was buzzing. He switched it off and fell back onto his bed. He enjoyed feeling more or less normal. Birds sang outside. Sunlight fell in through the window and landed silently on the floor in a brilliant yellow square. It was a relief to be at home.
He reached up and touched the sticker. Still there. He tugged on it and sighed when it pulled at the skin of his forehead. An adventure for sure. Oh, yes.
* * * * * * *
Rodney thought over the dream while he got ready for school. The dream was obviously trying to tell him something his brain was not prepared to understand. Maybe the sticker was some kind of training device. Training for what? By whom? The possibilities were mind-boggling, and he was perfectly willing to let his mind be boggled. But the explanation had better be good. He hoped he wasn’t giving up his kazoo for just any wimp adventure.
He was about to walk out the front door when he remembered that the sticker was still in the middle of his forehead. Teachers and fellow students would, no doubt, ask embarrassing questions.
He opened the closet and studied the hats that hung inside the door. Hanging there was another Captain Conquer leather flying helmet and a paper bag with holes for the eyes and mouth—the traditional headgear of the Tuatara. Also, there was a top hat with a card stuck into the band. The card said “In this style, 10/6.” Farther along were a fedora, a slick yellow rain hat, and a shapeless knit thing you could pull down over your ears when the weather turned cold.
The knit hat would have been perfect, but the weather was too warm and he would have attracted suspicion. Rodney took the fedora and closed the closet door so that he could look at himself in the mirror on the other side. If he pulled the brim down far enough, he couldn’t see the sticker. Not very well, anyway. If it was good enough for Humphrey Bogart, thought Rodney, it was good enough for him.
The bus ride wasn’t so bad. Nobody cared whether or not a kid wore a hat. But once he got to school, he was not so lucky. He hadn’t taken two steps onto the playground when he was stopped by Mr. Trowsinger, a stoop-shouldered, white-haired old guy who taught history.
“No hats in school,” Mr. Trowsinger said in his feathery old voice.
“I have sort of a medical condition,” Rodney said. Mr. Trowsinger folded his arms, waiting. He’d been teaching history since before Rodney was born, and he’d heard everything. Twice, maybe.
Rodney removed his hat, and Mr. Trowsinger bent to get a close look at the sticker. He lifted a hand and said, “May I?”
“Of course.”
As gently as if he were touching the wing of a butterfly, Mr. Trowsinger tugged at the sticker. When it didn’t come off, he grunted and crossed his arms again.
“It’s feeding medication into my bloodstream. Through my skin.”
“You have a note from your parents?”
“My parents are away at a Chocolatron sales conference.”
“I see.”
Mr. Trowsinger seemed to buy what Rodney was selling. He took Rodney to his classroom and wrote a note giving him permission to wear a hat in school until the sticker came off. Rodney was delighted with the note. It made everything else a lot easier. For one thing, it gave him an excuse to sit out gym class in the bleachers. His math teacher made a joke about hats and detectives, but otherwise left him alone. Mr. Weinschweig didn’t seem to care one way or another.
When nobody was looking, Rodney stuffed tiny bits of Kleenex into his ears. A pretty girl in a business suit sat down next to him and nodded in his direction. She was Nutti Phil, the second kazoo. The Kleenex didn’t do much good. When Nutti hummed into her kazoo to warm up, it was all Rodney could do not to pull the vicious thing out of her mouth.
Mr. Weinschweig began to conduct; Rodney put his kazoo to his mouth, but he did not play. He gritted his teeth and tried not to listen to Nutti playing next to him. To Rodney, her playing sounded like somebody cutting sheet tin with an electric saw. The rest of the orchestra sounded just fine. He barely managed to get through the class without jumping around and tearing out his hair.
Fourth period was history. Mr. Trowsinger just nodded at Rodney when he came in wearing the hat. The period after that was lunch.
Waldo was reading a chemistry book when Rodney sat down on the bench next to him. As Rodney took a peanut butter sandwich from a plastic bag, Waldo glanced at him, nodded, and went back to his book. “Nice hat,” he said.
“Thanks,” Rodney said. “Want to see what’s under it?”
Waldo closed his book on a finger and contemplated Rodney. “I’ve seen your head,” Waldo said.
Rodney showed him the sticker and told him the whole strange story. “I really miss the kazoo.” He sighed and brushed crumbs from his lap. He said, “The funny part is that I’m scared of two opposite things. On the one hand, I’m scared that the sticker is the beginning of an adventure. I don’t know if I can handle it.”
“You can handle it.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re handling it already.”
“Huh,” said Rodney, feeling a little better and enjoying the feeling while he chewed. But the realization came to him that adventures always got bigger, never smaller. The confident feeling went away.
“What’s the other thing you’re scared of?”
Rodney swallowed and said, “I’m scared that these stickers are just some crazy advertisement for glue, not the beginning of an adventure at all. I’ll end up like Mr. Weinschweig, writing the same movement of a symphony over and over again because I’m scared to continue. End up being jealous of my parents forever and hating myself because I know it’s all my fault. And not even having the comfort of the kazoo anymore.”
“Would it be all your fault?”
Rodney shrugged. His mood was gray and foggy. He’d felt like that before, just recently, though he couldn’t quite remember when.
Waldo pulled on the sticker gently, as Mr. Trowsinger had earlier. “And they call me weird,” Waldo said.
Rodney put the hat back on and chewed his peanut butter sandwich.
Without looking up, Waldo said, “I can get it off for you.”
“How?”
“Science,” Waldo said mysteriously.
They planned to meet in the boys’ bathroom after school. At that hour, nobody was likely to bother them.
* * * * * * *
The boys’ bathroom was down a short flight of steps. It was cold and full of chemical and biological smells. A light scent of cigarette smoke hung over the stalls. Waldo was studying himself in the mirror when Rodney came in. “We’re alone,” Waldo said. “I checked.”
“Good. What are you going to do?”
Waldo took a short, very sharp knife from his backpack and Rodney stared at it in horror. “That doesn’t look very scientific to me.”
“I use this knife in biology class. Surgery is very scientific.”
“Don’t touch me with that. You use it to cut up worms and frogs and stuff.”
“Get a grip, Rodney. I sterilized it before I came down here. Besides, I’m not going to cut you. Just the sticker.”
Rodney looked at Waldo dubiously. Just how badly did he want the sticker removed? It might fall off by itself that evening. On the other hand, it might be a permanent exhibit on Rodney’s forehead for years. “All right,” he said.
“Come over here, then.”
Rodney walked to Waldo and put his books and kazoo case on the floor. “Try to slice it off without killing me,” Rodney said.
Waldo