Cheez Whiz and I don't have too much to talk about anymore. My mom has an opinion about that. I didn't ask for her opinion or anything. She just says things when I don't expect them, like when I'm waiting my turn to get in the upstairs bathroom or like the other night when the pizza-guy was ringing the front doorbell.

Straight out of nowhere she said, "Sixth grade is hard. One friendship falls away but if you wait long enough, a new one grows."

"Sounds like a snake skin," I said, and I grabbed the TV clicker and I pretended I couldn‘t see the pizza-guy, fogging up the window, staring in a t me.

"Something like that," my mom said. Then she stood up. On her way to the door she stopped at my chair. "Monkey!" she said, with her hands on her hips. "Don't go and suffocate yourself!"

"Pay the pizza-guy," I said, and I kept my turtleneck pulled up over my mouth. My breath made the cotton feel hot and wet.

Mom patted my head. She went to the door finally. But there was no fun taste in that pizza. She'd only ordered it, she said, as a treat because I was acting so mopey.

It's the very end of September now and Cheez Whiz and I are back in school, but we haven't talked to each other at all. Not once, unless you count the time in gym when he tipped his head at me and I shrugged. After that I thought we might talk more but nothing's happened, even though my last name is Mercane and his is Nelson and our lockers practically touch. But I like my locker. We never had those in elementary school.

In elementary school Cheez Whiz and I were best friends. We used to walk to school with one arm around the other's shoulders. At least we did that for a week or so in fourth grade. We didn't do it at all in fifth grade because some kids started calling us girlfriend and boyfriend. That's not the way it was.

We were best friends, is all. He even named me and I named him. One summer day he noticed that I have toes like a monkey. Or just about. After he named me, Cheez Whiz started charging kids money to watch me take off my socks and pick things up. I can pick up paper clips, pencils, even coffee cups. Once, on a dare—for extra quarters—I twirled my little sister's baton.

Even my mom calls me Monkey. She picked it up from Cheez Whiz but I bet she'd quit saying it if she knew how he named me. My dad always calls me Jenny. He says the name "Jennifer" was good enough for my baptism so it's good enough now.

Cheez Whiz's real name is Ethan although I had almost forgotten that until last week when I heard him say it at the middle school. "Call me Ethan," he said, after some girl stopped by his locker and asked who he was. She also asked whether he wanted to skip class with her. The girl was older. A seventh grader. A couple of times, coming out of intramural soccer practice, I've seen her hanging out in a dark corner behind the school. She smokes pot. I've seen her. Watching her talk with Cheez Whiz at his locker made my eyes start to hurt.

I remember last year. Cheez Whiz's mom told me to stop calling him Cheez Whiz. That hurt my feelings, since I was the one who named him. "Jenny," she said, "you've gotta stop calling him that. I don't want everyone remembering the incident."

That's a grownup for you, always seeing the bad in things, finding something bad even when you name your best friend after a food. But Cheez Whiz was arrested because of the real Cheez Whiz™ and I guess I understand that his mom didn't want people to remember that. Cheez Whiz's mom was a psychic and one time she told me that if I just thought a thing, I couldn't help but suggest that people around me think it too.

My mind wasn't the only thing to spread the word, though. Everybody had read the story in the Police Log on the second page of our town paper. The paper didn't print his name or anything. Just "11 year old boy from Francis Circuit was brought into protective custody after spraying Cheez Whiz on the keys of six phones at the train station. Released to parents." I know the exact words because I still have the clipping hanging up on the bulletin board in my room. Everyone knew who it was about because there are only two houses on Francis Circuit. In the other house two old ladies live together.

Sure, what he did was weird, but Ethan, he explained it all to me. After he got out of jail. What happened is this: Ethan was making sculptures out of Cheez Whiz for his baby sister to eat. They were sitting on the floor in the TV room and his sister got so excited that she tried to spread some of the cheese on the TV screen. Ethan was trying to stop her. He had the can in one hand and was holding his sister back with the other when his dad came in from the kitchen. His parents had been yelling in there. The dad was crying and he took the baby from Ethan and then he said something about him and the mom maybe getting a divorce. The dad said, do you understand, and Ethan got up and ran out. He was all the way downtown before he noticed the can of Cheez Whiz in his hand. Ethan says it was like he woke up when a cop put a hand on his shoulder. He looked around and he saw that every phone at the train station was all cheezed-up. So he took off.

