Sorry You're Lost (23 page)

*   *   *

It's almost summer. My mom's lying on a hospital bed in a long white gown. She's bald.

A television buzzes on the wall. People are in court. A judge whose name is Judy tells a man that he needs to pay a lady forty bucks, though it looks like
he
could use the money. People laugh.

“Go ahead. Wake her up,” my dad says.

I shake my head. I don't want to disturb her. She looks peaceful but tired, like a dozen yellow daisies that are part of a peace rally but wilting after too much rallying.

“It's okay,” he says. “She wants to see you.”

I take a few steps forward and realize I don't want to see her
,
because up close she doesn't look peaceful. She looks dead. Her lips are purple. She's as pale as a vampire wearing pale makeup. Plastic tubes are stuck up her nose and I wonder if the tubes are permanent, like cement and permanent marker.

She tilts her head toward me but doesn't open her eyes. The judge named Judy makes people laugh again, asking a guy if he's lying. I turn around and whisper to my dad that I want to leave.

“Hey,” my mom whispers. Her breath smells like laundry. “Nice to see you.”

“Nice to see you, too,” I tell her. I am lying. I hate seeing her like this.

“How's school?” she asks.

“Fine.” I am lying again. Since she got sicker, I lie to her all the time, but I don't feel bad about it because this isn't really my mom in front of me. It's a stunt double. A replica. A wax figure at a museum that's so bad it's funny. The artist even got her glasses wrong: they're bigger, goofier, and black instead of her skinny pink ones. (This museum is ridiculous.)

“Glad to hear you're doing well,” she says. “How are your grades?”

“Excellent,” I tell her. She knows I'm lying because my dad tells her about my detentions. I wish he wouldn't tell her and I wish I wouldn't act up. I take it back. All of it. Especially because my health teacher told the class today that stress can make you sick, which means I'm making my mom even sicker and that I'm killing her. Maybe I already have.

A tube is taped to her hand. The tape is clear. I can see through it. The skin on her hand looks like it's melting.

My mom points to her mouth. “Ice chips,” she says. “I'm … thirsty. Please tell the nurse to bring more ice chips.” My dad runs out to tell the nurse.

“Are you doing your best?” my mom asks me.

“Yes.”

“Good,” she says. “That's what's…” she coughs into her hand. “Important. You can always fall asleep at night when you know you've done your best.”

“I am doing my best.”

“Stop! This is nonsense,” the judge whose name is Judy yells at a man. “I don't believe you. Case dismissed.” She bangs the gavel and walks away. Everyone laughs.

 

THE HORMONE EXTERMINATOR

Wiping the blood from my nose with the back of my hand, I realize I haven't done it. My best, I mean. Not even close. Mrs. Q knows it. My dad knows it. Sabrina knows it. Chad knows it. Or at least his foot does.

And soon Manny will, too. But I can't tell him now. I can't and I don't care that I'm not doing my best by keeping it from him. I can't tell him. I can't tell anyone.

*   *   *

Yes, I'd like to report a robbery. How much? At last count, around seven hundred dollars. What was I doing with that much money? Raising funds. For what? For a fund-raiser. What's the fund-raiser for? A dance, to get someone to go with me. Really? Yes, really, but never mind that. There was a robbery. How did I raise that much money? Selling candy in school. Am I allowed to do that? Sort of. Can I
prove
that the money was stolen? What do you mean, like do I have order forms? No, they were getting too tedious and unnecessary and sales were so good. I was a prolific salesman. Have I told the principal about this? Not exactly. Have I told my dad? Not a chance.

So, yeah, I'm not calling the cops.

Besides, I still have everything I want, anyway …

I still have Sabrina. Don't I?

*   *   *

I need to see her, tell her everything, have her tell me everything is gonna be all right. Everything is gonna be all right. Everything is gonna be all right. This morning I had seven hundred dollars. And now I don't. It was stolen. Everything is gonna be all right.

*   *   *

The next day, Sabrina passes me in the halls on the way to English class. “I have a surprise for you,” she says, smiling mischievously, tugging me down the hall.

