Shoebag Returns Page 4

  “You must not tell anyone, Stanley.”

  “But where did you come from?”

  Stuart Bagg remembered what Gregor Samsa used to say. “I come from here and there. I go back and forth.’ Don’t you remember the night you were saying your prayers, and I told you I’d be seeing you?”

  Stanley Sweetsong sat down on his bed. He shook his head and rubbed his eyes, then opened them again as though he expected Bagg to be gone. “I was having a horrible nightmare of being put into a tank in the Science Room,” he said. “I have you to thank for waking me up, but maybe I am not awake at all. Or maybe I am awake but seeing things that aren’t there!”

  “You are seeing me, and I am here. You’ll see me as long as you need a pal. Then pffft — I’ll disappear.”

  “Not in my Doc Martens, though.”

  “Not if you say not. I only wanted to be better dressed when we first met. I wanted to make a good impression.”

  Stanley Sweetsong looked chagrined. “I have a lot of clothes,” he said “and you are the same size I am.”

  “I won’t wear anything of yours you really care about.”

  “You can wear whatever you want to wear,” said Stanley Sweetsong. “Clothes will get you nowhere in Miss Rattray’s School for Girls, and now two boys.”

  “One boy. I am not enrolled here.”

  “You are lucky then. This is a cruel school. There are helpless animals imprisoned in the Science Room. There are secret clubs, too, which you cannot join!”

  “Once,” said Stuart Bagg, “I attended a school where not everyone was bright and beautiful, so we had a club for the rest of us.”

  “If you want to, you can wear my Doc Martens,” Stanley said. “Shoes won’t get you anywhere in this place, either!”

  “We sang a song,” Bagg continued. “It began ‘Here’s to the rest of us. Here’s to the best of us. … Here’s to our power. Here’s to —’”

  Stanley Sweetsong interrupted. “No one has any power in this place but Miss Rattray, the Betters, and the members of the Science Club. No one ever will, either!”

  “Because no one has ever tried to start a third club!” Stuart Bagg sat down in the chair opposite Stanley and rubbed his feet. Feet took some getting used to. Bagg wiggled his toes. His toes were bigger than any of the members of his family. Feet and toes were an insect’s enemies, particularly when they were in shoes. For sure, when they were in Doc Martens.

  “Why not start your own club?” Bagg said. He looked across at the mirror over Stanley’s desk. He saw Stanley, a round-faced, pensive boy with brown hair and brown eyes. And then he saw his true self: a cockroach with its antennae pointing. For once a roach, always a roach: The mirror never lied, even though he had become a tiny person.

  “A club is a hard thing to start,” said Stanley Sweetsong. “A club needs members.”

  “A club needs a name, too,” Bagg said.

  “A club could use a mascot like Butter the cat!”

  Butter had always been Shoebag’s very favorite food. Bagg almost drooled at the thought of it.

  “We can be the Butter Club! Just like Josephine said: We’re Butter!”

  And then and there the Butter Club came into being.

  Bagg helped Stanley make Butter Club badges, and he also helped Stanley make his bed, for he stayed in Stanley’s room until the sun came up, and the first bell rang.

  “I have to go now, Stanley.”

  “Go where, Bagg?”

  “Don’t worry. I will come back. I promise.”

  “You’d better. You have my clothes, remember, and you are my pal, remember.”

  “I’ll remember,” Bagg said.

  Thirteen

  WE ARE MISS RATTRAY’ S girls, and boy

  We are Miss Rattray’s girls, ahoy!

  Royal blue to say we’re true,

  White to show delight,

  At being in Miss Rattray’s School,

  Hoo-rah, hoo-ray, We start our day

  Sing-ing,

  Sing-ing,

  Sing-ing.

  Josephine dug her elbow into Stanley’s side and whispered out of the side of her mouth, “Ahoy? We are not at sea, are we? When did we become sailors?”

  “Blame Patsy Southgate,” Stanley whispered back. “She wrote it.”

  Miss Rattray stood at the podium peering out at them through her black spectacles. “Before you leave to attend your classes,” she said, “I have one announcement! There are rumors that the cook’s cat has been seen in the upstairs of the Lower School. Animals are not allowed, as you know very well! Anyone found harboring an animal will lose her, or his privileges.”

