“The attendance office.”
“The attendance office?”
“Yes,” Mr. Putnam said. “Why? Are you wearing a wire?”
“What? No. I’m just—it’s just that his mother is the only one who calls him Marion.”
“Then she must have been the one to fill out all the paperwork at the beginning of the school year,” Mr. Putnam said. “Okay if I continue here?”
I nodded slowly, a feeling of impending doom beginning to seep in around the edges of me. It was bad enough that I’d broken the Secret Secret Club’s only rule by sharing a secret with nonmembers and now I may have made it worse by talking about it. I needed to give them something else to think about instead.
“I was born with a tail,” I blurted.
I didn’t know if that was going to be enough for them to forget the Marion thing but I had to be sure. Me and Budgie might not have been friends anymore but a club was a club and what was said there was supposed to stay there.
“And my middle name is Dorothy.”
I had trouble falling asleep that night even though I was tired. Someone had taken down the Apache helicopter. It was probably my mom but I just didn’t have the energy to ask her about it. I tried looking at a different model. I looked at the F-14 Tomcat. I looked at the Spitfire. I even looked at the B-52 Stratofortress but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t imagine myself flying any of them the way I could the Apache. I couldn’t imagine my dad at all. It was like I’d forgotten him.
I rolled onto my side and looked out the window. The moon was cold. The yard shivered. I pulled the quilts up around my neck and closed my eyes. Everything I did in my dreams that night I did alone.
15
“HI, PIGGY. HOW’D YOU sleep?” Mom said without looking up from the bowl of batter.
“Are we having pancakes?”
“How’d you know?”
“You’re using the green bowl,” I said. “You always use the green bowl to make pancakes.”
“I do?”
“Yeah.”
The ingredients were spread out over the counter. The flour canister was open. The milk was still out. So was the butter tub. There were eggshells in the measuring cup. I went to the fridge and got the orange juice out and poured a glass and sat at the table and watched her stir the pancake batter. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d made pancakes from scratch. She usually got the just-add-water kind.
“Why do you have to stir it so much?” I asked.
“So it doesn’t get lumpy.”
“Can I flip them?”
“When it’s time,” she said. “Do me a favor and get the griddle set up?”
I got the griddle from the cabinet and cleared off a spot on the counter, plugged it in, and turned it on. Mom looked over at me. At some point she must have rubbed her nose because there was flour on the end of it. Her face had new lines on it and when she smiled it seemed fake—like it was trying to trick the world into thinking everything was okay.
We ate breakfast and then I went and got my stuff for school and hugged Mom good-bye and went to the bus stop. Budgie was there. He was wearing a red-and-black plaid hat with earflaps. One of the flaps was pulled up and he had a cell phone pressed against his ear. I couldn’t believe it. Where’d he get a cell phone from? And who was he talking to this early in the morning? Pizza Jungle wasn’t even open yet.
“Hey.”
“I’m on the phone.”
“Sorry.”
“Dude, I’m on the phone!”
He turned a little bit away from me and covered his mouth with his hand so I couldn’t hear him. I bet there wasn’t even anybody on the other end. I bet he was fake-talking just so I would see he had a cell phone and think he was cool for having one. I didn’t, though, and it would take a lot more than just a cell phone for me to change my mind. He took the phone from his ear and pressed a button and put the phone in the pocket of his coat.
“Where’d you get the phone?”
“My mom and dad got it for me,” said Budgie. He had this expression on his face like he thought he was cool but the earflap of his hat was still up so it didn’t really work.
“It’s got apps on it and everything.”
“What’re apps?”
“They’re things that do stuff,” said Budgie. “Jeez, don’t you know anything?”
“I know things.”
“No you don’t.”
“I do. I know lotsa things.”
“Name one.”
“I know the rubber sheets on your bed aren’t so it’ll be more comfortable like you said.”
Budgie suddenly stopped trying to seem cool. Now he looked kinda nervous.
“Who told you that?”
“I asked my mom for some and she told me.”
“Why? Why? Why would you ask for some?”
“My bed’s uncomfortable sometimes,” I said. “I also thought if I had rubber sheets it’d be more like a trampoline.”
Budgie swallowed. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something but then he closed it, digging into his pocket instead. He brought out his cell phone, stood next to me, and held it so I could see it. Then he showed me what apps it had and what they did. They were mostly games. There was a race car one and one where you shot chickens from a cannon. There were others, too. We played them on the bus all the way to school.
That morning was good. Me and Budgie played together at recess and we sat at the same table during lunch. We were even on the same dodgeball team during gym class. It was good to be on Budgie’s team. He might not have been the best player but he threw the ball harder than anyone else. He even told me that one time he threw the ball so hard it knocked a kid out. I wasn’t sure I believed that part but I was glad I was on his team so I wouldn’t have to find out the hard way. Our team won three games to none and for a while everything was awesome.
It was after school at rehearsal when things started to be not so awesome. Mr. Putnam had Missy Sprout and Budgie and the rest of the helpers sit onstage while he did the roll call, and me, Violet, and the rest of the cast sat in the audience. Budgie’d lent me his cell phone and I was playing a game with the sound off and even though I was only listening to Mr. Putnam with half an ear I heard him call Budgie’s name. Then Mr. Putnam asked Budgie something from so far out of left field it made me stop playing and look up. In fact it made everyone stop and look up.
“So Budgie,” he said. “Were you named after the Duke?”
“Who’s the Duke?”
“You’ve never heard of the Duke? John Wayne?”
“My name’s not John.”
“John wasn’t his real name either,” said Mr. Putnam. “It was Marion. Like yours.”
