Jack Strong Takes a Stand (10 page)

“Brody Newhouse,” I silently mouthed to them. “I swear.”

“NO WAY!” yelled Kevin Kessler, who had officially forgotten about his wounded toe.

Brody laughed again. “Sounds like you're having a bit of a party there. Celebrating a little bit?”

“Kind of, I guess.”

“So here's what I'd like to do,” he said, suddenly turning serious. “I'm going to want to come up there and see exactly what's going on. How long have you been on that couch?”

“Five days,” I said, suddenly realizing how puny that sounded.

But Brody didn't think so. “Five days on the couch? Holy moly, how have you not gone crazy?”

“Sometimes it gets a little boring, but basically it's been good.”

“What do you do all day?”

“Oh, you know, read, watch TV, do some exercises, hang out with my grandmother, stuff like that.”

“What about the bathroom?”

“That's the one time I'm allowed to get up. And for food, sometimes.”

“And your parents still haven't let you drop any of these activities?”

“My dad is pretty stubborn, I guess.”

“And so are you,” said Brody Newhouse. Then he whistled. “Son takes on father! Takes a stand by taking a seat! Overscheduled kids unite! This is golden!”

Cathy Billows elbowed me in the ribs. “What's he saying? Is it really him?”

“Sshhh!” I snapped. Wow, I was shushing Cathy Billows. The world was officially upside down.

“My friends can't believe it's really you,” I told Brody. “This is so cool.”

“Well, tell them it's really me,” he said. “And if it's okay by you, I'd like to come by Monday around five.”

“My schedule is wide open,” I said, which made him howl with laughter.

“I love this kid! I love him!” He put his hand over the phone, but I could still hear him say, “Shaina, I need to be at this Strong kid's house Monday at five. If all goes well and he's the real deal, we'll put him on Wednesday's show.” He returned to me. “Okay pal, see you Monday. No friends hanging around, I'm afraid. Just you and me. Don't want a circus.”

“Yes, Mr. Newhouse,” I said. I could tell he was about to hang up, so I added, “Oh, just one more thing.”

“What's that, kid?”

I held out the phone so I could say it just as much to my new friends as I could to Brody Newhouse.

“I'm the real deal.”

 

26

 

About twenty minutes later,
Jenny's and Kevin's moms came to pick up all the kids.

“Thanks for coming by,” I said to everyone, but mainly to Cathy.

“No problem, it was really fun,” she said. “It's cool hanging out with a celebrity and everything.”

“Yeah, sorry we can't move you back inside,” Kevin said, “but I'm already late for basketball.”

Baxter nodded. “Yup, some of us still have stuff we have to go to,” he said, and everyone laughed.

“No problem,” I said, but what I was actually thinking was,
How the heck am I going to get back inside?

The only logical answer—Dad—was also the only impossible answer.

Nana woke up from her nap about a half hour after they all left. She made herself a tongue sandwich and me a meatball sandwich, then joined me on the front lawn. I couldn't wait to tell her the exciting news about Brody Newhouse.

“Who's Brody Newhouse?” Nana asked.

I laughed. “Only the coolest guy on TV.”

“My grandson the star,” she said, just as my mom pulled into the driveway. She got out of her car and took it all in. Her screen door, her couch, and her son, all in the front yard.

She wasn't exactly thrilled.

“Does someone want to explain to me what's going on, and what happened to my rose bushes?”

Before I could answer, Nana jumped in. “You're son is going to be famous,” she said, chomping on her sandwich.

“Oh really,” my mom said. “This I gotta hear.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved.

She sat down next to me. “After you tell me about the screen door.”

*   *   *

I was telling my mom the whole story, and was up to the part about playing football in the yard, when I felt the first raindrop. Maddie started barking to get in. She hated rain almost as much as she loved anything edible.

My mom looked up to the sky worriedly. “Mom, have you heard anything about rain?”

Nana was a big fan of watching weather on TV. She nodded. “As a matter of fact, I have. It's supposed to rain quite a bit tonight.”

We all looked at one another, and then at the couch that had taken seven strong kids to move outside.

“Fantastic,” said my mom. Then she looked at me. “I don't suppose this will make you get up from the couch?”

I raised my arms to the sky. “Are you kidding? What's a little rain when you've got the host of
Kidz in the Newz
coming to your house to talk about putting you on TV?”

“You're lucky I was planning on replacing this ratty old thing anyway,” Mom said, shaking her head at the couch. “I'm going to call Dad.”

She and Nana took Maddie inside, and a minute later Nana came out with a poncho.

“Are you sure about this, kiddo?”

“I'm sure.”

“Well,” she said, wrapping the poncho around me, “you're a better man than I.”

 

27

 

The next two hours
were probably the wettest of my life. They were pretty miserable, too.

And I would say that I thought about giving up my strike and going inside, oh, somewhere around 643 times.

But I didn't. I stayed there. For some crazy reason, I stayed. A crazy reason that was some combination of Cathy Billows, Brody Newhouse, and the fact that I actually believed in what I was doing.

Luckily for me, it wasn't cold, or else I probably would have gotten pneumonia and died before the big TV show.

At one point, my mom came out and gave me soup. At another point, Nana came out and gave me hot cider.

I looked at her. “You guys do know it's not winter, right?”

“Well, you can't be too careful,” Nana said.

The cider was delicious.

It started raining harder.

Maddie stood at the window, staring at me like I was crazy.

She had a good point.

I had nothing to do because I couldn't use my cell phone in the rain, I couldn't read in the rain, and I sure couldn't watch TV in the rain. I started to understand why the contestants on
Now What?!?
were so miserable. The only thing to do was to curse Kevin Kessler and his stupid idea to move the couch outside, even though four hours earlier, it had been like the best idea ever.

