Happy Kid! Page 4

  When I went back to school the next day, everybody knew. And if anyone didn’t know, they found out by last period. Because instead of a shot of the girls’ track team, the next day’s Daily Report carried a blurry picture of me being hugged by my daddy in the Trotts parking lot. “Unidentified student is comforted by his father after bus incident,” the caption read because, though reporters can get basic information about police investigations since they are part of the public record, they can’t print the names of people under eighteen without their parents’ permission. So all the article said was that the student in the photo was questioned by state police regarding possession of a weapon on a bus filled with middle- and high-school students. That was enough.

  Jamie Lombardi and Beth Pritchard don’t read the newspaper, but they didn’t need to. An amazingly large number of people do, and they told everyone else. Melissa Esposito actually brought that morning’s paper to school with her that day. My teachers must have been passing a copy around in the faculty lounge because they were all being extra nice to me, as if they were afraid I’d snap and start twitching right in front of them. My afternoon classes were very, very quiet and a path magically cleared for me in every hallway.

  Later in the week there was a newspaper story about the PTO holding a special meeting on school violence because of a recent act of aggression by “an unidentified student.” Then came a story about the school board requesting an inquiry because of a confrontation on a bus with “an unidentified student.” One day the paper carried an interview with Mr. Alldredge in which he said he couldn’t comment on this incident because it would violate the “unidentified student’s” privacy. As if I had any left. I swear, for weeks the newspapers were full of articles about an “unidentified student” who was always described as having been involved in some kind of “assault” or “attack.”

  My mother saved them for her scrapbook.

  None of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for Mr. Kowsz. He was the one who came up with the lame screwdriver assignment because he can barely figure out how to turn on the computers in his classroom. Did anybody write articles for the newspaper about him? He’s well over the age of eighteen. The newspaper could have published his name without asking his parents. They’re probably dead, anyway. But no, no one wrote a word about how the principal and the school superintendent called Mr. Kowsz in for a meeting and told him he’d have to have his lesson plans checked every morning at the office for the rest of the year to make sure he was teaching what he was supposed to. They also said he’d have to get some computer training, which I think they should have thought of a long time ago. It wasn’t as if they were letting him get by because they liked him. Both Mr. Alldredge and the school superintendent are supposed to have been mad at Mr. Kowsz for a couple of years because he made a big fuss about a gym teacher he caught swearing at a kid.

  How did I know all this if I didn’t read it in the paper? I heard it from Jake Rogers, of course. Jake always knows all kinds of things about the teachers because he listens to as much as he can when he’s sent to the office. And he’s sent there all the time. Not often enough that June, as far as I was concerned. When Jake wasn’t in the office those last couple weeks of school, he was sticking to me like a boil, telling me all about the news he had picked up in the office and the creepy friends he’d made while serving detention. He thought I was some kind of hero or something because, as awful as he is, he had never done anything that involved the police.

  I couldn’t believe I said hello to him before first period on the first day of seventh grade and that my new math teacher and Beth Pritchard and I don’t know how many other people had seen me do it. I couldn’t understand how it happened because I really was not a “hello” kind of guy.

  CHAPTER 4

  Jake Rogers has been known to steal money from smaller kids, knock people off their feet by jerking on their back-packs, kick in lockers so they can’t be opened anymore, and rip apart other kids’ textbooks so they have to pay fines. His grades were so bad in sixth grade that he had to go to summer school to repeat some of his courses. Lauren heard he had a great time there. I’m guessing no one else did.

  So when he thought my saying hello to Mr. Pierce was just so incredibly funny, that was a good thing. Because if Jake’s laughing, he’s not doing something a whole lot worse. But who wants everyone to know he’s the kind of guy Jake Rogers thinks is funny?

  Unfortunately, by the time Jake got through laughing and saying hello to Beth and some of the other girls—and sitting next to me—everyone knew.

  Our homework for math was to cover our textbook and do three of the sheets in our State Student Assessment Survey preparation packets. The tests were only three weeks away, and Mr. Pierce was all hopped up about them.

