The Mealworm Diaries (8 page)

“Holy cow!”

“Man, that had to hurt!”

Then the questions started.

“What happened?”

“Was it a car accident?”

“How many stitches did you have?”

He hated the questions. Hated the thought of answering them. Hated what they made him remember.

He felt the blood drain from his face. Felt himself sway. He gripped the bench. A hand came to rest on his shoulder. Horace's hand.

“You okay, man?”

Jeremy took a breath. Nodded. The room fell silent, and in that silence everybody heard Aaron say, “Can I touch it?”

“No!” Jeremy said, pulling back. Then again, more softly, “No.” He shivered at the thought and let his arm drop in an effort to hide the scar.

He was so wrapped up in thinking about himself that he barely noticed Tufan stride toward Aaron and snarl, “Creep!” Tufan jerked Aaron to his feet and shoved him, hard enough to make Aaron stumble backward until he hit the opposite wall with a thud. Some of the girls gasped, but no comforting hand reached for him as he slid down the wall to sit in a heap on the floor.

The room stayed silent until Horace offered, “My uncle has two scars. One here”—he pointed at his shoulder—“and one here.” He pointed to his right buttock.

There was a burst of uncomfortable laughter.

“It's not funny,” Horace said. “They're from real bullets.”

The laughter stopped. Feet shuffled, eyes dropped.

“How'd he get shot?” Tufan asked. “Was it some kind of gang fight or something?”

“You don't know anything,” Horace snapped. “He was in Tiananmen Square. In China. Soldiers shot him. People died there.”

There was more uncomfortable shuffling, and Jeremy was surprised to hear Aaron say, “My…my father has a scar from here to here.” He ran his finger down his rib cage. “I used to dream about it all the time until my counselor told me how to make the dreams stop. He said, he said, you can turn off a bad dream the same way you turn off a light. Just switch it off.” Aaron used his finger to switch off an imaginary light. “Just switch it off,” he said again. “I can do it now. Good thing too, 'cause my dad's scar is way uglier than yours. Yours isn't so bad. It's kind of cool, you know. Like a lightning bolt or something.”

Jeremy frowned.
A lightning bolt?

“My uncle has a scar on his hand from when he lost his thumb. It was sliced off by a machine,” somebody offered, and the conversation shifted to missing body parts, until the groans from the girls in the doorway grew louder.

“What's going on here?” Mr. Collins' voice cut through the noise.

The kids looked at each other, but nobody answered until Tufan said, “Aaron wanted to touch Jeremy's leg.”

“What?” Mr. Collins turned to Aaron.

“I didn't. I didn't. I didn't,” Aaron said.

“Yes, you did,” kids chorused.

Aaron, silenced again, began rocking his body against the cinder-block wall.

“Jeremy?” Mr. Collins said.

Jeremy looked up. He had been thinking that having a lightning bolt on his leg was kind of cool, and he had almost forgotten about Aaron wanting to touch it. “I… I think he was just curious…about…about my scar.”

Mr. Collins came over to look at the red line that zigzagged down Jeremy's leg. He frowned. “With all the running and the skipping you've been doing, I assume that leg doesn't bother you a whole lot?”

Jeremy shook his head. “Not too much,” he said.

Mr. Collins nodded and moved to Aaron, whose rocking had turned to banging. “Aaron. Stop. You're not in trouble. You didn't do anything wrong. Jeremy told me. You didn't do anything wrong.”

With the teacher's hand on his shoulder, Aaron stopped. “Is he…is he…is he gonna die?”

Some of the kids snickered.

“Do you want to answer that?” Mr. Collins asked, turning to Jeremy.

“I hope not…,” Jeremy began, but his voice caught in his throat. He began again. “I was in an accident. The doctors fixed me.”

“Did they, did they stitch you up?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah. And they stapled me together. But first they put two metal plates in my leg. One here,” he said, pointing at one side of his ankle, “and one here.” He pointed at the opposite side.

