The Accidental Genius of Weasel High

by Rick Detorie

  His sounds a whole lot like the crocodiles in that “Pearls Before Swine” comic strip.

  As for learning French, the class is a total waste of time. Most of us are only in the class because Spanish was full.

  “So, what did you want to see me about?” asked Bethany, interrupting my thoughts.

  “I wanted to talk to you about the French class prank,” I said.

  Bethany scooted her chair closer to mine and got right in my face. I mean that literally. She’s one of those people who practically gets on top of you to carry on a conversation, and it’s not a real enjoyable experience.

  For one thing, she has bad breath.

  “I heard all about it,” she said, “and I think it’s mean what you want to do to Mr. Bivic.”

  Suddenly, I realized what her breath smelled like.

  When I was a little kid, I sometimes used to fall asleep while chewing on my bed sheet. Later, when I woke up, the damp sheet would be right in my face, and it smelled bad. Real bad. Well, that’s what Bethany Weaver’s breath smelled like—sheet spit!

  “It’s not mean,” I said. “Nobody gets hurt. It’s just a joke. It’ll be funny, unlike that other prank Dalton wanted to pull—”

  “Dalton Cooke’s involved in this?” she interrupted.

  “Yeah, it was practically his idea,” I lied.

  “I find him fascinating,” she said, suddenly looking all dreamy like. “He’s got that whole primal thing going on. He’s what cavemen must’ve been like if cavemen had shaved their body hair and worked out at a gym five days a week.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know anything about that,” I said.

  “But Dalton Cooke,” she sighed, “would never go out with a girl like me.”

  “As a matter of fact, Bethany,” I said, “Dalton has said some very nice things about you.”

  Sure, I lied, but it was for the cause.

  I went on to tell her that Dalton was interested in her, and I guaranteed that if she went along with the prank, Dalton would take her on a date to a restaurant, and even pay for the meal.

  And she fell for it.

  MISS SADIE, THE LOVE DOCTOR

  I was digging out the last of the roots from a dead boxwood in Miss Sadie’s backyard, when she told me to drop everything and come inside right away.

  “Wipe your feet,” she said as I entered the kitchen.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked her. “Is something wrong?”

  “Yeah, you,” she said. “With all that sneezing and coughing you’re doing out there, you’re obviously coming down with something.”

  “Nah, it’s the wind,” I said. “It’s blowing the dirt and dust up my nose and into my eyes.”

  “I made you soup—chicken noodle.”

  There it was, all laid out on the dining room table with cloth napkins and everything.

  “What do you want to drink?” she asked. “Root beer or ginger ale?”

  “Root beer, please.”

  “What have you got against ginger ale?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I’m an equal-opportunity carbonated-beverage drinker. Either one works for me.”

  “Root beer it is, then.”

  While I was eating the soup, we were looking at pictures of Miss Sadie’s family on the wall.

  “What was Mr. Grubnik like?” I asked.

  “Who, Morty? Oh, he was a sweetheart of a guy,” she said, “a real mensh, a class act all the way.” She leaned forward, looked around like she was telling me a secret, and said, “You know, when he was younger, he was quite the ladies’ man.”

  I scooped another spoonful of soup into my mouth, being careful not to slurp it because, you know, you can’t act like a regular slob with cloth napkins and everything.

  “What did the ladies like about him?” I asked.

  “What didn’t they like? For one thing, he could really cut a rug.”

  I didn’t know what that meant.

  “He was in the carpet business?” I asked.

  “No, that means he could really dance. Girls like a man who knows how to dance. Can you dance, Larkin?”

  I thought about it.

  “I guess so,” I said.

  I played around with the last noodle at the bottom of the bowl, then cut it in half with my spoon.

  “My problem,” I said, “is when I meet a girl, I don’t know what to say to her to make her like me.”

  “Just be yourself, and she’ll like you just fine.”

  “Yeah, but what should I say to her?”

