Mick Harte Was Here (2 page)

“Come on, Mick! I want that tattoo! Hand it over!”

“Say ‘please.’ ”

“Please, okay? Now let me have it!”

He tapped his chin. “Gee, I don’t know, Phoeb. I hate to be picky, but your ‘please’ wasn’t all that
polite. Why don’t you try it again. Only this time, say ‘Pretty please with sugar on top.’ ”

I swear I could not believe he was doing this to me.

“Pretty please with sugar on top. Now give it!”

But even before I finished, Mick was already shaking his head again. “Nope. Sorry, but it’s still not working for me. Maybe we should try something different this time. How ’bout this?…Try ‘Wee Willie Winkie went to town. Upstairs, downstairs in his nightgown.’ ”

That’s when I jumped on top of him and wrestled him to the ground. (I realize I’m too old to do stuff like that. But I’m not that bad a wrestler and I’m not quite ready to give it up.)

Anyhow, I almost had Mick in a headlock when my father walked in on us. Men who walk around in boxer shorts and socks are deceptively quiet, by the way.

He didn’t yell. Pop almost never yells. Instead, he just folded his arms and gave us one of those “looks” of his. This was the one where he rolls his eyeballs so far back in his head he can see his brain, probably. Then he heaves this huge sigh—like having two children who fight over a press-on tattoo is a hardship too great for any human being to bear.

Trying to save his own skin, Mick jumped right up. “Here, Pop! Quick! Take this! Phoebe wanted it for herself, but I thought you might want to wear it to the office today.”

He tried to press it to my father’s wrist. But it wouldn’t stick to the hair. So he just kept slapping at it.

“Boy, they sure don’t make tattoos like they did when you were a young lad, do they, Pop?”

My father knew Mick was only joking around, but he didn’t lighten up or anything. He just pointed his finger, first in my face and then in Mick’s, and squinted his eyes in this silent threat thing he does.

Then, with the tattoo still hanging off his hand, he swiveled on his sock feet and padded back out of the kitchen.

“Yeah, but wait, Pop!” I called. “That tattoo was mine! All I was doing was getting it out of the box and Mick jumped on me!”

My father kept going.

“Can I please have it back? Please?”

Pop’s bedroom door slammed.

I was steaming mad. Really fuming. But instead of backing off and letting me calm down, Mick started teasing me in this stupid pirate voice, saying stuff like “Shiver me timbers,” and “Thar she blows,” totally cracking himself up.

That’s when I shoved him into the refrigerator and called him a name that I’d never called anybody before in my whole life.

A really ugly name, I mean. A street word that you mostly hear only on HBO, or on school playgrounds.

It shocked him that I said it.

It shocked me, too.

But instead of apologizing, I just turned my mouth up in this nasty little grin.

Mick pushed me away from him. Hard.

“You’re cool, Phoebe,” he said.

Then he walked out of the room.

T
HAT WAS
our last morning together.

The last one ever, I mean.

I
T KILLS ME
when I remember that. Because usually I hardly cuss at all. At least not as much as most kids my age, I don’t think. Mick didn’t either. Which is almost
weird
for a seventh-grade boy.

Not that the two of us were angels or anything. I’m not saying that. We were always getting in trouble. But normally it was for stuff we did together. As a team. Because even though it sounds corny and all, when we weren’t fighting, my brother and I actually
liked
each other. A lot.

I think it was the result of being so close in age. Like when Mick was learning to talk, I was the only one who could understand him, so I sort of became his translator. I mean right from the beginning I knew that
truck
meant dog, and that
meme-fluzit
meant he wanted to flush the toilet.

The first big “caper” we pulled together was right after Mick started kindergarten. That was when we defaced our first property. To be specific, we scratched the letters F-A-R-T in the new driveway that had just been poured next to our house.

We didn’t do it to be bad. It’s just that I was learning how to spell. And Mick was learning how to print. And the cement just sort of
called
to us, I guess you’d say.

Mick promised that if I would tell him the right letters, he’d do a good job with his printing. He did, too. I mean his R was backward, but at the time neither of us knew the difference.

All I remember is how excited we both were when he finished. We clapped, and jumped up and down, and totally laughed our heads off. Without a doubt, this was the funniest thing anyone had ever done in the entire history of the universe.

It’s amazing how a little fart in the driveway can totally lose its humor when your father sees it.

I really don’t want to go into all the details of
what happened when he discovered it that night. But I will tell you that when he and Mom stood us in front of them and made us “solemnly swear” to tell them the “complete and honest truth” about how it got there, Mick swallowed hard, took a big step forward, and told them “a monkey did it.”

Seriously. He said that.

The trouble was, I had to back him up on it. I didn’t really have a choice, you know? So I stood there and swore that we had both seen a monkey run into the driveway with a little stick in his hand and write “fart” in the concrete.

Then—just to make the story even
more
believable—Mick said the monkey’s name was Zippy. And the two of us had saved the day by chasing him “all the way back to Africa.”

We ended up going to our rooms for a week or something, I think. But after a while, it became one of those things that everyone looks back on and laughs about.

Like even on the morning of the fight, when I went out the door and saw that backward R in the cement, I smiled a little bit. I didn’t want to. But I did.

I
WALK TO SCHOOL
with my best friend, Zoe Santos. In elementary school we used to ride our bikes. But mine’s pink. With a white basket. Which was fine in fourth grade, but I figure my teen years are going to be hard enough without being seen around town on a bike that Little Bo Peep would have picked.

Mick didn’t have that problem. His bike was black and chrome—which is why he could still ride it to school and not look like a complete doofus.

