The Absolute Value of Mike (15 page)

“Hey, I'm working on getting Misha adopted. Someone else can take care of Do Over Day, whatever that is.”

“The whole point of Do Over Day,” said Jerry, “is to make money for a good cause. Guess what the good cause is this year?”

“How should I know?”

“Getting Misha adopted! That's why Karen was running it.”

“What? Wait a minute. You mean I'm supposed to run Do Over Day, too?”

“Well,” said Guido, “you're the new Karen.”

“I am not! I don't know how to do this! Maybe we should skip Do Over Day this year.”

The three stooges stared at each other and then me.

Guido cleared his throat. “You're going to skip making money for Misha?”

“Well . . . how much money do you usually get?”

“Several thousand. And it'll be more this year because it's not just some charity. It's for someone we know. It's for Misha.”

I sighed. “Okay. But I have no clue what I'm doing.”

“You'll figure it out, though, I'm sure. You seem like a bright kid.”

“No, I'm not. Seriously.”

“Don't worry, Mike,” said Past. “I'll help you. I can lead the chorus.”

“Chorus? What chorus?”

“The one you put together,” Guido said from behind his paper.

“Are you kidding me? I can't—I—I wouldn't even know where to start!”

“You'll need a theme song—something international, since the kid is from Romania,” Guido said, looking at the others.

All three stooges started singing some song I didn't recognize.

“Hey!” Past shouted over to them.

The three stooges stopped.

Past folded his arms. “I don't think the theme song from
The Love Boat
counts, even if it's cruising international waters.” He looked at me, with some desperation. “Mike? Any ideas?”

“Other than this is completely crazy?”

“He means a song, Mike,” Jerry said.

“I know that!” I took a deep breath. A song for an international kid? I immediately thought of the song my fourth-grade class did for United Nations Day. We even got on TV. Sasha did a solo because the song had foreign languages. It was hard for him to sing, though, because he and I kept giggling. His parents were sitting in the front row, grinning like crazy, especially his dad—

“Are you with us, Mike?” It was Past.

“What? Oh. Yeah.”

Guido slapped his paper down. “Does that mean you've come up with a song?”

I nodded. “As a matter of fact, I have a good one.” I looked at Past. “How am I going to organize all this? I can't—”

Past's phone rang and he picked it up. “Yes?” His eyes widened as he looked at me. “You're with which paper?
The Daily American
? Yes, I know Karen. . . . Uh-huh.”

He nodded as he listened.

“Oh, I agree. It makes an excellent human interest story. This boy is driven to get the kid adopted.” He nodded. “Right, Michael. What? No, that's the teenager. The Romanian orphan's name is Misha, which also means Michael, by the way.” Past sighed and gave a faint smile. “More than a coincidence? I've heard that from others.”

“See!” Jerry shouted.

Past waved his hand at Jerry as he pushed the phone up against his ear. “Sure, you could call it fate. Uh-huh,
kismet
works, too.” He rolled his eyes, then winked at me. “
Miracle
might be a little strong, but why not?”

“What did we tell you?” Guido said.

“Yes, he's in charge of Do Over Day, too. Uh-huh. Just a minute.” He looked at me. “How old are you, Mike?”

“Fourteen.”

He spoke into the phone. “Fourteen. Yes, just call whenever you're ready to do the interview.” He shut the phone. “We have the power of the press behind us now, Mike. You're going to be in the paper.”

I let that sink in as we walked to the bank. A newspaper? I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but at least it was free advertising. Now I just had to figure out what to advertise about Do Over Day. I grilled Past on what it really needed—or what I really needed to do to make it happen.

We figured I could enlist moms like Tresa and her friends to organize the kid games, Moo and her friends to make baked goods, Gladys to handle the money part of it, and Past said he'd lead the chorus once I got all the singers.

“How am I going to find singers for a whole chorus?”

“I'll help you round up the usual suspects,” Past assured me.

“Fine. I'll make up some flyers.” That's how I'd use the math worksheets Dad sent. The blank side would now have Do Over Day information and photos of Misha. Like Moo had predicted, I was going to do something very special with that scrap paper. “I'll also advertise it on Facebook and YouTube. How big a crowd can we handle?”

“Do you seriously think that many people will come?” Past seemed doubtful.

“It's possible. We need to get Shop 'n Save to donate the food, so I better go talk with the manager there. Hey! Maybe we can get cotton candy and funnel cake concessions.”

Past stopped, a look of horror on his face. “Please. Let me take care of the food. I want to ensure that we're offering healthy choices.”

I shrugged. “As long as we've got food and live music, we can call it a fair. And a moon bounce. Kids will drag their parents in if they see one of those.”

“We usually just have three-legged races, sack races, egg races, that kind of thing. It's cheaper so the profit margin is higher.”

“Okay, I'll have people bring their own sacks because we might run out.”

Past chuckled. “You really think a lot of people are going to come, don't you?”

“Absolutely! By the time I'm done advertising, we could have thousands.”

Past stopped chuckling and eyed me. “You may be right. Okay, I'm going to enlist help from some of the guys.”

“What guys?”

“The soup kitchen.”

I looked at him.

“Hey, just because they're homeless doesn't mean they're not capable. A lot of them work but don't have enough money”—he started blinking rapidly—“or for whatever reason, they don't have a home.”

“Are any of them good with power tools? I mean, could they make Poppy's boxes?”

“I don't know about that. But I'm sure they can help run the games, direct the parking, serve food, things like that. It's held right here in the park.”

“What if it rains?”

“We use the soup kitchen since it's right next to the park.”

