The Mortification of Fovea Munson Page 8

  “Oh,” he said. There was a very long pause, during which we both adjusted to the fact that it was the first time we’d talked to each other on purpose in five years.

  “Ooooh!” said Howe’s mom.

  The kids chanting in the background got clearer for a second, and I could make out what they were saying. Throw it! In the pool! Sounded like the refinement business was tough these days.

  I cleared my throat and said, “Howe, you sing, right?”

  “Ha! Is there anything he doesn’t do?” his mom said proudly.

  “This is a private conversation,” Howe protested weakly.

  “Okay, honey.” The noise of the kids rioting got muffled, but it didn’t go away—she was clearly still on the phone.

  “I really don’t sing,” he said, almost whispering. “Is that all you wanted?”

  “But you’re in chorus at school. And your mom said you did. Just now.”

  “She was wrong.”

  “Howe Leonard Bernstein Berger!” Howe’s mom interrupted us. Howe didn’t seem that surprised. I wondered if she listened to all his calls.

  “Mom,” Howe said helplessly.

  “Howe loves to sing!” his mom said.

  I said, “Is there any chance you’re a baritone?”

  “He can fake it!” said his mom. “He’s technically a tenor, but he’s got very impressive range ever since his growth spurt last year.”

  “Mom,” Howe said.

  “Howe,” I said, crossing all the fingers of my mind. “Would you consider singing with a couple of guys I know? Just for a little while?”

  “This is a perfect professional development opportunity!” His mom sounded thrilled. “We’ve been waiting for something like this, and here it is, and Fovea, he’d love to do it.”

  He paused. “Can I speak to Fovea privately?”

  “Sure!” she said.

  “I mean without you on the phone?”

  “Of course!” she said.

  It got away! Catch it! hollered a kid in the background.

  It was pretty obvious she wasn’t going anywhere. I thought I heard Howe sigh, and then he asked, “Will I have to sing in front of an audience?”

  “No,” I assured him. That was the one thing I could guarantee.

  “You promise?”

  “Completely. You’d be singing with three guys. Nobody else will be around.” I didn’t know if it would make a difference, but based on our history, I added, “I won’t even be in there. Please?”

  “He’ll do it!” Howe’s mom said.

  “I guess I’ll do it.”

  “How soon can you get downtown?”

  After we hung up, I stared at the phone for a minute. That was easier than I thought it’d be. He was reluctant, maybe, but that seemed reasonable. I wouldn’t want to help me either.

  With Howe on the way, I went in search of a blindfold. It would have to be really good so he could wear it for the whole time and not have it slip. I poked around in my ­parents’ office and found some goggles, still in their packaging. They were the extra-durable type—probably to keep gross things from squirting in your eyes while you were operating on something. Perfect. My parents wouldn’t notice if a pair of goggles went missing. I found a marker and colored all over them until you couldn’t see anything through the plastic. When I was done, it smelled like marker, but aside from that, it was a killer blindfold. No way would it slip.

  Then I sat in the lobby, the goggles on the desk in front of me. I was ready for Howe to show up now, or as ready as I could be.

  I stared out through the glass windows. Nothing.

  A train rumbled by outside, but otherwise, it was quiet.

  I glanced down on the desk and noticed the folder my dad had given me—I might as well do that, since I was waiting anyway. I opened it and started working through the small stack. It was mostly bills for the lab, each one with a sticky note indicating what I needed to know to pay online. After I typed in the account and password, the companies just wanted me to click the PAY button. All the rest of the info was already stored. Easy. I didn’t mind paying the bill for the freezer repair or putting in the order for the extra scrubs. No, it was all going fine enough until I got to the last paper in the folder. I typed in the website at the top of the browser and the page that opened up was called Give Me a Hand, Et Cetera, LLC. I scrolled down.

  No way.

  That nightmare of a school assembly was coming true.

  Give Me a Hand, Et Cetera, LLC, actually sold hands, et cetera.

