Pack of Dorks

by Beth Vrabel

  Ms. Drake clapped her hands. “Enough!” She smiled kindly at me, which, of course, only made everyone laugh harder. “Settle down, everyone.”

  I spent the rest of the day staring at the back of Sam’s empty seat, and sitting alone on the monkey bars at recess and at our table during lunch. Part of me was worried about Sam. Maybe he really was sick? Another part was feeling a little angry that he abandoned me like this. But most of me was thinking about how cool it would be to have a selective hearing super power, so I wouldn’t have to listen to everyone around me hissing like flies. At least April walked home with me from the bus.

  Sam wasn’t in school the next day, either. Or the day after that.

  I tried calling his home, but his mom always said that Sam was taking a nap. But there was such a long pause between when she said she’d go get him and when she came back, that I knew she was covering for him. He just didn’t want to talk to me.

  It was totally unfair! If he wants to be mad at me for seeing him in the locker room, fine. I mean, it was stupid of him, of course. But I could understand being that embarrassed. (After all, I was glad Sam hadn’t see the splitting of the sausage skirt incident.) However, he was still my partner for the wolf report and that made up a huge chunk of our grade. Plus, seeing the wolves up close at the sanctuary would be incredible. Grrr!

  “Loser!” Henry called over to me on his way to the pencil sharpener.

  I only had time to gobble down a turkey sandwich and some grapes before Grandma picked me up on Wednesday for my first lesson with Miss Betsy.

  “Do I really have to do this?” I whined.

  She grinned. “Yup.”

  “Mom?” I whined harder as Grandma herded me through the door.

  “You’re going.”

  Grandma made Molly wave a pudgy little hand goodbye to Mom, who looked way too happy to see her two little sunshines leaving the house.

  April was waiting for us on her front porch. Even from the driveway, I could hear clanging, shouting, and a scream or two coming from her house. She seemed thrilled to see us; I guess she was looking forward to kicking and punching things.

  “Who’s excited?” Grandma asked as she pulled into a parking spot at a little strip mall. A sign across the store in front of us spelled out: MISS BETSY’S MARTIAL ARTS STUDIO. Even the sign was lame.

  But April chirped, “Me! I’m excited! Excited!”

  “Double excited? Wow.” I get sarcastic when I’m full of dread. April didn’t catch on, though, and just smiled.

  The studio smelled like gym class but I got a strange whiff of lilacs, too. I soon figured out why when Miss Betsy herself crossed the room. About a dozen kids, both younger and older than us, were already stretching on the huge, cushioned blue mat that spanned the mirror-walled room. Miss Betsy was decked out in a white karate uniform lined in black, a black belt cinched at her waist. Her lips were painted with pale purple lipstick and her hair matched. Seriously, her short curly hair was purple! That’s because she was old enough to have purple hair. I glared at Grandma, who seemed to be doing everything possible not to look at me.

  “Good afternoon, Irene.” Miss Betsy glared at Grandma. She looked sort of like a purplish walnut. Miss Betsy held her wrists behind her back and bounced softly on the balls of her old feet. I got the feeling she was holding her hands back purposefully. “Which of you is the granddaughter and who is the friend?”

  “Granddaughter,” I muttered.

  “Friend!” April chirped.

  Miss Betsy nodded at us. She had small wrinkles around her eyes and lips. “You will address me as ma’am or Miss Betsy, is that understood?”

  “Um, yes,” I shrugged at the same time April said, “Yes, ma’am!”

  Miss Betsy turned her glare on me.

  “I mean, yes, ma’am,” I said a little louder.

  “When you step onto this mat,” she jerked a thumb behind her, “you will bow toward the flags. The one on the right, of course, is the American flag. The one on the left is the Korean flag. You are about to learn the tenets of Tae Kwon Do.” She looked at us, her glare and wrinkles deepening as we looked back.

  Grandma nudged me hard in the shoulder.

  “Um, yes, ma’am?” I half-questioned, half-responded.

