Itch

by Polly Farquhar

  “Go,” he told me, turning back, swinging his arm out, at the road, at the wide open fields, at the gray sky.

  He pointed to his truck. The ride home was as quiet as the ride out—just road noises. It was a loud quiet. It was all there was, all I could hear. It was everything.

  CHAPTER 23

  MONDAY MORNING I was greeted like the high school quarterback after crushing a rival. Nate ran up to me as soon as I stepped off the bus. He’d been waiting by the bike rack, but it was too cold to ride to school. My bike was wrecked, anyway, all its gears frozen up. I’d have to figure what to do, maybe wash it and grease it up again, because last night I’d stuck all my money in an envelope for Mr. Epple and put it in the mailbox and I wasn’t going to get a new bike anytime soon.

  Nate pulled me aside and high-fived me and banged both his fists against mine. “Itch! Itch! Oh, man, it’s so awesome! I can’t believe it, man!” He looked as happy as I’d ever seen him, and that included the time he climbed a tree over the river, jumped in, and then crawled up the muddy riverbank. And the time last year in gym class when we were playing baseball and he pounded a home run so far that we couldn’t even find the ball again before the period was over. “You should have told me. I told you I would have helped, but you always told me how hard it would be. I mean, sure, I was hoping.” He shook his head. “Let’s just say I’m impressed.”

  Everybody else was there too. Daniel held up a fist for a greeting. “So cool, man.”

  “Yeah, I’m impressed, Itch,” Tyler said, pushing his OSU ball cap up off his eyes. “You actually pulled it off.”

  Daniel said, “They’d just dropped me off, you know. I can’t believe it. Missed the bird on the bus. Highlight of the night.”

  “Really?” That was Homer, his hands fists on the straps of his backpack. “That was the highlight of the whole night?”

  No one paid any attention to him. They bumped all around me, talking, and they bumped Homer right out.

  “It was bananas,” Sydney said. “A bird on a bus.”

  Tyler wanted to know if it flew into the windows. He looked unimpressed when Sydney told him it had mostly hunkered down on a cooler but cheered up when Homer told him it had pooped all over. “Had to scrub it off when we got home.”

  I asked, “Is it okay?”

  “Sure,” Nate answered. He really was happy. Just, happy. There wasn’t a better word for it. “Got to admit, I was worried about you getting me an egg. I know you said it would be the easiest thing, but it would have been real high-risk at my end.” He shook his head. “All the same, I never thought you’d be able to pull it off. An actual bird. Didn’t think you’d even try. Couldn’t believe it when Homeschool called me up Saturday night. Mind. Blown. Found the thing tucked down on the cushion of my chair.”

  Once, Mrs. Anderson gave a pop quiz with all sorts of crazy instructions on it. “Read carefully,” she told us as she passed them out. The instructions were things like Stand up on your desk. Take off your shoes. Shout your name. Write one thousand and one words explaining the meaning of life. Some kids started doing the stuff even though they knew it was weird. When Tyler stood up on his desk he stayed crouched down. I didn’t do it. Neither did Homer. Nate took off his shoes and warned everyone his feet stank. At the top of the page it said, Read the entire test before responding. At the bottom it read, Do not answer any questions. Write your name at the top of the test and turn the test in to your teacher. That day I’d gotten it right. Not this time, though. That’s what it felt like. How everybody but me was happy.

  Tyler asked, “What are you going to do with them?”

  “Raise them,” answered Nate. “Hopefully she’ll lay some eggs.”

  “Was she okay all night?” That was Homer.

  Nate shot him a look and Daniel snickered. “I guess. Me and my grandpa moved them to an old doghouse at our place.”

  Daniel said, “What Homer really wants to know is if you had a night-light for the pheasant. Like the one he’s got at home.”

  I said, “You can’t keep the bird in a doghouse.”

  Nate shrugged. “Sure you can. We fenced it up. Built a little run for them yesterday. It’s better than the storage unit. That’s all inside.”

