That’s why, if you valued your life, you never chased a ball into Finsterwald’s backyard. Finsterwald’s backyard was a graveyard of tennis balls and baseballs and footballs and Frisbees and model airplanes and oneway boomerangs.
That’s why his front steps were the only un-sat-on front steps in town.
And why no paperkid would ever deliver there.
And why no kid on a snow day would ever shovel that sidewalk, not for a zillion dollars.
So, it was late afternoon, and screams were coming from Finsterwald’s.
Who? What? Why?
The screamer was a boy whose name is lost to us, for after this day he disappears from the pages of history. We believe he was about ten years old. Let’s call him Arnold Jones.
Arnold Jones was being hoisted in the air above Finsterwald’s backyard fence. The hoisters were three or four high school kids. This was one of the things they did for fun. Arnold Jones had apparently forgotten one of the cardinal rules of survival in the West End: Never let yourself be near Finsterwald’s and high school kids at the same time.
So, there’s Arnold Jones, held up by all these hands, flopping and kicking and shrieking like some poor Aztec human sacrifice about to be tossed off a pyramid. “No! No! Please!” he pleads. “Pleeeeeeeeeeeeese!”
So of course, they do it. The high-schoolers dump him into the yard. And now they back off, no longer laughing, just watching, watching the back door of the house, the windows, the dark green shades.
As for Arnold Jones, he clams up the instant he hits the ground. He’s on his knees now, all hunched and puckered. His eyes goggle at the back door, at the door knob. He’s paralyzed, a mouse in front of the yawning maw of a python.
Now, after a minute or two of breathless silence, one of the high-schoolers thinks he hears something. He whispers: “Listen.” Another one hears it. A faint, tiny noise. A rattling. A chittering. A chattering. And getting louder—yes—chattering teeth. Arnold Jones’s teeth. They’re chattering like snare drums. And now, as if his mouth isn’t big enough to hold the chatter, the rest of his body joins in. First it’s a buzz-like trembling, then the shakes, and finally it’s as if every bone inside him is clamoring to get out. A high-schooler squawks: “He’s got the finsterwallies!”*
“Yeah! Yeah!” they yell, and they stand there cheering and clapping.
Years later, the high-schoolers’ accounts differ. One says the kid from nowhere hopped the fence, hopped it without ever laying a hand on it to boost himself over. Another says the kid just opened the back gate and strolled on in. Another swears it was a mirage, some sort of hallucination, possibly caused by evil emanations surrounding 803 Oriole Street.
Real or not, they all saw the same kid: not much bigger than Arnold Jones, raggedy, flap-soled sneakers, book in one hand. They saw him walk right up to Arnold, and they saw Arnold look up at him and faint dead away. Such a bad case of the finsterwallies did Arnold have that his body kept shaking for half a minute after he conked out.
The phantom Samaritan stuck the book between his teeth, crouched down, hoisted Arnold Jones’s limp carcass over his shoulder, and hauled him out of there like a sack of flour. Unfortunately, he chose to put Arnold down at the one spot in town as bad as Finsterwald’s backyard—namely, Finsterwald’s front steps. When Arnold came to and discovered this, he took off like a horsefly from a swatter.
As the stupefied high-schoolers were leaving the scene, they looked back. They saw the kid, cool times ten, stretch out on the forbidden steps and open his book to read.
6
About an hour later Mrs. Valerie Pickwell twanged open her back screen door, stood on the step, and whistled.
As whistles go, Mrs. Pickwell’s was one of the all-time greats. It reeled in every Pickwell kid for dinner every night. Never was a Pickwell kid ever late for dinner. It’s a record that will probably stand forever. The whistle wasn’t loud. It wasn’t screechy. It was a simple two-note job—one high note, one low. To an outsider, it wouldn’t sound all that special. But to the ears of a Pickwell kid, it was magic. Somehow it had the ability to slip through the slush of five o’clock noises to reach its targets.
