Slob - Ellen Potter [45]
Okay. We were back in business. Now I had to slip on the white gloves again and start studying two years’ worth of Retro TV Magazine for every instance of The Brady Bunch on the Freakout Channel. Plus, there was a very good chance that this episode had been repeated several times. If only I had been able to catch two old episodes in a row, I would have a better chance at figuring out when these shows were first broadcast. But since there was no guarantee that I’d hold onto the signal for that long, I went to Arthur’s carton and started my long night’s work.
Then I got lucky.
There was a commercial break on TV, and a fuzzy lime green screen came on with the words Freakout Pop Quiz in hot pink bubble letters. Then a voice read out the pop quiz question while it was spelled out on-screen: “What famous Laverne and Shirley star was born on this day, sixty-three years ago?”
I waited through a bunch of commercials, terrified every second that I’d lose the signal before the answer came on. I didn’t. “The answer to today’s Freakout Pop Quiz is . . . Penny Marshall, who played Laverne on Laverne and Shirley.”
I was so happy I could have done that embarrassing little dance.
Now all I had to do was to check the Internet for Penny Marshall’s birthday. Once I found that out, I just had to do a simple calculation to figure out the day, month, and year of this broadcast. Presto!
Well, not quite presto since we didn’t have the Internet at home. I’d have to wait till I got to school to check it.
Pift.
Jan Brady was gone, and in her place was a chimpanzee doing a handstand on a pool table.
I’d lost the signal.
Jeremy left for school without me the next morning. She must have snuck out while I was in the shower, because her door was closed when I walked into the bathroom and when I came out, the door was open and she was gone. She’d never left without me before, and I won’t lie, it hurt my feelings. At first. Then it just started making me angrier with her, and by the time I got to school, I decided that I wouldn’t wait for her after school. I just hoped that she would notice.
I arrived at school early to sign up for the computer workstation. There’s only one computer in our classroom, and it’s hooked up to the Internet, so it’s always the most popular workstation. I was the first one on the list today. I was shaking with nervousness. Everything rested on this one piece of information.
Mason Ragg slunk in, late as usual. He looked the same as always—from the top of his wild uncombed head to the tips of his busted-up sneakers, every inch of him seemed to say, “Oh yeah? Go ahead, I dare you.” It was almost unbelievable to me that only the day before yesterday, I had seen him fleeing from me with terror in his face.
He caught me staring at him, but this time his eyes swerved away quickly.
For no reason at all, I felt like a bully.
Well, maybe there was a tiny reason.
I started thinking about this whole karma thing. It occurred to me that I might have collected some pretty rotten karma lately. After all, I had attempted to clap Mason’s wrist in a spiked handcuff and possibly poison him with facial hair bleach, and the whole time he was innocent. I assumed that these were fairly serious crimes, karma-wise.
I looked at the computer screen as it was slowly booting up. If I ever needed some good karma, it was now.
I stood up and walked over to Mason, who was sitting in the art station, drawing on a piece of paper. His back was to me, so I was able to get a good look at his drawing. It was a wolf howling.
“Wow, that’s good,” I said. It really was. The wolf’s fur was drawn with these careful, fine little strokes. It was hard to believe Mason could do something that delicate.
Mason’s head swiveled around. Thankfully I had a view of the unscarred side of his face this time. It was like the half man/half woman that you’d see in old-time circus pictures. He gave a totally different impression if you saw him from the left side or from the right. From this view, Mason Ragg just looked