The Book of Joby (28 page)

Having once again proven faster and more agile than seemed possible from the look of him, Jamie had made the final cut. But Joby’s weird new klutziness had been in full force; and, to everyone’s astonishment, Mr. Bingham had suggested afterward that he sit the season out.
Joby Peterson! King of the Roundtable!
Ben could still hardly believe it. Mr. Bingham had assured Joby, where others would hear, that boys often went through an
awkward phase
when their growth started, and that Joby’s troubles only meant he was on his way to being tall and powerful sooner than most of his friends. But that hadn’t helped much, and now Joby sat between Benjamin and Jamie, head hung in shame.

Benjamin punched Joby’s shoulder companionably, and said, “Mr. Bingham was right, Joby. You’re gonna be wipin’ us
all
off the court
next
year—lookin’ right down at the tops of our heads—even Lindwald’s.”

“Course you will,” Jamie agreed. “Who said everybody’s gotta be a hot-shot athlete like Ben here anyway? You got lots of other good points. Your brain, for one, no matter what Miss Stackly says. And meantime, you need any protectin’ ’til your growth kicks in, I’m yer man! I ain’t forgot what you did for me last year.”

Joby stood abruptly, and walked away without speaking or looking back.

“What!?”
Jamie called after him. “I just meant—”

“Give it up, Lindwald!”
Benjamin growled. Really, it was hard not to hit him. If Benjamin hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn Jamie was humiliating Joby on purpose.

Laura endured this latest meeting of the so-called
Roundtable
daring everyone to notice the pointed scowl on her face. No one had. Their club was back in fashion, but fashion seemed to be exactly the problem. Who was cool, who was not, whose tennis shoes were coolest; that’s all anyone wanted to talk about now. Should the knights get special T-shirts made? Should they all get identical haircuts? To Laura’s irritation, Lindwald was among the worst practitioners of the Roundtable’s new conceits. He’d somehow gone from being merely accepted last spring to being the Chief of Status Police this fall, with Johnny Mayhew backing up his every decree.

They’d hardly done any secret missions yet this year. The two proposed that afternoon had been nothing but personal payback schemes against kids who had ticked off some so-called
knight.
With Benjamin’s support, Joby had managed to get them both voted down, but it made Laura sick! Nobody but Joby and Benjamin even seemed to remember what secret missions had been invented for, and since Joby’s failure to make the basketball team, no one paid him half as much attention.

Her thoughts returned to the meeting only when Joby stood up to speak, looking, Laura had to admit, far less confident than he once had.

“As most of you prob’ly heard already,” Joby began, “Lucy Beeker’s folks split up last week, and you prob’ly seen how much Lucy’s been cryin’ since then, so we all know she could use some cheerin’ up.”

The room’s sudden silence was more embarrassed than attentive. Lucy was the school’s number-one social outcast. Heavier than Lindwald, and shorter to boot, she talked like a baby, and wore thrift-store clothes. Her brittle blond hair was a fuzzy rat’s nest. She’d already been out of school twice that year for head lice, and they said her dandruff rained down on people from clear across the classroom. Laura knew what Joby was going to say as well as anyone, but, unlike the others, she was proud of him.

“I think we should do a secret mission for her,” Joby said. The silence became suffocating. Laura was bursting to get up and second the idea, but she had learned by now that support from the Roundtable’s only girl usually hurt Joby more than it helped.

Peter Blackwell stood and said, “Lucy’s . . . pretty weird, Joby. People’d think we’re dweebs.”

Laura was halfway to her feet, not caring what it might cost Joby or anyone else, when, to her astonishment, Jamie Lindwald stood, staring hard at Peter, and said, with a frighteningly quiet voice,
“So what, butthead?”

“Jamie?” Peter said, looking frightened and surprised.

“Only popular kids need help? ’S’at whatcha mean, ya little prick?” Jamie asked, balling his fists.

“No,” Peter quavered. “It’s . . . I just—”

Jamie turned to Joby. “I’m in.”

Looking chagrined, Benjamin stood up as well. “Me too.”

“I think it’s a great idea!” Laura announced, shooting to her feet.

For a minute, no one else moved or spoke, and Laura wondered if “the girl” should have waited longer to jinx it with her endorsement.

“I’ll do it,” said Duane Westerlund, looking far from thrilled as everyone turned to stare at him.

“Good,” Joby said, looking at no one in particular. “That should be enough. Any ideas on what we should do for her?”

“Next Friday’s her birthday,” Lindwald said.

The silence that followed this announcement was purely astonished.
Jamie Lindwald knew when Lucy Beeker’s birthday was?

“We should get some stuff together,” Jamie went on, “balloons ’n stuff, and fix up her desk maybe, so she’s surprised when she comes to school.”

“But when are we gonna do it?” Duane protested. “Her mom always drops her off way before class, and Lucy waits around to get picked up again ’til five o’clock sometimes—right on the front steps! Miss Stackly’s room is in the front hallway. It’s not like Lucy’s not gonna see us.”

