Heartbreaker

(Winter 2009)


3. Making a List

Mrs. Wright distributed photocopies of the class list. Though it was nearly the same list as the one back when school began in the fall, it showed a few differences. Two kids, Paul Gehrety and Sasha Kovchek, had moved away and were no longer listed. Three new kids, Briana Chertley, David Kestrel, and Riana Moffat had moved into the school district since the past October, and now they were on the list. Briana had come in at the beginning of term just after the break, and they were still getting to know her.

The others had been melded into the fourth grade pretty smoothly, finding places within the larger group. Dipper, on the edge, wondered how they did that. David Kestrel, who had come into the class in early October, was hanging with the jocks within a week. Not that fourth graders had organized teams, but they played softball and soccer during PE and after school. David slipped right in, playing second base and striker. He wasn't even as good as the departed Paul in soccer, but he had lots of pep and kept the team morale up.

And Dipper had to admit that David was better than he was. I couldn't do that in a million years, Dipper thought. He'd never got the knack of batting, always swinging before the softball was even within range, inevitably going down in three swings and three strikes. He could get under a fly ball, but even with a glove on, he flinched just before it smacked into his hands, and he had to recover from the shock of having caught it before throwing it to someone in the infield.

As for being a goalie, Dipper just couldn't judge the bouncing course of a ball. He hated seeing it go past on his left or right, and his teammates would replace him with somebody else and send him out of the game to sit and watch. Humiliating. Even the class loudmouth Kurt Thigben, who was a borderline bully and who had few friends, was good at sports. Once when he'd been benched, Dipper had watched the hefty Kurt smack a softball for a triple, and the next batter sent him home for a winning run.

When he trotted over to the benches to get his fielder's glove for the next inning, Kurt sneered at Dipper and said, "That's how it's done, Dipstick!" Dipper had just looked away.

And although Dipper was clever with words, he wasn't a class clown. Brant Aarons was that, always making jokes and causing Mrs. Wright to scold, "Settle down." Mabel was a close second with her sarcastic twists remarks on whatever subject the class was on. She and Brant could have made a passable stand-up team, junior division.

There were groups of guys who were nuts about cars or airplanes or music. Some of them could dance. They'd learned breakdancing from their older brothers. They could create impromptu a capella quartets and put on rap concerts on the playground, usually cleaning up a few words if teachers were within earshot. Other times—well, Dipper had heard his first f-bomb when some of the guys were performing a grown-up song.

Dipper just didn't fit. He didn't know or even care a lot about cars, airplanes, or music. He had no discernable singing talent, though he and Mabel had learned to pick out a pretty good duet of "Heart and Soul" on the piano. The things he liked—a few anime cartoons, really old horror and mystery movies (Frankenstein with a flat-headed Karloff, The Hound of the Baskervilles with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes). Stuff he watched with his dad.

Nobody else in class shared his tastes. He didn't like the popular American cartoons with characters who didn't look like anything human or animal. He didn't like the repetitive shows where a bunch of kids played games with pet monsters or raced cars, with shots repeated over and over.

And for some reason, it was hard for him just to strike up a conversation. He could be on the fringe of three guys talking about some TV show or sports team and, trying to join in, ask, "What is that all about?"

Instead of explaining, they were more likely to send him off with "What a lame question" or "Nothing you'd be interested in, Pines."

Mabel, on the other hand, could slip right into any group of kids, girls, boys, or mix of both, and even if she'd been totally ignorant of the subject, within a minute or two she'd be chatting away, making the others laugh or sometimes competing to answer her questions. What was her secret?

He would have given anything to know. Somehow, she couldn't explain it. She could fit in, but she couldn't think of how to explain it to him.

So at lunch he sat beside her, with nobody on his left, and generally her friends sat at the same table. He listened to girl talk but rarely spoke himself. Rhonda, a chubby, cheerful girl who almost matched Mabel for enthusiasm, once said, "Hey, Dipper! You're shy, aren't you?"

The five girls at the table all turned their gazes on him. Five including Mabel. And Dipper's throat closed up. He sipped his milk and shrugged.

"Yeah, my Brobro's shy," Mabel said. "But he's real good at . . . math."

"I'm no good at that," Susan said. "But I can read a whole book in one afternoon."

Well, there was something they had in common. After a pause, Dipper quietly started to tell them he could, too, and that he loved reading, but all he got out was a soft, "Uh, I—"

Mabel overrode him without being mean about it. "Hey, has anybody heard of a movie called Kiki's Delivery Service?"

"Oh, sure," Briana said. "We've got the video. It's OK."

"I liked the cat!" Mabel said. "You know, I don't see how a witch can ride a broom. I mean, doy! Screw a bicycle seat on it, lady! Have a seat belt! There ought to be safety rules, am I right?"

"I couldn't sit on a broom!" Rhonda exclaimed. "No way I could balance! It took me like a year to learn to ride a bike without falling off!"

"What makes a broom fly, anyway?" Susan asked. "It doesn't make sense! It's like in Harry Potter. There should be some kind of jet force that makes the broom move. And how come they don't have controls?"

"And radios!" Mabel said. She held an imaginary microphone to her mouth. "Pffft! Welcome aboard, kitty cat. This is your witch speaking. We've been cleared for a cruising altitude of a gazillion feet. The weather looks fine, so settle back, relax, and thanks for choosing SouthWitchy Broomlines!"

Mrs. Wright cruised by. "Girls, please finish your lunches." But she had a twinkle in her eye. "You can complete your flight on the playground at recess."

