The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen Read online

  Valentine’s Day means

  Candy if you are in love,

  Nothing if you’re not.

  Here’s the one I didn’t submit.

  Charmed by your horse-laugh,

  Your clothes, which smell of mothballs,

  Your lazy left eye.

  FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15

  I was at my locker this morning when Farley burst through the doors at the end of the hall. “Guess what! Guess what!” he shouted as he tore up to me, so that every single person in the corridor turned to look.

  “What?”

  “Guess!” He set his briefcase down. He was so excited, he was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

  “Farley. How can I possibly guess –”

  “The GWF is coming to Seattle! The GWF is coming to Seattle!” Spittle was forming fast and furious at the corners of his mouth.

  A tingle of excitement shot up my spine. “When?” I asked.

  “April 30th.”

  I almost fell over. April 30th was the anniversary of the night of the Other Thing. I swear I could suddenly smell plastic and pee.

  “Tickets start at twenty bucks US, but I think we should try to get good seats, right?” Farley was saying. “The best seats!”

  I couldn’t answer because my tongue felt thick and heavy in my mouth.

  “Imagine seeing Vlad the Impaler live! Imagine seeing the Great Dane! Imagine seeing Vlad drop someone with his Double Ax Handle!” Farley linked his hands together and spun around, swinging his arms to demonstrate –

  And hit Troy square in the back.

  At first, Troy looked more shocked than angry. “What the hell, ’tard?”

  ’Tard. That was one of Scott’s favorite insults, too. It’s what he called my brother whenever he got tired of Ballsack.

  Suddenly I was back on a sidewalk in downtown Port Salish, walking with Jesse. It was two summers ago, and Jesse was in a good mood because he’d just ordered a workout bench and weights from the Sears Outlet with money he’d saved from mowing lawns. I was in a good mood because I was only eleven going on twelve, and it was still fun to hang out downtown with my older brother.

  “I’m going to start pumping iron,” he said to me. “I’m going to get muscles as big as the Great Dane’s.”

  “Can I pump iron?”

  “Maybe. Only if I’m around.” His mind was whirring. “I’m going to buy a punching bag next. Or maybe I’ll take karate lessons. I wonder how long it takes to get your black belt.”

  “Why do you want your black belt?”

  He didn’t answer my question. “Want to get some ice cream? My treat.”

  I remember thinking what an awesome brother I had.

  Then Scott drove by with some of his friends. Like everyone else, I knew about the nickname Scott had given Jesse. I knew Jesse hadn’t had a great first year in high school. But until that day, I didn’t understand how bad it was.

  “Hey, it’s Jodie’s brother,” I said.

  Jesse’s face went blank. He grabbed my hand and started walking faster. “Don’t make eye contact,” he said.

  The car slowed down. Then Scott yelled out the passenger window, “Hey, Jesse! Ya ’tard!” Something came sailing out the window. It was a half-full can of Coke, aimed at Jesse’s head.

  The can just missed its target. It landed on the sidewalk in front of us. Coke splashed onto Jesse’s pants as the car squealed away.

  We didn’t go for ice cream. We just walked straight home. I remember that Jesse was really embarrassed. And I remember that I was embarrassed, too, because I suddenly knew with total certainty that my brother was not cool. My brother was the kid the other kids made fun of.

  I think that was the day I stopped looking up to him. I think that was the day I started to feel a little bit ashamed of him.

  It was hard to write those last two sentences.

  Anyway.

  I’d buried that memory really deep. So the fact that it was playing itself out in my head all of a sudden, in full Technicolor, really knocked the wind out of me, and maybe that’s why I didn’t try to stop what happened next. Troy grabbed Farley and got his buddy, the one named Mike, to hold open Farley’s locker door. “You ever touch me again, Slant-Eyes, you are dead.” Farley was squirming and shouting, “It was an accident! I swear!”

  Troy shoved Farley into his locker. Mike slammed the door shut. Farley kept shouting; it was just a little more muffled. The one named Josh clicked Farley’s lock into place. Then the three of them sauntered away, laughing.

