by Andrew Smith
Still, they were counting on me to be the one to climb up the T. rex at Lily Putt’s Indoor-Outdoor Miniature Golf Course and install the club’s receiving unit, which looked like a big tinfoil birthday hat.
And it was always the busiest day of the year at Lily Putt’s, which was right across from the main site of Blue Creek Days—the town’s community center. Dad was kilted up and already gone by the time I got out into the kitchen, which was a good thing, because he still wasn’t really talking to me for the whole ruining-his-dreams thing about my not wanting to go to MIT.
Then there was the James Jenkins problem. I could tell he’d been very nervous about the dance demonstration, even given that James Jenkins was the kind of kid who just didn’t ever show emotions very obviously (and it was NOT because he was a murderer; it was because of so many other things going on in that kid’s head, a lot of which I felt responsible for).
I may have been more nervous for James Jenkins than he was for himself. After all, it was my fault that he found himself cornered into performing—even if he ended up telling me he really wanted to do it.
And I didn’t know if he actually did want to do it.
I think James Jenkins was just the kind of kid who didn’t say no to people, a kid who never let other people feel let down, even if it meant potentially embarrassing himself—like by performing ballet in front of the formerly onion-planting townsfolk of Blue Creek, and especially in front of his chicken-fried-steak-on-a-stick dad.
At all costs, after what I’d done to him, and after what I finally had remembered James Jenkins had done for me, I’d have to be there for James today—no matter what. I imagined myself transforming into some kind of warrior superhero and running through the crowd, punching people right in the nose for making fun of him, except I don’t think I could ever punch anyone in my life.
It all made me extremely anxious, so much that my hands shook as I stirred the cream and gorgonzola into the roux to create the base of my sauce.
“Sam, why are you in the kitchen, cooking in your underwear?” My little sister, Evie, startled me with a surprise entry into my prep.
There were too many subterranean nocturnal animals running around in my brain that morning. I hadn’t even bothered to finish getting dressed, I was so flustered. I had intended to put on my official Clan Abernathy kilt that day. As much as I didn’t like wearing it in front of people, I hoped it would make Dad happy again. And maybe James Jenkins wouldn’t feel entirely alone in the Blue Creek Days Embarrassment Club.
I looked down at my bare legs.
My kilt was still balled up on the floor of my closet.
(Excuse me.)
“Oh my gosh,” I said, and ran back to my room.
I was a mess.
THE T. REX WITH THE TINFOIL HAT
This starts at the top of a giant fiberglass T. rex’s head.
I was good at climbing the T. rex, and Rigo, who was the only other worker at Lily Putt’s who was forced to do it, preferred not to. Hole thirteen, where the giant orange T. rex guarded the carpeted fairway, required golfers to putt their ball into a tunnel between the dinosaur’s legs. There were some mechanized feeder tracks inside the thing that would then cause the ball to come spitting out the dinosaur’s toothy mouth and drop in the direction of the hole. Sometimes the mechanism would get jammed, and either Rigo or I would have to climb up and reach our arms into the T. rex’s throat in order to dislodge the trapped ball.
This time there was no jam. I was climbing the dinosaur to install our receiver unit, a big shiny tin cone connected to a relay that would send whatever we received from outer space, or wherever, over to our club’s presentation booth at the fair.
“Holy cow, Sam!” Karim, who was standing beside the T. rex’s back foot, said. “Hayley, Bahar, don’t look! Turn around!” Then he said (excuse me), “Sam, what the heck are you thinking?”
I was just raising my left foot to step up onto the dinosaur’s tiny little arm.
Karim was six feet below, looking at me.
Like I said, it is never really a good idea to climb a T. rex in your kilt, especially if there is an audience of middle schoolers standing beneath you.
(Excuse me.)
“Well, what do you expect? I’m just trying to do my part for our—excuse me—dumb project. And it isn’t polite to look up a guy’s kilt, in case you didn’t know,” I said.
