Нил Шустерман - Antsy Does Time

No, this whole thing needed to fly under my family’s radar for a while.

Few things got by our school radar, however. It could have been Howie or Ira who overheard Gunnar at the Empire State Building—or maybe Gunnar had been selectively confiding in other kids as well. Whatever the reason, Gunnar’s life-span issue was all the whisper around school on Monday.

That was the day we had to sign up for John Steinbeck lit circles in English class. Apparently Of Mice and Men was just a prelude to a whole lot of reading. I showed up a few minutes late, and all the short books like The Red Pony were gone, leaving monsters like The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

Gunnar and I were in English together, and I noticed that he was in the Grapes of Wrath group. The Cannery Row group consisted of Wendell Tiggor and the tiggorhoids—which is what we called all the human moths that fluttered around Tiggor’s dim bulb. I make it a habit never to join any group where I’m the smartest member, so I put my name under Gunnar’s and prayed that The Grapes of Wrath wasn’t as deep as it was long. If nothing else, it would give me a chance to get to know Gunnar better, and figure out what Meaningful thing I could do for him.

After class he came up to me. “So I see we’re both in the Group of Wrath,” he said. “Why don’t you come over after school—I’ve got the movie on DVD.”

It was pretty bad timing, because just then Mrs. Casey, our English teacher, was passing by. “That’s cheating, Mr. Ümlaut,” she said.

“No,” I offered, without missing a beat. “It’s research.”

She raised an eyebrow as she considered this. “In that case, I’m assigning you both to compare and contrast the book with the movie.” Then she struts off, very pleased with herself.

Gunnar sighed. “Sorry about that.”

I leaned closer to him and whispered, “It’s okay—I think my brother’s got the Cliff’s Notes.” And from the far end of the hall Mrs. Casey yells back, “Don’t even think about it!”

Going over to someone’s house you barely know is always an adventure of strange smells, strange sights, and strange dogs that will either yap at you or sniff places you’d rather not be sniffed. But there’s interesting things at unexplored homes as well, like a giant tank of Chinese water dragons, or a home theater better than the multiplex, or a goddess answering the door.

In the Ümlauts’ case, it was choice number three: the goddess. Her name was Kjersten, pronounced “Kirsten” (the j is silent—don’t ask me how that’s possible) and she was the last person I expected to see at Gunnar’s house. Kjersten is a junior, and exists on a plane high above us mere mortals—and not just because of her height. She doesn’t fit the mold of your typical beautiful girl. She’s not a cheerleader, she’s not part of the popular crowd—in fact, the popular crowd hates her, because Kjersten’s very presence points out to them how pitiful they really are. She is a straight-A student, rules the debate team, is on the tennis team, is practically six feet tall, and as for other parts of her, well, let’s just say that the lettering on her T-shirt is like one of those movies in 3-D.

“Hi, Antsy.”

My response was a perfect imitation of Porky Pig. “Ibbidibibbiby-dibbity...” The fact that Kjersten even knew I existed was too much information for me to process.

She gave a little laugh. “NeuroToxin,” she said.

“Huh?”

“You were looking at my shirt.” She pointed to the logo on her chest. “It’s the band NeuroToxin—I got it at their concert last month.”

“Yeah, yeah, right.” To be honest, in spite of where my eyes were staring, my brain had turned everything between her neck and her navel into that digital blur they put up on TV when they don’t want you to see something. Her shirt could have had the answers to tomorrow’s math test on it and I wouldn’t have known.

“What are you doing here?” I said, like a perfect imbecile.

She gave me a funny look. “Where else would I be? I live here.”

“Why do you live with the Ümlauts?”

She laughed again. “Uh ... maybe because I am an Ümlaut?”

With my brain somewhere between here and Jupiter, I was only now catching on. “So you’re Gunnar’s sister?”

“Last I checked.”

The concept that Kjersten could be the sister of someone I actually knew had never occurred to me. I suppressed the urge to do another Porky Pig, swallowed, and said, “Can I come in, please?”

“Sure thing.” Then she called to Gunnar, letting him know that I was here. I shivered when she said my name again, and hoped she hadn’t seen.

There was no response from Gunnar—the only thing I heard was a faint, high-pitched banging sound.

“He’s out back working on that thing " Kjersten said. “Just go on through the kitchen and out the back door.”

I thanked her, tried not to stare at any part of her whatsoever, and went into the house. As I passed through the kitchen I saw their mother—a woman who looked like an older, plumper version of Kjersten.

“Hello!” she said when she saw me, looking up from some vegetables she was cleaning in the sink. “You must be a friend of Gunnar’s. Will you stay for dinner?” Her accent was much heavier than I expected it to be, considering Gunnar and Kjersten barely had any accent at all.

Dinner? I thought. That would mean I’d be at the same dinner table with Kjersten, and the moment I thought that, my own mother’s voice intruded into my head, telling me that I used utensils like an orangutang. Whenever Mom said that, I would respond by telling her that orangutan had no g at the end and then go on shoveling food into my mouth like a lower primate. My eating habits didn’t matter with my last girlfriend, Lexie, on account of she’s blind. She would just get mad when I scraped the fork against my teeth, so as long as I ate quietly, I could be as apelike as I pleased.

Now, thanks to my own stubbornness, I had no practice in fine dining skills. Kjersten would take one look at the way I held my knife and fork, would burst out laughing, and share the information with whatever higher life-forms she communed with.

I knew if I dwelt on this much longer, I would either talk myself out of it or my head would explode, so I said, “Sure, I’ll stay for dinner.” I’d deal with the consequences later.

“Antsy, is that you?” Gunnar called from the backyard, where the loud tapping sound was coming from.

“Maybe,” Mrs. Ümlaut said quietly, “you shall get him away from that thing he works on.”

Gunnar was, indeed, working on a thing. I wondered at first if it was something for our Grapes of Wrath project. It was a stone sculpture. Granite or marble, I guessed. He was tapping away at it with a hammer and chisel. He hadn’t gotten too far, because the block of stone was still pretty square. “Hi, Gunnar,” I said. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

“Neither did I.”

He continued his tapping. There were uneven letters toward the edge of the block. G-U-N. He was already working on the second N. I laughed. “You gotta make the sculpture before you sign it, Gunnar.”

“It’s not that kind of sculpture.”

It took me a moment more until I got the big picture, and the moment I realized just what Gunnar was doing, I blurted out one of those words my mother smacks me for.

Gunnar was carving his own tombstone.

“Gunnar... that’s just... wrong.”

He stood back to admire his work. “Well, the letters aren’t exactly even, but that will add to the overall effect.”