The Last Martin (7 page)

I shake my head and trudge out of the kitchen just as Lani rushes in. “There better be a bagel — Gross! There’s a photo of Martin’s butt on the fridge. How am I supposed to eat?”

I slip out of the house, find a nice-sized stone, and kick it all the way to the bus stop. The sun burns, too hot for April, and by the time I arrive I’m a nappy-haired, bruise-butted sweatball.

“Dressed a little warm, aren’t cha?” Charley runs toward me, pencil and paper in hand.

“I was out of clean shorts and T-shirts.” I yank at my collar. “It doesn’t matter any —”

“Big favor time.” Charley shoves the paper into my chest. “I really need some more of that knight story.” He starts to dance. The Charley Dance. His arms, legs, and hips all gyrate at the same time. Frightening. “And put in plenty of love-o-rama between the knight and what’s her name.”

“Alia.”

“Yeah, her. Lots of love stuff. And I need it before third hour or I’m going to look dumb.”

I shrug. “You do look dumb.”

The bus’s brakes squeal. We clamor in and take our seats.

“No air bag?” Charley backhands my chest. “What’s the deal?”

I think on that. “Just forgot. I forgot the mask too. And the sanitizer and my vitamin C tablets. I forgot everything.” I pause and sneak a peek at my friend. “Say, Charley, I, uh, found out something at the cemetery.”

“Your mom is bizarre and your dad’s stuck in the 1800s.”

How do I tell my best friend I’ll be dead in three months?

I stare straight ahead and breathe deeply. “Three more months is all I got.”

“It’s so great!” His beady eyes sparkle. “Can’t wait for summer myself. But about the story. You know,
The White Knight?
I gave you some more time to think about it.” He holds a pencil beneath my nose. “What are you going to do now?”

I shoot Charley a glance. “What am I going to do now? You’re the second person in two days who’s asked me — Where did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

The bus bounces over the repaired pothole and my friend babbles on, but I don’t listen.
What am I going to do now? I have three months.

I sit up straight.
Three months.

I peek at Charley. He’s still talking.

“… see, so I know you probably didn’t want to hear that, but it’s really going great between me and Julia …”

Julia.

F
IRST PERIOD PHYS ED. FIFTY MINUTES OF embarrassment. I sit sweaty-necked in the locker room watching other boys suit up.

Mr. Halden lumbers in. “Get dressed, Boyle,” he booms. “Then march that underdeveloped body of yours into the weight room.” Halden checks his watch. “You’re two minutes from late. You know what that means, boy.” He cracks a hideous smile and then his knuckles. “You’re asking for The Treatment.”

The Treatment. Sweating turns to shivering. I’ve never gotten The Treatment. Nobody has. Halden’s sinister threat is so terrifying, we all hop to. But today I can’t hop, not in my chipmunk turtleneck. Halden leaves and I stare into my open locker at my perfect blue T-shirt and perfect blue shorts and wonder what’s coming.

Will runs into the locker room, laughs, and points at the clock. “You’re not going to make it! Halden’s in his office preparing your Treatment. Move, you idiot.”

Suddenly the room fills with boys. The chant begins.

“Treatment! Treatment!”

From the back room, Halden hollers. “Here it comes. First time in thirty years I’ve ever had to administer this. Boyle? Office. Now.”

I nod and push to my feet. “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Head drooped, I shuffle between jeering lines of frothy boys … and dash for the locker room door.

“Catch him!” Will hollers and dives for my feet. I stumble but stay vertical and explode into the hall, serenaded by helium-lunged chipmunks.

“Get ‘em, boys!” Halden releases his demented herd. It’s the running of the bulls, and I’m wearing red, and if I slip, I’m toast. I fishtail around the corner.

… pa-pum-pum. “Shush, sweater.”

Girls’ bathroom!

Panic pushes me inside. I leap into a stall, slam the door, and hop on the bowl. My heartbeat steadies, my head thuds against the door, and I swallow hard.

This is crazy!

Hinges creak and I brace myself, peeking out the crack.

Oh no.

“Crazy guys,” Keira says. “Wonder what Martin did.”

“Probably squirted someone with Germ-X.” My Julia tosses her hair back and peers into the mirror.
I don’t have my Germ-X today, thank you very much!
“Whatever it is, I feel sorry for the guy, you know?” Keira turns and leans against the sink. “He seems nice.”

“How would you know? He’s mute. And he’s been in my classes since, like, kindergarten. I don’t think he has a tongue. But whatever, Charley’s different.” Julia glances down. “I almost told him about my parents yesterday. He’s so easy to talk to.” “And dumb.”

“That’s what I thought.” Julia smiles and bites her lip. “And then he wrote this story, well a piece of a story, and … it’s so, I don’t know, like romantic or something. Everything’s different. Does that make any sense?” “You like Charley because of a story?”
My story!

“He’s supposed to bring the next part today, third hour.”

Keira pulls Julia toward the door. “You’re crazy.” “Maybe, but —”

Yipping voices of frothy gym boys echo in the hall. “Hey, Julia, have you seen Martin?” Will shouts. “What do you think? I’ve been in a bath — “

Slam. The bathroom is very quiet. I let my head fall against the stall door with a thud.

Pa-rum-pa-pum-pum!
I grab at my turtleneck. “Stupid chipmunks.”

I close my eyes. “See, Julia? I do have a tongue.”

I pass the time in the bathroom, which makes me late to every class. Flimsy tardy slips are better than the attacks of rabid gym boys.

But there’s no escaping the pack during lunch hour.

I race to the round table, the one tucked in the lunchroom corner.
Stay low, eat fast, and pray. Stay low, eat fast, and
— Charley.

