The Puzzle Master (12 page)

Marshall nodded again. They were supposed to start on the puzzle today. It seemed so strange that she wouldn’t tell him; that she wouldn’t have called him or even told Luke that that those were the plans. Now she was in a hospital, or wherever, letting doctors check her out for an extended amount of time.

“I’ll be in the back then,” said Marshall with a sigh. Luke was in the middle of lighting up, and nodded. He was puffing on the thing
like
it was about to disappear in two seconds. Something weird was going on. It was all wrong.
Everything.
The store, no Iris, Luke’s behavior.

The door tinkled again and someone else walked in. Marshall turned around to see Michael walk through with Greg and Justin.
Shoot
, he thought, just
who
I didn’t need to see.

“Hey Marshy,” said Michael, “
What’chya
doing here?”

“Come here after school all the time.”

“To be with that Miss Iris?”
Greg and Justin sneered at the comment, but Michael looked like he was actually serious.

“She’s not here right now. What’s it to you?” They better leave him alone. He was in no mood to talk to a bunch of idiots about Iris. They had no idea what sickness was and he didn’t care how they took his answer.

Greg and Justin wandered off to look at some old comic books, but Michael didn’t move. He stared at Marshall, and Marshall felt like he could read his mind. Michael’s lips were set together, arms crossed and one of his eyebrows
raised
. He wanted some answers and he was going to get them.

“I saw you running like mad to get here,” he said. “What’s so important?”

“Why do you care Mike, it’s just a store. I thought Iris was going to be here is all.”

“I also saw you take a breath on your inhaler.”

Ah man, he saw that too?
“Yeah, so what?”

“So, I haven’t seen you use that thing in ages.
Didn’t know you still had the asthma.”

“I don’t
really,
just … sometimes I have a flare up.” He could feel his body temperature rising. The air conditioning that had felt good a couple of minutes ago
was
suddenly not cool enough.
A flush creeped up his cheeks.

“Why are you asking me these questions?” Marshall turned around and looked at a bag of purses and ladies wallets, old and wrinkly leather that looked like they had been on a cow a hundred years ago.

“I don’t know, just wondering. You
gonna
show me your best toy soon? You do want to join the club right?”

Marshall had to say yes, that of course he did, even though he thought Michael’s club was the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of. He didn’t want to join; he didn’t want to show them the cool fishing pole he was going to get. He wanted Iris, here in the room, and them in the back starting the big puzzle.

 “Sure, just waiting to find the right one is all.” Michael nodded and grinned and seemed satisfied that Marshall was planning on joining. Michael turned away, watching Greg
  rifle
through a box of books. Justin was trying on a pair of seventies sunglasses.

“So, she’s not sick?”

“Why do you care?”

“Maybe I don’t.”

Marshall sensed compassion within the confines of Michaels’ words, but just when Marshall thought he’d hear more of it, Michael was his old self again. He snorted, and a limp grin splayed across his thick cheeks.

“Alright Marshy, see you later.” Marshall didn’t reply. Michael gathered his pals, and they left the store. Luke was at the counter reading a book titled,
How to Hunt Whitetail Deer
, but Marshall had caught him
peeking
a glance at them when they were talking.

“That kid much trouble for you?” he asked.

Marshall walked over to the counter. Smoke was billowing softly into the cool air, and somehow, it was comforting. Walking into Luke’s store without the smoke was like listening to a pig without the snort. They were one and the same, together forever. That was comfortable.

“No trouble.
Just dumb.”

Luke laughed loudly.

“Does anyone else know about Iris’ cancer thing she’s got?” Luke finally asked. Marshall shook his head no and leaned on the counter. He looked at the fishing pole, its shine gleaming back at him from the mother of pearl handle.

“No.
Just me.
But, I don’t plan on telling anyone about it.” Marshall looked at Luke, whose eyes were soft and watery. “As far as I’m concerned, she doesn’t have it anymore, and no one needs to know.”

Luke sighed with relief. “You’re a good boy, you know that right?
A good kid and friend to Iris.
She asked about you on the way to the doctor, you know.”

Marshall brightened.
“Really?”

“She did. She hoped you knew that she really wanted to start on that puzzle today, and wants you to start it without her.”

“She does?” Marshall was surprised to hear that. “But …”

“No, she said that. Besides, if you ever plan on getting this thing,” and he pointed to the glass case, “you better get a move on it.”

Marshall grinned. Iris was smart. She seriously wanted him to win that bet. He hoped she was reading another medical journal so she could get that Nobel Prize.

He headed to the back of the room and grabbed a bag of chips. The mound of pieces was still as they left it. It was intimidating, now that he thought about it. It told him that they were crazy for even trying this one. He picked up a piece. It was a red bit of one of the tons of barns in the photo, which meant major work in trying to figure out which barn was which. He sighed. This was going to be hard. But he’d taken the bet, so at the very least, he needed to get going.

Marshall opened the chips and grabbed the empty boxes from the other puzzles. He began to put edge pieces into one box. But as he went through the pile, pieces tumbled onto the floor, and scattered everywhere. He decided to separate colors too.
All the golden grasses into one, the red barns in another, the trees in another, the blue sky in another.
But he ran out of empty boxes. The air conditioning unit rattled in the corner.

Marshall wished Iris was here. Doing a puzzle by
himself
was kind of like swimming alone. There wasn’t anyone else to show off to, or to talk to, and though he didn’t want to admit it, lonely too.

