The Saturday Boy

“Why are you here?”

“I wrote something.”

“What was it?”

“Something bad.”

“Where?”

“Um… the wall.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I was mad.”

“You think you were mad?”

“Yes sir.”

“Who were you mad at?”

“Budgie.”

“And what did Budgie do?”

Mr. Howard put his elbows on his desk and looked at me and waited for me to answer. Budgie hadn’t really done anything except hurt my feelings and that didn’t seem like a good enough reason to write what I’d written.

“Nothing,” I said. “He didn’t really do anything.”

“Then why did you write it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Mr. Howard stared at me. He petted his beard. After a minute he stood up and went to the door and opened it.

“Show me,” he said.

* * *

On the way back to the auditorium we ran into Mr. Putnam. He stopped and we stopped and Mr. Putnam and Mr. Howard started talking. Unfortunately they were talking about me and what I’d done to the wall. Mr. Putnam even had the Magic Marker with him and he handed it to Mr. Howard, who looked at it and shook his head. I stood there wishing I could turn invisible like Fadeout or that I had Opaque’s mutant ability to cloud people’s minds. At this point I’d have even settled for Mysterion’s lame Cloak of Obscurity. I didn’t have any of those things, though, so mostly I just stared at my feet and felt bad.

The afternoon didn’t get any better. In addition to scrubbing the wall clean, Mr. Howard said I’d have to stay after school every day for a week and scrub marker off all the walls, even in the girls’ bathroom. Then he had me apologize to Mr. Putnam for wasting his time and Mr. Putnam said maybe the next time I decided to act like a hooligan I should first consider who might be affected by it. And if that wasn’t enough, then Mr. Howard made me call home and tell Mom what happened, which was the worst part of all.

Mom was quiet on the phone. When she gets like that it means I’ve let her down and she’s disappointed in me. I didn’t like that. One time Budgie said that disappointing your parents was worse than making them mad because if your parents got disappointed too much they could stop loving you.

“I’m really sorry, Mom,” I said.

“Me too.”

“You still love me, though, right?”

I heard Mom clear her throat but she didn’t say anything. There was just more quiet.

“Mom?”

“Of course I still love you, Derek. I’m just…” she took a deep breath and let it out.

“Disappointed?”

“Yes.”

“But I said I was sorry.”

“I know,” she said. “Listen, I have to go now, Derek. Don’t miss the late bus, okay?”

“Okay,” I said. “And Mom? Mom?”

I was going to tell her that I loved her again so she wouldn’t forget but she wasn’t there anymore. I really, really hoped Budgie was wrong.

* * *

Aunt Josie made a Mexican stew for dinner that had red chiles and pork in it and I only knew that because that’s what she’d told me when I asked what was wrong with the chicken. I didn’t remember ever having pork before but by the way the smell punched me in the face I didn’t think I’d like it too much. Or at all. During dinner I made sure to fill up on tortilla chips so I wouldn’t be able to finish it. Aunt Josie looked at me like she knew what I was doing but didn’t say anything.

“I’m full,” I said. “Is there anything for dessert?”

“I thought you were full.”

“Well, I’m a little bit full. I saved some room for dessert.”

“There isn’t any.”

“Not even a Chocolate Ka-Blam?”

“No,” said Aunt Josie. “But if you’re still hungry you could finish your carne adobada.”

“My what?”

“Your stew.”

I looked at the stew and the stew looked back. It seemed angry.

“I’m full,” I said. “Can I be excused?”

“Fine,” she said. “But no TV.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because of what happened at school today. Your mom asked me not to let you watch TV.”

“For how long?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know—one hour, two hours…”

“Dude, I think you’re in a little more trouble than you realize.”

“But that was at school! I can’t get in trouble twice for the same thing can I?”

Then I remembered what Mr. Putnam said about my actions affecting other people and I wondered if this was what he’d been talking about.

“I don’t know, Derek. She’s pretty mad.”

“I thought she was disappointed!”

“She’s mad and disappointed.”

“She can’t be both!”

“You need to talk with her about it, Derek,” said Aunt Josie. “She just asked me not to let you watch TV.”

“But that’s not fair!”

“I don’t know what to tell you. Writing on the wall was something you chose to do. Nobody was holding a gun to your head.”

“Why would someone hold a gun to my head?”

“It’s just a figure of speech,” said Aunt Josie. “Listen, I’m just doing what your mom asked me to do.”

I went up to my room and shut the door and flopped down on my bed so hard the springs creaked. I could feel the frown on my face. It was deep—like someone had carved it there.

After what seemed like a long time I got down off my bed and went to my desk. The drawing I’d done of Castle Budgerek was sitting right on top. I picked it up and studied all the little details—the flamejobs on all the bumper cars and the cool expression on Budgie’s face as he caught mad air off the half-pipe. I’d even drawn scales on the piranhadiles, which hadn’t been easy.

I remembered how long it had taken me to do and how impressed Mom had been and how happy it had made her. Then I thought about how she wasn’t happy anymore and how she was angry and disappointed instead and it was my fault for making her feel that way.

Suddenly I was crushing the drawing in my hands, crumpling it into a ball and throwing it on the floor. I