by Jamie Gilson
Dawn Marie, the other Table Two kid, watched us. She knew something was up. She’d left the new kid behind in the lunchroom. She went out to the playground to sing songs and jump rope. The new kid got in trouble. This was not good.
“You okay?” she asked Sophie when she sat down.
“No, thank you,” Sophie told her. I think she was trying to be polite.
My friend Ben wasn’t at Table Two anymore. Mrs. Zookey had moved him to Table Three. She said we talked too much. This was not fair. He is my best friend. At Table Three, Ben sits next to Aiden. They were talking.
Most of the kids in the room weren’t paying any attention to us. They were staring at the ceiling. That’s because it looked weird. Mrs. Zookey must have spent the whole lunch hour turning our room into a rainforest. She did this because in social studies we were learning about rainforests. There wasn’t any actual rain in our room, but it did look forest-ish.
She’d taped a lot of long strips of green and brown crepe paper up to dangle from the ceiling. Kids were tilting their heads back to blow at them. She’d also hooked two ropes across the room. That’s where she hung our rainforest projects. It was stuff we’d made the week before in art class. There were purple paper orchid flowers and striped snakes and fruit bats with google eyes pasted on them. The new kid hadn’t come yet when we made them, so she didn’t get it. She shut her eyes, opened them again, and blinked.
On top of the bookcase, Mrs. Zookey had put a monkey. It was from Ben’s little sister’s collection of stuffed animals. The sign around its neck said RED HOWLER, but I bet it wasn’t one. It was pink.
The best part of the rainforest was the long line of black plastic ants stuck on a brown rope with glue. The ants were mine. They were supposed to be leaf-cutter ants climbing down to attack a bean plant. Patrick and me were both writing our reports on leaf-cutter ants, but since I’d brought the plastic ones to school, I got to glue them onto the rope. Mrs. Zookey had clipped it on an air vent near the door. It looked cool.
“Mr. E. made all this with magic,” I whispered to Sophie. “He did it while we were eating lunch.”
She was so easy to fool, I kept going. “Because of all the magic, we sometimes call our school Pigwarts.” Patrick heard me and laughed.
“Richard, Patrick,” Mrs. Zookey said. “Will you please stop talking and come to my desk.
“The rest of the class, use this time to continue your reports on plants and animals of the rainforest. I want each report to be interesting to read. I want it to make sense. Watch your spelling. One full page. Neatness counts.”
When we got to her desk, Mrs. Zookey still did not look happy. Usually she smiles. “Boys,” she said, and she sighed. “Mr. Economopoulos just told me what happened in the lunchroom.”
“See, Richard didn’t mean it,” Patrick said. “I saw it all.”
Mrs. Zookey went on like he hadn’t said anything. “He said he told you there would be consequences, and indeed there will. Mr. E. and I have just decided what those consequences will be.”
Patrick kept on talking. “Richie has these teeth that came out just yesterday and it still hurts him a lot and besides he said he was sorry. Right, Richie?”
Maybe he was trying to help me out. I fake-smiled to show her the empty space. I also tried to look like my no-teeth spaces hurt a lot.
Mrs. Zookey nodded. “I have noticed, Richard, that you have two missing teeth. But that does not excuse your behavior. You didn’t cover your mouth when you sneezed, and you ended up covering Mr. Economopoulos with—”
“With red raspberry gelatin dessert,” Patrick said. “It was a huge mess and he will never, ever do that again. Right, Richie?”
“Please stop talking, Patrick,” Mrs. Zookey told him. “I think you know it is not good manners to interrupt.”
Patrick looked up at the ceiling.
“The important thing,” Mrs. Zookey went on, “is for you to learn from what you did. Thursday morning there is to be a second- and third-grade assembly. It will be in the Gymatorium at ten o’clock. The third-grade chorus will sing.
“At that assembly, you will give a report on manners to the entire group. In your report, you will tell the other students what you have learned about how to behave properly in the lunchroom. This is Tuesday, so you will have a full day to prepare.”
“Richard won’t mind doing that, will you, Richie?” Patrick asked. “I bet he’ll have a lot to say.”
“What? Just me?” I asked her. “No fair.” Patrick smiled.
