Better Than Weird Read online

  Around noon the snow stopped, but the sky didn’t clear. In fact, new clouds moved in. They looked ominously dark, and even before the lunch break was over, it started snowing again. This time, flurries of snow, whipped by winds, were sent eddying in all directions.

  At dismissal time, Mr. Ulanni came on the pa to tell everyone to go straight home. Aaron, who was hurrying to put on his hat and coat, noticed Tufan, dressed and ready to go, leaning against the wall as if he was waiting for someone.

  Me, Aaron thought. He’s waiting for me. Today’s the day.

  He wanted to run. If he was a squirrel, he could run and jump right over Tufan. He’d get away. Maybe he’d even turn on Tufan. Chase him away. He glanced up. Tufan was still leaning against the wall. Waiting. Aaron felt sick.

  When he saw Jeremy hoist his backpack to his shoulder, he hurried to his side. Tufan wouldn’t do anything if Jeremy was there. When Jeremy walked down the hall, Aaron followed. Together they clattered down the stairs. At the bottom, Aaron glanced back. The staircase was empty. Safe, he thought. I won’t die today. Not today. But when they stepped out, Jeremy saw Karima near the schoolyard gate. “I gotta go,” he said. “See you.” And before Aaron could say anything, Jeremy took off, running.

  Aaron looked back a second time. He was still alone.

  The walk home wasn’t easy. At times the wind blew into Aaron’s face. He felt it cutting, biting, slicing at his skin. Then it shifted, and he felt himself pushed from behind. That made his heart clench. Was it…? No. Still safe. Still safe.

  The snow that had built up on the sidewalk during the day was deep enough to reach the top of his boots. Walking was hard. He tried big-stepping over the drifts, lifting his feet high and stomping them down. He wished for wings. If I had wings, I could fly over everything, he thought. In spite of the wind and the snow, he climbed a snowbank, lifted his arms and jumped, but the flying part didn’t happen. He fell and landed in a heap. It made him laugh. The laughter ended when he thought he heard a voice call his name.

  “Aaaaaroooon.” It was a low sound. Lower than the wind. He wasn’t sure. Did he hear it?

  He turned and looked around; the sidewalk was empty.

  Then he heard it again. “Aaaaaroooon.”

  Aaron began to run.

  Running was hard, but he kept going until his chest ached and a scratchy CHROO-CHROO-CHROO sound came from his lungs. Like a train, he thought. The image of an old-fashioned train with a cowcatcher at the front filled his head as his feet plowed through the drifts. The CHROO-CHROO-CHROO sounds grew louder. When he couldn’t go any farther, he stopped, put his hands on his thighs and leaned forward, gasping. He peered under his arm to see who was behind him. Nobody. There was nobody there. He sighed with relief, then straightened and looked around.

  That’s when he saw it. A shadow behind a car parked on the other side of the street. It disappeared, only to reappear through the window of the car ahead. The sight of it made him whimper, the sound catching in his throat as he took off again, running.

  This time he didn’t stop until he reached the walkway to his house. Home, he thought. Home safe. But with his next step, his foot landed on an icy patch. His arms rose instinctively, whirling, struggling for balance. It did no good. The ground below him vanished, and he fell. Pain, red as a fireball, exploded behind his eyes. He yelped.

  Behind him, the voice said, “Gotcha now.”

  Frantic, Aaron scrambled forward on hands and knees and crawled up the steps to the veranda. At the top he glanced back to see a gray figure on the road behind him: a warrior preparing for battle; a warrior standing, legs apart, packing a snowball, taking his time.

  Aaron rushed to the door, but the snowball whomped into the back of his head, making it snap forward, then back. Ice ball, he thought as his glasses flew off.

  “Bull’s-eye!” the warrior shouted. He laughed when Aaron dropped to his knees. “Praying won’t help!” the warrior called.

  Aaron picked up his glasses, but before he could put them on, a second snowball splattered the wall beside him, sending bits of snow and ice into his face. He squeezed his eyes shut and reached for the knob. When the door opened, he fell inside and scrabbled across the mat into the hallway. He turned then and shoved at the door until he heard the latch click shut.

