Been There, Done That

by Mike Winchell

  I shuffle my blank papers while I try to remember the next announcement. Nelson holds up a cue card that says “Science fair,” to remind me. I don’t know what I’d do without that kid. It’s really too bad his parents auctioned off his soul when he was a baby. But they did get a sweet car out of the deal, so I guess it evens out.

  “When . . . um . . . if . . . don’t forget to congratulate the winners of this year’s science fair,” I say, scrambling to regain my composure. Ms. Briar shakes her head, and I’m sure the mics pick up laughter from the control room. So unprofessional. “Runner-up Esteban Morales wowed judges by reanimating the corpse of Principal Blake, whose first act was to suspend Gregory Peters for killing him—crossbow safety is no laughing matter. But the real star of the science fair was Anya Mahadeo, whose demonstration of an interdimensional portal into the Bygone Lands earned her first prize. Mr. Kowalski is holding Anya’s trophy for her in the event she manages to return with her sanity intact. We’re rooting for you, Anya!”

  Nelson visibly relaxes as the focus returns to Skye. He flashes me a goofy smile, which hopefully means I haven’t botched up the show beyond all repair. Skye’s been in Ms. Briar’s ear for the last month to let her do the morning show alone, and if I keep screwing up, Ms. Briar might actually consider it. Without these few minutes a day to be seen, I wouldn’t have any reason to bother showing up for school at all.

  Skye tilts her head slightly to the side when she resumes speaking. “Vice Principal Brezenoff is asking anyone with information regarding the theft of twenty live frogs from the biology lab to report to him in the administration building.

  “And for lunch today, the cafeteria is serving meat stew. Sounds yummy!”

  To get back at Skye for interrupting me earlier, I turn and say, “Seems like our veep should investigate the meat stew if he really wants to find those frogs.”

  But Skye hardly misses a beat. “Don’t be silly, Colt, you know they’d never serve us something as extravagant as frog. But those azagoths on the tennis court better watch out. Chef Lafferty is a whiz with a cleaver.” She laughs so hard, she nearly snorts, yet still manages to make it look rehearsed and professional, before moving right into the next announcement.

  “For all you juniors and seniors watching, prom has been moved from May twenty-first to May fourteenth to avoid coinciding with the full moon. Your offering to Carthaxis will be accepted at the door, and students are reminded that only bladed, noncursed weapons are allowed inside the hall.”

  I can’t bear to think about prom. Shane Augustino didn’t even acknowledge me when I asked him. Shane Augustino, of all people! If I can’t get a guy with that much body hair and a tail to be my date, I’m going to wind up sitting at home watching my parents perform ritual sacrifices all night. Dad says the problem is that I’m too normal. Everyone else is either the spawn of a Dreadly or the blood slave of one of the many faces of the Infinite Horde. How can I compete with that? I’m barely important enough for anyone to try to dismember and eat.

  Skye, of course, is attending with Jeremy Weston. He’s practically Sprawl royalty. His father is mayor, his mother the high priestess of Belarax. And he was born in a nightmare. A freaking nightmare! I wish I’d been born in a nightmare instead of in the back of a Ford Focus on the way to the hospital. If I had, maybe then I’d have gotten some cool supernatural powers. Once, I thought I could set things on fire because I burned down the chemistry lab, but it turned out someone had just forgotten to shut off the gas on a Bunsen burner.

  The other day I thought about asking someone to prom during a broadcast. Then everyone in the school would hear me, they’d see me. And he’d have to say yes. Only I didn’t know who to ask. The truth is that I’m just not good enough for anyone. I can’t think of a single person who wouldn’t drown themselves to avoid going to prom with me. Besides, if I pulled a stunt like that, Ms. Briar would yank me out from in front of the cameras for sure, and I’d spend the rest of the year completely invisible.

  Nelson is waving at me again, and I realize that I’m up. I smile at Nelson for saving my skin, and he winks back.

