You Will Call Me Drog (11 page)

I couldn’t just go in the house. I had to do something or I’d explode. I paced back and forth in the backyard for awhile but the pressure just built up worse. I leaned up against the crabapple tree and yanked Drog out, ripping my pocket.

“Well, well. We really told old Daddy-O, didn’t we?” he said.

“Shut your stupid, stupid mouth!” I said through gritted teeth. “Thanks to you, my dad might never talk to me again.”

“Well, you’re welcome. I—”

“Just shut UP!” I screamed and whacked his mouth against the tree, hard. Then I did it again. Let him squeeze my hand clear off, I didn’t care.

“Hurt me, hurt yourself,” Drog said in a shaky voice.

I made my puppet hand into as much of a fist as I could.
Blam!
I hit the tree straight on.

I didn’t feel anything for a minute, and then ... Drog was right. It hurt bad.

“My head is bl-bloody, but unbowed,” Drog whispered.

He didn’t squeeze my hand. Maybe he was still too stunned. A little blood did trickle down out of the puppet glove, but that had to be mine. I watched it run down my arm.

I wasn’t finished. I ran into the house and charged up the stairs to my room. If Drog was my total enemy, I didn’t owe him anything. Nothing. What he just did to me and my dad gave me every right to put an end to him. Even if he could talk. I snatched the scissors off my desk.

“Been there, done that, no?” Drog said.

“No! Because this time I’m really cutting you off.”

I stuck one blade of the scissors into the puppet sleeve and squeezed the handle. Nothing. I squeezed again, and again, until my hand cramped. Why couldn’t I cut? It was only cloth, but I might as well have been trying to cut rock. The scissors broke apart on the next squeeze, and I threw the two halves across the room.

“Hmmm,” Drog said. “Looks like Drog has learned to focus his
ki
energy, no?”

I flopped back onto my bed and closed my eyes.

“Why fight it so hard, Boy?” Drog said. “We’re a pretty good team when you think about it.”

I silenced him with a pillow, because my hand was throbbing too much to put him back in my pocket.

What if my hand swells up inside him and gets infected?
I thought.
What could anybody do about it?

The next thing I knew, Mom was sitting on the edge of my bed. “It’s after six,” she said. “I got home an hour ago, but I let you sleep because you looked so wiped out. You okay?”

I shook my head and she felt my forehead. I guessed no infection had set in yet, because she didn’t go for the thermometer. But I kept Drog under the pillow in case there were any bloodstains showing.

“Want to tell me what happened today?”

Tell her what Drog said about her and me? Tell her what Dad said? No way.

“Oh, Drog mouthed off at Dad and he thought it was me talking.” True.

Mom put her hand over her eyes for a minute, then took them away and worked up a smile. “I don’t feel much like fixing supper so late,” she said. “Let’s go for pizza.”

“Thanks, Mom, but I’m not very hungry.”

“Well, I am,” she said. “Keep me company?”

I waited until she went for her coat, then wrapped Drog in the Ace bandage.

Once we got to Pizza Dan’s, I did manage to put away three slices of pepperoni. Which was probably good because my hand was going to need food to heal.

We finished up, but then we just sat at the table like neither of us really wanted to leave and go back home. I looked at Mom. She looked at me.

“Tell me again why Dad left us,” I said.

I didn’t want to hear any divorce-for-kids version, and I guess she could tell. She wiped the table with the napkin. Twice.

“At first it was all about work. Your dad was supposed to be the chief engineer for building an overpass out on East Main that would keep the trains from stopping traffic all the time. It was a project he’d dreamed of since he was a teenager.”

“But they never did that.”

“No. The funding fell through and they abandoned the project. For a while he was pretty depressed and hard to live with. Then one day, without consulting me or even telling me, he applied for the job in Moline. And took it. A great opportunity, he said.

“That was March. I had three weeks to quit my job at the library, get the house ready for sale, pull you out of school, and move to Moline, where we didn’t know anyone. I said no. We had to wait at least until the end of the school year.”

“So he went without us.”

“Yes.”

“I remember him coming and going for a while.”

“He came home on weekends, whenever he wasn’t tied up at work. Then it got to be summer, and I kept putting off moving. Then fall. That winter, he came home less and less. He said I apparently loved my job and you and Ferrisburg more than I loved him.”

One-point one-point one-point.
“Did you?”

She looked at me in shock. “Well, I...” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to.

“So it wasn’t all Dad’s fault,” my voice said. The rest of me just felt... hollow.

