The Mealworm Diaries Page 6

  Jeremy frowned. A lightning bolt?

  “My uncle has a scar on his hand from when he lost his thumb. It was sliced off by a machine,” somebody offered, and the conversation shifted to missing body parts, until the groans from the girls in the doorway grew louder.

  “What’s going on here?” Mr. Collins’ voice cut through the noise.

  The kids looked at each other, but nobody answered until Tufan said, “Aaron wanted to touch Jeremy’s leg.”

  “What?” Mr. Collins turned to Aaron.

  “I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t,” Aaron said.

  “Yes, you did,” kids chorused.

  Aaron, silenced again, began rocking his body against the cinder-block wall.

  “Jeremy?” Mr. Collins said.

  Jeremy looked up. He had been thinking that having a lightning bolt on his leg was kind of cool, and he had almost forgotten about Aaron wanting to touch it. “I… I think he was just curious…about…about my scar.”

  Mr. Collins came over to look at the red line that zigzagged down Jeremy’s leg. He frowned. “With all the running and the skipping you’ve been doing, I assume that leg doesn’t bother you a whole lot?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “Not too much,” he said.

  Mr. Collins nodded and moved to Aaron, whose rocking had turned to banging. “Aaron. Stop. You’re not in trouble. You didn’t do anything wrong. Jeremy told me. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  With the teacher’s hand on his shoulder, Aaron stopped. “Is he…is he…is he gonna die?”

  Some of the kids snickered.

  “Do you want to answer that?” Mr. Collins asked, turning to Jeremy.

  “I hope not…,” Jeremy began, but his voice caught in his throat. He began again. “I was in an accident. The doctors fixed me.”

  “Did they, did they stitch you up?” Aaron asked.

  “Yeah. And they stapled me together. But first they put two metal plates in my leg. One here,” he said, pointing at one side of his ankle, “and one here.” He pointed at the opposite side.

  When he looked up he noticed that the girls had drifted into the room. “The whole thing is held together with screws,” he went on. “See the little bumps here, and here and here?” He pointed.

  Everybody leaned forward to see.

  “Man, that must’ve hurt,” Aaron said, and for once he didn’t repeat himself.

  Jeremy nodded. “Yeah…but it’s good now. Really,” he finished, looking into Karima’s concerned face. Concerned, but not grossed out.

  SIXTEEN

  Jeremy was happy. The assembly had been a hit, and once it was done, kids he hardly recognized said “Hi” as he passed them in the hallway and schoolyard. It was a good day. A very good day.

  He came home to find Milly mopping the hallway stairs and singing a song about the moon hitting your eye and pizza. He grinned as he watched her mop dance across one step and back along another with each new line of song. The sound of his breathing must have told her she wasn’t alone, because she turned abruptly.

  “Hello, Jeremy,” she said. “I see you’ve been running.”

  “Uh-huh. Cross-country practice. And then I jogged home with Horace.”

  “No wonder you look hot,” Milly said. “Get yourself a glass of milk and put out some plates. Your Mom is due soon and I’m almost done.”

  He went into the kitchen while Milly mopped her way to the bottom of the stairs and along the hallway. “I put the kettle on,” he said as she backed through the swinging kitchen door.

  “Perfect.” She nudged her bucket into a corner. “Tea always hits the spot.”

  Milly walked to the counter and dropped a couple of tea bags into the pot before she placed a plate of cookies on the table.

  “Mmmm, chocolate chip. My favorite,” Jeremy said, choosing one and taking a large bite.

  “I thought you said peanut butter was your favorite.”

  “That was last week. Before I tasted these.”

  Milly chuckled as the front door opened and closed.

  “I’m home.” His mother’s voice.

  “We’re in the kitchen,” Milly called.

  Jeremy put his finger to his lips and winked at Milly. She gave him a puzzled look but didn’t ask any questions.

  “Hello everybody,” his mother said. There was a big smile on her face that vanished when she looked at Jeremy. He sat slumped in his chair, wearing a sad sorry expression.

