Sticks (6 page)

“This is close enough!” I yell. I jump out of the car and run the last block to Francine’s.

*   *   *

“See,” says Francine, holding out her official Magicians’ Society card. “There’s a rabbit on it. I’ve got to have a rabbit for my act.”

Arlen and I look at the picture of a little rabbit coming out of a black hat and nod. Francine is eleven years old and the only official magician either of us knows. I asked her once if she could make Buck Pender disappear and she said she couldn’t.

Francine opens her mouth and picks at her braces. “You can’t play Vegas without a rabbit. I talked to Sister Immaculata about it and she said that what could really convince my parents to get me one is if I come up with a list for why I need it.” Sister Immaculata is the new nun at St. Xavier’s Academy and Francine talks to her all the time.

“She has a past, you know,” Francine continues. “She used to work in
advertising
. It’s better when nuns have a past because it means they understand life. I’m going to be a nun after I’ve played Vegas.”

Francine adds glitter to her sign that she made out of posterboard. She’s used four bottles of red glitter on it already. It says

You can read it from half a block away if your eyes are decent. Francine wants a paying magic job more than anything.

She steps back, brushes glitter off the plaid jumper the nuns make her wear, and squints at the poster. “Well,” she says, “Buck Pender’s been at it again.” Arlen and I move closer. Buck got transferred to Francine’s school in January after getting kicked out of Thomas Edison Junior High for being a scum. Francine says Catholics let anybody in. The nuns like a challenge.

Francine watches Buck’s every move, too, even though he’s in seventh grade and she’s in sixth. “Buck took longer in confession today than anyone,” she reports. “Only God and the priest know what he’s been up to.
But
his parents came to school yesterday and I overheard them talking to Father Gilly about
military
school.”

Francine overhears things by standing near open doors and listening.

“One that’s far away,” I add. “Maybe he could get transferred before the tournament.”

She puts her hands on her hips. “You’re going to have to think of another way to win, Mickey.”

“I’ve thought of one.” I tell about Joseph Alvarez and my mom.

Francine wrinkles her long nose. “This Joseph Alvarez smells
fishy
. I’m sure your mother is protecting you from the truth about him. He’s probably a criminal. Sister Immaculata once sat next to a man
on the train all the way to St. Louis and they talked for two entire days and then he tried to rob her when they got off the train and she had her nun suit on! But
then
this other man came out of nowhere and frightened the robber away. Sister Immaculata got to keep her money and her life because she walks with God.”

“I don’t think he’s a criminal,” I say.

“You never know about people,” Francine says. “Maybe only your mother knew his terrifying secret and she was keeping it from the family because your dad was so sick. Maybe his whole family is crazy!”

“My dad taught him how to play!” I shout. “I need to learn from him!”

Francine smiles, reaches her empty hand out to my ear, and makes a quarter appear. It’s one of her better tricks.

“Just lay it on thick,” Francine says, pocketing the money. “It’s the only way to handle mothers.”

It’s so thick around here, I’m choking.

I make Mom breakfast in bed on Saturday with little sausages and my Mickey’s Famous Banana Bread. All she says is that I’m a terrific chef and a wonderful son. Then she goes out for her Saturday-morning bike ride with her best friend, Serena Gillette, who taught Camille how to sew since Mom falls apart with a needle and thread. Serena and her husband are fixing up the broken-down movie theater on Botts Street. They’re going to call it Gillette’s Movie Palace. It’s going to be the best thing this town has ever seen next to Vernon’s. Serena and Mom are riding to the old clock tower near the General Tire plant and when I say that’s really far for women their age, Serena slaps me on my butt with her helmet.

It’s my day to do laundry. I’ve got to wash all Camille’s neon blouses in cold water or she’ll hang
me out to dry. I drag the big laundry basket down Flax Street making groaning noises.

Mr. Kopchnik walks outside his fix-it shop with Cindy Winsocki, who’s sniffling; he’s holding her doll Matilda. Matilda’s head and arms are off again. Mr. Kopchnik fixes toys and dolls for free.

“I’m going to glue Matilda up and stick her in the little bed in the back while she dries overnight. It’s going to be like nothing was ever wrong with this doll.”

Cindy nods and runs to her mother, who’s standing in front of Cassetti’s Bakery.

Mr. Kopchnik looks at me through his round wire glasses. “So, champion!” he says. “You famous yet?”

I smile. “Not yet.”

“Just a matter of time,” he says, and bends over halfway to watch Mrs. Petrillo stomp across Flax Street, holding a toaster.

“It’s sick,” she says, handing it to him. “I tried everything.”

Mr. Kopchnik puts Matilda in his big jacket pocket and holds the toaster like it’s a baby.

“It burns the toast,” Mrs. Petrillo goes. “It doesn’t burn the toast.”

“You want the toast burned, Sophie?”

“I want it regular, Oscar.”

Mr. Kopchnik scratches his partly bald head and smiles at the little sign in his window:

He holds the shop door open for Mrs. Petrillo.

“I never lost a toaster yet,” he says, following her inside.

By the time I get the laundry done all the pool tables at Vernon’s are filled with paying customers. Paying customers always get to play before me—Poppy’s rule. I wait around until four o’clock, grab table sixteen by the window, and only play okay.

On Sunday Mom doesn’t once ask me what’s wrong even though I walk around with that miserable expression on my face that always makes her feel sorry for me. I practice pool for two hours in the afternoon, but I’m still not shooting great. My English shots are sloppy. English is the spin you put on the ball to get it to line up for the next shot. Buck’s watching me, laughing every time I miss.

