They snickered. I wiped my face and glared at them.
“I’ll get you guys,” I said.
“Oooooo,” said Danny.
I turned away from them and Danny reached his hand over to pluck at a single hair on my head. I slapped him away.
Jake, sitting next to me, watched all this without comment.
“Thanks for all the help,” I grumbled to him.
“I’ll tell!” said Jake. That was his answer for everything. It never really did any good. But I guess I couldn’t blame him for not standing up to guys like Danny and Thomas. What was he going to do, turn into a toad to scare them? Ha!
Danny could make himself into a Rottweiler, a big scary-looking dog. Thomas turned into one of those Alaskan dogs. Malamutes they called them. That breed of dog doesn’t bark, which maybe was why Thomas always let Danny do the talking.
“You know, I hope I turn into something big when I go through the change,” I told Jake.
“Connor, you don’t want that,” said Jake.
“I don’t mean something like… You know.”
“Nothing like a disgusting fat toad, you mean.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Nope, but you thought it.”
Great, I thought, now Jake was mad at me too. I could hear Danny and Thomas behind me. They were laughing and having a great time, making funny sounds with their hands, mouths and armpits. They had a talent for making funny sounds, those two.
I looked at Jake, sulking next to me. He had a big mop of blond hair that hung down in very straight lines from a central point on his head. His hair looked like a wig, because it hung down so straightly it wasn’t natural looking. He had chubby cheeks and glasses. I wondered if he wore his glasses when he turned into a weretoad.
I’d only seen him actually turn into a toad once, and I think my reaction that day made him my friend forever. All I did was not laugh. Everyone else laughed. It was at school, in the cafeteria, and I remember we were all having sloppy joes that day. Suddenly, Jake had grown a huge tongue that spilled out of his mouth into his half-eaten sloppy joe. Then his legs had sort of wriggled, kinking up and firing his shoes right off his feet when the rubbery flippers sprouted. Moments later, the transformation was complete and there, instead of Jake, sat a huge lumpy toad.
I did smile, I have to admit that. But I didn’t laugh. Everyone else laughed so hard he just hopped down from the lunch table and crawled away toward the office. He had lumpy warty skin and huge eyes and an even huger mouth. I could see in his big eyes he was scared and upset, and somehow it just wasn’t funny to me. He had hidden in the Principal’s office the rest of the day.
But later on, he told me he had noticed that I hadn’t laughed.
“You know, Jake,” I said.
He didn’t look at me.
“You know why I didn’t laugh at you that day you changed in the cafeteria?”
He finally looked at me. “Why?”
“Because I don’t know what I’ll become. It didn’t seem funny to me. One of these days, I’ll become something, but I don’t know what it is. That worries me. It could be something a lot worse than what happens to you.”
Jake was quiet for a minute.
“Thanks,” he said finally.
“Thanks for what? For not laughing?”
“No,” he said. “Thanks for making me think that maybe, just maybe, someone at this school will have it worse than me.”
I made a face at him. He laughed.
“That’s what I’m here for,” I said, “to cheer people up. If you feel down in the dumps, just say to yourself: ‘Well, at least I’m not Connor Ryerson.’”
We both laughed loudly until the dog pack behind us demanded to know what was so funny.
We just laughed harder, knowing that would annoy them.
Sarah scooted over to our seat then, coming to talk to me. Sarah had dark eyes that darted everywhere and never seemed to miss anything. She always wore her ginger ale-colored hair in a ponytail. Her hair was so short, however, that the ponytail couldn’t even droop down and instead formed sort of a fan of hair behind her head.
“What are you guys laughing so hard about?” she asked.
“Three in a seat breaks the rules,” said Jake teasingly.
“Shut it, you old toad,” she told him.
“Catch any good worms, lately?” he asked her.
She slapped at him. It was all in good play, I knew. We were tight friends. She was such a good friend that she could tease Jake about being a toad and tease me about not being anything at all without getting us mad. In turn, we could tease her about being a blue jay on sunny weekends in the park and she didn’t get mad either. Of course, what did she have to become angry about? The only bad thing about being a blue jay was the serious business of eating worms. She always swore she had never tried one because she didn’t want to change back and be sick afterward.
Danny popped up behind us again, making a tsking sound. “Three in a seat, that will never do,” he said. “Mrs. Terry,” he cried out loudly. “Children are breaking the rules back here, and I fear for their safety.”
“Shut up,” said Sarah.
“Mrs. Terry!” Danny shouted more loudly. He jabbed his finger down at Sarah’s head. “Safety first!”
Sarah tried to duck down low, but the driver’s eyes were on us in that big mirror of hers. Sarah’s standing spray of hair gave her away instantly.
“Back to your seat, Sarah. Keep your seat or I’ll have to report you.”
“Yes, Mrs. Terry,” said Sarah.
“See you boys at lunch and in Algebra,” she said.
As she passed Danny, she shook herself. It was an odd gesture, something only angry birds can do: she ruffled up, seeming to swell. A single blue feather slipped out of her sweater and floated down.
“Jerk,” she said to him.
“Only protecting your delicate feathers, Miss,” said Danny as if he were some kind of good Samaritan. He snatched Sarah’s blue feather out of the air and tickled Thomas’ nose with it until he sneezed.
Chapter Four
The next time the bus stopped, my day changed completely. Looking back, I think maybe my whole life changed.
A new girl got on the bus. She was cute. She wore one of those girly coats with a hood that had fake fluffy white fur coming out of it. The white fluff encircled her face like a picture frame. Her nose was small and turned up a tiny bit. There were three tiny freckles on the tip. That nose and her naturally smiling eyes made her look like an elf. I liked her immediately. Sometimes, a girl’s face will just strike me as especially nice, even though a hundred other guys wouldn’t think she was anything special. This was one of those times.
Everyone stared at her. In Camden, everyone is somebody else’s second cousin, and we aren’t used to new kids. Every once in a while, someone would try to move into our town who wasn’t special like us. After a few months they figured out that Camden was no normal little backwoods town and they would move out again-usually really fast in the middle of the night. But even that kind of thing was rare. People from Burns and other small towns in Harney County knew about us. They knew there was something different about our little town.
Oh sure, they might smile nervously at us when they stopped to get gas or to buy a cola at the Stop-n-Go. But they weren’t trying to make friends. They just didn’t want any trouble. They smiled at us the way you might smile at a mean dog that is curling its lips, but hasn’t come after you yet. Oh sure, they acted friendly enough, but none of them would ever even think of moving here.
The elf-looking girl was very self-conscious. She knew we were all staring. She didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She came down the aisle slowly, looking for an empty seat.
“Jake, get down,” I hissed.
“What?”
“Just get down off the seat. Sit on the floor.”