“Hang on a sec. Back up.” My father stops me at dinner. “What are these puffy-tails you keep talking about? Some kind of science unit?”
“Right,” I stammer. “Animal anatomy.”
“If you’re going to be dissecting some poor little bunny, I don’t want to hear about it,” Stepmonster puts in, shoveling strained bananas into Chauncey’s waiting mouth.
“And we’re going on that field trip tomorrow, remember?” I move on quickly.
“To a rabbit laboratory?” Dad asks.
“No, this is different.”
We’re going to Terranova Motors as Jake Terranova’s personal guests. I don’t know what we’re supposed to learn there, but the class is actually pretty psyched about it. One of the downsides of being in SCS-8—besides the obvious—is that you’re stuck in the same room all day. So the change of scenery will do us good.
Our two chaperones are Mr. Kermit and Miss Fountain. Mr. Kermit has no choice, but it’s really nice of Miss Fountain to volunteer, since her own classes have to have a sub today. As it turns out, they get Mrs. Landsman—aka Dawn of the Dead. Poor Vladimir. If he squeaks too loud, she’ll probably gut him with a protractor and barbecue him on a rotating spit in the home and careers room.
The bus is just a minibus, and it’s pretty uncomfortable with the whole class packed into one side and Elaine all by herself on the other. Aldo is getting mad because Barnstorm keeps thumping the back of his seat with one of the crutches. It doesn’t bother Rahim, though. He falls asleep as soon as we make the right turn out of the school driveway. Mateo stands in the aisle, knees bent, working on his balance, just like the Silver Surfer from Spider-Man.
Miss Fountain seems pretty uncomfortable with the bad behavior—and especially the fact that Mr. Kermit isn’t saying anything. So she tries to change the subject by talking about how SCS-8 should participate in the district science fair. She’s always coming up with suggestions for our class, like the Goodbunnies thing, or inviting us for Circle Time or to help out with Vladimir.
Sometimes, Mr. Kermit lets her push him around a little, but not today. “No,” he says simply. I think this field trip has put him in a bad mood. It’s pretty obvious that Jake Terranova isn’t his favorite person.
“But it’s a fantastic competition,” Miss Fountain persists. “Teams enter from every school in the district. There are prizes. And the first-place winners get an extra ten percent added to their grades on the state science assessment. It’s a win-win.”
“Not for us,” Mr. Kermit replies firmly.
His expression says it all: Do these really look like the kind of kids who will come in first place at anything?
It bugs me a little. Not that I’m dying to get mixed up in any science fair, me being a short-timer. But I’m used to Mr. Kermit sticking up for us, not writing us off. Maybe it’s part of his bad mood.
The other kids talk about Jake Terranova like he’s some kind of superstar. As we pull up to Terranova Motors, I finally understand why. It has to be the biggest car dealership I’ve ever seen—and that includes LA, where everything is kind of supersized. Mr. Kermit’s ex-student owns all this? That’s pretty cool—especially when Mr. Terranova himself comes out to welcome us.
“Hey, guys! Glad you could make it! Come on inside!” Like we’re longtime friends, not random middle schoolers getting our moment with the big boss.
We tour the showroom first, which, I have to admit, is pretty fun. All the vehicles are shiny, new, and top-of-the-line. We try out every seat in every car—front, back, and third row—and even climb into the payloads of the pickups. For the first time since blundering into SCS-8, I feel like I could be with any class of kids in the country, not Greenwich Middle School’s dreaded Unteachables. Ribbit sees it too—his bloodshot eyes are half-open, instead of the usual 25 percent. Or maybe he’s just on the alert because Mr. Terranova is here, and this is enemy territory.
Miss Fountain, the Prius driver, is looking disapprovingly at the giant SUVs and light trucks that dominate the showroom when Mr. Terranova walks up to her.
I’m wondering if she’s going to lecture him on the environment. Instead, she says, “This is a wonderful thing you’re doing. I don’t know if you can tell, but some of these kids have—special issues.”
“You think?” His grin is irresistible. “My floor manager just pulled a sleeper out of the trunk of that Cadillac.”
