Wednesday

Wednesday

The next day, in English class, Mrs. Kortchek stood behind her lectern. “OK class, as you know, if you’ve been paying attention lately, we’re learning about poetry and figurative language. I gave you the assignment to write an original poem about anything you want, and the only requirement is that you have to have at least one metaphor and at least one simile. So, let’s get started. I’m going to call on people randomly to read their poems, so I hope you’re all ready.”

Randomly? Crap. Now I had no time to relax. I could be called upon to spill my guts at any moment!

Mrs. Kortchek continued with her instructions. “When I call on you, come to the front of the class and read your poem in your best reading voice. After somebody reads their poem, then you can comment on the poem, as long as you give one compliment and one piece of helpful feedback. And remember, class, reading your personal poetry in front of the class can be scary, so everybody needs to be supportive. Sarah, you’ll go first.”

Sarah stood up, took a few steps to the chalkboard, and turned around. My eyes were fixed on her. She tucked some stray hair behind her ear, revealing a sparkly butterfly earring.

She looked stunning. I’ve already expressed how I feel about Sarah, but let me just say it again: Sarah Brighton is a queen, and I am her lowly servant.

She looked at Mrs. Kortchek, waiting for a signal to begin.

“Go ahead and start if you’re ready, Sarah,” Mrs. Kortchek said.

Sarah looked out to the class. “OK, don’t make fun of me, my poem is really kind of girly but… OK, here goes.” Sarah parted her pink lips and began:

The Butterfly Princess

Tenderly I see the Butterfly Princess
Going flap flap flap in the wind…
She gets the precious, oozing honey
Ever-so-daintily from a periwinkle;
The Butterfly Princess is on a beautiful
Field filled with a rainbow of green plants,
And the moon is glowing like a glow-in-the-dark sticker.
She gently takes the honey back to her
Other butterfly friends, flap flap flap, and
They all eat the sumptuous snack with
Smacking lips and flapping wings.


“Thank you, Sarah,” Mrs. Kortchek smiled. “That was very nice. Does anybody want to comment on her poem? Remember, if you want to say something, you have to give one compliment and one polite item of constructive criticism.”

Jeremy’s hand shot up.

“Yes, Jeremy?” Mrs. Kortchek said.

“I liked the poem because it had butterflies in it, and butterflies are like, good for poems and stuff, but, did you say in your poem that the butterfly got honey from a periwinkle?”

Sarah quickly skimmed the paper she held in her hands. “I think so,” she said. “I just love periwinkles, that’s why I put that in there.”

“Well, um, Sarah,” Jeremy looked nervous but passionate. “There’s a lot wrong with that. I mean, honey doesn’t come from flowers. Honey comes from bees. Honey is actually, -it’s is kind of gross, but it’s true- honey is actually bee barf.” Jeremy looked around the classroom for support. “Did you know that, guys? Whenever you eat honey, you’re really eating bee puke!” The class looked at Jeremy with blank faces. He persisted, gesturing frantically with his arms. “I like honey anyway, you know, but, so, I’m just saying that the idea of a butterfly extracting honey from a flower is just outright…”

What was Jeremy doing? Was he trying to humiliate my girlfriend-to-be? I looked over at Randall, expecting to see him about to clobber Jeremy. Instead, Randall was humming to himself and drawing x’s, o’s and arrows on a little football field diagram in his notebook.

Jeremy continued, “uh… I mean it was a good poem and everything, but, scientifically speaking-”

“Hey shut up, Jeremy,” a girl called out.

“Yeah, that poem rocked.” Another girl spoke up. “Like you could do any better.”

Mrs. Kortchek jumped in. “Alright, let’s not fight, OK, class. Calm down. Now, I thought it was a lovely poem. It had a simile and a metaphor in it, so it fulfilled the assignment and it was very sweet, OK, Sarah? But Jeremy did bring up a good point. Butterflies don’t literally get honey from flowers.”

“And they don’t even eat honey, Mrs. Kortchek!” Jeremy blurted. “Butterflies eat other bugs! I’m sorry, but that poem was riddled with entomological inaccuracies!”

I couldn’t stand it any more. I shouted, “Listen, Jeremy, nobody cares about your stupid bug facts, OK? So just shut up.”

“That’s enough!” Mrs. Kortchek yelled. “If we can’t comment maturely about these poems, then we won’t get to comment at all.”

The class was silent.

Jeremy looked at me. He was hurt.

Mrs. Kortchek let out a long, deep breath. “Now, all I was going to say is that poetry doesn’t have to be literally true. In fact, poetry is oftentimes very good when it doesn’t really make literal sense. That’s all I was trying to say. OK. Let’s move on to the next poem. I think next I’ll call on…” Mrs. Kortchek pointed her finger and slowly moved it around the room. I was about to puke. “Randall.”

Somebody nudged Randall, who got up and swaggered to the front of the class.

“All right, guys, I wrote my poem about football, the best thing in the world, a lot better than English.”

Mrs. Kortchek rolled her eyes. “Just read your poem, Randall.”

“Alright.” Randall took a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and then looked over the classroom. “This poem is called ‘Death Smash.’” A roar of laughter erupted from the class. When the laughter died down, Randall cleared his throat, and started reading.

Death Smash

When I want to tackle you
I just smash you to death
With these biceps ‘cause I’m built
Like a NFL star that’s
Built like a train!
So when you think you
Wanna play football against me,
Just remember I’m a machine
That smashes people in to little
Itty-bitty bits! Watch out!
Here comes me!

The whole class laughed again, except for Jeremy and me.

Randall looked up from his paper, “Hey Mrs. Kortchek, do I get extra credit for my double simile?”

“Extra credit for what?”

“For my double-simile. See, look,” Randall read from his paper again, “It says, ‘I’m built like a NFL star that’s built like a train!’ I should get like, at least 20 extra credit points for that, Mrs. K. Come on.”

“No, Randall, there’s no such thing as a double simile, that’s just two similes. Nice try.” Mrs. Kortchek turned to the class. “Does anybody have any comments for Randall?”

“Hey Randall, you’re hot!” It was one of the girls that had rubbed Randall’s biceps yesterday. Sarah shot a glare at her. Randall just smirked.

Mrs. Kortchek looked flustered. “Does anybody have any intelligent comments about the poem?”

“The poem was hot, too!” another girl blurted out. All the girls in the class went into a giggling fit.

Mrs. Kortchek shook her head. “Alright, we’re moving on. How about…” she scanned the room.

My heart throbbed as I watched the teacher’s finger rove around the room. I wished I had written a different poem, a safe poem, a poem that wouldn’t get my butt kicked by Randall. But all I had was my poem dedicated to Sarah.

