I picked up my spoon. “Do you think that guy was Dillon Zawicki’s father?”
Noah shrugged. “Anything’s possible.”
“But he looked too old. And way too small. I mean, he was regular size, but you know Dillon. He’s a baby T-rex.”
“So maybe it wasn’t his father.” Noah wiped his fork and spoon with his napkin, then spread the napkin neatly on his lap. “Maybe he was somebody not even related.”
I frowned. Dragged my spoon through my pudding. “Like who?”
“Like, knowing Dillon, possibly his probation officer.”
Probation officer. I licked pudding from my spoon.
“That makes a lot more sense,” I said. “Except, I don’t really see a probation officer holding his boots together with duct tape, do you?”
“How would I know?” Noah held his hands up. “And what difference does it make?”
Well, none. Probably.
Still, the whole thing seemed weird. Everybody had to come from somewhere, but I never thought of Dillon Zawicki having an actual . . . family. Except for Sam, of course, but that didn’t prove much.
Lightning split the sky beyond the lunchroom windows.
Lightning. That was powerful.
I picked up my pencil.
Noah studied the drawing over my shoulder. “Not bad.”
I nodded. The Sludge wasn’t bad. He’d make a pretty good bad guy.
Assistant bad guy, anyway. A henchman to the true arch villain.
I sighed. A pretty good henchman wasn’t good enough. A pretty good henchman had never brought out the superhero heart in anyone.
I tapped my pencil against the drawing.
Glanced at the table under the EXIT sign again. At Sam, who sat with her head down, chewing a bite of peanut butter and jelly, just about glaring a bullet hole into her lunch sack.
She was Sam Zawicki and everything, so she probably didn’t even care, since she hated pretty much everyone, but sitting by yourself at lunch had to stink. I mean, Dillon wasn’t much in the lunch buddy department.
But now she didn’t have anybody.
Sam didn’t say a word to me when I got home from Art Club.
I was pretty much used to that. It worked out well for both of us, since I didn’t want to talk to her, either.
But for some reason, today her silence seemed more, well, silent. She didn’t bang around the kitchen so much. The Zawicki Glare of Death seemed more like a smolder than a laser blast. And when she left, she didn’t slam the door hard enough to rattle it off the hinges.
Even Beech seemed quiet.
After she was gone, he shook his head. “Sam sad.” He wandered off to his room, his pillowcase cape drooped over his shoulders, muttering something that sounded like, “No tune-up. No money. No dress.”
Who even knew what he was talking about?
Twenty-One
Sam sat by herself again the next day. Which wasn’t a surprise, and I don’t even know why I noticed. I had way more important things to worry about than Sam Zawicki’s lunch plans.
For instance, I still hadn’t come up with that one thing I needed to make Beanboy’s story really rock.
Also, there was the Fall Fling.
Emma and the Kaleys had set up a table in the lunchroom to sell tickets. Emma explained the whole thing to us while she taped her ADVANCE TICKETS sign to the table.
“You get a fifty-cent discount if you buy a ticket now instead of waiting for the night of the dance.” She beamed her mind-jamming superpower all over Noah and me. “We told Ms. Flanigan it would encourage more students to come.”
“Good idea,” Noah told her.
“Urr-guh-yeah,” I said.
So Noah and I got in line to buy tickets. Because even though the Kaleys were probably very possibly right, and nobody would dance with us, we couldn’t let Emma down, not after she went to all the effort of setting up a table and making a sign and everything.
The line inched along. I jingled my money in my pocket, not paying attention to who else might be in line in front of us.
Until the Kaleys, who always had something to say, went dead quiet. And a barky voice growled out a single word: “One.”
I snapped to attention. It was Sam. Zawicki. She stood three people ahead of us, at the front of the line. From the looks of it, she was trying to light Kaley T.’s hair on fire with a Zawicki Glare of Pain and Dismemberment.
Kaley T. stared at her. “One . . . ticket? To the . . . dance?”
