Ms. Bixby's Last Day (12 page)

Dragon Man scratches the scruff on his chin. He's got scabs on his knuckles. Knife fights
and
fistfights probably. “All right. Here's the deal: You get ten to spend on your dying mother's
bottle of birthday wine. The rest I keep. Understood?”

We all look at each other. I'm not sure what the going rate is for bribing adults to break the law for you. I'm also not sure if ten dollars is enough to buy a bottle of wine that will complement a fifty-dollar cheesecake. I kind of doubt it, but we aren't in a position to negotiate. Topher nods and I nod along with him. Brand doesn't move.

“All right,” the man says. “Give me the cash. You just wait out here.”

I start to hand over the bills, but Brand stops me, grabbing my wrist. “No,” he says.

“Excuse me?” the man says.

I try to step on Brand's foot, to let him know that I don't think arguing with this tattooed stranger is a great idea, but he ignores me.

“No. We have to go in with you. We have to pick it out ourselves. It has to be perfect.”

For some reason, this makes the man snort, and the snorting makes his face turn ugly, his mouth screwed up at the corners. “The perfect ten-dollar bottle of wine. All right, then,” he says. “We all go. But if anyone asks, I'm yours and yours dad.” He points to Topher and Brand. “And you,” he says, pointing to me last, “were adopted from China.”

“I'm Japanese,” I tell him, then shut my mouth and stare
again at my shoes. The man takes the cash from Topher and me and folds it together, stuffing it in the back pocket of his jeans. Then he starts toward the door of What Ales You.

Topher turns to me and grins. He obviously wants me to tell him what a genius he is. To admit that he was right. Instead I watch as Brand hesitantly reaches out and tugs on the back of the man's blue T-shirt again.

“What's your name?” Brand asks. “What do we call you?”

The man stops to think. “You can just call me George,” he says. “George Nelson.”

What Ales You is a lot like Alexander's, except substitute bottles for books and brown stains on the floor for dust on the shelves. And the man standing behind the counter looks nothing like Mr. Alexander. For starters, he's big, almost Eduardo sized. He's dressed in a red polo shirt that's way too tight around his thick neck. He's reading a magazine about baseball. He looks up and nods at George Nelson, then frowns when he sees the three of us in tow.

“All right, kids,” George tells us, loud enough that even people in the next building over could probably hear. “Go pick out a nice,
inexpensive
bottle of wine for your mother.” He turns to the man behind the register. “It's her birthday tomorrow. The boys are making her dinner.”

“That's nice,” the giant black man behind the register says without conviction, then buries himself back in his magazine. I take one more look at the bars on the windows and follow Brand down the middle aisle, leaving our chaperone standing on the end.

“Let's hurry,” I say. “I don't want to be here any longer than we have to.”

“What are we even looking for?” Brand asks as we scan the legions of long-necked bottles that comprise the wine section.

“I don't know jack about this stuff,” Topher says.

Ms. Bixby didn't say what kind of wine she liked. It's probably not the sort of conversation you get into with sixth graders. I get out my phone, thanking my parents for splurging on unlimited data. The warning says my battery is only at eight percent, but this is important. Behind us, George Nelson has started wandering the aisles, picking up bottles of brown liquid and eyeing them carefully. Every second that we are in this place makes me more anxious. The huge man behind the counter peers at us occasionally from over the top of his magazine. The Cubs have a great shot at winning their division this year, according to the cover.

“Let's just get this one,” Brand says, holding up a bottle of something called Zinfandel. “It says it's white. The cheesecake is white. It matches.”

“I don't think it works that way,” Topher counters. He looks at me, and I Google white-chocolate raspberry cheesecake and wine. Turns out I'm not the first person to want to know. It's a question of compatibility. So many things are.

“Do you see a Moscato or a Brachetto anywhere?” I say, hoping I'm pronouncing them right. We all scan the shelves.

“There's this one. Robert Mondavi Napa Moscato d'Oro,” Topher says.

“Did you say ‘da Oreo'?”

“D'Oro. It has little leafy symbols all over it.”

“They all have leaves on them,” I point out.

“This one's called Bo-de-gas-val-de-vid-ver-de-jo-con-de-sa-ee-lo,” Brand says, as if he's singing a scale. “I think.”

“Too long. What about Asti spumante? I've actually heard of that, and it's only six bucks,” Topher suggests.

I thought spumante was a kind of ice cream. My parents ordered it for me at an Italian restaurant once. I had to eat around the chunks of cherry.

“If it's only six bucks, it's no good,” Brand says. Behind us, George Nelson is walking up and down the aisle by the door.