When he looked up he noticed that the girls had drifted into the room. “The whole thing is held together with screws,” he went on. “See the little bumps here, and here and here?” He pointed.

Everybody leaned forward to see.

“Man, that must've hurt,” Aaron said, and for once he didn't repeat himself.

Jeremy nodded. “Yeah…but it's good now. Really,” he finished, looking into Karima's concerned face. Concerned, but not grossed out.

SIXTEEN

Jeremy was happy. The assembly had been a hit, and once it was done, kids he hardly recognized said “Hi” as he passed them in the hallway and schoolyard. It was a good day. A very good day.

He came home to find Milly mopping the hallway stairs and singing a song about the moon hitting your eye and pizza. He grinned as he watched her mop dance across one step and back along another with each new line of song. The sound of his breathing must have told her she wasn't alone, because she turned abruptly.

“Hello, Jeremy,” she said. “I see you've been running.”

“Uh-huh. Cross-country practice. And then I jogged home with Horace.”

“No wonder you look hot,” Milly said. “Get yourself a glass of milk and put out some plates. Your Mom is due soon and I'm almost done.”

He went into the kitchen while Milly mopped her way to the bottom of the stairs and along the hallway. “I put the kettle on,” he said as she backed through the swinging kitchen door.

“Perfect.” She nudged her bucket into a corner. “Tea always hits the spot.”

Milly walked to the counter and dropped a couple of tea bags into the pot before she placed a plate of cookies on the table.

“Mmmm, chocolate chip. My favorite,” Jeremy said, choosing one and taking a large bite.

“I thought you said peanut butter was your favorite.”

“That was last week. Before I tasted these.”

Milly chuckled as the front door opened and closed.

“I'm home.” His mother's voice.

“We're in the kitchen,” Milly called.

Jeremy put his finger to his lips and winked at Milly. She gave him a puzzled look but didn't ask any questions.

“Hello everybody,” his mother said. There was a big smile on her face that vanished when she looked at Jeremy. He sat slumped in his chair, wearing a sad sorry expression.

“Oh, Jeremy…,” she began. “Oh, honey…” She hurried to his side. “What happened? Was it the assembly? Did things go wrong? I knew I should have talked to your teacher.”

Jeremy had meant his little act as a joke, but the pain in his mother's voice stopped him. “No,” he said, and he laughed nervously. “I was kidding. Really. It was all good. Everything was great. The assembly was awesome.”

“Jeremy!” her voice shook, but she laughed. “You! You're a terrible tease. You're just like your fa…” The word trailed off, but she started again. “You're just like your father,” she said firmly, and then they both laughed.

“I'm dying to hear all about this assembly,” Milly said, bringing the teapot to the table.

“The assembly was great,” Jeremy began. He paused to collect a few stray crumbs from his plate with his finger. Once he had popped them into his mouth, he said, “Mr. Collins played music, and Aaron started by jumping up and down. He wasn't really skipping because he was holding both handles of the rope in the same hand to show what to do when you're just learning. He can't skip for beans, but he can bounce all right. Then some kids showed how to do heel-toe taps and Karima, this girl in my class, and I did some cross-overs. She learned those really fast. And at the end, we all took turns running and jumping through the long ropes. Some of the teachers even joined in. The audience loved it. They cheered.” He chuckled. “City kids don't know much about skipping, so they're easy to impress.”

“Did you wear your shorts?” his mother asked.

“Yeah. Everybody who skipped wore the new uniform. That was the whole point of the assembly: to show the rest of the school how good it looks.”

“And?”

“Did anybody say anything? Yeah. Mostly they asked dumb questions, so I told them about the staples and the steel plates and the screws until they were really grossed out.” He reached for another cookie and took a bite before he added, “Aaron said my scar looked like a lightning bolt and he wanted to touch it. I told you how weird he is.”

His mother laughed. “I don't know if he's weird, but he sounds as if he's really curious.”

