The Misfits (20 page)

IF YOU are the sort who wonders what becomes of the characters in a story after it's over, I will clue you in to the future.

Joe will end up living in New York City and he will be a famous writer. Mostly what he will write about is his own life, including what it was like growing up gay in the little town of Paintbrush Falls, New York. The name he will be known by is Joe Bunch.

Skeezie will wait five or six years and give Hello-mynameisSteffi a call. They will end up getting married and having five kids. Together, they will buy the Candy Kitchen and bring back the jukebox. The place will become known far and wide for its great food and fast service. He'll call her Steffi; she will never call him anything but Elvis.

It will take Addie awhile to figure out what she
wants to do. After getting three college degrees and spending some time traveling, she will end up teaching social studies in middle school. She will get her students all worked up over questions of right and wrong. Her teaching methods will be a bit unusual, which will result in her getting canned from the first school where she teaches, but she'll stay at the next school until she retires and she will be named Teacher of the Year a record seven times. Many students will be influenced by her. Some will even go into politics.

I guess I am the first one Addie influences this way, because I will go into politics, too. Years from now, people like Kevin Hennessey and Brittney Hobson will open their yearbooks and say, “You know who that is? That's Senator Robert Goodspeed. I went to school with him.”

But that's all a long way in the future. Right now, Addie and Joe and Skeezie and me, we've got to make it through seventh grade. And you know something? We will. I swear on a stack of pancakes.

FOR SKEEZIE'S SIDE OF THE STORY!

HERE'S A LOOK AT

ALSO KNOWN AS ELVIS

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When Your Dad Leaves, Part of Your Mom Leaves, Too

So I get home after hanging out at the Candy Kitchen with my friends, and my mom is waiting, already furious at me, and I haven't even done anything yet.

“You were supposed to be home thirty-seven minutes ago,” she goes.

“It's just five,” I say.

“It's five thirty-seven. If you wore the watch I bought you, you would know that. And you would also know that I have to be at the store in twenty-three minutes. I needed to talk to you, Skeezie. You said you'd be back in time so we could talk. And I need your help with supper for the girls.”

“I'll make supper for the girls, geez. Since when
don't
I make supper for the girls?” It's true. I could have my own reality show:
Underage Chef.

“Fine. But we still need to talk.” My mom is in the bathroom off the kitchen while she says this, tossing back a couple of drugstore-brand aspirins and sighing after she closes the medicine cabinet and catches sight of her own tired face in the mirror. “God, I look old,” she says. I have to agree, although I know enough not to say it out loud.

My mom used to look like the kind of mom your friends would meet and say they couldn't believe she was your mom. She used to be young and pretty. She used to look happy. Now she looks old, and if she is happy, I guess I don't know what that looks like anymore.

“So talk,” I say.

“Right. In the two minutes I have before I have to leave. Okay, Mr. I Won't Wear a Watch . . .”

“Because you bought it at the dollar store and it broke.”

“Whatever. In the two minutes we have together, here's what I have to say. You're not in school, we can't afford a vacation, and I need help because there's stuff around the house that needs fixing. I
need
you to get a job, Skeezie.”

“I know. You've only told me, like, a hundred times. But I'm thirteen. What kind of job am I going to get? And besides, what about my
unpaid
job as full-time nanny to your snot-nosed daughters?”

“That's just helping out. And talk nice.”

“Yeah, well, who's going to cater to Megan's every wish if you and me are both working all the time? Who's going to hear her snap her fingers?”

(I do not pause to consider that finger snapping may run in the family.)

My mom puts on her lipstick like it's the last thing she wants to do. “For god sakes, Skeezie. I'm talking about a
part-time
job to bring in a few extra dollars. You keep half, give half to me for the house. You want to keep listening to the back door banging every time we forget to latch it? You
like
having to use the plunger every other time we go to the john?”

“Okay, okay,” I say, deciding not to point out the lipstick she just got on her teeth. “But there are child labor laws. You never heard of those?”

Now she begins to cry, and I immediately feel guilty about the lipstick, even though I had nothing to do with putting it there. “What about
mom
labor laws?” she chokes out. “I never knew that when I went into labor with you I'd never get out of it!”