Mrs. Kortchek’s pointer finger settled on Jeremy. “You.” Jeremy went to the front of the class without making eye contact with anyone.

“Your poem better be scientifically accurate, Jeremy,” somebody called out.

Jeremy didn’t respond. He just shifted his feet, and, without any introduction, quietly started reading his poem.

Magma Man vs. Mr. Meteoroid

Magma Man wants to battle Mr. Meteoroid
Even though they’re both good guys
Because Doctor Distresser disguised himself
As Mr. Meteoroid and then kidnapped Lady Lava,
Magma Man’s girlfriend. So
Magma Man thought that Mr. Meteoroid turned
Into a bad guy even though he was still
Really a good guy. So Magma Man used
His lava blast power on Mr. Meteoroid
And it shot through him like an arrow
Of flames with lava coming out of the arrow.
“I am a voracious planet!” Mr. Meteoroid yelled,
“A planet that contains a million exploding volcanoes!”
After the fight they talked and so Mr. Meteoroid
And Magma Man were friends again and then they joined
Forces to defeat Doctor Distresser and rescue Lady Lava.


Wow.

That was the worst poem I’ve ever heard.

Jeremy returned to his seat and put his head down on his desk. Silence filled the room.

Mrs. Kortchek said quietly, “Well, Jeremy, that certainly was an interesting poem.” She always knew just what to say. “Any comments for Jeremy? Remember, one compliment and one piece of advice.”

Silence again.

Mrs. Kortchek broke the silence. “Mickey,” she looked at me hopefully, “you read comic books like Jeremy does, right? What did you think of the poem?”

“Actually, uh…” I hesitated. “I don’t read comic books.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

Mrs. Kortchek looked confused. “But, Mickey, remember, you did a journal entry about a comic book that you read? If I remember right, it was even about the meteoroid fellow. And remember, you also wrote a dramatic monologue from the point of view of a superhero, didn’t you?”

“No. You must be thinking of someone else. I don’t really read comic books. I don’t know anything about Jeremy’s poem.” Jeremy lifted his head and looked at me, but I didn’t look back. I looked straight ahead and said, “But I do have a comment about it. The poem sucked.”

Jeremy put his head down again. Mrs. Kortchek was flabbergasted. “Mr. Marshall, that was a very immature and inappropriate comment. I do not want to hear another comment like that coming out of your mouth. Do you understand me?”

“Yes.” I said quietly.

“I think you owe Jeremy an apology.” Mrs. Kortchek said.

“No I don’t,” I shot back.

“Excuse me? What has gotten into you today?”

“No, I don’t owe Jeremy an apology. I was telling the truth. The poem sucked.”

“That’s it! No more comments from here on out!” Mrs. Kortchek was yelling louder than I had ever heard her yell before. She seemed to eyeball everybody in the class at the same time. “I thought you all were mature enough to handle commenting on each other’s poetry, but apparently you’re not. And Mickey, I don’t want to hear another word out of you this entire period, unless you’re reading your poem to the class. If you speak up again, I’m going to write you up.” She folded her arms and stared at me, waiting for me to fight back.

I just bit my lip.

I wanted to ditch class again. And I wanted to take Sarah with me.

But I didn’t leave. I just sat in my desk like an obedient dog. I looked at the clock and watched it tick. The class went on and some other people read their poems, but I didn’t really pay attention to them. Most of the poems were really bad. None of them even came close to being as heart-felt as mine.

One of them did catch my attention, though. Some girl wearing glasses with thick black frames went to the front of the class and read this poem:

My French Horn

My French horn, Frenchie, is a dead thing, really.
It lays lifeless beneath my bed,
Secured in a black box at night.
But since this is a poem, I’ll say (and almost believe) that
my French horn rests the way that I rest.
I too stay in a black box- my bedroom at night.

At night, the sky is a tall pot of simmering,
black stew. It boils slowly through the night,
and then, eventually, someone adds milk,
which addition splits the soup in half,
dividing the light from the darkness.

Then comes the glow of dawn.
I open my arms to the sun
Frenchie emerges from his case,
and we greet the fantastic day-
we play, me in my sunshine
pajamas, he in his golden skin.

The music we make is like a yawning, stretching
corn farmer, hailing his crops, wet with dew.

The music we make is like a
freshly-born squirrel romping in the thrill
and promise of the morning forest.

The music we make is like a nation of slaves
who wake up to find their taskmasters are dead,
who walk out on the frontier with their families,
who feel the chocolate-colored soil beneath them
with their fingers, who kiss, who dance, who love.


Now I thought that was a pretty good poem. In fact, I really liked it. While I listened to that girl, whoever she was, read it, I stopped thinking about the drama with Sarah and Jeremy and Randall, and I stopped thinking about the drama with my mother, and for a minute, it made me think about how beautiful music really is. And the simile about dawn being like someone adding milk to a black stew was cool.

But French horns are kind of nerdy instruments. The poem would have been better if it was about an electric guitar. And anyway, music wasn’t fixing my problems. Music couldn’t make Sarah love me.

Suddenly I heard Mrs. Kortchek talking to me. She was looking at me with her bulgy-eye face. That’s her face when she wants to look important. If you combine her bulgy-eye face with her lectern, the world’s probably about to end. Kortchek was saying, “Mickey, you’re the last one. It’s time for you to read your poem to the class.”

My poem?

That’s right, my poem! I was so overcome by everything going on, I had forgot that I still had to read my poem. My heart thundered in my chest. I stood up, swallowed, and concentrated very hard on not falling down.

When I got to the chalkboard, I glanced down at the poem I held in my hands, and saw that my hands were shaking badly. But I knew that this was my big chance. This was my chance to tell Sarah how I felt about her. I couldn’t blow it.

I took a deep breath, and then looked out at the audience. I saw Randall and Jeremy and a bunch of other students, and then I saw Sarah Brighton. She looked back at me, and in that instant, when her cornflower blue eyes met mine, I was back in third grade, in the sandbox, and her eyes were penetrating mine for the first time.

**********

“Mickey, are you all right?”
Who said that?

“Mickey, do you need to go to the nurse?”

An old woman was holding on to my elbow and talking to me. Her face was fuzzy, but I gradually figured out that it was Mrs. Kortchek.

I brought my palm to my forehead. What was wrong with me? I looked around to find that I was still in English class at Roosevelt High School, my name was Mickey Marshall, and I was about to read a poem to the class.

“Sorry about that guys, uh… I guess I’m feeling a little woozy. But I’m OK. I’m alright. OK. Here’s my poem.”

