I was staring through the window of Dad’s van when I saw the shopping cart, stranded like a lost dog at the corner of Sunbury Street and Lower Falls Road. The green plastic trim and the white Food Giant logo identified it as one of ours. Maybe a customer had wheeled it, illegally, to a house around the corner, unloaded it, and then wheeled it back to that spot in an effort to say, I didn’t really steal this. I was just borrowing it. You can have it back now.
Whatever. It wouldn’t be there for long. Bobby Smalls would pass this way in ten minutes. He would spot the cart and then comment bitterly about the person who had left it there, since he’d have to retrieve it as his first job of the day.
Dad turned right and our van bumped across the dark expanse of blacktop in front of the supermarket. The Food Giant sign was still in its low-wattage setting, glowing like a rectangular night-light for the town of Blackwater. Dad is the general manager of this Food Giant, and he spends most of his waking life there. Although it was still an hour before opening and the lot was empty, he backed our Dodge Caravan into an outer space—a requirement for all employees. He asked, “Do you want me to leave it running, Tom?”
“No. I’ll just open a window.”
“Okay. I’ll leave the keys in case you change your mind. I’ll be about fifteen minutes, provided the system is up.”
I yawned, “Okay,” and lowered the electric window before he could turn the key.
Plan A was that Dad would drive me to school, which meant I would get there way early, before anybody, which meant that no one would see me being dropped off by a parent. This was infinitely better than plan B.
In plan B, Mom would drop me off later, in front of everybody, which meant that I might as well be wearing a yellow patrol boy vest and carrying a Pokémon lunch box.
But first we’d had to stop at the Food Giant because the Centralized Reporting System had been down the night before, so Dad hadn’t been able to input all his sales figures, reorders, et cetera, and send them to the corporate office. In theory, he would input those figures now, and we would be gone before the opening shift arrived at 6:45.
I watched him walk across the large, rolling parking lot. The Food Giant was built, like much of Blackwater, on the uneven landscape of Pennsylvania coal country. If a shopping cart got away from you in this lot, it could roll for fifty yards, building up to a speed of twenty miles per hour before it crashed into a parked vehicle. That could do some serious damage, as any cart retriever would tell you.
Dad disabled the alarm, unlocked the automatic doors, and slipped inside. I opened my PSAT prep book, hoping to get in a few minutes of study time.
But that was not to be.
First, I looked up and saw Bobby’s mother drop him off, fifteen minutes early, as usual. He was wearing his green Food Giant slicker in case of rain. (Bobby was always prepared. The Boy Scouts just said it; Bobby lived it.) After listening impatiently to some final words from his mother, he pushed away from the Explorer and started walking back toward Sunbury Street and that abandoned cart. Mrs. Smalls drove on to her job at the Good Samaritan Hospital.
Then, just as I had returned to my book, a louder engine sound disturbed me.
A black tow truck, driving too fast, bounced across the parking lot and took a hard left at the ATM. Its high-mounted headlights flashed right into my eyes. Then the driver killed the lights and backed up to the front of the store.
A man in a hooded sweatshirt and a black ski mask jumped out on the passenger side. He reached into the back of the truck and rolled out a metal hook so large that I could see it clearly from two hundred feet away. He wedged the hook into a slot in the ATM and gave the driver a hand signal. The truck lurched forward, creating a god-awful sound.
I was now sitting bolt upright and staring at them. They were trying to rip the ATM out of the wall and make off with it—steal the whole thing and crack it open later for the cash inside.
Suddenly, to my right, I saw a figure approaching. It was Bobby Smalls. He came running back clumsily in his green rain slicker, without the cart. He started waving his arms and shouting at the robbers.
I thought, Oh no, Bobby. Not now! Keep away from them! I slid over into the driver’s seat and grabbed the steering wheel, trying to think what to do. I started pounding on the horn, making as big a racket as I could.
The driver, dressed in the same type of dark disguise, stepped out of the truck. He was holding a strange object. It took me a few seconds to realize what it was—a compound bow. He then produced a feathered arrow, nocked it, and aimed it right at Bobby’s short, advancing body.
The beeping horn got Dad’s attention. He appeared behind the glass in the entranceway, looking bewildered. He pulled the door open and stepped outside, holding out one hand toward Bobby like a traffic cop trying to get him to halt.
The bowman changed his aim from Bobby to Dad and then back again. Was he going to shoot one of them? Or shoot one, reload, and get the other? Or was he just trying to scare them?
I couldn’t take the chance. I cranked the car key and hit the gas pedal. The old van roared like an angry lion. I yanked at the gearshift, still revving the engine, and dropped it into drive. The van took off with a squeal of spinning tires and rocketed across the parking lot.
The bow-and-arrow guy turned toward me and froze like a deer caught in the headlights. Then he aimed the bow right at me. I thought, Can an arrow pierce the windshield? He must have asked himself that same question and decided it could not. He lowered his weapon, tossed it into the cab, and climbed back into the driver’s seat.
I continued to accelerate toward the truck, closing the gap quickly, like I was going to ram it. (Honestly, I had no idea what I was going to do.) By now, the other man had unhooked the cable and had scrambled inside the cab, too.
The truck lurched forward and drove right at me, like in a deadly game of chicken. I hit the brakes and steered to the right, throwing the van into a wild skid, stopping just feet away from the frozen-in-place figure of Bobby Smalls.
The tow truck continued across the parking lot and shot across Route 16, accelerating away into the darkness.
I turned off the van’s engine, threw open the door, and hopped out.
Suddenly everything was quiet.
Dad came running from his spot by the door. He had a frantic look in his eyes. He started waving his hands back and forth to get Bobby’s attention. “Bobby! Bobby, are you okay?”
Bobby didn’t answer. He was fumbling around under the green plastic slicker. He pulled out a cell phone and held it up. “I got to call my mom.”
Dad nodded. His face was perspiring. “Yes. Yes.” He turned to me. “And you, Tom? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“That was smart thinking—honking the horn like that.”
“Thanks.”
“But driving right at them? Where they could shoot you? Not so smart.”
“I thought they were going to shoot Bobby. And you.”
Dad looked at me curiously, like the second part of that had never occurred to him. “Me?” He shook all over, like he’d had a sudden chill. “Well, thanks, then.”
Bobby was now angry at his phone. His stubby fingers had punched in the wrong number. He was about to dash it to the ground when Dad stepped forward and calmly took it away. “I’ll call your mother, Bobby.”
Dad quickly pressed some phone keys. Bobby seemed confused. “You know her number?”
“Sure. I call her all the time.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“To tell her what a good job you’re doing.”
Bobby’s eyes widened upon hearing the praise. He loved praise. He thrived on it.
Dad spoke into the phone. “Hello, Mrs. Smalls? It’s Gene Coleman at the Food Giant. Yes. Yes, Bobby’s okay. But we’ve had an… an incident here, an attempted robbery. Bobby helped to chase the robbers away.”
Dad listened for a moment. It seemed like he was getting an earful. “Sure. Sure, I understand. We’ll probably be outside by the front door.” He hung up and told Bobby, “Okay. Your mother’s on her way.”
“What for?”
“To check to see that you’re all right.”
“I’m all right.”
“I know. She just wants to make sure. Can I use your phone to call the police?”
“Yeah. Go ahead.”
Dad called 911 and spoke to an operator. I craned my head forward to make eye contact with Bobby. I asked him, “What were you thinking there, dude? You could have gotten killed.”
Bobby answered loudly, impatiently, as if the answer was obvious. “They’re thieves!”
“Yes, they’re thieves. I’ll bet they’re murderers, too. I’ll bet they’d have murdered you if you’d gone a step closer.”
“I’m not afraid of stupid thieves!”
“He had a bow and arrow, Bobby. That’s a deadly weapon. You should be afraid of that. All you had was your cell phone.”
“If they’re so brave, why are they wearing ski masks and covering up with hoods? They’re just thieves, that’s all. Stupid thieves!”
Five minutes later, the police and Mrs. Smalls arrived, at the same moment, from opposite directions.