  Unbelievable. And frankly, considering that my parents weren’t doing such a great job keeping track of the body parts they already had, I wasn’t sure they should be ordering more.

  I glanced back at the paper in the folder, which told me to buy one item of product number 735 for six hundred dollars.

  Product number 735. I scrolled down. A leg.

  A. Leg.

  I was never going to unremember this.

  I gritted my teeth and placed the order. Fast. And when I’d finished, I stewed and swiveled and wondered if there was any possible chance I had a secret aunt in Aruba who needed someone to sweep lizards off her porch this summer. There had to be something to get me away from this land of body parts, both the talking and silent varieties. Although technically, I was only assuming the leg wasn’t going to talk. What did I know about anything anymore.

  I’d barely leaned back in the chair when the phone rang. Unknown, said the caller ID.

  I picked up the phone.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Hello?” said a voice I sort of recognized.

  “Hello?” I said again.

  “Who is this?”

  “Did you forget who you called?”

  “No, I know who I called. But who are you?”

  “Fovea Munson—”

  “Fovea!” shrieked the other person. “Fovea! Great! It’s me, Whitney!”

  I nearly dropped the phone. “Whitney? What the heck! Whitney, you have to come back, this creepy guy came by, and the guys, they need you, too—”

  “The guys?”

  “Andy. Um. And Lake and McMullen.”

  “Oh! You met them! That’s great, Fo, that’s terrific.” She lowered her voice. “They could really use more friends. That much time in the freezer, they get on each other’s nerves sometimes. Ooh, I bet they’re loving being defrosted, aren’t they? That was all they could talk about before, and I mean, they weren’t even having the easiest time talking because of being frozen—”

  She faded out a little and I could hear her talking to somebody on her end. I was afraid of her hanging up, so I tried to get her attention again, saying, “Whitney, you have to come back—”

  “Fovea, I’m sort of in a rush here, I’m in the middle of nowhere on like the last pay phone in the whole country, I think, and I don’t have a lot of quarters—you can tell me what you’re up to later, okay? I just, look, I think I left my phone there, in a drawer maybe, or in the conference room—”

  “Yeah, I found it, and there’s messages on it from—”

  “Can you send it to me?”

  “But—”

  “I’m going to email you the address of the motel, okay, and I’ll pay you back later, I promise. And also, I need you to apologize to Andy for me, okay?”

  “Okay, but—”

  And then she was gone. I sat there with the phone in my hand. She’d tornadoed me. She hadn’t listened to a word I’d said. By the time I figured out how to make that stupid complex phone dial her back, she wasn’t there anymore. The phone just rang and rang and rang.

  Dang.

  But I could tell the heads about the call, and I’d tell them about Howe and maybe they’d soften up a little and go on and tell me where the missing specimen was. I ran back down the Hall of Innards and through the door to the lab, where I stopped short.

  Not because of anything the heads were doing. I stopped because of what they weren’t doing. They weren’t arguin
g. Or laughing. They weren’t doing anything. The heads were just still. Their eyes were closed. They looked like they might be—

  “HEY!” I yelled. “I GOT YOU A BARITONE! HEY!”

  “I’m awake!” Lake screamed, somehow yanking himself over so he smacked down onto the side of his head. Of his…him.

  “Yelling is no way to wake a body up,” Andy said groggily.

  “You can disregard the part about the body.” McMullen growled.

  “AHHH!” Lake yelled from his new sideways position. “Get me up! Get me up!”

  “What was that?” I said, still angry. “It wasn’t funny!”

  “AHHH!” Lake continued.

  “We were napping,” Andy said. “Napping’s not supposed to be funny. It’s what old fogeys like us do.”

  “AHHH!”

  “You should really help him up,” suggested Andy.

  “I should what?”

  “Because of when he was unfrozen and refrozen sideways, you know? Along with all the extra feelings, he developed a bad case of vertigo. Now he’s dizzy if he isn’t straight up and down. You knocked him over with all your yelling, you should help him up.”

