Parrotfish (12 page)

“He’s going to be okay, isn’t he?” I whispered.

She nodded, brushing at her cheeks. “Yes, yes, he will. Maybe you could find us some coffee somewhere, in a machine or at the cafeteria. That would be a big help.”

“Sure, Mom.”

“Get yourself something too. We might be here for a while.” She dug some quarters out of her purse, and as she pressed the change and a few dollar bills into my hand, she squeezed it lightly, then leaned in to circle my back with her arms. “Thank you, honey. Thank you . . . Grady.”

M
ichael got out of the hospital the next day, and by the weekend he was fine again. Mom wasn’t crying anymore or giving me spontaneous hugs, but she actually called me Grady two more times. The name didn’t flow from her lips—it sort of stuck in her throat and she coughed it up—but I wasn’t complaining.

Sebastian’s mother picked us up after school on Friday, because we had to take the video camera home to tape the chorus concert that evening. As we were loading the stuff into her trunk, Sebastian asked her if I could stay for dinner.

“It’ll be easier,” he said, as if he needed an excuse. “We have to be back at the theater by six to get set up.”

Mrs. Shipley was so tiny, she had to sit on a big pillow in order to see over the steering wheel. When she spoke, I was surprised to hear that her voice matched her stature.

“It’s fine with me if Grady wants to stay for
dinner,” she said, the teeny sound floating from her mouth like bubbles from a glass of champagne. “Of course, I don’t cook, Grady,” she said, turning her pointy chin in my direction. “Never bothered to learn how.”

“I can make an omelet,” Sebastian said. “Or grilled cheese sandwiches, if you’d rather.”

“And salad, honey. You can make me a salad,” she said as she peeked at the oncoming traffic and pulled out.

“Okay,” Sebastian agreed.

When we got to Sebastian’s house, an enormous place with more bookshelves than a bookstore and enough bedrooms for half a dozen kids, his mother curled herself into an easy chair in the living room, clicked on the gas fireplace with a remote control, and dove into a large book that had obviously been waiting for her return.

“That’s all she ever does is read,” Sebastian said as we poked through the refrigerator. “She’s not much good at anything else, especially people.”

“She seems nice, though,” I said, thinking how every family is bizarre in its own way.

“Oh, she’s nice,” he said. “Kind of useless, but very nice.”

“Did you tell her about me?”

“Sure.”

“Really? And she’s okay with it?”

“Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Well, some mothers wouldn’t be that happy to hear their son was hanging around with somebody like me.”

He shrugged. “She checked some books out of the library about transgendered people and read up on the subject. Anything is okay by her as long as it’s in a book. Besides, I’m sure she’s amazed that
anybody
is hanging out with me.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that Sebastian didn’t have friends—he certainly had a lot of acquaintances, and people seemed to like him. He was probably a little too odd, though, for anybody to want to hang with him all the time. Which made him the perfect friend for me, the complete oddball. Next to me Sebastian’s idiosyncrasies seemed barely noticeable.

As promised, Sebastian had rented a DVD of
Napoleon Dynamite
, and we went into the den to watch it so we wouldn’t bother his mother. At first I wasn’t getting into it too much. The main character, Napoleon, was the epitome of dorkiness, wearing moon boots and badly fitting clothes, his curly hair surrounding his head like a matted fur hat. He mumbled and slumped and seemed barely able to keep his eyes open. He told completely
unbelievable lies and carried Tater Tots out of the cafeteria in the cargo pocket of his pants.

But before long the bizarre humor of the film began to get to me. Napoleon was surrounded by people more wacko than he was, and the poor guy was just searching for the same things most teenage boys are: a best friend, a girlfriend, and a little respect. Before long I was hooting as loudly as Sebastian. When the film ended, we applauded.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” Sebastian asked. “I told you.”

“Yeah, it’s really funny and sort of heartbreaking at the same time.”

Sebastian bounced on the couch. “That’s another category of films I love: simultaneously funny and heartbreaking.”

“You know what?” I said. “You’re just like Napoleon.”

Sebastian stopped bouncing and looked at me quizzically, obviously not sure how to take my comment.

“Ah . . . thanks, I guess. I don’t dress
that
badly, do I?”