Two police officers got out of the car and split up. One interviewed Dad, Bobby, and me. The other examined the ATM and walked around the lot, looking for evidence.
I told the police officer what I knew, trying to sound no-nonsense and coplike: “It was a black tow truck. It didn’t say anything on the side. Two men were in it. They had ski masks on. They had a homemade bow. They had at least one arrow. They took off when I drove at them. They went out the same way they came in.”
Bobby gave a much more spirited account of what had happened, and of how stupid the two thieves were.
Mrs. Smalls took Bobby’s pulse, temperature, and blood pressure right there in the parking lot, much to his annoyance. She seemed satisfied with the results, but she did explain to my dad, “Bobby’s system is delicate, Mr. Coleman. It’s all part of Down’s syndrome. He may appear to be fine, but that can be deceiving. He can’t take too much stress. Down’s patients are very susceptible to heart attacks and strokes.”
My dad nodded solemnly. “Yes, ma’am. You do what you have to do with Bobby. Take him home for a rest if he needs it.”
Bobby threw up his hands in frustration, so his mother quickly added, “No. That won’t be necessary. But no more excitement today, Bobby. Okay? You take it slow today.”
Bobby grumbled, “Yeah, I’ll take it slow.” He pointed to the store. “I’ll be like Reg the Veg today. I’ll take it slow. Real slow.”
The sun was now rising behind the store. By seven, the back parking spaces started to fill in with employees from the early shift. Gert, the head baker, marched straight to the front door, with barely a sideways glance at us or the cops. So did Walter from customer service. Mitchell, the head of the meat department, veered over our way and slowed down to listen, but he never really stopped.
Uno did, though. He’s the assistant manager, and in charge of opening up. He looked at my dad and held his hands out wide, as if to say, What gives?
Reg the Veg stopped, too. He’s the produce manager. He pointed at the police car and whispered hoarsely, “WTF, man?”
I replied, “Robbery attempt. On the ATM.”
Reg started hollering, at no one in particular, “WTF, man! WTF!”
Uno, whose name is really John Rollnick, was a little more focused. “Did anybody get hurt, Tom?”
“No.” I added, “But Bobby could have. My dad, too. The robbers were ten yards away from them, and they had a compound bow.”
Uno shook his head. “Wow. A compound bow? I know guys who hunt with those. Do you think they were guys from around here?”
“I have no idea.”
I stood around talking to people for a while longer, telling them what I knew about the incident. Eventually, I heard the sound of a car creeping up behind me.
I turned and saw a green Taurus. My mom was at the wheel, and my sister, Lilly, was sitting next to her.
Plan B was obviously in effect. Dad must have called home.
I walked back to the Dodge van. It was straddling two spaces, like it had been left there in mid-skid. I pointed to the far side of the parking lot, calling to Mom, “Pick me up out by the road.” I climbed in, started the van, and drove it carefully to its original space.
Uno, Reg, and Bobby went inside to do their opening checklist jobs. Dad went in to call the corporate office. Mom got out of her car and hurried into the store behind him, and she didn’t come back out for a long time. (She was freaking out in there, I’m sure.)
I spent the time thinking about this: The day could have begun horribly, with two murders. Or even three if they had shot me through the windshield, or rammed me in that game of chicken. The Food Giant could have a huge gash in its front wall, where the ATM had been ripped out, and a lot of money stolen.
But none of that had happened.
I took a moment to give myself credit. I had driven the thieves away. It could have been a horrible day, or a much-worse-than-it-turned-out-to-be day. A day that destroyed lives.
Instead, from here on out, it would be a normal day.
Mom finally emerged, climbed into the Taurus, and drove up to get me. As I slid into the backseat, she caught my eye in the rearview mirror. “Your father said you did a brave thing, Tom.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“No, I’m not saying that. Your father is. I’m saying you did a dangerous thing. And an illegal thing. You don’t have a driver’s license.”
Lilly interrupted her. “What is this? You told me that Tom saved Dad’s life!”
“Yes, I did say that,” Mom conceded. “But I didn’t know the circumstances.”
“Circumstances! Who cares? He saved Dad’s life.”
That silenced Mom for a while, which is no small task. We exited the parking lot and headed west. Soon we were on Sunbury Street and passing our own house—a white, two-story duplex set in a row of houses and businesses. The buildings on Sunbury Street tend to reflect our mining-town roots. We have lots of churches and bars and funeral homes.
At the end of the street, Mom remarked casually, “Don’t forget that counseling-group meeting after school, Lilly.”
Mom has always been active in our schools, volunteering for anything and everything. Mom rode with Lilly and me on all of our field trips—east to Philadelphia and the Liberty Bell in fourth grade, west to Pittsburgh and the Fort Pitt Museum in fifth grade, and so on. She keeps in touch with the front office at the high school just in case she can chaperone something, just in case she’s needed. And that’s how she found out about the counseling group.
Lilly snarled, “I’m not going to that thing!”
We reverted to silence, but it was a heavier silence. Mom had approached dark territory. She had nearly spoken about the great unspoken event of the summer, which was this:
About two months ago, on a hot July night, Lilly and a friend from Lewis Street had been sitting on that friend’s porch. A policeman had approached them, claiming that a neighbor had complained about the smell of marijuana.
Lilly got scared and immediately confessed to the crime. The friend took a different approach. She denied any drug use, and claimed that Lilly was crazy and was always telling lies.
Then Lilly, offended by those comments, actually reached under her chair and pulled out the remains of a half-smoked joint. She held it up and protested, “I am not lying!” (She chose honor over self-preservation, I guess.)
The police called Mom to pick Lilly up, and the incident got submitted to the local district attorney’s office. He decided it was a waste of time to prosecute Lilly and her friend for such a small amount of marijuana, and the whole thing, legally, went away.
But that did not get Lilly off the hook. Not even close. Mom took her to our family physician, Dr. Bielski, who prescribed an antidepressant which I don’t think Lilly actually took. She probably could have used it, though, as Mom kept her a homebound prisoner for the rest of the summer, allowing her out only for work. (I was at home, too, but it was by choice. Dad had finally gotten me a Nintendo 64. I had spent the summer mastering Super Mario Brothers 3, Donkey Kong, and Mario Kart.) Then, just to be sure, Mom signed Lilly up for a substance-abuse counseling group after school.
Lilly tried, “I’m never going to smoke pot again. There’s no reason for me to go and sit with a bunch of stoners. That might actually be worse, you know? I’ll learn more about being a stoner. I’ll make stoner friends. I’ll learn how to lie about using drugs!”
Mom was not moved. “You’ll learn no such thing.”
Lilly tried, “You just don’t trust me!”
“That’s not it, Lilly,” Mom assured her. “Your father and I have both told you that we trust you—”
“Right. Then why are you still punishing me?”
“This counseling group isn’t about punishment. It’s about information. You need to understand about addiction.”
“Addiction? I took two puffs on a joint, and now I’m some crack whore standing on a street corner?”
“Don’t overdramatize.”
“I’m not an addict!”
“No. But your father was a drinker, until he quit. And your uncle Robby was a drug addict, and it killed him.”
I said, “I thought Uncle Robby was an alcoholic.”
“It’s all the same. He was addicted to alcohol and drugs. That’s what gets transmitted in your genes, and in your DNA; that’s part of your family inheritance. You could have the same addictive personality.”
Lilly suddenly turned to include me. “Okay. So it’s in Tom’s genes, too?”
I answered, too casually as it turned out, “Yeah. We both have some evil drug zombie inside us, waiting for the chance to bust out.”
Lilly announced, “Then shouldn’t Tom go to the meeting, too?”
Before I could even protest, Mom replied, “Yes. I think that’s a good idea.”
It was my turn to snarl. “I’m not going to that thing!”
Mom continued: “You should go to the first one, Tom. If you don’t think it’s worthwhile, then you can stop. Lilly, though, will keep going.”
“That’s not fair!”
“That’s what your father and I decided. You know that.”
“I have to keep going until when?”
“Until further notice.”
“Because of stupid Uncle Robby?”
