The Big One-Oh (9 page)

But the whole time Garry was busy with that, I was staring at the latex eyeball, hypnotized.

And I completely forgot about Garry making my “third hand.”

I forgot about getting a theme for my party.

I forgot about making friends.

Because—and I know it sounds stupid—but at that moment I thought that eyeball was probably the most perfect present I had ever, ever received.

 

 

That night in bed I set the eyeball on my pillow, and I stared at it.

It reminded me of
Monsters & Maniacs,
Issue 114—“I Only Have Eyes for You—
FIVE HUNDRED OF THEM!!
”

And, as I lay there, I thought,
Wow. This eye will never blink.

And I fell asleep smiling.

I didn't really knock out Cougar. I know that's what people said, but the truth is that I never laid a hand on him.

I was alone at my cafeteria table the next day, playing games with my eyeball. Bouncing it. Winking it. Then I closed one eye and squeezed the fake one in under my eyebrow, like it was one of those single round eyeglasses that old men squint through in fancy English movies. I had just picked up a silverware knife to see my reflection in the blade when—WHAP!—I got smacked from behind, and I heard Cougar sneer,
“Made any cakes lately?”

Cougar's slap snapped my head forward and sent my fake eyeball flying through the air toward an empty table, where it landed on a dirty plate in a little puddle of ketchup.

Cougar jerked his head toward the plate and ordered Scottie, “Hey. See what that is.”

Scottie plucked the eye off the plate, and when he saw what he was holding, he freaked out! He quickly tossed the eyeball to Cougar, who looked down at this
thing
in his hand.

And it looked back at him.

It was still covered with ketchup, which I guess Cougar thought was real blood. He must have gotten scared that he had smacked my eyeball out of its socket, because that's when he gagged.

And his eyes rolled up into his head.

And he fainted.

No lie. Cougar went down like a sack of potatoes, taking a few empty lunch trays and a chair or two with him. The clattering made everyone stop what they were doing and turn.

And to them, it seemed like I had knocked Cougar out. The looks of admiration on the faces of my schoolmates were not looks that I was used to seeing, so I didn't hold up my hands and shout: “I didn't touch him!”

I figured I'd let them think what they wanted to.

 

 

Scottie and Mrs. Colby, the gym teacher, and I carried Cougar into the exam room of the School Nurse's office. The Nurse wasn't there, but a little paper clock on her door said, “BACK IN 5 MINUTES.”

Mrs. Colby had to get back to gym class, so I volunteered to sit in the outside waiting room until the Nurse returned. Mrs. Colby said that that was very generous of me, and, after she sent Scottie back to class, she left, too.

It actually wasn't totally generous of me to wait with Cougar. See, when Cougar fainted, he squeezed my fake eyeball into his hand, and I knew that if I wanted it back, I had to be there when he opened his eyes.

The door to the exam room swung open, and I stood up to greet the Nurse. Instead, I was shocked to see Jennifer pop her head out and say, “He's coming around.” She had a little white nurse's cap balancing on top of her red curls, and she was wearing a little white coat.

“
Jennifer?
What're you doing here?”

“Oh. I'm the Nurse's Aide.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, every day at fifth period, Nurse Dulaney goes behind the gym to have a cigarette, so I come in to watch the office. Mostly I just refill the Band-Aids,” she admitted, but then she leaned close and confided, “but I'm trying to get her to let me draw blood.”

There was a frightening thought.

Jennifer ushered me in to see Cougar. He was blinking and groggy, and what was really strange was that his forehead was covered with about twenty Band-Aids, stuck on in a crisscross pattern.

Jennifer jabbed Cougar's shoulder and barked:

“Get up, Leland. We need the bed.”

“Don't call me ‘Leland'!” Cougar snarled, and he swatted at her hand. Jennifer ignored him as she bustled in and out of the room, trying to look like she knew something about medicine.

When Cougar saw me his eyes got narrow. “You . . . !” was all he said. He wagged a finger at me, as if to say,
“I'm going to make you sorry.”

But then he realized that he had something in his hand; he opened his fingers and found . . . my eyeball. Smeared with ketchup.

“Uh . . . can I have that back?” I held out my hand. “Please?”

Cougar sat up on the exam table and squeezed the eyeball a few times to convince himself, I guess, that there was nothing to be afraid of. I could tell that he was fascinated, as fascinated as I had been when Garry first gave it to me.

“A bloody eyeball, hunh?” He looked up with a crooked smile. “You are so twisted, you know that?” And he started to laugh. I was so surprised to see him laughing without even hitting me first that I didn't know how to respond.

He held out the eyeball. “That is one scary idea, man,” he said as he dropped it into my palm. And when I heard the word
idea,
I froze.

