Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie (15 page)

I waited by the outside doors for Dad. I could hear the voices floating out from the auditorium. Julia sang like an angel.

“How’d it go?” Dad asked when he picked me up.

“Fine,” I lied.

When I saw Mr. Perchal in the hall the next day, I ducked my head and avoided his eyes. No point reminding him of what was probably the worst experience of his theatrical career. As I started to dash past him, he said, “Got a moment?”

“Sure.” I wondered whether he was going to ask me to take a vow never to sing in public again.

“How’d you like a spot on the stage crew?”

“Stage crew?”

He nodded. “Show business is more than just actors and singers.”

I guess he felt sorry for me. “I’m pretty busy,” I told him.

“This won’t interfere with any of your activities. I promise. Our schedule is very flexible. We could really use your help. The crew is the backbone of the troupe.”

“What do they do?”

“Not much. Mostly just make sure things run smoothly. The whole experience is a lot of fun. The crew and cast are like one big family. You’ll see.”

One big family
.

It sounded perfect. I’d get to hang out with the cast and I wouldn’t have to sing or dance. Or learn any lines. What could be better than that? I’d probably be able to do my homework while I sat around backstage. “Okay, sure. I’ll give it a try.” I could even offer to help Julia learn her lines.

“Great.” He flashed me the same smile I’d gotten from Mr. Franka when he hooked me into picking the topic for April. Then, as he walked off, he whistled a tune all the way down the hall.

Who’d have thought something as simple as a crib would bring two skilled mechanics to their knees. I was smart enough not to even go into the room. Dad was kneeling on the floor, surrounded by bolts, nuts, screws, slats, dowels, and odd pieces of metal twisted into all sorts of strange shapes. Bobby was next to him, holding a screwdriver in one hand and a pair of pliers in the other. A direction sheet lay on the floor between them. Mom hovered above them, her arms crossed on her ever-expanding stomach.

“Will it be ready by May?” she asked.

Dad glanced at her, nodded, then slid the directions in front of Bobby. “Read me the first step.”

Bobby pointed to the top of the sheet. “No need. There’s a
diagram. Directions are stupid, anyhow. The people who write them have never put anything together in their lives.”

I thought Dad would get annoyed, but he said, “I think you’re right.” He moved the sheet out of his way. “We won’t be needing this.”

Mom sighed and glanced up at the ceiling. I went downstairs. A half hour later, Mom joined me and started making a batch of cookie dough. I didn’t ask her how it was going. Every five or ten minutes, I could hear Bobby shout something. Once, I heard the clatter of a tool hitting the floor.

Two hours later, when I went upstairs and peeked inside the room, they had something in front of them that Dr. Seuss might have drawn to imprison a baby Sneetch. They seemed to be taking it apart.

Sunday, when I looked in, the whole crib was assembled. There were a couple extra parts lying on the floor, but I figure they weren’t important.

Monday, when I got to school, I saw a crowd of kids around the side door to the stage. I recognized some of them from the audition. I hung back, since I figured they’d probably recognize me, too. After the crowd thinned, I went over to see who’d gotten what role. I read through the list twice before the reality of it sunk in.

“I am such an idiot,” I muttered as I slunk off toward homeroom.

i
’d gotten in the habit of looking at Lee’s locker whenever I passed it. Tuesday morning, she’d put up a sign that said
This is not a cantaloupe
. But someone had written
Drop dead, freaky bitch
across it in black marker. It must have just happened. I could still smell the sweet chemical aroma of the marker. Kids passing by in the hall looked at the locker and laughed.

I stood there and stared at it when I should have been keeping an eye on the hall around me. Too late, I saw Wesley Cobble walking up. He glanced at the locker for an instant, but didn’t seem to notice anything. Maybe he couldn’t read. But he could see. He homed in on me and hit me up for a contribution. But after he moved on, the real problem was still right in front of me. I thought about those times on the news when they showed some symbol of hate spray-painted on a wall. Even though Lee was kind of freaky, this was just plain wrong. Someone should take down the sign. I reached out, not sure whether I wanted to get linked with her in people’s minds.

I remembered Kyle chasing after the guy who’d knocked my books to the floor. He hadn’t even hesitated. Or worried
about getting hurt. But Kyle and I were friends. Friends stand up for each other. I tried to tell myself that this was different. I barely knew Lee. She wasn’t a friend of mine. I had a hard time even looking at her face.

But it just wasn’t right, no matter how I felt about her. I took the sign down and tore it up. I hoped she hadn’t seen it. She might act all tough, but it had to suck when someone called you names in front of the whole school.

I watched her in homeroom, trying to guess whether she’d seen the sign. I couldn’t tell.

Later, as I was walking out of English class, I heard Mr. Franka mutter, “Why do they kill us with all this paperwork?”

I wandered over to his desk. “Ninety percent of everything is crap,” I said.

