Boy's Best Friend (5 page)

“I'll even do it for free,” Zac said, laughing.

“Thanks,” said George. He grabbed his lunch and backpack and headed for the door.

“Can I walk with you?” asked Vivien, raising her eyebrows in that way that made it hard for George to say no.

“Don't you want to take the bus?” asked George hopefully.

“No,” said Vivien. “I take it all the time. Please. You hardly ever walk.”

“George,” said his mother.

George sighed. “All right,” he said.

He headed down the driveway with Vivien in tow. She was wearing her lemon-yellow canvas sneakers with white trim—the kind you saw tossed on beaches in the summer in all colors of the rainbow. George looked at them, then shifted his gaze off into the distance.

“What are you doing, George?” asked Vivien.

“Nothing,” said George. “Just thinking.”

“About what?” said Vivien.

George was thinking about names again. Kyra's last name was Joyner. And he'd just realized that she had the word “joy” in her name. A sensation of warmth like the midday sun surged through George's body. “I was thinking about Kyra,” he said.

“Is she your girlfriend?” asked Vivien.

That question annoyed George. Maybe it was because he didn't know how to answer it. What did it really mean? He thought of the things he'd liked about Kyra when he'd first met her. The spray of freckles across her cheeks. The way she could touch the tip of her tongue to her nose. The way she bounced when she walked. But what he liked most was the way she thought. Like he did. Was he in love with her? George remembered one of the first things Kyra had said to him.

“Do you think you can feel someone's presence when they aren't around?” She hadn't even waited for him to answer. “I do,” she'd said.

At the time that had made perfect sense to George. But now as he stood struggling to connect to Kyra, her presence was the furthest thing from his grasp.

“She's not my girlfriend,” said George at last. “She's just a friend.”

George left Vivien with her classmates and crossed the playground. Lester was playing tetherball with Sean Hanlon, the biggest guy in the class. George stopped to watch. Sean banged the ball and sent it spiraling around the pole.

“You're good,” Lester said.

“You're not,” Sean answered. Lester guessed politeness was not one of Sean's virtues. But he kept up the game until he'd lost 21 to 2.

“Better luck next go,” said Sean, banging the ball into the pole one last time.

“Sure,” said Lester.

The bell rang and the students went into their classrooms.

Ms. Clover handed out a math sheet with word problems. For one of them Lester had to figure out the time difference between New York and Paris. That got him thinking of Denver. He looked at his watch. In Denver the sun was just coming up. In Denver he was two hours younger. That was a weird thought. But the strangest thing about it was that Lester couldn't get it out of his head, not until the afternoon when Sheila had a little accident.

It was art day and Ms. Clover had asked them to cut out silhouettes of one another. Sheila began to do Lester, but halfway through she pinched her finger on the scissors. It started to bleed. Lester began to feel queasy. He hated the sight of blood.

“Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and offering Sheila one of the napkins he kept for emergencies, like cake and pies. But the finger kept bleeding. Lester was relieved when Ms. Clover asked Charlotte to take Sheila down to the nurse, and he got to do a silhouette of George. Lester studied George's profile then traced an image of it on a piece of bright red construction paper.

“That's pretty good,” said George.

“Thanks,” said Lester, remembering that politeness was a virtue.

When the class had finished, Ms. Clover taped the silhouettes to the board and the students tried to guess who was who. Everyone recognized George, but no one recognized Sheila's half-finished portrait of Lester.

Lester lingered at the tetherball before starting home. He was hoping that Sean might come by and ask for another game. But he didn't. Lester gave the ball a punch, then walked over to the bike rack. He wondered if maybe George would be there. But he wasn't. Lester checked his watch. It was 3:16. He hopped on his bike and pedaled off just as George's mother pulled up to the curb.

George climbed into the car and looked out the window. A guy on a bicycle was speeding off down a side street, his hands stretched out to his sides like a bird. It took George a few minutes to realize that it was Lester.

George's dentist appointment lasted 30 minutes. “No cavities,” said George to his mother. He spun a pinwheel that he'd gotten out of the treasure chest that the dentist kept treats in for exemplary patients. George had been an exemplary patient.

