“Well, maybe there are a few murderers,” said Larry.
David figured Larry didn’t want him along. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t make it. Besides, I don’t think I should be around murderers when I still might be cursed.”
“The curse is gone,” said Larry. “The lemonade took care of that.”
“I just want to be careful,” said David. “You said three days was the standard waiting period.”
“You just want to be cursed so you don’t have to ask Tori out on a date,” said Mo.
“Bullshit,” said David.
Larry and Mo looked oddly at him. For some reason it sounded strange to hear David say “Bullshit.”
He felt odd about it too, and blushed right after he said it.
AFTER LUNCH he headed toward P.E.
“Hello, Mr. Ballinger,” said Tori, hurrying alongside him.
“Hi,” he muttered, looking down at the ground.
“I liked what you said in homeroom,” she said, “about happiness. Having to be sad in order to be happy.”
“Yeah, well, I just had to say something,” he said, then walked quickly away from her and into the boys’ locker room.
“Bye, David,” he heard her say behind him.
He walked down the row of lockers. Lately he had begun to dread gym. He felt very vulnerable there, especially when changing clothes. So far he’d been left pretty much alone, except for being called a few names. But he was constantly afraid that Roger and some of his friends might try to steal his clothes or put a jockstrap over his face.
He tried not to run around too much during soccer. He didn’t want to sweat too much because he didn’t want to have to shower. When he returned to the locker room, he quickly changed his clothes, then went to the bathroom and splashed his face with cold water.
“Your brother’s got more guts than you do,” said Roger Delbrook. He was combing his hair in front of the bathroom mirror. “Sure Glen beat him up, but at least he fought back. That’s more than you ever do. You just stand there like a pile of—”
The gym teacher entered the bathroom.
David headed outside. He saw Tori Williams coming out of the girls’ locker room. He quickly turned before she spotted him.
“WHAT’S WITH you and Ricky?” asked his mother. “He said he hated you.”
“I don’t know,” said David. He was sitting at his desk doing his homework.
“I think you should go talk to him.”
“I’m doing my homework,” said David.
He wondered if Glen had really beaten up Ricky, like Roger had said. Was that why Ricky hated him?
He went into his closet, got his baseball and glove, then headed for his brother’s room. He was surprised by how nervous he felt. “So, you want to play catch?” he asked.
Ricky didn’t look up from his paperback book.
David stood in Ricky’s room, pounding the ball into his glove.
Ricky put his book down. “What do you want?”
“Did you get in a fight with Glen Delbrook?”
“What do you care?”
“I care. I’m your brother.”
“Unfortunately!”
“What did I do?” asked David. “Just tell me what I did!”
“You’re a stooge!” said Ricky.
“Look, just because Roger calls me names. That’s his problem. Names don’t hurt me.”
“But it’s true!” said Ricky. “You are a stooge. I saw you and your stoogy friends. You dumped a whole pitcher of pink lemonade on your head.”
“Look, I—”
“Why’d you do that?” Ricky demanded. “If you’re not a stooge, why’d you do that?”
David didn’t know what to say. How could he tell Ricky about the curse? Ricky would only think he was a bigger fool. Ricky was too smart to believe in curses.
“Stooge!” said Ricky.
David walked out to the backyard. He tossed the ball onto the roof of the house, then caught it when it rolled down. He tossed it up again. It momentarily disappeared from view, then he lunged and caught it as it rolled off the roof.
“Careful,” his mother called to him from the kitchen. “You already broke one window.”
“I won’t,” said David.
He tossed the ball back onto the roof, just above the window.
24
THURSDAY.
David was wearing socks, no shoes. “I made orange juice,” he said, holding the pitcher in his hand. “Anybody want some?”
“That’s very nice, thank you,” said his mother.
David poured a glass for his mother, holding the glass in one hand and the pitcher in the other. His feet slid a little bit as he handed it to her.
“Dad?” he asked.
“Sure,” said his father. “Careful, not too full.”
He didn’t spill a drop.
“Hey, Ricky, you want some orange juice?” he asked as his brother entered the kitchen.
“I’m not thirsty,” said Ricky.
David put down the pitcher.
Ricky walked over, picked up the pitcher, and poured himself a glass of orange juice.
HE SAW Tori Williams when he got to school. He didn’t say anything to her, and this time she didn’t try to say anything to him either. She just walked right past him as if he wasn’t even there.
“I don’t think she likes me,” he told his friends at recess.
“You’re just too chicken to ask her out,” said Mo.
“No, I’m not. It’s just that she ignores me all the time. She won’t even say hello to me anymore. I think she likes Randy.”
“Well, you still have to call her up today,” said Mo.
“Unless the curse strikes,” said David. “I still have until four seventeen.”
“You sound like you want the curse to strike,” said Larry.
“No, I don’t,” David insisted. “I just want to be sure it’s gone, that’s all.”
“He’s afraid to call up Tori,” said Mo.
David changed the subject. “So,” he asked, “did you go watch the criminals pick up trash?”
