“Is that for your girlfriend?” asked Mo.
“Huh?” said David. “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Maybe.” He was flattered that Mo would think he was the kind of guy who had a girlfriend.
“Are you going to carve your initials in it?” she asked.
“Why would I do that?” he asked. “She knows who I am.” Whoever she was.
“Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do with hearts?” asked Mo. She returned to her project. Wham! Wham! Wham!
He watched her bang another nail in the back of the doghouse, then glanced back down at his own measly project. It did look more like a heart than an apple.
He looked up to see Randy and Alvin coming his way. He nodded to them.
“Hey, Mo,” said Alvin, ignoring David. “Me and Randy were wondering something.”
Mo looked at them suspiciously. “What?” she asked, hammer in hand.
“Are you a boy or a girl?” asked Alvin.
He and Randy cracked up laughing.
“Buzz off,” said Mo.
“She’s neither,” said Randy. “She’s a dog! Look, she’s making a house for herself!”
They laughed again.
“Watch out, David,” said Randy. “I don’t know if she’s had her rabies shot.”
David smiled.
“How would you like a hammer up your ass?” asked Mo.
David turned red. He wasn’t sure if she was threatening only Alvin and Randy or if she was including him too. He didn’t dare look at her.
Alvin and Randy laughed and headed back to their table.
David stared down at his cheese board. He didn’t breathe until he heard Mo slam another nail into her doghouse.
6
“YOU SHOULD have taken the cigarette this morning,” Scott told him as they walked home together after school. “You didn’t have to smoke it. All you have to do is go into the bathroom, light it, and let it burn for a few minutes so the smoke gets in your hair. One cigarette won’t kill you.”
“No, but my parents might,” said David.
Scott laughed.
David laughed along with him.
He was glad that they were still friends, at least as long as Roger wasn’t around.
“Sorry I didn’t wait for you this morning,” said Scott. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I mean you’re still my friend, it’s just that, you know, it’s not good for my reputation. I have to think of myself, too. You understand, right?”
“I guess,” said David.
“I’m taking a chance even walking home with you now,” said Scott. “But you’re my friend.”
“Thanks,” said David. “It’s not both of them, is it?” he asked. “I mean, I kind of get the feeling Randy thinks I’m okay. It’s just that Roger won’t give me a chance.”
Scott shook his head. “Man, you got that backwards,” he said. “Roger was saying that maybe you were kind of cool, now that there’s a curse on you, but Randy thinks you’re just a total dipshit.”
“DID YOU say the Gettysburg Address?” asked Ricky.
“No, Mr. MacFarland didn’t call on me.”
“Too bad!” said Ricky. “I know you wouldn’t have made any mistakes.”
David shrugged.
“Can I hear it again?” Ricky asked.
Once more David recited the Gettysburg Address for his brother. He remembered what Mr. MacFarland had said, and he did his best to speak with the dignity and grace befitting the occasion.
“That’s right,” Ricky said when David was through. “You didn’t miss a single word.”
Ricky had memorized it too.
“Now do you want to hear my address?” asked David.
“Okay,” said Ricky.
“1411 Meadowbrook Lane,” said David.
Ricky cracked up laughing.
David shook his head in amazement. He wondered why Ricky didn’t realize that if he was really such a neat guy he wouldn’t be reciting the Gettysburg Address to his little brother. He’d be out with his friends or even with a girl. Only nerds stay home and recite Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address to their little brothers.
What would Ricky think if he knew my so-called friends thought I was a dipshit? Or that there was a girl I liked, but there was no way she would ever like me? And that while she was reciting the Gettysburg Address I fell over in my chair and then had to lie on my back like a bug?
“Hey, Mom,” said Ricky as she walked by. “Do you want to hear David’s address?”
Their mother walked into David’s room with her finger on her lips. “Shh,” she whispered. “I just put Elizabeth down.”
She had medium length light brown hair and hazel eyes. She always looked worn out but at the same time content. Before Elizabeth was born she had worked for a consulting firm, doing statistical analysis. At first she was just going to take six weeks off, then three months, then six months, and now she still occasionally talked about going back to work.
“Do you want to hear David’s address?” Ricky whispered. “It’s really funny.”
“All right.”
“David, tell her your address,” said Ricky.
David shrugged. “1411 Meadowbrook Lane.”
Ricky cracked up laughing again.
Mrs. Ballinger smiled politely. She obviously didn’t understand the joke, if that’s what it was. “Ricky, you need to clean your room,” she said.
David watched his little brother walk out the door, followed by his mother. “Hey, Mom,” he said.
His mother stopped and turned back to look at him.
He flipped her off.
For a moment she didn’t react at all. Then in a strained voice she said, “Don’t move until your father gets home.”
She walked out of his room, slamming the door behind her.
A second later he heard Elizabeth crying. He looked down at his middle finger, which was still raised, and pointed it at himself.
7
DAVID DIDN’T think his mother actually meant “Don’t move.” She was just too upset to choose her words properly. He had to stay in his room until his father came home, but surely he was allowed to move.
