Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie (6 page)

“Yeah. Must be.” I flipped through his movie collection. He had some pretty good action films. “You remember being a freshman?”

He shook his head. “I’m not even sure I remember last night. Why?”

“Nothing …”

“What is it? A girl?”

“How’d you know?”

He threw a shirt at my head. “It’s always a girl. So what’s the problem?”

“Well, how’d you get girls to notice you?”

“I never thought about it. I guess they just notice me. They’ll notice you, too. You’re a Hudson. We’ve got the power.” He flashed me a grin.

Right. They’ll notice me. If I paint myself orange and glue hamsters to my shirt.

I helped him put his movies and music on his shelves. I was dying to find out how he felt about the baby. Mom and Dad
must have told him by now. But I wasn’t sure he’d even want to talk about that.

When I got up to leave, Bobby said, “It’s all going to change, you know.”

“What? School?”

He shook his head and pointed downstairs. “Everything. After the baby’s born, they won’t have time for anything else.”

“Sure they will.”

Bobby stared at me. “Stop lying to yourself. I was only four when you were born, but I can remember how much it changed things.”

“I’m not lying to myself,” I said. It was a lie I really wanted to believe. “Nothing’s going to change.”

m
onday morning, I plunged myself into my first full week of school. It didn’t start out much different from my first three days. Mouth talked nonstop from the moment he caught sight of me. Julia didn’t even glance in my direction. I glanced in hers. She seemed to grow more gorgeous each day. At this rate, I figured I’d explode sometime around mid-November. I’d look at her and just blow apart in a gruesome hydraulic disaster.

At least the Sheldon shield worked. I had a feeling that by the time he graduates, the accumulated smacks will have turned his brain into some sort of liquid resembling bean soup.

Maybe Julia didn’t notice me, but someone else did. All through English, Mr. Franka kept looking at me with this amused smile. I honestly didn’t have a clue what was going on. I even checked under my nose a couple times, to make sure nothing was dangling.

“Scott,” he said to me at the end of class, “I need to ask you something.” He held up a piece of paper. When I recognized it, I thought about making a dash for the door. But I figured he was fast enough to run me down.

I also figured he was going to give me a lecture because of all the things I wrote about losing legs and arms and stuff. I was really really really glad I didn’t put down the ones that I thought of later, like “Clean the toilet seat,” said Tom peevishly. Or “Who sneezed on my hamburger,” said Tom snottily.

Mr. Franka caught me by surprise. “You’re very creative, Scott. Have you thought about joining the school paper?”

I expressed my great creativity by saying, “Huh?”

“They could use you on staff. What do you think?”

“No thanks.” I couldn’t believe I wasn’t in trouble. But I didn’t want to join the paper. I already had too much to do.

“There’s a perfect opening for you,” Mr. Franka said.

“What?”

“Book reviews. With your wit, I suspect you’d be good.”

Book reviews
? When he mentioned that, these fantasies flashed through my mind. It was like someone pointed out a road I’d never noticed. I could see myself doing it.

Yeah, right. In my spare time.

“Look. Thanks. It’s cool you offered, but I’m pretty busy. You wouldn’t believe how much work they load you down with in honors English. The teacher is brutal.”

To my relief, he grinned. “Yeah, I’ve heard that guy’s a jerk. No problem. Maybe next year.”

The rest of the day, I found myself making up book reviews in my head. But as I walked toward my front door, the weight of my backpack dragged me down into the real world.

Not that the real world didn’t have rewards. The moment I stepped inside, I sniffed magic. Mom had been baking. Fresh
cherry pie is the perfect after-school snack. Add vanilla ice cream and it goes beyond perfection. Heat. Cold. Sweet. Sour. Heaven.

I vacuumed the first piece. I paced myself on the second, talking with Mom while I ate. She was over by the counter, trimming chicken breasts.

“Did anyone in our family ever go to college?” I asked.

Mom frowned, as if trying to identify a stranger in a photograph, then said, “Not that I know of. Your aunt Doreen went to business school for a year. That’s sort of like college.”

“What about on Dad’s side?”

“His people have always been good with their hands.” She trimmed another piece of chicken, then said, “Why?”

“No reason. Just wondering.”

Mom smiled at me. “There’s a first time for everything.”

The rest of the school week zipped past pretty quickly. After losing two more hats, Mouth switched to a jacket with a hood. Another mistake. Wednesday, I saw a couple seniors hang him from the top of a door by the wood shop. He finally managed to get free when he slipped out of the sleeves.

I saw Kyle with some seniors the next day. One of them pushed him. I figured there’d be a fight. But they all started laughing and pushing one another. I guess he knew them from somewhere.

Mitch ate lunch with his girlfriend now, instead of with us. I didn’t blame him. Outside the cafeteria, I never even saw him in school. I guess we just traveled different paths.

For the most part, high school had become a matter of life and death. Mr. Cravutto tried his best to kill us with exercise. Ms. Flutemeyer tried to slay us with quadratic equations. Mr. Ferragamo bored us to death with names and dates from the musty past. Ms. Balmer drowned us in chemical formulas.

On the other hand, Mr. Franka taught us all sorts of cool stuff. And on the third hand, Spanish class was still a total mystery.

