Strange Country Day (2 page)

The older kids began to shove some of us to stop the cheering. It was the beginning of a riot … and I was stuck in the middle of it. I tried to push my way back to the door.

There was no way that was happening—I felt shoves from behind. Sweat began pouring down my face as I saw Flab turn his attention away from Dex, who looked down at the action with a mix of horror and fascination. “Everyone stop!” Flab shouted. The seventh graders didn’t listen, pushing every kid in a football jersey they could see. I was shoved into Flab’s expansive back and stumbled back. As he turned to look at me, something, well, strange happened at Strange. Something that had never happened to me before today.

My vision got blurry, and my head began to pound. I smelled toasted marshmallows. Then it was like someone poured water through my veins, and it rushed through my arms, down to my feet and into my head, which stopped pounding. I couldn’t hear any of the noise of the chaos around me. Instead, a high-pitched whistle took its place.

Squeeeeeeeee

Then it disappeared—the marshmallows, the water in my veins, the blurry vision … everything.

I watched as if detached from my body as my fist flew toward the behemoth standing before me and connected with his nose.

The entire room stopped moving. Silence. Shock. I looked down at my fist and back up at Flab, who stumbled and touched his bleeding nose. He couldn’t believe what I had done and neither could I.

“What the heck is going on in here?” The entire room turned its attention to the door, where a young man wearing a tie and a white shirt stood.

The man glared at us. “Anyone want to take a trip to visit Headmaster Hoyer?” It sounded like he was a teacher.

More than a hundred Strange students shook their heads in unison.

“Good. Then I’ll wait here while you clean up the mess you made, and maybe I’ll forget I saw anything.”

Silently, everyone started picking up books, papers, and uniform jackets. When we finished, the ninth-graders filed out, followed by my classmates.

“Thanks.”

I looked down at Dex. I was surprised to hear him talk. His voice was squeaky, like he’d swallowed a balloon full of helium.

“For what?”

“If you hadn’t hit him, they would have gotten me,”

“Now, it’s your turn to save me when they come to beat me up,” I said. I wasn’t kidding, either.

“Anytime,” he said with an odd grin. Up close, his teeth were even weirder, as if they were a little too big for his mouth.

“You did a pretty good job in there,” I replied. “Alex.” I offered my hand, and he shook it vigorously. His palm felt clammy.

“Dex.”

We figured out that we lived near each other, and that he was new, like me. But there was something else I was itching to know.

“How did you get up the bookcase so quickly? That was amazing!” Dex didn’t answer. Instead, his eyes got wide as he peered around me. I turned around to see Flab and a few other yellow and maroon jerseys headed our way.

Flab looked around to see if anyone was watching and then got close to me. I could see some dried blood near his nose.

With every word out of his mouth, he poked me in the chest. Hard. “You.”
POKE
. “Got.”
POKE
. “Lucky.”
HARD
POKE
. He glanced down at his notebook. “Alexander Ptuiac,” he growled, pronouncing what was supposed to be a silent “P” as he pushed his way past me, as did his fellow football teammates. I turned around to see what they would do to Dex as they brushed by him.

But Dex was gone.

“I said today was
fine
.”

I spent that night’s dinner deflecting my parents’ questions left and right. No, I hadn’t made any friends. Yes, orientation took forever. No, I wasn’t sure what the other kids were like. And yes, for the fiftieth time, I said today was
fine
.

But I didn’t say a word about Fresh Meet Friday or the mysterious marshmallow smell and high-pitched whistle that led me to punch the biggest kid in school without having control over my fist.

“Don’t worry, sweetie. It’s the beginning of the year, and there are plenty of other new kids who probably feel the same way you do.” That’s my mom, always trying to turn a bad situation into a positive one. “Right, Martin?”

“Mmm.” I didn’t expect anything helpful from Dad, who wasn’t at the table. He was behind our refrigerator, punching commands into a computer attached to the back of it.

“Will you sit down and talk to your son? He needs you right now,” she commanded.

“It’ll be one sec, I promise. I just want to set Morimoto up for dessert, and we can talk over ice cream.”

