Bluefish (16 page)

He traced the steps of the phantom dog around the inside of the fence. The last of the dog dookey had disintegrated.

Travis paced the yard one way and then turned and circled in the other direction. What would McQueen say about him? What if

Grandpa swore or lit up a cigarette in McQueen's office?

When headlights turned into the driveway, Travis ran back inside and jumped on the couch. He put his feet on the coffee table and grabbed the remote. The TV flicked on just as the front door opened.

"Hey, Trav."

Grandpa went into his room. Travis stared at the TV, holding his breath.

Wasn't he going to say anything? After a few minutes, Grandpa came back out, picked up the remote, and clicked the TV off . He set something with a clink on the coffee table.

Rosco's collar. Beat- up brown leather, with the rabies tag still attached.

"You want that?" Grandpa lit a cigarette.

Travis picked it up, turning it over in his hands. The inside was greasy, the feel of Rosco still there.

"I should've given it to you a while ago, but. Well. I didn't." He kicked back the recliner and took a deep drag.

"So this McQueen fellow, he's taken quite a shine to you."

"Yeah?" Travis's pulse thudded in his ears. "What'd he say?"

"Said he's never seen a kid try so hard. Said you've got an A in his class and you've been coming in early to do extra work."

Travis ran his fingers across the stitches in the old leather collar.

"And that Ms. Gordon - you have a D in her class right now, but she thinks you'll do better the second half of the quarter."

He cleared his throat, and Travis looked up. Grandpa cleared his throat another time and tapped the long ash of his cigarette into the ashtray.

"Trav," he said, "I know it doesn't help much now, but . . ."

"It's okay." Travis said it fast.

"I should've known."

Grandpa stubbed out his cigarette, closed his eyes, and leaned his head back.

He swallowed, his Adam's apple jerking up and down. Then he cleared his throat again and looked Travis in the eye.

"I've been keeping that collar in my room to remind me why I shouldn't drink.

But I don't need it now. I look at you and I can remember pretty good."

on MONDAY

I almost told Travis things about Trailer World today. Maybe he really is an undercover cop. Sometimes he says exactly the right thing and it almost cracks me open. I stopped by the library on my way home, and Connie gave me three DVDs.

She said they came in as donations but they're duplicates and I can have them.

I said that's real nice, but thanks to Sylvia I don't have anything to watch them on.

One of them is Running on Empty. I love that movie.

I remember last time I saw it. Calvin made popcorn, and afterward he gave a big lecture about boys and staying out of trouble. I loved it when he lectured me.

When I got home tonight, the madre was freaking because Jimmy said he's moving to Texas. He has said that seventy- eight times before, so why would this time be different.

Tonight is parent- teacher conferences. The madre has never gone once. She says me and Jimmy got it backward, that he should be the smart one so he could make us millionaires and I could stay home and take care of her. Instead it's me that's smart and that just means I'm going to leave her and she'll be all alone.

I want her to be right about that, and I feel super- bad that I want her to be right about that.

If I leave her, will I turn out like Sylvia? Rich and mean?

Travis stopped in to see Ms. Gordon. She took him to the computer lab and showed him how to get into the shared files under her name.

"This file has your initials," she said. "I've scanned most of the material from the first few weeks in here."

She handed Travis the headphones. He put them on, and the computer started reading the text to him. Yellow shading jumped across the section being read, chewing through a word at a time. Ms. Gordon showed him how he could adjust speed, back up, and ask the computer to give him an out- loud definition if he didn't know a word.

"Stay here through first period this morning," she said, "and get the feel of it.

Try different speeds. See here - you can make the text bigger or smaller, and you can take it a word at a time or a phrase at a time, which-ever you like."

"So you can put any book on here?"

"We just have to scan it in. I'll show you how. You could ask your other teachers to put material on here, too."

He spent the rest of the hour playing with the Kurzweil. Speeding up, slowing down, watching the yellow highlighter crawl across the words. He made it read the same sentence over and over to see if he could mouth the words along with it.

