One Man Show (4 page)

As soon as the sound of running water was coming from the John, Mom whispered, “Now’s a good time for me to go downstairs
and start planning your gran’s surprise birthday party with your aunts. So the TV is all yours, your highness.”
She kissed my forehead, grabbed her coffee cup, and fled, saying, “Feet off the coffee table, mister.”

We lived upstairs in a two-family home but spent a lot of our time downstairs, with my aunt Olive and my aunt Birdie and Granny
Grubbs. I was the man of the house. (Gordy didn’t count, ‘cause he was a big flake and was hardly ever around.) Even though
Mom wasn’t a real Grubbs, my aunts and Granny had all pitched in to help her out since the divorce. Mom didn’t have any blood
relatives to turn to - her folks passed away years before I was even born.

Anyway, I was alone at last - sort of. I did a test run to make sure everything was in grabbing distance from the couch: half
a box of assorted Jack Sprat doughnuts, a full box of Dino-S’mores cereal, a carton of milk, the remote control. My morning
would be back on track with a single
click!

You’ll double over with laughter when Buddy uses his dad’s hair-growing ointment to try to grow a beard on today’s hair-larious
episode of
Double Take!
Laugh-Fest Saturday Morning is brought to you by Keggler’s Crustacean Crunch cereal.

“Wow, there’s blueberry barnacles, chocolate clams, and marshmallow snails!”

“Turn that down,” Granny yelled from the bathroom. “I can’t hear myself think.”

“Well, close the door, Gran!”

I didn’t want to accidentally see her naked and be scarred for life.

Crustacean Crunch is fun to munch for breakfast, snacks, and even lunch. Arrrrgh!

I was singing along to the jingle with Pirate Pete when the phone rang. I picked it up and heard another
“Arrrrgh!”

It was Wally, calling right on time. We were die-hard
Double Take
fans and had a pact to watch every episode together, even if we weren’t in the same room.
Double Take
was about these twin brothers who were total opposites. Buddy was the cool brother and Bailey was the dork. The best part
was that they were both played by the same actor - Jeremy Jason Wilder. The luckiest kid on the planet.

In our class, on Friday afternoons we had open discussion periods where Miss Honeywell would ask, “Okay, what do y’all wanna
talk about today?” Wally and I would give each other two quick looks and shout,
“Double Take!”
Miss Honeywell never took us up on it.

“Hey, Wal, before I forget - you wanna come to my gran’s birthday party? It’s three weeks from today, the seventeenth. It’s
gonna be huge.”

“Any food?”

“Tons.”

“Do I have to bring a present?”

“Dunno. Probably.”

“I’ll get back to you on that,” Wally said. “Oh, crud! This show’s not another rerun, is it?”

“They’re all reruns now. When’s it gonna sink in?”

Double Take
used to be on at eight o’clock on Thursday nights; then they stopped making new episodes and threw the reruns in with the
Saturday morning cartoons. Not a good sign.

“It’s the Follican one,” I said.

“The what?”

“That stuff for bald guys.” I chirped out another jingle. “’If your head can’t grow it, Folli-can!’”

That’s probably why I couldn’t remember things like who Lewis and Clark were or what the capital of Pennsylvania is -too many
jingles and sitcom plots were taking up valuable brain space.

“Oh, yeah. Buddy’s head ends up looking like a giant eggplant,” Wally said. “So how’s
your
head?”

“Fine.”

“Quick, before it comes on, tell me again about the famous kid who’s transferring into our class! What did the nurse say,
exactly?”

“I already told you.”

“Well, did she give you any hints, like -” Wally stopped talking and the sound got muffled. “Yeah, Ma? Okay, I’ll ask him.”

“Ask me what?” I said.

“My ma wants to know if you liked the costume she made you.”

“Tell her yeah,” I said. “And tell her not to mention it to my mom if she runs into her at the grocery store or anything.
Tell her she’s real sensitive about not knowing how to sew. She’s probably better off not even knowing about the play at all.”

I heard phone-fumbling.

“Dustin? It’s Wallace’s mom. Don’t worry, I won’t tell your mother about the play. We certainly don’t want to hurt her feelings.
I just hope I didn’t work my fingers to the bone making all those costumes for nothing. You know Principal Futterman. He’ll
put the play off till kingdom come.”

