Plunked (3 page)

Monday mornings always suck. It's sort of a law of nature. Or a law of human nature, anyway. It's not like beavers send their kids off to some little beaver hut to learn how to build dams. That's kind of a dumb thought, but that's the kind I have when I'm lying there avoiding getting out of bed.

It's not like I completely hate school, but I'll be honest: I kind of hate it on Mondays. There's never anything I can do about it, though. I have the kind of alarm clock the whole house can hear. I think, in the town of Tall Pines, it ranks third in noise to the clock tower on the Congregational Church and the alarm horn at the Tall Pines Volunteer Fire Department.

The alarm goes off:
BRREEEEP! BRREEEEP! BRREEEEP!

I scramble to slap the button on top. Then I throw the sheets off and get up.

I go through the same routine as always: clean up, get dressed, cereal, bus stop, bus ride, school.

I'm still sort of blinking myself awake in first period, history. History class is ridiculous even on non-Mondays. It's like the whole nation is terrified that there is some child somewhere who doesn't know about the Louisiana Purchase.

Second period is English, and at least I'm fully awake for that. We're reading
The Island of Dr. Moreau
by H. G. Wells. It's one of those really old books. I'd heard the name H. G. Wells before, but I hadn't realized he was a real person until the book plopped down on my desk. I thought he was like Sherlock Holmes or something.

The book is actually pretty cool. First of all, it's short, and those are the best kind of books. Second, it's about this crazy doctor (guess what his name is! Ha-ha!). He's creating half animal, half human creatures on this island, like a half pig or a half wolf or whatever. It's kind of a cool concept.

On the team, one of the best things you can call someone is a beast. “You're a beast, man!” Like if J.P., who's our best pitcher, strikes out ten guys, you'd say that.

Anyway, we're most of the way through the book. Like I said, it's short. There are no assigned seats in
English because Mr. Haun doesn't “believe in them.” But Andy and I usually get there early enough to sit across the aisle from each other. Sometimes we sit one in front of the other in the same aisle, but that's not as good, because one of us has to turn around to talk.

Anyway, today we're across from each other, like two-thirds of the way back. Perfect location. The bell hasn't gone off yet, and we're talking about what sort of half human, half animal we'd be.

“I'd be, like, I'd be…” says Andy.

He's taking too long, so I start in: “Donkey! Skunk! Monkey-butt!”

“Shut up!” he says. “I think I'd be a jaguar.”

“Yeah, right!” I say.

“No, seriously, think about it.”

“I am. That's why I said ‘yeah, right.'”

“Seriously, I'm kind of small but pretty fast.”

“I think that's cheetahs,” I say.

“I'm not
that
fast,” says Andy, and then the bell rings.

“Half tiger!” I say quickly, in that second when everyone is opening up their notebook and straightening out in their seat.

Andy rolls his eyes, but tigers are tougher than jaguars, and it's too late for him to change his pick. Mr. Haun is already talking.

Andy and I don't have all of the same classes, but we
always meet up at lunch. Whoever gets to the caf first saves a seat. By the time I navigate my tray of Mexican Surprise through the rows, I can see that Andy is already sitting down and eating. He really is fast. Maybe not jaguar fast, but still. Tim Liu is across from him, and I slide my tray into the reserved parking spot next to him.

“What are you losers talking about?” I say.

The answer is baseball, of course. Most of the time it's about our team, but sometimes it's the big leagues. Opening day is coming up, so it's on our minds. (It's not like it wouldn't be on our minds after opening day, but you know how it is. April baseball is kind of low stakes in the majors.)

Jackson wore a Yankees hat into school this morning, and so we're talking about whether or not the Yankees are evil. I guess it would be more accurate to say we're talking about how evil the Yankees are and whether or not that makes Jackson evil, too.

“Their payroll is like a billion dollars,” Tim says.

“No way,” I say. “It's like two hundred–some million.”

“Yuh-huh,” says Tim. “I mean total, long-range. They've got those big guys on like five- and ten-year contracts at ten or twenty million a pop.”

Those are what you call ballpark figures. I mean, there's a pretty big difference between five and ten years
and ten million and twenty million dollars. The thing is, though, he's sort of right.

“And Kansas City pays like forty million bucks for the whole team,” he adds.

I think that might be a little low, but again, ballpark.

“Evil,” says Andy.

“Evil,” Tim and I agree.

There's a little pause.

“The Sox are, like —” I say.

“Like two-thirds of the Yankees,” says Tim.

If you just say the Sox, you mean the Red Sox. If you mean the White Sox, you have to say so. That's just the way the world works.

And then Chester plunks his tray down on the table.

“Hello, losers,” he says. We use that word a lot. It's OK to call someone a loser if he's your friend. I don't know if that's the way the world works, too, or if it's just sixth grade.

