David Fleming - The Saturday Boy

Mr. Putnam was looking at me with a raised eyebrow. I’d noticed a lot of people had been looking at me like that lately.

“Um… embracing?”

“Yes?”

“That’s like hugging, right?”

“Yes. Only more so.”

So it was what I was thinking of. Great. Couldn’t Young Scrooge and his sister fist-bump or high-five instead? Couldn’t they just shake hands? What kind of weirdo hugged his sister, anyway? It didn’t seem right. Violet and all the others were looking at me, waiting for me to do something.

“Right. Okay. Embracing. Got it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course! I love embracing things. I’m like a professional embracer.”

Mr. Putnam’s eyebrow came down as the other one went up. I’d never seen that before. He stroked his beard and cracked his knuckles. There was a funny little grin on his face and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Seriously,” I said. “I’ll embrace you right here.”

He put up his hands.

“Easy, tiger,” he said. “We hardly know each other.”

Some of the middle schoolers laughed and Mr. Putnam was smiling and that’s how I knew it was okay and they weren’t being mean. He was just being funny. I sort of laughed a little then, too, even though I didn’t really get it. After the read-through this kid named Desmond asked Mr. Putnam when the next practice would be and he said, “Desi, me boy… jocks practice. But actors, oh… actors rehearse !”

Mr. Putnam rolled the r the way Señora Cruz likes us to when we’re doing Spanish. I couldn’t do it right. Either I wouldn’t roll the r enough or I’d roll it too much and end up spitting on someone by accident. Don’t ask me how it happened but it did.

The rehearsal ended and I walked with Violet out to the front of the school and we sat on a bench by the turnaround. Mr. Putnam had given us a script to share and Violet had her nose in it, reading scenes we weren’t even in. I’d also caught her paying attention during the read-through while I’d been trying unsuccessfully to solve her television problem.

“So what do you do?” I said.

“About what?”

“About not having a TV,” I said. “I mean, how does that even happen?”

“My parents don’t believe in it,” said Violet. “They say it rots your brain.”

“No way! That’s what my mom says!”

“Is your mom a professor, too?”

“No, she’s a nurse. Wait—are both your parents professors?”

“Yes.”

“So is it like school all the time?”

“No,” said Violet. “It’s just normal.”

“Well, not normal. I mean, you don’t have a TV and TVs are pretty normal. Seriously, you can ask anybody.”

A car pulled into the turnaround and the horn beeped twice.

“That’s my dad, Derek, I gotta go,” said Violet. “See you tomorrow.”

Violet put the script in her book bag and stood up and walked to the car. She opened the door and got in. Before Violet could shut her door I shouted, “What do you do for fun? Flash cards?”

Only I wasn’t teasing. I really wanted to know. Violet closed the door and waved as the car drove away. My mom’s car pulled into the turnaround a few minutes later. I opened the door and got in and put my book bag on the seat next to me and buckled up.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

Only it wasn’t Mom.

“Oh hey, Aunt Josie. Where’s Mom?”

Aunt Josie looked at me in the rearview mirror. She was wearing her glasses with the black frames—her Clark Kent glasses as she called them. I’d put them on once to see how cool I looked but it was so blurry I could barely even see the mirror. Man, Aunt Josie was blind.

She started to say something but had to stop and clear her throat and start again. Her smile didn’t look right. It looked on purpose.

“She’s at home. She’s, um… not feeling well, sweetie, and she asked me to come get you. Cool?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything.”

“If you didn’t have a TV what would you do for fun?”

“I don’t know. Paint, I guess. Cook? Why do you ask?”

I told her about Violet and about how her parents were professors and how they didn’t have a TV.

“Do you think Violet cooks?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Derek.”

“I know she likes to read. What else do you think she does?”

“I don’t know, Derek. I’ve never met her.”

“Maybe she likes gardening.”

“Maybe…”

“You think so?”

“Dude, I don’t know her.”

“She’s Violet. From my class.”

“Wanna listen to some music?” Aunt Josie said suddenly. “I’ve got some stuff in here you haven’t heard yet.”

She selected a CD and a track number and turned it up before I could answer. I looked out the window and wondered if Violet liked punk rock because I sure didn’t. I tried not to listen and thought about who would win a fight between Hammerfist and Deathpunch instead.

I considered all the variables—individual martial arts expertise, Deathpunch’s quickness versus Hammerfist’s strength and mutant healing factor—I even broke down their training, upbringing, and dojo affiliation. It went back and forth and there still wasn’t a clear winner by the time we got home.

My mom wasn’t in the kitchen when we came in. She wasn’t in the living room, either. She was in her bedroom with the lights off, all curled up on the bed. Aunt Josie went and sat next to her. I heard her whisper my mom’s name a couple times and when she didn’t answer Aunt Josie pulled the quilt from the foot of the bed and tucked it in around her so she wouldn’t get cold. Then she came back out into the hallway and closed the door.

“Looks like it’s just us for dinner,” she said. “You up for some Pizza Jungle? You can have whatever toppings you want.”

“Even jalapeños?”

Mom never let me get jalapeños because she said I wouldn’t like them and it would be wasteful, which, of course, made me want them even more. I kinda figured it was now or never.

“ Half ,” said Aunt Josie. “And I’ll throw in an order of cheesy breadsticks.”

“Extra dipping sauce?”

“Deal,” she said, handing me the phone. “But you have to call and order it.”

I called Pizza Jungle and ordered a large, half-jalapeño, half-mushroom pizza and cheesy breadsticks with extra dipping sauce. Then I lay on the floor in the living room and did homework while Aunt Josie talked on the phone in the kitchen. When the guy from Pizza Jungle showed up she took the phone and left the room.

Pizza Jungle was my favorite because the delivery guys wore these funny gorilla masks and they had monkeys driving the delivery vans in the commercials. The pizza was pretty good, too. I paid for dinner with money Aunt Josie had left on the kitchen table and then got plates and glasses off the drying rack by the sink and milk from the fridge.

By the time Aunt Josie came to the table I’d already eaten most of the cheesy breadsticks and a slice of the jalapeño pizza. It was different from how I thought it would be. And not really in a good way. Aunt Josie sat down and picked up a slice of mushroom.

“Wanna try some jalapeño?”

“Why? Don’t you like it?” she said.

“What? No, it’s great! It’s awesome!” I said. “Just… you should have some before I eat it all.”

“No thanks.”

“You’re sure?”

“Derek, I’m crashing on the pull-out couch tonight, cool?”

Usually it was great when Aunt Josie stayed over because in the morning she would make this kind of French toast that’s all crunchy on the outside, but something told me that this time there wouldn’t be any. It didn’t seem like it was going to be that kind of visit. She had a bite of her pizza and put the slice back in the box and closed the lid.