The Misfits (10 page)

THE NEXT morning, Addie and I get to school early so we can put posters up before classes start. I'm standing there with tape on four fingers and Addie is balancing on a folding chair she found someplace when Mrs. DePaolo comes out of the office and says, “Oh, I don't think that's a good idea.”

Mrs. DePaolo is the school secretary. She is nice but nervous. Kids are all the time telling her, “It's okay, Mrs. DePaolo.” I do not know if this makes her less nervous or more.

“It's okay, Mrs. DePaolo,” Addie says. “We're just putting posters up for the election.”

Mrs. DePaolo rubs her hands together like she's standing in front of a fire. I think she must have cold blood. She's always got these sweaters draped over her shoulders.

“I know,” she says. “I know that's what you're doing. It's just that, oh, did you speak to Mr. Kiley?”

“No. Were we supposed to?”

“Well, I know he wanted to speak with you.”

“With us?” Addie asks. “Why? Are we doing something wrong?”

“Oh, my,” Mrs. DePaolo says, blowing little puffs of air into her cupped-up hands. I'm definitely right about the cold blood. “I don't think you are, no, of course you're not. It's just that the question was raised, I believe, about ... oh, I shouldn't get into this, honestly. I think you kids had better talk to Mr. Kiley a.s.a.p., okay? Until then, why don't you hold off putting any posters up?”

A whole bunch of kids pass by. They're looking at us and at the poster Addie is standing there pinning to the wall with her one hand.

“Good luck!” Brittney, a.k.a. Mother Teresa, calls out in a cheery voice.

“Thanks!” Addie the leper calls back.

Kevin Hennessey shouts sarcastically, “Save the whales!” and both Addie and I check out the dolphin
on the poster as Mrs. DePaolo shushes Kevin and tells him she hopes she doesn't see him in the office today. The office is Kevin's second home.

Pretty soon, Addie and I are sitting across the desk from Mr. Kiley, who I notice is wearing a flag pin in his lapel. I am wondering if he has always worn this or only since Addie's refusing to say the Pledge, when I further notice that his tie does not go with his shirt. It bothers me. This is the curse of being a tie salesman. I figure I am doomed to go through the rest of my life noticing whether ties and shirts go together and being bothered if they don't. I think maybe I should quit my job.

Mr. Kiley has been talking and I am tuning in as he says, “I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do about it.”

Addie is perched on the edge of her seat, projecting her upper body at a sharp angle. She looks like one of those adjustable desk lamps.

“This is so unfair,” she is saying. “It's more than unfair. It's not right!”

Mr. Kiley opens his hands wide, palms up, fingers splayed. Adults use this gesture often, especially
when talking to kids. They think it means,
Look how honest and open I'm being. Look how hard I've tried. I feel just rotten about it, but I'm absolutely helpless to do anything more than I've already done.
What it really means is,
Conversation's over.

“But I don't understand,” Addie replies to Mr. Kiley's hands. “We met with Ms. Wyman on Thursday. We told her that our party was going to represent the voice of minority students. She didn't tell us then that we couldn't run.”

“I repeat: Ms. Wyman spoke to me after school on Friday and made the very good point that both parties state in their platforms that they represent
all
students, which includes minority students. A third party claiming to represent minorities is redundant at the very least and might justifiably be seen as promoting special rights. We don't want that sort of thing here at P.F.M.S., dowe?”

“I hardly think that giving minority students a voice is the same as asking for special rights. Besides which, political parties can have the same goals but achieve them through different means. Isn't that true?”

Mr. Kiley nods his head sympathetically. “That's a good point. Look, Addie, I appreciate your passion. I really do. You're a bright girl and you have strong feelings about right and wrong. That's good. But there
is
a system in place and it
works.
Let me encourage you to work within it. If you want to make changes, get involved in the parties that already exist. Talk to the candidates about your concerns and make sure your voice is represented.”

“Right,” Addie says, “like they'll even listen to us.”