My dad’s an inventor. He was one of those child prodigies who built computers when he was seven. A few months ago, he had a major breakthrough. He invented the first universal voice translator and sold it to the biggest software company in the world. He named me Alexander Graham Ptuiac—the “P” is silent—after his favorite inventor.

That’s when my parents informed me that we were moving to a rich suburb and that I’d attend one of the most expensive private schools in the country (they didn’t say it quite that way, but I Googled it).

Dad finished working on the computer and moved the fridge back into place. The kitchen appeared ordinary, but a set of machines complete with gears, claws, assembly lines, and countless miles of wires were built into the wall behind all the appliances. They started at the fridge and ended where the “washer/dryer” stood near the kitchen table.

He’d been working on Morimoto for years—an automatic chef.

He named his creation after a famous Japanese chef, something my mother called “ambitious,” probably because he still had to fix the countless errors in the system that screwed up our meals.

“I can cook, you know,” Mom said as he came back to the table.

Dad wiped his hands on his red and black plaid shirt and adjusted his rimless glasses. He waved her off. “Karen, if I’m going to sell Morimoto, it has to be perfect.”

She sighed as Dad looked over at the wall of machinery. “Morimoto, three vanilla ice cream sundaes, please.”

I could hear the whirring and clicking as the claws reached into the freezer and refrigerator to take out the ingredients. Hopefully, when the lid of the “dryer” popped open to reveal a serving platter, the sundaes presented on it would be perfect. Considering we’d just thrown away a bowl filled with nothing but the burnt skins of four potatoes, I didn’t have much confidence. But I was happy to see something distract my parents from asking anything more about my weird first day of school.

Pop!
The door opened, and the three of us jumped in our seats. Out came the tray and Mom handed us the three sundaes as Dad called out, “Thank you!” Somehow, he thought treating Morimoto like a human being would help it perform better. Then, he looked at the sundaes. Sure enough, two scoops of ice cream sat on each dish, but they were plopped on top of the whipped cream, chocolate sauce, and what was likely a Maraschino cherry on the bottom.

“He got it backwards. Dang,” he said.

I wasn’t even hungry anymore. “It’s okay, I’ll pass.”

Dad looked at me over his glasses and raised his eyebrows as the corners of his mouth turned up. He threw down his napkin and got up hastily. “I was going to wait until your birthday in February, but I think you need an early present.” He opened the back door and walked out. I looked at Mom, who motioned me to follow him.

Mom and I trailed him out to our spacious backyard. He held a device in his hands and pressed a button. I heard the garage door open and the sound of wheels screeching as whatever it was rolled out to where we stood. The waning light of dusk bounced off the gleaming surface as a machine as tall as I was stopped right in front of me.

It was a robot that sort of looked like a football player in a suit of steel armor. Beneath the enormous football helmet on its head was a pair of red, unblinking eyes staring back at me. A screen on its chest read, “Happy birthday, Alex!” It had arms and hands covered with yellow gardening gloves. I looked down at its feet to see the same kind of treads as a tank.

“I know it’s been rough moving and leaving your friends behind, and I know I don’t have any athletic skill, so I made you this. Tell it to throw you a pass,” Dad said.

I held out my hands as if ready to catch. “Throw it here.” Nothing happened. I tried something different—calling out in a cadence as if I was a quarterback. “Red 80 … set-
HUT
!”

The robot’s screen shut off and its chest opened up—and a football shot straight at me. The speed surprised me as it went right through my hands and knocked me down. Mom and Dad laughed. “Try throwing it a pass.”

I walked back a few yards and pretended a center snapped me the ball. I took a three-step drop and threw a wobbly pass that sailed a bit high. Instantly, its arms reached out and caught it. “You need more velocity, kid. Don’t throw so much off your back foot,” the robot reported in a familiar voice. I immediately knew who it was—Dad had programmed it to sound like legendary quarterback Peyton Manning, my favorite player.

Before I could respond, it tossed the ball right back to me, only this time I was ready. I started to laugh along with my dad. I gave him a hug. “Thanks, Dad. This is great.”

