“Listen to me!” says Seth. His burp rumbles for ten seconds, easy. We crack up.
“Knock it off,” says Paige, who is standing near us with Lacey and Maggie. She folds her arms and glares at us with disapproval etched into her pursed lips. “You guys should grow up and try learning something. You sound like burping moose. You can’t be ignorant bullies your whole lives, you know.”
“I know stuff!” I retort as Paige shakes her head.
The three girls glare at us and I frown back at them. Sure, I don’t get grades like they get, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know stuff. Books and school things aren’t the only things worth knowing. For example, it takes real talent to burp well. You have to swallow a bunch of air, open your airway, and then let it out quickly. Not everyone can do that.
And I wrote a play. I make up rhymes. That takes talent, too.
I’m not just an ignorant bully or a burping moose.
Don’t worry—you can count on me!
I’m a new Kyle! Just wait and see.
The girls stomp away as Brian burps again, short and quiet. Seth laughs, but I don’t. Burping doesn’t seem so funny anymore.
This exhibit is actually interesting. I turn my back on the burping-moose boys and try to focus on it. Right next to us, a glass case is filled with all sorts of arrowheads, and over in the corner sits a tepee. I hear Seth burp behind me and snicker.
Paige, Lacey, and Maggie stomp straight toward Mr. Chips, who stands with Samantha and Giovanna. As the girls talk to him, Paige points at us with stabbing, angry gestures.
I bet she’s telling him we’re ignorant.
Mr. Chips answers her in a loud, booming voice. It’s even louder than Brian’s burps, so I can hear it clearly, even across the room. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none!”
I have no idea what he’s talking about.
Brian burps. Seth laughs.
There are plenty of other people in the exhibit room, too. Some stare at Mr. Chips, and some glare at us. Brian burps again.
“Knock it off,” I say.
“What’s gotten into you?” snaps Brian.
“Nothing.” I read the exhibit sign next to me.
Brian burps, but I ignore him.
“Let’s go to the next room,” says Seth.
I’m not ready to go, though. I haven’t finished looking at the exhibits in this room. There’s a display across the room showing a bunch of people dancing around a fire, their faces covered in paint. It looks interesting.
“I bet we could make a break for it,” Brian whispers to me. “The old dude wouldn’t even notice.”
“Last one to the cafeteria is a rotten egg!” says Seth.
“Knock it off, guys,” I grumble. “You’re acting like ignorant moose.”
Someone shouts, and it’s not Brian or Seth doing the yelling, either. It’s Mr. Chips again. Now he’s arguing with a security guard. Samantha and Eric are with them. I wonder what’s going on.
“Thou lump of foul deformity!” Mr. Chips says loudly. “The tartness of your face sours ripe grapes. I denounce you, sir.”
I have no idea what Mr. Chips is talking about, but he’s angry and he looks like he wants to punch the guard.
Yow. Yow. Yow.
Well, this is the last time I’m doing a good deed, that’s for sure.
Now I know why I never do them. What a disaster of a day!
This morning, Mr. Wolcott waited for me outside the Big House for Old Geezers (that’s a name that makes me smile) wearing a bright pink bow tie and with a monocle in his eye, like the Monopoly guy wears. “Call me Mr. Chips!” he said in a loud British accent.
All things considered, the name could have been worse. I told him he was doing my class a big favor. I was grateful. Sincerely.
And when I got to school and introduced “Mr. Chips,” the other kids were really impressed that I had saved the day. Giovanna said that I was fantastically awesome, and that made me feel even more fantastically awesome.
But then he kept on quoting things like he always does. “You’re supposed to be a teacher,” I reminded him.
“And what life lessons we learn from the great bard, Shakespeare himself!” said Mr. Chips, who then added, “We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
“Uh, okay,” I said, biting my lip.
But even with him quoting things like usual, we arrived at the museum and everything was going well. Mr. Wolcott had been in a wonderful mood. He probably didn’t go on trips away from the Big House for Old Geezers (my name for the day) very often. We had been in the museum for about an hour and were in the Native American exhibit admiring their moccasins. I was trying to explain to Giovanna why shoes are the most important fashion accessory and how color coordination was not optional. I think I was finally starting to get through to her.
