The Bad Kid Read online

  “What do the Songs want now? I’m retiring soon. I can’t keep track anymore. I own my house on Eleventh Avenue. My granddaughter is getting married. Young guys don’t understand that when you’re old like me, you do this, you do that, it’s all the same bag of pretzels.”

  Dad undid his ponytail and ran his hand through his hair. He looked at his phone and over his shoulder. When he saw me, I stuck out my tongue.

  Mr. Chin is taller than Dad, with gray hair, fluffy sideburns, and a mini beard. He always wears striped button-downs with Mets T-shirts over them and a look on his face telling you he’s gonna leave this conversation in about three seconds.

  After Grandpa Si died, I overheard Dad tell Mom that these elderly neighborhood dudes Grandpa did business with were going to make him lose his mind. I remember Mom’s reaction, too, because I was surprised.

  “Please just quit, Si,” said Mom, “before it’s too late.”

  Before long Lala was back, with nails alternating baby blue and lavender. While we waited for our noodles, Dad and Lala caught up on their bonding, and I watched the crowd on Eighth Avenue through the giant window to the street. A river of people hustled through market stalls, loading up on greens and egg-shaped cakes.

  A few minutes later, Mr. Chin set three bowls of sesame noodles on the counter and winked at Lala, who fluttered her eyelashes like a doll. “You remind me of my granddaughter when she was young,” said Mr. Chin in English. “She got so many proposals we lost track.”

  Lala gave him her fanciest smile.

  Dad, Lala, and I slurped noodles as we walked across the waxy red-and-cream checkerboard floor to a corner table. A gold metallic cutout of a rabbit waved from its spot on the wallpaper, which has the pattern of rocks. Our noodles were sweet and salty, creamy and spicy and cold, just what you want on a sweaty Sunday afternoon.

  Lala looked up from her bowl. “What’s up, Brett?”

  Dad looked toward the door and held up his fist. “Yo, Brett! I was wondering where you was at.”

  Brett rested his umbrella inside the door. “Hello, Mr. Song, Mr. Chin. Lala.”

  Mr. Chin pulled out a teapot. “Just tea today, Brett? Or noodles, too?”

  Brett said, “Tea only, please.”

  Then Brett nodded at me.

  I nodded back and looked out the window.

  Great. Now I felt guilty.

  “Stupid,” mumbled Lala.

  I looked at her. “Who’s stupid?” I asked. Lala wandered toward Brett, texting. “Andrew. I’m telling him we’re on our way.”

  “We?” I asked. “I thought going to Money’s place was just an alibi for your mother.”

  “Andrew needs his friends,” said Lala. “If he won’t leave his house, we’ll just have to come to him.”

  “You make it sound like something is wrong with the guy,” I said. “The only reason Money won’t leave his house is because he doesn’t wanna be that far away from his computer screen.”

  When Brett snickered, I felt slightly relieved, because I’d been missing him—and slightly annoyed, because seriously? I don’t come get him, so he just shows up?

  Lala stopped beside the cash register and picked up a piece of paper. “Aw! It’s from that girl who’s making the friends!”

  Brett leaned over her shoulder. “Alma Lingonberry?”

  “This kid is everywhere all of a sudden,” I mumbled.

  Dad shook my chair. “Where’s the love, Claude?”

  “She’s kinda talented,” said Lala. She came back to the table and handed me the flyer.

  Untitled #11

  Odd, no?

  How precious life seems?

  When you’re following

  Your dreams?

  —Alma Lingonberry

  Hey, Sunset Parkers! How’s our neighborhood today? Sunny? Windy? Rainy and bleak? My window is a treat but the long walk to it is not one (I’m in the hospital). So, I’m

  TRYING TO MAKE 10,000 NEW FRIENDS!

  Yes, I’m doing this weird thing, BUT IT’S WORKING! I can’t believe all the amazing emails I’m getting.

  Here’s the deal. If you email me, I’ll write you a poem. I’ll tell you what poem # to look for so it’ll be 100% confidential.

  What are you waiting for? Tell me all about yourself!

  :)

  Love, Me.

  Alma Lingonberry.

  [email protected]

  FRIEND COUNT: 11

  “A dying poet,” I said. “And she wonders why she has no friends.”