“Both of you,” she said. “It will be a joint report.”
She looked straight at Patrick. “Mr. Economopoulos saw that your chin was also red and sticky until you wiped it on your sleeve. He did not think it was an accident.”
Patrick looked at his sleeve. It was red and sticky. “Well,” he said, “anyway, it wasn’t me who sneezed. It was Richie. I didn’t do anything. And besides, what about the new kid? She shouldn’t get off just because she’s new. Did you hear about what she said to us? She called us a name, a really bad name. I’m not even going to say it.”
Sophie whispered to Dawn Marie. Dawn Marie’s eyes got big. It got whispered around. When the rest of the class heard what Patrick had said, they were talking, too. They didn’t stop, either, not until Mrs. Zookey flicked the light switch off and on and said, “Class! Class!”
But Dawn Marie and the new kid went right on talking.
“Dawn Marie, do you girls have something you want to share with us?” Mrs. Zookey asked.
“Uh,” Dawn Marie said, “I was just telling Sophie about how you hung the rainforest.” She pointed at the ceiling like Mrs. Zookey didn’t know where the crepe-paper streamers were. “She’s new, so she didn’t see how it got there so fast. She said Richard told her—”
And that’s when Mr. E. came to the door. When he opened it, the wind made my ant-rope swing right at him. The ants must have looked real, too, because Mr. E. jumped. I poked Patrick and we laughed. Patrick and me, we were in this together. It wasn’t just about me sneezing Jell-O.
Mr. E. had changed into a new green Sumac School T-shirt. It was clean. There wasn’t a single smudge of bat blood on it.
Sophie looked at Mr. E. and then she looked at Patrick and me. She smiled. “Abracadabra,” she whispered.
Mrs. Zookey went to the door, and she and Mr. E. talked so quiet we couldn’t hear them.
“How we gonna get out of this?” Patrick whispered. “I think maybe I have a two-day sore throat.” He gave a fake cough. “That should do it.”
When Mr. E. left, Mrs. Zookey came back to Patrick and me. “Here’s the plan,” she said. “Thursday the third-grade chorus is going to perform for the assembly. Your report,” she told us, “will come just after the third graders’ song about manners. The seed spitters will be singing their report. They wrote the words themselves.”
“The Seed Spitters? They call themselves that?” Patrick asked her. “Maybe Richie and me could get a name, too. We could be the Vampire Sneezers. How does that sound?” His throat must have stopped being sore. “I take guitar lessons. I can sing, too.”
“They do not call themselves seed spitters. That’s what they did,” Mrs. Zookey said. “They spat seeds and pits. What you are to do is talk about how well-mannered boys and girls should behave in the lunchroom. You must give six good solid rules. And for goodness’ sake, don’t try to sing them.”
I could tell that Patrick was about to complain again, but Mrs. Zookey went on. “Mr. Economopoulos will speak to your parents. He will explain the assignment. Right now, though, take your seats. There’s work to do.”
Patrick waited at Mrs. Zookey’s desk.
“Parents can’t come to the assembly,” he said. “Please tell me they can’t.”
“Parents are always welcome,” Mrs. Zookey told him.
He sat down next to me and put his head in his hands. “Maybe my mom will answer the phone. Maybe she won’t tell my father. He would be mad,” Pa
trick said. “I’d be in big trouble. What am I gonna do?”
—6—
You Did What?
“And that nice Patrick, too?” my mom asked. “Mr. Economopoulos sounded very disappointed with both of you. What were you thinking? Well, clearly you weren’t thinking.”
When he called my mom, all Mr. E. said was that we had to give a report on manners. He said it was because we had misbehaved in the lunchroom. He let me tell her what we’d done. I sort of told her. I tried to clean it up so it wouldn’t sound so bad.
Still, no matter how I told the story, Mr. E. ended up with red sticky sneeze stuff on his shirt.
“It’s only right that you should be punished,” my mom went on. “Though I think what you did is far worse than bad manners. Still, giving a report seems about right. And when you stand there before the assembly, you must remember everything I’ve told you about being polite.”
