The Boy in the Box, page 1
For the whole house — Rebecca, Rachel, Emilio, Sophie, and Yoyo
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Published in Puffin hardcover by Penguin Canada, 2012 Simultaneously published in the United States by Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003
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Text copyright © Cary Fagan, 2012
Illustrations copyright © Erwin Madrid, 2012
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LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Fagan, Cary
The boy in the box / Cary Fagan.
ISBN 978-0-670-06585-1
I. Title.
PS8561.A375B69 2012 jC813’.54 C2012-904282-X
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1. THE HALF-CASCADE
2. AN ANGRY MOB OF OLD FOGIES
3. THREE FACES
4. TOMATO PANTS
5. A HUMBLE STAGE
6. SOME LITTLE TALENT
7. THE SOFT CLICK
8. SPOONITCH AND FORKA
9. A SUITABLE NAME
10. MISHAPS REMEMBERED
11. UNLIKELY ALLIES
12. PUNISHMENT
13. THE LOCK
14. YELLOW EYES
15. THE EMPTY DRAWER
16. THE DIRECTOR
17. THREE UNLIKELY OBJECTS
18. THREE LEGS
19. HOW TO CLIMB AN INVISIBLE LADDER
20. THE OLD LIFE PARTY
21. A LITTLE TERROR
22. AN ADVANCED IDEA
23. THE FIRST TIME
24. ROCKING, SHAKING, POINTING
25. LETTING GO
WHICH IS A MORE SHAMEFUL CALLING,
TO BE A JUGGLER OR A THIEF?
Old saying
FOR the first time in his life, Sullivan Mintz, standing in his underwear, was doing a half-cascade with four balls. He was trying not to become so excited that he would overthrow a ball, or look down at his hands, or make any of the million tiny moves that would throw him off.
The half-cascade is the classic pattern of juggling, the balls crossing one another as they rise up and fall again into the juggler’s hands before being thrown once more. It is an elegant sight when done well, the juggler appearing to move as effortlessly as if he were raising a glass of water to his lips.
The truth is, just about anyone who works at it can learn to do a half-cascade with three balls. Kids, middle-aged men, grandmothers. But four balls — that’s something else entirely, a whole new level of difficulty. It takes a leap of courage and coordination, not to mention speed. It takes far more practice — weeks, sometimes months. But done well, it looks not only elegant, but wondrous.
Sullivan had started juggling six months ago, but it was only in the last five weeks that he had attempted four balls. And until this moment, Sullivan had messed up every time. Yet he had persisted, obsessively practicing before school, after school, at bedtime, any chance he got. He took his soft juggling balls to school and practiced at lunch, in an empty classroom where nobody would see him. Even when he wasn’t practicing, it felt as if he were, the balls rising and falling in his mind, his fingers opening and closing the way people sometimes moved their lips silently when they read.
Five weeks. Five weeks, every chance he got. And now he had it.
Sullivan, who was eleven years and seven months old, was once called by a teacher “the most average kid I’ve ever known.” And it was true that his grades were average across the board, his height was average, even his hair color was somewhere between blond and brown. The remark had been made to another teacher, but Sullivan and several other students had overheard, including a beefy kid named Samuel Patinsky, who was always on the lookout for somebody to torment. From that day forward, Samuel had started calling Sullivan “Mr. Average.” Sullivan despised the nickname, but he didn’t see what he could do about it. His friend Norval had suggested that he call Samuel Patinsky “Mr. Below Average.” But Sullivan had no desire to get punched in the face.
He had taken up juggling on the advice of Manny Morgenstern, one of the oldest residents of the Star-dust Home for Old People. Manny was eighty-one. He had suggested juggling one afternoon when Sullivan was feeling pretty unhappy about just about everything. Like having only one friend at school. And being taunted by Samuel Patinsky. And having the kinds of chores that other kids didn’t have. And having a mother who was known by the embarrassing title of the Bard of Beanfield. And having a little sister who everyone thought was adorable when, in fact, she was the slimiest, most scheming creature alive.
Manny might have suggested all kinds of things, such as learning guitar or taking karate lessons. He was trying to think of something that would improve Sullivan’s coordination and perhaps give him some confidence. And that wouldn’t cost his parents, whose business was having what is politely called a cash flow problem, very much money. But juggling just seemed right.
“Once you start,” Manny had said, “you’ll want to juggle all the time. Your parents are going to have to tell you to stop. You’re going to drive everybody crazy.”