  “Say something nice about her,” said Miss Sadie. “Compliment her on her shoes, her earrings, the bow in her hair, or whatever she happens to be wearing, and she’ll go on for the next two hours talking about her adventures in accessorizing. And all you have to do is nod your head, say nothing, and she’ll walk away thinking you’re the greatest conversationalist in the world.”

  Except for the bow part, it sounded like good advice.

  LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

  It was prank day.

  As we filed into the classroom, I reminded Mr. Bivic that today was the day Kiernan and I would be filming his class for the documentary we were working on for Mr. Iampieri’s filmmaking class.

  Never mind that neither Kiernan nor I were in Mr. Iampieri’s class (we’re both freshmen), or that Kiernan wasn’t even sure how to operate my mom’s little 3.2-megapixel camera. He was tall, so he’d be filming the action from the back of the room, while I would cover the front with my regular old 6.0-megapixel camera.

  The bell rang and everybody settled into their seats.

  Bethany Weaver was at her desk in the front and she kept turning around to give Dalton the eye. You know, all flirty like. He either didn’t notice her, or pretended he didn’t.

  Mr. Bivic tapped a plastic ruler on his desk to get everybody to shut up and he said, “Votre attention, s’il vous plaît! Pipple, pipple, s’il vous plaît!”

  He announced that Kiernan and I would be filming in class today and said: “Joo are assepted to bee haff has joo do ever day. Unlee better. Hah. Hah.”

  Or something like that.

  Then he winked at me.

  He handed out yesterday’s vocabulary quizzes then asked us to open our lesson book to Chapter 21 to review irregular verbs.

  On cue, Erin Miller raised her hand and said, “Mr. Bivic, before we do the irregular verbs, would you please go over the colors one more time? I get confused with, like, blue.”

  “Blue in French is bleu,” said Mr. Bivic.

  “I know how bleu sounds,” said Erin, “but could you write it on the board, please? I get mixed up with the spelling and all.”

  He swung around and wrote bleu on the chalkboard.

  “How about green?” someone else said.

  Mr. Bivic turned and wrote vert on the board.

  Next came orange, then pink.

  I noticed that Mr. Bivic was acting kind of unusual, even for him. He was smiling a lot and acting all peppy, waving his arms around, almost like he was conducting an orchestra or something.

  And he kept looking at me and winking.

  “Yellow!”

  He turned, wrote jaune on the board, turned back around, looked at me, and winked.

  He repeated it again with aquamarine, then silver, then brown. Then I realized that Mr. Bivic was performing for the camera.

  I got another wink with purple.

  What Mr. Bivic didn’t realize was that we were pranking him. You see, every time he turned around and wrote something on the board, all of us moved our desks forward a couple of inches.

  With lavender, he turned and winked at Kiernan.

  With gray, I got winked at again.

  We had surged so far forward in such a short time, that we were already on the verge of pinning him against the wall, and he didn’t even notice.

  After he wrote blanc on the board, he tried to turn around, but he was blocked in and couldn’t. He staggered sideways, collided with B
ethany’s desk, and they both crashed to the floor.

  The room erupted in laughter, and everybody jumped up and high-fived and fist-bumped each other. Mission accomplished.

  I turned and looked back at Kiernan, and he gave me a thumbs-up. He’d gotten it all.

  Bethany helped Mr. Bivic to his feet saying, “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Bivic. I had no idea they were going to do this!”

  Mr. Bivic stood up, smoothed out his shirt, took a deep breath, and announced, “Making the fun eez a leetle going a long way!”

  Then the place really went wild. People were screaming, pounding their desks, and laughing like maniacs.

  Mr. Bivic whacked his ruler so hard against his desk that it broke in half. He threw the pieces on the floor and shouted, “I KNOW PAUL IZMUN! I KNOW PAUL IZMUN!” and stormed out the door and down the hall.

  “Hey, Pace Man,” yelled Dalton, “who’s this Paul Izmun dude?”

