Ms. Bixby's Last Day (8 page)

Ms. Bixby's cheeks turned pink to match her shock of hair. Suddenly the two of them started talking over each other.

“Mr. Sakata, I appreciate what you are trying to say, but I think what's more important is that Steve feels like he is being challenged and that he is growing, socially and intellectually, making connections and—”

“But in my son's case it represents a breakdown in the learning process, either on his end or on yours, and signifies—”

“—grades are just one way to reflect and measure that growth, and that one—”

“—his sister certainly never earned a B in her life, and both of his parents are quite well educated—”

“—spend too much time focusing on end results and not enough time on the process, the journey that your son is taking—”

“—feel that the real problem is that you aren't challenging
him
enough
, or maybe your system of evaluation is flawed and needs—”

“—simply don't think one little B is really worth worrying about.”

My father cleared his throat. “My son is a straight-A student, Ms. Bixby,” he said, straightening up himself, his voice rising to match.

I looked up to see Ms. Bixby smiling.

“Is that what your bumper sticker says?”

I laughed. I couldn't help it. I might have only smiled if it wasn't for the fact that there actually is a “Proud parent of straight-A students!” sticker pasted on the back of the Volvo. I'm not sure how she knew, or even
if
she knew. Maybe it was a lucky guess. Or maybe she had had this same discussion before with someone else's father, bickering over someone else's B.

“Excuse me?”
my father barked.

Ms. Bixby blushed again. “I'm sorry. That was uncalled-for. You're absolutely right. You should be proud of Steven. Incredibly proud. He is one of the brightest students I've ever had the honor to teach. He surprises me every day with how much he knows, and his curiosity is insatiable. I will make sure that he and I work hard the next several weeks to ensure that all his grades reflect the kind of student he is.” She gave a polite smile. My father stared at her hair again.

“That's all I'm asking,” he said gruffly, reaching out and retrieving my report card, holding it with two fingers like a used tissue. “Thank you for your time.”

He rose, and Ms. Bixby rose too. They shook hands politely. I wasn't at all sure who the victor was. I was still laughing inside at the bumper sticker remark. Then, as we were walking out the door to room 213, Ms. Bixby called my name. I turned and she stretched out her index finger, her look asking me to do the same. Our fingers touched lightly at the tips, and her eyes brightened. “Be. Good,” she said.

It was a line from
E.T.
I know because Topher and I had seen that movie four times already. But I also knew she was making a joke. Thankfully my father didn't get it, or maybe he just didn't hear. Then she said, “See you tomorrow,” and “Thanks for coming,” and I couldn't be sure, but I think she closed the door to her classroom with a little more force than usual.

Back in the Volvo my father shook his head. “Never have these problems with your sister.
Her
teachers understand.”

“I think Ms. Bixby understands,” I murmured.

“Doesn't matter,” my father grumbled. “Only eight more weeks.” Meaning only eight more weeks in the semester. Eight more weeks to bring my grade up. Eight more weeks with Ms. Bixby. Eight more weeks to deal with this woman with the crazy hair who obviously didn't know how to teach or at least didn't
appreciate Sakata greatness when she saw it. Eight weeks.

Except his math was wrong. He didn't know what was growing inside her. None of us did.

There were really only four.

The bells on the door chirp at us on our way out, leaving Brand and Eduardo huddled over the counter. Topher and I sit on the curb next to each other, knees almost touching. Topher reaches down and plucks a pebble from the street, rolling it back and forth between his fingers. I take my phone out and type in
why is cheesecake so expensive
. The answer, according to the first website I check, is “Because it is yummy.” That hardly seems scientific. The real answer, I suspect, is because people are willing to pay that much for it.

“What if it were Topher's?”

I put the phone down and look at Topher. He's looking at the pebble, smooth and gray, barely the size of an M&M. “It's just a rock,” I tell him. “You can probably have it if you want it.” I'm also not sure why he's talking about himself in the third person.

