He walked up the front stairs of the address he found in the phone book and rang the doorbell to her apartment. Nobody answered. She wasn’t at school and she wasn’t at home. This might be bigger than he ever even imagined. Maybe she was working for the CIA. She was certainly smart enough. That’s why when he called her on the phone, she couldn’t say anything in front of her father. But then, how did he know for sure that her father was even there? Angeline could have been lying about that too. All he knew for certain was that some man answered the phone—no, some person with a man’s voice. Angeline wasn’t a little girl at all. She was a midget Russian spy! Green socks. Green socks? It was some kind of code. She was trying to tell him something. She wanted to defect. She and agent XZ1000, who was posing as her father, were plotting to overthrow the government and…
“BOO!” said Angeline.
Gary stumbled down the stairs. “Have a nice trip, see you next fall,” he said.
Angeline laughed.
“I never even heard you coming,” said Gary. “You’re as quiet as a cat.”
“As a fish,” said Angeline. “Do you want to come in and see where I live?” She unlocked the front door of the apartment building and they waited by the elevator.
“You have an elevator,” said Gary.
“We have to,” said Angeline. “We live on the fourth floor.”
“We live in a house, so we don’t have an elevator,” said Gary.
“Do you have a backyard?” Angeline asked.
“Yes.”
“Well, then, you don’t need an elevator if you have a backyard. You can have a dog.”
“We don’t have a dog or an elevator,” said Gary.
They rode the elevator up to the fourth floor. Angeline unlocked the door to her apartment and they walked inside. “Would you like some salt water?” she offered.
Gary looked around the apartment. He was thrilled to be there, just as he was thrilled the time he got to go to Mr. Bone’s car. “Do you have any fresh water?” he asked.
“Yes, we have that too,” said Angeline.
“I’ll have fresh water,” said Gary. “My father said if you drink salt water you’ll go crazy. He said he read a book where a guy on a lifeboat drank salt water, then jumped in the ocean and was eaten by sharks.”
“How could that be?” Angeline asked. “You don’t go crazy from drinking water and you don’t go crazy from eating salt, so why would you go crazy from drinking salt water?”
Gary shrugged.
“Besides,” added Angeline, “fish aren’t crazy and that’s all they ever drink.”
“I didn’t know fish drank,” said Gary.
Angeline went into the kitchen and made them each a glass of water, no salt in Gary’s.
“Where’s your room?” he asked when she returned.
“This is it,” said Angeline proudly. “This is where I sleep.”
“On the couch?”
“It folds out into a bed,” said Angeline. “When I’m asleep it’s my bedroom and when I’m awake it’s the living room.”
“I just have a regular bedroom,” said Gary. “I wonder if my parents would let me sleep on the couch.”
They sat on the floor and drank their water. Gary had a wonderful time seeing Angeline again. He was a little afraid to ask her where she’d been when she hadn’t been in school. He didn’t want to spoil their good time, but he finally asked her.
She told him about Mrs. Hardlick’s note, and all about the aquarium, the four-eyed butterfly fish and the glass catfish, which you could see right through except for the bones.
“Aren’t you ever coming back to school?” Gary asked.
“I can’t,” said Angeline. “I tore up Mrs. Hardlick’s note and stuffed it under a bus seat. She told me I couldn’t come back to class until I bring the note back, signed by my father. Since I don’t have the note, I can’t ever go back.”
“I wish Mr. Bone would write me a note like that,” said Gary. “Then I could stuff it under a bus seat and I wouldn’t have to go to school.”
“Mr. Bone would never write a note like that,” said Angeline.
“No, I guess not.”
“Besides, if I had Mr. Bone for a teacher, I’d like school.”
“I guess,” said Gary. “But it was a lot better when you were there too.”
“I just don’t fit in at school,” said Angeline, “not like at the aquarium. At school, everyone calls me a freak.”
“They call me a goon,” said Gary.
“You call yourself that,” said Angeline.
