The Absolute Value of Mike

by Kathryn Erskine

  I stared at her stupidly because I couldn’t think of what to say.

  Moo gazed at me, her smeared red lipstick making her smile even broader. “You look like your father, dear. Only not as . . .”

  Smart. “Yeah, I know.”

  She glanced at the Exit 88/Gate 3B sign for a moment, then looked around the concourse as if she were lost. “But I can’t see you.”

  “I’M RIGHT HERE.”

  She flinched and turned her owl glasses to me. “I know, dear. What I meant was I can’t see your eyes because your hair is in front of them.”

  I tried pushing some hair out of my eyes, but it didn’t work very well. My hair grows in stupid swirls all over the place. I figure it’s a commentary on what’s directly underneath.

  “Your hair is very different from your father’s. James’s hair was so limp. Yours is—well, you just don’t see that many people with cowlicks.”

  “That’s because I got all of theirs.”

  “Would you like me to give you a trim?” She reached over and touched one of my swirls.

  I cringed at the thought of someone with her eyesight cutting my hair.

  “Oh, that’s right, James hated anyone touching his hair, too.” She sighed. “At least you don’t cover your ears and scream.”

  “Excuse me? Dad used to do that?”

  “Yes. You mean he’s outgrown that?”

  “Yeah, well . . . he’s fifty-six now. What else did he used to do?”

  “Well, he was always forgetting things.”

  “He still does.”

  “And he loved candy.”

  “That hasn’t changed, either.”

  “He had . . . unusual ideas.”

  “That’s because he’s a genius.”

  “Oh, is that what they’re calling it now?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. I’m glad to hear he’s grown up a little. It takes some of us a long time, doesn’t it? Still, little steps eventually get us somewhere. Speaking of which, we need to get moving.” She turned and started off the way she came, her pale yellow sneakers looking like duck feet padding down the concourse, pushing through the small crowd of people.

  I grabbed my backpack and sports bag and followed her.

  “James said you’re going to help Poppy, and I must say, he could certainly use the help. Are you good at working with wood?”

  I thought about my C’s in shop class. It was the fine corners I wasn’t any good at. But a screw didn’t have fine corners. “Woodworking? I can’t get enough of it!”

  She clapped her hands. “That’s wonderful, Mike!”

  “What exactly am I going to be doing?”

  “Oh, Poppy will let you know.” Her smile remained frozen. “Eventually.”

  “Eventually?”

  But she hurried on. “I want you to have some fun, too! All work and no play makes James a very dull boy.”

  “I think it’s ‘makes Jack a very dull boy.’ James is my dad.”

  She smiled broadly and touched her forefinger to her chin. “I know, dear.”

  Wait—was she calling Dad dull? But I couldn’t stop to think. I practically had to jog to keep up with her. Tiny as she was, that lady could move.

  “Your dad sent some scrap paper for you. I’m glad to see he recycles old school papers. It has all kinds of numbers and symbols and nonsense on the back, but he said you could use it.”

  As forgetful as Dad was, he hadn’t forgotten summer math worksheets. The numbers and symbols made about as much sense to me as they did to Moo. I definitely needed to concentrate on the artesian screw. It’d be the perfect excuse for why I didn’t get to the stack of worksheets.

  “Is it for ara—, agar—, goomee . . . what’s that folding paper thing?”

  “Origami?”

  “That’s it! Is that what you do with all that paper?”

  “Pretty much.” If that’s what you called crumpling it into balls, throwing it at the wall, and jumping up and down on it while cursing.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll do something very special with it. Come along, now!” She readjusted her red purse that was so large it would have to be considered checked luggage, and I watched it bang against the back of her white hoodie as she walked down the concourse. The picture of the white-haired woman on the cover of my old Mother Goose book flashed across my mind.

  I caught up with her and she grabbed my arm, maybe worried that I’d fall behind again. “Tell me, what do you like to do for fun?”

  Fun? I hadn’t thought of that possibility. “Do you guys have a PlayStation or Xbox or anything like that?”