  I’ve seen kids get stuffed into lockers on TV shows and in movies, but never in real life. It didn’t look as funny in real life.

  “99-10-12!” Farley yelled through the slats in the door. “99-10-12!”

  It took me a few seconds to realize he was shouting his locker combination. I finally unfroze and spun his lock around. I yanked open the door. Farley stepped out, adjusting his glasses.

  “He’s a psycho,” said Farley.

  “A racist psycho,” I added.

  “He tried to kill Ambrose once.”

  “Get out.”

  “It’s true. They went to the same elementary school. Troy and his friends slipped a peanut into Ambrose’s sandwich, even though they knew he was allergic. He almost died.”

  The warning bell rang. “That’s awful,” I said.

  “Aw, fudge.” Farley was looking down at his button-up shirt. The pocket was torn almost completely off, exposing the plastic pocket protector and pens underneath. “He tore my shirt.”

  His glasses fogged up, and I realized he was fighting tears.

  “Do you want to go tell the principal?” I asked.

  Farley looked at me like I was mental. He didn’t have to say a word; I knew exactly what he meant. Going to the principal might make things better; or it might make things worse.

  Jesse went to the principal once. The principal spoke to Scott. And do you know what happened? Scott just got better at covering his tracks. And Jesse got branded as a snitch.

  Farley took a cloth handkerchief out of his pants pocket and blew into it loudly. He sounded like a Canada goose.

  “C’mon,” he said. “I don’t want to break my perfect attendance record.” He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket, and we headed to class.

  What I like most about Farley is that he’s like a rubber ball. No matter how hard you throw him, he bounces right back.

  What I hate most about Farley is that he’s like a rubber ball. No matter how hard you throw him, he bounces right back.

  “So listen,” he said the moment class got out, “talk to your dad. See if he’ll take us to Seattle – because my parents can’t, obviously, they’re in Hong Kong. And Maria doesn’t have her license. We could drive down and back the same day. Plus,” he continued, stopping his rapid-fire monologue only to take a deep breath, “we need money to buy the tickets. And for gas and food and stuff.” He started to bounce on the balls of his feet. “I broke down the costs on an Excel spreadsheet last night. They’re based on three of us going. Me, you, and your dad.”

  He knelt down and opened up his briefcase in the hallway. Then he handed me a sheet of paper.

  Three tickets – $200.00

  Gas – $50.00

  Food – $50.00

  Souvenirs – $100.00

  Total – $400.00

  “That’s a ton of money,” I told him.

  “The tickets might be a bit less, but I had to factor in all those dumb service charges. And I know I’m not leaving there without a GWF T-shirt and a Vlad the Impaler poster.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “Me, neither. My parents make a lot of money in Hong Kong, but they’re cheapskates. They give Maria just enough for our expenses.”

  We’d arrived in English class. Farley sat beside me. “Would your parents maybe lend you the money, and then we can figure out a way to pay them back?”

  I looked away. How could I explain that my parent
s didn’t have any money? Well, Farley, my mom can’t work because she’s in a loony bin, and our place is still for sale in Port Salish because no one wants to live in a murderer’s house. Oh, and since criminal charges were never laid against my brother because you can’t charge a dead person, the Marlins have launched a civil suit against my parents, claiming “wrongful death.” If they win, we might owe them a lot of money that we don’t have.

  Yeah, no.

  “Just ask them over the weekend, okay? We have to go see this! We have to!”

  Our teacher entered, and I thought that would shut Farley up. But he just kept whispering loudly, “Please! Please!” even after Mr. Schell started the lesson.

  “Henry Larsen, tell your friend Mr. Wong to zip it,” Mr. Schell said.

  But even that didn’t shut Farley up. He just kept whispering, over and over and over, “Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease –”

  “Fine!” I said. “I’ll ask.”

  Even though I knew I never would.

  Later

  I hate Cecil.

