by Thomas Tosi
As Miss Sorenson laid each paper on a desk, I didn’t see anyone committing hara‐kiri with a ballpoint pen. I figured she must have meant it when she said she’d mostly been impressed.
I started wondering what I might have gotten for a grade when it hit me. I’d forgotten that, because of Marlene shoving me out of my chair, I hadn’t finished my essay—I never turned it in.
Could Miss Sorenson even have it?
But the paper also wasn’t either on or in my desk when I came back to class from Mr. Richards’ office that day, so somehow—
Maybe I got an INCOMPLETE. Mom and Dad would still let me get my doughnuts with an INCOMPLETE. Yeah, maybe that’s what I got and—
Miss Sorenson paused at my desk. She looked down at me, scrunched her lips tight, and gave a slight shake of her head. My hopes for an INCOMPLETE were squished like the jelly stick that Celia splattered on Marlene. Miss Sorenson slid the essay onto my desk, facedown.
“Marlene has an appointment this afternoon,” Miss Sorenson said. “Be sure to copy down the assignments for her.”
“I will.”
“And Abe…”
“Yes?”
“I was going to break up you and Marlene and find you different buddies. But something tells me the two of you can, and should, work out this thing that’s going on between you.” Then, saying it more like a little warning as she moved on, she added, “I hope I’m not wrong.”
Break up?
I wasn’t stupid, but my mind made a crazy leap. I knew that Miss Sorenson was talking about her buddy system. But when she said she wasn’t going to break up Marlene and me, somewhere in my head, I thought she couldn’t even consider breaking us up unless we were already together—as in going out.
I didn’t know anybody in my class that was going out, but I did know what it meant—at least I thought I did, the fifth‐grade version anyway. Last year when my big sister Faye was in the fifth grade, she told Dad that a guy and girl in her class were going out. Dad had replied that—since they probably had neither a driver’s license nor any money—he wondered exactly what going out meant. Faye said it meant that they liked each other, that they both knew it, and that everybody else knew it, too. And that it was kind of accepted by everyone, so—
“Dude,” Dewey whispered.
He flashed his essay at me.
B+
That jarred me back to reality. I looked at the facedown paper on my desktop. Thinking of westerns again, I peeled the corner of the page back like the cowboys do with cards in the movies when they’re playing poker.
What slowly came into view? Let’s just say it wasn’t four aces.
F ‐ SEE ME.
I laid that corner of the paper down, pretending I hadn’t seen what I had just seen. I waited a minute and then peeled it back again. Still an F. I repeated that process three times until Miss Sorenson had finished giving back all the essays and was at her desk again.
I didn’t show Dewey my grade. I didn’t have to. He could see it on my face.
“Too bad you didn’t have the string bean help you,” Dewey whispered. “Dude aced his.”
I glanced over and could see that, next to Dewey, Bernard looked a little happier—but just a little.
A Reprieve for a Good Heart
Other schools might use intercoms and tones and stuff to let kids know it was time to change classes. But because it was such an old building, Green Hill Academy still used bells—the kind that firefighters use just before they slide down the poles, the kind that rattles your back teeth when they go off. When the bells rang for the end of that school day, Miss Sorenson called out to me as I joined the crowd heading for the door.
“Abe, I want to see you for a minute.”
Dewey bumped me on purpose as he passed. “Dude,” he said, shifting his eyes from me to Miss Sorenson, who sat at her desk waiting. I wasn’t exactly sure what the word dude meant this time, but I thought it was something along the lines of: don’t worry, I’ll say good things about you at your funeral.
Bridget walked by and looked at me like I was something stuck to the bottom of her shoe.
After all the other kids cleared the room, Miss Sorenson said, “Is your father giving you a ride home today?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll make this quick then. I know a half‐finished essay is not the best you can do, and I know what happened between you and Marlene wasn’t entirely your fault.”
“Entirely? It wasn’t my fault at all.”