Mom warned her, “Don’t speak ill of the dead.” She added, “I bet your cousin Arthur will be there. If he isn’t, he should be.”
Our cousin Arthur, Arthur Stokes, was Uncle Robby’s son. He’s kind of a thug. Mom was right on that count—he should be there. He could probably use some counseling.
But I could not.
I accepted my fate silently, though. I would attend one meeting, and one meeting only. I quickly changed the subject. “Arthur is in my English class.”
Mom made a face in the rearview mirror. “How can he be in your class? Isn’t he with you, Lilly? Isn’t he a senior?”
“He said the office screwed up his credits, and he has to take two English classes this year or he can’t graduate. He says it’s because he flunked Shakespeare.”
Lilly stopped sulking long enough to remark, “So he has to sit there with you ninth graders?”
“Yeah. Can you imagine the shame?”
She smiled unpleasantly. “I can’t.”
Mom asked, “So is Arthur going to graduate or not?”
“I guess so. If he does everything that Mr. Proctor says.”
“Well, that’s a shocker. People in that family rarely make it through high school, never mind college.”
Lilly challenged her. “That family? It’s your family, you know. His father was your brother.”
Mom backtracked. “I meant that side of the family.”
Lilly pressed her on it. “Oh? I’m sorry. Did someone on our side of the family, someone like you or Dad, just graduate from college? Did I miss that? If so, congratulations.”
Mom continued backtracking. “I meant that we both graduated from high school. Your father and me.”
Lilly corrected her. “It’s ‘Your father and I.’ ”
I decided to defend Mom. “It can be either one. Like ‘Your father and I want to talk to you, Lilly.’ Or ‘Don’t talk back to your father and me, Lilly.’ ”
She told me, “Butt out, Tom. Go read your vocabulary book,” and the morning’s conversation ended for good.
By then we were climbing up into the foothills. As any old person around here would tell you, we were on the road that the coal miners walked on their way to work. Some days, they’d walk up here before the sun rose, work all day in their subterranean world, and walk home after the sun had set.
Such reminiscences were supposed to inspire the kids around here, I guess. But inspire us to what? To be coal miners? They lived in a world without sun, like mole people; like people on the dark side of the moon. Not all that inspiring.
Soon the piles of black slag and rusting machinery gave way to a nicer landscape of farms, creeks, and woods. This was my favorite part of Blackwater (the part that wasn’t, technically, Blackwater).
Mom pulled into the Haven Junior/Senior High campus at 8:45, exactly thirty minutes late. She let us out next to the statue of the Battlin’ Coal Miner—our school mascot—a tall, thin guy with a pickax over his shoulder.
Lilly hurried up the ramp and disappeared under the arch of the entranceway. I took my time, gazing at the distant mountains from the high elevation of our campus.
It was a beautiful view, on a beautiful day, and I was in no hurry.
I still had about a half hour remaining with Coach Malloy. Coach Malloy, at least in our family, was known for two things—being the worst teacher at Haven and being the father of Reg “the Veg” Malloy, from the Food Giant. My school day began with ten minutes of Coach Malloy for homeroom, followed by fifty-five more minutes of him for social studies.
After a final look around, I entered the front office and stood at the junior high counter. None of the student assistants paid the slightest attention to me, like I was some invisible boy.
Finally, Jenny Weaver came out of the principal’s office. She was always nice to me (to everybody, really). She asked, “What do you need, Tom? A late pass?”
“Yes, please.”
She tore one off a pad and handed it to me. “There you go. See you in Mr. Proctor’s class.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Bye!”
I headed out into JH1, the junior high hallway, and was soon standing outside the door of my first-period class. I slipped in and found a seat in the back row. One glance up front confirmed what I had expected: Coach Malloy wasn’t looking. He never saw me come in. (This early in the year, he probably didn’t even know who I was.)
Coach Malloy was in the middle of a long, rambling complaint about “the geniuses who purchased whiteboards for Haven Junior/Senior High.” According to him, he was part of a “select group of teachers who had been given one of these boards to test.” But the test, at least for Coach, was not going well.
The whiteboard is a high-tech classroom aid. It’s about four feet high by six feet wide. It can be rolled on wheels. You write on it with special erasable markers.
The cool feature is that you can press a button and a vertical bar starts to glide across the surface. As it glides, it copies every word that has been written. Then you press another button, and it prints out a piece of paper showing exactly what was on the board.
Mr. Proctor writes on his a lot. If you miss a class, he gives you a printout of what the whiteboard said that day. That way, you know what you missed.
Coach Malloy uses his whiteboard like it’s a cork bulletin board. He attaches papers to it with Scotch tape, papers like the varsity football schedule. (Football’s a big deal in Pennsylvania, but not so much in Blackwater. That’s because we never win.)
Today’s assignment, attached to the top of Coach’s whiteboard, just said “Pick up homework sheet on way out.”
The class was devoted to one of Coach Malloy’s favorite lessons—supply and demand. He has been teaching this lesson for thirty years. (Lilly and my cousin Arthur had already told me about it.) He brings in fifty candy bars, which he sells to fifty students for ten cents each. He lets the students eat the candy in class. The next day, he brings in ten candy bars and, because many students now want them, he raises the price to a dollar, explaining, “It’s supply and demand. If demand goes up and supply stays down, the item becomes worth more.”
He’d started the lesson on Friday, so this was day two, the day when demand for candy bars exceeded supply. Some kids were surprised that the candy bars now cost a dollar.
And only those with extra money were able to afford them.
Okay. Got it. Lesson learned: no candy for the poor kids.
The class ended with Coach Malloy holding up a mason jar, opening it with a pop, and sticking in a spoon. He pulled out a faded-looking, shrunken strawberry and commented, with his mouth partly full, “My son Reg plants a garden every year. We have fresh fruit and vegetables in the summer, and we have canned fruit and vegetables in the winter.”
He put the jar down, wiped his mouth with a paper towel, and announced, “Come Thanksgiving week, I’ll be selling jars of fruit preserves just like this one. The cost will be five dollars per jar. The sale will begin on Monday, November nineteenth, and it will last through Wednesday, the twenty-first. So be ready with your money. Demand is always high, and supply is limited.”
The bell rang right after that, and the students started for the door. I walked up front to drop off my late pass and take a homework handout. Just as I got to the door, a big senior, a football player named Rick Dorfman, came in the other way. (Football players stop in to see Coach Malloy a lot.) He plowed right through, making me back up into the classroom.
Normally, I would let something like that go—him being a senior football player and me being a freshman bagger at the Food Giant. But today I felt like a hero. I had foiled a robbery. I had saved lives. So I heard myself snap at him, “Watch out!”
I started to go, but I immediately felt a hand grab the back of my shirt collar and snap my head back. The senior kept his grip on my shirt and turned me around so I was facing him, with my twisted-up collar now acting like a tourniquet around my neck. He spoke in a very low, quiet voice. “What was that, you little pissant?”
I looked toward Coach Malloy. If he knew this was happening, he didn’t let on. He spooned another strawberry into his mouth.
“I just asked you a question,” Dorfman reminded me.
I could feel the blood pooling in my head, above the tourniquet. I squirmed to break free, but his grip got even tighter. He opened his mouth to speak again, but then he suddenly stopped.
His eyes darted to a spot behind me. His grip on my collar loosened, so that I could breathe again.
I staggered and then turned around.
Arthur was standing there. My cousin, Arthur Stokes.
He was a menacing sight, as always, dressed in camo and black boots. His head was shaved as close as his face, which always had razor burns where he had scraped over his acne. His eyes looked like gray steel, and his voice was steely, too, when he said, “Is there a problem here, Dork-man?”
Dorfman’s mouth twitched upward into something between a smile and a sneer. He muttered, “Keep out of this, Stokes.”
Arthur pointed at my shirt collar. “Hands off the merchandise. Understand, Dork-man? Or I shall visit the wrath of God on you.”
Dorfman took a step back, out of Arthur’s reach. He nodded his head up and down, one time. “Forget it. Forget you.”
Arthur nodded his head the same way. “Forget me? That would be stupid. Real stupid. Of course, nobody ever said you weren’t stupid.”
