The Kid in the Red Jacket

OTHER YEARLING BOOKS
YOU WILL ENJOY

TYLER ON PRIME TIME,
Steve Atinsky

ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET.
Judy Blume

SPIDER BOY,
Ralph Fletcher

THE YEAR MY PARENTS RUINED MY LIFE
Martha Freeman

MEET CALLIOPE DAY,
Charles Haddad

CALLIOPE DAY FALLS … IN LOVE?,
Charles Haddad

TRUE BLUE,
Jeffrey Lee

ANASTASIA KRUPNIK,
Lois Lowry

HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS,
Thomas Rockwell

CRASH,
Jerry Spinelli

    1   
“My leg’s hot,” I announced as our car pulled out of our driveway.

It was the day of the “big move.” At least that’s what my parents kept calling it. I hated that. It’s not that I didn’t realize moving from Arizona to Massachusetts was “big.” It’s just that when they said it, they made it seem real exciting and fun. They never made it sound like what it really was—rotten.

My mother turned around and gave me one of
her looks. “Please, Howard, don’t start. We haven’t even made it to the street yet.”

I glanced over at my baby brother, Gaylord. He was sitting happily in his car seat, staring at his hands. He had just discovered his hands, and he kept opening and closing them like they were some great new invention.

I reached out and touched his leg.

“Gaylord’s leg isn’t hot,” I reported. “Gaylord’s in the shade. Has anyone ever noticed how Gaylord always gets the shade? I mean, I’m aware that he’s a baby and everything, but I don’t think you should play favorites like this. I think we should flip a coin for the shady side.”

When no one said anything, I leaned toward him. “What’s that, Gaylord?” I asked. “You want what?”

I tapped my father on the shoulder. “Gaylord says he wants to switch places. He says he wants to get some sun on those lily-white legs of his.”

My mother just sighed. She probably would have yelled, but I had been making her yell so much lately, I think she was getting sort of sick of it. Normally, parents really enjoy yelling. But I guess it’s like anything else—too much of a good thing, and it’s not as fun anymore.

What’s weird is, until this move came along, I hardly made my parents yell at all. I don’t mean I am an angel or anything. But I get good grades at school, and I’ve never been arrested. I don’t think parents can ask for much more than that.

I used to actually even
like
my parents. They had always been pretty understanding, pretty fair. They didn’t go around tickling me in public or embarrassing me the way some parents do. That’s what was so crazy about our “big move.” They hardly even discussed it with me! I’m not kidding. My father just came home all excited one day and told me he’d gotten this big promotion and we’d be moving to Massachusetts. That was it! We didn’t even take a vote!

He made it sound real cheery, of course. Whenever parents announce something you’re going to hate, they try to spice it up and make it sound better than it is. They kept calling the move “a great new adventure.” Then they spent a lot of time telling me how much better off I was going to be because of my father’s new job. They talked about college and my future, stuff I couldn’t care less about right now. So instead of feeling better, mostly I just felt sick to my stomach.

I cried a lot after I found out. I didn’t do it much in front of my parents, though. When you’re ten and a half, you don’t like a lot of people sitting around watching your nose run. That’s why I saved most of it for my room, muffling my blubbering sounds with my pillow. Sometimes it got so soggy, I couldn’t sleep on it.

I was also more scared than I’d ever been before. But it wasn’t the kind of scared you feel when you think there’s a dead guy with a hatchet hiding in your closet at night. It was a new kind of scared. Moving makes you feel all alone inside. You don’t know what the new town is going to look like, or your new house, or your street, or even what kind of people you’ll meet. It may not
sound
scary. But if you ever have to move, you’ll understand what I mean.

Anyway, besides making me feel sad and scared, the whole idea of moving also made me furious. How could my parents do this to me? How could they just whisk me away from all my friends, and my school, and my soccer team, and then tell me what a “great new adventure” I was going to have? Did they actually expect me to be happy about it? Did they think that I had no feelings? That they could just pick me up like some dumb
stuffed animal and set me down any old place, and I’d be fine?

