The Seventh Most Important Thing (13 page)

I
t is not easy to wrap a lightbulb with tiny scraps of foil.

Arthur discovered this pretty quickly.

Mr. Hampton needed ten lightbulbs to decorate the top of a silver pedestal he was making for the collection. The pedestal would go to the left of the red chair—the throne—to balance a pedestal on the right. Everything in heaven was perfectly balanced, he said.

Mr. Hampton used foil-wrapped bulbs to decorate a lot of his pieces. “Lights in the darkness,” he called them.

After making his first one, Arthur called them a big pain in the butt.

First you had to put rubber cement on the lightbulb. Not too much or it would drip all over the place, Hampton warned. Not too little or the foil would slide off. Then, with one hand carefully holding the sticky bulb, you had to grab a tiny square of tinfoil and press it firmly to the side.

Without. Breaking. The bulb.

This was the part of the process that made Arthur very nervous. The bulbs were glass, of course. Ridiculously thin glass. Arthur's hands weren't very careful. He didn't trust himself not to crush, pulverize, or drop a bulb.

Squeak had much more patience. And smaller hands.

So Arthur would brush rubber cement onto the bulb and hand the foil scraps to Squeak, who would press them gently around the glass globe, as if he was working with an unexploded bomb.

Surprisingly, Arthur could still recognize where a lot of the foil scraps had come from. He could pick out the ones that were Squeak's lunch foil, the tops of TV dinner trays, Christmas gift paper, and wine bottle wrappers.

Arthur remembered how people in the neighborhood always used to call the Junk Man a crazy old drunk when they saw him sticking empty wine and liquor bottles in his coat pockets. It made Arthur feel guilty to think about it now. Nobody would have guessed he was using them for their foil wrappers.

“Best foil you can get, hands down,” Mr. Hampton told Arthur and Squeak when he showed them how to wrap the bulbs. “The other stuff works fine, but the bottle foil has the most shimmer.”

He liked to use a lot of different layers on each bulb. “More layers equals more shine.”

Arthur wasn't sure he believed this theory, but Squeak was the kind of person who followed directions 100 percent. He insisted on wrapping every bulb in about a half-dozen layers. Every shiny corner had to be glued down and pressed perfectly smooth against the bulb. He wouldn't go on to the next one until Mr. Hampton inspected it and gave his approval.

Arthur was glad when they finally finished the bulbs and could move on to something else. Their next job was much more suited to him. They had to smash a bunch of mirrors into tiny pieces.

Now it was Squeak's turn to be nervous.

They were supposed to put the mirrors in paper grocery bags and smash them with a hammer. That was the safest way to break them, according to Mr. Hampton. Once the mirrors were broken up, they poured the fragments into a box for him to use later as decoration on the wings.

“Gives the angel wings their sparkle,” he said.

But Squeak was convinced that if they broke the mirrors, they'd be causing themselves years of bad luck. “I don't think this is a good idea,” he whispered to Arthur. “You're not supposed to break mirrors. It's really bad luck in a lot of cultures. Haven't you ever heard of a broken mirror bringing you seven years of bad luck? I don't think we should be doing this.”

Arthur shrugged. “I don't care. I've already had a ton of bad luck. I'm not afraid of a stupid mirror.” He picked up the hammer, feeling strangely invincible. “Maybe it'll have the opposite effect for me.” He laughed. “Who knows…maybe smashing a mirror will bring me good luck.”

And then, after Squeak moved a safe distance away from the potential bad luck
and
closed his eyes, Arthur broke his first mirror.

It felt good.

Great, actually.

“Hand me another one,” he said to Squeak, who looked reluctant to touch anything resembling a mirror. So Arthur picked out one by himself from the stack leaning against the wall of the garage and put it in a paper bag. Lifting his hammer, he shattered another one. It reminded him of his earth science class—of the continental plates cracking apart. Only he was the one shattering the plates.

“Fourteen,” Squeak said faintly.

“What?” Arthur looked up.

“Fourteen years of bad luck. Seven times two.”

“I've already had that much bad luck in one year,” Arthur said, feeling happier than he had in a long time. “I'm going to break another one.” And he did.

“Twenty-one,” he and Squeak said together.

Arthur broke three more mirrors before Hampton looked up from attaching a large pair of foil-wrapped angel wings to one of the pedestals. “Okay, that's enough, boys. That's plenty of mirrors. You can stop now.”

“Good,” Squeak whispered, seeming relieved.

