Finding the Worm Read online

  I was still in my pajamas when Lonnie showed up. But I hustled downstairs and let him in.

  “C’mon, let’s get a move on,” he said.

  “Isn’t it too early?”

  He put his hand on his chin. “She said ‘tomorrow,’ right? That was yesterday. Which makes today tomorrow. So let’s get this show on the road. Chop chop!”

  “She said tomorrow, but I’m sure she didn’t mean—”

  “Tomorrow starts as soon as the sun comes up,” he said. “That’s a scientific fact, Julian. You can’t argue with a scientific fact.”

  It didn’t take a lot to convince me. I was itching to see Quentin too. The more I thought about how bad he’d looked sitting in that wheelchair, the more I realized how much he’d gone through just to get out of the hospital. He had to get unplugged from those beeping hospital machines, then get hauled out of bed, then get cleaned up, then get wheeled out, then get shoved into the backseat of the car, then get rattled around in traffic.… I mean, that would suck the life out of anybody. The real test was how Quentin looked after a full night’s sleep in his own bed. So I wasn’t going to try to talk Lonnie into waiting an hour or two. (As if I’d win that argument!) The worst that could happen, I figured, was Mrs. Selig would answer the door, shake her head, and tell us to come back later.

  Lonnie waited downstairs as I ran back up and put on my clothes. Not even three minutes passed before the two of us were walking up the block toward the Hampshire House. Halfway there, we met up with Eric and Howie—who were on their way to get us. (Only Shlomo was missing, on account of his dad forcing him to go to temple for Sabbath services, but he’d know where to look for us as soon as the sun went down.) Then the four of us walked back to the Hampshire House together.

  As we turned up the path toward the front door, Eric the Red mumbled under his breath, “I hope his mom lets us in.”

  “She’ll let us in,” Lonnie said. “We’ve got the right to see him. He’s our friend.”

  “But what if she says—”

  Lonnie cut him off. “Look, he’s our friend.”

  Right then, there came a shout from high above us. “Hey, guys!”

  The four of us looked up at once. Quentin was looking down from his fifth-floor window, waving his Yankees cap.

  “Hey, Quent!” Lonnie called up to him. “How do you feel?”

  “Okay, I guess. What kept you?”

  Lonnie laughed. “What do you mean, what kept us?”

  “I’ve been waiting by the window the whole day.”

  “It’s like eight-thirty, Quentin,” I called up to him.

  “Yeah, well, there’s not too much to do up here.”

  “Are you stuck in the wheelchair?” I said.

  “No, I’m walking around.”

  “Then buzz us in!” Lonnie said.

  It took half a minute for the buzzer to go off, which meant Quentin wasn’t getting around too quick. While we were waiting, I thought about the nickname Lonnie gave him years ago—Quick Quentin. It was supposed to be ironical, because Quentin always took an extra second to figure things out, like his brain had to haul itself out of mud before it got going. But another reason for it was his eyes. Quentin had big brown eyes and droopy eyelids that hung down, so he looked like he was about to fall asleep even when he was wide awake. Plus, “Quick Quentin” just sounded right—on account of the two Qs.

  Right then, however, I didn’t care how quick or how slow he was moving. The main thing was he was up and around, on his feet, out of the wheelchair. His voice sounded normal.

  Quentin was standing just outside the door of his apartment when the elevator opened on the fifth floor. He had on regular clothes—a brown T-shirt and blue jeans, plus the Yankees cap. He still looked bony, especially his face. His cheekbones were jutting out like a Halloween skull. But he looked about a hundred times better than he did in that wheelchair.

  The apartment smelled of pancakes and bacon. Even by the elevator, you got a whiff of it, and the smell got stronger once you walked through the door. It reminded me I hadn’t had breakfast, and I was half hoping Mrs. Selig would be in the kitchen and offer us a slice of bacon. But she wasn’t. Neither his mom nor his dad was out. Their bedroom door was shut, but I could hear the television playing inside as we filed into Quentin’s room.

