Slob

  Yeah.

  That’s right.

  And I didn’t even have a helmet or those nifty sandals.

  But Mr. Wooly had another decision to make. He hadn’t counted on Mason being there. After all the rest of us were herded into opposite ends of the gym, Mr. Wooly looked down at his list, then looked at Mason, who was still standing on A4. You could practically hear Mr. Wooly’s Neanderthal brain whirring, trying to figure out where Mason would cause the most pain and suffering.

  “Team B,” Mr. Wooly finally said.

  Of course.

  Mason strutted over to our team, his chin tipped up, eyeing all of us. Clearly he was not going to disappoint Mr. Wooly. He stood a little apart from the rest of us, but to be honest, we were all standing apart from each other. No one on Team B seemed to want to be on Team B. Even I looked longingly at Team A where Andre was already having a sportsmanly chat with his team.

  “This is so unfair,” muttered a tall, pimply kid on our team named Jay, one of the Andre wannabes. “Andre gets Ron and Corey and Tristan, while Wooly gives us . . . what? A fat slob and a psycho.”

  Everyone on the team glanced at Mason nervously to see how he would react to that. No one looked at me nervously, of course, but I didn’t expect them to.

  Mason didn’t say anything. He slowly reached down for his sock. All eyes followed his hand. We all saw it. The outline of something stuffed in his sock. Something distinctly knife-shaped. Eyes grew wide. Then Mason calmly tugged at the edge of his sock, just as though he was adjusting it to make all the lines in the cuff straight. He stood upright again, folded his arms against his chest, and quickly looked at all his teammates, as if daring them to say anything. None of them did.

  So he did keep his famous switchblade in his sock. I’d have to tell Izzy.

  Mason’s little exhibition did one good thing at least. It stopped Team B’s grumbling. All of a sudden, losing a gymnastic competition seemed somewhat less important than losing a thumb.

  Mr. Wooly explained the triathlon’s events course, which involved walking across the balance beam, jumping on the trampoline and tucking your legs, running a lap around the gym, then ending with a somersault on the mat.

  That’s four events, by the way. A triathlon would be three events, Mr. Wooly. That’s tri-athalon. Never mind.

  The teams would go one at a time, and he’d be timing them with a stopwatch. It would be relay race style, with points taken off if people botched the individual events. I could feel my teammates’ eyes on me, Owen Birnbaum, The Imperial Botch-meister.

  Team A was first. Mr. Wooly gave them a few minutes to figure out the lineup. Andre, of course, was the one who gave the orders, huddle style, arms over shoulders. It looked very professional. Our team was watching Team A enviously. There was no way we would get into a huddle. We didn’t even want to be on the same side of the gym with each other, much less nose to nose. Team A unhuddled, Andre clapped a few times to get everyone pumped up, and they sent their first teammate out on the course.

  I watched the first few guys pretty carefully to see how this thing was supposed to be done and to figure out just how badly I was going to embarrass myself and infuriate my teammates.

  It was going to be ugly.

  Mr. Wooly stood at the finish line with his thumb poised over his stopwatch. All the members of Team A finished their course. A few kids missed the leg tuck on the trampoline and five of them fell off the beam, but all in all, they did pretty well. Andre, of course, did it all so effortlessly that for a moment I wondered if he was one of those undercover cops they send into schools to masquerade as schoolchildren.

  One of the kids on my team groaned and said, “We might actually stand a chance if we didn’t have blubber butt on our team.”

  I felt my teammates’ eyes turn on me bitterly. I didn’t look back at them, yet I couldn’t help but catch Mason’s face in my peripheral vision, staring at me. Not with resentment, but with curiosity.

  Ah, yes, I thought. He’s never witnessed Owen Birnbaum in gym class before. Well, this will be a rare treat for him.

  Mr. Wooly turned to our team. His face was a little too animated, too interested. You could see he was thinking, Okay, Gene, now the fun begins.

  “Team B!” he barked. “Figure out your lineup.”

