“What?”
“Gary Hackett is probably just as scared as you are.”
In order to stop thinking so much about the Gary Hackett problem, I start working on a screenplay of my own, which I’m calling Arnold and Fawn. It’s kind of a takeoff on one of my favorite movies, Harold and Maude. I watch it again for the two-hundredth time to remind myself how extremely amazing it is. I mean, you wouldn’t think a movie where (spoiler alert) one main character fakes his suicide and the other one kills herself would be so entertaining.
In my version I want Arnold to be older than Fawn, but then I wonder if it’s creepy to have an old guy hanging around with a young girl, so I decide Arnold should be a dog instead. An old talking dog. Assuming I can’t find a talking dog, the animal’s speech would have to be in voice-over. The bigger problem is, where do I get a dog who can act?
The first scene opens with Fawn seeing Arnold sitting outside a grocery store. As she walks past him, he says:
ARNOLD
You look like someone I can trust.
Fawn is shocked and jumps back.
FAWN
Did you just…say something?
ARNOLD
Did you hear me say something?
FAWN
I…I thought I did.
ARNOLD
Well then, I must have said something.
FAWN
Wow. Does your owner know you can talk?
Arnold gives her a scathing look.
ARNOLD
I don’t have an “owner.”
FAWN
You don’t?
ARNOLD
I used to, but he left me in the garage all day long. By myself! What kind of life is that for a distinguished animal like me? There was no one to talk to!
FAWN
So you ran away?
ARNOLD
I certainly did.
FAWN
Oh, you’re so lucky! I want to run away too! My owners—I mean, my parents—are so boring.
ARNOLD
What’s stopping you? You’ve got four good legs. Well, two anyway.
By the end of the first scene, Fawn realizes how much she has in common with Arnold. Neither of them likes being penned up or having people boss them around. So Arnold and Fawn decide to run away together, and they get bus tickets to California. Of course, filming a dog on a cross-country bus trip will be difficult too, but when you’re in the grip of a good idea, you can’t let yourself get sidetracked by practical worries.
I start writing Sunday night after dinner. Mom sticks her head in the door of the den around ten o’clock and tells me to go to bed as soon as I finish my homework. I don’t tell her I’m not doing homework. It’s after midnight when I realize my eyes are drooping and the words are swimming around on the page, but even after I turn out the light and go to bed, I keep thinking about my script.
I wake up late and exhausted the next morning, so Mom offers to drive Cyrus and me to school. I close my eyes and lean my head against the window the whole way. If I wasn’t so tired, I’d probably feel a little embarrassed about our talk yesterday, but now I’m having a hard time remembering what was weird about it.
“Why are you so tired?” Cy asks when we get out at school.
“I stayed up late writing a screenplay,” I say.
“Really?” Cy looks excited, which is cool because I’m pretty sure nobody else on earth will care one way or the other. “What’s it about?”
I yawn and try to focus my brain. “The main character is a girl named Fawn, and she’s kind of a cross between Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Harold from Harold and Maude.”
Cy looks confused. “Those characters aren’t much alike, are they?” he asks.
“Sure they are. They’re both trying to figure out how to make their boring lives fun.”
Cyrus nods his head slowly. “Okay. When can I read it?”
“When I’m finished.”
“I guess you’ll be Fawn when we film it.”
“Of course.”
“What’s my part?”
Hmm. I hadn’t thought of that. “Well, right now there are only two characters, and one of them is a dog named Arnold. I know! You can do Arnold’s voice-over!”
“So, you can’t even see me in this movie? Thanks a lot. And where are you going to get a dog, anyway?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out. We must know somebody who has a dog. A big one. The bigger, the better.”
A grin slowly spreads across Cyrus’s face. “Gary Hackett,” he says, “has a Saint Bernard.”
“Maisie! Wait up!”
I know who it is without even turning around. I managed to avoid him at school yesterday, but I guess Tuesday is not my lucky day. Can I pretend I didn’t hear him? I hook my arms through my backpack and wrangle my bike from the rack outside the school.