“I’m giving you a break here. Don’t push it.”
“Sorry.”
Miss Sorenson reached for the paper I still held in my hand.
“Let me see that again.”
Gladly.
I wanted that paper about as much as I wanted a double batch of noogies from Brian and James.
She scanned the partially‐finished essay and shook her head.
“Why would anyone need six thousand doughnuts?”
“Well, it’s not so much about needing them. It’s more like I found a way that the rules say I can—”
“Yes, you found a hole in the rules. You’re very clever, Abe,” she said. “In fact, it’s because I know you’re clever that you’re going to have the chance to write a make‐up essay.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and it better be good.” She opened the binder on her desk and put my essay inside. “Your grade is going to be the average of this essay and your new one.”
I did a quick calculation in my head. The absolute highest grade I could get would be a C. And that’s if I aced the new essay. And if I didn’t…
“That’s the best deal you’re going to get,” Miss Sorenson said.
“Thanks,” I said without much enthusiasm.
She was staring at me. That glassy look she had when Bernard was all mopey in front of her desk was coming back to her eyes. But she didn’t say anything.
“Miss Sorenson? Is that all?”
“No, not really.”
She broke her eye contact with me and reached over to a ceramic apple sitting on her desk. The apple had a hole in it to store pens and pencils. Coming out of one side was a little ceramic worm. Somebody probably thought it was cute—but, honestly, what kind of person would give a teacher an apple with a worm in it? Miss Sorenson lifted a fancy gold pen out of the apple.
“Do you think he’ll be all right?” She was fiddling with the pen like it was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world.
“Who?”
“Bernard. Do you think he’ll be all right?” She was twisting the pen around—unthreading it at the center and then tightening it back up. If I did that, Miss Sorenson would tell me to stop fidgeting. But a kid doesn’t say that to a teacher.
Instead, I replied, “How would I know? Like Dewey said, we’re not really his—”
“Friends. Yes, I heard that, but that’s not what I mean.”
She tightened the pen back together one last time and carefully set it down on her desk like it mattered how it was aligned. She stared at me with those glassy eyes.
“What I mean is, you’re his age, and you’ve got a good heart. So, if it were you, do you think you’d be all right?”
Miss Sorenson thinks I have a good heart? Where is this coming from?
I was so amazed that, for about the next fifteen seconds, the only thing I did was blink—once. Then, I remembered her question.
Did I think Bernard would be all right?
Bernard was a goofy kid—tall, thin, bushy hair, wicked smart, wore old‐man shoes, talked like a grown‐up, and said he liked a girl right out loud without worrying what the rest of us would think. He was goofy, all right.
And it was easy to think goofy kids weren’t real and didn’t get hurt by the same stuff that hurt the rest of us. Well, they did. My little sister Peg was a goofy kid. When she felt dumb because she had to stay back a year, she was hurt. She tried to hide it from everyone, but I knew. That’s why I wasn’t so sure that B
ernard would be all right, and I was going to tell Miss Sorenson so.
What stopped me was that I noticed how she was being a little goofy herself right then. I wondered if anything like what happened to Bernard had ever happened to her. I mean, she wasn’t only a grown‐up; she was a teacher. She was supposed to be strong and smart, you know, to have her act together. But maybe somewhere inside, there was a little something that wasn’t quite so perfect—like the worm in the ceramic apple. I wondered if maybe we all had something like that in us, no matter how old we got.
Miss Sorenson said she thought I had a good heart. I didn’t know if it was true, but I liked that she thought it. I wanted it to be true.
So, when she asked me if I thought Bernard was going to be all right, I decided to tell her, “Yeah, he’ll be okay.”
Homework
When I got home, Celia and I did homework. That’s what Celia called it. It wasn’t homework for school. It was homework to get ready for Judge Sally Rules.
“Our first order of business,” Celia said, “is to understand everything we can ‘bout who it is we’re gonna tussle with.”