“I really don’t think so,” said Sullivan. Manny, who was very thin and always wore a suit and tie and stood remarkably straight despite his age, had been standing in Sullivan’s doorway. He still had his hair, which was now the color of ivory, and a little goatee — an empire, Manny called it. Sullivan had been sitting on the end of his bed, sulking. Having an eighty-one-year-old man as your friend was kind of neat, but having him as your closest friend wasn’t neat. It was pathetic.
“Juggling would be just about the dorkiest thing I could do,” Sullivan had said. “It would be like wearing a sign that said YES, I REALLY AM THAT BIG A LOSER. Besides, I’d be terrible at it. All I’d manage to do is drop things on my head.”
And yet here he was, keeping four balls in the air at once. (Or so it looked. The balls were never actually all in the air at the same moment. There was always one in his hand, just caught or about to be thrown.) “Sullivan!” came a voice from behind him. “I’ve already called three times. Now, please come for dinner.”
The sound of his dad speaking made Sullivan miss a ball. The others rained down around him. Entering the room, his dad sighed as he helped pick them up. “Juggling again? Having a hobby is one thing, Sullivan. But having a hobby that interferes with your chores is another. You’re keeping forty-eight hungry people waiting.”
“Sorry, Dad. I guess I didn’t hear you.”
“And, Sullivan, put on some pants.”
Sullivan placed the balls in the bottom drawer of his dresser. It used to be his sweater drawer, but he had moved the sweaters up one, cramming them in with his shirts. Now the drawer held all his juggling stuff — larger and smaller balls, clubs, plates, and instructional books. On his walls he had posters, not of baseball players or bands or movie stars, but of great jugglers of the past. There was Salerno, whose real name was Adolf Behrend and who was known as the “gentleman juggler” for dressing in tails and using hats and canes. There was Enrico Rastelli, maybe the greatest juggler of all time, who was known to practice constantly for the sheer love of it. There was the American Bobby May, who used comedy and was famous for his returning-bounce ball tricks. Sullivan even had a poster of ancient Egyptians juggling, from a painting inside a tomb. None of them had been easy to find. It wasn’t as if you could walk into a poster shop and ask for the juggling section. He’d saved his small allowance and then ordered them from acrobatic supply companies that he found using the Internet at the public libra
Sullivan pushed the drawer closed and pulled on his cotton pants (his parents didn’t like him to wear jeans at dinner). He was about to leave his room when something caught his eye through the window.
Sullivan moved over to it, put his hands on the sill, and leaned forward. There was something unusual moving down the street. It was dusk and the street-lights hadn’t gone on yet, but in the gloom, moving past the worn-down houses on the other side, he could see a wagon. That would have been strange even if it wasn’t being pulled by a horse. And it wasn’t a wagon exactly, thought Sullivan. It was something else. A caravan. Yes, that was the word. An old-fashioned wooden caravan, the likes of which he’d never seen before except maybe in pictures in some book.
The caravan had large wheels that turned slowly as the horse pulled it along. There was a sort of ornate carving around the top and sides. It looked like it belonged in the time of western cowboy movies or in Victorian London. On the side, painted in fancy lettering, were the words Master Melville’s Medicine Show. And under the arc of words was a picture of a narrow glass bottle with a stopper in it. Around the bottle were stars and lightning bolts.
It was only after he read the words that Sullivan noticed the figure on a seat at the front of the caravan, holding the horse’s reins. The figure was hunched over and wore a big coat and a stovepipe hat. The face was hard to make out in the gloom, but Sullivan thought he saw a mustache and beard. There may have been somebody seated on the man’s other side — he couldn’t be sure.
The sight of the horse and driver and caravan was so strange that Sullivan felt as if he were looking backwards through time. But as he watched it pull out of sight, he heard another of his father’s exasperated calls, and the spell was broken. He ran out of the room.
SULLIVAN and his family lived on the top floor of a three-story house on the outskirts of the town of Beanfield. The other two floors made up the Stardust Home for Old People. To get to the dining room of the Stardust Home, Sullivan had to run along the hall and down two flights of stairs that creaked underfoot.
“Hurry up, Sullivan,” said his mom. “Grab a tray.” She rushed by, putting down hot dishes of breaded sole and cooked carrots and rice. A lot of the residents could eat only soft food, so most of the meals his father cooked — or rather, overcooked — were mushy. Sullivan hurried into the kitchen to load up a tray of his own. As he came out again, he saw a sheet of paper tacked to the bulletin board. He knew right away that his mother had written another poem. She wrote lots of poems, sometimes two or three a day, and she left them tacked on the board, or taped above the toilet in the bathroom, or pinned to a door. Once a week the local paper published one of her poems under the heading The Bard of Beanfield. But the residents of the Stardust Home were his mom’s most devoted readers. Sullivan stopped a moment to read her latest.
