Space Station Seventh Grade

  But by the end of class the arguments were over. It was snow, all right.

  By the end of English it was heavy; big fat globs coming down.

  Nobody could eat at lunch. In the kitchen you could see them scraping tons of food into the garbage cans. The middle of the lunchroom was empty except for the monitors. Everybody else was hanging around the windows.

  Walking through the long hallways, where there were only lockers and walls and ceilings, everybody would kind of get nervous and hurry till they came to a window.

  By the first class of the afternoon it was piling up on the windowsills. Things got quieter and quieter. Ralphie Smitht laughed out loud in the morning, but from noontime on he only grinned. The teachers’ voices seemed far away. They were asking questions, but there weren’t any answers. The snow piled higher and higher on the sills. It splattered against the windowpanes, like soft, silent explosions. It was piling up all around—you could feel it—on the main doorsteps, at the boys and girls gym doors in the back, on the bike racks, on the bushes. It was on the roof. Getting deeper. Deeper. A great soft, silent pillow. Pressing. Hugging.

  It wanted us to come out.

  Oh, they tried. They tried to keep us there forever. But they couldn’t stop the clock, and when the last bell rang we were gone. G-O-N-E. The teachers flattened themselves against the walls. In three seconds flat that school was empty. E-M-P-T-Y.

  And no one told us, and no one told them, but we knew, and they knew we knew: no school the next day.

  We didn’t take the bus home. We walked. And planned.

  We figured we wouldn’t do anything real special that night. Just sort of cruise and throw snowballs and push each other and do general snow stuff. The only definite thing would be going over to Calvin’s house for hot chocolate.

  Then the next day. A whole day. First we decided we’d go sledding. We have our own private place to go. It’s a golf course. You just go over the fence and past these evergreen trees and this little lake and there it is: the perfectest sledding hill you ever saw. Nobody else knows about it. And all of us—me, Richie, Peter, Calvin, and Dugan—we all swore to God (Dugan crossed himself) never to tell anybody.

  As for the sleds, Calvin is the only one that has a real one. The kind that’s wood, with runners. The rest of us have those round aluminum giant dishes that you hold on to with hand-straps and sail down the hill on your butt on. Which is what we do—racing. And when we get tired of that, we all climb onto Calvin’s sled, all five of us, stacked on top of each other, and down the hill. It’s terrifying being on top—four bodies weaving under you—but it’s the funnest part too.

  And then Dugan said let’s make a snow hut. By the time he got done saying how neat it would be inside—you could build a little fire and eat and it would even be warm—we all wanted to do that too.

  So we decided to do both. Sled and snow hut.

  We were walking and messing around and planning so long that it was dinner time when I got home. I was pretty excited. I couldn’t relax. I wanted to get out and meet the guys as soon as I could. I must have been eating pretty fast, because I remember hearing Ham say, “My God, honey, look how alive he is. He’s not even taking the time to swallow!”

  Where did it get me? Instead of heading out to meet the guys, next thing I know I’m out on the sidewalk—shoveling. I gave Ham a million reasons why I shouldn’t have to do it, not right then anyway. But he didn’t care. Grownups with kids of shovel-age know they have a good thing:

  1. They don’t have to do it themselves.

  2. They can make the kid do it.

  3. They don’t have to pay.

  When I asked him what about Mary, he said she was the one that did the driveway. “Mary had it done by the time I got home,” he said. (Vomit.)

  And what about him? “Oh, I think I’ll just stay in here where it’s nice and warm,” he goes, smirking. “Since I never do any work anyway, as you’re always telling me, it wouldn’t be right for me to start now, now would it? Maybe I’ll just put on my robe and slippers and read a book; or smoke that ol’ pipe; or curl up—” That’s the last I heard before I slammed the door shut.

  Well, I’ll tell you one thing: it didn’t take me all night to shovel that sidewalk.

  Turned out everybody else had to shovel too. Except Dugan, of course. When we finally got together we headed in the general direction of the Monroe School. It’s hard to explain. I mean, nobody said, “Let’s go to Monroe.” We just headed that way. Like animals heading for the waterhole. All over that part of town, packs of kids were out prowling, and most of them, sooner or later, would wind up at Monroe. Then there’d be a herd.