  We didn’t have Andre to take charge. Instead, we had five wannabe-but-never-will-be Andres who all wanted to take charge. After a brief “discussion,” a full-out shoving match broke out between three of those guys. Mr. Wooly stepped in quickly and stopped it, but you could tell he was already well satisfied because he kept wiping his hand over the lower half of his face, as if in exasperation. But if you really looked, you could make out a smile that he was trying to cover. I was really looking.

  And he noticed I was really looking.

  The guilt/fear that he appeared to be feeling earlier vanished. He didn’t need to cover the lower half of his face anymore. The smile was gone.

  He walked right up to me and said, “Mr. Birnbaum. You’re a smart boy, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t quite know how to answer that.

  I didn’t need to, as it turned out, since Mason answered it for me.

  He snorted.

  I whipped around to stare at him.

  Mason’s horrible face was perfectly calm, his eyes meeting mine evenly.

  “Well, well!” Mr. Wooly said jovially. He was enjoying this unexpected turn. “So you have a little competition in the brain department, Birnbaum? Well, that’s okay. Two heads are better than one, eh? All right, since Birnbaum and Ragg are the smart ones on Team B, they’ll decide the lineup together. And remember”—he pointed a finger at Mason and me—“the lineup can make or break the success of your team.”

  There were explosions of fury at this decree from the wannabes, but Mr. Wooly made them shut up then left us to our task. Now pretty much everyone on Team B was glaring at us.

  “Okay,” I said as confidently as I could manage, “here’s the lineup.” I listed off a bunch of names. It was completely random, except for the fact that I went first. I had already figured out that if I went in the beginning, my other teammates would be too nervous about their upcoming turns to pay as much attention to me. If I went at the end, everyone would be relaxed enough to laugh their heads off.

  “Wrong,” Mason said.

  “What’s wrong about it?” I asked. The other kids on Team B were pretty riveted by now. The fat slob and the psycho were going to have it out.

  “You should be last and I should be second to last.”

  “Forget it,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. It’s not something I do often, and I was sorry I did it now. It makes me look like the Buddha in Nima’s living room. And yes, I was aware that I was arguing with a kid who kept a knife in his sock, but you have never seen me on a trampoline.

  “Clock’s ticking! Five, four, three—” Mr. Wooly shouted at us.

  Mason spit out another lineup, again putting me last and him second to last.

  “Two one. Okay, Team B. Step up.”

  Everyone hustled toward the equipment, arranging themselves in Mason’s sequence.

  “No!” I said again, but Mason shoved by me and said, “Shut up.”

  Mr. Wooly blew his whistle, and Steve Taylor shot off toward the balance beam. So that was that. I was doomed. I would be the last one. The grand finale. I’d be flopping all over the gym and everyone would be screaming with laughter, thanks to Mason.

  No, Team A would be screaming with laughter. Team B would be screaming with rage.

  The first couple of guys did really well, which made me feel like vomiting. None of them even toppled off the balance beam. Now we were actually contenders for the winning spot, which made my situation increasingly worse. In fact, it all might come down to me in the end. I glared at Mason. Look, I’m used to bullies. I was never exactly popular, even before I was fat. Back then I was picked on because I was smart. When I started gaining all this weight, about a
year and half ago (I gained it so fast and so furiously that I have stretch marks across my thighs and belly), I became the person everyone loves to hate.

  Still, most of the kids who picked on me were morons. Yes, the things they said and did hurt my feelings, but they were thoughtless insults from teeny-tiny minds.

  Mason Ragg, however, seemed to be thinking.

  Darren Rosenberg was finishing up on the mats, and Mason stepped up to the starting line. His jaw was working again. I was beginning to think this wasn’t a sign that he was going to spit at someone, but instead it was a sign of nervousness. Darren tagged him on his shoulder—carefully, I noticed—and Mason headed for the balance beam. The strange thing was, though, he didn’t run to it, like everyone else. He just walked. Actually, it was more of an amble. Team B started shouting at him, “Run, run!! What are you doing?”

