Yay! An assistant principal who was also an amateur comedian. VERY amateur.
“Never,” he continued, “in my twenty-three years in this district, have I seen two students—two sixth graders—cause so much trouble so early in the school year. If this is what you do during your first morning here, I shudder to imagine what you will do when we have a full day! Now, would you mind telling me what you and Mr. Strack were doing in that hallway?”
Bowen’s face flashed in my mind. Suddenly, I thought I understood what he had been trying to tell me. “Would you believe we were dancing?”
The Bee looked above my head, then sat back in his chair, folded his hands on his tummy, and grinned mischievously. “Really?” he said.
“Yes, sir. We take a dance class together. You know, after school. And, uh, on weekends. Sometimes.”
“And what kind of dance class would this happen to be?”
Crud. Bowen really needed to practice whispering faster. “Um, hip-hop?”
“Nice try, Maverick.”
“Well, sure, the end of the routine clearly needs some work, but—”
“No, I said ‘nice try’ because Mr. Strack told me you were both involved with the study of the noble art of ballet.”
Ballet? I thought. Seriously, Bowen?
“Yes, ballet,” I said.
“Can you please list four ballet positions for me? Surely your ballet studies have taught you the basics?”
“Well, there’s the leap. Then the . . . jump. And the . . . backflip?”
“Mr. Strack couldn’t name any, either. The next time you both decide to lie, I suggest you do your research first.”
Mr. Overbye went on to tell me he would let me know about my punishment later. Then he sent me back to class and called in the other kid, whose name turned out to be Nathan Something-or-other.
Based on the look Nathan gave me, I suspected he would be more than happy to give The Bee some punishment suggestions.
* * *
I actually spent nearly seventeen minutes in my sixth-period class, which was English with an extremely odd man named Mr. Kurt. When I came in late and handed him my note, he said, “Right-o-rooney, Mr. Falconer! Just take the open seat at the back table over there and get ready to make some beauty! We’re working on life collages. All you have to do is arrange some pictures into a visually pleasing pattern that tells us a story about you.”
Naturally, Mr. Kurt had put me next to the other person who had come in late: Bowen. Like everyone else, he was already cutting out his pictures. Typical Bowen Strack—his stacked photos were all either famous athletes, or close-ups of dollar signs or actual money.
Bowen was a really deep thinker.
“Ballet? Who takes ballet?” I hissed at him, grabbing an old magazine and starting to flip through it randomly.
“What?” he said. “I could take ballet. I happen to be extremely graceful. And flexible. In fact, my elbows and knees are double jointed. Check this ou—”
“Dudesters! Work!” barked Mr. Kurt.
I grabbed a pair of scissors and slashed furiously around an image of a United States Army soldier in full desert gear. Well, as furiously as one can slash with pink plastic school scissors. “I don’t care if you’re double jointed. You couldn’t answer any of The Bee’s questions about ballet. Plus, I told The Bee we took hip-hop. Now we’re busted!”
“Hip-hop? Like you’re coordinated enough for hip-hop!” Bowen snipped out a bunch of random-seeming letters from advertisements, and then rearranged them on the table to read GET PAID. I wanted to vomit. Instead, I focused on finding pictures that said something about my life. Of course, if I had been totally honest, I would have cut out a pile of vodka bottles, and maybe glued down a bunch of dollar bills with Xs drawn over them. Instead, I found a picture of Sheriff Woody from Toy Story, and cut out his badge. Next, I stumbled upon a whole double-page spread advertising a Marvel Comics DVD collection, so I grabbed images of Spider-Man and Captain America. Finally, I looked through a huge stack of National Geographics until I located a map of Afghanistan.
With a huge lump forming in my throat, I cut—super carefully—around the outline of the map.
Mr. Kurt cleared his throat and announced, “All righty, little artisans, you need to start assembling now! Just remember what I told you about this new glue that the school ordered, okay?”
Everyone started laying out their pictures on pieces of poster board. I leaned toward Bowen and asked what we were supposed to remember about the new glue.
