I held up my hands and checked them out first. My eyes were still heavy from sleep. But I could see clearly that the hair had not grown back.
“Yes!” I cried happily.
The razor cuts on my right hand still hurt. But I didn’t care. Both hands were smooth and hairless.
I turned them over and gazed at them for a long while. I was so glad they looked normal.
I had dreamed about hair during the night. It had started out as spaghetti. In the dream, I was sitting in the kitchen, starting to eat a big plate of spaghetti.
But as I started to twirl the noodles on my fork, they instantly turned to hair. Long, black hairs.
I was twirling long, black hairs onto my fork. The plate was piled high with long strands of black hair.
Then I raised the forkful of hair to my mouth. I opened my mouth. I brought the hairy fork up closer, closer.
And then I woke up.
Yuck! What a gross dream.
I had felt really sick to my stomach. And it had been hard getting back to sleep.
Now at last it was morning, and I continued my inspection. I leaned over and checked my feet. Then my legs. No black clumps of hair.
No weird fur growing anywhere.
I guess it’s safe to go to school, I told myself happily. But I’ll be sure to keep my gloves handy.
After breakfast, I pulled on my coat, grabbed my backpack, and headed out of the house.
It was a bright, warm day. The snow glistened wetly. The sunshine had started to melt it. I stepped carefully around puddles of slush as I walked along the sidewalk.
I was feeling better. A lot better. In fact, I was feeling really good.
Then I turned and saw that pack of dogs. Snarling dogs. Heading right for me.
13
My heart jumped up to my throat. The dogs were running full speed, their heads bobbing up and down, their eyes trained on me. They barked and growled furiously with each bounding step.
My legs suddenly felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds. But I whirled around and forced myself to run.
If they catch me, they’ll tear me to pieces! I told myself. They must smell Jasper on me, I decided. That’s why they always chase me.
I loved my cat. But why did she have to get me in so much trouble?
Who owned these vicious dogs, anyway? Why were they allowed to run wild like this?
Questions, questions. They flew through my mind as I ran. Across front yards. Then across the street.
A car horn blared. I heard the squeal of brakes.
A car skidded toward the opposite curb.
I had forgotten to check the traffic before I crossed.
“Sorry!” I called. And kept running.
A sharp pain in my side forced me to slow down. I turned and saw the yapping dogs racing steadily toward me. They crossed the street and kept moving over the snowy ground. Closer. Closer.
“Hey, Larry!” Two kids stepped on to the sidewalk ahead of me.
“Run!” I screamed breathlessly. “The dogs—”
But Lily and Jared didn’t move.
I stepped up to them, holding my side. It ached so hard, I could barely breathe.
Lily turned to stare down the dogs, as she had done before. Jared stepped up to meet them. All three of us watched the dogs approach.
Seeing the three of us standing together, the dogs slowed to a stop. The snarls and growls stopped instantly. They stared back at us uncertainly. They were panting hard, their tongues drooping down nearly to the snow.
“Go home!” Lily shouted. She stamped her shoe hard on the sidewalk.
The big black dog, the leader, uttered a low whimper and hung his head.
“Go home! Go home!” All three of us chanted.
The pain in my side started to fade. I felt a little better. The dogs weren’t going to attack, I could see. They didn’t want to tangle with all three of us.
They turned and started to trot away, following the big black dog.
Suddenly Jared started to laugh. “Look at that one!” he cried. He pointed to a long, scrawny dog with black, curly fur.
“What’s so funny about that one?” I demanded.
“He looks just like Manny!” Jared declared.
Lily started to laugh. “You’re right! He does!”
All three of us laughed. The dog had Manny’s curly hair. And he had Manny’s dark, soulful eyes.
“Come on. We’ll be late,” Lily said. She kicked a hard clump of snow off the sidewalk. Jared and I followed her toward school.
“Why were those dogs chasing you?” Jared asked.
“I think because they smelled my cat,” I replied.