I think he’d look real nice in a military-school uniform.

I can hear him laughing all the way through Monday.

In school Mrs. Riggles tells us about the Minutemen, who were volunteer soldiers who fought against the British in the American Revolution. They trained fast, were ready to fight “at a minute’s notice,” and pushed back the British in the first battles of the war, Lexington and Concord. I’d like to be a Minuteman.

My mom probably wouldn’t let me do that, either.

Rory Magellan is acting like he knows the secret of the century, and it’s making Arlen crazy. Rory’s one of those smart kids who makes sure everybody knows it. He’s got a pinched-in face and looks like
he just took a big breath. Rory’s sitting on the front school steps during recess talking loud with his fourth-grade friends about the anemometer he made, which measures how fast the wind is blowing. This year Rory’s mother is organizing the science fair.

“You know what this means, don’t you?” Arlen screams.

Petie Pencastle and I look at each other.

“It
means
that he’ll get the best table for his experiment. It
means
he’ll know everything before I do! It
means
she’ll pick the judges!”

“So what?” says Petie. “You won the last two years and your mother didn’t organize it.”

Petie doesn’t understand how bad Arlen wants to win. No one’s ever won the science fair ribbon three years in a row. Arlen storms off saying his mother never volunteers for the right things at school.

“She’s the Health Week mother,” he says, groaning. “She brings
raisins
.”

After school, Arlen and I head back to his house to work on our science fair project, “The Amazing Secrets of the Pool Table.” Arlen wanted to call it “Death-Defying Secrets of the Pool Table to Stun and Amaze Your Friends,” but Mrs. Riggles said it was better to use one big adjective and wow them with our findings. We are developing this in utmost secrecy in Arlen’s bedroom with Mangler standing guard. Arlen heard from Petie Pencastle that Rory Magellan has spies
everywhere
. Arlen says once your scientific secrets leak out, you can forget about your enduring place in history.

I think learning the laws of the universe is a whole lot easier than trying to understand mothers.

We’re laying out the poster that says

Arlen is drawing an okay universe with shooting stars that look like pool balls. I’m doing the lettering on Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion, which he figured out three hundred years ago to explain the way things move. We put them partly in our own words.

I’m drawing the first law in red:

In pool talk this means a pool ball isn’t going anywhere unless it’s hit by something, and once it starts moving, it needs something to stop it like a rail, another ball, or the friction of the cloth table.

I do the second law in blue:

That’s a fancy way to say that how hard you hit a ball will be how fast it’s going to move, and the less it weighs, the faster it will go.

I do the third law in green:

A cue ball stops dead when it hits another ball straight on.

*   *   *

There’s a knock on the door. Mangler starts squealing. “Friend or foe?” Arlen shouts.

“Cousin.” Francine walks in wearing lime-green tights and a long T-shirt with sparkly stars. When the nuns aren’t watching she lets loose. She stares at our poster. “It needs glitter,” she says, flopping down. Her face gets serious. “What was the worst moment of your life that you can remember? Everyone has to answer.”

Arlen says when Mangler got hit by that motorcycle and was lying on the street bleeding and had to have surgery.

I say when Poppy and I got robbed two years ago by that man with the ski mask and the gun who said if we called the police, he’d come back and get us.

Francine says it was when she realized she’d never be as successful in life as her big sister, April.

We’re all just sitting there with our worst moments.

“April’s president of her junior class, she’s on the debate team, she’s
beautiful
.” Francine covers her big ears with her thin brown hair. Buck Pender called her Dumbo once and she ran all the way home crying. “I just want to be the youngest magician to ever play Vegas and outdo April in anything. Is this too much to ask?”

This is why Arlen and I like Francine. She cares as much about her magic as we care about math and pool. We’ve been hanging out with her for years, too, even though she’s a girl. She’s got other friends her age, but they live across town.

I say April can’t do magic tricks.

“She could if she wanted to.”

Francine takes out a deck of cards and does her magic shuffle. “Pick a card, any card.”

I pick one. She touches her forehead. “The Amazing Francine will now tell you what card is in your hand.” She stops to think. “The three of hearts.”

“No.”

“Ten of diamonds?”

I shake my head.

“
Ace of spades
?”

“King of spades. You were close.”

Francine throws her cards on the floor. Card tricks are the weak point in her act. “I need a rabbit!” she wails. “Animals help you connect with an audience!”

Mangler starts squealing. Mrs. Pepper shouts that we have to take him outside before the noise shatters the crystal.

Arlen grabs his new book,
Harnessing the Memory Power Within You
, and we head outside. “This wouldn’t happen in a tree house,” he says sadly.

Francine looks at Arlen’s memory book and groans. We’ve tried all kinds of systems to help him remember. Color-coded ones, numbered ones in base ten and base three; we made a chart to keep track of everything he owned, but Arlen lost it.

Arlen thumps the book. “Do you know that memory is based on association? I just have to find symbols for the things I don’t want to lose.”

“
Bookbag
 . . .” Arlen turns the word over in his mind. “When I think of
bookbag
what do I see?”

“Death,” Francine offers. “If you lose your bookbag again, your father will kill you.”

“School,” I say.

Arlen shakes his head.

“Homework?” I try.

Arlen leans against the oak tree, thinking hard. “Prison,” he says. “No—I’d never remember that. Punishment. Misery.” He closes his eyes. “Wood!”