“Aren't you a little old for that?” his mother asked.

“I got it for Viv,” said George. He checked his watch. It was 4:01. “This will be a really good test for Bart,” he said.

When they pulled into the driveway, Bart was waiting on the porch steps and Zac and Vivien were playing Ping-Pong in the garage.

“Bart's been there for 8 minutes on the nose,” said Zac. George looked at his watch. It was 4:12.

“That proves that Bart knew I wasn't coming home right after school,” said George. He handed Vivien the pinwheel. “For you,” he said.

“Freaky,” said Zac, who looked a little puzzled.

“Zac always lets me win,” said Vivien, putting down her paddle and blowing into the pinwheel. George picked up the paddle.

“I won't let you win,” said George.

*   *   *

Meanwhile Lester had arrived home at 3:27. It had taken him 11 minutes on his bike.

“Bill Gates has been waiting 7 minutes,” said Lester's mother, pushing open the front gate. Bill Gates trotted up to Lester.

“So you knew I was coming,” said Lester, rubbing Bill Gates under the chin.

Lester's mother smiled widely. “It certainly seems that way,” she said. “How was your day?”

“Okay,” said Lester. “But Sheila didn't have such a good day.”

“Who's Sheila and why not?” asked Lester's mother.

“A girl in my class,” said Lester. “She cut her finger on some scissors.”

“I hope not badly,” said Lester's mother.

“It could have been worse,” said Lester.

“It could have been worse,” repeated Lester as he climbed the stairs and went to his room to fill in his logbook. “I could have cut myself.” But that thought didn't make him feel much better. In fact, he felt like he had cut himself. But not his finger. It was deeper inside, somewhere where he couldn't reach.

Lester went down to the basement and began searching through a box he'd brought from Denver.

“Are you missing something?” called Lester's father, who was at his desk writing.

“Denver,” mumbled Lester.

“What was that?” said his father.

“My boomerang,” said Lester. He found it and took it out to the backyard. “What do you think, Bill Gates?” he said. “If I could throw this all the way to Denver, would it return to me?”

*   *   *

That evening George texted Kyra. “Did you know you have the word ‘joy' in your name?” he wrote. He was about to punch the send button when he changed his mind and pressed delete. He'd realized that the moment Kyra read that, she would think of his name and what words were in that.

George then wrote, “Did you ever notice that Ms. Clover had the word ‘love' in her name?” But he erased that too. Finally he wrote, “Did I tell you the new guy's name is Lester Shoe? He loves mustard and he talks to himself. He took my bike spot. And he has a dog named Bill Gates. What kind of a guy do you think would name his dog Bill Gates?”

 

10

On Friday Lester decided to change a variable for his experiment. He took his mother aside. “I'm coming home really late today,” he said. “George said the results of the experiment are more accurate if you don't know exactly when I'm coming. Then you don't expect me. If you expected me you might behave differently and Bart might figure out that I'm coming.”

“I see,” said Lester's mother, looking up from the cookbook she was reading. She was smiling, but she'd wrinkled her forehead in a series of gentle waves so that Lester wasn't quite sure if she really did see.

“What are you making?” he asked.

“I thought I would make lasagna,” she said. That was one of Lester's favorite meals.

“Great,” said Lester, his mouth beginning to water.

When Lester got to school, George's bike was already in the rack. Lester looked at the sticker on the crossbar. “There is no Planet B,” it read. Lester liked that.

“Moving is fun. Change can be positive,” he said as he crossed the playground.

Lester took his seat in class and opened his notebook. He skimmed his list of virtues. “Patience,” he whispered. “Moving is fun. Change can be positive.”

“Are you talking to me?” said Sheila.

“No,” said Lester. His attention was drawn to her wounded finger, which was covered with a Band-Aid.

“Then who are you talking to?” Sheila asked.

“No one,” said Lester. Sheila looked disappointed, but Lester didn't notice. He was too busy wishing away the day.