  “Okay.” Maybe it would be better. It would probably be better. I was glad Nate was taking care of it and that the bird hadn’t been stressed out all night in darkness.

  “My grandma says I can build the birds a real pen in the spring. Hey, Itch, you want to help me with that?”

  “Wait, what? What do you mean, birds? What them?”

  “Didn’t you hear? Yesterday I was out at the unit and heard these bird noises down the road and do you know what I found? Another pheasant! A rooster! Just, out in the fields! Can you believe it? A wild pheasant when all the wild pheasants are supposed to be gone. Or at least so gone you don’t see them walking down the road.” He took a breath. “So I got that one too.”

  Homer looked at me. Nate might think it was a miracle, a ring-necked pheasant strutting down the road, but Homer knew better. “You were trying to save more than one,” he said. “Saving birds while we were eating brats and watching the game.”

  I didn’t care what Homer thought. At that moment, I only cared about one thing in the whole world. “How did you get that pheasant, Nate?”

  “Like this,” he said, shoving his hands in my face. They were covered in red lines. Some of the lines were just scratches and some were deep, like punctures, and he had bandages covering up a couple. Things looked pink around the edges. It looked like he’d been in a wrestling match with the rooster.

  “You should have worn gloves.”

  “Thanks, Sherlock.”

  “Didn’t you see the towel I left behind? You could have used that. Maybe wrap the bird up—”

  “I didn’t know I was going to get a bird. It was a gift from the universe.”

  “You washed those cuts, right, Nate?”

  “Itch, man, you’re starting to sound like Homer now.”

  “Seriously, Nate. They could get infected. Some of them look kind of ugly already.”

  Another bus unloaded and kids bumped around us. Everybody else was going inside. It was cold. I could see my breath. Daniel’s buzzed and uncovered head was pink and his ears were red. I didn’t know how he could stand it.

  Everybody started talking about names for Nate’s pheasants. Sydney said, “I like Scarlet and Gray.”

  Daniel said that was no good. “The one with all the colors is the guy and Scarlet is a girl’s name and you can’t name him Scarlet.”

  “How about Gray and Gray? That sounds kind of cool to me.”

  “That’s just stupid,” Nate said.

  Daniel suggested using old coaches’ names and giving one bird a coach’s first name and the other bird the same coach’s last name. “Urban and Meyer. Jim and Tressel.” Tyler suggested Earle and Bruce and Woody and Hayes.

  “Those are all lousy names for the girl pheasant,” Sydney said.

  Tyler said Tressel wasn’t so bad.

  “I got it,” Homer said. “Urban and Rural.”

  Conversation stopped dead. The boys made faces at him. “Lame.”

  “So stupid.”

  “Sheesh, Homer.”

  “Of course that’s what Homeschool Homer would come up with. How about we name one Foot and the other Ball?”

  I didn’t think the joke was that bad. Obvious, maybe. And maybe the kind of joke the coach would have heard his whole life, but the way the guys reacted you would have thought Homer had suggested naming the birds for a Michigan coach.

  The warning bell rang. We started toward the doors. Homer walked alongside me. “You did it, Itch. You’re lucky.”

  “Okay.” It didn’t feel that way to me. It was like a math problem when you got the first part wrong and you just got mor
e wrong answers all the way down.

  Guess Homer didn’t think I was appreciative enough of my new status because he grabbed a strap hanging off my backpack and stopped me short. “Do you know how lucky you are? Everybody’s impressed. You’re back on the team. You’ve got a second chance.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble, but maybe second chances aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”

  “Says you. I’d take a second chance over osmosis any day.”

  The final bell rang. Homer just stood there. Even though this was Homer’s first year in school, I knew he’d never been late for anything ever before and being late would be serious for him. If we made a run for it we might make it. Everybody else had cleared out. Except he still stood there, scowling at me, his hands so tight they were nothing but knuckles.

