When Friendship Followed Me Home Page 4

  “Mold?”

  “Coffin?”

  “Do I need to smack the snot out of you?”

  “Sure, pick on the short kid. Now you’re a tough guy. My hero. Are you going to eat the rest of that?”

  “What, you want to lick the plate?” I said. He did, too.

  After school I picked up Flip and we went to the library. I looked through the window and saw the place was packed. Somebody was bound to hiss, “No dogs allowed!” I rapped on the glass until Mrs. Lorentz came out.

  “I did what Halley said. I started getting Flip certified as a therapy dog.”

  “Totally awesome,” Mrs. Lorentz said. “Coincidentally, she started looking into setting up the reading clinic here. She was just talking about you, in fact. She said, ‘I bet sci-fi boy shows up in ten minutes.’ That was—”

  “Ten minutes ago,” Halley said as she came outside. She wore a red beret and a black hoodie with white writing on the front that said: I WRITE, THEREFORE I AM. She scooped up Flip and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “You know on the back wall inside, the picture Dreamland at Night?” she said.

  “It’s my favorite.”

  “It’s everybody’s.” She grabbed my hand and led me toward the water.

  I’d never held hands with anybody before, especially in front of their mom.

  “I’m not crushing on you,” she said.

  “No, I know,” I said. “Just friends, totally.”

  “Just? What’s better than friends? Sorry my hands are freezing.”

  “I don’t mind,” I said.

  She double squeezed my hand and we didn’t say anything for a while and just walked sort of fast. We both breathed hard. Then she said, “So?”

  “So.”

  “What’s your dad do?”

  “Who knows?” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

  I shrugged. “My mom’s a speech pathologist, though.”

  “That’s awesome.”

  “What’s your dad do?” I said.

  “He’s a magician. What’s with the face?”

  “No, that’s cool.”

  “It is, at least that’s what everybody says except you.”

  “They’re sneaky,” I said. “Their purpose in life is to trick you.”

  “To make you believe,” she said.

  “In what?”

  “A hundred and eleven.” She showed me her palm. She’d retraced the backward imprint from Monday with a sparkly purple marker.

  “The magic box,” she said.

  The magic box. I blinked it away. “It’s actually called a magic square,” I said. “Besides, that’s math, not magic.”

  “They’re the same thing,” she said.

  “I kind of had a bad experience with a magician this one time.” I blinked harder to push it back.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “What’s your book about?” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’ll show you.”

  We went to the new Luna Park. It was closed that day, but we looked through the fence. The golden tower from 1905 was gone. Flip begged me to pick him up. This seagull was giving him bad eyes, like he’d make a nice snack. The roller-coaster track was one of those high-tech ones, just one long mean rail slicing up the gray sky. “I like the old one better,” I said.

  “I love ’em both,” Halley said.

  “The 1905 one was all silvery and soft gold.”

  “Because it’s a black-and-white picture, hello? The new one’s bright. Look at all that pink paint. Anyway, you’d be able to go back and visit the old one if I let you read my novella. Which of course I totally won’t, not ever, which is a shame since the most pivotal scene in the whole entire story is set in Luna Park, 1905.”

  “I understand. I won’t push you—”

  “Okay, okay already, if you insist. But for all my bravado I’m actually spectacularly fragile when it comes to my art, so even if you hate it, tell me you love it. I’m perfectly okay with being lied to on that score.”

  “Deal.”

  She huffed. “So there’s this girl.”

  “There always is,” I said.

  “She runs away to Luna Park.”

  “The new one or the old one?”

  “Both.”

  “Interesting,” I said. “Why’s she run away? Crummy parents?”

  “They died instantly in a car crash.”

  “They always do.”

  “Well, you have to get rid of them somehow, and that seemed the most merciful yet expeditious way. Otherwise how do you turn her into an orphan? This is a middle grade story, like for ages ten to fourteen, and the rule is you need an orphan.”

  “I hear you.”

  “The girl, she has these flying dreams all the time. She thinks they mean she’s supposed to be a trapeze artist, so she starts training to do that. You know the ride where you can do the trapeze, and you’re connected to safety cables in case you fall? Well, she’s the one who hooks you up to the wires.”

  “The ride attendant.”

  “At night, when the park closes, she practices. Problem is, she’s not very good. She doesn’t have the confidence, you know? She needs somebody to cheer her on.”

  “This is where the boy comes in. Let me guess: He’s the guy who keeps the lights on for her after the park shuts down. The park electrician or whatever, right?”

  “No, but I like that. I may steal it.”

  “All yours. Everybody’s always stealing from me anyway.”

  “What do they steal?” she said. “Are you rich? I’m both suspicious of and fascinated by rich people.”

  “For a twelve-year-old I do okay. I have probably like the third-biggest coupon delivery route in my whole district.”

  “Golly.”

  “Thanks. Yeah. So how do they meet in the first place, the girl and the boy?”

  “Through the girl’s friend, this magician who works at the park,” she said, “and I’m going to stop right there for now. You’ll have to meet my dad before I can continue.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you have to believe in magic for this story to work, and Mercurious Raines is the best person to get you there.”