  “Oh, Jeremy…,” she began. “Oh, honey…” She hurried to his side. “What happened? Was it the assembly? Did things go wrong? I knew I should have talked to your teacher.”

  Jeremy had meant his little act as a joke, but the pain in his mother’s voice stopped him. “No,” he said, and he laughed nervously. “I was kidding. Really. It was all good. Everything was great. The assembly was awesome.”

  “Jeremy!” her voice shook, but she laughed. “You! You’re a terrible tease. You’re just like your fa…” The word trailed off, but she started again. “You’re just like your father,” she said firmly, and then they both laughed.

  “I’m dying to hear all about this assembly,” Milly said, bringing the teapot to the table.

  “The assembly was great,” Jeremy began. He paused to collect a few stray crumbs from his plate with his finger. Once he had popped them into his mouth, he said, “Mr. Collins played music, and Aaron started by jumping up and down. He wasn’t really skipping because he was holding both handles of the rope in the same hand to show what to do when you’re just learning. He can’t skip for beans, but he can bounce all right. Then some kids showed how to do heel-toe taps and Karima, this girl in my class, and I did some cross-overs. She learned those really fast. And at the end, we all took turns running and jumping through the long ropes. Some of the teachers even joined in. The audience loved it. They cheered.” He chuckled. “City kids don’t know much about skipping, so they’re easy to impress.”

  “Did you wear your shorts?” his mother asked.

  “Yeah. Everybody who skipped wore the new uniform. That was the whole point of the assembly: to show the rest of the school how good it looks.”

  “And?”

  “Did anybody say anything? Yeah. Mostly they asked dumb questions, so I told them about the staples and the steel plates and the screws until they were really grossed out.” He reached for another cookie and took a bite before he added, “Aaron said my scar looked like a lightning bolt and he wanted to touch it. I told you how weird he is.”

  His mother laughed. “I don’t know if he’s weird, but he sounds as if he’s really curious.”

  “Yeah. He can’t help it.” Jeremy took another sip of milk and a bite of cookie before he went on. “So many of the kids thought skipping was cool that they asked Mr. Collins to start a skipping club when cross-country is over, and he said yes. And guess what? Even Tufan wants to join, and he used to say that skipping was only for girls.”

  That night Jeremy had a different dream. In this dream, dots of blood, the size of mealworm droppings, bubbled up along his scar line. Aaron appeared, saying, “Can I touch it? Can I touch it?” and his finger came closer and closer until Jeremy shouted, “No! Don’t!”

  “You’re scared,” Aaron said. He sounded sad.

  Jeremy nodded.

  Aaron made a quick motion with his finger, as if he were switching off a light. “Then turn it off.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Try it.”

  Jeremy raised his hand to turn off an invisible switch just as a beam of hallway light hit his face and woke him. His mother was a shadow in the doorway.

  “Same dream?” she asked.

  “No…No. It was nothing. Sorry.”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine. Really.”

  She closed the door. He waited. When he heard her go back to her own room, he turned on his bedside lamp, shoved his quilt aside and pulled up his pajama pants to peer at his leg. The scar was there, same as ever, but there was no blood�
��and his bed was dry.

  SEVENTEEN

  Another Saturday. The morning was damp and grey and cold, with a wind that whispered of winter. The park was packed with kids. It vibrated with noise and tension.

  “Okay, guys!” A teacher’s voice bellowed through a megaphone. Guys…guys…guys! boomeranged from the trees. The boys on the starting line shifted. “Pay attention…tention…tention…tention!”

  “We’re listening,” Tufan grumbled. “Start already. It’s freezing out here.”

  “Ya got that right,” Horace chimed in. He was slapping his arms across his chest. Jeremy was doing the same. It didn’t help much. The October wind sliced into the tender skin at the back of his neck and behind his knees.

  The teacher with the megaphone gestured to the goal posts. “There’s your rabbit. Wave your hand, rabbit.”

  A bigger kid wearing paper bunny ears semaphored with both arms.

