Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie (13 page)

“Had to ask her about an algebra assignment,” I lied.

Kyle made a kissing sound, then grabbed his lip and said, “Ouch. Those damn pins.”

“Screw you.” I threw a bag of chips at him.

“Thanks.” He opened them and crammed a handful in his mouth, munched for a while, then said, “They ever put in a metal detector, she’s not getting past the front door.”

“They ever put in a fart detector, you’ll be standing outside, too.” I added a sound effect to drive home my point.

Kyle threw the chips back at me, which was part of my crafty plan, except that half of them flew from the bag.

The moment I got home, I tried to find the poem online, but I didn’t have a clue how to spell the title. I tried
Jawer, Jour, Jore
, and a bunch of other stuff. After a while I gave up. I couldn’t stay on the Internet too long. Our computer was really slow and it crashed all the time. About the only thing it was good for was writing. Before school started Dad said that we’d get a new computer for Christmas. I hoped he hadn’t forgotten.

It was a miracle. We stayed inside for gym on Thursday.

Lee wasn’t in school. Not that I paid all that much attention to stuff like that. Maybe I should have asked her to let me borrow that book. Or at least asked her to write down the title. It would be so cool to do a review of it. I could still hear the one line …
And suck the blood of all thy race
. I’d love to tell people about a book or a poem they didn’t know existed.

I knew I’d make a good reviewer. Mouth probably wouldn’t mind if I wrote one review sometime, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him for a favor. If I let him do something nice for me, that would make him think we were friends. Not that I could ask him right now. Mouth was absent, too. He hadn’t
been in school for a couple days. But that was no big surprise. All through middle school, he was out a lot. I had this image of him hooked up to a dictionary with an IV line, resupplying his word stream.

Friday, in homeroom, they handed out our report cards. It wasn’t a card, actually. It was a big slip of paper. I didn’t even have to get it signed. I did okay. I got mostly in the eighties. Except I got a 95 in English. Since it was an honors class, they bumped it up by 10 percent to adjust for it being a harder class. It came out to a 105, which was really beyond strange for me. I’d even managed an 85 in Spanish, which was a miracle since I still hadn’t discovered the secret of communicating with Ms. de Gaulle.

At lunch, I found out that Kyle got mostly in the seventies, and a 95 in gym. He was happy. “As long as I pass,” he said. I didn’t show him my grades. I figured he’d give me a hard time about making the honor roll. “I’ve got my penultimate game tonight,” I told him during lunch.

“Your what?”

“Next-to-last one. That’s what
penultimate
means.”

“So why don’t you just say
next to last
?”

“I like the way it sounds.”

“You’re a total dweeb. You know that?”

“I’ve heard rumors. But they’re unsubstantiated.”

There was still no sign of Lee. Maybe she’d run off to become a poet. Or a grave digger. If that was true, the football team could have used her. They got buried that evening.

Later, while I was working on my article, I was startled by
a scream from Mom. I was halfway out of my chair before I realized it wasn’t a cry of terror or pain. By the time all my internal organs had settled back where they belonged, I’d identified it as a scream of delight.

I went to the front door, where Mom had Bobby clutched in one of her death hugs.

“Hey,” I said when she released him.

“Hey, squirt,” he said.

I didn’t get too close. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in at least a week. His clothes were dirty, and he smelled like the bottom of a hamper. I think he’d hitched here. But it was good to see him.

Dad didn’t give him a hard time. He just said, “Welcome home.”

I could hear Bobby playing his guitar half the night. He had the volume low. I didn’t mind. He plays really well. He even played in a band when he was in high school. But they all drifted apart.

I hope I don’t just drift away after high school.

Bobby’s return meant I was abandoned on Saturday. Mom and Dad were helping him find a cheap apartment. After I finished my homework, Kyle and I hung out at his house. I can’t remember the last time we did that. I’d been so busy since school started.

“You heard from Patrick yet?” I asked.

Kyle shook his head.

“Me either.”

“You won’t,” he said.

“Sure I will.”

“No way. He’s gone. Why would he bother staying in touch? It’s not like we’ll ever see him again.”

I let it drop. I knew Kyle was wrong, but it wasn’t worth arguing about.

The folks came back home about an hour after I did. “Any luck?”

“Not yet,” Mom said. She got some ground beef from the fridge and started adding in all the magic ingredients that transform it into her amazing meat loaf. “There don’t seem to be many places available right now. There’s no rush. Bobby knows he can stay here as long as he wants. It’s his home.”

