The Misfits (17 page)

At lunch, Addie keeps switching channels between Colin-does-he-or-doesn't-he-know-we're-going-out-together-and-are-we-or-are-we-not-going-to-the-dance-together and the-election-how-am-l-ever-going-to-get-my-speech-written-Bobby-are-you-listening-you-promised-to-help-me. To make matters worse, I keep tuning out because I am checking out the other end of the cafeteria where Kelsey is sitting with Amy and Evie, who are her only two friends, probably because they are also shy. I wonder what they talk about. If they even talk. Anyway, I keep hoping that I will see her stand up so I can wave to her. Then I worry that if I raise my arm to wave, Roger Elliott, who is sitting at the next table, will notice that I have these huge sweat stains (which I do not know if I even have) and will yell out, “Look at Bobby's pits!” and everybody in the whole cafeteria will get to laughing, and so
finally I turn around and forget about the whole thing.

“Well,” Addie goes, all huffy, “it's about time you started paying attention.”

“Yes, Wendy,” I say, to which Skeezie winks at me, and Addie clicks her tongue.

“Well, all I can say is,
quel
relief she likes
you.”
I realize Joe is talking to me and he's talking about Kelsey.

“But she still
talks
to you!” I say back. “If she
likes
me and she
talked
to me on the phone on Saturday, why isn't she talking to
me
instead of
you?”

Skeezie pitches in with, “Same reason Addie used to be DuShawn's main spitball target.”

We all look at him, then look away quick because he is, in a manner of speaking, eating.

“Explain,” Joe says, looking down at his own burrito.

“Simple,” goes the Skeeze. “DuShawn is DuShawn, okay? The only way he knows to get the message across to Addie that he likes her is to nail her with spitballs and slip whoopee cushions under her butt.”

“Charming,” Addie says. “Whatever happened to sending flowers?”

“And Kelsey being Kelsey, well, if she likes somebody, she isn't going to come right out and say so. She's too shy. If anything, she's going to get even
more
shy around the guy she likes. Ergo, henceforth, and in conclusion: Kelsey likes Bobby, not Joe.”

“And DuShawn likes Addie,” I say, sidestepping the obvious question, Why is Kelsey putting notes in Joe's locker?

Addie furrows her brow. “What about Colin? Doesn't
he
like me?”

Skeezie gives this some thought. I know this because he stops chewing for a good twenty seconds. At last he says, “Colin is a mystery. On the one hand, he shows up at the flagpole at the appointed hour, hands you compliments, and walks you home—”

“Twice!”
Addie throws in.

“Point taken,” goes the Skeeze, “but on the other hand, he declines your invite to hang out at the Candy Kitchen and goes deaf upon mention of the upcoming dance. Ergo, henceforth, and in conclusion . . .” Skeezie
is in rare form. “Love is for the birds, and I'm stayin' single the rest of my life.”

“Fine,” says Addie, “now can we get our minds back on the assembly on Thursday? I've got to give a speech and—”

Skeezie snaps his fingers. “Here is a definite angle,” he goes.

Addie says, “Is this about the assembly and my speech? Because if it isn't—”

“It's about Colin,” goes the Skeeze.

“Oh,” Addie gives, “that's okay.”

Joe and I do a rolling-eyeball exchange.

“Maybe,” says Skeezie, “just maybe, the reason Colin's havin' a hard time makin' the old commitment is because of the, y'know,
class
difference.”

“You mean because he's popular and I'm not?”

“Bingo.”

“Oo,” goes Joe. “It's so Tony and Maria.”

“West Side Story,”
I say, snapping my fingers. “Great movie.”

The other two still look blank.

“Duh,” Joe says. “You two never saw
West Side Story?
Tony and Maria. The Sharks and the Jets. Two
gangs. Can't mix. Boy from one gang falls in love with girl from other gang.”

“Oh, it's the same story as
Romeo and Juliet,”
says Addie. “Bad ending. People die. I don't think I like that.”

Joe bursts into a song from
West Side Story,
which prompts Roger Elliott to holler, “Shut up, you little . . .”