“Since when did you become a wine connoisseur?” Topher looks at me. “What does it say about this one?” He holds up a bottle with another long Italian-looking name. I punch it into my phone and find a website full of wine descriptions. I read it
out loud, keeping my voice at a whisper.

“‘Mild citrus and pear aromas combine with floral notes of rose, honey, and candied violets to create an intense yet delicate profile. Finishes fresh with just a hint of ginger.'”

“Sounds disgusting,” Brand says.

“Yeah,” Topher concurs, putting it back. “How about this one?” We all stand around my phone as I type it in.

“‘Black currant, cocoa, violet and smoky aromas, complemented by undertones of raspberry and loam, culminates in a silky and prolonged finish.'”

“God. Gross. Who
drinks
this stuff?”

“And what the heck is loam?” Brand wants to know. I start to look that up too, but Topher interrupts me.

“Here. This one is exactly ten bucks and I can pronounce it.” He holds up a bottle of wine called Woop Woop. Brand shakes his head.

“‘Look, Ms. Bixby, we got you a bottle of Woop Woop'? Let's try to find something that sounds a little classy at least,” he says. “Just get the first one. The one without the loam.”

As Topher and Brand stand there arguing, I follow a whim and type the name George Nelson into my phone. There are no George Nelsons who live nearby, at least according to the social networking sites or the online white pages. I do learn that George Nelson was the name of a famous American furniture
designer. He invented the family room—which is basically just the room with the biggest TV.

George Nelson was also the nickname of one of the most infamous bank robbers and known murderers in American history.

I put the phone down. Brand and Topher are debating what a candied violet might taste like, holding bottles in each hand. “Hey, guys,” I whisper, waving the phone at them. “Guys. I think I found something.”

Suddenly the guy behind the counter calls out to us.

“Boys?”

We all turn, and he points to the door.

“Your
dad
just took off without you.”

GEORGE NELSON IS GONE. AND ALL OF OUR CASH
with him.

Guess I'm probably not the first person in history to say that.

We are out the door in seconds, the bottles of wine set totteringly back on their shelf. Behind me I can hear the guy from What Ales You yelling at us—words that Brand would have to make up safer ones to replace—but we don't stick around to hear the whole thing. Something about us never stepping foot in his store again, I think. And a word about our mothers.

Outside now. Look left. Right. Scan the area. Blue shirt. Torn jeans. Black hair. There. On the corner. The thief looks back at us, then takes off down the street, moving fast.

“There he is! After him!”

I've always wanted to say that.

Brand is first, me right behind, Steve bringing up the rear, saying something about a backpack and bouncing and heavy, but I just yell for him to keep up. George Nelson is getting away. I catch up to Brand and huff out the play-by-play.

“Suspect is a Caucasian male. Five nine. One hundred eighty pounds. Fleeing on foot. Last seen at the intersection of whatever street we are running down and whatever street we are about to turn onto.” I wait for Brand to contribute something, ask if he's armed and dangerous maybe, if we should proceed with caution, but instead he just adds that the suspect is a freaking jerk. He's so angry he can't even come up with his own word.

We tear around the corner like zombies are chasing us, though the only one behind us is Steve, who already seems on the verge of collapse. Up ahead, George Nelson runs into the street, chancing another glance behind him as he launches himself into the intersection. A car screeches to a halt, tires peeling, and George slams into it, catching the bumper with his knee. He spins once but keeps on running, causing more screeching and honking. The driver of the car that nearly flattened him rolls down his window and starts cursing as Brand and I catapult ourselves into the street. You don't look both ways when you're chasing the bad guy.

Brand circles around the car that nearly ran over the thief,
but on an impulse I put both hands on the hood and more or less vault over the front of it. It's not the same as jumping on the thing and leaping from the top of one car to the next, which is what I
want
to do, but it's as close as I'm going to get. The guy in the car yells something about my mother, too, and lays on his horn. As we make it to the sidewalk I glance behind me to see Steve on the pavement at the edge of the intersection, leaning against a mailbox, waving us on.

“You guys . . . go on . . . without me,” he yells. Then he collapses, legs pretzled beneath him.

“Man down!” I say, but Brand doesn't stop. He can't stop. George Nelson is still at least thirty yards ahead of us. We fly past grimacing pedestrians. I'm surprised at how fast Brand is; it takes everything I've got to keep up with him. We cross in front of bars and restaurants, underneath the forest-green awnings of old hotels. The perp is less than fifty feet away now. We are gaining on him. The loose gravel kicks up from my shoes. My backpack pistons up and down with each step. Somebody I nearly run into tells me to watch it. I apologize, even though heroes never apologize. They are too busy saving the day. “We're catching up,” I yell at Brand.