On Monday, Lee came up to me in homeroom and held out a book. “Here. This should give you pleasant dreams.” Instead of her usual fishnet stuff, she was wearing a top with long black sleeves, but I noticed something on her wrists. At first, I thought it was cuffs from another shirt. Then I realized it was bandages. On both wrists.

“Hey, spaceboy. Take the book. Duh?” She shoved it toward my face and I grabbed it.

I could tell from the musty scent of leather that it was an old book. “I’ll be careful with it.” I still couldn’t tear my eyes away from the bandages.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“This?” she asked, raising her arms. “I did something stupid in the kitchen.” She glared at me as if daring me to say anything more.

I thanked her again for the book, then went over to my seat.

k
yle got me in a headlock when I stepped off the bus.

“Guess what?” he said.

“What?”

“I’m wrestling.”

“Obviously. Want me to wrestle back?”

“No. I mean, I’m on the team. You should try out. It’s not too late.” He clamped down tighter on my neck. “I’ll put in a good word with the coach.”

“Not a chance.” Some of Bobby’s friends were wrestlers, and I saw what they went through making weight. It was pretty brutal. Sweating. Starving. Spitting into a cup, for crying out loud. I mean, how much can spit weigh? And I definitely wasn’t enjoying my current position as a human pretzel. Especially since it put my nose way too close to Kyle’s armpit.

“Well, you should go out for some sport,” Kyle said. He let go of my head and stepped back. “It’s a good way to fit in.”

He had a point. It was pretty obvious that you got treated better if you were on a team. Even a losing team. Except there wasn’t anything I could go out for. Some kids were good at sports. Some stunk. And some were right in the middle.
That’s where I was. I could shoot baskets okay when there was nobody in my face, but I was nowhere near good enough to play on a school team. Even if I grew six inches.

It would be wonderful to be good at something. I mean, I was a good reader, but that wasn’t like being a good ballplayer. Actually, there was one thing I was really good at—being the youngest Hudson kid. I’d mastered the art. And now I was getting benched.

After escaping Kyle’s headlock, I found myself the subject of an eyelock. Lee kept glancing over in homeroom, as if we shared some kind of secret. I felt like the guy you see in the beginning of just about every vampire movie—the first victim, who gets stalked during the opening credits. I avoided her gaze by taking out my notebook and making a list.

1. I really have no desire to find out in person what my small intestine looks like from the inside.
   
2. I’d rather not have to learn to exist on a daily diet of three Saltines and a Slim Jim.
   
3. Most of my joints only bend in one direction—and I’d like to keep it that way.
   
4. I look ridiculous in tights.
   
5. Two things get rubbed on the mat all the time—butts and faces. This can’t be good for my complexion.
   
6. There will without doubt be some form of painful hazing for the new guys.
   
7. Any activity that produces that much grunting should probably be performed in private.
   

When we were leaving the room, Lee waited for me by the door. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“The poem. Like it?”

“I didn’t read it yet.”

“You obviously have your priorities out of order.” She shook her head as she spoke. I expected to hear a fair imitation of Christmas sleigh bells, but much to my surprise, this motion didn’t produce any jangling from all the dangling pieces of metal.

“I guess.” I slipped away. But I had the book in my backpack. So I read the poem in study hall. The title was
The Giaour
. I didn’t have a clue what that meant. Didn’t matter. The poem was way beyond awesome. And way longer than I’d expected. It was more than thirty pages. The part Lee quoted was the best, but there were plenty of other amazing lines. I didn’t understand a lot of it. It was around two hundred years old, so some of the stuff Byron mentioned didn’t mean a thing to me. Like if I wrote about my favorite TV show, people two centuries from now might not have a clue what I was talking about. But it was still an amazing poem.

There was nothing to be thankful for on the football field that Friday. We played South Welnerton, our traditional Thanksgiving rivals. Though
rival
might not be quite the right word, considering they beat us 108 to 3. The scoreboard didn’t even go up that high. Maybe
executioner
would be a better choice.

I had an extra day to write my article. We always got the Monday after Thanksgiving off. It was the first day of deer season. I wasn’t sure whether they did this so kids could hunt
or because they were afraid some nearsighted hunters would take a shot at a school bus. Either way, I was happy to have a nice quiet day to hang out, read, and eat turkey sandwiches.

Tuesday, on the way out of homeroom, I gave the book back to Lee. She’d gelled her hair into tons of tiny spikes, which made her head look like some sort of dangerous green vegetable of the sort that was always trying to kill the Mario Brothers.