13 (4 page)

MY SCHOOL
back in New York was a gray brick building in the middle of a city block. The nearest blade of grass was two blocks away in Central Park. But my new school, Dan Quayle Middle School, looked a lot like I imagined a typical American school would—a redbrick building on the outskirts of town, surrounded by three sports fields and a big digital scoreboard. Pretty impressive. On the first day of school, there was a green and white banner hanging over the main entrance that read W
ELCOME
Q
UAILS!

The night before my first day, I was pacing around Pam's little house, pretending not to be nervous, when the phone rang.

It was Brett. “Stick close to me tomorrow,” he said. “I'll smooth things out for you.”

God looked down from the heavens and smiled on me. Truly I was one of the Chosen People. Without Brett, I would've taken my first terrified steps into that building alone only to be completely ignored. But with the quarterback by my side?

“Hey, come meet the Brain,” he called out as he guided me down the main hall. “He's from New York! That's right, the Big Apple!”

I was in. The cool new kid. And you should've heard some of the questions.

Like: “Hey, New York. You ever been where John Lennon got shot?”

Or: “I hear you guys don't have any trees!”

Or: “How many times have you been mugged?”

I didn't care what they asked, I was just happy to have made it. The road was clear from here on out, because Brett was by my side.

First-period homeroom was in Room 421, a big room with blue walls and thirty desks, neatly arranged in rows. A poster on the far wall read H
OOSIERS
L
OVE TO
R
EAD!

Walking in, I saw most of the kids I had invited to my bar mitzvah. Ryan and Eddie sitting together in the third row, laughing about something. Lucy and Kendra were whispering in a corner. Near the front, Nicole
was joking around with J.D. and Seth. Bridget was leafing through a magazine near the back. Then Brett swooped in behind me and began introducing me to other people whose names I had been hearing over the past month. Just like in the halls, everyone seemed psyched to meet the new guy from New York. It was like I was a rock star for a day. This one kid started asking which Starbucks Tina Fey liked to go to and what she liked to drink. As if I knew. Luckily, Brett saved me.

“Over here, Brain,” he said.

A minute later, I was at a desk at the back near Eddie and Ryan—a seat of honor, too, right next to the QB himself. No doubt about it: I was floating. All due respect to Steve and Bill, but back home I never hung out with a kid as cool as Brett. I took a long look around the room. Nice new friends, nice new school. Who'd have thought it? Maybe life in Appleton would work out after all.

“Yo, what is a bar matzah?”

Then again, maybe not.

I had been so busy lapping up my newfound coolness, I hadn't seen Fudge come in. But suddenly there he was, holding my bar mitzvah invitation by its edges like it was covered with armpit sweat. The mail in Appleton was fast, apparently.

“A party,” I said, then quickly added, “It should be a blast.”

Eddie wasn't so convinced. He grabbed Fudge's invite and narrowed his eyes.

“I got one of these on Saturday.” He looked at me. “You mean it was from you?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, and pointed at Fudge's invite. “See my name? Evan Goldman.”

Eddie looked mystified. “I thought your name was the Brain.”

“Oh, check it out,” Brett said. “I saw one of those fancy envelopes on our dining room table the other day.”

I swallowed. “So you haven't opened it?”

Apparently not. Brett took Fudge's card and pointed to the last line.

“What is this stuff anyway?”

“That's Hebrew,” I said, trying to sound cheerful.

Ryan looked concerned. “What's up with that? Are you an Arab or something?”

“No,” Lucy said, walking over. “He's Jewish. My mom says this is some creepy Jewish thing where we all have to get baptized.”

“It's not—it's just a party,” I protested. I was starting to flush.

“Isn't this in like three weeks?” Brett was working hard to manipulate his mental calendar. “Because I've got football.”

“No, I checked, there's no game that day,” I
stammered. “It's just a party.”

Fudge wrinkled his brow. “In the basement of a church?”

“Oh, come on, you'll have a great time!”

I felt like I was about to cry. After a grand entrance, I was suddenly like a week-old banana turning black in the fridge.

“Well, I gotta talk to my mom about this,” Brett said, sounding dubious.

