I truly hoped his illness was fake. I’d be relieved if it was—and yet at the same time, the thought was already making me mad. See, I had wasted all that time collecting months for him, thinking I was doing something noble—something that might make his limited time a little brighter—and he accepted those months without the slightest hint of the lie. If this was a con, then everyone had been taken in—there was even that stupid time thermometer by the main office. Sure, I’d be thrilled to know he wasn’t dying—but I couldn’t deny the dark river of anger running beneath it. Just the right conditions for a sinkhole.
12 Repossession Is Nine-tenths of the Law, The Other Tenth Is Not My Problem
Mr. Ümlaut was home that night. I had hoped he wouldn’t be, because his presence added an even greater air of tension. His Lexus was in the driveway, but not for much longer, because it was being hooked up to a tow truck.
Good, I thought. If his car is in the shop, maybe he won’t go running off to that casino as much.
He stood there in an undershirt, in spite of the cold, watching his car as it was raised. His hands were in his pockets, and his shoulders slumped.
“Hi,” I said awkwardly. “I need to talk to Gunnar.”
“Yeah, yeah—he’s inside.”
He didn’t look at me when he spoke, or take his hands out of his pockets, and I got the feeling that if I had asked to see Attila the Hun, his response would have been, “Yeah, yeah—he’s inside.”
The front door was open a crack. I pushed it all the way open and stepped inside. Gunnar and Kjersten were in the living room—Gunnar was listening to an iPod so loudly I could hear the song all the way across the room. Kjersten sat on the sofa—but not in the way you usually sit on a sofa—she was sitting stiff and straight, like it was a hard chair. All at once I recognized this scene. This was the aftermath of a family fight. Mrs. Ümlaut was nowhere to be seen, but I suspected she was either upstairs in a room with the door locked, or in the basement violently doing laundry, or somewhere else where she could be alone with whatever emotions had gotten stirred. I wondered if this had anything to do with the car breaking down.
Kjersten noticed me first, but she didn’t smile and say hello. In fact, she didn’t seem happy to see me at all. Under the circumstances, I wasn’t entirely thrilled to see her either, but I told myself not to judge things until I had all the facts.
“Hi,” I said, trying to sound as casual as humanly possible, “what’s up?”
“Antsy, this isn’t a good time.”
Well, call me callous, but I had a mission today and would not be put off by a family squabble. “Yeah, but I need to talk to your brother,” I told her.
“Please, Antsy—just come back later, okay?”
“This can’t wait.”
Kjersten gave a resigned sigh, then threw a sofa pillow at Gunnar, getting his attention. He saw me and took off his earphones.
“Good, you’re just in time to witness this pivotal moment of our family’s history,” said Gunnar, seeming resigned, disgusted, amused, and angry all at the same time—a combination of emotions I usually associate with Old Man Crawley. “Have a seat, and enjoy the show,” he said. “You want me to get you some popcorn?”
Kjersten threw another pillow at him. “You’re such an idiot!”
“I’m here to talk about Dr. G,” I said, cutting to the chase. “Or should I say, Dr. Gigabyte?”
Then his cool expression hardened until he looked like a stubble-free version of his father. That’s when I knew my suspicions were right. It was all there in that look on his face. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he said.
“I think there is.”
He pushed past me. “Talk all you want to Kjersten—I’m sure you’d much rather talk to her anyway.” And he was gone, bounding up the stairs. A second later I heard a door slam.
I turned to Kjersten, but she wouldn’t look at me. Not that she was intentionally ignoring me, but she clearly had bigger things on her mind at the moment. Personally, I didn’t think a family argument was bigger than her brother faking a terminal illness. It occurred to me that in my conversation with Gunnar, I never asked him the question directly. The answer was heavy in the air, but the question needed to be asked.
“Gunnar isn’t really sick, is he?”
She looked at me for the first time since I had been alone with her. It was an odd look. I didn’t understand it. She seemed bewildered.
“You’re joking, right?”
“So . . . then he’s actually sick?”
“Of course not!” She took a moment to gauge my seriousness, and her expression became a bit worried. “You mean you didn’t know?”
That threw me for a loop. I stammered a bit, and finally shut my mouth long enough to control it and simply said, “No.”
“You mean you weren’t just humoring him? Playing along?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you’re a good person.”
“I’m not that good!”
“You mean all this time . . . all those contracts . . . you really thought he was dying?” said Kjersten. “I just thought it was a smart way to force Gunnar to snap out of it, and admit the truth!”
“I’m not that smart!”
She covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh no!” Her entire understanding of the situation was based on the premise that everyone knew Gunnar was faking. Now I could see all her thoughts cascading like dominoes. If I didn’t know, then other kids didn’t know, which meant the whole school believed Gunnar was dying. The fact that this was news to her made me feel sympathetic, and annoyed at the same time.
“Did you actually think Principal Sinclair was just ‘playing along’?”