  “You can run, but you can’t hide,” the voice called. Tufan’s voice. He was sure now. Tufan’s voice. “I’ll get you tomorrow.”

  Aaron groaned. He pushed his glasses back on his face and sagged against the door. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. The word echoed. Tomorrow I die.

  THIRTEEN

  Aaron crouched on the hallway floor, his face dripping, his glasses fogged. He pulled them off, letting them drop as he blinked water out of his eyes. Then he lifted his hand to rub away the wetness. The movement sent waves of pain shooting to his shoulder and he yelped again.

  “Aaron? Is that you, Aaron?” Gran’s voice. “I’m in the basement,” she called. “I’ll be right up.”

  Leaning against the door, he pushed himself to his feet before he staggered along the hallway and up the stairs to the bathroom.

  Once inside, he locked the door and shrugged off his coat. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” he moaned as the weight of the coat slid down his arm. He took a deep breath and gingerly hiked up the sleeve of his sweatshirt. The hurting part seemed to be at the back of his arm, but it was hard to see. He tried looking over his shoulder into the mirror, but the hurting part stayed just out of sight.

  I need eyes on the back of my head, he thought, remembering something Gran often said. Her words had always made Aaron giggle as he tried to imagine how hard it would be for ‘back of the head’ eyes to see through all the hair. Now he wished his head had extra eyes.

  “Aaron! Are you upstairs, Aaron?”

  He groaned. There was anger in Gran’s voice and in the thump of her footsteps as she came up the stairs.

  “Do you know where you left your glasses? You left them on the floor beside the front door! And the carpet is soaked. Did you go upstairs wearing your boots? What’s the matter with you? Where is your head today?”

  Aaron looked into the bathroom mirror. His head was where it always was. He looked down. A puddle was forming on the bathroom tiles.

  “Uh-oh,” he muttered. He kicked one boot into the space beside the toilet, the other against the cabinet, before he picked them up and dropped them into the bathtub.

  “Aaron! Open the door!” Gran ordered.

  “I have to go,” Aaron called out as he pulled a towel off the rack. He dropped it to the floor and stepped on it, hoping to soak up the water so Gran wouldn’t notice.

  “Aaron! Open this door!” Gran was shouting now.

  “Jeez! Give me a minute!” he called back, giving the floor a last swipe before tossing the towel into the cupboard.

  “It…I had an emergency,” he called out. “I couldn’t wait,” he said as he stepped out.

  “Where are your boots?” Gran asked.

  Aaron pointed to the tub. “I put them in there. I didn’t know where else to put them.” He did his best to look as if he’d been trying to be helpful.

  “Oh, for goodness sake,” Gran said. “Pick up your coat and take your boots downstairs to the mat.”

  She watched as he bent to pick up his belongings. It was a lot to hold with one hand, and when a boot slipped from his fingers, his right hand reached for it instinctively. The pain of it made him yelp again.

  * * *

  “How did you hurt your arm?” the triage nurse in the emergency department asked. Aaron told her about slipping on the walkway. She nodded and checked the rest of him. Nothing else hurt until she ran her fingers over the back of his head. Then he flinched. “What about this lump?” she asked.

  “Lump?” Gran said.

  “There’s a lump?” Aaron asked. He ran his fingers over a swelling on the back of his head.

  “Did your head hit the pavement when you fell?”

  “No. Yes. Maybe.
I guess.”

  “That’s a lot of answers. Which one would you like to go with?” The nurse smiled, but there was something about her voice that made Aaron nervous.

  He squirmed, trying to remember. Had his head hit the sidewalk when he fell? He wasn’t sure. He was sure about the ice ball. Did that make the bump? Should he tell?

  I could rat him out, he thought. I could tell, and Tufan would be in trouble. For a moment, the thought of Tufan in trouble felt good. But that thought was followed by a jumble of others: He’ll get mad all over again. “I don’t get mad, I get even.” That’s what he’d said. But Aaron knew better. He had seen Tufan get mad. And he had seen him get even. He’s done it before. He’ll do it again. That’s what he’ll do. He’ll get even all over again.

