The Boy Who Lost His Face (11 page)

“That’s correct,” said Mr. MacFarland. “The Declaration of Independence says everyone has the right of the pursuit of happiness. What’s the difference between the right to be happy and the right to pursue happiness?”

“Okay, um,” said David, trying to fake it. “Not everyone’s going to be happy all the time. I guess most people are hardly ever happy. You probably have to be sad sometimes in order to be happy. Sometimes you might think you want something, but then when you get it, it doesn’t make you happy. You might be happier pursuing it than you are when you actually get it.”

He had no idea if what he said made sense or not.

“Mr. Umbridge,” said Mr. MacFarland. “Does that mean you have the right to do anything you want in order to pursue happiness? If smoking marijuana makes you happy, do you have the right to smoke marijuana?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s supposed to be bad for you.”

“Is that something the government should decide? Or should people be allowed to make their own choices? Cigarettes are bad for you, but they’re not illegal. Alcohol is bad for you. Even television is bad for you. What if it was discovered that television caused severe brain damage? Should the government be allowed to make it against the law to watch television? Miss Peters.”

“I don’t think they could ever make television illegal. It’s just like cigarettes. The cigarette companies are too powerful. Too many people would lose their jobs and …”

When the bell rang, David quickly left his seat and hurried out the door so that Tori Williams wouldn’t try to say good morning to him.

“Y
OU WANT
to go with us to the park after school today?” Mo asked David at lunch. “We’re going to watch criminals pick up trash.”

“See, every Wednesday criminals come to the park and pick up trash,” Larry explained.

“Robbers and murderers,” said Mo.

“Well, I don’t know if there are any murderers,” said Larry. “I think they are mostly drunk drivers and shoplifters.”

“Oh, I thought there’d be murderers,” said Mo, obviously disappointed.

“Well, maybe there are a few murderers,” said Larry.

David figured Larry didn’t want him along. “Sorry,” he said. “I can’t make it. Besides, I don’t think I should be around murderers when I still might be cursed.”

“The curse is gone,” said Larry. “The lemonade took care of that.”

“I just want to be careful,” said David. “You said three days was the standard waiting period.”

“You just want to be cursed so you don’t have to ask Tori out on a date,” said Mo.

“Bullshit,” said David.

Larry and Mo looked oddly at him. For some reason it sounded strange to hear David say “Bullshit.”

He felt odd about it too, and blushed right after he said it.

A
FTER LUNCH
he headed toward P.E.

“Hello, Mr. Ballinger,” said Tori, hurrying alongside him.

“Hi,” he muttered, looking down at the ground.

“I liked what you said in homeroom,” she said, “about happiness. Having to be sad in order to be happy.”

“Yeah, well, I just had to say something,” he said, then walked quickly away from her and into the boys’ locker room.

“Bye, David,” he heard her say behind him.

He walked down the row of lockers. Lately he had begun to dread gym. He felt very vulnerable there, especially when changing clothes. So far he’d been
left pretty much alone, except for being called a few names. But he was constantly afraid that Roger and some of his friends might try to steal his clothes or put a jockstrap over his face.

He tried not to run around too much during soccer. He didn’t want to sweat too much because he didn’t want to have to shower. When he returned to the locker room, he quickly changed his clothes, then went to the bathroom and splashed his face with cold water.

“Your brother’s got more guts than you do,” said Roger Delbrook. He was combing his hair in front of the bathroom mirror. “Sure Glen beat him up, but at least he fought back. That’s more than you ever do. You just stand there like a pile of—”

The gym teacher entered the bathroom.

David headed outside. He saw Tori Williams coming out of the girls’ locker room. He quickly turned before she spotted him.

“W
HAT’S WITH
you and Ricky?” asked his mother. “He said he hated you.”

“I don’t know,” said David. He was sitting at his desk doing his homework.

“I think you should go talk to him.”

“I’m doing my homework,” said David.

He wondered if Glen had really beaten up Ricky, like Roger had said. Was that why Ricky hated him?

He went into his closet, got his baseball and glove, then headed for his brother’s room. He was surprised
by how nervous he felt. “So, you want to play catch?” he asked.