“That’s Rahim,” Miss Fountain explains. “He doesn’t get enough sleep at home. But he’s a talented artist, sensitive and observant. They’ve got their quirks. They’re good kids, though. Okay, maybe good is too strong a word—”
“Gotcha.” He’s watching Barnstorm poking tires with his crutches.
“Hey, Mr. Terranova.” Parker approaches. “I want to take the red Mustang out for a test drive.”
“Right. Very funny, kid.”
“No, really. I have a license.” Parker digs a mangled ID out of the pocket of his jeans.
“It’s a provisional license, Parker,” Miss Fountain reminds him gently.
“This is a hundred percent farm business,” Parker promises. “I just remembered I’ve got to swing home and pick up a load of turnips for the Safeway.”
Looking for a lifeline, she calls out, “Mr. Kermit, I think it’s time for lunch!”
It’s hard to get a handle on what Ribbit thinks of all this. On one hand, it’s obvious that he can’t stand his former student because of what happened in the past. On the other, that must have been forever ago. Mr. Terranova was a seventh grader, even younger than we are. He’s an adult now, running a big business, and he’s trying to make amends. Why can’t Mr. Kermit see that?
We brought bag lunches, but Mr. Terranova ordered pizza for everybody in the dealership dining room. Only Ribbit turns him down—like anything from his old nemesis would turn to poison as soon as it enters his mouth.
The employees are really friendly, and we get to ask them questions. I want to know about fuel-efficiency standards. Barnstorm wants to know: “When you sell a car, do you get to keep the money?” Aldo asks the lease specialist, “How long did it take to grow that mustache?”
Elaine gets into the cookie platter set aside for customer appreciation week.
After lunch, we tour the service department. That’s where the field trip starts to get really good. Motor vehicles are such a huge part of life, especially in a place like LA, where you have to drive pretty much everywhere. People take it for granted that their cars will work, like they’re powered by some kind of magic. How often do we ever take a peek under the hood at the machinery that makes it happen?
Mr. Terranova leads us onto a raised catwalk, and we can look down on at least a dozen vehicles on lifts in various stages of being taken apart and put back together again. The noise is a cacophony of revving engines, pneumatic tools, and the clang of metal on metal. The smell is a mix of oil and grease, with a little bit of exhaust, whatever the ventilation fans miss. Yet there’s almost a kind of grace to it, and a rhythm that’s hard to resist. It feels productive, like necessary work is being done.
Parker is practically drooling, and even Aldo is leaning over the railing, fascinated. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him interested in something, and he looks older and more mature. Mateo is babbling about how the shop reminds him of the engine room of the USS Enterprise on Star Trek. Rahim is sketching furiously on a napkin from the lunchroom. Elaine is watching in rapt attention while double-fisting stolen cookies from her jacket pockets.
Suddenly, she clutches the rail in distress. For a second, I wonder if she’s trying to hype her reputation by ripping it free from the catwalk. But no—her cheeks are pink, her eyes terrified. Sharp staccato choking sounds reach me over the clamor of the shop. Mr. Kermit pounds her on the back, but to no avail.
I run up behind Elaine and reach around her to perform the Heimlich maneuver, positioning my hands below the rib cage, like they told us in lifesaving class back in California. Once . . . tw
ice. No good. Three times—
“Heads up!” bellows a wild voice.
I glance over my shoulder just in time to see a crutch hurtling toward me in a home run swing. I drop to the metal floor of the catwalk a split second before the wooden shaft would have taken my head off. It slams across Elaine’s broad back and—with a thud that momentarily drowns out the noisy shop—splits in two.
Everybody waits for her to crumple to the catwalk, unconscious, but that’s not what happens. Elaine doesn’t even flinch. Instead, a chunk of cookie comes flying out of her mouth. It sails over the rail and drops into the half-disassembled motor of a vintage Corvette.
The mechanics look up in horror.
“What was that?” Mr. Terranova asks urgently.
I confirm that Elaine is no longer choking. “She’s okay.”
The car dealer looks at me like I’m totally missing the point. “But what did she spit in the engine?”
Elaine smacks her lips. “I think it was a gingersnap.”
The word is like a panic alarm to Jake. “Guys!” he calls down to his team. “I want that engine taken apart and every piece wiped clean! Now!”