Anyway, we start to bust on him about the Mexican Surprise. That probably isn't cool of us, but it doesn't matter.

“My parents are from Ecuador,” says Chester. “Don't be so ignorant.”

“Come on,” says Andy, drawing a line from Tim to me with his finger. “You know these two can't help it.”

“Chuhhh,” says Tim. “You, like,
aspire
to be ignorant.”

Andy makes a far-off expression with his face and goes, “Someday…”

We laugh, and then we start talking about the team, our team. That's always going to happen when the four of us are together.

It's Monday night and my parents are going to an Awesome Eighties concert at the Atheneum. It's a forty-five-minute or thirty-year drive from here, depending on how you look at it. The show features not one, not two, but three bands I know nothing about. The funniest thing about it is seeing my parents getting all dressed up. My mom has one ancient can of hair spray that she pretty much only uses for things like this.

FFFshhhhhFFFFFshhhh!
I hear through the partially open bathroom door.

Mom emerges from the bathroom with a hair cliff above her forehead and a faded T-shirt that says “The Go-Go's” on it. Her sneakers could not be any pinker.

“Lookin' good, Mom,” I say, giving her a weak thumbs-up.

“Thanks,” she says. “I've got the beat!”

It's doubtful, but I don't say so. Then I turn the corner and see Dad in a polo shirt the color of pistachio ice cream — or the insides of that one kind of squashed caterpillar. He has the tip of each side of his collar pinched between the thumb and first finger of his hands. “What do you think,” he says, “up or down?”

“Oh, Dad,” I say, shaking my head.

A moment later, Mom comes around the corner.

“Up or down?” he repeats.

“Pop it!” she says.

He raises the collar up so that it's like the top of a squashed-caterpillar-green cape.

“I'll be in the car,” I say.

I'm not going to the show. I mean, can you imagine? They're dropping me off at Andy's. We're going to “do homework” while they listen to “rock and roll.” When we get there, Andy's mom makes a big fuss about their outfits.

“It's so dramatic!” she says, reaching out and lightly touching Mom's hair cliff.

“Thanks, Siobhan,” says Mom. “It's more dramatic now. I forgot and had the window down for a few blocks.”

“Still,” says Andy's mom. She turns to Dad. “And who's this young buck?”

Andy appears behind her, just inside the door.

“Excuse me,” I say, and duck past.

“What took you so long?” I say once we're inside. “I almost
died
out there!”

“Sorry,” he says. “I was preparing myself. You know, mentally.”

As we head for the living room we pass Andy's dad heading toward the door.

“Hi, Mr. Rossiter,” I say.

“Hi-Jack!” he says. It's his standard joke for me. When he holds up both hands for the pretend hijacking, I can see that he's wearing his Kings of Country tour T-shirt. I'm pretty sure that's not a coincidence.

“Guess I'd better go be neighborly,” he says, even though we're not really neighbors.

“It's not pretty,” I say.

“The eighties weren't,” he says.

By the time Andy and I hear my parents drive away, we're settled in at the living room table. We have our books open and look just like we would if we were doing homework. His parents duck their heads in and look just like they would if they believed us.

“We'll leave you two scholars alone,” says his mom.

“Don't pull a brain muscle,” says the King of Country.

Then they go upstairs, and we set up the Xbox Kinect. If you don't have one (I don't either), it's one of those video game systems that watches what you do and then has your character do the same thing in the game.

We decide to play soccer on it, so Andy takes the big square of carpet out of the closet and unrolls it right in front of the game's weird robot eyes. That way we can jump and kick without making too much noise.

We're both quiet for a second, and we can hear the TV coming through the ceiling from upstairs. It must be a dancing or singing show because first there's music, then there's applause. Those shows are pretty loud, so we figure we can have a pretty good game of soccer.

We both get carried away, but Andy's the one who brings his foot too far back on a penalty kick and clips the corner of the coffee table. We moved it back a little to put the carpet down, but I guess we didn't move it enough.

I turn around in time to see the whole table bump to a landing. Magazines shift sideways and drink coasters bounce. Right in the center of the table, a fancy-looking glass bottle wobbles twice on its little silver tray and falls over. I can see a few inches of brown liquid sloshing around inside of it.

“Nononono!” says Andy, looking over his shoulder.

He lurches back and grabs for the fancy bottle, but his body is all twisted around, and he falls and hits the table hard. Everything jumps again, higher this time. Behind him, his soccer player is basically going crazy. In front of him, the bottle skips off the edge of the table, brown liquid and all, and shatters on the floor.

“Uh-oh,” he says, getting up onto his knees. His face looks shocked and pale.

We both freeze and listen. There's no sound coming from above us now, no music, and definitely no applause.

“What was that?” I whisper. “Was it, like, expensive?”

“My mom's Waterford crystal,” he whispers.

