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Copyright © 1989 by Barbara Park
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eISBN: 978-0-307-79707-0
v3.1
To my friend and editor,
ANNE SCHWARTZ,
who smooths all the rough edges,
and lets me take all the credit
—B.P.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
(one)
(two)
(three)
(four)
(five)
(six)
(seven)
(eight)
(nine)
(ten)
(eleven)
(twelve)
About the Author
(one)
M
Y PARENTS are divorced. There’s no way to make it sound nice. They’re divorced, and that’s that.
I live with my mother, but I’m shared with my dad. It’s called joint custody. It means they both want me to know that they both want me. I stay at Dad’s every other weekend and on holidays and whenever else I want to. He moved into a new apartment a few months ago. It doesn’t smell as bad as his first one did.
Mom and I got to remain in the house, so at least something stayed the same. The only thing that changed was our hallway. We used to have family pictures from one end to the other. But after the divorce my mother put them away in the attic. Not all at once. Little by little, like the three of us just sort of faded off the walls.
I still go up there and look at them sometimes. She doesn’t know it, but I do.
A few weeks ago my mother put a picture of Ben on the bookshelf. Ben Russo. A man who’s not my father. The picture’s in a silver frame. Ben’s smiling. So far I haven’t smiled back.
My mother met Ben last summer a few weeks after the divorce was final. She was backing our car out of the driveway when she smashed into the side of his truck. We were both wearing our seat belts, so neither one of us was hurt. Ben was planting a tree in our neighbor’s front yard, so he wasn’t hurt either.
When he saw the dent, he didn’t jump up and down or wave his fists in the air or anything. He just put down his shovel, walked over to our car, and peered in the window.
My mother was sitting there, slumped over the steering wheel. She was saying the “s-h” word. Not loudly. Just sort of whispering it over and over again to herself.
“You hurt?” he asked her.
Mom didn’t look up. She just kept muttering you-know-what.
I got out of the car. “She’s okay,” I assured him. “She always does this when she crashes into something.”
Suddenly my mother opened her door and got out.
“Could we please not act as though I do this every day, Charles?” she snapped, her voice sounding shaky. “I’ve been driving for twenty-one years and this is my first accident, okay?”
I thought it over a second. “What about last year when you ran over my bike?” I reminded her. “And then there was that light pole at Dunkin’ Donuts.”
My mother threw her hands in the air. “Make a list for the man, why don’t you!” she shouted at me. “How about telling him all the things I’ve sucked up in the vacuum cleaner while you’re at it!”
I don’t know why Ben smiled, but he did. Then he got the name of our insurance company and went back to digging his hole. The next day he brought my mother a free tree from his plant nursery.
“Trees help calm your nerves,” I heard him explain as he carried it around to the backyard to plant it.
That’s all it took. One free tree and they started dating. I couldn’t believe it. No chocolate, no flowers—just a dumb little tree and my mother started acting as goofy as a teenager. Every morning she’d hurry out back to water it. Then she’d sigh and say, “Wasn’t that nice of him?” Seriously. She said it about a billion times.
The weird thing is that Ben Russo is just about as different from my dad as you can get. He looks like one of those nature guys. You know, the kind you see in commercials walking through the woods swinging an ax and eating acorns and wild berries. He has a beard and wears boots and a belt with a big turquoise buckle. Ben Russo would look comfortable walking around in a lumberjack shirt with a squirrel on his shoulder.
My dad is more the suit-and-tie type of man. If you put a squirrel on my father’s shoulder, he’d probably run around screaming, “Get it off! Get it off!”
He tried eating a wild blackberry at my grandmother’s house once. As soon as it was in his mouth he spit it out and ran inside to get a drink of water.
Ben has two kids. A teenage girl and a little boy. His wife died, so I guess he sort of got stuck raising them by himself. I know it sounds sad, but that doesn’t mean I automatically have to like him.
I don’t exactly understand what my mother sees in him anyway. Ben hardly ever talks and when he does, it’s usually real soft and quiet. What’s so exciting about hanging around a dull guy like that?
It’s hard, you know? Watching your own mother start to like a man who’s not your father. A guy who sells trees instead of insurance. A man who doesn’t know your birthday or your middle name or where your room is. It sort of makes you queasy, if you want to know the truth.
Besides, I just always thought I’d be all the family my mom would ever need. Even with Dad gone, the two of us still had a good time together.
