Harry Sue (19 page)

I was starting to feel a bit partial to Mr. Hernandez. Before we went back to Granny's, we swung by Jukebox Joe's and he bought me a Manly Meal: double cheeseburger, fries, and a Coke so big it could float the
Titanic.
I allowed myself four bites of the burger, seventeen fries, and sixteen sips of the Coke before we crunched up Granny's driveway.

The crumb snatchers could smell the food on me as soon as we came into the hall, and before Granny could move her lard out of the chair by the TV, I slipped the bag—Coke and all—to Wolf Man, knowing he'd share it out fair and square.

Too late, I realized I should have counted the fries. At Granny's, food you could actually eat was as valuable as tailor-made joes in the joint. Wolf Man would have an easier time of it if I gave enough fries to divide equally between the crumb snatchers. I hoped he remembered Moonie Pie, too, who could easily jaw a fry.

“I told you she was nothing but trouble,” we heard Granny say to Sink and Dip, flipping off the TV set on the kitchen counter. Granny and I had avoided each other since I tried to do her in with the
ash can. Not that I was afraid. She had nothing on me in the felony department, and if she chose to drop a dime on Harry Sue, I could drop a dollar on her to the cops. The only thing that concerned me was what she might do to the crumb snatchers.

It is a well-known fact, Fish, that they are my weak spot.

Mr. Hernandez cleared his throat as she rolled into the front hall.

“The purpose of my visit, Mrs. Clotkin, is to inform you that the Marshfield EMS wants to honor your granddaughter, whose quick thinking may have saved the life of one of our students.”

Granny looked suspiciously at Mr. Hernandez. She was holding the rubber ball she used to keep her hand grip strong and she squeezed it slowly.

Turning to Sink, she said, “What's he on about?”

I stood back, watching Mr. Hernandez take it all in. He was fingering his tie again, like he wanted to press it over his mouth. Granny's house was always too warm and the smell of poopy diapers mixing with the canned pea soup the crumb snatchers must have turned down for lunch would rival a humid day on the yard.

“He says that Harry Sue—” Sink began.

“I
know
what he said.” Granny regarded Mr. Hernandez with a look that could corrode metal. “What does he want?”

I crossed my arms and waited. I hadn't had this much fun since the last health inspector found mouse poop in the peanut butter.

“Well.” Mr. Hernandez cleared his throat. “Harry Sue's a bit of a hero around Trench Vista—”

He broke off and glanced at me, figuring in an instant I probably didn't share the highlights of my day over brownies and milk with Granny after school. So he gave her the long and short of it.

He finished with, “I'm told the papers will be covering it, which means—” Mr. Hernandez held out a piece of paper. “As her guardian, we'll need your permission.”

“There any reward in this? Any money?”

“Well, I—I'm not sure. I don't think so. It's just a nice gesture. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a certificate….”

Granny snatched the paper and pen and scribbled her name on the line.

“Better say where she lives,” she growled. “Granny's Lap. Better mention we have openings.”

She pushed the paper back at Mr. Hernandez, who, in return, gave her a look of pure astonishment.

Thinking back on it, it was the last time I had a good long look at Granny. That is, before my brains got scrambled and before the trial, where she did her best to appear old and feeble so the judge wouldn't send her up for long.

She glared at all of us, the skin under one eye twitching. She was giving us her lizard look: Sink, Dip, Mr. Hernandez, me. Like we were flies and her tongue was itching to connect.

It's not exactly a picture you want for your family photo album, but that's how I'll remember her.

“Well,” Mr. Hernandez continued, “we swung by early to see if maybe Harry Sue had something a little more appropriate to wear to an awards ceremony.”

Granny didn't even blink. She was a pro.

“Go find her something,” she said to Sink and Dip.

“But …,” they responded in unison.

“I'm sure you got something she could borrow,” Granny said calmly.

Now that I was going to have my picture in the paper and all, Granny realized it might not look so good for me to be dressed like I shopped at the Mercy Street Mission. So off went Sink and Dip, glancing over their shoulders at me, easily a good foot shorter and a bag of sand lighter than either one of them.