Dorfman then turned his back on us and faced Coach Malloy. The coach had put down his fruit jar by now. He had clearly been watching, and listening, but he hadn’t done a thing to help.
Arthur jerked his head toward the hallway and told me, “Come on.”
We started down JH1 alongside a slow stream of kids. Most of them were about a foot shorter than Arthur. (I was only about six inches shorter, but with about half his muscle mass.) I kept craning and rubbing my neck, trying to loosen it up, trying to tell if Dorfman had snapped a vertebra.
Arthur finally asked, “You okay, cuz?”
I tried to keep my voice calm. “Sure. Yeah.”
He gave me a quick nod. “I heard what you did at the Food Giant today.”
“You did? How?”
“Buddy of mine in first period. He stopped in on his way to school. He talked to Uno.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Uno said you were like an action hero out there.”
“What?”
“Like Rambo.”
“Like Rambo? No.”
“Like James Bond in a spy-pimped minivan or something.”
I was surprised that I could laugh. “Yeah. Maybe that.”
“I didn’t know you could drive.”
“I can’t. Not for eighteen months.”
“But who’s counting, right?”
“Right.”
We arrived at Mr. Proctor’s door, and I followed Arthur inside. If Arthur was embarrassed to be there among ninth graders, it didn’t show.
Mr. Proctor is both a first-year teacher at Haven and a grad student at Blackwater University. He’s working on his master’s degree in English. He told us that he is from Philadelphia but he likes it better out here. (He didn’t say why, and I couldn’t imagine.)
Anyway, he teaches ninth-grade English. Ninth grade plus Arthur Stokes.
Last week, the first week of school, he got my attention by covering all of early American lit in just a day. He summed up the Puritans in two sentences: “They suffered, and they died. Let’s move on to something good.”
That was it. I loved it.
In Friday’s class, he had had a brief discussion with Arthur about Shakespeare. He asked him, “Mr. Stokes, what did you like or dislike about Shakespeare?”
“Uh, I disliked that I couldn’t understand it. It wasn’t in English.”
“Sure it was.”
“Yeah, but like Old English.”
“No. Shakespeare is neither Old nor Middle English. It is modern English.” He smiled. “Didn’t you at least like all the sex and violence?”
“Maybe if I’d understood it.”
“Because I need to assign some Shakespeare to you this year,” Mr. Proctor explained. “The rest of you will have to wait for it.” Then he pointed to someone in the back. “Yes?”
A girl’s voice answered, “I really like Shakespeare.”
“Good. What plays have you read?”
“All of them.”
Mr. Proctor sounded impressed. “You have? All thirty-seven?”
“Yes,” the girl assured him. She sounded very confident.
As those two continued to talk, Mr. Proctor passed out copies of a paperback book. When I got mine, I read the title, A Journal of the Plague Year.
“This is a classic novel by Daniel Defoe, who also wrote Robinson Crusoe,” Mr. Proctor explained. “In this novel, people are getting killed by something mysterious.” He switched to a spooky, horror-movie voice. “Is it God? Is it the devil?”
Then he answered his own question: “No. It is a disease that spreads through London in the year 1665.”
The confident girl from the back asked, “Did you say this is a novel?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s called a journal, and it reads like it’s nonfiction.”
“It does seem like nonfiction, yes. The author was in London that year, and he did keep a journal. What you are holding is a story based on all that, but written afterward. It is a work of fiction.”
I finally turned around to match that girl’s voice with a face. She was really cute. And smart. And, as I mentioned, confident.
Mr. Proctor held up a memo. “Before we begin, I want to tell you about a change in the language arts curriculum this year. You are expected to write a lot, about four thousand words per month.”
Arthur let out a low whistle.
A new kid in a very tight Pittsburgh Penguins T-shirt raised his hand. He asked, “How many words is that a day?”
“I don’t know. I’ll let you do the math. One way you can achieve that total, though, is to write a journal for me for extra credit. So pay attention as you read this book. Think about how Daniel Defoe documented the history of a people and a place.”
The Pittsburgh Penguins kid asked, “What if you don’t have a journal?”
Mr. Proctor smiled. “A journal can be anything—a notebook, a pad, even loose papers that you clip together.”
The kid seemed relieved.
Arthur muttered to me, “No way. That’s too much work.”
But I didn’t think so. I had a new notebook from the Food Giant school supplies section, a small one that fit in my back pocket. I kind of liked the idea of a journal.
The Pittsburgh Penguins kid asked, “What if we write a whole lot and then we lose it?”
Mr. Proctor squinted at him, but then he explained patiently, “You can just tell me you did it. I’ll believe you.”
The kid sounded amazed. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He looked around. “You guys wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
The kid laughed and answered goofily, as if for the whole class, “Oh no! No, we wouldn’t do that!”
Mr. Proctor then picked up a black erasable marker and wrote one word on the whiteboard: plague. “Okay, tell me, what is a plague?” No one said anything, so he looked at his seating chart. He asked that new kid, “Ben Gibbons, what is a plague?”
“Uh, it’s a really bad thing.”
Mr. Proctor laughed. “It is. It’s a really bad thing. So what are some really bad things that can come in plague form?” He turned to the whiteboard and assumed a writing stance. Still, no one said anything, so he wrote the word disease.
Then the cute girl in the back spoke up. She rattled off a list as Mr. Proctor wrote frantically to keep up: “Frogs. Locusts. Hail. Darkness. Death of firstborn males.”
Mr. Proctor muttered, “Good. Good. Some of the ten plagues of Egypt, from the Bible.” He pointed at the paperback. “Does anyone know what Daniel Defoe’s plague was called?”
He looked at the girl, like she was the only one who had any chance of knowing. When she didn’t venture a guess, he told us, “The bubonic plague. It decimated London, England, in 1665.” He looked around the room. “But what about nowadays, in the year 2001? What kind of plagues do we have now?”
He answered his own question again, before any of us could. “AIDS? Swine flu?”
Mr. Proctor put down his marker. He pointed out the window. “Listen. I have been reading about a new plague. And they do use the word plague to describe it. It is a plague of drug use, right here in small-town Pennsylvania. The drug is called methamphetamine. Has anybody heard of it?”
Nobody answered. Nobody had, I guess. Not yet.
“Okay. Well then, let’s go back a few hundred years and see what’s going on in Daniel Defoe’s England.” Then Mr. Proctor began to read A Journal of the Plague Year aloud.
The drug-counseling group that Lilly would attend every Monday, and that I would attend one time only, was held in a large conference room inside the school’s main office. In the middle of the room, there was a long table with about twelve chairs around it. There were another dozen or so chairs set back against the walls, nearly ringing the table.
By the time I arrived, the wall chairs were already filled, forcing me to be the first kid to sit at the table. I looked at the table’s only other occupant, an attractive woman dressed in a dark blue suit. She wore an expensive necklace, earrings, and watch. Her hair was swept up in a style that I would call French (although I’m not sure why). I figured, correctly, that she was the leader of the group.
I watched Lilly enter the room. Her nostrils were pulled back as far as they could go, like she was entering the smelliest place on earth. She took the seat opposite me. Then, as Mom had predicted, Arthur walked in. His face betrayed no emotion at all as he took the seat right next to me. I turned, but I hadn’t said a word when he told me, “Shut up. This gets me out of football practice.”
I glanced quickly around the room, seeing how many of the wall-huggers I could recognize. Many were high schoolers. Some actually looked like stoners, with scraggly hair, tattoos, piercings, heavy-metal T-shirts. But some were a surprise to me as, I am sure, Lilly and I were a surprise to them.
Jenny Weaver was there, which really surprised me. She’s basically the perfect kid—Student Council representative, honor roll member, office assistant. She’s also in most of my classes.
Chris Collier was there, too. He was president of the Junior High Student Council last year, but I don’t think he’s running this year. At least I haven’t seen his name on any posters in the halls.
Angela Lang walked into the room. She was carrying her own folding chair, which she set down by the door. Angela had been my “girlfriend” back in the sixth grade, although we never actually went on a date. Our whole relationship went something like this:
Angela: Do you want to go out with me?
