This Journal Belongs to Ratchet (5 page)

Dear God,

Dad's supposedly doing work for you, and usually that ends up being only slightly annoying and somewhat embarrassing, but now I'm getting caught in the middle. Dad's arrest earned him one hundred hours of community service, but it's turning into
my
punishment.

They've assigned Dad a class at the rec center. Every year there's a go-cart contest in Moss Tree Park. So the rec center has a “Build Your Own Go-Cart” class. They need a new teacher since they got rid of the last guy because he didn't know a flathead from a Phillips. They thought Dad would be perfect for the job, and Dad thinks I'll be perfect for the job of his assistant.

What this all means is that I'll be helping Dad with the go-cart class
—
which Hunter and Evan will be taking,
and
the class meets right across the hall from the “Get Charmed” class THE SAME DAY AND TIME!

It's bad enough I'm not “getting charmed,” and now this.

I would appreciate any attention you could give this matter.

Sincerely,

Ratchet

Pablo Picasso:

“When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk, you'll end up as pope. Instead I became a painter, and I wound up Picasso.'”

Ratchet:

I don't know what my mom said I could be, so how will I know what I am supposed to become?

Report on Progress of Proposal Goal #2
—
Be More Like Mom

Places I've Searched for Clues about Mom:

.
Kitchen junk drawer

.
Living room TV stand

.
Dad's nightstand

.
Linen closet storage bin

.
Office desk drawer

Things I've Found:

The only expert on Mom I know is Dad, so I imagine the interview questions I'd like to ask him.

1.
What did you like best about Mom?

2.
What did she like best about you?

3.
What did Mom like best about
me
? (That's the question I really want to ask.)

4.
What was her favorite color? Her favorite food? Her favorite TV show?

But when Dad and I are in the garage, working on grinding down some rotors, those questions seem as out of place as I was in my Goodwill outfit at the “Get Charmed” class. So I ask a question that I'd never thought of before, but one that seems to fit the situation better. “Hey, Dad, did Mom like cars?”

“What?” he asks, sounding confused, as he slides the caliper over the rotor.

“Mom. Did she like cars as much as you do? Did she ever help work on them like I do?”

“Not really” is all he says; and the way he says it, I know the interview is over before it has even begun.

Another day

I search again

For something of Mom's.

In cupboards

In closets

In dressers

And

Even bathroom drawers

But

Find

Nothing.

Then I see

An old

Cardboard box

Full of

Cotton balls

And Q-tips

Way in the back

Under the sink

In the second bathroom
—

The one Dad's still fixing.

And when I see it

I remember

The box.

The Mystery Box

There's a box.

It's cardboard.

It's taped shut.

And it hasn't been opened

For a long time.

You can tell

Because the tape

And the cardboard

Are melted together.

The box goes with us

To each “Handyman Special” we move into.

Sometimes Dad puts the box in his closet.

Sometimes he puts it in the laundry room

On a shelf.

Sometimes he puts it in a kitchen cupboard.

I wonder where

Dad's put it

This
time.

In
this
house,

Because I haven't seen it lately

And I haven't found it,

Yet.

Maybe I can't find

Anything of Mom's

Because it's all

Inside

The box.

(I wonder what Dad would say if he read this.)

The Other Box

There is another box.

Not taped shut

Not up on the shelf

Not hiding in the closet

But here

With me

Every day

Usually hiding inside

A T-shirt

I hate.

We

Live together,

Eat together,

Work together

My dad and I.

So why don't I know what's inside?

The Third Box

My heart

Is the third box

Held together by hope

For something.

I don't even know what.

The hope keeps the box

Together.

And keeps everything inside.

So I hold on tightly

To the hope,

Afraid

To let go

Because

No one knows what's inside.

Not Mom.

Not Dad.

Not even me.

?

