Quaking (3 page)

The Rat snorts. “Uh—I—ah—ew—ahn—
DUH!
” I can feel him turn in his desk but I crouch down, out of his radar, I hope.

Snickering, and then the teacher’s voice again.

I hold my breath.

“No takers, then?” he says.

Takers?
Oh, God,
that’s
what he was saying. Not
Quakers
!
Takers.
I let out my breath and almost allow my head to drop the last few inches to the desk.

I hate first days.

“Hey, I care about this stuff,” the Rat says.“I’ll do an oral report, but I don’t want to write one. And can you make it count as my grade if, you know, I don’t ace the final?”

What? Involuntarily, I glance at the teacher. Is he going to let the Rat get away with that? Again, I am surprised at his response. His eyes are soft and he nods his head and looks at the Rat the way a father might look at his son, whom everyone else knows is obnoxious, but the father is too blind to see.

“I guess,” the Rat says, turning around to look in my direction, “some people don’t give a damn about our troops getting killed over there, trying to save our lives.”

I care! I hate anyone even getting hurt, much less dying! I hate to see anyone being a victim! How dare he make me look like someone who does not even care? Does he really care about dying soldiers? I wonder. He seems to care more about creating turmoil.

I look back at the teacher and his soft eyes have turned to fire and they are burning into me. This is not a good beginning.

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!
The electronic bell over the door makes me jump. Scuffling, and boots, and chatter move past me and I get up slowly, stiffly, and stagger out into the hall.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up even before the hot breath hits me. The hiss is low but the tension is high. “Chicken-shit.”

I whip around to see the narrowed eyes and ugly sneer of the Rat. He laughs mockingly and elbows a boy next to him, who starts laughing, too. The Rat stands shoulder to shoulder with several more of his Vermin. They blend into one massive Wall as they block the hallway, leering at me. I turn and run the other way.

I shake through my entire English class until the blaring bell jangles me again.

By the time I get to math, I am calmer. It is almost Zen to sit and do math problems. Algebra is the antithesis of World Civ. The teacher is boring, predictable, and relatively safe. He has about as much personality as a school bus driver. He sits at his desk and ignores us while we copy problems off the board and write the answers in our notebooks. At least, some of us do. Even those who refuse to work leave me alone. They throw spitballs, play games on PDAs, and trade medications. It is much like being on the bus. But without the Rat. I suspect the Rat is only in World Civ, although in his case “only” is still too much.

I have no appetite for lunch but I am on the lunch program and at my last school the Cafeteria Police called Loopy if I did not pick up the lovely rations. So I get my tray and slump at a table with some large, loud girls who smell bad, figuring I am safe because no one will mess with them, not even the Rat. They give me strange looks but shrug and go on with their raunchy jokes. I pick at the barf on my Styrofoam plate, trying to decide if it is Lasagna à la Piemonte or Mediterranean Trout Treasure. I do not eat any of it. I drink a soda, and that fills me up without making me sick.

I am in French 5, which is a little odd, considering I have only had two years of French. Still, my last French teacher told me that I have a
“bi-zarre”
facility for languages. I thought it was an idiot-savant sort of thing, like I am particularly good at languages but I am otherwise particularly stupid. Except that, apparently, I am not otherwise particularly stupid. Now that is truly
bi-zarre
.

We are studying French literature. Madame insists that we speak
“en français, s’il vous plaît.”
This does not actually bother me because it is like speaking in code. I imagine myself in the French resistance and everything I say to the co-opted Vichy French teacher is a lie, a façade to obtain an A but never tell her what I really think of Albert Camus . . .
merde!

Biology is good. I am an expert.We are studying morphing, but I have already morphed. I have my own exoskeleton. My face is hard and cold like stone. My shoulders are piles of knots strung together into steel. My muscles are so hard they are like bone.

I have spent years developing my armor and I will not let it be pierced.

On the bus, I sit near the front, away from where the Rat hole is, I hope. Rats carry plague and must be avoided. I learned that a long time ago. I stay low, digging in my backpack for some imaginary need, wanting to slump so far down that I can hide under the seat. I make myself small and dark so that I look like a hole and there is nothing there.
Nothing, Rat, only nothingness, so move on
. I sense him slink past and I am safe for the moment. I know, however, that it is only a matter of time before I am dead meat.

