Guy Wire

  A half hour later I reached up and ran my hand over my head. It felt like muskrat fur. Not that I’ve ever petted an actual muskrat.

  “What do you think?” I asked my mother.

  “Well, to be frank, it’s going to take some getting used to,” she said.

  I think I would have preferred to hear something more along the lines of “You look as cute as a button too,” but when I looked at myself in the mirror, I had to agree with her. It was going to take some getting used to.

  That night, as I went to sleep, I tried to imagine the look on Fennimore’s face when he saw what I had done for him.

  The next day was Saturday. As soon as I was up and dressed, I hopped on my bike and went over to Fennimore’s house. I couldn’t wait to show him my hair. As I rode up his driveway, I heard a basketball bouncing behind the garage. Figuring it was Fennimore, I headed around the back. The boy bouncing the ball wasn’t Fennimore at all. He was tall, with a full head of dark curly hair and a sharp look to his face that immediately put me on edge.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Who are you?” he shot back.

  “I’m Fennimore’s friend Guy,” I said.

  “Well, I’m his best friend, George,” he said. He had the same kind of twangy accent as Fennimore.

  “Where’s Fennimore?” I asked.

  “Inside finishing breakfast. I flew up here yesterday to surprise him. Boy, was he glad to see me.”

  Fennimore came out.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” he asked me. “Sheesh, what the heck happened to your hair?”

  “Looks like he got scalped, same as you, Fenn,” George cackled, and he spat in the grass.

  “Really, Guy, what’s with your hair?” Fennimore said again. “You look worse than I do. Why did you let her do that?”

  “I thought, I just thought, well, maybe it would help—”

  “The only thing that’s gonna help you now is a bag over your head.” George cackled and spat again. “Hey, wait a minute. Is this the kid whose mama skinned you, Fenn? The same one you told me ran around showing his bare butt at a class picnic or something?”

  “I did not!” I shouted.

  “That’s how I heard it,” said George. “Come on, Fennimore, let’s get out of here. This kid is giving me the creeps. Besides, his mama might be right behind him with her shears, and I don’t want to lose my hair too.”

  “Guy, you really shouldn’t have done it,” Fennimore said.

  “Yeah. No kidding,” added George.

  “I did it for you, Fennimore,” I said. “To show we’re friends.”

  “Some friend,” George sneered.

  “You really shouldn’t have done it,” Fennimore said again, looking at me and shaking his head.

  Okay, okay, I got the message. I wasn’t about to hang around here any longer getting dumped on. It wasn’t my fault if Fennimore would rather have a best friend who spit and cackled like a goose than one who would sacrifice his own head of hair for him. Some great plan I’d come up with.

  I ran and got on my bike, and pedaled home as fast as I could. I hated that stupid George from Pigeon Forge. And I hated Fennimore, too, for not understanding that a person who would do what I’d done for him was the kind of person anybody ought to realize would make a great friend.

  My mother was in the kitchen cutting up cheese when I got home.

  “So what did Fennimore say about your haircut?” she asked. “I’ll bet he was impressed.”

  “Oh yeah. Impressed with what a jerk I am.”

  “Well, I’m sure he’ll come around. I think it was very noble of you.”

  “Mom, can I ask you something?” I said.

  “Ask away,” she said.

  “What does ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’ mean?”

  “It means that people tend to be like their parents. An apple tree produces apples. The parents are the trees, and their children are the apples they produce. Get it?”

  I got it all right. What it meant was that no matter what I did, people were always going judge me by the tree I’d fallen out of. Just like Fennimore had done.

  “Guysie, which do you think is more festive, white cheese or yellow cheese?” my mother asked.

  Why did my tree have to be so weird? Why did my mother have to ask questions about cheese? How was anyone supposed to ever be able to see who I really was? How was I even supposed to know who I was? Maybe I really was weird, and just didn’t know it.

  “Oh, by the way,” my mother said, “Mrs. Adams called a little while ago. Seems they’ve got a houseguest this weekend. George, I think she said his name was. Anyway, he’ll be joining us for dinner tomorrow night.”