We'll only stay a minute at the fire station. They had a little buffet, and ever since Baba, I was game to try new food. There was this nifty little appetizer: a slice of roast beef was spread with cream cheese and wrapped around an asparagus spear. I thought it would be slimy, but it was crunchy like a pickle and the meat was salty and fresh. There was a lady firefighter who noticed I was partial to them and wrapped some in foil for me to take home.

Violet was there with her parents, who hung around me like I was their long-lost daughter.

“Vi says you like chicken-fried steak,” her mother whispered as the fire chief started talking about the history of the Good Citizen Award. I wanted to tell her I was partial to anything that
wasn't burnt, spoiled, or otherwise too rank to eat, and also, could we please listen to what the man was saying about me?

I wanted to ask, did conettes get the newspaper?

Well, anyway, I could nab the copy out of the teachers' break room just in case.

I remember clear as a bell how I told myself it was okay to feel good about what I'd done. I
did
save a life. Just because I was the one who almost offed Violet in the first place was a matter to handle another time. You can't help it when people die. They just do. If you didn't mean to do it, then it's okay. Accidents happen.

At the moment, I thought it couldn't hurt to tell myself,
Good job, Harry Sue.

And even though I wasn't around to see the picture they had in the paper the next day, I do carry it in the palm of my heart.

There I was, one arm around old Violet the Snitch, Dip's sweater hanging four inches down past the tips of my fingers. The Chumps were pressing in, big and soft, behind us. My other hand is shaking the hand of the fire chief. I'm looking directly at the camera and smiling, thinking how cheesed off old Granny's going to be when she sees what a fuss they made of me.

I must admit I was feeling pretty high as Mr. Hernandez crunched up Granny's Loving and Licensed driveway. I had just begun to touch the idea of what it meant to
Live
, the way J-Cat said, with a capital
L.

Maybe I wasn't doomed by all the bad that came before. Maybe it was possible to have a happy life even though both my parents had been sent up and my granny had an olive pit where her heart was supposed to be.

Life had delivered a KO punch to J-Cat, hadn't it? First, she got that bad sickness that kept her from having a baby. Then she fell for a guy who broke his neck in a ski accident and died three years later. But instead of giving up, she clawed her way out of the
hole and spent most of her time pulling as hard as she could on Homer and Baba to bring them out with her.

In the end, she was a better road dog to Homer than I had ever been.

But hey, I was still a kid. I could improve.

Mr. Hernandez pulled away and I swaggered into the house. I had a sack of food in my hand and the crumb snatchers were going to get all of it. I'd let everybody have a bite of the roast beef asparagus thing and Wolf Man would share out the crackers and cheese while I told a story.

It was going to be a whopper this time, all about this lion who's supposed to be the king of the forest, only he isn't because he's forever trying to PC up.

Everybody was at the kitchen table coloring on some pages Granny had ripped out of the newspaper. Last year—even with Sink and Dip's entries— she'd failed to nab the winner in the
Marshfield Journal
's pumpkin-coloring contest, eight-and-under category. Granny wanted one of the crumb snatchers to win so she could lure in more unfortunate kids and their clueless parents.

I glanced around as Granny patrolled the kitchen table, whacking her ruler on the papers of kids whose coloring got a little sloppy. Even Hammer Head was bent to the task, his ears bright red, which suggested there'd been some fallout earlier.
Probably Granny was still furious that something good had happened to me.

I put my sack down. “Why isn't Moonie Pie down here?” I asked.

Sink was very busy coloring the stem of a jack-o'-lantern. I could have told her they weren't green off the vine, but I didn't bother.

“He was crying a minute ago,” she said, without lifting her eyes. “But I think he fell back asleep.”

I glanced around at the little kids, who didn't dare lift their heads even in greeting. They were coloring in slow motion, no pleasure in it at all. Carly Mae's little fist was in her mouth. Wolf Man could color a lot better than that.

