The Secret Life of Lincoln Jones

  But back to being walked across the lobby.

  Anyone can come into the lobby. But if you want to get to the rooms where the oldies roam, you have to sign in and someone has to let you in.

  Someone also has to let you out.

  Mounted on both sides of every main doorway is an entry keypad, and the folks who work at Brookside are sly about shielding the pad with one hand as they type in the secret code with the other. They’re chatty while they do it, so it feels like they’re playing a shell game—sly shuffling moves mixed with small talk to trick you into forgetting what’s where.

  I usually look away from the keypad because I know it’s the polite thing to do, and I always go along with the small talk, but I never forget that once you’ve been shuffled in, you can’t come out without the secret code.

  Even Ma won’t tell me the combination. “I’m not about to jeopardize my job,” she said when I asked. “And you’re never there without me, so you have nothing to worry about.”

  It still made me feel trapped. So I asked, “What if there’s a fire and everyone but me’s in Activities?”

  “Hush, Lincoln.”

  “But what if—”

  “Lincoln, I’m not telling you!”

  So one time while Geri was letting me in, I did the sly-eye and got the combination myself. I’ve felt safer ever since.

  But back to Geri walking me across the lobby.

  She was thumbing in the code, talking about the weather, when an oldie’s face popped up in the East Wing’s door window.

  “Oh, dear,” Geri said, because it was Suzie York, looking like a pitiful dog begging to get out. “We’d better go through Activities.”

  I used to think you could talk your way past Suzie York, but it’s tough ’cause she’s stuck in an endless loop of finding a way out. So when Geri did a U-turn back across the lobby, I was all for it, even though it was the long way around.

  Activities is a really big room between the East and West Wings. Everything from exercise classes to movies to crafts happens in Activities. You can get to it from the lobby, the courtyard, or either of the wings, but from any direction you need the secret code to get inside.

  So Geri keyed us in and detoured me through Activities, past the tables and chairs, which were all shoved to one side so a man with a big roll-around bucket could mop the floor. “Enjoy your afternoon,” she told me as she let me into the East Wing through a side door.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, then went down a corridor, past a side hallway with a fake street sign saying DOVE LANE, and to the Clubhouse, which is what they call the big room where the East Wing oldies eat or hang out when they’re not sleeping.

  It’s also the place I spend my afters.

  Before I could make it to my usual table, though, Suzie York cornered me with sad puppy-dog eyes and said, “Where’d you come from? How’d you get in? Can you get me out?”

  “Sorry, Mrs. York,” I told her. “Only your family can get you out.”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “How do you know my name?”

  “Oh, we’ve met before.”

  She glossed right over that and got back to what she really wanted to know. “Where’d you come in?”

  “Down the hall,” I said, keepin’ it vague.

  “Which hall? Where? Does it lead outside?”

  Just then another lady, Debbie Rucker, shouted, “What is your name?” from across the room.

  I knew she was talking to me.

  She does the same thing every single solid day.

  “Don’t yell!” Suzie yelled, which only made Debbie yell it louder. “What is your name?!”

  Debbie doesn’t remember Suzie’s name, either, but I still knew Debbie was talking to me. The sad thing is, Debbie’s not even gray yet. And she wouldn’t belong in an old-folks’ home, only Brookside isn’t just for oldies.

  It’s for crazies.

  Ma gets mad when I call them that, and everyone else working there would probably hate me if they heard me say it, because Brookside’s motto is “Distinguished Memory Care.” But that’s just a fancy way of saying Crazy Town. The fact is, everyone living there has lost their mind. Or at least part of it. They can’t remember stuff. Not from one day to the next and, for some of them, not from one minute to the next. There’s one oldie named Stu who seems completely gone. He just sits in a corner and drools.

  At least he’s quiet. Debbie? Now, that’s a different story. I used to try and ignore Debbie, but it just made things worse. She got angry and kept asking the same question louder and louder until she was throwing stuff and screaming, “WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”

  “It’s not her fault,” Ma told me. “Her brain’s damaged. Just answer her straightaway and be done with it.”