For the school, Valentine's Day would fall on Friday because the actual holiday was on Saturday that year. On Thursday evening, Mrs. Pines finally released the cards to the twins so they could sign them and address them. The routine would be the same as it had always been at Eggbert: Mrs. Wright would provide each student with a white paper bag decorated with a pink heart. They'd print their names on the top edge of their bag and then through the morning everyone would go down the row of bags on top of the bookshelves and deliver their cards.

Dipper and Mabel went together. Dipper had sorted his cards alphabetically, the way the delivery bags were lined up. Morgan Abrams first, then Doug Atherton, and so on. He'd been careful to give the girls the cards with flowers or funny animals and the guys cards with sailboats, planes, or race cars.

Mabel had personalized hers. To Morgan, for example, she gave a card with a whiteboard math problem and a girl about to solve it: "What is 2+2?" Inside the answer was "A Valentine 4 You!" Mabel had added, "You are 2 sweet 2 me 4 me to 4-get!" and had sketched a picture of Morgan, in her pigtails, and of herself, in her ponytail, high-fiving each other.

Dipper had added only his name to each card.

The class had three breaks in the day, one for a morning snack, one before lunch, and one before recess. Different rows took turns delivering cards at each break, and then, just before school ended, Mrs. Wright said, "You may line up and go to the pick-up lines at the second bell. Briana, you're the class leader. I'm on car duty, so I'll have to leave now, but you children have ten minutes. Everyone collect your cards now. And have a happy Valentine's Day!"

"What a haul!" Mabel said. She turned her bag upside down and cards cascaded onto her desk. "How many Valentines did you get, Dipper?"

Dipper upended his bag. A small fragment of paper drifted from it.

And Kurt Thigben, wearing a black tee-shirt with a band name—Slight Fear—and the band's emblem, a bulldog on it, yelled out, "Oh, man, I thought I was the class loser! Hey, everyone! Dipstick didn't get any!"

Mabel looked as if she were in shock. Dipper slipped out of his desk. Everyone was laughing and pointing, and they started chanting, "Dipstick! Dipstick!"

Head down, he hurried out and went to the one place where he could sit in the dark and cry without anyone seeing—old Mr. Peavy's janitor's closet. It smelled moldy and felt damp, but he crouched with his back to the door and hugged his knees and rocked.

Loser.

Loser.

I'm always going to be a loser.

He heard something rustle and looked down. In the dim spill of light coming un under the door, he saw a heart-shaped something and reached to pick it up.

Valentines. Two dozen of them, at least. He saw a couple of them addressed to Mabel. What had she—

They had been taped together into a super-Valentine. He turned it over and read in blue marker For My Favorite Brother.

Then, though he was smiling, he cried a little. He got up and opened the door. Mabel, in her pink sweater, stood in the hall, smiling at him. She said, "Awkward sibling hug?"

They hugged and patted. Then she said, "We're gonna be late and Mom will fuss. You OK now?"

"I think so," Dipper said. "Thanks, Sis."

"Something stinks, Dipper."

"It's probably me. I was sitting next to the mop."

She gave him a little shove. "That's not what I mean. I know you had some cards in your bag. I put one in there, and I know Susan did, too, 'cause I saw her."

"Huh?"

"It's a mystery," Mabel said. "If I find out who hurt your feelings—"

"No, it's OK," he said. "Don't stir things up."

"Too late. This calls for stirring," she said. "Somebody stole your Valentines. I'm gonna find the jerk."

"Everyone was making fun of me and calling me names," Dipper said miserably. "Oh, I have to get my—"

"Beeyoop!" Mabel said. "I have your bookbag. Here you go. And look, there's Mom's car. Let's hurry without running in the halls, 'cause there's Mrs. Wright outside and she'd see us."

They passed her—Mabel wished her a happy holiday—and got into Mom's SUV. "Seat belts!" Mrs. Pines said.

"Got 'em!" Mabel said as she and Dipper latched in.

"How was school?" Mrs. Pines asked as the car crept toward the street.

"I don't want to talk about it," Dipper said.

"It was OK," Mabel said. "We each got about a dozen cards."

"That's nice," Mom said as she made the turn toward home.

"But—" Dipper started.

"Shh," Mabel warned. "Mom, what's for dinner tonight?"

"I haven't decided—"

"Pizza?" Mabel asked. "Please? It's been more than a week. And then you wouldn't have to cook, and clean-up would be easy!"

"You talked me into it," Mom said.

As they rode home, Mabel printed something on a pink envelope, one that she hadn't pasted into the giant Valentine for Dipper: We are going to solve this mystery just like the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. Nod if you agree. Nobody picks on my brother and lives! Or they do, but continued on the other side they live to regret it!

Dipper nodded and looked at the collage Valentine. He nudged Mabel and tapped one heart-shaped card. He pointed to himself, to Mabel, and to the card. It read LUV U.

He still wasn't sure about solving the mystery. So what if Mabel and Susan had given him cards that somehow vanished? Everyone else had jeered at him and called him Dipstick.

He doubted they could solve what Mabel called the mystery. And he hated the thought of having to go back to school on Monday.


Back at school, old Mr. Peavy, the janitor, shuffled around emptying wastebaskets. As he dumped the pencil shavings, crumpled notebook pages, milk cartons, and other trash from Mrs. Wright's room into his big bin, he frowned at a tumble of brightly colored cards.

He pulled them up. Seven, eight, nine of them.

Some kid had got these Valentines, he thought, and had just tossed them. Kids today were wasteful. And he remembered his own experiences with Valentines day sixty-odd years back. The time when everybody else in his class had got a dozen cards or more, and he got a grand total of three. He'd felt crushed. The thought of some entitled kid just throwing these away made him a little angry, a little sad.

Kids today. They didn't know what real friendship was.

He set the wastepaper bin down and trundled on to the next class, wishing he could have a word with the ungrateful kid.