The teacher walked in. Mr. Hertz was a big fat redheaded guy with a huge mustache. “Okay, here we go!” he barked, and all the kids jumped into their chairs. I sat down hard in mine, thoroughly depressed. And things were about to get worse. Just after Mr. Hertz closed the door, it popped open and Patrice ran in.

“Sorry, sorry!”

I hadn't seen her in a week or so. She had clearly gotten dressed up for the first day of school and looked prettier than I had ever seen her. But as she skittered across the room to a desk next to the window, I heard Lucy and Kendra giggling. I knew, and Patrice knew, that they were laughing at her.

I tried not to look at Patrice too closely, but as Mr. Hertz took roll, I saw her eyes drift to Fudge's desk. As luck would have it, my invitation was sitting right there. Watching her read it, my stomach sank. The
truth is that ever since I hadn't been able to drop her invite in the mailbox, I had felt torn. In a perfect world, Patrice would come to my party and have so much fun, she'd end up doing the hora with Lucy. But in real life, her presence would infuse the whole party with a giant chunk of weird. So even though I had half planned to mail her invite eventually, it was still at home on my desk.

Now she tried to catch my eye, but I turned away just in time and shouted “Here!” when I heard my name. It didn't matter, I reminded myself. Patrice wouldn't want to be at a party with all the cool kids anyway. Besides which, we weren't really even friends anymore.

Right?

 

Miraculously, the next two periods were both classes without Patrice. Brett was in English with me, Eddie was in everything with me, and the rest of the kids were around in various combinations. Now that the subject of my bar mitzvah had been broached, it seemed like everyone was basically pretending that it had never come up. I was desperate to ask people if they were going to come—Brett in particular—but I knew I had to ride it out a little.

The period before lunch, I was at my locker in the main hallway, alone for the first time all day. Then I
realized that someone was standing behind me. I turned.

There was Patrice.

She was staring at me with a fierceness I had seen before only when she gave Lucy the evil eye.

I turned back to the locker. I fiddled with my lock. I waited.

But she didn't leave.

I turned to face her, expecting her to finally say something, but she just kept staring at me. There was so much going on in her face, I couldn't tell if she was sad or angry or happy to see me or just tired.

I tried to make things right. “Look, Patrice,” I began. “I wanted to invite you. In fact, I have your invitation at home on my desk. Seriously.”

Her face sort of crumpled in on itself. Her eyes got hard and sad. This wasn't going well.

“I just forgot to mail it,” I said, panicking. “So I'll give it to you after school, all right?”

The irises of her eyes turned to ice. “You're a liar,” she said. Suddenly she was crying. Then she was running away.

I called her name, but the bell rang, so I didn't know if she heard me or not. All right, I thought, if she wants to be dramatic about it, then fine. Sure I should've mailed her invitation, but I had done what I thought was right. Patrice would get over it. It wasn't
that big a deal. After all, it was just a bar mitzvah. Everything was working out for the best.

Except.

The more I think about it, the more I think that betraying Patrice is what led to what happened next—like some Higher Power decided to balance the scales. As the second bell rang, I threw my backpack over my shoulder and started to run to lunch. If I hadn't had to tie my shoe, maybe it would have all happened differently. But no, right there, while I was on one knee rushing to get my laces tied, with no one else around, I heard the sound that would define my next few weeks.

DINK clump. DINK clump. DINK clump. DINK clump.

There he was. Archie, on crutches.

Our eyes met. I was surprised. I guess I had assumed that he went to a different school, one for kids with special needs.

“Hey,” I said. “What's up?”

Archie smiled.

“So,” he said. “I hear you're having a party.”

ARCHIE DIDN'T
sound like a normal person. First of all, he spoke very slowly, almost like he was stuttering. Then, when he finally did get a sentence out, his throat made this raspy, choking sound, and his voice bounced up and down, sometimes even within a single word. He didn't say “party”; he croaked “Pa” and then he squeaked “irrrr” and finally belched out “ty.” Like everything else about Archie, it caught you off guard.

“Huh?” I said.

