How to Survive Middle School (11 page)

“I love your Top Six and a Half list, David. Does your sister know about—”

“No,” I say. “Or I don’t think I’d be here right now.”

“Gotcha,” Sophie says. “I can’t believe you don’t have like a million views.”

I feel heat creep up my neck.

“I’m going to send the links to my homeschool network.”

“Your what?”

Sophie pushes hair out of her face. “You know, a network of other kids who are homeschooled.”

“How many is that?”

She leans back. “In the United States or internationally?”

My eyes widen.

“It’s pretty big.”

My first thought is that I want to tell Elliott that all these homeschooled kids will be watching our videos, but then I remember. Elliott and I aren’t friends anymore. He made that mean joke about my mom today. And I said something just as mean about his dad.
How have things gotten like this between us?

“You okay?” Sophie asks.

I nod, even though I’m not.

She points to one of the comments for the video. “Who’s Matzo Ball Mama?”

I nod toward downstairs. “Bubbe.”

Sophie laughs and covers her mouth. “That explains what she wrote: ‘Excellent video, but lose the bit about your sister, mister!’”

“That’s what I get for showing her how to use YouTube.”

“Who’s LADM?” Sophie asks, pointing to the screen. “He wrote, ‘Two thumbs up. If you see only one video this year, make it this one.’”

“No clue,” I say, “but he writes really nice comments on our videos.”

“Cool. A mystery fan. I’m totally going to let my friends know about this.”

“Thanks.”

“You should be on WHMS in the morning, David.” She waves her hand. “You know, reading the school news.”

I sit taller. “You think?”

“You’d be great.”

“I don’t even know where the TV studio is at Harman.” My stupid voice cracks.
What if I was on WHMS and my voice cracked with the whole school watching?

“I think it’s in the media center. When I went today during lunch, I saw a door that said ‘WHMS News’ on it.”

Sophie is leaning back on my bed, her curly hair swinging loosely.

I inhale a faint whiff of peppermint.

“David?”

“Yes?”

“We’d better get started.”

“Oh, right.” I type the Web address for Wikipedia.

By the time Bubbe calls us for dinner, we have three pages of notes about Albert Einstein.

“I didn’t know some of this stuff,” I say. “He
was
pretty amazing.”

“See?” Sophie says. “Einstein was the perfect choice, right?”

I look at Sophie hunched over her notebook, curly red hair framing her face.

“Yeah.” I let out a long, slow breath. “Perfect.”

Bubbe carries a plate of sweet-smelling blintzes into the dining room. My stomach rumbles. Lindsay follows with a dish of sour cream, and Dad’s got a salad in one hand and dressing in the other. We take our places at the table, but there’s an empty seat.
Mom’s old seat
.

“Where’s Sophie?” Lindsay asks.

“She was right behind me.” Feeling awkward about losing my guest on her first visit, I call from the dining room, “Sophie?”

From the living room comes a deep, throaty horn blast.

Dad’s fork slips from his fingers and clatters to the table.

Bubbe’s hand goes to her mouth.

And Lindsay looks at me with her jaw dangling. She’s the first to move; then we all rush toward the living room.

Sophie stands between the TV and the coffee table, holding Mom’s tuba—
Mom’s tuba!
—with air squirreled in her cheeks for her second blow.

Don’t!

She blows with gusto, and a loud blast comes from the bowels of the tuba.

A tiny noise escapes Dad’s throat.

The last time we heard that tuba was about two years ago in the middle of the night. It wasn’t the sounds from the tuba that woke me, though. It was my parents’ screaming at each other.

“Anita, you can’t play the tuba in the middle of the night. You’ll wake the kids.”

Lindsay and I crouched on the top step, held hands and listened.

“You don’t let me do anything, Alan,” Mom shrieked. “Anything at all.”

“If by ‘anything’ you mean stopping you from buying those damn figurines by the armful while we’re going broke, then yeah, Anita, I don’t let you do anything. Or holding séances when Lindsay brings her girlfriends over. Yeah, I kind of frown on that, too.”

“I’m suffocating here,” Mom shrieked. “Suffocating!”

Lindsay squeezed my hand so tight it hurt.

There was silence; then Mom wailed, “Alan, I can’t—”

“It’ll be okay, Anita,” Dad said softly. “It’ll be okay.”

A few days later, Mom left.

Sophie moves the tuba from her lips and bursts out giggling.

When she’s met with stone silence, she puts the tuba back in the corner, wipes her lips with the back of her hand and says, “Sorry. Mom taught me how to play the trumpet. I just thought …”

Her voice trails off.

Bubbe looks at Dad’s fallen face and rushes to Sophie. “That was lovely, Sophie. Just lovely.” Bubbe guides Sophie past us, into the dining room. “But dinner’s getting cold,” she says. “And it’s a shame to eat my blintzes cold. Wait till you taste them. Lots of sweet cheese and blueberries.”

When nobody says anything while we eat, Sophie nudges me with her foot under the table.

“So,” I say. “We found out one very interesting fact about Einstein.”

“That he was way smarter than you?” Lindsay says.