  So when she shouted it this time, I called over, “It’s Lincoln.”

  “Lincoln.” She said it all breathless. Like I’d just given her a beautiful gift. “Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States, you know. My favorite.”

  That right there is a good example of why crazy is something I can’t figure out. How can someone not remember your name after you’ve told it to them every single day for over a month but can remember that Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president?

  I was relieved when Ma came out of one of the bedrooms and gave me her sweet smile. “Have a good day?” she asked.

  Before I could even recall, Debbie turned to her and said, “Are you his mother?”

  “I am,” Ma answered, like it was a brand-new question instead of the same one she answered nearly every day.

  Then Suzie York pointed at me and called out, “That boy knows how to get out of here!”

  The crazies who’d been watching the action perked up a little, and the ones who were half asleep in their chairs sputtered awake and turned to stare at me.

  Except for Droolin’ Stu, who just sat there, drooling.

  “He’s just here to do his homework,” Ma announced, and shooed me over to my table. Then she smiled around the room and asked, “Who wants a snack?”

  Which was the end of anyone’s interest in me.

  It was only four-thirty, but Teddy C had already forgotten about the snack and was demanding dinner. “Where’s the food?” he hollered, pounding his fork and spoon on his table.

  “It’ll be here soon!” Gloria called as she helped another oldie to a table.

  Dinnertime at Brookside is five o’clock. Two guys in hairnets roll it in on big metal carts from the kitchen. The oldies live for the carts, which hold the dinners and desserts for all thirty folks in the East Wing, and Ma says the exact same thing goes on in the West Wing.

  Once the guys from the kitchen leave, the caregivers start handing around dinner plates while the nurses make sure the oldies who get meds take them.

  The oldies sit four to a table, facing each other, saying nothing, unless it’s “Where’s the food?” It was creepy at first to see all these old folks looking like a bunch of zombies and then eating like a bunch of zombies, but Ma explained that they don’t talk to each other because they’re concentrating. “It’s everything they’ve got just to get the food in,” she told me. “Take a minute and really watch them, Lincoln. You’ll see.”

  So I really watched them, and really watching them is not something I ever want to do again. It’s painful to watch them eat. Their hands shake and they focus on putting food in, and then it takes years for them to swallow and start on the next bite.

  There are usually the same four Purple Shirts in the Clubhouse during dinner. There’s Ma, Gloria, and two others named Teena and Carmen. Teena’s more no-nonsense with the oldies than Ma or Gloria, and Carmen’s got a voice like gravel being shoveled. Teena and Carmen don’t pay much attention to me, and I return the favor.

  But back to oldies eating.

  Gloria’s the one who spends time spooning dinners into the oldies who are really bad off. Their dinners come blended, so what might have been chicken and rice and green beans to b
egin with winds up being three blobs of mush on a plate.

  That’s painful to watch, too, so I don’t, which means I get a lot of homework done during dinnertime. Or, if I’m done with homework, I take out my notebook and work on my stories, which is the best way I know to block out what’s going on around me.

  After dinner, there are lots of leftovers. Not after dessert, but Ma says that some things stay the same no matter how old you get.

  There’s no Brookside dog, but if there was, he’d be big as a blimp on leftovers. Whole enchiladas and beef patties and chicken strips and biscuits…it’s crazy what gets left on plates. And after dinner, slop, it all goes into the trash.

  Ma has said more’n once what a waste it is, but who wants food that’s been sitting at a zombie table? Especially since lots of times there’s one little bite missing. Who’s gonna eat that?

  But the same day Kandi followed me, I saw Ma tuck away chicken strips in a plastic bag. Right there in front of God and the Purple Shirts, she slipped chicken and biscuits into a bag and put it in her purse.

