Nekomah Creek (10 page)

“Yeah, they use everything you say to prove what’s wrong with your family.”

“Well, I didn’t say anything bad about my family.”

But as I headed back down the hall, I was kicking
myself. Me and my big mouth, complaining about Dad not having time for me, admitting how mad it made me when the twins got me in trouble. I’d probably just turned my whole family in. I pictured Mom and Dad sitting in those little chairs outside the principal’s office, hanging their heads. They’d have to wear those pointy dunce hats like you see in old movies. BAD PARENTS, the hats would announce in big black letters.

And it would be my fault.

Back in the classroom, it was free reading time, usually my favorite. Only now, when I opened my book, the words just buzzed around the page. No way would they line up in sentences and march the story into my brain. Already too crowded in there with all these bad thoughts, I guess.

Now that really made me mad! It wasn’t enough that the school people were keeping me from reading as much as I wanted to—now they’d fixed it so I couldn’t concentrate on reading at all!

  6  

Riding my bike home after school, I felt weighed down with dread. If I didn’t have a big heavy problem before, I sure did now. The school would be wanting this permission slip back. I had to tell Mom and Dad about the counselor.

By the time I coasted down over our own little bridge, I had made up my mind to come clean, tell Dad everything, even admit how I’d ratted on our family by complaining to the counselor. I hated to do it, but he needed to know what we were up against.

I took a deep breath and flung open the front door with a bang. “Dad! I have to talk to—”

“Shh! The babies are still asleep!”

“Oh. Sorry, I forgot. But Dad—”

“Will you keep it
down
?”

I winced.

Dad softened his voice. “I’m sorry, Robby, but the kids have been
extremely
cranky today—”

“I know, I know. And they really need their naps.”

“
I
really need their naps.”

“Okay, but Dad?”

“Dadddeeeee!” The thin wail came from the babies’ room.

“Ding-dong it.” Dad threw down his dish towel. “I s’pose I better get her. If I don’t, she’ll wake up Freddie and I’ll have both of them on my hands.”

He hurried up the stairs, leaving me standing there with my story still stuck in my mouth.

I climbed up into my loft and threw myself onto my pile of blankets. I lay there, watching the raindrops slide over my half-circle stained-glass window.

Dad
didn’t
have any time for me. Maybe I was wrong to complain to the counselor about it, but it was true. Didn’t seem fair, getting in so much trouble for telling the truth. But I guess I should have paid more attention to Amber when she tried to warn me last week.

Amber Hixon. Exactly why were they sending her to the counselor, anyway? Couldn’t be rowdiness. She was quiet. Sullen, you might say. Even when she read aloud she barely muttered. She was always telling me she had a shelf full of books at home, but I don’t think she ever read any,
She didn’t have one single scoop on her reading ice cream cone. Were they bugging her for not reading enough just like they bugged me for reading too much?

I sighed and rolled over in my blankets. I wished I thought it was something like that-dumb, but not so scary. But when Amber came out of the counselor’s that first day, she said it was about some picture she’d drawn of her family. I looked at my drawing on the wall, the one of us kids tumbling down the stairs. Mrs. Perkins had been so shocked when she saw it. Gee, maybe I should’ve stuck to animal pictures just like Amber should have stuck to unicorns. This
was
about our families. And now wasn’t Mrs. Van Gent asking the exact sort of nosy questions Amber warned me she would?

How did I ever get myself into this? How was I ever going to get out?

I thought of my python wrestling match and my cheeks went flaming hot all over again. Had I really done that? But the thing is, when you’re making somebody laugh, and they’re enjoying it so much, it seems only polite to keep it up, right?

Downstairs, both kids were awake. I guess Dad had decided if he couldn’t keep them quiet he might as well crank them up.

I heard my favorite Zydeco record start. That’s Cajun music—lots of fiddles and accordions and singing about the spooky black bayous of Louisiana.
We like to scream along with the werewolves and zombies in the background. “Zydeco! Zydeco!” the babies are always yelling. That and a lot of French words none of us understands.

Well, I doubt there’s a person alive who could keep from dancing when they hear this music.

I hurried down the ladder and swept Lucy up. Now really, I thought, somebody ought to clue Mrs. Perkins in to Queen Ida and her Goodtime Zydeco Band.

Beats the heck out of the hokey pokey.

Maybe I should have mentioned the counselor at dinner, but by then I didn’t feel so determined about it, and I hated to spoil everybody’s good mood.

As usual, Dad started the goofiness. We were having spaghetti, so he launched into that mushy Italian song from
Lady and the Tramp
. You know, where the two dogs have a romantic dinner and the waiters come out with violins and accordions?

“Thees ees the night, eetsa beauuuuutiful night …”

Freddie crooned along, batting his eyelashes, mugging like Dad. What a ham.

So Lucy decided to compete for attention with noodle tricks. Flipping them, twisting them.

Before long both kids were throwing noodles, their little arms jerking out like spring-action catapults.

