“You’re up, Reynolds,” Gabe choked out. Nick turned around from his post by the door and looked at me.
“Still clear out there?” I asked.
“Still clear,” Nick answered. “No necktie.”
I took a fresh Binaca bottle out of the drawer. Somehow I couldn’t stomach the idea of using the same one Gabe had used. I had to beat his record and make it to twelve sprays. How hard could it be?
I took one spray. Quincy was right; it was minty. Kind of like a blast of one of Dad’s Altoids. The second spray was more of the same, but a little sharper. By the time I got to the fourth spray, it was definitely making my tongue feel warm. Spray five: watery eyes. Spray six: runny nose. Around spray seven, my tongue lost feeling. The same happened to my cheeks by spray number ten. Two more to go.
By now some of the kids were chanting my name: “AugusTA, AugusTA, AugusTA.” It made something click inside me. I pushed past the burning and the numbness and the tears to pump the top of the spray bottle one, two, three more times, for a total of thirteen sprays of Binaca. Lucky number thirteen.
Everyone but Gabe went wild. “Thirteen sprays! Way to go, Augusta!” Quincy said. I grabbed a tissue from the box on Mr. Smeed’s desk, lifted my glasses, and wiped my eyes.
“Not bad, Reynolds,” Gabe said. “Now we’ll see if Zambrano can beat that.”
I grabbed another couple of tissues before walking to the door to relieve Nick from lookout duty.
“Whoa, Augusta, that was impressive,” he said, and gave me a clap on the back.
“Ha, thanks,” I said. “Everyone has a talent.” I stepped inside the doorway and gave my eyes another wipe; they were still really watery.
I could hear the kids around the desk counting Nick’s sprays. “One, two, three, four…” The counting paused for a second, then continued at a slower pace. “Five…six…”
I wanted to turn around and watch, but I knew I had to be the lookout. Plus, my eyes were watering so much that I couldn’t see very clearly. Which, come to think of it, was a pretty big problem to have when you were supposed to be the lookout.
Whew, my eyes were really stinging. I started to wonder if it had been such a good idea to take thirteen sprays of Binaca. What if I was allergic to it and I didn’t know? Could you go blind from using too much Binaca? No, if that were the case, then Mr. Smeed would probably be blind by now. But I doubted he’d ever had thirteen sprays right in a row.
These were the thoughts I was pondering when I heard someone coming down the hall. I tensed up. Was it Smeed? The footsteps didn’t sound like they belonged to a sixth grader. I was just getting ready to yell “necktie” when a tall person rounded the corner. It was our neighbor, Rob Vinson.
“Hey, Little Gus! What’s going on?” He stopped and looked at me. “Whoa, what’s up, Little Gus? Why are you crying? What happened?”
“I’m okay,” I said. “I think it’s just, um, allergies.”
Somehow talking made it worse. My eyes were practically fountains. I started wiping them again.
“Little Gus…that looks pretty serious. You should tell your teacher. Whose class is this? Smeed’s? Tell him you need to go to the nurse.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said, blowing my nose, which had also started to run.
“I don’t think so, Little Gus,” Rob said. “Look, here he comes now. I’ll tell him.”
With watering eyes, runny nose, and the light-headed feeling I always get from impending doom, I turned to see Mr. Smeed two feet away, approaching from the other direction.
“What’s this about, Miss Reynolds? Mr. Vinson, where are you supposed to be?”
But we couldn’t hear Rob’s answer, because it was drowned out by the sound of my entire homeroom cheering and shouting, “Augusta won!”
Mr. Smeed pushed past me to open the door all the way, just in time to see Nick (also with watery eyes) holding a bottle of Binaca, the rest of the class huddled around him, and a baseball cap full of cash sitting in the middle of his desk.
Suddenly my list of symptoms expanded to include a sore throat. But as the door closed behind me, I managed to grimace at my class and cough out a single word: “Necktie.”
“Let me get this straight,” Principal Olin said, looking across her desk at Mr. Smeed. “You stepped into the hall to take an emergency phone call, and when you returned, the students had stolen property, used an unapproved substance in school, and started a gambling ring?”
