The Big One-Oh (14 page)

What could we talk about?
Monsters & Maniacs?
The weather? Her job in the Nurse's Office? Not one of them seemed right for the moment.

But I had to say
something.

Okay, you know how sometimes your mouth can say words that your brain wasn't even planning on? And when they fly out and you hear them out there in the world, you can't
believe
what you've just said?

That's what I did.

“Jennifer?”

She looked up.

“Yeah?”

“You wanna come to my birthday party?”

I know, I know! Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest! I was all three.

I
knew
my birthday party had been cancelled.

I
knew
I was supposed to be un-inviting my guests.

And I
knew
that, without Mom's help, I could never
ever throw a party on my own!!!

But when, very quietly, Jennifer answered, “I would like that, Charley,” you know what?

I knew I had to.

 

 

So my birthday party was back on again.

I felt pretty great about my wild decision almost all the way home, until I stopped in the middle of traffic when a terrifying realization hit me:
now I would need a cake.
And napkins. And noisemakers. And decorations. And all those things cost money!

But I had none.

Without a job, neither did Lorena. Garry wasn't speaking to me. And I sure couldn't ask Mom.

So how could I possibly get some cash in the two weeks until my birthday?

That night I fell asleep with that question burning my brain; I tossed and turned in distress until, about three A.M., I woke up with an idea that was so amazing—and so horrible at the same time—that I didn't know whether to jump up and down or to curl up and cry.

I would sell my
Monsters & Maniacs.

I mean, comic books are
big business,
right? There's always some story in the news about a collector—of comic books or coins or baseball cards or something—who sells his entire “lifetime collection” and gets paid enough money to buy a big jet and a small island. So I knew I was sitting on a gold mine.

When I made up my mind, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach, but I also knew that selling my comics was the only possible solution.

 

 

The next day after school, I loaded my plastic bins of
Monsters & Maniacs
into Mom's wheelbarrow and rolled them over to The Comic Soup, where I had bought them in the first place. And though I was sad, my head was spinning with visions of all the birthday goodies I would now be able to buy with the stacks of cash I would soon hold in my hot little hands.

Unfortunately, the staff at The Comic Soup didn't see things that way.

Gene the Bean—he's called that because he's tall and skinny, and because he dyes his long, stringy hair green—looked over my booty and called across the racks and racks of comics.

“Hey, Zandar, check it out: Charley's selling his stash.”

Zandar is the other clerk at The Comic Soup; “Zandar” is not his real name, but he read it in a comic book when he was, like, eight, and he's been Zandar ever since.

“Ooh, what've we got here?” Zandar asked, scratching his big belly through his
Star Trek
T-shirt.

“It's all my
Monsters & Maniacs,
” I said proudly. “A lifetime collection.”

Zandar and Gene the Bean burst out laughing.

“What?” I asked.

“Charley,” chuckled Zandar. “You're what? Seven? Eight?”

“I'm nine,” I said, defiant.

“Even so,” explained Gene the Bean, “that's not much of a lifetime. What I mean to say is: your ‘lifetime collection's' not much of a collection.”

I was stunned. “So, wait! You don't want to buy them?”

They both shrugged.

“You come back after collecting for thirty or forty years,” said Zandar, “and I promise we'll pay you a bundle.”

I hung my head. “I can't wait that long.”

“Why do you want to sell them anyway?” asked Gene the Bean. “
Monsters & Maniacs
is truly smokin'!”

“I need money,” I said. “For my birthday party. Next Saturday's my Big One-Oh.”

“Whoa,” they both sighed. Then they exchanged a
“what a shame!”
look and shook their heads.

Before they could pity me any more, I picked up the wheelbarrow handles and was starting out of the store when Zandar suddenly called out, “Hey, wait a second, Charley!” He turned to Gene the Bean, snapping his fingers. “That phone call you got . . . that collector in Chicago? What was he looking for?”

“Oh! Right you are!” exclaimed Gene the Bean. He rushed behind the counter and grabbed a note that had been taped to the cash register.

“
Monsters & Maniacs,
Issue 48,” he read.

Zandar turned to me. “You got Issue 48?”

“Have I got Issue 48?!” I practically shouted, ripping open the exact plastic bin in which it was filed. I plucked the comic book out of its pile and held it up, triumphant. “You mean ‘The Car of Tomorrow . . . It Seats Four AND
EATS MANY MORE!!!
' ”

That's the one that was going to be the cover of my birthday cake!

“Bingo!” cried Gene the Bean.

“Way to go, Charley!” Zandar chimed in. “You want to sell it?”

Zandar's question threw a bucket of cold water all over my excitement. I mean, Issue 48 is truly one my favorites.
Of all time!!

But it was also my only chance to make any cash.

So, with a lump in my throat, I held Issue 48 for the last time. Zandar and Gene the Bean were respectfully quiet while I took an extra long look at its cover and traced my finger around the screaming faces of the victims being devoured by their family car.

And then, I handed it over.

 

 

As I wheeled home with what remained of my lifetime collection of
Monsters & Maniacs
, I was actually kind of glad that my comics weren't collectors' items—yet. And I was glad that in my pocket I had enough money to buy one box of cake mix and one can of frosting.