  “Ice cold, Claude,” said Lala.

  “Come on, Lala,” I said. “Alma Lingonberry? Do you honestly think somebody with that name exists? I take it back. She might be the mascot for a box of stale cookies.”

  “Your mouth will only get you so far in life, Claude,” said Dad, cracking his knuckles. “A true gangster’s got heart.”

  Lala and Dad fist-bumped.

  I dropped the flyer. “Heart, huh? That’s how you got so far in life?”

  “Keep being funny,” said Dad. “Someday you’ll need somebody’s help. Everybody will be like, ‘Claudeline? She don’t need me. She’s got that mouth.’”

  Brett was sipping his tea, squinting at the flyer.

  “Let’s go, y’all,” said Lala. “I told Andrew—”

  “We’re on our way,” I said. “We know.”

  Brett set his teacup on his saucer. “Mr. Song, the best man is like water. He benefits everyone.”

  Dad punched me. “Where’d you get this boy?”

  “Ow,” I said.

  “Be careful, Mr. Song,” said Brett.

  “Oh yeah?” said Dad, laughing.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” said Brett. He took another sip of tea and went to put his dishes on the counter.

  Dad stroked his chin like he was pretending to think. “Like I might lose a finger or something, right?”

  I cringed. You’re a gangster with heart all right, Dad.

  “Who knows?” said Brett, looking at me. Then he looked away, like he hadn’t meant to.

  His feelings were definitely hurt that I’d come out for noodles without him.

  Ugh.

  As I watched Lala drag Brett toward the door, I wondered if everybody was right. Maybe I was heartless.

  Whenever I used to wonder if something was wrong with me, like if I was good or bad or whatever as a person, I went looking for Grandpa. With him I never felt like a bad kid. Or a good kid either. To Grandpa I was just Claudeline. Now who thought of me that way?

  Dad took our dishes to the counter and slipped a pile of cash under one of the empty bowls. He redid his ponytail and looked over his shoulder. “You’re still here?”

  “When are you teaching me Grandpa’s business?” I asked.

  Dad scratched around his scar. “You don’t need to worry about that, Claude.”

  Mr. Chin looked at me.

  Dad’s hand was in the air. “High five, kiddo.”

  The inside of the church, with the pool of red light from the stained-glass window, flashed through my head. I saw the guy with the neck hairs. I felt dizzy.

  “Claude,” said Dad, dropping his hand, as I walked out the door.

  The rain had finally started, and it was coming down hard, like it couldn’t stop even if it tried. Have you ever noticed that when colors get wet, they turn darker? The sidewalk turns a darker shade of gray, and if you’re wearing red jeans, like I was, they turn reddish-brown. Shop awnings, like the one across the street for the Beauty City Hair Salon, which is normally as green as green-apple bubble gum, sag, and get dimmer, and look heavier. I took my time catching up with Lala and Brett, even though he was, as usual, the one with the umbrella.

  THE MONEY FAMILY

  I’m a million miles away, And at the same time I’m right here in your picture frame.

  —Jimi Hendrix, musician

  Andy Money is the kind of kid who if you want to hang out with him you have to go to his house, which he hardly eve
r leaves, because that’s where he operates his moneymaking schemes. That and because he’s a mama’s boy. Brett says that’s a sexist thing to call somebody, but why? A girl can be a mama’s boy too, can’t she? Except you never hear somebody say, “What a mama’s girl!” Maybe that’s his point. You can insult a boy who spends all his time at home with his mother, but for a girl it’s supposed to be normal. Well then, I guess it is sexist. Was there an insult for girls like me, who never hung out with their mothers anymore? Maybe “Her mother obviously stopped liking her”? Anyway, I don’t mean it as an insult, calling Money a mama’s boy, except I kinda do, but I don’t mind going to his house—and the kid’s all right too. I’d tell you his last name, but why bother? Even his own family calls him Money.

  Lala unlatched the iron fence and rang the buzzer.

  “What’s up!” said Money’s husky voice through the intercom.

  The heavy front door unlocked with a click. We followed the scent of roasted garlic and chocolate cake and the sounds of a blasting baseball game and an argument between Money’s dad and his uncle Sal as we took the stairs two at a time to get to the second floor.