My mom likes to talk about polite stuff. She tells me a lot. But all I could remember was, if you’ve got to go, you don’t say, “Wait for me, I’ve got to pee first.” I did that once and my mom said it wasn’t polite. She said all I need to say before I leave for the toilet is “Excuse me.” Maybe that’s true, but I wasn’t about to say it out loud to a bunch of kids. No way. They’d laugh at me.
Wednesday morning at library time, I checked out two books on manners. Patrick wouldn’t even look at them. He said if he needed stuff, he’d look online. He said when Mr. E. called, his father answered, and he was mad. Mostly his father was mad at Mr. E. for not getting the joke. He didn’t tell his father about the sneeze part, because I was the one who did it. He said he told his father that parents aren’t allowed at assemblies. He said for sure his father wouldn’t show up. His father is a busy man.
“I’m lucky,” I told Patrick. “My mom said she wouldn’t be caught dead at the assembly. She said she’d be too embarrassed. She said it looked like she hadn’t done a good job with me. Like I was her job.”
I didn’t tell Patrick, but Mom still cuts up my meat. Last night she said she was going to give me lessons in how to cut steak so it’s bite-sized. This is good. I like steak when I can chew it.
Patrick and I were standing in the lunch line. It wasn’t moving. Some kid threw up, and they had to call a custodian to bring a mop and pail.
“We better think of six good rules for tomorrow,” I told Patrick. “We can’t just say, ‘Don’t sneeze with your mouth full and always say please and thank you.’”
“Right,” Patrick agreed. “That’s only three.”
“How about this,” I said. “You and me, we can scope out the lunchroom today and see what kids are doing that’s super gross. Then tomorrow we’ll just say, ‘Don’t do that.’” Seemed like a good idea to me.
He rolled his eyes.
“Or we could write a poem,” I tried.
He rolled his eyes again. “I started one,” he said. “And the only rhyme for ‘manners’ is ‘bananers.’ It wasn’t funny enough.”
“You’re right,” I told him. “A poem wouldn’t work. And remember, we’ve got to be serious. We don’t want all those kids laughing at us.”
Ben and Aiden were in line, too. So were Dawn Marie and the new kid. They were talking about kickball. None of them had to figure out how to say stuff in front of the whole second and third grade. That had to be a hundred kids.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” Dawn Marie said to us. “I asked Sophie already. I was scared to ask the whole class about it. Some kids might think my mom is, you know, weird. Do you promise, cross your heart, not to tell?” Everybody but Patrick nodded yes and crossed their heart.
“Patrick!” Dawn Marie called. Patrick gave a big sigh and crossed his heart, too.
“Well, the thing is, my birthday party is this Saturday, and everybody in the class is invited.”
“I already got an invitation in the mail,” Patrick said. “So?”
Dawn Marie began to whisper. We had to lean in. “Well, my mom thought that besides the chocolate cake, she’d put out some banana bread she’d made with—instead of nuts—a bunch of cicadas. She thought kids would like that. What do you think?”
“I think those are bugs,” Aiden said.
“It’s your birthday and she wants to feed us insects?” Patrick asked. “Your mother is weird.”
“Is not,” Dawn Marie said. “You remember cicadas. There were lots and lots of them and they were loud. My mom cut out all these pages of cicada recipes from the newspaper. And she even bought a sack of frozen ones. I had one in a cookie. It was crunchy. But if you think it’s a dumb idea,” she went on, “I can always tell her no.”
“Tell her no!” Aiden said.
“I say, Oui!” Sophie shouted.
“Easy for you,” I told her. “You eat snails.”
“My mom says cicadas have lots of protein,” Dawn Marie said.
“Ha!” Patrick said. “Protein! You want protein? I’ll show you protein.” He unzipped his lunchbox, reached in, and took out a plastic bowl with a lid on it. Inside was a hard-boiled egg. It was peeled.
He took the egg out of its bowl and handed the bowl to me. He held the egg up like he was a magician. “Watch this!” he said. “I bet this extra-large egg has more protein than a hundred cicadas. And you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna turn it into a boy. Abracadabra!” He opened his mouth super wide. Then he tossed the egg up and caught it, just like that, between his teeth.
The egg, the whole entire extra-large egg, was in Patrick’s mouth. It was super big, too big to swallow.