Marshall looked at the wall. The puzzle of the lighthouse was up. He gasped. How hadn’t he noticed that before? He turned around. The cat puzzle and the stallion puzzle were on different parts of the wall too. She’d put them up!

He smiled and ran his fingers over the pieces. They were tight and fitting, and perfectly matched. The cats stared back at him, and seemed as if they could jump out of the picture and run around him, purring as they went. He already had a story in his mind about how they could take care of the cats in the room, and keep them in there. When Iris and he left for home, they’d let them out of the room so they could roam the store at night and protect it from thieves and mice. They could even use the basket the cats were sitting in to store the other pieces of the big puzzle.

But Iris wasn’t there. It wasn’t the same.

Marshall went back to the puzzle pieces and tried to concentrate on finding the rest of the edge pieces. Out of ten thousand pieces, there were probably three hundred edge pieces. It could take all night to put it together.

But then he realized that that was exactly what he needed to do. Stay as long as he could to get the perimeter set up. When Iris came back, they’d be ready to go—each ready to get their quota of fifty connections a day. He’d have to reconfigure the numbers when she came back. They were missing out on several days of hundreds of connections. They might have to stay late, every night, just to finish it on time for Christmas.

But he knew they would do it. It was a goal, a promise they had to keep to themselves as friends: get the big one done before Christmas.

Marshall stared at the stallion picture. He saw a note attached to it and ran over. Was he blind? It was right there the whole time.

Marshall’s name was on it. He carefully peeled it off of the puzzle, not trusting the glue job to hold, and opened it.

Marshall,

 I’m sorry I can’t be there today. I finished hanging the puzzles on the wall last night. Do you like it? If you don’t, we can move them later. I thought about you and me riding on those stallions. Wouldn’t that be so much fun? We could be as free as the horses, not tied to anything; no cancer, no asthma, and we could run free.

See you soon. You better not finish the puzzle before I get back.

     -Iris

PS. I’ll be doing my research on cancer while I’m at the hospital, so don’t be surprised if I’ve found the cure for all the cancers when I return.

Marshall laughed. She was a riot.
Really.
She made him laugh the way a funny movie could.

He folded up the note and tucked it behind the puzzle picture. He finished finding all the edge pieces, and went through the mountainous pile again to be sure. And then he headed home for dinner, thinking about how glad he was it
was Monday
. Dad would be home this week.

Maybe they could go fishing.

Chapter 9: Now Everyone Knows

Iris wasn’t back on Tuesday. She wasn’t even back on Wednesday. So Marshall had to ignore the questions and how he felt, particularly when Mrs. Melton asked him in Math class—Iris’ favorite subject—where she was.

“I don’t know,” he had said. Everyone looked to see his face and what other juicy information he might tell
them
. He looked straight ahead; straight to the blackboard where the equation of the Pythagorean Theorem
was written
in large print. She wanted that equation melded into their brains apparently.

Marshall disliked math. He preferred to be down by the river, or reading a comic book.
Anything but geometry or algebra.
Yet, for reasons he couldn’t figure out, he
was forced
to learn this stuff. And Mrs. Melton loved telling them about it all in a way that only a
brainiac
could understand.

“You don’t know?”

“Hasn’t her uncle called the school about it?” Marshall asked. He really didn’t want to go into detail about her problem, especially not in front of the whole class, and even more especially not in front of the three amigos.
Although, in Math class, it was only the two amigos.
Greg was in a different class.

The cancer was a secret between the three of them, or at least with the office staff too. Had Luke not told Mrs. Melton what the problem was?

“He has called,” she said. Mrs. Melton had short gray hair and tiny glasses so that she looked like a mouse standing on her two hind legs. “You and she seem to spend quite a bit of time together.” A couple low whistles erupted from the back, presumably Michael and Co.

“Yes Mrs. Melton.” Marshall kept staring straight ahead. This was getting worse by the second.

“You sure you don’t know where she is?”

Marshall felt a flush creep up his cheeks. His breathing became raspy and shallow. His inhaler was there, but he didn’t want to use it. Not
now;
not in front of everyone who had practically forgotten that he even had asthma.

But he didn’t have to think any more about it because Justin whispered something to Michael and laughed out loud, which distracted her enough to forget about him. Marshall felt his breathing return to normal, and kept his head low. He sunk into his seat. No one would ask him about it again. He
was done
talking about Iris with anyone else other than her.

When school let out, Marshall headed over to the store. He only had an hour there today because he had to be home early. His mother had had enough of him being at Luke’s more than at home, and insisted he had to be home by four. So that was it. And this time he couldn’t be late. Or so help her, he’d never go to Luke’s again.

Marshall groaned when he saw Michael waiting for him at the gate. They walked through it toward Luke’s store.

“Going to Luke’s?” Michael asked.

“Yeah, just for a little bit.”

“If you don’t mind my asking (he did), what’s so special about that place Marsh? If Iris
ain’t
there, or even if she is, what do you do all afternoon?”

Marshall sighed. “
Sheesh
Michael, what’s with the twenty questions? You sound like my mom.”

“It’s nothing,” Michael defended, “Just
wanna
know why you got the
hots
for Iris.”

“I don’t have the
hots
for her,” Marshall said. “She’s a friend.”

“She’s not a friend like me though; you spend gobs of time with her. What’s so special about her?”

Marshall shrugged. That was a good question. Iris was different
than
most people they knew, but how could he tell Michael that? They had more than a common like of puzzles. She was a lot like him too—not altogether normal, not all together well.