Liar & Spy

Georges and the man travel to the fourth floor together. Georges is briefly relieved to find that the man talks, because Safer claimed that Mr. X never does. Georges says that he’s feeding the Koffers’ cat—the other family that lives on the fourth floor. The man says he didn’t know they had a cat; he also says that he could use someone to feed his dog while he’s traveling. Georges realizes that something is “off,” but he’s too worried about Safer to put the pieces together. The man stops in front of Mr. X’s door; Georges walks to the Koffers’ door and claims to have forgotten to bring the key. Mr. X offers to give him the spare he has, but Georges says he has to go downstairs anyway to get the special plant food. Georges thinks Safer must have had plenty of time to hide by now and flees back downstairs. When he reaches his apartment, the phone is ringing. It’s Safer, who claims to be standing by Mr. X’s front door.

This is when Georges figures that Safer made up the whole investigation. He sneaks upstairs to Safer’s apartment and knocks softly. Candy lets him in, and he quietly walks to the living room, where he finds Safer speaking into the phone, trying to get Georges’s attention by saying he’s ready to “make his move” and leave Mr. X’s apartment. Georges accuses Safer of being a liar and asks if Safer had fun watching him get all worked up over nothing. Safer says that it was always just a game and wonders why Georges is so upset. Georges tells Safer that he gives him the creeps and stomps away, slamming the front door on the way out.

Georges calls his father and offers to cook lunch. He makes scrambled eggs once his father gets home and then tells his father everything that’s been going on with Safer and Mr. X. His father suggests that maybe Safer was just playing a game and that all the investigation antics were part of his own way of being friends. Then, Georges tells his father everything that’s been happening with Dallas, Carter, and the taste test. His father is upset that Georges hadn’t told him about the bullying earlier, saying that there are ways to make the boys’ bad behavior stop. Georges says he knows it doesn’t matter because it’s just the dots of life; but his father counters that maybe the dots (the small things) don’t matter in the long run, but they do matter in the moment.

His father promises to go to the school in the morning to talk to administrators. Georges almost says yes, but then figures out his own plan and explains it to his father (but not the reader). His father agrees on the condition that Georges will tell him if he needs help. They make milkshakes and watch baseball. That night, Georges leaves his mom a note: “MISS U MIS U MIS U” (150). In the morning, he finds a new message: “ME TOO PICKLE” (150).

In science class on Monday, Georges tells Bob English about his plan for the taste test. Bob English likes the plan and draws on Georges’s hand with blue Sharpie. They share the plan with the former members of the Blue Team, who are scattered all over the cafeteria at lunch. Georges explains the plan to everyone; they all like it and allow Bob to draw on their hands with the blue Sharpie. After school, Bob walks Georges to Bennie’s and declares that they’re a team now. When Georges gets home, his father is there and the apartment smells like cooking food. Safer doesn’t call, there’s no note under the door, and there’s no note beneath his pillow when he goes to bed.

Mr. Landau starts talking about the taste test in science class on Tuesday. The kids are all excited. Carter starts chanting “Taste-test”; Dallas chants “G-test” and points at Georges (154). Mr. Landau threatens to kick Dallas and Carter out of class. Bob English writes a note while Mr. Landau lectures—it says, “Reemembur: Blu Teem stiks together. Smial no madder whut. No wadder” (154). Georges passes it on to the closest Blue Team member, who still has a blue dot drawn on her palm. Mr. Landau gives instructions and says that statistically, there should be at least two people who cannot taste the chemical.

Jason gets the note from David Rosen, another blue team member. Georges is worried that Jason will show it to Carter or Dallas, but he doesn’t. Mr. Landau passes out the paper strips with the chemical on them. Georges puts it on his tongue and tastes the bitter chemical, but he pretends that he doesn’t. None of the Blue Team gets up and runs for the water—not even Jason, who stays in his seat and gives David Rosen a thumbs-up. Mr. Landau counts 15 non-tasters. He says this is unusual and that they’ve turned out to be an interesting group of people. Dallas looks over from the water fountain and mutters, “Idiotic” (157). At lunch, Bob English and Georges sit together. Chad, Anita, and Paul approach and tell Bob that Chad’s blue-Sharpie dot needs to be touched up. Bob asks why, and Anita says that they’re a team and they should keep the dots. Bob fills in the smudged dot; Georges thinks maybe something has changed as a result of the taste test after all.

When Georges gets home, Safer is sitting cross-legged in one of the lobby chairs. He calls out to Georges and says that he never did explain the story behind his name. He says that when he was a little kid, he worried about everything. He was very afraid of the dark, and his mother would always tell him goodnight the same way: “Good night, sleep tight, you’re safe” (161). A minute later, Safer would call out, “Safer! Safer!” (161). He says that his name is Safer because he’s afraid of everything. Georges asks him if there’s anything he’s not afraid of; Safer says he’s not afraid of dogs. Safer asks if Georges is afraid of anything. Georges thinks there is one thing he’s “horribly, disgustingly afraid of” (162), but he doesn’t say it out loud. In Georges’s apartment, Safer explains that Mr. X’s real name is Dan and that he’s Dan’s dog walker. He apologizes for the game and says he thought they were having fun. He says that the game was kind of Georges’s idea because he wrote “What time?” on the Spy Club sign, which Pigeon had put up five years earlier. He says he was glad when Georges came to the meeting and tells him that he’s welcome to come up for dinner. Georges tells him to leave.