  On the way we threw snowballs at two things: each other and cars. I tried not to throw too many at cars, and I only aimed at their backs. I know you’re not supposed to throw at cars. But just go ahead and be a kid and try not to. Just try. And besides, it’s not fair. If they’re not going to let you drive cars, the least they can do is let you throw snowballs at them.

  We joined the herd at Monroe. Just sort of walked around at first. Seeing what was what. It was pretty dark. You could just about make out the shapes of kids. Mostly it was voices. Screams. You listened for ones you recognized. (I knew Debbie Breen’s regular voice, but I wasn’t sure about her scream.) And names.

  The more you looked and listened, the more you saw there were kids everywhere. The big front steps. The driveway. The bushes. The playground. You’d hear the swings creaking before you could see anybody on them. You’d pass under the sliding board—look up—somebody would be on top. Monkey bars too.

  Everybody was either in a tight little group, planning, or they were having a snowball fight, or they were chasing each other. No lone wolves. And unless you were close, it was almost impossible to tell boys from girls—by looking anyway. The best way to do it was to single out one of the dark figures, say, one running in the open, and wait till it screamed. Then you’d know what it was.

  Once around the school we went, and nothing happened. So Dugan packed a good snowball, snuck up right behind somebody standing still, took about five minutes aiming—we were cracking up—and let the kid have it. The fight was on!

  It was a great fight. It kind of flowed around the school. Pretty soon everyone was in on it, and it was everywhere. We were firing from the steps, firing from the trees, firing from the bushes. There were little skirmishes on the sides. There were snipers in the monkey bars. There were massacres in the corners and stepwells. There were banzai attacks. People retreated to the sidewalks, into the gutters, then they counterattacked and beat the others back to the school.

  It was actually a pretty organized war. But to the grownups passing by it probably just looked like a mess of snowballs and moosecalls.

  There was something else too, which I found out when I was looking for a hiding place for a minute. There were The Lovers, making out in a bush.

  All the time I kept my ears peeled for Debbie Breen. I was pretty sure she was there. I bumped into one of her girlfriends. I thought I heard her name called out a couple times. I even thought I heard her herself. But whenever I went to where I thought she was, she wasn’t.

  I wondered if the other Skywalker was there. I still didn’t find out who he was. I made it a point to pelt anybody tall I saw. Just in case.

  Another goal was to pelt Ralphie Smitht. When snow’s on the ground, that t on the end stands for Target. You know how it’s impossible not to kick a can when it’s right there in the middle of the sidewalk in front of you? Well, it’s just as impossible not to pelt Ralphie Smitht. And of course, the more you hit him, the more he laughs. He enjoys it.

  But hitting Ralphie isn’t all that much fun after the first couple throws. There’s no satisfaction. He’s too easy. Besides, your throwing arm could fall off before you’d make him stop laughing. So what you do is, you just sort of pelt him as a sideline, when there isn’t anything better to do at the moment.

  That’s what I was doing when I
saw what every good snowballer is always looking for: a moving target out in the open. It was alone. It was running. It was outlined against the streetlights.

  I didn’t think. I acted. I packed hard the ball I already had in my hand for Ralphie, wheeled, rushed up to get closer, set myself good in the snow, wound up, aimed, fired. All this only took about one and a half seconds.

  I hit the target. Dead center in the side of the head. (Something flashed through my brain: Jesus! People ain’t like birds. You can hit them.) It screamed. It fell. It was a girl. It was Debbie Breen.

  I turned around and started firing like crazy at Ralphie Smitht. The more Debbie screamed the harder I threw, and the harder I threw the more Ralphie laughed. It seemed like I was scooping and throwing for hours. Finally I went right up to him, like an executioner. He just stood there, sort of grinning and wincing with his hands flapped over his head, and that’s where I fired the last one, point-blank.

  I kept on walking. I forced myself not to run. Behind me Debbie was screaming bloody murder. Some of her girlfriends came running past me, yelling her name. Then almost everybody was rushing.