  “He knocked himself over. He can get himself back up.” I squatted down to Lake’s eye level and turned sideways to match him. “I believe in you! You have this! Just focus!”

  “AHHH!”

  It did kinda pull on me to see him lying there on the cold metal table. On the other hand, I did not want to touch him. I did not. I was not. Not with a billion foot pole.

  “AHHH! SO! DIZZY!”

  Crud.

  Well, I couldn’t leave him there.

  I closed my eyes and wished for a billion foot pole.

  There were boxes and boxes of gloves lining the walls of the lab. Small through extra-large. Latex gloves, every single one of them. Great.

  Since I definitely couldn’t use the gloves unless I wanted to have a massive allergy attack, I was going to need something less obvious. There was nothing in either of my parents’ offices that I could imagine using as a head scooper-upper. I couldn’t just shovel a magazine under him like he was a bug or something—he’d be too heavy, for sure. There was the dustpan from earlier, but I wasn’t convinced that would help. What if I just scooped him up and then he flipped right on over to his other side? I could get stuck doing that all day. I needed something grabby. Like tongs.

  Tongs.

  I ran down the hall into the conference room, flipped on the lights, and checked the trash can for yesterday’s barbecue leftovers. Ace.

  Salad tongs.

  So. Coleslaw: apparently good for something after all.

  I pulled the tongs out of the trash and ran back to the lab, where Lake was still yelling. Figuring out the best angle for grabbing was tricky since one side of his head was flat against the table. I couldn’t really get much of a grip side to side; I’d have to do it front and back. “Sorry,” I said as I placed one gripper at the back of his head and one in the middle of his forehead. He shut his eyes tight and in a high, unsteady voice said, “Smells like mayo?”

  “Just your imagination.” I squeezed the tongs. They sank into Lake’s head a little bit—a side effect of defrosting, probably. He was heavier than coleslaw, and I didn’t want to pinch too hard, but amazingly, the plastic tongs were doing the job and he was actually starting to get closer and closer to upright. I’d almost gotten him there when a couple of things happened.

  First the tongs slipped. Just a little.

  Then a little more.

  Then the doorbell buzzed.

  “The doorbell!” said Andy.

  “It could be a baritone,” McMullen said. “Could be.”

  “No doubt!” Andy exclaimed. “Are you going to get that, Fovea?”

  That was all fine and well, EXCEPT that I’D been laser-focused on the tong situation, and when the doorbell buzzed, I jumped about a foot, and the tongs slipped one more horrible time, leaving a streak of crusty mayo on Lake’s forehead as he glided right out of my grasp, tilted in slow motion back down toward the table, and I, without thinking, shot my other hand out and pushed him upright. With my actual fingers.

  For a second, we both stared at my hand. I did not want that hand back. Touching him was like grabbing a balloon full of frozen custard. Gross. To the absolute max.

  Lake was beaming with joy. Beaming, right out from his gross frozen custard head.

  “Fovea?” Andy sang. “Did you know the doorbell rang?”

  I stalked out, promising myself I would never do anything with that hand again.

  Nothing. Ever.

  I burst into the lobby, my contaminated hand safely away from me, and there was Howe Berger, standing on the other side of the glass, his hand absently checking his Afro. That was his nervous thing. I knew it from basically every time any teacher ever gave us a test. But anyway, his hair looked fine—that wasn’t what made me stare.

  It was the tuxedo that made me stare.

  I mean, the outfit was obviously circa before Howe’s most recent growth spurt, so it was a little tight in areas and a little short in other areas—but it was still a tux, and he still looked like a thirteen-year-old James Bond. I had a bad feeling that this situation was going to be a real letdown for Howe Berger.

  I unlocked and opened the door with my usable hand.

  “Hi, Howe.”

