Donutheart (4 page)

Our small band had assembled and lunch was proceeding as usual, with Bernie relating another installment, this time about the Dorgon Trolls’ sworn enemies—the dreaded dragons of Lairding—while Sarah Kervick chewed on rubbery chicken fingers and asked for clarifications in the action before swallowing. She had just opened her mouth again to speak when I, Franklin Delano Donuthead, did something I try very hard not to do. And that is: act on impulse.

I had decided the evening before that speaking to Glynnis Powell might be easier if I first practiced being
within
speaking distance. After that, a casual “hi” in passing would be the next logical step. My plan had been to spend the next few weeks carefully determining the locations we would most likely “bump into” each other.

But as I sat there with my organic yogurt untouched in front of me, I started hearing voices inside my head.

Voice of FDR:
Men are not prisoners of fate, Franklin, but only prisoners of their own minds
.

Voice of Franklin:
Stay where you are and eat your yogurt. You haven’t achieved the USDA-recommended amount of calcium yet today.

Voice of FDR:
It isn’t sufficient just to want—you’ve got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

I was so caught up in the conversation going on in my head that I said out loud, “But it’s game day. I already have a plan!”

Sarah and Bernie looked over at me with surprise.

On game days, Pelican View football players wore their jerseys. Today was our first home game. My fear was that seeing the players in their red-and-white jerseys might have the same effect on Marvin Howerton that a piece of red silk has on a bull. He
might
look for ways to channel his aggression off the field, especially after the run-in we’d had the day before. My game-day plan was to wear dark colors and keep a low profile, so today was
not
the best day to be roaming the lunch area.

“Quick, where is Marvin?” I asked Bernie and Sarah.

They just kept staring, as if I’d said,
Where is the Martian?

“How’m I supposed to know that?” Sarah Kervick answered, finally.

“I just thought…maybe…”

“I should put
him
in my book,” Bernie said. “He could be one of the bog monsters.”

“Good idea. Then we can kill him off.”

As they put their heads together and plotted Marvin’s demise in the swamps of the Malogon Forest, I continued to scan the lunchroom until I located the here-and-now Marvin Howerton, sitting with his back to us, his feet up on the table.

So it seemed safe to set out in the opposite direction on my quest for a crisp white blouse; a modest, knee-length checked skirt, or even a stone-washed denim kerchief.

As I walked, I scanned the lunchroom masses without success.

Could she be ill?
I wondered.
Absent for a dental appointment?

It was then I received the shock of my life; for there in front of me, in the place Glynnis normally occupied, sat a girl in a cheerleading uniform. As I stared at her back, covered in Pelican View Panther, reality began to sink in.

The intensity of my gaze caused Glynnis to shift in her seat. “Oh, Franklin,” she said, covering her mouth with a napkin, as it still contained remnants of her whole-wheat organic pretzel twists.

“Glynnis,” I said, too shocked even to dilate. “You’re a cheerleader.”

Glynnis glanced quickly at her seatmates, all festooned in red and white, with shockingly short, thigh-baring skirts.

“Hey, I’ve seen you somewhere before. What’s your name?” one of the girls asked.

I almost reminded Rebecca Foster—for that was the name embroidered on her uniform—that the recommended way to introduce yourself, according to etiquette expert Miss Emily Post, is to state your name along with “It’s nice to meet you.” And not to blurt out rudely: “What’s your name?”

However, I did not want to escalate the level of tension that already existed, so I simply answered her question: “Franklin Donuthead.”

“Wait a minute. You’re not a skater.”

“No.”

“Then why are you coming to my house tomorrow?
Donuthead
is on our calendar.”

I had no idea what Rebecca was talking about. I looked helplessly at Glynnis. Were these really the sort of girls she chose to be friends with?

“No wait,” said another cheerleader—Vivvy Heinz—whose mother allowed her to wear blue eye shadow and pink lip gloss to school. “You’re the one who ducks under the table in science class.”

Simultaneously, four cheerleaders covered their mouths and giggled.

Not Rebecca Foster. She continued to stare at me. “So what’s that orange thing on your forehead?”

I touched my forehead lightly, realizing at once that I had forgotten to remove the Mercurochrome at my locker. Why had Bernie and Sarah failed to point this out to me? Was making Marvin Howerton an entrée for the dragons of Lairding more important than my reputation?

I stared back at the cheerleaders. There seemed to be nothing to do but confess.

