Turtle Boy Read online

  My parents weren’t from Horicon: Dad grew up in California, and Mom grew up in Milwaukee. They met and got married in Berkeley. That’s where I was born. We only came to Wisconsin because my aunt Mo lives an hour from here, and after Dad died, Mom wanted to be closer to her sister.

  At first, I hated Marsh Madness. That’s what Ms. Kuper called the class excursions into the Back 40. We were supposed to be looking at the flora and fauna. I only noticed the mosquitoes and mud. But then I realized that no one ever went out there after school. That meant it could all be mine.

  I spent more and more time there, spotting red-winged blackbirds flying overhead, listening to the whoop of the whip-poor-will camouflaged in the trees. One by one, as spring turned into summer, I caught my turtle specimens. I didn’t tell anyone about it—not even Ms. Kuper. You could say that I secretly brought the Back 40 home with me and kept it in four large rectangles of glass in my room.

  * * *

  • • •

  Mom and I drive in silence. There may be no way to escape going to school, but I’ve invented a way to keep people from seeing my face. I’ve started wearing an extra-extra-large hooded sweatshirt, even when the school is hot and stuffy, so I can draw the strings and close it around my face. Also, I fill my backpack with big books, partially so I have something to read when I eat lunch alone, but mostly so I can set up a wall in front of me.

  On the bus, the front seat is mine. Nobody can turn and see my face except the driver. Last year, my best friend, Shirah, would get annoyed because her volleyball friends sat way in the back and she wanted to sit with them, but we had a deal: I copied her math homework and she copied my science homework. To do that, she had to sit in the front with me. We didn’t see it as cheating—we helped each other.

  I hope we’ll continue that routine this year. I hope we’re over our rough patch. Back in third and fourth grades, Shirah used to come over every Saturday after synagogue, and we’d play hide-and-seek or we’d invent new snack recipes, like Nutella, Cheerios, and marshmallows, microwaved into a steaming blob.

  In sixth grade we weren’t how we used to be. Shirah made the volleyball team and got a million new friends. Now we only hang out at Hebrew School and on the bus.

  “You’re awful quiet,” Mom says. “Nervous?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Not even a little?” she asks, a hint of a smile in her voice.

  I shake my head.

  “Okay, so what are you feeling?” she asks.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Nothing at all?” she presses. When I don’t answer, she adds, “Will, I wish you’d talk to me. I want to be helpful.”

  “If you want to be helpful, let me be homeschooled. You don’t even have to do anything, I’ll read my own books.”

  Mom laughs, even though I’m not really joking.

  We pull up to the curb outside school. “Have a great day, Will,” she says. “I think seventh grade is going to be much better than sixth.”

  “I don’t,” I say, getting out of the car. “I think it’s going to be a living nightmare.” I slam the door.

  “Beep!” she calls, leaning closer to the open window. “Will? Beep!”

  This “beep” thing started a long time ago, just after Mom and I moved to Horicon from California. I hadn’t met Shirah yet, and Mom didn’t have any friends, so we would go to the budget theater on weekends—they showed reruns and oldies for five dollars. In one movie, a bunch of secret agents were synchronizing their watches before a mission. Mom and I started doing the same thing whenever we were going separate ways. She’d say “beep” and touch her watch and I’d answer “beep.” I loved it.

  But that was when I was little. I think it’s totally stupid now. I don’t want to tell her that, though. I don’t want to hurt her feelings.

  I muster a grumpy “beep” and turn toward the school. Once Mom drives away, I draw the strings on my hood and push through the school’s glass doors. The lobby and halls are empty.

  This is bad. This is very, very bad. The receptionist sees me through her sliding window, standing there, frozen.

  “Hello, young man,” she says, and points to the double doors. “Go in quietly; the assembly has started.”

  The first thing I see is a wall of kids to my left and a wall of kids to my right. Everyone’s sitting in bleachers while Dr. Monk, our principal, stands in the middle of the gym, droning into a microphone.