I was so flustered; there were a million things firing through my head, and I was completely unconcerned about such things as kilts and spectators, or the highest point in Blue Creek. I positioned the big cone hat on top of the T. rex and flipped the switch for the transmitter. It was all set.
I slid down the spine of the fiberglass dinosaur (which was also not such a good idea in a kilt).
“It looks good,” Bahar said.
Karim coughed.
“I mean the receiver-transmitter unit,” Bahar clarified. She turned deep red.
“He looks like he’s going to a party,” I said.
And Hayley Garcia, always organized and executive, said, “And, speaking of which, we should get over to the fair and see how the signal is coming in.”
But there were still a few things I had to do, and time was running out. Not bending, not slowing down; it was just running out.
I said, “I’ll meet you guys over there. I need to go to the—excuse me—bathroom. See you in a few minutes.”
PAS DE DEUX
This starts with a conspiracy of time.
Something was going to be lost.
REALIZATION NUMBER 1: You can’t be in two places at the same time.
By the time we (I) had finished with the installation of the giant metal birthday hat on the T. rex, it was already nearly eleven o’clock, and the demonstration from Acceleration and James Jenkins was supposed to begin at eleven.
I was stuck.
If I ran home, I would have enough time to get my macaroni and cheese into the oven and cooked, and then make it back for the judging at noon, but I would have to miss James’s dance demonstration. And I couldn’t do that to James after what I’d done to make the whole thing happen in the first place.
I had to do the right thing.
There would be other Blue Creek Days. There would be more cooking competitions in the future, maybe even some where I’d have a chance of beating James’s nasty and untalented father, Kenny Jenkins. But still, when I came out of the bathroom after getting myself ready to go across to the fair, I was so disappointed with myself, I nearly felt like crying.
“I see you got your club’s gadget up on Rusty.” My dad caught me just as I was about to leave Lily Putt’s. He named our T. rex Rusty, on account of the orange paint on his (or her) bumpy skin. And Dad said, “It’s nice to see you in our Clan Abernathy kilt for Blue Creek Days.”
He still did not have the usual enthusiasm in his voice.
I nodded, and looked down and said, “Yeah.”
“Is there something wrong, Sam?” Dad asked.
“No.”
“Did you do your cooking thing?”
And when Dad said “cooking thing,” his eyes got smaller and darker, like he was talking about a car accident, or a visit to the doctor.
I felt like a flattened balloon.
I said, “I decided not to do it.”
Dad’s eyebrows migrated closer together, kind of the way they did when he was looking really hard in bushes for trash we could cook with or eat, but not finding anything there.
There was nothing to find, I thought.
I said, “Um. I really have to go, Dad. I’m supposed to be at a thing over there at eleven.”
Dad frowned a little, obviously not finding what he was looking for. He said, “Okay,” and I dashed across the street to the fair.
I hadn’t been to Blue Creek Days in years. I did not like Blue Creek Days for some obvious reasons. First, Blue Creek Days was pretty much a showcase for Kenny Jenkins and Colonel Jenkins’s Diner, neither of which I partic
ularly cared for. Worse was the fact that there were still plenty of Blue Creekers—and I saw this virtually every day—who still wore their old PRAY FOR SAM T-shirts.
I hated that.
And as I ran through the people crowding the midway, just as I passed the Science Club booth, where Hayley Garcia was tuning in whatever was out there, I heard someone say, “It’s the Little Boy in the Well!” Another person said, “Hey! It’s Pray for Sam! Look how small he still is!” And the inevitable “That boy’s wearing a dress!”
(Excuse me.)
I didn’t care. It was eleven, and I could hear someone testing the microphone at the main stage, talking about the dance school that’d come out to Blue Creek Days, all the way from Austin.
So much for macaroni and cheese.
By the time I worked my way to the front of the stage, there was a young woman at the microphone who introduced herself as Miss Olga. She had a thick accent that made her sound like a spy, or possibly an international jewel thief. Miss Olga told the audience about her dance school in Austin, and how successful their program was. Then she introduced her dancers—a girl named Anita Fleming, and James Jenkins—and she explained how James and Anita had won second place last summer in the Junior National Championships for what she called their Pas de Deux, a ballet duet with a boy-and-girl team.