“Oh,” he said, smiling in an unusually friendly way, “it’s finger glue. You just dab it onto the back of each picture with your fingertips and then stick the picture right onto the paper. It’s supposed to be better for the environment than the old glue sticks, because you only need a teeny-tiny bit of it.”
“Thanks,” I said, grabbing one of the little glue bottles from the tabletop. I turned the picture of Captain America upside down, squeezed the littlest drop possible onto my index finger, and touched the back of the picture. Instantly, it stuck to my finger.
Bowen giggled.
I couldn’t believe it. He had gotten me twice in one day!
“Bowen!” I practically yelled.
Mr. Kurt said, “What are you doing at that table? Do I have to come back there or something, pals?”
“Sorry, sir,” Bowen said. “We’re just bonding!” Then he added, under his breath, “Darn. I knew it was either finger glue or instant-hardening superglue. I always get those confused.”
Just then, the intercom blared to life:
“PLEASE SEND MAVERICK FALCONER TO THE OFFICE. WITH HIS THINGS.”
Naturally, the whole class made the “oooo-ooo” noise that everyone always makes when somebody gets called to the office. Then they stared at me as I frantically snipped away as much of the picture from around my finger as I could and grabbed my bag.
“Don’t worry about your collage materials, buddy-rooney,” Mr. Kurt said, in what seemed like a sort of sympathetic tone. “Your friend Mr. Strack can put them in a folder for you. Right, Bowen-boy?”
“With pleasure!”
I’m sure, I thought as I left the room. It was hard not to feel sorry for myself as I trudged toward the office—again—with the backs of my hands wrapped in gauze, a lengthening criminal record, and the decapitated head of Captain America permanently glued to my fingertip.
Around the corner from the office, I passed Nathan, who stared straight down at the floor the whole time. Either he was avoiding eye contact or he really, really admired the school’s swirly, poop-brown floor tiles.
The instant my butt hit the seat in The Bee’s office, I knew why Nathan had been looking down. He had told on me. Now, instead of The Bee thinking I was a victim who was reluctant to name names—which had actually been true—he thought I was some kind of improbable mega-bully.
“So,” he said in a dangerously cheerful tone, “Nathan just finished telling me about your human bowling exploits in the hallway.”
Human bowling? Huh?
“I wouldn’t have thought a little guy like you could take out an entire soccer team, plus an innocent bystander, with one charge, but then again, my five-year-old daughter once rolled a strike with a six-pound ball at Lizzy Lavinsky’s birthday party, and I wouldn’t have believed that if I hadn’t seen it, either.”
I sat and stared at him. Had he just accused me of charging into an entire soccer team and scattering them like bowling pins? That was so . . . so . . . so . . .
Technically accurate. Dang.
And then, had he also compared me to a six-pound bowling ball rolled by a five-year-old girl? Argh. Again, he sort of had a point. I curled my hands into fists, because when I glanced down into my lap, it had momentarily looked like Captain America was laughing at me.
“Well, do you have anything to say for yourself ? Anything else you’d like me to know about your foray into the beautiful, yet strangely violent, art of dance?”
&nbs
p; I didn’t say a word. What good would it have done?
Mr. Overbye pushed his phone across the desk to me and uttered the three most frightening words in the English language: “Call your mother.” Then he told me she needed to come and get me. Apparently, my brief experience with scissors and glue was going to be it for me in terms of first-day academics.
I didn’t know what to do. My mom couldn’t come.
She didn’t have a car.
She was probably hungover.
Or still sleeping.
Or, worst of all, drunk again.
She would either have to walk three miles or take two different buses to reach the school. I knew she didn’t have the money for a taxi. Plus, her face probably looked awful; the swelling was always much worse the day after.
I almost started to cry, but stopped myself by reaching into my jeans pocket and rubbing my dad’s star. I didn’t remember much about my father, but I thought I remembered him saying to me once that sheriffs didn’t cry in public.
“I’m waiting,” Mr. Overbye said.