  “You never, ever—”

  “I ALWAYS. I ALWAYS.”

  “Do you hear him, Ildiko?”

  “Shh! Enough already!”

  “Guests!” yelled Money as he opened the door.

  Money is a curly-haired pudgy kid with a groove in his chin and a savings account with (according to Money) seven thousand bucks in it that he earned selling junk online.

  “Kid with four fingers! Gimme some skin!” Uncle Sal leaned over the dining room table. Brett slapped his hand.

  The Money house is like one of those antique stores where everything in it tells a story in a different language. Fabrics and rugs with clashing patterns cover the couches and windows and floors. Dusty table lamps glow everywhere, but it still feels dark. An overgrown tree in a flower pot is about to raise the roof, and I’m pretty sure the dining room table with the feet carved into lion paws prowls around when you’re not looking. In the living room, a home-shopping show was on low, whispering about knife sharpeners and facial concealers.

  “Laliyaaah!” squealed Ms. Ildiko, whose hair was a new color, like she’d dunked it in a bathtub of raspberry juice.

  Lala went into the living room and sat beside Money’s mom on the footrest of the cushy chair, which was parked one foot from the television.

  “Where’d you get your nails, Ms. Ildiko?” asked Lala, in her girly voice.

  I’ve always liked Money’s mom’s name, Ildiko. Money told us they have all kinds of awesome names over in Hungary. His grandfather’s name is Zoltan. How tough is that?

  “Andrew, baby, join me and my future daughter-in-law.” Ms. Ildiko shook Lala’s hands. “How’s your mother, sweetheart? I’m trying to get her to come over for canasta some night.”

  Money followed Lala into the living room.

  “Gonna need more merchandise in my online storefront if I’m gonna support a family, Ma. You wanna gimme your credit card, and I’ll bulk-order some more plastic crap?”

  “Don’t say ‘crap,’ Andrew,” said Lala. “That word is repulsive.”

  “Okay, babe,” said Money, patting her on the head.

  “Don’t pat me on the head,” snapped Lala. “It’s condescending.”

  “You tell him, sweetie,” said Ms. Ildiko.

  “It’s what?” said Money.

  “Money’s gettin’ married!” squealed Uncle Sal.

  “Outta you, Sal,” yelled Ms. Ildiko, “if one more peep I hear—”

  “And now you’re gonna mock my wife?” yelled Money’s dad, pointing a rolled-up piece of paper at his brother. Money Senior and Uncle Sal don’t look anything alike. Uncle Sal is tall and buff with a face like somebody you think you saw on television but probably didn’t. Money Senior is wider than he is tall. He has a mustache and lights cigars near a cracked-open window over the kitchen sink, and puts on his clothes in no particular order, such as that day’s holiday shorts with the orange blazer and the T-shirt that said PIED PIPER PLUMBING SUPPLIES: LET IT FLOW IN SUNSET PARK. If this was what family values looked like, I wasn’t exactly sold, but the Money house was always entertaining. They made those characters on reality television seem as stale as some food-truck doughnuts you accidentally left in your backpack and found a month later, hard as rocks.

  Money Senior dropped the rolled-up paper on the dining room table and followed Uncle Sal into the kitchen. When it unrolled, I noticed the familiar smile of a sick girl with a crooked face. For a dying poet, I thought, this girl gets around. Besides her, Brett and me were the only ones left in the dining room. I glanced at him. He was looking at the flyer too. The grandfather clock dinged. I picked up the flyer and jiggled it. “This freak,” I said. I was working out a rhyming joke to sound like one of Alma’s poems, to break the tension, when Brett caught me off guard.

  “Why didn’t you come over today?” he asked.

  “What?” I said. And then I panicked. “I forgot.”

  Brett squinted. “You forgot.”

  I looked at my toes, squirming in my sandals.

  “Wow,” said Brett. “It’s like that.”

  “C’mon, Brett,” I muttered.

  “No, it’s on me,” he said. “I should’ve got the message.”

  I looked up at him and sighed. Brett’s brown eyes are so deep they feel like a place you could actually go.

  “It’s not you that’s the problem,” I said. “It’s your pal the philosophy book.”

  Brett exhaled loudly, like his breath was a sentence he couldn’t bother turning into words.

