Slob (11 page)

After
Mork and Mindy
, we watched an episode of
Sanford and Son,
then
The Love Boat,
then two back-to-back episodes of
Gilligan’s Island,
then
I Dream of Jeannie.
After a while I felt Jeremy’s eyes on me.

“What?” I said, keeping my eyes on the screen. If we caught some two-year-old signals, it might be only a second-long glimpse of the “wrong” show and I didn’t want to miss it.

“Maybe we should call it quits for the night,” Jeremy said.

My eyes left the screen. She was right. I think I had been temporarily hypnotized by hope and a blond genie in a pink harem outfit.

There wasn’t much time to work with Nemesis on Sunday. Sunday is Family Day. Mom always digs through the newspapers to find something “interesting” for us to do together. It’s pretty hit or miss. That Sunday it was miss.

She said she was taking us to a puppet show, which we objected to immediately.

“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re not five years old, Zelda,” Jeremy said.

I watched Mom press her lips together and blink a little too quickly when Jeremy called her Zelda. Mom hears the most hair-raising things every day and she has to always keep her cool, but I could see how much it bugged her every time Jeremy called her Zelda. Of course, so could Jeremy, which is why she did it. Still, Mom is stubborn too, so she said, “It’s not a kids’ puppet show, Caitlin. It’s supposed to be very sophisticated.”

Grrrr.
That was approximately the sound that came out of Jeremy’s mouth. Unlike Mom, she has no training in keeping her cool.

Mom was right in the end. It was not a kids’ puppet show. It was about this lady puppet that has loads of boyfriend puppets, and after about fifteen minutes, most of the puppets had no clothes on. Mom made us all stand up and leave.

“Sorry about that, guys,” Mom said when we were outside the theater. I wasn’t sorry I’d seen it though. It was kind of fascinating in an embarrassing sort of way, but when Jeremy whispered that one of the boyfriend puppets reminded her of Andre, I was glad we’d left when we did.

To make up for it, Mom bought tickets for us to take the Circle Line, a boat that sails around the island of Manhattan. It was a very touristy thing to do, which means it was also expensive. Normally Mom would have said that we couldn’t afford it, but maybe she thought the bracing watery breezes would purify our brains of the puppet show contamination.

It worked in a way. Ten minutes after the boat set sail, I forgot all about the naked puppets and all I could think about was
Gilligan’s Island.
It was one of the shows I was watching on the Freakout Channel. In case you don’t know it, it’s this show where these people get stranded on a desert island and are always trying to find a way to escape. But they’ve made the island pretty comfortable with these nice huts and they put on plays and have golfing competitions and turtle races, which makes you wonder if the reason they never escape is because they don’t really want to.

Manhattan is an island. Of course, everyone knows that, but it’s so smooshed with buildings and people and police sirens and street fairs and restaurants that it’s easy to forget it. You think it’s the center of the universe when you’re in it. From the boat, though, you can’t believe how puny it all is.

“Weird,” Mom said in this dreamy kind of voice.

“Yeah,” both Jeremy and I said at the same time. We all understood each other. All three of us were outside on deck even though it was cold. The wind was making us all squint, and Jeremy’s hair was flying every which way.

“Our mother and father took us on the Circle Line one time,” Jeremy said.

I sucked in my breath. There was a moment of silence during which I was grateful that I had the island of Manhattan to focus on while waiting for someone to say the right thing. I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be me.

“I bet they had more sense than to take you on it in frickin’ arctic weather,” Mom said.

That was the right thing to say.

We laughed, not the least because we’d never heard Mom say “frickin’” before.

“No, it was summer,” Jeremy said. “And remember that kid on the bridge?” she said to me.

I nodded, actually surprised that I did remember.

“What about the kid on the bridge?” Mom asked. She was half smiling at us, as though this just was an everyday conversation rather than the first time we had all spoken about my parents since we came to live with Mom.

“The kid was standing on one of the bridges, and right before the boat went under the bridge, he pulled down his pants and mooned us,” I told her.

“And remember what Dad did?” Jeremy said. “He laughed so hard that Coke shot out of his nose, and that made Mom laugh so hard that she started snorting. Remember how she snorted when she laughed hard?”

We stayed out on deck the whole trip, even when everybody else went inside the cabin. By the time we reached the pier, my fingers were stiff with cold and Jeremy’s face was as red as a radish, but I think I can safely say that we all went home feeling better about everything than we had in a long time.

 

 

After an early dinner I went into my room and right away turned on Nemesis. All that talk about my parents made me more determined than ever. Their faces appeared so clearly in my mind—my dad’s black moustache that twitched when he was about to say something funny. The kind green eyes that always had tired pouches beneath them. My mother’s eyes were also green, but a different green from Dad’s. So light they were almost the color of ginger ale. Sometimes she watched Jeremy and me so intensely, it was like she was wondering what we were going to be like when we grew up, and I always had the urge to tell her not to worry, we’d be fine. I really wish I had.

I turned on the TV and waited. I reasoned that if I did manage to catch an old signal, there would be a sudden change in the quality of the picture—more staticky, just like in the “ghost” images at The Black Baron Pub. And then, of course, the show would be different than the one I had been watching.

I watched an episode of
Happy Days.

Nothing happened.

Then I watched an episode of
The Beverly Hillbillies
.

Nothing happened. I was beginning to think that I might need a low-noise amplifier to make my signal stronger. But those things were pricey, and the odds of finding one at a demo site would be pretty slim. Or maybe a bigger satellite dish would do the trick . . .