Like sometimes on Saturday mornings we’d go to the World of Waffles and she’d let me order the kind with strawberries and whipped cream. When we first started going, I was a little self-conscious. I kept thinking people were staring at me, wondering why there wasn’t a dad with us. But after a while it didn’t bother me anymore.
We went to movies together, too. We’d get popcorn or Dots or Junior Mints. Just the two of us. It was fun.
At least I thought it was.
WHENEVER something bothers me, I’m supposed to talk it over with my parents. That’s the advice my psychologist, Dr. Girard, gave me. “Problems never get solved by keeping your feelings all bottled up inside you,” he said.
I met Dr. Girard last year when we were g
oing through the divorce. I’m not really embarrassed about it. Dr. Girard was a pretty cool guy to talk to. Besides, I wasn’t crazy or anything. It’s just that some kids don’t stay as calm during a crisis as others. Like if I was ever cornered in my basement by a vampire, I wouldn’t be in control enough to make a cross out of two paint sticks or shine a mirror in his eyes. I’d be too busy running around screaming.
I haven’t seen Dr. Girard lately, but I still try to remember some of the stuff he told me. That’s why I finally decided to talk to my mother about Ben. Sometimes if you don’t talk, the pressure builds up and you can explode all over the place. Not your insides. Your emotions.
I waited until she and Ben had had four dates before I said anything. Two movies and two dinners. Until then, I’d just been trying to put up with it. It wasn’t working, though. Seeing them go out together made my stomach feel funny.
Finally I just couldn’t stand it anymore. On their fourth date I stayed awake until Ben brought her home. Then I went to the top of the stairs and listened for his truck to drive away.
I waited patiently while Mom paid Paul Hall for staying with me. Paul’s this high school kid who lives next door. He gets paid, but he’s not a baby-sitter. Baby-sitters take care of you. Paul Hall just slumps in our recliner and watches the Movie Channel.
After he left, my mother turned on the news. As quick as a flash, I was standing in the doorway clearing my throat. I already knew what I was going to say. I’d been thinking about it all night.
“I don’t want you to go out with him anymore,” I announced simply. “He’s not Dad and it makes me queasy.”
My mother jumped a foot. She scares easier than she used to.
I sat down on the couch and continued. “He doesn’t fit in with us like Dad did. He’s too different.”
Mom raised her eyebrows. “Different?”
I nodded. “Just look at him. He’s nothing like Dad. He probably goes out to the forest every morning and eats a bowl of fiber cereal.”
I’m not sure how long my mother stood there staring. But finally she turned off the news and moved onto the couch next to me. Her expression had turned to puzzlement.
“You don’t like Ben? Is that what you’re saying?”
I shrugged. Liking him had nothing to do with it. I just didn’t want him, that’s all. We didn’t need him.
“I don’t understand this at all, Charlie,” Mom continued. “Ben and I hardly know each other. We’re just friends. There’s no reason for you to feel so strongly about him.”
I rolled my eyes. Who did she think she was kidding? Just friends? Ha! Another lie! Another big fat lie!
Parents lie all the time. It comes so easily to them, they hardly even know when they’re doing it. They start you off with the one about the tooth fairy and go from there.
“Put your tooth under your pillow,” they’ll say when you’re too young to know any better. “After you’re asleep, a little fairy will buzz into your room, sneak it out from under you, and leave money.”
A fairy. Yeah, right. Tell me another one.
And how about all those food fibs they tell you when they want you to eat your dinner? Like “Carrots help you see in the dark” or “Bread crusts make your hair curly.”
I’m not kidding. My parents said junk like that so much, I used to think I’d end up with bushy hair and x-ray vision.
Let’s face it, parents don’t exactly build a lot of trust by fibbing all the time. So when my mother sat on the couch that night and told me that she and Ben Russo were just friends, it’s no wonder I didn’t believe her.
“The two of you were holding hands when you left tonight,” I informed her cleverly. “That is not being friends. That’s being something else.”
She frowned. “Sometimes friends hold hands.”
I shook my head. “No, they don’t. Not after you get out of preschool. Martin Oates is my best friend and I’ve never held his hand once. Not even when crossing a busy street.”
Mom paused a second and gave me a funny look. “Wait a minute. How did you see us holding hands, anyway? You weren’t on the roof spying again, were you?”
Geez, why can’t she ever get this straight? Just because a guy likes to sit up on the roof and be alone sometimes doesn’t mean he’s spying.
“I’ve told you a hundred times, I don’t spy,” I explained. “I just happened to be climbing around up there and you just happened to be down on the ground holding hands and I just happened to see you.”