My best friend drapes over the isolation table. I ease up behind him.

“Charley?” I peek over my shoulder. “You dead?”

“Wish I was. I’m such a loser.” He lets out a moan.

I plop down. “I won’t argue with that.”

Charley lifts his head and squints. “It’s mostly
your
fault. A true friend would’ve given me a page, a paragraph, anything to make Julia happy, but no! You had to hold back. And after all we’ve been through.”

I want to feel bad for my friend, but I can’t. “So what —”

“I’ll tell you what! I wrote the next section of the
story and …” His forehead thuds against the table. “I showed Julia.”

“You
added to my story?” I clear my throat. “Couldn’t have been that bad.”

Charley digs in his back pocket, pulls out a ratty sheet of notebook paper, and slaps it down in front of me. I smooth the paper and read.

The night was scared. The night was angry. The other night was scared and angry. They were scared and angry at each other. They hit each other. The white night hit the black night. The black night hit the white night. They both said ouch.

“Oh boy,” I whisper.

“She had these beautiful drawings. She spent days working on them.” Charley buries his head in his hands, then spreads his fingers to talk through the cracks. “She said she couldn’t get the story out of her mind and then — they both said ‘ouch'? What was I thinking?”

I exhale hard. “You know, maybe I should have —”

“There he is!”

I glance around me. A ring of boys encircles the table. “Halden’s looking for you.”

“He’ll probably forget, right?” I say. “He has other kids to torture.”

“Next time we have gym …” Will slaps my back. “I wouldn’t want to be you.”

He scans the lunchroom and grins. “Hey, Halden’s in the teachers’ line. Over here, Mr. Halden!”

The pack snickers, and I jump. “Gotta go, Charley.”

I push through the circle, duck behind lines of tray-shuttling kids, and slither into the hall.

Where to hide. Where to hide. Media Center!

I take a sharp left, scamper through the hall, and turn right at the book showcase. I burst in the door and Ms. Kellian sets down an armful of heavy books. “Hello, Martin. It’s been a while.”

“Tough couple days.” I breathe heavily and pat a computer screen. “Can I hide behind one of these?”

“Be my guest.”

I sit and twiddle on the keyboard. The Treatment and Julia and my lunchroom escape fill my mind, but now in the silence, a cloud descends. I hate being chased, but at least I’m moving. In three months, nobody will chase me. They’ll look down at me; I’ll stare without blinking — face up, from a box. I can see it now …

“Come on, Mr. Halden.” Will yanks on his sleeve. “Can’t you give him The Treatment?”

The funeral home erupts. “Treatment! Treatment!”

“Hush, boys. No, we can’t. Look at him. Dead as a doorknob.” Mr. Halden leans over my stiff body and whispers, “You got off easy, kid.”

I blink hard and my arms feel heavy. I’ve been angry since the cemetery. But not now. My body slumps and my eyes sting.

I want to cry.

“Cruel. Fool. Gruel. Poole,” I mutter, and mindlessly whack the keyboard. “How come all rotten words rhyme? Hearse. Worse. Curse …”

I Google
geneology
and enter my name and city. “There I am. Let’s find the other unfortunates.
Martin Boyle.
Enter.” The screen fills with former Martins’ birth and death dates, the pattern undeniable. I click on the first Martin link.

Died heroically at Fort Snelling.

How can everyone miss these dates? Dad should know the curse’s pattern.

I straighten, click
print,
and grab the sheet off the tray. There’s no way out. It’s time to tell the family of my impending doom, starting with the one who matters most.

I run home from the bus stop, salty sweat coating my lips. I have sixty minutes of unhindered Dad time. Then the Owl alights and lunacy begins.

I leap up the steps, stumble through the door. “Dad? Dad!”

Footsteps shuffle above me. I pound up the stairs. “Are you up here?”

“Higher!”

Not the attic.

My room rests on the only secure level of our home. The Owl’s nest and Underwear World lie beneath my feet. The creaky, microbial, spore-filled attic promises danger overhead. I live between, sandwiched safe and sanitary, and more than once have vowed never to climb the stairs at the hall’s end.

“Come up here and help me!” Dad calls.

I clutch the paper that proves the curse and tiptoe toward the steps. Above me, the attic floor creaks and pops. Unfinished attic hardwood turns every step Dad takes into a scene from a horror flick.

I reach the stairway and think of Poole.

Creak. Pop.

Whistle a happy tune. Think, Marty. Anything cheery and —

Creak.

There are no happy tunes in my world. Life is like the door at the top of the steps — closed and dark and —

That door flies open and Dad smiles. “Come on up, I want to show you something.”

I climb into a cobweb-infested attic. It smells of must and mothballs.

“Here.” Dad whispers, and bends over in the corner.

I walk, slow and silent as a cat, to where he stoops. He glances at me, winks, and pulls back a swath of insulation. “Ever seen a sleeping bat?”

Fuzzy, black-winged mice clump in a heap on the floorboards. I jerk back and my head slams against a ceiling beam. I stagger limp-legged toward the door.

“They’ve been sleeping here?” I wince and massage my skull. “Right above my head?”

“Your mother doesn’t know. She’d be none too pleased.” Dad reaches out and strokes a beast. “There, there. Cute little fella. Want to pet one?”

I jam my hands deep into my pockets.

Dad nods. “They’re fast asleep. I’ll need to remove them, but don’t you think they give the house character?”

“Remove them?”

Dad points over my shoulder to the far wall. Sheets of contact paper, coated with dismembered bat heads and wings, cover the rafters. Bat bodies ball on the floor beneath.