Anything You Want by Geoff Herbach Page A

to calc like I should’ve, I went to the computer lab to check my email. She’d written me a note.
    Hey, man, I’m so tired right now. Mom and Dad are taking me to the doctor. It’s just a regular check-up. Don’t worry. I’ll call you later.
    The thought of Maggie in a paper hospital gown, all alone, her bare butt hanging loose for all to see, getting diagnosed without me, her husband who is not yet her husband, nearly caused me to run over to Southwest Municipal Hospital Clinics so that I could be by her side.
    But, no…no. My mom used to tell Darius not to go off “half-cocked.” I had no idea what that meant, but my mom knew everything. And I’d had that dream the night before about the chicken statue, right?
    Chicken statue.
    During the hearty lasagna dinner at the dinner table in the Corrigans’ home, Mrs. Corrigan’s constant stink eye scared me. She was a scary person not just for regular reasons. Here’s the truth: Mrs. Corrigan actually had access to curses, wooden chickens, and magical knowledge from the nation of Bali.
    Maggie told me about it earlier in the summer because I had picked up and played with this wooden chicken statue thing that was on a side table at Maggie’s house. “Put that down!” Maggie said. “Never touch that chicken!”
    â€œWhat?” I said. “Why?”
    â€œWhen she was in college, Mom ran away with her crazy anthropology professor. She followed him to Bali, and she learned all about witchcraft and casting curses on people she hates.”
    â€œSo?” I said. “She doesn’t hate me, right?”
    â€œThat chicken is part of the witchcraft,” Maggie said.
    I put the chicken back down very carefully.
    â€œYour mom ran away with her professor?” I asked. “How old was he?”
    â€œSh,” Maggie had said. “Don’t ever mention that again.”
    But I was very interested in the story, so I had asked Maggie more about it later. Mrs. Corrigan wasn’t married yet. At the time, she was just some young girl named Danielle. Her professor was fifty-two! Danielle’s own mother had to go to Bali and pay the police to basically kidnap her back. It took Mrs. Corrigan a whole year to get her head on straight and go to another college. That was where she met young Reggie Corrigan and got pregnant with Mary.
    Point is that Mrs. Corrigan knew Balinese witchcraft, dingus. Put that together with my bad dream about the wooden chicken statue and my own sweet mom’s warning to Darius about going off “half-cocked,” and I lost my nerve. I worried that if I tried to intervene and go to the clinic, maybe I’d wake up with my eyes pecked out by a Balinese chicken (which was part of the dream I had the night before). Terrifying!
    In retrospect, I believe I was overthinking. This overthinking caused a larger crisis. Going off half-cocked can cause lots of trouble too. What’s the right way to be? Life can be perplexing.
    Anyway, instead of running out of the building, I ran to calc. I was late, and Mr. Edwards was handing back our quizzes from earlier in the week. He looked at me, shook his head, and pointed at my grade. I got a fat effenheimer on it.
    â€œI always thought you were a math guy, Taco” Mr. Edwards said. “You might not have the chops for calculus though.”
    Never before had I gotten an effenheimer on anything. Yet there it was, red and gory, scrawled across the top of the page. I choked up.
    A few minutes later, Mr. Edwards gave us a problem to work on and left the classroom.
    Brad Schwartz leaned over to me. “You’re coming undone, dude,” he whispered.
    â€œTruth,” I said.
    â€œSharma and I’ll tutor you this weekend,” Brad said. “We’ll get your wheels back on track.”
    â€œOnly if Maggie doesn’t need me,” I said.
    â€œMan, Taco. What’s up with you two?” Brad asked.