“Not the rock. The bakery,” he says, looking up at the sign. “What if it were called Topher's? How much do you think I could charge for that cheesecake?”

Now I understand. It's a game. How much is your name
worth? “Would it be called Topher's or Christopher's?” I ask back, not that it would make a difference to me. I'd shop there regardless, though I know for a fact Topher doesn't know how to bake. The one time we tried to make cookies at his house, we set off the smoke detector.

“I don't know. I guess Christopher's sounds better. Topher's is more the name of an ice-cream parlor, don't you think?”

I don't actually think about things like this. That's why I like to have Topher around. “I guess so,” I say. “What about Steve's?”

Topher scrunches his nose. “Sorry, man. I'm not sure you could charge more than twenty bucks. Nobody wants to buy cheesecake from a Steve. No offense.”

I'm not offended. It takes a lot more than that. Especially coming from him.

“But I'd
totally
buy comic books from one,” he adds, then smiles, his dimples surfacing. He has a great smile.

I try to imagine what my parents would say if I told them I was going to skip college and open up my own comic book store. I picture their heads exploding. The thought makes me smile too. “What's he doing in there, anyway?” Topher says, craning his neck. Brand's back is to us, but Eduardo is nodding over and over.

I shrug. I can tell it bothers Topher, being kicked out, sitting out here on the curb while Brand is in there, carrying on the
mission or whatever he's doing, but it doesn't bother me. I think about all the times the two of us have sat together like this. On the bus. On the floor in his basement. In the cardboard fort we built in his backyard. Always side by side, never across from each other. Topher flicks the pebble with his thumb. I watch it skitter across the parking lot and bounce into a drain. I could never make that shot on the first try. Or the second. “You think this is a good idea?” he asks.

“It's a lot of money for a cake,” I say.

“I don't mean the cake. Not
just
the cake, anyway. I mean all of it.” He stretches his hands out to indicate the
all
of all of it, his shoulder bumping into mine. “I mean, do you think it's weird? Do you think
she'll
think it's weird?”

The word
weird
just sits there between us. I think about Ms. Bixby, who made us all memorize monologues from our favorite movies instead of famous speeches from history (though I still memorized the Gettysburg Address because my parents insisted on it, claiming that it was also, technically, from a movie, and had greater educational value). Ms. Bixby, who once came to school wearing her bathrobe over her normal clothes because it was twenty degrees outside and she couldn't find her coat. Ms. Bixby, who kept books scattered all around the room in the most unusual places—tucked in with the hand sanitizer, sitting on the windowsills, stacked on top of the python's terrarium—because,
as she put it, stories are everywhere, just waiting to be found.

“I think
she's
a little weird,” I say.

“She probably thinks you're a little weird,” Topher says. “
I
think you're a little weird. Don't worry. It's a good thing. It just means you're remarkable.”

“I think you're weird too,” I say.

“Come to think of it,” Topher continues, “I think the word
weird
is kind of weird. Just say it out loud a few times. Weird. Weird. Weird . . .”

I start to chant it along with him, the two of us sitting on the curb saying
weird
over and over again. I suppose if you say anything over and over again, it starts to sound strange.

About twelve
weird
s in, the door behind us jangles again and Brand comes out of the bakery carrying a square white box, holding it with both hands. The box doesn't have one of those see-through windows that birthday cakes from the grocery store always have, but I can only guess it's the whole enchilada.

“What was that all about?” Topher asks. I can tell he's miffed, and he's letting Brand know.

“No big deal,” Brand says. “I took care of it.”

“You ‘took care of it'?” Topher repeats. “What, are you the Godfather now? How much did he charge you? Did you actually get it for forty?”

Brand shakes his head and smiles. He hands the box to
Topher, who nearly drops it, grunting at the weight. Then he hands me back my crumpled ten and one of Topher's fives. Somehow he got the cake for less than half the price.

“Turns out it's teacher appreciation day,” he says with a shrug.

Through the window of Michelle's, I see the baker shrug at us too.

“Welcome to Eduardo's,” Brand says.