“Us?” Mr. Kiley says. “Who do you mean? Other than DuShawn, I don't know who on your ticket
is
a minority, Addie. I'm not sure you know yourself what you're attempting to do here. Between this third-party business and your refusing to say the Pledge, I can't help wondering if what you're
really
after is getting attention. If that's the case, there are better ways to go about it.”

Mrs. DePaolo's head is in the door. “Announcements,” she says.

Mr. Kiley excuses himself and minutes later Addie and I are walking down the hall with posters tucked
under our arms and late passes clutched in our hands, as classroom after classroom pledges its allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands.

We stop at our lockers so we can cram the useless posters in. “I can't believe Kiley accused me of just wanting attention,” Addie grouses. “What an insult! I'll bet he never would have said that if I were a boy.”

“He was talking to me, too,” I point out.

Addie shakes her head. “Mostly he was talking to me. And did you notice what he brought up at the end there? I'll bet this is really about my refusing to say the Pledge. He doesn't like it, and Ms. Wyman just can't stand that I am disobeying one of her little rules. She's all rah-rah self-esteem so long as the self you esteem is the one she approves of. That is
so
hypocritical.”

“You're right,” I say, “but what can you do? Wyman and Kiley have power and we don't.”

“And that's another thing,” Addie goes on, slamming her locker door. “Why do adults get to have all the power? Mr. Kiley and Ms. Wyman both say, 'Work within the system.' But it's
their
system! Kids should
have power, too. If the student council really
meant
something, we
would
have power!”

“So I guess it's not so bad that the Freedom Party's out of business,” I say, “seeing as how the student council doesn't have any real power, anyway.”

“Who said we're out of business? We just have to come up with another raison d'être. And when we do, it had better have some teeth in it.”

Just then, Kevin Hennessey pops his head out of Ms. Wyman's homeroom, holding a bathroom pass in his hand.

“Yo, Blubber!” he calls out. “You better get a ladder if you're gonna kiss Godzilla!” He laughs as if he actually finds this funny and goes off down the hall, shaking his rear at us.

“He is such an idiot,” Addie says, and this gets us both to laughing, which is good because inside I'm still stinging from being called Blubber. It doesn't matter how many times I've been called names, it still hurts—and it still always comes as such a surprise that I never know how to respond. Or maybe I do, but I'm afraid.

As soon as we get inside Ms. Wyman's room we put a lid on our laughter because she's got this look on her face like she has been sharpening her knife and fork and just waiting for our livers to arrive. When we hand her our late passes, she does a quick change into her muffin-baking self, all gooey smiles, but then two seconds later, after Jimmy Lemon pokes me and I tell him to watch it, she makes a personality U-turn and tells me in a tone as tough as stale fruit leather that I'm creating a disturbance and she will not tolerate disturbances in her homeroom.

It is only the third week of school and Ms. Wyman needs a vacation.

In my opinion.

It is on this day that I have my major brainstorm, and when I look back at it, I think it should have occurred to me the minute Kevin Hennessey called out, “Yo, Blubber!” And then I think it should have occurred to me the night before at Joe's house when he and Skeezie and I were sitting around shooting the breeze. Or the time we found that word on Joe's locker. Or the first time I was ever called Fluff. Or one
of a thousand other times. In other words, I should have had this major brainstorm a long time ago, but that is not the way life works. Life works like this: You are on the receiving end of all sorts of stuff, but you do not see it clearly. Then all of a sudden you see something happen to somebody else, and the light-bulb goes off over your head.

It happens at lunch.

Addie is filling Skeezie and Joe in on what went on that morning and is so worked up she doesn't even notice the Skeeze swap his box of raisins for her chocolate cake. He starts scarfing it down before she can say anything. I detect this out of the corner of my eye, since I try to avoid watching Skeezie relate to food in an ingestive manner. If his eating habits were a movie, they'd be rated R for violence.

Addie, the anti-Skeeze, spreads a napkin on her lap. “What we have to do is come up with a new platform,” she is saying. “Something Ms. Wyman can't dispute. Not that this is really about politics. It's all about Ms. Wyman and her need for control. And revenge.”