  Nobody said a thing, but I knew they were all thinkin’ stuff, and I was sure embarrassed. It seemed so pitiful. No kidding Ma’s tight with a dollar, but this I couldn’t believe. And once I got over the shock of what she’d done, my mind started screamin’ in terror.

  She’s gonna make me eat used food?!

  On the bus ride home, she didn’t say a word about it, so I finally asked, “Why’d you steal that chicken?”

  She looked at me like I had holes for brains. “Steal it?”

  “Okay, take it.”

  She studied me some more, then gave me a strange little look. Like someone at school might do if they were fixin’ to give you a wedgie. “Maybe I’m tired of cooking,” she said.

  That did me in. “Ma!” I cried. “No! I ain’t eatin’ zombie chicken! I’ll eat cereal, day and night! You never have to cook again!”

  “Zombie chicken,” she said with a look that made me sure my shorts would be up to my ears if we were standing. “And what did I tell you about ‘ain’t’?”

  “You make me eat zombie chicken and ‘ain’ts’ are gonna slip out!”

  “Hush,” she said, ’cause folks on the bus were staring now, wonderin’ what sort of ma made her boy eat zombie chicken.

  After a bit she leaned sideways and whispered, “And you can relax. It ain’t for you.”

  She gave me a devilish grin, which made my mind snap like a pea pod, scatterin’ thoughts all around my head.

  What was that grin about?

  What was she sayin’?

  And who was it for, then? We didn’t have a dog, and we didn’t know any, either.

  Only one thought made any kind of sense. “No, Ma!” I told her, keeping my voice low. “I won’t let you eat zombie chicken, either!”

  She gave me a stern look. “There is nothing wrong with this chicken.”

  “Ma, no!”

  She opened her purse a bit and sniffed. “Smells delicious, if you ask me.”

  “Ma, no!”

  She closed her purse and heaved a sigh. “The problem here is that you’ve never been hungry.”

  “I’ve been hungry!”

  She gave me another stern look. “I’ve seen to it that you have not.”

  “But—”

  “Hush.”

  The bus squealed to a stop, and when the doors flapped open, Ma led the way out, saying good night to the driver and nudging me to do the same when I started down the steps without sayin’ it.

  We walked the two blocks home without talking. It was cold out, and dark, and the streets had that scary feel they get when the only folks left on them are the ones with no place to be. I was glad to get to our corner. Glad to see light pouring out of the market.

  But instead of going up to our apartment, Ma told me, “Wait right here,” and headed off without me.

  “Ma!” I called, ’cause she’d never done that before, and I sure didn’t want to be left on my own with street folks.

  “Hush!” she said over her shoulder. Then she went up to a man sitting outside the market and handed him the zombie chicken.

  He looked up at her real slow. Like one of the oldies at Brookside might have. Then he raised a hand to take the food and gave Ma a nod.

  He’d been there every night since we moved in, and we’ve seen Mr. Noe, the man who runs the market, shoo him away from the door with a broom when he’s sweeping out the place. Mr. Noe doesn’t say a word to him—he just swats at him with the broom like he’s a big pile of dirt.

  So sometimes the man sits near the front door, and sometimes he’s up the sidewalk a ways by an old pay phone that’s covered in graffiti. Wherever he sits, though, he always looks the same. He wears a grimy green beanie, an old blue jacket, and gloves with the fingertips ripped out. He sits on a worn wool blanket by a cardboard box with a sign that reads:

  2 TOURS

  NO HOME

  ANYTHING HELPS

  I used to think anything helps meant money.

  Turns out it also means zombie chicken.

  A t my old school we had desks. They were ancient, but it didn’t matter ’cause yours was yours. The top lifted up, you could stash all sorts of stuff in it, and nobody bothered you about the mess lurkin’ inside. Unless a sandwich got rotten. Or a banana went past black and into gooey. Even then, it was no big deal. The teacher’d say, “Smells like it’s time for a little desk cleanin’,” and everyone would throw away their spoiled food and old papers and candy wrappers.