  I sort of wandered around the building out to the front. It was deserted, except for The Lovers. They even came out of their bush to listen. You could still hear the screaming plain on the other side of the school.

  I wanted to keep on walking home, but I was afraid that would give me away. So I just hung around the sidewalk and lobbed some balls at a tree. I wondered if anybody saw me. I kept half expecting a voice out of the night: “Herkimer! He did it! There he is! Let’s get him!” And then the mob.

  I knew she didn’t see me. But did anybody else? Maybe they did. But maybe, in the dark, they didn’t know who it was. Ralphie Smitht—he must have. But for some reason I didn’t think he would tell.

  The screaming stopped. God! I thought. Maybe she’s dead. I killed her. Jesus, please, no! Of all people! NO!

  Cold, wet, icy snow smashed me in the face. Snow gorged up my nose. Into my mouth. Snow pressed against my eyeballs. My lids couldn’t come down. My eyeballs felt like ice marbles.

  Somebody was mashing a whole armload of snow into my face. I groped out for his hands and arms, but he was pretty strong and kept mashing. I could hear him grunting. I couldn’t see. I could hardly breathe.

  Finally I got hold of an arm and yanked around and we both wound up on the ground, in the snow, me on the bottom, facedown, these hands pressing my face into the snow. And all of a sudden I realized what was going on. Somebody did see me. Whoever it was didn’t tell anybody, because there was no mob. He was just taking care of me himself. Probably the other Luke Skywalker. I didn’t care. I was getting what I deserved. Let him do whatever he wanted. I had it coming. I stopped fighting back.

  As soon as I stopped, he stopped. The hands were off my head.

  I wiped my face. Scooped snow out of my neck. I stayed on the ground. I wasn’t too anxious to look. After a while I sort of creaked my head around. He was there okay, standing right over me. I saw boots, pants, a fur-trimmed jacket, a face—the wrong face. It wasn’t a him. It was a her. It was the trombone girl. McAllister.

  She was staring straight down at me. At first she looked kind of funny. Probably wondering why I stopped fighting back. Then she smiled, if you want to call it that, and she said, “Now we’re even.” Then she walked off, slow, past the school, down the street.

  I was just getting up when I heard a crowd coming. They’re after me too! I’m thinking. But they weren’t. They were taking Debbie home.

  She was walking in the middle of them. Her hat was off. She was holding her ear with both hands and sobbing. I couldn’t see any blood, but it was really sad. I prayed I didn’t break her eardrum. She went right by me, and under the streetlight you could see her whole face was red and shining with tears, and her mouth was blue and all stretched out of shape from crying. Her watery eyes landed on me for a second, but they didn’t seem to see. When she was past, something seemed to reach out of my chest and go clawing after her, pleading, “I’m sorry, Debbie… really really sorry. Please forgive me.…”

  The rest of the snow time, that night and the next day, I just sort of went through the motions. I went along with the other guys to Calvin’s for hot chocolate. But I didn’t really taste it, and the steam coming up from the mug was like guilt in my face.

  We went to the golf course and did our sledding. I didn’t push too hard on the aluminum butt-bouncer. I just let the hill take me. When we piled onto Calvin’s sled, I didn’t fight the other guys for the top. I just stayed in the middle.

  Kippy Kim was there. Peter had to bring him, as usual. About the only fun I had was watching him throw tantrums because we always took off down the hill before he could climb onto the pile.

  As for the snow hut, I didn’t mind building it, but it didn’t do too much for me just to sit inside it. We made a little fire, but that didn’t work too good because we forgot to put in a chimney. Richie brought some pancake syrup from home, and some paper cups, and we filled them with clean snow and poured the syrup on.

  That night when I got home I called up one of Debbie’s girlfriends and told her I heard Debbie got hurt and asked how she was. She was okay, she said. No problems. No broken eardrum. Probably be in school the next day.

  I was really glad to hear all that. But even after I hung up I still didn’t feel right.

