Burning Questions of Bingo Brown (2 page)

“I’m trying to find the junior aspirin,” he called back.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“No. Don’t bother getting up, Mom. I’m not sick.”

“Then why do you need aspirin?”

“I can’t sleep. Oh, here they are. I found them. Don’t get up.”

Bingo did not want to face his mom. She might make him tell her the reason he could not sleep. His mother would definitely not be sympathetic about his being in love with three girls.

“You can’t do anything without going totally overboard, can you?” she would say.

“Well,” she called from her bedroom, “take the aspirin and go back to bed.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

The aspirin didn’t help much, and Bingo spent a restless night chasing Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde, the Orchestra Conductor, and the President of the United States, none of whom wanted to be caught. The final chase scene took place on the White House lawn and was broadcast on the CBS evening news.

In the morning Bingo was even more haggard. He stumbled into the breakfast room, sat down, and knocked over his milk. “Sorry,” he said. “I just caught a glimpse of myself in the toaster.”

His mom said, “Honestly, Bingo, you get more like your father every day.”

His dad said, “Say thank you, Bingo. Your mom just paid you a great compliment.”

“Thank you, Mom.”

His mother did not look amused. She started pulling napkins out of the holder and laying them over the milk. She said, “You get exactly two things from your father—his clumsiness at the table and his freckles.” She sat down.

Bingo’s mom hated freckles. The first thing she had asked in the delivery room after Bingo was born was, “Is he freckled?”

“Not yet,” the doctor answered.

This was not the first thing said in the delivery room, however, when Bingo was born. The first thing the doctor said was, “Bingo!” He probably said this every time a baby popped out, but Bingo’s mother thought it was a first. “Mom, he wasn’t naming me,” Bingo had said once. This was when he was in kindergarten and they were learning a song about a dog named Bingo. The song went like this:

B - I - N - G - O

B - I - N - G - O

And Bingo was his name—O!

Every time they sang that, tears of shame would come to Bingo’s eyes. He felt as bad as if he’d been named Fido or Poochie.

Anyway, Bingo’s father was very freckled. He told Bingo one time that he had counted his freckles and he had five thousand, two hundred and twenty-four of them.

Bingo was impressed. “How do you know that?”

“Well, I took a ruler,” his father said, “and I marked off one square inch on the back of my hand, right there. I counted all the freckles in that square inch—there were seventeen and a half.”

“There can’t be a half of a freckle. There can be a small freckle but—”

“It was on the line—half in, half out.”

“Oh.”

“Then I found out how many square inches of skin there are on the human body, and I multiplied by seventeen and a half, and it came out five thousand, two hundred and twenty-four.”

Bingo stood up. “May I please be excused?” he asked.

“You haven’t eaten a thing.”

“Mom, I can’t help it. I’ve got something on my mind—three somethings.”

“Oh, all right, you may be excused.”

Bingo got up and headed for the bathroom. Perhaps a Yogi Bear vitamin would …

Bingo opened the medicine cabinet and reached for the vitamins. His hand stopped in midair.

There was a new product in the medicine cabinet. He took out the can and read a new word.
Mousse.

The instructions were simple.
Spray an egg-size ball of mousse into the palm of your hand.

Bingo did that. His egg was the size of a dinosaur egg, and he felt better.

Apply to hair and style as usual.

Bingo’s usual method of styling was to comb. He applied the mousse, combed, and looked in the mirror.

For a moment Bingo could not move. He had transformed himself. Here, in the mirror, was not the haggard, pained face of last night. Here was the boy he had always wanted to be. When he got to school, every girl in her right mind would fall in love with him. He was going to have to hire a bodyguard like Sly Stallone or become a recluse like Michael Jackson.

“Why are you standing there smiling at yourself?” his mom asked from the doorway.

“I like the way I look with this mousse on my hair.”

“There’s such a thing as too much mousse.”

“Mom, some people need a lot of mousse.”

“You overdo everything.”

The last thing a boy in love with three girls wanted to hear was a lecture on overdoing things. “I’m off to school,” he said cheerfully, glancing at himself one last time.