Unfortunately his father sometimes didn’t get home until almost midnight. He worked in a lab at the university and would get so involved with his experiments that he’d forget all about time.
David didn’t know exactly what his father did, except that he was sort of working on a cure for cancer, but not really. His father tried to explain his work to him, slowly and simply, but then he’d always get carried away and start talking real fast about cutting and cloning and splicing DNA molecules. He could go on for half an hour before realizing that David had no idea what he was talking about. Then he’d just shrug and say, “I’m working on a cure for cancer.”
But David had also heard his father say that the only way to get a government grant was to say he was working on a cure for cancer. True, he hoped his research might eventually lead to a discovery that might help lead to a cure for cancer, but that wasn’t really the main thing.
Ricky brought David his dinner on a tray. “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” he said. “I’m just supposed to give you your dinner, then go right back to the kitchen.”
“Okay,” said David, lying on top of his bed.
Ricky set the tray on David’s desk and started toward the door, then stopped and walked quickly to his brother. “What’d you do?” he whispered.
David shook his head.
He was too ashamed to tell Ricky he had given their mother the finger, but once again he knew he had impressed his little brother. Here he was, eating alone in his room because of some great and mysterious thing he had done.
Maybe I really am cursed, he thought, picking at his dinner. I’ve got no friends. My mother hates me.
In an odd way it made him feel better to pretend to believe Mrs. Bayfield put a curse on him. It gave him an excuse. It’s not my fault I’m a dipshit. There’s a curse on me.
The door opened. His father entered, took one look at him, and shook his head.
“I’m sorry,” said David.
“Don’t tell me,” said his father, sitting on the bed. “Tell your mother.” He wore torn jeans and a T-shirt. This was how he dressed for work, unless he had to meet with somebody from the government, and then he wore a suit and tie. He had very curly hair like David’s, but his hairline was receding. He also had a scraggly beard and mustache.
“I didn’t think she’d know what it meant,” David tried to explain.
His father stared at him incredulously.
“Who told her what it meant?” David asked. “Did you?”
“No.”
“Then how does she know? Somebody had to show it to her and then tell her what it meant.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“How’d she tell you what I did?” asked David. “What’d she call it?”
His father thought a moment. “She didn’t call it anything. She said, ‘David did this to me,’ and then she showed me.”
“Was she very good at it?” asked David.
“Good at it?”
“I mean, was she able to do it easily?”
His father smiled. “No, actually she had to use her other hand to bend her fingers into place.”
“I just thought—I mean Mom seems so pure and innocent and everything. I didn’t think she’d know what it meant.”
“Well, that’s not the point,” said his father. “Even if she didn’t know what it meant, that still wouldn’t excuse your actions.”
“Why not?” asked David. “If you give somebody the finger, and that person doesn’t know what it means, then what makes it bad?”
His father started to say something, then stopped and reconsidered. “That’s a good point,” he remarked. “There’s nothing inherently bad about it. It is only bad because everyone has agreed it’s a bad thing to do. I suppose it could just as easily have been made to mean something good—like ‘good luck.’ ”
“Or ‘I love you,’ ” said David.
“Right,” his father said. He smiled, but then his face turned serious again. “Even if your mother didn’t know what it meant, you did. You weren’t thinking ‘good luck’ or ‘I love you.’ You meant it as an insult.”
“I didn’t mean anything,” said David. “I was just testing her to see if she knew what it meant. It was like an experiment.”
His father appeared to mull that over.
“Who made it up?” asked David.
“I don’t know.”
“Someone had to,” said David.
His father nodded. “I guess so,” he said. “And then, when he gave people the finger, he’d have to explain what it meant. Otherwise no one would care.”
“They might think he meant ‘good luck’ or ‘I love you,’ ” said David.
His father laughed. “Right,” he said. “And then those people would give other people the finger, and they’d have to explain it too. But now we live in a world where people have been cursing and insulting each other for so long that we can do it without having to bother to explain it.” He smiled sadly. “Aren’t we lucky?”
“I wonder how long people have been doing it,” said David.
“Quite a while, I suppose, for everyone to know about it.”
“Do you think Grandma and Grandpa know what it means?”
“I’m sure they do,” said his father. “But I never experimented on them.” He smiled.
So did David. “But what if there is one person who doesn’t know what it means, and you do it to her—or him? Is it bad? Elizabeth doesn’t know what it means. If I went into her room and flipped her off, would that be bad?”
“I don’t know. I know I wouldn’t like it if I was taking her for a stroll and somebody came along and said, ‘Hey, Elizabeth,’ and then flipped her off.” He thought a moment. “But would that be because he was offending Elizabeth or because he was offending me?”
“I guess Elizabeth’ll find out what it means some day,” said David. “Just like Mom. It seems so hard to believe. It’s sad.”
His father nodded. “Why don’t you go apologize to your mother,” he said.
David started toward the door.
“David,” his father called to him.
He turned around.
His father flipped him off. “Good luck,” he said.
David flipped off his father and said, “I love you.”
