The Saturday Boy

burning flagpole, then I realized it wasn’t a burning flagpole at all. It was a tree. And if the burning flagpole was a tree, that meant I was the weasel.

I wanted to turn around and scream at him that nobody believed he’d climbed the stupid tree anyway and that I didn’t have to prove anything to him or anybody else and that nobody liked him or cared about what he said, including Barely O’Donahue, who probably only hung around because he was short and afraid of being picked on. Instead I crumpled up the note and put it in my desk, which is what I should have done in the first place.

The clock kept ticking. The bell would ring soon and the day would end and I’d have to climb the tree and I wasn’t very good at climbing trees. But just because I wasn’t that good at it didn’t mean I was scared to. Budgie would soon find out that Derek Lamb was no chicken. Plus about a thousand people heard me say I’d do it.

* * *

“All right, Lamb, up you go.”

Me, Budgie, Barely O’Donahue, and a few kids from recess were all standing at the bottom of the tree looking up. I could see part of the sky and some clouds through the branches. They seemed very far away.

“What branch?” I asked.

“What what branch?” said Budgie.

“What branch did you carve your name on?”

Budgie glanced at Barely O’Donahue, who shrugged and shook his head.

“You know—the top one,” said Budgie.

“There’s more than one branch at the top.”

“Quit stalling!”

I wasn’t stalling. How could Budgie expect me to climb higher than he did if he couldn’t even remember which branch he carved his name on? I know that if it was me I’d totally remember. If it was me I would’ve hung a flag and claimed the tree for Derekland.

“Go on, Captain Saturday, get up there!” said Budgie.

“Yeah, go on!” said Barely O’Donahue. “Whatcha waiting for?”

“What’s the matter, Lamb? Chicken?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it.

“Dude, you sound like that dog food commercial.”

“What?”

Now I was stalling. I figured the longer I put it off, the more likely we’d get caught and I wouldn’t have to do it at all.

“You know—the Hungry Pup commercial? With that song?”

“I know that one!” said Barely O’Donahue.

“If your pup is up and sniffin’ in the kitchen,” I sang, with Barely O’Donahue and a couple of the other kids joining in. “Hungry Pup’s got rice, lamb, and chicken!”

“What are you doing?” asked Budgie angrily.

“What?” answered Barely O’Donahue. “It’s a commercial.”

“I know it’s a commercial.”

I looked up at the school building while Budgie and Barely O’Donahue worked things out, hoping we’d be spotted by a teacher or a janitor—somebody, anybody with even the slightest bit of authority who might recognize this as a potential breaking of the rules.

“What’re you doing now?” said Budgie.

“Making sure there’s no teachers,” I said. “You wanna get busted?”

“Just hurry up!”

I looked up into the tree again and swallowed hard. Three hundred feet. At least.

Ignoring Budgie, Barely O’Donahue, and the others, I walked around the tree looking for a good place to start. Luckily, the tree had some branches close to the ground and I found a sturdy one and climbed up onto it. From there I found another branch a little farther up. It was narrower than the first one but still wide enough for both feet and I hugged the trunk and pressed my cheek against the bark. My hands were starting to sweat and I hoped that Budgie couldn’t see that my legs were shaking.

“That branch looks wobbly,” said Budgie. “Are you sure it’ll hold you?”

“It held you, didn’t it?”

Some of the kids laughed.

“What did you just say?”

“He said, ‘It held you, didn’t it,’” said Barely O’Donahue.

“I heard him.”

“You know, because you’re fat.”

“Shut up!”

I tried not to listen to Budgie. I tried not to listen to Barely O’Donahue. I’d discovered something I didn’t want to do more than climb the tree and that was fall out of it. My heart was pounding so loud I was pretty sure Budgie could hear it.

“You suck, Lamb!” he said.

“Rack of lamb!” said Barely O’Donahue. “Ram-a-lamb-a-ding-dong!”

I kept going. I’d stopped thinking about it. I was just climbing—grabbing one branch after another, hoisting, pulling myself higher into the tree. I kept an eye out for Budgie’s name even though the higher I got, the more I believed it wasn’t there.

I got to a place where I could balance pretty good and stopped to catch my breath. My hands hurt. They were dirty and shaky and hard to open. I didn’t know how high up I was but I couldn’t see Budgie anymore because there were too many leaves in the way. Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard him for a while either.

I did hear something though. It sounded like bus engines.

“Budgie,” I shouted down, “do you hear the bus?”

Mom was working a late shift today, which meant my aunt Josie would be at my house, and since her car was still getting fixed it meant if I missed the bus I would have no way of getting home. I couldn’t miss the bus. I just couldn’t.

“Budgie?”

My stomach dropped. Budgie wasn’t there anymore, I just knew it.

And if Budgie wasn’t there, then Barely O’Donahue and the other kids weren’t there either. They were probably in line for the bus already. They might even be on the bus. I pictured them sitting in the way back, yucking it up, giving each other high-fives for ditching me.

They were a clever bunch for sure.

I climbed down as fast as I could. My feet slipped on the branches and some of them bent and broke but I hung on. My shirt ripped. Branches poked at me. Leaves swirled around me. My foot got stuck and I unstuck it. I could feel something in my hair—leaves or twigs maybe—and something itching me on my back. I hoped it wasn’t spiders. When I thought I was close enough to the ground to not get hurt, I took a deep breath and flung myself outward.

As I fell through the air I heard my dad’s voice, recalling the words of his commanding officer from a story he told me about his first day of jump school.

“Landing is easy. All’s you need to remember are the following three words in the following order.” I pictured my dad’s CO wearing mirrored sunglasses and chewing on a cigar, voice raspy from a lifetime of barking orders. “Feet. Ass. Head.”

I hit the ground pretty hard but in the correct order, little darts of pain shooting up my legs even though I remembered to bend my knees. I grabbed my bag and my jacket, thankful that Budgie hadn’t thought to hide them or, worse, open my bag and scatter everything around. I ran as fast as I could but when I got to the front of the school building the turnaround was empty. The smell of exhaust hung in the air.

I dropped my stuff and sat down on the curb. How could I be so stupid? All I had to do was make it through the day and get on the bus and go home and I couldn’t even do that. Instead I had let Budgie get to me again. I wished I could go back in time and do the day again only this time when Barely O’Donahue said, “Budgie climbed the tree,” I’d say, “Good for him” or “Get bent” or something—anything—other than what I’d actually said. Sometimes I wished I could just take my brain out and put it in a box and bury it.