Chapter Fourteen - In which Weirdo and I tell scary stories

I asked Weirdo to spend the night at my house. He pulled at his lip and thought about it for awhile.

"Okay, but you aren't going to make me sleep in the same bed as you or anything are you?"

"No."

"Then I guess I can make some time for you."

The next day he was going to get off at my stop with me. Since my stop was six stops after his, and since Weirdo had never been to my house before, he got to see where a bunch of other kids lived.

"Oh man, this is so cool to see how the other side lives. I ride the bus every day with all of you, but you never really know a person until you see where he lives." Weirdo pressed his face against the window. "Ooh man, whose house is that? Did you know a wise man said 'Home is not the place where you live, but the place where you belong', but my Dad says that most people never find where they belong so they may as well just throw that saying out the window."

I often found my mouth hanging slightly open when Weirdo talked.

"Oh man, look at the size of that maple tree. I bet he could hang some sweet Halloween decorations from that. What kind did he hang up last Halloween?"

"I don't know. Who cares?"

Weirdo pulled a big ziplock bag from his backpack. It had a little tube of toothpaste, a toothbrush, his night time mask in a tube and what looked like a little thing of chapstick.

"Why did you pack chapstick?"

"That's not chapstick, it's deodorant."

"I've never seen deodorant like that before.

"That's what they give out in jail. Uncle Jake got it when he went to jail last month."

"What did he go to jail for?"

"He says it was because he drank too much coffee at a party and got arrested for speeding on the way home."

We turned down my street I showed him where my house was. He made a face like he was disappointed, but didn't say anything.


* * * * *


I spent the afternoon showing him around my house and yard. If I showed him something he thought was interesting he would tell me I did good for myself. If I showed him something he thought was ordinary he would just nod his head and stay quiet. He became bored with my tour and asked to see the kitchen.

My mom was in the kitchen looking through the phone book when we came in. She asked if we had any requests for Chinese food.

"My mom makes her own Chinese food. She had a Chinese boyfriend in college who taught her Tai Chi and how to roll a perfect egg roll. Do you know how to make General Tso's sauce?"

My mom stared at him.

"Maybe my mom can call over and give you some pointers. That's if you have the right ingredients, though."

Weirdo opened our pantry and looked through it. He shook his head as he pulled out a can of Del Monte green beans.

"My dad says that anybody who buys Del Monte is a sucker. They all come from the same farm, but Del Monte costs more just because of the label. Did you know that?"

My mom took the beans from him and placed them back in the cupboard. Then she gave me the look.

"Come on, Weirdo. Let's go downstairs."

My older brothers shared a room downstairs next to the TV room. I sat down on the couch and turned the TV on. Weirdo was gone. I called for him and heard him in my brothers' room. My oldest brother had a locked trunk that he kept all his comic books in. The trunk was open and Weirdo was sitting on the floor next to it reading through all the comics.

"Weirdo! My brother is going to kill us if he finds out you broke into his trunk."

"Relax, he was just in here and said I could read them. He opened it for me."

"Really?"

My brother never let me read his comics. I sat down picked one up to read it. My brother walked in.

"What are you snots doing with my comics? How'd you break into my trunk?"

I looked at Weirdo. He looked back at me with big eyes and said, "What?"

"You said he opened it for you."

"That was so long ago, why are you even talking about it still?"

Weirdo tossed the comic he was reading back into the trunk.

"Besides, I already read #42. I have them all the way up to #56."

My brother looked surprised. "You mean you have Bonzai Man #'s 43 through 56?"

"No. I have #'s 1 through 56. I even have a special edition of #12 that's never even been read."

My brother was impressed. He picked me up by the arm and pushed me out of the room. The door closed behind me. I sat and watched TV while Weirdo and my brother sat by the trunk full of comics and talked about Bonzai Man and all the other cool comic book characters I knew nothing about because my mom wouldn't let me buy them and my brother wouldn't let me read his.

The doorbell rang and my mom yelled, "The food is here!" We all ran upstairs to the table. My mom passed out paper plates and forks.

"You guys eat your Chinese food with forks?"

We all stared at him. My dad looked at the fork in his hand and asked, "What do you expect us to use, our fingers?"

"You guys are too cute. My dad says that if you eat Chinese food with anything other than chopsticks you might as well dip it in ketchup too."

I kicked Weirdo beneath the table and gave crinkled my forehead at him.

"Well, I guess I can use a fork too. It won't hurt just this once."


* * * * *


After dinner Weirdo and I played in the back yard until it was too dark. We came inside and began getting ready for bed. We brushed our teeth together in the bathroom, then Weirdo pulled out his chapstick size deordorant and rubbed it into his armpits.

"You put deordorant on before you go to bed?"

"The mask makes my whole body sweat."

"Oh come one, please don't put that mask on. It's weird."

"Try eating Chinese food with a fork. That's weird."

Weirdo said he would do me a favor by not wearing the mask as long as I slept on the floor so he could sleep in my bed. I agreed. We went to my room, made my bed on the floor and turned the light out.

"Hey, I brought a surprise in my bag."

"What is it?"

I watched Weirdo reach into his bag and pull out a flashlight.

"This!"

"We have flashlights. What's the big deal?"

"Yeah, maybe you do, but do your flashlights do this?"