“No, we’re definitely doing it, Mrs. Dorkin,” I said. “We’d
better
be doing it!”

“All I know is, if it doesn’t involve sports, that man can’t be bothered,” she said. “He postponed the PTA bake sale so long,
we had to cancel it - and now I’ve got a pantry full of coconut-almond hockey pucks. Oh, he’d like that!”

“Ma, it’s your own fault,” I heard Wally say. “You know I can’t stand coconut.”

Just then, the front door flew open and Gordy oozed in, dragging Sheila - straight out of the 1950s and into our living room.
She wasn’t the poodle-skirt, ponytail variety I’d
hoped for. More like a skanky greaser chick, with big hair, a pink leather jacket, and too much makeup.

“Where’s Mom?” Gordy grunted.

“Downstairs,” I said, putting my hand over the receiver.

Sheila perched on the arm of the couch next to me, picking something out of her teeth, while Gordy dumped half a box of Dino-S’mores
into his mouth.

I hope he chokes on a stegosaurus.

“Gimme the phone,” Gordy said.

“I’m using it!”

“I have to make a freakin’ phone call,” he said, ripping the receiver out of my hand. “It’s important!”

He actually hung up on Wally’s mom and started dialing. I grabbed the remote control and turned up the volume on the television.

“Turn that down,” Gordy said.

“No can do. I’m watching
Double Take.
It’s important.”

“I thought they took that off the air,” Sheila said.

“It’s on Saturday mornings now,” I told her.

“That show bites the big one,” Gordy said. “And this Freak-show’s got that Jeremy Jason Jerk’s face plastered all over his
room. I’m tellin’ ya, there’s something wrong with this kid.” He thwacked my arm with the phone. “I said, turn it down!”

I turned up the volume as loud as it would go. Gordy dropped the phone, dived over the back of the couch, and torpedoed me.

“Hey, get off!” I yelled.

“Leave him alone, Gordo,” Sheila said. “Jeez, don’t be such a drag.”

“Yeah, Gordo!”

He was strangling my wrist to get the remote control when I pulled his T-shirt sleeve and saw a flash of orange on his upper
arm. In the middle of our struggle I got a better look and made out some sort of burning skull.

“Is that - that’s not a tattoo, is it?” I said, surrendering the remote. “That better not be a real one, or Mom’ll kill you.”

He pushed me away and tossed the remote to Sheila, who clicked the TV on mute and started channel surfing.

“So what if it’s real?” Gordy said, picking up the phone. “It’s my body. I’m old enough to do what I want.”

While he was dialing, I edged in a little closer to him, trying to make out the scabby letters under the skull.

“Uh-huh,” he mumbled into the receiver, slicking back his greasy hair. “Partly cloudy… a high of sixty-seven… winds from the
west-northwest gusting to - blah, blah, blah… humidity, thirty-nine percent. See, babe - no rain till tomorrow.”

“That
was your important phone call?” I said, but he ignored me.

“Come on,” he said to Sheila, “let’s rock ‘n’ roll.”

“Hey,” I said, “what’s R-E-B-U-L stand for?”

“Rebel,
you loser.”

“You’re the loser,” I said.
“Rebel
is spelled with an
e,
not a
u.”
All of a sudden it hit me and I burst out laughing. “Omigod! You have to walk around for the rest of your life with a typo
on your arm!”

Gordy did an all-out attack on me, twisting my arm behind my back and yelling, “Take it back, take it back,” like it was my
fault. Real mature.

“Aw, leave the kid alone,” Sheila muttered.
“American Graffiti
is on. I love this movie.”

When the pain outweighed the laughter, I “took it back” and curled up in the corner of the couch. I knew I didn’t have a snowball’s
chance in h-e-double-hockey-sticks of getting back control of the TV set as long as Elvis and Priscilla were in the room.
Luckily, it was the last twenty minutes of the movie.

When it ended, Gordy pointed his finger at my face and warned, “You’d better keep your big mouth shut about the tattoo, see?
‘Cause I’ve got some juicy dirt on you too.” Then he grabbed his main squeeze and my box of doughnuts and bolted.

I was stunned for a few seconds, wondering if Gordy really knew something - or if he was just being the usual Gordy. When
I switched channels on the TV, the
Double Take
credits were already rolling.

See ya next week, kids. Same time, same place—brand-new show!