  “Oh, play station! Yes, it’s in the attic because we haven’t used it since Doug—” She let go of me and stopped, grabbing the strings of her hoodie and yanking so hard, I thought she might strangle herself. She sucked her lips and I didn’t see any evidence of breathing. I was about to slap her on the back to make her snap out of it when she suddenly opened her mouth and gasped.

  “Play station,” she repeated, with a definitive nod but watery eyes, like she’d just recovered from a painful blow but was standing back up in the ring again. “Yes. Most of the little people are gone, but the cars are still there, along with the gas pump. The plastic hose from the gas pump is a little chewed up, but it still fits into the cars.”

  She smiled up at me and I read the big red letters on the front of her hoodie that shouted HOLY COMFORTER, even though the voice inside my head was shouting, Holy crap!

  “Please tell me you have a computer.” Dad made me leave my cell phone at home so I wouldn’t be “distracted from the mission.” I had a cheap MP3 player but absolutely no link to the outside world.

  “No computer, but they have some nice new ones at the bank. In color! Gladys loves to show off her new computer. She even gave it a name. She calls it ‘Mac.’ Isn’t that cute?”

  I looked away so she wouldn’t see my face and stared into Bound for Adventure Books and Videos as we walked past. Of course. Movies. “Do you have any DVDs?”

  She stopped and clutched my arm again, blinking up at me. “Oh, dear. You didn’t bring any of yours?”

  “No. Don’t you guys have any?”

  “Well, Poppy has some, of course. But they wouldn’t do for you. Not at all. We’ll buy you some, though. What size BVDs do you need?”

  “Size? What do you mean?”

  She took a deep, raspy breath. “UNDERPANTS, dear. What SIZE BEE-VEE-DEES do you wear?”

  The wave of travelers seemed to settle around Moo’s duck feet, gaping at me.

  “I—I said DEE-VEE-DEE! You know, like a video? A movie?”

  “Oh, that’s what you’re talking about!”

  There’s not a whole lot more embarrassing than having your great-aunt shout about your underwear in the middle of an airport. I felt like everyone was staring at where my boxers were. I rushed ahead through the automatic doors to get outside.

  “Wait for me, dear!” I heard Moo call after me. “You don’t even know where I left Tyrone!”

  I turned around and watched her come through the doors behind me. “Tyrone?”

  “Yes, dear. How do you expect to find him without me?”

  “Who’s . . . is that Poppy?”

  “Goodness, no! Poppy and Tyrone don’t get along at all.” She grinned. “Poppy thinks I spend entirely too much time and money on Tyrone. I think he’s a little jealous.”

  I had this momentary frightening image of a little old lady having an affair with a boy toy. I shook my head hard to get rid of it. “So . . . who’s Tyrone?” I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to know.

  3

  SKEW LINES

  —lines that do not intersect but are not parallel and exist only in three dimensions

  A car? Tyrone is a car?”

  “Yes, he’s a Ford Tor—, Tar—”

  “Taurus.”

  “See? Who can remember a silly name like that? I like Tyrone much better. It’s a lovely name, don’t you
think?”

  I decided to play along and opened the door of the backseat. “I’ll just put my bags in Tyrone’s back pocket—” I stopped when I saw what was inside. The backseat was covered in red velvet, including the armrest. There were movie posters on the backs of the front seats, the door panels, and the roof of the car. Gone with the Wind. The Sound of Music. The Wizard of Oz. Even Under Siege, Die Hard, and The Terminator.

  I stared. And sniffed. “It smells like popcorn.”

  “It must be left over from Sunday’s matinee.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sunday afternoons I come in here and watch movies.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, my dear, I know those old movies so well, I just look at the poster and it all comes back to me. It’s much cheaper than going out to a regular theater.”

  I threw my bags in the “theater” and sat next to Moo.

  She dropped her huge purse in my lap. The thing must’ve weighed fifteen pounds. “You take care of Junior.”

  “Junior?”

  “Yes, I’ve downsized drastically.” She put both hands on top of the steering wheel, which was covered with bright orange fuzzy fabric.

  “What was it before? A U-Haul?”