“Those dogs are mean,” Lily said, a few steps ahead of us. “They shouldn’t let them run wild like that.”
“Tell me about it,” I replied, rolling my eyes.
A sharp gust of wind nearly blew us backwards over the slippery sidewalk. Jared’s Raiders cap went flying into the street. A station wagon rumbled past, nearly running it over.
Jared darted into the street and snatched the cap back. “I’ll be glad when winter is over,” he muttered.
We met Kristina in front of the school. Her red hair blew wildly around her head in the swirling wind. “Do we have band practice this afternoon?” she asked. She was chewing a Snickers bar.
“Great breakfast,” I said sarcastically.
“Mom didn’t have time to make eggs,” Kristina replied, chewing.
“Yes. Practice at my house,” Lily said. “We’ve got to get to work, guys. We don’t want Howie to win the contest.”
Kristina turned to me. “Where were you yesterday?”
“I… uh… didn’t feel too well,” I replied.
That reminded me of the INSTA-TAN lotion. Were any of my friends growing hair, too, because of that suntan gunk? I had to know. I had to ask.
But if they weren’t growing hair—if I was the only one—then I’d be totally embarrassed.
“Uh… remember that INSTA-TAN stuff?” I asked quietly.
“Great stuff,” Jared replied. “I think it made me paler!”
Kristina laughed. “It didn’t work at all. You were right, Larry. That bottle was too old.”
“Look at us,” Lily added. “We’re all as pale as the snow. That stuff didn’t do anything.”
But are you growing weird black patches of hair now?
That’s what I was dying to ask.
But none of them said anything about growing hair.
Were they like me? Were they too embarrassed to admit it?
Or was I the only one?
I took a deep breath. Should I ask? Should I ask if anyone was sprouting hair?
I opened my mouth to ask. But I stopped when I realized that the subject had changed. They were talking about our band again.
“Can you bring your amp to my house?” Lily asked Kristina. “Manny will bring his. But it only has jacks to plug in two guitars.”
“Maybe I can bring mine—” I started to say.
But a gust of wind blew my parka hood back.
I reached up to pull the hood back on my head.
But my hand brushed the back of my neck—and I gasped.
The back of my neck was covered with thick hair.
14
“Larry—what’s wrong?” Lily demanded.
“Uh… uh…” I couldn’t speak.
“What’s wrong with your scarf?” Jared asked. “Is it too tight?” He tugged at the wool scarf around my neck.
The scratchy scarf my mom made me wear because my great-aunt Hildy had knitted it.
I had forgotten I was wearing it. When my hand brushed against it, I’d thought…
“You looked scared to death!” Lily exclaimed. “Are you okay, Larry?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I’m okay,” I muttered, feeling my face go red. “The scarf was choking me, I guess.” What a lame lie.
But I had to say something. I couldn’t say that I had mistakenly thought that my neck had sprouted
fur!
Larry, you’ve got to stop thinking about hair! I scolded myself. If you don’t, you’ll drive yourself crazy!
I shivered. “Let’s go inside,” I said, wrapping the wool scarf tightly around my neck.
I hurried to the boys’ room to brush my hair before the bell rang. Gazing at my wavy, blond hair in the mirror as I brushed it, I had a horrifying thought.
What if my real hair suddenly fell out? And the gross, prickly black hair grew in its place?
What if I woke up one morning, and my entire head was covered in the disgusting black fur?
I took a long look at myself in the mirror. Someone had smeared soap over the glass, and my reflection appeared to stare back through hazy, white streaks.
“Shape up,” I told myself.
I pointed a finger at my reflection. A smooth, hairless finger.
“Stop thinking about hair, Larry,” I instructed my reflection. “Stop thinking about it. You’re going to be okay.”
The INSTA-TAN lotion has worn off, I decided.
It had been several days since my friends and I had splashed it on ourselves. I had taken at least three showers and two baths.
It wore off, I told myself. It’s all gone. Stop worrying about it.