Arthur wished he could have broken a few more. As he carried the forty-two years' worth of bad luck—or good luck, depending on your perspective—over to Mr. Hampton, he felt as if he'd been set free of something, as if some big shadow over his life had been taken away.

After his dad's accident, he'd spent months worrying about what might happen next. He'd worried about his mom and Barbara all the time. Then, after he threw the brick, he started worrying about who he was—whether he was a bad kid who'd end up in trouble just like his dad. It was a big mirror of bad luck hanging over his head every day.

And now he had smashed that mirror into a million shiny pieces.

This was the third important thing.

W
hen Monday arrived, Arthur decided he'd better call Officer Billie at work, just to let her know the guards at juvie didn't need to get the bunk above Slash ready for him. He wasn't quitting yet.

As usual, Officer Billie answered on the first ring.

“It's Arthur Owens,” Arthur said.

“So, you aren't quitting,” Officer Billie guessed even before Arthur could tell her.

“How did you—”

“I told you, I've been doing this for years. I know everything. Nothing surprises me. I knew you weren't going to quit even before you knew you weren't going to quit.”

“All right,” Arthur said, getting annoyed by her again. “Just wanted to let you know.”

And then a small idea—okay, a kind of devious one—occurred to him.

“So—I was wondering, do you know what the seven most important things in the world are?” he asked, trying to make the question sound innocent.

“What?”

“The seven most important things…do you know what they are?” Arthur repeated.

“Is this a question for school, Mr. Owens?” Officer Billie sounded irritated. “Because I don't do homework. If you need to know the answer to something for class, look it up yourself. The most important thing to me is seeing that you don't mess up, got it?”

“Yes,” Arthur replied politely. “Thanks.”

Smiling to himself, he hung up the phone. So Officer Billie didn't know everything, he realized. She didn't know about Mr. Hampton's Throne.

I
t turned out that Arthur wasn't the only one keeping secrets from people. The next day, his sister dropped a bombshell about their mom.

“Mom's got a boyfriend who's coming over for supper on Friday,” she told Arthur while they were sitting in the kitchen polishing off a bag of corn chips after school.

“What?” Arthur felt as if someone had suddenly dumped a barrel of ice water over his head. His whole body turned cold in an instant.

“But I'm not supposed to tell you,” Barbara replied quickly as she shoved a handful of Fritos into her mouth. “Mom said she's going to talk to you about it later. When the time is right.”

Arthur sat frozen in his dad's chair in the banana-yellow kitchen that his dad had painted, unable to believe what his sister had just said. His mom had a
boyfriend
? And he was
coming over to their house for supper
?

This was way worse than throwing out his dad's stuff. This was throwing out his dad and replacing him with someone else.
How could his mom do this to him? To them?

Barbara stopped eating and stared at him. “You look kind of strange. Are you okay, Arthur? You look like you're going to throw up.”

Arthur shook his head. “I'm fine.”

She pushed the Fritos bag closer to him. “You can have the rest if you want.”

“That's okay.”

“You want to watch some cartoons with me?”

“No.”

Barbara tilted her blond head, studying him. “I think you look sick. You should go to bed. I can bring you a thermometer and a bucket if you want one.”

“Stop it. Just go and watch some TV, Barbara,” Arthur snapped.

“All right.” Barbara slid off the chair. She bounced from one foot to the other, standing in the kitchen doorway as if she was uncertain about leaving. Or needed to pee.

“You sure?” she said.

Arthur had to bite his tongue to keep himself from shouting
SHUT UP AND LEAVE ME ALONE!
at Barbara. Instead, he looked at the clock above the stove and told her in the most patient voice he could manage that if she didn't hurry, she was going to miss
Looney Tunes
.

“Okay, I'm going.” But before she left, Barbara said in a rush, “His name is Roger and I've met him already and he's pretty nice. He's a carpenter. Do you know what they do?”

Arthur felt his heart squeezing into a tighter and tighter ball. It was just a coincidence, he tried to tell himself.

“He builds things out of pieces of wood!” Barbara shouted proudly. “And he's making a birdhouse for Mom, but don't tell her, okay?”

“Okay.” Arthur nodded, feeling numb.

There was no way some loser named Roger could be the fourth most important thing.

R
oger the Carpenter wasn't the kind of person Arthur expected him to be. He'd pictured a slimeball guy who had probably swept his mom off her feet because she was lonely and sad and needed someone to talk to.

Arthur's mom told him they'd met at her new job—the dentist's office job that she'd only had since the beginning of January. Roger had been building some new cabinets for the dentist, and they'd chatted over lunch.

