Sorry You're Lost (25 page)

“Um, excuse me, I'm going to get help.”

I try to think of happy things and start to hum that song my mom used to sing to me. The one about me being her sunshine. My eyes are heavy and I couldn't stand up even if I wanted to, which I don't, because the sheep look so warm and fluffy. It's getting dark outside, or inside, which makes the sheep hard to see. I try my best to count them, I really do, but my best isn't good enough. It's never good enough. The sunshine goes away like it does every day and my eyes are closing and it's getting too dark to see anything and the skies are gray and then dark gray and soon I can't see anything at all.

 

HOMEY DON'T PLAY THAT

“How do you feel?”

The sunglasses are off. His eyes still look like a white owl's. About to feast on whatever owls eat. Hopefully not donuts.

“Denny, knock it off and get up. How do you feel?”

“Tired.”

“Up,” he says.

“Up?” Right, still on the floor, Roger that.

“Get up.”

I do as I'm told. “Detention,” he says.

“Oh.”

“And I'm calling your parents—your dad, I'm calling him.”

I want to remind him that it's not on my dad's afternoon agenda to visit me at school, but Mr. Morgan is already helping me up with hands as strong as a lumberjack's, and I'm too tired to argue, especially with Sabrina standing beside him.

*   *   *

The windows are closed, but the shades are open. It looks cloudy outside. Not partly cloudy, completely cloudy. And cold. The whole room is cold, including the armrest desks, but I don't say anything because he's got an index card on his desk with my dad's contact information in my handwriting and he's on the phone.

“Mr. Murphy?” He isn't talking to me.

The conversation doesn't last long. Nor will this detention. My dad says he'll be here in five minutes, which means at least ten, but it's still not a lot of time.

“Get some work done,” Mr. Morgan tells me, as he turns the newspaper page from Leisure to Local News. I lean forward and squint to see if our upcoming dance has made it to Local News yet. Negatory, no dance, but I see an ad for a local production of
Les Misérables
at the Forrest Theater.
Great
. And an article about the economy crippling schools.
Even better.
And Mr. Morgan's impatient eyes. “Work, Denny,” he says.
Splendid.

I take out my math book and turn randomly to page 239. The directions spill to page 243. Five pages of directions for one problem.

Mr. Morgan flips to the comics. Then he unwraps a turkey sandwich on white bread and takes a bite. A Three Musketeers bar is on the table next to him. He didn't buy it from me. The whole scene depresses me and I get this black-and-white feeling back again, for good reason. The gray weather. The cold air. Cold desks. Cold Mr. Morgan. Pages 239 to 243 of my math textbook. The sound of Mr. Morgan's newspaper crumpling. The comics I can't read. The black-and-white lunch I can't eat. I feel like the only man left on the planet. I gotta get outta here.

The newspaper crinkles as Mr. Morgan kicks his feet up. “Get some work done,” he says again. “Mrs. Q and your other teachers told me there's plenty to catch up on.”

“They're lying, Mr. Morgan. Just like Mr. Softee and his detention thing. He said teachers hate detention because it's time-consuming.”

Mr. Morgan chuckles. “Well,
he's
lying. I like the free time.”

“Told you he's a liar.”

He shakes his head, muttering, “I can't believe Mr. Soffer said that teachers—”

“I wanna get outta here. I need to get outta here.”

“Calm down,” he says, turning a page of the newspaper. “Use this time wisely.”

“I feel like I'm in prison. This is torture. We learned in government class that torture is illegal. Seriously illegal. Are you aware that what you're doing is illegal?”

He yawns. “I'm not aware of that.”

“You should be. I can sue you for war crimes.”

“War crimes? This isn't a war, Denny.”

“We'll let Mr. Softee be the judge of that.”

“Well,
that
sounds like a fine plan,” he says, folding up the paper.

He has a point—my idea is terrible, because as Judge Judy would say, “It holds no water”—but I don't appreciate his sarcasm. “You know what, I wish they'd fire you.”

He smirks. “For what? War crimes?”