  The sky was a pure blue and it didn’t matter that the sun was bright because it hadn’t warmed up anything yet. There were no clouds, only the thin white lines left by airplanes that traced a path through the sky and then floated apart. My mom was on one of those planes. Somewhere. Not over Ohio. She wasn’t even going to fly over Ohio, but she was up in the air right now someplace farther west than here—flying over mountains, Dad had said, and over another country still right until the very end, and from up above nothing would look familiar to her yet.

  “Homer.” I was thinking. Trying to restart. Trying to reboot. “Connor.”

  He jumped a little when I said his name.

  “Don’t bother trying anything now,” he said. “You got the birds. You’re a sixth-grade hero. Don’t worry. I won’t try to get you to join my team anymore. And you’re better off if you stick to calling me Homer.”

  * * *

  —

  Remember the note I’d written Sydney and folded into a paper triangle that had been flicked away?

  I had it.

  I’d picked it up off the floor when I’d left the classroom, itching.

  It had hung around in the front pocket of my backpack, but when I was getting ready for school I had to switch to one of my dad’s old backpacks because mine was busted and gross with bird feathers and bird smell. Even though I knew right away what it was, I unfolded it. Sorry. Sorry is one of those words that kind of says everything but at the same time doesn’t say enough.

  I’d refolded the note along the lines. It took me a few times to get it right. It was like folding a map, which always seemed like it should be easy but never was.

  It rode in my pocket all day.

  Because I didn’t know. I didn’t know if Sydney would ever want to be my friend again. She’d talked to me on the Buckeye Bus, but since it was hard to ignore someone when you’re trapped with them and a pheasant, I didn’t know if that counted. And this morning. Had she said anything to me? She hadn’t said anything to me.

  I gave her the note at lunchtime.

  First, though, I ran into Mrs. Anderson in the hallway on my way to the gym, and she gave me a big smile and a double thumbs-up. “Stop by my desk after lunch,” she told me, looking so happy that it caught me off guard. It had to be my math test. I must have done okay. I must have done better than okay, because she wouldn’t smile like that otherwise. “I think you’ll be pleased.”

  Lunch was in the gym and the gym was mostly empty because the PTA had started selling pizza in the lobby on Mondays and everybody was standing in line to buy some. So it was me and Sydney and a handful of other kids. Abby sat up high against the gym wall with Lucas, eating a frozen tube of yogurt and a sandwich. Sydney wasn’t going to eat pizza and I wasn’t going to eat it either, because it was the gas station pizza.

  Sydney unfolded the triangle and held it up. You could tell it was an old note. Worn. Ripped, even though I’d only unfolded and refolded it that once. “What can I say. I’ve been sorry for a long time. Can I eat lunch with you?”

  She folded the note back up but into squares and nodded. “Okay.”

  “For real?”

  “For real.” She opened her lunch box and set it up across her knees. She had crackers, lunch meat that she wrapped around carrot sticks before she ate them, a container of black bean dip, a box of chocolate soy milk, and a giant homemade oatmeal cookie.

  I sat down next to her. Not right next to her. But next to her. Sydney looked at my lunch. “Is that a tuna sandwich?” she asked.

  “Do you think it looks like cat food?”

  “Ugh, yes. Get it away from me.” She stuck a carrot in the dip. “You could eat the pizza, you know.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You know it’s bad because it’s from the gas station, right? It’s not bad because it’s cut into squares. Because how the pizza is cut doesn’t really affect the taste. I’ve never eaten that pizza. I only eat homemade. But I still know I’m right.”

  I pointed to the note next to her on the bleachers. “I mean it,” I said. “I am sorry. You know it was a mistake, right? I didn’t know what the ingredients were. And, and, I hated it. Seeing you like that.”

  Sydney made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “Yeah, I hated it too. More than you.”

  “Yeah.”

