The Kid in the Red Jacket (4 page)

To me what’s really important is how a room
feels
, not where the bed is. Parents don’t always understand stuff like this. To them the most important thing about a room is how it looks. Whether or not you’ve picked up your underwear,
stuff like that. But I wouldn’t care if my underwear was stacked to the ceiling as long as my room felt right. I want a room where I can go and shut the door and feel like I’ve just closed out the whole world, where I can cry into my pillow or make faces at my mother.

The trouble was that my new room was so big, when I closed the door it seemed like half the world was still in there with me. My mother could be lurking around and I could be making faces and not even see her! My closet alone was practically the size of my old bedroom. I know big closets are supposed to be real great, but personally I like my closets small. When your closet’s too big, dead guys with hatchets can hide in them. It doesn’t matter that you know dead guys with hatchets aren’t real. When you’re awake at midnight, even a pretend dead guy can be scary business.

Sometimes I have an overactive imagination. It’s hard to admit this, but even the bathtub in my new house scared me. It was the old-fashioned kind. Instead of looking like a normal bathtub, it had four legs with claws on the bottom. The first time I took a bath, I was practically positive the tub took a step backward.

I didn’t bother telling anyone. Why should I?
When you have an overactive imagination, no one believes anything you say, even if it’s true. If King Kong reached in my window and squished me to death, my father would think I squished myself.

That night I hardly slept at all. I was scared to death. The more I thought about my closet, the more nervous I got. Not only could
one
dead guy live in a closet that big, a whole
bunch
of them could probably squeeze in there together. Take vampires, for instance—my closet could hold three to four coffins easily.

Also, it didn’t help matters any that my windows didn’t have curtains on them yet. I could look outside and see the tree perfectly. It didn’t look like a tree, though. At night it looked like a huge ghost with twisted arms and bony knuckles. I figured it was probably waiting for me to go to sleep so it could reach inside and tickle me.

The other thing that drove me crazy was wondering where George Washington slept. My father might have been kidding, but it didn’t make any difference. Even if old George never slept in my room, who knows how many other dead people did? I know they weren’t dead when they were sleeping here, but they’re dead now. What if they
left something in the closet and came back to get it? What would I do if some dead colonist came back for his pillow or something?

When my mother got me up the next morning, I was still a little jumpy. My body felt tired, but my eyes were darting around all over the place.

“Well, you look alert this morning,” said Mom cheerfully. “All ready for your big day?”

Big day?
I thought.
What big day? Wasn’t yesterday my big day?

My mother started looking through the boxes of clothes still heaped in the middle of my floor.

“What do you want to wear today, Howard? Jeans okay?”

I grunted. What did I care what I wore? I didn’t know anyone in Massachusetts. It’s not like I was expecting a lot of visitors. As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t have minded spending the day in my Porky Pig pajamas.

“Well, what’s it going to be?” persisted Mom. “What do you think the other kids will be wearing?”

That’s when everything clicked. She was sending me to school! It was the first day after the move, and she was actually sending me to school!

I should have known she’d pull a trick like that. I’ve got the kind of parents who think that if you miss a day of school, you automatically turn dumb. I can’t even fake being sick. I have to prove it. I either have to have a fever or junk on my tonsils. If my nose fell off in the middle of the night and I didn’t have a fever, I’d have to go to school and breathe through my mouth.

Anyway, after I found out I was going to school, I started feeling really sick. It wasn’t like I was actually going to throw up or anything. This kind of sick made my mouth dry out, my stomach churn, and my skin sweat. Just the kind of stuff a new kid needs to make a good impression.…

I couldn’t eat my oatmeal at breakfast. I’ve always thought oatmeal looks a little like slop, and my poor stomach just couldn’t handle it.

As we drove to school my father kept whistling cheerfully, like we were the Seven Dwarfs going off to work. He went up to the classroom with me, but he wasn’t much help. He said, “Hello, I’m Cliff Jeeter and this is Howard.” Then he left. Thanks for the support, Dad.

My teacher’s name was Mrs. Walton. She smiled at me and welcomed me to the school. I tried to smile back, but my mouth was so dry, my top lip
got stuck on my gums. I must have looked like I was making faces at her.