EVERYBODY LOVES A GOOD SOB STORY, SO LONG
as it's not their story.

I don't know why. I'm not sure if people honestly care about other people or they just want a way to confirm that they've got it better than someone else, someone they can point to and say, “It could be worse. I could be
that
guy.”

Don't get me wrong. I don't think people are really like that. Not most people anyways. But I think we're all guilty of it sometimes. Just like we're all guilty of doing the opposite, looking at everyone else around us and thinking that none of 'em understand. That they are living in a fantasyland full of birthday cake and sunshine and can't possibly get what we are going through.

I think that all the time. I can't help it. Because, as it turns
out, nobody knows what I'm going through.

Then again, maybe that's because I haven't told them.

Eduardo didn't sob when I told him my story, but he did get quiet. He knew Ms. Bixby, he said. He remembered the pink hair, or was it orange? He couldn't quite recall, but she had definitely been in the shop before, and he was very sorry to hear about her diagnosis. He was even sorrier when I told him my side of the story—the truth, if not the whole truth—and why it was so important for me to see her today. Then he asked what this all had to do with cheesecake, and I explained that part too. He nodded to himself several times, tapping his fingers on the counter before telling me to just take it. The whole cake. Gratis. No charge. We argued about it for a few minutes more, and then I finally made a compromise, taking the cake and leaving twenty-five bucks on the counter. Nothing free is worth having.

That's not one of Ms. Bixby's sayings. My father actually taught me that one. My father, who keeps most of his money—most of our money—in the bread box by the refrigerator, and tells me to take whatever I need. I watch it slowly diminish, dwindle down to a few bills over a couple of weeks, and then I walk to the ATM by the Village Pantry and make a withdrawal and the bread box is suddenly full again, like magic. I'm sure he keeps track, but he doesn't say anything. Most days it's just lunch
money. A couple of bucks to rent a movie. Cash and tip for the pizza delivery guy.

Fridays are different, though. Fridays are the best. Fridays I take at least a hundred bucks.

Today I took twenty. I guess I should have taken more. Of course if my father knew that I spent twenty of his dollars on a cake for my teacher, he would flip.

Of course, if he stopped and thought about, he'd realize he probably owes her as much as I do. Nothing worth having is free.

There's a used-book store just down the street, and Topher insists on going. He says there's something he wants to look for, something he should have thought of earlier. We still have some time before the right bus comes to pick us up. The bookstore's not part of the original plan written across my arm a few days ago, but I can tell Topher's a little peeved at me for leaving him out of the whole cheesecake getting, so I go along.

First things first, though. We have to figure out some way to shove this cake in one of our backpacks. It weighs as much as a watermelon, and the box is the size of a microwave. Steve's pack is the biggest, so we empty it out, putting the speakers in Topher's, and wrapping the backpack around the box as best we can. It doesn't zip all the way, but the cake isn't going anywhere.

“We should have brought a cooler,” Steve says. “Cheesecake should be kept refrigerated.”

“I think it'll be fine for a couple of hours,” Topher says, though I can tell by the look on his face that he doesn't know the first thing about cheesecake. If it doesn't come slathered in ketchup or have a picture of Cap'n Crunch on it, Topher's not interested.

Steve carefully slides his arms through the straps, grunting at the weight. He looks like he's about to tip over backward and I wonder if I shouldn't be the one to carry it, but I know if I say something to Steve, he will think I'm hinting at something. That he's not strong enough. That he can't handle it. So I let it go and we walk over to Alexander's. That's the name of the bookstore. And maybe the guy who owns it. Then again, maybe not.

We push through the curtain of dust that greets us at the door, followed by the smell of pinewood and Old Spice cologne—the same kind my father used to wear, back when he took showers every day, before even going to the bathroom counted as exercise. The place looks just like one of those creaky old libraries you'd find in a Goosebumps book, jammed with books from floor to ceiling, stacked sideways, spine-ways, slanted, two and three deep on shelves that lean in every possible direction, like Jenga blocks about to fall. The floors creak when you step on them and even when you just stand there, but that's not the spookiest part.