  Miss Betsy nodded. Phew, I thought. The more Miss Betsy talked, the less she looked like just another old lady with purple hair and the more she looked like someone who could possibly knock another person’s face right off. She pushed back the sleeves of her uniform and I could see her arms weren’t soft like the saggy chicken skin on Grandma’s arms. They were solid and rippled with muscle. I swallowed hard.

  Miss Betsy gave us uniforms to put on and directed us to the bathroom. We had to dodge punching bags and a pile of foam-padded blockers on the way to the little restroom in the back of the studio. April yammered away while we changed. I tried to figure out how I was feeling. Angry at Grandma and my parents, of course. Annoyed with April. Scared of Miss Betsy. And I felt a little, tiny flicker of hope. Maybe I could be awesome at this.

  Maybe I already was awesome at this. Maybe when Miss Betsy started training us, she’d see that I was a karate prodigy and I’d go straight to black belt. When Tom and Henry threw volleyballs at my head during gym class, maybe I could do a back flip and kick the balls back into their noses. Maybe I could chop spitballs in half midair. Maybe I could do a demo filled with kicks, chops, and jumps on the blacktop at recess and show everyone my mad skills. (Only, of course, my demo wouldn’t end with me hanging from my underpants in the locker room.)

  But as soon as class started, my hope faded.

  Miss Betsy might be evil.

  April and I stood in the very back row, the only white belts in a class of about twelve. Some kids smiled as we walked by, but no one talked. Everyone faced forward, hands held behind their backs.

  Miss Betsy stood at the front. Everyone bowed to her, except, of course, April and me. April sort of bobbed forward, though. Then Miss Betsy ordered us to do fifty sit-ups. Fifty! Everyone else in the class did one hundred. They paired up, locking their ankles, and popped up and down one hundred times. It took April and me so long to figure out how to connect our ankles that the rest of the class had to wait for us to finish our lame fifty sit-ups. No one made a big deal of it, though. I noticed they all stood, facing forward. No one rolled their eyes or acted bored. Maybe they were happy for the break?

  As soon as we were done, I figured we’d be able to get a drink or something, but Miss Betsy just told us to “pound out” twenty push-ups. The rest of the class did forty. After that, we did twenty jumping jacks. And, thanks to the enormous wall of mirrors, I got to see just how ridiculous I jump jack. It’s like I don’t have actual control of my arms and legs when both are supposed to work together. My legs were going in as my arms were going out. It was horrible! And the more I watched myself, the more I realized everyone else was watching me, too. The rest of the class, even while doing jumping jacks in perfect unison, was watching me not do jumping jacks but sort of an upright spasm. At least no one laughed. One girl, who had a red belt, sort of smiled at me but not in a mean way. I rolled my eyes at her in a can’t-believe-we-have-to-do-this way.

  “Do you have a problem, Lucy?” Suddenly Miss Betsy’s scary face and muscled arms were right in front of me.

  “I stink at jumping jacks,” I huffed, stilling jumping.

  “You stink at jumping jacks what?” Her mouth made a white line like Sam’s when he’s angry.

  “I stink at jumping jacks a lot?”

  “Ma’am!” Miss Betsy yelled. “You stink at jumping jacks, ma’am.”

  I stared at her. She glared at me. Eventually, I realized that she wasn’t calling me ma’am. I was supposed to call her ma’am.

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Sorry. Ma’am.”

  Miss Betsy slowly breathed out through her nose. “You’ll improve with practice, Lucy,” she said. “Just do your best today. The next class will be a little easier. B
efore you know it, you’ll fit right in.” She moved down the line, nodding at April, whose face was tomato red. Her jumping jacks were fine, but she seemed to have forgotten to breathe while doing them. After the jumping jacks, April bent at the waist and gulped like the only oxygen was close to the floor.

