Soar (13 page)

I walk through the door that leads from the garage into our house.

Mom meets me at the door, with watery eyes and her hands on her hips. She is pretty much waiting to yell at me.

“Eddie, it's almost ten o'clock. Where have you been?”

I say nothing. I know I'm in big trouble already, so I don't want to lie about spying at Mouton's house when I was supposed to be at Miss Dorothy's place. It feels better just to keep quiet.

“I had no idea what happened to you,” she says. “For all I knew, you were at the bottom of Miss Dorothy's pond. I was about to call the police!”

I avoid eye contact and walk toward my room.

Mom grabs my arm, turns me toward her, and looks me in the eye.

“Look at me when I'm talking to you. I seriously thought you could be dead. Do you understand what that means?”

My bottom lip begins to tremble, just like it did at Gabriela's house when I was telling her about Dad flying away for good.

The truth is, I feel guilty for staying out two hours past curfew, and for making Mom worry so much. Mom has enough to worry about, like how to pay bills and how to put food on the table. She doesn't need me stressing her out even more.

I put my head down and lean toward her. I bury my forehead in her shoulder.

She hugs me and rubs my back. Even though she can't always give me what I want, Mom always knows what I need most. And right now I need her.

“I'm sorry for yelling at you,” she says. “I've already lost one piece of this family. I'm not going to lose another.”

She takes hold of my shoulders and looks me in the eye again.

“Me and you. You and me. This is all we've got, Eddie. We have to protect each other forever. You understand that?”

I can barely move, because I feel horrible about making my mom worry so much. I understand everything she's saying, but if I open my mouth to talk right now, I might cry and never be able to stop.

So I nod quietly.

Then I imagine my tears flooding our house and washing away all the bad memories of Dad being sick.

O
n Monday morning at school I open my locker and take out my science book. The welt on my back hurts like crazy. I still can't believe Mouton used a slingshot to peg me with a gumball. I can believe he took aim at me, but it's hard to imagine that he actually hit his target, which was MY BACK.

“You got your Predator, but you're still my prey.” Mouton stands across the hall from me, at his locker, his arms crossed.

“I told you I'd get my bike.”

“You came on my property without permission. This means war.”

“Mouton, if you're going to keep stolen property in your backyard, then you should pay more attention to it. You must've been too busy painting.”

He throws his arms down at his sides. “Hey, you weren't supposed to see that!”

“Too late.” I stuff my science book into my backpack. “I saw everything.”

Mouton's face and neck turn red. He pulls out his woodpecker pen from his pocket. He clicks it repeatedly.

Open-closed-open-closed-open-closed.

Faster and faster.

Until his hand shakes out of control.

“Woodpecker-woodpecker-woodpecker! Yip!”

I can tell he's trying to control what comes out of his mouth, but he can't help it. Part of me wants to take his woodpecker pen and stomp on it because he ruined my bike. The other part of me feels sorry for him, because there are times when he has no idea what he's going to say next. I can't imagine what that must feel like on the inside. He must be full of worry all the time, like Mom worrying about me. Except Mouton's worry never goes away. He was born that way, and he can't get rid of it.

“You're a good artist, Mouton, I'll give you that,” I
say. “But that doesn't change what you did to my bike.”

Mouton leans against the lockers, holding the pen at his side, still clicking it open and closed. “Yip-yip.” He looks down at the floor.

I can tell by his slumped shoulders and turned-down face that he's nervous. Maybe he's searching for ways to stop the worry.

I know a lot about worry from when Dad was sick. I wouldn't wish that kind of feeling on my worst enemy, including Mouton.

For the whole week, during science class we type up content for our poster boards. On the day of the symposium, each group displays a tri-fold poster board on their table. On the board we're supposed to have six categories about our project:

Title.

Hypothesis.

Purpose.

Materials.

Evidence.

Conclusion.

The display board is a big part of our grade, so the quality of our content is really important.

Gabriela and Trixie sit in the far corner of the classroom. Their computer screen lights up Trixie's orange hair, making it glow.

Mr. Dover walks around the room, checking on the progress of each group. Today he's wearing a black bow tie. It has two white eyes and two fangs. It's supposed to be a bat, but it looks more like a Halloween project I made in kindergarten.

“You should be able to finish your materials list today,” Mr. Dover says to the class. “And both partners should be contributing equally.”

Gabriela and Trixie's computer screen is all fancy and bright and colorful, which means they must be making progress.

Our screen is white, because it's blank.

Mouton drums his woodpecker pen on the table. “Let me type,” he complains. “You never let me do anything.”

I pause, deciding how much responsibility to give Mouton. Then I remember the look on his face at the lockers when he was trying to control his vocal tics. Maybe if he's able to focus his energy on our project, his worry will go away.

“He has a point.” Mr. Dover stands behind me. “You're partners,
and you need to work together. You only have a week until the symposium.”

After Mr. Dover walks away, I get up and let Mouton sit at the computer. Before he starts typing, he shoves his pen into his pocket and pats his pocket three times.

Gabriela walks past me, touching my shoulder. “Time flies when you are having fun. Over.”

She walks toward the printer to get a piece of paper.