  But I didn’t hear her answer because Tyrone shot out of the parking space faster than the Emperor of Doom’s trebuchet could fling a cannonball.

  “Whoa!” I grabbed on to the dashboard.

  “Tyrone has a mind of his own, dear, but he’s an excellent driver.”

  The way she put her hands up on the wheel made it look like she was trying to climb a ladder so she could see what was over the top . . . of the dashboard. I wasn’t old enough to drive, but it seemed to me you should be looking above the steering wheel, not through it.

  “Moo? Can you see okay?”

  “Of course I can!” she snapped. “There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. Now, help me read the signs.”

  Talk about the blind leading the blind. We circled the parking garage three times before I persuaded her to take the ramp with the Exit sign above it. She thought the sign said Erie and asked, “We don’t want to go all the way up there, do we?”

  I wasn’t sure we’d even get all the way to her house, what with the gurgling, knocking noises coming out of Tyrone. After several minutes Moo started coughing along with him.

  “What’s that noise?”

  Moo sniffed. “Allergies.”

  “No, I meant Tyrone.”

  “So did I. They’re seasonal, though. He does much better in the fall.”

  Tyrone’s allergies didn’t seem to slow him down at all. I kept my eyes peeled in case Moo couldn’t see something that I could. Like other cars. And the road. I wouldn’t say I was an extra set of eyes exactly. More like the only set of eyes.

  Moo kept looking over at me and smiling. I thought if I stared out the windshield she might follow my example. It didn’t work. Instead, she stared at me and said, “We’re all lost, aren’t we, dear?”

  “I—I don’t think so. We’re headed for your house, right?”

  “I mean your shirt.”

  I looked down. It was my Doves T-shirt, from their Lost Souls album.

  “Don’t worry. I’m a collector of lost souls.” I didn’t have a chance to wonder what she meant. Before I knew it, Moo was veering off onto the grassy median. I lurched in my seat and grabbed the wheel, jerking Tyrone back onto the highway.

  Moo pointed to the road ahead. “That’s our town!”

  I looked at the sign as we exited. “Do Over? That’s the name of your town?”

  “It’s Donover, but the n went missing a long time ago.”

  “Why doesn’t someone fix it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I rather like ‘Do Over,’ don’t you?”

  “It sounds like something was wrong the first time.”

  “Well, maybe there was. Do Over is a second chance. Sometimes we need a second chance.”

  Moo nodded at an abandoned Exxon station. “That’s where the flea market is on Thursdays and Saturdays. And that’s where . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked to her left at Big Dawg’s Tattoo and Bar. “You don’t need to know about that place.”

  I saw an orange warning sign for road construction. “Slow down!”

  “I told you, dear, Tyrone has a mind of his own.”

  I hit the dashboard a couple of times. “Tyrone! Dude! Slow down!”

  Moo peered over the steering wheel at the roadwork. “I think the orange team needs to find a better place for their soccer game, don’t you, Mike?”

  “They’re construction workers! They’re wearing orange vests so you can see them.”

  “Oh. Well, goodness, they don’t have to dart all over the road like squirrels.” She looked over at me, dragging the wheel to the right, narrowly missing a guy in a yellow hard hat. “It’s just not safe.”

  Tyrone crunched over several traffic cones before lurching to an almost complete stop and turning without using a signal. Horns blared behind us. Moo explained that Tyrone’s “ticky-ticky” wasn’t working, by which I figured out she meant the turn signal.

  “How does anyone know when you’re turning?”

  “Well, I know when I’m turning, Mike. That’s what counts. Goodness, other people are busy with their own lives. They can’t worry about where I’m going.”

  “Uh, actually, they do, because—” But I stopped as Tyrone made some particularly weird sputtering noises and lurched to a stop in front of a Kmart.

  I looked at Moo. “What’s wrong? Allergies?”

  “I’m afraid Tyrone’s out of gas, but we can walk home from here. It’s not that far.”

  But it was as hot as a furnace. “Can’t Poppy pick us up?”

