please welcome Blake Montgomery.”
It’s not clear if we’re supposed to applaud or say, “Hello, Blake Montgomery,” or what, so everybody just kind of sits there.
“Why don’t you tell the class a little about yourself, Blake?” asks Ms. Mayson.
I can’t help but sympathize with him. No student in the history of the school system has ever wanted to stand up in front of a class and tell everyone a little about themselves.
“I’m Rodney’s cousin,” he begins.
Ugh. Everybody already knew that my cousin was joining our class, but I still don’t like hearing him say it out loud.
“Usually, when my parents are off doing diplomatic work, they go separately, or if it’s during the summer, I go with them. This time it was too good of an opportunity to help the Ecuadorian people to pass up, so I’m staying with Rodney and my aunt. I guess my parents were worried that a party animal like me would trash the house while they were gone.”
The class chuckles. I wonder why he won’t admit that his parents are on a cruise. Or did I miss some important detail of my mom’s story?
“What are your hobbies?” asks Ms. Mayson.
“Oh, a little of this, a little of that,” says Blake. “I dabble in filmmaking, writing, painting, mentoring. Jack of all trades, master of none, right?”
“I hear that,” says Ms. Mayson, even though she’s been an English teacher for decades.
“I had to leave my motorcycle behind in California, which was a major disappointment. My daily ride gets rid of a lot of stress. I’m not trying to brag. I don’t do tricks or anything. Just me on the open road, seventy miles per hour, wind racing through my hair. I miss that.”
I raise my hand. “You don’t wear a helmet?”
Ms. Mayson shushes me.
“I should. I really should,” says Blake. “My craving for danger is going to get me in trouble someday.”
I glance around the classroom. Nobody is actually buying this, are they? I mean, c’mon. Everybody should be rolling their eyes. They should be pointing and laughing, not in a mean-spirited bullying way, just showing Blake they know he’s making up all this stuff about craving danger. The only danger he craves is eating a microwave burrito before it’s cooled down.
But my classmates seem to be buying his story.
“My newest endeavor is music,” Blake tells the class.
“Oh?” asks Ms. Mayson. “Which instrument do you play?”
“None. I only wish I were that talented. But I’m an advisor to my cousin Rodney’s band, Fanged Grapefruit.”
I’ll let the diplomatic mission and the fake hobbies and the motorcycle stuff slide, but no way is Blake going to stand up in front of the class and say that he’s an advisor to Fanged Grapefruit.
“No, you’re not,” I protest.
“Didn’t I provide feedback after your last rehearsal?”
“That doesn’t make you an advisor.”
“Wasn’t the feedback incorporated into the end product?”
“You’re not an advisor.”
“Don’t argue with your cousin on his first day,” Ms. Mayson tells me. “That’s very juvenile.”
“I’m setting the record straight.”
“Record,” says Blake. “That’s an appropriate pun for a band.”
The class chuckles.
“Anyway,” says Blake. “I hope you’ll all come to the Lane tonight to see the new and improved Fanged Grapefruit. It’ll be a great show.”
“Thank you, Blake,” says Ms. Mayson. She points to the empty seat in the back. “You can sit there for now.”
Blake smiles and takes his seat.
He’s not our advisor! I start counting to five again.
We’re reading this book called Falling Leaves of the Life Tree, which is not the real name of the book, but even though the author has been dead for about a hundred and fifty years, I don’t want to name the actual book in case the author’s descendants are sensitive and litigious.
Ms. Mayson has us read chapter twelve silently for about ten minutes.
“Ye who catch not the leaves see not the tree,” spoke Count Vargas. “If you gaze forth, why not gaze about instead?”
Guntheramous gave a nod of his weighty head. “Yours wisd’m haith giv’n this olde head a scritcher to puzzle, mightn’t it? Would ye confiss ta stailin’ such mind-thoughts from ye ailders?”
