The cafeteria was finished in December, two weeks after the OSU-Michigan game. It turned out a cafeteria was just a cafeteria: once we were back it was so usual and ordinary it was as though we’d never been without it. It’s not like anyone forgets how to eat in a cafeteria. Even though lunch hadn’t been cooked in it for two and a half months, it still smelled like hot meat and steam.
Dad gave up. That’s not how he said it, though. He said my school lunch was my problem to solve. He said it was a problem only a kid with plenty of food could have. Once the roof was back on and the cafeteria was open, he loaded up my school lunch account and I could pick whatever I wanted. Some of the food was good and some of it wasn’t good and some of it was downright awful, but I ate it anyway. My mom was right about the cheeseburgers. They weren’t bad at all. I kept an eye out for frog legs. Peanut butter was back but I didn’t want it. That spring, I signed up for the track team.
But that’s all what happened later on. That’s all the easy stuff. This is what happened right after.
The day after Sydney’s anaphylaxis, the whole class had to write essays on school rules and why they were important. And the whole class had quiet, indoor recess for a week. Daniel and Tyler also got a week of detentions. Nate and I had two days of in-school suspension and meetings with the principal—me with my dad and his wild-man beard, and Nate with his grandparents. In-school suspension was served in a little room with no windows off the back side of the gym and near the janitors’ office, and even though we were in this dark, claustrophobic space we heard screaming gym-class kids and clanging from the janitors. The teacher was a man I’d never noticed before. His beard was as big as my dad’s and he had yellow, chalky fingernails even though the blackboard in the room looked clean and brand-new. He gave us packets of work from Mrs. Anderson and would let us talk, but only if we talked about fantasy football. So I had nothing to say and Nate was happy. Nate sat at the front of the room. I got the back corner. The only other kids there were two fifth-graders who had gotten into a fight on the playground. I kind of thought that maybe the school needed two separate rooms of in-school suspension to keep the kids who hate each other apart, but I learned later there were already two. One for everybody sixth grade and below and one for everybody above. I kind of felt like a pheasant in a pen with Brutus. I just kept my head down.
The school nurse called and talked to my dad about the itch and my dad put a pill out for me every morning next to my OJ. He’d give me looks too, when he set it out for me, and none of them were the same. Some meant that I was irresponsible, that I should remember something this important. Some meant that he felt sorry for me. Sometimes he rubbed my head, and his look then meant he was doing dad stuff, like making me eat my vegetables. Some were just about hurrying up and getting it done. Sometimes the itch happened anyway.
The first day we were out of in-school suspension, Nate punched me. Boom. Just like he said he would.
We were out on the far side of the track behind the school. At the center of the track’s dirt oval was the football field. We weren’t allowed on it. Cold metal bleachers rose up on one side of the field. It was far enough away from school that there was only time to get out there, run around the track four times, and then return once we were done. Mr. Mullins stayed out there with the last, slow kid, and as we each finished we headed back to the locker room on our own. The trek was a long diagonal across the empty soccer fields, the gym-class fields, and the edge of the parking lot.
Next week was Halloween, and I couldn’t believe Mr. Mullins was dragging us outside for gym at the end of October. The cold and then warmth of the running and the rubbing of my clothes on my skin had me fighting the itch. I wanted to be quick and get it over with, and I’d never been that fast but then I took off and it was like I was on the bike, busting out, bursting through.
Mr. Mullins shouted to the kids behind me. “Slackers! Catch on up!”
I did my four turns and ran straight off the track, past the creaky bleachers, and out to the empty fields and back toward the gym.
Nate stood by the soccer goal. Waiting for me. I didn’t realize he was waiting for me.
“Hey,” I said, slowing down to a walk and breathing hard. “Did you cut out?” Because there was no way he beat me here.
He punched me. Shot his hand out and punched my face. “Enjoy your sandwich.” Then he punched my gut so hard I fell to the grass and then he was gone and I was alone.
My lungs squeezed. I tried a great big breath but it was just an empty shudder, then another, and then I got air, my heart thumping, my gut aching. The other kids caught up to me as I walked slowly back to the school, hunched over and with my hand at my eye. Homer and Tyler and Daniel and everybody else, talking football and Halloween costumes. They oozed around me and kept on going.
Mom wrote me a lot of emails saying she loved me. She called me up too, the night it happened. “Oh, Isaac,” she said, and her voice sounded hollow and far away. “It was a terrible mistake,” she told me after we were both quiet for a long time. “You’re allowed to forgive yourself.”
“What happened happened,” I told her, “so I don’t think it matters if it was a mistake or not.”
“Have you talked to Sydney? Talk to Sydney. She’ll feel better. You’ll feel better. Would you like me to call her mother?”
It was sesame seeds. Not dairy or peanuts. Sesame seeds in the bun. Not on the bun, but in the bun, ground up, mixed in just like the flour, I guess. I read the label a few times to triple-check and quadruple-check. Sometimes things people are allergic to are bolded or listed in a special place, but not sesame seeds. So I didn’t notice it right away.
