Box of Shocks (12 page)

Maybe I should wait. Maybe I'll wait until everyone's gone to bed, then I'll sneak out. Or maybe not. For sure it would freak the kid out to see me come out of his closet. Plus, by then, Mom and Dad will have phoned the police, and they'll be scouring the city for me. When I show up, I'll have to explain everything. No. Waiting them out isn't a good plan.

What other choices do I have? Not many.

Then I catch a lucky break. I hear the side door slam, and a few seconds later the old car starts up. Its tires crackle on the gravel driveway as it pulls onto the street. I listen as the engine fades into the distance.

I hope they've all gone. I hope no one has stayed behind. I wait and I listen.

Nothing. I don't hear a thing. No closing doors. No creaking floorboards.

I wait and I listen some more…Still nothing. It sounds like they've all left the house.

I open the closet door slowly. As I tiptoe across the room, I glance over to the window. The cookie is gone. I hope the kid got it and not his parents. I go down the stairs two at a time, cut through the kitchen, run out the back door and sprint like crazy toward my house.

As I cross the street, I pull my house key out of my pocket. At the top of the front steps, I jam the key in the top lock and give it a twist. I do the same with the lower lock, glancing over my shoulder to make sure no one sees me. The door swings open, and I step inside, slam it behind me and turn the lock. I whirl around and punch in the four numbers on the alarm system, then run up the stairs and into my room. I made it!

As I lie on my bed trying to catch my breath, that's when I remember. My Box of Shocks! In my wild escape from the house, I was so worried about getting caught, I forgot all about my Box of Shocks. It's still hidden in my old closet, but for some reason, it doesn't seem so important anymore.

Twelve

T
he next morning, I tell Dad I have to get to school early. I don't say why.

“Do you have a practice or a meeting or something?” Dad says.

“No,” I mumble. “There's something I need to do. Some research.” It's not exactly a lie.

Dad doesn't ask any more questions. He seems to know I'm not in the mood to talk.

When he drops me off at school, I head straight for the doors of the school, but Dad honks the car horn. I turn around, and he shouts, “You forgot to wave!” He's right. I always wave when Mom or Dad drops me off at school. Today, I have other things on my mind.

I throw my pack on the front steps, open the zipper and reach in. My lunch will be on the lower left-hand corner of my pack right next to my math textbook. Mom always packs my stuff the same way every day. I feel for the flap on my lunch bag, pull open the Velcro and slide my hand into the right-hand side of the bag. I find what I'm looking for, pull it out and slip it into my pocket.

Once I'm through the doors of the school, I head right for the kid's locker. There are locks on all the lockers except his. His locker is as wide open as his house.

The hall's empty at this time of the morning, but I still look around anyway to make sure no one's watching. I open the kid's locker door. Inside, it's like his house—pretty much empty, except for some crumpled-up school newsletters and a couple of broken pencils. I hear the bang of a door somewhere down the hall, so I quickly do what I need to do. Then I close the locker door behind me and try to look casual as I amble off down the hall.

At noon in the lunchroom, I'm the first one there. I head to my usual table where Reggie, Karl and Grayson sit, but I make sure I take the seat against the wall. That way, I can watch. From here, I can see the table in the far corner of the lunchroom where the kid always sits— always by himself.

My friends show up, and right away Reggie starts babbling about something that happened yesterday. I pretend to listen while I watch the kid.

“So my grandma was driving down the highway doing about a hundred,” Reggie says. “She's too cheap to get air-conditioning, so she's got the windows rolled down…”

The kid has something wrapped in a scrap of paper.

“…and there's this stupid crow pecking at some road-kill in the ditch…” Reggie continues.

The kid carefully opens up the paper, folds his hands in his lap and stares down at what he's unwrapped.

“…and suddenly, the crow flies out of the ditch just as my grandma's driving by…”

I wonder if the kid likes raisins. Of course, chocolate chips would be way better, but Mom never makes chocolate-chip cookies. Not healthy enough.

“…next thing you know, Grandma's got this crow going ballistic, flapping around the inside of the car!” Reggie shouts, pounding the table with his fist.

Finally the kid picks at the plastic, slowly pulling it back until the cookie is completely unwrapped.