Bubbe shoots Lindsay a look.

“No,” I say. “Well, yes, but … he was an Ashkenazi Jew.”

“We’re Ashkenazi Jews,” Bubbe says. “Your
zeyde
—God rest his soul—and I were both from eastern Russia.”

“Wait a second.” I run to the kitchen to get paper and a pencil.

“Where were you from again?”

“Eastern Russia,” Bubbe says, her cheeks stuffed with blintze. “Why?”

“School assignment.”

“Oh,” Sophie says. “I had to do that, too. But ours was due today.”

My blintze goes down hard. “Yeah, we, um … So, Dad, where were Mom’s parents from?”

Dad parks his fork midway between plate and mouth. “Hmmm. I think her mother was from Austria.”

“Like Arnold Schwarzenegger,” Sophie says.

“Yes, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can’t remember where
her father’s from.” Dad shakes his head. “It’s sad they died so young.”

“David,” Lindsay says, stabbing her blintze with her fork, “why don’t you call and ask Mom? Oh, that’s right. You can’t. She doesn’t have a—”

“That’s enough!” Dad says.

I glare at Lindsay but go back to eating.

No one says another word the rest of the meal.

“Your family’s quiet when they eat,” Sophie says as we stand by the door, waiting for her mom to arrive.

I can’t tell her the truth—that remembering Mom has a way of doing that to us. It’s been two years now, and sometimes I wonder if it’ll ever get easier.

“Yeah.” I shrug. “They’re kind of weird about that.”
Shut up, David
. “Afraid of choking or something.”
Really, shut up
. “I choked on a nickel when I was little.”
Oh my gosh! Shut up!

“Really?”

“Yeah, I saved it in a jar in my closet.”

“Oh.”

“It’s sort of green now.”
Please strike me dead. SHUT UP!

Sophie’s mom runs up our steps at exactly 7:29, holding a plastic bag out to Sophie. “Look what I found.”

Sophie pulls out a paperback book with Einstein on the cover.

“Ta-dah!” Ms. Meyers says. “For your project.”

“
The New Quotable Einstein
?” Sophie says. “You bought us a book about Einstein? We can do our project by ourselves, Mom.”

Ms. Meyers looks down. “I just thought …”

I take the book from Sophie. “This is great, Ms. Meyers,” I say quietly. “It will be real helpful for our project.”

But Sophie still looks upset. “Let’s go,” she says, storming down the steps.

Ms. Meyers looks at me awkwardly. “Thanks for having Sophie for dinner.”

“No problem,” I say.

“I can thank him myself,” Sophie yells. She gives me a quick salute, gets in the car and slams the door.

After they leave, I head to my room and glance through the book Sophie’s mom bought us. Even though it seemed to make Sophie mad, there are some great quotes. I mark off the ones I think would work well in our video, then go to my closet and pull out the box of letters from Mom.
Sophie, you have no idea how lucky you are
.

I pull a piece of paper and a pen from a drawer in my desk.

I want to write to Mom about Sophie and our project, maybe even mention how Sophie’s not so nice to her mom.

But all I end up writing is

I know if she answers, it will be too late for the assignment, but I want to know anyway. It feels like I lost so much after Mom left. I don’t want to lose my history, too. A person should be able to find out where he came from.

I address and stamp the letter, then say good night to Hammy. Before getting into bed, I switch off the ringer on the phone in case Elliott or Tommy gets any more brilliant early-morning ideas.

I need a good night’s sleep tonight.

In the morning, Dad is in the living room, sitting near Mom’s tuba.

“Hey,” I say.

When he turns toward me, I see that his eyes are red-rimmed. “How ya doing, champ?”

I know he was sitting here thinking about Mom. I wonder if he’s thinking about the last time she played that tuba, and I wonder if it makes him as sad as it made me. Probably.

I nod toward the tuba. “How
you
doing?”

“Been better.”

I give Dad a sympathetic look. He doesn’t usually admit stuff like that.

“Hey, maybe—”

“Don’t worry. Your old dad’s gonna be fine.”

“I know,” I say, but I don’t, because Dad still gets really sad sometimes.

“By the way,” he says, walking into the kitchen, “what’s this?” He presses “play” on the answering machine.

“It’s Underwear Day at Harman,” Elliott says in this real excited voice. “Don’t forget to wear your Superman Underoos.”

Dad presses “stop,” and I slump in a chair.

“David?”

I sigh. “Things got weird between me and Elliott.”

“Weird how?” Dad sits beside me and puts a hand on my knee.

Everything about Elliott spills out.

Dad listens and nods. When I’m done, he waits awhile, then says, “That explains the fight.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Look, David, things like this happen at your age. You’ll probably make up and forget all about it.”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “Things are pretty bad.”

“You’ll be surprised.” Dad gets up and measures ground coffee into the filter and slips it into the coffeemaker. “Things have a way of working themselves out.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Really, David. Give it time.”

I know Dad’s wrong. Just because he has a column where he has all the answers, it doesn’t mean his answers are always right. “Things don’t always work themselves out.”