  It was a mess, Quentin’s room, which was also normal. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guy’s bed made or his junk not scattered on the floor. He loves to build plastic models, so he always has plane kits that he’s gluing together or painting or decaling. He’s good at it too. They always look just like the pictures on the boxes. But he never hangs them from the ceiling or sets them up on the windowsill, like you’re supposed to do. When he’s finished with them, he leaves them on the floor and plays with them, the way a kindergarten kid would play with them. It’s kind of dumb, but it’s also … I don’t even know the right word. It’s just, well, Quentin. He’s not embarrassed about it. He likes to sit on the floor and wave the planes around his head and make humming engine noises, and no one thinks less of him because of it. It’s just his way.

  Another thing about Quentin’s room is that he has more records than the rest of us put together, and they’re scattered on the floor too. He has every record the Beatles ever put out, right up through Abbey Road, plus every one by the Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Plus, he likes the Monkees. Lonnie likes to tease him about that, but Quentin likes what he likes. Before he went into the hospital, his favorite song was “Daydream Believer”—he’d just about worn out the grooves on that one. He got me real sick of it. But when I saw the record sitting on his turntable, I asked him to play it. Not because I wanted to hear it, but because it meant things were getting back to how they used to be.

  He put on the record, not too loud, just in the background. But I did listen for the word “ ’neath” in the first line:

  Oh, I could hide ’neath the wings

  of the bluebird as she sings …

  That always cracks me up, the way they shorten “underneath” to “ ’neath.” It’s the kind of thing you expect in a Shakespeare poem, not in a Monkees song. I listened for that, and then I forgot the song was even playing.

  “Did you see your sneakers up in the tree?” Lonnie said.

  That made Quentin laugh. “I thought those were mine.”

  “I treed them in that old oak behind the Bowne House. But then someone got them down and treed them out there. I would’ve got them down and treed them back at the Bowne House, but I figured you’d like to see them out your window, so I left them where they were.”

  “Who got them down at the Bowne House?” Quentin said.

  “It’s still a mystery. Jules swears up and down it wasn’t him, but I got my suspicions.”

  “It wasn’t me, Lonnie.”

  Quentin smiled at me.

  “I swear, Quent, it wasn’t me.”

  “Well, I like them where they are.”

  For a couple of seconds after that, no one said a thing—which felt weird.

  Then, at last, Eric said, “Shlomo’s going to come over as soon as he can.”

  “Yeah,” Lonnie said. “He’s busy Jew-ing it up.”

  “Today’s Saturday?” Quentin said.

  “Yeah.”

  He shook his head. “I guess I kind of lost track.”

  “Are you going to school on Monday?” I asked.

  “The doctors said I could. But I don’t think my mom’s going to let me.”

  “Why not?” Eric asked.

  “She says I’m still too weak. I get out of breath real fast.”

  “You can take the bus both ways,” Lonnie said. “We’ll ride with you.”

  “I don’t know if I can make it up and down the stairs at school.”

  “Then we’ll carry you,” Lonnie said. “We can take turns doing it.”

  Quentin smiled in a strange way. “My mom’s scared I’ll get teased.”

  “C’mon, why
would you get teased?” I said. “It’s not your fault you got a tumor. It could happen to anyone. Plus, who’s going to know? You’ve got a thousand kids, and no one’s paying attention. For all anyone knows, you moved out of state and then moved back. Or maybe you took a long vacation. The point is, we’re the only ones who’ll know what happened. No one’s going to tease you.”

  He began shaking his head again. “Jules …”

  “What is it?”

  He started to talk, but his voice cracked. It was just for a half second, or maybe not even that long. But it was noticeable. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath. “I got no hair, guys.”

  “What do you mean?” Lonnie said. “You got plenty of hair.”

  “It’s a wig.”

  “It looks just like your hair,” Howie said.

  “The nurses took a picture when I first got to the hospital. Then, afterward, they got a wig that matched.”

  “So take it off,” Howie said.

  “No!”