David’s mother was quite delighted to find out it was just an experiment. She was flattered that David didn’t think she’d know what it meant.
8
DAVID WASN’T going to stop by Scott’s house Tuesday, but it was right on his way to school, and maybe Scott would be there.
He wasn’t.
“I told him he should wait for you, Davey,” said Scott’s mother, “but he seemed to be in a hurry.”
“That’s okay,” said David. “I figured he wouldn’t, but you know, I mean since I had to walk right by your house anyway, I might as well—”
“Oh, he forgot his lunch,” said Scott’s mother. “Would you mind bringing it to him?” She disappeared back into the house, then returned a moment later with a white paper sack.
David carried Scott’s lunch all the way to school, where he saw Scott, Roger, Randy, and Alvin all laughing together. He dropped Scott’s lunch into a trash can. After all, he didn’t want to ruin Scott’s reputation.
He got his books from his locker and headed toward his homeroom. Maybe Mrs. Bayfield really did put a curse on me, he thought. Except even if she was some kind of witch, she would have put a curse on Scott or Roger, not me. All I did was give her the finger.
And then I gave my mother the finger too, he realized. Maybe Mrs. Bayfield somehow made me do that.
A weird thought popped into his head. He had broken his parents’ bedroom window too, just like Roger had broken a front window in Mrs. Bayfield’s house.
And, he suddenly realized, he had fallen over backward in his chair in homeroom, just like Mrs. Bayfield when Randy pulled over her rocking chair.
He smiled at the strangeness of it all.
The smile left his face when he saw Miss Williams coming his way. Her red hair hung over a long yellow and purple sweatshirt. He hoped she hadn’t thought that he was smiling at her.
Her green eyes flashed at him. “Hi,” she said.
His mouth went dry. “Hello, Miss Williams,” he said, nearly gagging on the words.
She pushed on through the door and made her way to her desk.
He hoped she hadn’t seen him blush. He felt like an absolute fool as he went to his desk.
He couldn’t believe that he had called her Miss Williams. So what if he didn’t know her first name? He should have just said hi back to her. “Hi,” she had said, cool and sweet. “Hello, Miss Williams,” he replied, nerdy and dumb.
He felt himself blush again, just thinking about it. Well, it’s not my fault—I’m cursed.
Mr. MacFarland was talking about John Wilkes Booth, a prominent actor who assassinated Abraham Lincoln right in the middle of a performance. “For all we know, President Lincoln might have thought it was all part of the play, right up until the last moment, when Booth fired his pistol.”
She did say hi to me, David realized. That was something. He wished he knew her first name. He wondered if he had ever heard it before. He went through every girl’s name he could think of to see if one rang a bell. Alice Williams. Amy Williams. Betty Williams. Barbara Williams. Carol Williams. Cathy Williams. Debbie Williams. Donna Williams.… He made it all the way through Zelda Williams, but the only bell that rang was the one at the end of the period.
AT RECESS he saw Scott and Roger and everyone hanging out on the steps. Roger was waving his arms, talking about something, and everyone else was laughing.
David sighed. He didn’t know what Roger was saying, but he doubted it was very funny. Still, he knew if he was there, he would have laughed t
oo.
Leslie Gilroy was wearing Roger’s black vinyl jacket. That was one of the games they played. Whenever a girl wore a boy’s jacket it meant she wasn’t allowed to talk to another boy. Leslie wasn’t even allowed to talk to Randy or Scott without first taking off the jacket.
Leslie had long, silky, beautiful blond hair that she was always complaining about. It seemed whenever she wasn’t the center of attention, like when the guys were talking about sports, she’d suddenly say, “I hate my hair. It’s too straight. I wish it was like yours, Ginger.” Ginger had dark frizzy hair.
David opened his math book and started on his homework. If he didn’t have any friends, at least he’d get his homework done so he’d have plenty of free time after school. He laughed at himself. Free time to do what? Play with my little brother and his friends?
“You have to go with me, Ginger!” he heard Leslie exclaim.
He glanced up to see Leslie and Ginger coming toward him. He looked back down at his book but continued to watch Leslie and Ginger out of the corner of his eye.
They stopped right in front of him. Leslie took off Roger’s black jacket and handed it to Ginger. Now she was allowed to talk. She turned to David and said, “No girl will ever want to wear your jacket. You’re the ugliest boy in the whole school.”
She took the jacket from Ginger and put it back on. Then the two girls turned and walked quickly back to their friends.
“I said it!” David heard Leslie exclaim. “I said it right to his face!”
“He didn’t do a thing,” said Ginger. “He just sat there.”
9
WHAT WAS I supposed to do? David was still thinking two and a half hours later as he changed into his gym clothes. Punch Leslie Gilroy in the face? What’d they expect? I’m not going to say, “No, I’m not ugly.” That would have been worse.
Roger was in David’s P.E. class. David was glad that Roger’s locker was on the other side of the locker room. At least he could get dressed in peace.
He headed out to the soccer field. He was good at soccer. He was a pretty fast runner, but more than that, he had quick feet.