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Authors: Jack Gantos

BOOK: Jack Adrift
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“What are you doing?” Pete asked.
“I'm encouraging a genius,” I whispered. He looked puzzled.
“I love this TV show,” I said loudly to Pete. Suddenly the channel changed.
“Are you doing this?” Pete asked.
“No,” I said. “It's your
genius
friend across the swamp. The two of you are on the same
genius
level.”
I walked over to the window. “Hey, genius!” I yelled. “Stop changing our channels.”
He popped up from under his windowsill. “I'm a-a-a genius!” he yelled. “Watch this.” He pointed the remote at our house and the TV changed again.
“Hey,” Pete yelled back. “This was my top-secret sneaky genius idea.”
“No, this is
my
sneaky genius idea.”
“I'm the real genius,” Pete claimed, waving the remote over his head.
“No-no-no way,” Julian shot back. “I'm the true genius.”
It takes one to know one, I thought, as Julian turned our TV on and off and flipped through the stations. Pete did the exact same thing to them. The battle of the remotes was going full blast and that's when I figured out what their special genius really was—driving us all insane.
After they had spent about twenty minutes changing each other's channels, I looked over at Pete. “Why don't you two start a
genius
club together,” I said.
“That's a great idea,” he replied. “But you can't join because you're not a genius.”
“But I can join,” Julian shouted. “Because I'm a genius!”
I got up and went into my bedroom. I was getting a headache. I needed a good book to read. “TV,” I muttered, “it brings out the
genius
in everyone.”
T
he bathroom in our house trailer was very small. When you sat on the toilet your knees nearly touched the back of the door. The sink was the size of a salad bowl. My face just barely fit inside the frame on the wall mirror. Only half of Dad's face fit and he had to shift back and forth to shave both sides. But it was the only private room in the house—semiprivate, really, because anyone on the outside could hear what was happening on the inside. When Dad took a long shower after work and sang all the colorful verses of “Barnacle Bill the Sailor,” Mom made us play out behind the swamp.
Even though I knew the bathroom was about as private as covering myself with a bedsheet in the middle of the living room, it was the place I retreated to when I needed to cry. I knew everyone could hear me sobbing away, but I just didn't want them to see my face. When I cried, my face got all screwed up like a washcloth being
wrung out. I'd rather be seen naked and smiling than dressed and crying. It just seemed that crying in public was asking for trouble—especially with Betsy around. Whenever I was at my weakest, she became an even bigger bully than normal.
I was crying, not because of anything that had happened in my family, but for what had happened in trailer number two, where Mr. Hancock lived. He was divorced and had a son, Elliott, who lived with his mom on the mainland. From time to time Elliott came to visit. He was in a wheelchair and his dad always drove him around in the bed of his pickup truck. That's how Elliott liked it. His dad built a little ramp to wheel him up where Mr. Hancock could secure him in a special rack. After the ride he could wheel Elliot down. Elliott was very pale and thin and his arms always seemed to quiver for an awkward moment before he kind of jerked them into motion, like he first needed an electric shock to get himself going. The same with his speech. It was as if his lips were out of sync with his thoughts, and he could only talk one syllable at a time, as if the words had been snipped apart with scissors. He had always been in a chair and, from what we knew, wasn't doing very well. Word got around that there was some chance he was going to die and so his dad had me and Julian over to the house to be Elliott's friends for a day. We both understood we were supposed to be extra nice
and, regardless of all my mom's warnings, we were. We had great fun playing Wiffle ball indoors and rubber-band warfare and game after game of ticktacktoe. That was Elliott's favorite game, and when he started first there was no beating him. It was the one thing he had going for himself, and he was proud of it. He knew he beat us fair and square, unlike when we played Wiffle ball and gave him as many strikes as he needed. Then after he hit the ball, one of us would drop it, while the other one would wheel him around the living room for an inside-the-park home run. He flopped around in his chair and laughed, but there was some understanding in his eyes that told me he knew we were faking. Or maybe he just always knew whatever fun he was having was temporary because soon it would
all
be over with.
Still, we all enjoyed the visit. It was fun being especially nice and by the end of the day we really liked the kid. And when he said
goodbye
he whispered the word as though he didn't want to wake it up. That was the last time I saw him alive.
So earlier in the day, when Elliott's dad knocked on our door and stepped inside and quietly told me that Elliott had died, I was really struck by the news. I didn't know what to say. I just kept repeating, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry. I'm so very, very sorry.” I couldn't stop myself from adding an extra
very
each time I expressed just how sorry I was. And I couldn't
keep my mouth shut because I knew as soon as I stopped talking, I
would
be sorry and all the pain of it would hit me and I wanted to hold that pain off for as long as I could. So even after Mr. Hancock left, I kept saying, “I'm so very, very, very.” With each
very
I took a step down the hall until, after twenty
verys,
I was in the bathroom with the door closed against my knees. I thought of Elliott and right away my chin quivered and my face twisted up and the tears ran hot down my cheeks and I cried so loud that my mom knocked on the door.
“Honey,” she called gently, “are you all right?”