Joe stops singing, but not before we all notice that Roger stopped first.

We lean our heads into the center of the table. “He didn't say it,” I point out. “He didn't call Joe a faggot.”

“Or a fairy,” says Skeezie.

“Or Tinky Winky,” Joe tosses in.

“It's
working,
Bobby!” Addie goes, all excited. “Do you think the No-Name Party can win? I mean, I
want
us to, but I never really thought. . . What do you think? Can we?”

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe.”

Something happens in that moment. It's not something spoken, not something we acknowledge in any way, but I know we all feel it. For the first time, we consider the possibility that we just might win. That we, the Gang of Five, could actually be winners.

ADDIE AND I agree to get together Tuesday night to write the speech. I am still not sure how I got hauled into this except that of the three of us—Skeezie, Joe, and me—I am the best with words and also Addie probably figures I am the least likely to get flaky on her.

The way it works is that all the candidates sit up on the stage in folding chairs, but it is only the presidential candidates who make speeches. The rest of us get to spend the whole time trying to look serious and remembering not to pick our noses or scratch in unseemly places. And of course it is crucial to visit the john right before the assembly. I do not look forward to this event, as I have told Addie a whole handful of times. She keeps telling me, What do
I
have to worry about, I'm not the one giving the speech, which
is about as close to sympathetic as Addie ever manages to get.

Before I head over to Addie's house, having neatly worked a dinner invitation into the deal, I show up at Awkworth & Ames to put in my time. Mr. K is calling me Bobby now, except in front of customers, when he still calls me Mr. Goodspeed, on account of putting on a good show, I figure. He is actually being nice to me, and when I make a mistake ringing up a customer's bill, he does not jump on me or even turn his eyebrows into a V, but waits until the customer is gone and says in this calm voice, “Is something weighing on your mind today, Bobby?”

I ask him what would give him that impression and he replies to the effect that it is not like me to mess up and besides which I have seemed a trifle distracted. I own up to girl trouble, at which he smiles, and then I tell him I have to go over to my friend's house later and help write a speech and I do not know what to write.

He gets out of me the whole story about the No-Name Party and how it came about, and the whole
time he is shaking his head, which he switches to nodding when I tell him our party motto,
Sticks and stones may break our bones but names will break our spirit

“That is so true,” he says. “I believed every name I was called in school and took them with me into the rest of my life. I wonder if I might have been a braver person if I hadn't been called a sissy so many times when I was young.”

He stops and gives this some thought, then goes on. “Well, there is no point in blaming others, although I do think names belong more to the people using them than the people on the receiving end. But what can we do? We're all so ready to believe the worst about ourselves, we just accept them without even thinking about what they mean or even if they're true.”

The voice says, “Shoppers, the store will be closing in fifteen minutes,” and Mr. Kellerman goes, “Sorry I can't help you with your speech, Bobby.”

To which I say, “You already have.”

When I get to Addie's house, I tell her to shush before she even gets five words out, on account of
having to write some stuff down. Addie sits there on her bed staring at me until I tell her to stop it, at which point she starts writing, too. And just as I'm finishing up, her mother is calling from downstairs, “Dinner!”

Later, Addie says to me, “What did you write, Bobby?”

I hand her the pad of paper and she starts reading it, then hands it back and says, “Here, you read it to me.”

I go, “Why?”

And she says, “Your handwriting is impossible,” which I happen to know is not true. I figure she's got some other reason, but I do not wish to waste time trying to get it out of her, so I just pick up the pad and start to read.

It takes me awhile, seeing as how I have written a lot and sometimes it doesn't make sense so I have to fix it while I'm talking, but Addie does not stop me. She just keeps sitting there, cross-legged on her bed, whilst I go on and on, and in the end, she goes, “That's the speech, Bobby, and you've got to be the one to give it.”

“
Me
?” I squeak. “This isn't a speech. It's just notes. And, anyway, you're the one running for president, and the presidential candidate is always the one to speak, and, besides, there is no way I'm getting up in front of the whole school and giving a speech. Repeat: no way. And, anyway, this is just notes.”