I laughed. “No, you don’t look like him, although your nerd genes do sometimes show through your clever disguise.”

“Admittedly.”

“I mean, the way Napoleon just naturally takes up with the odd kids—the shy girl and then Pedro, the new kid with the mustache and the Spanish accent. He doesn’t think about it—he just does it. And he kind of becomes their savior.”

Sebastian looked a little embarrassed. “Maybe he just needed some friends.”

“Still,” I insisted, “most people wouldn’t have chosen the oddballs for their friends.”

“Well, they’re crazy, then. The oddballs are always the most interesting people. Don’t you think?”

I shrugged. “Who am I to disagree? I believe I’ve been crowned King of the Oddballs.”

“King
and
Queen,” he said as I followed him out to the kitchen. “How about if I just order us a pizza for dinner? That’s what I do half the time anyway. It contains all the food groups, you know.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said. “I don’t want to discriminate against any food groups.”

Sebastian called for pizza delivery, then got some vegetables from the fridge and began to cut up a red pepper and a few green onions.

“Your mother really doesn’t ever cook?” I asked.

“Nope, never has. She’s a very picky eater, too. She doesn’t really
like
food much.”

“So you make her a salad every night?”

“Not every night. Sometimes I make scrambled eggs and toast.”

I paused a moment, then said, in my best imitation of the goofy drawl of Napoleon Dynamite, “Do the chickens have large talons?”

It was a line from the movie, and Sebastian got it immediately. He answered as the old Idaho farmer in the movie does: “I don’t understand a word you just said.”

We both grinned stupidly, as if this little exchange had been made in our own newly invented language. Which in a way was true.

Sebastian paid the pizza guy when he showed up, then delivered a pretty good-looking spinach salad to his mother in the chair by the fire.

“Did you start the coffee for me, sweetie?” she asked in her tinkly little voice.

“Just turned it on,” he replied.

She thanked him without raising her eyes from the book. We took our pizza upstairs to Sebastian’s room. Which was also huge, and also full of books.

“Have you actually read all these books?” I asked him.

“Not all of them, but lots of them. It’s what we Shipleys do.”

I nodded. “So, if I wasn’t here, would you be eating with your mother?” I asked, trying to make some kind of sense out of this household.

“Well, I might eat in the same room with her, but she’d still be reading. And I probably would too.”

“And if your dad was here, would he be reading too?”

“Oh, he’s never here for dinner. Why come home for salad and take-out pizza? He eats in restaurants most of the time with his clients or his partners.”

I thought of the usual Katz-McNair dinner-table routine—all three of us kids trying to broadcast our news louder than the others, Mom and Dad jumping up and down to get stuff we forgot to bring into the dining room and attempting to jam a few words of their own into the conversation. It was usually pandemonium, unless the whole thing was scripted, as on Christmas Eve.

“So,” Sebastian said, “Russ Gallo and Kita Charles will probably be breaking up pretty soon. Then you can make your move.”

I choked on a mushroom. “
What
are you talking about?”

He continued to calmly separate pepperoni rounds from mozzarella strings in order to eat the
pepperoni first. “Anybody can see that Russ is not up to handling a woman like Kita. She’s got places to go, things to do. She’s not your run-of-the-mill Buxton High girl.”

“No, she’s not, but that has nothing to do with me. I don’t know why you think I’m interested in K-Kita,” I said, cheese tangling around my tongue like rope. Obviously, it didn’t take a genius to see that I could barely even say the girl’s name without falling apart. But Sebastian was kind enough to not point that out.

He chewed his slice carefully. “I’m just saying, the time may soon be approaching when you could make a move on Kita, if you were so inclined.”

I had to laugh—the idea of me making a move on anybody at this point in my life was too ridiculous to contemplate.

“If Kita is as special and amazing as you say she is, why would she be interested in the school mutant?”

“Duh, Grady. That’s exactly why she
would
be interested. You’re both
special
. Didn’t you learn anything from Mr. Rogers?”

Ridiculous. I was hardly special the way Kita was special. Nobody was. “Didn’t you learn anything from Napoleon Dynamite?” I said. “Even he
had the sense not to go after the best-looking girl in the school. Besides, Kita and Russ make a good couple—I don’t see them splitting up.”

