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They sat on the floor and drank their water. Gary had a wonderful time seeing Angeline again. He was a little afraid to ask her where she’d been when she hadn’t been in school. He didn’t want to spoil their good time, but he finally asked her.
She told him about Mrs. Hardlick’s note, and all about the aquarium, the four-eyed butterfly fish and the glass catfish, which you could see right through except for the bones.
“Aren’t you ever coming back to school?” Gary asked.
“I can’t,” said Angeline. “I tore up Mrs. Hardlick’s note and stuffed it under a bus seat. She told me I couldn’t come back to class until I bring the note back, signed by my father. Since I don’t have the note, I can’t ever go back.”
“I wish Mr. Bone would write me a note like that,” said Gary. “Then I could stuff it under a bus seat and I wouldn’t have to go to school.”
“Mr. Bone would never write a note like that,” said Angeline.
“No, I guess not.”
“Besides, if I had Mr. Bone for a teacher, I’d like school.”
“I guess,” said Gary. “But it was a lot better when you were there too.”
“I just don’t fit in at school,” said Angeline, “not like at the aquarium. At school, everyone calls me a freak.”
“They call me a goon,” said Gary.
“You call yourself that,” said Angeline.
“I guess I’ll always be a goon,” said Gary, “but someday everybody will be sorry they ever called you a freak. You’ll be somebody really great.”
“You never know.”
Fourteen
Mr. Bone Is on the Phone
Angeline watched the porpoises and dolphins, sea lions and seals, all playing together. She pressed her face up against the glass, squashing her nose. It would have looked funny to the dolphins, had they noticed, which they didn’t. None of the fish ever noticed her.
The scissors-tail fish cleanly cut their way through the water. The sea horses galloped around the bend. The turkey fish gobbled up their fish food. And beneath the silvery moonfish, the convict fish silently escaped to the other end of the tank.
She was on the outside here too, just like at school. Even in the circular room, with all the fish swimming around her, she was on the outside. She was in the middle, but on the outside.
At school, Gary stood under a tree, near where he and Angeline first met.
It used to be, before Angeline, Gary didn’t have any friends but he got along fine, telling jokes. Nobody laughed, but so what? The world spun around and he spun around too. But now he missed Angeline. Without her, his jokes, oddly enough, didn’t seem funny anymore.
He kicked the tree. He had told it a joke and it didn’t laugh. “What did the acorn say when it grew up? Geometry. Gee, I’m a tree.” It was even a tree joke.
“It’s not the tree’s fault,” said Miss Turbone.
Gary shrugged.
“I’m sure Angeline will be back soon,” said Miss Turbone. “Did you go see her, like I suggested?”
“She’s never coming back,” said Gary.
“Oh?”
He sighed, then told Mr. Bone all about it. He hoped Angeline wouldn’t be mad at him, but he told her everything, all about the note from Mrs. Hardlick, and how she’d been going to the aquarium every day. “And since she destroyed the note,” he concluded, “she can’t ever come back.” He looked sadly at Mr. Bone.
Miss Turbone didn’t say a word. She just winked at him.
The garbage truck pulled into the garbage truck garage. Abel brushed the top of his head and checked in the rearview mirror one last time for banana peels. “Mr. Bone, socks, smalayoo—I tell you, Gus, it just keeps getting stranger. I’m almost afraid to go home.”
