Fangboy (9 page)

“Ahhh.”

“Actually, I wasn’t interested in hearing the noise itself. It was really just a ruse to get you to open your mouth. So let’s try it again.”

“Ahhh,” said Nathan, opening his mouth and sticking out his tongue.

The doctor held the tongue depressor in mid-air. “Is this some kind of joke?”

“Do we look like the kind of people who would play such a joke?” asked Mary, believing it to be a suitably evasive answer.

The doctor looked wistful. “My entire life, I’ve been ashamed of the normalcy of my teeth. Each night as I brushed I thought about how wonderful it would be to be a shark or a barracuda, swimming around in the ocean with a mouth full of jagged teeth.”

“Wouldn’t the other kids have made fun of you?” Nathan asked.

“They did! In a moment of poor judgment, I told one of my classmates about this fantasy, and he thought it was ever-so-amusing. ‘Hey, everyone, let’s ridicule the warped boy who wishes he had razor-sharp teeth!’ Those were dark times for me. But I had the final laugh, because now I am a rich and successful physician, with a huge house and a thin wife, while he has a small house and a huge wife. Did you want another shot?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. You passed another test.”

* * *

“See, now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” asked Penny, as they drove away. “Doesn’t it feel good to be healthy again?”

“It does,” said Nathan. “It really does.”

* * *

If one were to draw up a comparison chart between any two months of the year that Nathan spent in the forest, and the two remaining months of his first summer with the sisters, the line for the months in the forest would be drawn near the bottom of the page, indicating sadness, while the line for the months with the sisters would be drawn near the top of the page, indicating happiness. The bottom line would be drawn in an unhappy color, perhaps dark blue, while the top line would be a bright yellow or purple.

Nathan’s bedroom was small (they’d converted a room in the back where Penny used to like to sit and read) but comfortable. He stayed at home while the sisters went to work each day, since they supposed that a boy who’d lived by himself in the forest could stay by himself in a locked house during the daytime. He was given a list of chores to do each day, and almost always did them.

Each night they played games. Mary would usually win, and Penny would pretend to be furious and storm off, and everybody would laugh. Sometimes Penny would win, in which case Mary would also be furious and storm off, except that she wasn’t pretending. When Nathan won, he would do a dance, which would be adjusted in scope and intensity depending on whether he’d won by a little or a lot.

The sisters would scold him when he did something wrong, and even punish him when necessary, but he always felt loved.

Was he happier with them than with his real mother and father? That is an unfair question. Given the opportunity to change history, he certainly would have saved the lives of his parents and gone back to excitedly anticipating his candy store visit. Yet he also enjoyed being able to go grocery shopping, to eat in inexpensive restaurants, and live beyond his front and back yard.

He would have changed the past if he could, but since he couldn’t (to the best of his knowledge), he would simply live the life he’d been given and enjoy being happier than he’d ever been.

The happiness was impacted by a sense of dread, though, as the date for his first day of school approached. He liked social interaction such as ordering hamburgers, but to be stuck in a classroom all day? With other children? Who might chant “Fangboy” at him? And who might draw mean-spirited pictures of him depicting his teeth as even larger and sharper than they were? This seemed like it could go terribly wrong.

“Can’t you just teach me at home?” Nathan asked Penny and Mary.

Penny, who sat on the couch, patted the cushion next to her. “Come here, Nathan, and let me tell you a story.”

Nathan sat down next to her.

“Once upon a time there was a little boy, a boy who looked much like yourself as a matter of fact. This little boy did not want to go to school. But we made him. And he went. The end.”

“That wasn’t a very good story,” said Nathan.

“That’s because it’s based on reality. Would you really have us devote as much time as a teacher to your education? Shall I quit my job and let Mary support us? Would
you
like to get a job?”

“I’m sorry,” said Nathan. “I’ll go to school.”

“Yes, you will. And you’ll bring home good grades. Your handwriting is so atrocious that you’d think you had sharp pointed fingers instead of teeth. What is six times seven?”

“I don’t know, but six times five is thirty.”

“The fives are easy. You have many things to learn, Nathan Pepper, and you
will
go to school like any other child.”

Nathan nodded, and felt ashamed that he’d ever protested. This was his chance to have a normal life. He couldn’t expect anybody to quit their job to keep him from feeling awkward. When had he become such a selfish boy? He was going to go to school and study hard and learn his multiplication tables and be able to point out every country on a map and become smart and invent things and get rich and move himself and the sisters into a mansion with a butler and a gardener and a special room filled with butterflies.

He would change the world!

NINE

Two weeks before school started, Nathan lay in bed, nearly overcome by sleep, when he discovered that one of his teeth was loose.

It was one of the corner ones that could legitimately be called a fang. The upper left. If he poked at it with his tongue, it jiggled. He lay there for a moment, jiggling his tooth, then got out of bed and hurried into Penny’s room. She sat up in her bed, reading.

“Look!” he said, proudly opening his mouth and making the tooth move. “It’s my first loose one!”

Penny leaned forward. “I believe you’re right!” She called Mary into the room, and they both admired his loose tooth, the way it could wobble forward and backward.

They’d discussed this before. Mary had told him that before too long his teeth would start to fall out, one by one, and that it was nothing to be afraid of, it was part of the natural course of things, and that new teeth would grow back in their place.

“Will they be normal teeth?” Nathan had asked.

“We won’t know until we see them. Perhaps they might. Perhaps when it’s all over, you’ll have a mouth full of teeth just like anybody else.”

