Chapter One
A gentle breeze blew through Roger's bedroom, upsetting his many papers. "Darn," he said as he closed the window. His room was the only place he could be safe from his annoying older sister, Sally. When she wasn't calling him Fathead and making his life miserable, she was talking on her phone, brushing her hair, or shopping at the mall with Mom's credit card. Roger couldn't stand her.
His room was filled with charts, diagrams, and a globe. Roger was fascinated with anything to do with science, his favorite topic being the weather. He spent his time building models, watching the Science Channel on television, and staring out his window daydreaming for hours.
Once, when he'd told Sally he'd like to be a meteorologist and chart weather patterns, she'd laughed and reminded him that whenever there was a thunderstorm he hid under his bed. "You're a big baby! What are you going to do if you're at work and there's a storm? Hide under your desk?"
An argument erupted. Roger called to Mom for support, but she'd been busy on the phone arranging another social club party, fingernail appointment, or whatever. "Now, Sweetie," Mom had said, "stop arguing with your sister! Can't you see I'm busy?"
Dad, however, was almost never home. When he was, he would be in his study working or talking on the telephone anyway. So whenever Roger and Sally fought -- which was often -- their dad automatically scolded Roger, even if it wasn't his fault. Which it never was.
"Hey there, Coach," Dad would say, "you know better than to fight with a girl."
It didn't seem to matter to Dad that even though Sally was a girl, she still was a head taller than Roger and beat him up every chance shegot. As long as no one was looking, that is.
The only things Roger's parents did together was go to cocktail parties and play golf or tennis at the club. When they did see each other, they acted so ridiculous. Roger found it especially nauseating when his mother called his dad Sweetie Pie and Pookums and other stupid names.
Last summer, they had sent Roger to soccer camp. He wasn't allowed to watch television, the food stunk, and all they did was play soccer. He begged them not to make him go, but Mom and Dad sent him anyway. They were going to Europe for six weeks and couldn't leave Roger and Sally alone.
"It's not like you're around much anyway," Roger protested.
He got punished for that, but later his dad bought him a train set. Not that that made up for anything -- it stayed in the box.
But he was pretty happy now that school was over, there was no camp, and he had the summer to dedicate to scientific pursuits. Roger actually used to like school, but that was last year at his old school in his old neighborhood. Everything changed when Dad got a promotion. Roger and his family had moved into a new house in a new neighborhood, where Roger hadn't cared much for anything but staying in and conducting experiments from a book he found, "Fun with Science. Everything he needed was right there in his bedroom. That was just how he liked it and he preferred not to leave.
The outdoors, he thought, was highly overrated.
On some weekends, the family had dinner together -- well, sort of. They all sat at the dinner table, eating some strange cuisine Mom had ordered in or prepared, but they never said a word to one another. That's not to say it was quiet, because it wasn't. Dadwould be on the phone with clients in the Far East, Mom would be watching the latest celebrity chef on her mini TV, Sally would be blasting her music, and Roger would be playing an obnoxiously loud video game. You couldn't hear yourself crunch on your batter-fried octopus legs, poached quail eggs, or whatever Mom had seen on television that week and thought they "simply must try."
"Mom?" Roger had once asked.
"Gwendoline. Remember, dear, call Mommy by her first name," Mom had said.
"Uh, Gwendoline, why don't you just cook regular food? You know, like hamburgers or barbecued chicken or something?"
She'd looked at Roger as if she were smelling a dead fish. "Honey," Mom had answered, "we don't have to eat that anymore."
On the nights Mom and Dad weren't home, Mom left little notes taped to the microwave with directions on heating the frozen dinners, or a pile of menus from restaurants that delivered. In fact, Roger ordered in so often, the deliverymen not only knew him by name but knew that he liked extra cheese on his pizza and his Szechuan chicken and cashews without the cashews. Mom also left lists of reasons why she wouldn't be home until way past his bedtime, so he'd better be in bed when she did.
The house they lived in was big. Well, bigger than the house Roger lived in for his first eight years. He'd had to share a bedroom with his sister then. Now she had her own room, with a phone no less, and he had become Fathead.
If there was one thing Mom and Dad loved to do more than talk on their phones, go to cocktail parties, and call each other silly names, it was to give presents. On birthdays or Christmas, Roger would get catcher's mitts, hockey masks, andfootballs.
"But I don't like sports. Dad."
It didn't matter.
"Hey there, Tiger, every boy should play sports."
And then, like clockwork, came the story of how Dad had been captain of both the football and basketball teams at once ...
Dan Yaccarino is an award-winning artist whose work has been featured in magazines, ad campaigns, and animation worldwide. His large-scale paintings and sculptures have been exhibited in galleries across New York City, Tokyo, and Rome. Mr. Yaccarino has written several books of his own and illustrated numerous books by other authors, including I Met a Bear and So Big!. His television show Oswald the Octopus airs on Nick Jr. He lives with his wife, Susan, and their son, Michael Dante, in New York City.