“And other stuff. For one, you're not—what's that word Mr. Softee used—oh yeah,
progressive
. You're not progressive enough.”

“You don't even know what that means.”

Another good point.

“Listen, Denny, your project, it could use a bit of touching up, but it's well done. I'm proud of the work you did with Sabrina.”

She did the work, not me. Sabrina did it all.

Sabrina. I find a girl with the type of face you want to come home to, and I ruin our home. I have to tell her. And I have to tell Manny. I have to tell them everything.

“Can I go to the bathroom, Mr. Morgan?”

“Your dad should be here any minute.”

I hope the traffic is bumper-to-bumper, as heavy as he is. I hope he gets stuck in the middle of the highway and doesn't show up. Then he'll get blamed instead of me. I'll tell Mr. Morgan that my dad never even
meant
to come. That cutting class and cutting meetings runs in the family. That it's a proud and storied tradition dating back to the days of those mischievous Pilgrims, but I hear his heavy breathing all the way down the hall.

“He's here,” I mutter.

“How do you know?”

“Those wheezing noises aren't coming from the heater.”

“Well, great, let's go then.”

“Go where?”

“Mrs. Q's room.”

“What? Why?”

He shrugs. “Change of scenery; I get tired of being in the same room. It should be a nice change of pace for you, too. I hear you haven't been there in a while.”

*   *   *

In a black business suit, Mrs. Q doesn't say “aloha” to me, and I don't say it to her, and my dad says nothing. Not “hey” or “hello” or even “thanks for interrupting my day.” All he does is nod, which makes me uncomfortable, so I sort of laugh again, but only in my mouth. I'm not sure my dad hears it because I pretend to clear my throat to mask the noise. You know, like when you're in class and accidentally fart, so you slide your chair or cough a few times so everyone will think
that
was the noise they heard instead of the fart.

Yeah, that never works.

And neither does my dad's attempt to sit down. He takes a deep breath, rolls up the sleeves of his wrinkled brown dress shirt, and tries to shimmy himself into an armrest desk, but he doesn't fit.

Mrs. Q offers him her chair. He waves her off and tries to sit on top of the armrest desk, but the desk tips forward and the chair's back legs become airborne until the whole thing almost capsizes. He steps off to allow the chair to come back down, but then he gets right back on until the desk tips forward again. It's like one of those little kid rides in which you put a quarter into a bull or a horse or an elephant and ride it forward and back, up and down, forward and back, up and down.

“I think I'll stand,” my dad says finally. A fine idea.

I take a seat, my dad standing over me. Mr. Morgan and Mrs. Q sit across from us. Her room has changed a bit since I last blessed it with a visit five weeks ago. Her decorations have matured, no sign of the Learning Zone; instead, there is a new rules poster—“Three strikes and you're out. Batter up!”—and some new math slogans: “Math is everywhere, math is life. If you say you don't like math, you're saying you don't like life. That's a problem. Solve it!” … “If you don't have time to
do it right
, you must make time to
do it over
” … “Try math; odds are you'll like it” … “Math
=
Success. Go figure.” Get it? Like, in math, you
figure
things out?

Eeesh. She's still got a ways to go.

Mrs. Q calls the meeting to order. “Thank you again, Mr. Murphy, for coming in.”

A nod, and then, “Thank you for having me,” and it's already sounding too much like a guest on a late-night talk show.
Tell me about your latest movie,
I assume is next. Roll the clip.
Tell me about your love life
. Sip from your mug. Cue the bombshell.

Cue it.

“Well, Mr. Murphy, as you know from the message I left on your machine, Denny has, uh, struggled a bit in math class, and struggled, to a large degree, to show up for class.”

I try to switch topics a bit and play the talk show guest for all it's worth: “I
have
struggled in math, Mrs. Q, and may I express my appreciation toward you and Mr. Morgan for organizing this important meeting of the minds and—”

My dad waves me off. “I'm sorry, what did you say about that message?”

“Oh, I—I assumed you got it…” Mrs. Q says. “I left it about a month and a half ago.”

