Husky Read online

  I wake up.

  The next morning, I call Ellen to go to the park, so she knows it’s important. I usually get the call from her telling me what to do, but I can’t wait to see if that’s going to happen today. I have to see her and I have to talk about the party and all of it. I guess I need her, because if there’s a real Carmen snarl anywhere in the world, it can come out of Ellen. And she’s my best friend, I never think of that, but it’s the truth.

  On my way to the park, I walk past Sophie’s house and I get sort of angry. Maybe angry isn’t the whole thing, sad’s there too. It’s a little like getting kicked out of something or being voted off the island, and you don’t know why. No one will tell you. You didn’t gossip with other castaways or form secret alliances or anything like that. You were just there, and then you’re not. Maybe you looked at an armpit.

  I get to the park before Ellen, so I have to wait for her by the big statue at the side entrance of the park. It seems like forever but really isn’t. Maybe I’m anxious. While I wait for her, I start thinking what I want Ellen to do. What do I need her to say? Do I need her to tell me that she isn’t going to the makeover party? Do I need her to say that it’s a totally screwed-up thing to have the party in the first place and that Allegra is just the worst Plankton of the highest order? Do I need her to tell me that Allegra is totally jealous of me, and how much better Sophie likes me? She does like me better, even though it doesn’t feel like it now.

  Basically, I need Ellen to be mean, to be the meanest she’s ever been: I need Plankton and side-mouth and spit-bubble mean. For the first time, I’m not scared of that, I want it. I sit there thinking of her foaming at the mouth, her eyes turning red while steam shoots out her ears; I think of her wild and angry and running after Allegra, who’s scared for her life, as she should be. Or, really, hitting Brian and Ryan like Allegra but harder. They’d all be scared to death, and who wouldn’t be when a really angry girl foaming with rage is chasing after them while a little fat kid behind her laughs a big villain’s laugh? That’s my part in the whole thing. I’m going to sic my hound on Allegra and the rest, and my hound is Ellen, which sounds awful. I won’t tell her that part.

  When Ellen finally shows up she’s smiling, this big kooky smile, one that I’ve never seen before, which means Ellen is happy. I think, Why today?!

  “Hey, what’s up?” Ellen says as she bounces over to me. And then she hugs me.

  Ellen. Hugs. Me.

  Ellen, my mean friend but my best friend, who says terrible things and hates pretty much everyone—even her own family half the time, who are, like, the super sweetest people in the world—and doesn’t ever like to be hugged herself, hugs me. On the one day I need her to be awful, she’s deciding to hug people. I need a beast from hell, and I get a puppy.

  Ellen. Hugs. Me.

  At first, I think I’m going to choke. It is that shocking. I think the surprise of it will get caught in my throat and stay there and I will just turn blue and die right here. But then, as she just keeps hugging, for what seems like a really long time, it starts to feel okay. I don’t want it to, but the world is a crazy place, and this is probably the craziest thing I’ve seen except for that guy who rides a unicycle through the park with an iguana on his shoulder—but I don’t know him. I know this, so I start hugging back.

  I forget, sometimes, how long it’s been since I’ve really hugged back. With Nanny at night, it’s just a squeeze to say good night. There isn’t any way to avoid that. I just stand there and try not to be suffocated by her shoulder pad. And with Mom, well, we haven’t hugged in a while. I barely see her, and when I do, I sort of stick to myself. That sounds awful to admit. But she’s been working and I’ve been me.

  But with Ellen, this feels nice, because I sort of need it.

  When Ellen pulls away, she still makes her I’msorry face but tries to smile through it. She’s not weird about the hug. She just did it, and I guess she thinks it’s the right thing to do, not because she has to or because she thinks it’s what I need—though it is—but just because she thinks it is the thing to do in the moment. Maybe that’s why it feels so good.

  We walk into the park, and I take the lead a little quicker than I ever have. I never get to pick the way and just go. But today is different, and Ellen says nothing and follows after me. I guess if she’s hugging now, I’m doing this now.