“Yeah. To the dance. What else would I be standing in this stupid line for?”
The Kaleys shot each other a look. A sideways loser dweeb look.
Kaley T. turned back to Sam. Gave her a sweet, concerned, and completely fake smile. Pulled a ticket from her pile and acted like she was going to hand it to Sam, then pulled it back.
“Are you sure this is the best use of your money?” she said. “I mean, if your family can’t even afford milk . . .” Her voice trailed off. She raised an eyebrow.
Milk? I looked at Kaley T. Then at Kaley C., who suddenly, for some reason, decided at that very minute to count her stack of tickets.
“What did you say?” Sam’s growl was quiet, but even from the back, I knew her face was burning red. She clenched her fists. Her hair crackled with rage.
Kaley T. sighed a completely fake concerned sigh. “Don’t get mad. I’m only worried that—”
“Kaley.” Emma’s voice was sharp. “We’re here to sell tickets.” She snatched the ticket from Kaley T.’s hand and held it out to Sam.
Who stood there for a really long moment, fists still clenched.
“Forget it,” she said finally. “I wouldn’t come to your stupid dance if you paid me.”
She whirled, shot the entire line down with a machine-gun glare, then stomped across the cafeteria, her combat boots practically shattering the floor tiles, and clanked out the door.
For a second, the whole lunchroom went silent.
Then it erupted in conversation, everyone talking at once.
Kaley T. rolled her eyes. “She makes such a scene out of everything.”
Emma looked at her.
Kaley C. looked at her pile of tickets.
The line inched forward.
“Well, it’s true,” Kaley T. said. “Her brother”—she wrinkled her nose, like she’d just gotten a whiff of something rotten—“stole a whole gallon of milk from the FACS room.”
“Milk?” I said.
Noah glanced at me. I closed my mouth.
“She can’t help what her brother does,” said Emma.
Boy, that was true. I’d spent my whole life trying to help whatever Beech did, and I’d never made a dent. And Beech was way smaller than Dillon.
“Besides,” said Emma, “we don’t even know for sure he did it.”
“Yes, we do,” said Kaley T. “Why do you think he got suspended? They can’t kick somebody out just for being a big, stupid jerk. Although, really, I don’t know why not. When Ms. Flanigan checked their kitchen, their entire gallon of milk was just”—she threw her hands in the air dramatically (you could tell she liked telling this story)—“gone. And then, when she asked him about it, he lied—to her face—and said he didn’t take it. That’s why he got suspended. For stealing and lying. And not only that, his family has to pay for the missing milk.”
Kaley C. studied the flaky green polish on her fingernails.
“They paid for the milk? But”—I stared at the Kaleys—“what about the other kitchens? Was everybody else’s milk there? Like, say, yours?”
Kaley C. didn’t move.
Kaley T.’s nostrils flared. “Of course it was. We don’t steal.” She picked up her stack of tickets, clearly finished with the conversation. “So are you going to buy a ticket or what?”
I stuck my hand in my pocket. Fingered my dollar bill and four quarters. It was plenty for my Fall Fling ticket. With two quarters left over.
“Um, Noah?” I whispered. “Can I borrow
a dollar from your emergency bassoon case fund? I’ll pay you back. I just . . . didn’t bring enough.”
Kaley T. rolled her eyes.
Noah shrugged. “Sure.”
He swung his bassoon case around, unzipped his emergency supplies pocket, pulled out a dollar, and handed it to me.
I doubt he would’ve been so casual if he knew what I was planning to do with it.
I let Noah go ahead of me. He bought his ticket and shuffled off to the side to zip the bassoon case.
I slid the two dollars and four quarters across the table to Emma and held up two fingers.
She flashed her half-dimple smile. “Oh, you need—”
She stopped. Got this really thoughtful look on her face and glanced at the cafeteria door, which was still vibrating from Sam slamming through it. She beamed her smile on me again, only this time it was full dimple.