  I picked up my packet from the stack on Mr. Pierce’s desk on my way out of the room while Jake pretended not to notice they were there. “The ass tests,” he said. “I can’t wait. We don’t have homework during the test week, and we spend the three hours a day of test time just sitting in a classroom doing nothing.”

  That pretty much describes every day of Jake’s life.

  I got out into the hallway and took off, trying to get away from Jake as fast as I could and on to my next class.

  Which was art, one of those classes, like music, that everybody is supposed to really enjoy. Ah . . . why? At least my art class was going to be taught by Mr. Ruby, the cool art teacher, and not the old hippy woman who was always spitting sunflower seed shells into her hand.

  When I got to the art room, the first thing I saw was Luke Slocum, my best friend from elementary school, putting his backpack down at an empty table. Luke! Empty table! I rushed over, afraid three other people would get there before me and take all the empty seats.

  “Hey,” I said to him as I sat down. Luke was the first person I’d seen that day who I actually wanted to say hello to. I hoped that “hey” was a much cooler way of doing it.

  “Hey,” Luke said back.

  Someone came up behind me and dropped onto one of the empty stools at our table.

  “Can you believe it? We’re both in this class, too,” Jake said.

  I watched Luke turn and start looking around the room for another empty seat. We’d hardly seen each other for a whole year. I couldn’t really expect him to stick by me through good times and bad, particularly if the bad times included Jake Rogers.

  Luke slowly stood up, as if he wasn’t sure what he should do. Three more kids came in and took seats while he tried to make up his mind. That left two tables with one empty chair each—a table of girls and ours. Luke picked up his backpack and started toward the girls’ table, but another boy beat him there.

  He came back, sighed, and sat down. He was pretty quiet the rest of the period. Or maybe he just seemed that way since Jake was making so much noise whispering hello to everyone.

  My third-period class was social studies, which is probably my best subject. I was walking down the hall toward the classroom when I realized I was following a blond girl who was nearly as tall as I was. A girl who looked smart and cool even from the back. A girl lots of people were speaking to as she walked along. A girl who was turning into my classroom!

  Chelsea Donahue was walking into my classroom! Right in front of me! I could reach out and touch her! Which I would never do, but that’s how close I was to her.

  Chelsea and I are going to be in the same social studies class again this year, I thought as I followed her. I’m going to sit closer to her this time. I’m going to—

  Chelsea got away from me because I was distracted by the sight of what I assumed was Ms. Cannon, our teacher—a pretty woman in a heavy sort of way. She was wearing a pair of red leather pants that looked as if they were at least a size and a half too small for her and balancing all her weight on tiny red high-heeled shoes with open toes and no backs.

  By the time I was able to take my eyes off her, a lot more people were in the room. Most of them, I not
iced, had been in my social studies class—and on the honor roll—the year before. I started to get a bad feeling.

  I hurried up to the front of the room and said, “Hello, Ms. Cannon?”

  I had done it again—said the “H” word. And what was worse, in my rush to speak to Ms. Cannon, I hadn’t noticed that she was busy with—who else?—Melissa Esposito. I hated to interrupt, but I’d sort of already done it with the “hello.” So since I had Ms. Cannon’s attention, I went ahead and asked, “Ah, Ms. Cannon, could you tell me if this is accelerated social studies?”

  She nodded her head, and I said in a low voice, “Would you check your list to see if I’m supposed to be here? My name’s Kyle Rideau.”

  Ms. Cannon froze for a second before looking down at a computer printout.

  “Your name’s here,” she said, and I groaned.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Is that a problem?” she asked. “Because if it is, let’s get it taken care of right now. Education is very important to me. I’m working on a Ph.D., and I expect all my students to be as committed to their studies as I am to mine. So if you think you’re going to want out of here, let me write you a pass to the guidance office before we waste another minute of each other’s time.”