Penny had shushed her and told her she was being cruel, that it was wrong to raise his hopes likes that. Mary had argued that it was a perfectly feasible outcome, and that there was no reason the boy shouldn’t look forward to the possibility. Nathan had been told to leave the room, and the subject was no longer discussed.

“Should I get a pair of pliers and rip it right out?” asked Mary, her eyes gleaming with mischief. She said it with a smile to let Nathan know that she was teasing, that she wasn’t really going to rip his tooth out with pliers.

“No, no,” said Penny. “We need to tie a string around his tooth, and then we need to tie the other end around the tail of a bull, and then we need to anger the bull so that it runs off.”

“But what if the tooth isn’t loose enough? Our poor Nathan could find himself being dragged behind an angry bull!”

“You’re right! And what if we were careless about the location of the bull and sent it rushing toward a cliff?”

“And what if at the bottom of the cliff were shards of broken glass floating in lava?”

“He would be doomed, doomed, doomed, and it would be all our fault!”

Nathan poked at his tooth some more. “I think I’ll wait for it to fall out on its own.”

Penny furrowed her brow in deep thought. “I wonder if the Tooth Fairy brings extra money to boys with sharp teeth?”

“The Tooth Fairy?” Nathan asked.

“You haven’t heard of the Tooth Fairy?”

Nathan shook his head.

“You, of all people, have never heard of the Tooth Fairy? What sort of upbringing did you have?” Penny bit her lip, as if realizing that she’d said something awful. “I’m sorry. Maybe your parents meant to tell you at a more appropriate time. When a little boy or little girl loses their baby teeth, they put them under their pillow, and when they wake up in the morning, they find that the Tooth Fairy has replaced the tooth with money!”

“Money for teeth? I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, well, you have to believe, or the Tooth Fairy won’t come.”

“What does she do with the teeth?”

“Nobody knows. Perhaps she makes necklaces out of them. Perhaps she grinds them up and makes chalk. Perhaps she even eats them.”

“Hmmmm,” said Nathan. “If these teeth are so valuable, maybe people should hang on to them instead of selling them off to a fairy.”

“That may very well be a wise idea,” said Penny. “Who knows? You could sell them for ten times what that miserly Tooth Fairy would have left.”

Nathan continued to work at the tooth. He did not have the courage to take any drastic measures to hasten its removal, but he wiggled it whenever he had a free moment, and he bit into apples harder than he might normally have done, and when he brushed he focused nearly twice as much attention on that particular tooth as he did the others.

And then, when he woke up one morning, the tooth was gone.

He’d lost his first tooth!

He was so excited he nearly cried out with joy.

But…where was it?

“I’ve swallowed my tooth!” he shouted. “I can’t believe I’ve done this!”

He’d lost his source of profit!

And more importantly, what devastation awaited his insides as this tooth made its way through his body? He could almost feel it, poking and jabbing and slicing through important parts. Oh no!

He started to run out of his bedroom, then caught himself and walked in a very, very, very, very slow manner, hoping to keep the tooth from moving around. Where was it now? Still in his stomach? Lodged two inches below his throat? He’d be lucky if it didn’t slice him open, neck to navel.

“What’s the matter?” asked Penny, wiping sleep away from her eyes as she emerged from her bedroom.

“I swallowed my tooth while I slept!”

“Are you sure?”

Was
he sure? He wasn’t doubled over in agony. There weren’t any new holes in his body where the tooth might have made its way out. “I’m pretty sure.”

“Well, let’s look for it instead of rushing into a state of panic.” They walked into Nathan’s bedroom, where Penny gently pulled the blanket aside. She quickly plucked something small and white from on top of the sheet. “Here it is.”

She handed him the tooth.

“Thank you!” Nathan said. “I thought I was a goner!”

“You are a silly boy sometimes.”

Nathan held the tooth up to the light, admiring it from all angles. “I’m going to figure out exactly what the Tooth Fairy does with all of the teeth she purchases,” he said. “Maybe that’s how I’ll make us all rich!”

Of course, it cannot be forgotten that Nathan was only seven years old, and though his intentions were admirable, the lure of easy money was too much to resist. During dinner, he admitted to Penny and Mary that perhaps he ought not to interfere with the Tooth Fairy’s business, and would indeed place the tooth under his pillow.

It is now that we must step way from our story for a bit to speak to the younger readers of the tale of Fangboy. Though we hope you have enjoyed the narrative so far, and perhaps learned some valuable lessons from it, the next section will be of no interest to your youthful minds. You will find it dull and ponderous, and you may find yourself wishing to place the book aside rather than read it through to its conclusion. That would be a shame, for there are many adventures still to come, including some frightening moments and some derring-do action that will tickle your hearts. So when you reach the end of this section (which will be helpfully marked with “* * *”) skip ahead to the next section and resume reading as if you’d missed nothing.

Parents who are reading this book out loud to their children should also skip the following section.

* * *

Of course, there was no Tooth Fairy. When children placed their teeth under their pillow, the parents knew fully well that no magical fairy would appear in the home and secretly replace the tooth with money. It was, in fact, the parents themselves who did this, using their own money. This explained why rich children received large sums of money and poor children received small sums, in much the same way that the disproportionate gift distribution by Santa Claus always favored wealthy families, even though one might think that elves making gifts at the North Pole would be uninterested in a family’s socioeconomic status.

So in the middle of the night, after Nathan was asleep, Penny and Mary crept into his bedroom, moving with great stealth so as not to wake him up and expose the ruse. Penny reached underneath his pillow and withdrew the tooth, while Mary did the honor of sliding the money where the tooth had been.