“Yes,” I replied, sniffling. “I'm fine.” And then I bit down on my lower lip to keep from crying, but soon enough my chin started quivering and then I was right back at it.
Between sobs I heard Mom say, “Just give him some time. He's sensitive. He'll be out in a minute.”
“Well, I can't hold it any longer,” Dad replied. “I think I'm going to have to go back to nature.” In a minute I heard a beer pop open as he clomped down the hall and out the back door to pee in the bushes like he usually does when the bathroom is occupied.
Mom was wrong. I knew I could stay in the bathroom crying all night or until either she or Betsy would have to go and then I'd be flushed out of my hiding spot to cry in public. I couldn't bear the thought of Betsy making
fun of me. So when I thought the coast was clear, I opened the bathroom door and dashed to my room. Pete wasn't there and I swung myself out the window and down onto the strip of dry ground next to the swamp. I wiped my face on my shirtsleeve and went over to Julian's window and peeked in. He was building a plastic warship from a kit. I didn't know if he knew about Elliott's dying because Julian's dad and Mr. Hancock had a falling-out at work over stolen tools and weren't talking.
“Let's take a walk,” I said to Julian, and wiped my nose on my forearm.
“Can't,” he replied. “I'm grounded for-for-for life.”
“Why?”
“We were at my cousin's wedding. He was having it at his house. He's like nineteen and all my life he's been a jerk-jerk-jerk to me. So I climbed out a second-floor window and was just hiding out on top of the roof getting away from everyone when a crazy thing happened. The bakers were delivering the wedding cake, which looked-looked-looked something like a pirate ship with the bride and groom in the crow's nest. It was pretty cool. But like I said, I never liked him, so as they carried the cake across the yard I started singing,
Here comes the bride … one ton and wide! I'd rather kiss a pig-pig-pig in a wig … everyone hide!
Then I did my nut dance and lost my balance and rolled off the roof. I missed
most of the cake but-but-but clipped off the mast and crow's nest and the bride and groom and when the bakers started yelling and everyone came out and saw cake and icing all over my shoes, they went ballistic and my cousin threatened to kill me, and my parents did, too.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“I started hollering that it was an accident and that I had fallen out a window and somersaulted off the roof and by coincidence the cake-cake-cake was passing by.”
“Did they believe that?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said. “But it's kept them from killing me, so they've just grounded me for life. I wrote a song about it,” he said. “Do you-you-you want to hear it?”
“Love to,” I said.
He stood up on his bed and struck a guitar-playing pose with one hand out on the imaginary neck of the guitar and the other scratching at his belly. “Okay,” he said. “Imagine this played as loud and fast as humanly possible.” Then he got a faraway look in his eyes and stared out over my head as if addressing the crowd at a rock concert. “Here's my new hit song that you all have been waiting for. It's dedicated to my cousin and it's called, ‘I'd Do It Again!'”
Then he gritted his teeth and started strumming his air guitar and bouncing all over his bed.
“I'd do it again!” he screamed. “I'd jump on the cake. He's a jerk to me. And she's a-a-a fake!”
Then he went into an air-guitar frenzy
and caromed all over his room and flipped over his ship model before landing back up on his bed for the second verse.
“I'd do it again!”
he wailed at the top of his lungs.
“I'd ruin their fun! I'd laugh at their wedding! Then run! Run! Run!”
He jumped off the bed again and started kicking holes in his door and rolling across the floor and punching the walls. The whole house rocked back and forth. “Somebody
help
me!” he yelled. “I'm
possessed
!”
“Julian!” his mother hollered, and whipped his door open.”You're already in enough trouble. If you trash your room you'll be sleeping outside. You hear me?” She pointed a very real frying pan at him.
His face dropped. “Yes, Mom,” he replied. “I-I-I was only playing rock star.”
“Well, try acting your age,” she said. “Rock stars are
infantile!
”
“Okay,” he said glumly.
“And,”
she said, steaming up, “if you claim you're possessed one more time, I'll let the local priest knock the devil out of you, and believe me, they use more than a frying pan!”
“Yes, Mom-Mom-Mom,” he said, and picked up a toppled chair.
Then she caught sight of me. “You!” she hollered with the frying pan held out like she had a tennis racket and was about to return a volley. I ducked down and began
to slosh through the swamp on the way over to my house.
“You little coward!” she yelled again from the window. “You better run! I think you are a bad influence on my boy. You're giving him bad ideas. He was a good boy until you came along.”
I didn't stop to argue with her. I thought Julian was a great kid. He was full of his own wild ideas and didn't need any of mine to get him worked up. But I didn't want to get my head flattened just to tell her so.
As soon as I reached for the front-door knob I heard Mom and Dad talking in the living room. I stopped to listen.
“He's a boy,” Mom said. “For my own selfish reasons I'd love to see him stay a boy forever, but in the blink of an eye he's going to be bigger than both of us. And he can only grow into being a great man if we start young and raise a great boy.”
“That's not true,” said Dad. “I didn't start being a man until I turned thirty and look how I turned out.”
“That's just what I'm talking about,” Mom said sharply. “He needs guidance. Something wholesome to do, like Boy Scouts, or a sport.”

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