I’m mystified. “What’s so bad about a gingersnap?”
“Sugar!” he exclaims in agony. “It’s the last thing you want in a car engine. It dissolves in the gas and ends up everywhere. If word gets around that I sold a car with a sugared tank, I’m finished in this business.”
Mr. Kermit is beaming from ear to ear. It’s the first time we’ve ever seen him so happy, and what did it take? Problems for Jake Terranova. I actually feel a little guilty. I saw Elaine pocketing those cookies, and kept my mouth shut. I may be a short-timer, but you don’t have to be at our school very long to know that Elaine rhymes with pain.
The field trip breaks up soon after that. Mr. Terranova is focused on the Corvette, so he’s not playing host anymore. Plus, Barnstorm is complaining about his mobility with only one crutch.
“Then you shouldn’t have busted the other one over Elaine’s head,” Aldo tells him.
“It was her back, not her head,” Barnstorm retorts. “I saved her life, man. She’d better remember that while deciding who her next victim’s going to be.”
“You just cost yourself a puffy-tail, buster,” Mr. Kermit snaps.
Barnstorm is bitter. “No fair! I save a life and I’m out a crutch and a puffy-tail? What kind of justice is that?”
“He should earn a puffy-tail for helping and lose it for being mean,” Parker puts in. “At least then he breaks even.”
“We should all get a puffy-tail except Elaine,” Aldo reasons truculently. “You know, for not barfing a cookie into that Corvette.” This seems to be his idea of fairness.
Elaine tosses a mild glance in Aldo’s direction, and he decides to stand on the other side of a tall cargo van.
It’s too bad that such a great field trip has to end on a down note. But by then the minibus is waiting outside, so there’s nothing to do but get on it.
Halfway back to school, Miss Fountain gets a call on her cellphone. It’s the dealership. There’s a middle school boy asleep on the couch in the showroom.
Mr. Kermit does a head count. “It’s Rahim,” he reports. “We have to go back and get him.” And we turn around.
“Wait.” I frown at Miss Fountain. “How come they called you? I mean, why does Jake Terranova have your phone number?”
She blushes the color of Chauncey’s diaper rash.
Nineteen
Parker Elias
Grams has a lot of life experience, being super old and all that. For example, she tells me that when she was first dating my grandfather back in Israel, there was this other girl who was trying to steal him away while Grams was doing her military service in Haifa. So Grams challenged this girl to an arm-wrestling match, and the prize was Grandpa.
I peer over at her in the passenger seat of the pickup. “What if you lost?”
“I was loading supply trucks, kiddo. I was strong as an ox.”
As much as I love Grams, I’m not so sure I believe the story. The last time she explained how she got rid of the girl who moved in on Grandpa, she said she backed over her Vespa with a jeep. Grams tells the same stories because she doesn’t remember telling them last time and the time before that. Some people might find that annoying; to me it just means that we’ve always got something new and interesting to talk about while I’m driving her around. I just wish she could remember my name.
The reason the subject comes up—dating and boyfriends, I mean—is that there’s a rumor that Miss Fountain and Jake Terranova are going out. Our class thinks this because Jake has kind of adopted SCS-8. Jake—that’s what he told us to call him. Even the employees at the dealership call him Mr. Terranova, but to us, he’s Jake. Except Ribbit. He always uses Mr. when he talks to Jake, which is almost never. (Jake may be hitting it off with Miss Fountain, but he isn’t getting very far with Mr. Kermit.)
Here’s how it usually goes down. Jake shows up in room 117 to invite us to Terranova Motors so the mechanics can show us how windshield wipers work, or how a battery supplies power to the starter. He has to come in person because Mr. Kermit’s phone is so old that it would probably explode if it ever received a text. Meanwhile, Miss Fountain randomly walks in from 115—“Oh, what a surprise. Mr. Terranova’s here.” She calls him Mr. Terranova too. (We’re not fooled. He calls her Emma.)
From there, something always happens to connect our two classes. Maybe Vladimir starts squeaking because he hears Aldo’s voice, and won’t shut up until Aldo goes over there. Or the seventh graders are just about to have Circle Time, and we get in on that. Jake loves Circle Time, and whenever it’s his turn to compliment someone, he always picks Miss Fountain.