  WAITING

  NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED THEN FOR A WHILE. IT NEVER DOES. Not at that time of year, with Christmas just a couple weeks away. If time goes faster at the speed of light, well, around now it’s riding on the back of a snail. An old snail.

  In December there are two main things you do:

  1. You wait.

  2. You work on your Christmas list.

  We’re always supposed to have our lists in by December 1. But how can you do that? That leaves twenty-four days to look in stores. Twenty-four days to see what other people have that you could use. Twenty-four days of TV commercials. Twenty-four days to change your mind. You can’t do it. So I always come up later with a revised version. And then a final revised version. And then an absolutely final revised version (with last-minute changes). I know I have to stop when Ham smiles, takes the list, nods, goes “Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm,” and then, still smiling, very, very neat and slow, tears the paper until it’s almost confetti, and drops the pieces back in my hand.

  What bugs me more than anything else about a Christmas list is having to listen to somebody make comments on it. They can’t just take the thing and then just get or not get you the stuff. Oh no. It has to be, “Hey, whoa, hold it there. What is this?”

  Or, “Didn’t we just get you one of these last year?”

  Or, “Were you thinking of paying for half of this yourself?”

  Naturally most of this kind of talk comes from Ham. That’s what I hate about him sometimes: he always has to say something about something. My mother’s not like that. She understands kids better. She’s more reasonable. That’s why I always try to give my list to her.

  But she always lets Ham see it. (“Honey,” she says to me, “Ham has to see it. He’s the one that pays for all this, you know.”)

  I hate it the most when he doesn’t say anything, but just starts laughing.

  This year Ham’s big comment is, “What, no dinosaurs?” Each time I hand in an updated list I hear it. I even hear it other times too, like when I’m going to bed, or going to the bathroom. Anywhere. Anytime. Like a cuckoo. “What, no dinosaurs? What, no dinosaurs?”

  This year I hadn’t asked to get dinosaurs, but I was going to give them. That’s what I decided to get Timmy for Christmas. Just a couple cheap ones. Like the ones everybody knows: brontosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex. I figure if I get him some of his own, maybe he’ll stop taking mine.

  Except for anything that Cootyhead does, including breathing, there’s not many things that I hate more than Timmy taking my dinosaurs. It’s not that I can’t stand to share anything with him. It’
s just that my dinosaurs aren’t toys. They’re a collection. They’re not to play with. They’re really good ones. They cost a lot. It took me a long time to get hold of them. I don’t have just the famous ones, like the ones I mentioned, and triceratops and stegosaurus. I have other ones. Ones you probably never heard of. Ones you never saw in a Japanese movie. Plateosaurus. Ornithomimus. Trachodon.

  I had to move them from my room when my space station started getting too big, so I put them on a platform in the basement. I got cardboard and twigs and a papier-mâché volcano and stuff and made it look like sixty million years ago. And then I put the dinosaurs in. And in front of each one I made a little sign telling what it is.

  All that—and nobody understands why I get all mad when I see one of them is missing and I go looking around and finally find it lying in the dirt outside. Or in the bathtub.

  So Timmy goes bawling, if he’s playing with it when I find it and jerk it from him, and my mother goes, “Well, he didn’t hurt it, did he?”

  “I don’t care,” I tell her. “That’s beside the point.”

  “He was only playing with it.”

  “It’s not to play with. It’s not a toy.”

  “Well, it looks like a toy to him. Don’t you think?”

  “It’s not. It’s my col-lec-tion!”

  “I know, I know,” she nods and looks at Timmy. “Now, Timmy, you know these are Jason’s collection. They’re not toys. You do not take them out of the basement—”

  “Off the platform—” I go.

  “Off the platform—”

  “Don’t touch them—”

  “Don’t touch them—”

  “Ever.”

  “Ever. Never never never touch them—not even with the tippy-tip-tip of your tippy-nippy nose. Understand?”

  So my mother’s there tweaking Timmy’s nose and he’s there laughing and everybody’s having a great old time except me, who’s standing there fuming with a dirty dinosaur in my hand. As you can see, my mother is really rough. She’d make a great Marine drill sergeant.