To A Secret Girl

Secret Girl, I have to tell you something.
Something big. Something huge.
It’s this: I like you.
I like you!
I like you like a dog likes to bark.
I like you like a bat likes the dark.
I like you like a child likes the park.
I like you!
But I know that I am a worm, ordinary and ugly,
And you are a Pegasus- mythic and gorgeous.
But babe, this worm’s heart will burst
If I do not say: I like you!

I went back to my desk and sat down. I could feel the rest of the class looking at me. Some of them snickered. I wasn’t absolutely positive that Sarah knew the poem was about her. But how could she not know? Before I read the poem, we had that mystical eye contact moment! Surely Sarah must have felt what I had felt.

Mrs. Kortchek wheeled her lectern back to the front of the class and started lecturing again about metaphors and similes.

I imagined that after the class was over, Sarah would want to talk to me. I wondered how it would happen. Would she give me a wink or a look in the hallway that said, “Come over here and get me?” Would she slip me a note that told me to meet her somewhere after school? Would she stop me in the hallway right after class and start kissing me in front of everyone? The possibilities were endless, and the possibilities were all pleasurable.

Or would she reject me?

The class seemed to drag on for hours. The tension was unbearable.

I watched the clock tick down to the last few seconds of class. Sarah hadn’t given me any signals so far. She just faced forward, and I stared at her hair, neck, and back. I supposed she was listening to Mrs. Kortchek lecture. She was always such a good student.

The bell rang. Sarah got up, found Randall and held his hand. They went into the hallway together, and I stayed in my seat.

“Mickey, are you OK?” Mrs. Kortchek asked me. I realized that I was the only student left in the classroom.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

I wasn’t going to discuss my personal life with a teacher. Teachers are supposed to dress nice, give their lessons, make a corny joke now and then, and mind their own business.

Mrs. Kortchek continued. “I’m just concerned, Mickey. You’ve been acting out of the ordinary lately. Do you want me to make you an appointment with the counselor?”

“No.” I put my English folder into my backpack, got up, and walked out the door.

No way was I going to let anybody strap a gigantic magnet to my head.

**********

Next period was gym. As usual, I changed into my gray shorts and black T-shirt and stood next to Heber, who was mumbling magic spells. Everybody stood in a line on the basketball court boundary as Mr. Bullham took attendance. Randall took a step in front of the line and started stretching his arms. I was mustering all the brainpower I could to avoid spontaneous combustion.

How could Sarah have done nothing, absolutely nothing, when I read her that poem? I mean, she acted like nothing happened! And how could Randall ignore me, too? I don’t want him to fight me or anything, but shouldn’t Randall be at least a little bit afraid that another man is trying to get his woman? Shouldn’t he be concerned that I, a sensitive, poetic, and intelligent guy, am taking aim on his woman? But no, everybody was acting like last period was just a normal English class. Even Heber! He wasn’t asking me how my holy love-quest was going. He was staring into the ceiling and softly saying “ala-spalacken!” “luh-fwaah-nuh-kint” and other nonsensical words. No, they weren’t even words really- they were just sounds.

The whole class started jogging around the basketball court, and Heber seemed especially slow. For the first time all year, without saying anything, I started running, not jogging. I left Heber gasping for air far behind me. It was weird; a burst of energy had come into me. I deepened my stride, leaned slightly forward, and pumped my arms. With each inhalation, I said in my mind, “one two three four.” And with each exhalation, I said in my mind, “four three two one.” I went faster and faster.

For a second, I could see the appeal of running. Running did have a way of clearing your mind. It was rhythmic and physical; it got your mind off of emotional and stressful things. But just when I thought about how clear my mind was, I felt a cramp in my stomach, and I started thinking about Sarah again. Strange how both those things- the cramp and the thoughts of Sarah - came at the same time.

I slowed down to a near-walk, slightly hunching over to avoid more stomach pain.

Maybe Sarah was waiting for the right time to confess her love for me. Maybe she was planning some extravagant “I love you” surprise party for me. I had no idea. I had never had a girlfriend before, so I didn’t know how these things worked. But I couldn’t wait any longer than I already had. I had to act, and I had to act quickly. I needed to talk with her, in person, tonight. I decided that I was going to call her.

The rest of the school day crawled by. We played basketball in gym and in science we took notes on the solar system. Sarah was nowhere to be found. Hopefully she wasn’t avoiding me.

I saw Jeremy for a second, between gym and science class, and I think he saw me too, but he just kept walking, acting like he hadn’t seen me. Of course, he wouldn’t want to talk to me after what I did to him in English. Whatever. If I could get Sarah as my girlfriend, I wouldn’t need Jeremy as a friend.

I got on the bus to go home and Manny smiled at me. “Hello. It’s good to see you,” he said. I said it was nice to see him too, and then walked down the aisle to find a place to sit.

Jeremy was already on the bus, sitting in one of the seats close to the front. He sat in the middle of the seat and looked out the window. He had his backpack on his seat, just to his right. It didn’t look like he wanted company. I silently passed him and sat by myself.

I got home, got the key out of the fake rock, and let myself in the empty house. I was glad Mom was gone. Hopefully I would be gone by the time she got back from work.

I went to a desk in the living room, opened a drawer, pulled out a phone book, and flipped to the B section. My heart started beating faster when I found Brighton. I picked up the phone and got ready to dial, but then I looked closer at the page in the phone book. Nine Brightons were listed. Nine? There were nine Brightons in this town? Crap. Did I really want to call every single Brighton in the phone book until I found Sarah? Wasn’t that a little psychotic? No, I told myself. No, it’s not psychotic. It’s romantic!

But then it occurred to me that Sarah probably wasn’t home yet, so I put the phone down. I probably had to wait another twenty minutes or so before she got back from school. Although, she doesn’t stay after school for any clubs or anything- and maybe she even gets home before I do. But still, even if she is home, I should be polite, give her a few minutes to get settled in, and then call.

I backed away from the phone and the desk and went to my bedroom. I put my backpack in my closet and took off my shoes.

Then I realized I was hungry. Not really really hungry, but hungry enough to eat something.

I went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I nudged some things around, opened up a few plastic containers and sniffed the contents, but nothing looked good. Then I saw the leftover Chinese food from a while back. I opened the white foam to-go box, and whatever it was looked like worms and moss. I shut the box and closed the fridge.

No luck in the freezer, either.

I went to the pantry and saw some canned vegetables, some cereal boxes, a little bag of rice, macaroni and cheese, and various food in cardboard boxes. None of that looked appetizing.

There was always popcorn. But I’ve had a bag of popcorn every day for the past six or seven days. It’s time for a change.

Sigh. I wanted something special to eat. Something really good. After all, today was a special day. Today was the day that Sarah would become my girlfriend, or the day that Randall would kill me. Either way, it was a special day, and it deserved a special meal.

