Monday

Mickey on Friday


Monday

“Magma Man could totally beat up Mr. Meteoroid!” Jeremy yelled at me. We were sitting on the school bus on a Monday afternoon, riding back to our neighborhood. We were freshmen, and we were happy.

“No way,” I said. “Mr. Meteoroid’s entire muscular system is made out of space-rock! He can’t be affected by heat damage!”

“Except for lava,” Jeremy said. “Come on, Mickey, there’s no way Mr. Meteoroid could withstand lava.” Jeremy was a good friend of mine, my best friend actually, but he had a way of talking about comic books that could get annoying. He thought he knew everything.

“Yes he could!”

“No he couldn’t. Remember in Magma Force issue number 217, Magma Man was-”

We were interrupted by crying.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” a brown-haired girl across the aisle said. She had her arm around another girl who was sobbing. They were both middle-schoolers.

“I can’t believe this! I hate him!” The sobbing girl had her head in her arms and was clutching a cell phone. “I can’t believe he would dump me through a freaking text message!” The crying girl pressed a few buttons on her cell phone, then slammed it shut.

The brown-haired girl tried to be comforting. “I know, sweetheart, I’m so sorry.” Then she looked over at Jeremy and I and scowled. “What are you two looking at? Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Jeremy and I looked away as the girls across the aisle kept crying and talking. A hush fell over the bus. Everyone was quiet out of respect for the recently dumped. Or maybe they were just nosy and wanted to conveniently overhear juicy breakup details. Either way, the girls lowered their voices, and it wasn’t too long before the rest of the bus started their normal noise making again.

Then Jeremy asked me a question.

“Mickey, have you ever had a girlfriend?”

I froze. What kind of question was that? I looked around to see if anybody else was listening in, waiting to hear my answer. Nobody was. Jeremy and I had been friends since elementary school, and we had never talked about girls or relationships or anything like that. We always stuck to safe topics, like homework or comic books or TV. We never talked about love. And why did he have to bring it up here, on the bus?

“Mickey, have you ever had a girlfriend?” Jeremy asked me again.

“No,” I said. I felt ashamed. There was a pause. “Have you?”

“Nope.”

Jeremy looked away, and I looked out the window, my cheek leaning against the glass. I adjusted the backpack at my feet and watched the familiar buildings go by. We passed some fast food restaurants, a supermarket, some other buildings, and then we got to our neighborhood. I recognized all these houses. I’ve seen them go by on bus trips ever since I was in kindergarten.

I looked up at the bus driver while Jeremy was rummaging through his backpack. I’ve known the bus driver for a long time. His name is Manny, and he’s been driving this bus for as long as I can remember. Manny’s an old Mexican guy who usually looks old and tired, like he’s lived a really long life. But he’s a friendly old man. Whenever anybody gets on the bus he always looks them right in the eyes, smiles, and simply says, “Hello. It’s good to see you.” And when you get off the bus, he always says, “Goodbye. See you later.” He never says anything else. Those are the only two things he ever says. “Hello. It’s good to see you,” and “Goodbye. See you later.” I think that’s all he says because his English is bad. Some students say that Manny’s an illegal immigrant, but I don’t know about that.

So there Jeremy and I are, sitting next to each other, not talking. We hardly ever had awkward silences, but that was one of them.

I didn’t mind that I never had a girlfriend. Lots of people don’t get girlfriends until they’re juniors or seniors in high school. But it was pretty much the rule that if you didn’t have a girlfriend before you graduated, you were a loser.

It was Jeremy’s stop, so he quickly said goodbye to me, and I said goodbye to him, and he got off the bus. Two blocks later Manny stopped the bus again, and I walked to the front of the bus.

“Bye Manny.” I said.

“Goodbye. See you later,” Manny said to me as I went down the two steps and on to the asphalt. I walked by a few houses, got to my doorway, and looked around. Nobody was there. I picked up a fake rock, opened a little camouflaged compartment, and got the house key out. Stepping inside my house, I put my backpack down, and decided to eat popcorn. Mom was still at work.

Cooking popcorn in the microwave is tricky. Leave it in too long, and it’s burnt. Don’t leave it in long enough and you’ve got a bunch of un-popped kernels in your buttery paper bag. But this time I did a pretty good job. I ripped open the bag, got a fistful of steaming popcorn, and stuffed it into my mouth. Why did Jeremy have to point out that I had never had a girlfriend? I sat on the couch, picked up the remote control from the coffee table, and pointed it at the black, silent screen. As I was about to push the power button, I stopped. Suddenly I didn’t feel like watching TV. I put some popcorn in my mouth and chewed.



I was still on the couch when Mom came home.

“Hey pumpkin,” she said. I was 14 and she still called me pumpkin. I guess that was her one way of sounding sweet.

“Hi Mom.”

“How was school?”

“OK.”

“I brought dinner,” Mom said. She set a box of pizza on the kitchen table, put her keys on a little hook on the wall, and started taking off her high-heeled shoes.

“How was work?”

“Alright.”

“Did you sell any houses?” I asked. Mom was a real estate agent.

“Not today,” she said quietly. She came over close to the couch where I was lying. The empty popcorn bag was on the floor and the TV was off. I must have looked depressed, because she asked me, “Are you OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Why isn’t the TV on?”
“I don’t know.” I really didn’t know. We always kept the TV on. “I guess I just didn’t feel like watching it.”

“Hmmm… well we can’t keep it off for too long. My show’s on in about…” she got her sparkly pink cell phone out of her pocket to look at the time. Her fingernails matched her phone. “twenty minutes. Hey, you want some pizza? It’s got mushrooms and ham and bell peppers and, uh…” she took a bite out of a slice. “other yummy stuff.”

“Aren’t you on a diet?”

“Yeah. Oh, you know, sort of.”

Mom took another big chomp. She looked sadder than usual. I don’t know why I brought up the dieting subject. Mom’s always mad about how much she weighs, even though she’s really not that fat. I’d call her medium. But talking about dieting with my Mom never goes well. Talking with her about dieting is almost as bad as talking with her about dating. Not that we’ve ever had an intelligent, mature conversation about dating. It’s more like Mom whines about men when she’s drunk, and I try to ignore her without being too mean.

I got up, headed to my room, and shut the door behind me. In a few minutes, I heard the TV come on, and Mom was giggling with someone on the phone.