I took one last glance at my hair. It was getting pretty long, but I liked it that way. I liked brushing the sides back over my ears.
Maybe I’ll let it grow really long, I thought. I tucked the hairbrush into my backpack and headed to class.
I had a pretty good day until Miss Shindling handed back the history term papers.
It wasn’t the grade that upset me. She gave me a ninety-four, which is really good. I knew that Lily would probably brag that she got a ninety-eight or a ninety-nine. But Lily was great at writing.
A ninety-four was really excellent for me.
The grade made me happy. But when I flipped through the pages, glancing over Miss Shindling’s comments on my writing, I found a black hair on page three.
Was it my black hair? I wondered. Was it one of the disgusting black hairs that had sprouted on my hands?
Or was it Miss Shindling’s? Miss Shindling had short, straight black hair. It could be one of hers.
Or else…
I squinted at the hair, afraid to touch it.
I knew I was starting to get weird. I knew I had made a solemn vow that I was going to stop thinking about hair.
But I couldn’t help it.
Seeing this one, stubby little black hair stuck to the third page of my term paper gave me the shudders. Finally, I raised the term paper close to my face—and blew the hair away.
I didn’t hear a word Miss Shindling said for the rest of the class. I was glad when the bell rang and it was time to go to gym.
It will feel good to run around and get some exercise, I decided.
“Basketball today!” Coach Rafferty shouted as we filed into the brightly lit gym. “Basketball today! Change into your shorts! Come on—hustle!”
I usually don’t like basketball that much. There’s so much running back and forth. Back and forth the entire length of the floor. Also, I don’t have a very good shooting eye. And I get really embarrassed when a teammate passes me the ball and I miss an easy shot.
But, today, basketball sounded just right. A chance to run and get rid of a lot of my nervous energy.
I followed the other guys into the locker room. We all opened our gym lockers and pulled out our shorts and T-shirts.
At the end of the row of lockers, Howie Hurwin kept shouting, “In your face! In your face!”
Another guy snapped a towel at Howie.
Serves him right, I thought. Howie is such a jerk.
“In your face!” I heard Howie chant. Someone shouted to him to shut up.
“In your face, man! In your face!”
I sat down on the bench and pulled off my sneakers. Then I stood up and started to pull off my jeans.
I stopped when I got the jeans about halfway down.
I stopped and let out a low cry when I saw my knees.
Bushy clumps of furry black hair had sprouted from both knees.
15
“How come you kept your jeans on in gym?” Jared asked.
“Huh?” His question caught me by surprise. It was the next day, and we were walking along the slushy sidewalks, lugging our instruments to Lily’s house for another band practice.
“You refused to change into gym shorts, remember?” Jared said, swinging his keyboard case at his side.
“I… was just cold,” I told him. “My legs got cold. That’s all. I don’t know why Coach Rafferty gave me such a hard time.”
Jared laughed. “Rafferty nearly swallowed his whistle when you sank that three-point jump shot from midcourt!”
I laughed, too. I am the worst shot in school. But I was so crazed about my hairy knees, so totally pumped, that I played better than I’d ever played in my life.
“Maybe you should wear jeans all the time!” Coach Rafferty had joked.
But, of course, it was no joke.
I ran all the way home after school and spent nearly half an hour locked in the upstairs bathroom, shaving the clumps of black hair off my knees.
When I finally finished, both knees were red and sore. But at least they were smooth again.
I spent the rest of the afternoon closed up in my room, thinking hard about what was happening to me. Unfortunately, all I came up with were questions. Dozens of questions.
But no answers.
Sprawled on my stomach on top of the bed, my knees throbbed as I thought. Why did my knees grow hair? I asked myself. I didn’t spread any INSTA-TAN on my knees. So why did the ugly black hair sprout there?
Had the INSTA-TAN worked itself into my system? Had the strange liquid seeped into my pores? Had it spread through my entire body?