But then my shoulder was tapped.
“I think something’s wrong with Mr. Chips,” said Eric.
“Who?” I asked.
“Mr. Chips. Our pretend teacher.”
I thought he was next to me. I had been keeping Mr. Wolcott by my side all morning.
He stood in the middle of the room, his hands balled into fists. He breathed heavily. I quickly walked over to him. “Are you okay, Mr. Chips?”
“Him!” Mr. Wolcott pointed to a tall, scrawny security guard against the far wall. The guard was an old guy, in his sixties at least.
“Do you need help?” Maybe Mr. Wolcott had some sort of emergency and needed to alert the authorities for assistance. “What can I do?” I asked, genuinely concerned. Maybe we needed to find a doctor.
“That man is Jeffrey Barrows,” Mr. Wolcott announced, still staring at the guard. “My archenemy!”
The guard yawned. He didn’t notice Mr. Wolcott pointing at him with a long, crooked finger or the angry glare in our chaperone’s eyes.
“That’s just a security guard,” I said. The scrawny old guy across the room didn’t look like he could hurt a fly. Still, Mr. Wolcott seemed pretty worked up.
“I would recognize him anywhere!” Mr. Wolcott declared. His nostrils flared. He took a step forward, toward the guard.
I stepped in the path of Mr. Wolcott to block his way. He tried to sidestep me, but I moved in front of him again. “Let me pass,” he demanded.
“I think you might be mistaken, Mr. Chips.” I hoped if I said his teacher name, it might remind him he was supposed to be acting, and that teachers didn’t start fights with security guards. But I don’t think he even heard me. His stare never left the guard. A few people were watching us now. I turned my back to them.
“Have I told you about the love of my life, Franny Bree?” he asked.
I assured him that I might have heard her name once or twice.
“It was fifty years ago. Franny and I were set to perform on the London stage. It would be a grand performance of Romeo and Juliet. We would tour Europe, playing the star-crossed lovers. If not for him!”
His nostrils flared. His heels bounced. His face was tomato red. Mr. Wolcott was always so sweet on his lawn chair. I had never seen this side of him.
“I planned to propose marriage,” he proclaimed. “Our happiness was assured. But the night before we were set to leave, I fell ill. Barrow went to London in my place. He stole her heart. I never saw Franny again.”
“I’m so sorry.” I pictured Mr. Wolcott sitting on his lawn chair when I came home from school every day. I’d never seen him with friends or family. Did he have any? Maybe he’d spent half his life regretting his lost love. “But you can’t blame someone else because you got sick.”
“The cad poisoned me!” shouted Mr. Wolcott. “True, I cannot prove it—but I know it with every fiber of my soul. He wanted me out of the way so he could take my Franny from me.” He averted his gaze from the guard and looked down at me. I have never seen eyes so sad.
I wanted to give him a big hug, but that would have been totally weird.
Mr. Wolcott looked away for a mom
ent, wiping a tear from his eye. But then, when he turned back around, his expression of despair was gone and once again replaced with anger. His body seemed to vibrate with rage. He stared at the guard and shook his fist. “Revenge will be mine!”
“But are you really, really sure that’s him?” I asked. “It’s been a long time.” I patted Mr. Wolcott on the shoulder to help calm him down. He had been speaking so loudly that everyone in the room now stared at us. I threw some of the gawkers a soft smile to assure them nothing was wrong.
I shouldn’t have glanced away, because Mr. Wolcott quickly stepped around me. He marched toward the guard.
“Wait! Come back!” I begged as he stomped across the room. I hurried after him.
As he drew closer to the guard, Mr. Wolcott’s face grew fiercer and fiercer.
“So, Barrows! At last we meet!” Mr. Wolcott barked between clenched teeth. He puffed out his chest and glared up at the guard, who was a few inches taller than our pretend teacher.
The guard threw Mr. Wolcott a puzzled expression. “Excuse me?”
