I all but run to the coffeemaker and pour Donna a large cup. She drinks it black.
"Thanks," she says. "Are you not eating?"
"Can I use your bathroom first?"
Donna nods once and disappears behind the business section again.
Upstairs, in the bathroom, I strip down quickly, brush my teeth with the toothbrush stored permanently on Amber"s Shelf, floss, use mouthwash, and then I"m in the shower washing my hair, using Donna"s expensive conditioner, trying to keep my long black hair shiny. I do this all super quickly, so I don"t use too much of Donna"s hot water, because hot water costs money. I towel off, use the deodorant and perfume and makeup that Donna buys for me, redress, and then return to the kitchen, where BBB has fallen asleep on the little braided mat in front of the sink.
My hair is soaking wet, but neither Ricky nor Donna say a word about my needing to use their shower. Ricky is used to my using his place as a second home, and Donna is too cla.s.sy to bring up the sore subject of my needing to freeload off her.
I wolf down my omelet and then do all the dishes and clean up the kitchen while Donna reads the rest of the paper and Ricky does math equations in his workbook. He is a frickin" math genius. I take BBB out for one last pee, and then I kiss him goodbye just before I lock him up in his room, which is an unused first-floor bedroom with a doggie bed, tons of chew toys, a water dish, and even a radio, which we keep on the cla.s.sical station to calm B Thrice"s nerves. (B3 loves Chopin. I know because my pup starts jumping in the air like a maniac every time some Chopin-playing dude tickles that piano.) Just like every other morning, BBB starts crying and scratching at the door as soon as it"s shut, which breaks my heart and makes me feel bad about Donna"s door getting all clawed up, even though she says she doesn"t give a c.r.a.p about that room and has tons of money for buying new doors or whatever.
We hop into her Mercedes-heated leather seats, which are pretty killer. True? True. We rock out to Dinosaur Jr., which is an obscure indie band of olden days. Donna digs unheard-of bands like Dinosaur Jr. She even has cool taste in music. We listen to "Feel The Pain" three times, because Ricky likes that one, and then we are at Childress Public High School, so Donna shuts off the tunes.
"Amber, what do you have after school today?"
"The Korean Divas for Christ at three thirty."
"You can get Ricky home first?"
"No worries."
"Ricky, are you going to be good today?"
"Yeah-ssssss," Ricky says in his goofiest robot voice.
"Are you going to repeat dirty words?" Donna asks.
"Nooooooooooooo!"
"What happens if you do?"
"Amber Appleton will not go to prom with Ricky Roberts. Yes."
"That"s right. So behave your little behind. Be the gentleman I know you are." To me, Donna says, "Tell Franks Freak Force Federation that we meet at my house at seven sharp. I"m not picking all of their little b.u.t.ts up individually, because I"m in court all day-murder trial. But if they pull off the mission without s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up too badly, we"re going to Friendly"s afterward."
"Yes, ma"am," I say, like a moron.
"Friendly"s. Reese"s Pieces Sundae. Yes," Ricky says.
"All right. I have to get to the courthouse. Kisses and then out."
Ricky kisses his mother as I hop out of the backseat and onto the sidewalk. Ricky gets out of the Mercedes, slams the door too hard, and then says, "Going to play Halo 3 with Mr. Jonathan Franks! Yes! Halo 3."
CHAPTER 3.
Maybe you want to know how The Five came to exist? True?
History of The Five.
It all began when Jared and I failed fifth grade.
Well, neither of us technically failed, but we were both held back, dropped into Chad"s, Ricky"s, and Ty"s cla.s.s. Jared-because he used to have this awful stutter back in the day and could hardly complete a frickin" sentence without repeating just about every syllable a bazillion times. Word. And me-I was held back because I missed too many days of school, even though I technically pa.s.sed all of my tests when I eventually took them. If you miss so many days, you automatically get held back, or at least that"s what I was told. The reason I missed so many days of school was because we were living with Good Boyfriend Gerald at the time, who was Mom"s best pick by far, if you ask me.
GBG was a truck driver and used to make these long hauls across the country, and Mom used to go nuts for road trips, so whenever she didn"t want to be left alone without GBG, she"d have one of the bus driving subs cover her route for a week or so and she"d let me skip school to ride across the country with GBG in his big old red tractor-trailer truck, which he called Melissa. Since GBG was making these trips all the time, I missed tons of school.
