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FEELING SORRY FOR YOURSELF, could you possibly have picked a worse thing to say,

McCrae? — and Sunny went off on a tangent and you weren’t really listening, because all you could think was what a bad friend you were and you never should have agreed to drive Sunny home because YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO KEEP YOUR BIG MOUTH SHUT.

And finally Sunny’s voice stopped sounding like words and became more like a noise, like fingernails scraping a blackboard, and you needed to keep concentrating on the road but that was hard because you felt all this pressure, thinking about how you should have been home studying but instead you were solving someone else’s problems, putting someone else’s life first, AS

USUAL, and don’t your friends see that you’re a person too? And then you thought, how can they when you jump at their requests and act like you’re the happiest person in the world and OF

COURSE they’re going to take advantage unless you PUT YOUR FOOT DOWN.

“BE QUIET!” you yelled.

It was almost as if someone else had climbed inside you and started shouting. And once you started, you couldn’t stop. You blurted out how you were feeling — how scared and tense and worried you were, and before you knew it, you were telling her about the Cro Mags and Alex and Jay. And Sunny was quietly listening and saying “Really?” and “Oh, Ducky,” and “Why didn’t you tell me?” and by the time you turned onto her street your eyes were so misted up you could barely see the road.

And BOOM, you felt angry at yourself, and guilty, because here was Sunny, all upset about her mom, and you couldn’t just let her vent, could you? Okay, she’s feeling all this self-pity, but you do the same thing and SHE HAS AN EVEN BETTER REASON TO DO IT THAN YOU so you

shouldn’t judge her, you should let her complain, THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU, ANYWAY.

And those last words remind you of Mom and Dad, the way they’d say that to you sometimes when you were upset, and you never understood it, because you thought EVERYTHING was

about you — and you think of them, and of home, and it’s the last placed you want to go right now, so when Sunny asks you to come inside her house, you say yes.

Sunny’s mom is lying on a sofa in the Winslows’ living room. Mr. Winslow is on the phone, and the support group friends are making dinner in the kitchen. So you and Sunny sit with her mom, and you begin telling stories about school and doing imitations of various students and teachers, and Mrs. Winslow is cracking up and saying how talented you are and comparing you to Robin Williams (!), which eggs you on — and soon everyone else is in the living room, and they’re all your audience, laughing at all your jokes, and you feel great. You feel APPRECIATED. So when Mr. Winslow asks you to stay for dinner, you say yes because you know the alternative at the McCrae house is Cheerios, in milk that’s probably been left out since Ted came home from school.

The support groupers are great cooks.

The meal is the best you’ve had in months.

And the drive up into Vista Hills — sitting here, writing, with the breeze blowing through the open windows — that’s the perfect dessert.

In Which You Ask the Question:

So Why Couldn’t the Day

Have Ended There?

You are a maniac.

Your hands are filthy. Your shirt is clammy with sweat. You smell.

It is 11:21, and you have spent the entire night CLEANING.

Why did you bother coming home?

WHAT A DISGUSTING MESS this place is! Cigarette butts in the toilet tank. Fungus growing under the fridge. Chewing gum on the kitchen floor. A rock in the stove that looks like it was once a hamburger.

Clothes you forget you even owned. Clothes that were once Ted’s but have been lying around so long they probably fit you. Clothes that don’t belong to anyone you know and you don’t know what they’re doing here. You don’t WANT to know.

HOW DID IT GET THIS BAD? You were HERE the whole time. Didn’t you notice?

You did notice. You just didn’t care. Because it was just the way things were. Life with Ted and Ducky.

It hit you tonight, though. You opened the door, and — WHAM — the stench hit you.

Your house SMELLS.

It’s like a combination locker room, laundry hamper, and Dumpster from the back of a

restaurant.

And up until then, you’d felt so good. Driving into the hills was relaxing. And the meal at Sunny’s — you’d forgotten how much fun it could be to just sit around eating and talking.

It’s such normal stuff. But it’s stuff you haven’t done in months. Since Mom and Dad left.

Which is so weird because you never think life is so great when they’re here — and maybe it isn’t, but it sure feels better than it does now.

For one thing, when they’re here, it feels like you live in a HOME.