  “My head hit the pavement when I fell,” he said, echoing the nurse’s question.

  She frowned. “Not sure how that could have happened. The bump is pretty low down. Did you fall on something? Was there something sticking up? A brick? A stone? Did somebody hit you with something?”

  “Nobody hit me!” Aaron said.

  The nurse frowned. She went to get an ice pack and showed Aaron how to hold it up to the lump. Then she kept asking questions until Gran started to frown and question him too. But no matter what they asked, Aaron kept saying, “Nobody hit me. Nobody.”

  The waiting room was filled with people. There was an old man in bedroom slippers slumped in a wheelchair; a woman pacing the aisle, crooning to a crying baby; a man cradling an arm wrapped with a bloodstained towel; a girl in tight jeans yelling into the pay phone: “It’s not my fault! I was puking all night. What did you want me to do?”

  “Sit there,” Gran said, pointing Aaron to one of two empty chairs. She stood over him until he was settled before she sat down herself.

  “How long do X-rays take?” Aaron asked.

  Gran shrugged. “Depends.” She peered at him. “Are you feeling dizzy or sick or sleepy or anything?”

  “Uh-uh.” Aaron started to shake his head, but thought better of it. “It only hurts if I do that.”

  “Then don’t do that,” Gran said, and for a moment her worry lines softened and she grinned.

  He opened his eyes wide. “Do my pupils look big? The nurse said that if my pupils are delated I might have a concussion.”

  “Dilated. If your pupils are dilated.” She peered at his eyes. “Yours look fine to me. You look a little tired.”

  “Yeah. I’m tired.” He yawned, then giggled when Gran yawned too.

  “A concussion,” he said. “That’s like…that’s like a crack in my head, right?”

  “Sort of.”

  “If I have a concussion, will my brains leak out?”

  “Stop it. Your brains won’t leak out.”

  “But if I did? If I did have a concussion? Would I be a nut with a crack?”

  “You’re not a nut.”

  “I’m different.”

  “Everybody’s different.”

  Aaron sighed. Yeah. Mostly not as different as me.

  * * *

  “There’s a crack in this bone,” the doctor said, and he showed Aaron the X-ray of his arm and the broken bone. “We’ll put a cast on it. You’ll be fine in no time.”

  He gave Aaron a choice of colors. Aaron picked the white one. “Then everybody can sign it,” he said. “Jeremy and Mr. Collins and my dad. And you, Gran. You can sign it first.”

  The clock at the nurses’ station read eleven thirty by the time they were getting instructions about how to take care of the cast. Aaron leaned on Gran as the nurse’s voice droned on. His eyes burned with tiredness.

  Behind them, the big emergency doors whooshed open. A gust of cold air came through as paramedics wheeled in a woman wrapped in blankets. She looked old and frail behind the oxygen mask that covered her face. Her skin was as gray as her hair.

  The paramedics wheeled the gurney to a spot beside the wall. One took a clipboard and went to talk to the triage nurse. The other stayed, checked the mask, then turned to talk to a man in a green uniform.

  The old woman’s eyes opened and darted from side to side. She’s scared, Aaron thought. Her face looks scared.

  Her head turned, and when her frightened eyes found his, he jumped in his seat. It was Tufan’s grandmother. He recognized the long gray hair that lay bunched on her pillow. He looked around, expecting to see Tufan nearby. He wasn’t there.

  The woman’s hands fumbled under the restraints that held her to the gurney. She pulled one free and reached out. Aaron got up and walked to her side. He put out his good hand and felt her tiny, bird-bone fingers close around his. Small as they were, her fingers felt hot and strong as they grasped his hand.

  “I got a cast,” Aaron said, lifting his right elbow a little. “See. The doctors…they’re really nice. They’ll take care of you too. They’ll make you better.” He tried to smile. Her fingers fluttered. She pulled them back.

  “Aaron?” Gran called.

  “I gotta go,” he whispered. “But don’t worry. They’ll take good care of you.”

  He was behind Gran, walking toward the exit, when the emergency doors whooshed open. They stepped aside to let a woman rush through. Behind her came Tufan. Aaron saw them hurry toward the gurney. He saw Tufan lean his head toward his grandmother. Her tiny hands reached out and patted his face.

