Dancing Dudes (5 page)

“Wait,” I called out. “Graham is missing. That means we have one extra boy.”

“Thank you, Raymond. I forgot that Graham went home,” she said. “We’ll take care of that tomorrow.”

AFTER SCHOOL, I
ran to Graham’s house. I rang his doorbell, hoping his mom would let me see him even though he was technically sick. Graham peeked out the window and then opened the door. I walked right in.

“Oh, man, this is bad,” I started, without even saying hi.

“Hold on, Raymond, what are you talking about?” Graham asked. He had a Popsicle in his hand.

“No way, you get Popsicles, too?” I said, forgetting for a moment about the hoedown.

“Yeah, and not only that, my mom is at the store buying me some soda pop. She says it will help my stomach.” Graham smiled.

“No fair,” I said.

“Hey, what were you saying about something being bad?”

“Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,” I said. “Guess who walked through the door right when we were lining up for dance partners?”

“Um, how about Gordon Armstrong?” Graham answered. Gordon was a big, cool fourth-grader back when we were puny first-graders. We had always hoped we would be as cool as him one day.

“What? Why would Gordon Armstrong walk into our class? He’s in seventh grade,” I said.

“I don’t know, you just said, ‘Guess who walked through the door?’ so I thought I would guess Gordon Armstrong,” Graham said, looking like that was a perfectly normal answer.

“Well, it wasn’t Gordon. Let me give you a hint. She’s someone you really like, and she can cut great heart shapes out of paper.”

Graham’s face went white, except for his lips. They were purple from his Popsicle.

“
Kelly?
Kelly came back to school?” Graham shouted. He started pacing around the room. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “This plan was perfect. I even got Popsicles and soda pop out of it. How could this happen? ”

“I don’t know—everything seemed to go bad. I was paired up with Heidi for about one minute. Then Kelly walked in and ruined that, and now I’m stuck with Lizzy.”

“No way, you have to be Lizzy’s partner? That’s the worst,” Graham said.

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said, dropping into a big chair. I had tried to follow manly rule number three, but it was no use. Graham plopped himself onto the couch. We both just sat there in silence thinking about our lousy luck and how terrible this dance was going to be. Finally, Graham spoke up.

“So who did Kelly get matched up with? Was it Brad?” he asked.

“No. It was Matt Lindenheimer. Brad is dancing with Suzy,” I said.

“How did that happen? Brad is a lot taller than Matt,” Graham said.

“That’s what I thought, too. But Mrs. Gibson said it’s just Brad’s big hair that makes him look so tall.”

“Hmm, so Kelly would rather dance with the smart kid, huh? She likes brains more than beauty,” Graham said in a quiet voice, shaking his head.

“What are you talking about, Graham? She just got assigned to dance with Matt. It doesn’t mean she likes him,” I said.

“Sorry, I was just thinking out loud,” Graham said. “Well, one way or another, I’m going to make this work. I don’t know how, but mark my words: I
will
dance with Kelly.”

“I hope you’re right. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to dance with Heidi. I would settle for just not having to dance with Lizzy,” I said. I looked out the window. Graham’s mom’s car was pulling into the driveway. “Well, I’d better go, Graham. Enjoy your soda pop and Popsicles. I hope you feel better.”

“Hey, I’m not really sick,” Graham said.

“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot.” I walked out the door, passing Graham’s mom.

I said hi and told her I just stopped by to see how he was doing. She thanked me for being a nice friend and pulled a cookie out of her grocery sack for my walk home.

I kicked a pinecone up the street. Little pieces broke off as it rolled. By the time I got home, the pinecone was almost gone.

My grandma and grandpa’s big brown car was parked in our driveway. I hoped they weren’t staying for dinner. I was not in the mood to have Grandpa picking things off my plate with his dirty fork.

“Hey, partner,” Grandpa yelled as I walked into the house. He grabbed my hand and shook my arm all over the place like he was trying to pull it right off of my body.

“Hi, Gramps. Hi, Grandma,” I said.

“Don’t I get a hug from my favorite grandson?” Grandma said. Not only was I getting a hug, but her wrinkly lips with bright red lipstick were all puckered up and heading toward me. I turned just in time to get the kiss on my cheek. It tickled a little. I know girls aren’t supposed to shave, but sometimes I wonder if my grandma should shave off some of those whiskers on her face. They aren’t thick like a man’s beard, but they still tickle when she kisses you.

“So what have you been up to, partner? And why do you look so sad?” Gramps asked, putting his fists up like he wanted to box me or something.

“Nothing much, and I’m not really too sad. Although I did find out today that I have to dance with Lizzy at our class hoedown next month. I’m not too excited about that,” I said.

“Oh, she can’t be that bad. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time,” Grandma said. “Hoedowns are great fun.”

“That’s right,” Gramps interrupted. “Your grandma and I used to square-dance every Saturday night back in the good old days. We were the best hoedown dancers around. Weren’t we, honey?” Gramps said.

“Well, I don’t know if we were the best, dear. But we did have a dandy time,” Grandma answered.

“What do you mean, you don’t know if we were the best? Of course we were the best! Everyone knew that,” Grandpa said, hopping around and kicking his feet up in the air. “You’ve got dancing in your blood, Raymond,” he added.

“You’d better stop that,” Grandma called after Gramps. “You shouldn’t be doing that with your bad hips.” She chased him around the room trying to catch him.

“Well, I’ve never danced before, and I don’t think I want to try with Lizzy,” I said.

“You’ll see, partner,” Gramps said, “you’ll love it.” He kept hopping and dancing right out of the room and into the kitchen. I followed him in and sat down in my chair.

All of that dancing must have tired Gramps out, because he finally grabbed the chair right next to me and just kind of fell into it. He was breathing hard.

