Middle School: Get Me Out of Here! (13 page)

I sat up late that night, drawing in my sketchbook and talking to Leo about it.

“What do you think will happen if I find him?” I said.

“I don’t know, but I’ll give you a ton of credit for the mission,” he said.

Sometimes Leo has a one-track mind.

“What happens if I look for him and
don’t
find him?” I said.

“What if you stop asking questions and start figuring it out?” Leo said.

So as soon as I heard Grandma’s TV go off upstairs, I got out of bed and went over to the computer.

I couldn’t find a website for Hairy’s Place, but I did find an address—3921 Calumet Avenue. I pulled it up on a map and then coughed a lot while it was printing out, just in case Mom was still awake.

Then I stuck the map in the bottom of my backpack and tried to get some sleep.

Even that wasn’t easy, though. On top of everything else, I started thinking about that question Mr. Beekman put up on the board the first day of school:
WHO ARE YOU?
Like maybe if I could find out more about who my father was, I might find out more about me too.

And if that wasn’t part of getting a life, I didn’t know what was.

T
he next day, when I asked Matty how to get to the corner of Calumet Avenue and Thirty-Third Street, he got right on board. First thing after school, we were back out on the streets. He showed me how to get the number 23 bus and then the number 9 bus to get to the place I’d marked on the map.

I didn’t tell him why I was doing this, but it didn’t even seem like it mattered. Matty the Freak was always up for anything.

As soon as we got off the bus, Hairy’s Place was right there on the corner. It looked pretty much like the picture Grandma showed me, but I didn’t know it was a barbershop until I saw it in person.

“I get it,” Matty said. “
Hairy’s
Place.”

“Wait out here. I’ll be right back,” I told him.

Now he got curious. “Why? What are you doing, anyway?”

“I’m robbing a bank,” I said. “Just wait outside, okay?”

It was either that or tell him I was looking for someone who got his picture taken on this corner about twenty years ago. Yeah, that doesn’t sound too ridiculous.

Inside the shop, there were three barber chairs lined up in front of a big mirror, but only one barber. I knew the second I saw him it had to be Hairy, since he was so… well,
hairy
. And huge too. He looked like Bigfoot with tattoos.

“Pop a squat, kid,” he said. “I’ll be right with you.”

“Oh. Uh… okay,” I said.

I sat down in one of the regular chairs near the front and picked up a
Field & Stream
magazine. Even that seemed kind of weird to me. I hadn’t seen a single field, or a stream, since I’d moved to the city.

But before I could even crack it open, Matty came strolling in from the street.

“We got a line going,” Hairy told him. “You can wait if you want.”

“Sounds good,” Matty said. Then he sat down a few chairs away from me like we didn’t even know each other. I was giving him the evil eye the whole time, but he was evil eye–proof. He just sat there holding a magazine upside down and watching to see what I’d do.

Whatever
, I thought. I wasn’t going to turn back now. The other customer was already paying for his haircut, and Hairy was waving me over with this big pair of scissors in his hand.

“Next!” he said.

“Actually,” I said, “I just wanted to ask you about something.”

Right away Hairy’s face went all mean, and those two bushy eyebrows of his turned into one big shrub.

“This ain’t a library,” he said. “You want to pay for a cut, we can talk all you want. Otherwise, I got customers waiting.”

I was pretty sure a haircut would cost more than thirty-five cents, which is what I had in my pocket. Meanwhile, my throat was starting to feel like a clogged drain.

“Oh… um… I mean… I just wanted to ask if you knew—”

“Did I stutter?” he said. Or more like roared. “Stop wasting my time, Shrimpo! I’ve got bills to pay!”

I didn’t know what to say to that, but Matty sure did.

“Hey, mister,” he said. “I’m just curious. What’s it like to be the world’s tallest butt-wipe?”

That was pretty much the end of the conversation. Hairy came right for us then, looking like he was ready to kill. (And did I already mention those scissors?)

One thing I’ll say for myself—I’m pretty fast on my feet. I hit that sidewalk in about half a second flat and didn’t stop running for the next six miles. Or maybe it was three blocks, I don’t know.

Matty was still laughing when he caught up to me.

“Did you see the look on that guy’s face?” he said. “Grumpiest barber ever, no contest.”

I guess I could have been mad about him messing things up, but I was actually glad Matty was there. Besides, it wasn’t like Bigfoot Hairy was about to sit me down and break out the milk and cookies.

“But I don’t get why he acted like that,” Matty said. “I thought he was related to you or something.”

“Related to me?” I said. I figured Matty had to be joking, but he looked totally serious. “What are you talking about?”

“His name was right there on the mirror, next to his picture. Didn’t you see that?”

“What name?” I said.

“Harold Khatchadorian,” Matty said. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you were part giant before?”

S
o that’s when I told Matty everything.

Well, not
everything
. I didn’t mention Leo. There aren’t too many people I trust in the world, besides Mom (and Leo, of course), but even if there were, I wouldn’t exactly start off by telling them about my imaginary best friend.

Still, I did tell him about my dad, and why we went to Hairy’s, and even about Operation: Get a Life.

I thought Matty might laugh or something when I was done talking, but he didn’t even flinch.

“And you’re doing all that just so you can stay at Cathedral School of the Farts for another year?” he said. “How come?”

“Don’t you like it there?” I said.

“Compared to what? I mean, it’s better than regular school. But, dude—it’s still school.”

I thought that was a pretty good answer. In fact, the more I got to know this kid, the more I liked him.

“You know what?” Matty said. “Forget about Hairy. Forget about all that stuff. You want to live a little? Come on.”

He was already walking back toward the bus stop. And then he was running again. Now it was my turn to try to keep up.

“Where are we going?” I said.

Matty didn’t even look back. He just kept running.

“Everywhere!” he said.

I
learned a few things about Matty the Freak that day. Things like:

His real name was Matthew Theodore Fleckman.

He came up with his own nickname, Matty the Freak, so that MTF worked either way.

He had three younger brothers, a mom, a dad, and a beagle. The beagle’s name was Bagel.

And most important of all, I learned that Matty Fleckman knew how to do more stuff for no money than anyone I’d ever met.

When we got off the bus again, our first stop was the biggest Electronics Depot Warehouse you’ve ever seen. This place practically had its own ZIP code. The whole third floor was just games, and almost all of them were set up so you could try them right there in the store.

“You just have to keep moving,” Matty told me. “Then they don’t know how long you’ve been here, and you can play all day if you want.”

After that, we hit the megaplex just up the street. It was the kind of place with superluxury seating, where you could spend a hundred dollars on snacks without even getting full, and the tickets cost fifteen bucks each.

Unless, of course, you’re Matty the Freak.

We walked right past the main entrance and around to the side of the building, where there were a bunch of one-way exit doors with no handles on the outside. No problem, though. The theater had something like thirty-eight screens, so it didn’t take
long before a movie let out and a bunch of people started coming out the doors.

“Just be cool and follow my lead,” Matty said. Then he walked right into the crowd, like we were swimming upstream.