  “Mercurious Raines?”

  “Yup. Okay, so from what you’ve heard so far, the setup, what do you think?”

  “I love it.”

  “You’re lying again.” She pecked my cheek and grabbed Flip and they went down to the water. She cheered Flip on as he chased the wave froth. The sun came through here and there and it was like spotlights. One of them passed over Halley and she was gold for around ten or eleven seconds.

  • • •

  All I could think about on the way home was that I didn’t want to move to Florida now. Flip started whimpering as we came to my apartment building, probably because the rain was starting, I figured. Nope.

  I stepped into the apartment and saw an old lady sitting at the kitchen table with Mom. Flip jumped into the woman’s lap. She smothered him with kisses and said, “Darling, how Mommy missed you!”

  12

  THE TRAVELER FROM THE PAST

  Flip licked the tears out of the old lady’s eyes. Her clothes were dirty, her sneakers worn thin. She showed me a grimy picture, her and Flip all cuddled up in front of a pine tree lit silver and red. In the picture the woman looked nice, pretty clothes, sweet smile. The dog’s tail wasn’t bent and chomped. It was all fluffed up like somebody went at it with a blow dryer for an hour and a half. “Spencer’s first Christmas,” she said.

  “We’ve been calling him Flip,” I said. When the dog heard the name Halley gave him he squirmed out of the woman’s arms and hopped up into my lap. He was shiveri
ng.

  “Where do you live?” Mom said. She poured the woman coffee.

  The woman called out, “Spencer. Here now, my angel.”

  I set him down. He hesitated. He went to her, licked her hand once and came right back to me.

  The woman nodded. “I see,” she said. She looked around our nice comfy kitchen. She stopped on the picture of Laura. She looked at Flip in my arms. “Spencer seems to have found a fine, safe home here,” the woman said. “Flip, I mean. He seems to have found himself a family.”

  I wasn’t going to say anything to that, but Mom was halfway into “Well, now, let’s talk about this,” when the woman just up and ran out of our apartment.

  “Ben, get the umbrella and come with me,” Mom said. “Leave Flip here.”

  The elevator doors closed just as we got to them. By the time the next one came and we got to the lobby, the woman was gone. We went outside. Here it was September, and the air was cold with all the rain. It tore the leaves from the trees. Then I saw her at the end of the street, sitting on the curb.

  “Come back inside,” Mom said. “We’ll have some nice hot soup.”

  “Forty dollars,” the woman said. “I got sick and had to go into the hospital. I couldn’t pay my doctor’s bills. I lost my apartment. They don’t let animals into the homeless shelters. We slept in the waiting rooms at the airport terminals, traipsing from one to the other when the security guards made us move. When I fell asleep, a man tried to take Spencer. After that we slept in the ATM lobbies. I was begging out in front of the bank one night, holding the door for people on their way to the cash machine. A woman said she would give me forty dollars for Spencer. She seemed like a nice woman. I thought Spencer would be safer with her.”

  “You were going to sell him again, if we gave him to you just now, right?” I said.

  “Ben,” Mom said. “I won’t have you talking that way to our fellow traveler.”

  “She’s not my fellow anything.”

  “I could never do that to him again,” the old woman said. “I still can’t believe I did it. I couldn’t feed him anymore. I couldn’t feed me. I was starving.”

  “Do you see how messed up his tail is?”

  “Not another word, son,” Mom said. “Come with us,” she said to the lady. “I can help you find the help you need.”

  “What I need is money.”

  Mom took all the money out of her wallet and gave it to the woman. “Ben, give our friend here whatever you have.”

  I reached into my pocket. “I only have a dollar,” I lied. All year round I delivered those coupons before school, rain, sleet, heat, snow. In winter I shoveled sidewalks and driveways on the block where the people owned one-family houses. In summer I washed their cars and weeded their gardens. First Rayburn and now this lady. Why should I hand over my money to somebody who sold Flip to a stranger? I was so mad I didn’t even want to let her have the crumpled dollar.

  “Give it to her,” Mom said.

  I put the bill into the woman’s hand, and she took off.

  Mom nudged me to follow her. “Here, go, give her the umbrella.”

  The lady wouldn’t take it. She kept going.

  “Thank you, Ben,” Mom said.

  “It was just a stupid dollar.”

  “It was everything.”

  • • •

  That night Flip did great at his training session for the therapy dog certification. He already knew lots of tricks, roll over and play dead and even this one called the fighter. The guy running the class said, “Flip, box.” That little dog stood on his hind legs and jabbed the air with his front paws. I couldn’t stop thinking about the old lady and how many hours she must have spent teaching him that one.

  It took a long time to get home. The rain made the trains run slow. Mom nudged me. “Cheer up.”

  I took Flip out of the backpack and he snored in my lap and I cheered up.

  13

  THE UNEXPECTED SOLUTION TO THE FLORIDA PROBLEM

  Thursday was good all through school because Rayburn was “out sick” again. On the way home Mold wanted me to come over and chill for a round or two of Infinite Crisis, but Flip and I had a date with Halley, except it wasn’t a date. “She’s a friend,” I said.

  “That’s not what I asked,” Chucky said. He’d asked if she was a babe.

