Sorry You're Lost (29 page)

Walking around the school and through the front entrance, I avoid the gaze of Manny's date. No way I'm looking her in the eye.

Approaching the dance hall, I'm not sure how to look at the guy in front of me, either. In a red and green tweed suit, Mr. Morgan waves us forward. I want to tell him that his suit looks swanky, but I'm not sure if “swanky” is the right word to use and he
is
an English teacher after all, and I want to tell him that I've given things a lot of thought and that I'm sorry, and that the heading on his work sheet isn't entirely wrong, isn't completely wrong; that it should read “Life is
good
flabbergasting,” but instead I say, “I assume you're the hormone checker. Guess we gotta leave them at the door.”

He shakes his head. “Actually, for tonight, but just for tonight, hormones are allowed in. This is a hormone-friendly establishment. In fact, please bring them.” He nods at Ronald “the Gum Dealer” Latimer running in place in the center of the dance floor, his arms in full pump, his mustache twitching with every long stride. “If Ronald's the only one dancing, we're in for a long evening.”

He pats me on the shoulder on our way in and I can't help but turn around and say, “Turns out Sabrina likes me, Mr. Morgan. I guess you're not as omniscient as I thought you were.”

“Don't push your luck.”

“She understands what an intellectual powerhouse I am at English.”

“I guess so.” He chuckles. “By the way, Mr. Anonymous, thank you for the classroom equipment. Mrs. Q thanks you, too.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

He waves me off. “Know it's appreciated. Really, thank you. I admire you.”

I think of hugging him—until he says, “But if you don't hand in months of math work by June, you'll be watching her test out that Smart Board this summer.”

“Roger that. But you're killing the vibe, Mr. Morgan.”

“That's my job. Seriously, it is. That's why they pay me the big bucks and why intellectual English powerhouses call me the Lumberjack and the S.U.O.G.E.”

I can't help but smile. I feel another urge to hug him, to throw my arms around him and give him a big ol' bear hug, grizzly bear that he is. But I don't, because students aren't supposed to bear-hug teachers, because bear hugs hurt, and because Manny shoves me forward, barking: “How many times with the ‘Roger that'? And how inappropriate for a teacher to engage in conversation with a student at such a formal gathering!”

“Manny, chill out, I engaged with him.”

“You are engaged to your teacher? I thought you had a firm grasp of all the rules of social etiquette. You need to be on your best behavior tonight!”

“I was only going to give him a bear hug, Manny.”

“
What?
You should never hug people as if they are bears, especially teachers! Not now, not ever, forever and ever, amen!”

I can't tell if he's serious or not. He's so worked up from the helicopter landing that it's hard to get a read on him.

Walking inside, the first thing that hits me, like a basketball or a volleyball or tennis ball or soccer ball or any other balls we use in gym, is that our dance—our monumental and dreaded and fancy and overwhelming and apocalyptic seventh grade dance—is in the gym. Our dance hall is the Blueberry Hills Middle School gymnasium. Like any other middle-size gym in the state of New Jersey that doesn't smell as bad as it usually does. (It smells of cologne and perfume and french fries.) Eighty, maybe a hundred students are already inside, walking in groups, dark clumps like shadows pasted together, like they're attached at the hip for their own comfort, and it looks like it's working because the groups of ten and fifteen and twenty look a lot more relaxed than I feel. But it's hard to be sure of anything right now, and it's really hard to get an accurate count on each group because it's hard to see.

The overhead lights are off; a red and white disco ball sparkles in the back, above a DJ with a strobe-light jacket and long sideburns. The white walls are covered in purple banners and dance posters. “This is a hormone-friendly zone,” one of them says. Pink streamers cross the room in all directions, as if it were toilet-papered as a prank. Blue balloons hover above a circular dance floor. A green tablecloth stretches across three café tables full of food.

The DJ begs everyone to come onto the dance floor, but they're all on the outside of the circle dabbling at the tables with all sorts of snacks and a jug of Hawaiian Punch. I feel my body loosening. “Aloha!” I shout, but nobody gets it.

“The punch,” I explain to Sabrina. “It's Hawaiian. Aloha!”

She shakes her head.

Still, it's better than the fascinating conversation I hear to my right:

“Are you having fun?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You're not talking.”

“Neither are you.”

“That's because you aren't.”

“No,
you
aren't.”

“Okay, I'll start. Are you having fun?”

“Yes. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Great.”

“Yes. Great.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Yes, have you?”

“Yes.”

Manny must catch the tight, cautious vibe because he points to a kid that just joined the dance floor. “He is dancing like the Tin Man. Someone needs to put oil in that guy's armpits. What about you, Donuts? Care to lubricate that tall chap's pits?”

“Why don't
you
dance?”

Instead of dancing, Manny points to the row of candy bars on the food table. “Courtesy of I.M.P,” he says. “But do not have too many. Nobody goes to the bathroom at a formal dance because the toilet can overflow and you can slip and crack your head, and you will forever be known as the guy who slipped on his own crap at the dance. Plus, because this is such a formal gathering, you will need to tip some guy for handing you a paper towel in the bathroom. So, I believe one candy bar will suffice—and one, of course, for the Mrs.”

Sabrina fills a cup with Hawaiian Punch and piles celery sticks, peppers, mini-carrots, a spoonful of dip, and a roll of bread on her plate.

“I thought you didn't want any,” I say.

She shrugs.

Over her shoulder, I spot Marsha in her hairnet, holding a tray of mozzarella sticks. I wave. Her hands are full so she can't wave back.
Relationship beings,
she mouths.
Relationship beings,
remember
. I nod.
Dance. You have to dance.
I nod again.