  “The debate team has asked us to remind you that you are wrong. The Leviathan Weekly regrets to announce that, due to the extra space necessary for obituaries, they will no longer be printing the popular haruspicy advice column “Questions of the Heart and Other Internal Organs.” And the mathletes are on the hunt for new members. If you love confluent hypergeometric functions and you’ve got the brains, see Mrs. Spalding to sign up. If you don’t have the brains, they have extras to loan you.”

  “Maybe I should check that out,” Skye says. “What do you think, Colt?”

  This time I’m ready and refuse to let her fluster me. “Oh, Skye, I doubt they’ll let you eat those brains, but I know that won’t stop you from trying.” She kicks me under the desk again, and this time it’s Nelson who can’t stop laughing. Ms. Briar is flapping her arms like she’s going to smash through the glass separating the studio from the control booth and strangle us.

  “Finally,” I say, “we’d like to take a moment to remember those students and faculty we’ve lost this week. With any luck, they’ll turn up alive.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Skye says with a bitter laugh.

  “That’s it for us here at Sprawl Morning News. I’m Colt Favre—”

  “And I’m Skye Bolton.”

  “—have a wonderful day, and we hope you’ll survive to tune in tomorrow. All hail Mighty Belarax.”

  I count to three and watch the red lights on both cameras die.

  “You are such a loser!” Skye screeches at me the moment we’re off the air. “I hate you!” She stands up, sending her chair skittering back into the wall behind her, and storms out of the studio.

  It’s a small victory, but I cherish it, anyway. She’s got everything I want. Popularity, a boyfriend, people who see and pay attention to her when she talks. She doesn’t know how fortunate she is.

  I stand slowly. Without the cameras on me, I’m already fading, disappearing.

  “Great show, Colt,” Nelson says. He’s all smiles.

  “Yeah. Whatever.”

  My hands are translucent; I can see the speckled linoleum floor through my legs.

  “That last bit with Skye was killer.” Nelson edges out from behind the camera. “She’s so mad.”

  “I guess.”

  The overhead studio lights beam through my body like it’s made of glass.

  “So, I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Nelson says. As my body loses cohesion, his words pass through me.

  “Sure,” I say, not really hearing him.

  “Cool. I was wondering if . . .”

  I hold my hands in front of my face and watch them vanish. Until nothing remains. In moments I transform from the face of Sprawl High News, seen by hundreds, to an afterimage that fades and is soon forgotten. Like always. I drift to the door like a dandelion seed carried by an easterly breeze. I don’t say good-bye to Ms. Briar or Nelson or anyone. They wouldn’t hear me if I tried.

  “And it’d be such a blast. We could rent a limo and wear matching tuxes and . . .” Nelson’s voice trails after me, but the words are little more than a meaningless jumble of sounds. They don’t register. I barely perceive them before I float out of the studio. He’s still talking and he can’t even see me. I’m not even there. What was he asking me? I’m sure it wasn’t important.

  Sometimes I don’t know why I bother with school at all.

  But that’s a lie. I do know.

  I want to be seen.

  Mike Winchell

  CLASS HAS STARTED

  Congratulations, you’ve made it to your first class! There’s your teacher, the person who will introduce you to all kinds of new things, from study skills, to important information, to lasting life lessons.

  The thing is—as you will learn
from authors Howard Cruse, Meg Medina, and Bruce Coville—every teacher has a unique style. Some can be a bit strange with an odd sense of humor, some are stern and direct, while others are sensitive, encouraging, and want to connect with students on multiple levels. But one thing they have in common is that they all have helpful lessons to share.

  Howard Cruse

  WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

  DARING TO BE DOC

  Doc, our Basic Studies teacher, was normally punctual, but on one memorable occasion he threatened to be a no-show for class. And an unwritten rule at my boarding school was that should a teacher fail to arrive, his students were duty bound to wait patiently for ten minutes but no longer. After that grace period, they were free to return to their dorm rooms.

  Those ten minutes of waiting time were usually boring. Which is why, that day during my freshman year when the starting bell rang and Doc was nowhere to be seen, I impulsively chose to fill the dead time with improvised entertainment for the benefit of my captive classmates.