  I’d forgotten all about the dinner! Maybe if Fennimore had been coming on his own, we would have found a way to talk. I could have convinced him that I wasn’t a nut like my parents and that he ought to give me another chance. But with George there making fun of me, things between Fennimore and me were just going to get worse.

  “This is going to be such fun!” my mother said, happily chopping away. “Assorted cheeses and new friends. What could be more perfect?”

  I just looked at her and sighed. I knew there was no point in even trying to explain how much I wished at that moment that my apple had fallen a million miles away from her tree.

  Chapter Eleven

  The doorbell rang at six o’clock on the dot.

  “Come in, come in, you’re right on time. Let the party begin!” Mom sang to our company. “Guy! Company’s here!”

  I came out of my room and stood at the top of the stairs looking down. When I saw what my mother was wearing, I could have kicked myself for not thinking to check on her beforehand.

  She had on one of what she calls her “hostess-with-the-mostest outfits.” This one was particularly bizarre. She was wearing a skirt made out of potholders she’d sewn together. The matching blouse had red flames painted on the front and wooden kitchen matches hot-glued to the back that spelled out “Too hot to handle.” My father was wearing his usual too-short pants, white socks and loafers, and a shirt that matched my mother’s. On the back of his, the matches spelled out “Light my fire.”

  I saw George poke Fennimore in the ribs and point at my father’s socks when his back was turned. Fennimore whispered something in George’s ear, and they both laughed.

  “Why don’t you two boys run upstairs and find Guysie,” my mother suggested.

  “Yeah,” said George. “Let’s go find Guysie.”

  Quickly I went back to my room and grabbed a book so they wouldn’t know that I’d been standing out there watching them.

  “Hey,” said Fennimore when they reached my door. “Your mom said we should come find you.”

  “Here I am. I was just reading,” I said.

  “Shall we tell Guysie his book’s upside down?” George said to Fennimore, giving him another one of those pokes in the ribs.

  I blushed and put the book on the nightstand beside my bed.

  There’s only one chair in my room. It’s one of those rolling desk chairs. George sat down in it, leaned back, and put his feet up right on my desk.

  “You know who talks about you all the time, Fenn?” George said, ignoring me as though I wasn’t even in the room. “Janice Greenhut.”

  “No way,” said Fennimore.

  “Who’s Janice Greenhut?” I asked, figuring I might as well try to join in the conversation.

  “Some girl you don’t know,” George said dismissively. “Anyway, she’s pining for you bigtime, Fenn. I swear. Remember that valentine she sent you last year?”

  “That was gross,” Fennimore said.

  “Be Mine, Sweet Valentine and I Shall Be Thine,” they recited in unison. Then they both laughed and pretended to gag.

  “Oh, remember Kyle Kibble?” George went on. “He broke his ankle skateboarding, and now he’s got pins in it. He can put refrigerator magnets right on his skin, and they stick to him.”

/>   “I never broke a bone,” I said, making another attempt to join the conversation. “But I know this kid, Bob-o Smith, who got a peanut stuck up his nose and had to go to the hospital to have it taken out.”

  “Really?” Fennimore said.

  “So what?” George jumped in, grabbing Fennimore’s attention back with both hands. “Remember that time we went to the ball game and we saw that guy hurling over the railing onto the hot-dog vender?”

  Another fit of laughter as Fennimore and his best friend, George from Pigeon Forge, recalled yet another wonderful, perfect, terrific time they’d spent together. I gave up trying to be a part of the conversation. They didn’t seem to notice. For the next forty-five minutes they talked about people I didn’t know and events I hadn’t been a part of. I might as well have been a dust bunny under the bed for all they cared.

  My mother called us down to dinner. I kind of wanted to sit by Fennimore, but George elbowed me out of the way and plopped himself down next to him. They whispered and giggled together through the whole meal.

  I’m not even going to go into the gory details of what the fondue was like. Let’s just say that festive and interactive didn’t begin to describe it. Lumpy and disgusting is a lot closer. When it was finally over and they’d all gone home, I was in as foul a mood as I’d ever been in.