  Then he spun around, opened the front door, and left.

  Just left.

  The sounds of the Money house faded as I followed him out of the apartment and down the stairs.

  “Wait,” I said. “Wait!”

  When Brett got to the bottom of the stairs, he let the heavy door to the street shut behind him with a click. Right in my face.

  “Jeez!” I said. I opened the door and yelled outside, “WAIT, Brett!”

  Brett turned around. The rain had stopped. He was standing in a patch of sunlight on the sidewalk, beside a puddle.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “If the mail gets delivered to the wrong apartment on Saturday, the neighbors drop it off on Sunday. I’m going to check. After that, the library.”

  “Your e-mail gets delivered . . . where? The library?”

  “No, my regular mail might get delivered to the wrong apartment, and after I check, I’m going to the library. But as a matter of fact, yes, Claude, my e-mail gets delivered to the library. Unlike you, I don’t have the Internet at home.”

  “Why are you so mad at me?” I asked. “I mean—okay—”

  “You didn’t forget, Claude,” said Brett.

  “I know! It slipped out!”

  “So we’ve established that you ditched me deliberately. Which begs the question: Why are you mad at me?”

  Looking at Brett, all penguiny with the sun on his shoulders, I felt confused. Was I mad at him? No. No! No, just . . . I needed a break from philosophy that morning. I really did.

  Hadn’t I just said that?

  I felt in my pocket for my photograph of the Fuzhou crew. Maybe now was the time to talk about the Thing that lived in it, which I’d been worrying about since Grandpa died. It might sound weird, but I felt like I couldn’t look directly at the Thing unless Brett was with me. Because he’d understand and help me keep it far away—far enough away that it couldn’t get me. Otherwise, as soon as I pointed it out, it’d turn around and open wide and swallow me whole.

  Then again, was I gonna tell Brett about the Thing that was worrying me about Grandpa’s business while we stood on the sidewalk outside Money’s house, fighting?

  Mussels with French fries. That’s what we needed. After dinner in Manhattan at Guillaume’s we’d take the N train back to Brooklyn, with full be
llies, and deal with my photograph.

  “Wanna come to the restaurant?” I said. “Phil was asking about you.”

  “What I have to do today is important to me, Claude.”

  Now, that annoyed me. Whatever Brett has to do is important, right? Me? Nah. Impossible.

  “Same here,” I said. “Amazing, huh? I was asking if you wanted to do something together, something fun, and then maybe we could talk about something that is important to me. Forget it, though.”

  Brett smoothed his hair, which was extra curly from the rain.

  “What is it?” he said. “What do you want to talk about?”

  My fingertip folded the corner of my photograph.

  “Not here,” I said. “Not now.”

  Brett squinted, again, like he could see through me. Sometimes I liked how that made me feel. Like nobody in the world knew me as well as he did. Other times, such as now, it made me wish I had on a mask made of steel and kryptonite. Something that would let me keep one single secret to myself until I was ready to talk about it. Which I wasn’t, which I had just said. I mean, which I was and wasn’t, at the same time. But which, still, I had just said. Hadn’t I? I pretended something was in my eye and turned away, rubbing it.

  Finally Brett said, “I do want to hang out, Claudeline. But I’m going to be busy for the next few days.”

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  “Stuff I need to do,” said Brett.

  I started to ask what was so top secret. “Like—”

  “Let me finish,” said Brett. “Do you want to come over on Thursday, and we can hang out and try to be normal?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling around the edges of my photograph. “Yes.”

  SARA LEBERNARDIN

  The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

  —Jacques-Yves Cousteau, oceanographer

  “So the cops are in my face with the ‘jumpin’ the turnstiles is breakin’ the law’ and the ‘don’t make faces when I’m talkin’ to you’ and the yadda yadda. That’s when Grandpa Si walks over and puts his arm around me. We’re in Grand Central on our way to the Natural History museum. Grandpa Si doesn’t say nothing to the cops, either; he doesn’t smile or nothing. He just stands there looking like a movie star in his tan jacket and his fancy scarf he always wore. And the cops say, ‘Sir, are you two related?’ and Grandpa Si doesn’t say anything. He takes my hand and we walk away.”