CHAPTER FOUR

 

T
he first day of school seems like a week and I spend Saturday in my room recuperating. It is actually Jessica and Sam’s room, I suppose, since this house has only two bedrooms and the Blob has the tiny one next to mine. Jessica and Sam sleep in the living room downstairs.

There is not much in my room except the sofa bed, dresser, and shelves filled with an odd assortment of books—
Contact, A Beautiful Mind, Fine Woodworking
—and a cross-stitch on the wall that says “Be the change you want to see in the world.—
Mahatma Gandhi
.” I was not aware that Gandhi was a Quaker. I imagine it would be news to him, too.

By Sunday, I am ready to see the Quaker Trio in the “family” room, aka kitchen.

Jessica fixes a big breakfast.

Scrapple: I call it the
s
word with
crap
inside of it.

Eggs: aborted animals.

Burnt toast: dead bread.

No apple crisp.

I eat nothing.

“It’s First Day,” Jessica says.

I think this is some special occasion. “First day of what?”

“I mean it’s Sunday, the first day of the week. We have Meeting for Worship this morning.”

“You mean church?” I try to put it in normal words for her.

“Well, it’s our version of church.”

“Oh, no thanks. Been there, done that.” I have been to so many churches—fundamentalist, revivalist, and even regular ones—it is ridiculous. And so are they.

“There’s no child care at Meeting this week,” Jessica pipes up.“I was going to stay home with Rory so you could go, but if you don’t mind staying home and taking care of him—”

“Whoa! Okay, I understand blackmail. I will go.” No way am I being stuck with the Blob.

I am out the door while they are still staring at each other in Quaker. I crunch over the frozen grass to their Subaru station wagon. It is white. And rust. With a lime-green passenger door. And a peace symbol on the back. And a bumper sticker that says I SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, I QUESTION OUR POLICIES.The bumper is crushed right next to the sticker, and I wonder if an angry vehicle was responding to the statement.

Sam catches up with me. I stop breathing when I see his dorky hat. It is a too-small baseball cap that makes his hair stick out in curly clumps on the sides. He looks like a clown.

He is wheezing.The man needs to go on a diet. And get some exercise. He will be dead by the time he is forty. Oh, God, I sound like a public service announcement.

“You don’t have to go to Meeting if you don’t want to.” He pants. “You’re welcome, but you’re not compelled.” Another breath. “Jessica will stay home with you and Rory, if you like.”

I ponder my stellar options. I look back at the dumpy duplex, then at the sucky Subaru. I am freezing.The Subaru is closer. “Fine, I will go to your Meeting.”

“We don’t proselytize,” he says. Big word for a clown. “Quakers don’t try to convert people.”

“I said I would go.” A shiver runs through me.“See, I just quaked.”

“You really don’t have to—”

“Could you unlock the car? Please?” I am stuck in
Little Subaru on the Prairie
and Pa won’t open the door.

Finally, I am sitting in the front seat, arms folded, shivering. I look down at the shredded seats. “Which one of you had the tantrum with the knife?”

Sam chuckles. “This is one of those ‘previously owned vehicles.’ I don’t know anything about the seats. Or the dents in the doors.” He shrugs his Michelin Man shoulders, almost like he is embarrassed.

“It is all right. I understand ‘used,’” I say grimly.

He smiles. The clown misses the irony.

He shoves a hand in his pocket and pulls out an open roll of wintergreen LifeSavers with the wrapper dangling. “Would you like a mint?”

“Why? Does my breath stink?” My arms are still folded.

He laughs. “No. Come on, have one.”

I reach out, rip more of the wrapper off, and take one, cautiously. Quickly, before he has the chance to make a snide remark, I say, “It will not make me sweet.”

“Aw, you’re already sweet,” he says, stuffing the candy back in his pocket.

“You are mistaken,” I say. And you are not very bright.