“Whew . . . Don’t get old, partner,” he said, patting me on my knee.

“I’ll try not to,” I replied. I was hoping he was just resting and would get up and sit somewhere else. But no such luck. He picked up the paper napkin in front of him, opened it, and stuck in his collar like a bib. This meant business.

I love Gramps and all. And it’s not just that he takes food off of my plate. But whenever Gramps comes over, I get kinda sick watching him eat. Mom says I’m rude for feeling that way, but I can’t help it. He shovels so much food in his mouth at a time. And he doesn’t even finish what’s in his mouth before he shoves more in there. There are always bits of chewed-up food falling out of his mouth when he opens it to put more in. It’s disgusting! And even when I try not to watch him, I can still hear him. When he opens his mouth to load up, he makes this wheezing noise, like a broken vacuum. And then when he starts chewing, he makes this sick groaning noise with his voice.

Then a brilliant idea popped into my brain. Grandma sat down in a chair at the other end of the table. “Hey, Gramps, don’t you want to sit by your lovely wife?”

“Nah, I sit by her every day. I’m taking a break,” he said, laughing. He laughed until he started coughing. Mom patted him on the back. “And besides,” he said, “this seat is closer to the bathroom, in case I need a quick getaway, if you know what I mean.” He smiled at me and winked, like I knew what he meant. I didn’t really know what he meant, but it didn’t sound very good.

We were having pork chops, mashed potatoes, peas, and salad. As we passed the food around the table, there was nothing that Gramps didn’t put on his plate. Even when there wasn’t room for any more, he just piled it on top of his other food. I could tell this was going to be ugly.

Everyone dug in. In no time at all, the wheezing, sucking sound and the groaning began. My appetite was gone and I couldn’t even eat a bite.

“Eat your food, Raymond,” Dad said.

“I’m not that hungry. And I really don’t like peas.”

“Hey, partner,” Gramps said. “Try your grandpa’s old trick.”

I looked over at his plate. He was smashing all of his peas into his mashed potatoes until it was a light green gooey mess. I felt queasy just looking at it and thought I might even puke. Then Gramps did something that put me over the edge. After taking a bite of his green potato-and-pea mixture, he pulled his fork out of his mouth. It still had some of the potato goo and a little piece of pork chop dangling from it. Then the fork headed toward my plate.

“I’ll help you get rid of a few of these,” Gramps said, sticking that nasty fork into my peas and scooping up a pile. He leaned over my plate and shoved the fork into his mouth so he wouldn’t lose any peas. Unfortunately, one of the peas fell from either the fork or his mouth onto my potatoes. It was more than I could handle.

“Excuse me please!” I yelled, pushing my chair back and running into the bathroom. I stayed there for a long time. After a while, my mom knocked on the door.

“Raymond, are you all right in there?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “It’s just that . . . well, Gramps . . .”

“I know, sweetie,” she interrupted. “I saw him.”

I opened the door and asked her if I had to finish my dinner.

“No, not tonight,” she answered. “I’ll make you up a new plate and put it in the refrigerator in case you want it later.”

I went to my room. I hoped I didn’t make Gramps feel bad, but I figured he was probably happy just finishing the rest of my dinner.

THE NEXT MORNING
I woke up starving. Mom made heart-shaped pancakes and hot chocolate for breakfast to celebrate Valentine’s Day. I ate tons of pancakes and drank four big cups of hot chocolate. So far things were going great. I finished breakfast, put my bag of valentines in my backpack, and ran out the door.

Graham came out of his house with a big smile on his face and a plastic grocery bag full of valentines.

“Why don’t you carry them in your backpack?” I asked.

“I am carrying them in my backpack. These are just more valentines that didn’t fit,” Graham said, holding up his backpack to show me how full it was. “After you left the other day, I decided to make a few extra valentines for Kelly. I didn’t sign them. I want to see if she can figure out it’s me.”

“How many extra did you make?”

“I don’t know, about twenty,” Graham said.

“Whoa, isn’t that a little too much?” I asked.

“Listen, Raymond. Take it from your manly coach,” Graham said. “You can never do too much for your girlfriend. You can’t talk to her too much, wave at her too much, and there is no way on the planet you can give her too many valentines. Remember that. It’s rule number four.”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks again for being my coach. I don’t know what I would do without your help.”

“Don’t mention it,
hermano
. That’s what friends—and manly coaches—are for.”

We walked as fast as we could to get to school early. Our class Valentine’s Day party would be in the afternoon, but Graham wanted to put the extra valentines he made for Kelly in her box without anyone seeing.

Luckily, we got there before the other kids. The door was open, but Mrs. Gibson must have been in the office or somewhere else. All of the valentine boxes were on the back tables. “Okay, you stand by the door and watch for Kelly—I don’t want her to see me. We need a code word or something. If she comes in, yell out, ‘Underwear!’”

“Underwear?”
I said.

“Yeah, underwear,” Graham said. Then he headed back to the boxes. He looked around for a while and then called back. “Hey, which one is Kelly’s? I don’t see her name on any of these.”

“It’s in the middle with all of the really good hearts on it. You can’t miss it,” I said. “She wrote her name in hearts.”

I looked down the hall to make sure Kelly wasn’t coming. I didn’t want to yell “Underwear!” if I could avoid it. A few people started coming through the door, but no sign of Kelly. Heidi and Diane came in talking.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Raymond,” Heidi said, smiling.

“Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too, Heidi,” I said back. I tried to follow manly rule number four and come up with something funny or clever to say to her, but I couldn’t think of anything. As I stood there trying to be manly and talk to Heidi, I must have forgotten to look for Kelly, because all of a sudden I noticed Kelly was already in the classroom.