  “C’mon, just do it for a second—”

  “He told you no,” Lonnie said. “End of discussion.”

  “Will it grow back?” I asked.

  “Except where the scar is,” Quentin said. He reached behind his head and up under the Yankees cap and touched the spot right where the bottom of his head joined the back of his neck.

  “Can we at least see the scar?” Howie said.

  Lonnie shot him a look, but then Quentin said, “Not now with the gauze pads and stuff over it. But I know it’s bad, because every time my mom changes the dressing, she starts to bawl.”

  “How many stitches did you get?” Howie said.

  “I’m not sure. But a lot. Maybe forty, at least.”

  That made the rest of us sit up. I said, “Forty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does it hurt?” Howie asked.

  “Nah, it just feels kind of tight.”

  “Forty stitches!” Eric said, shaking his head. You could tell he was impressed.

  Howie said, “The most I ever got was six.”

  “When did you get six stitches?” Lonnie said.

  “Playing tag, two years ago … you were the one chasing me!”

  “You mean that time you grabbed the fence?”

  “I dodged you, didn’t I?”

  “Hey, I just didn’t want to touch you because of all the blood.”

  Then Eric chimed in. “I got four stitches the time Shlomo fell on my head. I got them right under my left eye. When they were sewing me up, I could feel the needle right under my eyeball. Look, I still got the scar.…”

  Just like that, we were back to normal.

  About an hour later, we were still yakking away in Quentin’s room when his mom poked her head in to make sure we weren’t tiring him out. Quentin told her he was fine, which she didn’t seem to believe. She just stood there, not quite in the room but not quite gone, with a suspicious look on her face. But then Quentin said he was hungry, and that perked her up. She asked him what he wanted, and he told her peanut butter and jelly, and then she asked the rest of us who else wanted peanut butter and jelly, and Howie’s hand went up, and then Eric’s, and then Lonnie’s. I raised my hand too, even though I was still kind of hoping for a slice of that bacon I’d smelled when we first walked in.

  We were just finishing up the sandwiches when the doorbell rang. Quentin figured it was either one of his doctors or one of his relatives, which meant, either way, his mom was going to make us leave. But when Quentin cracked the door and peeked out into the living room, he saw a guy he didn’t know. He motioned me over to the door to take a look. The guy was wearing a dark blue suit and carrying a dark blue briefcase. It didn’t seem like the kind of bag a doctor would carry on a house call. It was too flat.

  “You’re sure he’s not a long-lost uncle?” Lonnie asked. He was half sitting, half lying on the edge of Quentin’s bed, too comfortable to take a look. But now he was curious.

  “No way,” Quentin whispered.

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “He’s sitting at the dining room table with my mom and dad.”

  “Here, let me see.” Quentin and I made room as Lonnie slid in next to the door. “Wait … he’s opening the briefcase. He’s got papers inside, lots of them.”

  “What sort of papers?” I asked. “What do they say?”

  “Pass me your periscope, and I’ll let you know.”

  That made Howie and Eric crack up, how sarcastic Lonnie sounded. It was kind of humorous, but maybe you had to be there.

  “Quent, why don’t you just walk out there and ask what’s going on?” I said.

  “I could do that,” Quentin said.

  Lonnie slid the door shut. “Plan B, we could just sit tight and wait to see what happens. I vote Plan B. For all we know, the guy might be selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.”

  “But he doesn’t have vacuum cleaners,” I said.

  “Or encyclopedias. Or whatever. Geez, Jules!”

  “Maybe the guy’s a Chinese spy,” Howie said.

  Lonnie looked at him. “Except he’s not Chinese.”

  “Maybe that’s what makes him good at his job.”

  It was about the funniest thing Howie had ever said, and it had us cracking up until we were gasping for air. It even cracked up Quentin—which couldn’t have felt too good, since he’d just told us how fast he got out of breath. He staggered back and fell onto the bed, laughing hysterically, holding on to his Yankees cap with one hand and holding his stomach with the other.