Then I saw a cookbook. It was an old thing, a gift from my grandmother to my mother, if I remember correctly. I took it off the shelf, put it on the table, and was about to open the book, when all of a sudden a gust of wind from an open window came in and blew right on the book, making the pages flutter. I backed away from the table. The pages rustled and flapped for a few seconds, until the wind stopped just as suddenly as it had began. I went back to the table and saw that the book had fell open to a bread recipe.


Hmm… Bread. I didn’t know people could actually make bread. But the wind had opened my grandmother’s cookbook to a page about bread because, for some reason, for some inexplicable reason, I was supposed to make bread. I felt it. Yes, I was destined to make bread, really. Somebody or some force up there in the sky, in the heavens, wanted me to make bread.

It was a weird feeling, but a genuine feeling nonetheless. I decided not to fight the feeling; I just went with it. I was going to make bread.

I didn’t have the slightest clue about how to make bread, but I was pretty sure it involved mixing stuff together, so I went through some drawers and cupboards until I found a mixing bowl and a big spoon. I put the bowl and the spoon on the table, and then I didn’t know what to do. I looked at the table in frustration, and then remembered that my grandmother’s cookbook had the recipe! I started reading the instructions.

“Step 1. Combine three cups of flour and one teaspoon of yeast in a bowl.”

I knew what flour was, but what was “yeast”? And how was I supposed to get “one teaspoon” of it? This was madness.

But I persisted. I walked around the kitchen with my chest puffed out and threatened the kitchen cabinets until they gave me what I wanted. Finally I found a sack of flour buried beneath some cleaning supplies. I yanked it out and a broom head, dirty with dust balls and hair, fell on me. I yelled at the broom, shoved it back, and then went about putting three cups of flour into a bowl. I didn’t know if they wanted a large cup or a small cup, or if the size of the cup mattered at all, so I just got an average-sized cup and used it.

As for the fabled “yeast”, I didn’t find any box with “yeast” printed on it anywhere, so I decided to skip the yeast for now, and went back to the instructions.

“Step 2. Melt a quarter of a cup of butter in pot. Combine with two cups of milk.”

That seemed simple enough. I put some butter in a metal pot and then put it in the microwave. I set the microwave for a minute and twenty-three seconds, just because I like the way 1:23 looks, and I like the way those buttons are all in a row.

I went to the fridge to get the milk, but just when I opened the door, I heard a crackling, exploding sound! I spun around. The microwave was lit up and smoky. I dashed over to the microwave, turned it off, and then remembered that you weren’t supposed to put metal in the microwave. I decided to melt the butter on the stove.

Eventually, after a burnt finger and a few hundred dirty dishes, I had the flour, butter, sugar, salt, and raisins in a big plastic mixing bowl. All I needed now was the milk. I went to the fridge, opened the door, and looked for the milk. But there wasn’t any. Hmmm… no milk. That’s bad news. But we did have orange juice.

I thought the mixture had to be wet in some way, so I filled a cup with orange juice, poured it into my concoction, and started stirring.

I stopped stirring and stared at the blob in the bowl. A foul odor wafted up to my nostrils, and I turned away. I looked back at it, and realized that the flour/orange juice/butter/sugar/salt/raisins mixture in my bowl was a disaster. It sucked. It was slimy, it was whitish-orange, it didn’t have any milk, it didn’t have any yeast, it stank, and, whatever else it was, it definitely wasn’t bread. It wasn’t even bread-in-embryo. It was non-bread.

There was only thing to do with the monstrosity I had created. I had to bury it in the backyard.

I went out the back door, got a shovel, and started digging. Luckily, there was a tall brick wall around our backyard that hid me from the neighbors. If they saw me doing this, they’d think I was crazy.

After I had dug about a foot, I hit something squishy. I slowly moved some dirt around with the tip of my shovel and found blue feathers and some tiny animal bones. Sir Chirpsalot! I had found Sir Chirpsalot! He was a pet bird that I had buried in the backyard about three years ago.

I dug a little more and found other body parts. What looked like a wing and a few unidentifiable bones turned up. I carried all the bones and feathers with the shovel over to the back patio and spread them out.

I leaned on my shovel. At a time like this, I was probably supposed to feel sorry for the dead animal. Happy memories of Sir Chirpsalot were supposed to fill my mind, and I was probably supposed to cry, but I didn’t cry.

To be honest, I never really liked the bird. All he ever did was poop, stink, and squawk. And he always looked at me like he wanted to get out of his cage. But I couldn’t let him out of his cage, because then he’d just poop all over the house and Mom would yell at me. Plus he had the stupidest name. I couldn’t blame him for that, though. I was the one who named him Sir Chirpsalot. When I first got him I thought it was clever, but then saying “Sir Chirpsalot” so many times just got annoying.

I went back to the kitchen and got the mixing bowl with the blob in it from off the table. I set the bowl on the back patio, next to Sir Chirpalot’s remains. With the shovel, I picked up the fragile bones and the dirty, blue feathers and put them in the bowl. The way the partial bird skeleton and feathers looked mixed with all that flour, raisins, orange juice and such was fascinating. It was like an art piece.

I stuck the shovel in the plastic mixing bowl and started stirring it around, folding the feathers into the blob of botched food. Then I carried the bowl over to the hole I had dug, dumped in the contents, and started covering it up with dirt. Goodbye bread. Goodbye Sir Chirpsalot.

I went back inside, washed my hands, and went to the phone. I walked to the desk in the living room, took out the phone book, and dialed the number of the first Brighton listed. I wish they listed kids’ names in the phone book, and not just parent’s names.

“Hello?” It was a gruff voice.

“Hello, is Sarah there?”

“Who?”

“Sarah?” There was a pause.

“You must have the wrong number.”

“Oh, sorry.” I laughed. “I’m dyslexic.”

I put down the phone on the receiver. One number down, eight phone numbers to go. I picked up the phone, looked at the next Brighton in the phonebook, and dialed.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is Sarah there?”

“Who’s this?”

“Uh…Mickey.”

“Who?” He sounded annoyed.

“Mickey.”

“Well we don’t know any ‘Mickey’ here.”

“Yeah, but I mean, please don’t hang up, um, well, see, I go to school with this girl named Sarah Brighton and I was just wondering-”

“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but there’s no Sarah here, OK? I’m watching TV, OK?”

“OK, that’s fine.”

“I know it’s fine!” He slammed the phone. Some people must have very sad lives.

I hung up and dialed the next number.

A sultry female voice answered the phone. “Hello, you’ve reached Brighton’s Costumes and Lingerie. This is Black Licorice, how may I help you?”

“Uh…did you say your name is Black Licorice?” I asked.

“That’s me, Black Licorice,” she said.