“…so all she could think of doing was pull into the next town and look for a car wash. So she drives through the car wash with the windows down, figuring the crow'll want to get out of her car…”

The kid breaks off a small piece of the cookie and, bit by bit, chews the tiny pieces, holding each one in his mouth for a few seconds before swallowing. It takes him forever to eat just one cookie.

“…so the crow kind of liked it inside Grandma's car, even when it was going through the car wash, and now my grandma has a pet crow. Can you believe it?”

When the kid finally bunches up the empty plastic, he stands up and turns around. Then he does something I've never seen him do before. He smiles.

The next morning, Mom drops me off at school early. I tell her I've got some work to do in the library. For the second day in a row, I forget to wave goodbye.

At lunch the kid eats an avocado and bean sprout sandwich on whole-wheat bread. He eats it in the same, slow way, chewing each mouthful with his eyes closed. Each time he swallows, he smiles.

The day after that, Dad drops me off forty-five minutes before the bell. “More research?” he says. I nod. But at least I remember to wave this time.

For lunch, the kid has carrot sticks with yogurt dip. I've never seen anyone take so long to eat a single carrot stick. And I've never seen anyone smile while they eat carrots either.

Right after lunch that day, we have English. Mrs. Franzen is famous for giving strange assignments. “I'm trying to push the bounds of your imaginations!” she says.

For this assignment, she wants us to bring a pet to school.

“It's not like the Pet Day you had in kindergarten,” she explains. “I want you to bring your pet, and then you are going to do an oral presentation about their life. But I don't just want to hear about how old they are, some of the tricks they can do or what food they eat. I really want you to get inside your pet's head and try to imagine how they see their lives. For example, what would Melissa's dog say about its own life? What are his favorite things in the world? What does he worry about? Does he find life boring? Frightening? Really use your imagination to dig deeply into how your pet feels. This assignment should be very challenging and fascinating.”

Mrs. Franzen says all of her assignments will be challenging and fascinating. In other words, really hard and mind-boggling.

“How are we supposed to know what our pet's thinking?” Kelly calls from the back of the room. “My hamster has a very limited vocabulary.”

Mrs. Franzen taps the side of her head with her index finger. “By using the power of the creative mind!” she says. “Of course you can't know exactly, but I want you to stretch your thinking to imagine what they might be thinking.”

There are all the usual questions about how long our presentation should be, how many marks it's worth, and then I ask, “What happens if you don't have a pet?” Even though I have my Siamese fighting fish, Bubbles, I have another reason for asking.

“If you don't have a pet, I'm sure you'll be able to find one to borrow. Ask a relative or a friend. I'm sure they wouldn't mind lending you theirs,” Mrs. Franzen says. “If anyone doesn't think they'll be able to bring a pet, please raise your hand.”

There's a buzz of chitchat around the room, but no one raises their hand—not even the kid. I know he doesn't have a pet—unless he catches some of the mice running loose in the old house. And it's pretty unlikely he can borrow one. As far as I can figure, he has no friends and his only relatives are his crazy parents. But the kid's arm doesn't move. He isn't going to raise his hand.

That doesn't matter. I have a plan.

Thirteen

M
rs. Franzen sends a letter home to our parents explaining our new assignment. Mom and Dad are all excited about it.

“How wonderful! Such a creative project!” Mom says. “You'll really have to put your imagination to work!”

They can't stop going on and on about what Bubbles might be thinking, and what I could say about his life. I'm tempted to ask them to come to school and do the presentation for me.

While they babble on and on about the assignment, I'm thinking about something else. A plan is slowly unfolding in my mind, so I say to Dad, “After school tomorrow, can we go to Grandpa Golley's place? I haven't been there for a while, and I figure it's time I check in and see if he needs any help with the animals.”

“Why, that's very thoughtful of you, Oliver,” Dad says. “You're absolutely right. We haven't checked in on him in a while. Plus, he might be able to give you help with your assignment!”

“Yeah! Right. That's exactly what I was thinking,” I say.

The next day, about two minutes after we arrive, Grandpa Golley puts me to work shoveling dog poop in the backyard while Dad carries a few giant bags of pet food in from the garage and then cleans out some birdcages.

When Dad finishes helping Grandpa Golley, he calls from the back door, “How's it going out there, Ollie?”

“I'm pretty much done!” I say as I carry about the hundredth shovelful of dog poop across the yard and dump it in a garbage can.