Wasn't it just yesterday that I was looking for someone with ideas? And now, without meaning to, had I actually come up with one?

A
scary
idea?

Scary idea, scary idea, scary idea
tumbled around in my head like a marble in a clothes dryer. And by the time the eyeball landed in my hand . . .

Right then and there, I decided to throw a
Monsters & Maniacs
House of Horrors Happy-Birthday-to-you-Charley-Maplewood Party!!

It was brilliant!

It was inspired!

It was . . . !

“What the
heck?!
” Cougar stopped laughing because that's when he caught sight of himself in a wall mirror and was freaked out to find that he had, like, an entire box of Band-Aids stuck across his forehead.

Jennifer re-entered in time to hear his question.

“Those are for the bump on your head,” she said in the crisp, professional way that she was practicing to be a nurse.

“There's no bump on my head, you . . .
cow!
”

Jennifer simply sniffed, “Oh. My bad.” She reached up and, with a lightning-fast flick of her wrist, Jennifer ripped the entire wad of Band-Aids off in one clean move.

Unfortunately, when they came off, so did Cougar's eyebrows.

People would later tell the story and snicker about how, at that moment, Cougar's scream had ripped through the halls and classrooms of the entire school, stopping everybody in their tracks.

But I didn't even flinch; I figured his eyebrows would grow back.

And besides, I had my theme.

I had to celebrate finding a theme, and I knew that if there was anybody in the whole world who would understand why I was so happy that afternoon, it would be Garry.

“You want me to
what?
” he asked when I got to his house.

“I want you to make a copy of my face.
Smiling.
So I can always remember this moment.”

Garry was not accustomed to having people get so enthusiastic about being covered with slimy goo and sitting still for long periods of time, so he was actually kind of happy for the practice.

“Let's do it!” he said.

 

 

Garry clipped a towel around my neck and had me smear oil on the parts of my face where the marshmallow-creamy-stuff would be slopped on. He gave me two straws and explained that they'd have to go into my nose.

“You're not serious,” I laughed.

“Fine. You don't have to. But when I spread on this goo, it'll fill your mouth and clog your nostrils and you'll suffocate. No big deal,” he shrugged.

Ha ha. Very funny.

So I stuck the straws up my nose; I looked like a walrus with his tusks in the wrong place.

As Garry worked, I kept talking, and as I talked, I got more and more excited about my
Monsters & Maniacs
birthday party.

“I could have, like, skeletons at the door and skulls on the cake, y'know? And I'll get scary black napkins . . .”

“How,” Garry wondered, “do you make black napkins
scary
?”

“Aha. Good point. But how's this? The punch could be red, like blood! Or green, like slime!”

See what I mean? The ideas were just pouring out of me.

“And, if you'd like,” Garry offered, “I could lend you my DVD of
My Principal Is a Maniac!
to show at the party.”

I sat up. “Get out!”

“Sit back!” Garry ordered, and pushed me down in the chair. “Are you gonna sit still?”

“I will. I promise. And you know why?” I said, settling down. “Because I've got a theme. Whoo-hoo!”

And then Garry covered my smiling face with goo.

 

 

I don't know how long I sat there—unable to see or speak—but from the way the goo warmed and tightened around my face, I could tell that Garry would have a really good mold to cast a mask from. I could hear him puttering around in his workshop, and when he'd ask, “You okay?” I would hold up my fingers in an “okay” circle.

I must have drifted off into a little nap, but I sure snapped wide awake the instant somebody started pounding at Garry's front door.

“Who in the world . . . ?”
I heard Garry say. Then the pounding came again.

I guess when Garry opened his front door and found Mom standing there, he wasn't exactly looking spiffy. His hair was all in his eyes and his glasses were crooked. He had on his rubber apron and rubber gloves, and those were covered with the white goo that was hardening on my face at that very moment.

I could hear the whole conversation.

“Charley?”
Mom called into the house.

“Can you make a complete sentence?”
When Mom asks something like that, you can tell she's about to lose it.

“Not his head, actually. His face . . . it's covered up right now. But don't worry,”
Garry rushed to add,
“cuz he's got straws up his nose.”

“He's got WHATS up his nose?”
And that's when I heard Mom push her way into the house.
“Charley? Charley, where are you?”
Her voice was getting closer.
“Where is he?”

“In the garage,”
Garry was saying.
“But when you see him, don't get upset . . .”

I figure that's when Mom saw me. I waved one hand in a friendly “hello,” hoping to show her that I was okay, but it probably looked to her like Garry had buried me—with straws up my nose—under a mountain of mashed potatoes.