The voice wasn't as good as McQueen's, not by a long shot. It was machiney and choppy. Good for reading textbooks, not fox stories. But it meant that he could read.

Social studies. Science. All those handouts they gave him that he ditched in a folder. He could find out what they said. All of them.

"So, Travikins," said Velveeta when he sat down at lunch.

"Bradley here tells me you've been walking home with him. Are you his official bodyguard now?'

"No." Travis looked at Bradley. "Did you tell her that?"

"She made the bodyguard part up. Next time I run into them, I'm going to try what you said." He turned to Velveeta. "Travis says if I treat them halfway normal, they'll leave me alone. Do you think that'll work?"

"Why'd you say that?" Velveeta asked Travis. "They'll kill him."

"Maybe, but when he acts all scared, it makes them want to kill him more. Like if you run away from a mean dog, it's going to chase you and kill you."

"Chilson, mean dog, grrr, bark, slobber, grr," said Bradley.

"He's not a dog," said Travis. "You say stuff like that, no wonder he doesn't like you."

"You're the one who said dog."

"I didn't say he was a dog."

"I didn't mean anything by it," said Bradley.

"Well, nobody really means anything by anything, do they, Bradley?" said Velveeta. "Travis has a point. Maybe Chilson thinks you think you're better than him."

"Maybe I am," said Bradley. "I'm smarter for sure."

Travis looked up and met Velveeta's eyes.

"Should I try to be not smart?" asked Bradley. "It's not my fault I'm smart and he's not."

"Yeah, but it's your fault you go around saying that," said Travis.

"Bradley." Velveeta stood up as the bell rang. "If you're really as smart as you think you are, you'd listen to Travis more."

As she walked away, Bradley grabbed Travis by the sleeve.

"Did you see how she looked at you?" he whispered.

"She totally wants you."

"Bradley, shut up."

"Okay. But she does."

Travis sat in Life Skills sixth period, not listening.

Velveeta's volume was still turned down. It had to be about her place and her scarves. Whatever happened, maybe it was as bad as his place and his dog. Maybe worse.

After the last bell, he walked alone through town, working over a new idea. He forgot all about the picnic table until he got to the bridge.

"Hey, Skinnyboy," yelled Chilson. "Where's Bradley cakes? Did you two break up?"

Just Chilson and Maddox were there. Travis reached in his pocket and found Rosco's rabies tag. He'd taken it off the collar and put it on his key ring the night before.

He crossed the bridge and walked directly down the slope to the table. By the time he got there, Maddox was on his feet. Chilson stayed on the table, his feet on the bench.

"You want to stomp my guts now?" asked Travis.

He'd never walked into a fight on purpose before.

They always just happened.

Maddox walked in a circle around him. "I kind of do," he said. "I'm not sure you're worth the trouble, though.

Seems like a lot of work, making your guts spout out your nose."

"Can you guys just lay off of Bradley then?" Travis said to Chilson.

"Why should we?" Chilson flicked his butt away.

"You know you can make him cry - so what? What's it prove?"

"Ooo, that's all deep," said Maddox. "So now you're telling us what to do?"

"No." Travis said it to Chilson. "Just asking."

He turned and walked away. His back crawled with the hope and the dread of Maddox rushing up behind him, but it didn't happen. When he got up to the road, he turned and looked over his shoulder. Maddox was back on the picnic table. They both had new cigarettes lit.

Travis walked on up the hill, hammering away at his new idea. He turned it over and around, looking at it from every angle. It was risky. Much riskier than inviting Maddox to stomp his guts.

"Hey, Grandpa," he said when the front door opened.

"How was your day?"

"What do you want?" Grandpa looked at him sideways.

"I was just wondering - I know someone else is renting the old place now, but what if I wanted to go back to the swamp? Just to walk around back there? Do you think they'd mind?"

"I could call Chuck and ask him to check with them," said Grandpa. "How you planning to get there?"

"I was hoping you might drop me and a friend there on Saturday when you get off work. I want to show her the swamp."

"Her? This friend is a her?"

"She's just a friend."

"What's her name, this just a friend?"