“That’s right, Ms. Olin,” Mr. Smeed said.
Nick gave me a look again, the same look he had given me the first time Mr. Smeed had lied and said he’d been just outside the classroom on his phone.
“And the entire class was involved?” she asked.
“All but Ms. Carruthers and Mr. Peterson,” he answered.
When Mr. Smeed had first entered the room and seen everyone chanting around the hat full of money, it was clear he didn’t know where to look first. There was a lot to take in: the money, his open desk drawers, Nick holding a bottle of Binaca, everyone except Heidi and Tyler out of their seats, and me, wiping my eyes and coughing. Since I was standing behind him, it might not have been obvious that I was involved, except for the fact that he’d heard people yelling “Augusta is the winner!” He decided to start there.
“The winner of what?” he bellowed. “Just what is going on here?! Mr. Zambrano, what is that in your hand?”
Nick dropped the Binaca and started coughing. His eyes were watering almost as much as mine were.
Mr. Smeed took in the room full of watery eyes and coughing kids. “Were you ALL using my Binaca?” he thundered.
“Not all of us,” Heidi said in a voice just above a whisper, not looking up from her book.
“Who, then?” Mr. Smeed asked. We were all quiet. The volume level in the room was exactly opposite what it had been five minutes earlier.
Just then Assistant Principal Wyatt happened to walk past. Great timing.
“Mr. Wyatt!” Mr. Smeed called into the hall. “Perhaps you can help us here.” He explained the situation as though he were describing a grisly crime scene (using phrases like “egregious breach of decency” and “time to unmask the perpetrators”).
Mr. Wyatt ate it up. “Well, there’s one easy way to find out who the guilty parties are,” he said. “Line up.” We looked around the room, not sure what he had in mind. “I said line up!” he yelled. “Against the back wall. Every last one of you.”
“Now,” he said, after we were all in a line, leaning against the back wall. “Breath test. One by one.”
Was he serious? He was really going to conduct a crime-scene investigation by making all of us breathe on him so he could see if we’d used Binaca? Yes, Lou. Yes, he was.
Mekhai was first in line. “Mr. Curry,” Mr. Wyatt said, “I want you to look up at me, open your mouth, and say ‘Hello, Henry!’ using as much breath as you can.” He put extra emphasis on the H’s as he said it.
“Who’s Henry?” Mekhai asked. “Is that your real name?”
“No, Mr. Curry, but it is a name that begins with an H, and it makes it easier to detect Binaca on your breath when you say it!” he explained. “And there is no need for you to continue anyway, Mr. Curry, because I could smell the spray right away when you said ‘Who’s Henry?’ Clearly you were involved. Take a seat.”
“Ms. Hiller, you’re next,” Mr. Wyatt said, moving on to Quincy. “Hello, Henry.”
Quincy repeated it, and so it went down the line, the entire class saying “Hello, Henry” one by one as Mr. Wyatt smelled our breath and sent us to our seats.
The craziest thing was, it worked. When Mr. Wyatt got to Heidi, she said, “Hello, Henry,” and he said, “No, just regular toothpaste. Thank you, Ms. Carruthers.” And when it was Tyler’s turn, Mr. Wyatt sniffed, looked up in the air for a moment, and then said, “Onion
bagel for breakfast?” Tyler blushed and nodded. “Very well,” Mr. Wyatt said. “You’re in the clear too.”
The bell rang just as the investigation was concluding, and Heidi and Tyler were allowed to go to class. But Mr. Smeed escorted the rest of us straight to Principal Olin’s office. I briefly wondered who was going to be in charge of Smeed’s first-period class. Wasn’t he worried that they would get into the Binaca too?
“So how did this get started?” Principal Olin asked. “Whose idea was it?”
I figured I was doomed then. I mean, Gabe was the one who had first suggested a bet, but it had been my brilliant idea to turn it into a gambling pool. Those things I remembered. The rest of it was a blur. And I was suddenly feeling a bit light-headed again, wondering if people get sent to jail for starting gambling rings.