“Hello, Black Licorice,” I said.

“May I help you?”

I forgot why I called.

“May I help you?” she repeated. Her voice was less sultry and more annoyed.

“Never mind.” I hung up the phone. Calling strangers in the phone book was more amusing than I thought it would be. I dialed the number of the fourth Brighton in the phonebook.

“Hello?”

“Hello, is Sarah there?”

“Yeah, hold on, let me get her.”

Aagghhh! In a few seconds I was going to talk with Sarah Brighton! What was I going to say, “Hey, let me come over to your house right now so I can make out with you?” I should have written myself a script.

“Hello?” Sarah said.

“Hi.” I froze.

“Who’s this?”

“Mickey.”

“Mickey?” she asked.

“Yeah, sorry, I sort of lost my concentration for a little bit. Geez, that must have been awkward. But anyway, yeah, this is Mickey, Mickey Marshall, from school, from English class and I just was calling you because, um, there’s something really important I need to tell you, like something really, just, important. So I was wondering if there was a time that we could get together, like I could go over there or you could come over here if you wanted, and I could tell you what I needed to tell you tonight. Well, I mean, it doesn’t have to be tonight. I guess it can wait until another night, or afternoon, or whatever. I mean, the time of the day that I tell you this important thing doesn’t matter at all, it could be when we first wake up in the morning, really, but, my point here, um, Sarah, is that I have something important to tell you, and it’s urgent.”

“OK, what is it?” Sarah asked.

“Huh?” I was having trouble breathing, and I was confused.

“What’s the important thing you need to tell me?”

“Oh, I see. Yeah, see the funny thing about that is that, what I need to tell you is, it’s something that I shouldn’t say over the telephone. Not like there’s somebody out there from the government or something secretly listening in to this phone call! No, no, it’s nothing paranoid-schizophrenic like that. What I mean is, what I have to tell you is so important that I really want to tell you, and I think that I should tell you, in person.”

“How about tomorrow at school?” Sarah asked.

“Well, school’s not really a good time, either. See, Sarah, because there’s so many people around and I don’t know if we’ll have a lot of time at school with each other, just us, you know, just us two, to talk about it- to talk about what I have to tell you. So, like I was saying, maybe I could just go… go over to your house now and tell it to you?”

“How did you get this number?”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that.” I laughed. “Not because I have anything to hide but because, well, the way I got your number might seem a little… it’s not bad or anything, the way I got your number, it’s just that, well, it may seem strange to you is all. Unorthodox. That’s what it was. Unorthodox. See, I, I called all the Brightons in the phonebook until you picked up.”

“Oh.”

“Please, look, Sarah, I’m sorry if I’m freaking you out, I know this must sound strange, but, please, just, you know- we can meet in public, too, if you’re more comfortable with that. We don’t have to meet at your house, we could-

“All right. Look, Mickey, I’m going to be honest with you.” Her voice was stern.

I held my breath.

“Um, OK, this is a little weird because we never talk to each other at school, and I don’t know why you want to see me today. And the way you’re talking on the phone right now makes you sound really weird.”

My heart was ready to break. Sarah thought I was crazy.

She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I thought maybe she had hung up.

“But, you know what?” Sarah said slowly, “I’m not that busy tonight, and I’m sure you’re harmless, so uh… me and some of my girlfriends are going to the mall later. If you want to talk to me, just meet me there.”

“Yes! Sounds great. The mall! Thank you so much. Yeah, Sarah, OK, I’ll just-”

“Oh hey, I got another call waiting.” Sarah said.

“OK, bye Sarah.”

“Bye.”

I had a date with Sarah Brighton!

**********

I changed into a clean pair of jeans and a polo shirt, put on a new layer of deodorant, stuffed a water bottle into my pocket, and headed out the front door. At the end of the driveway I remembered that I didn’t have any money. I really ought to have some cash, in case Sarah wanted dinner, or maybe ice-cream.

I went back inside, went into Mom’s room, went into her closet, and found my mother’s secret stash of cash beneath her jewelry box. I took out a twenty-dollar bill. Hopefully Mom wouldn’t notice.

Then I went back outside, stopped again at the end of the driveway, and remembered that a lot of things were unclear. I wasn’t sure how to get to the mall; I didn’t go there very much. And I didn’t know what time Sarah and her friends would be there. “Later” could mean, “in a few minutes,” or “later” could mean “ten o’clock at night.” Another thing: where exactly in the mall were Sarah and her friends were going to be? It’s a big mall. I could probably look for them all night and never find them.

I started walking.

Sigh. This would be a lot easier if I had a car. And a cell phone. And a magic stone that would make Sarah fall in love with me.

I took a drink out of my water bottle and looked at the sky. A few clouds floated by lazily, but mostly the sky was clear- light blue near the horizon, and darker blue towards the middle of the sky. The afternoon sun beat on the sidewalk and asphalt, and reflected brightly off of cars parked on the side of the street.

After a few minutes of walking through my neighborhood, I got to a park. A young married couple was there with their toddler, gently pushing him back and forth on a swing. The mother stood behind her son, placing her hands on the back of the swing, pushing it forward again. The father was standing in front of the child, and every time the toddler came close to him, the father tickled his belly. The toddler laughed and smiled. They all looked so good. I tried not to look for too long, though. It’s rude to stare.

Eventually I got to the commercial part of town. I passed a few restaurants, a grocery store, some gas stations, a hair salon, the post office, and other buildings I didn’t look at very closely.

The city had its own kind of rhythm: the traffic lights going through their green, yellow, and red rotation, the people walking down the sidewalks and driving down the streets, and going into stores and coming out of stores, the cars and trucks and motorcycles and semi-trucks stopping and going, braking and accelerating. The city had its own kind of music, too: birds squawking, shoppers yakking, engines running, horns honking, the occasional police or ambulance siren blasting through the streets. It all made me feel very small, like the city just goes on and on and on, and whether I’m there or not, it’ll just go on and on forever.

Everywhere I looked people were busy. Everyday these people, whoever they were, were buying things, selling things, running errands, filling up parking lots with their cars in the morning and emptying parking lots at night.

Suddenly I felt very alone. Whenever some friends or a family drove down the street, they looked at me, and they saw me by myself. I imagined them in their air-conditioned cars, looking through their windshields or through their tinted side windows, looking at me. Maybe they felt sorry for me. Or maybe they didn’t feel sorry for me; maybe they thought that I had made myself lonely. But other people were alone, too. Especially the homeless. They were almost always alone.

On a street corner, I pushed a button on a traffic light pole and waited for the blinking red hand across the street to turn into a white walking man. I wiped a bit of sweat from my forehead, took another drink of water, and looked up in the sky. The sun was lower now, and the shadows were getting longer. I can’t remember the last time I walked this far.