When we"d head west, we would drive right through the night, hardly ever stopping, because Good Boyfriend Gerald got paid more if he got the load there early. We"d all sit in his truck, Mom in the middle, holding both of our hands, and it was fun to drive on the highways of America like that, sorta like a family. GBG was pretty d.a.m.n old and didn"t ever say much, but he had a kind, wrinkly face-he loved to smile, and even though he was really big and was rough-looking with a gray bushy beard, he was the type of guy you trust right away, sorta like Santa Claus or something like that.
After he"d drop his load off, we"d drive back east a little more leisurely, and GBG used to take us to see cool stuff too. The best thing he ever showed us was the Grand Canyon. Word. We went there in December when there was snow all around the edge, and looking down into that big beautiful gap in the earth was sorta like a spiritual experience for me. I remember that there were so many shades of brown and tan inside that majestic hole that it didn"t even look real. And the clouds-those were like looking at something too beautiful, like it actually hurt your eyes to see something so gorgeous. I wanted to hike down into that canyon, and will one day-word-but Mom was against it, saying that it wasn"t safe in the winter, even though tons of other people were doing it with huge backpacks and spikes strapped onto their boots. Hard-core.
GBG paid for a hotel in Arizona, and after eating dinner at this little greasy diner of sorts, Mom and I went for a walk while GBG took a shower in the hotel room, because he never could shower if I was in the room, saying it wasn"t proper, which was sorta n.o.ble of him, like he was a knight from olden times. I remember walking, holding hands with my mom in this dumpy little town, and once we got away from the main drag, once we walked far enough down this empty road, my mom told me to look up.
Holding her hand, I tilted my head back and then watched my gray breath climb up toward a billion stars. Tiny blue diamonds the color of gas flames were everywhere. It was so beautiful. My mom and I just stood there in the road looking up for-like-forever. And looking up at winter stars in Arizona-this is Amber-and-her-mom moment number five. It was very cold, but I didn"t care. I had never seen so many stars-and out in the open, with no one else around, I remember praying to JC, thanking him for the stars and my mom and that moment and for sending us GBG so that we could see things like the Grand Canyon, which is one of G.o.d"s masterpieces if you ask me. It was a nice moment. Word.
That winter we took a lot of trips like that with GBG, who never said much but seemed to like having us around. I really thought he was going to be the one for Mom-the one who would make her an honest woman. But then one day at the end of the school year, GBG went on one of his trucking runs and simply didn"t come home. Mom held out hope for weeks, saying he would be back, but then the landlord visited us, saying that the rent hadn"t been paid for two months, and soon after that Mom and I moved in with yet another one of her boyfriends-Crazy Craig, whom I don"t even want to talk about, that"s how crazy he was-and GBG was nothing but a memory.
I often wonder what happened to GBG, the silent abandoning one who got away.
The second week of fifth grade, take two, I was removed from cla.s.s by a strange woman who wore a frilly blouse. In the hallway, the woman said, "I"m Mrs. Pohlson. I"m not a teacher, but a social skills coach, and I"d like to invite you to join a very special club."
"Am I in trouble?" I asked her, because it seemed like Mrs. Pohlson might be lying to me.
"No. Why would you think that? Did you do something wrong?"
"You don"t have to do something wrong to be in trouble," I told her.
She nodded appreciatively and led me to a small room at the end of the hall that had no windows and sorta reminded me of a big closet. Inside the room was a round table that took up almost all of the s.p.a.ce, and seated around the table were four boys, the very boys that would eventually become my boys-Franks Freak Force Federation.
None of them said anything to me when I sat down at the table and said, "h.e.l.lo."
"Boys, this is your cla.s.smate, Amber Appleton. Don"t you want to say h.e.l.lo to her?" Mrs. Pohlson said.
"Ricky Roberts says h.e.l.lo to Amber Appleton. h.e.l.lo. Yes."
"H-h-h-h-el-el-o."
"Hi, Amber," said the boy in the wheelchair.
"Hey," said the black kid.
"This is Ty, Jared, Chad, and Ricky. All cla.s.smates of yours, although they are in the other two fifth grade cla.s.ses. We"d like you to join our club," Mrs. Pohlson said.