  I hitch my backpack a little higher and begin my walk past the sixth graders, heading toward the seventh-grade section. The entire school is looking at me. My heart is pounding so hard, I’m not even sure I’d hear the Turtle Boy chant if it started.

  You’d think I’d love being called Turtle Boy, but they don’t call me that because I love turtles. That’s just a sick coincidence. In fact, no one knows I have turtles at home. They say I look like one. They call me that to humiliate me.

  “Will! Will!”

  I flinch, as if I’ve been kicked, but I turn and it’s Shirah! She’s about five rows from the back, sitting with all her volleyball friends. It’s impossible to miss her: she has huge, curly hair and braces and freckles and kind of looks like a lion. She waves for me to join her. I start to climb the bleachers, but the moment I take my first step up, I hear another voice: “Hey, look! It’s Turtle Boy! Turtle Boy, you’re late!”

  It’s Jake. He’s pointing at me. He and Spencer start pumping their fists, chanting rhythmically, and one by one the rest of his lacrosse friends join in. “Tur-tle Boy! Tur-tle Boy!”

  My face burns with shame. I drop down to sit alone on the lowest bench, push my knees together, and bury my face in my lap.

  A teacher picks up on the commotion from my section and comes over to stand in front of us, arms crossed, feet apart. The chanting stops.

  Dr. Monk continues his list of announcements, but I’m not paying attention. I’m trying not to be here. In my mind, I’m at home, with my turtles. Or walking the trails of the Back 40, the breeze against my cheeks, all alone. But then Dr. Monk says something that brings me back to the gym.

  “And now,” he says, “a few words from Ms. Kuper.”

  There’s a friendly round of applause, and I look up to watch Ms. Kuper, my favorite teacher, clump-jog to the microphone in her duck boots. She’s shorter than Dr. Monk, but her Afro sticks up a few inches, making her almost as tall as him. She stands there in baggy corduroy pants and a flannel shirt and waits a minute for the noise to die down before speaking.

  “Hi, everybody,” she says. “I have only one quick announcement, and it’s concerning the Back 40.”

  I lean forward in my seat.

  “Unfortunately, the Back 40 is going to be off-limits to students for a while,” she says. I feel my jaw drop.

  “For your own safety,” she continues, “we ask that you not try to climb or go beyond the new fence.”

  Did she say “fence”? Off-limits? For how long? And why?

  I push my face back down into my lap and leave it there for the remainder of the assembly.

  Finally, Dr. Monk dismisses everyone to our first class, and the mob surges to the double-doors. I hang back as the seventh graders flood around me. Shirah climbs down the bleachers, and I see her say goodbye to her volleyball friends.

  “Hey,” she greets me, coming closer. “Are you okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I reply.

  “Because you had your head shoved way down between your knees for the past fifteen minutes,” she says. “That doesn’t seem ‘okay’ to me.”

  “Well, I do that sometimes,” I say.

  “You shouldn’t let that stupid Turtle Boy thing bother you so much,” she says. “It’s a dumb name, and they’re idiots. Sticks and stones, right? Ignore them.”

  “Easy for you to say. No one calls you names.”

&nb
sp; “You don’t know that,” she says firmly. “Maybe they do. Maybe I choose not to make a big deal about it.

  “Okay, changing the subject. How was your summer?”

  “Fine,” I say.

  “And did you do anything?” she asks brightly. “Did you go anywhere? Did anything happen?”

  “No, no, and no,” I say.

  “All right.” Shirah barely conceals her annoyance. “How about I just tell you about my summer?”

  We start walking toward our first-period classes. She goes on about volleyball camp: It was hot, the food was bad, she got athlete’s foot, and yet, she had a great time! To me, it sounds like a bad dream: being surrounded by hundreds of kids all day and then sleeping on a bunk bed in a cabin with total strangers? Torture. Still, it’s way better than my summer.

  I also had my appointment with Dr. Haffetz, the surgeon; the appointment I’d been dreading since fifth grade. He took X-rays and a bunch of blood tests and bigger, fancier X-rays. I finally learned the scientific name for what was happening to my face: a condition called “micrognathia, with aplasia of the mandibular condyles.”

