The Misfits (3 page)

We do not record the rest of the proceedings, since we never do get back on the topic. If I recall correctly, we spend the rest of our time at the Candy Kitchen that Monday talking about who are the meanest teachers in seventh grade and who are the best. Ms. Wyman scores points in both categories.

TUESDAY MORNING, we get to school, and what do we find scrawled in big ugly marker on Joe's locker but the word Fagot.

Joe is outraged.

“Don't they teach
spelling
in this school?” he goes, then yells across the hall to Kevin Hennessey, who is wearing his usual smirk, “There are two 'g's in 'faggot,'you numbskull!”

“
I
didn't do it!” Kevin shouts back. “Not this time, anyways.”

“Yeah, well, tell your illiterate friends that if they're going to call names, they should at least know how to spell them.”

“Okay, f-a-i-r-y,” Kevin retorts with an evil grin.

Joe gives him the raspberry.

“Liver pâté,” I mutter under my breath, which is
code for: Ms. Wyman should rip his liver out, toss it in a blender, and serve it on crackers.

Joe and Kevin have been doing this little dance together since kindergarten when Kevin told the whole class that Joey didn't have a pee-pee and Joe announced in a loud voice that he had
two
pee-pees and Kevin was just jealous.

“Faggot,” Kevin Hennessey spits as the bell rings.

“Numbskull of Unknown Paternal Origin,” Joe spits back.

“Good one,” I say.

Kevin jabs Joe with his elbow, then goes, “Out of the way, Lardbar,” to me as he pushes his way into Ms. Wyman's homeroom. Joe rolls his eyes at me and shrugs before moving down the hall to Mr. Daly's homeroom. Just another morning at Paintbrush Falls Middle School.

Now, as my classmates and I settle into our seats (we have at least a couple of minutes before Ms. Wyman leads us in yoga breathing), let me tell you about the first time I laid eyes on Joe. He was four. So was I.

I and my mom were visiting Addie and her mom,
when Addie ups and tells me I should go check out the new kid next door. I noticed she did not offer to go with me.

“Just ring the bell,” she told me.

So I did. When the inside door opened, there on the other side of the screen was this kid wearing a dress.

“Will you marry me?” the kid in the dress asked.

I shook my head.

“Why?”

“I am going to marry my mother,” I answered. My mother did not yet know this.

“Can I marry your mother, too?”

“No.”

“Can I marry your father?”

“No.”

“Can you play with me?”

“Okay,” I said.

“I'm Joe,” he said.

“Okay.”

“I'm a boy,” he told me, lifting his dress to show me the proof. He was not wearing underpants. (For the record, he had only one pee-pee.)

“I never knew a boy who wore a dress,” I told him.

“There's a lot you don't know,” he said.

He was right about that.

It wasn't the last time Joe wore a dress. He kept taking stuff from his mother's closet and trying it on until his mother finally gave him his own box filled with clothes she was through with and he could dress up to his heart's content.

He doesn't wear dresses anymore—at least, not that I'm aware of—but lately he's taken to running a streak of color through his hair and he's always got the nail of his right pinky finger painted some crazy way. Sometimes his aunt Pam, who sells cosmetics at Awkworth & Ames but is really an artist, paints these tiny pictures on it. Faces or flowers or symbols. They're pretty amazing. Even Kevin Hennessey has been known to say, “Cool.” Right now, there's a scorpion on his finger, on account of his being Scorpio, I guess, except that's changed of course and he's JoDan, but I never remember to call him any of these names
du jour
anyway and just call him Joe.

As for Pam, well, I'll have to tell you more about her later on, because we're halfway through homeroom
period and I perhaps should listen up in case Ms. Wyman says something that might be of actual use. I do want to tell you this, though: Pam is beautiful. I don't mean ordinary Paintbrush Falls beautiful; I mean, like from a whole other planet beautiful. And although she does not smile all the time (she's no phony), when she does, she's got the kind of smile that makes your chest feel two sizes too small and your brain two sizes too big, and the truth is I can hardly stand being around her most of the time. Or at least my body can hardly stand it.