I have a surprise for you, too.
SAY IT!
I didn't sell candy for a fund-raiser. Not a real one, anyway. And now it's all gone—my share is, I mean—but it doesn't matter because, look, we need to talk. Now. Say it!
SAY IT!

I want to, I really do, but my high-dive skills have withered away and we're almost to class and I can see Mr. Morgan in his room sipping coffee from a Dunkin' Donuts cup while setting up his TV/VCR. Teachers at Blueberry Hills are the only humans left on the planet who still use VCRs. They don't even have working remotes, which is why he's leaning over, pushing buttons manually on that clunky piece of junk. It looks like it was made a hundred years ago. Mr. Morgan tries to bang the top of it to get it to work. It doesn't. I want to walk in the room and help him, but I don't know a thing about old VCRs and everyone knows better than to burst into Mr. Morgan's class.

“Guess what?” Sabrina cries, leaning against the wall at the front of the line.

“Sabrina, really, we need to—”

“I finished!”

“Finished what?”

“Our project, silly. I filmed myself as Willy Loman's wife, and took video of you picking up wrappers and dubbed the ‘Look Down' song to it and—”

“Wait, you took video of me picking up wrappers in the halls?”
I'M SAVED!
“Where'd you film me? Do you have Chad on video?!”

“Why would I have Chad on video?”

“No reason.”

“What's wrong with your nose? Was it bleeding?”

I touch the bridge of my nose, now swollen and painful and hopefully not discolored. “Oh that, it happens all the time. It's the dry air. In the atmosphere. Tell me you filmed me in the halls.”

“No, I filmed you in the lunchroom. When I got home I put a few sound bites together and rewrote much of the dialogue to fit the footage. I took a few pictures, too. Not completely done yet, but maybe we can finish after school.”

“Yeah, that'd be great. I need to talk to you, Sabrina, I—”

I can't finish my sentence because everyone in line is giving me a stink face. It's easy to ignore one stink face, but twenty-five stink faces … that's another story, especially when one of them belongs to Mr. Morgan. His face gets
really
stinky when he wants to make a stink face. Now is one of those times.

“Good morning, readers and writers. You are about to enter a hormone-free zone. No hormones allowed in here, for I am the hormone exterminator.”

Normally I'd laugh, but I'm too focused on Sabrina and what I have to say and—

“Are we ready, Denny?” This from Mr. Morgan, owner of said stink face. “For the last time, stop looking at Sabrina. She doesn't like you. Class, you may enter.”

On our way in, I'm scared to turn around and look because I'm afraid I won't find her there and won't see blushing and everything will be lost and I'll be left with nothing because she doesn't like me, never liked me … I can't help it. I must know …

I sneak a peek behind me. Sabrina's cheeks are red and rosy, as rosy as roses, and that's a beautiful thing because she's a beautiful thing—not a thing, a girl, a young lady, a female member of the human species who likes me, or
has
liked me, or doesn't like me at all and is simply embarrassed by what Mr. Morgan said. Or embarrassed of me, like my mom would be if she found out what I've become, what I've done, how much I've lost, what I've said, what I haven't said to Sabrina and Manny and my dad and …

Mr. Morgan shuts the door behind us.

“Okay, class, settle down,” he says, and of course everyone does. “We've had volunteers to show a few rough sketches of their work thus far. Shelly, care to go first?” Mr. Morgan claps lightly, a golf clap, and encourages us to do the same, like we're all one big polite golf audience. As the first volunteer walks up to meet Mr. Morgan at the VCR, I get itchy, really itchy, like red ants are crawling up my leg, and I know I need to leave this room. LEAVE THIS ROOM I'm shouting at myself but the door is closed and my feet are frozen and I just feel so uncomfortable all of a sudden that I sort of start laughing. Maybe it's because Sabrina blushed earlier, which means she may, she might, she could still like me. Or maybe it's the clunky old VCR giving Mr. Morgan fits. Or the way some girl named Shelly says, “So, like, I don't know if it's, like, any good. I, like, think it's, like, honestly pretty
bad
, I mean, I'm like still working on it, and, like, here goes,” but I can't stop laughing.