  I keep walking fast and Ellen is keeping up and trying to talk to me a bit, until finally I’m too far away to hear. It doesn’t matter anyway, I’m too busy having one of those totally unrealistic thoughts, like when you think if you do something really well or really fast, something else really awful won’t happen. It’s a little-kid thought, but every once in a while I still have them, even now. When I was little I thought if I ate peanut butter before bed, I wouldn’t get eaten by the monsters under my bed, because monsters hate peanut butter and they’d smell it on me. And even if they did bite into me, I would be filled with peanut butter and that would be super gross to them. I don’t know where I got the whole thing about the peanut butter, it was pretty stupid, but I believed it. And I never got bit, so maybe it worked.

  Now my little-kid thought is if I can just get to a bench in the middle of the park, everything will be fine. That’s the only safe place for me in the whole world. So I have to get there, and I can’t stop for anything. Certainly not for Ellen, who may or may not be mean anymore. I need to get there, I need to get to that bench or the world, or at least my world, is going to end. All of it. All of it for me. So I keep walking. I almost run a little, but I don’t. I wouldn’t, I don’t want Ellen to think it is a big deal. She can’t know that I’m a crazy person, not yet.

  I don’t pick our regular bench by the meadow, it’s not that one. I walk right past it, fast. That part throws Ellen a bit, she’s getting ready to sit but I just keep going. Past the baseball fields. Past the swampy bit that’s all fenced in, where we always hope to see frogs, even though they make the both of us scream. Past the boathouse, and the swans you’re always told to stay away from because they can get aggressive. I like them today. But I can’t stop, I have to keep going, farther into the park than we’ve ever really gone, and finally when I get to this little white bridge over a little green pond, there’s a bench. The bench. There. And that is where I want to be. So I sit.

  Ellen follows me, a little out of breath, which shouldn’t make me happy but sort of does. And when she stops, she just looks and me and says, “What’s the deal, Ducks?”

  “I just wanted to sit somewhere else.” That’s the deal, Ellen.

  “Why out here? We never come out here,” Ellen asks.

  “Well, maybe that’s why. Maybe I never get to pick the bench and I never get to pick anything or do anything I just want to do, so today I did. Is that okay?” I say as I cross my arms, which I totally know makes me look like a big baby or a brat, but I don’t even care. I can be whatever I want because I just saved the world by getting this bench.

  “Fine,” Ellen says, and she sits down next to me. She doesn’t say anything else. She doesn’t cross her arms even. She just sits there. Quiet. Swinging her feet a little, looking over the side of the bridge. Is she waiting for me to say something? I don’t say anything. I just sit there, crossing my arms. But my not doing anything or saying anything is a thing. I’m doing it on purpose. What’s with Ellen today?

  “This is really a nice bench,” Ellen says.

  I don’t answer.

  “We’re silly not to come out to this part of the park, it’s really pretty here . . . and quiet.”

  I wish I could say, Yes, I know, I come here all the time on my own or with my other friends, you don’t know them, but we come here all the time, but it’s not a big deal. This is sort of our favorite spot. It’s no big deal, not being invited somewhere, is it? Nope. No big deal.

  But I don’t say anything except, “Yup. I like this place better.”r />
  “I never knew you didn’t like our bench,” Ellen says.

  “I didn’t say that,” I say.

  “You sort of did.”

  “No, I said I like this better. I never get to pick, and now I am picking and this is where I pick. God,” I say so loud and awful, like I am one of those stupid teenage girls on TV. I so hate that I did that.

  “You can always pick, Ducks,” Ellen says.

  “No I can’t,” I say back.

  “Yes you can, who says you can’t?” Ellen asks me.

  “You! You always march off and I have to follow you. Which I always do because it’s actually not a big deal, not at all. But me not getting invited or even a say if I’m invited to my best friend’s birthday party is a really big deal. A huge deal.” I’m getting loud, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to be this person, but I’m really sad and angry and I sort of want Ellen to be sad and angry with me, but she’s just not. She’s talking about a bench. And I’m making sounds like a brat on TV.