He was showing off. I knew how to get him. Patrick got me all the time. It was my turn.
First I shut the egg bowl and gave it to him. He had the lunchbox in his other hand, so his hands were full. Then I looked behind him. Nobody was there. So I said to nobody, “Oh, hi, Mr. E., we were just talking about eating protein—weren’t we, Patrick?”
Patrick’s eyes got big. He did not turn around. His cheeks were fat. He had an egg in his mouth.
The rest of the kids got it. “Hi, Mr. E.,” they said.
“Patrick told us eggs have a lot of protein,” Dawn Marie said to nobody.
“I heard somebody threw up,” Ben said, looking up at nobody. “I bet that stinks.”
I yawned. Huge. I did not cover my mouth. Mr. E. didn’t care. Mr. E. wasn’t there. “Oh, Mr. E.,” I said, “I stayed up really late last night working on my ‘Good Manners’ report. I am soooo sleepy.” I yawned again, bigger.
The thing about a yawn is, it’s like a cold. It’s catching. When you see a big yawn, you have to yawn, too.
“Stop, stop,” Ben said. “Now you’re making me do it,” and he did.
“Oh, Mr. E.,” said Dawn Marie, “you better go or you’ll want to take a nap right here in the middle of the hall.” She opened her mouth wide.
So did Patrick. He couldn’t help it. He yawned. His hands were full with the covered bowl and the lunchbox, so he couldn’t catch the egg. It oozed past his teeth and out of his open mouth. It dropped splat onto the hall floor. He’d squashed the egg in his mouth, so it didn’t roll far. The glob of yellow and white just sat there. Patrick didn’t want Mr. E. to see the egg, so he picked up his foot and he smashed it flat. He never got to turn it into a boy.
“Au revoir, Mr. Economopoulos. Goodbye,” Sophie called. But when Patrick snapped his head around, Mr. E. was nowhere in sight.
“Wow, Patrick,” Ben said. “You are one lucky duck. If Mr. E. had caught you with a whole egg stuffed in your mouth, he’d have thought you didn’t know anything at all about manners. That was disgusting. I mean, a whole egg! That was huge. Was it a duck egg or something? Good thing our yawning made Mr. E. go away.”
Sophie picked up the plastic bowl and lid. Ben rescued the open lunchbox and gave it to Patrick.
I scooped up most of his squashed egg. The joke was worth it. I yawned.
Patrick zipped his lunchbox shut just as the line began to move again.
“Unless he did see it,” Ben said. “He’s very tall.”
—7—
Other People’s Plates
Once we made it to the lunchroom, I looked around for stuff that was bad manners. Nobody was throwing whipped-cream pies like they do in cartoons. Actually, nobody ever does that, so I could cross “food fight” off my list of things not to do.
Patrick sat down with his lunchbox. Most days I bring my Spider-Man one, but not this time. My mom said she was out of food I didn’t have to bite. I stood in line and bought the soup of the day, milk, and lemon pudding. I could eat them all, easy.
Ben and Aiden sat at the same table as Patrick and me. So did the new kid and Dawn Marie. Aiden sniffed at my soup. “They call that sweet potato and black bean chili, but it has green stuff in it. I would never eat that,” he said. “Yuck! What is that green stuff?”
He looked like he was going to poke his finger in my soup, so I grabbed it away. “I bet it’s either spinach or kale,” he went on. “I hate that stuff. I brought my lunch. It’s all good. I’ve got a PB and J, without the PB because you can’t bring PB to school. I have a sack of chips and a bag of chocolate-covered raisins. I know because I packed it myself.”
“To me the soup looks good,” Sophie told me. “Tomorrow I will buy. Today I bring my lunch. I have the pain and the jambon.”
I didn’t ask if she was doing idioms again. It looked like she was eating a ham sandwich. I also didn’t ask if it was true she ate snails. I was afraid she’d say yes and I’d have to say “Yuck.”
The soup was so good my mom could have made it, and I was hungry. I was eating it fast. I’d stopped missing my two front teeth.
Patrick grabbed my arm. “Okay, Richie,” he said. “You got paper? Write this down. Rule number one. Don’t slurp your soup. I bet that’s in all those books you got. Slurping soup is bad.