  I promised myself I would get my hello problem under control and never use the word again. Then I looked over my shoulder at Chelsea. I decided I’d skip the trip to the guidance office.

  “I’m fine,” I said to Ms. Cannon. “I was just checking. Nice outfit you have on,” I added as I backed away.

  I slunk off to an empty desk. It just happened to be behind Bradley Ryder. Bradley is smart, but he’s not weird about it the way Melissa and some of the other kids in accelerated classes are. He doesn’t act as if he thinks he’s on some kind of mission from God to make the world a better place or find a cure for cancer or something just because he’s always read above grade level. That’s why people don’t hate him even though he’s in all kinds of accelerated classes, plays first trumpet in the band and first base in baseball, got the best part in the Drama Club’s play last year, and goes skiing over winter vacation with his family instead of sitting around waiting for his mom to get home with the car. He never even had to wear braces, and you just know he’s never going to have acne.

  He turned around to me and whispered, “Bet she assigns a lot of homework.”

  Brad is also always right. In addition to covering our social studies textbook, Ms. Cannon told us to read the first section of chapter one and prepare to discuss the review questions. We had to do three pages in our SSASie preparation packets for Thursday, and she warned us that on Friday we would be discussing current events, so we should start watching the news for something to talk about.

  On my way to my next class, I thought about all the hours I’d put in on social studies projects back in sixth grade and wondered if seventh grade social studies could be that much worse. Of course it could. Things can always be worse.

  With my mind occupied like that, it took me a while to notice that a lot of the kids from social studies were walking along with me to English. Just as I realized that I must have accelerated English with them again this year, I heard “Hellooo, Kyle!” being shouted at me from somewhere in the crowded hallway. I pretended I didn’t hear it and followed Melissa and Chelsea into our next classroom.

  But Jake had seen where I was going.

  “Hellooo, Kyle,” he repeated from the doorway. The words roared out of him as if he were using a microphone and speaker.

  He didn’t actually come into the room, though. He held on to the door casing with each hand and leaned into the room as if there were some kind of force field keeping him from entering honor roll airspace.

  Did this mean that in an accelerated class I was safe from him?

  “Hel-hello,” I said, to make sure I didn’t tick him off and because I really couldn’t help myself.

  “What are you doing in here with these snots?” he asked.

  What could I say that would satisfy him but not get the accelerated kids on my case? They had to notice he was there talking to me.

  Suddenly a man in a dark dress shirt and tie marched to the back of the classroom and closed the door in Jake’s face, which took care of the problem for me. Jake pounded on the door from the outside a couple of times and finally gave up and moved on.

  Mr. Borden, my new English teacher, turned around and looked at me. His hair was a little too long, and he had to toss his head so his bangs wouldn’t hang in his eyes. “A friend of yours?” he asked.

  “Ah . . .”

  The room was totally quiet. All the other students were looking at me, as if they’d been wondering about that, too.

  “He’s more like a stalker,” I explained.

  A couple of boys behind me laughed.

  Mr. Borden stared at me. Then all of a sudden he said, “Stalking is not funny,” and marched back to his desk before I had a chance to say something like “Tell me about it!” or “Was I laughing?”

  For homework we had to cover our English textbook and do three pages of vocabulary words. We also had to write an essay for Friday. The topic was “Are we alone?” Mr. Borden said he had gotten it off an old SSASie test and that it should give us practice writing the kinds of boring things the people who score those tests like.

  My classmates disappeared at the end of the period, probably for another accelerated class. I was left to face my lunch section by myself.

  Lunch on the first day of school is worse than gym because gym is supposed to be an ordeal but lunch isn’t. You’re supposed to enjoy it. But there are three lunch sections, and on the first day of school you have to walk into the cafeteria not knowing who has been assigned to yours. Will your friends be there? Will you be able to eat with them? Will you have to sit by yourself at the end of a table pretending to read a book or doing homework while everyone around you knows that you’re really just putting on a show for them?