  Lookin’ back on it, those desks might have been old and creaky, but they were way better’n the ones we have at my new school. What I liked most about the old desks was knowing where the borders were. Borders were simple. Nobody ever hogged up part of your desk with their stuff, or edged you out when they got carried away with a project. If they got carried away, their stuff went smack onto the floor.

  At Thornhill School, the desks may be new, but they’re really just tables. Tables for two, with a wide-open shelf for each person that barely holds a thing. There’s no border on the desktop between you and your partner, not even a drawn line. So it’s hard to protect your territory ’cause stuff is always creeping across the table like it’s on a stealth mission.

  And if that’s not bad enough, we have to sit with two tables shoved together, face to face, so there are four kids at one big, square table, with no borders.

  A whole continent of desktops, with no borders.

  When I asked Ms. Miller if it was going to be like this all year, she explained that sixth grade is “a time of community learning” and that “this is how things are done around here.”

  Ms. Miller has put all sorts of reminders about being part of the community on our classroom walls and even on the ceiling. Every possible inch is covered in bright colors invitin’ us to get along. There’s the Global Community part, with flags and maps and art from around the world. There’s the United We Stand wall, with more maps and figures from U.S. history. And there’s the Our Community wall, where our projects get posted around the Golden Rule display.

  Maybe I wouldn’t mind community learning if my everyday community wasn’t three girls with way too much stuff. I don’t understand why they have to have ten of everything and, if they do, why can’t they keep it in their own territory?

  Rayne’s got hair accessories that stack up as the day goes by. She usually comes to school with her hair clipped down or braided with ribbons or decorated somehow, but by the end of the day it’s busted loose and in full mane mode, with her headbands and clips and ribbons or whatnot roamin’ wild across our continent.

  Straight across from me, there’s Wynne, and she goes through Kleenex like air. She breathes in, she sniffles out. “Sorry! Allergies,” she whispered the first time I got fed up with her tissue avalanche and pushed it back on her side. “Sorry” hasn’t stopped avalanches from happening, but I feel mean just shoving them back because she looks truly miserable with her nose drippin
’ and her eyes waterin’.

  But the worst invader was Colby’s pencil feather. It’s pink and fluffy and has little fake jewels that kind of clink when she writes. Why does a pencil need a feather? And why does a feather need jewels?

  That’s accessories on accessories!

  I wouldn’t have cared, except Colby’s feather made her pencil about two feet long, and since she sat right next to me, that feather would wag around in my airspace with its little fake jewels all clinkin’ together.

  Colby gets A’s on everything, which Ma told me was a good reason to put up with her feather. But during tests, that feather flaps around like a demon bird, and what that means is, Colby’s got answers.

  Right off, my stomach would tie up in knots. How could she know the answers so fast? And how come all of a sudden I couldn’t think of any?

  All through September and all through October I forced myself to put up with Colby’s demon feather. I would scoot to the side and try everything to ignore that feather flapping through the air.

  Then November rolled around and Ms. Miller gave us a math test and none of my feather-fightin’ tricks worked. I just couldn’t concentrate. Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, that demon feather went, whippin’ through the air while Colby showed all her steps. It would glide for just a second as she put a box around her answer, then take off again, flappin’ its way through the next problem.

  I was so distracted that instead of working on the math test, my brain went off and made up a story. In it there was a big feather that released hypnotizing eraser dust that was used as a powerful weapon by an intergalactic queen named Colby. Queen Colby had hijacked the Inquiry, a spaceship that, until then, had been under the command of the famous Captain Jones. The feather had hypnotized the captain and he was now a desperate prisoner on his own ship.

  There’s a great battle in the story, where the captain finally defeats Queen Colby by snatching the feather and tickling her nose with it, bringing her down in a fit of sneezing. It was a pretty funny scene, and I was having a great time making it better and better in my head when Ms. Miller told us that test-taking time was up.