Okay for Now (9 page)

"How's that going to help?" I said.

Every kid in the classroom laughed. Every one.

Principal Peattie did not laugh.

"Read the next rule," he said.

I looked down at the sheet. "I think Doug Swieteck has to go to the bathroom now," I said. "But

he'll only need to go once, probably. He's pretty sure, anyway."

Exploding laughter all over the place.

Principal Peattie did not laugh.

"Then Douglas may go to the bathroom."

I stood up.

"And while he's there, he should see that his T-shirt is properly tucked in. He may as well get in the

habit now. And he might think about when he's going to get his hair cut, since I don't let boys who look

like girls into my school."

More exploding laughter all over the place.

What a jerk.

I left. Principal Peattie closed the door behind me.

On the way to the bathroom, I went by the classroom where the A-to-L kids were in their session.

They were all quiet and kind of sitting forward, and I could hear Mr. Ferris's voice. "Within a year,

possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done.

NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this

one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I

could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the

months ahead. You come to dream dreams. You come to build fantastic castles up into the air. And you

come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will

command that mission were boys your age, no one knew that they would walk on another world

someday. No one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now,

what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid from Washington Irving Junior High

School would grow up to do'...what? What castle will you build?"

I didn't go to the bathroom. I waited outside the auditorium for my mother to come out. And when

she did, we went through the lobby doors and I looked up at the moon. Then we headed on home by

way of this ice cream place around the corner and down a block from the library. We had black-and-

whites, my mother and me. And I paid for them.

You know how that felt?

My brother came upstairs later that night, while I was thinking about Audubon's birds, and buying a

black-and-white for my mother, and planting daisies with Lil Spicer, and looking out the window at

the spectacular moon.

Remember how I said that when you're feeling good, something always happens to wreck it all?

Remember?

"Hey, Douggo," he said. I think you can figure out for yourself how my brother said
Douggo.
"Hey,

Douggo, what are you doing with yourself these days?"

"Nothing," I said.

"That's not what I heard," he said. "I heard you were going to the library."

"So?"

He started to laugh the way you'd imagine someone with a twisted criminal mind would laugh.

"So, you don't even know how to read," he said.

"I do too know how to read."

The twisted criminal mind laughed again. "Douggo," he said, "if you had to read directions to pee

in a toilet, we'd be spreading newspapers for you all over the house."

Okay, here comes this weird moment. I know I should have jumped off the bed and stomped across

the room and flattened him against the wall and punched his lights out.
Now let's see
you
read,
I

would have said. If Joe Pepitone had been in the room right then, that's what he would have done.

But I didn't think about that at first. At first, all I could think about was the Arctic Tern, heading

down into the water, about to crash, his neck yanked back because he knows he's going to smack into

it. The eye.

And then—and this is the even weirder part—I thought of Lucas and wondered where he was and

if he was looking out from wherever he was, if he was seeing the spectacular moon like I was seeing

it.

Then my stupid brother took off his stupid sweaty socks and lobbed them over at me. "Hold on to

these until I need them tomorrow," he said. I threw them on the floor. More twisted criminal laughter.

"It's all right, Douggo," he said. "Don't get mad. I'm sure lots of kids in the eighth grade can't read."

I turned over. He was snoring a long time before I finally fell asleep.

***

back door, in case someone with a twisted criminal mind was waiting for me out front.

It turned out that the library did have a back door—locked, of course. But it didn't matter. My

brother wasn't waiting out front. Probably the pack had found some new place to prowl.

So I climbed the six steps and went in by the front door. Mrs. Merriam was at her desk, cataloging

like crazy because I guess it's the most important thing in the whole wide world. She had her loopy

glasses on, and when she looked up and saw me, she smiled. Sort of. It was the kind of smile that said

I know something you don't.
The kind of smile my brother would get when he knew that my father

was looking for me. The smile of a twisted criminal mind.

But who knows? Maybe something lousy had just happened to her. Maybe she was lonely. Maybe

she hated stupid Marysville too. Who knows? So maybe I could, once, try being nice to her. Once.

What did I have to lose?

"Hey, Mrs. Merriam," I said. Pretty cool.

"Hey, yourself," she said. "You're not always going to get everything you want, you know. That's

not what life is like. Maybe after today, you'll understand that."

See what trying to be nice will get you?

I went upstairs to see if Mr. Powell was with the Arctic Tern. I held the rolled paper in my hand.

The one with the feathers.

"You don't need to run up the stairs," hollered Mrs. Merriam.

Mr. Powell was by the case, looking down into it. His hands were on the glass like he was trying to

press it down.

"Hi, Mr. Powell," I said.

He looked up. "Hello, Mr. Swieteck," he said. He puffed his breath out and ruffled the light hairs

all around his face. "How did the problem with the feathers go?"

"I think I solved it, but it took a few tries."

"That's how it should be," he said. "Let's see." He took a couple of steps toward me and reached

out his hand.

And that's when I knew that something was wrong. He should have asked me to spread the paper

across the glass so we could compare what I did with what Audubon did. But he was reaching out his

hand.

So I handed him the paper and then walked over to the glass case and looked inside.

The Arctic Tern was gone.

"Mr. Swieteck," Mr. Powell said.

