The Boy Who Lost His Face (9 page)

He stood on the counter and put the sack on the top shelf, jumped down, and landed hard on the linoleum floor. The sack of flour tipped over and fell on his head.

Ricky burst out laughing.

It took David a few seconds to figure out what had happened. His curly hair had turned white with flour.

Even his mother laughed.

“Is that like something Curly of The Three Stooges would have done?” asked Ricky.

David smiled. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

It wasn’t until later that night, when David was lying in bed, that he realized the curse had struck—if there
was
a curse, and he didn’t believe in curses.

Roger and Randy had trampled all over Mrs. Bayfield’s flower garden. They had stepped on her flowers. Now the flour had “stepped” on him.

Oh, come on, now, he thought. That’s really pushing it. Flowers and flour are completely different things. Just because they sound alike—that shouldn’t mean anything.

All it proved was that if you really want to believe something, you can always find some way to make it seem true. Just like those stupid horoscopes.

Still, he had to admit it is pretty strange for a sack of flour to suddenly fall on your head. That kind of thing doesn’t usually happen.

He thought about talking to his dad about his problems—telling him about what they’d done to Mrs. Bayfield, and then about all the things that had happened to him. Maybe his dad would be able to find
some kind of logical, scientific explanation for everything.

Except he was too ashamed to tell his father that he helped steal a cane from a poor old lady. And he would be too embarrassed to talk about all the things that had happened to him. His dad probably would just tell him to go apologize to her.

Besides, what kind of scientific explanation could there possibly be? No, science had nothing to do with it. There were only two possible explanations. Either he was cursed or he was a stooge. It was one or the other.

H
E DECIDED
to tell his friends about the curse. “Do you know Felicia Bayfield?” he asked on Friday at recess.

“Who?” asked Larry.

“I know her,” said Mo. “She’s this old, spacey lady who wears a lot of funny clothes.”

“Sounds like Tori Williams,” said Larry. He and Mo laughed.

“She’s a witch,” said David. “She murdered her husband. She removed his face.”

“Ugh!” said Mo.

“He lived for a while,” said David, “but you can’t live too long without a face. But his face is still alive. It’s hanging on a wall of her house. She put it in some kind of special solution to preserve it. And she talks to it, and it talks back.”

David didn’t like saying mean things about Mrs. Bayfield, but he had to convince his friends she was really a witch. Little did he know that one day his own face would be hanging on the wall of her house.

“I wonder what a person would look like without a face,” said Larry. He thought a moment. “Wouldn’t there just be another face behind it? How thick is a face?”

“Real thin,” said Mo. “Thinner than paper. And behind it you just have blank skin that you could almost see through, with holes where the eyes, nose, and mouth used to be.”

“Like a ghost,” said Larry. “Except you’re alive.”

“A Doppelgänger,” said David.

“What?” asked Mo.

“I don’t know,” said David, shaking his head. “Remember when I said I thought I was cursed?” he asked. “Well, it wasn’t like you thought. Mrs. Bayfield put a curse on me. She said my Doppelgänger will regurgitate on my soul.”

He started at the beginning. He told them about how he had helped Roger, Scott, and Randy steal her snake-head cane, except he made it sound like he was the one who led the attack.

“… Then she said in a really creepy voice, ‘Would you boys like some lemonade?’ Except I don’t think it was really even lemonade.”

“What’d you do?” asked Larry.

“You didn’t drink it, did you?” asked Mo.

“No. As I was pouring it in my glass I pretended to trip, then I knocked her rocking chair over and poured the lemonade right on her face!”

“All right!” cheered Mo.

He didn’t want to tell them that he really just stood around while the other boys knocked her over in her chair and poured lemonade on her head. It wouldn’t make sense. Why would she put a curse on him if he had just stood there while everyone else did everything?

“I tossed the empty pitcher away,” he said, “but it accidentally went into her window. It broke the window and the pitcher.”

The more he lied, the more he got into it. But at the same time he felt a horrible sense of guilt right in the pit of his stomach. It only bothered him a little at first, but the feeling grew, like Pinocchio’s nose, with each lie.