“Her What-er-ferd what?” I say.

“Waterford crystal,” he says. “They don't even make them anymore. Not in Ireland, anyway.”

As soon as I hear the word
Ireland
, I know this is bad. Andy's mom doesn't just happen to be Irish, she's seriously
into
being Irish. She's a member of some society for it, and Andy just barely escaped Irish step-dancing lessons. Someone who would do that to her own son … Well, you can see how serious it is.

“What's that smell?” I say.

“Whiskey,” he says. “Irish whiskey.”

That's when we hear the footsteps coming down the stairs. They're coming fast. I'm actually hoping it's his dad, but it's not. Andy barely has time to get to his feet before his mom bursts into the room.

“What was th—” she starts, but she's already seen it. Her eyes are on the floor, and her jaw isn't too far away.

“My Waterford,” she says.

She peels her eyes away just long enough to register the rest of the room: the soccer game on the TV and
Andy and me standing there looking as sorry as we possibly can.

“I just…” she says. “I don't even…”

And then she disappears and comes back with a roll of paper towels and a dustpan. She goes over and cleans up the mess. When she stands up again, I can see the remains of the thing in the dustpan. It broke into a few big pieces, and it seems like there should be some way to fix it. But I know there isn't.

“How?” she says, looking straight at Andy.

She looks like she's about to start crying or maybe screaming.

“I…” says Andy. He's in an enormous amount of trouble. “I just…”

“He just turned on the game,” I say.

Andy looks at me. His eyes are wide open, and he's shaking his head slowly: No.

“I broke the bottle, Mrs. Rossiter,” I say. “I'm very sorry about the bottle.”

“It's a decanter,” she says. “It was.”

Her eyes slowly leave her son and land on me. They are so intense that I blink a few times and then look down.

“It was very nice,” I say. “I'm sorry I broke it.”

“It was very old,” she says.

We're all quiet for a moment. The game makes a noise, trying to get our attention.

“Turn that off,” says Andy's mom. “You won't be playing it again for a long time.”

Andy walks over and turns the game off.

“Stay here,” says his mom, like we have anywhere else to go. Then she leaves the room, and we hear her heading back upstairs to get his dad.

“What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Andy says in a hissy whisper. “She is going to
kill
you!”

“She can't kill me,” I say. “She can only kill you!”

“OK, that's true,” he says. “But you're going to get in a ton of trouble — a ton!”

“But I'll get in less than you would,” I say. “It's just smarter this way.”

“It's incredibly stupid!”

Now we hear them both starting down the stairs.

“Just don't say anything,” I say. “We'll both get in trouble if you say something now. You for doing it, and me for saying I did it.”

“I can't let you do this,” he says.

His parents are almost at the bottom of the stairs, and our whispers are getting lower and lower. I try to think of some convincing way to end this.

“It was my penalty!” I say.

“What?”

“You know, the penalty kick,” I say. “The one where it happened.”

“So?”

“I fouled you,” I say. “My fault. I got a yellow card.”

“What does that even —”

And then his parents appear, and we shut up. Andy's mom gives us both a speech about taking responsibility for our actions, while his dad stands there and looks serious, sad, and sometimes a little bored.

“I'm very sorry,” I say for the fourteenth time.

“Me, too,” says Andy.

They keep looking at him, waiting to see if he's going to say anything else. I do, too, but he doesn't say another word until after they leave. We're sitting at the table, really doing our homework this time.

“Thanks,” he says.

“Ehh,” I say, waving him off. “You'd do the same for me.”

And he would've. He has.

We're done with our homework by the time my parents return from the Awesome Eighties. Andy and I are both worried about what his mom is going to say to them. We're all standing there under the light on the little front porch, except for Andy's dad. He starts work early and is already in bed.

“How was he?” asks my dad. He's smiling, and his green collar is still mostly “popped.”

Mrs. Rossiter looks at me. All she has to do is say a few words, and I'll be handing over my allowance to her
forever. “A total hooligan,” she says, but she says it like it's a joke. “As usual.”

“That sounds like him, all right,” says Dad with a little laugh.

“Oh, yeah?” says my mom. Her voice is more suspicious. They could be communicating on a secret mom wavelength.

“Yep,” she says. “Mayhem, destruction. But it's nothing the insurance won't cover.”

My mom and dad both laugh.

“Well, thanks,” says my mom. “We got you this.”

It's an Awesome Eighties concert T-shirt. Yeah,
that
should cover it. But amazingly, it does. I forget sometimes, our parents are friends, too.

“What do you think?” Mrs. Rossiter says to Andy, holding the shirt up in front of her.

“Dad'll love it,” he says.

I thank Mrs. Rossiter again as I leave, but Andy and I don't say anything to each other. We bump fists and nod. That's what teammates do.