So I hunkered down in my poncho, sipped my cider, and stared at the gray sky.

Eventually, I got up off the couch and headed inside to use the bathroom. As I stared at myself in the mirror—a wet mess—I couldn't believe how much had changed. In five days, I'd gone from a pretty normal, somewhat invisible, typically overscheduled kid to a mini-celebrity, local hero, and determined but soggy crusader.

Would it be worth it?

I had no idea.

*   *   *

By the time my dad pulled into the driveway, it was pouring so hard he couldn't even see me when he got out of the car.

He was halfway up the front steps when he saw his only son sitting in the front yard, on a couch, in a rainstorm.

He stopped and stood there, his suit soaking in the rain. Then he came over to me and said the first words he'd said to me in two days.

“Better bundle up.”

And he went inside and had dinner.

*   *   *

An hour and a half later, it had gotten pitch black and was still raining. Then the porch light came on, the screen door opened, and my dad came outside with a flashlight. He walked up and stood over me.

“Did you know that I was the first member of my family to go to college?”

“Yup,” I answered. He'd told me that a lot. Usually when he was trying to talk me into doing something that was good for college.

“What I bet you didn't know,” he said, “was that I didn't want to go.”

I squinted into the blinding flashlight but didn't say anything.

“My dad owned a kitchen supply store,” Dad continued. “It was pretty tiny, but it got us by. I worked there every summer from the age of eleven. I actually loved it. I thought for sure he was going to hand the store down to me. And when I was in high school, and he got sick”—my dad stopped for a minute, the way he always did when he talked about his dad getting sick—“I told him I wanted to take over the store right after I graduated. I knew if I didn't take over, he was going to have to sell it. Which was a big deal, because the store had been his dad's store, and his dad's dad's store before that.”

The flashlight suddenly went out, and my dad started fiddling with it. “Dang battery,” he muttered.

“So what happened with your dad?” I asked him in the dark.

“Well, we got in a pretty big fight, is what happened. My dad told me there was no way I wasn't going to college. I told him there was no way I was. We screamed at each other all night. We were both incredibly stubborn, I guess. Sounds familiar, right?”

He stopped, like he was actually waiting for an answer, so I said, “Right.”

“I didn't realize, of course, just how sick he was. On the day after I graduated from high school, I went down to the store just like always. But it was boarded up. There was a big sign on the door that said SOLD.”

Then my dad sat down on the couch next to me.

“He died a year later. My mom told me much later on that the sale of the store paid for the first two years of college, and his life insurance paid for the rest.”

The flashlight suddenly came back on, and I was able to see his face. It was wet. I think with rain.

“I wish I'd gotten to know him,” I said softly. “He sounds pretty awesome.”

“He was,” my dad answered, after a minute. “Even though he used to drive me crazy a lot.”

We sat there for a minute, just listening to the rain slow to a drizzle.

“People are paying attention to me,” I said to my dad. “Kids are noticing. Kids want to go on strike just like me! How awesome is that? How can I go back to the way it was before?”

I waited for his answer, but there was none.

“And besides,” I added, “you still haven't told me I can quit tennis and karate and stop going to tutors.” I looked up at him, finally. “Sorry, Dad.”

He shined the flashlight up into the sky. “Looks like the rain stopped. Good night.” Five minutes later, my mom called me in for a bathroom break. I changed into my pajamas and got a warm blanket. Then I went back outside, lay back down on the wet couch, and thought about what my dad said until I fell asleep.

*   *   *

The next morning when I woke up, the couch and me were somehow back in the TV room. My dad was sitting in a chair next to me, watching SportsCenter.

“How did you get me back in here?” I asked.

“You're a good sleeper” was all he said as he left the room.

 

28

S
TRIKE
—D
AY
6

On Saturday,
for the first time since the strike began, I felt like playing the cello. I'd been practicing for about an hour and a half when my cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Jack? It's Lucy Fleck.”

She was whispering for some reason.

“Hey, Lucy. What's up?”

“I wanted to check in with you to make sure you were well.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She lowered her voice even further, to a level only dogs could hear. “Are you?”

“I'm good,” I told Lucy.

“I think what you're doing is extreme,” she said, “but I admire your perseverance.”

“Thanks.”

“I can imagine your father is quite upset with you.”

Now it was my turn to whisper, since he was in the next room. “My dad freaked out when I told him. He's still freaked out. But you know what? The world didn't end. I'm still here. Not to mention the fact that Brody Newhouse is coming over on Monday.”

“WHAT?!?” Lucy shouted. “I mean, what?!?” she repeated, returning to a whisper.

“It's true.”

“I imagine there's a story behind that bit of news.”

“There is.” And I told her the whole story: about the kids coming over, the toe injury, the touch football game, the phone call from Brody, and sleeping in the rain. Afterward, I waited for her to congratulate me and tell me how awesome it was that I was going to be on a popular TV show about brave kids.

But the only thing she said was “Baxter Billows was at your house? That's interesting.”

“Why, do you like him?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said, but I could almost feel her blushing.

“Okay, sorry.”

“I have to go,” she said. And she hung up.

I guess deep down, girls are all the same.

Even piano-playing, fencing, ice-skating girls.

 

29

 

There's not much to report
from the rest of the weekend. I spent most of my time waiting for Monday and the meeting with Brody.

*   *   *

On Saturday afternoon, Leo came over to play video games. After about fifteen minutes, I told him that video games are a lot less fun when you can play them whenever you want.

“That's impossible,” Leo said.

“Trust me,” I told him.

We ended up just hanging out and talking about Cathy Billows and her adorable lack of ability at touch football. (Well, I talked, and Leo shook his head and rolled his eyes.)

*   *   *