  Basic Studies, I should explain, was the umbrella term for a class that from day to day rotated its emphasis among writing, history, literature, and philosophy. The inclusion of philosophy among the more typical ninth-grade disciplines was due to Doc’s presence among the course’s rotating set of teachers. Philosophical inquiries were among Doc’s favorite pastimes, and he especially enjoyed engaging in them with the school’s teenage population. He saw that as a good way to open young minds to new ways of looking at life.

  Doc and I had bonded from my earliest days at the school. He found my cartooning ambitions a refreshing novelty, and he encouraged me to let my satirical impulses roam free. This was true even when he was my target, as he often was in the cartoons I drew for the student newspaper.

  Spoofing Doc was easy because of the unique figure he cut as an educator. He was a tall, portly, big-boned, balding, pipe-puffing, charismatic visionary whose brilliance was obvious even though he spoke in a rural Oklahoma drawl.

  In or out of the classroom, Doc was likely to prod students into conversations about topics we had never seriously considered, like the nature of democracy or the essentials of civic responsibility. For a teenager like me he was an inspiring presence. His role as a mentor didn’t stop me from making fun of him, though.

  On the mornings when Doc took the Basic Studies helm, he always began by puffing on his pipe as he spelled out on the blackboard the area of philosophical inquiry he had chosen for the day. A typical example might be:

  Proposition: A chair does not exist if I cannot see it.

  Lively arguments and counterarguments would soon be sparked among Doc and the kids in the room.

  Which brings me to the day Doc showed up late for class. Most of my classmates were happy to swap jokes and otherwise goof off during our unexpected ten minutes of leisure, but I surprised myself by leaping to my feet and strolling to the blackboard, where I scrawled some absurd philosophical proposition that I’ve long since forgotten and began improvising a comic impression of Doc’s style of teaching.

  My startled classmates locked their eyes on me and began chuckling. No one was rolling in the aisles, but the laughs I got kept me riffing.

  So I spent several minutes satirizing all of Doc’s mannerisms I could think of. His drawl was the centerpiece, of course, but puffing on an imaginary pipe filled out the picture, as did furrowing my brow while I waited for my classmates to answer questions that—unlike any questions Doc might really ask—everyone knew were ridiculous.

  But my stomach quaked when I noticed the face of our late-arriving teacher peering through the window of our classroom door. I had no need to worry, though, because Doc, quickly perceiving what was going on, chose not to interrupt my improvisation. I was being creative, after all, which he enjoyed when I did it on paper and which still tickled him now that I was doing it in the flesh. The good-natured sparkle I saw in his eyes gave me courage to carry on.

  So I did.

  For a bit too long.

  Giddy from the laughter I had initially elicited from my peers, I began realizing that my improvisatory skills were running out of steam. My humor was wearing thinner, my audience becoming less amused. But I was unable to invent a good way to bring my stunt to a close.

  Finally one of my classmates solved the problem for me. He stood up, grumbled, “This is a big waste of time,” and headed for the door. Before his hand could touch the doorknob, though, Doc stepped into the room, and the student retreated.

  For a moment I froze. Then I reassumed the role of compliant student by sheepishly surrendering the floor to Doc. Without commenting on what had just transpired, Doc wrote the day’s philosophical proposition on the board, and the format of our normal Basic Studies class was restored.

  After class, I found Doc strolling alongside me down the hall. He drawled, “Well, Howard, that was fun, but a good performer knows when it’s time to get off the stage.”

  Meg Medina

  WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

  ALL THAT MRS. ZUCKERMAN TAUGHT ME

  Every school has a Mrs. Zuckerman.

  She’s the teacher whom everyone dreams of having because there’s light in her eyes and a sense of fun.