  “It’s not even her real birthday party. It’s not even on the right day,” Ellen says.

  “Is she going to have another party?” I ask.

  “I don’t know, I don’t think so,” Ellen answers.

  “Then it’s her birthday party and I’m not invited,” I say, crossing my arms a lot tighter.

  “It’s a makeover party, they’re getting facials and they’re getting their nails done,” Ellen says. “Gross. Why do you want to go? I’m not.”

  “You’re not going?” I ask.

  “No,” says Ellen. “My mom thought it was just a little silly, and she didn’t think I wanted to go anyway. I totally didn’t.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because it’s not my thing. I don’t want to sit around and have a stranger touch my feet and put mud on me,” Ellen says. She makes the face she made that time we found a dead bird.

  “Is that what they do?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. It’s not my thing.”

  “Well, at least you were invited,” I say back snottily.

  “You’re a boy,” Ellen says.

  “So I don’t need nice feet or mud?” I say back, snottier.

  “It’s not like that,” Ellen says back.

  “Then what’s it like?” I ask really loudly, not in a way like I want an answer or anything but more like I just want to be rotten.

  “Ducks, you need to not freak out about it,” Ellen says, smiling at me, which only makes me lose it.

  “I am not freaking out! I’m not. I just don’t get it. I don’t. Okay: It’s a girlie thing. Fine. I’m a boy. Fine. So it’s a thing I can’t know anything about because I’m not cool enough.”

  “No one is saying that,” Ellen says, trying to interrupt me, but I keep talking.

  “Or because I’m not rich enough, or because I don’t even have a cell phone or nice sneakers or anything, or because I don’t know about the music you and everybody else know about, or it’s just because I’m fat.”

  “Wait, what?” Ellen says, totally stopped.

  “I’ve been your friend forever, and for everything, your braces and you being super mean about everything and even that one year, a whole year, where you only wanted to be called Max. I was your friend, and I called you Max. And now, what, Allegra hates me, and for whatever reason you have to too?”

  “I don’t hate you at all,” Ellen says. “What are you talking about?”

  “Then why aren’t you mad too?” I say.

  “Because it’s not a big deal,” Ellen says, and I want to scream.

  I want to scream so loud that everything in the park stops. I want to scream so loud that people playing volleyball drop the ball, that the people walking their dogs stop and so do the dogs. I want to scream so loud that even frogs stop. Everything in the park, even everything in Brooklyn stops. Stops cold. I want to scream. It is. It is a big deal. But all I say is, “It’s a big deal to me.” And that makes Ellen stop.

  “You’re not fat,” Ellen says. Why did she have to say that first?

  “I am. I hate this,” I say.

  “What?”

  “I hate feeling like this.”

  “Like what?” Ellen asks.

  “Like everyone is not like me, or doesn’t like me, and I don’t know why and I don’t know how to be anything else. I really don’t. Because if I did, don’t you think I would try? I’m just so tired of losing everything and everyone . . .” I stop for a second, I stop now, because more than any scream that would stop all of Brooklyn, that thing I just said stops me, because it’s the truth.

  “I love you. And Sophie totally loves you. You’re not losing us. And we don’t want you to be like anyone else at all.” I don’t want to believe her when she says this, because it sounds like something you’re supposed to say and not mean. But the way she says it, I want to believe she actually does.

  “It’s not her birthday. It’s something stupid Allegra wanted to do. And stupid Allegra’s mom is taking them,” Ellen says. Ellen takes my side and at least calls Allegra stupid, but I can’t smile because this part I still don’t totally believe. Some part of me still thinks it’s her birthday and it’s a big deal.

  Almost as big a deal as Ellen getting her braces off, which up until this moment I haven’t even noticed. Her smile looks great.