  We were still laughing hard when a knock came at the door. Quentin’s dad pushed the door open a second later. He looked at us like we were out of our minds, which I guess, right then, we kind of were. Slowly, though, we began to calm down. I could feel a stitch in my side from laughing, but at least I could focus my eyes. Mr. Selig, meanwhile, stood at the door and waited.

  “When you jokers feel you’re up to it,” he said, “there’s a fella out here that wants to talk to you.”

  He ducked back out of the room as we caught our breath. Maybe a half minute later, another knock came at the door.

  “Come in,” Quentin called out, which made Howie sputter. But the rest of us kept straight faces.

  The guy in the dark blue suit stepped into the room. He smiled at us in a stiff way, the way grown-ups do when they want you to like them.

  “Hey, nice room!” he said. “So, a little birdie tells me one of you boys is a big Bobby Murcer fan.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Yeah, that’s me. But how did you know?”

  The guy’s expression changed when I said that. The smile left his face, and for a second he looked real nervous and confused.

  But then Quentin said, “I’m a Bobby Murcer fan too.”

  Now I stared at him in disbelief … because I knew he was lying. Quentin’s favorite baseball player is Willie Mays. Right before he got sick, he built and painted a plastic model of Mays making that over-the-shoulder catch in the World Series. The thing was sitting on the windowsill, right behind the bed. But the guy in the suit didn’t notice it. Instead, he began to smile again.

  “Make room for me, will you?”

  Lonnie got up to make room for the guy at the edge of the bed. The guy sat down next to Quentin and stuck out his hand. “You’re Quentin, right?”

  Quentin nodded and shook his hand.

  “My name’s Jerry Manche,” he said. “Sounds like there are two e’s at the end of Manche, but there’s only one. People mess that up all the time. I’m with the New York Yankees.…”

  That got our attention real fast.

  “What I’m thinking—correct me if I’m wrong—is that you know why I’m here.”

  Quentin smiled. “You’ve got an autographed picture of Bobby Murcer?”

  “Coming right up!” He popped open his briefcase and pulled out a photo, which he handed to Quentin. There was writing in black Magic Marker at the bottom. “You want to read out loud what Bobby wro
te? I’m sure your friends would like to know.”

  Quentin read: “ ‘To Quentin. From one home run hitter to another. Get well soon, buddy. Bobby Murcer.”

  Jerry Manche said, “What do you think about that?”

  “It’s great,” Quentin said. “But what about Julian?”

  “It’s okay, Quent,” I said.

  “He’s a Bobby Murcer fan too. Do you think Bobby—”

  “Consider it done!” Jerry Manche said.

  “Can you get me Mickey Mantle?” Lonnie asked.

  “Now hold your horses—”

  “C’mon, you work for the Yankees!”

  “In case you haven’t heard, the Mick’s retired.”

  “Don’t you know where he lives?”

  Jerry Manche started to laugh. “I’ll see what I can do. What’s your name?”

  “Lonnie Fine. Sounds like there’s two e’s at the end of Lonnie, but it’s i-e.”

  Jerry Manche gave Lonnie a look. “You’re quite the wisenheimer, aren’t you?”

  “No, sir!”

  “That’s good to hear,” Jerry Manche said, “because I don’t think Bobby Murcer would’ve agreed to come out here in April, after the Yankees finish spring training, just to meet up with a bunch of wisenheimers.”

  My mouth fell open. “Bobby Murcer’s coming here?”

  “What do you wisenheimers think about that?”

  “Can we talk to him?” Eric asked. It was a dumb question, but the rest of us were too stunned to razz him about it.

  “You’re going to hurt his feelings if you don’t.”

  “What day in April?” Lonnie asked.

  “We’re still working that out,” Jerry Manche said. “But don’t you worry. He’ll be here. You can take it to the bank.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Manche!” Quentin said.

  “There are two conditions, though. The first is that you guys have to call me Jerry. I don’t want to hear about Mr. Manche unless you’re talking about my dad. Do we have a deal on that?”

  “What’s the second condition?” Lonnie asked.