  “Ahoy,” said Josephine under her breath. “What privileges are those? The privilege of being locked away in a boarding school? The privilege of going hungry because all the portions of food in the dining room are not enough to keep the kitchen rats alive? The privilege of being kept out of the school clubs?”

  “Not all the school clubs,” Stanley said. “Not anymore. Are you ready to spring our surprise on everyone?”

  “Ready, mate,” Josephine gave him a snappy salute.

  Both had on one yellow sock. Both wore their cardboard buttons painted yellow, reading WE’RE BUTTER!

  The first one to notice, and comment, was of course, the president of the Better Club, C. Cynthia Ann Flower.

  “How very sorry you’re going to be, Stanley and Josephine,” she said. “How very sorry I am that I have to report this immediately!”

  When anyone was very rich, Stanley’s mother always said the person was rich rich. And if anyone was very dirty, Stanley’s mother always said the person was dirty dirty. Stanley’s mother would have called C. Cynthia Ann Flower beautiful beautiful. She was known for it. Known for her long, black, shiny hair that fell halfway down her back. Known for her sky-blue eyes and rosy complexion. Known for her play clothes from Banana Republic and Saks Fifth Avenue. Known for her VCR tapes of every commercial starring Gregor Samsa, plus one of every sitcom in which he had a minor part. Known to have her school blazer and skirt tailor-made. Known to be rich rich and snobbish snobbish.

  She was an Upper School pupil, thirteen years old, and fluent in French.

  Often, in times of crisis, she slipped into that language, as she did that Monday morning.

  “Mon Dieu!” she said. “What could you two be thinking of, to pull such a stupide stunt?”

  Off she strutted in the direction of Miss Rattray’s office.

  Several other Betters looked down their noses as they passed Josephine and Stanley in the hall.

  But Ethel Lampert, a mousy young Lower School girl, stopped them. She was known for her stamp collection and little else.

  “What is this Butter Club all about?” she asked them.

  “Mostly, it’s about not getting into the other two clubs,” said Stanley.

  Josephine gave him the elbow again and whispered, “Don’t make us look like losers. We have to have style: We have to buy a box of Butterfingers at the school store, and present one to each new member. That will give us a little flair. And we can never be easy to get.”

  “If you ever become easy to get,” said Ethel Lampert, who had overheard Josephine, “will you let me know?”

  “We vote you in,” said Stanley confidently.

  “We do?” Josephine gave him a look. “I don’t even have the Butterfingers yet!”

  “We have to have founding members. I remember that from the Red Fox Hunt Club, where my father is a founding member.”

  “All right, welcome to the Butter Club,” Josephine told her. “Come to my room after classes for a Butterfinger. But you have to stop with the stamps. We don’t want any stamp collectors. They’re too lonely.”

  “I won’t be lonely now,” Ethel Lampert said.

  “Get yourself a yellow sock,” said Josephine. “I’ll make up a button for you … and, Ethel?”

  “Yes, Josephine? What is it?” Ethel’s voice was tinkling with joy, her face alig
ht with surprise and wonder.

  “Don’t tell anyone how easily you got in.”

  “Oh, I won’t,” said Ethel, who would.

  How could she keep such an unexpected honor to herself?

  Pleased with themselves, never mind that they had taken in a less than dynamic girl as their first member, the Butters went skipping down the hall to science class.

  There, their moods soon changed.

  Mr. Longo waited until everyone was seated to reveal his own new acquisition.

  His drooping mustache wiggled as he tried to contain a triumphant smile. He wanted absolute silence before he pulled the black silk cloth away from the third tank.

  “What have we here, I wonder,” he trilled in a teasing tone. “What has Mr. Longo got to show you?”

  Josephine whispered to Stanley, “Another poor critter.”

  “Another object of torture,” Stanley agreed.

  “Thanks to C. Cynthia Ann Flower, who I am now appointing president of the Science Club, we have a new prize specimen she ordered from a catalog!” said Mr. Longo.

  “But C. Cynthia Ann Flower is president of the Betters!” Josephine wailed.