“I guess I’ll always be a goon,” said Gary, “but someday everybody will be sorry they ever called you a freak. You’ll be somebody really great.”
“You never know.”
Fourteen
Mr. Bone Is on the Phone
Angeline watched the porpoises and dolphins, sea lions and seals, all playing together. She pressed her face up against the glass, squashing her nose. It would have looked funny to the dolphins, had they noticed, which they didn’t. None of the fish ever noticed her.
The scissors-tail fish cleanly cut their way through the water. The sea horses galloped around the bend. The turkey fish gobbled up their fish food. And beneath the silvery moonfish, the convict fish silently escaped to the other end of the tank.
She was on the outside here too, just like at school. Even in the circular room, with all the fish swimming around her, she was on the outside. She was in the middle, but on the outside.
At school, Gary stood under a tree, near where he and Angeline first met.
It used to be, before Angeline, Gary didn’t have any friends but he got along fine, telling jokes. Nobody laughed, but so what? The world spun around and he spun around too. But now he missed Angeline. Without her, his jokes, oddly enough, didn’t seem funny anymore.
He kicked the tree. He had told it a joke and it didn’t laugh. “What did the acorn say when it grew up? Geometry. Gee, I’m a tree.” It was even a tree joke.
“It’s not the tree’s fault,” said Miss Turbone.
Gary shrugged.
“I’m sure Angeline will be back soon,” said Miss Turbone. “Did you go see her, like I suggested?”
“She’s never coming back,” said Gary.
“Oh?”
He sighed, then told Mr. Bone all about it. He hoped Angeline wouldn’t be mad at him, but he told her everything, all about the note from Mrs. Hardlick, and how she’d been going to the aquarium every day. “And since she destroyed the note,” he concluded, “she can’t ever come back.” He looked sadly at Mr. Bone.
Miss Turbone didn’t say a word. She just winked at him.
The garbage truck pulled into the garbage truck garage. Abel brushed the top of his head and checked in the rearview mirror one last time for banana peels. “Mr. Bone, socks, smalayoo—I tell you, Gus, it just keeps getting stranger. I’m almost afraid to go home.”
“What’s smalayoo?” asked Gus.
“I haven’t a clue,” said Abel.
They walked to their cars. “Oh, sorry,” said Gus, as he purposely stepped on Abel’s foot while he secretly placed a banana peel on top of his head.
Angeline made herself a glass of salt water and brought it into the living room. The one-eyed pirate brought his prisoners to a secret cove, where he tried to think of the best way to kill them. He and his crew laughed and sang ribald songs as they drank rum and brandy. The sailor didn’t let on that he had managed to untie the rope around his hands.
Abel came home. “Don’t hug me until I take a shower,” he said.
Angeline laughed when she saw him. “Make sure you wash the banana peel out of your hair,” she said.
Abel was amazed—more amazed than when she played the piano or beat a computer at chess. She knew about the banana peels! How did she? How could she? It made him feel extraordinarily close to her. He hadn’t felt that way for a long time.
But then he felt the top of his head. There really wa
s one! He threw it away, in the trash in the kitchen, underneath the sink. The phone rang. Angeline watched as he answered it. “Hello,” he said.
“Hello, Mr. Persopolis?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Yes.”
“I’m Miss Turbone. I’m a teacher at Angeline’s school.”
He dropped the phone and stared at Angeline. “She says she’s Mr. Bone,” he whispered. It was as if everything imaginary were suddenly turning real—first the banana peel, now Mr. Bone. He retrieved the phone.
“Uh-oh,” mouthed Angeline.
“Hello, are you there? Hello?” said Miss Turbone.
“Hello,” said Abel. “Sorry, we were temporarily cut off. So, what can I do for you…” He paused. “…Mr. Bone?”
“I would like to talk to you about Angeline,” she said.
Abel looked around the room in disbelief. “I would like to talk to you, too, Mr. Bone.”
“Good,” said Miss Turbone. “I think it would be better if we talked in person. Perhaps I could come over there later this evening?”
“Okay, fine.” He gave her directions.
