We Could Be Heroes

by Margaret Finnegan

  Unfortunately, while Hank’s plan was foolproof, he did not anticipate how long he would have to keep it up. And so he did not think to bring his book out to lunch. Big mistake. Maisie cornered him as he was looking for rocks—and she stepped right on all the good gravel too, so he couldn’t ignore her.

  “What are you doing?” she said.

  He tried to think of an amazing fact. “Um… did you know that there are three kinds of rocks?”

  She flipped back her hair. “Igneous. Sedimentary. Metamorphic. Duh. My parents are geologists.”

  Panicked, he tried to think of another fact, but this time she was too fast for him. She said, “So about Booler…”

  Through clenched teeth, he said, “I don’t want to hear about that dog.”

  She stepped closer. “I was just going to tell you—”

  He looked past her and stared at the fence. “I’m not taking that dog.”

  She crossed her arms. “Jeez.”

  Hank began to rake through the gravel. He was determined to look everywhere except at Maisie.

  She stepped right in front of him, waited a minute, and then cleared her throat. When he didn’t look up she let out a bitter laugh. “Fine. I see how it is.” She walked all around him, slowly, her hands behind her back. “Just so you know,” she said when they faced each other once more, “you’ve broken Booler’s heart.”

  He made a quarter turn. He said softly, “I’m not listening. I’m not listening. I’m not listening.”

  She moved in front of him again.

  She began to speak like an actress in a movie so tragic that only grown-ups would ever want to see it. “When I visited Booler before school he was sprawled out on the ground and sighing. He didn’t even pick his head up to say hi. He barely looked at me. He is super depressed.”

  Hank started to hum, but it was too late. He had heard her, and now his insides twisted as he imagined a depressed Booler. The worst part was that he had just untwisted his insides too. Mrs. Vera had been reading them that sad, sad book and it had taken him all morning to forget that the boy’s father had up and disappeared, and the boy’s grandparents were telling him he had to go hide in the woods despite the fact that they were too frail to go with him.

  “Leave me alone,” he demanded. “I’m trying to find rocks.”

  “I just can’t see why you don’t want Booler. There’s something wrong with a kid who doesn’t want the best dog in the world.”

  Hank’s heart gave a hiccup. She had crossed a line. Oh, yes. She had crossed the mother of all lines. His eyes narrowed defiantly. He sat back on his heels and parroted what his mom always told him to say. “Nothing is wrong with me. Different is not less.”

  Maisie put her hands on her hips. “Well, any normal person would want Booler.”

  He felt his spine lengthen. He felt his neck stretch. He looked up to find her staring down at him, her eyebrows scrunched together and her face pale.

  “I am normal,” Hank hissed.

  “Obviously not if you don’t want Booler.”

  “I AM.”

  “NO, you’re NOT!”

  Hank lunged forward, fury erupting inside him. His hands found Maisie’s legs and she fell backward.

  A loud gasp escaped her mouth. “Oh, you did not just push me down.” With a yell, she sprang forward and tackled Hank, pummeling his chest with her fists. Surprise replacing his rage, Hank pushed against her shoulders, and when that didn’t stop her he turned onto his side and tried to shake her off, but that just relocated her punches from his chest to his back.

  “Get. Off. Me!”

  “Say you’ll take Booler!”

  “We already have a baby!”

  Students began to gather round them. From narrowed eyes Hank spied shoes and pants jostling into one another. He heard voices, but the only words he could make out were “Hank,” “Maisie,” and “big trouble.”

  A shadow fell over Hank and he felt Maisie being lifted off him. He peeked up to find Mrs. Vera scowling and breathing heavily. Her arms clutched a clawing, purple-faced Maisie.

  Mrs. Vera shook her head. “What kind of behavior… fighting!” She grabbed them each by the shoulder and hauled them to the principal’s office, depositing them on the couch in the reception area.

  “Now what is going on here?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips in that way adults love to do.

  Maisie turned away with a sneer.

  Hank just shook his head. He had no idea where to start.

