The Saturday Boy

This was it.

I snuck down the hall and into the classroom. Through the windows I could see the turnaround where the buses were lining up with all the kids waiting to get on. I didn’t have much time. Soon the buses would be full and they’d drive away and I’d be stuck here. I grabbed all my stuff and was pulling on my jacket when I noticed that Budgie had left his math workbook on his desk.

Budgie. Budgie with the fat, dumb laugh. Budgie whose fault this all was.

I went over and picked up the book and flipped through it a little. We had math homework tonight and he couldn’t do it without the book. The nice thing to do would be to bring it to him. The right thing to do would be to bring it to him. He could get in trouble if he didn’t do his homework.

I looked out the window again. The buses were filling up. I thought about Budgie and what Mom had said about him having pain in his life. Then I thought about what a pain it was having him in my life. I thought about those two things for as long as I could without missing the bus.

Then I glued the book to his desk and ran.

* * *

Mom was waiting for me when I got home.

“Derek?”

“Yeah?”

I dropped my backpack on the floor and took off my jacket and hung it up and went into the pantry for a Chocolate Ka-Blam. When I turned around Mom was standing in the doorway. Her arms were crossed. She didn’t look happy. She looked disappointed and a little sad.

“Do you know who I just got off the phone with?”

“No.”

“Derek.”

“Ms. Dickson?”

“And Mr. Howard,” said Mom. “Do you know why they called?”

I nodded and fiddled with the Chocolate Ka-Blam and then put it back on the shelf. I suddenly wasn’t very hungry anymore.

I remembered the last thing Mr. Howard had called about. It was easy to remember because Dad had just gotten home and I always remembered everything that happened when he was here.

It’d been late and I was supposed to be in bed but I’d had two sodas at the welcome home party and they’d had caffeine in them so I sat at the bottom of the stairs instead, listening to my daddy’s voice as he and Mom talked in the kitchen.

I didn’t know what they were talking about and it didn’t matter. I’d just missed the sound of my dad’s voice. My mom once said she thought Dad must be afraid of the quiet the way he was always talking to himself and singing but I didn’t agree. My dad’s not afraid of anything. But the quiet is awfully loud when he’s away.

I didn’t remember how long I’d been sitting there listening but at some point the tone of my dad’s voice changed and I started to pay attention. He was angry. I hoped it wasn’t because of me.

“What? No. No way. We’ve been through this once already.”

“We have, Jason, but—”

“Remember first grade? His teacher decided there was something wrong with him and wouldn’t shut up about it until we agreed to have him tested?”

I didn’t remember taking any tests or anything but first grade was ages ago.

“And even after everything came back negative she still wouldn’t let it go?”

“I remember. I do. Just—”

“Annie, c’mon,” Dad said. “That’s messed up.”

“Yes it is.”

“Why can’t he just be a high-spirited kid? Why do people feel the need to put labels on everything?” Dad said. “You want a label for Derek? Awesome. There it is. There’s your label.”

I totally remember him saying that. Word for word. Mom agreed, saying something like if Dad was trying to get an argument out of her he’d have to try harder. Then she said, “Mr. Howard said Derek’s in a different kind of trouble. There have been a few… outbursts.”

First of all, those had not been my fault. If Mrs. Bailey hadn’t spent so much time with her back to the classroom she’d have seen all the stuff that went down—all the spitballs and ear flicks—but that wasn’t the case. All she’d heard were the times I’d reacted. Because she was always facing the whiteboard she’d missed all the times I did ignore them—all the times I hadn’t done anything.

She’d missed all the times I’d just sat there and taken it.

“What have they decided is the matter this time?”

“Don’t be like that, Jason,” Mom said. “It’s not like the teachers want him to fail.”

“How should I be then?” said Dad. He was frowning. I could hear it in his voice. “This is exactly what I was afraid of. It got written down in some file that one teacher thought there was a problem and now that red flag’s always going to be there. I’m sorry. It just frustrates the hell out of me that he has to deal with this. Again. It sucks.”

I remember him saying that because it was a word that I wasn’t allowed to use. But it did suck. It sucked a lot. I sat on the stairs then, feeling angry and frustrated at the unfairness—the suckiness—of it all. Feeling like there was nothing I could do.

“You’re right. It completely sucks. But it happened.”

“Did your sister ever have to deal with anything like this?”

“Like what?”

“People thinking she had a problem or was strange because of the way she dressed or the music she was into or whatever,” Dad said. “Don’t forget—I’ve seen Josie’s Mohawk pictures from high school.”

I remember wondering how anybody could think Aunt Josie was strange. There was just no way. Maybe they were just jealous of how cool she was. Not everybody got to be an artist, after all, and I bet the number of people who got to be tattoo artists was even smaller. She’d also lived in Mexico and Japan and just about every time she came over she’d give me a new tattoo with Magic Markers. I was her favorite client because I sat like a rock. That’s what she told me.

“…and right or wrong people are going to have their opinions of him,” Mom was saying. “They’re going to label him in the same way they felt the need to label my sister and everything else—because their world doesn’t make sense without them.

“Listen—Derek has proven them wrong before. Just have him meet with their behaviorist and he’ll do it again and we can move on. Okay?” I remember hearing her chair scrape on the kitchen floor and her footsteps as she walked around the table. I knew she’d sat in my dad’s lap because his chair made a noise like it was complaining. “Would you like to know what I think?”

“Yes I would,” my dad said.

“I think he missed his daddy. Plain and simple. He puts on a brave face but I can tell it’s tough for him when you’re not here. He needed you.”

“Well, he’s got me,” Dad said. “I’m home now.”

“Why are you smiling?” Mom asked, smashing the memory to pieces and yanking me back to the present. “Is this funny to you? I asked you if you knew why they called.”

“Ms. Dickson told me to go to the office and I didn’t go,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I was going to, I swear,” I said. “But I went to the boys’ room and I lost track of time.”

“What were you doing in the boys’ room?”

“Drying my hair.”

“Drying your—wait. What?”

So I told her. Then I told her about what happened—about Budgie and the notes he’d passed me and that it