  “Follow the rabbit,” the teacher went on. “He’ll lead you to the finish. ARE YOU READY?”

  Jeremy toed the line. Leaned forward. Eyed the rabbit. Stood statue-still even when he felt a tap on his shoulder and heard a voice say, “Hey, Jeremy.”

  Aaron.

  Jeremy clenched his teeth and spread his elbows to fill in the gaps between himself and his neighbors. No way was he going to let Aaron lever himself into line beside him.

  Neither was Horace. “Get lost!” he growled, and to Jeremy’s relief Aaron stayed back until the sound of the starter’s pistol ricocheted off the trees. Jeremy launched himself forward. He was anxious to run. It was his first race since the accident, and he knew that his mother and Milly were on the sidelines watching.

  There was confusion at the beginning. Runners jostled for position, trying to avoid elbows and knees and the other runners who crisscrossed in front of them.

  The rabbit was way out in front, already trailed by kids who were free of the pack. For a second Jeremy thought to sprint and catch up, but he remembered Mr. Collins’ advice: “Take your time,” he had said. “It’s a long race. You don’t want to run out of steam before the end.” So he worked on finding a comfortable stride that would last him to the finish.

  After a while the line spread out, and the runners were spaced like beads on a necklace, with Jeremy running behind Horace. But Horace was a smooth steady runner with longer legs, and when they came to a series of small hills, Horace climbed easily, and Jeremy fell back. Other runners passed—three, four, five—and he found himself slogging along on his own.

  The path was bordered by trees and shrubbery that provided some protection from the wind. Even so, the cold seeped into his right ankle and brought on a deep, uncomfortable ache and an occasional sharp pain. He tried shifting his weight to his left foot, but that meant that he was hinking along unevenly. Four more runners passed. He clenched his teeth. Evened his stride. Tried to ignore the pain. Suck it up, Jeremy, he told himself. Suck it up.

  He thought of the time when he was seven and he got a fishhook stuck in his thumb. He had cried and pulled away when his father tried to examine his hand. “There’s not much choice here, Jer,” his dad had said when Jeremy finally let him look. “You’ll just have to suck it up.”

  Suck it up. Suck it up.

  His father had thrust the sharp end of the hook up and through the flesh without warning. “It hurts less if you don’t think about what’s coming,” he had said. Even so, it was a while before Jeremy allowed him to cut off the jagged barb and remove the hook. That hurt too.

  He ran on. Suck it up. Suck it up. Running is nothing compared to a fishhook, he told himself. His arms pumped, his feet pounded a beat. Suck it up. Suck it up. Suck it up.

  It was his mother’s voice that broke the spell. “Go, Jeremy! Go!”

  He heard her before he saw her jogging beside the path, keeping pace with him, cheering him on. “Way to go, Jeremy! Way to go!” she shouted until he entered the chute. Milly was waiting there, her face beaming. Horace greeted him with a high-five. The number on his paper was twenty-three. Twenty-third. Not as good as Horace who finished ninth, but still…

  He gasped for air. “Keep walking,” his mother told him as she draped his jacket over his shoulders. Then she leaned toward him as if she was about to give him a kiss.

  “Mom,” he said, his voice a warning.

  She straightened, lifting her hands in pretend horror as she backed off. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.” Then she laughed so happily that Milly and Horace laughed too, and Jeremy couldn’t help but join in.

  The last of the boy runners was still straggling in when the starter’s pistol went off again. That will be for the girls’ race, Jeremy thought.

  “I’ll be right back,” he called over his shoulder, as he slipped his arms into his jacket and hurried back the way he had come. He would go back for Karima—to run the last stretch with her, to help her finish the way his mother had helped him.

  He met two of the last boy runners coming in. They were plodding, their heads down, their breath harsh in their throats, their feet barely moving. “You’re almost there,” Jeremy called. “Don’t stop now, you’re almost there.”

  He was searching for a place to wait, a place with enough shrubbery to protect him from the wind, when the sight of another runner stumbling around a curve made him groan. Only one person he knew ran like a wounded duck. Aaron.