  I had fairly good idea about what he was doing. He was trying to make it even harder on me. Team B would be so behind on time that the pressure would be on me to make it up.

  When he got to the balance beam, he eased himself up and inch by inch made his way across. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. As though he were terrified of heights. Well, maybe he is, I thought. He certainly looked scared.

  Team B was practically rabid. “Go!” they screamed. “Can you freaking believe this?” And other choice things.

  When he was halfway across the beam, the fire drill sounded.

  There was a cry of outrage from Team A and a cry of joy from Team B and a cry of “Shut it!” from Mr. Wooly. While everyone else was hustling out of the gym or appealing to Mr. Wooly for a rematch, Mason got off the balance beam. I watched him. He had no trouble with balance. He had no issues with height. He had hopped off the beam and landed on the floor mat as easily as a cat.

  He was diabolical.

  Our eyes met, and he smiled at me. This was a definite smile. A gloating smile that crinkled up his scar.

  Do you know what I did then? I actually smiled back. And this is the weird part. I don’t know how to explain it. For a split second, I felt like Mason and I were on the same side rather than sworn enemies. Amazing what a smile can do to you physiologically. I think it pumps up the endorphins so you automatically feel like the universe is a good and friendly place.

  That lasted all of twelve minutes.

  Nine minutes of standing outside in the frigid cold in my gym shorts, two and half minutes of walking to the lunch closet. At the twelfth minute, I discovered that my entire lunch sack was gone.

  In its place was a note. It said:

  NEXT TIME I LEAVE THE CLASS, COUNT TO 20, THEN FOLLOW ME.

  9

  “I wouldn’t,” said Izzy. He had given me half his sandwich since I didn’t have anything to eat at lunch. “It’s probably a trick. He’ll get you into some dark corner and pull out his buck knife.”

  “Switchblade. And it is in his sock,” I said. My voice was dead-sounding. “By the way.”

  “Oh, dude.” Izzy shook his head, looking at me piteously.

  Mason was sitting at a corner table in the lunchroom, all by himself as usual. There was no sign of my lunch sack anywhere around him. He’d probably taken out its contents and dumped the bag. Mom would not be happy. She hated wastefulness. Plus, she’d ask how it had happened and I would have to make up a lie.

  Every so often I glanced over to see if Mason was eating my cookies yet. Seeing Mason gag on facial hair bleach cream was the only glimmer of possible satisfaction in this whole situation. The lunch bell rang and Mason got up and dumped the contents of his tray in the trash. He hadn’t eaten any Oreos as far as I could tell.

  “Just think,” Izzy said, “anything could happen over the weekend. Mason might get run over by a truck.”

  “Or he might devise a new and improved way to torment me.”

  “Think positive, man, think positive.”

  I spent most of Friday afternoon at the Ninety-third Street demo site alone (Jeremy was busy plotting out some new GWAB scheme with Arthur) poking through the same debris in the hopes that I’d find an amplifier. I didn’t find one. In fact, there wasn’t much of anything left at that site. The only thing I took was a plastic bag full of small metal brackets.

  On my way home, I saw a group of kids hanging out together on the steps of a brownstone. I crossed to the other side of the street. A group of kids hanging out always spells trouble for me. But to my surprise, the kids were actually calling to me. Not by name, but a few of them were waving their arms for me to come over.

  I’m not a moron. I ignored them. But when they quieted down I glanced over. The steps of the brownstone were strewn with stuff—toys, games, lamps, books. Stuff. It’s really hard for me to turn my back on stuff. So I crossed the street.

  The kids spotted me crossing and immediately started frantically motioning for me to come over again. I was guessing that sales hadn’t been stellar.

  “Anything on the first three steps is one dollar,” a girl explained to me. “Everything above that is two dollars.”

  “But we’re willing to negotiate,” a boy added. He was a little chunky. Not fat like me, but he was younger too. I had a sudden urge to warn him. Life is tough when you are significantly fatter than the national average, kid. You might want to cut back on the Cheez Doodles.