The only black kid in town. The kid who couldn"t speak properly. The tiny wheelchair kid with a big head. The r.e.t.a.r.ded kid (I didn"t know what autism was back then). And suddenly me. I wasn"t so smart back in the day, but even I knew that I"d landed squarely in Club Freak. I wasn"t all that upset about being admitted into Club Freak, because I was a freak too, and I sorta knew it-word-but I was worried that there would be punishments, like extra homework.
"What sorta club is this?" I asked.
"We play board games twice a week in this room," Mrs. Pohlson answered.
"Why?" I asked, and then looked around at the other boys who were all looking at their laps. "Won"t we get in trouble for missing cla.s.s?"
"Don"t you like board games? We can play Monopoly, Scrabble, Life."
"Why would you take us out of cla.s.s just so we can play games?" I asked.
"Well," Mrs. Pohlson said, "we also practice speaking properly and interacting appropriately with our friends."
"Interacting?"
"Playing."
"So this is a club where we learn to play games with each other?"
"Kind of," Mrs. Pohlson said. "Yes."
All through elementary and junior high school Mrs. Pohlson took the five of us out of cla.s.s twice a week. Sometimes we played board games, sometimes we read books aloud, and sometimes we just practiced having conversations with each other.
I began to notice that The Five hardly talked outside of Mrs. Pohlson"s room-but when we were there, we sorta talked a lot, or at least more than we did in the lunchroom or gym or in the schoolyard, maybe because there weren"t so many other people to compete with for talking time. I began to really like going to Mrs. Pohlson"s room, and it wasn"t long before our parents were scheduling after-school and weekend events for The Five. Soon I was over at my boys" houses, like, all the time, and it was like we had been friends since birth. We got tight quick. Word. Suddenly I sorta had four brothers and all these extra parents looking after me. Suddenly, I had Donna too.
Eventually, Jared stopped stuttering, but nothing else major happened through Mrs. Pohlson"s intervention-except that we all became best friends.
CHAPTER 4.
Almost magically, just when we had to leave Mrs. Pohlson, our group social sessions, and the elementary/junior high building behind, Franks was hired to teach marketing at CPHS, so he was sorta like a freshman too (only a teacher freshman) when we started high school, which is exactly when me and The Five first started hanging with Franks. Jared and I were in his marketing cla.s.s, and because Franks was so cool, allowing us to play video games during cla.s.s and whatnot, we were soon bringing the rest of The Five to his cla.s.sroom before school and during lunch. The rest is history, as they say.
Franks" windowless cla.s.sroom is in the bas.e.m.e.nt of our high school, and you can access his room from outside by descending down into the earth via a set of old concrete stairs, and then knocking on a metal door seven times. Three quick knocks. Two slow, and then two fast. This lets Franks or whoever is inside know that a Marketing Club member is on the other side of the door. There are only five Childress Public High School M.C. members, and all five just happen to belong to Franks Freak Force Federation as well.
After Ricky knocks, we back up two stairs. Two seconds later, Jared kicks open the door, which doesn"t have a k.n.o.b, but a silver bar that opens it, and then he sprints back to his seat behind one of the six televisions set up high on roller stands-every one of them connected to an Xbox and each Xbox connected to the rest via a crazy web of chords. Ty and Jared are both seated behind the television closest to the outside door-eyes glued to the a.s.s-kicking alien action on the screen. On the other side of the room Franks is sitting next to Chad"s super robotic wheelchair, which we call Das Boot, even though we don"t even know what the h.e.l.l Das Boot means exactly. All four of them are holding controllers and are trying to kill each other"s s.p.a.cemen in a virtual world that the televisions bring to their brains.
Ricky sits down at a third television set and turns on a third Xbox. "Ricky Roberts wants Ty Hendrix and Jared Fox to die so that Ricky Roberts can enter into the Halo 3 game and join Mr. Jonathan Franks" team, because Mr. Jonathan Franks is Ricky Roberts" very favorite teacher. Yes."
"Your wish is my command," Franks says. And then something happens in the virtual world that makes Jared and Ty moan and hold their heads.
Chad and Franks are high-fiving now, and Ricky is clicking b.u.t.tons on his controller, entering into the virtual world.