  Mrs. Vera sighed. “I am very disappointed in you both, especially you, Hank. I thought you’d learned your lesson.” Hank felt his face get hot. Mrs. Vera shuffled into the principal’s office, her limp shaming them with a judging shick, shick sound. When she came out she squinted. Her mouth a prune, she said, “Stay,” and headed back to class.

  So they stayed. They stayed through the rest of recess. They stayed through the school receptionist helping some kid with a bloody nose. They stayed even when their mothers walked inside the building and gave them bitter frowns. Then they stayed while their moms talked to the principal without them.

  “I was just looking for rocks,” mumbled Hank.

  “Well, I was just being my charming self.”

  A lump in his throat, he said, “It’s charming to say people aren’t normal?”

  She screwed up her face and let loose an annoyed blast of air. “You know I didn’t mean that.” She paused, puffed up her chest, and added, “I gave you a cookie and everything.”

  He looked down. “It was a good cookie.”

  Maisie made a strange gurgling sound. She leaned toward Hank. “Look, I didn’t mean to punch you or anything. I’m just worried about Booler.”

  He slid away from her, his hands giving a helpless flop. “Booler. I’m sick of hearing about Booler.”

  “Fine. I won’t ever mention him again.” Maisie crossed her arms and slid away from him too. She slid back. “But since we’re on the subject, listen, you can’t tell anybody about Booler.”

  Hank said nothing. He just stared down at his three rocks of the day (polished turquoise, rock salt, stinky sulfur).

  “You can’t tell, okay?”

  “Oh, I’m gonna tell,” he boomed. “You won’t leave me alone about that dog.”

  The woman who guarded the principal’s office looked over at them. She sniffed daintily as with one finger she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

  Maisie slid her hands underneath her thighs and smiled at the woman. When the woman looked back at her computer, Maisie swiveled toward Hank. She wiggled her hips and whispered right in Hank’s ear, “If you tell them about Booler, then my parents will never let me visit him, because they already think I need to drop the subject before I drive them to an early grave.”

  “If they ask me what happened I’m gonna tell them what happened.”

  Maisie threw her hands upon her head and began to pull on the roots of her hair. Desperate, she said softly, “Okay, listen to me. You can have one of my parents’ rocks.”

  Hank turned toward her, suspicious. “Which one?”

  She dropped her hands onto her lap. “Not one of the ones in the house. My parents will notice that. One from the garage. Any one you want. Any one you can carry. Just let me do all the talking and don’t disagree with me. Okay?”

  The door to the principal’s office opened. “Any one I can carry?” said Hank, who figured he could carry quite a lot.

  “Yes! Just don’t tell them about Booler.”

  Hank pinched his lips with his fingers. He did it all casual-like so no one would notice, with his elbows on his knees and his fingers gripping his mouth and his head bent low. But he did it. He didn’t say a word about the dog. Not during the whole meeting. Not to the principal. Not to his mom. Not to Mrs. Huang. Not even when Maisie explained with velvety sweetness that they had been playing Jungle Book—Jungle Book! Instead, he thought as hard as he could about the apple-size amethyst that he had seen in Maisie�
�s garage. It was not nearly as spectacular as the giant coffee-table amethyst, but it was still beautiful: purple and white and perfect. He was going to put it right on top of his dresser, the new showcase of his entire rock collection.

  “You’re telling me you were playing Jungle Book?” Hank’s mom said. Her eyes were dubious pinpricks, her mouth a wavy line. When his bottom slid toward the front of his chair she reached out and squeezed his knee. “It’s okay. You can tell us.”

  He thought harder about the dazzling gemstone that would soon be his.

  Maisie said, “The Jungle Book is a very, very famous movie and also maybe a book because it has the word ‘book’ right in the title. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of it.”

  “Believe me, I know the movie,” said Hank’s mom, her eyes rolling to the top of her head.

  “It’s my favorite movie,” said Hank, his eyes growing wide in surprise by the fingers that had abandoned his mouth so that the words could escape. He clamped down on his lips once more.

  “It’s my favorite movie too,” said Maisie, sounding surprised herself. She regarded Hank for a moment and then went on. “So, yeah. We both love The Jungle Book. Jungle Book is our favorite game. Hank is always the boy, Mowgli, and I am always the bear, Baloo. Baloo was tickling Mowgli, not fighting him. That was all. We started playing yesterday at my house. We’ll probably play it at my house tomorrow too.” She sat back in her seat and tossed her hands in the air. “I don’t know why everyone is making this such a big deal.”

