Stu Truly Page 4

  I ate my last four pancakes and excused myself.

  Up in my room, I reviewed the load of homework that had been heaped on me before the weekend. My math, English, science, and history teachers had apparently masterminded a diabolical plan to ruin my days off. If I started now, I could be done by June. Using time travel, I could then return to the past and turn in all my assignments on Monday. Whether to work first on my homework or a method of time travel perplexed me. I opted to head over to Ben’s house.

  As I neared his street, I found myself slowing. This seemed strange since usually I sped up the closer I got to his house. Ben and I had known each other since we were babies. Even when I couldn’t stand the sight of the guy, I’d always rushed to get from my house to his. Except today. Today, I ground to a halt a full two blocks from my destination. And there I stood, hands at my side and a bewildered expression on my face. What was I doing? For a moment, a pang of fear shot through me. I wasn’t feeling guilty about ditching my homework, was I? The thought made my hands go cold and a chill run up my spine. It couldn’t be that. What, then?

  An image flashed to mind. I tried to shut it out, but it returned. An image of a girl. The girl. Becca. I was beginning to sweat. The zombie warlord in my chest woke up. I suddenly realized I was standing in the middle of the street in front of Becca’s house. Panic exploded within as I retreated behind a parked car. My eyes glanced toward her porch, perched up off the street like the prow of a mighty ship. Empty. The steps leading up to the porch, empty. The front windows, empty. Nothing to worry about.

  “What are you doing hiding behind that car?” Ben asked from behind me.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. Why would a best friend do something like that? I tried to clear my brain and push her from my mind. To lie to my best friend, I needed all my wits about me. “I don’t know,” I croaked at last.

  “You’re freaking me out,” he replied. “Are you spying on Becca or something?”

  The zombie warlord hammered out a warning in Morse code on my ribs. I took a breath. It would feel good to admit the truth. “No, of course not,” I said with all the earnestness I could muster. “You’ve got to be joking. I don’t even like her.” This was probably going a bit far, but I was over the edge by this point.

  “Oh,” Ben said, his voice sounding anxious. “Yeah, I don’t like anyone, either.”

  I paused. I hadn’t suggested he did. Why would I? He was Ben. He didn’t like girls. I nearly spit out my tongue. He didn’t like girls, did he? I wasn’t ready for the implications.

  “Wanna play Death Intruders 4?”

  The look on Ben’s face changed from anxiety to relief. “Yeah, of course. I made it to level fourteen,” he said eagerly. “There are zombies everywhere. Wait till you see.”

  I risked a last glance back at Becca’s house. Maybe it was only a reflection, but I thought I saw movement within. I returned my attention to Ben. “Cool.”

  The next few hours passed quickly. Somewhere along the way, between levels, we ate chips, devoured candy, and drank a half liter of orange soda. By midafternoon, my vision had blurred and my thumbs were beginning to cramp. Also, Ben’s mother had discovered the pile of books on his desk. She leapt to the conclusion that he needed to take a break from “playing silly games” and do something “that really matters.” I’ve never understood how a mother in her right mind is unable to see the relevance of a game where you learn how to defeat a zombie apocalypse. Do they think zombie apocalypses defeat themselves? Just because we’ve never had one doesn’t mean there isn’t one just waiting to happen. As carefully explained in Death Intruders 1, a zombie apocalypse is only a bad batch of wieners away. Ben and I have been boycotting hot dogs ever since. But as long as others keep eating them the best we can do is prepare ourselves for the worst. And hope it happens in our lifetime.

  The walk home was uneventful, despite pausing at the corner for about twenty minutes. To be clear, I was not waiting for anyone to happen by. I was simply a young man hanging out on the corner being cool, while glancing around to make sure Ben didn’t see me.