"Okay, forget it." Travis got off the couch. "If you're going to make it into a big thing, forget it."

He shut his bedroom door behind him and dropped onto the bed. What made him think for even a second that could work?

"Don't sulk!" yelled Grandpa through the door. "God, boy, you are the touchiest thing crawling. Can't you take a joke?"

"No!"

The TV came on, and Grandpa banged around the kitchen for a while. Travis finished his math homework and worked on his word list. The TV went off .

"There's dinner on the stove," Grandpa yelled through the door. "I'm going to the meeting. I'll be home later."

Travis was on the couch when Grandpa came back.

"I called Chuck and it's a go," Grandpa said as he walked in the door. "I'll take you and your friend to the swamp Saturday. But just tell me this -are you going there to fool around? Because if you get her pregnant, I' ll - "

"Grandpa! God! No."

Grandpa was as bad as Bradley. Worse.

"No sex, no drugs. Rock 'n' roll, that's fine."

"Forget the whole thing," said Travis. "It was a bad idea."

"I'll drop you for an hour or so and pick you up after."

Travis stared at the TV. Maybe it wasn't a bad idea.

Even withGrandpa in the picture.

"What time you want to go?" asked Grandpa.

"I'll let you know. I gotta check with her."

"Her." Grandpa giggled. "You ever going to tell me the name of this her?"

"No."

Grandpa slapped his knee and lit up a cigarette.

on TUESDAY

Since the madre didn't come to conferences, they gave me my mid- quarter grades today at school. It's the worst I've ever gotten. All Cs. I'd rather be almost anything than aver-age. Calvin would give me sad eyes over this, and probably only let me watch black- and- white movies for a month.

I keep thinking about how Travis rescued Bradley from that punk Chilson and his buddies. I wish I could have seen it. I just love it that he protects Bradley. I liked that about him from the very first day.

I'd still love to see him beat the crap out of Jimmy. It can't ever happen because they'd have to be in the same place at the same time, and that would cause some freaky disruption to the space- time continuum of the universe.

But it makes an amazing movie in my head. Best movie I've ever seen.

I've decided to quit the no- homework religion. It's no fun anyway since Travis converted. I took some books home and stopped by the library after school.

Connie's teeth just about fell out of her head, she was so surprised.

Travis found Velveeta in the lunchroom, eating a bowl of cereal.

"You get off at noon on Saturday, right?" he asked.

"Are you busy after that?"

"Why, do you want to pull my wagon?"

"No, I want to take you someplace."

"Where?"

"It's a surprise. We'll be gone for like three hours. My grandpa's going to drive us. Do you want to?"

"That's a vague invitation." Velveeta got up and cleared her place. "Are you going to kidnap me and hold me for ransom?"

"No, but I have some words I need help with, and I thought we could do some of that."

"You're trying to help me by letting me help you.

Don't think you're being tricky."

"I'm not being tricky. I just want to make sure you'll come." Travis followed Velveeta to her locker. "But you have to promise not to yell at me to try.

If you do that, I'll leave."

"Let me get this right. You want me to go to some secret place with you, for some completely unexplained reason, and if I tell you to try, you'll walk away and leave me wherever we are."

"Right," said Travis as she closed her locker.

"That sounds like a perfect action suspense setup. What time?"

"Anytime after one because my Grandpa works in the morning."

"One fifteen?"

"Okay, good. Wear warm clothes if it's cold, because we'll be outside."

"Is that a date?" Megan came up behind them as they entered the classroom.

"Are Velveeta and Travis going on a date?"

"Pull your nose in, Megan," said Velveeta. "It's no date.

It's a financial summit with our lawyers and accountants in Vegas. You can't come, so stop begging."

"Like I'd want to," said Megan.

"Yes, exactly like you'd want to."

Megan whispered to Cassidy on the other side of the classroom, and they both laughed.

"You're so mysterious," said Velveeta. "Okay, so probably not Vegas. But are we going to a secret hidden cave?

Indiana Jonesy?"

"No. Tell me where you live so we can pick you up."

"No. You can pick me up at the library."