She slipped my money into the metal cash box and handed me two tickets, tucked together so that no one could tell she was holding more than one. “You’re a good person, Tucker MacBean.”
“Ar—guh—yigh,” I said. Which, roughly translated, meant No, I’m actually a really stupid person, but thank you. Let’s hope I live through this.
I tucked both tickets in my shoe and shuffled across the cafeteria after Noah.
Twenty-Two
I trekked into the kitchen after Art Club.
Beech was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing the pillowcase and eating macaroni with a cut-up hot dog face.
Sam was doing . . . something, I guess. I didn’t look at her. I usually didn’t. We’d gotten into a pretty good routine. I didn’t look at her. She didn’t look at me. I didn’t say anything. She didn’t say anything back. She babysat Beech. I handed over the babysitting money. She left.
Worked out pretty well for everybody.
So I marched straight to the refrigerator, as usual. Slid the money from under the magnet and covertly folded it in half. It was a little bulkier than usual, but I hoped nobody would notice. I turned and handed the whole wad to Sam.
She snatched it from my hand, heaved her backpack from the chair, said “Bye, kid,” as she ruffled Beecher’s hair, and banged out the door. Beech and I listened to her boots thump down the stairs.
The thumps stopped, and for a minute, all we heard was silence.
Beech looked at me. I closed my eyes. I’d been hoping she wouldn’t find it till she got home.
The footsteps thumped back upstairs. The kitchen door flew open.
Sam stood in the doorway, holding the Fall Fling ticket in the air like a machete.
“What is this?”
I swallowed. “Looks like a dance ticket.”
She mowed me down with a glare. “I know that. What was it doing in my babysitting money?”
“Um . . . because I put it there?”
Sam narrowed her eyes. “Quit being stupid on purpose. You know what I mean.”
I closed my eyes again. Why did she have to make everything so . . . hard? Why couldn’t somebody just do some tiny little thing for her that was just a tiny bit nice without having to run for cover?
I took a breath. “Look,” I said. “It’s not that big a deal. It’s just that, well, the Kaleys are mean to everybody. They’re mean to me, too. But mostly they just give me the loser dweeb look and leave me alone.”
“Loser dweeb look.” Sam stopped breathing fire long enough to consider this. She nodded. “Yeah. That’s about the right name for it.”
Beech nodded, too. “Right name for it.”
As if he even knew what he was talking about. He just wanted to be like Sam, which was too scary for me to think about right then.
“They’re not going to waste the full impact of their superior meanness on a lightweight like me,” I said. “So they shoot the loser dweeb look, remind me I shouldn’t be allowed to breathe the same air as them, and that’s it. They don’t actually, you know, say anything to me.”
Sam snorted. “Lucky.”
Beech snorted, too.
By this time Sam had relaxed a little. She was still holding the ticket, but more like a piece of paper than like a weapon. Even her hair had smoothed down so it wasn’t in full-attack position.
And I should’ve stopped right there.
But me, being me, I had to explain things further.
“So since I was standing there in line anyway,” I said, “I figured I could buy an extra ticket without being totally run out of the cafeteria—”
The very second those words left my mouth, I knew they were wrong.
“What did you say?” Sam’s hair snapped to full alert. “You think the Kaleys ran me out of the cafeteria?”
“No. I just—”
“For your information, I left on my own. Because I wanted to. Not because anyone ran me out.”
“I know. I didn’t mean—”
“No one runs me out of anywhere, you got that?” She pointed the ticket at me. “I know how people look at me. I know they think, oh, she’s just one of those scroungy Zawickis, can’t even buy her clothes in a normal store. Like I’d really want to dress like everybody else and go to some lame dance and be like those stupid Kaleys, who can’t even decide what to wear without texting each other first. But they did not run me out of the lunchroom. You got that?”
She stopped to catch her breath, her bony chest heaving with rage, the ticket shaking in her white-knuckled fist.