She waits for me to finish and says, “Look, Bobby, I've been working on my speech for over a week now, okay? You saw what I had last week. A lot of blah-blah-blah about democracy and the Constitution and the Pledge. Even though you thought it was boring, I kept working on it over the weekend and I was all set to convince you tonight that it was brilliant and all you needed to do was help me refine it. But the truth is—and if you tell anybody I said this I will kill you, I swear—my speech is a bunch of words and
your
speech is brilliant. Okay, maybe it needs some work to
become
a speech, but I can help you with it and it
will
be brilliant. Anyway, you have to give it because it's all about you.”

“It is?” I go, surprised. I don't even see it. “But the rules—”

“We're the third party. We've already broken rules. Or maybe what we're doing is remaking them. Wait, I have this brilliant idea!”

“Brilliant” is Addie's newest favorite word.

She then tells me her brilliant idea and I have to admit it
is
good. “All you have to do is make a few changes at the beginning of your speech, and it will work brilliantly,” she assures me.

I look down at the paper and try to imagine myself saying these words
out loud,
not just to Addie, but to all the kids and all the teachers at Paintbrush Falls Middle School. I break into a sweat and my stomach starts to hurt.

“We'll all be there,” Addie says, seeing my hesitation. “Skeezie and Joe and me, we'll be up there with you and we'll be part of it. But the words, Bobby, they've
got
to come from you.”

“Do you really think I can do it?”

“Absolutely. You'll be brilliant.”

I look at Addie and see that she is being serious. “Okay,” I tell her. “Okay.”

She smiles and says, “Great, let's get to work.”

HERE ARE some of the things that could have happened on Wednesday and I would not have noticed:

* The school could have burned down.

* Ms. Wyman could have smiled a real smile.

* The school could have been buried in a mud slide.

* Skeezie could have used a napkin.

* The school could have been overtaken by giant flying ants.

* Kelsey could have told me she likes me.

Well, okay, I would have noticed that last one, but you know how it is when you have to do something really scary, like go to the dentist to have all your teeth painfully and slowly extracted one by one (which of course is never going to happen, but you always think
there's the outside chance it
might)
or, as in my case, get up in front of the entire school and give a speech. Not just a speech, mind you, but a speech that when translated into basic middle-schoolese, boils down to: “Ready, aim, laugh!”

If you know what I am talking about, then you will know that it is impossible to think about anything else until you are on the other side of whatever your particular brand of doom is.

From the time I leave Addie's house Tuesday night until eleven in the
A.M
. on Thursday, all that occupies my mind is the mess I have gotten myself into by agreeing to give this speech. Fine, the No-Name Party is my idea, along with just about everything that goes with it, but does that mean I have to submit myself to ridicule and, worse, the loss of my one true love? Not that Kelsey knows yet that she is my one true love, but after I speak, she will undoubtedly shudder at the mere thought that it might ever have happened.

When I get home Tuesday night, I tell my dad what transpired at Addie's house, expecting him to say, “I'm not letting you get caught up in any left-wing, radical,
nutcase politics. I'm calling Addie's parents right now and putting a stop to this nonsense!” But he does not say this. He says, “Good for you, Skip.” And, hold on to your seat belts: “I'm taking off work Thursday morning so I can come hear you.”

I go, “But,
Daaad.”

He goes, “And I've been thinking about it and I
will
chaperon that dance Friday night, son. Who should I call?”

Wonderful. My father will now be on hand to witness my two greatest moments of humiliation in a life that has been just building up to them.

You may wonder why I think the dance will also be humiliating. Picture this: I will be trying to get Kelsey to dance with me, but she will only want to dance with joe. Joe will want to dance with Colin, which is not going to happen for a multitude of reasons, including the fact that Colin will be dancing with Addie, unless Skeezie's theory is right, in which case, Addie will be dancing with nobody. So Kelsey will ask Joe to dance and he will say yes, on account of Joe being a dancing fool.