Mom’s eyes flickered. “It wasn’t really anyone’s fault, Parker. It certainly wasn’t yours.”

I wanted to believe that, but it was easy math. If Mom had loved Dad a little more or me a little less, then one plus one plus one would still equal three. Together. Any way you looked at it, I was a factor.

As soon as we got home, Mom punched the phone machine and Dad’s voice said, “This message is for Parker.”

She ducked out of the room.

“Parker?” the voice said. “We didn’t have a very good afternoon did we? But what I’m really concerned about is those things you said. They’re not true, believe me. I want you to know that.” He was quiet a minute, then he said “Goodnight, Son.”

Goodnight, not goodbye.

My Drog hand didn’t swell up after all, but otherwise things sure didn’t look like they were going to get better. So what did Dad mean when he said he’d have to do something? What would a guy like Dad do if he thought his son was making things up and being disrespectful and being allowed to get by with it? Why not send him off to Bradley, his favorite military school?

Bradley. I’d heard all the stories and driven by it sometimes in the car, but what was it really like? What did I know about it? Nothing.

Sunday morning was gray and gusty, but I wrapped Drog in the Ace bandage, got on my bike, and rode across town to check Bradley out, to see what I might be up against. I felt weird about pedaling up to the place, so I locked my bike to a tree a block away and walked, leaning into the wind.

The fence around Bradley looked like a row of iron spears stuck in the ground point-up. I peeked through the gate. The grass inside was all brown, but still cut short and neat. A box that looked like a tollbooth was empty. The word
sentry
popped into my head. That must be it.

Lights were on in a few big stone buildings, but there didn’t seem to be anybody around. Then, out of nowhere, a car came down the drive. The gate opened by itself, and I jumped out of the way. All I could see was the driver’s uniform before the gate closed behind him again with a click and he was gone.

I peered back through the bars. Just to the side of the driveway stood a big statue, the same grey-black as the fence. Shiny—like when you rub hard with a pencil. It was of a man in a real old-fashioned-looking uniform. I couldn’t read the words on the base, and the wind had blown a piece of newspaper over the face and stuck it there, but I figured this must be a statue of some general named Bradley that the school was named after. I was just trying to figure out if there was any way I could get inside when a gust ripped the paper off the statue’s face.

Except it wasn’t a face. It wasn’t even a human head. It was the head of a bird, an eagle.

I wanted to yell. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t get my legs to move. I could only stare at that fierce man-bird. I couldn’t stand being there alone with that thing, but the schoolyard and the street behind me were both empty. Why hadn’t I brought someone with me?

Drog! As fast as I could with my hand shaking, I unwound the Ace bandage.

“Wha—? Where are we?” Drog said, waking up.

I pointed his face toward the statue. Drog clenched.

“It’s HIM,” he screamed. “Run for your life!”

Suddenly my legs unfroze and I tore down the street, with the end of the bandage streaming behind my Drog hand, all the way back to my bike.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s him’?” I said, catching my breath. “Who?”

“Ben-Ra, you fool! The phantom-maker! He can suck people’s brains out through their eye-sockets just by looking at them. Been doing it for thousands of years.
Aiya!
You didn’t look directly at him did you?”

“I ... I don’t think so.”

“Well, then maybe we’re safe, but let’s get going!”

I got on my bike and headed home. “Take it easy, Drog,” I said. “That really scared me too, but it’s a statue. Somebody made it. It couldn’t have been there thousands of years.”

“You don’t understand, Boy. Ben-Ra takes many
forms
. Didn’t you hear him? He said ‘I smell a puppet and his boy!’ It’s Ben-Ra, I tell you!”

By the time he decided we were safe at home, Drog was wiped out by all the stress of the afternoon. He fell asleep, slept through supper, and snored all night.

It wasn’t so easy for me. Of course Drog had to be talking crazy about the statue being a brain-sucker, but I was still shaking, thinking about that head.

I asked Mom if she knew anything about a creepy statue at Bradley Military, and she said she’d never paid any attention. I knew I couldn’t have imagined that eagle. I looked up the B.M. website, but I couldn’t find a picture of it. There was a map, though, and right about where the man-eagle should be were the words “Homage to Valor.” That must be what the statue was called. I looked up the words and they meant something like honoring courage. Maybe it was a test you had to pass to be a Bradley cadet.

Maybe you had to be able to walk by that thing without flinching to enter the academy. I would fail that test for sure. Part of me swore I would never ever look at that terrible statue again if I could help it. But part of me was tempted to go back and make a drawing of it. From across the street.