The thought struck me that nobody knew where I was. Nobody in the whole world knew that I, Mickey Marshall, was on this particular street corner right now. Mom didn’t know where I was, and she didn’t care. Maybe she was a little bit curious about it, but not concerned enough to go searching for me or anything. Anyway, maybe she was having better romantic luck now that I was gone.

Finally I got to the mall. Finding it wasn’t as dramatic as I thought it would be. I just looked up and there it was. The mall.
I walked through the enormous parking lot and towards an arched entryway. Eight massive glass doors stood in a row like sentinels guarding a palace. Four doors were for entering, and four were for exiting. I put my hand on the shaded handle, pulled it open, and felt the air-conditioning coming from within. I walked in and headed for the nearest bench. It was nice to finally sit down. I took the water bottle out of my pocket, finished off the last little gulp of water, and looked around.

Ah… the mall.

Everything was so clean, open, and well lit. The walkways were broad, the ceilings were high, and the tile floor shone. Designs painted on the walls, the skylights, mannequins in the shop windows, potted plants, the aroma- everything was as though it had been created by a well-paid team of architects and interior designers. Even the trashcans were stylish. They weren’t the gray metal, Oscar-the-Grouch-type trashcans; they were solid and silver; they were trashcans from the future. A metallic pink lid rocked back and forth when somebody put something in it. Billionaires must have those kinds of trashcans in their mansions.

And the shoppers! Everyone looked so fashionable. The men wore khaki slacks and pastel polo shirts tucked in. Their hair was short, their shoes were clean, and sometimes the men had their sleeves rolled up to just below their elbows, revealing a wristwatch, a tan, and the perfect amount of arm hair.

And the women! The women were everywhere. One of them passed by the bench I was sitting on. She was a trim lady in her med-twenties. A shopping bag extended from one of her smooth, manicured hands, a purse hung from her right shoulder, and she was clothed in a white sundress, snug around her breasts and flowing around her thighs. She lifted a pair of sunglasses from the top of her head, lowered them over her eyes, secured them, and walked out one of the eight doors.

I looked around at some of the other people and wondered about them. Where did they live? What did they do for a living? They all looked as if they were in their mid-twenties or early thirties, but how was that statistically possible? They looked like every night after work they went to the beach, (even though that didn’t make sense because we lived in Arizona) or to the movies, or shopping, or out to eat, or out drinking. And what about these people’s relationships? They looked like they were dating someone new, or engaged to be married, or newly married. Or maybe they were recently divorced, but recovering nicely.

This is what people must do after high school, I thought. This is what all my education and all my growing-up is leading to: walking around the mall, wearing cologne, dressing nicely, looking at attractive women, and shopping.

My legs were rested. I started walking around the mall to look for Sarah Brighton. Of course I had no idea if she was there at all. She could have already come and gone, I suppose; it had taken me a long time to walk to the mall.

I made a sweep of the entire mall. No luck. I checked the giant map of the mall near one of the entryways, to see if there were any corridors I had missed. Nope. I had indeed walked through the entire mall. I hadn’t gone inside any of the stores, but I thought my best bet of finding Sarah was to stay out in the open.

As I walked around for the second time the mall looking for Sarah, my eyes were drawn to a women’s clothing store. It was the mannequins in bikinis that caught my attention. The mannequins were displayed in windows, standing on platforms and posed like supermodels at the end of a runway, except that they didn’t have heads. I have to admit that I looked at them longer than I should have. The truth is, I was attracted to those headless women in bikinis. The mannequins were nicely shaped, they were perfectly smooth, they stood confidently, they didn’t have any wrinkles or ugly birthmarks, and they were wearing my favorite piece of lady’s swimwear, bikinis.

I wondered if it was weird of me to be attracted to these plastic, dead women. They were just tan plastic women, without heads, meant to advertise clothing. As perfectly shaped or as psychically attractive as these women were, these women could never love me.

I looked away and walked on, mostly because I didn’t want anybody to think I was a pervert.

After I had walked around the whole mall for the second time, I went back to the entryway I had come in through and sat down on the same bench I had sat on before.

I let out a deep breath, and remembered that I was hungry. It was already dark outside. And then there she was, Sarah Brighton, coming through one of the big glass doors! She had two friends with her.

I stood up and fiddled with the buttons on my polo shirt. My palms were sweaty.

“Hi.” I waved at her.

Sarah walked up to me. “Oh hey, Mickey, you found me.” I loved watching her lips when she talked. They were so full and shiny.

She gave me a smile and folded her arms in front of her.

“Yeah,” I said. “Did you just get here?”

Sarah looked confused. “Yeah.”

“Oh yeah. That’s right. I just saw you walk in. Duh.”

Sarah leaned over to one of her friends, whispered something in her ear, and then they both giggled. Sarah turned back to me and said, “Mickey, these are my two friends, Molly and Trisha. Molly and Trisha, this is Mickey.”

“Hi,” either Molly or Trisha said. I couldn’t remember which one was Molly and which one was Trisha.

I knew it was important to be nice to Sarah’s friends, so I tried to be nice to them. “It’s good to meet you two.” I said. “I mean, not ‘you too’, like, you said ‘it’s good to meet you’ and so I’m saying it back, you know. But, there’re two of you girls and I was just saying it’s nice to meet the two of you.” I laughed. “Homonyms can be so confusing.”

Sarah put her hand in front of her face and started playing with her bangs. “So what did you want to tell me, Mickey?”

“Oh, yeah, right, about that, well, see, remember that I said I wanted to be alone with you when I told you what I needed to tell you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty hungry, so I was thinking maybe we could get some dinner or maybe some ice cream. Or maybe one of those giant pretzels. Do you like giant pretzels?”

“Um… just hold on, Mickey, I need to talk with Molly and Trisha about something.” The three girls took a few steps away from me and started whispering to each other. I looked away to be polite.

They whispered and giggled for what felt like a long time. I wish I could hear what they were saying. Finally they broke apart from their huddle and Sarah walked up to me and said, “OK, Mickey, here’s the deal: Molly needs some new sandals to match the skirt she got yesterday, Trisha needs some eyeliner because her eyeliner ran out. So they’re going to go shop while you and I can go to the food court so you can tell me your important secret. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds great!” I said, a little too loudly. Molly and Trisha walked away, and Sarah and I walked towards the food court.

My heart leaped. Here I was at the mall with Sarah, walking next to her. It was like a dream. Only yesterday I told Heber about my holy love quest, and now here I was, already, so close to her, so close to Sarah Brighton!