  “He’s . . . busy.” Moo took the keys out of the ignition and put them in Junior. “Oh, dear, we didn’t get to buy scrapple for—”

  The blare of an air horn drowned out anything else she was saying and made me jump and reel around to look out of the rear window. An eighteen-wheeler practically sliced off Tyrone’s butt, which was kind of stuck out in the lane because of Moo’s parking job.

  “. . . and we need to be careful of the trucks, dear.”

  “No kidding! Get out of the car, fast, before the next one comes!”

  She smiled back. “It’s rather a nice day for a walk, isn’t it, Mike?”

  With the semis?

  I grabbed my bags out of Tyrone’s theater and followed Moo down the rural highway. A semi blasted its horn over and over and I thought it was going to run us down, but Moo was laughing, her fist pumping up and down like she was pulling a chain.

  Five more semis went blasting past, Moo pumping her fist at each one. I was panting like a dog from the sun, my bags, and the horns, but I literally jumped when a horn blared right behind us, a whole string of notes that sounded out “Dixie.”

  A black Ford F-350 swerved right by us, missing us by inches, and honked again. The driver’s long hair was flying wildly around his face, but I could see that he was laughing.

  “What the—”

  “NUMNUT!” Moo screamed.

  “No kidding!” I watched the pickup, loaded with drums and amps bouncing in the back, as it raced away from us.

  “Gladys’s boyfriend.”

  “What?”

  “GLADYS,” Moo shouted, “from the bank.”

  “He’s an idiot!”

  “Yes, he is. We’re all waiting for Gladys to dump him. Again.”

  “She sounds a little clueless.”

  “Oh, she’s very bright, Mike, super smart. But not when it comes to men, I’m afraid.”

  “Obviously.”

  I wondered if Gladys was one of Moo’s “lost souls.”

  A few minutes later, we finally turned off of the main road and passed a couple of houses before Moo walked up a gravel driveway. A white Chevy Suburban with a dented bumper sat at the end of the driveway, in front of an old garage. I followed Moo, walking past their mailbo
x, which had a Harley-Davidson motorcycle carved on top.

  It was an ordinary small white frame house except for the fact that the front porch and steps were carpeted. In an orange and red swirly pattern. Even weirder was the array of colorful plastic buckets and bowls sitting upright in the yard.

  “I bet I know exactly what you’re thinking,” Moo said from the top step.

  I was thinking a lot of things. Like, What’s up with the buckets? And, Am I really stuck here for six weeks? Even, If this is some bizarre video game, how do I quit?

  Moo nodded knowingly. “You’re thinking, West Nile virus. But don’t you worry, I never let any water sit in those buckets, so no mosquitoes can breed West Nile virus. And I put a little vinegar in each bucket because bugs hate vinegar. As soon as the rain stops, I empty all the tubs into my big covered trash can in the vegetable garden out back to use for watering later. Water isn’t cheap, you know.”

  Moo held the front door open for me and I caught a whiff of mothballs. I recognized the smell from our attic, where Dad kept the bags of Mom’s clothes. I asked him why he didn’t give them to the Namboodris’ church to send to orphans and homeless people in eastern Europe. All Dad did was stare into the distance and mumble something about mothballs preserving things.

  “Come on in, dear!”

  Moo disappeared inside. “Poppy! Mike’s here, and do you know what? He got me home from the airport. Isn’t that amazing? Mike, come meet Poppy!”

  As I tried to adjust my eyes to the darkness, I noticed the walls were covered in portraits. It was a good thing Dad wasn’t there. He’d be freaked by this many sets of eyes staring at him. “Who are all these people?”

  “They’re portraits nobody wanted. I call them ‘instant ancestors.’ I’m a regular URL—Unwanteds Rescue League.” She grinned at me. “I take care of all the rejects.”

  Rejects? Like me? I wiped the sweat from my upper lip and told myself she was just an old lady, and a pretty wacky one at that. She really wasn’t calling me a reject. Not on purpose, anyway. Still, I was getting hotter. And sweaty. And dizzy. Then I realized what was wrong. It was about a hundred degrees in the house. It was amazing the paintings weren’t melting.

  “Moo?” My voice was dry, cracking, weak. “Where’s the thermostat?”