  “Fovea.” He nodded.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly,” I said. It had been strange talking to him on the phone, but it was even weirder talking to him face-to-face. It was clear that neither of us was used to it. I tried to stay as professional as possible and at least not sound nervous. “Welcome. Can I get you some water?”

  He pulled at his bow tie, which seemed a little too tight, and looked around at the lobby. “What is this place?”

  Did he already know? I couldn’t tell. “My parents’ office. They’re…doctors.”

  “Who’s that guy?” he asked, looking at the painting.

  “Hippocrates, Father of Modern Medicine. It’s an unauthorized portrait,” I said.

  “Huh. When should I tell my mom we’ll be done?” There was a bright orange minivan outside, which I assumed belonged to Howe’s mom, mostly because it said THE CHILDREN’S REFINEMENT CENTERTM (RESULTS NOT GUARANTEED) across the side. It was parked directly in front of a fire hydrant. Howe’s mom, an even taller, lady version of him with even more impressive hair, leaned across to the passenger-side window and gave us an epic thumbs up.

  “Can you just call her when it’s over?”

  He frowned. “I’ll see.”

  I held the door open while he went to find out. He leaned into the van briefly, then returned. “I can stay for an hour,” he said, walking past me into the lobby and sitting down on one of the chairs. “Then my mom has errands to do.”

  “She can’t go do them now?” I asked as I locked the door again. I didn’t want her coming in and discovering her son singing with a handful of heads. I wanted her as far away as possible.

  We both looked out at the orange van, so unreasonably bright in the sun that it seemed possible it was actually radioactive. After a second, Howe said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  I had no idea what the heads were planning, but it couldn’t take too long. They already knew my parents would be coming back to the lab soon. And now, with Howe’s mom hovering outside, there was even more reason to hurry it up, whatever it was. “Let’s get this over with,” I said.

  “Do you, um, have a contract for me?” He glanced out the window.

  “A what?”

  “A contract?” he said again. “A written one, if possible. My mom says a verbal contract is unreliable.”

  “This isn’t really a contract kind of situation,” I said, not having any idea what a contract situation was.

  He just scratched a little at his cucumber-colored cummerbund. “What kind of situation is it, then?”

  “More like a charity sort of thing.”


  He looked unsure. “Who would I be helping?”

  “A desperate girl trying to keep her parents from going to jail.”

  “Jail?” He edged toward the door. “That sounds kind of serious? I think you have the wrong guy.”

  “I didn’t mean jail jail. I meant, like, singing jail.” I tried to laugh. I was not very believable.

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  Accurate. “I know. It doesn’t make any sense at all, and it won’t make sense, but honestly, I need your help. I mean the girl. Needs your help.”

  He picked at the sleeve of his tux like he was thinking it over.

  “She’s desperate.” I could see him trying to find anything to hold on to.

  “What about the guys I’m singing with? What’s their deal?”

  “They are…shut-ins.”

  “They’re shut in here?” He looked around suspiciously. “In a doctor’s office?”

  “Hypochondria. And acrophobia. It’s very sad.”

  “Uh-huh. I get that they think they’re sick, but what does a fear of heights have to do with it?”

  “Not heights. The one where you’re afraid of crowds.”

  “Agoraphobia.”

  “You sure? That sounds like somebody who’s afraid of those hairy sweaters.”

  “That would probably be angoraphobia.”

  “You really know your fears of things,” I said, impressed.

  “The Refinement Center has Latin on Thursdays,” he said.

  “You’re still taking classes there?”

  He shrugged. “It’s free for me, so that’s what I do summers. All summers. Forever.”

  “I get it,” I said. “I mean, I’m here, being a receptionist.”

  Maybe this was going to work after all.

  We both nodded silently for a minute, and I was pretty sure we were thinking the same thing. About how summer break was basically a sham. About how easy it was to get stuck someplace, like a book in the wrong library section that nobody would ever actually read. About—

  “Is that a betta fish or a guppy?” Howe asked.

  I reminded myself that this was business, not friend-making time. “So will you do the singing thing?”