Me: Okay.
Angela: I think we should break up.
Me: Okay.
And she has barely spoken to me since.
Finally, and best of all, that cute girl from my English class walked in and stood next to the leader. I had a much better view of her now. She did not look like the girls from around here. She had bright blond hair and a golden tan. She had blue eyes and very white teeth. She actually seemed to sparkle.
The leader woman reached over and touched the girl’s golden arm. (I suddenly wished I could do the same.) She directed her, for some miraculous reason, to the chair next to Lilly.
The leader then cleared her throat softly and spoke. “Before we get started, I would like to announce that I do not have the plague. Any of you who would like a comfortable seat around the table, please join us now.”
No one moved.
The woman went on: “Okay. My name is Catherine Lyle, and I am a mental health professional. I have a master’s degree in counseling from USC.” She stopped for a moment, wondering whether she had to explain that to us. She concluded that she did: “The University of Southern California.” Then she added, like it was some big deal, “My husband is Dr. Richard Lyle.”
We just stared at her. Arthur muttered to me, “Didn’t he play linebacker for the Steelers, back with Mean Joe Green?”
Catherine Lyle explained, “He is a well-known lecturer in the field of psychology.”
Arthur continued muttering, “What? He works in a field? Hey, I might know him, then.”
Mrs. Lyle told us, “I just want you to know how much I appreciate this opportunity to put my degree to work. And I hope this group will be a benefit to all of you.”
She pointed at the door. “First things first: As a counselor, I adhere to a code of ethics. We will have strict confidentiality in this room. Does everyone know what that means?”
Arthur said loudly, “What we say in here stays in here.”
“Yes. That’s very well put.”
Arthur liked that. His scarred cheeks reddened.
Catherine continued: “If I see you in public, I will not acknowledge you. If I did, people would think, That person must be in counseling, and that’s nobody’s business but ours. So if I do not say hello at Starbucks, I’m not being mean; I’m just following my counselor’s code of ethics.”
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking, We don’t have a Starbucks here, lady.
She opened a large leather notebook with gold-trimmed pages. She slid a silver pen out of a slot in the middle, clicked it, and said, “Now let’s go around the room. Please say your name and one quick thing about yourself so we can get to know each other.” She turned and looked at Chris Collier. He shrugged and said, “I’m Chris Collier, and I work at the Strike Zone.”
Catherine Lyle beamed a white smile. “Now, what is that? A batting cage?”
Chris looked confused. He answered, “No. It’s a bowling alley.”
“Ah. Of course.”
The next kid, a high school stoner, mumbled his name as Terry something, but he didn’t add anything else. He looked so stressed-out that Mrs. Lyle changed her mind on the spot. “Okay. Let’s say that the one quick thing about yourself is voluntary. You’re free to just say your name.” She smiled kindly at Terry and moved on.
All around the wall, kids started mumbling their names and nothing else.
When the kids sitting in the wall chairs were finished, Catherine Lyle looked at me to start at the table. I said, “I’m Tom Coleman, and I work at the Food Giant.”
“I’m Lilly Coleman. And I work there, too.”
“I’m Arthur.”
Finally it was the cute girl’s turn. “I’m Wendy, and I am new here at Haven.”
Catherine Lyle concluded by saying, “Thank you all. I know that was difficult for some of you. It’s difficult to talk about yourself, isn’t it? You think no one really wants to hear about you and what you are feeling, but that’s not true. Not in here.
“In this group, we will talk about low self-esteem, low expectations, and many of the other factors that can lead to teenage drug abuse. But I will not be doing all the talking. If we’re going to have a successful group, you’ll all need to talk, either in the large group or in smaller ones. I will be inviting some guest speakers to come in, too.”
She consulted her notepad. “Finally, I want this group to be an information resource for you. Information is power when you are dealing with drugs and addiction. I’d like to ask for a volunteer to do a report on a drug that has recently emerged in this area—methamphetamine.”
Most kids looked away. I could have researched that word on our Gateway computer and written a report on it if I’d been planning on coming to another meeting.
The cute girl finally raised her hand and said, “I’ll do it.”
Catherine Lyle said reluctantly, “All right, Wendy. Thank you.” She stood up very gracefully and moved her hands in a circling motion. “I know it is easier to talk to a few people than to many, so let’s arrange ourselves right now into groups of four.”
The cute girl took the initiative. She held out her arms so that they encompassed Arthur, Lilly, and me. “How about if the four of us form a group?”
I replied eagerly, “Sure. Okay.”
Arthur just frowned at her.
Lilly didn’t even do that. I could tell by her eyes that she had checked out completely.
Still, the girl smiled gamely and told us, “I’m Wendy Lyle. And… you guys must all be related, right?”
I smiled back. “How did you know that?”
She pointed to Lilly. “You two have the same last name, and the same face.” She looked at Arthur. “And I’ve heard you call him ‘cuz’ in English class. Am I right?”
“You are,” I assured her, then added, “That’s very perceptive of you.”
She beamed at me, so I tried, “And you have the same name as our group leader, but not the same face.”
She gave me a short finger point. “That is very perceptive of you. Catherine is my stepmom. We just moved here for my dad’s job. He’s a professor at the university.”
Arthur said sourly, “My dad’s a drunk.”
Wendy looked right at him. “I’m sorry. I hope that will change.”
“I don’t think so. He’s dead.”
She kept looking at him. “Sorry again.”
I liked how Wendy kept her cool in the face of this open hostility from my cousin, and the open indifference from my sister. I didn’t know why they were being so rude. Because she was an outsider? Because she was cute? Because she was kind of a teacher’s pet? I turned to Arthur, determined to ask him what his problem was, but I stopped when he waved at someone outside.
Looking through the window, I saw Arthur’s stepfather, Jimmy Giles.
Jimmy is a wiry, scraggly guy who always looks like he just woke up. He was standing in the school office, wearing a threadbare jeans jacket. Jimmy’s brother Warren was out there with him, jangling a set of keys. (Jimmy had his driver’s license revoked by a judge, so Warren has to drive him around.)
Warren is a handsome guy of about forty. He’s the same age as my dad, but he looks a lot younger. Warren was wearing a jacket, too, but his was striking. It was green satin with gold lettering on the back. When he turned, I saw that the lettering said Haven High Football.
I asked Arthur, “What’s your stepdad doing here? And Warren?”
Arthur nodded toward Catherine Lyle. “A judge sent Jimmy to this counselor lady.”
“Yeah? Really? So is he in our group?”
“Nah. He’s here to do community service.”
Since Arthur wasn’t exactly answering my question, Wendy Lyle added, “My stepmom asked him to talk here today.”
“About what?”
“He’s talking about drugs. About what they did to his life.”
I looked at Arthur. “That doesn’t sound like Jimmy.”
“What doesn’t?”
“Well, public speaking.”
Arthur smiled. “You just might be surprised about that.”
Catherine Lyle walked over to the door. She had a very classy walk, like a model. She opened it and spoke softly, “Mr. Giles? Are you ready?”
Jimmy nodded and entered the room. Warren stayed outside, watching through the glass.
Mrs. Lyle told us, “It takes courage to face an addiction and to overcome it. I’d like to introduce you to someone who is facing that challenge right now. Actually, I will let him introduce himself and tell you about his own experiences getting into, and then getting away from, drug addiction.”
She smiled sweetly and reclaimed her seat. Jimmy Giles stood by the door, avoiding eye contact with us. He seemed to be talking to himself for a few seconds. Then he pulled a white note card from his pants pocket and started to read from it.
“I am here to tell you about my experience so that it does not become your experience.” He cleared his throat and continued. “Any dumb animal can learn from a mistake. If a horse walks into an electric fence and gets a shock, it don’t walk into that fence again. It learns from it. But humans can also learn from others’ mistakes. I hope that’s what will happen today.”
Catherine Lyle encouraged him. “That’s an excellent point.”
Arthur suddenly spoke up, as if he were at an old-time-religion camp-revival meeting. “Amen, Jimmy! Well told.”