You look forward to coming back to a HOME. A HOME doesn’t stink.

SUNNY has a home.

You have a HOLE.

She has a FAMILY.

You have a

What? What do you have?

What are Ted and you?

It’s like, when Mom and Dad leave, you say: Okay, family’s over for awhile [sic]. Suspended animation. Don’t do anything until they come back.

You and Ted don’t talk to each other much. You don’t do ANYTHING much. You just come home, sleep, go to school. Like you’re waiting for someone to tell you what else to do.

Someone to tell you how to act. Like you’re both paralyzed.

So how ARE you supposed to act? It’s not like you can buy a book about this. There’s no Homemaking Guide for Virtual Orphans.

So you cleaned.

The house still looks disgusting. But it’s a start.

Maybe you’ll talk to Ted about this tomorrow.

Maybe not. You don’t need another argument.

What

Have

You

Done?

You couldn’t have kept your mouth shut?

You had to tell JAY, of all people, about your housecleaning? You had to paint this picture of yourself flitting from room to room, picking up old underwear, putting on an apron like Suzy Homemaker to do a stack of dishes that was almost glued together with dried food?

You didn’t ASSUME he was going to tell everybody in school? That this would NOT help your reputation at all?

Duh.

NOW what?

Now Jay is coming over after school to HELP you. And he’s bringing Lisa, a broom, and a can of Lysol.

And … Bud.

Bud the Cro Mag.

Why?

You don’t know why. Jay secretly hates you, you guess.

Jay insisted that Bud is OK. Which you accepted. You said FINE — but WHY ON EARTH

MAKE HIM COME TO YOUR HOUSE TO CLEAN UP, OF ALL RIDICULOUS THINGS? —

and Jay insisted that he was talking to Bud the other day, and JUST CASUALLY in conversation your name came up, and Bud said he FELT BAD about the way their pals treat you, and so Jay said, okay, if you want to do something about it, let’s help my buddy Duckster clean his trashed house, and Bud was psyched about it.

DOES THIS MAKE SENSE?

No, it doesn’t.

WHY was he psyched? Does he want to do research? Take photos? Infiltrate the house of Ducky and report to the Cro Mags, so they can humiliate you EVEN MORE?

And what’s worse, YOU COULDN’T SAY NO. You tried, but Jay just railroaded you. He

insisted that he was trying to help.

And you know what happens when Jay “helps.”

McCrae, your days are numbered.

The Great McCrae

Cleanup

You’re home alone, after school. You’re in a blind panic.

You consider calling a cleaning service. You consider calling Jay and saying you’re sick.

Locking the door and running away. Setting fire to the whole thing.

But instead you stand in the house, frozen.

You figure: Cleaning the place up before they get here might make Bud angry, because then he’d be coming over for no reason. But leaving it filthy might make him hate you, because he’d have so much work to do.

You try to imagine you’re a Cro Mag, living alone with your brother. How would YOUR house look?

Like a prehistoric cave. Finger paintings of bison on the walls.

So you decide to do nothing because maybe a messy house is a good thing, like a badge of honor, and just the thought of this makes you realize you are OVERTHINKING and MAKING THIS

TOO IMPORTANT, and maybe Jay was right and Bud has nothing better to do than come over and help out a friend of a friend.

Still, you’re constantly looking out the window for Ted. Maybe — just maybe — your brother would come home the ONE day you need him. But no. He’s probably stuffing his face with pizza and having a great time in your moment of humiliation.

The doorbell rings, and your hand shakes as you reach for the knob. You open the door, trying to look as macho as possible.

“Yo,” you say. “ ‘Tsup?”

But Jay’s not looking at you. He’s staring at the room behind you and his first comment is

“WHAT HAPPENED?”

Lisa’s face is all twisted in shock and disgust, as if she just walked into a fertilizer sale at Sears.

Behind her is Bud McNally — and he looks amused. HE’S LAUGHING AT YOU.

“I’ve been working real hard with the decorator,” you say — just a joke, you can’t help it —

AND YOU WANT TO KICK YOURSELF because that’s just the kind of sarcastic comment Cro

Mags hate.

“How about a few more dustballs near the sofa, for atmosphere?” Bud suggests.