“Yes!” exclaimed Mo. “They were so scary. You should have been there. There were robbers and murderers. You could tell they were planning an escape, too.”
“A criminal spoke to her,” said Larry.
“It was horrible!” said Mo, grinning from ear to ear.
“What’d he say?” asked David.
“I remember every word,” said Mo. “We were sitting by these bushes with these weird-looking yellow and red flowers and the man picked up a piece of paper right next to me!”
“She put it there,” said Larry, “so that he’d have to come near us to pick it up.”
“It was my math test,” said Mo. “It has my name on it! Luckily it didn’t have my address.”
“What did he say to you?” asked David.
Mo looked at David with wide, frightened eyes. “He said, ‘Those are pretty flowers.’ ”
David stayed late in science class to help Mr. Lugano put away some laboratory equipment and chemicals. “Be careful not to drop anything,” Mr. Lugano warned him.
“I won’t,” said David.
He didn’t.
“You know, I was thinking,” Larry said at lunch. “If you’re afraid to go on a date with Tori—”
“I’m not afraid,” said David. He lay on his back as he drank from a carton of lemonade.
“Well, anyway,” said Larry. “I was thinking. It might be easier to ask her out if it was sort of like a double date.”
“Huh?” said Mo.
“I was just thinking,” Larry said to Mo. “Maybe you and I could pretend to be on a date, too. We wouldn’t really be on a date. We’d just pretend to be on a date.” He adjusted his blue sunglasses. “Like, if David wants to put his arm around Tori, or something, he can signal me, and then I’ll put my arm around you. I’ll just be pretending, but Tori won’t know that.”
“Oh, well, sure, if it
will make it easier for David,” said Mo. “Sure.”
“So where do you want to go?” asked Larry.
“We could go to a movie,” suggested Mo.
“Okay,” said Larry. “A scary movie! That way Tori will want to hold David’s hand or grip his arm or something.”
“I’ll grip your arm,” said Mo. “But it won’t count.”
“Right,” said Larry.
“It’s still only a little past twelve,” David reminded them. “We have four more hours.”
They never asked him, but actually he thought their “pretend” date was a good idea. That way, when he called up Tori he could just say something like, “Some friends of mine and I are going to a movie. You want to come along?”
That is—if the curse didn’t strike first.
After school, Mo and Larry stuck with him to make sure he didn’t cheat. “I’m not going to cheat,” he protested. “Why would I cheat?”
They continued to plan their “pretend” date. They decided to see The Tongue That Wouldn’t Die! It was scary and they figured it would also make Tori think about kissing.
“The curse may have already struck, and we don’t even know it,” said David.
“You’d know if—” Larry started, then stopped.
Roger, Scott, and Randy were hanging around the bike rack with three girls. Roger was with Leslie. Scott was with Ginger. Randy was with Tori.
David looked at Tori as she looked back at him. Then she turned abruptly and said something to Randy.
David and his friends kept walking.
“You don’t know that she likes Randy,” said Mo. “She might just have been getting her bike.”
“It was just a coincidence that she happened to be there when Randy was there,” said Larry.
“She talked to him,” said David.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Mo. “Maybe he was in her way. She probably said ‘Get out of my way, jerk!’ ”
“You still have to ask her out,” said Larry.
David realized that Mo and Larry didn’t want anything to get in the way of their pretend date. “Unless the curse strikes,” he said.
When they entered David’s room, the clock radio next to his bed read 3:33 P.M.
“Three threes,” said Larry. “That’s lucky.”
“I think the curse has already struck,” said David. “I just haven’t figured out how yet. It can be real subtle sometimes.”
Larry and Mo didn’t buy it.
“So, what do you want to do?” David asked.
“Nothing,” said Mo. “We’re just going to wait.”
Ricky walked past David’s door and scowled at David and his stoogy friends.
It was 3:45 P.M.
“We can go out back and throw the ball around,” David suggested.
“No way,” said Larry. “We’re staying right here until four seventeen.”
“How about something to drink?” asked David. “I’ll go make some lemonade.”
Mo and Larry each put a hand on David’s shoulder, holding him in place. “We’re not thirsty,” said Mo.
“You can’t fight a curse,” said David. “If it wants to strike it will strike whether we drink lemonade or not.”
The clock read 3:57 P.M.
C’mon, curse, he thought. If you’re going to strike, strike me now!
The time was 4:05 P.M.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” said David.
“Not yet,” said Mo.
“Look, do you want me to go in my pants? That could be part of the curse.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Larry.
“I can go to the bathroom by myself.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Don’t let him try anything,” warned Mo.
Mo waited outside the bathroom door while Larry went in with David. He did what he had to do, flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and started toward the door.
“Your fly,” said Larry.
“I was just about to do that,” said David. He zipped it up.
“So how’d it go?” Mo asked.
“He tried to walk out with his zipper down,” said Larry, “so you’d see his underwear!”