  “I like your friend Fennimore,” my father said as he scrubbed a plate and handed it to my mother to dry.

  “In case you didn’t notice, he’s not my friend,” I said. “He’s George’s.”

  “Well, I think the two of you looked pretty doggone adorable with those matching buzz cuts. I have to say, Guysie, yours is beginning to grow on me a little,” my mother said, obviously trying to cheer me up.

  I grunted and rolled my eyes.

  “I have a feeling what Guy’s hoping is that it will grow on him,” my father said. “The sooner the better. Am I right, Guychik?”

  I nodded glumly. I couldn’t believe I’d cut off my hair. For what? Fennimore couldn’t care less about being friends with me. Why should he, when he and George had so much in common?

  “You were pretty quiet tonight,” my mother said as she put away the stack of plates she’d just dried. “Are you and Fennimore still working things out?”

  “Mom, leave it alone, will you? There’s nothing for Fennimore and me to work out, okay? He hates me. The end.”

  I sat down at the kitchen table and rested my head on my arms.

  “Why do you say that, Guysie?” my mother asked, putting down her dish towel and coming over to sit beside me. “You two will work it out. After all, he came to dinner here tonight. That’s got to mean something, right?”

  “Yeah, he came to dinner with his best friend, and they both ignored and insulted me all night. That’s gotta mean something too, doesn’t it?”

  “Social triangles can be deadly,” my mother said, giving my knee a little pat. “But tomorrow George goes back to Pigeon Forge, and you’ll have Fennimore all to yourself again. The two of you will be like two peas in a pod—which reminds me, tomorrow is our first costume fitting for the play, so I’ll be coming to school in the morning.”

  Could my life get any worse? Fennimore hated my guts, Kevin Brudhauser was going to go nuts when he got a load of my haircut, and now on top of that I could look forward to my mother being on display in front of the whole class.

  “Why me?” I muttered as I got up and headed up to my room. “Why me?”

  Chapter Twelve

  As soon as Kevin Brudhauser saw me the next morning, he got hysterical. Every time he looked at me, he’d burst out laughing that stupid donkey honk of his. He didn’t make one plucked-chicken crack about Fennimore. Clearly I was the only game in town now.

  My mother got there around ten o’clock. I’d made her take off the first outfit she’d put on that morning—a suede jumpsuit with tea bags sewn along the seams like cowboy fringe—and convinced her to wear jeans and a plain T-shirt of my father’s (all of hers are decorated). But dressing her normally didn’t guarantee anything about the way she was going to behave.

  Mrs. Hunn had cleared out a supply closet that would serve as my mother’s headquarters, and one by one the kids went in to have their first costume fitting.

  “I’m not doing it!” I heard Lana Zuckerman yell when it was her turn to be fitted. “I’m a queen, not a plumber.”

  It seemed my mother’s idea of a queen’s scepter was a plunger, the kind you use to unplug toilets and sinks, covered in aluminum foil. King Kevin was similarly displeased with his costume.

  “What’s this weird bent-looking thing stuck to the front of my crown?” he asked.

  I knew what it was. I’d recognized it right away when I’d seen the crown set out on the table that morning at breakfast. It was one of my great-grandmother’s sterling silver salad forks, which my dad had accidentally ground up in the disposal a few years ago. My mother cried when it happened, but she managed to cheer herself up by declaring that someday she’d find a way to put it to good use. Apparently that day had come.

  When it came time for the shrubs to be fitted for their costumes, I was filled with a sense of dread. What were Fennimore and the other guys going to do when my mother tried to get them to dress up in Astroturf and bathing caps?

  “Calling all shrubbery!” she cried.

  We followed her into her room. On the table she’d laid out the capes and caps and six pairs of bright-green boxer shorts decorated with shamrocks.

  “Mom, do you expect us to wear underwear onstage?” I asked in horror when I saw them. “In front of everybody?”

  “It’s not underwear, Guysie, it’s a costume.”