Not looking like a doofus was pretty important to Mick, actually. It’s not that he was conceited. It’s just that when he was eight, my mother made the
mistake of showing him his christening gown, and he never really got over it.

I mean who could blame him? It was this long, lacy white thing with blue ribbons and a matching lace hat.

He had a fit when he saw it. “But that’s a dress!” he shouted. “You mean you took me to church in a dress? And people saw me in it? And they knew I was a
guy
?”

My mother explained about how it wasn’t really a dress. It was a gown. The same gown my father had worn. And my grandfather, too. But nothing helped. For the rest of the year, the only thing Mick would wear to Sunday school without a battle was a black T-shirt with a motorcycle on the front of it, and the kind of camouflage pants that Marines wear.

They were neatly pressed, though. In this ridiculous compromise with my father, Mick agreed to let Pop iron creases down the pant legs.

Anyway, it didn’t take long before it was the only outfit he’d wear to school, too. Which sounds extreme and all. But the school psychologist told my mother it was Mick’s way of balancing out the “trauma of being paraded around in public wearing ladies’ sleepwear.”

By fourth grade he’d finally gotten over his obsession with “macho” clothes and he became “trendy” instead. In fact, he got so picky about what he wore, my parents would actually flip a coin to see who had to take him to buy school clothes. The first time my father lost the toss, he came home from his day at the mall with some of his hair pulled out.

Still, even Pop had to admit that Mick was a sharp dresser. A lot of girls had crushes on him. But other than me, the only girl he hung around with was Zoe. They really liked each other, too. Not like boyfriend and girlfriend, I don’t mean. But they both had naturally curly hair, and they both thought professional wrestling was real—which are two pretty strong bonds, when you think about it.

Anyhow, that’s why Zoe was a little hurt when Mick passed us on his bike that morning and he didn’t say hi to her.

“It’s not you he’s mad at. It’s me,” I said. “We just had a fight and I called him a bad name.”

“What bad name?”

I didn’t want to tell her, but she wouldn’t stop looking at me.

“Okay, okay. It’s the word that comedian kept saying on that HBO special we promised your
mother we wouldn’t watch the other night.”

You could almost see Zoe’s mind clicking down the choices. But as soon as she hit on the right one, she just shrugged it off. Cuss words don’t impress Zoe one way or the other.

“He’ll be over it by lunch,” she said.

I knew she was probably right. No matter how hard he tried, Mick could never stay mad at me. Like even at his most furious, the longest he could last was a couple of hours.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised when he came running up behind me as I was walking out of the cafeteria that day.

“Hey, Phoeb! Wait up! I need you to do me a favor, okay? I need you to ride my bike home from school. Dillon Rigby’s mother is taking a bunch of us to his house so we can rehearse the announcement for Friday’s basketball game. He’s got one of those Mr. Microphone things.”

He tossed me the key to his bike lock.

I tossed it back. “Sorry. I’ve got soccer practice after school. Plus I’ve got a ton of books to carry home tonight.”

He looked at Zoe, but she was already walking away. “Can’t do it either, Mick. If I don’t take my science project home this afternoon, Mr. Garcia’s going to drop me a whole grade. He
says it’s starting to stink up the science wing.”

Mick rolled his eyes. “Great. Wonderful. Now I have to ride over there all by myself and I don’t even know where the kid lives.”

“Aaah, no big deal. You’ll be fine,” I said, casual as anything.

Then I just walked away.

I didn’t even say goodbye.

I
’
M RUNNING SPRINTS
at soccer practice when I hear the siren. I stop right away and stretch my neck to see if an ambulance is coming
.

It bothers me that I’m kind of hypnotized by the sight of an ambulance. I don’t want to be one of those creeps who gawk at accident scenes. But I am, I think. Because as soon as I see the flashing red light appear over the fence, I can’t take my eyes off it. And so like always, I just cover my ears and watch it come
.

The ambulance is getting close to the soccer field now. But instead of speeding past, it seems to be slowing down. Then it slows even more and turns the corner in front of the building
.

My stomach starts to churn. I don’t like having the ambulance turn there. By now it should be speeding off to someone else’s neighborhood. A neighborhood where I don’t know anyone
.

But even after another minute or two, the noise of the siren hasn’t faded at all. And with my ears still covered, I walk to the sidelines and sit down in the grass. “Just turn the damn thing off!” I scream inside my head
.

Then they do. But the noise it makes as it winds down is worse than the siren itself And I can’t understand how some of the girls on my team have already started running sprints again
.

Then all of a sudden, the door of the gym flies open and one of the school secretaries comes rushing out. The old one. Only she’s moving pretty fast—sprinting practically—over to my coach
.

A few seconds later, Coach Brodie is running full speed in my direction
.

I
’VE REPLAYED
that scene in my head a hundred times since the day it happened.

But every single time I get to the part where Coach Brodie’s arms go around me, my muscles still tense just like they did that afternoon.

“P
HOEBE, HONEY.
It’s Mick,” she says
.

And for the second time that day, I am shocked by what comes out of my mouth
.

I say, “I know.”

T
HINKING BACK
, I’m not exactly clear what happened after that. It’s sort of like the film in my mind speeds up and there’s just a blur of people walking me to the office. And bits and pieces of conversation. Mick’s name. The name of the hospital. Talk about how fast the ambulance got there.

And it’s strange, you know? Because the only thing that I really
do
remember is the feeling that none of it was really happening. It’s more like it was a play or something, and I was acting out a role. Like, “The part of the victim’s sister is being played by Phoebe Harte.”