I know my window is tiny, because once the game starts my boys are gone, so I say, "Franks, we doing a Marketing Club announcement today?"
Marketing Club is basically an extension of Franks" marketing cla.s.ses. Only once a year we compete against other schools in these debates about marketing strategies and also we do these marketing presentations in front of judges for points. My boys and even Franks wear suits to the compet.i.tions and I usually wear one of Donna"s killer business skirt suits. Pretty wild stuff. If you get enough points, you can win and go on to the national compet.i.tion. We"ve never made it past regionals.
Franks is always trying to get more people to join M.C., because his job is always on the line when it comes to district budget cuts. His marketing cla.s.ses are electives, and while they are usually full-because he teaches cla.s.ses like Marketing Video Games, Make and Market Your Own Movie, and my personal favorite, The Business End of the Rap Game-he"s not exactly a PTA favorite, nor do many of the Childress parents take him all that seriously.
Franks is maybe only five-six, he weighs close to three hundred pounds, and he hasn"t cut his hair in years-sporting the gray ponytail look. To make matters worse, he wears these little photosensitive gla.s.ses that make him look sorta like a cross between Buddha and Lennon. (John-like, of The Beatles-not to be confused with that Russian dude, Vlad.) "You write it, and I"ll read it," Franks says, his eyes locked onto the screen ready to do s.p.a.ce battle with teenage boys.
"Cool," I say, sitting down at Franks" teacher desk near the whiteboard.
"You can have half of my Sausage Egg Mcm.u.f.fin. It"s in drawer number two," Franks says to me. "I"m watching my figure. And the top drawer is filled with peanut M&Ms, as always."
"Donna fed me," I tell Franks.
"Cool," he says.
Aside from the occasional curse words muttered and the post-killing taunting, it"s easy to write when the boys are playing Halo 3, because the game distracts them and keeps them all pretty quiet.
Ricky never kills anyone in the game, and no one kills him, because he is diagnosed with autism and just likes running around in the virtual world, stimming out. And I have to say I love that my boys are cool with this-I love their letting Ricky play Halo 3 in his own pacifistic way. My boys are good people. Word.
So I write up the ad for Marketing Club, trying to make Franks sound hip, but also trying to write something that he won"t read over the morning announcements, because I"ve never stumped him yet. There is an art to this, because I know he isn"t going to read curse words or anything like that, so writing profanity into the ad would just be cheap and pointless and the opposite of urbane.
I"m halfway through the writing of the ad when I look up at the big-framed picture on Franks" desk. His little mean-looking redheaded wife is on the beach surrounded by Franks" six little redheaded children. Franks" head is sticking out of the sand by their feet-big head, little gla.s.ses. They buried him to the neck and then had someone snap the photo. I think about what would happen to Franks" kids-who are all less than ten years old-if he got canned.
"Yo, Franks!" I say, but he doesn"t answer me, because he is playing the dumb video game, but I know he hears me, so I say, "You going to the school board meeting tonight?"
Silence.
"Franks?"
The sound of b.u.t.tons being pushed rapidly by boy thumbs.
"FRANKS!"
"It"s of this world," Franks says, which is what he says about everything. He means that he only worries about what will happen after this world, when G.o.d takes him to heaven, because he"s a Catholic like me, and he has a super faith in JC.
Now I have faith in JC too, but I also know what it"s like to live on a school bus.
"Maybe you should go, Franks. Think of your children, bro," I say, because tonight"s when they are deciding whether to cut the marketing department"s funding and if they do that, Franks will lose his job at the end of the year. But no worries. Me and The Five are not going to let that happen. We have a killer plan. We"re doing a mission.
My boys, all except Ricky, shoot me nervous glances, because they don"t want Franks to know what we are doing for him-they prefer to be anonymous do-gooders. So I flash them a thumbs-up to rea.s.sure them I know what the h.e.l.l I"m doing.
"My family"s never missed a meal," Franks says, like a man who has never missed a meal, because he doesn"t know what it"s like to be homeless. But it"s all good in the hood, because I"m not going to let any bad hooey happen to Franks or his redheaded kids.
"Can I give you a hug today, Franks?" I say, because I"ve always wanted to hug Franks ever since we met in his The Art of Marketing Junk Food cla.s.s.
"Against school policy," he says.