“All he brought to eat was a candy bar, so I gave him some of my homemade ham salad,” she said. Then he'd asked her out for coffee after work. And they'd gone out for coffee a few times since then.

“He's been very nice to me,” Arthur's mom insisted. “So I invited him to supper on Friday. Will you at least meet him and see what you think?”

He promised nothing.

Roger arrived early on Friday. Arthur heard the doorbell ring at five, but he didn't wander downstairs to meet the guy until Roger had already been there for about half an hour, talking with his mom and Barbara.

As it turned out, Roger was balding and short and looked about ten years older than Arthur's dad had been. He wore a striped shirt tucked into pants that appeared to have been bought that afternoon. The only thing missing was the price tag.

“You must be Arthur,” the guy said, standing up quickly when Arthur came into the living room. He nearly knocked over his drink on the shaky tray table beside the chair. “I'm Roger Dent. Good to meet you.”

Roger
Dent
from the
dentist's
office. Good grief. It was like being in a bad TV comedy.

“Barbara, go and get the lovely birdhouse Roger made for us so your brother can see it,” Arthur's mom said in this strangely happy voice that sounded exactly like Wilma Flintstone's.

Barbara carried the birdhouse from the hallway and set it in Arthur's lap. “What do you think?” she said, hands on her hips.

Arthur had to admit it looked as if Roger Dent had put some serious time into it. The roof had tiny shingles made of the ends of Popsicle sticks. There were two small windows on the front outlined with matchsticks.

“Isn't it beautiful?” Arthur's mom raved.

From the starstruck look on his mom's face, Arthur had no doubt Roger the Carpenter, who made beautiful things out of wood, was the fourth most important thing. At least for his mom.

“Are we ready to eat now?” Arthur's mom asked everyone in the same Wilma Flintstone voice.

Arthur really wanted to say no, but he didn't want to upset his mom.

Supper seemed to last forever.

Unlike Arthur's dad, Roger Dent was not a big talker. So there were long silences when all you could hear was food being chewed and silverware clinking on the plates. Between the silences, Barbara told endless stories about her school friends: who was mad at who, who was friends with who. And Arthur's mom kept nervously asking if everything tasted okay and if anybody needed more food.

Arthur tried not to glance in Roger Dent's direction at all. At least the guy wasn't sitting in his dad's old seat. Arthur had told his mom he wouldn't be part of the dinner with Roger—or any dinner, ever—if her boyfriend sat in his dad's chair.

So his mom was sitting there instead.

He wondered what his mom had told Roger Dent about them—if the guy knew about his dad dying in a motorcycle accident and about him being in juvie. It probably wasn't the kind of news you shared until you knew somebody pretty well, he decided.
Yeah, my husband only died a few months ago and my son is a brick-throwing juvenile delinquent
probably wasn't a good conversation starter.

Toward the end of the meal, Arthur's mom looked over at him and said in this shaky-tense sort of voice, “You've been quiet, Arthur.”

Arthur didn't dare point out that Roger Dent hadn't exactly been a great conversationalist either. He could see that his mom was on the verge of losing it. And he knew he'd better not push her much closer to the edge.

“So, um, other than birdhouses, what kinds of stuff do you build?” he asked Roger Dent, trying to sound slightly interested.

Which he wasn't, of course.

But the guy grabbed hold of that question and wouldn't let go.

He talked for about thirty minutes straight, reciting all of the projects he'd done—kitchen cabinets, bookshelves, garden sheds, playhouses, even a custom doghouse for some movie star's dog once.

Roger said he'd learned carpentry from his grandfather. Then he went into a long story about how he'd started his own business with nothing but a box of tools from his grandpa and a rusted-out Ford truck. “Until I got my first job, I lived in that truck,” he told them. He described how he'd slept in parking lots and stayed at campgrounds.

The story was more interesting than Arthur had thought it would be. Although he wouldn't admit this to anyone, there were times he'd thought it would be fun to build houses someday. He remembered designing a house for an art class project, back in the sixth grade.

He'd drawn it with a third-floor “tower” all for himself. The tower had its own bedroom, living room, and bathroom. Plus, there was a swimming pool on the roof and a helicopter landing pad in the front yard. (Okay, that was a little crazy—but hey, he'd gotten an A-plus.)

By the time Roger finished talking, the rest of the food was cold. But Arthur could tell his mom and Roger Dent were a lot happier. His mom had this goofy smile on her face.

Arthur wasn't sure how he felt. Loyal and disloyal to his dad at the same time. Mostly, he wished he'd just kept his big mouth shut. It was a lot easier to dislike someone you didn't know anything about.