  When I finally got home, I found my father and his friends circled around the trailer. When I say friends, I mean the guys my father plays cards with once a month and whom my mother refers to as his “hick buddies.” My favorite, Harley, waved hello as I approached. He was not only named Harley but he rode one as well. He had already promised I could take it for a spin as soon as I was strong enough to hold it up. Considering the bike’s weight, I would need to become a circus strongman first. However, that didn’t prevent my mother from forbidding it. “I’ll be dead and gone before I’m gonna let you go riding a Harley,” she liked to say.

  “Hey, Stu,” Harley said, “what you been up to?”

  I stopped next to him. Harley was about six foot five and probably weighed 280. He had a handlebar mustache and low-slung sideburns that perfectly complemented his greasy black hair. He brushed back the strands hanging over his eyes.

  “Not much,” I replied. “Just been over at Ben’s playing Death Intruders 4. We made it to level eighteen.”

  “Dang,” he said. “I can’t get past level four.”

  My father walked up and put a hand on my shoulder. “Stu, we were just talking about you.”

  “How come?”

  He leaned in. “We’ve got an idea for the trailer that might need your help.”

  “Really? Does Mom know?”

  My father’s hand slid back like a vampire exposed to sunlight. “Your mother’s not here,” he said quietly. “For now, let’s keep this to ourselves, shall we?”

  “No problem,” I replied, “as long as you give me some idea what’s going on.”

  My father stepped back and inspected me like a crime boss looking over a new recruit. At last, he gave the others a knowing smile. “Okay,” he said. “This is just between you and us, but we’re going to build a float for this year’s parade.”

  Of all the possibilities that had run through my mind since the trailer appeared, a parade float had never been on the list. A parade float? Seriously? I checked everyone’s faces. They were all grinning from ear to ear.

  I nodded weakly. “A parade float. Excellent.”

  My father puffed out his chest. “Yep. Just you wait and see.”

  I looked again at the trailer sitting in the middle of the driveway. “How are you going to keep this a secret from Mom?”

  My father gave a knowing look to his cronies. “Oh, don’t you worry about that. We’ve got it all worked out.”

  I shook my head and walked into the house. Sure they did.

  Our town is known for its annual Irrigation Festival. You may have heard of it. Probably not. Long ago, irrigation ditches were dug to bring water into our valley from a nearby river so crops could be grown.

  Apparently that was a big deal back then and the reason Sequim, pronounced like “squid” but with an m at the end, grew from being an unknown town in western Washington to being a slightly less unknown town. These days, there’s not much in the way of farming going on. Mostly people move here to retire. As my father likes to say, Sequim is a great place to die. My second-grade teacher told me that was a “disturbing” viewpoint after I used it to explain why my grandmother had recently moved to town.

  The high point of the festival is the Irrigation Parade. The parade takes place on the first Saturday in May. People come from all over. They line Main Street hours in advance, sometimes parking overnight in campers just to reserve the best views. The parade is filled with all the sights and sounds our small town has to offer, including marching bands, clowns, drill teams, dog clubs, clowns, 4-H exhibits, more clowns, and, most important, floats.

  People in Sequim love their floats. They’ll spend months converting an old hay truck into a thing of beauty with flowers, streamers, sparklers, and sometimes even moving parts. One year, there was a float that looked like a flower garden with a giant papier-mâché bumblebee chasing a papier-mâché butterfly. Unf
ortunately, that year a storm hit. By the time the float reached us, the bee looked more like a pile of runny dog poop and the butterfly had melted down into a pair of flyswatters sticking out of an old boot.

  Personally, I’ve never found parade floats the least bit interesting. They seem to be more about celebrating the town’s royalty and carrying church groups singing “That Old-Time Religion” than about entertaining those of us under the age of sixty. Were I to see a float with live explosives on it or zombies rising from the dead, I might feel differently. But that never happens. For the most part, I just ignore them and focus on the good parts of the parade such as the cotton candy, the occasional clown tripping, and, well, mostly, the cotton candy.

  At dinner, I did my best to respect my father’s wishes concerning secrecy. It wasn’t easy. Especially after he used the mashed potatoes, bratwurst, and string beans on his plate to build what looked like a miniature parade float.