  Ellen buys me frozen yogurt and we walk to her house. We’re mostly quiet on the walk, except for a few words about school coming up or how good it feels not to have metal on Ellen’s teeth. Both of us feel this way: It’s a big improvement. I walk Ellen all the way to her door, and she gives me another big hug. At the door she says through her brand-new smile, “I’m always glad you’re you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Getting home should take only a few minutes, but I don’t want to go there. At least not yet. Home’ll be filled with questions and Nanny being loud and asking me what I’m going to do tonight and if I’m going to the Big Bake tomorrow or not. And I don’t know. I just don’t know anything at the moment. I don’t know even where to go, so I just keep walking. I can’t think of a place to just be by myself and not have to talk to anyone else, because right now everyone else in the world is just awful to me. Everyone. Even the people I like.

  So I walk. Past my house. And then past the park. At least that has quiet bits. I don’t have my iPod with me, so it’s just me alone in the world. No music, no orchestra, no soaring voices in Italian, nothing that will take me away from this really sucky moment with myself. I guess I think I can walk it off, or walk away from it, but it follows me, and keeps following me. Everywhere. I’m not invited. I know what Ellen said but I’m not wanted at all. It’s not on Sophie’s actual birthday, but that doesn’t actually matter. Ellen says they love me, but do I believe her? I’m not going. But neither is Ellen. Is she just as upset as me? Allegra and her mom planned the whole thing. Probably planned the whole thing so I couldn’t go, because they hate me. Hate me. And I’ve never even met Allegra’s mother, but I would totally imagine she’s awful too. Everyone is. Everyone. Maybe even me.

  I keep walking.

  Back through the park. Back to the avenue, then a big avenue, and then I turn around again. It’s such a strange feeling, not knowing where to go, really having no idea which is the right way. At all. Where is the place you’d go to be where all of this didn’t feel so bad? I could walk to Manhattan, maybe. Or maybe somewhere else, like the Bronx. Just to get away. Far away, even if it is scary or something. Just away.

  I walk down to an ice-cream place, the one Sophie and I always go to but probably never will again. I walk past Martinetti’s. I walk past the bakery, just to hear if Stevie Nicks is playing, and she is. I start to walk home. Maybe this is all for nothing. Maybe I just need to go home and maybe there I can be alone. Maybe.

  By the time I get home, Nanny is wai
ting by the door again. Waiting for me.

  “What time do you call this, now?” she yells as I open the door. “Come here to me, boy-o.” So I walk in without a word.

  “Where’ve you been? What were you doing? Nobody’s seen you. You don’t call.”

  “I don’t have a phone,” I answer back.

  “Oh, this again. No, sir. No. This is not my fault at all, you little devil. How can I trust you to take care of one of them phones when you can’t even call home to me to tell me where you’re keeping yourself?”

  I try not to laugh, but seriously? I can’t help it. I mean, she just said she can’t trust me with a cell phone because I don’t have a cell phone to call her. It is so . . . the worst mistake I could make right now, but I smirk. And she sees it.

  “Funny, is it? You won’t be laughing when I call your mother. Come now to me,” Nanny says as she throws her purse on the chair and marches out to the kitchen. We’re going to call my mother, who she thinks will yell at me and punish me and scream me into the floor. But she never does. It’s never happened once. But here we go. Again.

  Nanny is so angry, she can’t work the phone. She gets flustered like this with remotes too. Anything with buttons. Maybe that’s why I don’t have a cell phone, because if she ever really gets angry at me, she won’t be able to find the buttons to turn it off. I think about this, and I smirk again, which is a huge mistake. Huge. Nanny looks over and hands me the phone. “Here, Chuckles, call your mother and tell her what a disrespectful little brat you are. Go on, tell her. Go on.”

  I dial the bakery. And wait and wait, but no one answers. I look at my shoes while I wait, because if I start thinking about saying all those terrible things about myself to Mom to prove to her what an ungrateful brat I am, that’ll make me laugh too. But as the phone rings and rings, and Mom doesn’t pick up, it gets less and less funny.