  “Looks like underwear to me,” said Max.

  “St. Patrick’s Day underwear to be exact,” added Greg.

  “I think they’re perfect,” my mother said. “Clover is vegetation just like shrubs are. And besides that, they were half price at Finnigan’s, since they’re left over from last season.”

  “Gee, I wonder why,” grumbled Alex.

  “Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that nobody would be caught dead wearing them?” said Henry.

  “Uh, duh,” said Greg.

  Fennimore said nothing.

  We all tried on the capes and bathing caps and reluctantly slipped the shamrock boxers over our jeans. You’ve never seen a sadder bunch of bushes in your life.

  “Perfect!” my mother pronounced with satisfaction. “All we need is a little green greasepaint for your hands and faces.”

  My mom went to get some safety pins from the office to help tighten up Alex’s boxers, which kept falling down. As soon as she left, the other shrubs turned to me. Or rather, on me.

  “Strang, you’ve got to do something about your mother. If we go out onstage dressed in these outfits, we’re never going to live it down. Brudhauser will torture us for the rest of our lives,” Max said.

  “Yeah, Strang—you may not mind looking like a geek, but we don’t want to,” said Greg.

  “We’re wasting our time talking to him about this,” said Henry, jerking his thumb toward me. “Look at him; he’s as weird as she is.”

  “Good point. Strang and his mom already messed up poor Fennimore here. Let’s get out of here before she does the same to us. Come on, Fennimore—you’ve suffered enough.”

  The five of them took off their costumes and went back to the classroom, leaving me behind. It was so unfair. My haircut made me a geek, but Fennimore’s haircut made him “poor Fennimore,” just another sorry victim of those horrible Strangs. My mother returned a minute later with the safety pins.

  “What’s the matter? Where is everyone?” she asked when she saw the look on my face.

  “Where does it look like they are? They’re gone, Mom.”

  “To the bathroom, you mean?” she asked.

  “No. They left for good.”

  “Why on earth would they do that?”

  “Why? Because they’re afraid
of us, that’s why. They think we’re weird. And you know what? They’re right.”

  “Oh, pooh. I know people think I’m a little left of center, but you? You’re as normal as apple pie, sweet pleat.”

  “Yeah, but don’t forget where the apples for that pie came from,” I said. “Face it, I’m doomed for life, Mom. Doomed and bald.”

  “You’re not bald,” said a familiar twangy voice behind me. “Besides, according to this fashion magazine my mama showed me last night, the buzz cut is back. We’re not dweebs—we’re hip, Guy. And you know what? So are these wild costumes, if you ask me.”

  I turned around and watched in amazement as Fennimore walked over to the pile of costumes on the table and pulled on a cape and bathing cap. “How do I look?” he asked my mother.

  She adjusted his cape a little and pulled the cap down lower on his forehead.

  He looked ridiculous.

  “Perfect,” she said. Then she handed him a pair of boxer shorts. He started to put them on, but then he stopped. “Mrs. Strang,” he said, “you’re the boss. So if you tell us that shrubs have to wear green underwear onstage, I’ll do it, and I think Guy will go along with that too. Right, Guy?”

  He looked at me. I shrugged, and he continued. “But if you ask me, I don’t think the rest of those guys are going to go along with it. That means Guy and I would be the only shrubs.”

  “That would be a shame,” my mother said, sadly surveying the pile of costumes she’d worked so hard on.

  “But I have a suggestion,” Fennimore went on. “Instead of boxers, what do you think of green sweatpants?”

  “Hey, that’s a great idea!” I said.

  “What do you think, Mrs. Strang?” asked Fennimore.

  My mom looked at Fennimore and smiled. Then she ran her hand gently over the top of his fuzzy head.

  “I think green sweatpants are wonderful,” she said. “And so, Fennimore Adams, are you.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A loud bang made me jump. It was the double doors of the emergency room swinging open. A nurse pushed a hospital gurney out of the room. Buzz was lying on it, looking pale and still, and Mrs. and Mr. Adams were walking next to it.