Ricky didn’t look up from his paperback book.

David stood in Ricky’s room, pounding the ball into his glove.

Ricky put his book down. “What do you want?”

“Did you get in a fight with Glen Delbrook?”

“What do you care?”

“I care. I’m your brother.”

“Unfortunately!”

“What did I do?” asked David. “Just tell me what I did!”

“You’re a stooge!” said Ricky.

“Look, just because Roger calls me names. That’s his problem. Names don’t hurt me.”

“But it’s true!” said Ricky. “You are a stooge. I saw you and your stoogy friends. You dumped a whole pitcher of pink lemonade on your head.”

“Look, I—”

“Why’d you do that?” Ricky demanded. “If you’re not a stooge, why’d you do that?”

David didn’t know what to say. How could he tell Ricky about the curse? Ricky would only think he was a bigger fool. Ricky was too smart to believe in curses.

“Stooge!” said Ricky.

David walked out to the backyard. He tossed the ball onto the roof of the house, then caught it when it rolled down. He tossed it up again. It momentarily disappeared from view, then he lunged and caught it as it rolled off the roof.

“Careful,” his mother called to him from the kitchen. “You already broke one window.”

“I won’t,” said David.

He tossed the ball back onto the roof, just above the window.

T
HURSDAY
.

David was wearing socks, no shoes. “I made orange juice,” he said, holding the pitcher in his hand. “Anybody want some?”

“That’s very nice, thank you,” said his mother.

David poured a glass for his mother, holding the glass in one hand and the pitcher in the other. His feet slid a little bit as he handed it to her.

“Dad?” he asked.

“Sure,” said his father. “Careful, not too full.”

He didn’t spill a drop.

“Hey, Ricky, you want some orange juice?” he asked as his brother entered the kitchen.

“I’m not thirsty,” said Ricky.

David put down the pitcher.

Ricky walked over, picked up the pitcher, and poured himself a glass of orange juice.

H
E SAW
Tori Williams when he got to school. He didn’t say anything to her, and this time she didn’t try to say anything to him either. She just walked right past him as if he wasn’t even there.

“I don’t think she likes me,” he told his friends at recess.

“You’re just too chicken to ask her out,” said Mo.

“No, I’m not. It’s just that she ignores me all the time. She won’t even say hello to me anymore. I think she likes Randy.”

“Well, you still have to call her up today,” said Mo.

“Unless the curse strikes,” said David. “I still have until four seventeen.”

“You sound like you want the curse to strike,” said Larry.

“No, I don’t,” David insisted. “I just want to be sure it’s gone, that’s all.”

“He’s afraid to call up Tori,” said Mo.

David changed the subject. “So,” he asked, “did you go watch the criminals pick up trash?”

“Yes!” exclaimed Mo. “They were so scary. You should have been there. There were robbers and murderers. You could tell they were planning an escape, too.”

“A criminal spoke to her,” said Larry.

“It was horrible!” said Mo, grinning from ear to ear.

“What’d he say?” asked David.

“I remember every word,” said Mo. “We were sitting by these bushes with these weird-looking yellow and red flowers and the man picked up a piece of paper right next to me!”

“She put it there,” said Larry, “so that he’d have to come near us to pick it up.”

“It was my math test,” said Mo. “It has my name on it! Luckily it didn’t have my address.”

“What did he say to you?” asked David.

Mo looked at David with wide, frightened eyes. “He said, ‘Those are pretty flowers.’ ”

David stayed late in science class to help Mr. Lugano put away some laboratory equipment and chemicals. “Be careful not to drop anything,” Mr. Lugano warned him.

“I won’t,” said David.

He didn’t.

“You know, I was thinking,” Larry said at lunch. “If you’re afraid to go on a date with Tori—”

“I’m not afraid,” said David. He lay on his back as he drank from a carton of lemonade.

“Well, anyway,” said Larry. “I was thinking. It might be easier to ask her out if it was sort of like a double date.”

“Huh?” said Mo.

