As Ever, Gordy

  Lizard glanced my way and caught me staring at her. To my surprise, she handed Brent over to Magpie and, without actually looking at me, strolled toward the jungle gym. She stopped a couple of feet away and jammed her hands in her pockets. Meeting my eyes at last, she said, "I just want to say I'm sorry about your grandmother, Gordy. My grandmother passed away last summer, so I know how you feel."

  I nodded, but I didn't say what I was thinking—which was that Lizard had a mother and a father and a nice house. She was smart and she was pretty. Everybody liked her. The little snot had no idea how I felt. Not even a due.

  Lizard waited a second like she thought I might say something. When I didn't, she ran back to the swings and started pushing Brent again.

  As soon as she left, I felt like kicking myself for being such a dope. So Lizard didn't totally understand what it was like to lose Grandma—at least she'd said she was sorry. I could have been more friendly. Could at least have smiled. Now she'd probably never speak to me again.

  Mad at the world, I climbed to the top of the jungle gym. The tall windows of my old sixth-grade classroom blazed in the light of the setting sun. From a block away, I heard the rumble of cars and trucks on Route 1. A man walked past, coming home from work, probably. A woman scurried along behind him, head down like she was scared of tripping on a crack in the sidewalk.

  "Hey, June, it's time to go," Lizard yelled. She and Magpie were dragging Brent away from the swings. From the way he was howling, the troll must not have been ready to leave the playground.

  I flipped off a high bar, a pretty good trick, but only June noticed. Lizard and Magpie were too busy with Brent to pay any attention to me.

  By the time June and I caught up. Brent was walking between Lizard and Magpie, holding their hands. I could have walked faster and passed them, but I was enjoying the view of Lizard's hips and legs.

  I felt like whistling, but instead I tried repeating something I'd heard Donny yell at girls. "Must be jelly," I shouted, "cause jam don't shake like that."

  Lizard turned and hollered, "Drop dead, Gordy!" Magpie gave me a dirty look, and Brent sang out, "Dumb old 'tupid Yuncle Poopoo!" Dragging the troll with them, the girls started running like they couldn't wait to get away from me.

  Once again June and I tagged along behind the three of them. But I didn't enjoy the view as much as I had earlier. It seemed Lizard hated me more than ever. Just being near her put me in a lousy mood.

  "What's wrong, Gordy?" June asked.

  "Nothing." I must have said it louder than I meant to because June ran after Lizard and Magpie like I'd scared her away. I walked slower and slower, letting the distance widen until the four of them were no bigger than the dolls in June's dollhouse.

  By the time I finally got to Stu's apartment. Lizard and Magpie were on their way down the stairs. When they saw me coming, they flattened themselves against the wall like I had cooties or something even worse—leprosy, maybe. I swear they held their breath to keep from inhaling my germs.

  "It's been great seeing you two," I muttered.

  "The pleasure was all yours," Lizard said. Laughing like hyenas, she and Margaret ran outside.

  I opened the apartment door and went straight to the bathroom. Turning on the water so people would think I was doing something legitimate, I stared out the window at the train tracks. A freight was coming, pulled by one of the new diesel engines. The boxcars thundered past, shaking the bathroom so hard that stuff in the medicine cabinet clinked.

  Maybe I'd hop a freight and head west the way I'd always dreamed of doing. Jump off the train in Tulsa, find Donny, talk him into letting me stay with him. As soon as I turned sixteen, I'd drop out of school and get a job in the oil fields. By the time I was twenty-one, I'd be filthy rich.

  I'd come back to College Hill driving a Cadillac convertible, top down. I'd stop for a traffic light on Route 1, and Lizard would walk across the road in front of me. She'd be so fat and ugly, I'd barely recognize her.

  But she'd recognize me. "Oh, Gordy, it's great to see you," she'd gush. "I hear you're a millionaire ten times over now."

  I'd sneer and gun the motor. "Believe me, the pleasure is all yours," I'd say as I drove away.

  I smiled at my reflection in the mirror. Wouldn't that fix Lizard's wagon?

  9

  A FEW DAYS LATER, TOAD AND DOUG AND I WERE SITTING at our table in the back of the cafeteria, gassing about basketball. While Doug gave a play-by-play account of the University of Maryland's big win over Duke, I sat there looking around the cafeteria, bored out of my mind. It wasn't that I hated basketball—I just didn't want to hear Doug describe every bounce of the ball.