“You're having a party, right?” he repeated. Pairrrr-ty. “Everybody's talking about it.”

He had a wide grin, and his eyes were set way off
to either side of his head, froglike, and he was a little pudgy. Sort of sweet looking, and with the crutches kind of defenseless, like a penguin. And the crutches weren't like the wooden ones that fit under your armpits like I used when I busted my foot skiing in fourth grade; these were heavy-duty aluminum things with cuffs for his arms to go through.

“Yeah,” I said. “It's just a, um, bar mitzvah.”

He leaned forward on his crutches. “I bet the city is really amazing. Is it like in the Storm Front episode when Silik and Archer go to Manhattan to stop Hitler and they end up resetting the Temporal Conduit?”

I felt bad about the crutches, but this guy was too weird for words. My eye caught the clock over his head. “Well, listen, it's been great talking to you, but I'm late for lunch.”

“Oh, you'll be fine,” Archie said. “Just tell them you were walking me to the nurse's office. You can always use me as an excuse. Whenever you don't want to do something or you get in trouble, just say, ‘Sorry, I was helping out my friend who has muscular dystrophy.' Gets you off the hook every time.”

I swallowed hard. “I appreciate that.”

“And you don't even have to tell me,” Archie went on. “I'll back you up. You're my friend.”

I blinked. I was? We had only just met!

“Yeah,” I stammered. “Okay. That's great.” The
doors to all the classrooms along the hallway closed as class started. “I really have to get going.”

If Archie heard, he didn't let on. He just clumped closer.

“Here's the thing,” he said. “Since we're friends now, I was thinking that you should get me a date.”

I looked around to see if anyone was playing a joke on me.

“With Kendra Peterson,” he went on. “Can you make that happen?”

“I'm sorry?” I said.

Archie moved even closer. “You know, a date. Like to a movie. Or IHOP?”

“With Kendra?” I had to make sure I had heard right. “The head cheerleader? She's going out with Brett, the most popular boy in the whole school. You'll never get near her.”

Archie rolled his eyes. “They're not
going out
. They haven't done the tongue.”

“What does that mean?”

“That's the rule—you're not ‘going out' until you do the tongue,” Archie said. “And Kendra won't let Brett do it.”

“I've never heard of this rule,” I said skeptically.

“Well, I guess in New York City, you're all too busy being chased by muggers to worry about these things, but that's how it works out here.”

“Listen, if she won't let Brett”—I felt ridiculous even saying it—“do the tongue with her, why would she let you?”

Clump, clump.
He was standing as close to me as he could, his wild frog eyes glaring into mine. “I'm glad you asked.” He turned to one side, then the other, checking to make sure no one could hear him. “This morning, in biology class?” He waited, building up the suspense. “I'm just sitting there, right? Being invisible, as always. And I look up, and Kendra's staring at me. So I'm like, whoa, what's that about? And before I could do anything…”

Silence. The sound of chalk writing on a blackboard in the classroom next to us. “What? Before you could do anything, what?”

Archie grinned—no, more like he beamed—and he said, “She smiled at me.” He stepped back in triumph. He raised his eyebrows knowingly. “She likes me.”

My head was starting to hurt.

Archie said, “So I was thinking that you could get me a date. I mean, you're new here and everyone likes you.”

“That's because I haven't done anything stupid yet!” I said. More like yelled. This was getting a little bit scary. “One wrong move and I'm exiled to the Loser table for the rest of the year.”

Archie wasn't listening.

“Or hey, wait a minute!” he said. “Maybe it'd be easier if I just sit next to her.”

Now I was really confused. “When? At lunch?”

Archie shook his head. “No! At your bar mitzvah!”

I nearly fell over. Seriously. Flat on my face. Down for the count. Then Archie's face twisted into this sick sort of grin. “I can always just ask your mom if I can come.”

See what I mean about the Higher Power punishing me for what I had done to Patrice?

“What?” I said.

Archie stared me down. “I mean, your mom's not gonna tell the little crippled kid he can't come to the party.”

Suddenly there was nothing charming, quirky, or even sad about Archie. Disease or not, this was hard-ball. If he came to my bar mitzvah, I'd be doomed. Brett and his gang would never come!