A big lump grew in my throat. I tried to tell myself it was the cold medicine she gave before nap time, but I was pretty sure I'd scared Granny off that. No, the reason they were coloring so slow and so badly was because Granny had done something much worse. The crumb snatchers suffered from joint mentality. She'd taken the heart right out of them and they no longer believed things would be any different tomorrow than they were today.

It was what J-Cat said to Homer about sicknesses of the heart. They were worse than the pain Granny caused with her hands.

“I'll get him,” I said, and walked out of the kitchen.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

And that's when my whole life changed.

If somebody had cared enough to clip the picture of me from down at the fire station out of the newspaper, they could have written
Before
on it, because that day was the end of my life as I knew it.

Of course, not every kid's life ends two times before they hit their teens. But mine did. The first time was when Garnett Clotkin threw me out the seventh-floor window of Destiny Towers.

The second time was worse.

It took me a second—ten seconds—a minute— how do you know when time stops?—to figure out what was wrong with the picture in the hallway.

The stairs were shining.

And then I knew in a rush, following my eyes to the safety gate, listening to the noise of water dripping from one piece of wood to another.

He'd turned on the water. And something had plugged up the drain.

I took the steps two at a time, slipping in a puddle on the stairs, cracking my shin but feeling nothing.

Nothing but white-hot urgency.

The safety gate wouldn't open.

I kicked at it, but it held fast.

I jumped.

Never in my whole entire life will I forget the picture of Moonie Pie floating facedown in that bathtub. That picture grew me up quick. Up to that
point, I didn't have much of a childhood and now I knew I never would. It was like the sun had sunk into the ocean and drowned, plunging the whole world into darkness.

From that point on, J-Cat had nothing on me. I went nut up.

I kept hearing the line in my head.

Don't hurt my baby.

And I knew I had to get Moonie Pie somewhere safe. I fished his fat little body—wet sleeper, swollen diaper, and all—out of the tub and took off, pressing him to me like a sponge.

I must have been screaming because I have this impression of them all at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me with their mouths hanging open.

“Don't hurt my baby,”
I said, underlining every word.

Granny was taking the stairs two at a time. “Don't be a fool. He needs help.”

I squished Moonie Pie to me harder and kicked at the safety gate. It caught Granny right in the shoulder.

Her howls joined mine as I bum-rushed her back down the stairs.

Somehow, she got a fist full of my hair. “Where do you think you're—”

“Hammer Head!”

I started screaming again. It was such a scream of pain and sadness, of the horrible agony I'd been
feeling my whole life but had tried to hold in. It was coming out now and I couldn't stop it. Hammer Head launched himself at Granny and hit her right in the breadbasket. All the other little crumb snatch-ers swarmed her like killer bees.

“Get them off me,” Granny was yelling, and Sink and Dip joined the fray while I shot out of the house like a cannon, leaving my road dogs to take care of Granny.

Don't hurt my baby.

I tossed Moonie Pie to my shoulder. One wet half dangled down my back as I held on to his slippered feet. Running. Running like my life depended on it. There was just one clear thought. I had to get Moonie Pie to safety. Hadn't Baba beaten back the lions? Hadn't he carried babies over swollen rivers and outrun soldiers with guns? If anybody could save us now, it would be Baba.

I felt something burst underneath my ribs and more warm wet liquid gush out, and I remember not so much thinking as
knowing
that my rotten old heart had finally burst with sadness.

I streaked across lawns and driveways and flower gardens and was to the edge of Baba's yard in less than ninety seconds from the time my toes left Granny's house of horrors.

There he was, standing just beyond the drive, hunched up against the cold in a brown leather jacket. I ran toward him, hurling myself forward,
knowing me and Moonie Pie were just seconds away from safety.

As I crossed the driveway, I saw out of the corner of my eye a flash of shiny orange metal and I knew, with her recklessness and speed, J-Cat would not see us. Same as I knew that wanting couldn't make me move fast enough to get out of her way.

And so I passed him. I crushed Moonie Pie into a ball and passed him to Baba—using the now famous Clotkin chest pass—my love like rocket fuel, propelling him through the air.

And then the north winds and the south winds met where I stood. And I rose in the air. Me. Harry Sue Clotkin. At the eye of the storm.