Finding the Worm Read online

  “Mr. Twerski,” Rabbi Salzberg said, “I’m right here. Are you confused?”

  I spun back around. “Sorry, Rabbi, I’ve got to go.”

  Saying that, I rushed out the door.

  As soon as I stepped outside, Lonnie grabbed the sleeve of my coat and started to pull me through the crowd. We were weaving in and out, walking fast until we got to the sidewalk, and then we took off running. I had no idea where we were going, but I was glad to be in the open air, feeling the sun on my face, making a quick getaway from Gates of Prayer.

  After a couple of blocks, my dress shoes were cutting into my feet. I slowed down to a walk again, which caused Lonnie to slow down too. We were both huffing and kind of laughing.

  “All right,” he said, “I think the coast is clear.”

  “You don’t think the posse’s coming after us?”

  “Well, Magoo is definitely going to kill you.”

  “Yeah, but what can he do? Today, I am a man.”

  That cracked up Lonnie, which cracked up me.

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  He was smiling. “I got something to show you.” There’s a crinkle-eyed look Lonnie gets on his face when he knows he’s outdone himself. Right then, he had that look. We were walking along Roosevelt Avenue toward Bowne Street. He turned right on Bowne, and I followed him for another block and a half. It wasn’t hard to figure out that he was leading me to the Bowne House. There’s nothing else on that street.

  The closer we got, the queasier I began to feel. You don’t mess with the Bowne House. You don’t mess with a painting of the Bowne House, and you sure as heck don’t mess with the real thing. What I mean is … it’s the Bowne House! It’s a historical site. Tourists from Manhattan take the train to Flushing just to see the thing. But in a weird way, that calmed me down. I mean, how bad could it be? Lonnie’s a practical joker, for sure, but he’s not out of his mind.

  We came up on the west side of the house. It’s not much to look at, to be honest, given that it’s such a big deal. Really it’s just a two-floor wooden house with peeling paint that used to be brown but now looks more tannish gray. It’s got a tall brick chimney, which kind of stands out, and a big oak tree in the backyard. But otherwise, you wouldn’t give it a second look if you didn’t know how historical it was.

  The place was deserted, which you’d expect, since it didn’t open to the public until noon. So Lonnie and I took a quick look in both directions, then hopped the three-foot stone wall that separated the sidewalk from the backyard lawn.

  He grinned at me. “Notice anything different?”

  “You didn’t break a window, did you?”

  “C’mon, Julian, why would I do that?”

  “Okay, so what did you do?”

  “Just look around,” he said.

  I put my hands in my coat pockets and took a stroll. The ground underneath the grass was hard, which I was grateful for, since it meant mud wasn’t caking on my dress shoes. I was glancing up and down, side to side, trying to pick out anything that looked wrong. After I’d covered the yard, I walked along the edge of the house, running my fingertips along the wood slats.

  “You’re ice cold,” Lonnie called.

  I stepped away from the house and drifted back toward the yard.

  “You’re getting warmer.…”

  “Did you carve the tree?”

  “I wouldn’t hurt the tree, Julian. What did the tree ever do to me?”

  “Then I give up,” I said.

  “Do you want a hint?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t go out on a limb,” he said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means what it says.”

  “Then I don’t get it.”

  “Don’t go out on a limb, Julian.”

  Suddenly, it hit me. I looked up, almost straight into the sun. It took a second for my eyes to adjust, but there, about three-quarters of the way up the tree, was a worn-out pair of black high-top sneakers. They were dangling from a narrow branch by their laces, which were knotted together. The dark color of the sneakers blended in real well with the bark of the tree. You likely wouldn’t have noticed them unless you were looking straight at them. Sooner or later, though, they were sure to get noticed.

  “How could you do that, Lonnie?”

  “How could I not?” he said.

  “C’mon, it’s the Bowne House. If it were just a tree from the block—”

  “You’re the one who gave me the idea when you were going on and on about that painting. So, in a way, it was your idea.…”

  “Lonnie!”

  “I’m just joking with you, Jules. Don’t be such a Goody Two-Shoes.”

  “I’m not a Goody Two-Shoes,” I said. “I just don’t get the point of it. Why would you even want your sneakers here? Who’s going to see them?”

  “They’re not my sneakers. They’re Quentin’s.”

  “You stole Quentin’s sneakers?”

  “He left them at my house last year,” he said. “They didn’t fit him anymore, so we were going to tree them, but then it started to rain, and we just forgot about them. My mom found them a couple of weeks ago in the basement. That’s when I got the idea. I even wrote Quentin’s name in them—”

  “Lonnie!”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to get him in trouble.”

  “I didn’t write his last name,” he said.

  “How many guys named Quentin live in Flushing?”

  “What difference does it make? The guy’s got a tumor. What do you think is going to happen? You think the cops are going to show up at his hospital room and arrest him? Not to mention they’ll know he couldn’t have done it himself, because he’s in the hospital.”