Suddenly I feel a sharp pain in my side. I've been shot, obviously. Sniper on the roof, covering the criminal's escape. I reach down under my rib cage and hitch a breath.

No blood. No bullet. Just a cramp. I'm not used to running this much. I leave my hand pressed against my side and keep running. From somewhere far away I'm almost positive I hear helicopter blades. Or it could just be the sound of a car engine.

Up the street, the perp glances backward and sees that we are right behind him. He knocks over a metal trash can, tipping it onto the middle of the sidewalk with a reverberating
gong
. It's a classic move, I think. It's exactly what I would have done.

Brand simply goes around the trash can, just like he did the car. Practical.

I'm not Brand.

I'm James Bond. I'm Jason Bourne. I'm Super-freaking-Mario come to life. I'm the caped crusader, sans cape. I don't go around, I go over. I leap. I practically fly.

I catch the edge of the aluminum can with my back foot.

I fall, twisting, my front foot turning underneath me as I try to catch myself.

I hit the sidewalk hard, sprawled out, chin scraped, backpack catapulting up over my head. I cry out, completely un-007-like.

A few feet away, Brand hears my cry of pain and stops, looks back at me, then up at George Nelson, who is turning another corner.

“Go,” I wince, holding my chin with one hand, reaching for my foot with the other. “I'm all right.”

But he can see I'm not all right. My ankle screams. I can feel it pulsing. I can't even begin to try and move my foot, let alone stand. Maybe it's broken or maybe it's just sprained, but it shoots needles of pain up my leg. I try to crawl. I close my eyes and will myself to my knees.
Get on your feet.
What kind of caped crusader are you?
I scrabble upward, but the instant I put weight on my left foot, I tumble right back down, whole leg throbbing, blood pounding in my ears. The whole city swirls around me. I close my eyes.

This is so stupid. It was a stupid idea, giving our money to some total stranger. I bite down on my lower lip and pound the sidewalk with my fist, which only serves to make it hurt as well. Then I feel a pair of hands underneath my sweaty armpits.

“Come on, soldier,” Brand says.

Brand lifts me and pulls one of my arms over his shoulder, propping me up. He half carries, half drags me past the bags of trash over to a nearby bench, then bends down to inspect my ankle. I scan the street ahead of us. George Nelson is nowhere to be seen now. We've lost him. And our twenty-five bucks. Our mission is officially gefragt.

I wince as Brand pokes at my ankle, gingerly peels down my sock. “He got away,” I tell him.

“Yeah,” Brand says, unlacing my shoe and carefully slipping it off.

“He's got our money.”

“Yeah,” Brand says again, gently moving my foot by fractions of an inch, watching my face to see how much it hurts. I try not to show him. He slowly moves my foot in a circle and I suck in a breath and scrunch my eyes, blinking back tears. Heroes don't cry. The pain is shifting from a butcher-knife stabbing to a hammer-blow aching.

“I don't think it's broken,” Brand sighs. “Probably just twisted it.”

I look back at the metal trash can lying impertinently in the middle of the sidewalk. “I guess I shouldn't have tried to jump it.”

Brand nods. “You're not Superman, you know.”

I look away. I know that. Of course I know that.

I just don't need to hear it from him.

It's true I sometimes imagine my life is different. That I'm somebody else. Maybe more than sometimes. But I'm not the only one around who makes stuff up.

Adults are always telling you you can be whatever you want when you grow up, but they don't mean it. They don't believe it. They just want
you
to believe it. It's a fairy tale. Like the tooth fairy. Something they tell you that gets you excited about something not so fantastic. If you think about it, it's pretty gross—your teeth just falling out of your head, leaving bloody
sockets for your tongue to poke through. But the story makes it better and the dollar makes it worth it.

Then one afternoon you sneak into their bedroom and open the drawer of their nightstand, looking for the DS that they confiscated as punishment for your jumping on the roof of the car again, and you find the little Tupperware full of a dozen jagged pearls, caked brown with your own dried blood, your name written in black Sharpie across a piece of Scotch tape, and you stare at them for a moment in disbelief, wondering if maybe they aren't what you think they are. Maybe they are somebody else's teeth. They can't be yours, because
your
teeth are in Neverland. Or Toothtopia. Or outer space. Or wherever kleptomaniac fairies live.

So you confront them, your lying, scheming parents. Over breakfast, you ask your mom about the tooth fairy: where she lives, what she does during the day, how she manages to collect so many teeth each night, and how come some kids' teeth (like Robbie Dinkler's) are worth five bucks when yours only fetch a dollar apiece. And you see her search for some explanation that is at once both magical and believable, but you know she's just making it up as she goes.