I was in awe of how brave James Jenkins must have been. The people of Blue Creek (thanks mostly to his dad) had determined that James Jenkins would be a standout quarterback, but he was the second-best fourteen-year-old boy in the entire nation at Pas de Deux, whatever that was.
When Miss Olga introduced them, James and Anita stepped out onto the stage from opposite sides. The crowd went as quiet as a thousand farmers witnessing the landing of an alien spacecraft in the middle of their onion fields. Anita was a black girl, tall and slender, stepping gracefully out and pinning herself motionless in the rear corner of the stage. Her hair was pulled back in a compact twist, and she wore white tights under an airy lavender dress that you could see through. I thought she easily could have been the prettiest girl I’d ever seen in my life. James Jenkins wore pale gray tights with white shoes and a tight-fitting white T-shirt tucked down into the top of his tights. And they both had expressions on their faces that looked so calm and confident, happy even. This was a James Jenkins—in real life—that nobody here had ever laid eyes on.
James looked directly at me (without moving his chin). I think he smiled a little bit, but it wasn’t like a murderer’s smile. His mouth moved upward maybe one-fifteenth of an inch, like a danseur would do, so that nobody could really tell if he smiled or not.
Then I did the thing that I had come here to do.
And I have to explain that what I did was definitely not something I would normally have ever done—not for anybody or anything. But I couldn’t get over the fact that James Jenkins had kind of saved my life, and more than once, too. And I also couldn’t get over how wrong I’d been about him all these years, but maybe that’s exactly what living in a place like Blue Creek can do to people.
What I did was this: I reached down, grabbed the bottom of my T-shirt, and quickly pulled it off over the top of my head, so I was standing there at the front of the crowd, right next to the stage, bare chested in front of all these people attending Blue Creek Days.
I raised my fists in the air like I was crossing some kind of finish line, just to make certain James Jenkins (and the beautiful Anita Fleming) would really look at me.
REALIZATION NUMBER 2: Painting slogans on your own chest and belly while looking into a restroom mirror at a miniature golf course is very difficult.
Before I’d left Lily Putt’s Indoor-Outdoor Miniature Golf Course, I had taken a bottle of the paint we used to touch up Rusty, our orange tinfoil-hat-wearing fiberglass T. rex, and painted this:
My S fell victim to the reversing powers of a restroom mirror.
James Jenkins saw it. His eyes darkened a little and turned down, and I noticed he gulped a quick breath, like he was startled. His cheeks turned a little red. Nobody in Blue Creek had ever seen ballet, and nobody had ever seen James Jenkins blush. And although the crowd was as quiet as they’d be if we were all stalking the same buck on a deer hunt, with my arms still raised I shouted this: “You’re my hero, James Jenkins!”
I would bet it was the first time in history a bare-chested, kilt-wearing eleven-year-old Texan had painted his belly and yelled at a ballet performance.
A few people behind me clapped, but it sounded like an unsure round of applause.
I turned around and saw James’s mother in the crowd. His dad wasn’t there, though. Of course he wasn’t. I was sure Kenny Jenkins was at the judging for the Macaroni and Cheese Cook-Off Challenge, which he would certainly win now.
I didn’t care.
The music came on, and James and Anita began their Pas de Deux.
REALIZATION NUMBER 3: I may not understand anything at all about ballet, but I could still tell that James Jenkins was a—excuse me—heck of a talented danseur.
James could fly. He landed soundlessly, and when he lifted Anita Fleming, she transformed into a weightless floating spirit, and then their bodies would fold and collapse and soften and blend together like they were a single, incredible living creature.
When the music stopped, there was a hush in the audience like we had all collectively been punched in the gut. I looked back at James’s mother. She was crying and had her hands folded in front of her mouth. I was kind of crying too, but I must have looked like an (excuse me) idiot, standing there shirtless in a kilt with “Go James” (with a backward S) painted on my belly in non-washable orange paint that would probably never come off. I turned back toward the stage, and the audience snapped out of their stunned silence and broke into applause.
