You Will Call Me Drog (15 page)

I was lying around my room on Sunday, practicing lame apologies to Wade Hunt out loud, when Mom called me to the phone. Guess who.

“What’s wrong with your mother?”

“I don’t know, Dad. She’s probably just upset about me.”

Dad cleared his throat. “Look, Parker, I’ve been thinking. Maybe we need to spend more time together.”

Brilliant.

“Parker? You still there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why don’t you come for Christmas?”

I considered that for a minute. “Why don’t
you,
Dad?”

He sighed. “Son, you know I have another family to think about now.”

“Yeah.”
Think about your family.

“Well? I’d really like to have you here.”

“What about Mom? She’d be alone then.”

“That’s true. But I’m sure your mother can take care of herself for one Christmas.”

Easy for you to say.
Dad never did understand about Mom and Christmas. Why she sticks pine branches in baskets all around the living room and dining room until the house smells like a forest and spends a whole afternoon hanging her collection of ornaments on the tree. Why she always wants us to curl up together on the couch on Christmas Eve to read that famous ghost story.
A Christmas Carol.

What would Christmas be like at his house?

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, there’s still time. Think about it, will you?”

I said I would. But first I had to think about apologizing. How could I ever make myself do it?

Man,
I thought.
Everything was fine—well, mostly—before Drog came along. I did okay in school, got along with everybody, made all kinds of things and had fun doing it.
Why couldn’t everything just be like it was before?

Well because it can’t, that’s why,
I answered myself.
Drog did happen. He’s on your hand, and it doesn’t look like he’s coming off soon. So now what? What do you want now?

I wanted to be back in the dojo with Big Boy and Wren at least, and have Sensei be friendly again.

Then apologize and let yourself look weak if you have to. Just because you look weak doesn’t mean you are weak, in fact—

That was it! I laughed out loud.

“What?” Drog said.

“I just realized something, Drog. Fighting is easy. Especially if you’re mad. What takes guts is to apologize, to let yourself look dumb to someone you were mad with. To be the only one who knows you’re not weak for doing that, but strong. Well maybe not the only one. Sensei would know.”

“That, dear boy, sounds like advanced dodo-think.”

I pocketed him.

“Until,” Sensei had said—not “unless”—“Do not speak to me
until
you have done this.” That meant he already believed I was strong enough. That I would do it.

I could hardly wait to get it over with.

I had my chance on Monday, which turned out to be my best day in quite a while, starting with some fun I had waking Drog up. I pulled out the Omar Khayyam book and read the first verse to him over his snoring:

Wake! For the Sun, who scattered into flight

The Stars before him in the Field of Night,

Drives Night along with the Heavens, and strikes

The Sultan’s Turret with a Shaft of Light...

“Wh—
What
in the world, Boy...?”

“Drog!” I said. You mean you don’t recognize that? It’s from the Ruby Yacht!”

He didn’t speak to me for hours.

Charlie handed me a note at lunch recess. “Wade Hunt came over to my house yesterday. He told me to give you this.”

From the half-scared, half-excited looks on their faces, I could tell his friends already knew what the note said.

I folded the note and put it in my pocket.

“You’re going, right?” Charlie said.

“Can’t. I’ve got aikido practice at five.”

“But what about Wade? Parker, you have to!”

“Maybe I’ll go to his house instead. A little early.”

“Cool, can I come with you?” asked Charlie.

“Me too!”

“Me too!”

“Uh-uh. Just tell me where he lives. I have to do this by myself.”

“Our hero,” Drog said. “May the farce be with you.”

At Wade’s, I could see scraps of toilet paper still stuck in the bushes like bits of snow. Wade and his friends were out front throwing rocks, trying to knock down a stack of soda cans, and laughing.

“Here we go, Drog,” I whispered.

“Speak for yourself!”

“Hey, Wade ...” I called out.

He turned around. Wow, his eye! He had what Dad would call a shiner. You couldn’t call it a black eye, really, because it was kind of green and yellow.