“Principal Sinclair?”
“Did you think that stupid time thermometer was all part of some practical joke?”
“What thermometer?”
I explained it all to her, because between tennis, debate team, and the static filling her family life, she had missed some crucial things. She never heard my Morning Announcement, never noticed the thermometer. She knew that time donations were pouring in, but she thought it was just from other kids. She had no idea that it had become “official,” and that the faculty had begun donating months.
“There was a message on the answering machine, from Sinclair,” Kjersten said. “But I erased it before I heard the whole thing—I thought it was one of those school recordings we always get.” Which was understandable, since Principal Sinclair did sound like an automated message. I suspected there must have been more messages that Gunnar erased himself, knowing full well they were not recordings.
Then I thought about something Kjersten had said. She thought I was trying to get Gunnar to “snap out of it.”
“Does Gunnar actually believe Dr. Gigabyte?” I asked. “Does he really think he’s dying?”
The question just frustrated her. “How should I know? You know what he’s like—no one can ever figure out what he’s really thinking.”
I was relieved to know that it wasn’t just me. If he stymied his own sister, it meant he was more of a mystery, and I was less of a numbskull.
Out front I heard the scrape of metal on pavement, and glanced out of the window to see the tow truck leaving the driveway, scraping the underside of the Lexus on the curb as it did. Mr. Ümlaut just stood there and watched it go. I almost expected him to wave.
“So what’s wrong with your car?” I asked, in an attempt to change the subject.
“It’s not our car,” Kjersten said. “At least not anymore.” Then she got up and closed the blinds so she didn’t have to look at her father standing in the driveway. “It just got repossessed.”
This is something I knew a little bit about. When my parents got my brother Frankie a car, he was supposed to get a part-time job and make payments on it. He didn’t, and the family fights all became about how they’d come and take the car away. Dad was going to let the bank repossess the car to teach Frankie a lesso
n, but it never got that far—Frankie got the job, started making payments, and the threatening phone calls and letters in red ink stopped coming. I wondered how many letters and phone calls you had to ignore until they actually showed up at your door.
“My father tried to stop them by ripping out some hoses so they couldn’t drive it away. Then they sent a tow truck.”
“I’m sorry,” was all I could say to Kjersten. Now I felt like an idiot for dismissing the whole thing as just a family argument—but before I started beating myself up over it, I did a quick search for ultracool Antsy, who seemed to be easier to find these days. Even without thinking, I knew what he would do. I went to her, and gave her a gentle kiss. She kissed me back with a little bit of spark, so I kissed her again with slightly higher voltage, and she returned that with enough electricity to light Times Square, but before circuit breakers started popping, we shut it down, because we both knew this wasn’t the time or place. Just my luck, right?
“Don’t be too hard on Gunnar,” Kjersten said.
“Hey, you’re the one throwing pillows at him.”
With a gust of cold air, Mr. Ümlaut came in and saw Kjersten and me standing a little too close. I made no move to back away from her. Sometimes a guy’s gotta stand his ground.
“I thought your business was with Gunnar,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I got lots of business.”
He looked from me to Kjersten, to me again, like he was watching one of her tennis matches. Finally he settled his gaze on her, and he pointed the parental threatening finger.
“We’ll talk about this later.” Without looking at me again, he went to the back of the house and I heard the door to his study close. This was a house of many closing doors.
“We won’t talk,” Kjersten said. “He says that all the time, but we never do.” Kjersten smiled at me, but there wasn’t much joy in that smile.
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head in understanding. “Fathers and follow-through . . .” My own father didn’t follow through on much of anything these days—threats or promises—since he started the restaurant. But Mr. Ümlaut did not have work as an excuse.
“I just wish things could be the way they were a couple of years ago,” Kjersten said, “back when everything was fine—or at least when I was naive enough to think it was.” Some warmth came back to her smile as she looked at me. I was glad I could have that effect on her. “You’re lucky you’re a freshman—you’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
That made me laugh. “And you don’t?”
She kissed me gently on the forehead, then looked out to the grease spot on the driveway where her father’s car had been. “My life is going to change very soon.”
“Whoever it is, I have no intention of letting you in.”
I knocked on Gunnar’s door again. A more sensible guy might have been satisfied with Kjersten’s kisses and left, convincing himself that Gunnar was somebody else’s problem, but I don’t possess the self-preservation instinct. I’ve got the this-frying-pan-isn’t-hot-enough-let’s-try-the-fire instinct. I must have been Roadkyll Raccoon in a previous life.
I knocked again. This time there was no response, but I did hear the door being unlocked. I opened it to find Gunnar lying facedown on his bed, with a pillow over his head to shut out the world. This was quite a feat—because just a second ago he had unlocked the door. He must have hurried back to his bed at lightning speed, just so he could present himself to me in this state of anguish.