  Suddenly I spotted Lizard and Magpie in the lunch line. To my disgust, Lizard was talking to Bobby Pritchett, this kid I'd always hated, a stuck-up snob who lived in a big brick house at the top of Beech Drive. Like almost everybody else in College Hill, he'd grown. Though he used to be about my height, he was now almost as tall as Magpie. From the size of his shoulders, he might have been lifting weights while I was building model airplanes with William.

  While I watched, hating him more every second, Pritchett moved closer to Lizard till his face was about an inch from hers. I hoped his breath stunk.

  Toad turned his head to see what I was looking at. "I hear Pritchett took Lizard to the movies last Saturday," he said.

  "Why should I care who that little snot goes out with?" I asked. "I wouldn't take her around the block."

  Doug gave me a look that said he didn't believe a word of it. "Pritchett plays JV basketball," he said. "He's been high scorer all season."

  I scowled at Doug. "So what?"

  "So he also played football last fall—first-string tackle," Toad put in, playing the loyal buddy role as usual. "All the girls are nuts about him."

  "Including good old Lizard," Doug added.

  "Hurray for her. Hurray for him, too." I crushed my empty milk carton in my fist the way Donny used to flatten beer cans and got to my feet.

  "Where are you going?" Doug called after me.

  Without bothering to answer, I swaggered over to the cooler and grabbed another carton of chocolate milk. Though I didn't plan it that way, I just happened to catch up with Pritchett. Somehow—I swear it was an accident—my foot got in front of his foot. The stupid idiot stumbled and bumped into Lizard. Her plate of spaghetti $Jid off her tray and hit the floor. Tomato sauce splattered everywhere, but most of it landed on Pritchett's trousers and Lizard's skirt.

  "Look what you did, Gordy Smith!" Lizard yelled. "My skirt's ruined!"

  Beside her. Magpie gripped her tray like she thought I might dump her spaghetti on the floor, too.

  "Pritchett did that," I told Lizard. "If he'd been looking where he was going—"

  "Don't blame me," Pritchett cut in before I'd finished. "You tripped me on purpose."

  The jerk's size and height didn't scare me. Stepping right up to him, I gave him my best Bogart sneer and said, "It's not my fault you're blind in one eye and can't see out of the other."

  Pritchett scowled. If he hadn't been holding a tray, he probably would have socked me—which would have given me the excuse I needed to punch his big ugly nose.

  "I remember you," he said. "You used to live down at the end of Davis Road. Didn't one of your brothers desert or something?"

  "So what if he did?" I would have hit Pritchett then, tray or no tray, but my shop teacher came up behind me, grabbed my shirt collar, and pulled me backward so hard I almost choked.

  "What's going on here?" Mr. Boylan asked.

  Pritchett pointed at the spaghetti sauce on the floor. "Gordon Smith tripped me, sir. He made me—"

  "It was an accident," I interrupted. "Pritchett wasn't looking where he was going. It's not my fault he—"

  Boylan cut me off and turned to Lizard. "Did you see what happened?"

  Lizard glanced at Pritchett. He smirked like he knew she'd defend him. Then she looked at me. I didn't waste my energy smiling. It was
obvious^ whose side she was on.

  "Gordy tripped Bobby," Lizard said, giving me the evil eye. "Maybe it was an accident, maybe it wasn't, but just look at my skirt. My mother's going to kill me when I get home."

  Next Boylan asked Magpie what she'd seen. "I don't know," she whispered. "I wasn't looking, sir."

  Boylan let go of my collar, shoving me a little at the same time. "Go sit down. Smith. If I catch you starting any more trouble, I'll send you to the office."

  I strolled back to my seat, aware I had the whole cafeteria's attention. Toad and Doug gave me a big thumbs-up, and I bowed—Gordy Smith, spaghetti king.

  After school, I saw Lizard at the streetcar stop. I would have said I was sorry about her skirt, but she was with Pritchett, smiling and laughing and tossing her stupid hair around. Why should I care what happened to her dumb old clothes?