That night in bed, sharp beak shapes kept poking into my hands and spoiling the patterns I was trying to make in my mind. Beaks and claws and lightning bolts. I tried to move them around, too, but they were like magnets that came together on their own, forming an iron mask too cold to touch.

“Well, well, looky who’s here,” Drog said.

Notebook Man was back on the playground on Monday, but this time he was going up to the sixth-graders one by one, bending over to ask them questions and jotting down their answers. The weird thing was, the kids he talked to didn’t report to the rest of us, they just tried to pretend nothing happened.

Talk about energy coming out of people! The whole schoolyard felt like a wind-up toy cranked as far as it would go. Or maybe it was just me. I guessed I’d have to wait until it was my turn.

It never was my turn, because Wren went over to Mrs. Belcher and said something, and Mrs. Belcher stormed over to Notebook Man with her porcupine quills out.

“
Mister
Masterson!” she said.

He stopped writing, straightened up, and tried to smooth a few hairs over his forehead with the heel of his hand. Mrs. Belcher shooed away the kids around them and said some more stuff to him that no one else could hear, and when she was finished he snapped his notebook shut and left. She kept her hands on her hips until he was out of sight.

When the bell rang for the end of recess, I felt like it went off in my brain.

“Don’t ask me, I’ll tell you,” Wren said when we got back in the room. “That man who’s been writing—”

“Notebook Man?” I said.

Her eyes smiled for a second.

“Well, he wanted to know all about the puppet. And he asked a lot of other questions. About you.”

“About me? Like what?”

“Like how long you’ve been acting this way and what we thought it was all about and whether you have any friends.”

One-point one-point one-point.
“What did you say?”

“I said I was your friend.”

I closed my eyes.

“And I said I thought you were normal.”

I opened my eyes again. “Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, thanks for saying that anyway.”

“He said not to tell, but I don’t like secrets like that.”

“Thanks, Wren. Thanks for telling me.”

Great. Nobody’s talking to me, they’re just talking about me. And they think I’m crazy.

I expected Wren to go to her seat then, but she hung around, turning her pocket stone over and over in one hand. “Parker, you know what my mom says?”

“What?”

“She says it’s natural for boys and girls our age to go their own ways, even if they’ve been friends before. She thinks that’s all that’s happening.”

Natural? Natural? How could anything be more
un
natural than Drog? “That’s not what’s happening, Wren.”

“I know. But I think I’ve got it figured out.” She sounded half-sad, half-teasing.

“Uh oh,” I said, trying to tease back. “Again?”

“Yep. You’re not really Parker at all. They’ve taken him away, and you’re an alien that replaced him.”

I had to smile. “Well, I’ve got the green hand, anyway.”

She started to smile back and then stopped. “Whoever you are, I want you to bring Parker back.”

My eyes stung and I turned away. I said something dumb like “I’ll see what I can do.”

An alien. Well, that was one I hadn’t thought of. Sure would explain why Drog would glom onto me. Takes one to know one. Or maybe it was the other way around—by attaching himself to my hand, Drog was slowly turning me into an alien like him. So how do you stop being an alien?

“Alien, eh?” Drog said. “Ever wonder if they eat Mars Bars on Mars, Boy?”

Dad. Notebook Man. Wren. I could hardly wait to get to aikido that day. The dojo was beginning to be the one place I could feel okay and relax.

“Don’t go tonight. Trust me.” Drog said as I reached for my
gi.
“Any fool could see what’s going on at that dodo.”

“Dojo. What do you mean? What’s going on?”

“Think about it. You dress in white uniforms and bow to the master and speak only when spoken to—even Big Boy, the torch murderer. A room full of boys and girls sitting on their heels, bowing and being respectful and meditating about peace and harmony? It’s unnatural.”

“But—”

And look what they teach you. You actually have to practice giving up. They plan to make you into zombies, I tell you. Probably some kind of cult!”

“Drog, that’s silly.”

“Silly, ha! Someone attacks you and you’re supposed to do nothing?”

“Sometimes. At least until you figure out what’s happening.”

“So in your case I suppose that would mean doing nothing for a lifetime.”

“Listen, Drog,” I said, “I’m going to keep on going to aikido practice. If you don’t like it, take a nap or something.”

“My, my, aren’t we getting testy? What would Pansy say?”

“It’s Sensei, Drog! And you know what? Someday I’m going to figure out what makes you talk, and then I’m going to turn you OFF.”