“Good. I’ll see you in, say, two hours?”
“Okay, fine.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Bone.”
He hung up the phone and began talking to himself. “That’s it, Abel,” he said. “It’s all over. You’ve finally cracked.”
He took his shower and washed the rest of the banana peels out of his hair. “It’s no wonder I have banana peels in my hair,” he said loudly. “My head is full of bananas.”
Angeline watched him shave. “Is Mr. Bone coming over here?” she asked him.
“So she said,” said Abel.
She liked to watch her father shave. It fascinated her, the way he scraped the creamy white lather off his face while the hot water steamed up the bathroom. “Are you shaving because of Mr. Bone?” she asked.
“Sure, why not?” Abel replied. He slapped some after-shave lotion on his face, and also on Angeline’s.
She shrieked with delight. “Ooh, it tingles.”
He put on a clean shirt, and tie too, for Mr. Bone.
“You look so handsome,” said Angeline.
They were both beginning to feel very excited. Abel took a couple of deep breaths to try to calm himself. “Okay, one last time,” he said. “Who is Mr. Bone?”
“She’s a teacher,” Angeline replied. “She teaches Gary’s class.”
“Okay, fine.”
Angeline didn’t know why she was so excited that Mr. Bone was coming over, except that she hadn’t seen her for a long time. It only meant that she would get into trouble and would have to go back to Mrs. Hardlick’s class. Still, the thought of Mr. Bone coming here, to her apartment, thrilled her.
Abel didn’t know why he was so excited either. Maybe it was because Angeline was so excited, or maybe it was because he’d find out who this mysterious person really was. “Or maybe,” he thought, “maybe it’s because I’m just plain loony.”
They both forgot all about eating dinner.
When the bell rang, Angeline hit the button to let Mr. Bone into the apartment building. Then she waited by the door for Mr. Bone to come out of the elevator. “Over here, Mr. Bone!” she called.
“Come on in,” she invited. Even though she knew it meant she’d get into trouble, she remained absolutely delighted to see her, just the same.
“This is my father.”
Abel and Miss Turbone shook hands.
“Mr. Persopolis,” said Miss Turbone.
“Mr. Bone,” said Abel.
There are some people who are so cold and unfeeling, like reflections in a mirror, that they might as well be imaginary. But as Abel shook Miss Turbone’s hand, he could feel her warmth. And he could see it in her face. And as they talked, he could hear it in her voice.
“Call me Melissa,” she said.
Abel was glad her name wasn’t Howard or Robert or Frank. He thought Melissa Bone was a nice name. He told her to call him Abel.
“Call me Angeline,” laughed Angeline.
Melissa sat on the sofa.
“That’s my bed,” said Angeline. “It folds out.”
Melissa smiled. “It’s very comfortable.”
“So now, what can we do for you Mr.—Melissa?” Abel asked. His tie was strangling him. He didn’t know why he had put it on in the first place.
“Maybe it would be better if we could talk alone,” she suggested.
Angeline was sent to her father’s bedroom. She took her book with her although she had no intention of reading it. She sat with her ear next to the door and listened.
“I don’t know where to begin,” said Melissa. “Has Angeline told you where she’s been for the past week?”
“Where she’s been?” Abel repeated.
“She hasn’t been in school.”
“No,” said Abel as he turned and looked toward his bedroom door. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“She’s been going to the aquarium,” Melissa informed him.
Angeline knew, of course, that Mr. Bone would know that she hadn’t been in school. What she couldn’t figure out was how Mr. Bone knew she’d been going to the aquarium. It amazed her.
“I only know what Angeline’s teacher, Mrs. Hardlick, told me about it,” said Melissa, “and to be perfectly honest I don’t believe half the things that Margaret Hardlick says.” She then related to Abel Angeline’s final act as Secretary of Trash and the subsequent note that Angeline was supposed to have signed by her mother.
“Her mother’s been dead for over five years,” said Abel. His tie was driving him crazy. He stretched his neck in all directions. “Excuse me,” he said, “would you mind if I took off my tie?”