“What’s the plan?” I asked when I got to Kyle’s house.

“Football game?” Patrick suggested.

“That wouldn’t be much fun,” I said. I liked pro ball and pickup games, but the last thing I wanted was to drag myself back to the school right now.

“Shows what you know,” Kyle said. “It’s got nothing to do with football. Everyone goes. It’s a chance to hang out.”

“It’s a chance to let the seniors get their hands on us,” I said. “After they’re all worked up from watching two or three hours of violence.” I wondered whether Wesley Cobble went to the games. He didn’t seem like the school-spirit sort, but he might appreciate the convenience of having so many victims packed together in one place.

“Don’t be such a wuss.” Kyle turned to Patrick. “Is it at home?”

Patrick shook his head. “It’s at Hershorn.”

“We could go to Mitch’s,” I said. “We haven’t raced cars in a while.” Mitch had an awesome slot-car track in his basement.

“Mitch isn’t around,” Kyle said. “He’s hanging out with that girl.”

“Are you serious?” I asked. “They aren’t dating, are they?”

Kyle sneered. “Yup. For now. They won’t last a week. You’ll see. She’ll dump him fast.”

I looked over at Patrick. “Any ideas?”

“Rent a video?”

That’s what we ended up doing. In the movie, the dorky high school kid ended up with the hot girl. Obviously, it was a fantasy.

When I got home, I found Dad in the kitchen with a bucket of wings. “Want to help?” he asked.

“Sure.” I grabbed the milk from the fridge and joined him. We had our work cut out for us. The bucket was nearly full.

“So how’s school going?” Dad asked.

“Good.”

“Glad to hear it.” He slid the bucket toward me.

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Did Mom notice you right away?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“So what did you do?”

“Showed up.”

“Where?”

“Wherever.”

“So you showed up wherever she was?”

“Or wherever she might be.”

“That must have taken a lot of time,” I said.

Dad shrugged. “Worth it.”

We finished the bucket, and I slept far into Saturday afternoon.

Sunday, after lunch, I was in my room reading the last chapter of
To Kill a Mockingbird
. It was so good, I hated to close the book and admit that it was finished. I wanted to spend more time with Scout and Dill and Atticus Finch.

A minute or two after I reached the last line, I heard Bobby come out of his room.

“Hey,” I said, catching him in the hall. I held out the book. “Perfect timing. This is really good. I don’t have to turn it in for a couple days. Want to read it?” I figured he had plenty of free time, since he hadn’t found a job yet.

He stared at my hand as if I’d offered him a slab of month-old uncooked pork.

“It’s really good. Honest. There’s this girl named Scout. She’s just a little kid, but she’s really cool. And she has a brother who—”

“Not now,” Bobby said. “Give me a break. I’m not even awake yet. I was out real late. Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

As I started to walk off, he said, “Hey, if the folks let me borrow a car, we can do something later. Want to?”

“Sure.”

I went downstairs. I could hear Dad out in the garage. Mom was in the kitchen, making applesauce. “This is pretty good,” I said, holding up the book. “You want to read it?”

She looked at the cover and smiled. “That is a good one.”

“You read it already?” I asked.

“I saw it. What a wonderful movie.”

“So maybe you’d like the book.”

“Hard to imagine it could be as good as the movie. Besides, I’ve got plenty to read.” She pointed over to the kitchen table at a stack of baby magazines, then dipped a spoon in the sauce and held it out to me. “Taste?”

“Absolutely.”

“Need more cinnamon?”

“Nope. It’s perfect. You sure you wouldn’t like to read something different for a change?”

“Why don’t you read some of it to me while I cook? How would that be?”

“Great.” I sat down and opened the book, and started to read. It felt strange. Not counting school, I’d never read to anyone before. It was also sort of nice. Right after I finished chapter three, Bobby came down.

“Can I borrow the car?” he asked.

“Sure,” Mom said. “Just be careful.”

“I will.” Bobby turned toward me. “Coming?”

I looked over at Mom. “Go ahead,” she said. “I’ve got a million things to do. But thanks, I enjoyed that.”

Bobby grabbed the spare keys from the hook by the door and we headed out.

“So what do you want to do?” Bobby asked.

There was a great used-book store just outside of town, but I didn’t think Bobby would go for that. He liked to hang out at the music stores, but since I didn’t play an instrument—not
counting one disastrous month spent wrestling with a trombone in sixth grade—all I could do was look at the guitars and pretend I was a rock star for about ten minutes, until reality stomped down on my imagination.

“How about slot cars?” I said. “We could go to Hobby-Land.” That was pretty far away, but it was the nearest place with a track.

“Sure,” Bobby said. “Anytime I can go way too fast without hurting anybody, I’m good.” As he pulled out of the driveway, he said, “Hey, doesn’t Mitch have a setup?”

“I haven’t seen him in a while. He’s been kind of busy.”

“Yeah. School will do that to you if you aren’t careful.”

I didn’t say much more until we’d pulled into the parking lot at HobbyLand. Finally, I told Bobby, “Mitch’s got a girlfriend.”

“Way to go, Mitch!” Bobby said.