  “I think he said, ‘I’m no policeman!’” I shouted back.

  “Oh. That’s a good one,” said Dalton.

  And it was.

  THE MONICA SOLIS PROJECT

  There’s this girl in my French class who seems kind of nice.

  Her name is Monica Solis.

  Right after we played the prank on Mr. Bivic, she came up to me at my locker and said she thought the prank was really funny, and she couldn’t wait to see the video.

  But even before I could say “Thanks,” Dalton Cooke butted in, put his arm around Monica, and said:

  Then he led her away, bragging about himself all the way down the hall.

  A couple of days later, I saw Monica again.

  By that time, I had prepared exactly what I was going to say to her. A bunch of guys (and girls, too) from school were going to go bowling on Saturday night, and I was going to ask Monica to go with me.

  As my date.

  “Hi, Monica,” I said.

  “Hi, Larkin!” She seemed glad to see me.

  I decided to lead with Miss Sadie’s advice and I said, “Nice earrings.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Then I actually took a good look at her earrings and saw a big hickey on her neck. Wow.

  “Larkin?” she said.

  “Oh, uh, yeah,” I said. “I was wondering if you’d like to go with me to the bowling party Saturday night.”

  Then she started talking, but all I kept thinking was, Who gave her that hickey?

  Victor? Shaun? Pony Boy?

  And I didn’t hear a word she said, which was: “Sorry, but I’m going with my mom and dad to Overton, because they’re putting my grandma in a nursing home.”

  And I’m thinking: Tyler? Or was it DALTON?

  Then I looked more closely and realized it wasn’t a hickey at all. It was a birthmark. What a relief.

  “Larkin?” she said.

  So I finally said:

  And that’s how I ruined my chances with Monica Solis.

  HAVE I GOT A DEAL FOR YOU

  On Saturday Freddie and I took the bus into the city, because Freddie’s cousin Jason was selling a camcorder, and I wanted to check it out.

  I’d never met Jason and I didn’t know much about him. I did know that he’s about thirty and writes the instructions in user manuals for phones and other electronic equipment. So when you’re reading stuff like: “Press the STOP button to exit programming,” there’s a real good possibility that Jason wrote that line.

  I was looking forward to meeting Jason, not only because he would be the very first professional writer I’ve ever met but also because when he introduced Jason to me, Freddie would finally have to say my name.

  “Jason, this is my friend Larkin.”

  I mean, how could he not say my name?

  We only had to walk a couple of blocks from the bus stop to Jason’s building, but it took us longer than it should have because Freddie was wearing his bedroom slippers, and his feet hurt.

  The building Jason lives in is big, old, and right next to the river. We pressed Jason’s button at the door, and he buzzed us in.

  The lobby was dark and creepy. There was a big gray chandelier and a huge marble staircase that curved up and around to the second-floor apartments.

  We took the rickety old elevator up to the fourth floor and found Jason’s apartment, 412. Freddie knocked, and a voice inside yelled, “Come in!”

  We went inside the apartment, which was small and crammed with lots of stuff like ski equipment, snowboards, a mountain bike, video games, and boxes and boxes of electronic equipment. I thought it was a pretty cool place because it didn’t look like a grown-up lived there.

  “Hey, Freddie,” said Jason.

  “Hi, Jason,” said Freddie.

  “How are Uncle Ted and Aunt Sharon?” said Jason.

  “Okay,” said Freddie.

  “So, Freddie,” I said. waiting to finally hear him say it. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your cousin?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Freddie. “Jason, this is the guy I was telling you about.”

  “Hi,” I said to Jason. “I’m Larkin.” Then I turned to Freddie and said it again, only louder, “Larkin!”

  Anyway, so Jason showed me the camcorder, said it worked fine, and let me try it out.

  It seemed to work okay. It wasn’t as good as my dream camcorder, which costs $1,200, but this model retails for $800, and Jason was only asking $450—sweeeeet!