  Mom leaned even closer to Hank. “You’re going back to Maisie’s house? For another playdate?”

  Hank let go of his mouth. “Maisie just said that, didn’t she?” Then he pinched his lips once more.

  “Of course he’s coming back,” she said. “Hank is my friend.”

  His hands fell away from his mouth and he turned so that he could see Maisie. He was her friend?

  She looked back at him. Her lower lip plopped out and she shrugged.

  Hank had had friends when he was in early elementary. He had had two of them, boys who liked dirt and digging and rocks. Together, they would pretend that they were dinosaurs and sometimes rock-eating aliens. But one of the boys had moved away and the other had become interested in baseball and soccer and other things that had nothing to do with dinosaurs, or rock-eating aliens, or Hank. And that had been the end of that. For a while he had tried playing dinosaurs and rock-eating aliens by himself, but it just wasn’t the same.

  Then, of course, he had discovered his love of rocks as things in and of themselves, and rocks were always fun. Rocks were always interesting. Rocks were always ready to be collected and sorted and polished and held. Rocks never wanted to play something that Hank did not want to play. Rocks never made jokes that made no sense at all. Rocks never sounded annoyed for no reason. Rocks were always just what they were. They were always rocks. Just like Hank was always Hank.

  But apparently now he had a new friend. Now he had Maisie—who liked The Jungle Book and had a house full of rocks.

  “Hank,” said the principal.

  Hank looked up just for a second, just enough time to feel the prickly a’a discomfort of her gaze.

  “Hank,” the principal said again. “It seems like you have been having quite a few… challenges lately. Are you sure everything is all right? Is Maisie telling the truth?”

  Hank slid back down in his chair. He pulled his rocks out of his pocket and held them very close to his eyes. He mouthed the word “geode” over and over again.

  There was a long pause.

  Mom said, “If Hank says he and Maisie were playing, then they were probably just playing. Hank doesn’t lie.” There was another pause, shorter this time. “That’s one of the many great things about Hank.”

  The principal broke another stretch of silence. “Okay then,” she said, pivoting in her chair.

  “Okay,” said the moms.

  “Okay,” said Maisie. “But this better not besmirch my personal record.”

  Hank said nothing, but later, in the newly painted and restored boys’ bathroom, he whispered excitedly to his rocks, “I had a fight with Maisie, but now she’s my friend and is going to give me a cool rock so shhhhhhhhh.”

  * * *

  Even friends sometimes bring their moms along for playdates, and Hank’s mom and Mrs. Huang thought maybe supervised playdates might be best for a while, “considering…,” said Hank’s mom.

  “You might have a point there,” said Mrs. Huang.

  “Don’t worry,” said Maisie, sidling next to Hank and speaking softly. “We won’t let them cramp our style.”

  “What style?” Hank whispered back.

  She gave him a big wink. “That’s right. We’ll leave them guessing.”

  At Maisie’s house they sat in the kitchen and downed the rest of the lemon ricotta cookies. Their moms sat in the living room making the classic mom mistake of thinking no one could hear anything they said.

  “She is a piece of work, that Mrs. Vera,” they heard Hank’s mom say. “That stupid book. It will be the end of Hank.”

  “Maisie hates it too.”

  “They all hate it. But Hank… poor Hank… It gives him nightmares. I begged Mrs. Vera right from the beginning. ‘Can’t you read something less sad? Can’t you let Hank read something else—be somewhere else?’ ”

  “And she wouldn’t bend?”

  “She never bends. She wouldn’t even let him go to the bathroom when they were reading that one book, the one about the girl with the pony. He would weep—weep—when he got home. But Mrs. Vera would not relent.”

  Embarrassed, Hank took a bite of cookie and looked down at his plate.

  Maisie stood up. “This is boring. Let’s go.”

  She led him to the garage. “Take your pick,” she said, opening the closet full of rocks. “I keep my promises. You can keep what you pick forever, even if you turn out to be a lemon.”

