Catch My Drift Read online

  “Two minutes,” Durant says. I stare hard at the pizza, trying to remember. I draw some more lines. Then I attach a little neck, a small head and some feet. I draw a little flower for Ernie to eat. Then Durant says to trade our papers for grading. I take Valerie Calorie’s from her, but I don’t give her mine.

  “What’s your problem?” she says, hands on her hips.

  “What’s yours?”

  “You’re supposed to give me that!” She tries to grab my paper from me, but I hold it down with my fist. She pulls harder and it rips in two. She gets the chunk with the picture of Ernie and laughs with her mouth open wide. “You’re the one with the problem,” she says. “You’re retarded.”

  I grab the black magic marker from inside my desk and swipe it across her yellow sweater. She squeals and jumps backwards, eyes blinking like crazy and searching for Durant. I put the tip of the marker on my own sweater and draw a faint line so I can say she attacked me first, but Durant sees me do it.

  I get sent to see Ms. Del Degan, the new principal with the powdery face. She is away at a dentist appointment, which is lucky, but the secretary makes me stay anyway. She gives me a piece of foolscap and tells me to write a letter of apology to Valerie. She doesn’t care that Valerie said I was retarded. She gnashes a piece of gum and laughs into the phone. I can’t think of anything to write to Valerie except that she should be more like a fraction and get skinnier.

  “You didn’t get very far,” the secretary says when the bell finally rings. “Not too bright. Now you’ll have to do it for homework.”

  After school I jump whenever the phone rings because it might be Mrs. Calorie or Durant calling Mom to complain about me. I sit on my bed and try writing the letter again. Dear Valerie, I’m sorry I got mad today and drew on you. I shouldn’t have done it. Hope we can still be friends. The last part is definitely a lie, but it’s what Durant and the secretary will want. I decide to ask Jed what he thinks because at least he’ll think it’s cool that I got in trouble. He got sent to Ms. Del Degan last year for poking little pins through the skin on his fingertips and chasing after Mandy Mahon, who actually has cool boobs.

  I hear music coming from Jed’s room down the hall. He has a special knocker on his door that’s been there since Halloween a million years ago. When you pull the handle, a cowboy voice says, “Dodge, Kansas, leave your guns at the door!” I try it, but no one comes. When I push the door open a crack, I see Jed and Toby looking down at his record player. Jed is holding Ernie over the turntable. He puts him down shell-first. “Watch this,” he says. “He’ll go flying.”

  I look at Ernie’s tiny, twitching legs. “You’ll hurt him.”

  Jed turns around, hair hanging over his eyes. “Private property.”

  “Don’t do it.”

  “Turtles don’t feel anything. They have shells,” Toby says. “Don’t be gay.”

  “Don’t make references to people’s sexual preferences.”

  Toby squints at me like this is the stupidest thing he ever heard anyone say.

  “Ignore her,” Jed tells Toby. “She’s a retard.”

  “He’s my turtle too.”

  Jed turns up the volume on Amazulu’s “Montego Bay” and takes his finger off Ernie’s pale yellow belly. Ernie spins around slowly at first and then faster when Jed flips the player to chipmunk-speed. I watch Ernie drift closer and closer to the edge of the record. My heart is pounding like crazy, but I’m afraid I’ll start to cry if I say anything. After a few seconds, Ernie flies off the turntable and lands right on his feet on Jed’s bed. Thank you God, I say in my head.

  “Fuckin’ A!” Toby picks Ernie up off the bed and lobs him to Jed. Jed catches him and slams the door.

  I’m still standing in the hallway when Mom comes around to tell Jed and Toby to get ready for hockey practice. She asks if I want to come along with them and have hot chocolate, but there’s no way I’m going. Now that I’m in fifth grade, she lets me stay home by myself for up to two hours. It’s enough time to save Ernie.

  I go back to Jed’s room after they leave. It smells like dirty laundry and vinegar, and I have to step around shiny, naked records to get to the tank. Ernie is asleep on a big plastic rock.

  “Hey there, Ern!” Ernie jumps from his rock and swims down to the gravel. “I’m sorry that Jed’s mean now.” The back of the tank is coated in brown slime and it gets on the sleeve of my sweater when I reach in to pick him up.