“. . . elections three weeks from today,” I hear Ms. Wyman saying. I had best tune us back into the action because these elections she is going on about are going to play a big part in this story—and, although I have no way of knowing this at this moment, they will play an even bigger part in the story of my life.

“As you will recall, you all registered as Democrats or Republicans in the sixth grade—”

“Or Independents,” Addie pipes up.

Ms. Wyman gives Addie a look that's laced with arsenic, on account of being interrupted.

“Or Independents,” she gives. “Now, anyone interested in running for student council on either ticket has until Thursday, seventh period, when the nominating conventions will take place—Republicans in the auditorium, Democrats in the media center.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Addie stir. I want to swat her with a rolled-up newspaper, but I do not have a rolled-up newspaper and besides I remind myself she is not a fly.

“Where will the Independents meet?” she asks, to which Kevin goes, “The girls' John,” and general hilarity ensues.

Ms. Wyman brings this to an abrupt halt with threats of detention or disembowelment, I have trouble hearingwhich.

“We have a two-party system,” she says firmly, once order has been restored.

“But—”

“The candidates from the
two
parties will meet with me, as student council adviser, in this room after school on Thursday. Any questions?”

Addie raises her hand.

“Good,” Ms. Wyman snaps, grabbing a stack of papers from her desk. “Then we can move on. Brittney, would you pass these out, please?”

Brittney Hobson jumps up. “I'd be happy to,” she says perkily. Brittney is the kind of person for whom active verbs and modifiers were invented.

As we read about the seventh-grade dance coming up in October, the announcements come on the P.A., and soon we are standing for the Pledge.

Or not.

Which explains why Ms. Wyman now has that liver-eating look on her face and is saying to Addie, “Miss Carle, I think perhaps you had best go see Mr. Kiley.”

Some of the boys go, “Oooo.”

“That's enough!” snaps Ms. Wyman. “Miss Carle, you may be excused.”

Addie rises to her full height, meaning she occupies all the vertical space she's entitled to instead of slumping, which she sometimes does because of her being so tall and getting called names on account of it, and she walks to the door, clutching her books. When she gets there, she turns and cradles the books
in the crook of her left arm and raises her right hand high in the air so she looks, I swear on a stack of pancakes, like the spitting image of the Statue of Liberty (which I expect is exactly what she intends) and she proclaims in a voice that sounds like she's been listening a whole lot of times to that “I Have a Dream” speech: “Until there is LIBERTY and JUSTICE for AWWLL... let there be TRUTH in SILENCE!”

Ms. Wyman's jaw drops. Some of the kids clap. Some laugh. Jimmy Lemon calls out, “What a loser!” Ms. Wyman says, “That will be enough, Mr. Lemon.” DuShawn Carter sends a spitball flying, but it misses Addie because she's turned and walked out, and hits the “a” in Ms. Wyman's name on the door instead. Ms. Wyman sees it and there's blood in her eyes as she yells, “Kevin Hennessey!”

“Why is it always me!” Kevin protests. “I didn't do it!”

The whole class gets laughing so hard I forget that Addie is in serious trouble.

SO NOW it is Tuesday after school and an emergency meeting of the Forum has been called on account of what happened to Addie today, her being sent to Mr. Kiley's office and all, as well as some other matters I will attend to in due course. But I am not yet sitting with Addie and Skeezie and Joe in the back booth with the torn red leatherette upholstery at the Candy Kitchen; as of this very moment I am standing ten feet away from Killer Man, waiting. I listen to the sound of his fingertips drumming the wooden edge of the Calvin Klein neckwear display case, while at the same time making the observation that whenever the Muzak choral
oo-ah
rendition of “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head” plays it is always followed by a sprightly accordion version of “Y.M.C.A.,” and I think I may be trapped in a time warp or an episode of
The
Twilight Zone.
And then I begin to worry that if I keep coming here on Tuesdays and Fridays and the occasional Saturdays, I will become accustomed to standing around waiting for customers who do not appear, waiting for time to pass, waiting for who knows what, and that eventually I will turn into either Mr. Keller-man or a Zen Buddhist.