  “I’m not a lemon,” said Hank, sighing as he admired the crowded rows of rocks upon rocks. “Lemons grow on trees.”

  “Not really a lemon, you goof.” Her hair hula-ed sideways. “But a lemon like a bad car, a car that looks good on the outside but is rotten on the inside.”

  He picked up the apple-size amethyst and cradled it like a baby. “Why would I be rotten on the inside?”

  “Exactly. So listen.” She lifted her heels off the ground and began to walk in a small circle on her tiptoes. “I… am… sorry… if I was like… ‘Ack! That Maisie is a bulldozer!’ I did not mean to break you. Or punch you. Or be mean. Okay?”

  He gave her a shy look. “Okay.”

  “Who I am is just who I am, is the thing,” she said.

  “Who I am is who I am too,” said Hank, his eyes growing wider.

  “My mother tells me I need to care a little less sometimes. She says it gets me into trouble.”

  “My mother tells me I need to care less sometimes. She says it gets me into trouble!” said Hank, astounded by the growing number of similarities he had with this girl who was, indeed, a lot like a bulldozer. He pictured a bulldozer with Maisie’s face and her swishy black hair. It made him laugh.

  She smiled and then laughed too. “Great. Okay. Let’s play Jungle Book. For real this time. You’re Mowgli but your parents didn’t die. We’re on the same baby hockey team. That’s what we’re doing now. Playing jungle hockey. Baloo always plays tricks on you, but you like it.” She grabbed two yardsticks from a tub of tools.

  Hank shoved the amethyst in his sweatshirt pocket and took one of the sticks.

  Maisie led Hank outside. “These are our hockey sticks.”

  Hank watched Maisie run across the yard.

  “Ha ha!” she said. “I actually replaced your hockey stick with an eel, but at first you just think it’s a normal hockey stick.”

  He took a step forward. “Mowgli says this is just a normal hockey stick, and Mowgli isn’t worried that his best friend is a bear because bears actually don’
t want to eat people.”

  “But then you realize your hockey stick is actually an eel and go all crazy.”

  Hank looked down at his yardstick. His eyes bulged as he dropped the stick on the ground and started wiggling and jumping. “Mowgli is going all crazy.”

  “Don’t worry, Mowgli. It’s a nice eel. It won’t hurt you.” She picked up a long twig that had fallen from a tree and handed it to Hank. “Here’s your real hockey stick.”

  Hank had a tingly feeling in his belly, and at first he didn’t know what to think of it, but then he remembered. This was delight. This was just like rock-eating aliens back in the day.

  “But this turns out to be an eel too,” said Hank, dropping the twig and jumping some more. “Mowgli’s going all crazy again.” He pulled his amethyst out of his pocket. “Mowgli thinks he might also eat a rock.”

  Maisie started to jump up and down. “Oh, no! That’s not a rock. That’s a sweet baby hedgehog.”

  From across the fence Booler started barking. Hank looked up and could see the dog pulling against the end of his rope, staring at Maisie.

  “Oh, no, Mowgli, your wolf mom, Raksha, says we have to come home for dinner. Let’s go. You can bring the baby hedgehog because it wants to be our friend.” Maisie hopped the fence and ran to Booler.

  Hank hesitated.

  She looked back at him, dropped her chin a fraction. “We’re just playing.”

  She plopped down next to Booler and started scratching his chin. “Raksha says we have to eat bones for dinner. No, Raksha, we want honey.”

  Booler rolled onto his back and showed Maisie his belly. She started scratching that instead.

  Hank hopped the fence. “But Mowgli likes bones so he’s happy,” said Hank, putting down the amethyst and petting it before plopping one side of a twig in his mouth. “And interestingly, bears also like huckleberries.”

  Maisie smiled. “Now it’s bedtime,” she said, dropping on all fours and resting her head next to Booler. The dog wiggled and placed a paw on Maisie’s shoulder. “Raksha says you should go to sleep and she’ll make you more bones in the morning.”

  Hank sat next to Maisie. He watched as Booler, his nose vibrating, looked at him. The dog blinked and, in a flash, ran his long tongue across Hank’s face.