  “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  Chucky rolled his eyes. “Compared to Mystique from X-Men, beautiful like that?”

  “There’s no comparison. Mystique is completely blue and this girl’s a rainbow.”

  “Mystique is also completely naked,” Chucky said. “A rainbow, huh? Dude, the way you talk sometimes? You’re a riddle wrapped inside an enchilada.”

  “Enigma.”

  “See, like right there. Quit looking so bummed out.” We were at the corner where we usually split up, but I guess Chucky could tell I needed to talk, because he went with me up the block, toward my building. Turns out he should’ve just gone home.

  “I’m setting up this whole Read to Rufus thing, and in nine months I’m out of here.”

  “So you set up another one in Florida,” Chucky said. “Of course the rainbow babe won’t be in Florida, but there’s still tons of chicks down there.” He slugged my shoulder. “Ow,” he said. “Bony shoulder you got there. Ow,” he said again.

  Rayburn had just slapped him in the back of the head. “Pockets,” he said. Angelina giggled and Ronda just looked mean.

  Chucky turned his pockets inside out: nothing but an empty Skittles wrapper.

  “Let’s go, Coffin,” Rayburn said.

  “No,” I said.

  “What?” Rayburn said.

  “What?” Chucky said.

  “What?” Angelina said.

  “Coffin, don’t be mental,” Ronda said.

  Rayburn shoved me, but I stayed on my feet. “No,” I said.

  “Good for you, Ben,” Chucky said.

  “Shut up, Mold.” Rayburn cracked him across the mouth. I shoved Rayburn and then everybody went nuts. Rayburn was belting me and Angelina was kicking Chucky and Ronda was yelling for everybody to stop being mental and shoving everybody in sight. Half a minute later they were gone and my pockets were empty. The idiot took my headphones too.

  I don’t know how long it was before I could breathe anywhere near normal. I was on my back, looking up. The pigeons were looking down at me from where they hung out under the elevated train tracks and pooped on everybody. Chucky kept asking me if I was okay, I think. I had a hard time understanding him because his lip was stuck to his braces. We huddled behind the dumpster—always dumpsters for us—and got ourselves together. “Do I need stitches?” Chucky said.

  “No, it’s just a fat lip. Quit crying,” I said. “Quit it!”

  • • •

  I wiped the blood from my nose and turned my sweatshirt inside out to hide the rest of it. No way was I telling Mom. She’d be on the phone with Mrs. Pinto before the words were out of my mouth, and things would be ten times worse in school. I’d explain away the fat eye with the old gym excuse, “I got nailed in dodge ball.”

  When I got home Flip wasn’t at the door waiting for me. “Flip? C’mon bud, let’s go see Halley.”

  He crawled out of Mom’s room real fast to my feet. I picked him up and boy was he trembling.

  This old lady was in my mother’s room, facedown on the floor. It took me a few seconds before I figured out who it was, even though she wasn’t supposed to be home from work for another two hours. “Mom?”

  She was cold the way you can’t be when you’re alive. It looked like she died in the middle of putting on her sneakers. That was the other reason we were moving to Florida—her health. Her heart acted a little fluttery in the New York winter, she said.

  The weirdest thing? I was kind of mad at her. What the
heck was I supposed to do now?

  14

  ITCHY SOCKS

  The next four days passed in a blur. I didn’t sleep, didn’t have one asthma attack, didn’t cry one tear. I was actually kind of mellow. It’s not like any of this was a surprise. Here was the proof: Nothing perfect lasts forever.

  I do remember one thing very clearly, breakfast the first day of the wake. I was making myself some Cap’n Crunch when Aunt Jeanie came in and said, “That’s not a proper breakfast, Ben. That’s not even food. Let me make you something that’s—oh!” She clutched her chest, like she was about to follow in Mom’s footsteps. “Your slacks!”

  They were a little short. I must have grown another inch in the last year, since the last time I wore them to my interview for my coupon delivery job, which everybody laughed at me for—but hey, I got the job. “You can see your socks!”

  “Only a little,” I said, lowering my pants some, except they were already below where my butt crack started.

  “They’re white!”

  “So?” That’s what Mom would have said. “So they see your socks, Ben? Is the world going to stop spinning? You look cool. In fact, I might wear my slacks like that too.” And she would have hiked them right up and laughed. Aunt Jeanie, on the other hand, turned into a freakazoid. “Let’s go,” she said. “In the car. Now.” The whole way over to Macy’s she kept saying, “This is a disaster. You poor dear. If Tess could see us now, she’d have my head on a platter.”

  Really, she would have said, Jeanie? Take a pill.

  “We’ll get you fixed right up, don’t you worry at all.”

  “I’m really not worried, though,” I said.

  “You poor thing.” She called ahead for them to have a pair of slacks ready for us. She was like the queen when we walked in there. The sales assistant practically bowed to her. She waved him off and said, “Absolutely not,” when the guy suggested a pair of pants that were only half lame, sort of comfy-looking like jeans but with dress pants material, very shiny. “We’re not going out to a nightclub, Angelo. We’re going to my big sister’s . . .” She got all teary.