Dad read it too. He gave me one of those dad hugs that’s part hug, part lung-crushing squeeze, part backslap. “It was an accident,” he said.
“It doesn’t feel like an accident.”
“You didn’t mean to hurt her.”
He didn’t remind me that there are rules for a reason or anything like that and it was such a deep relief I think it made me cry more.
“Do you want to go see her in the hospital?”
I shook my head and threw out the buns.
* * *
—
I didn’t see Sydney again until the day after my in-school suspension ended and Nate punched me, and then I made it all worse.
I’d only been out of class for two days, but right then the gym where we were eating felt big and unfamiliar and I didn’t know where I should try to sit. So I just stood there. The gym was full of loud lunchtime kids. Mr. Mullins blasted on his whistle. We were supposed to sit on the bleachers but kids were still everywhere, coming in from their classes, bumping around me.
Daniel knocked into me. And then he was right up in my face, pressing his hands on his cheeks and mushing his face together.
“Look,” he said, through fish lips, “look at my fat face.” He kept sticking it closer to me.
Sydney showed up, yanking down one of Daniel’s arms. “Stop it.”
“I’m goofing.”
“Stop picking on me,” she told him.
“I was not.”
He scowled and ran up to the back row of the bleachers. It was just me and Sydney. I hadn’t talked her since that day. I didn’t know how to do it. Everything felt like slow motion. My brain didn’t work, and any words I had were stuck down someplace where I couldn’t get to them. I’d never had to think about words with Sydney before. I’d never had to think about anything with Sydney before.
“What happened to you?”
I touched my eye. It hurt. It was ugly too.
“Did Nate do it?” She had her brown paper lunch bag crunched up in her fist, and I wondered what she had. I wondered what it was like to eat food again, after what I did to her. She was still waiting for an answer and I was still all knotted up and about to make everything worse. Because this is what she sa
id next. She said, “Why are you not even talking to me anymore, Itch?”
Itch. That’s what she said. That’s what she called me.
Then she was as gone as a fish in the ocean, lost in the moving crowd of lunchtime kids loose all over the gym. Mr. Mullins still blasted away on his whistle, and I left too, for the long and empty blue hallway far away from there.
CHAPTER 15
Mom: Dad says you’re not going trick/treating tonight.
Me: Because I am GROUNDED.
Mom: Did you dress up for school?
Me: No way.
Mom: There’s a harvest moon tomorrow night.
Me: What’s a harvest moon?
Mom: Full moon closest to the autumnal equinox.
Me: What’s that?
Mom: The first day of fall! This year’s harvest moon is later than most years. Be sure to look. If you look, you can’t miss it.
Me: For scientific purposes?
Mom: Because it’s amazing!
Me: Okay.
Me: Do they have Halloween in China?
Me: When are you coming home?
On Beggars’ Night, Dad came down into the basement between doorbell rings. “Sydney came by a little while ago.”
I sat up on the bed. “She did?”
“Sure. Dressed like a zombie with a lot of red makeup dripping down her face.”
“What did you give her? What are you giving out this year? She’s got allergies. You can’t just give her anything.”
“Give me a little credit here.”
“Mom’s always got all kinds of stuff. Stickers for the little kids. She says everything’s a choking hazard. And she has pretzels. Or boxes of raisins. Dad. Tell me you didn’t give her a box of raisins.”
That made him laugh. “It wasn’t a box of raisins.”
I’d been trick-or-treating with Sydney before. She collected her candy in a pillowcase like everybody else and then swapped it all out at home for candy her parents had that was stuff she could eat.
I flopped back on the bed. Itch. She’d never called me that before. “She probably made a mistake.” I hoped that was what had happened with my name. It was bound to happen, right? A fish can’t always swim upstream. All the same, though. I missed being me. “She probably didn’t even know it was my house. You know. With a mask on and everything.”
“Yeah,” my dad said, patting my arm, “and because this town is so big and she’s never been here before.”
“And everybody knows our house,” I said.
“Is that so?”
“We’re the only one on the street without a Buckeye flag. Or an Ohio State welcome mat.” I looked at the poster from Sydney. It was the only football thing in the house.
“So I’ve heard.” He held up his hand. “Only from you. It’s never come up with any other living soul.”
“I meant that Sydney forgot it was our house.” Because why would she ever come here again?
“Is something going on between the two of you?”
“Duh, Dad. I nearly killed her.”
“Did she punch you? Is that how you got your black eye?”
“Nobody punched me, Dad. I ran into my locker.”
He shook his head. “You and Sydney are too close to not get past this. Have you tried talking to her?”
Why are you not even talking to me anymore, Itch?
“Um, so she was a zombie?”
Dad looked at me for a while before answering. “Yeah. Fourth one of the night.” He shook a small purple box of candy and handed it over to me. “There’s more upstairs if you want some.”
I wondered what she looked like. I wanted to ask something like, Was she a brain-eating zombie or a cookie-eating zombie? because Sydney would laugh at that.
Aside from fetching me on Saturdays, it was the first time Sydney had been back since the storm.
Since before.
When we sat in the basement with our helmets still on and in our muddy shoes and later Sydney said I’d saved her life.