“You’re a little prickly on the outside, maybe, but I don’t blame you. I know you’re a sweet kid inside, though.”

“What makes you so delusional?”

He shrugs. “An old Quaker idea.”

“Excuse me?”

“There’s something of God in everyone.”

I stare at him. “Perhaps I inherited His bad side.”

He just smiles, crunching his candy.

It is an annoying sound.

“You will break your teeth,” I warn him.

“The great thing about wintergreen LifeSavers is that they spark.”

I do not follow his logic. Then I realize he has none. “What?”

“Haven’t you tried that before? Here, you’ve got to take the rest of the roll.” He struggles to get the candy out of the pocket of his green down vest again and the car jerks around the road.

I roll my eyes.

“No, really,” he says. “Take these and go stand in a totally dark room and look in a mirror—”

“I will not be able to see anything in a totally dark room,” I point out.

“But you will! If you bite through wintergreen LifeSavers—with your mouth open—you’ll see sparks!”

I stare at him. He is a child in a grown-up body. Peter Pan swallowed up by the Incredible Hulk. And the Hulk is shoving LifeSavers into my hand.

I take them and look at them. Something stirs deep inside my head. It is my mother. I remember—I think I remember—her giving me LifeSavers. Like this. Partially opened. And they were mint. Maybe spearmint. I do not know. But they were white. They looked like this. Just like this. I cannot stop staring at the LifeSavers in my hand.

“Hey!” Sam cries, making me jump. He points past me, out of my side window.“Look at the way the mist just hangs over the river like that!”

It does not take much to amuse Sam, apparently.

“Nice,” I say dully.

He is not put off. “Isn’t it incredible?”

I sigh. “Actually, it is called science.”

He looks at me.

“Wa-ter va-por,” I say slowly, on the off chance that he might understand.

He grins like an imp, if imps are crazy, annoying creatures. And he imitates my speech pattern. “I—think—it’s—God.”

“God as water vapor. Nice, Sam. I am not sure He—or She—would go along with it, though.”

He grins. “Why not? God is all around us.”

Oh, really? I sincerely doubt that, Sam. He was never around at 125 South Water Street, apartment 416. He never stopped the rock-hard hand from finding my mother. Or me. No matter where I hid. No matter how fast I ran. No matter how many times I begged him to stop. Where was God then? No one ever has a good answer for that. They look away. Or down. Or worse, they look at you with pain oozing from their eyes and you do not know whether the pain is theirs or yours. And whether you have brought more pain into the world by opening your big mouth. And whether all the pain was your fault to begin with.

Sam is staring at me. What? Was I supposed to answer him? His eyes are not twinkling. He is not chuckling. His belly is not shaking. So, what is that noise? Oh, it is my foot kicking the dashboard. Hard. Over and over. I stop.

“Are you all right?” His voice is soft and marshmallowy.

“Of course. My toe was itching. That is all. It is hard to get at it in these boots. So I have to kick.”

He does not say anything but watches the road ahead. I steal a look at him. He is wearing the saddest clown face I have ever seen and I have to look away. The mist from the river is getting in my eyes.

CHAPTER FIVE

 

I
am sitting in a big, blank, cold room staring at a bunch of people. Who are all staring back at me. The chairs are in a circle. It appears that we are going to play Duck, Duck, Goose.

This is the Meeting House. It is not a church, I am informed. It is, in fact, a small, shabby house in the middle of a run-down neighborhood not far from Casa Quaker.We are sitting in what is probably supposed to be the living room. Only without furniture, except for these metal folding chairs. Also, there is no steeple. No cross. No altar. Outside, there is no brightly lit church sign with a thought-provoking query like,
Where will YOU spend eternity—smoking or nonsmoking?
There is only a small sign on the porch railing that states the hours of worship and a banner underneath saying PEACE ON EARTH in red and gold letters. I am thinking they forgot to take down their Christmas decorations.

I pick flakes of black polish off my nails. I look at my watch. I squirm in my cold, hard chair next to Sam’s.“When is the service going to begin?” I hiss.

Sam smiles, then grins his impish grin and whispers, “This is worship, Matt.”