The spookiest part is the owl sitting on one of the high-up shelves by the door. Stuffed, obviously, except whoever stuffed it did it with its head twisted around, looking backward. Owls can do that, I know, but it's still freaky. A sign on the wall below the twisted owl says
Caveat Emptor
in fancy gold letters and then, smaller underneath,
Buyer Beware.
Beware of what? I wonder. The owl's clearly missing some feathers; I guess it's seen better days.

The door swings shut behind us, no chimes or ringing bells to give us away. Topher calls out a “Hello?” There's no answer. “Bizarre,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“And creepy,” Topher adds.

“That too.”

“You ever been here before?”

I shake my head. “Didn't even know the place existed.”

Topher inches a little closer to me. I can't imagine what he's thinking. His imagination must be in overdrive. “Reminds me of the bookstore from
The Neverending Story
,” he says.

“Never read it,” I say.

“That's all right. It's practically impossible to finish anyway.”

Any other time I'd laugh, if I wasn't feeling so weirded out. We stand by the door, none of us wanting to take a further step inside. There aren't enough lights—at least a third of the bulbs
are burned out—and that makes for a lot of shadows on the walls. I get a chill, and it seems to be contagious, because Topher and Steve shiver too. Then, just as I'm about to suggest turning around, heading back, and waiting at the bus stop, Steve sneezes so hard he gets a blob of snot in the crook of his elbow. A huge yellow glob quivering there like Jell-O. I think about the time I picked his nose. This is way grosser.

“I meed a missue,” he calls out desperately, more snot snaking down his upper lip. Topher says to just rub it in, but Steve looks horrified at the idea. I look around and find an antiquey-looking sign that says
Powder Room
, pointing down a dark hallway. Steve looks at the hallway, looks at the snot, trying to decide if it's worth the risk. Then he finally stumbles off.

“Messy,” Topher says.

“Yeah,” I say.

The upside is that Steve has broken the invisible force field that was holding us in place by the door, at least. We take a few timid steps, me leading the way. Save for the three of us and the freaky, backward-glancing owl, the place seems deserted. I stare at the mountains of books leaning against each other along the crooked wood shelves. Now that we are inside and surrounded by them, though, I feel a little better. It reminds me a little of room 213 and how there are books everywhere you look. Ms. Bixby would like it here, I think. This is the kind of place she would
go. A place you could get lost in. A wooden placard dangling by twine from the ceiling says we are in the literature section.

I run a finger along one shelf, leaving my trail in the dust, then pull out a copy of a book by someone named Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Never heard of the guy. Sounds like a blowhard. The gilded letters on the cover say
Idylls of the King
. I open it up to the middle, see that it's actually poetry—really
long
poetry—and quickly put it back. I don't mind reading literature when I have to, but it's almost summer and I have my limits.

Suddenly the books start to speak.

“‘Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.'”

Topher and I instinctively step close together. From the dark hallway with the powder room I hear a sound—not quite a scream, more of a squeak, but definitely Steve's voice. Before I can even take a step toward it, though, a man not much taller than me peeks his head around the corner of the shelf, looking at us from behind thick silver-framed glasses. I nearly trip over Topher as we both stagger backward.

“Aha!” he says.

The man who emerges from behind the bookcase looks like Yoda . . . if Yoda were a nearsighted, five-foot-tall white man in khaki pants and a frumpy gray sweater. Pointy ears jut out of a melonish head, topped with little wisps of white hair tufting out
like pulled cotton. And he's got Yoda wrinkles too, the kind that come in waves crashing down to his eyebrows. His gray wool cardigan reaches nearly to his knees. He has a haunted expression on his face, eyes wide, dangerous looking. “‘Boldly they rode and well,'”
he bellows. “‘Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of hell . . .'” With the last word, he slaps his hand down on the bookshelf beside him. I jump.

Then the man's expression suddenly softens. “Tennyson,” he says brightly.