“About a month and a half ago. A month and a half ago.” He keeps tasting those words and it doesn't seem like he likes the taste. “A month and a half ago. A month and a half ago…”

He looks down at me like I'm beneath him, which I am, because he's standing.

Given that I'm on trial, I can't help but think of Judge Judy and realize that none of these accounts mean anything without written proof, and I'm just about to proclaim
She lacks evidence
but Mrs. Q reaches for a navy blue attendance book. “Denny is, well, very active and needs a lot of support to excel in his classes. For starters, he needs to
come
to class.” She flips to the back of her book. “He's only been to … hold on, let me see here … yes, four of my math classes this marking period. This is his attendance record if you'd like to take a look.” My dad leans over, nods at her notebook, then nods at me. “And when he
is
in class he has difficulty focusing and he can be a distraction to his peers. I know he's … recently been through some difficult times. I was sorry to hear about his loss—your loss. I was—am, sorry.”

My dad grunts but doesn't speak, so Mrs. Q continues: “I'd
like
to see him do well, but he hasn't taken the work seriously. He'd much rather interrupt the class and play around.”

Once it's clear that Mrs. Q has concluded her opening statements, my dad turns to me. “Well, son. What do you have to say?”

What do I have to say?
That's a terrible question. It's not as bad as asking “What do you have to say
for yourself
?” but it's still pretty bad. I mean, what can I possibly say to make anyone feel any better? The worst part is that my dad doesn't even
want
me to say anything. But I know that if I don't open my mouth, he'll keep pestering me just for show until I do. I don't know what to say, so I say that: “I don't know what to say.”

He leans over and it looks like he's going to whisper in my ear, but he doesn't whisper, he yells.

“YOU DON'T HAVE
ANYTHING
TO SAY?”

“No.”

He takes a breath, lowers his voice. “But your teacher, Mrs. Um…”

“Q,” Mrs. Q says.

“Right, Mrs. Q tells me you have a lot to say in class. A whole lot to say. You don't have
any
thing to say now?”

“No.”

“Nothing at all?”

He's getting pretty worked up and is beginning to sound like a bull, breathing loudly through his nose like a backward sniffle. “Nothing at all, Denny? Nothing at all? We're not leaving here till you say something.”

“Actually, I do have something to say. To Mrs. Q.” I turn to her. “Mrs. Q, after picking up all the garbage in the hallways like Jean Valjean, I now know how difficult your job is, and how much more difficult I made it for you. I'm sorry.” Mr. Morgan furrows his brow, so I explain: “Jean Valjean had a harder life than I do, much harder, I know. Most people do, including Mrs. Q.” Now it's her turn to look confused. “It's a play,
Les Misérables
, and there's this guy who—”

“I'm familiar with the play,” she says.

“Of course. Forgive me. Anyway, I realize now how hard I've made it for you to teach. I now know what it's like to argue with the animals in this school. I've been picking up trash, you see. It's been difficult, but it was only fair. I'm not complaining about it. I shouldn't have been selling candy in the first place.”

“WHAT ARE YOU, A CANDY DEALER?” It seems my dad's volume switch is stuck on loud. “DON'T I GIVE YOU AN ALLOWANCE?”

“Yes, but it's only a dollar and—”

“YOU SPOILED BRAT! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I—”

Mr. Morgan jumps like a heroic lumberjack savior to rescue me from annihilation, throwing out a two-by-four for me to grab on to for dear life. “In English, Denny has done some good work as of late.” Then Mr. Morgan must tire of rescuing me, as he yanks that two-by-four from my hands. “But Denny couldn't stop laughing today in English class.”
Okay, that's enough.
“And fell asleep in the hallway.”
O-kay.
“And is now in danger of failing my class.”
Got it.
“And is in danger of repeating the grade.”
Yup, got it.

“Wait, you're Mr. Morgan?” my dad says. “Mr. Life Is Good, right?”

This is the first time I've seen Mr. Morgan blush. “Well, I—”

“I've seen your work sheets. And what Denny's done with them.”

He nods, his face reddens. “I've seen them, too.”