The guard was even older than he had looked across the room. He must have been in his seventies, at least. I pointed to his name tag. “Look! His name is Clyde. So he can’t be Jeffrey Barrows. It’s a different guy.”
But Mr. Wolcott waved me away. “Names are easily changed.” I pulled Mr. Wolcott’s arm to lead him away, but he wasn’t budging. “Thou art a Castilian King urinal!” Mr. Wolcott shouted at the guard. The veins in his neck throbbed and his lips shook. “Thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows!”
“Please, you’re going to ruin everything,” I pleaded to Mr. Wolcott.
I had no idea what our pretend teacher was talking about, but it was obviously meant to be insulting.
Our class secret would be exposed. Everyone would blame me.
I wondered what Daddy would say when I ended up in jail and needed him to bail me out.
Good deeds are a lot more trouble than they’re worth.
“You scullion. You rampallian. You fustilarian. I’ll tickle your catastrophe!” ranted our half-crazy teacher impersonator, his eyes bulging.
The guard had obviously had enough. He held a walkie-talkie, and he raised it to his mouth. I was certain that he was going to call for backup, and then a bunch of guys would run into the room and tackle Mr. Wolcott.
I hoped jail was comfortable.
But then a funny thing happened. The guard released the button. His eyes grew wider and he lowered his speaker. He stared at Mr. Wolcott. “Hey! I recognized that. You’re quoting Shakespeare, right? Was that line from Shakespeare’s play King Lear? I read it once, but that was a long, long time ago. I was a theater major back in the day.”
Something seemed to click just then. Mr. Wolcott’s face relaxed. The wrinkles of rage seemed to disappear. His anger just sort of melted away, like an ice-cream sundae you’ve left on the balcony of your high-rise penthouse. He unclenched his fists. He coughed. He smiled. “Actually, that line was from his play Henry the Fourth, Part Two. I performed it in my youth.”
“I did regional theater back home in Kentucky, but nothing too significant,” said the guard. I now noticed he had a very slight Southern accent. “Were you an actor?”
“I am an actor,” Mr. Wolcott corrected him. He seemed to grow taller. He lifted his chin. He laughed. He was a completely different person from the madman I saw an instant ago. He was himself again. He looked down at me, laughed, and said to the guard, “I mean, I’m a teacher of course.” Then, he put on his monocle and gazed at the guard with a wry eyebrow lift. “See?”
The guard nodded. “Ah. Yes, indeed. Very academic.”
Mr. Wolcott nodded. “I know.”
A few seconds later we were walking away. Mr. Wolcott smiled. “A good man, that,” he said.
“I thought he was your archenemy?” I asked.
“Him? No. Barrows would never mistake Henry the Fourth for King Lear. Those two plays weren’t even written in the same decade.”
I was too relieved to say anything else. I just nodded. “Let’s look at the exhibits,” I suggested, pointing to a glass display of Native American fur clothing and eager to get his mind on something else. Meanwhile, my heart beat a million miles a minute. It’s still beating just as fast now.
The rest of the trip went without a hitch, thankfully. Still, it was way too stressful.
“I was resplendent today, wasn’t I?” asks Mr. Wolcott as we walk home from school together.
I’m not sure what resplendent means. If it means I was a pain in the neck and almost ruined everything, then yes, he was very, very resplendent.
“If only the esteemed Franny Bree had seen me,” he says. “She would have marveled at my performance.”
Mr. Wolcott always rattles on about meaningless stuff, but maybe much of it isn’t meaningless to him. “You really loved her, didn’t you?”
He nods. “Loved? Past tense? Oh, love never extinguishes completely. Not true love, anyway.” That twinkle in his eye dims for a moment, but then it quickly rekindles. He laughs, and then he’s the same Mr. Wolcott I see on his lawn chair every day.
He waves good-bye and turns down the entranceway to the Home for Really Old and Sometimes Baffling Guys and Gals.
“Thank you for coming today!” I shout after him. And, despite everything, I actually mean it. Mostly.
An eraser bounces off the back of my head. “Two points!” yells Brian.
“Quit it. I’m not playing,” I grunt.