“And just so you know, even though you probably don’t care, my brother is not a thief. He’s sure as heck not sneaky enough to get a whole gallon of milk out of the FACS room without anybody noticing. He does a lot of stupid things, and I spend a lot of time trying to undo them because my grandpa has enough to worry about—”
“Wait.” I blinked. “Your grandpa? So . . . the man with the white hair. He’s not your father?”
“My father? Are you kidding me?” Sam sputtered, her face so red, I thought her head would pop right off her neck. “I’ve never even met my father. We’re not as lucky as you, Beanboy. We don’t have a mom or a dad just hanging around the house waiting to stick pizza money on our refrigerator. But we pay our own way. We pay for our own milk, and we pay for our own dance tickets, so you can keep this.”
She flung the mangled ticket on the table.
“It’s not like I can go to the dance now anyway, so you just wasted your money.”
Beech picked up the ticket. I guess that’s when she remembered he was sitting there.
Her bark softened. “Hey, kid.” She ruffled his hair. Picked a piece of macaroni off his cape. “I have to go now, but I’ll see you next time, okay?”
Beech nodded. “Net time.”
She hiked her backpack up and stomped out the door.
I listened to her boots thunk down the steps.
What was wrong with her? Didn’t she ever get tired of fighting with everybody?
And what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I have just kept my two extra quarters in my pocket?
Beech tried to smooth out the wrinkled ticket. He looked up at me, his face scrunched.
“I know. You think I scared her again.” I shook my head. “Just eat your macaroni.”
Later on, when I was leaning against the bathroom door, waiting for Beecher to get ready for bed, I spotted a spool of thread in the hallway. It had rolled into the corner, leaving a trail of pink thread behind it.
I followed the thread down the hall into my mom’s room, across her rug, and under her desk, where the end of it was caught in the lid of the giant sewing box.
I lifted the lid to put it back. Inside was a mess. Who knew what Sam and Beech had been doing in there? Pink thread was mangled up everywhere. And bits of pink material.
And one more thing: My drawing of the sparkly superhero dress was gone.
Twenty-Three
I poked my fork at the edge of my chicken patty. Or, as Noah called it, my alleged chicken patty. We’d found very little evidence that the squishy gray slab was actual chic
ken.
I sneaked a quick glance across the lunchroom.
At Sam. Sitting under the EXIT sign. By herself. For the third day in a row.
Which was not my problem. Except, well, it kind of was.
I tore my mayonnaise packet open with my teeth, squirted it on the bun, and skooshed it around to coat the alleged patty.
Noah tapped his finger on my lunch tray. “You going to eat your fruit cup? You should. It’s probably the only thing on your whole tray that contains a single nutrient. But if not . . .”
I pushed my tray toward him. “Go for it.”
Noah scooped up the plastic cup of questionable fruit.
I shot another glance at Sam. Here was my problem: Her brother was suspended for stealing milk. Except he didn’t steal it. And I was the only person who knew that.
So I should probably tell the truth. That’s what H2O would do. Heck, that’s what Beanboy would do (the real Beanboy, not me). He wouldn’t even think about it. He’d go to the office, ask to see Mr. Petrucelli, and tell him exactly what happened on grilled cheese day in FACS.
It would be the right thing to do.
But I’d tried doing the right thing with the dance ticket. That hadn’t worked out so hot for anybody.
Plus, if I told Mr. Petrucelli that Dillon didn’t take the milk, I’m pretty sure I’d have to tell him who did. And even though I’m not a huge fan of Kaley C.—or either of the Kaleys—it would feel weird to be the person who got her kicked out of school instead of Dillon.
Especially if she found out who told on her.
Which she would.
And so would everyone else.
Including Emma.
And then the whole school would hate me.
First they’d find out I existed.
Then they’d hate me.
Including Emma.
Plus, if we’re being honest, did anyone really want Dillon Zawicki tearing through the halls of Earhart Middle again any time soon?
Well, yeah. I could think of one person: his grandpa.
The Adventures of Beanboy Page 8