Two Birds with One Stone
SCHOOL THE NEXT DAY wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought it would be, even though everyone looked at me funny because of my forehead. The plus sign had turned a lovely shade of purple overnight, which made it stand out even more than it had the night before. But nobody asked me about it directly except Lizzie. When she got on the bus, she asked whether it hurt, and when I said it didn't, she blurted out, “Well, that's a plus!” Then she realized what she had said and blushed. In fact, she was so embarrassed that she didn't talk to me the whole day.
So that was half of the good news. The other half
was that Dodger had stayed home. He could barely look me in the eye after beaning me with the football, and insisted that he needed the whole day by himself so he could set up something super-special for after school. I admit that the thought of what Dodger could do with an entire day of planning was pretty scary, but at least it kept him away so I could get through school without getting in any more trouble. Craig and I both got hundreds on Mrs. Starsky's pretest-retest. Or re-pretest. Or preretest. Whatever you called it, I was relieved.
At lunch I sat at my usual table, alone. But with no Lizzie to bug me and no blue hair in my soup, I told myself it wasn't so bad. The afternoon went by quickly, because we were planting terrariums. I love terrariums, especially the good kind with real worms in them. And in fact, our homework was to bring something to put in our terrarium. Mrs. Starsky even gave each kid a little plastic jar. Which meant I could dig for some nice, juicy worms on the way home. Five minutes before the end of school, I was in a great mood. Then a monitor came in with a note. Mrs. Starsky called me and Lizzie to the front of the room.
There went the mood.
The note said that my mom and Lizzie's mom had to meet to discuss the work of their PTA committee at my house, so we should walk home together. “Take your time, and feel free to play outside on the way,” the note said. Clearly, that was the work of Lizzie's mother; my mom's worst fear was what I could do to myself if I had free time to play. Rubbing my forehead, I could almost see her point.
When school let out, I started walking as fast as I could. Lizzie practically had to run to keep up. But then, just as we got to the place where the Little League fields ended and the edge of the forest began, I had to slow down. I couldn't believe my eyes: Half of the sidewalk was blocked by a hand-painted wooden sign on a homemade stand:
I stepped around the sign, just as Lizzie caught up with me. I had a bad feeling the sign was Dodger's work. First of all, the lettering was blue.
Second of all, who else would misspell “worms”? I just thanked my lucky stars that Lizzie wouldn't be able to see the sign, and started walking even faster. I noticed I was pulling away from Lizzie again. Looking back, I was happy to see that she had stopped to pick up some litter from the sidewalk. It looked like a red, yellow, and white fast-food bag.
Oh, no
, I thought.
But it can't be. It just can't.
I turned and walked even faster.
About ten feet later, with a pretty loud POP, another sign appeared right in front of me:
Again I stepped around the sign. This time I broke into a jog, thinking I could just run the rest of the way home. But the next sign popped up so close to me that I crashed into it and had to step back to read it:
I did, and saw Lizzie standing behind me with her arms crossed, looking annoyed. She said, “Why are you running? Aren't you curious about these weird signs?”
Jeepers,
I thought,
she can't see the signs, can she?
With a
POP
, one more sign appeared over Lizzie's shoulder:
YES, SHEE CAN!
SHEE PICKD UP THE BAGG TOO!
I sighed. This was too much. I knew Dodger had tested me with the litter trick. But just because Lizzie picked up a stupid paper bag, that didn't make her special.
Did it?
A bright blue carpet appeared right between me and Lizzie, and unrolled itself so that it became a path into the woods. I started to turn away from it, but Lizzie's voice stopped me: “Oh, come on, Willie. Don't you want to see what this is all about? We can have an adventure together!”
Oh, yay,
I thought.
An adventure with Lizzie!
But
as she stepped happily onto the carpet and started skipping into the forest, I followed. Who knew what trouble Dodger and Lizzie could make for me if I let them have time alone together?
I caught up to Lizzie a few feet beyond the tree line. She smiled at me. “Isn't this delightful?” she asked. “Worms, a mystery, and a friend to share them withâwhat could be better?”
I almost choked. We walked side by side for a few minutes, until suddenly we were in a clearing. A blue clearing. Only this time, instead of a little blue clearing with a stream, it was a huge blue clearing with an entire blue baseball field in it, and thick, dense bushes all around. In fact, as we stepped off of the carpet, the bushes closed behind us so that there was no way anybody but us could possibly find the field. Dodger appeared next to Lizzie with a huge grin. He was fully decked out in a baseball uniform. Across the chest, it said CHIM-PAGO CUBS. Next to him, in a neat pile, were two extra jerseys, a pair of mitts, and two sets of cleats. I held up one of the jerseys: It said NEW YORK MON-KEES in fancy lettering. Dodger tossed the other one to Lizzie and shouted, “PLAY BALL!”
While Lizzie was pulling her jersey on over her school clothes, I grabbed Dodger's elbow and dragged him around the edge of the backstop. “What are you doing?” I hissed.
“Dude, you wanted me to solve your Lizzie problem, so that's what I'm doing! Plus, we're practicing baseball together, so this is like splitting two coconuts with one stone.”
“Uh, the saying is âkilling two birds with one stone.'”
“Wow, you humans are, like, so violent.”
“Oh yeah?” I pushed my hair back from my forehead so my bruise would show. “If humans are the violent ones, who did
this
to me? And anyway, how do you figure
this
is going to solve my Lizzie problem?”
“Because, dude, after this, you'll be great friends with her!”
Did you ever feel like someone was listening to you but completely not hearing what you were trying to tell them? Anyway, when we emerged from behind the backstop, Lizzie was wearing her jersey, her cleats, and even her mitt. “Wow, everything fits me perfectly! Thanks, Mister Orangutan!”