“But here's the thing,” he was saying. “This is a two-way deal. If you get me a date with Kendra, I'll do something for you. Get you and Patrice back together.”

That pulled me up short.

“You're friends with Patrice?”

It was sort of hard to believe, considering she hadn't hung out with him all summer. At least, not
since I'd arrived. Archie shrugged. “Oh, yeah, from way back before I got so sick. Also she feels sorry for me, so I take advantage of that. Like I said, I can get you two back together in no time.”

“There's nothing to get back together,” I said. “Patrice and I weren't really such great friends to begin with.”

Archie didn't buy that for a second. “Oh, please,” he said. “Until you met Brett and the rest of those idiots, I saw the two of you together practically every time I looked out the window.” He leaned closer. “I can fix things. Patrice likes you.” He leaned even closer. “I mean, she
likes
you.”

I saw a teacher looking through the window of her classroom door. “Archie, can we talk about this later?”

“So you'll get me that date with Kendra? You will, right? You're gonna do it, right?”

By that point, Archie was so worked up that his chest started to heave a little bit and his leg shook. Then, behind me, someone spoke.

“Archie, are you all right? Do you need help getting to class?”

I turned to see a middle-aged woman with bright red hair and cat's-eye glasses standing at the other end of the hallway.

Archie transformed instantly. His eyes softened, his
posture loosened. He was suddenly a typical sweet twelve-year-old boy.

“That's okay, Mrs. Kincaid. Evan's helping me.”

Mrs. Kincaid smiled. “Well, get a move on, you two. Evan, that's a very kind thing to do. Thank you.”

I stammered, “Of course, Mrs. Kincaid.”

As she walked off, she said, “Welcome to Appleton!”

The minute she was out of sight, Archie was grinning.

“You know what I could've done just then?” he said.

“What?”

He shrugged. “I could've flopped on the floor and told her you pushed me.”

Did this kid have any limits? I must've gasped. Or turned white. Because suddenly Archie was giggling like a wild man.

“You should see yourself! Don't people joke around in New York? I wouldn't do that to you—you're my friend. You've got to relax.”

“Okay,” I choked. By that time I was leaning against a locker for support.

“But remember,” Archie said, “good things can happen if you help me.”

I was desperate to get away. Practically dying.

“Archie, listen. I've really got to go. We'll talk, okay?”

I began to walk away, fast. But ten feet or so down the hall, I heard a loud thud. When I turned there was Archie—on the floor, twitching and gasping like a freshly caught fish. Ten thousand thoughts rushed through my head at once. Had I done this to him somehow? Was he going to tell people I had pushed him? Was I his last-ever hope for happiness at that miserable school? Was he really in trouble?

“Hold on!” I cried. “I'll get the nurse!”

I was maybe ten steps down the hall when I realized that the gasping had stopped. I turned, expecting him to be dead, and instead he was propped up on his arms smiling impishly at me.

“Just imagine that on the dance floor in the middle of your bar mitzvah!”

“Archie!” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “Just get me that date!”

With that, Archie got himself up on his feet. It took forever. He couldn't just stand up. Instead, he had to brace his feet against the lockers, then walk forward on his hands until he was upright. Halfway through, I made a motion to help, but he stopped me with a glance.

“I've got it.”

Once he was on his feet, he moved down the hall without another look. I was calculating in my head: What happens if I say yes? How do I get Kendra to go
on a date with him? She's Brett's girlfriend! Or she will be soon. But what happens if I say no? If Archie tells my mother I didn't invite him, all of a sudden he's gonna be at the house every night eating dinner with us. And what if, oh my god, what if he really does come to the bar mitzvah and does the crazy fake seizure?

A little too quietly, I said, “I'll try.”

Archie looked over his shoulder. “What?”

“I said I'll try, okay?”

You should've seen the grin the spread across his face—so hopeful. Like for the first time in years that someone had agreed to help him. I felt pretty good about myself, to tell the truth.

“I knew you would,” he said, and sort of snorted.

And
DINK clump, DINK clump
, he was off down the hall.