Sorry You're Lost (2 page)

I turn my attention to my dad, who, instead of greeting guests at the door, permits entry, his wide body stepping aside with a curt nod. He looks like a bouncer. He must think uncle impersonators will barge in and steal the corned beef. You can steal a lot from my dad (not that I do) and he won't notice, but steal his
food
 … cue the sirens, call the authorities. It's best to alert someone before the explosion, as it's tough putting him back together again.

My dad greets Manny at the door and allows him entry. Manny's eyes look red under the rims of his glasses. “I am sorry,” he says. “She was a great lady and mother. To me as well. Please accept my condolences.”

My dad nods. “Come in,” he says, then blocks the door with his body once again. I'd tell my dad to stop being a bouncer and join the, I don't know, party/sports bar/competitive corned beef fest, but he's better off where he is. Neighbors and these strangers don't know their boundaries.

“Sure looks like there'll be plenty of leftovers … can feed a whole fleet … or just your dad. Take care of the old man, will ya?” “Playin' any sports, Denny?” “You should talk to someone.” “Really sorry about, you know … ever been to Maine?”

And then someone says, “It's really heartbreaking for me, too,” and all I hear is
I'm leaving, I barely knew her, I've stayed too long.

There are sweat stains under my arms. Thanks, Old Spice. There's a mustard stain on the carpet—not from Uncle Mustard. This one's brown and probably spicy and definitely making a wet circle the size of a quarter on top of the fabric. At the crowded dining room table, the smell of sour pickles, the sound of crinkling cellophane. Neighbors and aunts talk about the SATs, how the test is hard and rotten and so are the tutors. I should feel grateful I still have about five years before I take it. But I don't feel grateful. I hope whoever is in charge of Thanksgiving cancels it next month.

Someone fills a glass at the sink without waiting for the cold water to cool down. I should tell them it's warm.

My bouncer dad eyes the corned beef. The neighbors are buzzing in my ear again and it's making me dizzy: “If there's anything you need, Denny, you know where to find us.” “Following the Phillies?” “Man, you're in the seventh grade already?” “Do people at school know?” “You look snazzy in that suit.” “It must be so tough.” “Make sure you keep busy.” “It is what it is.” “How are you coping?” “Seen any movies recently?” “What are you up to later?” “Sure looks like it's shaping up to be a lovely day outside.” “Such a lovely service this morning, wouldn't you say?”

The sweat stains under my arms are swelling, and there's so much I want to say to these people, shout to these people, write down for them to read and reread so they'll never ever bother me again, but all I can think is,
Dear Old Spice deodorant: You suck.

 

ROCK STAR

3½ months later

“Aloha, goddess of mathematics!” I give Mrs. Q a gummy smile as I walk into a packed math class. “Aloha!”

I live in New Jersey, not Hawaii, but I love me some Aloha. Love the sound of it. Who doesn't? Come on, everyone loves the sound of “Aloha,” even teachers, and people with really bad taste, like teachers. Ah, those gods and goddesses of literature, mathematics, and other fine subjects … If I were a teacher, I'd
love
to be called a god or goddess. And to be told how good I look.

“Wow, Mrs. Q, did anyone ever tell you that you have really nice earlobes?”

I don't have
a whole lot of
any experience whatsoever with pickup lines, but that's my favorite one, not that I'm trying
too hard
in any way to come on to Mrs. Q on this February morning. Though I do mention, as she reaches instinctively for her earlobes, that she looks aces, which is an awesome word that means awesome.

She shuts her eyes and bites her lower lip. “Denny, please sit down.”

Teachers just don't know how to take a compliment. They really don't. They get all paranoid that you're using some kind of teenage-coded sarcasm to make fun of them, which of course is unfounded and ridiculous and downright insulting.

And usually true. (I
might've
once told last year's sixth grade science teacher that his lectures were “whack,” horrible, lame. Chuckling nervously, he said, “I'll take that as a compliment, Denny. Being whacky is a good thing.” Couldn't agree more.)