We walked off together. I tried to walk at the same speed she was walking at. I didn’t want to rush her, but I didn’t want to slow her down, either. So I looked at her feet and tried to match her rhythm. I never really got the hang of it though. I stumbled a few times, and I ran into a baby in a stroller another time.

As we walked through the mall together, I was hoping that we would never get to the food court. I was hoping that this moment, this walk with Sarah, could last for the rest of my life. I also wished we would run into somebody from high school. What would Jeremy or Heber or anybody say if they saw me walking with none other than Sarah Brighton?

I wished I had something to say to her while we were walking, though, something interesting. She wasn’t talking, and I wasn’t talking, either. I thought about commenting on some of the fake plants around the mall, but I bet she thinks fake plants are boring. Come to think of it, I think fake plants are boring, too. Why would anybody want to talk about fake plants? Finally I thought of a good general question to get us talking.

“So, Sarah, do you like the mall?”

“It’s a mall.”

“Yeah, you got that right,” I said.

I tried to chuckle, but a snort came out.

That was a nice conversation.

We got to the food court. Hundreds of options were before us. Pizza, hamburgers, Chinese food, Mexican food, Italian food, giant pretzels, giant cookies, and giant ice cream cones. People were all over the place, getting out their wallets, eating, joking, and looking at stuff they just bought. It wasn’t the ideal place for confessing my love to Sarah, I would have preferred the beach at sunrise, or a mountaintop, but the food court would have to do.

“So where do you want to eat?” I asked.

“Hmmm…” Sarah looked at her choices. “How about Mexican food? I feel like nachos,” Sarah said.

“OK. I like nachos, too.”

We waited in line at the Mexican place. I looked up at the menu on the electronic screen above the cash registers. Wow. I was really standing in line at a restaurant with a woman. I was taking Sarah Brighton out to eat. This was a date!

Sarah’s cell phone rang. She took her phone out of her purse, looked at it, and said, “Hey Mickey, just order for me. I want nachos.” Then she was gone.

I ordered a basket of nachos for Sarah, a combination plate with burritos, beans and rice for myself, and two waters. I gave the teenager behind the cash register the twenty-dollar bill I had stolen from my mother’s closet, he gave me back some change, and then waited for them to fix my order. Sarah wasn’t anywhere in sight.

I just waited around for a while, thinking about how I was going to tell Sarah I liked her. But where was she? I hope she didn’t get any bad news on that telephone call.

Our order was ready. The food was wrapped in clean white paper, and they put the whole thing on a red tray. I carried the red tray around. The food smelt incredible. It reminded me about how hungry I was.

I wanted to sit down and eat it, but I was on a date. I had to wait until Sarah got back. I walked around the whole food court, which was difficult because there was people everywhere, but didn’t see Sarah. Maybe she went to the bathroom or something. I left the food court, still holding the tray with the food and drinks on it. I probably wasn’t supposed to bring the tray outside the dining area, but what choice did I have?

Finally I saw Sarah by a kiosk that was selling earrings. She was with Molly and Trisha again. They were talking and holding up earrings to look at them closely. What was Sarah doing? Is this how she acted on all her dates?

I walked up to her and said, “Hey, Sarah, our food is ready.”

“Oh yeah, our food,” she laughed. “Mickey, I forgot to tell you, but… I’m really not that hungry. I actually ate before I came.”

A lump formed in my throat. “But I thought you said you wanted nachos.”

“Yeah… I did say that, didn’t I?” She didn’t look at me when she said that.

I stood there with the tray of Mexican food, not knowing what to do.

Sarah took a few steps away from me and picked up a pair of golden earrings hanging on a rack. She looked closely at them. “Hey, Molly, do you like these?”

“They’re OK,” Molly said, “But I think I like the red ones better. The other one has the same design, but it’s a different color, and I just like the color a lot better, you know?”

Trisha looked at me standing there holding the tray like a butler, and then walked over and put her hand on Sarah’s shoulder, “Sarah, come on, he bought you dinner, why don’t you just go with him?” Trisha said. “You’re being, like, mega-cruel right now.”

Sarah looked over to the woman working at the kiosk, who was busy helping another customer. Sarah slipped a pair of earrings into her purse, and then took a few steps towards me. “You know what, Mickey? I am a little bit hungry, but I’m actually in a little bit of a hurry tonight, so, um, let’s just go back, find a table, and then you can tell me whatever you wanted to tell me and then we can call it a night, OK?”

“OK,” I said.

Sarah went back to Molly and whispered something in here ear. I was getting a little bit tired of her telling secrets to her friends all the time, but I had to respect her privacy. We walked back down the broad walkway, through crowds of people, passing shops. My stomach was growling by the time we got to the food court and sat down.

I immediately started eating. The warm tortilla, meat and cheese filled my mouth with pleasure. Sarah picked up a chip, looked at it and said, “Oh, gross!”

“What’s the matter?” I said with food in my mouth.

“I hate jalapenos! Didn’t I tell you to get me nachos without jalapenos?” Sarah said.

“Uh… maybe you did. I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. I don’t even like these nachos.” She threw the entire basket of nachos into a trashcan.

I could have eaten those. But of course I wasn’t going to say anything rude to the woman I loved. I did remember, though, that you were supposed to return the baskets that the nachos came in.

“Oh you know what,” I said, “I don’t think you’re supposed to throw away those baskets. I think the restaurant wants them back. I mean, they looked like pretty thick plastic to me.” Sarah just looked at me. “I can go get it out of the trash can.” I started to get up.

“What? No, that’s sick!” Sarah yelled. I sat back down. Sarah continued, “Those trashcans are disgusting. You’re making me sick just thinking about those nachos in the trashcan. Ugh. I throw those baskets away all the time. Nobody cares. Those Mexicans should be smart enough to use paper trays or something instead of plastic baskets anyway.” Sarah put her hand on the table, spread out her fingers, and started picking at her fingernails with her other hand. “So what’s the big important thing you wanted to tell me?”

This wasn’t the way I had imagined telling Sarah that I liked her. I was hoping that we would have had a nice conversation first. My heart pounded. I put down my fork and scooted my plate away from me a little bit. “Sarah, do you remember what we did in English today?”

“Not really.”

“We all read poems out loud. Remember, your poem was about the butterfly? I thought that poem was beautiful, by the way. The best one in the whole class,” I said. Sarah kept picking at her fingernails. I think she was trying to scrape off old fingernail polish with her thumbnail. I swallowed and said, “Well, do you remember my poem at all?”

“No.”

“You don’t?” I asked.

“No.”

What? How could she not remember my poem at all? I thought we had that mystical eye contact moment. Was she joking?

“You don’t remember my poem at all?”

“Um… was it about super-dude or something?”

I was speechless. Tears welled up in my eyes. I covered my face with a napkin for a minute. “This food is spicy,” I said. I took the napkin away. “I thought you listened to my poem today.”

