Lessons I Never Learned at Meadowbrook Academy (12 page)

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the tip of a yellow plastic oar moving up and down in the door window. The oar shot out of sight and then reappeared; this time it had a fluorescent pink Post-it note attached that said:
We are here
. Mervin and Annie were back from the mall.

Mr. Wizard let out a gigantic snore. He wiggled around a bit, closed his mouth, licked his lips, and opened his mouth again. The oar vanished and reappeared, this time with a Post-it note that said:
Escape!
I took my scratch paper, folded it up, and put it in my pocket. I didn't want to lose proof of my prodigy status when the matter came into question.

The oar disappeared again. I quietly got up. With each breath, Mr. Wizard's mouth shook like two pieces of bologna in front of a fan. Standing there, I looked at him and felt guilty for what I was about to do. Before he fell asleep on me, he really made me feel like I
did
have some kind of gift, and I didn't want to screw that up. I've never had a teacher tell me I could be something. I mean, if I were a prodigy, maybe I could do something really amazing, like cure cancer through an algebraic theorem.

I started to think about all the things I could do with the fame and success that would follow being the person who cured cancer through algebra. Most importantly, I would save endless amounts of lives, but then I would also win awards, like large metallic statues and swirled marble plaques with my name on them. And of course, I would be rich so I could buy lots of things for myself and my family. A shiver ran through me.
I could buy my dad a boat, like a fisherman's boat or a crab boat.
Yes, that's exactly what I would do.

When I was younger, we spent many summers down on the Jersey shore, and my dad would always rent a crabbing boat for one day. He would take Anthony and me to Point Pleasant, and the three of us would go crabbing. It was wonderful. We ate foot-long hot dogs smothered in mustard and sauerkraut from Maxx's and sweet cherry Italian ices from the Weazer truck all day long.

My dad taught Anthony and me how to set the crab cages with bait and how to lower them into the ocean. He would drink beer, and Anthony and I would go swimming. We'd lather on coconut-scented
Banana Boat
tanning oil, SPF 15, and the summer sun would turn our skin golden brown. The best part of the entire day was that we never, in all the years we went crabbing, even came close
to catching a single crab.

When the rental time on the boat was over, we'd go to the Point Pleasant pier and buy three pounds of crabs from Joe's Fish Shack. My dad would take the crabs and pour them into our buckets. Then he would dispose of any and all evidence that might incriminate the legitimacy of our crabbing expedition. The three of us would hold our hands to our hearts and swear on the Yankees that Joe's Fish Shack was our private secret.

One summer, we had gotten back from our long day of crabbing and Anthony called first shower. I was watching a rerun of my favorite episode of
Little House on the Prairie
when I heard something in the back yard. I looked out the window and saw my mother shoving things in our neighbor's trash can. I went outside and she nearly jumped five feet in the air.

“Roberta! What are you doing sneaking up on me like that? God, you kids give me heart pains.”

“Why are you putting garbage in the neighbor's can?”

“Just go back inside.” She quickly tried to close the lid, but I caught a glimpse of a ripped silver sticker that read:
Joe's Fish Shack
.

Mortified, I said, “Mom! You know about Joe's?”

She finally snapped the lid shut. “Be quiet. I don't want your father to hear.”

“But why do you—”

“Roberta, let me tell you something.” She had leaned in closer and tucked a wild curl of mine behind my ear. “Your father loves crabbing, for whatever reason, but I
know for a fact that he couldn't catch a crab if it was in our own bathtub. When he takes you kids out on that boat and comes home with three pounds of crabs, regardless of where they came from, I make a big to-do about it because in that moment, he's the best crab catcher that ever lived.”

“But I don't get it. What's the point of lying if you know the truth?”

“He's a good man, Roberta. And he's worked hard for all of us. Deep in our hearts, we all have dreams. If, for one day out of the year, I can make your dad feel like he's a terrific crab catcher, then that's exactly what I'm going to do.”

My mother had made me swear on the Virgin Mary that I would keep
her
secret a secret, and we walked back into the house. My dad was at the stove sautéing the crabs, wearing the red-and-white crab-shaped apron that my mother had given him for his birthday the year before. He was whistling and humming along to the song, “My Girl,”
which was playing on the radio. My mother went over and kissed him on his cheek.

“Smells good, Tony. I'll open a nice white.”

She uncorked a bottle of wine from the fridge and poured them each a glass. I watched my dad slowly dance my mother around the kitchen. He was happy, really happy. They both were. And in that moment, I realized this was what truly loving someone looked like.

That memory of my parents kept me standing frozen next to Mr. Wizard's desk, not moving any closer toward the door. The clock ticked over to read 3:49. I decided to sit back down. I just couldn't screw up my chances of being able to buy my dad a crabbing boat one day.

The oar reappeared in the window. This time, the fluorescent pink Post-it note attached said:
SAVE ME
.

