“Does Gert know?”
“A Viking’s weapon belongs to the Viking and is nobody else’s business,” I said.
“Exactly,” AK47 said.
Big Todd is the person who runs the Community Center programs and gets us organized. He is tall and skinny and gay. His boyfriend, Noah, sometimes comes by to play basketball with us in the gym. He and Big Todd met playing basketball in college. Once I said to Gert that he should play basketball with Big Todd and Noah, since he was almost as good at basketball as he was at football, but Gert does not like faggots, a word that means gay but in a bad way, and is one of the words that AK47 told me never, ever to use.
Todd was the only gay person I had ever met in real life, and he was also one of the nicest people I had ever met, gay people or other people. I didn’t really understand how he had sex, since neither him or his boyfriend had vaginas. AK47 told me not to worry about it.
“They do just fine,” she said, and I know that when she says things like that, it’s time to stop asking questions.
The Community Center has big windows in front, and brown squares up the side that make me think of the Jenga game. A lot of different kinds of people go to the Community Center. There is a big gymnasium in it, and machines that can help you build muscles. Originally Gert used to go in there to work on his muscles while I was with Big Todd and Hamsa and Yoda and Marxy.
Inside of the classroom there are a bunch of orange and blue chairs, the plastic ones, and a whiteboard that used to be a chalkboard. It smells good. Everyone likes to smell the board, especially when someone uses the markers. Big Todd keeps an eye on who smells the markers for the board too long.
There are always a bunch of parents and brothers and sisters who wait for the class to start. I used to wish that Gert waited for class to start, like the other parents and brothers and sisters. Now, especially after my birthday, I felt like heroes needed to do things without parents and brothers and sisters. Also, people like Hamsa and Yoda and I did not have people waiting for us, since we came on the bus, which means we’re poor compared to other people. We do not have to pay for the bus or have cars, because it is a free service.
The people who were not part of the class left when Big Todd clapped his hands and asked us to get into pairs.
Yoda and Hamsa chose each other. I looked around for Marxy, but he had not arrived yet. Usually Hamsa, Yoda, Marxy, and I trade with each other, since we are all friends and we don’t do many weird things, so practicing isn’t very hard. It was hot in the room and the air conditioner in the window shot wind into my face as I went around, trying to find someone who was not weird.
Everyone had paired up except for me.
“Do you have a partner?” Big Todd asked.
“I am waiting for Marxy,” I said.
“Well, we can’t wait any longer.” Big Todd looked around. “There’s Sarah-Beth. Sarah-Beth, do you have a partner?”
Sarah-Beth shook her head. She was standing away from everyone, by the window but not looking outside. Even though she has been to the Community Center a hundred times, she is still afraid of everyone and acts weird. She is the worst person to be social with. She has Down syndrome like Hamsa, but is two years older than him. She has long hair that she plays with all the time. There are places on her head where the hair is gone and she is bald like an old man, only her hair is very long in other places.
Big Todd told Sarah-Beth that I was going to be her banking person and to join the others, who had already started sitting down.
“Okay,” I said to Sarah-Beth. We sat across from each other at the table. “No being weird and putting things in your mouth. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sarah-Beth said. She sat down on her hands to show me that they weren’t going to put her hair in her mouth.
Big Todd told us to pretend that we were in a bank and that we wanted to give them a check, which is a slip of paper that has money in it. Not actually in it, but when you give it to the bank, the bank puts money into your bank account. The last few times we practiced being social we talked about money and bank accounts, and how important it is to understand money if we all wanted to be independent adults.
“Think about banks as the place where all the money you make gets held for you,” Big Todd said. “That way you don’t always have to carry it around with you.”
I raised my hand. “So it’s like a treasure hoard,” I said.
“A what now?”
I explained that whenever Vikings defeated other tribes or monsters, like dragons, in battle, they took the treasure and kept it locked up in a hoard. “They don’t carry around the treasure, but if they ever need it, it’s there.”
Big Todd snapped his fingers. “Exactly. It’s like a treasure hoard. And debit cards let you take out some of the treasure from your hoard, your bank account, without having money with you all the time. Now, checks are pieces of paper where you promise to give some of your treasure to someone else.”
“And what happens if a check bounces?” I asked, since Dr. Laird had said that Gert’s check had bounced.
“It means you promised someone treasure from your hoard but you didn’t have as much as you promised in the check.”
So that meant that Gert’s hoard did not have enough money to pay Dr. Laird, which was why the check promising treasure to Dr. Laird so that he could help me bounced. I put my hand up again.
“Last one, Zelda,” Big Todd said. “Things’ll become clearer as we go along.”
“Where do you get more treasure for your hoard?”
“From jobs, dummy,” someone said from across the room. “Can we bank now?”
Big Todd shot over a dirty look.
* * *
Sarah-Beth stared at the piece of paper in front of her. It was supposed to be the check. There was a plastic box with a bunch of plastic cards that were supposed to be fake debit cards. Sarah-Beth and I had to share a debit card, which was bad because I knew she would start chewing on it. So I got the card first.
When I pretend-asked her to give me money from my bank account, using the plastic card from the basket, Sarah-Beth did not answer. Her mouth was full of her orange hair.
“I would like to deposit this check, using the bank account with my debit card,” I said, and showed her the check, and also the plastic card.
Instead of being a banker, she closed her eyes and plugged her nose like she was going underwater.
That wasn’t what people did in banks, I told her. Her eyes popped open.
“You don’t know everything,” she said. “My sister plays with her hair, and there’s nothing wrong.”
I raised my hand and tried to wave to Big Todd, who was going around listening to the banking happen.
“Good,” Big Todd said to another pair at the other end of the table. “Good banking, everyone.”
My hand waved like crazy until he saw me and came over. “Who is working for the bank, and who is bringing in the check?” he asked.
“Sarah-Beth just eats her hair.”
Big Todd asked Sarah-Beth which she wanted to be, the banker or the customer. Her hair was covered in spit, and her hands were covered in spit too. If I worked in a bank, I wouldn’t want to touch a check with spit on it, and if I was bringing a check into a bank, I wouldn’t want spit to get on my check. I said that and Big Todd said to take it easy.