I thought and thought. I rubbed my star and squinched my eyes shut as tightly as I could. Then I said a little prayer and punched ten digits with the Captain’s face. As soon as I heard a voice on the other end, I blurted out, “Mom, can you please come get me at the middle school? Uh, Montvale West, of course. Very funny, Mom . . . In the office? Right now? I got in trouble. Yes, this is Maverick. Who else would it be?”
I rolled my eyes at The Bee, as if to say, Mothers!
I said two more words into the phone: “Please hurry!” Then I hung up before Mr. Overbye could try to get in on the conversation.
The Bee sent me out into the main office to wait, which was a good thing, because I hadn’t actually called my mother. Once, Aunt Cat had made me memorize her number in case of an emergency. But ever since the time my mom flipped out on her, I had never called my aunt in a crisis. Today, though, I had given in. It was a pretty big risk, because Cat was as wild as her name, but I figured nothing could be as awful as having my new assistant principal meet my actual mess of a mother.
Still, I was going to have to do an awful lot of explaining, awfully fast, the instant Aunt Cat walked in.
Or stormed in, as it turned out. Aunt Cat knew how to make an entrance. First of all, she was really tall—probably about five eight without the super-high heels she was wearing. Second, she had ultra-bright pink hair. Third, she was dressed in a leopard-print pantsuit and a short fake-fur coat. Aunt Cat has a pretty unique sense of style.
Anyway, she shoved the door open so hard it clanged off the coatrack behind it, while her head swiveled until her eyes locked on mine. She closed the distance between us in three long strides and enveloped me in an extremely bone-crushing hug.
One of the secretaries had leaped up and was saying, “Excuse me, miss,” but Aunt Cat waved her away over my shoulder. At the same time, she snarled into my ear, “What’s going on, Mav?”
“I got in a fight.”
“A fight? You?”
At the sight of my aunt—the only person in the whole world who made me feel safe—I had immediately started crying. This made it hard to speak, so I nodded against her shoulder.
“Did you win?”
I managed to choke out, “Sort of.”
“How do you sort of win a fight?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, I knocked the other guy into a garbage can, and then a banana peel got stuck in his hair, but I accidentally smashed another kid’s head into a locker, and that kid told on me.”
She pushed me away and held me at arm’s length. “A banana peel?” she asked. Then she noticed the gauze on my hands and the head of Captain America on my fingertip, shook her head, and started giggling. “A banana peel? Only you, Maverick Falconer . . . ”
Just then, a voice rumbled from behind me. “Excuse me, Mrs. Falconer, but we need to talk about your son’s behavior.”
Aunt Cat squeezed my wrists, winked at me, then whirled to face The Bee. I crossed my fingers.
“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth, “we do!”
In his office, The Bee went through his version of my whole day, while Aunt Cat nodded solemnly at all the right times. As soon as he finished, she turned to me and said, “Young man, I hope you understand the seriousness of all this. I am sure Mr. Overbye here has better things to do with his time than handle your messes all day. Do you understand me?”
I nodded. Boy, she was a really good actress. Either that, or her moods changed extremely fast.
“If I have to come down here again, Maverick David Falconer, you are going to be one extremely unhappy little sixth grader. Now, you are going to go straight to your room when you get home and think about what you’ve done.” She turned and looked sweetly at The Bee. She might have batted her eyelashes at him. He might even have blushed, but maybe—hopefully—I was imagining that part. “Don’t you worry, Mr. Overbye. Between us, I’m sure we can get Maverick straightened out. You have my number if you, um, need to get in touch.”
Then she stood, gestured for me to follow, and strode out of there, pausing just long enough to wave over her shoulder at The Bee.
She didn’t start giggling again until we got to the street.
By the time we got in her car, Aunt Cat had stopped laughing. First, she asked why I had called her instead of my mother. I mumbled something about a job, although I may have neglected to mention the fact that my mom was busy looking for a job.
Next, Aunt Cat started in on my behavior. “Maverick,” she said, “what were you thinking? A fight? Against an entire soccer team? In front of a hallway full of witnesses? On the first day of school? In what universe could that ever seem like a good idea?”