Jimmy grinned at Arthur. Then he looked at the rest of us. His nerves seemed to melt away as his glance passed from face to face. When he spoke again, he was relaxed. “I should tell you my name is Jimmy Giles, and I’m from Blackwater. I have worked as a wildcat coal miner, on and off. I have worked as a mover”—he looked back through the door—“with my brother Warren. We move kids in and out of Blackwater University. We also sell Christmas trees.”
He paused to clear his throat. From my side view, I could see his large Adam’s apple bob up and down.
“I got involved with marijuana in junior high school.” He looked around at the walls of the room. “At this junior high school, in fact. I started smoking it when I was twelve, and I was still smoking it three months ago when I got arrested for the second time. If I get arrested a third time, I go straight to jail.”
Jimmy hung his head, as if looking back into his days at Haven Junior High. “Here’s what I learned between then and now—what I learned the hard way.” He suddenly pointed at Wendy. “Miss? Name something that you love to do.”
“Me? I read. I read a lot.”
“Okay.” He pointed at me. “What about you, Tom?”
I answered, “Uh, play video games. Nintendo 64.”
“Okay. Got it. Now let me break it down for you.
“You love to read, miss. And then you get high, and you love to read even more when you’re high.
“And you love to play video games, Tom, and then you get high, and you love to play video games even more when you’re high.”
He looked from Wendy to me. “But then something bad happens.” He pointed at Wendy. “You find that you don’t love to read anymore when you’re not high. It’s not good enough.” He switched to me. “And video games? You don’t love to play when you’re not high. No way. It’s not good enough.”
Jimmy stopped, then said, “Now, here’s the really awful part.
“Miss, you soon realize that you don’t love reading anymore even when you are high. And Tom, you don’t love video games anymore, high or not. You don’t love anything anymore. Not books, not games, not even getting high.
“But you keep getting high anyway because… well, that’s what you do.” He glanced at the kids against the wall. “Right, stoners? That’s what you do, so you keep on doing it. Even though you hate it now. You have officially arrived at zombieland. You don’t love anything. You don’t like anything. You don’t care about anything. It has all been taken away from you… by drugs.”
A few of the stoners nodded at him.
Arthur suddenly said in his tent-revival voice, “Preach, Jimmy!”
Jimmy looked at Arthur. His voice started to rise. “I am thirty-eight years old, with a wife and kids, and I have a job that only pays minimum wage. And I have had some jobs that paid less than minimum wage. What can I thank for that?”
Arthur answered, “Drugs. You can thank drugs for that.”
Jimmy went on. “I am a professional driver, licensed for any vehicle up to fourteen tons. Yet I have to get driven around in my pickup like I’m some two-year-old. What can I thank for that?”
Arthur’s voice dropped this time. It was barely audible. “Drugs. You can thank drugs for that.”
“My wife, and my son, and my stepson live on a piece of land that has been condemned by the United States government as unsafe for human habitation. What can I thank for that?”
This time, Jimmy looked around the room at all of us.
And we knew what to do. We replied, softly, raggedly, “Drugs. You can thank drugs for that.”
This call-and-response continued for a few more minutes. Jimmy and Arthur did that old-time-religion thing, and, to my amazement, the whole group responded to it. Warren stood by the door watching us, smiling broadly.
When Jimmy finally finished, Catherine Lyle stood up. She delivered a very nice, very sincere thank-you to him, and we all applauded. Then she announced, “That’s it for this week—just a short meeting, a getting-to-know-you meeting. I hope to see you all back here next week.”
I walked outside with Arthur, Jimmy, and Warren. Warren was laughing. “I could hear you two through the door! You were doing that fire-and-brimstone stuff, right?”
Arthur conceded, “I reckon we were.”
Warren winked at me. “You keep away from me with that. I don’t want nothing to do with burning. I don’t even want to hear about burning.”
Arthur grinned. “Yeah, I know. Okay.”
I glanced at Jimmy. He seemed nervous and withdrawn again. He muttered, “Thank you, Arthur. And you, too, Warren.” He looked at me and explained, “They helped me write that stuff on the cards.”
“But you delivered it, Jimmy Giles,” Arthur told him. “The spirit was speaking through you.”
And maybe it had been, but it wasn’t now. Jimmy didn’t say anything else. He climbed up into the passenger’s seat of his Ranger pickup and just stared straight ahead.
As usual, Mom was waiting for Lilly and me after school in the car riders’ circle. She drove us from Haven to our jobs at the Food Giant. Then she went home to cook dinner. (Mom calls that being “a traditional housewife.”)
Lilly walked ahead of me into the store. She passed the customer-service desk and ducked into the employees’ lounge, where she’d change into a green-and-white smock, pick up a cash drawer, and open up register three.
The Food Giant only has three registers (so it isn’t all that giant). Two older ladies named Del and Marsha run registers one and two during the day. They get replaced by high school kids at around 4:00 p.m.
I walked into the anteroom outside the men’s room, where all the brooms are stashed and the green slickers are hanging. As soon as I did, I heard voices on the other side of the door. I recognized Reg’s wise-guy drawl. I recognized Bobby’s voice, too. Hearing those two together was never good.
Reg went out of his way to bust Bobby’s balls wherever and whenever he could. As a result, Bobby truly despised Reg.
I opened the door and stepped into the actual men’s room, with the toilets and all. Bobby and Reg were both standing in front of the sinks, talking to each other’s mirror images.
Reg immediately included me in whatever he was up to. “Here’s Tom. If you don’t believe me, ask Tom.”
Bobby, still in his green slicker, shook his head adamantly. “I ain’t asking nobody.”
The door pushed open behind me, bumping me aside. Uno walked in and continued on to the urinal. He called over his shoulder, “Ask what?”
Uno always went along with Reg when it came to pranking Bobby. (I didn’t. Well, except when it was something really funny.) Reg replied as if he were Coach Malloy handing out an answer sheet. “I am trying to explain to Bobby that the produce department is having a promotion—Chiquita Banana Week.”
Uno confirmed that right away. “Oh yeah, Bobby. It’s Chiquita Banana Week.”
Reg continued: “As part of the promotion, we are asking each bag boy to carry a Chiquita banana in his pocket and to ask each customer if she would like a Chiquita banana.”
Uno sputtered. He flushed the urinal to cover up the sound of his laughter. I started laughing, too, so I turned away from the mirror.
When I looked back, Bobby’s round face was scrunched up.
Uno joined them at the sink. Bobby said warily, “Come on. Is that true?”
Uno assured him, “That is one hundred percent true, Bobby.”
“So, is Tom going to do that tonight?”
Reg answered quickly. “The promotion doesn’t start until tomorrow, Bobby. Tomorrow morning at seven. Tom will have a banana in his pocket tomorrow afternoon. And if I know Tom, it will be a sizable one.”
Uno laughed so hard that he had to plunge his face into the sink and splash water on it.
I had to turn away again, too. But I also started to feel uneasy. There were rules about bustin’ them on Bobby. Rule one was that you couldn’t do anything to hurt Bobby. Rule two was that you couldn’t do anything to hurt the store. I was pretty sure this violated rule two.
I made a mental note to tell Dad about it. He would talk to Bobby in the morning. He’d talk to Uno, too. He probably wouldn’t bother with Reg, though. They didn’t call him “the Veg” for nothing.
I stepped back into the anteroom and grabbed a broom. My first job was usually to take one lap around the store with a wide push broom.
At broom level, the Food Giant is one large square divided into seven aisles. The floor is red-and-white linoleum. It is old, and cracked in places, and faded from thousands of moppings (many of those by me).
The ceiling is actually very high, probably twenty-five feet, but you can only see that if you are back in the storeroom. Out front, it is covered by a white drop ceiling, which, unfortunately, shows water stains from roof leaks.
Seven lines of fluorescent lights extend from the dairy and meat cases in the back to the registers in the front. The left wall is all frozen foods, so the floor there is the most messed up, again from leaks. The right wall contains the bakery and the produce department, which can also be messy.
Aside from the registers, the front part of the store has a customer-service desk, a line of soda, candy, and ice machines, and a corral area for the shopping carts.