As the car neared the end of my street, I started fidgeting.

“I’m bored and my leg’s hot,” I whined. “Also, I think I might be getting carsick.”

At the wheel, I saw my father shaking his head in disgust. “Come on, Howard. Not today, okay? Why don’t you take some time off from complaining and just relax?”

Relax?
I thought to myself.
Are you kidding? Complaining is my job now. It’s what I
do.

Suddenly my mother reached into a bag in the front seat and tossed me back an orange. She does this sort of thing a lot when we’re traveling. Since I’ve never been what you’d call a good little traveler, my mother buys a bunch of stuff to keep me busy so I won’t gripe. When you think about it, it’s kind of insulting—like feeding a gorilla a bunch of bananas so he won’t bother you.

I was particularly annoyed at my mother lately—especially after what I heard her say to Aunt Emily on the phone. It happened a couple of days before we moved. I was sitting on the back stairs, so she didn’t know I was around.

“Yeah, he’s not too happy about it right now,
Em,” she had said. “But you know how kids are. Once you get them there, they always seem to bounce right back.”

Bounce right back! I’m not kidding. She really said that! She made me sound like a Nerf ball. Like she had a foam rubber son with no emotions at all!

The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I got. I tried to take my mind off things by looking out the window, but my father’s voice distracted me.

“Hmm,” he said, pondering out loud. “I wonder if the van will get to Massachusetts before we do.”

The moving van! Why did he have to bring up that stupid moving van? I hated that van and all the stupid moving men that came with it! The day they packed our stuff had been the worst day of my life.

My parents were upstairs when the knock came at the door. “Answer that, would you, Howard?” called my father. “We’re busy up here.”

“I can’t!” I called back. “I’m in my pajamas!”

My father was standing at the top of the stairs with his hands full. “No one cares what you’re wearing, Howard. Just let the men inside.”

“
I
care what I’m wearing! Have you seen these
things? Would someone please tell Nana that I’m too old for Porky Pig pajamas?”

“Howard!”

My father was using his killing voice. You can push him so far, but when he uses his killing voice, it’s best to do what he says. I went to the door.

“Hi, sonny.”

There were three of them, all lined up in their brown moving-men suits. They came inside. One of them looked at my pajamas and whistled. “Porky Pig, eh?” he asked.

I covered Porky with my hands and ran up to my room. Then I locked the door so no one could come in. Later, when the movers were ready to pack my stuff, my father got a key and opened it.

It still makes me sick when I think about it. The moving man stomped right in and started dumping all my stuff into big boxes. He just heaped it together like it was garbage or something. When the marbles fell out of my Chinese checkers, he dumped them in the box without even putting them back in the game first. It really made me furious. I don’t even
like
Chinese checkers, but a guy still likes to keep his marbles together.…

I concentrated harder on looking out the car window. As luck would have it, we were just passing
Thornsberry’s house. Seeing it gave me this real empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. Barry Thornsberry is one of my best friends. Saying good-bye to him and to my other best friend, Roger Grimsley, had been the hardest thing I’d ever had to do in my whole life. The three of us practically grew up together. I know this sounds mean, but I felt closer to Thornsberry and Roger than I did to my very own baby brother. I mean, we’ve even known each other longer—since preschool. Our teacher, Miss Filbert, introduced us and assigned us to the same work table.

Thornsberry was crying at the time. Of the three of us, he’s the most sensitive. He thought his mother had given him to Miss Filbert for keeps. It took him about a week to figure things out.

I didn’t like Thornsberry at first. It’s hard to get to know a kid who only talks to you from behind a Kleenex. I liked Roger, though. On the first day of school, Miss Filbert asked us to draw a picture of our family. Roger drew a cow.

“Uh, that’s a very nice cow, Roger,” she said. “But are you sure you understood the project? You were supposed to draw a picture of your family.”

Roger just smiled happily and nodded.