Rebecca Stead Read online

  He showed up around the beginning of the school year, when Sal and I still walked home from school together. A few kids called him Quack, short for Quackers, or they called him Kicker because he used to do these sudden kicks into the street, like he was trying to punt one of the cars speeding up Amsterdam Avenue. Sometimes he shook his fist at the sky and yelled crazy stuff like “What’s the burn scale? Where’s the dome?” and then he threw his head back and laughed these loud, crazy laughs, so everyone could see that he had about thirty fillings in his teeth. And he was always on our corner, sometimes sleeping with his head under the mailbox.

  “Don’t call him Quack,” Mom said. “That’s an awful name for a human being.”

  “Even a human being who’s quackers?”

  “I don’t care. It’s still awful.”

  “Well, what do you call him?”

  “I don’t call him anything,” she said, “but I think of him as the laughing man.”

  Back when I still walked home with Sal, it was easier to pretend that the laughing man didn’t scare me, because Sal was pretending too. He tried not to show it, but he freaked when he saw the laughing man shaking his fist at the sky and kicking his leg out into traffic. I could tell by the way Sal’s face kind of froze. I know all of his expressions.

  I used to think of Sal as being a part of me: Sal and Miranda, Miranda and Sal. I knew he wasn’t really, but that’s the way it felt.

  When we were too little for school, Sal and I went to day care together at a lady’s apartment down the block. She had picked up some carpet samples at a store on Amsterdam Avenue and written the kids’ names on the backs. After lunch, she’d pass out these carpet squares and we’d pick our spots on the living room floor for nap time. Sal and I always lined ours up to make a rectangle.

  One time, when Sal had a fever and Louisa had called in sick to her job and kept him home, the day-care lady handed me my carpet square at nap time, and then, a second later, she gave me Sal’s, too.

  “I know how it is, baby,” she said.

  And then I lay on her floor not sleeping because Sal wasn’t there to press his foot against mine.

  * * *

  When he first showed up on our corner last fall, the laughing man was always mumbling under his breath. “Bookbag, pocketshoe, bookbag, pocketshoe.”

  He said it like a chant: bookbag, pocketshoe, bookbag, pocketshoe. And sometimes he would be hitting himself on the head with his fists. Sal and I usually tried to get really interested in our conversation and act like we didn’t notice. It’s crazy the things a person can pretend not to notice.

  “Why do you think he sleeps like that, with his head under the mailbox?” I asked Richard back when the laughing man was brand-new and I was still trying to figure him out.

  “I don’t know,” Richard said, looking up from the paper. “Maybe so nobody steps on his head?”

  “Very funny. And what’s a ‘pocketshoe,’ anyway?”

  “Pocketshoe,” he said, looking serious. “Noun: An extra shoe you keep in your pocket. In case someone steals one of yours while you’re asleep with your head under the mailbox.”

  “Ha ha ha,” I said.

  “Oh, Mr. Perfect,” Mom said. “You and your amazing dictionary head!” She was in one of her good moods that day.

  Richard tapped his right knee and went back to his newspaper.

  Things That Get Tangled

  Lucky for Mom, some of the old people at the nursing home where Louisa works like to watch The $20,000 Pyramid at lunchtime. Louisa takes notes on every show and brings them over after work. She gets off at four, so I have time to write out the day’s words on stolen index cards before Mom gets home.

  Tonight, Mom and Richard are practicing in the living room. I’m supposed to be doing homework in my room, but instead I’m tying knots and I’m thinking.

  It was Richard who taught me how to tie knots. He learned back when he sailed boats as a kid, and he still carries pieces of rope in his briefcase. He says that when he’s trying to solve a problem at work, he takes out the ropes, ties them into knots, unties them, and then ties them again. It gets him in the right frame of mind.

  Two Christmases ago, which was his first Christmas with us, Richard gave me my own set of ropes and started showing me knots. Now I can make every knot he knows, even the clove hitch, which I did backward for a few months before I got it right. So I am tying and untying knots, and seeing if it helps me solve my problem, which is you. I have no idea what you expect from me.