I’ll tell you then, I’ll tell you now,
of all the beasts, I love the cow.
With eyes so pretty and breath so sweet,
she gives us both our milk and meat.
But I do feel bad, I must admit,
when into a burger I have bit
and I think I hear a call — but who?
Could it be the sound of “moo”?
No wonder they were having fish tonight. His tray loaded, Sullivan headed into the dining room. There were eight round tables covered in white cloths, each with six people — six white-haired or bald, liver-spotted people, some with trembling hands, others with watery eyes or shifting dentures — waiting for their dinner. It used to surprise Sullivan how eager old people were to get their dinner, even if they never ate very much, but by now he was used to it.
Sullivan went straight to table number seven, where Manny Morgenstern was talking to Elsa Fargo and Rita Cooley, two widowed sisters who always sat on either side of him.
“It’s true. I really was a professional boxer,” Manny was saying. “Of course, this was sixty years ago. My job was to lose and make my opponent look good. Which I was happy to do. Except for this one fight. You see, the five Trepovsky sisters came to see me. And I didn’t want to look bad in front of them, because naturally, I was in love.”
“But which of the Trepovsky sisters were you in love with?” asked Elsa.
“I can’t remember. It was either sister number three or sister number five. My opponent was Hank ‘the Crusher’ Hopster and he looked like a gorilla, only he was hairier and uglier. I knew that my only chance was to surprise him with a knockout blow.”
“And did you?” asked Rita breathlessly. “Did you knock him out?”
“I guess I wasn’t as in love as I thought. I took one look at the Crusher, jumped over the rope, and ran out of the gym. I never boxed again. Instead, I got a job on a riverboat. Oh, Sullivan! I haven’t seen you all day. What have you been working on?”
“Four balls,” Sullivan said, putting down their plates.
“And?”
“Kept them up for twenty throws.”
“Brilliant. You’d better keep serving or you’ll have an angry mob of old fogies after you. Now, Elsa, Rita, did I ever tell you about the time I lived in Come By Chance, Newfoundland, testing rubber boots?”
Sullivan served two more tables and then sat down with his mother, his father (who was just taking off his apron), and his little sister, Jinny. “So how was school today?” his mom asked.
“Super great,” said Jinny, who was only in first grade. “I made up a poem, just like you do. It’s about a frog. Want to hear it?”
“No,” said Sullivan. Jinny was always getting attention from their parents. It wasn’t as if Sullivan wanted to be the center of attention, but still, it was annoying as anything. Now she was just sucking up to his poetry-loving mom.
“Of course we do. Go ahead,” his mother said.
Jinny put her hands together and made her face look serious. She recited:
A frog is the specialest thing in the world.
More than a brother, a nail, or a bird.
All the frogs love me, it really is true.
But not brothers, because they smell like —
“Now that’s enough, Jinny,” his dad interrupted.
But Jinny insisted on shouting the last word out.
“Glue!”
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re a genius, Jinny?” asked Sullivan. “Because if they did, they were lying.”
His dad sighed. “Can we have some peace at the table, please? Otherwise I’ll never be able to digest my food.”
Sullivan’s parents, Gilbert and Loretta, had been the managers of the Stardust Home for eight months. Before that they had run a diner, an old movie theater, a hair salon, and a beadery, and each time they had gone bankrupt. “Not,” Sullivan’s dad once admitted, “something to be really proud of.” His parents worked hard, they got along with people, they always provided a good service. But the Mintzes just weren’t competent at running a business. They paid too much for supplies and never charged enough for whatever they were selling. When people couldn’t pay, they gave the meal (or the ticket, or the haircut, or the beads) away for nothing.
The Mintzes had hoped that the Stardust Home would be different. For one thing, they could save on expenses by living in the house themselves. For another, they could use the skills that they had learned running the other businesses. They could cook for all the residents, show movies and other entertainments in the evening, even cut hair and hold art workshops. They liked old people, who had so many fascinating stories to tell, and thought that it would be good for the children to be around them. And now that Sullivan was older, he was able to help a lot more.
But as always, things hadn’t worked out as planned. For one thing, Sullivan’s parents found running a home full of old people exhausting. There was a never-ending stream of chores — shopping, cooking, laundry, cleaning, pills to dispense, bored or lonely or irritable residents to cheer up, doctor’s appointments to arrange. For another, Gilbert and Loretta seemed to attract people who had very small pensions or limited savings and could not afford to pay very much. In fact, if things continued on as they were now, the Stardust Home, like the other businesses, would soon go bankrupt. But this time, not only the Mintzes would suffer — all the residents would find themselves without a place to live.