  When I showed up at his office this afternoon, he said, “What do you say we go for a walk? It’s a beautiful day.”

  Leaving the office seemed very “un-psychologist-like,” but it was a beautiful day – sunny after weeks of rain – so I said okay.

  Once we were outside, he told me a long boring story about the matzo ball soup his mom would make when he had a cold and how good it made him feel. I was like yawn, but I nodded to be polite.

  “Why don’t you tell me a happy memory about your family?” he said.

  I have plenty of good memories about my family. But maybe I wanted to get a rise out of Cecil because I said, “We loved a good fart joke.”

  He didn’t miss a beat. “Great. Tell me one.”

  “Confucius say, man who farts in church must sit in his own pew.”

  He laughed. “That’s pretty good.”

  So I told him another one. “What do you call a teacher who won’t fart in public? A private tutor.”

  Cecil obviously likes toilet humor ’cause he laughed really hard, and I guess it made me feel good because I kept on going.

  “Whenever we go to my Pop-Pop and Grams’s in Ontario, Pop-Pop always toots at the supper table. Like, loud.”

  “Holy Moly.”

  “He’s sixty percent deaf, and I guess he thinks that if he can’t hear it, we can’t either. But, of course, we can. And we have to try so hard not to laugh. Mom winds up snorting water up her nose. And Jesse and I have to squeeze each other’s knees really hard under the table –” I stopped.

  I’d broken two rules. I’d spoken Jesse’s name aloud. And worse, I’d talked about him like he was still alive.

  “Tell me another good memory.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Please?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Henry,” he began, “it’s okay to talk about your brother. It’s healthy.”

  “I Am. An Only Child,” I answered in Robot-Voice.

  “No, you’re not. You had a brother, and you loved him. And I bet you still love him, even if you’re really angry with him, too. Those conflicting emotions are totally normal.”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Your dad told me what happened in the park a month before Jesse died –”

  “System Meltdown!” I shouted in Robot-Voice. “System Meltdown! System Meltdown!” People on the sidewalk were turning to stare.

  “It’s okay, Henry. Calm down –”

  “System Meltdown!” I kept shouting as I spun in circles, flailing my arms.

  “Why don’t we go back to the office –”

  “System Meltdown!” I shouted again, then I ran away from Cecil as fast as my pygmy legs and my wobblies would carry me, which wasn’t very fast. But Cecil didn’t take up the chase. I guess he figured it wouldn’t look good – an old guy in a ponytail trying to tackle a kid.

  When I got home, Dad still wasn’t there, so I went into his room and pulled the shoebox out from under his bed.

  “Shithead,” I whispered. “Thanks for ruining my life.”

  Then I changed into my pajamas and ate four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in a row.

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16

  INTRIGUING FACT: Weekends didn’t exist till the 1940s. Henry Ford was one of the first bosses to give his workers two days off in a row, in 1926; he figured people buying his Model T’s needed leisure time to drive them.

  Before IT happened, I loved weekends. My family was good at them. In nice weather, we’d pack up the car and go camping or fishing. In bad weather, we’d bake bread and cookies and play board games and, of course, watch “Saturday Night Smash-Up.”

  These days, weekends are torture. Today, for example, Dad spent a lot of time in bed with a “cold.” I’m pretty sure this was code for “hangover.” Usually he just drinks beer, but on Friday night he brought home a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and I noticed this morning that it was half-full.

  Since he wasn’t feeling well, I did some chores around the apartment. I even put on rubber gloves and plugged my nose and scrubbed out the toilet, for the first time since we moved in. Gross. Then I lugged a garbage bag full of dirty clothes to the laundry room in the basement. All the way down in the painfully slow elevator, I fantasized about seeing the GWF Smash-Up Live! in Seattle. But we could never afford it. I know I have to let it go.

  When I got to the laundry room, all of the washing machines were full. One of them had finished its cycle, so I pulled the clothes out and placed them on the counter. Believe me, I had no desire to touch someone else’s clothes – especially not someone else’s frilly undergarments. But when something fell on the floor, I had no choice but to pick it up. It happened to be a very red BRA with big huge CUPS, and just as I was placing it on the counter, I heard, “Are you fondling my brassiere?”