When I finished my sweeping pass, I went outside to take Bobby’s place in the parking lot. He was standing next to a white metal cage that holds propane tanks for grills. (His mother always picks him up there.) When Bobby saw me, he pointed out two carts left out near Route 16.
Reg emerged, fumbling with his truck keys. He called over, “Don’t forget about that promotion tomorrow, Bobby. I’m countin’ on you.”
By the time I had walked all the way out to the road and back, both Bobby and Reg were gone. I wheeled the carts inside and crammed them into a lineup along the front wall. The Food Giant has fifty carts. But at any time, a dozen or so might be scattered across the parking lot (or stolen, or borrowed and abandoned, like this morning).
Dad was now running register two, so I went over to bag for him. Uno came up and stood next to me, apparently to bag for Lilly, although there was no one in her line. Uno got his nickname around sixth grade, or whenever puberty was, because only one of his testicles had descended. I’m not sure I would have bragged about that, but he apparently did. He still answers to the nickname, but lately I have heard him introduce himself as John. I guess if you live in Blackwater, anything that makes you stand out in any way is considered good.
Now, like most guys, I don’t really think of my sister as a girl. I mention this because so far I have described her pretty much as an angry, snarling monster. And she can be that. But other guys, who are not her brother, seem to find her attractive. And she can act attractive around them.
Uno had asked Lilly to her junior prom last year (or, more likely, Lilly had asked him, but she won’t admit it). He had just turned twenty-one and was legally an adult. Lilly, at seventeen, was legally a child.
Mom was horrified.
Dad said yes at first, but then Mom freaked out, and he had to change his vote to no. So Lilly didn’t go to the prom.
Mom returned to the store at 6:30 to pick us up. She does that every school day so we can go home, eat dinner, and do homework. Dad used to go home then, too, but lately he misses dinner more often than he makes it.
Today it would just be Lilly leaving, though. I had to stay and work. The produce truck had arrived late, due to a flat tire. Reg was gone for the day, and Dad couldn’t reach him, so I had to stay and unload it.
They didn’t call him “the Veg” for nothing.
I stacked produce crates until closing time, which is 9:00 p.m. Dad took two bakery rolls and filled them with lunch meat for our dinner. We ate them as we worked for another half hour, cleaning up, straightening up, locking up.
It was nearly ten when we finally got home. Fortunately, there was a big open space on Sunbury Street not far from our door. Dad parallel-parked the van into it.
The front doors on our street sit almost on the sidewalk, and the houses extend almost to the alleyway behind. This leaves very little room for backyards. Ours is taken up by a carport, a metal shed, and a cement slab that holds a gas grill (a Coleman, like us).
Since the houses are so close to the sidewalk, lots of people have turned their ground floors into some kind of business. On our block alone, we have a beauty parlor, a pet groomer, and a travel agency.
So far, our house is still just a house.
Dad opened the front door, and I followed him into the parlor. It’s basically a living room, with a couch, a TV (which always has my Nintendo 64 plugged into it), and our computer. Mom insists on calling it “the parlor,” though.
After the parlor comes the dining room, dominated by a large wooden table and four chairs. That’s where I have sat and done my homework since kindergarten (and Lilly has sat and avoided doing her homework since kindergarten). Beyond that are a big kitchen, the back stairs, and the back door.
Dad and I trudged directly up the front stairs. At the top, he veered off into his room with a low “Good night, Tom.”
My parents’ bedroom sits directly over the parlor, just feet away from the traffic on the street. After that comes our one, much-fought-over bathroom, and then two more bedrooms—my small one and Lilly’s large one.
And that is it. Well, we have an unfinished basement with a washer and dryer, and an unfinished attic with boxes of Christmas stuff. But that is it.
I entered my bedroom wearily, not even bothering to turn on the light. With the skill of a blind man, I pulled off most of my clothes in the dark and dropped them in a hamper inside my closet.
I crawled into the same bed that I have been crawling into since I was five. My feet now extend several inches beyond the end, uprooting the covers every night.
If I had turned on the light, I would have seen my Florida college collage on the back wall. It’s a collection I have put together myself: pictures of beautiful green campuses, pictures of smiling young people at FSU, UF, UCF. Beautiful warm places that I would like to live in someday.
Places that are far from here.
Today was a full plan B day, with Mom dropping us off in a crowd of kids at 8:10. Lilly and I exited the car quickly, with our heads down, like guilty criminals dodging the media.
I hurried inside, turned left down the junior high corridor, and went straight to homeroom. I flopped into a seat near the front and stared at the TV set mounted in the corner. Its screen displayed a test pattern of colors in vertical lines—ROY G BIV. Its speakers gave out a low hissing sound.
The desks around me soon filled up with bleary-eyed ninth graders. Haven Junior/Senior High is filled with working-class white kids. We only have a few Puerto Ricans, and no blacks. Most of us live in Haven County because someone, somewhere on the family tree, was a coal miner. Most of those miners were white Europeans, so most of us are, too.
At 8:25, the test pattern disappeared and was replaced by the unsmiling face of Mrs. Cantwell, the principal of the junior high side of the campus. Mrs. Cantwell was all business. “Good morning. Let us rise and recite the Pledge of Allegiance and remain standing for the playing of our national anthem.”
We straggled to our feet, covered our hearts, and recited the pledge. Some kids kept their hands on their hearts for the national anthem, but most let them drop and started to fidget, stretch, and yawn.
Then, when the music stopped and we all sat back down, something wonderful occurred. Wonderful for me, at least.
Mrs. Cantwell’s glowering face disappeared and was, after a moment of darkness, replaced by the face of a smiling, beautiful girl.
My heart nearly stopped beating.
It was her. It was she. Whatever. It was Wendy.
What was she doing on the TV, smiling that white, white smile? She said something about the upcoming school elections, and about this week’s football game against Mahanoy, and about a fund-raiser. But I couldn’t really take it in. I was too shocked. Too excited.
I thought about what I could say to her in second period. I even jotted some things down, like Hey, you looked great on TV, and other variations of that.
Then the TV blinked off, bells rang, and Coach Malloy’s social studies class began. I pulled out the homework sheet that I had finished over breakfast. He went over it slowly, methodically, death-inducingly. He covered the topic “The Three Branches of Government” exactly the same way Mrs. Kerpinski had in fourth grade. The kid behind me, Mikeszabo, had not finished his, so I let him copy mine. Coach didn’t notice.
Mikeszabo and I go way back. He had been in Mrs. Kerpinski’s class, too. He was one of two Mikes in that class—Miklos Szabo and Michael Murphy. She always called them by their full names—Mikeszabo (the s is silent) and Mikemurphy—so I’ve called them by those names ever since.
Mikemurphy is a problem kid now. He gets suspended a lot. He gets caught with stuff on campus—cigarettes, a hunting knife, a can of beer. From stray comments I’ve heard from Mom and Dad, I get the idea that Mikemurphy’s parents are heavy drinkers.
Coach finally finished his lecture. He looked at the wall clock. “Tell you what—you can have free time to work on other assignments from now until the bell rings. Then don’t forget to pick up your worksheets on the way out.”
A few kids took out pens and loose-leaf binders (I was one of them). But the majority, including Mikeszabo, did what Haven Junior High kids had done in Coach Malloy’s class for a generation. They put their heads down and went to sleep.
After class, I managed to pick up my worksheet without getting into any confrontations with angry football players. I turned left in the hallway and spotted Arthur’s shaved head in the crowd. Apparently, he was waiting for me, letting the river of freshmen eddy around him on either side.
When I got right next to him, he leaned forward and whispered in a no-nonsense voice, “Something’s going down, cuz.”
“What?”
“We’re under attack.”
“Who is? Am I? Is it Dorfman?”
“No. Shut up and listen. The United States of America is under attack. We just heard about it in first period. You didn’t hear?”
“No.”
“Two jet planes, big ones, full of fuel, hit the World Trade Center in New York City. One plane hit tower one. Then, fifteen minutes later, another hit tower two. Hijacked planes, man, exploding like bombs. Death and destruction everywhere.”