  Micrognathia sometimes starts during puberty, which is a really cruel joke of nature. It’s the reason my chin has continued to shrink; it’s why I’ve developed a lisp and why I’ve had more and more trouble eating. I can’t take bites like a normal person; I have to grab my food with the side of my mouth and tear off chunks. Dr. Haffetz concluded that there would be no way to correct my occlusion with braces alone; I’d need surgery.

  “What kind of surgery?” I asked, frantic. Mom put her hand on my back and rubbed gently.

  Dr. Haffetz grabbed the plastic skull model from his desk and pulled off the removable jaw, showing Mom and me how they would break the hinge, move the jaw forward, and add bone from my hip to build up my chin. Then they’d wire my teeth together so the bones could heal. I’d have to eat my food through a straw. He suggested I do the surgery a week before winter break to allow maximum time to recover at home.

  The rest of the appointment passed in a blur.

  * * *

  • • •

  “What if I decide not to have the surgery?” I asked on the way home. I’d been Turtle Boy for almost a year. I hated it, but I was used to it. If living with the humiliation got me out of surgery, I’d take it.

  Mom turned down the radio and spoke to me very gently, both hands on the steering wheel. “Will, remember how Dr. Haffetz explained that this condition can affect your breathing? We need to take care of this. And you’re not alone. I’ll be with you every step.”

  That evening, Mom went on with normal life; making dinner, doing some work for the Dodge Gazette, where she’s a copy editor (that means she takes other people’s bad stories and uses a red pen to make them better). But I was on summer vacation, and I had nothing to distract me. I’d be watching TV, and see a toothpaste commercial and remember…Teeth wired together. Or I’d be eating a frozen pizza…Food through a straw. Or I’d be walking the paths in the Back 40…Break the jaw hinge. Bone from my hip.

  Eventually, I stopped going to the Back 40. I stayed in my room, shades down, and let the sliver of light around my window turn bright, then blue, then dim with the evening. I thought about turtles, how they overwinter. When it starts getting cold out, they burrow under the mud, under ice, and their heart rate slows down. It’s more than sleeping. It’s almost dying. It would be nice to overwinter my year away and wake up when the surgery is over.

  “Hey, Will,” Shirah finally says, looking me in the eye. “Are you really okay? Besides those idiots and the Turtle Boy thing…is something going on?”

  I wish I could tell her about my diagnosis, that I need major surgery to correct it. But we’re not the friends we used to be. I can’t tell her my secrets. Not because I don’t trust her…but because I’m too embarrassed. She’s turned into a popular girl. I’ve turned into Turtle Boy.

  “I’m completely fine,” I say flatly. “Have a good first period.”

  I’m walking along the center aisle in the cafeteria, between the two rows of tables. About halfway down, I see Jake and Spencer and the other lacrosse kids. I don’t want to go anywhere near them. Besides being the first to point out my deformity, Jake was the one who gave me that stupid, awful nickname.

  Last year, I was eating lunch, minding my own business, when he and Spencer walked by. Jake looked at me with his little weaselly eyes, pointed straight at my face, and said, “Hey, look! He eats like the turtle in the bio lab.” Spencer—who’s built like a big, dumb bear—snatched one of my carrots with his giant, fleshy paw-hands and nibbled at the tip, imitating a turtle. There was nothing I could do. From that day on, a bunch of kids started calling me Turtle Boy.

  I tried to ignore it. I hoped it would go away. But it stuck and it spread. Whenever we played kickball and I dropped a pop fly, someone would say, “Nice job, Turtle Boy!” And whenever I got up in front of the class to do literally anything—sharpen a pencil, hand in my homework, do a presentation—somebody would start that stupid Turtle Boy chant, and then the others would join in, quiet enough that the teacher couldn’t hear it.

  “Tur-tle Boy! Tur-tle Boy! Tur-tle Boy!”