The cop ran after him, threw him in the squad car and then locked him up in a cell. My dad doesn't believe the locking up part of the story because he has friends who are cops and, he told my mom, that's just not the way it happens, with little kids. But that's what Ethan said, and I believed him.

Besides, that's the part of the story that made Ethan history and that's when I named him. He was totally popular for a while, what with being thrown in jail and all. Kids in our class even started naming themselves after foods. At least they did until Cheez Whiz told Bazooka Joe that a nickname only counted if somebody else made it up.

We started the Injustice Club after Ethan became Cheez Whiz and I became Monkey. It was a secret club. Every Wednesday afternoon Cheez would wait underneath my front porch till I finished my guitar lesson. When the teacher left I'd crawl underneath the porch to meet him. On rainy days we got to sit in the mud and that was a lot better than dry days. Sometimes I'd bring my guitar down and I'd show Cheez Whiz what I had just learned. Cheez always wanted to play Johnny Cash songs. He said his mom had been listening to those since she was a kid. Johnny Cash had been thrown in jail too.

We started the club because we didn't think cops should be able to throw kids in jail, even though jail was the thing that gave Ethan a chance to become an elementary school hero. Still, we used to plan all sorts of bad things to think about cops. If we thought about tying their shoelaces together, we thought maybe the cops would reach down and do it themselves. Because, like Cheez Whiz's mom, Cheez Whiz and I believed in telepathy.

If telepathy really worked I don't think things would have turned out the way they did, though. I would have known what was coming, for instance, and how to avoid it. And even right now, I might know what Cheez is thinking. I guess that's clairvoyance, though. But I don't know anything. I didn't even know that Cheez's mom moved away from him and his dad and the baby. I heard that from my own mom. She heard the story at the grocery store. I guess Cheez Whiz's mom stuck around for a few months after the incident and then one day, she got up and said that the wind was right for a move to California. My mom told us that story at the dinner table. She looked at my dad and said, "An ill wind."

There used to be a wooden sign outside of Cheez Whiz's house that had an eyeball painted on one end and a hand, palm up, on the other, and in between the words said: "Psychic Consultation." When Cheez Whiz and I took turns lying at a certain angle underneath the sign, and squinted, the eyeball would blink. It was the best kind of scary.

We weren't allowed inside the house when his mom had customers because she said we would make too much noise and we could interrupt her vibrations. Mrs. Cheez Whiz held consultations in their glassed-in sun porch. She usually pulled down some big brown blinds but sometimes she forgot to twist them shut. If we sat on our crooked oak tree in the back yard, on the two-foot wide plank that Cheez's dad nailed up there for us, special, we could see inside the room and we could watch his mom's face. Usually she sat on a couch facing the windows and the customer sat on a beach chair, his back to us.

I noticed that most of her customers were men. I asked Cheez about that. He said his mom said that was because grown-up men didn't talk to their mothers the way they should, or the way that grown-up girls do. He said that was why they needed a psychic.

Sometimes we watched with binoculars. They were mine. My mother gave them to me one day last winter because she felt bad after yelling at me for no reason at all. I didn't feel as bad as she did but I didn't mind getting the binoculars. They are great for watching football games and for staring in at people's windows.

Up in the tree, Cheez Whiz and I would take turns passing the binoculars back and forth. I always kept the strap around my neck, though, just so the binoculars wouldn't fall and break. All through fifth grade Cheez Whiz kept growing taller and clumsier. My mother noticed that first and then I couldn't help but notice. His fingers didn't seem to work nearly as well as my toes did. One afternoon he broke two jelly jar glasses at my house and my mom said, "Ethan, I think you can break a glass just by looking." That was mean, I thought, but Cheez just reached for three Chips Ahoy! Cookies, put them all in his mouth, and chewed for a while. After gulping he said, "I don't think so. That's telekinesis. That power doesn't run in my family."