  If you just wanted to know what happened that day this past winter, it would be easy. Not fun, but easy. But that’s not what your note says. It says to write down the story of what happened and everything that led up to it. And, as Mom likes to say, that’s a whole different bucket of poop. Except she doesn’t use the word “poop.”

  Because even if you were still here, even if I did decide to write the letter, I wouldn’t know where to start. The day the laughing man showed up on our corner? The day Mom and Louisa met in the lobby? The day I found your first note?

  There is no answer. But if someone sat on my legs and forced me to name the day the whole true story began, I’d say it was the day Sal got punched.

  Things That Stain

  It happened in the fall, when Sal and I still walked home from school together every single day: one block from West End Avenue to Broadway, one block from Broadway to Amsterdam, past the laughing man on our corner, and then half a block to our lobby door.

  That middle block between Broadway and Amsterdam is mostly a huge garage, where the sidewalk is all slanted, and we had to be careful when it was icy or else we’d slip right in front of the pack of boys always hanging out there. If we did fall, they’d make a really big deal out of it, staggering around laughing, and sometimes calling us names that made our hearts beat fast the rest of the way home.

  The day Sal got punched, there was no ice on the ground because it was only October. I was carrying the big oak-tag Mysteries of Science poster I’d made at school. I had drawn big bubble letters for the title, which was Why Do We Yawn?

  There are a lot of interesting theories about yawning. Some people think it started as a way of showing off the teeth to scare predators away, or as a way to stretch facial muscles, or to signal to the rest of the tribe that it’s time to sleep. My own theory, which I included on my poster, is that yawning is a semipolite way of telling someone that they’re boring everyone to death. Either that or it’s a slow-motion sneeze. But no one knows for sure, which is why it’s a mystery of science.

  The day Sal got punched, the boys by the garage were hanging out, as usual. The day before, there had been a fight, with one of them slamming another one up against a parked car and hitting him. The kid getting hit had both his hands up like he was saying “Enough!,” but every time he tried to get off the hood of that car, the other kid pushed him down and hit him again. The other boys were all jumping around and yelling and Sal and I had crossed to the other side of the street so that we wouldn’t get accidentally slammed by somebody.

  On the day Sal got punched, the boys were being regular, so we stayed on our usual side. But just as we started past the garage, someone moved away from the group. He took a big step toward me and Sal and blocked our way so that we had to stop. I looked up and saw a not-too-biggish kid in a green army coat. He made a fist that came up like a wave and hit Sal right in the stomach. Hard. Sal doubled over and gurgled like he was going to throw up. And then the kid whacked him across the face.

  “Sal!” I yelled. I glanced over at Belle’s Market on Amsterdam, but no one was out front. Sal was bent over and frozen. The kid just stood there for a few seconds with his head tilted to one side. It seemed crazy, but it actually looked like he was reading my Mysteries of Science poster. Then he turned away and started strolling toward Broadway like nothing had happened.

  “Sal!” I leaned over to see his face, which looked okay but had one cheek all red. “Walk,” I said. “We’re almo
st home.”

  Sal’s feet started to move. It took me a few steps to realize that the boys weren’t laughing or whistling or calling us names. They hadn’t made a sound. I looked back and saw them standing there, staring after the kid in the green army coat, who was still walking in the other direction.

  “Hey!” one of them yelled down the block after him. “What the hell was that?” But the kid didn’t look back.

  Sal was moving slowly. He squeezed the arms of the blue satin Yankees jacket Louisa got him for his birthday, and tears were dropping down his face, and I almost cried but didn’t. It was my job to get him home, and we still had to get by the laughing man.

  He was on our corner, marching around in a circle and doing some salutes. Sal was crying harder and walking in a hunch. Some blood had started dripping out of his nose, and he wiped it with the blue and white striped cuff of his jacket. He gagged a lot. It sounded like he really might throw up.