  I put Ernie on the palm of my hand. He feels heavy, almost as big as my whole hand now. I stroke Ernie’s shell with my fingers, tracing his waxy lines. “I’m going to save you, OK? I’ll tell Mom what Jed did to you and how your tank’s all sick.” When my fingers get close to Ernie’s head, he opens his mouth up wide like he’s going to yawn, but instead of yawning, he lunges at my finger. I jump backwards like Valerie Calorie and Ernie flips from my palm and crashes off the edge of the tank and onto the floor. His head, arms, and legs all go sucking back into his shell.

  I watch to see if Ernie will move, but nothing happens. I’m afraid to touch him, so I poke his shell gently with my toe. “Come on, Ernie. You’re OK.” Ernie has never snapped before. Jed has made evil Ernie come out.

  Ernie stays completely still. I kneel down and scrape him up with one of Jed’s records. Two legs wiggle a little, but his head stays scrunched in. I slide Ernie off the record, back into the tank. He doggy paddles on one side, but his body keeps dipping underwater. I pick him up carefully and drop him on the rock where he’d been sleeping. “Just stay there,” I whisper.

  I close the tank and leave the bedroom as fast and controlled as I can. Please let Ernie be OK. Please let Ernie be OK.

  Back in my room, I pick up my note to Valerie Calorie. When I read it again, I see that the printing looks sideways and stupid. Durant always says my printing is clumsy, at least two years below grade level. I rip up the letter. Rip it into tinier and tinier pieces until it’s like snow covering my comforter. When I hear the slam of the car door outside, I scoop up the scraps and toss them under my bed.

  I don’t see Ernie dead. Jed finds him. I hear Mom in the hall telling Jed that it was probably an infection that killed Ernie. “You took good care of him, sweetheart,” she says. “Nothing lasts forever.”

  Mom says there is sad news and asks me to come down to the kitchen to talk. While she explains about Ernie, Jed keeps his eyes on me.

  “Did you notice anything unusual about Ernie?” Mom asks. “Anything that was different today or yesterday?”

  “I don’t know.” I look at Jed. His neck and ears are bright pink.

  Mom asks if we want to have a funeral for Ernie or do anything special to say goodbye. We both say no. She takes the chocolate ice cream out of the freezer and scoops out two large bowls. “Well,” she says, “Christmas is coming.” She tugs my ponytail gently. “You both loved Ernie. Should we talk about another kind of pet?”

  Jed and I stare at our melting bowls of chocolate ice cream. When the phone rings, Mom waits a few seconds and then goes to answer it. I think that if it’s Mrs. Calorie or Durant, I really don’t care. But it’s just Ian, her boss. She sounds all cheerful on the phone, not like someone whose turtle just died.

  The next day at school, my desk gets moved up against Durant’s. It’s the first time she’s done that, and I can’t turn around and look at the class without my whole face burning. At recess, Durant makes me stay inside to do extra math sheets, which is fine because no one wants to play with me anyway. They think I’ll get them in trouble or ruin their clothes. Erica B., who has the best clothes, said I made the stuffing come out of her ski jacket, and then Valerie sucked up to her by saying she saw me pull it. I get disinvited from Kathleen’s birthday party, which is supposed to have a lip-synch contest.

  After a week, I get my old desk back, but the situation is actually worse. I’m switched to Room 12 for one hour of math every morning with Ms. Graham.

  The retard room is big and sunny with round tables instead of
desks. There’s only about five kids in there at one time, so mostly I get Ms. Graham to myself. Ms. Graham wears big felt hats and says weird things like “Rootin’ tootin’!” whenever I do something right, but at least Valerie’s not there. We play Connect 4 and Mastermind, and on Thursdays she gives me ten minutes of Math’s a Blast! on the computer. She says if I get perfect on the fractions test before Christmas, I can have pizza to celebrate.

  After school, I study alone in my bedroom, doing each question on my practice sheet over and over until I know the answers by heart. The day before the test, Jed stops by my door and stands there watching me.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Mom says maybe you want help.” He stares at the carpet while he talks.

  “Well, I don’t.”

  He takes a step in. “It’s fine if you do. Did you know that four out of three people have trouble with fractions?”

  “I told you I don’t need help!”