One day, up in the tree, we sat a long time watching and we didn't see anything. The blinds were open a little bit so we could see the room. It was full of furniture but the furniture wasn't full of people. I craned my neck and looked at all the places I would look for my own mom from behind my own house. Our houses are shaped exactly alike so I knew what windows to look in. Finally I said, "Maybe they're both in the bathroom."

"We've only got one," Cheez Whiz said.

"Maybe the customer got a splinter in his foot or something. Maybe your mom is in the bathroom with him, helping him take it out. My mom does that for me," I said. I said it in a big rush, as if I wasn't lying. I didn't know what they were doing but I knew that probably a splinter had nothing to do with it.

"Maybe," Cheez Whiz said. He was probably thinking something different too. He dropped the binoculars. I hit him when he did that. He could have let them down gently. They're professional binoculars and they're really heavy. The way he dropped them snapped some hair out of my ponytail and made my neck hurt.

"Let's go to your house," Cheez Whiz said. He was out of the tree before I could even say, Okay! Then he yelled, RACE! after he'd already started running. I didn't even come close to catching him.

The first thing Cheez Whiz broke after that was my arm. He told my mom he didn't mean to do it but my mom, she saw the whole thing from the window overlooking the backyard while she was washing the lunch dishes. Later, when she stood outside the curtain pulled around my cot in the emergency room, I heard her tell my dad: "It sure as hell looked deliberate!" I heard her sigh and then she said, "Playing like that—with a girl!" My dad didn't say anything. I heard him clear his throat, though. He hates hospitals.

I liked having a cast. I don't know if Cheez Whiz broke my arm on purpose or not but I wonder about that on rainy days because that's when my arm aches, way up near my elbow.

We were just playing. It was two days after we didn't see anybody in the psychic consultation room and we were sitting in the oak tree again, swinging our legs and trying not to fall off our special seat. Cheez put his hand on my leg and said, "Shh—shh!" when a car pulled into the gravel driveway. We sat there, quiet, and then we heard a door slam. Even I knew it wasn't Cheez's dad. His dad has a truck that gives a big "pop" sound when he turns off the motor.

We jumped down and peeked around the corner. Same car as the other day and this time, we saw the man. He had a nice suit on and he walked like somebody's dad. Like dads you see everywhere, at the mall and in the park, in the city, and everywhere else. Looking down at his shoes as he walked over the lawn, jiggling some change way down deep inside his front pocket. He walked into the house, comfortable as could be. Didn't ring the doorbell or anything. Anybody would have thought he was Cheez Whiz's dad.

For a long time I've been trying to think about what I said next that made Cheez Whiz so mad. Sometimes you say things you just can't remember but when you try to remember them, you know it could have been something bad, all right. I think I said, "I guess that man needs to talk with a mother again." Was that so bad?

It must have been. Cheez Whiz went crazy. I don't live on Francis Circuit—I live on the street right behind, Franklin Place. All the streets in our neighborhood loop around each other and them all start with the letter "F." To get to Cheez Whiz's house I just used to walk out my back door, through my back yard and straight into his. But when I said that thing about his mother, whatever it was I said, I took one look at him and started running. I didn't run into my own back yard straight away. I should have, because maybe my arm wouldn't hurt me on rainy days if I'd been smart enough to do that. Instead, I ran all around the "F" streets, with Cheez Whiz chasing me. Once or twice he got close enough to pound my back with his fists. But I was running fast enough to get ahead. Being scared makes you do that, even if you've never ever been scared of that somebody before.

Finally I got smart enough to run home. I ran right through the bushes in the side yard and later my mom touched the scratches on my face and said, "You could have lost an eye, doing that." All moms are the same when it comes to eyes.

In my back yard Cheez Whiz chased me in circles. When I was too tired to run anymore I just stood still. I didn't think Cheez Whiz would hurt me for real. Even when he jumped up on the picnic table I didn't think so. I looked back at him for a second and then I started to walk away, toward my own sun porch. I could see my mom watching me. I almost waved to her. But then Cheez Whiz landed on my back, from way high up, and even through the kitchen window I could hear my mom yell, "MONKEY!"