“Oh yes, terribly,” she answered.
“Oh, all right then,” said Abel. He kept it on.
Melissa laughed. “I’m kidding,” she told him.
Abel smiled foolishly. He took off his tie and hurled it across the room. He unbuttoned the top button on his shirt and let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Much better,” he said.
“I could never figure out why men wear those things in the first place,” said Melissa. “And they say that women are such slaves of fashion.”
Maybe that was why she called herself “Mr. Bone,” thought Abel. It was some kind of women’s liberation. He returned to the topic of conversation. “I never saw the note,” he said.
“I know,” said Melissa. “Angeline stuffed it under a bus seat.”
Incredible! thought Angeline from behind the door. Mr. Bone knows everything!
“I told Mrs. Hardlick that I would speak to her mother—to you—in lieu of the note,” said Melissa.
“Well, thank you,” said Abel. “I’ll see that Angeline is punished.”
Melissa and Angeline each winced at that. “Please don’t get me wrong, Abel,” said Melissa, “she’s your daughter. But I didn’t come all the way over here so that Angeline would be punished.”
On the other side of the door, Angeline wiped her forehead. “Way to go, Mr. Bone,” she whispered.
“I’m all ears,” said Abel.
Melissa smiled at that expression. “I guess I just wanted you to be aware of the situation,” she said.
“Well, I’m aware of the situation,” said Abel. “Angeline gets herself into lots of situations. And I blow every one of them.”
“Judging by Angeline,” said Melissa, “you must be doing something right.”
“Really?” said Abel. “You think so? Even though she’s been going to the aquarium?”
Melissa laughed. “If I had Margaret Hardlick for a teacher, I’d go to the aquarium, too.”
Abel smiled. “Really? Okay, so now what do I do?”
“What do you think about switching Angeline to my class?”
Behind the door, Angeline vigorously nodded her head.
“That’s the fifth grade, isn’t it?” asked Abel.
M
elissa said it was.
“I don’t know,” said Abel. “No offense, but I hate to see her move backward. She has so much potential; that’s what really scares me. I don’t want to do anything to blow it. I hate to send her back a grade just because you’re such a pretty, er—” He stumbled over his words. “A pretty nice person, er, I mean teacher.” He smiled.
“Thank you, Abel. I think you’re nice also.”
Angeline beamed.
Abel took a deep breath. “Okay, fine,” he said. “What happens next year?” he asked. “She’ll be in the sixth grade all over again, won’t she, with Mrs. Hardlick?”
“Who knows where she’ll be next year?” said Melissa. “Right now, she’s smart enough to be in college, yet emotionally, she needs to be with kids her own age. That’s the whole problem. She doesn’t fit anywhere.”
Angeline agreed with that. She was always on the outside, even now, behind the door.
“So why the fifth grade?” Abel asked.
“Because,” Melissa said, shrugging modestly, “because, like you said”—she smiled—“I’m a nice teacher.”
“Yes, I bet you are,” said Abel.
They decided to leave it up to Angeline. She bolted out from behind the door. “I want to be in Mr. Bone’s class,” she announced.
“Okay, fine,” said Abel.
Miss Turbone told Angeline that she might have to wait a couple of days before all of the administrative stuff could be completed. In the meantime, she would have to return to Mrs. Hardlick’s class.
“Okay, fine,” said Angeline.
It didn’t occur to any of them, at the time, that Angeline might have been better off waiting at home or at the aquarium or anyplace else except Mrs. Hardlick’s class, until the administrative stuff could be completed.
They didn’t think that one or two days would matter.
Fifteen
Otherwise Known as Mr. Bone
Abel offered to walk Melissa out to her car. She said it wasn’t necessary but he insisted. “I don’t know how safe the streets are this time of night,” he said.
They didn’t speak, or even look at each other, as they rode down in the elevator. Elevators do that to people. But once outside in the cool night air, Abel finally asked the question he had wanted to ask all night.