  Next we had to line up and practice kicking foam-padded targets. Turns out, all my life I’ve been kicking wrong. Here I thought kicks were simple. Wham, kick. Wrong! Kicks are specific. I learned something called a front snap. There are three parts to it: chamber your leg (which is karate-talk for bend your knee), snap your leg (karate-talk for the actual kick), and re-chamber (bend your leg again). There’s also something called a roundhouse kick, where you swing your leg to the side and hit with the top of your foot. That one was really fun. I could do it all day! At least, that’s what I thought on kick number three. By kick ten, my leg gained about twenty pounds. By kick fifteen, I was sort of crying.

  I looked over at the person-sized foam target I was sharing with April. Her narrow face was screwed tight like someone was twisting her mouth. Her hands were clenched in tight fists. Bam! Bam! Bam! I stopped trying to kick my thousand-pound leg and watched her go. Bam! What was she thinking?

  Miss Betsy was behind me. Seriously, that old lady has ninja skills because I didn’t hear her coming near me at all. But she stood beside me, watching April kick, kick, kick.

  “Don’t forget to breathe,” she said sternly. “And swivel your hips. It’ll put more force in your kicks.”

  Sure enough, April’s next kick actually moved the target to the side a little bit. She grinned, her smile splitting that twisty look. She didn’t look like the April I knew when she was standing there with her hands in fists, her cheeks rosy and her face slick with sweat and pride. She looked tough.

  “Wow, April,” I murmured.

  “I know! This is awesome!”

  Miss Betsy smiled. “You remind me of me in my first class. Feels good to kick stuff, doesn’t it? I’d hate to be whoever you were picturing there.”

  Who was April picturing? Faces from our class flashed in front of me like I was looking at the yearbook. Of course Tom, Henry, and Becky were jerks to April. But so was Amanda. So were the half-dozen or so people who ignore her entirely. So was I.

  And that’s when I realized, again, what a selfish jerk I am. Because I never once stopped to think about how much it stinks to be April. Here I am feeling sorry for myself because people might see that she is my friend. I am such a jerk.

  “You’re really good at this,” I told April.

  Miss Betsy turned toward me. The corners of her mouth twitched like she was trying not to smile. She nodded and kept walking.

  At the end of class, I was sweaty. Like shirt-sticking-to-my-chest sweaty. I was thirsty, too. Like lap-up-a-puddle thirsty. (You can’t get a drink of water during a karate class “unless you’re dying,” according to Miss Betsy. After class, I was last in line for the water fountain, where everyone took a thousand gulps.) I was more tired than I’ve ever been before, including the time Dad and I stayed up until four in the morning making a LEGO city.

  Part of me never, ever wanted to see Miss Betsy and her evil institution of pain again. But another part—a bigger part—felt proud. I made it through the class. I just wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it through another one.

  “I’ll see you on Friday,” Miss Betsy called out as we left.

  By the time we dropped off April, the proud feeling was even stronger than the tired feeling, which is really something.

  “You did well,” Grandma said to me over the yells, crying, and laughter pouring out from April’s open door as she went inside her house.

  Friday’s class was more of the same. Sit-ups, push-ups, kicks, and punches. Only my muscles were sore from Wednesday, so my leg turned into a thousand-pound weight right away. But I made it through the class. And Miss Betsy gave me a high-five at the end.

  “So,” Grandma said after dropping off April. “You ready to admit I was right?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t ready to say she was right when I wasn’t even sure why I liked the class. We did nothing but work ourselves sweaty. I scrunched back in my seat and thought about it. I guess what I liked more than anything was that even when April and I took twice as long to do each drill, no one in the class laughed at us. An older boy told me how to twist my foot to hit the top of it against the punching bag when we were doing roundhouse kicks and he didn’t make me feel stupid at all. At the end of class, everyone shook my hand like I was adult. No one whispered, rolled her eyes, or ignored me when I needed help.

  I wanted to be around people like that. I wanted to be a person like that.

  “Stop the car!” I screamed to Grandma. She slammed on the brakes. The car behind us screeched to a stop and the driver must’ve pushed his whole body into the horn, it was so loud.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Grandma screamed.

  “That’s my friend Sam’s house!” And Sam was outside, riding his bike around on his long driveway. So much for being sick!