“Hold up, Maisie! I wanna talk to you!”
He knows I can hear him. How mean can I be?
“Oh, hey…” I almost say “Gary,” but his name gets stuck in my mouth and I swallow it back down.
Hackett wheels his bike up next to mine. “Can I ride with you?”
What? “I’m not going home. I’m going to my grandma’s.”
“That’s okay. I can ride anywhere I want as long as I don’t cross Route 17.”
I don’t know what to say. I can’t stop him, can I? So I just start riding, and he pedals right alongside me. I go faster, but he keeps up.
“Cyrus told me you’re writing a movie,” he says.
“A screenplay,” I say. Does Cyrus have to tell this guy every single thing now?
“Right. A screenplay. He says it’s kind of like Harold and Maude.”
“Not really. I mean, that was just my inspiration.”
“Cool.” I speed up and he drops back for a minute, but before long he’s next to me again. “Cy says you need a dog for the movie. Mine would be perfect.”
We do need a dog. “Is yours big?” I ask.
“Huge. We named her Buffalo when she was a puppy, because, well, she kind of looks like a buffalo. But mostly we call her Buffy.”
“Like Buffy the Vampire Slayer?”
“Yeah. Have you ever watched that show?”
“The early seasons,” I say. “I liked it, but I stopped after Buffy died the second time.”
“Yeah, it gets dark,” said Hackett, “but it’s still really good.”
It’s hard to pedal uphill and talk at the same time, but he’s managing it without too much huffing and puffing. “Maybe you could come over to my house and see Buffalo sometime. You and Cyrus, I mean. She’s a really smart dog.”
“Maybe,” I say.
He talks on and on about how enormous Buffy is, how much she eats, how his little sisters ride her around the house, and blah, blah, blah. I stop listening. How can a person be so cheerful and enthusiastic when they’re being ignored?
“My little sister Abby is so funny. Once she put her hair barrettes all over Buffy, like twenty little bows and flowers and stuff, but Buffy didn’t care…” It’s nice that Hackett gets along with his little sisters, I guess, but how much information do I need to hear about them? This is the longest bike ride in history, but at last I see my grandma’s condo at the end of the block. And there she is, sitting on the little porch, waving.
“Okay,” I say to Hackett, dismissing him. “I guess I’ll see you later.”
Grandma stands up, leans over the porch railing, and squints at us. “That’s not Cyrus, is it? Did you bring a new friend?”
“No, this isn’t Cy. This is…um…”
“Gary Hackett!” he yells, as if she’s deaf. “I met you once at Maisie’s house.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you again,” Grandma says. “I love company. Come inside, both of you. I made brownies.”
This cannot be happening. “But, Grandma, we have to work on my history project, remember?”
“There’s plenty of
time for that after we have our snack,” she says.
In seconds Hackett manages to park his bike and chain it to the fence out front. He’s up the steps and holding the door open for Grandma before I’ve even climbed off my bicycle.
By the time I get inside, Hackett is taking the tray of brownies to the table and yakking about how his mother never makes brownies even though they’re his favorite food, and Grandma is telling him he should come over again and she’ll make them for him whenever he wants. What the heck?
Grandma brings us big glasses of iced tea while I busy myself with the video camera. I watch as Hackett dumps six or seven spoonfuls of sugar into his tea.
“Sweet enough for you?” I ask.
He blushes, which makes me feel kind of bad for noticing his sugar consumption. And then bad for noticing the blushing, which actually makes him look kind of sweetly shy. It’s possible I’m blushing now too. Apparently embarrassment is contagious.
“Did you say your name was Gary?” Grandma asks Hackett.
“Yup.” His mouth is full of brownie.
“I’ve always liked that name. And anything that rhymes with it. Gary, Harry, Larry.”
“My dad’s name is Larry!” Hackett says, spitting chocolate crumbs all over the table in his excitement.