As he went out the door, he wondered if mousse could bring new happiness to Mr. Mark. What would be the best way to let Mr. Markham know about mousse? Should he write an anonymous note? Should he wait until the class went out to recess and write the word on the blackboard in capital letters?
MOUSSE
! Would the class know he had written it? Would it give away the secret of his new looks? He wanted Mr. Markham to have the secret because they shared a similar pain, but he didn’t want Billy Wentworth to know.

As he went down the steps, he asked one last question. If Billy Wentworth does find out, will he start calling me Mousse Head?

B
INGO SPENT THE MORNING
inspecting the girls he was in love with. This was because he hoped to discover something he had previously overlooked—a wart, a mustache, a loose tooth, anything that would turn him off. If he could fall out of love with just one of them, that would be a major breakthrough.

Would it be conspicuous, he wondered, if he brought his dad’s binoculars? If he could look at them through the zoom lens, wouldn’t he be sure to—

“Bingo!”

“Oh, sorry, Mr. Mark. Did you want something?”

“Class, from now on, assume that if I call your name, I want something. Like, I just called Bingo’s name—what does that mean? All together!”

“You want something!”

“What do you want?” Bingo asked.

“I want you to pass out the notebooks.”

“I’d be glad to.” With the confidence of a newly moussed person, he got up, accepted the notebooks, and made his way down the rows.

Mr. Markham said, “Gang, these are going to be your journals. They are your property. They will stay in your desks. Part of every day will be spent writing in your journals.”

After he had given out the notebooks, Bingo sat down quickly and opened his journal. He felt he should be the first one to start writing. After all, he had announced the day before that he was the top science-fiction writer in the world.

He looked up. Others had beat him to it. Mamie Lou … even Billy Wentworth. What did they have to be writing about?

Bingo decided to check this out. Weeks before, he had worked out his route to the pencil sharpener.

As he passed Billy’s desk, he glanced down.

Billy Wentworth was not writing after all. He was drawing a picture of himself in combat gear and labeling the various weapons—flamethrower, radio-control missile, noxious-gas grenades, etc.

Bingo kept walking. He wanted to see what his three loves were writing in their journals. Hopefully it would be something to weaken his love.

The first one he came to was Mamie Lou. She was not writing at the moment, but she had written two words previously. Now she was lost in thought. Bingo glanced down. He read the two words.

Dear Dairy,

Bingo blinked his eyes twice, three times. Was Mamie Lou, the President of the United States, writing to a bunch of cows? He reread the words.

Dear Dairy,

“Excuse me for interrupting, but I think you’ve made a mistake.” Bingo said this in the respectful way he would have corrected any President of the United States. “You’ve written
Dear Dairy,
and you probably meant to write
Dear Diary.
See, the
i
goes where the
a
is, and the
a
—”

Mamie Lou looked up at him and Bingo trailed off.

This was not a look of gratitude. This was a look of pure, ice-cold hatred. It was the look that would probably be effective, years from now, against Russian diplomats, but to look at him that way, he who was going to fill in for her at Easter-egg rolls …

Billy Wentworth exploded into laughter. “Dear Dairy,” he said, “Mooooooooooooooo.” More Wentworth laughter. Billy’s laughs were distinctive
Har, har, har’s.

Mr. Markham closed his eyes as if in pain. He had told them last week that when he closed his eyes in this manner, he did not want to hear one single sound.

“This is important, gang, so let’s practice,” he had said. “Make as much noise as you want to.”

The class had made a moderate amount of noise.

“Is that the best you can do? You disappoint me.”

They had made a lot of noise with whistles and catcalls. Mr. Markham had closed his eyes. There was silence.

“One more time.”

More noise. Eyes closed. Silence.

“I think you’ve got it. I hope so.”

Bingo waited, frozen in place, until Mr. Markham opened his eyes. When Mr. Markham’s newly opened eyes looked right at Bingo, Bingo decided to go back to his seat without sharpening his pencil or checking any more journals.