  But who am I to give advice?

  After a quick scan of all their items, I could see there was nothing I wanted. “Sorry,” I said, and started to leave.

  “But we have a large selection of board games,” the chunky boy said, sweeping his arm across a stack of beat-up board game boxes.

  “Thanks, but I don’t need any,” I said, backing away.

  “Well, what do you need?” the boy persisted. He was a natural salesman, actually. You had to admire that. So I played along.

  “I need a forty-decibel amplifier.” I smiled as I said it. It reminded me of playing bank teller with Jeremy when we were little kids—“I’d like to withdraw fifty billion dollars, please.” “Here you go, ma’am. Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  But this kid, he wasn’t playing around.

  “Hold on,” he said, jabbing a finger at me. “I think I may have what you need.”

  He jumped up and ran inside the brownstone. He was gone for a good five minutes, during which the other kids tried to convince me that I needed a pair of binoculars with one busted lens.

  Finally the brownstone door opened and the kid came out with this huge smile on his face, carrying a rectangular black metal box. He walked down the steps and thrust the black box toward me.

  “Is this was you’re looking for?” he asked.

  You know what? It was.

  “Two dollars,” he said.

  Once again, I’m not a moron. I knew this didn’t come from the bottom of the kid’s toy chest.

  “Okay, who does this belong to?” I asked him. I tried to use my stern voice.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” The kid waved a casual hand in the air. I’m telling you, he was a pro. “It used to belong to my older brother, but he got a new one and this is just sitting around in the back of his closet.”

  It might have been the truth, who knows. That’s what I told myself as I dug through my backpack and collected up the spare coins that were floating around in there. Altogether I had one dollar and sixty-three cents.

  “Sold!” the boy said and pocketed my change hurriedly. I suspect he was worried that his older brother would come home any minute.

  At the apartment I hooked up the amplifier. It took some time. Jeremy came in and when I told her about it, she said, “That’s it, then! Nemesis will work!”

  “Don’t get all excited yet,” I warned her. “Even if we can get a strong signal, there’s another problem.”

  It was a doozy too. I had thought about it long and hard but couldn’t figure out how to solve it.

  “We’re looking for a specific day two years ago, right?” I said.

  Jeremy nodded. “October 25.”

&n
bsp; “Right,” I said. It bothered me that the date flew right off her tongue so easily. It was hard for me to say that date without my voice sounding weird. “So, even if I do manage to pick up a signal from the past, I have to be able to figure out when that signal was first sent out.”

  “Oh.” She sounded so disappointed. It reminded me that if this project worked, it was going to affect both of us, not just me.

  “I’ll figure it out,” I assured her.

  I sounded more confident than I felt. I had no idea how I was going to figure it out. I mulled over the problem as I worked. I mulled it over as I ate dinner. And I mulled it over some more that night as I went back to work on the amplifier. But I was getting no closer to a solution. I was just getting more and more frustrated. To take my mind off it, I turned on the TV and watched some really stupid sitcoms, but they were so stupid that my mind drifted back to the problem. I guess I can’t stop myself from thinking for very long. As it turned out, though, the solution was staring me right in my face.

  The TV.

  I jumped up and ran to Jeremy’s room. Jeremy was already in bed when I knocked on her door. She sleeps with her head under her blanket. She always has. It used to make me crazy when she was really little. I was convinced she would suffocate, or at the very least suffer irreparable brain damage from lack of oxygen, so I would slip into her room every night and pull her blanket off her head. By the morning it was always back over her head again, and eventually I gave up.

  I sat on her bed and said her name a few times but she didn’t respond. I’ve never seen anyone sleep as heavily as Jeremy sleeps. You almost have to get rough with her in order to wake her. I pushed her shoulder a few times. When that didn’t work, I pulled the covers off her head and pinched her cheek.

  That worked.

  “Hey!” She sat up like a shot, her hair wild.

  “Listen,” I said, “do you think Arthur would let me borrow her old Retro TV Magazines?”