In this case, Mrs. Q really
does
look aces. Her skirt is nicely pressed, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. And you already know about those magnificent earlobes. Plus, her skin is as smooth as butterscotch pudding, but it'd be a whole lot smoother if she weren't a rookie teacher. How do I know she's a rookie? Because she's young and pretty, and her breath smells like coffee, her eyes droop like old flowers, and the bright orange poster on the outside of her door says, “You are entering the Learning Zone.”

It really says that. The Learning Zone.

When the class gets rowdy, which is pretty much whenever I drop by these days, she points to the poster to remind us that we've entered the Learning Zone, as if the reason we're talking is simply because we've forgotten what zone we're in.

“Denny, please take a seat.”

“Mrs. Q!” I gasp. “
Take
one of your seats? Heavens, no! Good heavens, no. I am not a thief. A borrower, sure; a lender, certainly. But a thief? No, ma'am.”

Her seats don't exactly have street value. The desks and chairs are attached, like foldout trays on an airplane, or an armrest, or a skimpy one-piece bathing suit. Not that I wear skimpy bathing suits or anything. Seriously, I don't. I mean it. (Right now I'm wearing a green long-sleeved T-shirt and baggy jeans.
Not
a skimpy bathing suit.)

I glance at the rest of the class beyond Mrs. Q. Smiling faces, as chipper as a Sunday afternoon. And why not, for they're all enjoying my morning performance, except for Sabrina, who sits in the front row and always asks for extra math homework. But everyone else is chipper, especially my Rockafella crew: a small group of devoted homeys who never fail to laugh on command. We're not a gang, we're not even friends. I don't have many of those not named Manny, not that I discriminate based on name. I'd happily befriend someone
not
named Manny but … anyway, the Rockafellas respect my craft, my art of faking it. To steal a word from my dad, the Rockafellas and I are colleagues. We may not be friends, but we work together. In harmony.

From the right side of the room, they're warming their golden pipes, feeling out the rhythm.

“What what?!” cries Billy D. He isn't asking a question.

“Wicki wicki wicki!” shouts Doug E. He's spinning an imaginary record.

“Yup yup,” says Sean. I don't know his last initial. Or anyone's last name. They're just my harmonic colleagues.
Wicki, wicki, wicki, pop-u-lar-ity, hee-hee
. Just a little sample of our hits.

One of the Rockafellas screams out, “DO-NUTS! DO-NUTS!” which is sort of my name. Manny named me. Not because I like donuts or I'm shaped like one or because my middle name sounds similar to donuts, like Dontz or Domus. Not because my first word was “donut” or because I dressed as a donut for Halloween when I was too young to know any better.

Manny named me Donuts because I once beat him in a donut-eating contest during an elementary school field day event. That's it. That should have been it, but he got so bitter at my victory that he posted flyers all over the school with my face below my new name. Donuts. I took down as many flyers as I could, but the damage had been done. I was renamed. Born again as a pastry. I wish I had eaten slower. Or had a stomachache that morning. Or not come to school. But I came, I ate, and in those two minutes, everything changed forever. It reminded me of that famous Robert Frost poem, “The Road Not Taken,” where a split-second decision changes the course of your life. You've probably read the poem because it's so famous, but in case you haven't, it goes like this: “A group of goofy kids gobbled donuts in the back of the school near the broken fence. I swallowed four, Manny only three, and that has made all the difference.”

Donuts … the name is a blessing and a curse. I mean, it's not exactly a selling point for the ladies. Seems nobody wants to squire a Donut about town, which makes sense, I guess. I probably wouldn't make out with a girl named “Funnel Cake.” In general, you don't want to be labeled a pastry—unless you do what I do. Lets me be the dancing Rockafella, the Jolly Man, Jolly Olly.

Anyway, I'm at the front of the room jollier than a Jolly Rancher with a very important decision to make: where to sit, front or back. The front is my stage, spotlight and all, where I mark my territory and proclaim “Donuts was here,” just in case the social worker asks whether or not I came to school and inquires about my state. (Not New Jersey; I mean how I'm doing, if I seem sufficiently cheery.)