“TGIF,” Lester said to himself. He was glad it was Friday, thankful that he'd made it through his first week of school. The problem was he was doing just what his mother had told him not to do—wishing his life away, hoping that the weekend would come sooner.

After school, Lester spotted George pulling out of the bike rack. He stopped to read the bumper sticker another time. “I like your sticker,” he said.

“A friend gave it to me,” said George.

“I like your friend then,” said Lester, sitting down on the curb. “I'm hanging out for a while before going home. Testing Bill Gates. He was waiting for me yesterday.”

George pulled his bike out of the rack. He checked his watch—3:03. “I bet he'll be waiting today too,” he added before speeding off.

Bart was waiting when George got home.

“Six minutes,” said George's mother.

*   *   *

Lester lingered on the playground a while, then took baby steps home, stopping in front of his neighbor's house. He looked at the tall hedges with their small pinecones. Then he peeked through them. An older lady was out back puttering around a toolshed. She opened the door to the shed and stepped in. Lester could hear noises coming from inside. It sounded like a shuffle. Suddenly the lady came out of the shed and quickly pulled the door closed.

Maybe she's hiding someone in there, thought Lester. Maybe she's a criminal. Lester thought of his neighbors back in Denver—the Bristows. They weren't criminals. They had twin girls, eight years old, who were really cute. Every spring the Bristows had a barbecue and invited all the neighbors.

Lester turned away from his neighbor's house, focusing on his new home on Cape Cod. “Here I come,” he said. Two minutes later, Lester walked through the front gate.

“Bill Gates just came out four minutes ago,” said Lester's mother.

“Can't fool you, can I?” said Lester to Bill Gates. Lester went up to his room and filled in his logbook. Then he took his notebook and began sketching. He drew Sheila with a Band-Aid on her finger. Then he drew himself with a Band-Aid on his heart.

*   *   *

George waited until dessert—lemon meringue pie, one of his mother's specialties—before mentioning what had been on his mind the entire week.

“I was thinking—” he said.

Zac interrupted him. “That's your first mistake,” he said between bites of foamy meringue.

George ignored his brother. “Ms. Clover has the word ‘love' in her name,” he said. “What do you think that means?”

“Why does everything have to mean something?” asked Zac.

“We have a word in our name too,” said George. He didn't wait for them to guess, but blurted it out. “Ass.”

“George,” cried his mother.

“We have a lot of words in our name,” Zac reminded George. He began to list them. “Son, as, mass, on.”

“Too many, I think,” said George. “Maybe we should take out one of the s's.”

“Why would we do that?” asked Mr. Masson.

George shrugged. “It's just an idea,” he said.

“I can't think of a better way to complicate our lives,” said Mrs. Masson.

George's father folded his napkin and rose from the table. “Well I'm proud to be a Masson,” he said. “Ass or no ass.”

“Me too,” said Vivien.

“Me too,” said Zac.

“Me too,” said George weakly.

After dinner, George went up to his room and got out his dictionary. He looked up “sheldrake.” A sheldrake was a gooselike duck slightly larger than a mallard, with mostly black-and-white plumage and a red bill. George wondered how Rupert Sheldrake had ended up with that name. His relatives couldn't have been ducks, but maybe they'd owned ducks. Or liked ducks.

George turned to the A's and scrolled down the page to “ass.” Ass: a stupid, obstinate, or perverse person; any of several African or Asian mammals; buttocks.

“Ass,” said George out loud. “Ass, ass, ass.” He couldn't help but think how Kyra might react to what he was doing. She would probably laugh. That's because she had “joy” in her name and not “ass.”

 

11

Saturday morning Lester decided to take Bill Gates to the marsh.

“Let's see what this place is like,” he said to the dog. Lester had never seen a marsh, but everyone on Cape Cod seemed to think it was special.

Lester gazed at the long extensions of water that stretched their fingers inland. In the distance an island bubbled eerily from the surface of the waves. Lester started along one of the paths that threaded through the low-lying brush toward the sea. At first Bill Gates stayed by Lester's side, but as they neared water he broke loose, diving headfirst into the patches of sea lavender and cordgrass.