“If Dad hadn't left . . . ,” I start to say.

“Stop right there! If your dad hadn't left, we might have killed each other by now. It's a lose-lose, Skeezie, so let's not go down that road, okay? Let's just leave it. And now
I've
got to leave. Our two minutes of quality time is up. Please. Find something, anything, just help me out here. Talk to Bobby.
He
works to help
his
family out.”

I hate it when she does that. Brings in my friends as role models. It's so stinkin' unfair.

She glances in the mirror, yanks a tissue off the top of the toilet tank from the crocheted box she made back in better times, and wipes the lipstick off her teeth. And what can I say, she looks so sad and even older than she did two minutes ago that I tell her, “Okay, Mom. I'll get a job. I'll help.”

I feel older now, too.

The back door slams. And as soon as she hears the car start up in the driveway, Megan shouts from her bedroom, “What's for supper? I'm starving!”

I hate my dad so much I want to punch the wall. I look into the bathroom mirror, half expecting to see my mom still there, but what I see is my own skinny face with its most recent acne acquisitions and an expression I don't even recognize. I don't like the me that's looking back.

“Spaghetti!” I shout.

“Again?”

Jessie, who's five and not nine-going-on-twenty-five like Megan, appears out of nowhere, grabs me around my legs, and squeezes real hard. “I
love
spaghetti!” she says, like it's “I love you!” I wish my friends could see this moment of Jessie hugging my legs, but not what went before it. I don't want them to see that. I don't want them to see the me I just saw in the mirror.

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BOOKS BY JAMES HOWE

Teddy Bear's Scrapbook (with Deborah Howe)
A Night Without Stars
Morgan's Zoo
There's a Monster Under My Bed
There's a Dragon in my Sleeping Bag
The Watcher
Horace and Morris but Mostly Dolores
Horace and Morris join the Chorus (but what about Dolores?)

BUNNICULA SERIES

Bunnicula (with Deborah Howe)
Howliday Inn
The Celery Stalks at Midnight
Nighty-Nightmare
Return to Howliday Inn
Bunnicula Strikes Again!

TALES FROM THE HOUSE OF BUNNICULA

It Came from Beneath the Bed!

Invasion of the Mind Swappers from Asteroid 6!

Howie Monroe and the Doghouse of Doom

Howie Monroe and the Screaming Mummies of the Pharaoh's Tomb

SEBASTIAN BARTH MYSTERIES

What Eric Knew

Stage Fright

Eat Your Poison, Dear

Dew Drop Dead

PINKY AND REX SERIES

Pinky and Rex

Pinky and Rex Get Married

Pinky and Rex and the Spelling Bee

Pinky and Rex and the Mean Old Witch

Pinky and Rex Go to Camp

Pinky and Rex and the New Baby

Pinky and Rex and the Double-Dad Weekend

Pinky and Rex and the Bully

Pinky and Rex and the New Neighbors

Pinky and Rex and the School Play

Pinky and Rex and the Perfect Pumpkin

Pinky and Rex and the Just-Right Pet

EDITED BY JAMES HOWE

The Color of Absence: 12 Stories about Loss and Hope

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places,and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First Aladdin Paperbacks edition May 2003

Text copyright © 2001 by James Howe

ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children's Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

All rights reserved, including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.
Designed by Ann Bobco
Cover design by Russell Gordon
Cover Photograph by Laura Hanifin
The text of this book is set in Meta Book.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Howe, James, 1946–
The misfits / by James Howe.
p. cm.

Summary: Four students who do not fit in at their small-town middle school decide to
create a third party for the student council elections to represent all students who
have ever been called names.
ISBN-13: 978-0-689-83955-9 (hc.)
ISBN-10: 0-689-83955-3 (hc.)
[1. Schools—Fiction. 2. Elections—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Teasing—Fiction.]
1. Title.

PZ7.H8377227 Mg 2001
[Fic]—dc21 00-066390
ISBN-10: 0-689-83956-1 (Aladdin pbk.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-689-83956-6 (Aladdin pbk.)
eISBN-13: 978-1-442-44942-8
1210 OFF