  I got into line. Water freezes faster than that lunch line moved, which meant I had lots of time to worry about where I would actually eat. I pulled the first two things I could find that wouldn’t damage my braces onto my tray, paid for them, and started looking for a table.

  The cafeteria was crawling with desperate kids trying to find people to eat with. I passed the first row of tables. No one I knew. I passed the second row of tables. Full of new sixth-graders.

  When I got to the third row, I noticed that there was a table way at the back of the room with only three people. One of them was Jake Rogers. He was sitting with a couple of eighth-graders—Brian Coxmore, who is sixteen years old and still in eighth grade, and Kenny Ferris, whose older brother is in jail. Kenny is expected to follow him there soon.

  I had to find a table before I got back to them. I had to find a table before Jake saw me.

  I moved closer and closer to the point where Jake’s Kyle Radar would pick me up. Once he sucked me into eating lunch with him, my future would be crystal clear. No one would ever believe that I wasn’t one of Jake Rogers’s badass friends. My hands were sweating so badly, I could feel my Styrofoam tray dissolving from the moisture. My head swung from side to side as I scanned the cafeteria, looking for a friendly face near a free chair. Or even just a free chair.

  I was thinking that it would be a perfect time for a fire drill when I saw Luke. And there, at the end of his table, was an empty chair. I held my breath while I slid between seats and kept my face turned away from Jake, just in case he tried to signal to me. I didn’t ask if the free seat was taken, I didn’t wait to be invited, I just dumped my tray on the table and collapsed onto the chair.

  “You guys have got to let me sit here,” I pleaded. “Otherwise I’m going to get stuck sitting with Jake and those guys he hangs out with. He’s already in two of my classes, and he follows me in the hall. I can’t get away from him.”

  “Oh, Kyle, man, having Jake like you is almost as bad as having him not like you,” Luke said, sounding pretty sympathetic
when you consider that he’d had to sit with Jake in art because of me.

  “It’s worse,” I insisted. “At least if Jake pounds on you on your way to the buses after school, you might get some pity. Nobody pities Jake’s friends.”

  “Most people are afraid of Jake’s friends,” a guy named Ted added.

  I looked around the table. In addition to Luke and Ted, who I recognized from my two months in Boy Scouts, there was someone who’d been in a study hall with me last year, plus two guys I didn’t know. None of them acted as if they were thrilled to see me, but they didn’t seem to think I was going to grab a plastic knife off someone’s tray and use it on them, either.

  “Jake has already been sent to the office today. He’s in my English class,” Luke explained. “Mrs. Hooker was walking up the aisle, and Jake waits until she’s right next to him and then he . . . and then he . . . farts! It sounded just like a dog howling! A wolf! Mrs. Hooker turns to him with this really mad look on her face, and she starts to say something, but Jake holds up his hands and says, ‘It’s okay, Mrs. Hooker. I’ll take the blame for you. I don’t mind.’ So she sends him to the principal!”

  I was laughing around my french fries, a safe item for me to eat because I can stick them way back and chew them where they won’t make a disgusting mess all over the front of my braces.

  “What do you think he said when Mr. Alldredge asked why Hooker sent him there?” Luke gasped, hardly able to talk, he was laughing so hard. “She farted?”

  “Remember when we were kids and we took swimming lessons with Jake and he farted in the pool?” I asked.

  “There’s a memory that definitely makes me glad I decided not to take swimming lessons this year,” Luke said.

  Swimming lessons was another one of the things, like Boy Scouts, that I quit last year because of homework.

  “I’m taking taekwondo with Ted instead,” Luke announced, nodding at Ted, who was sitting across from me.

  Those french fries I’d been eating suddenly felt as if they’d re-formed into a solid potato down under my ribs. Luke was taking taekwondo with Ted. Luke used to do things with me. Seeing that you’ve been replaced by someone else is the strangest feeling. It’s like when people in movies find out they have a clone and realize that there’s nothing special about them anymore because someone else can be them as well as they can.