And you’re amazed. A Cro Mag with a sense of humor!

Jay rolls up his sleeves and asks if I have kitchen trash bags.

Soon we’ve started. We toss clothes into bags. We sweep. We throw out food. We fix broken hinges. Bud opens windows you hadn’t even realized were closed. We work, work, work.

And that’s when you make your discovery: YOU ARE A RAVING, STEREOTYPING,

PARANOID, IMMATURE fool, just as bad as the Cro Mags.

Because Bud IS a good guy.

You actually have fun. By the end of the day, everyone’s laughing at your jokes and asking you to do your imitations of Ms. Patterson and Mr. Dean.

And just before you go, Jay asks if you want to go to his house Saturday. Just a “small hang with the guys,” he calls it, and Lisa is rolling her eyes and teasing him for not inviting girls, so Jay has to make excuses and claim that he TRIED, but the other guys wouldn’t let him — which makes you think this is really a Cro Mag gathering, but you don’t want to ask right out, so you casually ask who’ll be there, and Bud jumps in and mentions Sam and Travis and Marco — and you say you’re not sure you can come, and Jay says, “I’ll take care of Marco,” so you think about it awhile.

Before today, you would have said you’d go to the party when hell freezes over.

But you realize that you were wrong about Bud.

Maybe you’re wrong about some of the other guys.

Wouldn’t it be nice to actually have them ON YOUR SIDE? To have so-called NORMAL guys as your friends?

You picture a new life. A house that can actually be a HOME, even without Mom & Dad. Guy friends your own age.

It COULD happen.

So you say yes.

The Morning After

In Homeroom

Ted is flabbergasted.

You know this because he came into your room this morning and woke you up, saying, “Ducky, I am flabbergasted.”

You told him you’d be full of flabbergast too if your little brother had totally cleaned the house out of the goodness of his heart, without asking for so much as a dime.

Then he asked where his college jersey was, and why some of your socks ended up in his drawer, and whether or not you threw away his intro biology notes that were probably lying on the living room floor, and soon you felt like you’d done something terribly wrong.

But you didn’t. You were actually able to open the fridge without worrying that something living would crawl out, and you could walk through the house to the front door without tripping over anything. THAT’S progress.

But that was nothing compared to what happened at school, when you saw Bud and Marco and Travis and a couple of other goons standing at the door in their familiar places.

Bud said hi.

Just HI.

No other singsongy voices or snickers or comments about your clothes or imitations of the way you walk — nothing.

So you said hi back.

And you strolled into school feeling about seven feet tall.

You could get used to this.

Today, friend of the Cro Mags. Tomorrow, who know? Cigarettes, flannel shirts, and muttering with lots of one-syllable words.

Ha.

Ducky, you are SUCH a snob.

Anyway, at your locker, Jay was his usual self. Talking so fast you could barely understand him.

He went on and on about Saturday, insisting it’ll be fun, just hanging out, no big deal, etc. Then he asked a question you REALLY didn’t expect.

Did you think ALEX would want to come?

Alex? To a place where Cro Mags are invited? (To ANY party, for that matter?)

You burst out laughing. You told Jay he was nuts. You reminded him he hates Alex. You reminded him that all the Cro Mags hate Alex.

But Jay was totally serious. He said he’s been getting on the Cro Mags’ cases about the insults and comments. He’s convinced them that Alex and you are good guys, and Bud has backed him up. So now they’ve promised to have open minds.

Then Jay told you that he’s been missing the old days lately. Whenever he sees Alex and you hanging out, it brings back the happy times you three spent together. “Maybe Alex was gone slacker on us, but hey, he’s the same guy inside, right?” Jay said. “Once a friend, always a friend, that’s what I say.”

You couldn’t argue with that. So you said you’d ask Alex if he was interested.

You’ll catch him at lunch.

You KNOW that he’s going to say no. But it’s worth a try.

Sometimes —

Rarely, but Sometimes —

You’re Not as Smart as You Think

You did tell Alex about Jay’s gathering.

He didn’t believe you.

Well, he didn’t believe JAY. He thought the invitation was a trick. But you told him you were CONVINCED that Jay was just being friendly, just trying to bring back the old times, and why not give it a try.