So, from the dump, from the creek, from the tracks, from Red Hill—in ran the Pickwell kids for dinner, all ten of them. Add to that the parents, baby Didi, Grandmother and Grandfather Pickwell, Great-grandfather Pickwell, and a down-and-out taxi driver whom Mr. Pickwell was helping out (the Pickwells were always helping out somebody)—all that, and you had what Mrs. Pickwell called her “small nation.”
Only a Ping-Pong table was big enough to seat them all, and that’s what they ate around. Dinner was spaghetti. In fact, every third night dinner was spaghetti.
When dinner was over and they were all bringing their dirty dishes to the kitchen, Dominic Pickwell said to Duke Pickwell, “Who’s that kid?”
“What kid?” said Duke.
“The kid next to you at the table.”
“I don’t know. I thought Donald knew him.”
“I don’t know him,” said Donald. “I thought Dion knew him.”
“Never saw him,” said Dion. “I figured he was Deirdre’s new boyfriend.”
Deirdre kicked Dion in the shins. Duke checked back in the dining room. “He’s gone!”
The Pickwell kids dashed out the back door to the top of Rako Hill. They scanned the railroad tracks. There he was, passing Red Hill, a book in his hand. He was running, passing the spear field now, and the Pickwell kids had to blink and squint and shade their eyes to make sure they were seeing right—because the kid wasn’t running the cinders alongside the tracks, or the wooden ties. No, he was running—running—where the Pickwells themselves, where every other kid, had only ever walked—on the steel rail itself!
Keep reading for a sneak peek of WHO PUT THAT HAIR IN MY TOOTHBRUSH?
Megin
THE SADDEST SHOWER of all is the one you take the night before school starts in September. It’s like you’re not just washing the day’s dirt away, you’re washing the whole summer down the drain—all the fun, all the long, free days. So it’s sad. So the last thing I needed, taking my end-of-summer shower, was something to make it even worse. But that’s exactly what I got.
It started while I was washing my hair: someone flushed the toilet and the shower water turned scalding hot. “Toddie!” I yelled, scooting on my heels to the other end of the tub. My little brother is the only one who goes to the bathroom while I’m taking a shower. I peeked around the curtain. No Toddie. No anybody. But the door was open. “Shut the door!” I yelled. The door slammed shut.
I figured that would be it. Wrong. A couple minutes later, just as I got all soaped up, the water changed again, this time to freezing. I jumped back—and rammed my hip into the soap dish—pain! I peeked out, massaging my hip. Steaming hot water was gushing from the faucet in the sink. Again: nobody there, the door open. I knew right then who was behind it all.
“Shut the door!” I yelled. The door stayed open. I had to get the door shut and the sink water off. They were both too far to reach from the tub. I pushed the curtain outside the tub, then I stepped out onto the floor with the curtain still in front of me. Dripping. Hip killing me. Door still a long way off. I inched away from the tub. I was getting closer, but with every inch, more and more of me was sticking out from behind the curtain. Pretty soon the only thing covering me was the red plastic triangle of the curtain’s lower corner. I reached out my leg as far as it would go; my big toe wiggled way short of the door.
Only one thing to do. I dashed for the door, leaving the curtain behind. Right then, in mid-dash, is when things really started happening fast: suddenly Toddie was standing—gawking—in the doorway; I froze; I screamed; I dashed back to the curtain; I banged my leg against the toilet; I wrapped myself in the curtain; the curtain, like a machine gun, came pop-pop-popping off the rod; I screamed again—
“YYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AHHH!”
Then my father came rushing in. He saw the shower running in the bathtub, he saw the water boiling into the sink, he saw his daughter, wrapped in the shower curtain, dripping and screaming in the middle of the bathroom—and what did he say? “Hey, your dimples don’t show when you’re screaming.”
I screamed louder.
He turned off the sink water and the shower. “Okay, okay, Dimpus. Now what’s going on?”
“I’ll kill him,” I swore.
He looked around, pretending not to know what I was talking about. “Kill? Who?”
“You know who.”
He rubbed his chin and pretended to think. “Hmm, let’s see now. You said ‘him.’ So it’s a ‘he’ you’re going to kill. Can’t be me. That leaves two other ‘hes’ in the house.” He turned to Toddie, who was still standing goo-goo-eyed in the doorway. “You’re not going to kill your little brother, are you, Megin?”