  Jed backs out of the door, his palms held up. “Whoa! Sorry!” It’s only after he leaves that I realize he was trying to tell a joke.

  Anyway, I really don’t need help because Ms. Graham’s Christmas fractions test is so easy. I get all ten questions, plus the two bonuses. It turns out that everyone is getting pizza, but Ms. Graham specifically ordered Hawaiian just for me. All the other retards wanted pepperoni. When she brings it in, I think we’re going to eat it together at the round table, but she has her own bagged lunch. “I’m on a diet,” she says, patting her stomach. “Plus it’s for you, kiddo! You earned it.”

  “I can’t eat the whole thing.” I’ve never heard of a teacher giving a kid a whole entire pizza before.

  “Share it with your friends in the lunchroom.” She holds up ten fingers. “If you give three friends two slices, how much of the pizza will you have left?”

  She should know that question is too easy for me. “Four out of ten. Four-tenths.”

  “Good.” She nudges the pizza box toward me. “I won’t even bug you to reduce it this time.”

  When the lunch bell rings a minute later, I step out into the hallway with the pizza box, but I don’t feel hungry anymore. I don’t want a retard treat that not even Ms. Graham will share with me.

  While everyone else is having lunch inside, I head for the playground and the bench furthest away from the doors. It’s almost cold enough to snow, but the pizza box is warm on my thighs. I gobble the first two slices so fast that I don’t taste a thing.

  “You’re eating a whole pizza all by yourself?”

  I close the lid and look up at Valerie Calorie’s greedy face. She must have finished her lunch inside in one minute flat. Piglet. She puts her hands on her hips. “Give me a slice?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll tell Durant.”

  It’s not worth it. Durant already hates me. I give her the smallest slice and watch her flick the pineapples onto the ground.

  “Who let you have a pizza?” she talks with her mouth full.

  “Ms. Graham.”

  “Aw. She feels sorry for you because you’re stupid.”

  “No she doesn’t.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  In another minute, all of Valerie’s dorky friends start crowding around. I give out more warm slices, just wanting the dumb pizza to disappear.

  When Toby comes up, there are only two slices left. Seventh and eighth graders don’t normally get the same lunch period as us, but Toby and Jed have yard duty on Fridays. They’re supposed to push little kids on the tire swing and break up fights and show good citizenship, but mostly they just hang off the fence and talk about hockey and Saturday Night Live.

  “Where did you get the pizza?” Toby puts his basketball shoe up on the bench next to me.

  “None of your beeswax.”

  “Yeah, it is.” He licks the silver inside of a chip bag with his fat tongue. “I’m on duty. I need to know everything.”

  Valerie Calorie has sauce on her chin. “Ms. Graham gave it to her.”

  “Ms. Graham from the retard room?” Toby snatches my last slices. “What’s two minus two, retard?”

  I don’t answer him. I don’t care.

  Toby waggles the slices in the air. “Oh my god. You don’t even know two minus two!”

  Valerie squeals and claps her hands. “She doesn’t. She really doesn’t.”

  “Yeah, I do.” But I’m only looking at Valerie. I guess it makes Toby mad because he shoves me hard on the shoulder. I fall over the bench and land on my butt. I expect people to laugh, but when I scramble up, no one is even watching me. Everyone is looking at Jed. Jed, who came out of nowhere but now has Toby in a headlock. The pizza slices he stole are face down on the asphalt.

  “Get the fuck off me!” Toby swings his arms. Jed grunts with the effort to hold him in place. Valerie and her stupid friends make a circle around them.

  When Toby manages to get free, he goes for a punch, but Jed tackles him easily down to the ground. I see Valerie running off to get a lunch lady.

  “What’s your problem, Ketchum?” Toby’s voice comes out high and everyone laughs.

  Jed doesn’t answer, he just keeps panting in Toby’s face.

  “Teacher’s coming!” someone yells.

  When Jed gets up, he doesn’t look my way at all. He just dusts off his knees, gives Toby the finger and walks away.