Mateo is confused. “I thought Jake chose us because he wants to make up for the cheating scandal, not because of Miss Fountain.”
“That’s just his excuse,” Barnstorm puts in wisely.
“Do you think it’s the car?” I muse. Jake rolls this really snazzy Porsche convertible that’s got to be a lot of fun to drive.
“Of course it’s not the car,” Kiana retorts angrily. “Miss Fountain isn’t that kind of person. She wants a relationship.”
I don’t understand how Kiana can know something like that. But whatever the reason, life is definitely better since Jake started hanging around. Everybody loves him—even Aldo, and Aldo hates everybody. Jake’s more like another kid than an adult—but a kid who has a dream life, with tons of money and no adults telling him what to do. He talks to me about cars, to Barnstorm about sports, and to Mateo about Game of Thrones. He talks to Elaine—I guess car dealers don’t worry about being head-butted down stairs or tossed into garbage dumpsters. He talks to Kiana about practically everything. He asks Rahim’s opinion on the art for new ads for Terranova Motors, and Rahim never so much as yawns when he’s around.
The only person Jake can’t schmooze is Mr. Kermit. Our teacher isn’t quite mean to him. Most of the time, he just ignores Jake the way he used to ignore us. When Mr. Kermit’s old car breaks down, he has it towed all the way across town, even though Jake offers to fix it for free. Ribbit would rather pay a lot of money than accept a favor from his old enemy.
Whatever the reason Jake has started hanging around, the trips to Terranova Motors are amazing. At first, the service staff aren’t too thrilled to see Elaine because of what happened that time with the cookie. But then the compressor for the pneumatic system conks out, and Elaine’s the only one who can loosen a stripped bolt using a hand wrench.
All the mechanics stop what they’re doing and applaud.
“Kid, that was something!” the service chief exclaims admiringly. “If the lift system loses power, can we count on you to pick up cars on your shoulders?”
It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Elaine blush. I’ll bet the kid she head-butted down the stairs wouldn’t think it’s so funny that an eighth-grade girl is stronger than a shop full of adult mec
hanics.
At first, the mechanics just talk a lot and show us stuff, but pretty soon we’re doing real work. Jake guides my hand as I fit a new hose into the radiator of a Jeep Cherokee. As I set the ring to seal the connection, it just feels right. Somehow, I know that hose isn’t going to leak.
The boss reaches in and tests my handiwork. “Perfect. Not so tight that the rubber might split. Nice job, Parker.”
It’s weird. I open a book, and the letters are all jumbled together into Unbreakable Code. But I look at a car engine and it all makes sense—even if the tires still say READY GOO. (That’s supposed to be GOODYEAR.)
Mr. Kermit is watching me, and he’s almost smiling. I think I can count on a puffy-tail being added to my line of the chart today.
Terranova Motors isn’t the only place we’re doing real work. It’s happening in room 117 too. Mr. Kermit is teaching stuff—math, science, English. We have our first test of the year—social studies—and Mr. Kermit even grades it.
When we get to class the next day, our papers are facedown on our desks.
Aldo flips his over. “D? Ribbit never gave tests before, and now he’s throwing Ds around?”
Barnstorm laughs in his face. “It isn’t Ribbit’s fault you’re stupid.” He examines his own paper. The word INCOMPLETE is written across the top.
“What?!” he complains.
“At least I got a grade,” Aldo tells him.
“I miss the old Ribbit,” Barnstorm complains.
“Yeah,” Aldo agrees. “This is way too much like education.”
I get an incomplete too—mostly because I finished only seven of the twenty questions. But—I blink—seven check marks parade down the page. Which means whatever I did I aced! I still got an incomplete—but not incomplete-dumb, just incomplete-slow.
It stinks to fail, whatever the reason. But I disagree with Aldo and Barnstorm that our class was better before. We’ll be in high school next year. Will they have an SCS-9 for us? Followed by SCS-10, SCS-11, and SCS-12? And then what? Sooner or later, something has to change. It might as well start now.
The Unteachables Page 10