  We were quiet for a little while. Then Sydney said, “You didn’t come to see me. How come you didn’t come to see me? I wanted you to come and see me. And then you ignored me. It hurt me that you acted like it never happened.”

  That feeling where every heartbeat felt like a punch was back. “I was scared.”

  “Me too. It would have been good to see you.”

  “I wanted to,” I told her, “but I just couldn’t. Because it was my fault. I’m really sorry.”

  “You were my friend. And then you wouldn’t even talk to me.”

  “I didn’t mean not to talk to you. I was so upset. And then I got stuck. That day in the gym I froze up.”

  Sydney was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Let’s go back to being normal. Let’s be friends again.”

  “Is it because I got the pheasant?” Because I didn’t want it to be because of the pheasant.

  “It’s because you’re here.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” She bumped my shoulder.

  There was nothing to do then but eat our lunches. My tuna sandwich was okay as long as I didn’t look at it or think about cats. Sydney had moved on to her oatmeal cookie. It was about the size of my sandwich. I was jealous. After a while, Sydney said, “Homer sure thinks you’re a rock star now.”

  That made me choke on a laugh. “He doesn’t. He’s mad. I ruined his party.”

  “How did you ruin his party? Because you weren’t there?”

  “Hardly.” I finished chewing my bite of sandwich. “Because everybody’s talking about the pheasants, I guess, and not the Buckeye Bus.”

  “Like, two interesting things can’t happen on the same day?”

  “More like if you’re Homer and Itch, only one of the interesting things gets to count.”

  She looked at me. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “School’s weird,” I said.

  Sydney laughed and looked around the gym. “Where is he? He’s usually here by now. Do you see him?”

  “I don’t see him.” There was something else I wanted to tell her. “It’s not like he said, though, how I was doing something good or cool or whatever.” I couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Epple and the way he’d turned away from me and the way he’d cut his hand through the air. It was like a knife. And it was for me.

  “He can’t eat any of the pizza,” Sydney said, “so where is he?”

  “Standing in line with everybody else.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “He’s like that today.”

  “Stupid?”

  “Something.” I wasn’t a sixth-grade hero the way he’d said, but I could do better. Be better.


  Maybe everybody else could be better too. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what Nate or anybody else would do, but I knew what I was going to do.

  “I’m not going to call him Homer anymore.” I thought about how he’d looked, outside, when it was just the two of us, and I’d called him his name. His real name.

  “Yeah?” Sydney asked. “What are you going to call him?”

  “Connor.”

  “Why are you going to do that?”

  “Because,” I said, “that’s his name.”

  “Oh. Then I’m going to call him Connor too.”

  “We should go get him. Tell him to sit with us.”

  “Homer?” Shaking her head, she said, “I mean, Connor?”

  “Yeah. He brought his own lunch just like always.” The gym was still pretty quiet. No one was playing basketball yet. “He can hang around those guys if he wants to, but he should know he doesn’t have to. Do you have a pen?”

  I grabbed the square of the note. Unfolding it, I smoothed it out on the bench. Sydney handed me a pen and I wrote neatly and went over the letters until they were a solid black. Get better, not bitter. “What do you think?”

  “He said that to me back when the soccer team had a five-game losing streak.” She pulled her braid over one shoulder. “Do you think it will work? He’ll know what it means?”

  I thought about second chances and sometimes not knowing what they were or what to do with them. “I think he needs our help. We ought to try.”

  Abby scooched over to us. Looking over my shoulder, she read my note. “That’s Homer. He’ll understand. You’re speaking his language.”

  “His name is Connor,” Sydney said. Abby nodded. “We’re going to go get him.”

  “Okay,” Abby said. “Let me get Lucas.” Lucas had already finished his lunch and sat drawing in his notebook. He came down the bleachers two at a time.

  “What’s up?”

  I showed him the note. Lucas said, “Homer told me that when my stuff didn’t get picked for the art show.”

  Abby said, “It’s Connor.”