  When the streetcar came, I walked past Lizard without even looking at her and took a seat in the back with Toad and Doug. We laughed and shouted and pushed each other around till the driver threatened to throw us off. But Lizard never glanced my way, not once. She was laughing so hard at Pritchett's dumb jokes, the Russians could have dropped the A-bomb on Washington and she wouldn't have noticed.

  If she'd only given me the chance, I could have told her some really good jokes, much better than Pritchett's. Thanks to William, I knew over a dozen Little Moron riddles. Donny had taught me a bunch of even funnier traveling salesman stories, but I couldn't tell her those—they were pretty dirty.

  Pritchett rode right past his stop and got off the streetcar with Lizard and Magpie. I watched the three of them walk down Garfield toward Lizard's house. Lizard was still laughing at Pritchett's jokes—he must have had a million of them. But poor old Magpie trailed along behind, head down, clutching her notebook, looking as glum as I felt.

  My stop was next. I didn't feel like hanging around with Toad and Doug or going home to Stu's, so I wandered around by myself, going up one street and down another, feeling lonesome and sad. The wind was blowing hard, and the sky was full of big dark clouds. Dead leaves tumbled every which way, some rushing ahead, some lagging behind, some spiraling into the air around me. The bare trees and brown grass made the whole town look ugly—houses, yards, garages, even telephone poles.

  At the comer of Dartmoor and Davis Road, I stopped and looked down the street. Our old house was at the end. From where I stood, all I could see was the chimney and part of the roof, but being this close started a landslide of memories. My father sitting in his armchair by the radio, a bottle of beer in his hand, just waiting for somebody to give him an excuse to start punching us. Mama moving slow and quiet, speaking soft, hoping not to rile him. My little brothers playing in the yard, scared to come inside till the old man left—or passed out. June watching everything with those big sad puppy-dog eyes of hers. Donny blowing up toilets with cherry bombs. Stu down in the woods hiding from the war.

  And me fighting, cussing, acting mean and hateful. Pulling Lizard's hair, calling her names, ruining her homework. No wonder she hated me.

  Like a zombie controlled by forces too powerful to resist, I walked slowly down the street, half expecting to see the old black car parked in front of our house. It wasn't there, but for a second I thought I heard Victor yelling. When I got closer, I saw some other kid, a boy about my little brother's age, playing cowboys with two girls.

  I'd expected the house to be an empty, falling-down wreck, everything busted and broken and dirty the way we'd left it. But the yard was nice and tidy, no weeds, no trash. Grass covered the bare spots. Bushes grew green and healthy on either side of the front steps. The house had been shingled, the trim painted, the porch fixed. It was hard to believe we'd ever lived there.

  I stood at the gate and stared at the place so long the kids stopped playing and gathered together in a little group. Clutching cap pistols, they looked like they were protecting the family ranch from a would-be cattle rustler.

  I turned away and headed back to the apartment. Too bad people couldn't fix themselves up that easily. A little paint, a little wallpaper, and you'd be ready to start over, a brand-new person.

  When I walked in the door, June and Brent were too busy playing with blocks to look up and say hi. Barbara was typing. She didn't speak, either.

  I tossed my jacket on the couch and went to the kitchen. Just as I was about to make myself a baloney sandwich Barbara noticed I was home. "Please don't eat that," she called. "It's for Stu's lunch."

  I slung the baloney back into the refrigerator and reached for the milk, but eagle-eyed Barbara caught me again. "Don't drink that, Gordy. We won't have enough for breakfast."

  I put the milk down and slammed the refrigerator door shut. "I'm hungry," I said.

  "We'll have dinner when Stu comes home from class," Barbara said. "Surely you can wait an hour."

  "What are we having?" I hoped it wouldn't be Spam again. Or canned stew, another of Barbara's specialties.

  "Macaroni and cheese." Clickety clack went the typewriter, faster and faster.

  I glanced at the kitchen counter. Sure enough, a box of macaroni and cheese dinner sat there, along with a can of peas. That was Barbara's idea of cooking—open a box or a can, dump it in a pot, and put it on the stove. "You call this dinner?"

  Barbara frowned. "What's wrong with it?"

  "Grandma never made dinner from cans or boxes," I told her. "She fixed everything from scratch."