  “Now she is president of both clubs,” Mr. Longo responded.

  “But prizewinners are supposed to catch their own specimens,” Josephine wailed again. “Not order them from a catalog.”

  “Prizewinners can do as they please, which is why they are prizewinners,” said Mr. Longo. “And here we have the biggest, the hairiest, and the very scariest spider you have ever seen!”

  With a fast turn of his hand he swept away the silk cover.

  “A Sericopelma communis!” he announced, rubbing his fat fingers together gleefully. “A tarantula!”

  Fourteen

  JUST BECAUSE YOU LIVE inside a Macintosh, does not mean you do not know what is going on outside one.

  Word of the new tarantula had spread very fast, and Under The Toaster’s family was talking of little else that morning.

  “Shoebag, Shoebag! You’re alive!” Drainboard cried out when Shoebag slipped through the disc drive.

  “Of course I’m alive, Mama! Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because there’s a tarantula in the Science Room!” she said. “What spider wouldn’t kill for the taste of you, Shoebag? So when you didn’t come home all night, we thought you’d been found and fed to that hairy arachnid!”

  “We even said ‘Go to a better life,’” Radio told his brother, “the Cockroach Prayer for the Dead.”

  “Well, I am alive and well,” Shoebag told them all. “I was only away overnight.”

  Of course he could not tell them where he’d been, or what he’d been while he was there. They would only scold him, and nag him to tell them the formula for becoming a tiny person. If he ever told the formula, it would lose its power for him forever. When Gregor Samsa had given it to Shoebag, he had given up his ability to go back and forth.

  So Shoebag tried to make light of his absence, even though Under The Toaster was not speaking to him now.

  “Tell my son,” he said to Drainboard, “about the missing T-shirt, too, the one with Hootie & The Blowfish on it!”

  Shoebag had left it in Stanley’s room when he had put on Stanley’s jeans, one of his Polo shirts, and his Doc Martens. Those clothes were just around the corner in the Changing Room, where students changed into swimming suits before they used the pool. Where else but in the Changing Room would Stuart Bagg become Shoebag again?

  Drainboard said, “The T-shirt Cook put over our Macintosh has disappeared. She is looking everywhere for it. Papa says it’s a bad omen.”

  “Tell my son,” said Under The Toaster, “that someone is eyeing our Macintosh, and it isn’t the cook!”

  “Tell Papa not to worry,” Shoebag said.

  “Tell him we have lost our cover!” said Under The Toaster, “and it is a bad omen!”

  “Do not stray again, Shoebag,” said Drainboard. “We may have to move someplace new in a hurry, and we do not want to move without you.”

  “I’ll find you, Mama. Don’t worry,” said Shoebag.

  “DON’T YOU MAKE US WORRY!” Under The Toaster thundered finally speaking directly to his son. “Things are changing around this place. A tarantula comes, a T-shirt goes. It’s a bad omen!”

  “Stick close to the computer, son,” Drainboard said.

  “You are foolhardy and reckless!” said Under The Toaster, “and you are asking for trouble!”

  But Shoebag had promised Stanley Sweetsong he would return.

  He played a few roach games with Radio and Garbage Pail, and found a bit of salami in the kitchen for Drainboard, and her favorite snack: rye bread crumbs.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Drainboard asked. “Out all night and half the morning? Don’t you want to eat this?”

  Shoebag had no time to answer, for Under The Toaster snatched the food. “I eat first and best!”

  “They are for Mama!”

  “Let Papa have them, dear,” Drainboard said what she always said. “Papa’s been so worried you were given to the tarantula to eat.”

  And so it went, until all creatures in the Macintosh were ready for their afternoon nap … all but Shoebag.

  Off to the Changing Room he went. Then: “Flit, flutter, quiver, quaver, totter, stagger, tumble, warble, wobble, wiggle, swing, and sway.”

  Stuart Bagg reached behind him for the clothes he had borrowed from Stanley.

  They were gone!

  “EEEEEEEEEEK!” from the mouth of a little girl, on her way to her diving lesson. “EEEEEEK! A naked boy!”