James and Anita stood and faced the audience and bowed. In James’s case, that meant lowering his chin about half an inch. Neither of the dancers showed any emotion. Their faces were perfect and calm, like this is what they were always meant to be doing—like the audience had been lucky enough to eavesdrop on something of such personal and perfect natural beauty that there was no space for words or thought. Then, noiselessly, James and Anita left the stage, and it was all over.
It really was all over.
I pulled my shirt on and ducked back through the crowd. It felt good. I didn’t care about anything else. I was happy for my friend.
THERE’S NO SCORE
We start with a song recorded decades earlier, stuck in my head, trapped in a slow bend of time.
I had done what I wanted to do. Well, for the most part I did, that is.
And it was a strange thing, because I was happy and sad all at the same time. I especially did not want to talk to anybody after watching James Jenkins do what was so important to him. I headed out through the midway of the fair, determined to get back to Lily Putt’s so I could lose myself behind the counter of the snack bar. It would be busy there, and I had added a special hamburger made with venison, sweet potatoes, and charred bitter greens to the menu. I thought maybe I’d send one over in a to-go package for Kenny Jenkins, to congratulate him on winning the Macaroni and Cheese Cook-Off Challenge while he was busy ignoring his son, just so maybe he could write about how horrible my food is in next week’s Cook’s Riot! column.
Nice work, Kenny Jenkins.
“Hey, Sam! Sam!”
I stopped walking.
James Jenkins was moving through the crowd behind me. His head and shoulders rose above the sea of people between us. He looked transformed. He looked like he’d just conquered the world. It was almost like he had grown a foot taller; or maybe I’d shrunk. He’d pulled on some track pants and was barefoot. I guess walking around a small-town fair in Texas when you’re a boy dressed in very tight tights and ballet shoes makes you look as out of place as if you were wearing a kilt.
I guess James Jenkins and I were as outcast as outcasts could be.
And he still walked so slow, without m
oving his chin. James Jenkins was something else. How was it that a guy who could jump as high and far as James Jenkins, who could spin around faster than the drum of a washing machine, moved so painfully slowly?
Nice work, James Jenkins.
Before he caught up to me, I heard two more people say something about the Little Boy in the Well. One of them was wearing a PRAY FOR SAM T-shirt.
Then James said, “Hey.”
And I said, “Hey.”
It was awkward. We were never not awkward. Just like I was never not the Little Boy in the Well. At least James Jenkins was something else now, something new.
So I said, “You were incredible, James. And that Anita. Wow.”
James Jenkins nodded, which is to say his chin moved up and down about one-tenth of an inch. He said, “She’s the best.”
“She’s really pretty.”
James said, “I know.” And, “Why are you wearing that?”
Sometimes it was almost like I could completely forget I wore kilts. I looked down at my bare white twig-legs poking out from the hem of the red Clan Abernathy tartan. I said, “I ran out of pants.”
James made his huh sound, a kind of whispered, tentative laugh. He needed to work on that.
“Well, I . . . uh . . . wanted to tell you thank you, Sam, for what you did. You know, getting Miss Olga to come out, and making me dance. And painting your chest and all,” James said.
“Sorry. I know you hate it when people paint their bellies.”
“Only for football,” James said.
“Yeah. And Gatorade. You told me that.”
It was so awkward, and all I wanted to do was get the (excuse me) heck away from Blue Creek Days.
James Jenkins didn’t move his chin. He didn’t move his eyes, either, but he was looking straight at me, or maybe he was looking at the top of my head—I couldn’t tell. But he said, “I feel like you kind of saved my life.”
Excuse me, but dang it, that made me choke a little.
I said, “Then we’re even.”
James Jenkins shook his head. It wasn’t a major headshake, but it was significant movement for James Jenkins. He said, “There’s no score.”