“Ooo, Cruella De Vil,” Joe says, and it is hard to know whether he means this as an insult or a compliment. Cruella is one of Joe's favorite movie characters. Back in second grade he even called himself Cruella. For about a week.

Addie ignores him. “Well, revenge is a paltry weapon when confronted with the arsenal of truth.”

Skeezie stares at her with an open mouth, which, given the state it's in, I wish he wouldn't. “Do you make that stuff up on the spot?” he asks Addie. “Or do you stay up nights writing your own material?”

“I can't help it if I have a brilliant mind,” Addie says, “and that is
my
cake you just ate.”

Skeezie lets out a belch, a loud, lingering, wet one.

Joe turns and looks at him, disgusted. “Couth,” he says.

“Thank you,” the Skeeze gives back, looking mighty pleased with himself. “Thank you kindly.”

I figure all serious conversation has been derailed, and I am right, except that something happens just then that we might not have picked up on if we had been busy knocking our heads together over the new
Freedom Party platform. It is the something that gives me my major brainstorm.

“D-d-d-daryl,” I hear. “H-h-how ya d-d-d-doin', D-d-d-daryl?”

“S-s-s-s-stop it, K-k-k-k-k-kevin!”

Kevin Hennessey's laughter is as blunt and heavy as a boot while he watches Daryl Williams slink away from the table his ridicule has forced him to vacate. Gripping the edges of his tray of half-eaten food, Daryl's knuckles turn white and his shoulders hunch up in a desperate attempt to hide the look of humiliation burning his face.

“What a dweeb!” Kevin Hennessey goes, and jimmy Lemon laughs like Kevin is the funniest guy since Robin Williams.

“That's our raison d'etre,” I hear myself saying.

The others turn and look at me, and in that split second before I explain, this amazing feeling comes over me. It's a Twilight Zone sort of feeling, like I'm about to pass from one dimension into another. And you know? That's exactly what I'm going to do. I am about to stop being a get-along kind of guy and turn into somebody who makes a difference.

“NO MORE names,” I say.

Addie goes, “What?”

“That's our platform and that's our party,” I explain, getting excited. “The No-Name Party.” Ideas are rushing at me like water out of an open hydrant.

The Skeeze, wiping chocolate off his mouth with the back of his hand, says, “What are you talkin' about? The Lame-Brain Party? I don't get it.”

“That's because
you're
the lame brain,” I tell him. “No offense, Addie, but you've been looking at the wrong minority the whole time. DuShawn even said it.”

“Said what?”

Joe chimes in, “He said
we
were the ones who had
to watch our butts, not him and Royal and Tondayala Cherise.”

“Right,” I go. “And, Joe, you said not every minority is visible, remember? Think about it, Addie, what makes a minority? It's numbers, right? The majority is the larger percentage, the minority the smaller.”

“Wyman would be prouda you, man,” says the Skeeze, ridding his fingers of unwanted chocolate crumbs by dragging them down the front of his shirt. I swear, his eating is some kind of performance art. He could charge admission.

“Whatever,” I say. “The point is that being a minority isn't only about the color of your skin or your religion. It's about not fitting in, being on the outside.”

“Like us,” Addie goes.

“And Daryl, who Kevin just called a dweeb,” I point out. “Think of all the names
we've
been called over the years.”

I grab a pen out of my back pocket and start writing down all the names I can think of on a napkin. There are eighteen, then seventeen when I realize I've written “Fluff” twice.

“Wow,” Joe says, “that's almost as many as me.” He starts rattling off his list and I'm writing so fast the napkin begins to shred. He's got twenty-six by the time he's through and those are only the ones he can think of off the top of his pink-streaked head.

“What about you, Skeeze?” I ask. “What names have you been called?”

Skeezie starts rocking back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. “Wop,” he starts with, “greaser, greaseball, slimeball, guinea ...” His list ends up at sixteen, four of which are put-downs of Italians, which doesn't even make sense because Skeezie doesn't have an ounce of Italian blood in him.