“Ha, ha. That’s funny, Boy. Nothing
makes
me talk. I say what I please when I please. Which is a lot more than I can say for you.”

Drog kept up his aikido-bashing on the way to practice.

“Don’t you get it?” he said. “Aiki-dodo is like sword fighting on the stage. Looks great, but it’s all rehearsed. You do this and I’ll do that and it’ll all come out here. Easy! Useless! In a real-life fight, you think the opponents cooperate and try not to hurt each other? No way! It’s anything goes!”

Just then I thought I saw Wren going into the dojo ahead of me. It was her.

“Good grief,” Drog said. “Too many girls. Girls would never be allowed at Shaolin.”

Wren was already wearing her
gi
, so she’d planned this. She’d probably read a book about it. Aikido practice was supposed to be my break from thinking about problems, including my problems with her. But here she was.

What was she doing anyway, competing with me? Oh well, if she stuck it out, maybe she’d at least see how people treated each other in the dojo. How they treated me.

I half-waved to her.

“Good,” Sensei said. “You know each other.”

I couldn’t get over her being there. “How come you signed up for aikido, Wren?”

She shrugged and looked at Sensei. “I guess if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

Sensei grinned. “Exactly! Parker, please take Wren to the side mat and show her the beginning roll.”

Wren frowned. “No,” she said.

“No?”

Whoa, Wren.

“What I mean is, not with Drog.”

“We can’t always choose our opponents, Wren,” Sensei said in a kind voice. “Please step onto the mat.”

We took our positions.
Forget about everything but aikido
, I said to myself.

“I can’t believe Sensei lets you practice with Drog on,” Wren said.

I put my hand on my one-point for a moment, breathing out. Then I focused on rolling, rolling. When I finished, I bowed to Wren without thinking. I felt Sensei smile behind me.

Wren tried the roll. At first she ended up flat on her back, but she caught on pretty quick. I went a half step ahead and showed her how to push down on my wrist to make me roll. Then I did the same with her with my good hand, not hard.

After a while, Sensei called everybody over to talk about centering on our one-point. That was mostly for Wren, but he said the rest of us could never hear it too often.

Wren’s mom offered me a ride after class, but I had my bike so I said no. Besides, I wanted to talk to Sensei alone. I walked around with him while he locked up.

Say something
, I thought. But what? Tell him I got my dad all insulted and then beat up my puppet?

“Something awful happened Saturday,” I blurted out. “My ... somebody got mad at me for something I didn’t do, and then everything got worse and worse. I sure could have used my one-point then, but I didn’t think about it. Not even once.”

He nodded. “That can happen.”

“Sensei,” I said, “do you ever let things really get to you and, you know, lose your center?”

He nodded again. “Often!”

“But—”

“The important thing is to find it again quickly when you need it.”

He unrolled the mat again, stepped out of his shoes and commanded, “Kata Mochi!”

That was a technique we had just been working on during practice.

Without thinking, I kicked my shoes off too and got in position. I knew I was supposed to grab his shoulder, and then he would take my wrist, move in toward me, and turn me to the side and down to the mat. But just then I remembered what Drog had said about it all being too easy.
What if I do something else?
I thought.
Something Sensei doesn’t expect?

I pretended to reach for his shoulder but I kicked high instead, aiming for his chest like I had seen street fighters do in the movies. Sensei’s eyes widened, but he ducked before I could connect, then pushed on my shoulder and turned me until I ended up behind him on my knees.

I got up and we faced each other again. I thought he might be mad about what I had done, but he just stood there, ready.

Everything tormenting me came together in that moment. Not being able to get my hand out of Drog prison. Not being believed when I told the truth. Constantly getting on everyone’s bad side even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

Something inside me switched on and I exploded —punching, shoving, butting, swinging, tripping—and yelling and grunting with each thrust. No matter what I tried, though, or which way I turned, his body swirled around me like a river whose current was so strong I had to go where it took me, while his face seemed to stay still in the middle, growing calmer and calmer.

Finally I gave up, breathless, and stood up.

“When you prevent someone from hurting you, you do him a favor,” Sensei said, quietly.

I nodded.

I put my hand on his shoulder and he turned me down to the mat in one motion. Then he helped me up and bowed to me. I bowed back.

“Don’t worry, Parker,” he said. “Things get easier with practice.”

We rolled the mat back up, then he held the front door for me and set the bolt.

I was halfway home before I realized Sensei never asked me what it was that went wrong. All he ever talked about was practice. Well at least there was one person I couldn’t hurt even if I tried. And Drog was wrong about aikido.