Gabe and I made eye contact for about a quarter of a second; then we did what the rest of the class was doing and stared at the floor. No one said anything.
“This is exactly what happened when I asked them,” Mr. Smeed said. “No one will talk. I say, if they’re all so good at not talking, maybe they’d like a week of silent lunch!”
“All right, then,” Principal Olin sighed. It seemed like she wasn’t thrilled to be taking Mr. Smeed’s suggestion, but couldn’t think of anything else. “For the rest of this week, this homeroom class will have assigned seating during lunch, and during that time you are to eat your lunches and not talk to each other, or to any other students. The cafeteria monitors will record and report the names of any students who violate the silence.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nick mouthing “violate the silence” as he continued to stare at the floor. He was probably thinking it sounded like a song lyric. But I knew that for the rest of that week, there wouldn’t be much to sing about.
“Really, Gus? A gambling ring?” News of the Binaca incident had reached Mom and Dad via a call from the principal’s office in the middle of their workday. Mom had just gone on break after hooking up an IV for a kid with a bad stomach bug. Dad was in the middle of a sales call with a big advertiser for the radio station. They weren’t happy.
“What ever gave you such an idea?” Dad asked, rolling the pizza cutter through one of the pepperoni pies he’d picked up on the way over from work. (They had sent you upstairs to finish your homework, Lou, so they could yell at me in private. I could tell you wanted to hang out and hear what was going on. I saw your shadow in the stairwell, which is why I knew you’d be there when I hissed, “Go upstairs, Louisa.” And rolled my eyes when you popped your head around the corner and whispered, “Okay, but later just tell me what a gambling ring is!” I know I still haven’t told you. It’s never going to be my favorite subject.)
After you went upstairs, the questioning continued. Technically this wasn’t supposed to be a “Dad” night, but you know how he and Mom had decided occasional family dinners were still important, especially when there was something to discuss. Like one of us being in trouble. Sometimes I’m glad they still get along pretty well. This was not one of those times.
“I got the idea from Mom’s work,” I said. “You know how they do that March Madness pool every year. I didn’t know it was illegal.”
“It’s not illegal when adults do it,” Dad said. Then he looked at Mom and made a quizzical face, like he was silently asking, Wait—is it illegal? Mom closed her eyes and shook her head, which either meant No, it’s not illegal or It possibly is somewhat illegal but we are supposed to be focusing on yelling at Gus right now.
“But I still don’t understand why,” Mom said. “Why was this something you wanted to do?”
I couldn’t believe they were so clueless. “Because I need money!” I said. “Because I’m sick of wearing glasses and you said I could buy contacts last year and then you guys split up and didn’t want to spend money on anything ever, and then I tried to ask you about it again the other day and you didn’t even want to talk about it because Louie had lice, and it seems like you guys are always distracted by something, so when this chance to make money on my own came up, I took it.” I took a deep breath.
“Okay,” Dad said. “I admire your initiative.” Mom shot him a look, and he gave her a little hand raise that meant Hear me out. “But this is not the way to go about it. Maybe we can think of other ways for you to make money. In the meantime, go get your sister for dinner. Mom and I need to discuss next steps.”
Next steps meant what they were going to do to punish me. As I went up the stairs, I heard Dad whisper to Mom, “Our little high roller,” and they both started laughing. I was annoyed that they were making fun of me, but I was hoping that maybe it meant they were in a good mood and I’d get a lighter punishment.
I was wrong.
* * *
“Hand over your phone,” Dad said after we’d finished the pizza and you’d gone back upstairs to do more homework.
“What? Why?”
“That’s your punishment,” Mom said. “No phone for a week.”
“A week?” I said. “No way! I need my phone. Take something else away. How will I get in touch with you guys if I need you?”
“You’ll do what we did when we were your age,” Dad said. “Have the school call us. Or use the home phone if you’re here and we’re at work.”
“But you guys have us split between two different houses! What if someone needs to call me?”
