Нил Шустерман: Antsy Does Time

I sighed. Old Man Crawley had more eyes in more places than anyone I knew. I wouldn’t be surprised if right now he told me to stop picking my nose.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, I oughta tell you a little bit about Old Man Crawley, or “Creepy Crawley,” as all the little kids call him. The guy’s a legend in Brooklyn—the kind you really don’t believe until you actually meet him, but by then it’s too late to run. He’s very rich, very selfish, and generally mean. He’s the kind of guy who’d hand out vomit-inducing candy on Halloween, and then sell Pepto-Bismol across the street at jacked-up prices.

I’m one of the few people who actually knows him, on account of he’s mostly a hermit. He used to be entirely a hermit, until he hired me to walk his dogs and to date his granddaughter, Lexie, who’s blind, but has managed to make her blindness seem like a mere technicality. Pretty soon dating her stopped being a job, and it became real, much to Old Man Crawley’s disgust. There was this one time Lexie and I kidnapped Crawley, and forced him to see the outside world. He liked it so much he now has us kidnap him on a regular basis.

The weird thing is that I kind of like him. Maybe it’s because I understand him—or maybe it’s because I’m the only person who can call him a nasty old fart to his face and get away with it. I can’t quite say that Crawley and I are friends, but he dislikes me less than he dislikes most other people. Still, with Crawley, the line between tolerance and disgust is very thin.

“If you give me the details of tonight’s incident, maybe I won’t have to ask your father about it,” Crawley said.

There was no sense in lying to Old Man Crawley. No sense sugarcoating it either, so I told it to him as plainly, and as simply, as I could. “I spilled some water, and plucked ice cubes off some woman’s plate, so my father had to give her a free meal. Then he sent me home.”

A long silence on the other end. I could hear dogs barking in the background, and then Crawley said, “I am amazed, Anthony, by your continuing ability to disappoint me.” And then he hung up without as much as a good-bye.

Mom came home at about ten that night, with Christina practically asleep in her arms. I knew Dad wouldn’t be home until past midnight. It was like that all the time, since he opened the restaurant. On this particular night, though, I didn’t mind.

My mom came into my room once she got Christina off to bed. “You gotta understand, Antsy, your father’s under a lot of pressure.”

“Yeah, well, he doesn’t have to take it out on me.”

“He doesn’t mean to.”

“Blah, blah, blah.”

She sat on the edge of my bed. “The restaurant’s not doing as well as he would like. Mr. Crawley keeps threatening to pull the plug.”

I sat up, and before she could launch into the Top Ten Reasons Why I Should Cut My Father Some Slack, I said, “I get it, okay? But just because I get it doesn’t mean I gotta like it.”

She patted my leg, then left, satisfied.

When Dad got home around midnight, he made a point to stop by my room. Even before he spoke, I could tell that Darth Menu had left the building.

“Things good?” he asked.

Since there was no short answer, I just said, “Things are things.”

“So,” he asked, with a crooked little smile. “Did you at least like the Garlique Yam Puree?”

This, I knew, was an apology.

“Yeah, it was good,” I said. “All your stuff is good.”

This, he knew, was me accepting his apology.

“Good night, Antsy.”

After he left, I turned off my TV and tried to get to sleep. As I lay there, at the place where your thoughts start to break apart and stop making sense, the day’s events began to swim into a soup of raccoon, ice water, and terminal illness. Like Gunnar had said, life is a fragile thing. One moment you could be marching happily in a parade, the next you’re hanging from the Empire State Building. Sometimes it’s because of the choices you make, or sometimes you’re just careless—but most of the time it’s just dumb luck—and in my experience few things are dumber than luck, except for maybe Wendell Tiggor, whose brain cells communicate by smoke signal.

Luck was about to take some pretty weird bounces, though. It never occurred to me how something as simple as a pitcher of ice water could change a person’s life ... or how a single piece of paper could change the course of an incurable disease.

Pulmonary Monoxic Systemia. Very rare. Very fatal. Basically the body, which is supposed to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide, turns it into carbon monoxide instead—the stuff in car exhaust that kills you if you breathe it long enough. In other words, when you’ve got Pulmonary Monoxic Systemia, your own body fails the smog check, and you’re eventually poisoned by the very air you breathe. I think I’d rather fall from a giant inflatable raccoon.

There are several different ways to respond when you find out that someone you know has something weird and incurable. Your response all depends on the type of person you are. There are basically three types.

Type One: The “I-didn’t-hear-that” people. These are the ones who just go on with life, pretending that nothing is wrong. These are the people who would be sitting in Starbucks during an alien invasion, arguing the virtues of Splenda over Equal. You know this person. We all do.

Type Two: The “not-in-my-airspace” people. These are the ones who believe that everything is somehow contagious and would probably start taking antibiotics if their computer got a virus. These people would do everything within their power to avoid the terminally ill person, and then say, “I wish we had more time with him,” once the farm had been bought.

Type Three: The “I-can-fix-this” people. These people, against all logic, believe they can change the course of mighty rivers with their bare hands, even though they can’t swim, and so usually end up drowning.

I come from a family of drowners.

I guess I follow in the family tradition—because even though I couldn’t even pronounce the illness that Gunnar had, I was convinced that I could somehow help him live longer. By the time I went back to school on Monday, I had already decided that I wanted to do something Meaningful for him. I wasn’t sure what it would be, only that it would be Meaningful. Now keep in mind this was before I met Kjersten, so my intentions weren’t selfish yet. I was being what they call “altruistic,” which means doing good deeds for no sensible reason—and having no sensible reason for doing things is kind of where I live.

I knew I’d be on my own in figuring this one out—or at least I wasn’t going to ask for help from my family. Talking to Dad about it was out of the question, because all of his mental wall space was covered with restaurant reservations. I couldn’t tell my mom, because the second I did, she’d get that pained expression on her face and be on my case about praying for Gunnar. Not that I wouldn’t pray for Gunnar, but I probably would be strategic about it. I wouldn’t do it until he was on his deathbed, because the way I see it, praying is like trying to win an Academy Award; you don’t want to come out praying too early, or you get forgotten when it’s time for the nominations.

I considered telling Frankie or Christina, but Frankie would just try to top it by telling me all the people he knew who died. As for Christina, traumatizing her with this was a bit different from telling her our basement was sealed off because of the zombies. Besides, who goes to their younger sister for advice? She does have a spiritual streak, though, I’ll admit that. In fact, lately I’ve found her sitting in her room, in lotus position, trying to levitate. She read somewhere that monks in the Himalayas have special spiritual mantras they repeat over and over that will make them float in midair. I’m open to all possibilities, but I told Christina that her mantra of “Ama Gonna Levitato” sounded more Harry Potter than Himalaya.