I sat at his desk chair, realizing he couldn’t stay that way for long—he’d have to breathe eventually. Sure enough, he loosened the grip on the pillow, turned to see me for just a split second, then turned his face the other way.
“Go away,” he said. But if he really wanted me to go away, he wouldn’t have unlocked the door.
I said to him the one thing I could think to say under the circumstances. “I’m sorry you’re not dying.”
He sat up and faced me. He seemed insulted. “Who says I’m not? Just because it’s a Dr. Gigabyte diagnosis doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“Well, then maybe my sister has leprosy.”
He showed no sign of being surprised or confused by that, and I wondered if maybe he had, at some point, been given that diagnosis by Dr. Gigabyte, too.
“Have you seen any real doctors? What do they say?”
“I don’t care what they say. ‘The enlightened man knows the workings of his own body and soul.’ ”
“Who said that?” I asked.
I could see him thinking and he said, “The Dalai Lama.”
“You made that up!”
“So what.”
And then I had a sudden revelation. “You made them all up!” Even as I said it, I knew it was true. Nobody could have so many quotes-for-all-occasions at their fingertips. “None of those people ever said those things, did they? Your quotes are all fake!”
He looked down at the pillow in his hands, and punched it like he was kneading a wad of dough. “That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have said them,” he mumbled.
I laughed. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but the fact that even his pretensions were pretend struck me as funny. He didn’t react well to that. He stood up, and went to the door. “I’d like you to leave now.”
This time I think he meant it. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m actually glad you’re not dying.” I stood up and went to the door. “Do your parents have any idea you’ve been conning the whole school?”
“I’m not conning anybody,” he said. “My life is over. Whether or not I actually die is just a technicality.”
But before I could ask him what that meant, he closed the door between us.
The next day—the Friday before a desperately needed Christmas vacation—I was hauled into the principal’s office again. This time he already had other guests—a man and a woman in expensive-looking business suits. When I walked in, they both stood up. I flinched, like you do when the cat jumps out in a horror movie.
“Ah,” said Principal Sinclair, “here’s the boy I’ve been telling you about.” I shook their hands—but can’t remember their names, on account of my brain was still processing the fact that they had been talking about me—but I’m pretty sure that the woman was the newly elected superintendent of schools.
“Anthony has been spearheading a schoolwide community-service effort to give hope to a terminally ill student.”
“Uh . . . yeah,” I said, looking anywhere but at the three of them. “Funny you should mention that . . .”
“I’ve heard all about it,” said the superintendent. “We need more students like you.”
That almost made me laugh.
“If you don’t mind,” the man said, “we’d like to donate time, too.”
Call me a gutless wonder, but I didn’t have the courage to let them know the truth about Gunnar and his “illness.” I tried, but the words stuck in my throat and clung to my tonsils like strep, refusing to come out.
“Yeah, sure, why not,” I said, and reached into my backpack, pulling out two blank time contracts for them to fill in and sign, with my principal signing as witness. Then, when it was done, Principal Sinclair sat on the corner of his desk, in that casual I’m-your-principal-but-I’m-also-your-friend kind of way. “Now, I’m sure you’ve heard that the student council has organized a rally for Gunnar during the first week of January,” he said.
“They have?”
“Yes—and I think you should give a speech, Anthony.”
There comes a moment in every really, really bad situation when you realize your canoe’s leaking, there’s no paddle, and you can hear Niagara Falls up ahead. There’s nothing you can do but hold on and pray for deliverance. I don’t mean the movie Deliverance, which is, coincidentally, about canoes—I mean real, Hail Mary, Twenty-third Psalm kind of deliverance.
“I’m not good at speeches.”
“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” said the superintendent. “Just speak from the
heart.”
And the other guy said, “We’ll all be there to support you.”
“You’ll be there?” I asked. The Falls were getting louder by the minute.
“This school,” said the principal, “is under consideration as a National Blue Ribbon school. Academics are only a part of that. The school must also demonstrate that its students are committed to making the world a better place . . . and you, Anthony, are our shining star.”
13 Kidnap Ye Grouchy Gentleman, with Something to Dismay
In spite of what happened on the Double Date From Hell, my friendship with Lexie was back to normal. “I care about you too much to be anything more than mildly furious at you,” she had told me, but even then, I could tell she wasn’t furious at all.
The two of us kidnapped her grandfather as planned—the first Saturday of Christmas vacation. As usual, Old Man Crawley had no concept of what was in store for him today. “I don’t want to do this!” he yelled as I fought to blindfold him. “I’m calling the police! I’ll skewer you on the end of my cane!” But this was all part of the ritual.
By the time we got him out to his chauffeured Lincoln, he had stopped complaining about being kidnapped. Now he merely complained about the conditions.
“You forgot my winter coat.”
“It’s a warm day.”
“I just ate. If I have digestive problems because of this, I won’t be happy.”
“When are you ever happy?” I asked.