I felt horribly guilty because I had given my word to Mervin that I wouldn't leave him alone on the raft with Annie. Mr. Wizard snored loudly. I just had to trust he would still believe in me, even if I cut detention.

I stood up and carefully tiptoed around the desk. There was a thin trail of drool inching its way out onto Mr. Wizard's chin. When I reached the door, I could hear Mervin and Annie arguing on the other side. Mr. Wizard turned his body a little and almost woke up, but didn't. My heart was pounding. I waited, just to make sure he was still asleep.

“What do you want me to do?” Annie said in a muffled, aggressive tone.

“Go in there and get her!” Mervin said back.

I heard a thud.

“Owww, don't hit me with that oar, Annie, or I'm going to shove it up your ass.”

I heard another thud. I started to open the door.

“Someone's coming,” Mervin said.

Mr. Wizard turned again, now in the exact direction of me and the door. My hand froze on the knob. I waited, with my heart racing faster and faster.
Oh God
,
I could always say I needed to go to the bathroom.
He couldn't dispute that. Mr. Wizard took in a big, deep walrus yawn and rubbed his eyes. His eyelids fluttered almost open and then…
bam
, they were totally shut again and he was back to snoring.

I grabbed the knob and quickly turned it to freedom. There was no sight of Mervin or Annie anywhere.

“Over here!” Annie whispered.

I turned toward the direction of her voice, coming from the other side of the hallway. She and Mervin were hiding behind a potted tree.

“Close the door.” Mervin's head peeked out through some leaves.

I shut the door as quietly as I could, but it wound up making a loud
click
sound. I waited a second to see if the noise had woken Mr. Wizard.

I hurried over to them. Mervin and Annie emerged from behind the tree. Annie was carrying the toy store
shopping bag. And it was the first time all day that I had seen Mervin without his gigantic green backpack. He actually looked a little weird without it.

“Let's go rafting,” Annie said.

The three of us quickly headed down a hallway toward the back of the school. The shopping bag loudly banged against Annie's leg with each step. We scurried past a very worried-looking parent, with her hand on her son's back, speaking to a female teacher. And then we swerved around a couple of kids following behind a very intellectual-looking male teacher, hanging on his every word.

At the far, far end of the corridor, I could make out that Twiggy was talking to a custodian. I stopped short. “You guys, we have to go another way.”

Annie protested, “But we can't. This is the only route to the back of the school.”

“Well, she's the one who gave me detention in the first place.” I pointed to Twiggy. “Somehow I don't think she'll approve of me going rafting.”

“Oh, that's not good,” Mervin said.

“Come on, let's move before she sees me!”

We turned around and ran the other way.

“I have an idea,” Annie called out between our fast steps. “Take a left up here, toward the gym. We'll go through the locker rooms. It's the only other way.”

We made a left up at the corner, but walking down the hall with his back toward us was Dr. Murphy. Annie hauled to a stop and Mervin and I crashed right into her.

“Shit,” Annie squealed. “This way.”

Annie turned around and ran down a different hallway, out the front doors of the school, into the auditorium (where an a cappella singing group was rehearsing), down the aisle, out the side doors, and back into another hallway, which led us straight to the locker rooms.

Out of breath, we looked at a yellow sign with a black slash over a red stick figure, which leaned up against the girls' locker room doors. It read:
Closed for Emergency Maintenance.

“I truly hate you for this,” Mervin said as he ran into the boys' locker room.

Annie looked at me. “Well, go on. It's not like you haven't seen a penis before!”

Well, she was right about that
. I ran in after Mervin, and Annie followed right behind me. The stale locker room air immediately smashed me in the face and smelled like parmesan cheese. We quickly navigated our way through the aisles of steel grey lockers. Fortunately sports' practices were all still in session, so the locker room was empty.

Passing by an open locker, my attention was caught. Mervin and Annie came over to where I was. A disgusting yellowish-white jockstrap hung from a hook like a necklace in a jewelry box. The pouch intended for a boy's downstairs equipment was all huge and stretched out. I leaned in and looked at it.

“Oh, God, Roberta!” Annie squealed. “Don't get too close, you might catch something—”

“I'm not going to touch it! But why is that so big—” I pointed to the droopy pouch. “Are guys really that big?” I turned to Mervin.

“How should I know?” he quipped.

“Let me see.” Annie pushed Mervin aside to get a better look. “Sweet Jesus, that's huge.”

Just then, we heard the door to the locker room open, followed by footsteps and whistling.

“Shit, hide,” Annie whispered.

The three of us scattered. I ran and crouched down behind a yellow industrial-sized garbage can. I wasn't able to see where Annie and Mervin had gone.

The sound of whistling moved closer. I wasn't entirely positive, but I think it was to the tune of Meadowbrook's fight song.