Brian shrugs and hurls an eraser at Seth, who ducks behind his chair.
They’re just ignorant.
Brian burps.
They’re just ignorant burping moose.
I ignore them and think of yesterday. I look around the class. I still can’t believe we made it through the entire field trip without being caught.
Yow. Yow. Yow.
But not everyone is celebrating our success. Maggie runs around in a panic and yanks her hair. “We need to practice the play! We are not prepared! Friday is in two days!” she shouts.
No one pays much attention to her. But she’s right. If we don’t practice, our performance will stink.
I want to impress our parents Friday night. I want to impress my mom, most of all.
I don’t think I’ve ever spent so much time on a homework project before. I’ve been spending a lot of time revising and editing the play, even at home.
Not that this is homework, because I assigned it to myself.
No, I think it counts as homework. It should count as homework, anyway.
The crowd applauds as we act and sing—
Maybe I could get used to this homework thing.
I’m especially proud of the songs. Everyone loves a musical.
But instead of rehearsing, Adam and Lizzie doodle on the floor. Danny and Gavin play paper football. Cooper eats a candy bar.
I whistle. Loudly. Everyone looks at me. “Maggie says we need to practice the play,” I snap.
Maggie throws me a grateful smile. Adam and Lizzie stop doodling and join her, and so do all the other actors. Behind me, Giovanna and Samantha remove a roll of large brown paper from our supply closet to start the set decorations.
Brian and Seth continue to hurl erasers at each other and burp.
Don’t they get sick of goofing off?
I think about last night. Mom was busy changing AJ’s diaper, and she asked me to take the meat loaf out of the oven. I told her I would in a moment, and I was planning to do it at the next commercial break, except I forgot.
Mom was pretty steamed, although she was not as steamy as the burnt meat loaf, which Mom made us eat even though it was charred and black. Marley and Nate wouldn’t talk to me the rest of the night.
Later, I asked Mom about the promotion and she said she was turning it down. I begged her to reconsider. I told her I’d hold down the fort.
She told me that she didn’t want the promotion and it had nothing to do with me.
/>
I don’t believe her.
I haven’t told her I wrote the class play. I want to surprise her. Maybe, if the play is absolutely fantastic, she’ll see that she can depend on me.
I’ll prove to her that I’m good for something. I’ll prove that to everyone.
A flying eraser grazes my hair. “I said I’m not playing,” I grumble to Seth.
“You’re no fun anymore,” says Brian.
I ignore him and join the actors. As the playwright, I need to be prepared to make more script changes and help the director.
I should write a part for our hamster, Soda. Soda can play the part of George Washington’s dog. I think he had a lot of dogs.
Wait. Soda! I forgot to feed him this morning. That’s my job.
How am I supposed to take care of my brothers and sisters if I can’t even remember to feed a hamster?
I hurry to Soda’s cage to fill his food bowl with hamster food pellets and to refill his water bottle.
The top of the cage is open. That’s strange.
“How are you doing, Soda?” I ask with a smile.
But when I look inside, Soda is missing.
“Hey! Who has Soda?” I ask loudly, scanning the room.
No one says a word. Everyone stares at me. I point at the cage. “Soda is gone. Who has him?”
I’m met with silence and blank stares.
“Who was the last person to go in his cage?” I ask.
I’m met with more silence. More stares.
I fed him yesterday before the field trip. I remember, because I lifted him from the cage, stroked his fur, and pretended to throw him at Emmy and then Jasmine.
They fall for that joke every time, screaming and cringing. It was funny. It’s always funny.
After that, I put Soda down on the floor while I poured some food into his dish. Then I put Soda back, right? Then I closed the door, right?
Or did I start playing Eraser Wars?
“You’ve lost our hamster?” Jade sounds very angry. She glares at me.
“No, of course not,” I say. I mean, I couldn’t have lost Soda, right?
I’m not that completely worthless, am I?
My stomach starts twitching with worry. My mouth fills with spit, like I’m going to get sick. I duck down to look under the desk, but there’s no Soda hiding there. “Help me find him!” I shout. My voice fills with panic.
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