“Speaketh not that blasphemy lest thy cleft of chin meet the steel tip of my dagger,” Count Vargas gasped in rage.
“I’m an advisor for Fanged Grapefruit,” Blake Montgomery told the Count.
“Liar! Fraudulent liar!” shouted Count Vargas, waving his dagger to and fro. “Thou shalt suffer dearly for this falsehood! Guntheramous! Slay him thusly!”
“But Count Vargas of Wicktensteinberg, my faingers, when clutched, containen naught to call a weapoun!”
“Then slay him with thy bare hands! Tear his head from his shoulders, then his arms from their sockets, then his fingers from their finger sockets, then his legs from his torso, and then squeeze his torso until all contents doth spill forth, and then tread firmly upon them!”
“Uh-oh,” said Blake Montgomery. “I’m in a heap o’ trouble now!”
And Guntheramous, he did attack, and he did tear the rascal limb from limb. As Blake Montgomery spilled, he cursed the wretched day that he deceptively told a classroom of students that he was in any way associated with such a fine group of musicians as Fanged Grapefruit. His eyes closed, everything went dark, but it didn’t go dark because his eyes were closed (sorry to confuse ye) but rather because he was dead.
Should I be worried that I’m inserting Blake’s demise into scenes of classic literature that I’m reading for English class? Probably, but I’ll worry about it later. And just hope there isn’t a pop quiz before then.
unlucky
13.
(A.K.A. “THE GROSS CHAPTER”)
(WARNING: DO NOT READ.)
Fourth period is much better because Blake isn’t there. Then it’s lunchtime, where I sit with Audrey and Mel every day. (Clarissa has second lunch. Luckily, she has many other friends besides us, so she’s has people to eat with. She’s fine.)
To actually refuse to let Blake sit with us would feel like bullying, so I work out a two-part strategy:
1. Hope that Blake doesn’t sit at my table.
2. If he does, try to avoid knocking myself unconscious from repeatedly bashing my head against the table in frustration.
It turns out that I don’t even see Blake. Maybe he’s eating outside. M
aybe he’ll eat outside every day for the next three months, and it’ll be one less problem for me to deal with. Knowing Blake, he’s probably having sushi delivered.
Mel and Audrey, perhaps noticing a twitch in my eyebrow, do not mention Blake the entire time. It’s half an hour of happiness.
Fifth period is fine. Sixth period, physical education, is also fine because running while a gym teacher yells at me to run faster is a hobby of mine. (I’m actually a good runner. All the jumping around I do while playing music keeps me in good shape.)
Seventh period, as you may or may not recall, is biology. I’ve always enjoyed this class. Not enough to become a doctor or marine biologist, but enough to look forward to the labs and stuff. Audrey is my lab partner, but even if my lab partner was Stinky Frank, the Deodorant-Free Kid, I’d enjoy it.
But today, there’s a new student in seventh-period biology, one I want to be farther away from than Stinky Frank. And that student is…you know.
(Fun fact: One day Stinky Frank came into school wearing an automobile air freshener around his neck. He has a good sense of humor about his aromatic challenges. I think it gives him a sense of identity and purpose. He’s very odd but always kind.)
Mr. Gy doesn’t make Blake stand in front of the class and tell them a little about himself. “Gretchen is out today, but she’ll be your lab partner in the future,” Mr. Gy tells him. “For now, your cousin can show you the ropes.”
Blake walks over to my and Audrey’s station. Today we’re doing dissections.
I quickly hold my notebook over the specimen, as it occurs to me that this might be really upsetting for him. (Blake, not the specimen, although I suppose things aren’t going so great for the specimen either.) It’s probably the last thing he wants to dissect.
“Maybe you should join one of the other tables,” I say. “Julie and Mark are dissecting a squid.”
“What are you dissecting?” Blake asks.
“You don’t want to know.”
“What is it?” he presses.
“A rat.”
“Oh, cool!”
“I thought you loved rats.”