You know, if anyone else called him an orangutan, Dodger would flip out, or launch into some long speech about why chimps are far superior to orangutans. But all he said to Lizzie was, “No problem. I'm a chimpanzee, though. You can recognize us by our handsome, prominent ears and lively sense of fun! My name is Dodger, and I'm a close personal friend of Willie's. He's told me all about you, so I thought you might want to come and help me with his top secret practice regimen.”
I couldn't believe it. I was also amazed at how Lizzie wasn't getting all freaked out by any of this. I mean, signs popping up in the middle of the sidewalk, self-rolling blue carpet trails, a magical baseball field, a talking blue chimpâshe was going with the flow all the way. For a horrifying second, the thought crossed my mind that Lizzie might be kind ofâwellâ
cool.
Then she picked up a baseball and said, “I'll be glad to, Mr. Dodger. Can you show me how to make a touchdown?”
But believe it or not, the first half of practice went well. Dodger took the bat and made us take
turns playing the infield and catching throws back to the plate. Even though Lizzie hadn't really played before, our infield skills were pretty similar, because of course my coaches always plunked me in right field, as far from the ball as they could put me. Dodger hit maybe a hundred grounders, and Lizzie and I only booted maybe thirty of them. Truthfully, we even kind of laughed together when one of us missed a playâwhich was a totally different experience from getting made fun of all through my team's practices. Maybe because I wasn't as nervous about getting teased, I really think I started improving after a while.
Then Dodger stopped hitting balls, stood up straight, and said, “It's time to put my Top Secret Coordination Improvement Plan into action.”
As I trotted in from my position between second and third base, I asked, “And that would be â¦?”
“Here, bud,” Dodger said. “Take this.” He whipped off his eye patch and held it out to me. My first thought was
YUCK!
I could only imagine what kind of horrible wound might be behind that thing, not to mention what my mom would say
about putting on a chimp's used eye patch. When I got closer to him, though, I noticed that the eye that he'd just uncovered looked totally normal. It was also blinking repeatedly. Dodger said, “Wow, it sure is bright out here!”
“Uh, Dodger? You can see out of that eye?” I asked as I gingerly took the patch from him.
“Oh, sure, when I have to.”
“Then why would you wear the eye patch?”
“It's for my image, bud. Makes me look tough!” He leaned closer and whispered, “Plus, the lady chimps love it.” He raised his voice again. “Now put that thing over one eye and get back out in the field. Once you learn to throw and catch with the patch on, you'll totally
rule
without it!”
This sounded crazy. “Dodger, what makes you think this will make me a better player?”
“Well, remember the fat guy from the Yankees who ate all the hot dogs? It worked for him. We used to play some ball out behind his orphanage when he was a kid, and he couldn't hit to save his life until he tried the patch trick.”
Whoa. If it was good enough for the Babe, it was good enough for me.
I hustled back into the field and slipped the patch on between my left eye and my glasses. It felt very weird, and I totally missed the first five or six grounders that Dodger hit to me. After that, I got betterânot great, but better. Lizzie even got all excited to try the patch. Dodger said, “Wait, let's try some pop-ups first.”
And that's how I wound up with a bloody nose.
Fortunately, the magical ball field came with a first-aid kit. Dodger stuffed a twisty cotton thing up each of my nostrils, then busted out with an ice pack, which he made me hold against one side of my rapidly swelling nose. As Dodger started raking the infield (he said we still had a couple more days to practice before my big game), Lizzie and I walked home on the blue carpet, which had reappeared right when we needed it. She said, “Well, that was a lot of fun. I mean, until the end part, obviously.”
Through my blood-caked cotton nose plugs, I replied, “Yeh, id was.”
She ignored my little speech problem and said, “I can't wait to do it again! Not necessarily the bleeding scene, but the rest of it. D'you think we
could play again tomorrow? I could probably convince my mum that we needed to collect specimens for our terrariums. And, no offense, we still need to work on your ball-whacking.”
“Ball-whacking?”
“You know, with the bat?” she clarified.
“Oh,” I said. “Batting. It's called batting.” She had a point. My team would hate me even more than they already did if I blew the last game and ruined our first-place finish. So it might be a good time for me to learn how to hit.
We reached the edge of my backyard. Through our dining-room window, I could see my mom and Lizzie's sitting at the table drinking coffee, with their heads bent over a big chart that said PLANNED SAFETY IMPROVEMENTS across the top. I could read the top three:
1.
Pad the playground: No ouchies!
2.
Shatterproof lunch trays!
3.
Buy helmets for dodgeball!
Jeepers! Every kid in school knew my mom was the safety nut. If we all had to wear helmets for
stupid dodgeball and run around on padding for recess every day, that would really help my popularity
ânot!
Anyway, Lizzie put a hand out and stopped me from walking into the moms' line of sight. “Hold on,” she said. “Your mum will go absolutely mental if you walk in there with these bloody cotton thingies hanging out of your nose.”
Again, Lizzie had a point. But I was afraid to pull the plugs out. I reached up and gently wiggled one experimentally. The slightest pressure made it feel as though an angry weasel were clawing its way up my nose into my brain.
Lizzie sighed, reached into her school backpack, and pulled out a wad of tissues. “Here, let me,” she said.
“Uh, are you sure? It's going to be really gross.” Plus, what if she made it hurt even more? And then what if I passed out in front of her? She would scream. My mom would freak and dial 911. I would wake up in a jet-powered helicopter, racing to the nearest hospital with a trauma center, andâ