“Daddy,” I said, “he’s making Toddie do stuff to me. He made him flush the toilet and turn the water on.”
“Toddie,” my father said gently, “did somebody make you do that?”
Toddie stuck out his chest. “Nobody make me do nuffin’.”
“Daddy, he probably paid him off. He pays him to torture me. Look in his pockets. Go ahead—look.” My father reached into Toddie’s pockets and pulled out two nickels. “See!” I screeched.
“Megin,” he said, “you can’t convict somebody on two nickels. That’s not proof.”
My hip and my leg were killing me and I felt like I was being swallowed by a giant fish, and he was talking about proof. Still drenched, I stormed out of the bathroom and over to Grosso’s room. I could hear barbells clanking inside. His door was locked. I started kicking it and banging and screaming. “I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!” By the time my father dragged me back to the bathroom, my feet and fists were sore too.
But I wasn’t about to give up. I slipped from the shower curtain into a towel and had my father put the curtain back up. Then I made him stand guard outside the door while I went on with my shower. Sure enough, in about a minute the water changed again, to ice. I screamed. I could hear my father tearing downstairs. When he came back, he looked sheepish. “Sorry, Dimpus,” he said, “Mommy started the washer.”
Greg
“… forty-eight… forty-nine… fifty.”
Done. I was ready If she was ever going to notice me, this would be the day.
Suddenly I was nervous. Terrified. God, this is it! What if she still didn’t notice me? What if I still looked the same? What if those million sit-ups went to waste? What if she met somebody down the shore over the summer? What if…
Stay calm, stay calm. I sat on the edge of my bed and started taking long, deep breaths. Relax, relax. Ever since school had ended in June, I had had only one goal in life: to make myself good-looking enough so Jennifer Wade would have to notice me. I got subscriptions to Muscles and Body Beautiful. I exercised and lifted weights. I covered myself with Coppertone and tanned in the sun. I used Sassoon shampoo and Sassoon conditioner and Sassoon rinse, and I brushed my teeth with Close-up at least four times everyday. I drank Pro/Gain and I ate tons of eggs and raw vegetables and fruit and red meats. Plus potato skins. I read they’re good for the complexion.
And now it was time. One final first-day-of-school series of curls (25 each arm), push-ups (50) and sit-ups (50), and the job was done. I went to the bathroom and checked out my summer’s work. I was re-created. A new kid. A sort of Sassoon-Pro/Gain-Coppertone Frankenkid.
But I still felt the same inside.
I washed my face but couldn’t find a towel. I was ticked. I hauled my wet face right into Megamouth’s room. There they were: one towel wrapped around her head, one on a chair, two on the floor.
“Dad-dee! Dad-dee! Greg’s in my room! Get outta my room!”
I grabbed the towel on the chair and got out. I felt something hit me in the back.
“Somebody better do something about that room of hers,” I told my parents in the kitchen. “We’re gonna get roaches.”
“You know,” my father said, “it amazes me that two children in the same family can be so different. One so neat, one so sloppy.”
“Doesn’t amaze me,” said my mother. “Greg, pancakes?”
“No thanks.”
“Not even on the first day of school? I don’t do this all the time, you know.”
“No thanks.”
Megamouth came in mocking. “No thannnks, no thannnks. He doesn’t want to junk up that beautiful body of his.”
“Once you get roaches, you know, you can’t get rid of them.”
“Greg, you’re going to have more than that milk shake, aren’t you?”
“It’s not milk shake. It’s Pro/Gain.”
“If you don’t want the pancakes I got up early to make you, then what?”
Megamouth swooned. “Oh, Jennifer, my darling, I love you, I adore you.”
“Greg, I’m waiting for your order. I only do this one day a year, you know. Now what’ll it be?”
“A grapefruit. Y’know, roaches’ve been around since before the dinosaurs.”
Megamouth made a smooching sound. “Oh, Jennifer, I’m wild about you! I simply went crazy without you all summer!”