I do not know why I have this job, except that my dad does not make much money at the nursery and I do what I can to help out. So, okay, I know I have to work, but why
this
job, I cannot figure, other than that my dad knows the store manager. Perhaps, I think, it is not about the job. Perhaps there is a lesson I am meant to glean from the experience. Perhaps it will make me a better person. I think,
I am already turning into a Zen Buddhist.

At this moment, the anti-Buddha walks in, in the person of JoDan Bunch.

“Look at you,” he greets me with, “in that tie with all the little amoebas on it. How science dweeb is
that?”

“These aren't amoebas,” I inform him. “This a style called paisley.”

“Well, I think I knew that,” says Joe, casting his eyes over the ties on the nearest display table and gingerly selecting a purple one. At least I do not have to worry that his hands are filthy. This is never a question with Joe.

I glance over my shoulder to see if Killer Man is giving me the evil oculus, but he is not so much as looking in my direction. He appears to be lost in thought and whatever has got his brain cells occupied is having a strange effect on his facial muscles. They are not locked into their usual the-world-is-beneath-me sneer, but hang on his face like melting cheese, creating the illusion that he is an actual human being and a sad one, at that. Seeing him like this makes me wonder once again about his life outside of Awkworth & Ames, and I make a mental note to try and find out a thing or two.

Joe has come to remind me of the emergency Forum at five-fifteen, which will be brief but crucial. I have no doubt that the words coming out of his mouth have been supplied by Addie. Joe does not say such things as “brief but crucial,” whereas Addie loves to
make herself sound like a business executive. I worry about her sometimes.

Joe has also come to have his pinky fingernail repainted by his aunt Pam.

“Can you take a break?” he asks me.

I look at the clock. I have been working (or what passes for working at Awkworth & Ames) for only forty minutes. I am not entitled to a break until I have worked for at least an hour. It says that somewhere in the six stapled pages.

“Notyet,” I tell him.

Joe goes off to find his aunt Pam. He is doing a little dance as he goes that is a sort of polka version of “Y.M.C.A.” and I return to listening to Mr. Kellerman's digit-drumming and I suddenly imagine I hear this deep voice intoning, “You are traveling to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. Your next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

My dad and I have been watching
way
too many episodes of
The Twilight Zone.

By the time my break comes and I join up with Joe, Pam has already finished painting his fingernail
with a black-and-white yin-yang sign on a bright yellow background.

“Like it?” Joe asks. This is
not
a multiple-choice question.

“Awesome,” I say.

Pam is standing there, with her hair all frosted pink to match the pink jacket they make all the cosmetics ladies at Awkworth & Ames wear. On most of them, it looks like a rag—a
shmatte,
Joe calls it—but on her it's high fashion. I get a sniff of some kind of perfume I'd bet a week's supply of Mallomars has the word “magnolia” somewhere in its name, and I decide that the only way I can handle a conversation at the moment without embarrassing myself is to select a boring topic.

My topic of choice: Killer Man.

“Hey, Pam,” I say, trying to sound old and studly.

“Hey, Bobby,” she gives back in a magnolia sort of way, making me feel I've almost succeeded.

“What do you know about Mr. Kellerman?” I go on, figuring the faster we get to the boring stuff the better for all concerned.

Pam laughs. At the sound of it, I pray,
Dear God, give me the strength to get through the next ten minutes without dissolving into a pool of lustful preteen sweat.

“Funny question,” Pam says.

“Bobby's a funny guy,” Joe puts in. “Oo.”

When Joe goes, “Oo,” it usually means he has found something more interesting going on than his conversation with you, so do not expect further attention. In this case, what distracts him is an Estée Lauder gift bag that is your gift with any twenty-five-dollar purchase. Joe
has
to know what's in it. He moves down the counter to check it out.

Pam leans on her elbows in my direction, a move that causes me to develop an intense, nearly scientific interest in my shoelaces.

“Mr. Kellerman,” she says. “Hm. Well, he's kind of a sad character, isn't he?”