“Give people both of our home numbers,” Dad said.
That was such a dumb answer. What was I supposed to do, pass out my parents’ home numbers in the hall at school just in case someone wanted to call me during the next week? People I knew hardly even called anyway. Everyone texted. And what about when I wasn’t even at home?
“What if—”
Mom beat me to it. “If you are somewhere other than school or home, you can ask to borrow someone else’s phone if it’s an emergency. But let’s just hope for an uneventful week; how’s that sound?”
It sounded terrible. I needed my phone. My best friend didn’t even go to my school. I had to be able to communicate with her. Which reminded me…
“I actually told Layla I’d text her today. Like right now.”
“Why do you have to text her like right now?” Dad asked.
I did a big sigh. “Because we want to have a sleepover and we need to figure out when. We can’t do it any old time like we used to because now you guys are split up and I live in two different places and I have to plan.”
“You know you’re welcome to have Layla sleep over here or at my apartment,” Dad said.
“But I don’t want to do that,” I said. I didn’t want to hurt Dad’s feelings, but I thought his apartment was pretty boring. It had a pool, but that was closed for the season. And since you and I share a room there…well, it’s not the best for sleepovers. Not to mention that it just would feel awkward to take a friend there. If Layla and I hung out at our house with Mom, it would almost feel like old times before the divorce, like when Dad was on a business trip or something. But if we did a sleepover at Dad’s…I don’t know; it would feel like the divorce was this big obvious thing hanging in the air, on everyone’s minds even if we weren’t talking about it. Ugh.
I took a deep breath. “I just want to sleep over at Layla’s house,” I said. “And now it’s all complicated since we can’t do school nights and you guys have to take turns with us on weekends.”
This time Mom held her hand up when Dad started to talk. “Okay, Gus,” she said. “You can talk to Layla about planning a sleepover. But don’t use your phone. She lives a block away; just walk over and see her. You know, also like you used to do.”
I clenched my fists and bit my tongue to keep from making an “AAARGH!” sound. I also made sure to close the door softly on my way out, because I knew if I was accused of throwing more “attitude” at Mom and Dad, I could lose my phone for eve
n longer. Maybe it was good that I couldn’t text at that moment; I needed to get out of the house and see Layla. She’d make me feel better.
* * *
Layla did not make me feel better. When I got to her house, her dad answered the door. That wasn’t the best start because, well, you know how Mr. Perkins has always made us nervous because he’s so quiet and also perpetually grouchy? Seeing me at his doorstep at eight o’clock on a school night didn’t help that.
“Augusta?” Mr. Perkins is the only person in our neighborhood who doesn’t call me Gus. “What are you doing here so late?” He leaned out the door and looked up and down the street like he suspected I was playing a prank on him.
Mr. Perkins wasn’t inviting me in, so I was standing on the front step, but I could still hear music coming from upstairs in the house, and smell something baking in the kitchen.
“I need to ask Layla about something,” I said. “And I can’t…find my phone to text her.” I almost said I couldn’t use my phone, but no way did I want to get into the whole Binaca/gambling ring/phone punishment story with Mr. Perkins.
Then Mrs. Perkins popped into the doorway. As usual, her level of grouchiness was the opposite of Mr. Perkins’s.
“Gus!” she said, like she was a talk-show host introducing a famous guest. “Hello, stranger—how have you been?”
“Okay,” I said. Suddenly I felt really tired. I wasn’t sure which parent I felt less like talking to right now: grouchy Mr. Perkins or chatty Mrs. Perkins. “I was wondering if I could talk to Layla for a minute. Is she here?”
“Of course she’s here,” Mr. Perkins said. “It’s a school night. She lives here. Seems like she’s the only kid in town who is where she belongs right now.”
What did he mean by that?
“Oh, Terrence.” Mrs. Perkins swatted at him and rolled her eyes. “Gus, come on in. Layla’s upstairs with her friend Jocelyn from school. Run on up and see them.”
The 47 People You'll Meet in Middle School Page 7