She seemed nice, but I knew that didn’t mean much. Teachers are always nice when you first meet them. Their true personalities don’t come out until something goes wrong in the classroom, like when a fight breaks out during a spelling bee.

Anyway, Mrs. Walton talked to me for a few minutes. Mostly she just said a bunch of stuff about how “delighted” she was to have me in her class.

“Heh heh.” I laughed nervously. I sounded like a real lunkhead.

Finally, she assigned me to a desk. It was just in time too. As I sat down the other kids started coming into the room.

I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and I’ve decided that the hardest thing about being a new kid is that everyone gawks at you. The way the class was staring at me, you might have thought they’d never seen dry gums before.

Why did it have to be that way? Would it have been such a big deal for them to have just said hi? I’m not asking for a welcoming speech—just “hi,” that’s all, and maybe somebody to show me to the bathroom.

Of course, by the time lunch hour came, no one seemed to notice me at all. It was like I suddenly disappeared. As we were walking to the cafeteria, two kids actually turned their heads away when I looked at them. I guess they thought I was going to try to eat with them or something.

When we got there, I was forced to ask a little kid from another class what to do.

“Hey,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Where do you get milk?”

“From a cow, stupid!”
he yelled.

I glared at him for a second. I don’t usually carry a grudge, but in his case I decided to make an exception. I’m going to wait until I get to be about two hundred pounds. Then I’m going to come back and stomp him into the playground.

Lunch was awful. I ended up sitting at a table all by myself with no milk. My mother had packed a sandwich and stuff, but I was too upset to enjoy it. Mostly it just tasted like lump.

The thing is, when you’re eating by yourself, you keep thinking everyone’s talking about why you don’t have any friends. You look like a real loser, and you feel lonely as anything. It’s funny. I used to think that lonely was something you felt when you couldn’t find anyone to play with. It’s
not, though. Even in a lunchroom crowded with kids, you can feel lonely. Loneliness can strike anywhere—just like the stomach flu.

After I finished swallowing my lump, I wasn’t sure what to do with my trash, so I just left it on the table. On my way out the cafeteria door, some man grabbed me by the back of my collar. He didn’t say anything. He just spun me around and pointed at my trash.

I would have appreciated it if he’d have told me what I was supposed to do, but he just kept pointing. Finally I walked over and picked it up.

“I’m new,” I explained nervously.

Without saying a word, he pointed to a big orange can with a smiley face painted on it.

“Oh,” I said, meekly dropping my garbage inside. I had seen the can, but I wasn’t sure if it was for trash. “Where I come from, garbage cans don’t look that happy,” I explained.

Recess was practically worse than lunch. I just sort of wandered around, trying to look like I fit in somewhere. I made a lot of trips to the water fountain. When you go to the water fountain a lot, it looks like you’re playing hard and getting thirsty. You’ve got to be careful, though. After a few minutes your stomach starts to slosh.

I noticed that a bunch of guys from my class had grabbed a ball and were playing soccer across the field. It really made me homesick for Arizona. All I could think about was Roger and Thornsberry and the fun we’d had together on the soccer team. I wondered what the two of them were doing and if I would ever see them again. I wondered if they missed me as much as I missed them. As a matter of fact, I wondered about them so much that, after a while, I wondered if I was going to start to cry.

“Hi!”

The voice behind me sounded familiar, but I knew it wasn’t meant for me. How could it be? I was a new kid. No one talks to new kids.

“Hi, I said!”

No one except Molly Vera Thompson, that is. Suddenly the voice was unmistakable.

I turned and looked down. “Oh, it’s you,” I muttered glumly.

It wasn’t a very friendly greeting, but that’s the kind of thing you say when you’re depressed.

Molly wrinkled her nose cutely and smiled. She was holding hands with someone.

“This is my friend Sally!” she informed me cheerfully.

Sally looked scared. Like she thought I might hit her.

“What’s wrong with her?” I grumbled.

Molly just giggled. “She’s afraid of big kids. One stole her sandwich this morning. I told her
you
wouldn’t, though. You’re my new friend, Howard Jeeper.”