“That would be Mercurochrome. I’ve gotten pretty good at dodging him, but Mr. Spansky does score a direct hit on occasion.”

Six more hands flew to their mouths. I had the attention of the whole table now. I failed to see why my troubles with Mr. Spansky were so funny. I
did not
fail to see the look of distress on Glynnis’ face.

Once again, reality hit me full force. She was ashamed of me—the poor unfortunate who’d been spit on by our science teacher and so become the laughingstock of her new friends. How I managed to stumble back to my own table I do not know. Even Bernie, who normally failed to read the subtle nonverbal cues of others, was shocked into silence by my pale expression.

“Franklin,” he said, finally. “Are you okay?”

“All my hopes are dashed,” I replied, sinking into my chair.

“Why?
Why
didn’t you tell me that I still had Mercurochrome on my forehead?”

Sarah Kervick swallowed the last of her chocolate milk and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “That orange stuff?” She looked over at Bernie.

“It’s been there before, Franklin,” Bernie said matter-of-factly. “We thought you knew.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Helping Out Hope

Every object has a center of gravity through which the laws of the earth and its magnetic forces act. I think it is safe to say that, most of the time, Sarah Kervick defies gravity.

For example, an object will remain stable as long as its center of gravity is directly over its base. For a skater, that means directly over the weight-bearing foot. Watching the other girls, it was easy to tell when their center of gravity shifted. Some were able to resist the pull of gravity by leaning in the other direction. Others fell. Repeatedly.

But Sarah Kervick’s body seemed as finely calibrated as the ancient Egyptian scales of justice. At first, when she turned her skates out and leaned back into a spread eagle, I cringed with the knowledge of what happens to an unstable object. But when I opened my eyes, I found her gliding over the ice, a beatific look on her face, as if the invisible hand of Isaac Newton were pushing on the small of her back.

Normally, I was not recruited to observe the highly dangerous activity known as contract ice, where up to twenty-five skaters, most of them girls between the ages of ten and eighteen, pay for the chance to practice their routines. Twenty-five girls skating in twenty-five different directions is enough to bring about heart palpitations in the most seasoned air-traffic controller. But my mother’s schedule on certain days made my attendance necessary, and I was told to do my homework in the “snack area” and
not
request that the table be sanitized more than one time. With Sarah just weeks away from her first exhibition, it seemed like the ice arena was becoming my second home.

My mother was rarely around during these sessions. As soon as we arrived at the rink, she would disappear into the girls’ locker room, emerging near the end of Sarah’s practice flushed and, obviously, worn out from the exertion. She told me there was a ballet barre and some weights in there that the girls used for warming up. Why not take advantage of the facilities?

“A strong core prevents injuries,” she explained, imitating coach Debbi’s heavy Swedish accent. It sounded suspiciously to me like she was trying to improve her statistics for Paul.

There were times when my mother felt bad about her neglectful behavior toward her only child and compensated by picking up little gifts for me during her workday. Most recently, I’d scored the updated edition of
Live Safely in a Dangerous World.
So I didn’t dare tell her that I actually enjoyed the time I watched Sarah.

It all began a few months ago when Sarah took a bad spill while practicing a Salchow. She pulled herself up, skated over to the edge of the rink, and waved me closer.

“Franklin, did you know that was going to happen?” she shouted over the plastic barrier.

I nodded yes. Of course I did. Sarah had pressed down too hard on her toe pick, and that slowed her down. She tried to make up for it by cranking around the jump, but that just threw her off balance.

“You think you can still do that thing we did in baseball?”

“I’m afraid you need to be a bit more specific than ‘that thing’…?” I shouted back, getting a couple of slanty-sideways glances from hovering mothers. Distracting the skaters was frowned upon. I started down the bleacher steps.

“Where you know what’s going to happen…remember?” Sarah said as we met at the opening of the rink.

When Sarah Kervick played outfield for Pelican View Elementary’s Modern Hardware Team, I enjoyed predicting—and then conveying to her via agreed-upon hand signals—in what direction and how far the ball would travel, so that she could be waiting to meet it when it fell to the ground.

Still, I didn’t see how knowing she would fall helped her. “It happens in an instant. There’s no time to warn you.”

Sarah tugged at the sleeves of her warm-up jacket. “Right. But I’ll get smarter, see? If you teach me?”

I nodded. I did.

She tossed me the jacket and held out her hand. “Partners. Okay?”

We shook on it and I returned to my seat in the bleachers.