My mother made sort of a hissing sound. She’s never been very understanding about the time I spend on the roof. Ever since I spotted her dancing with our neighbor’s dog in the back yard, she’s been pretty unreasonable about it.
“Remember Santa Claus, Charlie?” she asked then. “Remember the year you thought he was spying on you from the North Pole with high-powered binoculars?”
I felt my face getting red. Why did she have to bring that up again?
“It wasn’t my fault,” I explained for the millionth time. “It was the stupid song. The one about how he knows when you’re sleeping and when you’re awake and if you’ve been bad or good. Doesn’t that sound like spying to you?”
Mom wasn’t listening. “Remember how you kept turning toward the North Pole and waving? And how you spent the entire week before Christmas searching the house for hidden microphones? You thought the star on top of our tree was taking pictures.”
“It blinked funny,” I muttered quietly.
“Well, you didn’t like it then, and I don’t like it now. I’m an adult, Charles. And I deserve to have friends, just like you do. And I ought to be able to go out once in a while and get in someone’s car without wondering if my son is up on the roof doing a routine stakeout.”
She was making me sound ridiculous. Like a little secret agent or something. I circled my arms around my knees and hid my head.
For the next minute or two, both of us sat there not saying a word. Then finally Mom drew a deep breath and let her cheeks fill up with air. She let it out slowly. When it was all gone, she seemed a little calmer.
“Look,” she said softly. “We’ve both had a tough year and things still haven’t completely settled down yet. But friends can help. You have yours and I have mine. And I hope that both of us keep making new ones.”
I wanted to mention that none of mine would be holding my hand, but I didn’t.
“Ben and I have had four dates. Four dates as friends. He’s a nice man. And I like him. But most of the time he’s busy with his own kids and his business. And there’s simply no need for you to worry about whether he fits in here or what kind of cereal he eats.”
She tousled my hair. “Come on. What d’you say?”
I looked up. What could I say? My whole argument had turned out stupid.
I shrugged my shoulders.
After that we hugged for a minute, then I went upstairs. I can’t really say I felt much better. But I didn’t feel any worse either. At least now my feelings were out in the open. At least now I wouldn’t explode.
Not for a while, anyway.
(two)
I
T WAS nine o’clock on Saturday morning. I had just gotten up. I’d been awake since eight, but when you’re eleven, it’s not really cool to bail out early and watch The Smurfs. Not even if you still want to.
When I finally made it down to the kitchen, my mother was already outside hanging sheets on the clothesline. We have a dryer but she says that sheets smell fresher if they’re hung outside. It also makes them stiff as a board.
I was just about to pour some milk on my bowl of cereal when I heard a truck pull up in the driveway. I couldn’t see it, but I looked out the window and saw my mother fluffing her hair, so I figured it must be Ben. A second later, she dropped the clothespins out of her mouth and ran around to the front of the house to greet him.
I wondered why he was here. To plant another tree, maybe? Or spread some fertilizer? But that wouldn’t make sense
. He’d already done those things the week before.
I put down the milk. If I wanted to know what Ben Russo was up to, I’d simply have to interrupt my breakfast and sneak a peek at him through the dining room window.
I was just heading into the hallway when I heard the front door slam. It was them! My mother was bringing Ben inside and I wasn’t even dressed yet! I still had on my Superman pajamas! The old, faded ones that say MAN OF STEEL across the front.
I have a rule. No one except my family gets to see me in my Man of Steel pajamas. I made the rule last year after I accidentally wore them into the kitchen one Saturday morning and found this strange guy fixing the drain. His name was stitched across his shirt pocket. MAURICE. He was from France.
“Hey, Superman,” he said when he saw my pj’s (only with his French accent, it sounded more like “Supairman”). “Eef you’ve got some free time, ’ow about looking tru teese pipes and finding hair clogs for me.” Then he roared for about fifteen minutes. He roared in English.
That’s when I made my pajama rule. Until someone makes a dignified pair of pajamas for kids my age, no one outside the family will ever get a chance to laugh at me again.
Their voices were getting louder and louder. Oh geez, they were coming into the kitchen! I had to hide! There was no time to lose!
Quickly I shoved the milk back into the refrigerator and grabbed the box of Fruity Flakes. I learned this from watching TV. It’s called removing the evidence. If I could make it to the broom closet, they would never even suspect I was up yet.
Hurry! Hurry! I screamed silently. They’re almost here! Quick! My heart was pounding like crazy as I lunged for the closet door.