  "Maybe your grandmother had more time than I do," Barbara said. "Maybe she—"

  "She had twenty-four hours a day," I cut in, "just like you."

  Barbara didn't have an answer for that. Grabbing a sheet of paper, she started rolling it into the typewriter. She was so mad it went in crooked. Yanking it out, she started over again. "Don't you have homework, Gordy?"

  "Where am I supposed to do it? You've got stuff spread all over the table, plus there's too much noise. At Grandma's I had my own room, I had—"

  "What's wrong, Gordy?" June jumped to her feet, scattering the blocks. "Why are you shouting?"

  "Nothing's wrong," I yelled. "And I'm not shouting!"

  "You shut up, Yuncle Poopoo," said Brent. "Or the big bad wolf will gobble you up."

  Ignoring them all, I went into my so-called room, slammed the door, and flopped down on my bed. I hadn't been here a week, and nothing was going right. Opening my notebook, I began writing a letter to William. He'd sent me two letters already—keeping his promise to write even if I never answered. The second one had a kind of bitter edge to it.

  "I knew you wouldn't write," he'd said. "You're having so much fun up there you've forgotten all about me."

  I didn't want William to get the wrong idea, so I wrote.

  For your information, I'm not having any fun at all. I hate College Hill. Barbara is a lousy cook, Stu nags me about my homework, and I have to share a room with a three-foot-high troll who snores. I'd go live in my hut down in the woods except stupid Toad and Doug burned it down by accident. They aren't so great by the way. All they ever talk about is sports and cars. They never read books, just comics. What they are, William, is D-U-M-B.

  I stared at what I'd written. It was true. Compared with William, Toad and Doug were dumb. But they were the only friends I had. I sighed and closed my notebook. I'd finish the letter when I was in a better mood.

  10

  THAT NIGHT, A BIG WINTER STORM DUMPED AT LEAST twelve inches of snow on College Hill. The next day, everything shut down, including Hyattsdale High.

  Around ten in the morning. Toad phoned to say he and Doug Were on their way to Beech Drive with their sleds. Everybody would be there, he told me. Since I didn't have a sled, Barbara let me borrow Brent's—over his loud protests. It was pretty dinky but better than nothing.

  When I got to Beech Drive, the first person I saw was Lizard, pulling a first-class Flexible Flyer and accompanied, as usual, by Magpie. You'd think those girls were Siamese twins or something. One couldn't go anywhere without the other—p
robably not even to the bathroom.

  "Hey, G.A.S.," Lizard yelled, "what poor defenseless baby did you steal that sled from?"

  I picked up a handful of snow, thinking I'd shut her up fast. But before I had a chance to pack it hard, lizard laughed and sped off down the hill on her sled. I belly flopped after her and knocked her into a snowbank.

  "You jerk!" Showing her great affection for me, Lizard threw a snowball at me. Hit me right in the face. For a girl, she had a good arm.

  More and more kids showed up. Lizard was always in the middle of things, belly flopping down the hill, laughing louder than anyone else, shouting insults, making jokes, showing off. Every time I got a chance, I chased her and knocked her off her sled or hit her with a snowball. Even though she made it crystal clear she hated my guts, I just couldn't stay away from her.

  Then Pritchett showed up. After that, I couldn't get near Lizard. He was always beside her. When he knocked her off her sled, she didn't get mad or throw snowballs at him. Oh, no, she just laughed. As far as Lizard was concerned, Bobby Jerk-Face Pritchett was Mister Perfect. It was enough to make me puke.

  I tried to get between him and her a few times. Once the handles of his sled and mine hooked together, and Pritchett and I slid sideways down the hill, crashing into a ditch at the bottom.

  "You did that on purpose, you little punk," Pritchett said, getting ugly fast.

  "So?" I brushed my jacket off, hitting him in the face with a spray of snow. "Want to make something of it?"

  Pritchett shoved me backward. "Stay out of my way. Smith."

  "You don't own this hill," I said, shoving him back. "I'll sled where I want."

  He shoved me again, a little harder. "And stay away from Elizabeth," he said. "Can't you see she doesn't want you near her?"

  "Leave Lizard out of this." Now I was really mad. I shoved Pritchett so hard I slipped in the snow and fell on my face. By the time I scrambled to my feet, he'd started to walk away.