At the rec center, I walked down the hall. Thankfully, without being noticed by the cover girls. They were already crowded around Charlize, practically sitting on top of her. It looked like she had every kind of makeup ever made spread out on the front table. Eye shadow, blush, lip gloss, mascara, and I could smell perfume all the way out in the hall.

I turned and went into the room Dad had been assigned. Food wrappers and empty soda cans all over the floor. Desks pushed every which way. The air was a mixture of peanut butter and sweat with a faint smell of lemon floor cleaner. (Hard to believe you could still smell the floor cleaner because it looked like the floor in our garage, which has never been washed.) In the middle of the room were eight boys. All talking too loud.

Dad wasn't there yet. He was finishing up a brake job at home. He sent me over on my bike to keep order until he got there. I wondered if he realized I was the same age as the kids in the class. What made him think I could keep order?

No one noticed me when I walked in. I picked up a few candy wrappers from the floor. Straightened out a few desks. (It did about as much good as throwing a cup of water on an overheating engine.)

Then Evan said, “Hey, look, everyone. It's Professor Ratchet!”

The kids laughed in a way that proved Evan was the “cool” kid everyone looked up to.

I ignored him. Maybe my invisible routine would work. I pushed a few more desks to make another row. That's when I smelled something like burned toast. Evan yelled, “FIRE!” And at the same time, the fire alarm went off. We all ran out of the room and down the hall with the screaming cover girls following us.

Out in the parking lot, an old lady waved her arms. “It's all right. False alarm. Little mishap in creative cooking. No big deal.”

That's when Dad came squealing around the corner in his 1981 diesel Rabbit. (Real rabbits are quiet, cute, and cuddly; but there's nothing quiet, cute, or cuddly about Dad's piece of junk car.) The squealing noise came from the loose fan belt he never bothered to fix. He was always too busy fixing other people's cars to fix his own.

If it weren't for the smell of the fire, we would've
smelled
Dad coming before we heard him. To keep the environment cleaner, Dad had converted his car to run on vegetable oil.
Recycled
vegetable oil, of course. Which meant the oil came from fast-food restaurants. They threw out barrels of the stuff every day. Dad always picked up oil from King of Wings so he spread the tasty aroma of fried chicken wings wherever he went.

Dad waved at me through his open window as he pulled into the parking lot. Then the rec center director, who looked a little like Cruella de Vil, realized Dad hadn't been in his classroom when the fire alarm went off. She went CRAZY. As crazy as Dad did at the city council meetings.

“Mr. Vance! Where have you been?! You mean to tell me that you were not supervising your students when the fire alarm went off?”

Dad's car door groaned as he got out. The door barely opened and closed anymore. The car really belonged at the junkyard instead of on the road.

“Sorry. I was running a little late,” Dad said as he got out. “Won't happen again.”

Dad slammed the door. I cringed, hoping the whole car wouldn't fall apart. Dad's hair looked like it had been
fried
in vegetable oil. He had a huge oil stain on his shirt. Black wheel-bearing grease smeared into his knees. And his hands looked like they hadn't been clean in years.

The boys in the class looked at Dad and took Evan's lead
—
they all burst out laughing. The cover girls joined in. I could tell from the way they giggled that they thought Dad was a huge joke, and I could tell by the way they fluttered their eyelashes and looked over their shoulders as they huddled closer together that they wanted the boys to stop noticing Dad and start noticing them.

“Mr. Vance,” Cruella went on, waving her finger in Dad's face (she even had long Cruella de Vil fingernails), “this whole arrangement of you teaching goes against my better judgment. You'll need to work a lot harder to prove me wrong.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Dad knew he couldn't mess this up. It was community service or jail time.

Soon we got the “all clear” from the fire department who'd showed up a couple of minutes after Dad.

“C'mon, future mechanics of the world,” Dad said, waving his arm toward the door. “Let's go build some go-carts.”

Evan raised his eyebrows to the group. Then circled his finger by his head and mouthed the word
crazy
.

He'd read my mind. This was
only
the beginning.