So, while my mother sweated it out in the locker room, I got my own share of cardiovascular exercise, running down the bleachers to confer with Sarah Kervick at the opening of the rink.

It wasn’t the same thing we did in baseball. Our baseball strategy was about Sarah meeting the ball. Now she was applying what I taught her about physics to what she felt when she skated.

“You’re not getting enough momentum on that inside Mohawk because you’re waiting too long to change feet,” I would tell her. “As soon as your shoulders have turned as far as they can go, you need to reverse them and change your feet at the same time. If you wait too long, you’ll lose momentum.”

I demonstrated from the safety of the rubber matting: “You’re making the T shape, you’re bringing your free leg up along the skating foot, you’re turning your upper body…now! Reverse from top to bottom in one motion.”

After a few more practice sessions, Sarah would achieve what I’d shown her. It was a funny thing. Unlike in school, Sarah had no problem listening to lectures about skating. She kept her head down and twirled a piece of her hair, concentrating intensely. Then, more often than not, she’d hand me a piece of her clothing and head back to the rink.

The girls began practice in tights, skirts or warm-up pants, sweaters, gloves, hats, and jackets. But all during the practice, they peeled away layer after layer of clothing until they were down to little more than a sleeveless shirt and a skirt. Sarah Kervick had not minded wearing a skirt in the early months. My guess was she would have worn a bodysuit woven of horsehair and nettles as long as they let her on the ice.

No, her decision to stop wearing skating skirts had come about six weeks ago. She’d shown up for practice in baggy warm-up pants, and nothing my mother could say would convince her to go above the ankle. This wasn’t merely a fashion whim. Sarah was going against one of Debbi’s rules of professionalism. The girls Debbi coached—the girls who were serious about skating—wore skirts, not yoga pants, not warm-ups,
definitely
not jeans. There was a long conference between Debbi and Sarah in the locker room. When they emerged, Sarah took to the ice again…in her pants. It appeared, for the time being anyway, that Sarah had won.

But won what? There was nothing Sarah Kervick wanted more than to skate. Practice, exhibition, competition, she didn’t care. Just put her on the ice. She knew what skaters wore when she got into this business.

And I knew her well enough to know she was hiding something. I wanted to ask her about it, but I didn’t know how. The laws of mathematics and physics are consistent and logical. Girls, I have found, are neither.

And they don’t grow out of it, either. As proof, I will offer up my own mother.

When she dropped us off at Pelican View Elementary after Sarah’s practice, she said: “I’m heading back to the rink. I’ll pick you up at five-thirty. Oh, and Franklin, I hope you don’t mind. I borrowed your dishwashing gloves.”

“My dishwashing gloves? For…?”

“Uh…washing dishes?”

This was an obvious lie, but she shooed me out of the van before I could interrogate her further.

I sighed. We all had our secrets.
My mother’s fascination with the ice rink, Sarah’s insistence on wearing pants, my feelings for Glynnis…

“It seems smaller, somehow,” Sarah said as we walked to the front entrance.

“And quiet,” I added.

School had dismissed an hour earlier, so we entered through the door by the office. Behind the plate-glass window, we could see Mr. Putnam on the phone. He gave us a cheerful salute. Sarah waved back and we continued down the hall.

“Hey, I’ve never done this before! Look, Franklin. It’s Ms. Linski’s room.”

“Never done what? Been in the building after school?”

“No. Seen my last year’s class. Look, that’s where you sat, remember, on the end, so you didn’t have germs comin’ at you from both sides?”

“Well, that’s not exactly the reason I sat there….”

“And I wanted to sit in back, but Ms. Linski made me your partner.”

Sarah stared through the window at the empty classroom. Peeking in really did bring back memories. There were Ms. Linski’s motivational posters, and her timeline of American history made of cereal-box toys she’d collected on eBay (all carefully sealed in plastic to protect their value). And the wall-mounted hand-sanitizer dispensing unit inspired by yours truly. We cut the incidence of cold and flu outbreaks nearly in half, I might add. And the door to the restroom. I sighed happily, remembering. Yes, every classroom at the elementary school had its own private bathroom.

“…and you hung your backpack on your chair, and every time you got your calculator or a pencil out of it, you looked over at Glynnis Powell.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s pretty obvious you got it goin’ on for Glynnis, Franklin.”

“Really? How so?”

Sarah managed to pull herself away from Ms. Linski’s door. She leaned back against the door jamb.