Without even glancing up from the piles of paper on his desk, he said, “Sturgeon’s law. How true.”

Score.

Wednesday morning, while I was waiting for the bus and contemplating the purchase of a football helmet, Mouth started talking about his next book review.

“I’m doing
The Princess Bride
this week.”

“You must have a lot of free time,” I said. That was a pretty long book to finish in a week. My own life involved far fewer books than I wanted. And far more sports. My butt had been permanently marked by those rounded bolt heads that made the bleacher seats so awfully comfortable. I’d lost track of how many games I’d been to. I guess if I really wanted to know, I could count the rings on my butt.

“I didn’t have a chance to read the whole thing,” Mouth said. “But I rented the movie. I skimmed a lot of the book, too. I just didn’t read every single word. That’s one of the tricks I learned. You can get a pretty good feel for a book without reading everything. I try to pick books that are also
movies. It makes reviewing a lot easier. Or short books. With those, you can read most of it. If I do a hardcover book, almost everything I need to know is already on the cover flap. Sometimes, I’ll pick a book because the cover is awesome. This reviewing stuff is a lot trickier than it looks.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, when I turned away from Mouth, I saw something that completely crushed my spirits. Sheldon went by. In a car. I guess his mom was driving him to school. I wanted to chase after them and scream, “Take me with you!”

When I got on the bus, I looked all around, hoping to spot a replacement decoy. I didn’t see one. That’s when it hit me—I was the new Sheldon.

Slightly later, I got to restore at least a pinch of those spirits. On the way out of homeroom, I caught up with Lee and said, “Sturgeon’s law.”

She patted me on the arm. “Well done.”

I guess the head smacking really had done something to my brain, because I brought my football satire—the one I’d written during student council—to the newspaper meeting. Mandy wasn’t there yet. While we were waiting, one of the artists passed around a couple really awesome cartoons he’d drawn.

“Check this out,” I said. I pulled the paper from my notebook. It was too good not to share. I’d called it “A Football Feast.” I compared the players to the food in the snack stand. Vernon was a hot dog, of course. The defensive line was
nachos because they crumbled so easily. The offensive line was soda. They lost their fizzle early in the game. I didn’t say anything bad about individual players, except for Vernon. And it’s not all that bad being called a hot dog. I actually complimented a lot of the players, though in a fun way. For example, Terry Swain was pretty fast. So I said he was hot chocolate because he burned up the field, and all the girls thought he was sweet. Terry was also the center on the basketball team.

Mouth laughed so hard, I thought he was going to lose his lunch. Everyone else liked it, too. Then Mandy came in and we got down to business.

I nearly died when I got home and realized I didn’t have the article. The last time I’d lost track of something I’d written, I’d ended up as a sports reporter. If this piece got in the wrong hands, I’d end up as a large bloodstain. But when I got to the bus stop the next morning, Mouth was waiting for me.

“Hey, you forgot this,” he said, handing the piece back to me.

“Thanks. I can’t seem to hold on to anything.”

“I know what you mean.” He started to tell me about all the stuff he’d misplaced.

It wasn’t just papers that could get misplaced. I didn’t see Kyle at lunch. Not at first. I finally spotted him over at the minor-jocks table with a bunch of the JV wrestlers. I caught up with him on the way out and asked, “What’s up?” Which was really my way of asking,
What are you doing
?

He shrugged and said, “They kind of like the team to hang
out together. We’re all in training, so it helps if we eat at the same table.”

I waited for him to suggest that I join him tomorrow. He didn’t. Maybe I should dye my hair green and start wearing black shirts with pictures of dead rock stars. And stick some pins in my face.

1. Fish in any form. (Fish sticks are safe, since they don’t contain any actual fish.)
   
2. Turkey served more than a week after Thanksgiving.
   
3. Anything with
   steak
   in its name. Especially if it’s chopped up.
   
4. Anything with
   surprise
   in its name.
   
5. Brown lettuce.
   
6. Green meat.
   

1. Jell-O (unless the lady who sneezes a lot is working in the back).
   
2. Pizza (unlike real pizza, this kind is never served dangerously hot).
   
3. Potato chips.
   
4. Ice cream.
   
5. 5. Fish sticks (see above).
   

Monday.

Hush.

It was a day of silences. In the morning, for the first time in the history of the universe, Mouth actually stopped talking. We’d just gotten off the bus and headed into the school. He was describing some of the things his dog had eaten—both organic and inorganic. Right in midsentence, he stopped. The sudden absence of sound was as jolting as the blare of an alarm clock.

A second later, I saw what had caught his attention. Lee strolled toward us, wearing a black T-shirt with two words printed on it in large red letters: FREAKY BITCH. It looked like one of those do-it-yourself iron-on things.

She grinned at me and did a very feminine curtsy, then floated on by without a word.