It's the same with all grown-ups. They tell you what they think you want to hear and let life tell you the truth later. You can be an astronaut or the president of the United States or
second baseman for the White Sox, but you can't really because you hate math, aren't rich, and can't even hit the ball. It's just another fairy tale. So when your next tooth falls out, you figure you'll just ask them if they'd like to keep it or throw it away, because you're not buying it anymore.

Or maybe not. Maybe you won't tell them. Maybe you'll still put your teeth under your pillow.

Because sometimes it's better to believe in the impossible. To believe you are a secret agent or a private detective or a superhero and not just a kid with freckled cheeks and gangly arms who is too clumsy to leap a tipped-over garbage can in a single bound.

Until you are lying in the middle of the sidewalk, with a throbbing ankle and bloody chin, wishing you hadn't even tried.

Brand goes back for Steve. It takes longer than I thought it would. I sit and wait on the bench and poke tentatively at my already swollen ankle. It's not as bad as I first thought. I don't think it will need to be amputated. Unfortunately, there won't even be a scar to show off. But it still hurts like a mother whenever I try to move it.

When I see the two of them coming up the street, I know something is wrong. Not just that George Nelson has run off with our cash. Something else. Brand looks mad enough to punch through brick walls. Steve hangs his head in shame. He's
carrying his backpack in his arms, cradling it like an infant.

“Show him,” Brand says when they make it to my spot, my foot propped on my own backpack with the book for Ms. B. inside.

“Show me what?”

Steve reluctantly kneels down and opens his pack. I know what's coming. I can see the state of the white box, its corners crunched, one side caved in. He opens the lid.

There sits twenty-five bucks' worth of heaven, except it looks like it's been through hell. Michelle's formerly divine white-chocolate raspberry supreme cheesecake now looks like a giant, heaping turd of white and red Play-Doh mixed together. I'm guessing the heat and the running caused it to soften and then be repeatedly smashed into the sides of the box, taking a beating with every step. It's a deformed monster of a dessert now. The hunchback of cheesecakes. I bet it still tastes okay, but I'm not sure I'd be the first to try it. “It's lumpy,” I say. Kind of like my ankle.

“It's ruined,” Brand says. “The whole thing.”

He doesn't look at me when he says this, but I know that it's somehow my fault; I know that's what he means. Even though this was all his idea to begin with. Even though Steve was the one carrying the cake. It's still my fault. Without me there wouldn't have been a George Nelson. Without the high-speed chase, we'd still have our money, and our cheesecake would still look more like a wheel than a mound of bloody mashed potatoes. I stare
at it, sitting in its half-collapsed cardboard container. It looks nothing like the cakes sitting behind the glass back at the store.

“It's just a cake,” Steve replies, closing the lid and taking a seat beside me.

“An expensive cake,” I say.

Brand looks across the street. I think maybe he's looking for George Nelson still, but his eyes are glazed over, like he no longer recognizes where we are. Steve somehow wrangles the box back into his backpack, though at this point it seems we might just as well toss the whole thing in the trash. “So now what?” he asks timidly.

Even after all this, he's still looking at me for a plan. I don't know what to tell him. We've got three dollars in change, a twisted ankle, and a ruined cake. It's not as if we can run to the cops.
Excuse me, officer, but you won't believe this—the guy who we bribed to buy us a bottle of wine ran off with our money.
I can already hear the laughter. And I can't imagine Brand could work the same magic with the guy at What Ales You that he did on Eduardo and get us a free bottle, not after what that man said about our mothers. So then where do we go from here? That's what Steve wants to know. “What do you think?” I ask back.

“Well, I guess we could still do it,” Steve suggests. “Go to the hospital, I mean. To visit Ms. Bixby. While we're there, you could have your ankle looked at.”

I give him a dirty look. I can't help it. “Sure. That's a great idea. Let's go to the emergency room and have the nurse call my parents so I can explain how we skipped school to come downtown and I broke my ankle chasing the guy who stole all our money. Then we can call
your
parents and tell them the same thing.”

As soon as I say it, I feel bad. Steve's shoulders slump, chin digging into his chest. The thought of calling his parents terrifies him. He draws something in the gravel with his toe. “I'm just saying, it really doesn't matter what it
looks
like. What matters is that we tried. Right?”

Standing beside us, Brand takes one more look at Steve's backpack, then down the street where George Nelson disappeared. It looks like he's holding his breath; his face turns red for a moment.

“It's
not
right,” he says.

He turns his back to us and starts walking. But he's not headed in the direction of What Ales You or even the direction of the hospital.

He's headed back toward the bus stop.