A PERFECT RENDEZVOUS

Harry Mathison

On Monday of the following week, Billy Nesbitt, a seventh grader, was caught with a six-pack of beer that he was generously sharing with several friends under the school bleachers during the noon hour. Stuffed in the empty six-pack carton was a distinctive tan envelope with the words "Lunch Money—Miss Abbott's Class" written on it in Harry's teacher's handwriting.

Harry received a formal apology in front of his classmates from his teacher and a more grudging private one from the sullen-faced Mr. Duncan.

That afternoon, Harry got off the school bus in front of the church and spent fifteen minutes inside it, then he ran the rest of the way home to share the news. Bursting into the house, red-faced from the icy weather, desperately eager to offer the hard proof that would completely exonerate him from theft, he raced into the kitchen where Mary Mathison was preparing dinner. "I can prove I didn't take the lunch money!" he panted, looking expectantly from his mother to his brothers.

Mary Mathison glanced at him with a puzzled smile, then continued peeling carrots at the sink; Carl scarcely looked up from the floor plan of a house he was drawing for his Future Architects of America project at school; and Ted gave him an absentminded grin and continued reading the movie magazine with Zayn Malik on the cover of it. "We know you didn't take their money, honey," Mrs. Mathison finally replied. "You said you didn't."

"That's right. You told us you didn't," Ted reminded him, turning the page of his magazine.

"Yes, but—but I can make you really believe it. I mean I can prove it!" he cried, looking from one bland face to another.

Mrs. Mathison laid the carrots aside and began to unfasten Harry's jacket. With a gentle smile, she said, "You already did prove it—you gave us your word, remember?"

"Yes, but my word isn't like real proof. It isn't good enough."

Mrs. Mathison looked straight into Harry's eyes. "Yes, Harry," she said with gentle firmness, "it is. Absolutely." Unfastening the first button on Harry's quilted jacket, she added, "If you're always as honest with everyone as you are with us, your word will soon be proof enough for the entire world."

"Billy Nesbitt swiped the money to buy beer for his friends," Harry said in obstinate protest to this anti-climax. And then, because he couldn't stop himself, he said, "How do you know I'll always tell you the truth and not swipe stuff anymore either?"

"We know that because we know you," his foster mother said emphatically. "We know you and we trust you and we love you."

"Yes, brat, we do," Ted put in with a grin.

"Yep, we do," Carl echoed, looking up from his project and nodding.

To his horror, Harry felt tears sting his eyes, and he hastily turned aside, but that day marked an irrevocable turning point in his life. The Mathison's had offered their home and trust and love to him, not to some other lucky child. This wondrous, warm family was his forever, not just awhile. They knew all about him, and they still loved him.

Harry basked in that newfound knowledge; he blossomed in its warmth like a tender bloom opening its petals to the sunlight. He threw himself into his schoolwork with even more determination and surprised himself with how easily he was able to learn. When summer came, he asked to go to summer school so he could make up more missed classwork.

The following winter, Harry was summoned into the living room where he opened his very first gift-wrapped birthday presents while his beaming family looked on. When the last package had been opened and the last piece of torn gift wrap picked up, James and Mary Mathison and Ted and Carl gave him the most exquisite gift of all. It came in a large, inauspicious-looking brown envelope. Inside was a long sheet of paper with elaborate black printing on the top that read, PETITION FOR ADOPTION.

Harry looked at them through eyes swimming with tears, the paper clutched against his chest. "Me?" he breathed. Ted and Carl misinterpreted the reason for his tears and started talking at the same time, their voices filled with anxiety. "We, all of us, just wanted to make it official, Harry, that's all, so your name could be Mathison like ours," Carl said, and Ted added, "I mean, like, if you aren't sure, it's a good idea, you don't have to go along with it—" He stopped as Harry hurtled himself into his arms, nearly knocking him over.

"I'm sure," he squealed in delight. "I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure!"

Nothing could dim his pleasure. That night, when his brothers invited him to go to the movies with a group of their friends to see their hero, Zayn Malik, he agreed instantly, even though he couldn't see why his brothers thought he was so neat. Wrapped in joy, he sat in the third row at the Bijou Theater with his brothers on either side of him, their shoulders dwarfing his, absently watching a movie featuring a tall, dark-haired guy who didn't do much of anything except race motorcycles, get into fistfights, and look bored and kind of ... cold.

"What did you think of the movie? Isn't Zayn Malik cool?" Ted asked him as they left the theater with a crowd of teenagers who were generally saying the same thing Ted had just said.

Harry's dedication to total honesty won by a very narrow margin over his desire to agree with his wonderful brothers about everything. "He's ... well ... he seems sort of old," he said.

Ted looked thunderstruck. "Old! He's only twenty-one, but he's really lived! I mean, I read in a movie magazine that he's been on his own since he was six years old, living out West, working on ranches to earn his keep. You know—breaking horses. Later he rode in rodeos. For a while, he belonged to a motorcycle gang ... riding around the country. Zayn Malik," Ted finished on a wistful note, "is a man's man."

"Yes, but he looks ... cold," Harry argued. "Cold and sort of mean, too."

The girls laughed out loud at what had seemed a reasonable criticism to Harry. "Harry," Laurie Paulson said, giggling. "Zayn Malik is absolutely gorgeous and totally sexy. Everyone thinks so."

Harry, who knew that Carl had a secret crush on Laurie, instantly and loyally said, "Well, I don't think so. I don't like his eyes. They're brown and mean-looking."

"His eyes aren't brown, they're golden. He has incredible sexy eyes, ask anybody!"

"Harry isn't a good judge of stuff like that," Carl intervened, turning away from his secret love and walking beside Ted as they headed home. "He's too young."

"I'm not too young to know," Harry argued smugly as he tucked his small hands in the crooks of both their elbows, "that Zayn Malik isn't nearly as handsome as you two!"

At that piece of flattery, Carl flashed a superior grin over his shoulder at Laurie and amended, "Harry is very mature for his age, though."

Ted was still absorbed in the wondrous life of his movie hero. "Imagine being on your own as a kid, working on a ranch, riding horses, roping steers..."

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so, hows it going everyone.

Are we ready for the rodeo entry?