“Can’t you just teach me at home?” Nathan asked Penny and Mary.
Penny, who sat on the couch, patted the cushion next to her. “Come here, Nathan, and let me tell you a story.”
Nathan sat down next to her.
“Once upon a time there was a little boy, a boy who looked much like yourself as a matter of fact. This little boy did not want to go to school. But we made him. And he went. The end.”
“That wasn’t a very good story,” said Nathan.
“That’s because it’s based on reality. Would you really have us devote as much time as a teacher to your education? Shall I quit my job and let Mary support us? Would you like to get a job?”
“I’m sorry,” said Nathan. “I’ll go to school.”
“Yes, you will. And you’ll bring home good grades. Your handwriting is so atrocious that you’d think you had sharp pointed fingers instead of teeth. What is six times seven?”
“I don’t know, but six times five is thirty.”
“The fives are easy. You have many things to learn, Nathan Pepper, and you will go to school like any other child.”
Nathan nodded, and felt ashamed that he’d ever protested. This was his chance to have a normal life. He couldn’t expect anybody to quit their job to keep him from feeling awkward. When had he become such a selfish boy? He was going to go to school and study hard and learn his multiplication tables and be able to point out every country on a map and become smart and invent things and get rich and move himself and the sisters into a mansion with a butler and a gardener and a special room filled with butterflies.
He would change the world!
NINE
Two weeks before school started, Nathan lay in bed, nearly overcome by sleep, when he discovered that one of his teeth was loose.
It was one of the corner ones that could legitimately be called a fang. The upper left. If he poked at it with his tongue, it jiggled. He lay there for a moment, jiggling his tooth, then got out of bed and hurried into Penny’s room. She sat up in her bed, reading.
“Look!” he said, proudly opening his mouth and making the tooth move. “It’s my first loose one!”
Penny leaned forward. “I believe you’re right!” She called Mary into the room, and they both admired his loose tooth, the way it could wobble forward and backward.
They’d discussed this before. Mary had told him that before too long his teeth would start to fall out, one by one, and that it was nothing to be afraid of, it was part of the natural course of things, and that new teeth would grow back in their place.
“Will they be normal teeth?” Nathan had asked.
“We won’t know until we see them. Perhaps they might. Perhaps when it’s all over, you’ll have a mouth full of teeth just like anybody else.”
Penny had shushed her and told her she was being cruel, that it was wrong to raise his hopes likes that. Mary had argued that it was a perfectly feasible outcome, and that there was no reason the boy shouldn’t look forward to the possibility. Nathan had been told to leave the room, and the subject was no longer discussed.
“Should I get a pair of pliers and rip it right out?” asked Mary, her eyes gleaming with mischief. She said it with a smile to let Nathan know that she was teasing, that she wasn’t really going to rip his tooth out with pliers.
“No, no,” said Penny. “We need to tie a string around his tooth, and then we need to tie the other end around the tail of a bull, and then we need to anger the bull so that it runs off.”
“But what if the tooth isn’t loose enough? Our poor Nathan could find himself being dragged behind an angry bull!”
“You’re right! And what if we were careless about the location of the bull and sent it rushing toward a cliff?”
“And what if at the bottom of the cliff were shards of broken glass floating in lava?”
“He would be doomed, doomed, doomed, and it would be all our fault!”
Nathan poked at his tooth some more. “I think I’ll wait for it to fall out on its own.”
Penny furrowed her brow in deep thought. “I wonder if the Tooth Fairy brings extra money to boys with sharp teeth?”
“The Tooth Fairy?” Nathan asked.
“You haven’t heard of the Tooth Fairy?”
Nathan shook his head.
“You, of all people, have never heard of the Tooth Fairy? What sort of upbringing did you have?” Penny bit her lip, as if realizing that she’d said something awful. “I’m sorry. Maybe your parents meant to tell you at a more appropriate time. When a little boy or little girl loses their baby teeth, they put them under their pillow, and when they wake up in the morning, they find that the Tooth Fairy has replaced the tooth with money!”
“Money for teeth? I don’t believe you.”
“Oh, well, you have to believe, or the Tooth Fairy won’t come.”
“What does she do with the teeth?”
“Nobody knows. Perhaps she makes necklaces out of them. Perhaps she grinds them up and makes chalk. Perhaps she even eats them.”
“Hmmmm,” said Nathan. “If these teeth are so valuable, maybe people should hang on to them instead of selling them off to a fairy.”
“That may very well be a wise idea,” said Penny. “Who knows? You could sell them for ten times what that miserly Tooth Fairy would have left.”
Nathan continued to work at the tooth. He did not have the courage to take any drastic measures to hasten its removal, but he wiggled it whenever he had a free moment, and he bit into apples harder than he might normally have done, and when he brushed he focused nearly twice as much attention on that particular tooth as he did the others.
And then, when he woke up one morning, the tooth was gone.
He’d lost his first tooth!
He was so excited he nearly cried out with joy.
But…where was it?
“I’ve swallowed my tooth!” he shouted. “I can’t believe I’ve done this!”
He’d lost his source of profit!
And more importantly, what devastation awaited his insides as this tooth made its way through his body? He could almost feel it, poking and jabbing and slicing through important parts. Oh no!
He started to run out of his bedroom, then caught himself and walked in a very, very, very, very slow manner, hoping to keep the tooth from moving around. Where was it now? Still in his stomach? Lodged two inches below his throat? He’d be lucky if it didn’t slice him open, neck to navel.
“What’s the matter?” asked Penny, wiping sleep away from her eyes as she emerged from her bedroom.
“I swallowed my tooth while I slept!”
“Are you sure?”
Was he sure? He wasn’t doubled over in agony. There weren’t any new holes in his body where the tooth might have made its way out. “I’m pretty sure.”
“Well, let’s look for it instead of rushing into a state of panic.” They walked into Nathan’s bedroom, where Penny gently pulled the blanket aside. She quickly plucked something small and white from on top of the sheet. “Here it is.”
She handed him the tooth.
“Thank you!” Nathan said. “I thought I was a goner!”
“You are a silly boy sometimes.”
Nathan held the tooth up to the light, admiring it from all angles. “I’m going to figure out exactly what the Tooth Fairy does with all of the teeth she purchases,” he said. “Maybe that’s how I’ll make us all rich!”
Of course, it cannot be forgotten that Nathan was only seven years old, and though his intentions were admirable, the lure of easy money was too much to resist. During dinner, he admitted to Penny and Mary that perhaps he ought not to interfere with the Tooth Fairy’s business, and would indeed place the tooth under his pillow.