I sat at his desk chair, realizing he couldn’t stay that way for long—he’d have to breathe eventually. Sure enough, he loosened the grip on the pillow, turned to see me for just a split second, then turned his face the other way.
“Go away,” he said. But if he really wanted me to go away, he wouldn’t have unlocked the door.
I said to him the one thing I could think to say under the circumstances. “I’m sorry you’re not dying.”
He sat up and faced me. He seemed insulted. “Who says I’m not? Just because it’s a Dr. Gigabyte diagnosis doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“Well, then maybe my sister has leprosy.”
He showed no sign of being surprised or confused by that, and I wondered if maybe he had, at some point, been given that diagnosis by Dr. Gigabyte, too.
“Have you seen any real doctors? What do they say?”
“I don’t care what they say. ‛The enlightened man knows the workings of his own body and soul.’”
“Who said that?” I asked.
I could see him thinking and he said, “The Dalai Lama.”
“You made that up!”
“So what.”
And then I had a sudden revelation. “You made them all up!” Even as I said it, I knew it was true. Nobody could have so many quotes-for-all-occasions at their fingertips. “None of those people ever said those things, did they? Your quotes are all fake!”
He looked down at the pillow in his hands, and punched it like he was kneading a wad of dough. “That doesn’t mean they couldn’t have said them,” he mumbled.
I laughed. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but the fact that even his pretensions were pretend struck me as funny. He didn’t react well to that. He stood up, and went to the door. “I’d like you to leave now.”
This time I think he meant it. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m actually glad you’re not dying.” I stood up and went to the door. “Do your parents have any idea you’ve been conning the whole school?”
“I’m not conning anybody,” he said. “My life is over. Whether or not I actually die is just a technicality.”
But before I could ask him what that meant, he closed the door between us.
The next day—the Friday before a desperately needed Christmas vacation—I was hauled into the principal’s office again. This time he already had other guests—a man and a woman in expensive-looking business suits. When I walked in, they both stood up. I flinched, like you do when the cat jumps out in a horror movie.
“Ah,” said Principal Sinclair, “here’s the boy I’ve been telling you about.” I shook their hands—but can’t remember their names, on account of my brain was still processing the fact that they had been talking about me—but I’m pretty sure that the woman was the newly elected superintendent of schools.
“Anthony has been spearheading a schoolwide community-service effort to give hope to a terminally ill student.”
“Uh ... yeah,” I said, looking anywhere but at the three of them. “Funny you should mention that...”
“I’ve heard all about it,” said the superintendent. “We need more students like you.”
That almost made me laugh.
“If you don’t mind,” the man said, “we’d like to donate time, too.”
Call me a gutless wonder, but I didn’t have the courage to let them know the truth about Gunnar and his “illness.” I tried, but the words stuck in my throat and clung to my tonsils like strep, refusing to come out.
“Yeah, sure, why not,” I said, and reached into my backpack, pulling out two blank time contracts for them to fill in and sign, with my principal signing as witness. Then, when it was done, Principal Sinclair sat on the corner of his desk, in that casual I’m-your-principal-but-I’m-also-your-friend kind of way. “Now, I’m sure you’ve heard that the student council has organized a rally for Gunnar during the first week of January,” he said.
“They have?”
“Yes—and I think you should give a speech, Anthony.”
There comes a moment in every really, really bad situation when you realize your canoe’s leaking, there’s no paddle, and you can hear Niagara Falls up ahead. There’s nothing you can do but hold on and pray for deliverance. I don’t mean the movie Deliverance, which is, coincidentally, about canoes—I mean real, Hail Mary, Twenty-third Psalm kind of deliverance.
“I’m not good at speeches.”
“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” said the superintendent. “Just speak from the heart.”
And the other guy said, “We’ll all be there to support you.”
“You’ll be there?” I asked. The Falls were getting louder by the minute.
“This school,” said the principal, “is under consideration as a National Blue Ribbon school. Academics are only a part of that. The school must also demonstrate that its students are committed to making the world a better place . . . and you, Anthony, are our shining star.”
13. Kidnap Ye Grouchy Gentleman, with Something to Dismay
In spite of what happened on the Double Date From Hell, my friendship with Lexie was back to normal. “I care about you too much to be anything more than mildly furious at you,” she had told me, but even then, I could tell she wasn’t furious at all.
The two of us kidnapped her grandfather as planned—the first Saturday of Christmas vacation. As usual, Old Man Crawley had no concept of what was in store for him today. “I don’t want to do this!” he yelled as I fought to blindfold him. “I’m calling the police! I’ll skewer you on the end of my cane!” But this was all part of the ritual.
By the time we got him out to his chauffeured Lincoln, he had stopped complaining about being kidnapped. Now he merely complained about the conditions.
“You forgot my winter coat.”
“It’s a warm day.”
“I just ate. If I have digestive problems because of this, I won’t be happy.”
“When are you ever happy?” I asked.
“Your attitude does not bode well for your paycheck.”
But I knew he paid me for my attitude as well. It was all part of the ambience of the experience. “This one’s special, Grandpa,” Lexie assured him.
“That’s what you always say,” he grumbled.
Our Holiday Kidnapping Extravaganza was a zip line fifty feet off the ground through the treetops of Prospect Park—the largest park in Brooklyn. Lexie had arranged to have engineering students build the zip line for class credit. There were two platforms equipped with rope-and-pulley lift systems, because Old Man Crawley couldn’t be expected to climb a ladder. Flying down the wire from one tree to the other, you reached a top speed of about forty miles an hour.
This was a good distraction from the Gunnar Debacle, as I was now calling it, since I figured I’d earned the right to be as pretentious as him. Still, it weighed heavily on my mind.
As the chauffeur drove to Prospect Park, I told Lexie everything.
“I knew it!” she said. “I knew something was wrong with that whole family. I could tell the way whatserface left that night without as much as a good-bye.”
“You were pouting in the bathroom,” I reminded her. “She couldn’t say good-bye to you. And anyway, I’m not breaking up with her, if that’s what you’re thinking. The problem is with her brother, not her.”
I had had enough time to really think about Gunnar’s behavior, and realized that this wasn’t just a simple con. He wasn’t faking in the traditional sense. There’s a fine line between being a hypochondriac and being a faker. I think Gunnar was speeding down that particular zip line at speeds in excess of forty miles an hour.