“Yeah. He can't help it.” Jeremy took another sip of milk and a bite of cookie before he went on. “So many of the kids thought skipping was cool that they asked Mr. Collins to start a skipping club when cross-country is over, and he said yes. And guess what? Even Tufan wants to join, and he used to say that skipping was only for girls.”

That night Jeremy had a different dream. In this dream, dots of blood, the size of mealworm droppings, bubbled up along his scar line. Aaron appeared, saying, “Can I touch it? Can I touch it?” and his finger came closer and closer until Jeremy shouted, “No! Don't!”

“You're scared,” Aaron said. He sounded sad.

Jeremy nodded.

Aaron made a quick motion with his finger, as if he were switching off a light. “Then turn it off.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Try it.”

Jeremy raised his hand to turn off an invisible switch just as a beam of hallway light hit his face and woke him. His mother was a shadow in the doorway.

“Same dream?” she asked.

“No…No. It was nothing. Sorry.”

“You okay?”

“Fine. Really.”

She closed the door. He waited. When he heard her go back to her own room, he turned on his bedside lamp, shoved his quilt aside and pulled up his pajama pants to peer at his leg. The scar was there, same as ever, but there was no blood…and his bed was dry
.

SEVENTEEN

Another Saturday. The morning was damp and grey and cold, with a wind that whispered of winter. The park was packed with kids. It vibrated with noise and tension.

“Okay, guys!” A teacher's voice bellowed through a megaphone.
Guys…guys…guys!
boomeranged from the trees. The boys on the starting line shifted. “Pay attention…
tention…tention…tention
!”

“We're listening,” Tufan grumbled. “Start already. It's freezing out here.”

“Ya got that right,” Horace chimed in. He was slapping his arms across his chest. Jeremy was doing the same. It didn't help much. The October wind sliced into the tender skin at the back of his neck and behind his knees.

The teacher with the megaphone gestured to the goal posts. “There's your rabbit. Wave your hand, rabbit.”

A bigger kid wearing paper bunny ears semaphored with both arms.

“Follow the rabbit,” the teacher went on. “He'll lead you to the finish. ARE YOU READY?”

Jeremy toed the line. Leaned forward. Eyed the rabbit. Stood statue-still even when he felt a tap on his shoulder and heard a voice say, “Hey, Jeremy.”

Aaron.

Jeremy clenched his teeth and spread his elbows to fill in the gaps between himself and his neighbors. No way was he going to let Aaron lever himself into line beside him.

Neither was Horace. “Get lost!” he growled, and to Jeremy's relief Aaron stayed back until the sound of the starter's pistol ricocheted off the trees. Jeremy launched himself forward. He was anxious to run. It was his first race since the accident, and he knew that his mother and Milly were on the sidelines watching.

There was confusion at the beginning. Runners jostled for position, trying to avoid elbows and knees and the other runners who crisscrossed in front of them.

The rabbit was way out in front, already trailed by kids who were free of the pack. For a second Jeremy thought to sprint and catch up, but he remembered Mr. Collins' advice: “Take your time,” he had said. “It's a long race. You don't want to run out of steam before the end.” So he worked on finding a comfortable stride that would last him to the finish.

After a while the line spread out, and the runners were spaced like beads on a necklace, with Jeremy running behind Horace. But Horace was a smooth steady runner with longer legs, and when they came to a series of small hills, Horace climbed easily, and Jeremy fell back. Other runners passed—three, four, five—and he found himself slogging along on his own.

The path was bordered by trees and shrubbery that provided some protection from the wind. Even so, the cold seeped into his right ankle and brought on a deep, uncomfortable ache and an occasional sharp pain. He tried shifting his weight to his left foot, but that meant that he was hinking along unevenly. Four more runners passed. He clenched his teeth. Evened his stride. Tried to ignore the pain.
Suck it up, Jeremy,
he told himself.
Suck it up.