  When he saw us, the laughing man dropped his arms to his sides and stood up straight. He reminded me of the big wooden nutcracker Louisa puts out on her kitchen table at Christmastime.

  “Smart kid!” he said. He took a step toward us, and it was enough to make Sal take off running for home. I ran after him, trying to hold on to my poster and get my keys out of my jeans.

  When I had gotten us into the lobby, Sal went straight to his apartment and closed the door on me. I knocked for a while, but Louisa wasn’t home from work yet and he wouldn’t let me in.

  If I’m not wrong, this is the beginning of the story you wanted me to tell. And I didn’t know it yet, but it was also the end of my friendship with Sal.

  Mom’s Rules for Life in

  New York City

  Always have your key out before you reach the front door.

  If a stranger is hanging out in front of the building, don’t ever go in—just keep walking around the block until he’s gone.

  Look ahead. If there’s someone acting strange down the block, looking drunk or dangerous, cross to the other side of the street, but don’t be obvious about it. Make it look like you were planning to cross the street all along.

  Never show your money on the street.

  I have my own trick. If I’m afraid of someone on the street, I’ll turn to him (it’s always a boy) and say, “Excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?” This is my way of saying to the person, “I see you as a friend, and there is no need to hurt me or take my stuff. Also, I don’t even have a watch and I am probably not worth mugging.”

  So far, it’s worked like gangbusters, as Richard would say. And I’ve discovered that most people I’m afraid of are actually very friendly.

  Things You Wish For

  “Miranda?” Mom calls from the kitchen. “We need you to keep time. This egg-timer ticking is driving me crazy.”

  So I watch the second hand of the kitchen clock while Richard feeds Mom clues. Then Mom gives the clues while Richard guesses.

  “Can I play?” I ask after about five rounds.

  “Sure. Richard, you keep time for a while.” Mom stretches and peels off her purple sweatshirt. As it goes over her head, her hair falls free of the collar and bounces down around her shoulders. As usual, this makes me curse my nonexistent dad, who must be to blame for my hair, which is straight, brown, and just kind of there. I blame this stupid flat brown hair on my father, but otherwise I don’t hold any grudges against him.

  In my book, Meg is looking for her father. When she finally gets to Camazotz, which is a planet somewhere near the Big Dipper where he’s being held prisoner, this evil man with red eyes asks her why she wants him, and she says, “Didn’t you ever have a father yourself? You don’t want him for a reason. You want him because he’s your father.”

  So I figure it’s because I never had a father that I don’t want one now A person can’t miss something she never had.

  Richard is looking at the kitchen clock, waiting for the second hand to get to the twelve. “Okay, get ready—go!”

  I look down at the first card. “Um, this is something you spread on toast,” I say.

  “Butter!” Mom yells.

  Next card. “You drink a milk shake with this, you suck through it.”

  “A straw!” Mom yells.

  Next. “It’s leather and it holds your pants up!”

  “A belt!”

  “It’s sweet—you drink it in winter, after you go sledding!”

  “Hot chocolate!”

  It’s good to play, to think of nothing but the next word and to have Mom think of nothing but the next words out of my mouth. We fly through the pack of seven words.

  “You’re good at this,” Mom says when we finish with five seconds to spare.

  I’m smiling. “I really think you’re going to win,” I tell her.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” she warns. “This is just the speed round. The speed round is the easy part.”

  * * *

  The truth is that our hopes are already up. Our wish list is stuck to the fridge with a magnet Mom stole from work:

  Trip to China

  Good camera for trip to China

  Wall-to-wall carpeting for Miranda’s room

  New TV

  And Richard has scribbled Sailboat at the bottom, though it’s hard to imagine where we would park it.

  That’s the official list, anyway. Richard and I have our own secret plan for the money, if Mom wins it.

  Things That Sneak Up

  on You

  The day Sal got punched, back in October, Louisa came upstairs after dinner to have a conference with Mom in her bedroom. They decided that Sal needed a mental health day, which meant he was allowed to skip school and watch TV the next day.