“Are you in Maisie’s class at school?”
He nods. “We’ve been in the same class forever.”
True, I think, but you didn’t start bugging me until this year.
Grandma sighs. “You children are so fortunate to have your whole lives ahead of you. It’s very exciting to be young! Soon you’ll be falling in love and getting your heart broken and all those wonderful experiences.”
Hackett chokes on his brownie and then has a coughing fit. Grandma whacks him on the back.
Oh my God, this has to stop. “Grandma,” I say, “we need to get going on my history project. It’s due next week, and I still have to edit it all together.”
“Well, let’s get to it then. I’m sure your friend won’t mind listening to us talk, will you, Gary?”
“Not at all. My project is on my great-uncle Samuel. It’s about how he was a pitcher in the minor leagues for the Decatur Commodores back in the sixties. You’d think that would be pretty interesting, but all he wants to talk about is how much beer they drank and how much tobacco they chewed. It’s kind of gross.”
Grandma laughs. “Well, I don’t think my life is nearly as interesting as that. All I talk about is how I grew up working in my parents’ grocery store.”
“I’d like to hear about that,” Hackett says politely.
I point the camera at Grandma and try to pretend he isn’t sitting right here, listening and liking everything so much. “Why don’t you tell me more about what you did with your girlfriends?” I ask her. “What did you do for fun besides go to the movies?”
She sighs and leans back in her chair. “We had good times. We played tennis and listened to records and danced. And we went to Turner’s Swimming Pool as often as our parents would let us. You could get a pass for the whole summer.”
“Were you a good swimmer?” I ask.
“Oh, no, not very. But we didn’t go to swim. We’d just lie on our towels and slather ourselves with suntan oil—that wasn’t so smart, but we didn’t know it then.” She dusts some brownie crumbs off the tablecloth into her hand, then gets up to throw them in the trash. I follow her with the camera. I’m glad she’s moving around, because the film will be too static if she’s sitting at the table the whole time. Also the light coming in the kitchen door throws a cool shadow when she stands near it.
Grandma laughs. “Some of the girls would parade around the pool in their swimsuits, trying to get the boys to notice them. And they did pay attention!”
For someone who was supposedly nervous around boys, she sure seems to want to talk about them a lot all of a sudden. “Did you have sleepovers with your girlfriends?” I ask, hoping to change the subject.
“Sometimes.” She goes to the screen door, opens it a crack, and looks out. “My friend Laura came over a lot.”
“Did you go out on dates?” Hackett asks, leaning his elbows on the table.
“Hey! This is my interview!” I look up from the camera to glare at him.
“Oh, sorry, Maisie,” he says.
“We talked about that last time, when you weren’t here,” I tell him. “She didn’t date anybody in high school. She was shy.” Like I am, I think, but I don’t say it.
Grandma is not paying attention to us anymore. She’s mumbling something as she looks out the door.
“Is something wrong, Grandma?” I ask.
“I thought I heard him outside, but now I don’t see him,” she says. “Soon as I shut the door, he’ll be back here, scratching to get in.”
“Your cat?” Hackett asks her.
Grandma nods. “He’s an old rascal. We call him Batman because he’s got a black mask on his face.”
The pain in my chest is back, and I have to blink my eyes to keep the tears from leaking out while Hackett blabs on about his own cats. Apparently there’s quite a menagerie over at his house, but not at my grandma’s. Batman has been dead longer than Grandpa.
I should never have told Hackett, but he knew something was up when I wanted to leave Grandma’s house so fast. Of course, he followed me home and kept asking questions, and finally—because I had to talk to somebody, and he was right there—I gave in and told him about Batman and the melted teakettle and Grandma mixing me up with my mother. And, of course, he was in the room the afternoon she forgot her husband was dead.
“Does your mom know?” he asks as we pull up in front of my house.
“I don’t think so.”
“You should tell her.”