She kept interrupting like that, but I ignored her. “They hang around where there’s food and darkness,” I said. “Just what’s in that room.”
“Why, Jennifer, don’t you recognize me? It’s Greg. Greg Tofer.”
“If somebody comes in here and sees that room, they could sic the Board of Health on us.”
“That’s right! Remember ugly old Greg Tofer?”
“I read this article—once you get roaches, you might never get rid of them.”
“Since you saw me last, I lifted my dumbbells and I shampooed with my Sassoon and I drank my proteins and now look at me—I’m gorgeous!”
“Never.”
“Even my zits are smaller!”
My father stood up—as usual, this big grin on his face. “Well, family, I’m off to support you now. Don’t forget: Help your father—push somebody into the mud.”
He always says that. He’s an appliance salesman at Sears, and one of the things he sells is washing machines.
I finished my grapefruit, grabbed a potato skin from the refrigerator (my mother saves them for me), and took off.
You might have thought just a weekend had passed, not a whole summer. As usual, Old Mrs. Greeley next door was sweeping off her sidewalk. (You could eat off her sidewalk.) Valducci was waiting at the first corner, Poff at the second. Just like always.
But everything wasn’t the same.
Valducci jumped out in front, whirled, and did a high-kick in our faces that stopped us cold. Valducci is into karate or something. “Hey, baby! We are now”—an open hand snapped down to split an invisible cinder block—“chakkah!—ninth-graders!”
“Big rip,” said Poff, who is built like a visible cinder block.
Fast as a lizard’s tongue, Valducci’s hands flicked out, tattooed Poff’s head up one side and down the other, then shot back before Poff could raise a hand. Valducci’s quick, you have to give him that. “Ninth grade, man! We’re gonna rule that school!” Valducci went kicking and jerking and chopping ahead of us. “We are—sokka!—kings now, babeee—Look out—sokka!—teachers—look out—sokka!—everybodeee—Gonna rule—sokka!—that—sokka!—school—sokka sokka Chakkalahhh!”
Valducci was right, even if he did get a little carried away. No longer were we seventh-grade zeroes or eighth-grade halfways. Suddenly I felt a little bigger in the world. I grinned. “Yeah, right, ninth-graders now.”
“Big rip,” said Poff.
Coming up to the school, I only had one question: Where was Jennifer Wade? I couldn’t go obviously gawking around after her; nobody in ninth grade knew about my thing for her, not even Poff and Valducci, and I wanted to keep it that way. So, while the outside of me was slapping hands a
nd saying “How was your summer?” the inside of me was like a sack of blinded eyes.
A couple times I saw girlfriends of hers, once I thought I heard her voice, but by the time the door opened, I still hadn’t spotted her. I was almost relieved. I didn’t know what I’d do if I saw her, anyway. The whole idea was to have her see me. All summer long I had been directing this little movie in my head:
SCENE I
Time: First day of school.
Place: Avon Oaks Junior High.
Somewhere in the hallway.
JENNIFER. Hi, Greg.
ME. Hi, Jen.
JENNIFER. Gee, you look great.
ME. Thanks. You’re looking pretty good yourself.
JENNIFER [blushing]. Thank you.
ME. My pleasure.
JENNIFER. Say, Greg, that’s a great tan you have.
ME. Thanks. You have a pretty good one too.
JENNIFER [blushing]. Thank you.
ME. My pleasure.
JENNIFER. You weren’t down the beach all summer by any chance, were you?
ME. Nah. I just love the outdoors, that’s all.
JENNIFER. Well, that golden tan really sets off your eyes nice.
ME. Thanks. So does yours.
JENNIFER [blushing]. Thank you.
ME. My pleasure.
JENNIFER. And your forearms, I can’t help noticing them. They seem so strong, so rugged. And wow—look—look at that vein running down there, how it’s popping out!
ME. Yeah.
JENNIFER. That’s really great.
ME. Thanks, Jen.
SCENE II
Time: Next day.
Place: Same.
JENNIFER. Hi, Greg.
ME. Hi, Jen.
JENNIFER. How’s school going?