“Every chance you get, you’re moonin’ over her. In health class for sure. In the lunchroom. I don’t know…it’s just obvious. Like I-like-skating obvious. Like Mr.-Spansky-spits-on-the-table obvious…”

“All right, fine. I understand what you’re saying.”

We continued down the hall. “It doesn’t really matter, now that I know she’s a cheerleader….”

“Why?”

“Why? Because cheerleaders hang out with football players, basketball players, soccer players…in short, athletes, Sarah, in contact sports. Cheerleaders do not fraternize with QuizBowl finalists and Mathletes.”

“How do you know? Did you ask her?”

“Ask her? I can’t even get within shouting distance without all my blood rushing to my face.”

Sarah shrugged. “Jeez, Franklin, you give up awful easy….”

“That’s not true!” I wanted to tell Sarah that if she measured the amount of time I thought about winning Glynnis, the girl would be neck and neck with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the length of my arms and legs, and keeping my hands clean.

“I wouldn’t let anything come between me and skating,” Sarah said quietly. “Nothing. You hear that, Franklin?”

This last line sounded faintly aggressive. As if
I
would suggest such a thing.

“Well, excuse me for confiding,” I said, dragging my steps so that Sarah could be the first to reach Mrs. Boardman.

“I could maybe help, you know…with you talkin’ to Glynnis.”

“Thank you…,” I said slowly, imagining possible Sarah Kervick techniques for getting up close and personal. “But I already have a plan.”

“You do? What is it?”

I explained to her that I intended to gradually spend more time in the vicinity of Glynnis, with the goal at the end of three weeks of waving to her without turning red in the face.

“Jeez…at that rate, you’ll be a geezer before you get a kiss.”

I thought about telling Sarah that love takes time, but then, what did I know about it?

“Have my two helpers arrived to rescue me from this pile of unshelved books?” came a little-old-lady voice from around the corner.

Sarah took off. “Grace!”

“Sarah…and Franklin.” They stood together as I came into the room, Mrs. Boardman’s two hands pressed around Sarah’s one. “We’ll have to catch up as we work, dears. I’m afraid I am behind my time. Franklin…”

Mrs. Boardman gave me a crinkly old-lady smile. “I saved the folktales for you.”

I am very familiar with the Dewey decimal system and therefore did not need much direction. I managed to reshelve my entire stack, from the Grimm brothers to stories from
1001 Arabian Nights,
while Mrs. Boardman and Sarah worked side by side in nonfiction.

“Oh dear,
Extreme Bicycle Maneuvers,
” Mrs. Boardman chuckled, inserting her ruler between two books on the top shelf. Sarah Kervick pressed the book into place. “What will they think up next? Here’s
Surfing in CyberSpace.
That would be right…here, I believe.”

Sarah fit another book in the space Mrs. Boardman created with her ruler.

“Now, tell me how that lutz is coming….”

Mrs. Boardman had grown up in Norway, where people skated into town down frozen rivers, so she was very interested in Sarah’s skating activities. She even knew Debbi, Sarah’s skating coach, from church.

“Has Debbi taught you the Scandinavian stop? It was all the rage at the ’64 Olympics, you know.”

“Not yet, we just do the T and the L so far. She says I shouldn’t go too fast.”

I agreed with Debbi—when I could understand her Swedish accent—that Sarah should get a complete grounding in fundamentals before she attempted more difficult moves.

After we finished the shelving, Mrs. Boardman gave us a snack: Oreos for Sarah and Tree of Life organic garden vegetable crackers for me.

“And, Franklin, I have some very nice organic lemonade to go along with it.”

We sat there, eating over napkins and flipping through our favorite books. It was very peaceful.

Sarah looked up from one of the glossy skating books Mrs. Boardman had ordered for her through interlibrary loan.

“Remember when you used to read to me, Franklin? When you were teaching me?”

I nodded.

She sighed. “We should do that again sometime. You could read that story about Pandora that we got out of the library.”

“It was Gloria who said you should read it.” Long ago, when I’d hardly known Sarah, Gloria told me to show her the story of Pandora from Greek mythology. It was about a beautiful and curious girl who opens a box and lets all the evil things out into the world: sickness, hate, pain, jealousy, all of it. But she also frees the little winged creature called Hope, who gives heart to all who suffer.

“Well, I’ve been thinking about that story lately…,” Sarah said, drawing her finger across the table, “and I’m wondering this: How does she know where to go? Hope? With all the problems in the world, how does she choose?”