Topher mumbles something like “Mmwha?” I don't say anything. I'm starting to think there is a good chance we are about to be murdered.

“‘The Charge of the Light Brigade'?” the man says. “Surely you've heard it. ‘Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them, Volley'd and thunder'd; Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldly they rode and well.'”
His voice grows thunderous, then gravelly, then thunderous again, and he pounds one fist into the other hand and grins. I shake my head. The man frowns. “What are they teaching kids in school these days?” I maneuver a little—small steps, just so I have a clear path to the exit. I'm not sure he realizes it, but Topher is holding on to the sleeve of my shirt. “Sorry I didn't hear you boys come in. I was down in the basement, eating a body,” the old man adds, licking his lips.

“Um . . .
what?
” Topher asks.

“Biscotti,” the old man repeats, holding up a half-eaten biscuit. “They are really quite good dunked in tea.”

Crazy-five-foot-tall-Yoda-who-could-still-very-well-be-an-ax-murderer circles around us, blocking our path, heading toward the front of the store, probably to lock us in. “I think we should get out of here,” I whisper to Topher, but then I remember that Steve is still in the bathroom.

The old man is standing at the entrance now, looking up at the stuffed owl on the shelf above. He calls back over his shoulder. “Normally Scout warns me when we have guests, don't you, Scout?”

The name strikes a chord, and I feel a a little jolt of electricity shoot through me. “The owl's name is Scout?” I ask. I know a Scout. Ms. Bixby introduced us not too long ago.

The man nods. “A good name for an owl, don't you think?” He cocks his head, as if listening to the stuffed bird. “Scout's wondering what brought you in here today.”

My eyes dance from the owl to the old man and back again. I elbow Topher. This was all his idea, after all.

Topher clears his throat. “We were . . .” I step on his foot. “I mean,
I
was, um, looking, um, you know . . . for a book.”

“Then you've come to the right place, hasn't he, Scout?” The old man snorts and snaps his fingers. Maybe he's not a cannibal,
but he's clearly nuts. “No shortage of supply here, though I should warn you: I don't carry comic books. I don't have any diaries written by wimps. And the only novel I have about vampires was written over a hundred years ago. So if you are looking for anything like that, you might as well leave.”

“Funny. That's what
I
said,” I say to Topher through clenched teeth. I look back toward the hallway to see if Steve has come out of the restroom yet.

“Actually,” Topher says, ignoring me, “I just need to know if you can point me to your fantasy section.”

The old man puts a finger to his nose and then points to Topher. “Fantasy. Of course. I could tell just by looking at you.” And in a flurry of his flapping cardigan, he comes and takes Topher by the shoulders, leading him through the maze of shelves. Topher glances back at me, begging me with his eyes to come along, but I hear another door open and look to see Steve finally emerging from the hallway, face ghostly. He approaches slowly, glancing back over his shoulder with every other step. When he gets to me, he takes a deep breath.

“There's a shark in the toilet,” he says.

If it were Topher, I'd laugh. Or give him a dirty look. But this is Steve. Steve doesn't make things up. He researches them carefully and then commits them to memory so he can bore you with them later. His eyes are as round as cheesecakes.

“Show me,” I say, leaving Topher to fend for himself.

We head down the dark hallway to the restroom, and I flip on the light. Steve stands by the open toilet, pointing with both hands, just in case I don't know where to look.

“Huh,” I say.

Sure enough. Someone has painstakingly painted the inside of the toilet bowl to look like a great white shark's gaping mouth. Pretty much just the mouth and that triangle snout, like in the movie poster from
Jaws
. Rows of jagged teeth, red gullet, deep dark pit leading to who knows where.

“Who paints a shark in their toilet?” Steve wants to know. Of course he hasn't met the crazy, wispy-haired man who talks to stuffed owls and shouts about the jaws of hell yet.

I stare at the shark. “I wonder how the paint even stays on,” I say. “You'd think it would wear away by now. You know. Erosion or something.”