Or maybe you’re kidding yourself that this could ever work in a hundred billion years, I heard my brain grumble.

Shut up, I told myself. All the great inventors have had moments of doubt. Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”

I watched an episode of
The Brady Bunch,
during which I decided I liked Jan better than Marcia because she reminded me of Rachel Lowry except with long hair and braces. Rachel’s teeth are really nice, by the way.

There was a knock on the door and Mom poked her head in.

“Hey, good lookin’. Any idea where your lunch sack is?” she said.

Oops.

“I think . . . oh. Sack, hmm. I left it at school,” I said.

Can you tell I’m not a good liar?

Mom listens to people on the phone all day long, liars included. I’m sure she knew I was lying.

“Everything okay at school?”

“Fine.”

“Did someone take that lunch sack from you?” she asked.

Do you see what I mean about her?

“Yeah, but it’s no big deal,” I said.

“Stealing is a big deal,” she said. “A very big deal.” She was getting all worked up. Boy, you’d think someone who hears about people falling onto subway tracks and getting their arms sliced off or about people tossing their wives out a hotel window wouldn’t care about a little thing like lunch sack theft.

“No, I know it is. It’s okay. I know who did it. I’m going to get it back.”

“Maybe I should have a talk with your teacher,” she said.

“No! Let me handle this!” I don’t generally raise my voice at her. Jeremy was at the door like a shot.

“What?” Jeremy said. “What’s going on?”

“Someone stole your brother’s lunch sack,” Mom said.

I groaned. This was all getting way out of hand.

Jeremy frowned at me and folded her arms against her chest. “Do you know who?” she asked.

“No one you know,” I said. The last thing I needed was for her to chase after Mason Ragg.

“All right, Owen.” Mom backed down. “I’ll let you handle this one.” Maybe she didn’t want to ruin our perfect day.

“Thanks.”

“So,” Mom said, glancing at the TV, “
The Brady Bunch
? I didn’t know kids still watched that show.”

“Some of us do.”

“You probably think Marcia’s cute, huh?” she said.

“Jan.”

“Really?” She tipped her head to one side and smiled. I had the feeling that she was always the girl that never got any valentines.

“Yeah. Definitely Jan.”

“All right, buddy. But next time someone is bullying you, will you promise me that you’ll tell the teacher?”

I nodded.

I could feel Jeremy’s eyes on me. I didn’t like the way she was looking at me. It felt like she was
looking at me.
And that for the first time she was seeing me for who I really was.

That night I slept with the TV on. I just couldn’t bring myself to turn it off, in case something happened.

Which it didn’t.

“What’s up, Flapjack?” Andre Bertoni jogged up to me and Jeremy on our way to school and he thumped me on my back.

Andre Bertoni is not someone you want to see first thing on Monday morning. There’s way too much thumping.

Quickly, I crushed the I
Puffins tote bag against my jacket. Mom had put my lunch in the tote bag, much to my horror, but I had rolled it up into a cylinder as best as I could to hide the huge puffin on the side.

“What you got there, Flapjack? Is that a puffin?”

“It wasn’t
his
idea,” Jeremy was quick to defend me. “Someone stole his usual lunch sack.”

Then she turned bright red again because Andre Bertoni looked at her.

“Well, it wasn’t me,” Andre said, getting all bristly.

“No one said it was,” I told him.

“Well, she’s looking at me funny,” he said, nodding at Jeremy, who then turned a shade redder. You’d think if you were all heartthrobby like Andre, you’d know when a girl is turning red because she’s madly in love with you or because she thinks you stole her brother’s lunch sack and wants to pulverize you.

“I already
know
who stole it,” I reassured him.

“Really?” I could practically see his shoulder muscles relax. Frankly, if I didn’t know who stole my lunch sack, I might have started to suspect Andre. “Who?”

“Mason Ragg,” I said.

“Oh, man.” Andre thumped me on the back of my neck. “That’s who I wanted to talk to you about. Listen, don’t mess with that lunatic. Did you know he carries a razor under his tongue?”

“A switchblade. In his sock.”

“Here’s the thing,” Andre said. “I was at basketball practice on Friday, and I went to get a drink of water at the fountain. That’s when I overheard my coach talking to Mr. Wooly about you.”

“Me!?” I couldn’t imagine the name Owen Birnbaum being tossed around the gymnasium on off-hours.

“You
and
Mason Ragg. Wooly thinks the two of you were up to something at the triathlon. He thinks you two knew that there was going to be a fire drill and that’s why you arranged it so that you were both last.”

“That’s ridiculous! How would we know there was going to be a fire drill?” I said. “Besides, why would Mason and I be up to
any
thing together? We can’t stand each other!”

Andre shrugged. “All I know is that Wooly is planning something special for the two of you at the next gym class.”

“What’s he planning?” I’m not going to lie to you. I didn’t ask this question with a nice, calm question mark at the end, like the one written here. I asked it with three exclamation points at the end, in bold letters, and underlined. In other words, I shrieked it.

Andre shrugged again. “I don’t know. But if I were you, I’d reconsider getting that fat exemption ASAP.” He thumped me on the belly.

“What’s a fat exemption?” Jeremy asked when Andre was gone.

“Nothing,” I grumbled.

“Owen?”

“What?”

“Maybe it’s better that those Oreos get taken.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean maybe you shouldn’t be eating Oreos at all, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”

Of course I knew exactly what she meant. But never, NEVER had Jeremy said anything about my being fat. She was always the one who didn’t care. She was always the one who never even seemed to notice, who saw me for who I was, underneath all the blubber.