“Denny, stop,” Sabrina whispers, tugging on my sleeve, and for a second I gain my composure, but then I notice the word “Donuts” on Mr. Morgan's Dunkin' Donuts coffee and it makes me laugh again.

“Denny, what are you
doing
?” This from Mr. Morgan, and the last thing I want is for
him
to get mad. I try to smile so that he'll lighten up, but he's not getting any lighter. He takes a few steps toward me. “And now you're smiling? You think what you're doing is funny?”

I can see myself in the reflection of his sunglasses. I look like Silly Putty, a stretched out, discombobulated lump of Silly Putty. I look like my dad. That's when I get even more uncomfortable and start to laugh. I don't want to, really I don't, but the more uncomfortable I get, the more I laugh. And the more I laugh, the angrier Mr. Morgan gets. Even through his sunglasses, I can see his eyes are ablaze. “What are you—I can't—believe me—you need to—Denny—seriously.”

“Are you on drugs?” he finally asks.

I'm not, so I say I'm not.

“Don't believe the hype,” he says. “The dope will make you a dope.”

I don't want to laugh, but it's such a lame thing to say, especially for an English teacher, so I laugh. Louder. Longer. It's at this point that Mr. Morgan looks down at the work sheet in front of me with the following headings: Life is
good
a misunderstanding. Life is
good
a series of unfortunate events that are stacked like trees, and the stacks are so tall that not even lumberjacks can cut them down. Mr. Morgan's face tightens. And then my hero and model, the good ol' supreme and merciful and omniscient god of English, the S.U.O.G.E., always a quick trigger on student laughter, gives me the boot. The old heave-ho. The ax.

He doesn't actually take a lumberjack's ax to me or physically
boot
me out the door, but picturing him doing either while yelling “Homey don't play that!” is pretty funny, so I laugh harder, longer. Mr. Morgan shakes his head, muttering something about “waste” or “space.” He might've said I was a waste of his time. Or a waste of space. A space cadet. A wastebasket. A waste of Silly Putty. I think he called me a waste of Silly Putty. And then he removes his sunglasses for the first time ever and his eyes look like the eyes of white owls, like someone at the slopes after a week with goofy ski goggles, and he's staring at me so intently that I laugh some more. Then he says, “I'll see
you
in detention,” and the way he stresses “you” as if it was unclear if
I
was in trouble or someone else, like that girl Shelly who, heavens forbid, got, like, worried, she was in, like, a lot of trouble, and was in, like, detention, so I laugh some more and glance one last time at Mr. Morgan. For some reason, I start thinking of that Christmas eggnog with those teachers who hadn't laughed in months and now can't stop laughing but don't even know what they're laughing about. I want to stop, I really do, but I can't, and Sabrina is blushing again and not in a good way, and I don't want to embarrass Sabrina more than I already have, so I leave and don't look back.

 

MY BEST

“Hello? How are you? That's good. Dad? Oh, he's not here. I'm in school. I'll tell him you said hey. Not much. Yeah, just wanted to hear your voice.”

This time, after I put the phone away I don't feel better. After getting the heave-ho from Mr. Morgan and wandering the halls, I've settled at the front entrance of the school, where the doors are freezing cold from the outside wind. I feel, well, cold, but also naked, sort of like how it is in a dream, where you're naked in a public place like a classroom or stadium or bus stop and you can't do anything about it. Can't find clothes, can't hide in the bathroom, can't even cover yourself because your hands don't work.

I must spend about a minute touching my coat, my jeans, my hat—anything to convince myself that I really am clothed. Then I rest my face on the cold glass doors. A few small black birds chirp outside, a large black crow squawks, and it just seems that everything is in black and white all of a sudden. The street, the cars, the birds, the mat, the clouds—everything is in black and white, like I'm in an old movie. I realize maybe I
am
in a black-and-white movie, like I've traveled back through time, but then I remember that even in the days of black-and-white movies people lived in color, and I notice the sign for Blueberry Hills Middle School has mold on it, the first sign of color. The tops of the B, H, M, and S are dark green, like month-old mashed potatoes.