  FOURTEEN

  When Gran said, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt you to miss one day of school,” Aaron sighed in relief. At home, he wouldn’t have Tufan to worry about.

  For a while he tried working on his space project, but without Jeremy, building a space city wasn’t much fun. Besides, even opening the lid of a paint jar was hard with one hand.

  “I’m bored,” he complained when he went back upstairs. “Why don’t we have a television, or…or a game system or a computer? Then I’d have something to do. Everybody else has that stuff.”

  “Not everybody,” Gran said. “We don’t.”

  Aaron huffed. “You never want anything new.”

  “That’s all I need,” she said. “Another expensive gadget I don’t know how to use.”

  “You know how to use a tv. We had one before.”

  “We did. And you know why we got rid of it.”

  He cringed. When they had a tv, Gran had complained because all he wanted to do was sit and watch. She kept making him turn it off. Once she even pulled the fuse, but Aaron, who knew about fuses, put it back. That annoyed her. Then last year, when she found him watching a movie in the middle of the night, she got really mad.

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning!” she had stormed. “You should be in bed.” And on the next garbage day, she asked a neighbor to carry their set to the curb. Out it went, and it was never replaced.

  “I was a kid then,” he argued. “I didn’t know any better. Why can’t we get a new one now?”

  “It’s one less problem for me,” Gran said, and she refused to say any more about it.

  Aaron stomped into the living room and slumped to the floor in front of the couch. He sat cross-legged and began rocking back and forth as he continued the argument in his head: My dad. My dad will let me have a tv. Probably he’ll let me have a computer and an iPod and other stuff too. Dads are better than grandmothers. My dad is.

  His argument went on until he heard a voice from the kitchen radio. The voice was talking about how to make soup. “You can’t make soup without onions,” it said.

  “You can’t make soup,” Aaron repeated, making the words match the beat of his rocking. Soon he was chanting:

  You can’t make soup,

  You can’t make soup,

  You can’t make soup,

  Without ooon-ions.

  When Gran came in to call him for lunch, she looked at him and said, “I think you’re probably good to go back to school after you eat,” and nothing he said changed her mind.

  * * *

  Everybody noticed the cast as soon as he walked into the classroom. There w
ere a lot of questions. People wanted to know what happened. Everybody except Tufan. He didn’t ask anything. And every time Aaron looked his way, Tufan looked down.

  That afternoon, Karen called for Aaron. “I was worried about you this morning,” she said. “You hardly ever miss school. What happened?”

  “I slipped,” he said.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I was running and I slipped.”

  “You have to be more careful,” she said. “Snow and ice can be treacherous.”

  “Yeah. I could’ve cracked my head or something.”

  Karen studied his face.

  “What?” he said. Her look was making him nervous.

  “I was thinking about something you said last week,” she said. “Something about running away so you wouldn’t get hurt. Remember?”

  Aaron looked away from her probing eyes.

  “And you mentioned Tufan. You said he made a mad face at you.”

  “Yeah.” He looked up again. “That was when the snake got out and Mr. Collins said we should look for it, and I found it at the back of the room. Tufan was surprised. And then…” He paused. “Then he made a mad face.”

  Karen waited. When Aaron couldn’t stand the silence a moment longer, he said, “Jeremy said probably Tufan was surprised ’cause I wasn’t scared. ’Cause I picked up the snake. He said, ‘Probably Tufan is scared of snakes.’ Some guys are. And girls. Mostly they don’t like snakes. And when I was holding it, I maybe held it too close to Tufan, and he jumped up and his chair fell over. And everybody laughed, and then he was… you know…he was mad.”

  “Did he threaten to hurt you?”

  “I…I didn’t say that.”

  “No, you didn’t.” She tilted her head and peered at his face. “If he did, and you told me, I’d be able to help.”

  Aaron looked at Karen. She was small for a grownup. And she was skinny. Tufan was pretty big. Probably he was stronger than her. Aaron didn’t want anything to happen to Karen.

  “Okay,” he said.