  I told Jason I’d have to talk to my dad about it and I’d let him know in a few days.

  Then Jason said he had someplace to go, and he’d walk out with us.

  While waiting for the elevator, I said, “This place is pretty old, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Jason, “it was built in 1902 as a lodge for an exclusive men’s club. It had a ballroom and a restaurant downstairs. The second floor had offices, and the top floors were set up like a hotel. About fifty years ago, after the building had been abandoned for many years, it was converted into an apartment building.”

  “It looks haunted,” I said.

  “That’s because it is,” said Jason.

  “For real?” I said. I looked up and down the hallway to see if there were any ghosts loitering about, but the coast was clear.

  We got into the elevator.

  “One day,” said Jason, “when I was going down the big staircase in the lobby, I saw a guy standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was wearing a little tweed jacket and knickers. You know what knickers are, right?”

  “Sure,” I lied.

  We got out of the elevator and Jason continued.

  “He was also smoking a pipe. It was vanilla-scented pipe tobacco; I could tell from the smell. I walked past him, then stopped and said, ‘I guess you missed the sign,’ and I pointed at the No Smoking sign on the wall. When I turned to see what his reaction would be, he wasn’t there. He’d vanished.”

  “Vanished?”

  “Into thin air, as the saying goes.”

  “No way!” I said.

  “I haven’t seen him since,” said Jason, “but now and then I smell the vanilla smoke, so I know he’s still around.”

  As we went out the front door and onto the sidewalk, Freddie mumbled, “Tell him about the cat.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Jason, “the ghost of a cat visits my apartment almost every night. Freddie’s seen it. Tell him, Freddie.”

  “You did?” I said.

  “Yeah.” Freddie shrugged. “But not really.”

  Whatever that means.

  On the bus ride home I asked Freddie if the ghost cat was the reason he’s afraid of cats all of a sudden.

  “I’m not afraid of cats,” said Freddie. “I just don’t want to be around them. Now that I know they can be ghosts, I figure if you’re mean to a cat when it’s alive, after it dies it could come back and haunt you.”

  “So be nice to cats,” I said.

  “That’s just as bad,” said Freddie. “If a cat likes you, it might come back and haunt you because it likes you so much
it wants to hang out with you.”

  Freddie had a good point. I wondered if you were allergic to cats, would a ghost cat make you sneeze? That could be a problem.

  “I got an idea,” I said. “Let’s spend the night in Jason’s apartment and film the ghost cat!”

  “No,” said Freddie.

  “Come on, Freddie,” I said, “we’d be filming an actual ghost, not doing one of those fake reenactments they do on those ghost programs. This could be big. If we got footage of an actual ghost, we could make a gazillion dollars!”

  “No,” said Freddie. “I will never again spend a night in that apartment.”

  Case closed.

  PANDORA, WE HARDLY KNEW YE

  I had been out hiking most of Sunday morning with the Buddies and returned home at noon to find my dad in the kitchen making a sandwich.

  “How about some lunch, Larkin?” he said. “Your mom bought French rolls yesterday; we can make subs.”

  So together we made submarine sandwiches and settled down at the table.

  I took a bite out of mine and said, “Dad, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

  “Don’t speak with your mouth full,” he said.

  So I chewed, swallowed, then told him about Freddie’s cousin Jason and the camcorder he was selling and what a great deal it was and could I borrow $350 from him to buy it?

  “I’ll pay you back,” I said. “I promise.”

  He took a real long time to answer, and then he said, “I don’t think so, son.”

  I hate when he calls me son like that, especially like now, when he’s being all cheap, and I’d rather be someone else’s son, like Jack Cooke’s son. He gives his son Dalton whatever Dalton wants whenever Dalton wants it. A camcorder would be no big deal to Jack Cooke.

  “Why not?” I asked.

  And I was immediately sorry I’d asked, because I knew he’d tell me the reason why he wouldn’t lend me the money, and I didn’t want to hear it again.