  “What about after he gets out?”

  “If he’s out of the hospital, that means he’s in good shape. So it’s win-win.”

  “That’s not even what ‘win-win’ means.”

  “I know what ‘win-win’ means, Jules. Do you know what ‘tribute’ means?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Don’t you think Quentin deserves a tribute?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then case closed,” he said.

  January 12, 1970

  Good Citizenship

  Here’s the third essay on good citizenship I wrote for Principal Salvatore:

  My sister, Amelia, reads lots of books. Not just the ones she has to read for school.

  She takes books out of the library on Union Street and reads them just because that’s what she likes to do. Last week, she finished a book called Love Story. It made her cry her eyes out at the end, and when I asked her why she was crying, she said, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” I think good citizenship is the exact opposite of love. It means saying you’re sorry for stuff you didn’t do. So I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I hope that makes me a good citizen.

  As usual, I slid the paper under the door of Principal Salvatore’s office as soon as I got to school, and as usual, Miss Medina handed it back to me an hour later. Principal Salvatore had written on the back:

  I’m sorry, try again.

  January 14, 1970

  For the Quakers’ Sake

  I couldn’t stop thinking about Quentin’s sneakers. It kept nagging at me, the picture of them dangling on that branch, swaying in the breeze, waiting to be noticed. On the one hand, it was a decent tribute to Quentin, but on the
other hand, it was also disrespectful to the Quakers. It was both. But the more I thought about it, the more the disrespectful part outweighed the tribute part.

  Last night, when I couldn’t stand it anymore, I decided to climb the tree and take them down. I felt pretty skunky about it, knowing how much thought Lonnie had put into the thing, and how much trouble he’d gone through to get them up there. It was like a work of art, in a way. It was something he had accomplished, and I hated to ruin it. But I figured he’d made his point. He’d shown it off to the rest of the guys on the block, and he’d even taken a Polaroid and brought it to the hospital to show Quentin. There was no need to keep it going.

  So I waited until after dinner and told my mom I was headed over to Shlomo’s house to trade baseball cards, but instead I headed up to the Bowne House. Lying to my mom made me feel even skunkier than I already did, but I couldn’t very well tell her the truth.

  The Bowne House might not be much to look at during the day, but after dark it’s downright creepy. What I mean is it’s got a cemetery feeling even though no one’s actually buried there. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like I believe in any of that haunted house stuff. Besides, from what I’ve heard about Quakers, they’d be the most polite ghosts ever—they’d hover around, saying prayers, eating oatmeal, telling you to have a nice day.

  I guess what creeps me out about the place is just the fact that it’s so old, the fact that real people were walking in and out the doors, living their Quaker lives, worrying about their Quaker stuff, not having the slightest clue that a kid named Julian Twerski would someday climb that old tree in the backyard and take down a pair of worn-out sneakers. They likely didn’t even know what sneakers were! But I was doing it for their sake, for the Quakers, as much as for Lonnie and Quentin. How could it be that they’d lived and died without knowing what I was doing for them?

  As I turned onto Bowne Street, I shook my head to shake loose those thoughts. I wanted to get up the tree, get the sneakers, and get out as fast as I could. But the second I hopped the stone wall and landed on the scraggly grass of the backyard, I had a feeling I wasn’t alone. I squatted down as low as I could get and looked side to side. No one was there. But the feeling of not-aloneness was strong. It sent a shiver across the back of my neck, which came at the exact same time as a cold gust of wind. It gave me second thoughts. I decided to come back another night.

  “Help me, Julian!”

  It was a girl’s voice, a whisper, but still loud. It was coming from above me.

  I looked straight up. “Who’s there?”

  “Please, please help me!”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m here, Julian!”

  That was when I realized the voice was coming from the tree, right around where the sneakers were dangling. I glanced up and saw a shadow clinging to the branch maybe five feet below them.

  “It’s me, Julian!”

  “Beverly?”

  “Help me. I’m stuck. I can’t move,” she said.

  “What are you doing in the tree?”

  “Please!”

  “All right, I’m coming.” The lowest branch was just out of reach, so I had to jump straight up to catch hold of it. After I pulled myself up, there were plenty of other branches to grab for balance. Beverly was another twenty-five feet up and ten feet out from the trunk, hanging down like a human hammock, with her arms and legs wrapped around the branch.

  “Hurry!”

  It wasn’t a hard climb. The branches were close together, and you could pretty much step up from one branch to the next. It didn’t get hairy until the branch below Beverly’s, which was thinner than the lower ones. I could feel it starting to sag as soon as I put my weight on it, so I dropped down and shinnied out until I was right underneath her.

  “All right, I’m here,” I said, then tapped her foot.

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “All right … but what do you want me to do?”

  “Race me,” she said.

  “What?”

  She started to crack up. “My hero!”

  “Are you stuck or not?”

  “What do you think?”