Weirdo pushed the little white switch and the flashlight turned on, beaming a bright circle on the ceiling. None of the flashlights in our house ever had batteries that actually worked. So I agreed with Weirdo that his was pretty cool.

Weirdo told me to get settled in, because he was going to tell me a scary story. He put the flashlight under his chin to make his face look real creepy.

"Last year... there was a man who worked at the bank. His boss told him he needed to get some papers signed by one of their clients. So the man went to the client to have the papers signed, but when he got back to the bank he couldn't find his brief case."

I was waiting for it to get scary.

"He looked, and looked, and looked for the brief case everywhere. He eventually told his boss that he lost the briefcase with the papers in it. His boss fired him on the spot."

I thought there was more, but Weirdo just looked at me waiting for me to react.

"That's it?"

"What do you mean, 'That's it?' Wouldn't that scare you silly if it happened to you?"

"I don't know. It doesn't sound scary.”

"The here, you tell a story scarier than that."

Weirdo handed the flashlight to me. I held it underneath my chin like he did. I felt like an old Indian storyteller sitting around a fire late at night in some tepee far out in the mountains.

"Once upon a time..."

"Boring."

"I didn't even start yet. Shut up."

I couldn't see real well in the dark, but I knew Weirdo was rolling his eyes.

"There was a man driving down a lonely highway at midnight. His car broke down and he had to pull over. There was nothing around but trees on every side. He didn't know what to do and thought he would have to start walking down the road to the next gas station miles away. He started walking, but then saw a light far off in the forest. It looked like a little cabin. He walked..."

"This had better get scary soon."

"It's called building up suspense. Now shut up."

"I think it's called a bedtime story for two year olds. Come on, let's get this story moving already."

I shook my head and continued.

"He walked into the forest and deep into the trees until he finally came to the little cabin. There were candles lit inside, which he could see through the little windows, but there was nobody in there. He opened the door and screamed! There was an old woman laying dead on the floor with blood all around. He heard something running toward the cabin. He turned around and screamed again! There in the doorway was giant wolf man with blood around his mouth!"

"Enough! That is so stupid. I thought we were telling scary stories here. We might as well save the batteries in my flashlight."

"What do you mean that's not scary? What's so scary about some dummy losing his job?"

"That could really happen! My Dad lost his job once and it was really scary. Wolf men aren't even real. How can it be scary if it can't happen?"

Weirdo took the flashlight from me and shined it underneath his chin again.

"Okay. Do you want to hear something really scary? I mean really, really scary?"

I nodded my head.

"Once, and this is a true story by the way, my Uncle Jake was on a plane that crashed high on top of a mountain. A bunch of the passengers died, but there were many who were still alive, like my Uncle Jake. There were stranded for days and were getting very hungry. They had no food at all except for chocolates that they passed out on the plane before it crashed. After three days, Uncle Jake decided that he was so hungry he could eat anything. He walked over to one of the people who died in the crash, licked his lips and started to..."

"No, that's gross. Don't even say it."

"What? Don't say that he checked the pockets for more chocolate? He was dead, you know. Dead people don't need chocolate."

"I thought you were going to say that Uncle Jake wanted to eat the dead person."

"Oh, that is gross. Why do you say things like that?"

"Well, then what's so scary about taking chocolates from a dead person?"

"I wasn't even done. Can I finish?"

I nodded in the dark.

"Uncle Jake knelt down next to the dead guy. Very slowly he reached into the guy's pocket. He didn't find any chocolates but he screamed when..."

Just then the flashlight batteries died and the light went out.

"Humph. I guess I'll just have to finish telling you later."

Weirdo put the dark flashlight back into his bag and fell asleep on my bed.

For once Weirdo was scary. Too scary. I wasn't sure that I wanted to know how the story ended, so I didn't ask him to tell the rest. I don't know what Uncle Jake screamed at, but my mind wandered the possibilities.

He screamed when the dead person grabbed his arm? He screamed when a spider hiding in the dead person's pocket bit him on the hand? He screamed when he found that the pocket was full of blood?

I pulled the blanket over my head and tried to think of happy things. I thought about throwing balls at a target to knock a clown in the water. I thought about how many colors of sprinkles are on donuts. I tried to think about Abraham Lincoln, but I remembered that he was dead. That threw my mind right back to Uncle Jake with his hand in a dead man's pocket.

I had a very hard time falling asleep, just like every time I sleep at Weirdo's house. Somehow he always creeps me out at night.


* * * * *


Weirdo woke me up in the morning. He was excited because he forgot that he packed an extra set of batteries.

"Now I can finish the story."

He turned the flashlight on and put it under his chin. The morning sun was shining and the flashlight didn't make a difference.

"So Uncle Jake put his hand in the dead man's pocket to look for chocolates. Then he screamed when he saw a helicopter come towards the mountain. He jumped up and waved his arms, and the helicopter pilot saw him and rescued all the survivors."

I stared at Weirdo.

"That's why he screamed? That's it? Geez Weirdo, what's so scary about that? I was up all night scared out of my wits."

"What do you mean what's so scary? The helicopter pilot almost didn't see them and they could have been stranded forever."

We were both quiet for a long time, just looking at each other. Weirdo scratched his head and looked at the corner of the ceiling. After another moment he said, "I saw my sister kissing Blake Nelson the other night."

"Now that's scary."