Celia led me into the living room, where she sat in the chair in front of the family computer desk—which was really just an old card table. I dragged the footrest from the couch over to her and plopped down on it.
“How are we going to find out stuff about Sweetly Crisp?”
“Sweetly Crisp ain’t who we’re up against.”
“It isn’t?”
“My stars! Y’all seen the Judge Sally Rules show before, right?”
“Sure.”
“Then y’all know there ain’t no jury for that kind of court.”
She reached under the table and pushed the power button of our beige beast of a computer—Dad’s old discard from work. The cooling fan made a grinding sound, pinged, and whirred into a spin. I was grateful for the noise because that was probably what woke the tread‐wheel hamster powering our ancient machine.
Celia winced at the sound and used her sleeve to wipe the monitor screen.
“And if there ain’t no jury, who is it that’s got the say‐so? Who’s gonna decide whether or not we get our six thousand doughnuts?”
“The judge?”
“Yup. So that’s who we got to understand. We got to watch her shows—we got to watch a whole heap of her shows.”
Judge Sally Rules was on TV once a day. The only way to see a whole heap of it was to watch the episodes uploaded on MyVids. Celia logged into the family account that Dad had set up for all of us—username: MitchKids5, password: 4HomeWorkOnly!.
The page didn’t even finish loading when I saw a little red bell appear at the top of the screen with the number one—a new MyVids message.
Celia ignored the message and typed in the search box instead.
JUDGE SALLY RULES
The screen filled with results. She clicked on a playlist called, Best of Judge Sally Rules: Savage Put Downs.
I don’t know if it was because of what happened to Bernard out on the playground or because Miss Sorenson said that I had a good heart, but, for whatever reason, I wasn’t sure I was ready to watch a playlist called Savage Put Downs. It just didn’t feel right—someone thinking it would be funny to post online videos of other people being made to look stupid. Maybe I was getting soft.
I was more interested in that red bell showing we had a message. I was going to tell Celia to click it when—
“Celia! Celia! Look!”
Peg sprinted into the living room. She tripped over the corner of the footrest I was sitting on.
She tripped over it because she didn’t see it.
She didn’t see it because her eyes were covered with cucumber slices.
Her eyes were covered with cucumber slices because…
Well, I had no idea why her eyes were covered with cucumber slices. But there was a good chance it had something to do with the chunky green goop that was also smeared all over her face.
“Hang on there, darlin’, you done gone tail over teakettle.”
Celia swiveled around in her chair to help Peg to her feet.
I reached in and clicked on the red notification bell. A little box slid up from the bottom of the screen. The message was from J & B Enterprises—James and Brian.
DOES SHE KNOW?
Celia and Peg weren’t paying attention to the message on the screen. Some of the green goop from Peg’s face was now mushed into the baby blue carpet where she landed. In trying to hoist herself up, she had lathered more of the schmear onto one side of the couch with some blobs that had come off her hand.
Celia made a face at the goop. With her finger and thumb, she picked up one of the cucumber slices that had fallen to the floor like it was toxic waste.
I typed into the MyVids message reply box.
DOES WHO KNOW WHAT?
Below what I’d typed, some text appeared, followed by three animated dots.
A friend is typing…
Ha! MyVids thought J & B Enterprises was a friend?
DONUT FACE, THAT’S WHO!!!!!
In the main MyVids window, the first video of the Savage Put Downs playlist was running. If you’ve watched the show before, you already know what Judge Sally looked like. She was old—but not gray‐haired‐grandmother old. She was more aunt‐that‐won’t‐let‐you‐have‐food‐in her‐car old. And she didn’t smile much—not on the show, anyway. She sure wasn’t smiling in the video that was playing right then.
“Both of you zip it,” Judge Sally said. “Now.”