I cracked up.

“Robby,” Mom said in a warning voice. “Don’t encourage them.”

“I can’t help it,” I pleaded, clapping my hands over my mouth. Parents are so weird. One time something makes them mad, another time they’ll think it’s hilarious. How’s a kid supposed to keep it straight whether they’re in a funny mood or a mad mood?

Right now Dad looked serious. “We’ve told you over and over, Robby. Just ignore—”

Whap
. A glob of noodles smacked him in the eye.

I sucked in my breath.

Dad reached up, wiped it away.

Freddie, flinger of the noodles, was waiting with a hopeful look.

Dad’s eyes narrowed. His black brows went together.

Oh, no, I thought. He really
is
mad.

But Freddie was still smiling.

Slowly, carefully, Dad picked up a noodle from his own plate.

Then he tossed it at Freddie!

Freddie shrieked with delight.

“Oh, Bill.” Mom looked at the ceiling.

Lucy stood up and squawked for attention, then she dumped her whole bowl over her head.

We all about fell off our chairs. Even Mom started laughing in a tired, I-give-up sort of way.

Through strands of orange spaghetti, Lucy grinned at each of us in turn.

Mom and Dad were laughing. Hot dog! That meant I could laugh too. I wished the counselor could see this. My nutty family! I wanted to make them laugh too.

I picked up
my
plate of spaghetti and turned it over
my
head.

The laughing stopped.

Mom and Dad jumped up.

“Robby! For cryin’ out loud!”

Warm noodles were sliding down my neck. Mom attacked me with a dish towel. I guess there was a lot more spaghetti on my plate than in Lucy’s bowl. Mom dragged me toward the bathroom.

“What on earth would make you do such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” I wailed as she made me kneel down and put my head under the tub faucet. Things had gone from good to bad so fast. “Anyway, Dad started it.”

She muttered something about bad examples, then lectured me about me being nine and how I shouldn’t act like I’m two, et cetera et cetera …

But all I could think of was how much I hated shampoos, especially when the shampooing person is mad. Besides, a faucet full of water blasting over your head is pretty distracting …

Dad hauled Lucy in, swung her up on the changing table and started wiping her head.

“Poopy!” she cried.

“Okay,” Dad said. “But one end at a time.”

Freddie trailed in with his favorite stuffed animal, Buddy Wabbit.

Mom started roughing up my head with a towel.

“Hey, take it easy!”

“Spaghetti all over your head.” She stopped toweling and looked at me. “What is the matter with you, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I said miserably. “Maybe you ought to ask the school counselor.”

Dad dropped Lucy’s diaper in the toilet and looked at us. “What’s this?”

A little warning sign popped up in my brain.
Danger: Concern Ahead
. “Oh, nothing.”

“Robby,” Mom said, “what about the school counselor?”

I was already kicking myself. Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut? Sure, that was neat for a second there, suddenly getting their attention in a real dramatic way. But now they’d want to follow up on it and this was not the greatest time.

I sighed. “They’re making me talk to that new counselor at school. The one
you guys
thought we ought to have. They think I’ve got problems or something.”

Mom and Dad looked at each other. They looked at me. I groaned to myself. When they act worried, I start thinking maybe there’s really something to be worried about.

“
Do
you have problems?” Dad said.

“Well, some. Like I hate that new jacket you bought me.”

“Come on, get serious.”

“I am serious. It’s too puffy.”

“Well, if that’s your worst problem—”

“It’s not, though! Um … Orin gave me a hard time when I brought a boot box instead of a shoe box for our diorama project. He goes, ‘You always have to be better than everybody, don’t you?’ ”

“That’s nothing new,” Mom said. “Orin teasing you.”

Okay,
think
. I didn’t want to upset Dad, telling how Orin kept talking about his dad beating him up. And I didn’t want to hurt his feelings about his pig costume. I had to come up with something safe.

“I’m dreading fifth grade,” I announced. “Because they have this plastic model of the human body in the fifth grade and I can’t stand thinking about the insides of bodies. You know those wormy things? Intestines? Yuck!”

Dad frowned. “And that’s what the counselor wanted to talk about?”

Lucy had toppled the dirty clothes hamper. She stuck a pair of my underpants on her head and paraded around like a queen with a crown, cracking me up.

“Robby?” Mom said. “How about an answer?”

“Oh, sorry.” I was still giggling. “What was the question?”

“Daddy fuss it down!” Freddie yelled.

“All right, all right,” Dad said, wringing out the diaper.

The big debate over whether I had problems or not had to wait while Freddie enjoyed his favorite spectator sport—toilet flushing. He held his rabbit up for a better view. Every good thing in life Freddie discovered, he wanted Buddy Wabbit to get in on it, too. Lucy joined them at the toilet bowl.

“Watch go down!” Freddie ordered them.

Dad sighed. “What were we saying?”

Mom shook her head. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if just once we could have a decent discussion about something?”