  “You realize I almost killed us, right?” Grandma asked through her teeth. The guy behind us swerved around her car. Grandma shook her fist at him when he made a rude gesture toward us.

  “Sorry about that,” I said. “Thanks for stopping, though. I really need to talk to him. Can I get out of the car?” But I didn’t wait for Grandma’s answer. Already I was out of my seat and dashing toward Sam.

  He looked up at me for a second and cocked his head to the side like he was confused. I guess having some girl from school stop traffic and dart toward you in a karate uniform is a little startling. I was only a couple feet away from him when he dropped his bike and ran into the house.

  “Sam!” I shouted. “You know I totally see you, right? What are you doing?” I ran to the front screen door. I wanted to just throw it open and chase after him, but I knew my mom would never let up on the rudeness lecture if I barged into someone’s house. So I took a cue from the angry driver guy and laid on the doorbell.

  A confused-looking woman came to the door. Her head whipped from the stairs to me and back a couple times. “Sam?” she called up the stairs just as Grandma huffed to the front door.

  “Lucy!” Grandma snapped at me.

  Sam’s mom and Grandma exchanged a look that I was quite familiar with seeing. It usually came just before an adult sighed and said, “Kids!”

  Then Sam’s mom smiled, but in a small, sad way. She looked a lot like Sam when she did that. They both have smiles that seem to stop a little too soon. “So, you’re the famous Lucy? Sam never stops talking about you.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that, so I just jabbed a thumb toward Grandma. “This is Grandma. Listen, Mrs. Righter, I really, really need to talk to Sam. Really.”

  Mrs. Righter glanced back up the stairs. “It seems Sam has had a sudden relapse of his mystery illness.” She opened the screen door to us. “Come inside. I’ll see if I can get him to come down.”

  I stayed in the foyer, staring up the steps and straining my ears to hear what Sam and his mom were saying, but Grandma wandered into the living room. She let out a low whistle. “You didn’t tell me your friend was such an athlete.”

  The mantle over the living room fireplace was crowded with trophies, most with a big number one on them. Hanging over the mantle were framed pictures of Sam, but all black and white action shots of him doing gymnastics—hoisting himself up and swinging his legs over a pommel horse, hanging by his hands on rings, mid-flip on a high bar.

  “I didn’t know,” I whispered.

  Grandma shook her head and whistled again. “Someone doesn’t get this good without a lot of practice. You thought your karate lesson was tough? Imagine how much work it took to get in this type of shape.”

  She was right. Sam had to be practicing all the time to get this good. But he never once talked to me about it.

  Just then Sam walked into the room. Or rather, his mom pushed him in
and stood just behind him so he couldn’t back out.

  “What are you doing here?” he snapped.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were this awesome at gymnastics?” I asked back in the same angry voice.

  “What’s it to you?”

  Sam’s mom said something in his ear. It sounded like a whisper yell. I caught the words “incredibly rude.” Then she straightened up and asked Grandma if she wanted a cup of coffee.

  Grandma shifted Molly to her shoulder and squeezed my shoulder. “Sounds great,” she said, even though I know she hates coffee. She drinks about a dozen diet colas a day, but says coffee tastes like spit mixed with dirt.

  Before they even left the room, I crossed my arms and said, “I thought we were friends.”

  Sam shrugged.

  I stomped my foot. (Mom says I need to work on disguising my frustration. But I think frustration should be obvious.)

  Sam looked at his sneakers. “I started gymnastics when I was five, okay? It isn’t really a secret. Don’t you remember second grade?”

  “Parts of it,” I mumbled. I got a twisty feeling in my knees. I know a lot of people feel nervous in their stomachs, but for me it’s my knees. It feels like someone’s twisting and pushing on them at the same time and at any moment they might refuse to hold me upright. “Second grade was two years ago.”

  Sam gave a small smile. “Show and share? First week of school? I brought this in.” He walked over to the mantle and pointed at one of the larger trophies. “Amanda said, ‘I thought only girls could be in gymnastics.’ Tom and Henry laughed right in front of the Miss Granger. She told them to be quiet—”