Bingo was disappointed. All he had learned was that the President of the United States did not take criticism well and that he would have to use a lot of tact to help her through her presidency.

Bingo raised his hand. “You’re not going to read these, right?”

“No one is worried about
me
reading them, Bingo. Who are you worried about, class? Who will be going to the pencil sharpener again and again and reading over your shoulders? Who? All together now—but not too loud.”

“Bingo.”

The hushed sound of his name broke Bingo’s writer’s block. He knew now what he would write. This journal was going to be one of the most important books of the century. It was going to be a book of questions, burning questions …

He folded his book open and wrote on the title page:

BURNING QUESTIONS

by

Bingo Brown

On the next page, he began to write questions, starting with a couple that had been worrying him a lot.

Has there ever been a successful writer named Bingo?

Has there ever been a successful writer with freckles?

Has there ever been a successful person with freckles?

Why did no one notice my mousse?

Does mousse wear off?

Should I bring a bottle of mousse in my lunch box instead of a thermos?

What does Mr. Markham think about when he closes his eyes?

When the bell for recess rang, Bingo did not hurry out with the rest of the class. He still had questions to put in his journal and, also, he did not have the strength—because of the burdens of love—to go out to recess.

“Mr. Mark, is it all right if I stay in?”

“No.”

“I’ll keep my head on my desk.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I want to put my head on my desk, and I know I’ll keep lifting my head to make sure
your
head is on
your
desk and that way
my
head will never be on
my
desk. Does that make any sense to you, Bingo?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you and good-bye.”

When Bingo got to the playground, he saw that Billy Wentworth had pulled out a book of insults and was reading things like, “Helen McTeer is so ugly she isn’t listed in
Who’s Who,
she’s listed in
What’s That.”
Billy Wentworth was going around the playground, finding an insult for every single person there.

Mamie Lou’s insult was, “Mamie Lou, you are a perfect 10. Your face is a two, your body is a two, your legs are a two—” Mamie Lou didn’t wait around to hear what her other two’s were.

Tom Knott’s was, “Tom, your nose is so big that it has its own zip code.”

Melissa’s was, “Melissa, you have the face of a saint—a Saint Bernard.”

The Orchestra Conductor’s was, “Harriet, you may not have invented ugliness, but you sure are the local distributor.”

Miss Fanucci, the music teacher, chose that moment to come out onto the playground to round up some chorus members, and Billy found an insult for her.

Hers was, “Miss Fanucci is so ugly that when she goes to the zoo she has to buy two tickets—one to get in and one to get out.”

Miss Fanucci passed the group at the exact moment Billy delivered the line. She stopped. She put out her hand for the book. She was not smiling.

Billy whipped the book behind his back. The faint remnants of the Magic Marker python writhed on his bare arm.

Miss Fanucci kept holding out her hand.

Billy Wentworth shook his head regretfully.

Miss Fanucci said, “Billy.”

Billy said, “The book isn’t mine, Miss Fanucci, it belongs to my dad. He’s got to have it.”

Miss Fanucci’s hand was still extended. The class pulled back like old-time Westerners sensing a shoot-out. For the first time in the school year they were absolutely quiet.

“Miss Fanucci,” Billy said, “I might as well level with you. My dad’s going to a roast for one of his bowling buddies on Friday night, and he’s got to have this book. If he doesn’t, he won’t have any insults. You wouldn’t want my dad to go to a roast without any insults, would you? He would be disgraced.”

Miss Fanucci hesitated.

“Do you want my dad to never bowl again, Miss Fanucci? Because if my dad got disgraced in front of his buddies, then that’s what would happen. I know the man, Miss Fanucci. I’ve been living with him for thirteen years.”

Miss Fanucci then did what anybody in their right mind would have done. She lowered her hand. “I don’t want to see that book again, Billy.”

Billy dropped it down the neck of his Rambo t-shirt and patted it. “You won’t” he said.

Before he went back inside, Billy managed to remember the insult he had picked out for Bingo.