You saved my life. You saved my life. You saved my life.
I didn’t even think. I was past my dad, banging up the basement stairs, out the door and onto the sidewalk. You saved my life. Outside it was cold but not yet dark. Up ahead, at the end of the block, I caught sight of a group of three kids—I couldn’t see much, just somebody in white, somebody with a red cape, and a third person wearing a pointy witch hat. Dad said there were a lot of zombies. Maybe it wasn’t her. And maybe it wasn’t a zombie. I wished she’d been a cookie. She’d be easier to find.
“Sydney! Sydney!”
Up ahead, the superhero and witch peeled away from the zombie. The zombie’s face was covered in white and red make up. “Sydney?”
Can zombies talk? What if all she said was zombie talk? What if she looked at me and all she said was, “I’m going to eat your brain”?
We stood there a minute. Sydney the zombie stood patiently as though she expected me to say something. I hadn’t thought that far. I’d only thought as far as busting out of the house.
Do you know what I said? When I had my chance, when I should have apologized or asked how she was doing, or maybe even just said hello, I said, “Trick or treat.” Because I choked.
Somebody laughed. The zombie tilted her head. Her braid slid loose of its zombie rags. Without saying anything, she held out her partially full pillowcase, and I dropped in the cardboard box of candy I still held on to. It was crushed some from my fist. She stood like that for a little while, holding the pillowcase open. Next to her, her friends were restless. The superhero had a mask over her eyes. She shifted her weight back and forth. The witch swung her bag of loot over her shoulders. Her face was painted green, and she glared at me.
I didn’t realize until later that Sydney was waiting for me to say something else. More. I was supposed to say something. Showing up wasn’t enough.
So we just stood there until someone knocked shoulders down the row of girls and one of them said, “Let’s go,” and they turned away and went up the steps to Sydney’s house.
They went inside. Dylan sat on the porch step. He wore his football helmet and a Buckeye jersey.
Dylan said, “That was weak.”
“I know.”
“Whatever you were trying to do.”
I cleared my throat. “Apologize,” I said. “I was trying to apologize.”
“Weak,” he repeated. Then he asked, “What candy did you give her?”
“Nerds.”
“Eh. That makes it a little better.” He was shoving candy into his mouth. “Mom said if I handled the kiddos I could eat everything I didn’t give away, so I mostly gave away the stuff I don’t like.” He looked me over. He made me nervous. All he said, though, was, “Where’s your costume? I can’t give you candy without a costume.” He held something out toward me. “You got to say trick or treat.”
“I’m not trick-or-treating,” I said. “I’m grounded.”
“That’s okay,” he said. “Take some peanut butter cups. I got to move the nut stuff.” He dropped some into my hand and I stuck them in my pocket where they’d get gross and melty and I wouldn’t want to eat them anyway. “Mom’s upset with her.”
“What?”
“Yeah, because of the reaction thing.”
“Your mom shouldn’t be mad at her. She should be mad at me. It was my fault.”
I guess I was loud because Dylan gave me a look through the face mask of his helmet.
“She’s not supposed to share food. She can only eat her own food or she has to see an ingredients label. Like, a lot of store bread usually has dairy in it so it’s always a problem. So forget the sesame seeds.”
“It wasn’t her fault. It was my fault.” She knew it was my fault.
“She broke the rules.”
“Well, I guess you both broke the rules.” Candy wrappers crinkled and Dylan asked, “So how are the birds?”
“Um, good.” Why was he being nice to me? If Sydney were my sister, I wouldn’t be nice to me.
“Are you down about the birds?” His mouth was full. “It’s kind of a bummer when they start getting moved out. Not going to lie. But, you know, I didn’t want to be a kid who didn’t know a farm chicken and nuggets aren’t the same thing. I mean, I know there are no pheasant nuggets, but you know what I mean.”
“Are you still taking the job back in the spring?”
“Depends on baseball. Maybe I’ll split it with you.”
“Okay.”
“They don’t taste bad,” Dylan said, surprising me. “Pheasants. Maybe Epple will make you some pheasant stew. He brought some by for us once. It wasn’t bad at all.”
“Did you know he can’t really hear?”
“Sure,” he said.
“I didn’t know.”
“Sorry if I forgot to mention it,” he said. I thought it was a pretty major thing to forget. “Sometimes it’s better if you write him a note if you have a question or something. Hey, do you want some more candy?”
“No. Thanks.”
Heading home, it felt spooky like Halloween should, the way the wind moved the branches of the trees like they were hands scratching the night sky. The sky was just dark. No stars. No moon. Some little kids ran around me, plastic pumpkins banging against their legs. Ninjas and princesses and video-game characters and more superheroes.
Then this other thing came out of the darkness. It ran right toward me. Thinking about Nate and his punch, I flinched and dodged to the side, but the running thing did the same and crashed into me.
It was Bigfoot. A kid my size in a Bigfoot costume. A furry fabric shirt and some furry fabric draped over his head for hair and then some more for a beard, and a pair of brown gloves. White sneakers poked out of the bottom of some furry pants.
“Hey! Sorry!”
Itch Page 10