“I was just thinking,” Larry said to Mo. “Maybe you and I could pretend to be on a date, too. We wouldn’t really be on a date. We’d just pretend to be on a date.” He adjusted his blue sunglasses. “Like, if David wants to put his arm around Tori, or something, he can signal me, and then I’ll put my arm around you. I’ll just be pretending, but Tori won’t know that.”

“Oh, well, sure, if it will make it easier for David,” said Mo. “Sure.”

“So where do you want to go?” asked Larry.

“We could go to a movie,” suggested Mo.

“Okay,” said Larry. “A scary movie! That way Tori will want to hold David’s hand or grip his arm or something.”

“I’ll grip your arm,” said Mo. “But it won’t count.”

“Right,” said Larry.

“It’s still only a little past twelve,” David reminded them. “We have four more hours.”

They never asked him, but actually he thought their “pretend” date was a good idea. That way, when he called up Tori he could just say something like, “Some friends of mine and I are going to a movie. You want to come along?”

That is—if the curse didn’t strike first.

After school, Mo and Larry stuck with him to make sure he didn’t cheat. “I’m not going to cheat,” he protested. “Why would I cheat?”

They continued to plan their “pretend” date. They decided to see
The Tongue That Wouldn’t Die!
It was scary and they figured it would also make Tori think about kissing.

“The curse may have already struck, and we don’t even know it,” said David.

“You’d know if—” Larry started, then stopped.

Roger, Scott, and Randy were hanging around the bike rack with three girls. Roger was with Leslie. Scott was with Ginger. Randy was with Tori.

David looked at Tori as she looked back at him. Then she turned abruptly and said something to Randy.

David and his friends kept walking.

“You don’t know that she likes Randy,” said Mo. “She might just have been getting her bike.”

“It was just a coincidence that she happened to be there when Randy was there,” said Larry.

“She talked to him,” said David.

“That doesn’t mean anything,” said Mo. “Maybe he was in her way. She probably said ‘Get out of my way, jerk!’ ”

“You still have to ask her out,” said Larry.

David realized that Mo and Larry didn’t want anything to get in the way of their pretend date. “Unless the curse strikes,” he said.

When they entered David’s room, the clock radio next to his bed read 3:33
P.M
.

“Three threes,” said Larry. “That’s lucky.”

“I think the curse has already struck,” said David. “I just haven’t figured out how yet. It can be real subtle sometimes.”

Larry and Mo didn’t buy it.

“So, what do you want to do?” David asked.

“Nothing,” said Mo. “We’re just going to wait.”

Ricky walked past David’s door and scowled at David and his stoogy friends.

It was 3:45
P.M
.

“We can go out back and throw the ball around,” David suggested.

“No way,” said Larry. “We’re staying right here until four seventeen.”

“How about something to drink?” asked David. “I’ll go make some lemonade.”

Mo and Larry each put a hand on David’s shoulder, holding him in place. “We’re not thirsty,” said Mo.

“You can’t fight a curse,” said David. “If it wants to strike it will strike whether we drink lemonade or not.”

The clock read 3:57
P.M
.

C’mon, curse, he thought. If you’re going to strike, strike me now!

The time was 4:05
P.M
.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” said David.

“Not yet,” said Mo.

“Look, do you want me to go in my pants? That could be part of the curse.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Larry.

“I can go to the bathroom by myself.”

“I’m going with you.”

“Don’t let him try anything,” warned Mo.

Mo waited outside the bathroom door while Larry went in with David. He did what he had to do, flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and started toward the door.

“Your fly,” said Larry.

“I was just about to do that,” said David. He zipped it up.

“So how’d it go?” Mo asked.

“He tried to walk out with his zipper down,” said Larry, “so you’d see his underwear!”

“I did not!” David exclaimed. “I can’t believe you’d think I’d do that!”

They escorted him back to his room as if he was some kind of prisoner. It was 4:13
P.M
.

They watched the numbers change. 4:15 … 4:16. David looked up at the ceiling as if he hoped the roof would cave in.

4:17.

M
O AND
L
ARRY
wanted David to call up Tori right then and there, but he convinced them that it would be better to call her up that night. Mo finally agreed that girls were more romantic at night.

“But if you chicken out,” she warned, “don’t even bother coming to school tomorrow.”