“My God!”
“It could be happening in every city in America. Right now. It could be happening here.”
I thought about that for a second. “No. Not here.”
He agreed. “No, probably not. But every major city, every important target. The United States is under freakin’ attack.”
We turned into Mr. Proctor’s classroom. He had his back to us, and he held a TV remote control in his hand. Keeping his eyes on the screen, he repeated several times, “Everybody take a seat.”
Arthur and I sat in two desks up front, right under the TV. The screen showed a jet, moving impossibly fast for its altitude, slamming into one of the twin towers.
Wendy Lyle took the seat next to me, but I barely noticed. (And I completely forgot about her earlier TV appearance.)
As we watched and listened, things just kept getting worse. CNN announced that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. I thought Arthur was going to jump out of his chair at that news. He clenched his fists like he wanted to punch somebody.
The TV announced that all planes flying in United States airspace had to land immediately or they would be shot down, to which Arthur shouted, “Hell, yeah! Payback!”
Then, right before our eyes, the first tower in New York City crumbled to the ground, just disintegrated into dust. Mr. Proctor whispered, “My God. That building is full of people.”
It was amazing, and shocking, and News with a capital N. We all stayed glued to the television. Here is a summary of what happened:
8:46: Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
9:03: Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
9:37: Flight 77 crashed into the western side of the Pentagon.
9:59: The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed.
At 10:15, the scenes of destruction and carnage suddenly faded away and Mrs. Cantwell’s face appeared. She told us, “Due to the national emergency, Haven County has decided to close all schools and to send students home for the day. We ask you to stay where you are, in your second-period classes, until the buses return. We will call for the bus riders first, after which we will call for the car riders. Students with no ride home should report to the auditorium.”
Mrs. Cantwell’s face faded and CNN returned. At first, I could not believe what I was hearing. The CNN anchors, who should have been talking about New York City and Washington, D.C., were talking about us instead. About Somerset County. About western Pennsylvania.
We were under attack?
I turned to Arthur. “Pennsylvania?”
He waved me off—“Shut up”—and continued to glare at the screen.
A plane had just crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Basically right next to us. It could have been in Haven County. It could have been right here—on our school, on my house, on the Food Giant.
Mr. Proctor looked at me and said, “Remember today, September eleventh. It’s going to change everything.”
He raised up the remote and clicked to different channels. The horrible news was everywhere, and it just kept coming. A car bomb had detonated outside the State Department Building in Washington, D.C. There were mass evacuations going on in New York City and Washington.
Then, just before 10:30, the second World Trade Center tower followed the first, disintegrating before our eyes, killing everyone still trapped inside, including all the firefighters and police who had run in to save people.
I turned around and looked behind me. Most kids just looked stunned, like this was way too much for them to handle.
That Ben kid kept saying stuff like “My dad’s gonna be really pissed. Supermad. Like furious.”
Jenny Weaver sobbed as she stared at the TV. “All those people, thousands of them, they all have families.”
And me? What did I feel? I know this is strange, but I was secretly thrilled by the reports. We had never been part of the big story, the news headlines. Never. And now we were part of the biggest story to happen in my lifetime. It was happening right here. “Pennsylvania,” the reporters kept saying. And I felt connected to the big world, to the real world, for the first time. This was happening to us, and it was being recorded in my journal.
At 10:45, an announcement came on for bus riders to go to the bus loop. At eleven o’clock, car riders were told to gather out front at their drop-off spot. I figured that Mom would be tuned in to all this and would be there, but she was not. Neither was Arthur’s mom, my aunt Robin.
I hung out with Lilly, not speaking at all. Then I heard Arthur’s voice behind me. “Payback time, cuz! This is it. Vengeance is ours, saith the Lord!”
Lilly asked him, “What are you talking about?”
“Vengeance. Payback. I’m talking about a military response. They’ll be needing a lot of men, and I’ll be one of them.”
“A lot of men to do what?”
“To get whoever did this!”
I shook my head in total confusion. I asked, “Who would do this, Arthur? And why? It seems so crazy.”
Arthur shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? It’s a matter of honor now. We’re going after them. We’re gonna kick ass and take names, cuz. The wrath of God will descend, and the infidel will be slain. Amen.”
When I looked closer, I was surprised to see that Lilly had been crying. She asked me, “Does this mean they’ll close the Food Giant today?”
I shook my head. “People will be panic-buying. Who knows when there’ll be more food deliveries. All planes are grounded. Maybe all trucks—”
“Tom!”
“What?”
“Just yes or no. Will they close the damn store?”
“No.”
“That’s all you have to say.”
Mom pulled up at 11:15. She told us, “Your father called. He said the store is a complete madhouse.”
We drove straight to the Food Giant parking lot. It was crowded and chaotic. Mom eased the car into a parking space. “They say we may not be getting groceries for days. I have to stock up.”
As we wended our way through the lot, I saw Dad and Bobby corralling carts. I hurried over to join them.
As soon as he spotted me, Bobby pointed and cried out, “Tom was there! He told me to do it. Didn’t you, Tom?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. The planes? The World Trade Center?
But then it hit me.
“Oh my God!” I stopped and stood with my mouth hanging open. I had forgotten all about the prank on Bobby. I had forgotten to tell Dad.
Bobby’s stubby finger stayed aimed at me.
Dad maneuvered a train of carts my way. He looked really pissed off. When he got close enough, he said through clenched teeth, “Of all days to pull a stunt like this! With our country under attack!”
“It was yesterday, Dad. We didn’t know—”
Bobby screamed, “You did know!”
“I mean about the attacks.” I half whispered to Dad, “Oh my God. What did Bobby do?”
Dad snarled, “He did what he was told to do.”
I cringed.
“Mrs. Mercer came up to me at eight, before all… this happened. She told me that Bobby had said something inappropriate. Did you put him up to it?”
“No!”
“Did you know anything about it?”
“Yes, I knew,” I admitted. “And I meant to tell you. I just forgot. I’m sorry.”
I told Bobby, very sincerely, “I am really sorry.”
“You’re a liar! You’re like Reg the Veg!”
“No, I’m not. I’m not like Reg. And I’m not lying.”
“Yesterday! You lied yesterday. You told me it was the banana promotion.”
“No, I didn’t. I just… didn’t tell you that it was a lie. I just stood there. I let it happen. I’m sorry.”
Dad looked at me with great disappointment. “Did you really think that was a funny joke, Tom?”
“No. No, sir.”
His eyes swept the parking lot. “Well, we have more serious things to worry about now. Bobby, do you accept Tom’s apology? Can we all get to work?”
Bobby was quick to forgive. (He always is, except when it comes to Reg.) He shrugged. “I accept it.”
“Okay. Please, both of you, get these carts into the store.”
Dad took off, nearly running, and squeezed through the entranceway between clumps of shoppers.
Bobby and I threw ourselves into a frenzy of cart collecting, and bagging, and wheeling groceries out. All fifty carts were in use, and all were full of groceries, and all three registers were running.
The frenzy did not let up until 6:00 p.m. By then the shelves were about three-quarters bare. Dad and Uno had restocked them steadily throughout the day, but the stockroom, too, was now reduced to just a few cartons and lots of empty wooden pallets.
Mom came back at 6:05 and took Lilly home, but Dad wanted me to stay. (He was still mad about the Bobby prank.) I wound up working until 10:30, over ninety minutes after the store had closed. Uno (who was also in Dad’s doghouse) and I had to sweep the front, the storeroom, and the parking lot.
By the time we were driving home, though, munching on our deli sandwiches, Dad had let the Bobby thing go. He wanted to talk about something else. He said, “I had to fire Vincent this morning.”
“What? Why?”
Dad shook his head in mild disbelief. “He was stealing.”
“Stealing? Stealing what?”
“Cleaning supplies.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And over-the-counter drugs. Boxes of cold medications.” Dad pondered that. “Cleaning supplies and cold medications. Isn’t that a weird combination?”
I told him, “Yeah.” And I thought it was.
But I wouldn’t think so for long.