“Let me know if it attacks you,” he said. He wasn’t joking. He’d created all sorts of gadgets over the years for birthday and holiday presents, but most of them either didn’t work or ended up dive-bombing my head. Or, like Morimoto, they did things a little backwards.

I stayed outside for the next two hours, throwing pass after pass at the robot, which wheeled around on its treads and caught everything I tossed.

Back in my hometown, which I thought of as my real home, my friends and I used to watch football every Sunday at someone’s house and play
Madden
until we couldn’t move our thumbs anymore. We’d play touch football at the local park until sunset and talk about which players we were like. My parents were always worried about me getting injured, so I wasn’t allowed to try out for the local Pop Warner team. But like every kid, I still dreamed of being Peyton in the fourth quarter, throwing a laser beam pass to my star receiver for the Super Bowl-winning score.

My arm felt sore as I threw my final pass of the night. The robot caught it on the run and called out, “You’re on your way, champ.”

For the first time since we moved, I smiled.

“
Mis
-ter P-P-P-P-tuiac!”

A few days later, I was late for math. After my little skirmish, I spent a lot of time between classes looking around and stopping to make sure no one was following me as I walked quickly between buildings. I hadn’t seen much of Flab and his friends since Fresh Meet Friday, thank goodness.

I made it to class just in time for a dirty look from Mr. Crowley, an old guy with a graying moustache and a closet full of identical tweed jackets who probably spent fifty years inhaling chalk dust before blackboards were replaced with electronic versions. I looked around the room and saw one empty seat in the corner of the room. I’d spent most of my classroom time angling for the seat closest to the door, conveniently half-concealed by a column, so I hadn’t paid much attention to the rest of the kids. When I awkwardly zigzagged between desks to take the only vacant chair, the occupant of the desk next to me made me stop in my tracks.

It was a girl. A pretty girl. A pretty girl who smirked at me for being late. Everyone’s a critic.

That girls were worth my attention was a recent revelation. Back in my old school, I was friends with a few girls and knew of one kid who was more “advanced” than the rest of us. He already had a faint moustache and had taken one of my female friends to the movies a few times. He would brag about what they did there, but I didn’t believe him and didn’t have any interest. But lately, the idea didn’t seem so foreign to me. Most of the girls at Strange were good-looking, though they all blended into one type: shiny, just-washed long hair, lip-gloss, diamond stud earrings, and purses worth the price of a Super Bowl ticket. They were stuck with uniforms, too: white collared shirts, blazers, and skirts.

She was different. Out of the corner of my eye, I got a clear look at her: her long, blond hair had streaks of red mixed in, and her big earrings dangled beads and metal pieces. That’s when I noticed she had two different-colored eyes, one blue and the other green. It was … so cool. Her white shirt was undone just one button more than it was supposed to be, which meant if I turned my head just another inch, I could see—

“
Mis
-ter P-P-P-P-tuiac!”

I looked up. The entire class was staring at me. Mr. Crowley was tapping the board with his digital pen. “I asked you what
y
equals. The answer, please.”

The feeling of panic was replaced almost immediately by the delicious smell of toasted marshmallows. The sound of a few of the kids giggling at me was overtaken by a screeching, ringing sound.

Squeeeeeeeee

The same thing happened last Friday. Only this time, after my vision cleared, I saw a flash of what was written on the board in front of me, like a photograph: 2(2y + 16) = 48.

“Four.”

Mr. Crowley looked crushed. “That is correct.”

I sat back and let out a sigh. I hadn’t even so much as glanced at the problem. Maybe I just inherited my dad’s math genes.

While contemplating what had just gone down, I heard a scratching noise. A hand was writing something on the edge of the paper in my notebook. The hand wore a silver bracelet with something punched out of leather around it, and it was attached to the green-blue-eyed girl.

So you do talk.

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and nodded slightly.

Yeah. What’s your name?
I wrote on my page, pretending to take down another equation as Crowley droned on.

Sophi.

Alex
, I scrawled. I really wished I had better handwriting. It looked like a four-year-old wrote it.