  “What are you doing?” my mother asked.

  My father gave me a quick wink. “Oh, nothing. Just playing with my food.”

  My brother stuck three beans in his mashed potatoes and began clubbing them with his bratwurst.

  “I think it’s time the shop needs some new marketing,” my father said.

  My mother directed my father’s attention to the slow death being inflicted on my brother’s green beans. “Do you see what he’s doing?”

  “Don’t club your beans,” my father said.

  “I’m playing with my food,” my brother replied, still clubbing his beans.

  “Don’t play with your food,” my father said.

  My brother crossed his arms. “It’s not fair.”

  My father took a large bite out of what had been the bed of the trailer. “See? Just eat.” He speared another bratwurst from the serving platter. “I’m thinking of doing something that will really grab people’s attention.”

  My mother’s eyes widened. “Does this have anything to do with that trailer?”

  My father jammed the bratwurst slice into his mouth along with the last of the mashed potato wheels. “Now where would you get that idea?”

  My mother shook her head. “Just promise me that trailer will not be used for anything other than hauling things.”

  “You have my word,” he replied, almost too quickly.

  My mother looked him up and down. “You better be telling the truth.”

  “Scout’s honor,” he replied with a reassuring smile.

  “You were never a scout.”

  “Hmm,” my father murmured. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  The remainder of the weekend was consumed with homework and time spent mulling over the mystery of the secret parade float. Not that I really spent much time on either. To be honest, I don’t know where the time went. Anyway, Monday came way too soon and PE class way too soonest of all. I found myself pressed against the gym wall with the other boys.

  “I can see you’re all excited about our unit on square dancing,” Mr. Snedaker said.

  Mr. Snedaker clearly misunderstood the meaning of excited since it was the last word any of us would choose to describe square dancing.

  “I promise none of you will die from the experience.”

  Who was he kidding?

  “And you might even enjoy it, if you give it half a chance.”

  The odds of us giving it half a chance were about as good as the odds we would suddenly sprout a beard and leg hair. I, for one, would die for some real leg hair, the kind that can be seen without magnification. But that wasn’t happening anytime soon. Currently, my downy soft arm hair was perfectly matched by my downy soft leg hair.

  “So, go ahead right now and grab a partner.”

  Say what? Me and all the boys pressed up against the wall trying to deny the reality of what was happening, while the girls took to gathering in small groups for protection. They peered about periodically while whispering among themselves. A few made eye contact, daring one of us to leave the safety of the wall. Instead, we clung to it like metal shavings to a magnet.

  Just when it appeared Mr. Snedaker would be forced to back down from his misguided attempt to socialize us, a lone figure stepped away from the wall and crossed into no-man’s-land. He had the broad shoulders and the lone chin hair of one already moving on a different plane from the rest of us. He approached the nearest clump of wide-eyed, not-quite-invisible girls. Then, in a single sentence, he altered the course of our middle school history.

  “Wanna be my partner?” Jackson asked.

  “Yes,” Becca answered.

  The zombie warlord in my chest lurched sideways, pounded one final, disgruntled thump on my ribs, then clambered out my backside and slid under the nearest set of bleachers. My other organs twisted together in a failed attempt to follow. When your organs turn against you, you know you’re in trouble.

  In the meantime, a flurry of activity took place around me. Boys asked girls, girls asked boys, Ben asked Kirsten. Ben did what? Had I just witnessed my best friend asking a girl to be his dance partner? My life flashed before my eyes. That wretched mostly man, Jackson! How could he do this to me? I had half a mind to yank that lone chin hair out and shove it up his—

  “Do you want to be my partner?”

  I spun to find Gretchen Gorst standing beside me. I remembered Gretchen vaguely from the last seven years of going to school together. Honestly, I’d never given her much thought. Just like all the other girls I had gone to school with for the last seven years. All I knew was that I’d rather be slowly eaten by a tag team of crocodiles than forced to hold hands with Gretchen while prancing around inside the gym. “Uhhhh, sure,” I stuttered.