But that was all.

For every other part of my House of Horrors Birthday Party, I realized, I was going to have to get creative.

I crawled through our cupboards and closets and even climbed up into the attic to see what I could find to create spine-tingling, bone-chilling experiences at my party. I hauled out the Christmas decorations, the plastic turkey Mom sets out every Thanksgiving, and even the stuffed bunnies that Mom puts around the house when Easter comes.

Nothing scared me.

I pulled apart the fluffy cotton of the Christmas tree skirt that we use every year, because I thought that maybe the wispy cotton strands would remind people of cobwebs.

Not scary.

I tried wrapping the plastic turkey in gauze bandages, as if he'd been mummified instead of stuffed.

Not scary.

I even tried tying black ribbon around the necks of the Easter bunnies, thinking that I could hang them from the living room ceiling, as if they had been strung up as punishment for some grisly crime.

Interesting.

But not scary.

 

 

At school, however, I was in heaven. For the first time in my life, kids greeted me in the halls and waved to me on the playground. I felt like an Invisible Man who suddenly appears in the middle of a vast and appreciative crowd.

Donna and Dina and Dana cleared a place for me to sit with them at lunch, and Leo winked at me as he hobbled by on his crutches. Darryl challenged me to a chess game, which he won with seven moves, but I didn't care. Even Cougar and Scottie didn't smash me into walls anymore.

And Jennifer had trimmed her chopped-up hairdo into a tamer red halo. I thought it looked a lot better than it did before Cougar's stunt, but I wasn't going to tell her that; she was already behaving like a puppy who'd had too much coffee. Every day she'd rush up to my locker and give me the countdown.

“Three days to go, Charley! Then two! Then
one!
You must be so excited! Do you get rashes when you get excited? I do . . .
Look!
”

Jennifer almost succeeded in making me forget that, except for a devil's food cake with dark chocolate frosting, I would have nothing else to offer at my party.

 

 

The question of what I could
possibly
do to entertain my guests hung over my head like a sword suspended by dental floss, until finally, while walking Boing Boing past Garry's house late at night, I remembered how Garry had once offered to lend me his copy of
My Principal Is a Maniac!

The thought of actually having to face Garry, though, absolutely terrified me. So I turned away and was heading for home when Garry's words popped back into my head again.

“Do
not
let fear rule your life, Charley.”

So the next afternoon—on the day before my birthday—I took a deep breath and went over to Garry's.

 

 

When I walked into his backyard, he was at the redwood table, carefully painting a latex stab wound. It looked awesome.

Garry glanced up. I was sure he could hear my heart thumping against my ribs, that's how nervous I was. Once he saw it was me, Garry didn't say anything; he just went back to work. But he didn't ask me to leave, which I thought was a good sign.

“Did you make more scars and stuff?” I asked, indicating some of the other pieces he had lying around.

“I made what I could. Someone used up a lot of my latex,” he answered quietly.

“Sorry,” was all I could manage. Then I remembered why he was making all these wounds in the first place.

“Oh! When do you show your stuff? To the people at the theater place?”

“My audition?” he said. “My audition's tomorrow afternoon.”

“Oh. Same as my party.” I tried not to sound disappointed. Then I slapped on a smile and said, “You know you're invited.”

“Thanks, but, like I said, I'm busy,” he sighed. After he worked a little more, he added, “Besides . . . your mom doesn't want me around.”

“Oh, she won't be there,” I blurted out.

Garry looked up. “Huh?”

“Yeah. She has to work.”

“But she's still letting you have a party?”

“She doesn't know.”

That stumped Garry. “You're throwing your own birthday party?”

I nodded.

He shook his head. “That's not right. You . . . you shouldn't have to throw your own party. Not your Big One-Oh.”

I could only shrug. “If I don't, who will?”

He looked at me for a long time, and in his eyes, I thought I saw the old Garry. My friend Garry.

It was just for a moment, but I'd swear it was there.

And later, when I asked to borrow
My Principal Is a Maniac!
, Garry loaned it to me, and I didn't even have to beg.

 

 

As I left with Garry's DVD in my hands, I had a really good feeling that his movie was going to save my party.

What I was planning to do was shut all the drapes in the house and lead my guests into the darkened living room. (That way they'd never see that there were no decorations.)

Then I'd put on
My Principal Is a Maniac!
, during which I would scream,
“Boo!”
or
“He's got a knife!”
before each of the scary parts and hope that my guests would jump and yelp in shock and surprise.

Afterward, I'd quickly feed them some cake and send them home before they realized what a dud my party turned out to be.

It wasn't much, but it just might fill a few hours.

I stopped inside the front door and slipped Garry's DVD under my sweatshirt; I didn't want to have to explain to Mom that I had disobeyed her order about going to Garry's. That's when I heard Lorena yell,
“Mom!”
from the living room.

“What?!”
Mom answered from upstairs.

“What's wrong with the DVD player?”
whined Lorena.

The blood drained from my face.

“Why?”
said Mom, coming down the stairs.
“What's it doing?”

“It won't eject my DVD of
Mean Girls.
”

“Well, don't use a screwdriver!”
Mom cried.
“It's not ours.”