“You! What’re you doing here?” he said. “I told you to meet me at the school.”

I walked up to him, ignoring the others and the rocks still in their hands. “I came to apologize. For attacking you the other day.”

Wade snickered. “Apologize? Why? Your mommy make you?”

His friends fake-laughed.

Keep your intention, Parker
. “I’m sorry I hit you. Sorry about your eye.”

“Sorry? I’ll make you sorry!” He shoved me to the ground.

I rolled and came up. He lunged at me again and I turned to the side. I could have used his weight to throw him, but I didn’t.

“I don’t blame you for being mad,” I said.

That just made him madder. He reached out for my neck. I ducked and rolled, and he staggered forward.

“Fight back, you puppet freak! Only one of us can be the Man.”

“Right, and that’s you.”

“Huh? You’re too weird, you know that?”

“So people tell me.”

I laughed then, but not at him. I laughed because taking the one-down position wasn’t as hard as I thought. The hard part was deciding to. The hard part was over.

“C’mon,” Wade said to the others. “This guy’s wasting our time.”

They started up the steps. Then Wade turned and said, “I don’t get it, Mop Head. You’re not scared, but you won’t fight.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t scared. You’re pretty tough.”

“Yeah, well. How’d you ever learn to fall like that, anyway?”

“I take aikido.”

“Aikido?”

“No!” screamed Drog. “You are
not
going to invite this bruiser to aikido!”

“Whoa, Drog! That’s a great idea. Wade, you want to come to practice and learn how? You’ve got nothing to do at five now, right?”

“I—”

“Come here, let me show you something.”

He came. Like he was approaching a snake.

“In aikido, if you pushed somebody the way you did me,” I said, “he would take hold of your wrists and turn you so both of you are facing the same way, like this. But then he’d throw you. When I throw you to the ground, as soon as you feel yourself going down, duck your head and roll over your shoulder. Ready?”

“Is this some kind of trick?”

I glanced at his friends. “I dare you.”

He had to do it.

He landed kind of hard and came up panting, but he got the angle right.

“So ... why didn’t you throw me ... before?”

“I was giving you a chance to get even. Throw me.”

He did and I rolled.

“Come to practice, why don’t you?” I said. “It’s where the furniture store used to be. The first time is free.”

Drog groaned. “First the torcher, now the bone-cruncher!”

“What about that?” Wade said, pointing to Drog. “You practice with that thing on?”

“Yeah.”

“So with your mouth you say come to this aikido, but with your hand you say don’t, huh?”

I put Drog away. “Don’t listen to my hand,” I said.

I didn’t think he’d show up, but he did.

“Sensei, this is Wade. My used-to-be enemy,” I said.

“Jeez,” Wade said.

“My sentiments exactly,” Drog grumbled into my sleeve.

But Sensei smiled big at me and nodded. “Welcome, Wade. We’re just about to warm up.”

Then he bowed to me. Long and low. I bowed back even lower.

I felt sure Sensei would have me work with Wade that night, but he paired himself with Wade and Wren with me. I tried to get Wren to fall with me the way she did with Sensei. But she couldn’t seem to do it.

When my turn came, I discovered something else she was afraid of. She didn’t like to attack. She didn’t understand that when you attack in aikido, you’re helping each other get better at defense.

I was glad Sensei worked with Wade, though, because he was trying to be a powerhouse before he knew anything, and he could hurt himself. I saw Sensei holding his arms, showing him the motions over and over.

“Going to sign up?” I asked Wade after practice.

“Nah. I thought I’d learn how to fight better, you know, maybe some cool spin-kicks or something? I don’t want to learn how to get
out
of a fight, so I guess this aikido stuff’s not for me.”

“Well, maybe not.”

“I know one thing, though. I’m not fighting you anymore. No sense!”

Walking home, I felt light and easy for a change. I had stood up to Wade in a way he didn’t expect, and that actually made a bad situation better. He and I sort of respected each other now. Best of all, I made Sensei proud and glad to have me back. Not bad for one day!