I looked at him.

"They're Large-Billed Puffins," he said.

I looked down into the case. Whatever they were, these birds were chumps. Fat-bodied and thick-

legged and looking about as dumb as any birds could possibly be and still remember to breathe. One

looked like he had just fallen into the water and was doing everything he could to keep his face from

getting wet. The one on land stood there watching like a jerk, as if he didn't even care that the other

one was bobbing up and down, trying not to drown. Probably he was too stupid to care. Or maybe he

had a twisted criminal mind and that's why he didn't care.

"I know," said Mr. Powell. "They look a little bit different than the Arctic Tern."

A little bit different? A little bit different? I don't know. You take away the sleek white feathers of

the tern and put on stubby dark ones. You take away the pointed wings and stick on dumb oval wings.

Then you take away the long neck and throw in a body like an old football, and stick a stupid yellow

cup over the stupid bird's face instead of the pointed beak, and I guess a puffin looks a little bit

different than a tern.

Mr. Powell walked over to the case and looked down at the puffins. "It was about time to change

the page anyway." He shook his head and coughed lightly. "I thought I'd show you some elements of

texture since you're already getting into it. Let's take a look at what you did with the feathers first."

"You didn't just change the page," I said.

He looked at me. "No," he said. "I didn't."

He spread my page over the stupid Large-Billed Puffins. He pointed to the left wing. "I see you

figured out the problem pretty quickly."

"You can't draw in every feather," I said. "They start to look like nothing but a bunch of lines next to

each other."

His hand moved over to the bottom rows on the right wing. "Tell me what you did here."

"I drew just a few lines to show how the feathers curve in."

"And that," Mr. Powell said, nodding, "is what an artist does. "You're right: you can't draw in every

feather. But you can draw in the patterning of the feathers so I can see how they are shaped and how

they lie on the bird's body. When you draw in the pattern, your viewer's eye will fill in the rest. Now,

look at this."

He took an eraser out of his pocket and rubbed out one of the lines for the tern's body. "Draw in

these feathers like you've done the others."

"I don't have a line to show where they stop."

"That's right," he said. "So you'll have to suggest it."

So I drew, while the Large-Billed Puffins bobbed in the water below me like the chumps they

were. And by the time I was done, Mr. Powell had erased all the lines, and my tern's feathers were

plunging against the air like all get-out.

Mr. Powell asked if he could keep my drawing.

You know how that feels?

A few nights before Washington Irving Junior High School was doomed to start, Spicer's Deli on

Main Street, Marysville, got broken into. It happened sometime after ten o'clock. And in case you

were wondering, my jerk brother was home then, and for the rest of the night.

And if you
were
wondering, you weren't the only one.

Mr. Spicer was wondering too.

And so were the policemen he sent to find my brother.

They came the next day when my mother and I were washing up the dishes after breakfast. They

were mostly polite—probably because my father was out somewhere with Ernie Eco and he wasn't

there with a whole lot to say and letting himself say it. So my mother did the talking. No, she hadn't

heard that Spicer's Deli had been robbed last night. No, she had never shopped there, but her youngest

son worked for Mr. Spicer. She did not know Mr. Spicer and she had no idea why he would think that

her son had anything to do with the robbery. Yes, she knew exactly where he had been last night:

home. No, he had not gone out after nine o'clock. Yes, she was sure of that. Yes, she was very sure of

that. Yes, very sure.

The two policemen did not look very sure.

They looked at me. Yes, I knew Spicer's Deli—I worked there. No, I didn't hear my brother go out

last night. No, I'd never seen him near Spicer's Deli. Nope, I was sure. Never. Just ask him.

The policemen said they would do that. Did I have any idea where he was right now?

I didn't. My mother didn't either.

They looked at each other. They said they'd ride around some and if it was okay with my mother,

they'd ask my brother the same questions—if they happened to see him, that is.

My mother said that would be fine.

When they left, she leaned against the sink. Her breathing was quick and short.

"Douggie," she said, "you don't think..."

"He was here all night," I said.

She looked at me.

"He was," I said.

And in case you think I'm lying because of the lie I told about not seeing him at the deli—which, by

the way, isn't that big a lie and one you probably would tell too—I know that he didn't leave last night

because I was awake for most of it. I was awake with a flashlight and drawing the tern's feathers

again, the way they were supposed to be. On a new page, I drew in the body lines lightly, and then I

erased them as I went. The feathers came out pretty good. You could feel them moving through the air.

They were moving the way no stupid Large-Billed Puffin's feathers could ever move. And I'm not

lying.

So my brother didn't rob Spicer's Deli, no matter who says he did.

This didn't matter a whole lot to my father, who came home really late with Ernie Eco after

someone had told him that he'd seen the police talking to his son. I heard the door slam open and his

feet on the stairs— taking them two at a time—and him calling for my brother, who probably wished

he hadn't come home that night, who sat up in bed and said, "I didn't—" before my father was on him.

I guess I should have been happy about what happened to him. Like he was when it happened to

me. But I saw my brother's face when my father flipped on the light switch.

The terrified eye.

"Look at the way Audubon has arranged the two puffins," said Mr. Powell.

"You mean the two stupid puffins," I said.