I’m thinking the same thing myself, but I don’t like him telling me what to do. “I will,” I say. “I just don’t know if now’s the right time. I mean, she’s so busy, and my uncle’s here with us, and—”
“If you wait, something could happen!” he says, his eyes getting big and damp. “My mom told me that my great-grandpa had Alzheimer’s and he left home one night and got lost downtown. The police found him, but it was cold out and they said he could have frozen to death!”
“She’s not going to freeze to death in May,” I say. But the idea of Grandma getting lost and not knowing how to get back home suddenly stabs my heart like an icy knife. A tear rolls down my cheek. I turn away so Hackett doesn’t see it, but apparently he never takes his eyes off me.
“I’m sorry, Maisie,” he says. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.” His hand brushes against my shoulder, but he takes it back quickly. Maybe my skin has thorns. His touch is so light that I hardly feel it, and yet it reverberates through my whole body as if he’s banged a gong deep inside me.
I brush the tear away and hope my voice isn’t shaky. “I’m not crying. I’m just worried, is all.”
“I know,” he says. “I really like your grandma. She’s got a wonderful laugh, and it was fun to hear her talk about growing up in New Aztec.”
I nod, sniffling as quietly as I can.
“You’re lucky you have such a great family, Maisie. I mean, your parents seem nice, and your uncle is super cool too.”
“He really is,” I say. Somehow Hackett has made me feel okay again, like the ceiling hasn’t just fallen in on my head.
Neither of us hears Cyrus walk up, and we jump a little when he says, “Hi.”
I try to smile at him, but I can feel it’s a cockeyed smile.
“What’s going on?” he asks, looking from one of us to the other. His face seems a little bit collapsed. Sad, I guess, or scared. He always knows what’s going on with me, except right now he doesn’t.
Hackett gives me a questioning look.
“Cy already knows most of it,” I say. Then I tell him about the Batman episode. I can see he’s relieved that Hackett and I aren’t keeping some big secret from him.
“Wow,” Cy says. “That’
s pretty crazy.”
Crazy? “She’s not crazy, Cyrus! There’s something wrong with her.”
“That’s what I mean,” he says. He looks up at Hackett and says, “She’s gotta tell her mom now, don’t you think?”
Hackett nods sadly.
“Okay. I know. I will.” I take a deep breath and let it out in a big shuttering sigh. “I guess I might as well do it now.”
Cyrus puts his hand on my shoulder, steady and strong, and gives me a little push toward my house. His hand landed on the same spot Hackett touched a minute ago, only there’s no gong this time. It’s confusing, but fortunately I have too much else on my mind to think about it for long.
“Good luck, Maisie,” Hackett says.
“Thanks, Gary.” I hardly even realize I’ve used his first name until I see Cyrus staring at me with a surprised look on his face. I guess he thinks it means something that I said “Gary” instead of “Hackett,” but it doesn’t. It’s just that when someone is being nice to you, you can’t very well keep calling him by his weird upchucked-hair-ball last name.
When I go inside, Uncle Walt is sitting at the dining-room table, flipping through a copy of Entertainment Weekly and looking glum. In the den, Mom’s banging out (and belting out) “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Misérables, a song sung by a woman whose life is hopelessly ruined. This can’t be a good sign. I guess I should be glad she’s not singing something from Sweeney Todd. Sometimes she really gets into those songs about the barber who slits people’s throats and the cook who bakes them into pies.
I sit down across from Uncle Walt, who barely looks up.
“Has Mom been singing long?”
“One depressing dirge after the other for half an hour,” he says.
“Any reason?”
He closes the magazine. “She got laid off. Something about budget cuts.”
“Oh, no!” This isn’t the first time it’s happened. Mom used to be a receptionist for a law firm, but they had to lay off some people and decided they didn’t need a receptionist anymore. She was out of work for eight months before she got the job as a parking enforcement officer, and those were long months. Dad was still working at the post office, of course, but we ate a lot of vegetable soup for dinner, and Mom walked around glaring at everybody like she was figuring out how many pies she could make out of them.