“Roger, Randy, and Scott ran away with her cane, but I stood over her. Her legs were up in the air. If you think her clothes are weird, you should see her underpants!”

“You saw her underpants!” exclaimed Larry.

“What’d they look like?” asked Mo.

“It was like they were made out of spider webs,” said David. “And there were spiders crawling all around and some other kinds of bugs, too.”

“Gross,” said Mo.

“So then I flipped her off,” said David. “You know, gave her the bird.”

“Good going,” said Mo.

“That’s when she said the thing about my Doppelgänger.”

“What’s a Doppelgänger?” asked Larry.

“I looked it up in the dictionary. It means the ghostly counterpart of a living person.”

“What’s that?” asked Mo.

“I don’t know.” He explained the curse to them, but he exaggerated that, too.

“… And I was playing catch with my little brother and I threw the ball right to him, but it suddenly
curved in midair and crashed into my parents’ bedroom window.”

Larry and Mo were skeptical at first, but as David went over each incident they had to admit that if nothing else, it was a lot of weird coincidences.

“Are you sure you’re not making this up?” asked Mo.

“You know about the beaker I broke in science class,” David reminded her. “And Larry, remember what happened to me in Spanish?”

“That’s right!” Larry exclaimed.

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that,” said Mo. “Your fly was down and you didn’t know it.”

David blushed. “It was because I saw her underpants,” he explained. “Everything I did to her has happened to me. Except so far I haven’t poured lemonade on my head. That’s probably next. Oh, and I also flipped off my mother.”

“You flipped off your mother!” exclaimed Mo.

David shrugged.

“I don’t believe it,” said Mo. “You wouldn’t flip off your own mother!”

“I was just waving to her,” he explained, “when suddenly I got like a cramp in my hand, and all my fingers bent down except the middle one.”

“No!” said Mo.

“It was really no big deal,” said David. “It was just a cramp. Besides, it’s not such a bad thing to do, when you think about it. Why is raising your middle finger any worse than raising any other finger?”

“It just is,” said Mo. “It’s the most horrible thing you can do!”

“Why?” asked David. “Most people probably don’t know what it means.” He turned to Larry. “You’ve lived in other countries. Do they know what it means there?”

“They do it differently in different countries,” Larry explained. “In Spain they do it like
this
! In Hong Kong they do it like
this
!” He demonstrated the gesture for each country. “In Italy they do it like
this
!”

Mr. Lugano happened by at that moment. He grabbed Larry’s shoulder and said, “You’re coming with me, young man!”

Mr. Lugano was Italian.

D
AVID DIDN’T
see Larry again until Spanish class. “What did Mr. Lugano say to you?” he asked after class was over. “Did you get in trouble?”

Larry smiled. “He couldn’t do anything! First he was going to send a note home to my parents telling them what I did, except he couldn’t figure out how to write it in a note. So then he told me I had to tell my parents what I did. But then I said, ‘What did I do?’ And he said, ‘You know.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ So finally he just told me not to do it again, and I said, ‘Do what?’ ”

David laughed, but abruptly stopped when he saw Scott, Randy, and Roger coming.

Scott, Randy, and Roger were walking down the center of the sidewalk next to the row of outside lockers. There wasn’t room for David and Larry to get by.

David stepped aside to let them pass.

Roger glanced at David, then turned to Scott and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “Hey, Scott, are you going out with Ginger again on Saturday night?”

“Sure,” said Scott, equally as loud. “You and Leslie want to join us?”

“Hey, that sounds like a good time,” said Roger.

“How about you, Randy?” Scott asked. “Why don’t you and Tori join us?” He said the name Tori especially loud.

“Yeah, that Tori Williams is one hot babe!” said Roger.

“Maybe I will,” said Randy.

David’s face burned, even though he was fairly sure they had said all that just for his benefit. Somehow Scott must have found out that he liked Tori Williams. Maybe Scott also saw them making moon eyes at each other.

But Randy still might ask her out for Saturday night, he realized, just because Randy knew David liked her. He wondered if Tori would agree to go out with Randy. She must know Randy’s a jerk. But then he remembered that he himself once thought Randy was a good guy. Randy was good at pretending he wasn’t a jerk.