I waited a few seconds and then slowly peeked out around the edge of the garbage can. I saw Dr. Murphy's back as he peed into a urinal. Gross, I thought. I couldn't even imagine having to pee standing up. And then, as if it were happening in slow motion, Dr. Murphy turned around, before his
stuff
was completely back inside his pants, and I saw something that I shall never forget. I saw the headmaster's penis.

I ducked back behind the garbage can, but it was already far too late. The damage had been done. It had been seared into my memory bank forever. There was no way around it.

Murphy whistled right on out the locker room door, never once missing a note. I counted to thirty just to make sure he wasn't coming back.

I cautiously emerged from behind the garbage can. Annie climbed out of a utility closet, clutching the toy store bag close to her chest.

“Did you just see that?” I said in a whisper.

Her eyes were big. “Yeah. Through the crack in the door. Nasty.”

“Wait a second, where's Mervin?”

And from inside one of the lockers we heard, “In here.”

Annie and I followed his voice to locker 317, which also happened to be the locker where the jock strap was on display.

“Mervin?” I said and tapped on the locker.

“Could you please get me out of here? I'm stuck. The handle won't open.”

Annie and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

“Wonderful, Mervin, lock yourself inside a death vault,” Annie said.

“I'm highly claustrophobic and I can't breathe,” he whimpered.

“What should we do?” I was getting anxious.

It was getting late, so I was pretty sure the football tryouts had to be ending soon. This of course meant that in a matter of moments, the entire boys' locker room would be filled with football players oozing with aggressive testosterone. Not to mention the entire football table that wanted to kill me.

My heart began racing really fast. Then I remembered Mervin had opened my locker earlier in the day. “Mervin, you know how to open locks; tell me what to do!”

“Okay, okay…start turning the lock clockwise and simultaneously pulling up on the handle. When the lock clicks to a stop, write down that number,” he said, slightly muffled by the door.

“What do you mean ‘write it down'? We don't have anything to write it down with!” Annie shrieked.

This was my chance, my chance to use my gift and knowledge of all things numbers. “I can remember it. Trust me.”

“Please start turning!” Mervin shouted.

I bent down and turned the lock, recording in my brain each and every time it clicked to a stop, all the way around to the last number. “Okay, I got it!”

“How many whole numbers and how many half numbers?” he asked.

I scanned my memory. “Five whole and seven half.”

“Take the whole numbers and tell me which one doesn't have the same matching second digit.”

I ran through the numbers in my head again: three, thirteen, twenty, twenty-three, and thirty-three. “Twenty!” I called out.

“Great! That's the third number of the combination. Now twenty divided by four is—”

“Five!”

“With no remainder. So take zero and add a sequence of fours all the way up to the last number on the lock.”

I added all the way up to thirty-nine in my head to wind up with a series of ten numbers. “I got it, Mervin, keep going!”

“Take the number two and add in a sequence of fours again to the last number.”

Bam!
I did it in a matter of seconds. “Got those too. What next?”

“The first series of ten is the first number, the second series is the second number, and we already have the third number. Just start doing multiple combinations!”

I got down on my knees so that my eyes were directly in front of the lock and started twirling away. I tried the first number in the first set with each number in the second set before I moved on to the next number in the first set. I had to have tried at least thirty combinations and nothing was working.

“Shit,” Annie said, “I hear people in the hallway.” She put down the shopping bag and ran to the door to peek outside. “It's the football team!”

“Come on, Roberta, just keep turning it!” Mervin pleaded from inside the locker.

My hand started to tremble, and sweat was pouring down my forehead into my eyes. I quickly wiped my eyes clean so that I could see the lock. And then something just clicked inside me. I would not, under any circumstance, allow myself or Mervin or Annie be tortured by the football team anymore!

I started twisting and turning that lock like it was an Olympic sport. “Hold on, Mervin! Just hold on!”

Annie ran back over from the door. “They're steps away! Hurry, Roberta! Hurry!”

And on my sixty-seventh combination, which were the numbers twenty, twenty-two, and twenty…the lock popped open! Mervin toppled out into my arms, and the jock strap tumbled out with him. Annie grabbed the shopping bag, and all three of us ran as fast as we could out the back exit. I managed to slam the door shut, just as the first football player stomped in.

The three of us fell to the ground.

Between heavy exhales, Mervin said, “That…was so…my bad.”

I looked over at Mervin and just started laughing. Annie joined me, and even Mervin started to chuckle a little.

“You guys, stop…that wasn't funny,” he said between spurts of giggles.

Annie and I were laughing so hard, I could barely breathe.

“Oh, yes, yes it was,” Annie said. “That jockstrap—” she couldn't even get the words out.

Mervin wiped his face with his hand. “Yeah, that dirty, disgusting jock strap was all over my face! That's so not funny—” And just as he said this, he began to laugh just as hard as we were. “I guess that makes me an ass-face!”

“An ass-face!” Annie managed to squeak out.

And I swear to God in heaven, sitting there on the ground in the afternoon sun, I thought the three of us might possibly die of laughter. It was one of the best feelings I have ever felt.