  Aaron looked as if he’d been attacked by a roving mud puddle. He was caked with the stuff, and the mud on his arms and legs was reddened by the blood oozing from his knees and elbows.

  “Hey, Jeremy.” Aaron waved. He seemed happy enough in spite of the way he looked.

  “Hey, Aaron.” Jeremy tried to hide his annoyance. “Keep going. You’re almost there.”

  But Aaron stopped. “I can’t find the rabbit,” he said.

  “The rabbit’s long gone. Just keep going and you’ll get to the finish.”

  Aaron didn’t leave.

  “For crying out loud, Aaron!” Jeremy shouted. He didn’t want Aaron around when Karima arrived. “Go! Go on!”

  Aaron stayed.

  Jeremy took a breath. “Come on,” he said and he began slowly jogging beside Aaron to get him restarted. Aaron started all right, but every time Jeremy stopped, he did too. Finally, not knowing what else to do, Jeremy ran on.

  The girls’ rabbit and the first of the girl runners lapped them as Jeremy steered Aaron into the chute to finish dead last in the boys’ race.

  Seconds later Karima flashed through. She disappeared into a circle of laughing girls before he had a chance to congratulate her. He realized then that waiting for her had been a dumb idea. She’d have outrun him on the way back anyway.

  Still, he couldn’t help being annoyed with Aaron. He spoils everything, Jeremy was thinking as he joined his mother and Milly, who were talking with an older woman. That woman leaned out and grabbed Aaron when he walked by. She pulled a sweatshirt over Aaron’s head and helped him put his arms into the sleeves. His grandmother? Had to be.

  “You must be Jeremy,” she said with a wide smile when he approached. “It was so nice of you to go back for Aaron.”

  Jeremy shook his head. “I didn’t…,” he said.

  “It’s no wonder he talks about you all the time, says you’re his best friend ever. Right, Aaron?”

  Jeremy felt trapped. He was sick of Aaron. Sick of Aaron telling the whole world they were friends. “We’re not friends,” he blurted out.

  The woman’s smile vanished. Milly and his mother exchanged glances. “We’re not friends,” he said again. “The teacher says we have to work together, but we’re not friends, are we, Aaron?”

  If Aaron heard, he didn’t answer. He was picking off the crusty layers of drying mud and blood that matted the fine hair on his legs.

  “Jeremy,” his mother said, her voice filled with disapproval.

  He glared at her. I won’t apologize, he thought. I won’t. You can’t make me. But she didn’t say an
ything else. She just looked at him and her look was…sad? Disappointed? He wasn’t sure, but he couldn’t face it and he turned away.

  Beside him Aaron was still picking dirt from his knees, while his grandmother fussed. “Stop that,” she said. “Stop that!” and she tried to pull Aaron’s hands away. Then, sounding a little helpless, she turned to Milly. “I’ll have to find someplace to clean him up.”

  “They’ve got wet towels at the first aid station,” a new voice said, and Jeremy turned to see Karima. She smiled and gave him a little wave, but she spoke to Aaron.

  “Hey, Aaron,” she said. “You’re a mess. Come on, I’ll show you where you can get cleaned up.” And to everyone’s surprise Aaron followed her.

  Jeremy watched them walk away. He could see Karima lean towards Aaron and say something. Whatever it was, it made Aaron laugh, and Jeremy felt a little jealous. That’s where he wanted to be, walking beside Karima.

  “I don’t know how I’ll ever get those clothes clean again,” Aaron’s grandmother said as she hurried to catch up. “I should probably help,” Milly said and she followed too, leaving Jeremy alone with his mother.

  He glanced at her. Now that everybody was gone would she tell him he had been rude? He was ready for that. It’s wasn’t my fault, he would tell her. I never told him I’d be his friend.

  But she didn’t say anything. He heard her sigh, saw her fumble in her purse, pull out a tissue, blow her nose. “I…I have to go,” she said when she was done. “My shift starts in half an hour.” He nodded and watched her walk away without saying good-bye.