I started some new lists of all the things I had to do for Do Over Day, and another list of the points I should make with that reporter. As soon as we had a newspaper article, I'd send the link to my teachers, friends, anyone I could think of to spread the word, even my neighbors. Whatever my school was selling, I could always get some neighbors to buy it. And it was a lot easier to sell this cause—
Build a Family, Adopt a Child
—than magazines or wrapping paper.

Past and I checked the street outside the bank. No Numnut or F-350 pickup. It was safe to go in.

I handed Gladys Moo's direct deposit forms. “Completed and signed. Now you have to sing on camera.”

Gladys, who'd started to smile, stopped. “Look, guys, I really—”

“A deal's a deal.” I picked up the bling-framed photo of Misha and held it in front of her. I also used my earnest Misha eyes to add to the appeal.

“Fine,” she said, in a voice of defeat, “but is anyone going to be there while you're filming?”

“We'll use the soup kitchen, after it's closed,” Past assured her.

“You know,” I said casually, “it'd be really great if you could sing at Do Over Day—”

Gladys went totally pale and shook her head. “I—I can play the guitar for you.”

“Yeah, but could you also sing?” I asked.

“One step at a time,” Past murmured.

His phone rang and he stood up. “Excuse us, that's the press.”

We ducked out of the bank as Past answered. It was actually Karen calling from Ohio, checking on how things were going. We went back inside to ask Gladys about donations to the cause. We were several thousand up from the previous week!

Past and I gave each other a high five as he relayed the news to Karen.

Gladys smiled. “Just wait until the eBay sales come in!”

But the real success of the day was the porch pals video. I decided a kid story was appropriate. As a play. “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” I even got Past to act it out with the three stooges. They each rubber-banded the arms and legs of a porch pal to their own arms and legs. When they moved, it looked like live porch pals. Sure, you could tell that there was a person attached to the back of the big stuffed porch pal, but that made it even funnier, especially since Spud's bald head peeked out above the blond yarn of the Goldilocks doll. Guido did a great job as Baby Bear and Past was a very dignified Papa Bear, but Jerry's swishy, sexy Mama Bear about killed me.

I posted it on our website, all the networking sites, as well as YouTube. By the next day, we already had a lot of hits and an average four-star rating, so if anyone read the appeal at the end of the video, we ought to get some donations.

Misha was coming home!

—movement of a figure along a line

 

 

T
here's a difference between watching videos and actually donating money, though. People must've been too busy rolling on the floor laughing to see our appeal for cash at the end. I kept thinking about how much more money we'd raise if Poppy would just get off his butt and make those boxes.

“How's Poppy doing?” said Past as we entered the quiet soup kitchen to set up for Gladys. “Any movement?”

I slumped on a chair at one of the long tables inside, exhausted from days of preparing for Do Over Day—printing and posting flyers, getting the word out electronically, talking to just about everyone in town about what they needed to do. “Poppy? Yeah, he's moving, all right. Now he's putting his duck slippers all around the house to give us hints of what he wants. First, Moo found one under the sink where he keeps his Preparation H, because he was almost out. Then she found one in the fridge where she normally puts his soda, but she'd run out. And last night he wanted his A.1. sauce for his scrapple, only I didn't know that, and Moo was out talking to her tomatoes, so no matter how many times he smacked his busted yardstick on Felix—”

Past flinched.

“—Felix the clock—I didn't get him what he wanted, so he finally had to get up and go to the fridge himself. It was the first time I'd ever caught him out of his chair. Anyway, he was so ticked that when he sat down again, he threw a stupid duck slipper at me!”

I could tell Past was trying not to laugh.

“It's not funny! The man is seriously annoying.”

“The man needs counseling.”

“The man needs a kick in the butt!”

“Okay,” he said, still smirking, but covering it up by bending over his cart and pulling out camera equipment. “Let's get this place ready for Gladys.”

I looked around the soup kitchen. It was a big white room with a linoleum floor like a school cafeteria, complete with tables and chairs. The walls were covered with peeling posters about churches and government agencies. It didn't look like the greatest backdrop for a music video. Fortunately, the kitchen, which was partially open to the rest of the room, had black curtains that could be shut to divide it from the eating area. We pulled them closed and set a chair and mike in front of them just as Gladys walked in.

She wrapped her arms around herself. “I'm not sure I'm good enough for YouTube.”

“Come on, Gladys,” I said, pulling her over to the chair. “Have you seen some of the crap that's on YouTube? Belching, farting, people falling, lots less skill than you have. And I'm adding at the end what you're singing for, remember? We still need . . .” I tried to remember exactly how much we still needed for Misha's adoption. “Almost thirty-two thousand dollars. Hey! Has my dad deposited money in Moo's account yet?”

She shook her head.

“Are you kidding me?” I swung my arms out so violently, I almost knocked over the tripod and camera that Past had just set up.

“Mike!” Past yelled.

I grabbed the tripod, saving it.

“You can IM him later,” Past said.

“Like it does any good,” I muttered.

He paused. “Let's focus on Gladys.”

Gladys looked positively horrified. She clutched the seat of the chair and I thought her eyes might roll back in her head at any moment. We tried saying, “Roll 'em!” several times, but she stared at the camera like a statue.

Eventually, Past went over and stood behind her, and I recorded him singing some old song called “Anticipation.” Gladys didn't even react.

“That was a Carly Simon hit decades ago. This one is an R.E.M. classic called ‘Losing My Religion.' ” He really enunciated a line about singing, but Gladys still didn't move.

Finally, we heard a squeak.

“What?” I asked, running over to her so I might be able to hear.

“Stand,” she whispered. “I think I need to stand?” It came out like a request.

I practically pulled her off the chair and stood her up while Past took the chair away. She wavered a moment, then stood still.

I ran behind the camera. “Okay, why don't you start by just saying hi, maybe introduce yourself.”