I want to but … I still feel too nervous to dance, too nervous to eat. I fill up a plate of food and push it around, waiting patiently for my song. Something slow, something smooth, something I can rock to. Not rock and roll to, just rock to, from side to side. Or the chicken dance. Or anything by Bruce Springsteen.

The DJ has other plans: techno beats, wailing drums, a strobe light that makes everyone look like robots weaving their arms in and out of figure eights. The DJ, pretending to scratch a record, screams “Wicki, wicki, wicki!” into the microphone, obviously plagiarizing me and the Rockafellas, none of whom seem to notice because they're happily dancing in a group of at least a dozen. And then the DJ plays a song that was ruined. I had heard it on the radio on the way home from the funeral. It still feels ruined, and I feel myself tightening up again, but halfway through the song, I don't know, it sort of doesn't feel ruined anymore—until the DJ groans into the microphone, “Uh … yeah … uh-huh uh … yeah … let the good times roll.” Then it's ruined. I fight a smile.

“The DJ is an abomination,” Manny says. “This music is flabbergasting.”

Manny's right, but at least he made me laugh and at least I'm not the only one standing on the sidelines watching the DJ pepper his mixes with uh-huh-yeah sound effects. A few couples within each group gaze at the dance floor, hands in their pockets, until their group pushes them together for a push dance. I call it the “push dance” or “mush dance” because that's really what it is: they mush kids together and say “Dance!”

Reluctantly, the couples oblige. Not that they have a choice.

Sabrina watches the push/mush dances with a sparkle in her eye, sipping Hawaiian Punch. Part of me wants someone to force Sabrina and me to push/mush dance and part of me thinks I'm a raving lunatic for wanting that, and a part of me wants to hug her or kiss her, and part of me just wants to talk to her, show her a good time, but I don't know what to say. Thankfully, the DJ and his music are loud enough to drown out any herky-jerky sentences I think of pronouncing. One song to the next, uh-huh-yeah, I say nothing.

What feels like days later, the DJ leans into the microphone and announces the last song: “I give to you, as voted on by the seventh grade class, your dance song and from what I hear, your
official
school song—” He pauses. “This will be the last song, so make it count. Grab that special someone, escort them to the dance floor, and soak in the memories. Uh-huh, yeah. Soak 'em in, like a sponge. Let the good times roll.”

Marsha eyes me from the food table.
Dance,
she mouths, pointing desperately at Sabrina.
You need to dance!

Dance? With a girl? With my girl? I want to, I do, but my heart is racing and my palms feel sweaty. I reach into my pocket and play with my phone. I want to talk into it,
need
to talk into it. There's so much I want to say, want to tell her, ask her; so much I want to thank her for, apologize, whisper to her. But, I realize, she probably already knows. Because … how could I have gotten through the past year without her? I mean, if she weren't with me—if she stayed at her funeral and never left to watch over me at the corned beef fest and everywhere else—then how do you explain the good in this world, in my world: that my dad and I are now speaking—not in long sentences, but still; that gods and goddesses have new technology; that Chad got played; that I have a girl, an actual human female, and Manny has one, too, for at least another hour.

My mom isn't a tense. But if she were, she'd be present. Past, too. But also present. I want to call her, but I get the feeling that she's here with me now, in the present, smiling down on me as the DJ plays the school song and everyone barks in order to let the dogs out. It feels good to think of her like this.

(All of the barking dog sounds in my ears don't feel as good.)

Sabrina asks me to dance. Tells me, actually. “You need to dance.” Thankfully, she or anyone else doesn't push/mush us together. But we do lock hands and assume what seems to be dancing position. I know how to
surf on a desk
fall in a trash can, how to do the chicken dance, how to do the worm, but I've never done them at a dance, an official school dance, with hundreds of barking students and a few barking gods and goddesses—and a girl in my arms, swaying me from side to side.

I don't have a clue how to do this.

But I do know this: the same way I know that somehow I'll get through this night and all other days and nights and months and summer school and the rest of my classes as a student of Blueberry Hills Middle; the same way I'll get through Chad's revenge and all the other issues—and there'll be
plenty
—that come with a flabbergasting age in a flabbergasting school with a flabbergasting friend and a flabbergasting parent and m'lady, m'flabbergasting lady, in this
good
flabbergasting life.

I'll do my best.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

There are many people who helped make this book possible. First, thank you to my wife, who makes everything possible.

Thank you to Hubert for his candy ideas (and candy). Thank you to Joseph for his word. Thank you to all my students. This doesn't happen without them.

Thanks to my agent, Michelle Andelman, for her support. Thanks to Janine O'Malley, Angie Chen, and everyone at FSG for their tireless work.

The book was written for those lost. I hope it provides direction, comfort, a laugh, a smirk, hope, company, a distraction, a conversation starter, and/or a pillow.

 

Also by Matt Blackstone

A SCARY SCENE IN A SCARY MOVIE

 

Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

Text copyright © 2014 by Matt Blackstone

All rights reserved

First hardcover edition, 2014

eBook edition, March 2014

mackids.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Blackstone, Matt.

     Sorry you're lost / Matt Blackstone. — First edition.

        pages cm

     Summary: New Jersey seventh grader and class clown Denny Murphy has just lost his mother, his father is uncommunicative, he is in trouble with his teachers, and to top it all off, his best friend has a scheme to get dates for the end-of-year school dance.

     ISBN 978-0-374-38065-6 (hardback)

     ISBN 978-0-374-37121-0 (e-book)

     [1. Grief—Fiction. 2. Middle schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 5. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 6. Popularity—Fiction. 7. Conduct of life—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Sorry you are lost.

PZ7.B5332Sor 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2013021215

eISBN 9780374371210