“No, I didn’t listen to your poem,” Sarah said. “So what? I don’t remember anything about anyone’s poems. It’s nothing personal. I just don’t like poetry.”

She doesn’t like poetry? How could she not like poetry? Not liking poetry is like not liking words.

“I didn’t even write my own poem,” Sarah went on. “Trisha wrote it for me. Mickey, English is such a joke. Mrs. Kortchek is a joke, too. Everybody in that whole class knows it’s a joke. I already know how to read and write. What do I care about poetry or literature? That stuff’s not going to get me anywhere after high school.” Sarah got out her phone and started pushing some buttons. “Hey, I have to go to the bathroom.” Sarah stood up and left me alone.

Was this the same Sarah Brighton that had rescued me from the sandbox in third grade?

I ate the rest of my burritos, rice and beans, and drank the last bit of water out of my white foam cup. A few ice cubes were left in the bottom of my cup. I looked down at the ice cubes, swished them around, put them in my mouth, and crunched. I returned the tray to the counter at the Mexican restaurant, and then went back to the table.

I sat there in the food court for a long time, waiting for Sarah to come back from the bathroom. People came and went, and I didn’t recognize any of them. After about an hour of waiting for Sarah, I left.

**********

I had a long walk home from the mall in the dark. It was sort of a good thing, though. It gave me time to think.

The city slowed down at this time of night. Fewer people were on the sidewalks; fewer cars were in the streets and in the parking lots. A lot of the store lights were out. There were lots of good lights, though, that kept the city lit up all night. The lights made me feel safer walking through some of the bad parts of the city. I never usually liked cops, but tonight when I saw a police car in the street, I felt better.

I was halfway home when I realized that I had never actually told Sarah how I felt about her. Maybe it was a good thing I never told her.

On my way home I stopped at the park where I had seen the young mother and father with their child on the swing earlier that day. I stayed on the sidewalk, put my arms over my head, and looked over the empty park. The park looked so different at night. Kind of mysterious. And quiet. Very quiet. I realized that I hadn’t really been to a park in a long time. I use to play in parks all the time when I was a kid, but for some reason, around about the time I went to middle school, parks became un-cool, and I stopped playing in them.

The park seemed to call me.

I stepped off the concrete sidewalk and took a few steps on the grass. I sat down on the ground, took off my shoes and socks, threw them aside, and stood up again. A few blades of grass came up between my toes, and tickled my feet, and my heels sunk a tiny bit into the topsoil. I bent over and felt the earth with my hands, letting the dirt crumble I formed one hand like a cup, and filled it with dirt. After that I swung on the swing for a while, and listened to the chains of the swing creak as I went back and forth. A few grasshoppers were up, singing their grasshopper song. But now and then the grasshoppers would stop their noise making and it would be perfectly silent. Still barefoot, I walked away from the swing set, lay down in the grass and looked up at the stars. A million sparkles were up there, forever suspended in the black heavens. I looked for all the constellations I knew, but after finding Orion’s belt and the Big Dipper, I couldn’t remember anymore.

My eyes started drooping. I closed my eyes and listened to my own breathing. I could fall asleep right there, in the park. But I knew I couldn’t fall asleep in the park. I think I heard that sleeping in the park overnight was illegal. Plus, it was getting a little cold, the ground was starting to get uncomfortable, and I didn’t have a pillow or a blanket. Reluctantly, with my mind feeling foggy, I got up, put my shoes back on, and started walking home again.

But I didn’t want to go home. Mom might be there.

If she was home, Mom would probably be on the couch, watching TV. She wouldn’t do anything mean to me, of course. She doesn’t care if I get in late. She would just act like everything was normal, like nothing happened yesterday afternoon, like she never told me that it was my fault that I didn’t have a father. When I got in tonight she’d most likely call me “pumpkin” and give me money for comic books or a movie or something.

But I still didn’t want to go home. But where else could I go?

I decided to go to Jeremy’s house.

Jeremy lived just about a block away from me, so it wouldn’t take me too long to get there. Maybe Jeremy would let me spend the night, or maybe I could stay over there for just a little while, long enough to apologize to him for the way I made fun of his poem in English.

After about another ten minutes of walking, I got to Jeremy’s doorway. His house looked a lot like my house. All the houses around here were pretty much the same, really. All tan colored, all one-story, all more or less the same size.

I was about to press the doorbell when it occurred to me that I didn’t know what time it was. The whole house was dark. Was it too late to see Jeremy? I left the doorway, walking on some stepping-stones in their front yard. A faint light shone through the window, so I went back to the doorway and rung the bell.

The porch light came on. Jeremy’s Dad came to the door in his pajamas and yawned.

“Hello.”

“Hi, is Jeremy there?”

“You’re one of Jeremy’s friends right?”

I nodded my head.

“And your name’s Mickey?”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, it’s a little late for visitors, especially for a school night.” He stretched his arms, yawned again, and said, “But he might still be awake. Hold on.” Jeremy’s Dad shut the door, leaving me outside.

When he closed the door, I noticed a hand-painted wooden sign on the front door that said, “Mi Casa Es Tu Casa.” It was cute. There were other decorations, too. I looked down and saw a big furry mat that said, “Welcome.” A wind chime of little glass birds hung from the roof, and a green potted plant sat on a wooden stool in the corner of the doorway. Jeremy’s Mom was really into decorating. One time when I went over to Jeremy’s house, his Mom was hot-gluing sequins onto picture frames.

Jeremy’s Dad came back. “Hey kiddo, Jeremy’s awake, but he says he’s not in the mood for friends right now. He’s pretty tired. He’ll see you tomorrow at school, though, OK?”

“Can you tell him it’s important? I mean, I just want to talk to him for a little bit. Five minutes, maybe.”

Jeremy’s Dad thought about it. “OK, I’ll go ask again.”

I looked at the decorations in the doorway again until Jeremy’s Dad got back.

“Listen, kiddo, sorry, but Jeremy said no. Alright?”

I started to walk down their driveway.

“Hey, does your Mom know you’re out this late?” Jeremy’s Dad called from the doorway.

“Yeah, she does,” I said, as I kept walking away.

“Alright.”

He shut the door, locked it, and turned off their porch light. With nowhere else to go, I started heading home.

My house was dark, like most of our neighbors’ houses, so it looked like Mom was either asleep or gone. Or maybe she was watching TV with the lights off.

I got the key out of the fake rock, let myself in, and didn’t see Mom anywhere. Maybe she was on a date. I don’t know. I suppose it’s none of my business where she is.

I went to my room, made sure my alarm clock was set for tomorrow morning, got into bed, and fell asleep.