“Okay, but he’s lyin’,” said a woman who wore a shiny lemon‐yellow shirt and zebra pants and stood in front of the judge’s bench. She nuzzled her face in the fancy hairdo of a yipper dog she was holding. “Duchess and me was together way before the party‐of‐the‐other‐part over there ever—”
Duchess? Why did yipper dogs always have names like royalty? Even dressed fancy, they’re still just dogs. Their owners should be realistic about that fact—if they have to be royal, give them names like Duke Droollendrip, Lady Poopsalot, Commodore Sniffabum—you know, something like that.
“Lady, I said zip it!” Judge Sally ran her fingers across her lips and pointed her gavel.
Right on cue, the entire audience gave a long, slow ooh.
Faye appeared in the entryway to the living room. She was wearing a Green Hill Academy Tigers sweatshirt—as though there were really any tigers in Green Hill, New Hampshire. The sleeves were pushed up to her elbows. Her hair was pulled back with rubber bands like she was trying not to get messy. Faye doesn’t do messy.
“Faye’s giving me homework to get me ready for Franny’s sleepover,” Peg said happily. Peg was trying to stick the fallen toxic cucumber slice back on her eye. I saw a little carpet fuzz and some cracker crumbs stuck to the slice. “She’s showing me how to play makeover and having me watch monster movies, so I toughen up and don’t get scared.”
I heard the front door open and Mom’s voice ask, “Who’s showing you monster movies?” She pushed past Faye into the room. After one look at the goop on Peg’s face, Mom grabbed a box of tissues from the little table beside the couch and knelt down. Mom took the mess in stride. She was a pro. We taught her well over the years.
I typed another MyVids message.
U KNOW CELIA’S GOING 2 KILL U GUYS WHEN SHE FINDS OUT U DID DONUT VIDEO, RIGHT? WHERE R U?
After a few moments came the reply…
A SECURE UNDISCLOSED LOCATION.
“J & B Enterprises?” Celia exclaimed, making me jump. She’d finally noticed the message box. “Ain’t they the dirty low‐down weasels that put up that doughnut video? And you’re chattin’ with ‘em?”
“Are you guys talking about the doughnut video?” Mom spoke from behind me. “People aren’t still watching it, are they?”
“Just who, in the wide world of sports, is J & B Enterprises?” Celia slid the mouse and slam‐clicked the button to add video to the chatbox.
“Hol
d still.” Mom was struggling to clean Peg’s face. “What is all this gunk?”
Peg opened her big mouth.
“J and B,” she said while Mom fought, unsuccessfully, to wipe her face. “That’s the same as James and Brian’s initials.”
That’ll do it.
Everyone in the room turned to stare at Peg, except for me.
“What?” Peg asked. “It is.”
Super Villains
Smart evil villains would never have accepted Celia’s request to add video to the MyVids chat. But we weren’t talking about smart evil villains. We were talking about Brian and James. A live video feed popped up.
James appeared onscreen, hunched close to the camera, which made him look distorted in a menacing kind of way. He was someplace completely dark except for the glow of whatever screen he was using to chat with us—probably their phone. It was creepy. I mean, even creepier than Brian and James usually are.
A small red label appeared in the lower corner of the video.
LIVE.
James was wearing his too‐small suit again. Only this time, he also had his hair slicked back. It looked wet. Maybe he’d washed it for once. I’m not saying he used soap or anything—but who knows, miracles do happen. He held a white cat in his lap and was petting it. The cat didn’t move.
“Welcome, Mr. Bond,” James said. “We’ve been expecting you.”
None of us in the living room made a sound.
“Get it? I’m like the evil guy from James Bond. Blofeld?”
Through the chat, we could hear Brian but not see him. “I told you they wouldn’t get it.”
Celia grabbed both sides of the computer monitor as though it were really James, and she could shake him by the shoulders.
“You two! Y’all are J & B Enterprises? With the doughnut video?”
Peg pushed in beside Celia and me.
“Argh!” James shouted when he saw Peg’s face.