  A round, red-faced lunch lady comes rushing high-speed toward us like some kind of tomato on wheels. She blows a whistle from a chain on her neck, which gets even more people staring. The fight really should be over, but Toby’s too pissed. He rushes up behind Jed and kicks him in the butt. Jed trips forward but doesn’t fall; he swings around and punches Toby bam on the mouth. By the time the lunch lady arrives, wheezing and pressing her hands to her knees, Toby is bleeding. I hide the pizza box under the bench.

  When Mom comes home that night, there’s a call from Ms. Del Degan, of course. Jed gets grounded for the Christmas holidays, and I expect him to drag me down too, but he doesn’t say anything about the pizza. I’m glad Mom doesn’t have to find out I’m a loser at school now on top of being dumb at math. Mom’s always worried about what I’m good at and whether I have friends. In October, I lied and told her I was going to be the lead in a version of Cats that my class was putting on. On parent-teacher interview night, I asked her three times not to mention the play to Durant. If they talked about it, if she found out I was a liar, she never said.

  It does nothing but rain for the first holiday week off school, so Jed doesn’t really miss anything and just hides out in his room. Sam Grossman from down the block, my only friend these days, and probably because she isn’t from school, gives me a bag of chocolate Hanukah coins that I slip under Jed’s bedroom door. He pushes the coins back.

  The first day there’s snow, Jed works on a comic book at the kitchen table while I get ready to go tobogganing with Sam. Mom obviously feels sorry for Jed because she suddenly says she’d be perfectly happy to reduce his punishment if he can offer a good explanation for his actions. “Violence is never the right answer. But if I understood—”

  “Toby’s a dick,” Jed says.

  Mom crosses her arms. “What does that mean to you?”

  “Same thing it means to you.”

  “So why now? Why hit him all of sudden. I’m curious to know.”

  “I’m a bully, OK? Ms. Del Degan already told you.”

  “That’s not what she told me, exactly.” Mom turns to both of us. “Toby is no weakling. If he were, this would be a different conversation.”

  Jed stares at the window. Mom keeps her eyes on him a moment, then goes back to the sink. “Suit yourself,” she says.

  When Jed turns around, I give him a small smile. He squinches his eyes and shakes his face at me like “What? What’s your problem?” Then he gathers his pencils and goes back to his room.

  Vacancy

  Winter, 1989

  When the doorbell rang, Lorna was in front of the fridge, eating peanut butte
r directly from the jar. She’d been at the Y pool the last couple of hours while her real estate agent, Brenda, another single mom from Quit4Life, showed the house. Now the showings were over, the kids were still at friends’ homes, and Lorna had a moment’s peace. She wanted badly to ignore the bell, but the chance it could be her neighbour’s seventeen-year-old daughter, locked out again, made her answer it.

  Lorna fluffed her bangs and unlocked the door. A woman stood smiling in a damp coat. She scrunched up her nose, apologetic. “I know the open house ended a couple of hours ago.” She glanced over her shoulder at the lawn sign. “But is there any way? My husband and I are just here for the weekend.”

  Lorna didn’t know how to show a house, but there wasn’t much to lose. Brenda said business had been slow. It was a wet, early March weekend and, according to Brenda, only five couples had come through earlier and none of them struck her as “real serious.” Lorna managed a wide, Brenda-esque smile for the woman. “Lorna Kedzie. I live here,” she said. “But come on in. I’ll show you around.”

  “I’m Amanda,” the woman said, removing her coat and shaking rain onto the foyer floor. “My husband’s just parking.” She looked behind her. “This is a cute block. Is it always hard to park?”

  “Once you’re a resident on the street, you can get an annual pass,” Lorna said. “It’s easy.” She had no idea if it was easy; Alex had taken care of it every year. She took Amanda’s coat, noting a rounded bump underneath her sweater.

  Amanda was attractive in a way that reminded Lorna of a morning TV news anchor. Thirty at most, with a smooth layer of baby fat still in her face. Her brown hair sprung cheerfully off her scalp. She bent down to remove her leather boots.

  “Oh, you don’t need to do that,” Lorna said. “We wear our shoes all the time.”

  “But they’re dirty.” Amanda looked up at Lorna with a tilted, prudish expression. “And wet.”

  Chastened, Lorna batted her hand. “Right, I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

  Amanda lined her boots neatly against the radiator while Lorna backed up to the rug in the middle of the small foyer, conscious of the squeak of her running shoes on the linoleum.