“Jeeter,” I corrected, beginning to feel annoyed.

“Jeeper!” Molly repeated cheerfully. “I like Jeeper better.”

“It doesn’t matter what you like better. You can’t go around calling people the wrong name.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s wrong,” I snapped.

“I know that,” she retorted. “But I like Jeeper better anyway.”

By now I was almost yelling. “Fine! Call me any stupid thing you want! But it’s wrong!”

“I know that! You already told me that!”

Suddenly Sally started to cry. Then she sort of huddled over like she was going to get punched out.

“Trouble here?” bellowed a deep voice behind me.

Slowly I turned and looked up. It was the same teacher who had grabbed me in the cafeteria. Geez!
What was wrong with this guy, anyway? Who did he think he was … Rambo?

Quickly Molly grabbed my hand. “Nope. No trouble. I’m Molly Vera Thompson and this is my new friend, Howard Jeeper. Only I’m not supposed to call him that, only I like it better.”

The man frowned and looked at Sally. “What’s she crying for?”

Then the three of us just stood there for a second, watching Sally bawl. Molly shrugged. “Maybe she’s crying because she had to eat hot lunch today.”

Finally the man just sort of pointed his finger in my face and walked away. If you ask me, some teachers take playground duty too seriously.

As soon as he was gone, I pulled my hand away and put it in my pocket. “Look. Why don’t you two just go swing, or something?”

Molly shook her head. “Nope. Can’t,” she announced. “I don’t get to swing for a week. On Friday I pushed Frankie Boatwright off the swing, and now Teacher said I have to learn a lesson.”

“Fine. Go seesaw, then,” I retorted.

“Nope. Can’t do that, either. I’m not sure what I did wrong there. All I know is, Teacher said I can’t teeter-totter again until I can act like a lady.”

By now I was feeling pretty frustrated. This was exactly what I needed—two little first-grade girls following me all over the playground.

“Look, I gotta go, okay? You two run along and do whatever it is you do.”

Suddenly Molly’s face grew serious. “You can’t go anywhere, Howard. When you’re at school you have to stay at school. If you try to go home, the principal will track you down with radar. Frankie Boatwright told me that.”

Finally I just took off running. If I didn’t, I was going to go crazy. I didn’t even think about where I was headed; I just ran around the playground for a minute and then onto the soccer field.

Before I knew it, someone was passing the ball to me. I guess all my frustration had built up inside, because when I kicked the ball, I booted it so hard that it sailed right over the top of the net. It was probably the hardest I’ve ever kicked in my whole life. The bell rang then. But on my way back to class two kids came up to me and said, “Nice kick.”

Maybe it doesn’t seem like much, but those two words were the best things I’d heard in a long time.

    5   
When I got home from school that day, for the first time in weeks I forgot to be mad at my parents. I walked into the kitchen and, instead of being my normal obnoxious self, I started blurting out everything—all about being stared at, and eating lunch alone with no milk, and not putting my trash in the happy can, and Rambo. Then the next thing I knew, my mother was hugging me and my father was handing me a roll of Life Savers. I was sort of sniffling by then and Mom kept smoothing my hair and telling me
that things were going to get better. I didn’t argue or say anything smart-alecky. I couldn’t risk it. It was the first time all day I hadn’t felt alone.

It was weird. Even Gaylord seemed to take my feelings seriously when I went in to see him after calming down. He didn’t spit up on himself like he usually does.

“I don’t know if I can go back there again, little fella, I really don’t,” I confessed quietly. “I was just so alone, you know? And I felt like such a loser.”

Gaylord rolled from his back to his stomach. Maybe this sounds stupid, but it looked like he was getting into a better position to listen to me.

“It’s not that anyone really tried to be mean to me on purpose, I don’t think. Well, one kid did—the one I plan to stomp into the ground. But the rest of the kids just didn’t seem to care one way or the other. It was like I was invisible or something, you know. I guess it’s possible they didn’t know what to say to me. But that’s the trouble. I didn’t know what to say either. So no one said anything, and I just sat around like a big lunkhead.