“You shouldn’t have stepped out of their way,” said Larry.

“Huh?”

“You lost face,” said Larry.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a Japanese expression,” said Larry. “You reminded me of it when you were talking about Mrs. Bayfield stealing people’s faces. I used to live in Japan, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“You know how Mo always tells you to stand up for yourself. It’s the same thing. When you don’t stand
up for yourself, the Japanese say you lose face. Like just now, when those guys were coming toward us. We have just as much right to walk on the sidewalk as they do. You stepped aside, so you lost a little face.”

“There wasn’t room for all of us,” said David. “What was I supposed to do? Push my way through them? It’s not worth getting in a fight over.”

“Every time they push you around and you do nothing about it, you lose a little more of your face,” said Larry.

David rubbed his face with his hand. “They push you around too,” he said. “I don’t see you doing anything about it.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“I don’t have to fight. I know kung fu.”

“Yeah, right,” said David.

“I do,” said Larry. “I have a black belt. If I had to, I could take on all three of them at once.” He karate-chopped the air in front of him. “They wouldn’t have a chance.”

“Yeah, right,” said David.

“But that’s not
the way
of kung fu,” Larry continued. “It’s always best to walk away from a fight. Like remember when they wouldn’t let me use the bathroom? I just walked away. You only fight if you have no other choice. Sometimes it takes more courage to walk away than it does to fight.”

“Well, how come it’s all right for you to walk away, but if I walk away I lose part of my face?”

Larry didn’t answer. “You know what you should
do,” he said. “You should call up Tori Williams and ask her out for Saturday night, before Randy.”

“Randy’s not going to ask her out,” said David. “They were just saying that. Besides, you know I can’t ask her out.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a curse on me, remember? What if I take her to a movie and then pour lemonade on my head. Or her head?”

“That’s not going to happen,” said Larry. He shrugged. “Just don’t drink any lemonade.”

“What if she asks me to get her a cup of lemonade?”

“Tell her they don’t have any. Get her a Coke or something.”

“You don’t realize how powerful the curse is. Even if I ordered a Coke, the person behind the counter would probably make a mistake and give me a lemonade. Then as I’m about to hand it to Tori, there’d be an earthquake or something, and I’d trip and pour it right on her head! No, there’s no way I can take her out so long as I’m cursed.”

“Yeah, right,” said Larry.

David forced a laugh.

“What?” asked Larry.

“Oh, I was just thinking,” said David. “Those guys all think they’re so tough. They have no idea you know kung fu. They don’t know you could tear them apart.”

“Right,” said Larry. “But only if I couldn’t walk away.” He smiled. “Too bad about the curse. Otherwise
you and Tori would have a great time together.”

They had reached an understanding. If David would believe Larry knew kung fu, Larry would believe that the only reason David didn’t ask Tori Williams out on a date was because of the curse.

“Hey, Larry,” said Mo, coming up behind them. “Will you teach me that?”

“What?”

“You know, how to give someone the finger in Italian.”

F
RIDAY AFTERNOON
and evening David couldn’t stop thinking about Tori—and Randy. What if he really did ask her out? What would she say to him?
She might be talking on the phone to him right now
.

Saturday he worried about their date. He wondered where they went, what movie they saw. Was it rated R? What else did they do? Did he put his arm around her?
He might be kissing her right now
.

Sunday he wondered if she was in love with him. What if she came to school wearing Randy’s jacket? She wouldn’t be allowed to talk to him anymore, not even “Hello, Mr. Ballinger.”

He was glad he hadn’t put his books in her locker. He’d never be able to get them out. Maybe she’s been in love with Randy all along. Maybe she was just pretending to be nice to David, like Randy used to do. It was some kind of big joke. She pretended to like David, but really she and her friends were all laughing at Curly, the stooge.

Monday morning he was standing outside the door to Mr. MacFarland’s class when he saw her coming toward him. He didn’t know whether to say hi to her anymore. At least she wasn’t wearing Randy’s jacket. She had on a long multicolored kind of shawl.