“Wait and see. Russ is a nice guy,” Sebastian said, “but he’s just a regular guy. Nothing extra. You’ve got extra.”

That I did. Extra in some places, and not quite enough in others. But would that make me interesting to the most amazing girl in Buxton?

I’d never been to a chorus concert before. Not surprisingly. The only people who showed up for this kind of activity were parents or maybe best friends. I was surprised—the singing was actually pretty good. And they all looked very professional: the girls in their white blouses and long black skirts, the five guys who’d had the courage to join the group in black tuxedos and bow ties. Of course, I couldn’t help wondering—if I’d joined the chorus, what would I have been wearing? A long black skirt and a bow tie? Always the question.

It was nice to see everybody enjoying themselves up there, singing harmony and coming in at just the right places. I was stupidly happy that those five guys hadn’t let their friends talk them out of joining a group that was obviously going to
be 90 percent female. The guys sang as loud and strong as the girls.

Of course, my eyes were pretty much glued to Kita during the whole performance, so I couldn’t really tell you who those five guys were. She had her hair pulled back with an elastic, but it still stood out gloriously around her face. What a beautiful face it was, her double ethnicities weaving themselves around each other in perfect harmony.

Russ Gallo was sitting in the back of the auditorium, not that far from where we had the camera set up. The place wasn’t more than half full, and most people sat up close to the stage. Russ slumped in his chair and put his feet up on the seat in front of him; he didn’t appear to be enjoying himself. Not that I spent much time looking at Russ, but when I did, he was studying his fingernails, not looking at the stage. I wondered if Kita could feel me staring at her. If she did, would she think the person who couldn’t take his eyes off her was her boyfriend? If she realized it was me, Grady the
Special
, would it freak her out?

When the concert was over, Russ got up and ambled over to where Sebastian and I were packing up the equipment.

“Hey,” he said, reaching down to pull in some wires.

“Hey,” I said back, feeling immediately guilty for the betrayal of him that had been going on in my overactive brain.

“You guys want to come out and get something to eat with us?” he said.

“With you and Kita?” I asked.

“Sure.”

Sebastian gave him an arched eyebrow look. “You guys want company?”

Russ shrugged. “Might be easier that way. Kita’s still pissed off at me.”

“About the Ben and George thing?”

“Yeah, that. And other stuff. I don’t know. She’s on my back all the time lately about one thing or another.”

“Well, couples have their ups and downs,” I said cheerily, as if I had any experience of couplehood or knew what the hell I was talking about.

“Yeah, I guess. Anyway, Kita will be happy to have you two along. She likes you.”

I had a Sally Field moment:
She likes me, she really likes me!
But I came to my senses when I saw Kita walking down the aisle toward us, her jawbone arranged in a manner that seemed to be saying she didn’t like anyone very much at the moment.

“The chorus sounded great,” I said, trying to wipe the frown off her face. “I totally enjoyed it.”

“Thanks, Grady,” she said, shooting me a half-baked smile. “The harmony was off in the last song, though.”

“Really?” Russ said. “I liked that one.”

“You did, huh? What
was
the last song?” Kita turned on Russ and stared him deep in the eyes. I could imagine crumbling to dust under that stare.

“You know, the one about . . . wasn’t it about a . . . a train or something?” Russ looked to us for help, but it was too late.

“Tell him, Grady. What was the last song we sang?”

My betrayal fantasy was coming true. “It was ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,’” I said quietly, thanking God I was a better listener than Russ.

“That’s right. There aren’t any trains in it, Russ. There’s a chariot in it, but no trains.” Kita propped one arm on her hip and pursed her lips, glaring at him.

“Oh, I guess I was thinking of a different song . . .”

“Admit it, Russell. You weren’t even listening. You didn’t want to come, so you just sat out here pouting. I could see you. You decided before you showed up that you wouldn’t like it, so you didn’t.”

Russ turned his palms up and appealed to Sebastian and me to help him. “Can you believe this? I told you, Kita, I’m not that into singing. I
came
, didn’t I? What do you want from me?”