  Karen. She was standing in the doorway to the laundry room, arms crossed, smirking.

  In an instant, my face felt like it was on fire, and I knew that even my freckles were blushing. “I was just emptying the machine so I could use it,” I said, hating her.

  “You shouldn’t do that, you know,” she said as she started to toss her stuff into a dryer. “No one likes a stranger pawing through their clothes.”

  “I wasn’t pawing!”

  “Could’ve fooled me,” she said, smirking again.

  Then, to make a crap day crappier, Mr. Atapattu entered the laundry room. “Henry, greetings! How are you?”

  “Fine,” I muttered as Mr. Atapattu opened a dryer and started removing his clothes.

  “He was pawing through my underwear,” Karen said, and it dawned on me that she was enjoying herself.

  “I was not!! I was just emptying the machine!”

  Mr. Atapattu tilted his head toward Karen. “Hello. I don’t believe we’ve met. Suresh Atapattu, 213.”

  “Karen Vargas. 311.”

  They shook hands.

  “I was just telling Harry here –” Karen began.

  “Henry!” I said, louder than I meant to. I was dying to get out of there. I’d shoved our clothes into the machine and added detergent, and I fumbled for a loonie in my pocket.

  “Excuse me, I was just telling Henry that he shouldn’t remove someone else’s clothes from one of the machines.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Atapattu. “It can be very annoying when people don’t empty the machines promptly.”

  “True, but still, touching their clothes – it’s an invasion of privacy.”

  “But that is the price you pay for living in a building with shared laundry facilities,” Mr. Atapattu replied. “A little less privacy.”

  Karen crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “So you’re saying just because some of us can’t afford to live in a building with an ensuite laundry, we should have less privacy?”

  “You misinterpret my words. I simply mean that, when a large number of people have to use comm
on facilities, rules must be bent to accommodate everyone, isn’t that right, Henry?”

  But I’d managed to get the machine started, and I was already halfway out the door. I could hear them arguing as I stood waiting for the elevator.

  “If you don’t want anyone else to touch your things, you should be here when your laundry is done.”

  “I was ten minutes late! So sue me!”

  I couldn’t take it any longer, so I walked up the stairs instead.

  Later, when it was time to flip our clothes into a dryer, I approached the laundry room like a sniper in Call of Duty 4. I poked my head in to make sure the coast was clear. It wasn’t. Karen was there, and she was posting a big handwritten sign over the washing machines that said PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE OTHER TENANTS’ CLOTHING. Then she picked up her hamper, which was full of dry clothes.

  I panicked. No way did I want to have to talk to her again about her undergarments, or anything else for that matter, so I hurried back down the corridor. But instead of going right toward the stairs, I went left toward the elevator, and it wasn’t till I was passing the storage lockers that I realized my mistake. The elevator would take forever to show up. Not only would Karen catch up to me, but we’d have to ride up in that cramped space together. With her brassieres!

  Then I remembered that the key to our storage locker was on my key ring. I quickly opened our unit and slipped inside. The lockers are basically just floor-to-ceiling metal cages, meaning anyone can see in, but I hid behind some boxes, and luckily Karen didn’t notice me as she passed.

  I meant to leave as soon as she was gone. But then I started reading the labels on the boxes: KITCHEN, EXTRA LINENS, PHOTO ALBUMS.

  JESSE & HENRY.

  I only meant to take a little peek. But before I knew it, I was going through every single item: our old ratty blankets (his was called Softie, mine was called Blankie); all of our report cards; the knitted blueberry hat Jesse wore as a baby, which was then handed down to me; some of our artwork, including a fire truck that Jesse had painted when he was six. He’d signed it STEVE. Suddenly I was laughing because I remembered that, for a month in first grade, he had insisted on being called Steve. We never knew why, but it became a favorite family story.