Before I went to bed that night, I took a moment to think about the various weirdnesses that had gone on in Gunnar’s backyard that afternoon—particularly the way he acted when I gave him that silly piece of paper. I had written it just to give him a laugh, and maybe get him to shift gears away from dying and stuff. Had he actually taken me seriously?
I opened a blank document on my computer, and typed out a single sentence. Then I pulled up the thesaurus, changed a few key words, found a really official-looking font, put the whole thing in a hairline box, and printed it out:
I, Anthony Paul Bonano, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath one month of my natural life to Gunnar Ümlaut.
Signature
Signature of Witness
I have to confess, I almost didn’t sign it. I almost crumpled the thing and tossed it into the trash, because it was giving me the creeps. I’m not a particularly superstitious guy ... but I do have moments. We all do. Like, when you’re walking on the street, and you start thinking about that old step-on-a-crack rhyme. Don’t you—at least for a few steps—avoid the cracks? It’s not like you really think you’re gonna break your mother’s back, right? But you avoid the cracks anyway. And when somebody sneezes, and you say “God bless you,” you’re not saying it to chase away evil spirits—which is why people used to say it in the old days—but you don’t feel right if you don’t say it.
So here I am, looking at this very legal-looking piece of paper, and wondering what it means to sign away one month of my life. And then I think, if this was an actual contract—if it was true and somewhere in the Great Beyond a tally of days was being kept—would I still do it, and give Gunnar an extra month?
Sure I would.
I knew that without even having to think about it.
So I bit back the creepy step-on-a-crack feeling, got a blue pen, and signed my name. Then, during my first class the next morning, I got Ira to sign as witness.
And that’s when things began to get weird.
4. Photo Ops, Flulike Symptoms, and Trident Exchange in the Hallway of Life
There are very few things I’ve done in my life that I would consider truly inspired. Like the time I e-mailed everyone at school to tell Howie his pants were on backward. After dozens of people pulled him aside to tell him, he finally gave in to peer pressure, went into the bathroom, and turned his pants around, so they really were on backward.
That was inspired.
Giving Gunnar a month of my life—that was inspired, too. The problem with inspiration, though, is that it’s kind of like the flu—once one person gets it, it spreads and spreads until pretty soon everyone’s all congested and hawking up big wads of inspiration. It happens whether you want it to or not, and there’s no vaccination.
I tracked Gunnar down in the hallway between third and fourth periods that day, and presented him with his extra month, officially signed and witnessed.
He read it over, and looked at me with the kind of gaze you don’t want a guy giving you in a public hallway.
“Antsy,” Gunnar said, “there are no words to express how this makes me feel.”
Which was good, because words might have made me awkwardly emotional, and that would attract Dewey Lopez, the school photographer—who was famous for exposing emotions whenever possible. Such as the time he caught star football jock Woody Wilson bawling his eyes out in the locker room after losing the first game that season. In reality, Woody was crying because had just punched his locker and broken three knuckles, but nobody remembers that part—they just remember the picture—so he got stuck with the nickname “Wailing Woody,” which will probably stick to him like a kick-me sign for the rest of his life.
So here we are, Gunnar and me, standing there all ripe for a humiliating Kodak moment, and Gunnar finds the words I had wished he wouldn’t: “As Lewis once said to Clark, ‛He who would give his life for a friend is more valuable than the Louisiana Purchase, entire.’” And now all I can think about is what if he hugs me—and what if Dewey gets a picture, and I’m known as “Embraceable Antsy” for all eternity?
But instead Gunnar looks at the paper again and says, “Of course you didn’t specify which month you’re giving me.”
“Huh?”
“Well, each month has a different value, doesn’t it? September has thirty days, October has thirty-one, and let’s not even mention February!”
I have to admit, I was a little stunned by this, but that’s okay, since stunned is an emotion I can handle. It is, in fact, an acceptable state for me. I was willing to go with Gunnar’s practical approach—after all, he was the one who was dying, and I wasn’t going to question how he dealt with it. I did some quick counting on my fingers. “You got six months left, right? A seventh month would put you into May. So I’m giving you May.”
“Excellent!” Gunnar slaps me on the back. “My birthday’s in May!”
That’s when Mary Ellen McCaw descends out of nowhere, grabs the paper away from Gunnar, and says, “What’s this?”
Just so you know, Mary Ellen McCaw is the under-eighteen gossip queen of Brooklyn. She’s constantly sniffing out juicy dirt, and since her nose is roughly the size of Rhode Island, she’s better than a bloodhound when it comes to sniffing. I’m sure she knew about Gunnar’s illness; in fact, she was probably responsible for broadcasting the information across New York, and maybe parts of New Jersey.
“Give it back!” I demanded, but she just holds the thing out of reach, and reads it. Then she looks at me like I’ve just arrived from a previously unknown planet.
“You’re giving him a month of your life?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“Giving Gunnar a new lease on life? Antsy, that’s so sweet!”
This leaves me furtherly stunned, because no one has ever called me sweet—especially not Mary Ellen McCaw, who never had a nice word to say about anybody. I figure at first that maybe she means it as an insult, but the look on her face is sincere.
“What a nice thought!” she says.
I shrug. “It’s just a piece of paper.”
But who was I kidding? This thing was already much more than a stupid piece of paper. Mary Ellen turns from me to Gunnar, and bats her eyes at him. “Can I donate a month of my life, too?”
I look at her, wondering if she’s kidding, but clearly she’s not.
Gunnar, all flattered, gives her an aw-shucks look and says, “Sure, if you really want to.”
“Good, then it’s settled,” says Mary Ellen. “Antsy, you write up the contract, okay?”
I don’t say anything just yet, as I’m still set on stun.
“Remember to specify the month,” says Gunnar.
“And,” adds Mary Ellen, “make sure it says that the month comes from the end of my life, not the middle somewhere.”
“How could it come from the middle?” I dare to ask.
“I don’t know—temporary coma, maybe? The point is, even a symbolic gesture should be clear of loopholes, right?”
Who was I to argue with logic like that?
“So what’s it like at the Ümlauts’?”
Howie and Ira were all over me in the lunchroom that day, as if going over to the Ümlauts’ was like setting foot in a haunted house.
“Was there medical stuff everywhere?” Howie asked. “My uncle had to build a room addition just for his iron lung—the thing’s as big as a car.”
“I didn’t see anything like that,” I told them. “It’s not that kind of illness.”
“It must have been weird, though,” Ira said. I considered telling them about Gunnar’s do-it-yourself tombstone, but decided not to turn something so personal into gossip.