  She spun around and sat on the branch, then squirreled out the last five feet, reached up with her left hand, and snatched down Quentin’s sneakers. Then she dropped them. It took a long time for the sneakers to thud onto the ground. It kind of spooked me, how long it took. The sound of them hitting down seemed like it came from about a mile below us. I’d never climbed so high, not even in a neighborhood tree. I doubted Beverly had either. Not to mention she was so far out on her branch that it had drooped down level with mine, even though my branch was lower on the trunk of the tree.

  “Want to keep going?” she said.

  “Keep going where?”

  “To the top.”

  “No!”

  “C’mon, we’re halfway already.”

  “The branches aren’t strong enough, Beverly.”

  She stood up, which caused her branch to droop even more. Balancing herself with just her fingertips against the branch above hers, she took a step farther out, and her branch made a noise that sounded like a groan. I was about to tell her to stop, but she stepped off her branch and onto mine, which caused it to droop and groan too. I tightened my grip and pressed my stomach into the bark. It felt cold and damp, but I wasn’t letting go. With how much the branch was drooping, my head was actually closer to the ground than my feet were. It was a queasy, terrifying feeling.

  “You’re going to kill us both!”

  “You think so?”

  She hopped several times on one foot. Every time she landed, the branch vibrated into my guts.

  “Stop it!”

  “Say I’m a better climber than you are!”

  “What?”

  “Admit it,” she said. “I’m a better climber than you are.”

  “All right, I admit it,” I said.

  “What do you admit?”

  “You’re a better climber than I am,” I said.

  “And a faster runner.”

  “C’mon, Beverly!”

  “Just admit it!”

  “But it’s not true! I’m not going to admit something that’s not true!”

  She began hopping up and down again.

  “Stop doing that!”

  She stopped and said, “Then admit it. Admit I’m faster than you. Just say the words, all right?”

  “Nothing’s going to change if I say it.”

  “Then why not say it?”

  “I told you,” I said. “It’s not true. Why is that so hard to understand?”

  “So you’re like George Washington?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You cannot tell a lie, right?”

  “This is a stupid conversation,” I said.

  That made her hop up and down again.

  “I’m not doing it, Beverly!”

  She stopped jumping up and down. “You’re really afraid, aren’t you?”

  “I’m afraid of getting killed, yes.”

  She stepped over me, then stretched and swung from branch to branch until she was back on the ground. It took her less than a minute. She was a better climber than I was. She called back up, “So are you stuck, or what?”

  “No!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m fine, Beverly. Just leave me alone.”

  “C’mon, Julian. You can do it.”

  “I know I can do it! I got up here, didn’t I?”

  “I’m not leaving until you’re down.”

  “All right, I’m coming down,” I said.

  She was making such a big deal out of it that I had to remind myself that I wasn’t stuck. Still, I was thinking about falling—which always makes climbing feel harder than it is. You don’t want to let go of the thing you’re holding on to, and you don’t trust the thing you’re reaching for. It was only after I got to the last few branches that I relaxed again.

  Beverly start
ed to laugh as I hung from the bottom branch and dropped to the ground. “You’re the world’s slowest climber.”

  “That’s real funny.”

  “It’s kind of funny.”

  As we were talking, she walked over to where Quentin’s sneakers had landed. She picked them up and slung them over her shoulder.

  “Why do you care about those?” I said.

  “It was a stupid thing that Lonnie did.”

  “How is that your business?”

  “You came for them too!”

  “Lonnie’s my friend. I didn’t want him to get in trouble. Or Quentin. I didn’t want either of them to get in trouble.”

  “Well, I came for the Quakers,” she said. “You know what? I think you did too.”

  I couldn’t think of a good comeback for that. She had me dead to rights. She and I were there for the same reason. There was no use denying it, which meant there was nothing more to say. We were staring at one another, on the lawn behind the Bowne House. It felt weird, like a gunfight in a Western movie, except it also felt different, since now the two of us had a secret, and we had to trust each other to keep it between us.

  “You don’t have to admit I’m faster than you.…”

  “C’mon, Beverly!”

  “As long as we both know it.”

  She turned and walked toward the stone wall, then jumped down to the sidewalk below. I wasn’t going to follow her, but then she stopped and looked back. We were going in the same direction. If I waved her away and waited until she turned the corner, I’d only wind up walking home half a block behind her.

  She rolled her eyes when I hopped down to the sidewalk beside her, but I let it go. I’d had enough of the Bowne House and Quakers for one night. Counting the painting, I’d had enough of them period.

  As we started to walk, I said, “What are you going to do with the sneakers?”

  “I’ll tree them on the block.”

  “Lonnie’s going to be mad.…”

  “If you’re worried about that, you can tell him I did it.”

  “I’m not going to tell him who did it. I’m just saying he’s going to be mad.”

  We walked another half block without talking. Then, at last, she said, “Do you think they’re grateful?”