“I can take care of that,” Lindwald replied, but would say nothing of how.

They’d all been pretty startled when Jamie finally told them his
simple plan
for evading Lucy’s attention. While Laura, Benjamin, and Duane had agreed to help get the signs and decorations together, they had sheepishly declined to break into the school with him later that night to put them up, despite Jamie’s assurances that he knew how to get in without damaging anything. Joby had wanted to back out too, but the mission had been his idea, and he wasn’t going to let Jamie go it all alone after the way Jamie had backed him at the meeting. So, after telling his folks he was going to study at Benjamin’s, he’d come here to school with the sack of balloons and crepe paper to join Lindwald under cover of darkness behind a row of hedges that grew against the building, sneaking toward Miss Stackly’s classroom windows.

When they got there, Lindwald grinned back at Joby, then reached up to grab a short length of wire hanging from one of the metal sills. When he tugged it, the window tilted open, freeing a small slip of paper Jamie had left to keep the latch from catching. Joby almost laughed in relief. He’d been afraid Jamie might break the glass or something. Jamie pulled himself up through the window, then helped Joby in. Navigating by the glow of street-lights, they went straight to Lucy’s desk and got started.

They had all the balloons inflated and taped to the desk, and were just starting on the signs and crepe paper when Jamie suddenly gasped and lunged for the floor. Joby looked up and saw the red
flash, flash, flash,
reflecting palely off the far wall.

“Get down!”
Jamie rasped.
“Someone called the cops!”

Joby dove for the floor, and hissed,
“Who? Why?”

“ ’Cause we broke in, stupid!”

“But how did they know?” Joby insisted. “Are there alarms?”

“I don’t know,” Jamie growled, “but we gotta get outta here! Don’t stand up. They’ll see you. Crawl to the door, and run for the back of the school.”

“But the hall doors are locked,” Joby whispered, feeling drops of sweat trickle down under his shirt as he crawled after Jamie toward the classroom door. “How will we get out?”

“The doors only lock from outside,” Jamie replied. “ ’Cause of fires. From inside, you just push ’em open.”

Scrambling out into the corridor, they got up and ran toward the front hallway intersection, then turned down a second hallway toward the school’s back exit, but slid to a halt when they got there, staring at the heavy chain wrapped and padlocked around the inside handles.

“What now?”
Joby groaned.

“Another window,” Jamie said without hesitation. “Come on.”

He turned and bolted toward Mr. Bingham’s room, but as they entered the room, a flashlight beam swept the glass from outside. Lindwald threw himself against the wall beside the windows, put a finger to his lips, and waved Joby frantically toward a narrow closet to his left. Joby dashed to the closet, and stepped inside. Feeling surprisingly messy piles of stuff around him totter and shift as he brushed against them, Joby held absolutely still, trying not even to breathe, for fear that his treacherous clumsiness might cause an avalanche and give them away, but it was not
his
body that betrayed them.

From out in the classroom came a horrendous crash of breaking glass.
Without thinking, Joby stuck his head out of the closet to see what had happened, and had only an instant to see Jamie standing sullenly amidst the tangle of Mr. Bingham’s huge American flag, its heavy toppled pole jammed through the broken pane, before a flashlight beam hit Joby square in the face.

“Stay right there, son!” came an angry, authoritative voice from just behind the beam. “Don’t move a
muscle.
”

Waiting mutely beside his parents, Joby stared at the Thanksgiving decorations plastered around the school office. The upcoming holiday seemed utterly absurd as he sat, still trying to map the full dimensions of his disaster.

The night before, while Lindwald and one officer had waited out in the patrol car, the other officer had stood in Joby’s living room asking his stunned parents if they
wanted
their son “detained.” After all the other trouble he’d been in that fall, Joby had been afraid they might say yes, but after assurances from his parents that Joby would be severely punished, the policeman had left him in their “custody,” warning that the school might wish to pursue “criminal prosecution” of Joby’s “offense.”

When the officer had gone, Joby had tried to explain about the secret mission to cheer up Lucy Beeker, but his parents had just stared at him as if he were some creature left by aliens in place of their real child. And why not? He had lied about going to Benjamin’s house. Why should they believe anything he said ever again? When they’d sent him to his room, he’d left the door ajar and listened to them argue about things Miss Stackly had said about him, and, to his deep dismay, whether or not to take away his book about Arthur!

“She’s right, Miriam,” his father had insisted, coming up the stairs toward Joby’s room. “The whole thing has gone too far!” Joby had just managed to hide his beloved book behind the bed headboard before his father barged into the room, demanding that he hand it over. When Joby burst into tears instead, his father had insisted that Arthur was not, had
never been,
real, and that Joby needed to start learning to live in the real world. This had only made Joby cry harder. “Blubbering’s not going to fix anything, Joby!” his father had scolded. “Sooner or later, a boy’s got to stand up and learn to be a man!” He had stormed out after that without remembering the book, and Joby had gone to bed feeling more miserable than he’d ever known a person could feel.