There’s a note from Georges’s dad in the kitchen that says he’s visiting mom at the hospital. Georges takes the America’s Funniest Home Videos tape out of the VCR and looks at his mother’s handwriting on the tape—“Smile, Pickle. I love you” (165). He calls up mental images of his mother and sobs. The narrative reveals that his mother fainted in the kitchen of their house two weeks ago when she was packing. They drove her to the Emergency Room, where the nurses buzzed around her. Eventually, Georges’s father told him that his mother has a serious infection that she caught from a patient in the intensive care unit. She would have to stay for a week or two to get treatment. On their way to visit his mom, Georges got extremely upset.

Back in the present moment, Georges calls his father and says that he wants to go with him to the hospital the next day and spend time with them. Georges’s dad is happy to hear that; he asks how school was, and Georges says it was better. Georges’s dad says he’ll leave the hospital soon for dinner, but Georges tells him to stay there, that he’ll be fine. He goes upstairs to Safer’s apartment for dinner.

When Georges’s mother was 16, she went on a youth group trip to Europe. She was profoundly impacted by the experience of being on the plane and watching all the buildings and trees and cars shrink into dots as the plane got higher and higher. She used to tell Georges the story as a bedtime story, talking about the beautiful and distant sights from the plane. She told him she was afraid for the plane to land because she imagined that the bond that tethered her to her old life had been stretching like a rubber band, and “she was afraid that when the plane touched down, the rubber band would break, and a part of her life would be over” (171). Georges relates this feeling to the way he felt two weeks ago, when he was walking down the hall to his mother’s hospital room. He did not want to get there and see her sick in the bed, because as long as he didn’t see her that way, he could pretend that he was still in the part of his life when she was not sick. He cried and refused to go into her hospital room, ran to the elevators, and swore he would never come back.

In his mother’s story, the last part of her plane trip was the landing—the sun was up, everything was normal-sized as they were about to touch down, and she knew that everything would be all right.

Georges hates the hospital as soon as they get there, but he goes upstairs to his mother’s room. The nurse, Sophia, says that it’s been a good morning. In his mother’s room, Georges is afraid to hug her—he worries that he might accidentally break or touch a tube that he isn’t supposed to—but she wraps him in her arms. Georges thinks she’s stronger than he thought she would be. They watch TV in the hospital room and hang out. She shows Georges a notebook where she writes down his Scrabble messages—she’s been giving her responses to Georges’s father, who has been spelling them out in tiles each night after Georges falls asleep. She sees the blue dot on Georges’s hand and asks about it. He tells her that it’s a long story and promises to tell her later. When he gets home from the hospital, he calls Safer and tells him to come down with a notebook so they can make a list of the things that Safer is not afraid of.

Candy decides to enroll in fourth grade with three weeks left to go in the school year. She says, “Everyone makes such a big deal about the last day of school […]. I don’t want to miss it” (176). She’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt instead of her usual overalls and pig slippers because while she doesn’t mind being different, she wants to try to fit in on her first day. She says she will wear her overalls the next day. It's Safer’s job to walk her to school, which is a big trip for a kid who almost never leaves the apartment building. He and Georges have been working on taking longer and longer trips out of the apartment building—first to the corner with the dogs, then to Bennie’s with Candy, then to DeMarco’s with Pigeon. They even walked to Georges’s old house, where he showed Safer the big crack in the path and told him about the fire escape bed in his old room.

Safer says it’s about time Candy goes to school because he thinks she has wanted to go forever; Georges thinks she was probably staying home for Safer’s sake, but that she doesn’t need to anymore. On Candy’s first day of school, Georges runs back to his apartment to get his backpack and runs into his mother, who has been healing at home, but who will return to work the next day. Safer, Candy, and Georges walk to school. They meet Bob English at the front door; he draws a blue dot on Candy’s hand and tells her it means she’s not alone, no matter what. Safer is considering attending school himself; he says Candy is his scout, and if she reports back that it’s safe, he might join Bob and Georges in eighth grade next year. Or maybe ninth grade the year after. In gym class that afternoon, Ms. Warner says the class can choose what game they want to play. The Blue Team wins the vote with Capture the Flag. Ms. Warner tells Georges that she met his friend Candy. Georges asks her if she really hates her job. She says, “This is pretty much my dream job, G” (179) and offers him a high five. It isn’t Friday, but he high-fives her anyway, because rules are meant to be broken.