I don't remember what my mom said to Cheez Whiz once she got to me. It was something bad, though. I couldn't have cared less at the time because I was lying on the ground with my arm twisted up behind me. It was broken down the bottom and pulled out of its socket up the top too. The doctor said that was because Cheez Whiz somehow jumped me, pulled, and twisted, all at the same time. Later, after it didn't hurt so much, I thought it was pretty interesting that one big jump screwed me up so bad.

After a week of lying around the house, Cheez Whiz dropped by to see me. I was watching an old Full House episode. I sat up on the couch, surprised my mom even thought about letting him in. I could hear them talking real low from two rooms away. My mom said, "All right, Ethan. I'll go see." And then she came and asked me if I wanted any company.

"No," I said, turning back to the kids on TV.

Now I wish my mom had been smart enough to let him see me. Sometimes you do need a mom to fix things up for you.

He went away. And pretty soon it was summertime and he went away for real. I don't know where he went because over the summer, my dad started doing the grocery shopping and dads only seem to get food at the grocery store, not stories.

The day I got my cast off I thought a lot about Cheez Whiz and I wondered if he was thinking about me. My arm looked old after the doctor sawed off all the plaster. I couldn't move it around much, either. At first. It looks young again now and now I can swing it over my head and everything. But sometimes I feel old all over.

My mom seems to know this. At home she says things like, "Feeling low, old girl?" She smiles at me nicely. I don't particularly like it when she calls me "old girl" though, so I hang my head and count the seconds till she says, "Monkey?" in a high voice with a question at the end. It's the same way that she says, "Honey?" to my dad.

"The future will bring good things to you, Monkey," my mother said the other day. "Good things that you have never imagined." I nodded my head. I didn't know what she was talking about but I wanted to think that she was right. That night my mother touched my forehead and stared at me for a minute, as if I had a fever. I didn't mind; her palm was soft and warm.

"When is the future?" I managed to ask. I didn't want to start crying but I couldn't help myself. My mother nodded as if she knew the answer. "It'll come," she said, "it'll come.

But it's not here yet. Just the other day I saw Cheez Whiz after school. I heard a girl yell, "OUTTA THE WAY, JENNY!" I jumped a little because not too many kids know either one of my names down at the middle school, even though I might want them to. I turned around. It was the seventh grader who had yelled. But I didn't see her at first. She was sitting behind Cheez Whiz on a big pink bike. A girl's bike. No cross bar. Cheez Whiz was the person I saw first. His face was all red. He was standing up on the pedals, pumping, and the girl was right behind him, on the seat. Her legs stuck out at the sides. I just stood there. They were headed straight for me.

Cheez Whiz swerved, went right off the curb and into the street, even though there's a lot of traffic late in the afternoon. When they went off the curb, the girl's rear-end flew up in the air. She laughed when they landed and then she let go of Cheez Whiz's shoulders for just a second. She waved her arms in the air.

At the Safeway grocery store they took a left. There's not much down there. Except the river. Older kids like to go down there after school to roll around together near the bushes. Guys and girls, I mean. I know because once, way back in elementary school, Cheez Whiz and I went down there. We stole my little sister's scooter, on the spur of a moment. I had grabbed it away from her in our driveway and Cheez Whiz laughed. I put one foot on the baseboard and I pushed off with the other. Cheez Whiz took a running leap and landed right behind me. We were close together, like one person, almost. He held onto my shoulders and we pushed off again, together this time, and we sailed right down the street. My sister followed, hollering, for a little bit, but we were too fast for her.

Once we got out of our "F" neighborhood it was downhill all the way to the river. We sat down on a little wooden bridge and watched people rolling around for a while. We talked about how stupid they looked. But my mother hadn't gotten mad at me yet, so I didn't have my binoculars, so we didn't see that much. And because we were still best friends back then, Cheez Whiz and I took turns pushing the scooter uphill, all the way home.

Volume 1, Issue 2, 2007