  So the following afternoon I walked home alone. I was doing a lot of talking in my head so that I would be deep in conversation with myself by the time I got to the laughing man. I was almost to the garage when I realized someone was walking right behind me. I glanced back and saw the kid who punched Sal. He was maybe two feet away, wearing the same green army jacket he had worn the day before.

  I was about to panic. I always know when I’m about to panic because my knees and neck both start to tingle. And then, before I had really decided what to do, I turned around to face him.

  “Excuse me, do you happen to know what time it is?” My voice sounded almost normal. That was good.

  “Let’s see….” He turned his head and looked back toward Broadway like maybe there was a giant clock hovering in the air right behind us. “It’s three-sixteen.”

  I nodded like I could see the invisible clock too. “Thanks.” He didn’t look like he was about to hit me, but still, my heart was pounding.

  He pointed. “See that big brown building? Yesterday the sun started to go behind it at three-twelve. Now it’s about halfway gone.” He glanced at me. “Plus, it’s one day later, and it’s October, so the days are getting shorter.”

  I stared at him. He looked down at his hand, which held a key. He pushed the other hand into his pants pocket. “I don’t have a watch,” he said.

  “Oh,” I said. “Me neither.”

  He nodded, and I wasn’t afraid anymore. But as soon as the fear was gone, I filled up with guilt. “Look at you,” my brain said, “chatting with the kid who punched Sal!” My brain has a way of talking to me like that.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said, and I didn’t let myself glance back until I got to the corner. When I did, the kid who punched Sal was gone. That was when I realized that he must live in the apartment over the garage, the one with dead plants on the fire escape and bedsheets hanging over the windows.

  I’d forgotten all about the laughing man. His legs were sticking out from under the mailbox, and I was careful not to wake him.

  Things That Bounce

  After he got punched, Sal started playing basketball in the alley behind our building. Our living room windows face that way, and I heard him dribbling his ball back there from about three-thirty to f
ive every day There was a rusted-out metal hoop with no net that made a clanging sound whenever he hit it.

  Sal and Louisa’s apartment is mostly the same as ours. We have the same rectangular bedrooms, the same pull-chain light in the hallway, the same weird-shaped kitchen with the same unpredictable ovens, theirs right below ours.

  There are differences. Their kitchen floor is yellow and orange linoleum squares instead of the white with gold flakes that we have, and Sal’s bed is up against a different wall in the bedroom. But we have the same bathroom floor—these white hexagonal tiles. If I look at them long enough, I can see all kinds of patterns in those hexagons: lines, arrows, even flowers. They kind of shift into these different pictures. It’s the sort of thing a person would never try to explain to anyone else, but once, when we were little, I told Sal about it, and then we went into his bathroom to stare at the floor together. Sal and Miranda, Miranda and Sal.

  Sal played basketball more and more and talked to me less and less. I asked him four hundred times whether he was okay, or if he was mad at me, or what was wrong, and three hundred and ninety-nine times he answered “Yes,” “No,” and “Nothing.” Then, the last time I asked, he told me, while standing in our lobby and looking at his feet, that he didn’t want to have lunch or walk home together for a while.

  “Do you even want to be friends at all?” I asked him.

  He glared at his feet and said no, he guessed he didn’t for a while.

  I was lucky, I guess, that this was the same week Julia decided to punish Annemarie for something.

  The girls at school had been hurting each other’s feelings for years before Sal left me and I was forced to really notice them. I had watched them trade best friends, start wars, cry, trade back, make treaties, squeal and grab each other’s arms in this fake-excited way, et cetera, et cetera. I had seen which ones tortured Alice Evans, who, even though we’d started sixth grade, still waited too long to pee and never wanted to say out loud that she had to go. These girls would wait until Alice was pretty far gone, jiggling one foot and then the other, and then they would start asking her questions. “Alice,” they’d say, “did you do today’s page in the math workbook yet? Where it says ‘multiply to check your answer’? How did you do that?” And she’d desperately hop around while showing them.