The only bad part about the front is that Sabrina, the girl who asks for extra math homework, is always perched there, with her book open—to the right page, no less—and her hazel eyes focused solely on the day's lesson. Because her straight black hair covers her right eye like a curtain, I can't prove that both her eyes are focused on the board, but if her grades are any indication, she doesn't get distracted by sideshows such as myself. Still, that doesn't stop her from rolling her eyes—the visible one, the left, I mean—and grumbling about me needing to grow up, which I don't really mind because it's pretty much true and Sabrina's face is pretty pretty—I mean, it's pretty much pretty. Well, very pretty. It's fair in color, and even though she's not wearing any lipstick or any other makeup, her full lips look glossy. Not as glossy as a picture, but glossy like, nice. And she's got this small stud on her nose that is cute at all times of the day except when she's blowing her nose. Oh, and she wears a Batman band on her left wrist and she wrote on her bag in whiteout and pen—names, dates, poems, lyrics, jokes, a Batman logo—and nothing goes better with math than Batman and graffiti.

Still, her grumbling is a turnoff, and I must admit that her presence has, at times, impacted my performances, the way a kid chokes when his parents attend his baseball games. But over time, through repetition, I've learned to ignore my critics because critics are like banana peels. They try to make you slip, and they all stink.

“Denny, please sit down.” Mrs. Q says this in soothing tones and offers a pat on my shoulder, a common move from the goddess of mathematics (especially since she found out about my mom). It's chummy and casual, a subtle nudge in the right direction that, for her purpose of leading a lesson, is for me to park in the back.

“You know, Mrs. Q, I've been thinking, when you're a baby, parents can't wait for you to speak and walk around. In elementary school, you're encouraged to talk, communicate, and explore the classroom. But then you get to middle school, where they tell you to sit down and shut up.”

“Denny, I need you to please stop distracting everyone.”

“I'm participating.”

“This isn't the way to participate.”

“But it's the only way I can, and I gotta participate somehow, especially when I'm in your class. When I'm in the Learning Zone, I try to give one hundred percent, one hundred percent of the time, which, as goddess of mathematics, I'm sure you realize is the most I mathematically can give at the highest frequency mathematically possible.”

I have a keen sense of when I'm losing my audience, and I know, as I look around the room, that though my classmates remain chipper, I've lost them.

Except for Sabrina, rolling her eyes and sighing with such gusto that her hair leaps to the side of her face. The class is knee-deep in talk of the seventh grade dance and I am lost in the sauce: “Which group are you, like, going with?” … “What do you mean, you don't know yet?” … “I know Jimmy just, like,
has
to go with Jenny, because they're, like, hooking up, but even they're going in separate groups” … “Which group are you in?” … “Who's in your group?” … “I wish the day was here already” … “You don't even know what you're, like,
wearing
? I mean, HEL-LO?”

Hello. Whoever invented middle school dances should have the following written on their tombstone:
HERE LIES THE DESTROYER OF MANKIND. AND WOMANKIND. BUT THE MAN LYING HERE IS NOT KIND, SO PLEASE LEAVE ROTTEN FLOWERS AND MOLDY PIZZA CRUSTS
.

“Okay, class … okay … up here … class … please … please listen up.” Mrs. Q plugs in a dinosaur—an old, dusty overhead projector at the front of the room—then raises her right arm in the air to get our attention, swaying it from side to side like they do at rock concerts, lighters in the air. But lighters are banned from middle schools. So she just waves her arm. “Listen up. Up here, everybody. We have an interesting lesson ahead of us today, but first let's review last night's homework.”

I let my eyes wander so as not to be noticed, but it's hard not to look at something when you tell yourself not to, so after four seconds of avoiding Mrs. Q's gaze, I take the slightest peek. Our eyes meet and it's hopeless. “Denny, please come to the front and do the first three problems from last night.”

Crap. Doesn't she know that showtime is over?

“Come on up, Denny. You can do this.”

I don't know why Mrs. Q believes in me. Maybe because she's a rookie teacher and doesn't know any better. Maybe because she heard about my mom from the sixth grade teachers. Maybe Mrs. Q sees something of herself in me, something deep, something you'd see on a greeting card: “I am you, you are me, together we can be.” No, forget that. She believes in me the way parents “believe” in a clumsy kid on the soccer field: she doesn't have a choice. She's being drowned out.