I could feel my face flush. “I wasn’t trying to get in a fight! But there’s this one kid named Bowen Strack—”
“Banana Boy?”
“Yeah, him. Anyway, he thinks he’s so great because he’s rich and popular and everything. But he’s mean! And he tricked me into punching my locker.”
“So that was your first trip to the office, right?”
“Right. And then I was walking to my next class, minding my own business, when—”
“He attacked you? Why didn’t you say something to Mr. Overbye, then?”
“Well, um, actually, I attacked him.”
She looked at me like my face had just turned purple, with hot-pink polka dots. “You attacked him? Randomly? You just jumped him, out of the blue?”
“Not exactly. He was with all his rich, stupid, mean soccer friends. And he had taken a book away from some new kid named Nate, who’s small like me. So I looked at Bowen really hard. That’s all I did—I just stared at him. I thought maybe he would stop torturing the kid if he knew someone besides his group of idiots was watching. Then he said something and I kind of lost it.”
I looked down at my hands. There was dumb old Captain America, grinning up from my fingertip like this was all some big joke. I was starting to hate that guy.
Aunt Cat’s voice was much gentler as she asked, “What did he say, Mav? Did he make fun of you?”
My throat felt kind of hot and closed, like I was going to cry again if I tried to talk, so I just sat there like a fool, until Aunt Cat reached across the seat of the car and began stroking my hair. Then I actually did start sobbing.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how superheroes roll.
When I finally got myself under control, I said, “No, he didn’t make fun of me, exactly. He kind of . . . challenged me.”
Aunt Cat sighed. “Oh, kid. If you start swinging every time some knucklehead challenges you, I’m going to be getting a lot of phone calls.”
“But what was I supposed to do, ignore him? He was picking on somebody smaller than him.”
“I know, but—”
“Aunt Cat, what would my dad have done?”
She kind of jerked back from me. I never talked about my father in front of her. I basically never talked about
him in front of anyone, but one of my earliest memories was of her crying on the freshly turned earth at the foot of his grave, so she would normally have been the last person in the world with whom I’d have brought this up.
But then she smiled. “Maverick, your dad would have fed that kid his teeth, one by one.”
I felt some kind of frozen lump in my chest crack open, just a bit.
“Aunt Cat, is it true that he was a hero? I mean, a real hero?”
She leaned back in her seat and sighed. “Well, you know how he died . . . That was pretty heroic. Nobody signs up to be a military firefighter unless he’s some kind of special, right?”
I nodded.
“And I don’t think you ever knew this, but your father was paying my way through college until he died. Then I had to drop out and go to beauty school, because it was cheaper and faster. Whatever. I guess what I’m trying to say is that he was my hero. He was my big brother, and he always, always watched out for me. When I lost him, it was like losing a guardian angel. But . . . ”
“But what?”
Really quickly, Aunt Cat sat up straight, started the car, and slammed it into gear. Just before she stomped her high-heeled foot down on the gas pedal, I could have sworn she wiped a tear away from under one eye.
“But nothing. I just noticed the time. Geez, I have a client in fifteen minutes! You’re going to have to explain all of this to your mother. Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“For real?”
“For real. And, Aunt Cat? Thanks.” I would tell my mom about the trouble I’d gotten in. I didn’t say that my plan was to wait until she’d had a bunch of drinks and was about to pass out.
“You’re welcome. And hey, I’ll drop off some wood shavings for Freddy next week sometime, all right?”
“That’s perfect! Thanks again!”
Aunt Cat was basically the reason I had Freddy in the first place. There was a pet store next to the salon where she worked, and I was pretty sure the owner, Bill, had a crush on her like every other grown-up man in the world did, so he gave her big discounts on Freddy’s food and the wood shavings for the bottom of his tank. Even the tank itself and Freddy’s drinking bottle and exercise wheel had been gifts from Aunt Cat, dropped off when my mother wasn’t around.