  They thought it was hilarious, but it made me want to climb into my backpack and zip it up. Sometimes I’d get so upset, I’d take the hall pass, go to a bathroom, and just sit in a stall until the bell rang.

  So no, I won’t sit anywhere near Jake and Spencer. That cuts off the entire back half of the cafeteria.

  I’m watching Shirah eat lunch with her volleyball friends. One of them is talking excitedly, making big gestures with her hands, while the others laugh. I wish I could sit with them.

  I’m starting to think I should go eat by myself in the library when something drills between my ribs.

  I cry out in surprise and whip around.

  Max Rosenberg-Chan!

  Max moved here last year and joined the carpool with me and Shirah to Hebrew school. Pretty much he’s ruined one of the few times Shirah and I still hang out. She seems to like him, but he’s the most annoying person I know. At school, I stay as far away from him as possible.

  “Dude!” he says, practically panting with excitement. “Look at my arm! You gotta sign my cast!”

  Max’s arm is strapped into a plastic brace, the kind you wear for a sprain. He’s taped a long strip of masking tape along one edge, where it’s signed by two people: Mom and Mikey, his little brother. Also, he’s written L’Art du Déplacement several times around the edge of the tape, whatever that means.

  “This is a brace, Max,” I say. “You sign a cast, not a plastic brace.”

  “Whatever,” Max says, trying to hand me a marker. “Just sign it.”

  I grab the marker and scrawl my name.

  “Where are you sitting?” he asks.

  I don’t want to admit that I’ve been in the cafeteria for five minutes and still don’t have anywhere to sit, so I point to the nearest table. It’s occupied by a small group of sixth graders, except the two seats on the end.

  “You wanna know how it happened?” he asks excitedly, holding up his brace. “I was executing a dive-roll down an entire flight of steps. My cousins in Chicago taught me a bunch of maneuvers this summer, and I’ve been practicing nonstop.”

  “And your cousins are ninjas?” I wonder skeptically.

  “First of all,” he says, “ninjas are Japanese. That side of my family is Chinese. Not the same. Second, for your information, it’s called parkour. Climbing, diving, rolling—it’s urban movement.”

  “I know what parkour is,” I say. “You sent me YouTube videos all summer.”

  “It was originally gonna be the whole flight of steps,” he continues, “but I bailed at the last second, so it was only about half, but it was still awesome! My idiot brother was supposed to get it on vid
eo, but he’s such a doofus, all you can see is me running. Then the camera’s all jumpy and it’s over. Here, you wanna see?”

  He digs his phone from his pocket and shows me. He’s right. I can see Max running toward the camera, but then it’s chaos: a thud and some loud groaning.

  “I landed too hard on my arm and had to go to the emergency room,” he says, sounding almost happy about it. “We were there for, like, five hours. Now I have this cool brace, and I’m a full-fledged track-ee-ur.”

  “A what?”

  “Track-ee-ur,” he says. He spells it out: “T-r-a-c-e-u-r. It’s French.”

  “I think it’s pronounced tray-suhr,” I say.

  He ignores me, admiring his brace with a smug expression, as if the injury were a small price to pay for an honorable French title.

  “Once the brace is off,” he says, “maybe you could come over and we’ll make a video, but this time I’ll nail it!”

  “Hey, Turtle Boy!”

  Before I can stop myself, I’ve looked up. It’s Spencer and Jake, standing behind Max, grinning at me. They both pump their fists and chant: “Tur-tle Boy! Tur-tle Boy! Tur-tle Boy!”

  Max registers what’s going on and seems upset. I look down, my eyes glued to my sandwich. Finally, Jake and Spencer turn and walk away, still doing the Turtle Boy chant.

  “That is so unfair,” says Max. “Why should you get a nickname and I don’t?”

  “What?” I ask. “Are you kidding?”

  “In parkour, you get to pick a nickname,” he says. “I’m Aero! But no one else calls me that. I wish I had a cool nickname people actually used.”

  “Turtle Boy is not a cool nickname,” I say coldly.

  “Why not?” he says. “It’s a superhero name…Turtle Boy! Like Batman.”