“I did not!” David exclaimed. “I can’t believe you’d think I’d do that!”
They escorted him back to his room as if he was some kind of prisoner. It was 4:13 P.M.
They watched the numbers change. 4:15 … 4:16. David looked up at the ceiling as if he hoped the roof would cave in.
4:17.
25
MO AND LARRY wanted David to call up Tori right then and there, but he convinced them that it would be better to call her up that night. Mo finally agreed that girls were more romantic at night.
“But if you chicken out,” she warned, “don’t even bother coming to school tomorrow.”
David sat on his parents’ bed and waited for 8:11 P.M. They had decided he’d call her then. They chose 8:11 P.M. because it would seem spontaneous. If he called her at exactly eight o’clock or exactly eight fifteen, Tori would know he’d been planning the call for a long time.
Sometimes you just have to do what your friends want you to do, David realized, no matter how terrible it is. He had finally learned that. It was the opposite of what everyone had always told him. Just say no, he had been told again and again. Don’t let peer pressure make you do something you don’t want to do. Be yourself. Just say no. If your friends don’t like you for it, then they’re not really your friends.
But he didn’t have any other friends. He had said no to Roger and Randy. That was why they hated him.
Besides, Larry and Mo weren’t asking him to do anything really bad. It wasn’t as if they were asking him to take drugs or steal a car. They wanted him to ask out Tori Williams so that they could go out too. There’s a difference between “just saying no” and letting your friends down.
It was more a matter of face. If he didn’t call her up, he’d lose even more face. Besides, he wanted to go out with Tori. So what was the problem?
He was afraid that Tori Williams would just say no.
He got out the phone book from the nightstand next to his parents’ bed and thumbed through the pages until he got to Williams.
“HELLO.”
“Hello, Tori, this is David.”
“Oh, hi, David. I was just thinking about you.”
“Really? What about me?”
“Oh, I don’t think I should tell you that.”
“Maybe I was thinking the same thing about you.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, anyway, the reason I called was—Would you like to go to a movie with me on Saturday night?”
“Sure, that sounds like fun.”
Unfortunately, that conversation never happened—except in David’s head.
“HELLO.”
“Good evening, Miss Williams. This is Mr. Ballinger.”
“Oh, well, make it quick, Ballinger. I’m expecting a call from Randy.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, I, um, would be delighted if you would consent to have tea with me on Saturday.”
“What?”
“We don’t have to have tea. I mean, some of my friends and I are going out to a movie and I thought maybe you’d like to come along.”
“Are you asking me out on a date?”
“Yeah, sort of. Sure, why not?”
“Are you crazy? The only reason I talk to you is because I feel sorry for you. Why would somebody like me want to go out with a stooge like you? Be real, Curly!”
That conversation never happened either.
HE NEVER called her. There were more than two pages of people named Williams in the phone book.
He couldn’t call up each and every one and ask if someone named Tori lived there. Surely Mo would understand that. What if there was another Tori Williams? What if he asked the wrong Tori Williams out on a date?
He decided he would just have to ask her for her phone number tomorrow at school. A
ctually, the more he thought about it, the better he liked that idea. He’d ask her for her phone number, and then she’d ask him why he wanted it. Then he’d say because he wanted to call her up to ask her out on a date. If she gave him her phone number it would mean she wanted to go out with him. And if she didn’t give him her phone number, then he wouldn’t have to call her and be rejected.
He put away the phone book and went into the den feeling a lot better about things. His mother and Ricky were watching television. Ricky turned and scowled at David.
“What’s the matter, Ricky?” David asked sarcastically. “Wrestling not on?”
Elizabeth was playing with blocks on the floor. She dropped a circular block through a circular-shaped hole.
David, his mother, and his brother all clapped their hands and told her what a good girl she was.
“How come I don’t see Scott anymore?” David’s mother asked.
David shrugged. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I guess we just have different interests.”
“Yeah, Scott’s not a stooge,” said Ricky so only David could hear.
“Ba-ba,” said Elizabeth.
“Bottle?” asked David.
“Ba-ba!” said Elizabeth.
“I’ll get her some apple juice,” said David’s mother.
“That’s okay,” said David. “I’ll get it.”
He went into the kitchen and got the apple juice out of the refrigerator. As he poured it into Elizabeth’s bottle he thought about Mrs. Bayfield. At least we’re finally even, he decided, even if there never really was a curse. Everything that happened to her had now happened to him.
Except did that make them even, really? What if she didn’t put a curse on him? What if it was just one coincidence after another? Then nothing that happened to him really made up for the suffering he had caused her.
He pictured her again, lying helplessly on the ground, her face covered with lemonade, her legs in the air.
He stuck Elizabeth’s bottle into the microwave for a few seconds to take the chill off. He started to screw on the nipple when the phone rang.
“Hello?” he said, answering it. “Hello?”
Nobody answered.
He hung up, then brought Elizabeth’s bottle back to the den. “Here you go,” he said, handing the bottle to her. “Good, fresh apple juice!”