  Mrs. Zuckerman taught the Talented and Gifted class, the smartest third-grade class at P.S. 22, where I went to elementary school. Everyone knew that was the class for minigeniuses, which made me feel a little hopeless at the end of second grade. I still used my fingers to do addition. Mrs. Kreitman, my teacher, had repeatedly pointed out my sloppy work habits in the comments section of my report card every quarter, too. I ate holes in my papers with my erasures, and my worksheets were always stained and crumpled. And, of course, there was my lingering fascination with Elmer’s glue. I’d make little blobs inside my desk and play with them as they dried into gooey lumps.

  What hope, then, did I have to be moved into Mrs. Zuckerman’s group? Only the very best students were destined for that class, and I suspected that they had better work habits than mine. They remembered their homework and brought in elaborate projects. They certainly knew their number facts. My best skill was getting lost in a book or making up stories. Mrs. Kreitman had sometimes even called it daydreaming or lying.

  Imagine my shock, then, when I peeked at my final report card and found Mrs. Zuckerman’s name and room number. Was this a mistake? A joke? Even my mother was speechless over the miracle, but she didn’t argue.

  Naturally, I fell in love with Mrs. Zuckerman the way everyone always did. She was cheerful when we arrived each morning, and almost never raised her voice when we got too rambunctious. Instead, she quieted us with her own contagious stillness. She always assigned us interesting projects, too, especially in writing, my favorite. It was Mrs. Zuckerman, in fact, who wrote the words “Margaret, you are a wonderful writer” across the top of my first poem. It was the first time I could remember that a teacher said I was good at anything. I beamed inside and rewrote my final copy with more care than I had ever written anything else before. All these years later, when I look back to what made me love writing, I think it was Mrs. Zuckerman’s approval and praise.

  But Mrs. Zuckerman also taught me something even more important than having faith in my writing, and it happened on the heels of what I was sure was a disaster.

  As the winter holiday break approached that year, all of the students buzzed about the wonderful things they would bring Mrs. Zuckerman as a present. I already had the perfect plan. Someone as spectacular as Mrs. Zuckerman deserved a truly spectacular gift. My choice was obvious. I would buy her a Chia Pet. To me, that pottery gift seemed magical. It was shaped like a sheep; you would water it, and within days the seeds inside would sprout to look like lamb’s wool. Pointless? Maybe. But this was the era of mood rings and pet rocks, too.

  Unfortunately, my mother had other ideas. In fairness, I have to admit that money was very limited in our family. My mothe
r earned minimum wage, there were three mouths to feed, and the rent would soon be due. But the bigger problem was my mother’s eccentricity, which made a scary companion to her tightwad tendencies. She was criminally practical, too. Every purchase she made had to be useful. In other words, she could be counted on to give you pencils and underwear as Christmas gifts.

  Anyway, she hated my idea.

  A hunk of pottery that grew grass seedlings to imitate fur? Who on earth would want such a thing, she said. Instead, Mami handed me the gift that she had carefully selected.

  It was a pair of pantyhose that she had purchased at the supermarket for a dollar.

  I begged my mother to see it my way, but it was no use. I was destined to die of shame. While my friends would shower Mrs. Zuckerman with impressive gifts, I would hand over a woman’s personal undergarments. The only worse gift might have been a bra.

  I walked to school that day, heavyhearted, and handed over the gift at the very last moment. Somehow that odd gift made me feel like an especially poor kid and, worse, a weird one. I was positive that no American family would ever stoop to give pantyhose as a present.

  Thankfully, Mrs. Zuckerman chose not to open any of the gifts that day. When she hugged us each good-bye, she promised to do so over vacation.

  When I got back to school in January, there were small white envelopes on our desks. My name was written in her beautiful script on the outside.

  Dear Margaret,

  Thank you so much for the lovely and practical gift. I will get plenty of use from the hosiery. You were so thoughtful to think of me.

  Your friend,

  Mrs. Zuckerman

  There are so many ways that adults can build up children. We can teach them and put stars on their papers. We can laugh at their jokes. We can help them when they struggle with friends. Mrs. Zuckerman did all of those things, of course. But with that simple acknowledgment of my strange gift, she did something else. She erased all of my shame and gave me a living example of the power of extending even the simplest kindness.