Was I going to turn into some kind of big, hairy creature? Was I soon going to look like King Kong or something?
Questions—but no answers.
The questions still troubled me as I crossed the street with Jared, and Lily’s white-frame house came into view on the corner.
The sun beamed down above the two bare maple trees that leaned over Lily’s driveway. The air felt warm, almost like spring. The snow had melted a lot in one day. Patches of wet grass poked up through the white.
In the yard across the street from Lily’s house, a half-melted snowman looked sad and droopy. My hightops splashed through the slushy puddles as Jared and I carried our instruments up the driveway.
Lily opened the door for us. She and Kristina had already been practicing. Lily was wearing a bright red-and-blue ski sweater pulled down over pale blue leggings. Kristina wore faded jeans and a green-and-gold Notre Dame sweatshirt.
“Where’s Manny?” Lily asked, closing the front door behind Jared and me.
“Haven’t seen him,” I replied, scraping my wet sneakers on the floor mat. “Isn’t he here?”
“He wasn’t in school again today,” Kristina reported.
“We’ve got to get serious,” Lily said, biting her lower lip. “Did you talk to Howie today? Did he tell you what his dad bought him?”
“A new synthesizer?” I replied, bending to open my guitar case. “Yeah. Howie told me all about it. He says it can sound like an entire orchestra.”
“Who wants to sound like an orchestra?” Jared asked. He had a wet leaf stuck to his shoe. He pulled it off, but then didn’t know where to throw it away. So he jammed it in his jeans pocket.
“If Howie sounds like an orchestra, and we sound like three guitars and a kiddie keyboard, we’re in major trouble,” Lily warned.
“It’s not a kiddie keyboard!” Jared protested.
I laughed. “Just because you wind a crank at the side of it doesn’t make it a kiddie keyboard!”
“It’s small—but it has all the notes,” Jared insisted. He set the keyboard on the coffee table and bent down to plug it in.
“Let’s stop messing aroun
d and get to work,” Kristina said, moving her fingers over the frets of her shiny red Gibson. “What song do you want to practice first?”
“How can we practice without Manny?” I asked. “I mean, what’s the point?”
“I tried calling him,” Lily said. “But his phone is messed up or something. It didn’t even ring.”
“Let’s go to his house and get him,” I suggested.
“Yeah. Good idea!” Kristina agreed.
All four of us started for the front entryway to get our coats. But Lily stopped at the door. “Larry and I will go,” she announced to Kristina. “You and Jared should stay and practice. Why should we all go?”
“Okay,” Jared agreed quickly. “Besides, someone should be here in case Manny shows up.”
With that settled, Lily and I pulled on our coats and headed out the front door. Lily’s Doc Martens splashed through a wide puddle as we made our way along the sidewalk.
“I hate it when the snow gets all gray and slushy,” she said. “Listen. All you can hear is dripping. Water dripping from the trees, dripping from the houses.”
She stuck out her arm to block my path and stop me from walking. We listened in silence to the dripping sounds.
“It’s deafening—isn’t it?” Lily asked, smiling. The sunlight reflected in her eyes. One blue eye, one green eye.
“Deafening,” I repeated. Lily can be pretty weird sometimes. She once told me that she writes poetry. Long poems about nature. But she’s never shown any of them to me.
We trudged through the slush. The sun felt warm on my face. I unzipped my parka.
Manny’s house came into view as we turned the corner. Manny lives in a square-shaped brick house on top of a hill. It’s a great sledding hill. There were two little kids sledding down it now on blue plastic discs. They were going pretty slow since most of the snow had melted.
We walked past them and made our way up to Manny’s front stoop. Lily rang the doorbell, and I knocked. “Hey, Manny—open up!” I shouted.
No reply.
No sounds at all. Just the drip drip drip of water from the gutter.
“Hey, Manny!” I called. We rang and knocked again.
“No one home,” Lily said quietly. She stepped off the stoop and moved to the front window. Edging up on tiptoes, she tried to peer in.