  She let out a sigh of relief. I think she said something but my attention had returned to Jackson standing next to Becca. The neon gym lights made her skin look slightly green, but it was the most amazing green I had ever seen. Unlike Jackson, whose skin looked like the infected wieners that had started the zombie apocalypse in Death Intruders 1. I wished I had one of those wieners so I could sneak it into his lunch. We’d see who got the last laugh then.

  “Okay, now that everyone is paired up,” Mr. Snedaker said, raising both hands to get our attention, “it’s time you got acquainted with your partner.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Since when did we have to talk to them? This was getting serious.

  “I want you to take a few minutes and get to know each other. Find out your partner’s interests. What do you share in common?”

  What did we share in common? Who cares? I was sure she didn’t spend her afternoons playing Death Intruders. Beyond that, I really didn’t want to know.

  “Do you like to dance?”

  I turned to find her staring at me with expectant eyes. “Um—not really.”

  “Oh. I love to dance. I’ve been taking lessons since first grade.”

  I noticed the gym windows had not been cleaned in a very long time. If someone gave me a bucket and a sponge, I was more than willing to hang like a spider from the ceiling and make those babies shine. I’d even be okay to hang from the ceiling and lick them clean with my tongue. Anything to stop this conversation.

  “What do you like to do?”

  What I’d like to do is run screaming from the gym and then be run over by a car in the parking lot to end this nightmare. “Um, I like to play video games.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Do you like music?”

  Did I like music? Was that really a question? “Sure.”

  “Oh,” she said for like the five hundredth time. “I like Christie Moreno. She’s cool.”

  I had no idea who Christie Moreno was. Nor did I want to find out. Unless Christie knew how to get me out of here or was willing to run me over in the parking lot. “Yeah, she’s cool.”

  “Well, class,” Mr. Snedaker interrupted. “How’s it going? Discovering things in common?” He slithered through the jungle of nervous couples like a boa constrictor looking for prey to suffocate. He stopped next to Jack
son and Becca. “How about you two? What have you found in common?”

  Becca smiled. “We both have younger sisters who drive us crazy.”

  A ripple of nervous laughter passed through the class.

  Mr. Snedaker turned next to Ben and Kirsten. “Excellent. What about you two?”

  Ben giggled. “We both like lizards.”

  “Interesting,” Mr. Snedaker commented. “And how about you two?” he said, staring directly at Gretchen and me.

  “We both like Christie Moreno,” Gretchen said with enthusiasm.

  The girls giggled, as did many of the boys, apparently those familiar with her music. Some went so far as to double over with laughter. “She’s a teen idol,” I heard kids whispering. “Little girls love her.” This led to more laughter. I was pretty sure they weren’t laughing at Gretchen. If only a car would smash through the wall of the gym and crush me against the bleachers. Sometimes a guy can’t buy a break.

  When class finally ended, I staggered out the doorway gasping for air. What had happened in there? My palms were sweating so badly I thought they were melting.

  Tyler bent next to me, his cheeks flushed. “Thank God that’s over.”

  Ryan staggered past looking as if he’d seen a ghost.

  “Ryan!” I called out.

  He tried to open his mouth, but no words came out. Poor guy.

  “I’m done with PE,” Tyler lamented. “It’s not worth it.”

  I tried to give him a pat on the back, but my hand didn’t have the strength. “Yeah, I’m stuck with Gretchen.”

  “Gretchen? You’re lucky,” Tyler said. “I got Hannah. She doesn’t smell right.”

  I had to admit for all Gretchen’s faults, at least she bathed. That was something to hold on to. “Sorry.”

  “You think you got it bad?” Ryan said, having recovered enough to join us. “I’m stuck with Debbie. She must be at least a foot taller than I am.”

  That was mostly true. Debbie had to be at least six feet tall. Ryan barely topped five feet.

  “That’s awkward,” I replied.