Trixie's glowing orange hair blocks their computer screen. If I could catch a glimpse of their screen, I might be able to figure out what their project is about. It'd be helpful to know what the competition is up to, since Gabriela won't tell me.

Mouton pecks at the keyboard, one letter at a time.

“There. Finished.”

He leans back in his chair, admiring what he has typed on the screen. Everything is in size forty-eight font.

Materials

1. poster

B. tape

3. Woodpecker pens (one from every state)

4. $

5. gumballs

I sigh and bury my face in my hands. I finally look up. “Are you serious, Mouton? What is this?”

“It's our materials list.”

“That's not the project Mr. Dover approved. Besides, you shooting me with a gumball has nothing to do with the science symposium or this class or anything else.”

Mouton just sits there, looking at the screen. He refuses to talk.

I can't help but wonder if he's being stubborn or if he's pushing the worry down inside him and fighting the urge to say something he doesn't mean to say.

“How about we work on the materials list together?” I suggest. “We can start by making the font smaller.”

Mouton looks at me, then at the computer screen. “Yip-yip.”

I guess that's his way of saying yes.

So for the rest of class, we work on the materials list together. It takes some working and reworking, and some major compromising, but we eventually get the hang of working together. By the end of class, Mouton becomes an expert in fonts, and he actually chooses some neat designs. He even draws a bird's nest on the computer with the mouse, and it looks totally real.

“Mouton! That's awesome!” I say. “How'd you do that?”

Mouton saves the document on the screen. “I think it needs more twigs.”

“No, no. It looks great the way it is.”

Mr. Dover doesn't bother interrupting us. He's the kind of teacher who lets students work things out by themselves. Well, I have news for Mr. Dover. Mouton and I are
finally
working things out and moving in the right direction on our project.

But besides drawing and choosing neat fonts, there's nothing else Mouton has shown interest in. Nothing.

Wait a second!

Mouton is an artist!

Birds.

Art.

Birds.

Art.

Yes!

That's it!

Mouton can paint the golden eagle!

W
est Plains doesn't have much of a downtown. But what it doesn't have in fancy buildings it makes up for in small shops. Mom calls them nugget shops, because she says there is at least one good deal with her name on it—a golden nugget—in each shop. Dad said most of the shops are worthless. He called them junk shops.

The main shops are Clocks N Things, Al's Antiques, Teddy's Toy Tractors, and Sigfried's Dollar Depot. A block down the road from all those shops sits Pumps, the only gas station in town, and further down from that is a garage with two police cars and one fire truck.

Dad always called West Plains a one-horse town. It sounds like one of those phrases Gabriela is always saying.

On Saturday afternoon I walk my dying bike past the Freeze Queen on my way to Jetz Skating Rink.

The Freeze Queen is a one-story white building with huge windows outlined in pink neon lights. The sign out front has more pink lights that outline a vanilla ice cream cone, with a queen's crown on top of it. The Freeze Queen is mostly known for ice cream, but a lot of people, like Mom and me, go there for the Buck Burgers.

My poor, poor bike. The frame squeaks, the handlebars aren't aligned properly, the pedals and seat are loose, and the tires are in sad shape.

The symposium is coming soon, and I have a lot of work to do. But I can't roll around town on a broken bike. There's only one person who can put my Predator back together again.

Sandy.

Dad said Sandy could build a house out of paper that would stand up to a tornado. Just like the golden eagle, Dad wouldn't lie about something like that.

Jetz Skating Rink sits between the end of Main Street's
junk shops and Pumps Gas Station. It's not at the end of town, but close to it. A lot of kids come to Jetz on Saturday nights. There's music, arcade games, popcorn, pizza. And if you get bored, there's always roller-skating. If nothing else, it's a place to hang out, away from your parents. It's only two bucks to get in, plus money to rent skates.

Sandy owns and manages the place, but he never makes a dime, because he doesn't charge enough for food or skate rentals. Prices were about the same when Dad was a kid. But that's Sandy for you. He doesn't care about money. That's why he drives a bus for almost nothing and lives in his camper close to school.

Another thing about Sandy is that he always comes to the symposium. He won the blue ribbon, but that was when there were about twenty kids in seventh grade, so it wasn't a big deal back then like it is today.

When I open the front door to Jetz Skating Rink, the welcome bell rings. I walk my bike down the ramp. The whole place is covered in carpet that's not really carpet but just a padless floor covering. When you fall while roller-skating, it hurts pretty bad. Mom says this type of carpet is easy to clean and that's why Sandy installed it.

Sandy moves around behind the rental counter, spraying the inside of skates with air freshener.

I roll my bike close to the counter and stop. “Aerosol is bad for the environment,” I tell him.

Sandy ignores me. He grabs another pair of skates. Size six, with red-and-white checkered laces and a loose wheel. He shoves the aerosol can inside the skates and sprays. I wore that same pair in fourth grade, the night I skated with Camilla Caflisch. The night I threw watered-down Coke at Mouton because he wouldn't stop calling me Fish Boy in front of her. The night I had to say good-bye to my best friend, because the next day Camilla left for Switzerland and never came back.