“New show?” I said back to the TV. “What about
Double Take?”

You’ll slap yourself
silly
if you miss it when the
Maniac Muldoon
cartoon makes its hilarious debut on Laugh-Fest Saturday Morning!

Wally called again. Our conversation started out just like the one before.

“Arrrrgh!”

Wally’s mom had me all worried for nothing. Monday morning, after the Pledge of Allegiance, Futterman announced that
The Castle of the Crooked Crowns
would be performed in a special assembly at one o’clock that Thursday - April Fools’ Day! We rehearsed like crazy for three
days, and I knew my lines (and everyone else’s) backward and forward. But come Wednesday night I was so wound up, I must’ve
slept maybe five minutes. Tops.

When the big day finally arrived, Miss Honeywell was as dressed up as I’d ever seen her, in a silky yellow dress with a matching
jacket. Maybe it was just the sun streaking in, but I swear she was glowing like an angel dropped from heaven -only in high
heels and with a big hairdo.

“Good morning, class,” she said. “Well, we’ve certainly got an exciting day ahead of us!”

I’ll say.
It felt as if water balloons were sloshing around in my stomach all morning.

“I have a bit of news,” Miss Honeywell said, sitting on the edge of her desk. She crossed her legs, with a shoe dangling off
one foot. If I weren’t a nervous wreck I might’ve drooled. “I’m not exactly sure why the main office wanted to keep all the
details hush-hush,” she said. “I mean, y’all were going to find out eventually. But that transfer student I told you about
will not be joining our class next week, as expected.”

The famous kid? No way.

“He’s arriving today!” Miss Honeywell said, so excited that she kicked off her shoe.

Who starts at a new school in April, anyway? Why bother? And what are the odds that he’d get here on Play Day, of all days?

“I should explain that this young man is very - well, let’s say ‘special,’” she said, hopping down from the desk and stepping
into her shoe. “Not to say that y’all aren’t special, because you know I think each one of you is finer than hair on a frog.
But he’s special in - well, a very special way.”

Huh?
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was drunk.

“Now I want you to treat him just like you’d treat anybody else,” she said. “The last thing in the world we want to do is
to make him feel uncomfortable.”

Millicent Fleener raised her hand.

“Yes, Millicent?”

“Is he physically challenged? Like, in a wheelchair or something?”

“No, he’s not,” Miss Honeywell said.

Darlene Deluca’s hand went up, but she didn’t wait to get called on.

“Is he from another country and doesn’t speak English?”

“No.”

Wally’s desk was right next to mine. His hand shot up next. “Ooh, ooh, ooh!” he said, bouncing up and down like his seat was
on fire and he was putting it out with his rear end.

“Yes?”

“Is he, like, forty-five years old and just now coming back to school to finish his education?”

The class groaned.

“It’s possible,” Wally said. “Stuff like that happens all the time.”

“It does not,” I whispered. “And I already told you he was somebody
famous!
“

“So? You could be forty-five and famous.”

“Y’all are getting carried away now,” Miss Honeywell said, fiddling with her charm bracelet. “You’ll find out, all in good
time. Just remember to be yourselves. It’s no big deal.”

She was right. It wasn’t a big deal - it was a gi-normous deal! When Reggie MacPherson transferred into our class, Miss Honeywell
barely mentioned anything about it. She just made sure there was an empty desk ready and waiting. But
today our classroom was hospital clean: the windows and blackboards were washed, the papers on the bulletin boards were lined
up perfectly, and there were even fresh flowers on her desk.
Jeez, who is this kid? The heir to the throne of Bulgaria?

There was a loud knock on our door. I thought it was the Crown Prince for sure, but then Futterman’s big head appeared on
the other side of the glass. He waggled his finger for Miss Honeywell to join him in the hall.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, smoothing her hair on her way to the door. “In the meantime, get out your history books and
turn to chapter twelve. Y’all can get a head start on your reading assignment for tonight.”

Fair enough.
I cracked open my book and began reading.

The earliest castles were made of wood and first appeared in Britain sometime after 1066, when William the Conqueror won the
Battle of Hastings….

I had “reflector brain.” That’s when you keep reading the same sentence over and over but the words don’t sink in. That’s
when you keep reading the same sentence over and over but the words don’t sink in. (Kidding.)