  Fifteen

  “STANLEY SWEETSONG, YOU HAVE some explaining to do!”

  Stanley sat up on his bed, eyes as wide as Miss Rattray’s were narrow behind her black frame glasses. Head held high, back stiff, she said, “Are you going to invite me to sit down?”

  “Sit down,” said Stanley, and she did, ramrod straight in the chair beside his bed. In her hands she held a small pile of clothing: Levi’s, a Polo shirt, and Doc Martens.

  “This afternoon,” she said, “I found these in the Changing Room. Your name tag is on them.”

  “I don’t know how they got there,” said Stanley, who knew the only one who could have left them there was Bagg.

  “About an hour ago, little Lucy Lightite saw a naked boy fleeing from that very room.”

  “I’ve been right here ever since classes ended, ma’am.”

  “You are up to something, Sweetsong!” said Miss Rattray, who only called students by their last names when she was furious. “And I think I know what you are up to!”

  “What am I up to, ma’am?”

  “I think you want to be sent home.”

  “I just got here, ma’am.”

  “I know you just got here! But you are doing things to test my patience, Sweetsong. There is something else I have on my mind, too. You know that we have only two clubs here.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And that is all we have ever had here. Now, I see that many of the Lower School girls believe they, too, can become —” Miss Rattray had a bit of trouble getting out the word, “Butters.”

  Stanley said nothing, for what was there to say?

  Miss Rattray said, “I had to shoo away a line of girls from Josephine Jiminez’s door as I came down the hall.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stanley agreed, for he had seen the line himself. He had wondered why suddenly Josephine Jiminez had become popular, since she never was before. Neither did she ever let other girls into the Black Mask Theater.

  So it was Ethel Lampert who had brought this about! Ethel Lampert, who broke her promise, and spread the word how easily she had become a founding member of the Butters! Now everyone but a Better wanted to be a Butter! Everyone but a Better wanted a Butterfinger!

  Miss Rattray said “It is one thing for poor, thin, angry Josephine to be part instigator in this undertaking. For poor, thin, angry Josephine is under the care of the school psy
chologist who visits us on Fridays. She has not had an easy life being a child of the military, her family moving about constantly, her dolls her only company. But you, Sweetsong, have had a very lovely life so far.”

  “Yes, I have,” Stanley agreed, and did not wonder aloud why it ever had to stop so he could attend a girls’ boarding school.

  If it was not for Bagg, Josephine Jiminez would not be the only one who needed to see the school psychologist.

  If it was not for Bagg, Stanley might never have awakened from the nightmare, would never have thought up the Butter Club, nor made the yellow Butter badges. Bagg had even helped him make his bed! That was a real pal!

  They had done a sloppy job on the bed. Stanley took this opportunity to turn back the top sheet as he sat there.

  “You’re not such a good bed maker, either, are you?” said Miss Rattray.

  “I have never had to make my own bed.”

  “So you said the first day we met, Stanley.”

  “So I said.”

  “But a bad bed maker is one thing, and a bad sport is another.”

  “I don’t like sports at all,” said Stanley, “except for croquet, which I play with Tattle on the great, green lawns at Castle Sweet.”

  “Played,” said Miss Rattray firmly. “You are not at Castle Sweet now. You are here.” She crossed her long legs and pushed her black-framed spectacles back on her nose. “What I mean by a bad sport is someone who turns bitter at the fortune of others, just as you were bitter over the Betters, and formed the Butters.”

  Miss Rattray’s point was punctuated then by a WHACK! WHACK! WHACK! against the wall next door.

  It seemed the Black Mask Theater was having a surprise matinee, though that was not the custom at all.

  “Speaking of bad sports,” Miss Rattray sniffed, “Josephine Jiminez seems to be acting out her rage once again. No wonder she is called the Doll Smasher!”

  “Maybe she is mad because you sent away the line of girls in the hall. No one has ever lined up to see her before!”

  WHACK! WHACK! WHACK!

  Butter, the cat, must have been on his way into the Black Mask Theater when the whacking began, then changed his mind. For suddenly out of the corner of one eye, Stanley saw the creature dart through the door of his room, and disappear under his bed.