Third Grade Angels

by Jerry Spinelli

  Mrs. Simms got another plastic bag and dropped in the apples. “These,” she said, “will become my famous pink applesauce.”

  For our first work of the day, we started to learn cursive. The twenty-six letters — capitals and little ones — were written on a green track across the top of the board. Our job was to copy the capitals, A to Z. Five times each.

  I was super neat and careful. I kept the letters perfectly between the blue lines on the paper — except when they had to go below for the J, Y, and Z. Mrs. Simms walked around, looking over our shoulders. When she stopped next to me, she tapped her finger on my desk and whispered, “Good.”

  We did map reading. Mrs. Simms spun the big globe. She asked who could come up and point to the Indian Ocean. She called on Noah Jablonski. He missed it. She called on Diana Briggs. Not even close. She called on me. I nailed it!

  In math, Mrs. Simms said by the end of the year we’re going to add and subtract numbers up to — she wrote it on the board — 10,000. “How much is that?” she said.

  Joey called out, “A million!”

  Mrs. Simms didn’t even look at him. When you don’t raise your hand, she ignores you.

  I raised my hand. She called on me. “Ten thousand,” I said. I was right.

  Mrs. Simms read us a story. It was about a city kid who spends his summer on a farm. When she came to a strange word, she stopped. The word was “husbandry.”

  “Anybody know what ‘husbandry’ means?” she asked the class.

  Only one hand went up. Emma Feldman said, “A married man.”

  Wrong.

  Joey’s hand shot up. “Two married men!”

  Everybody laughed.

  I raised my hand.

  “George?”

  “Could I go to the dictionary and look it up?”

  She smiled. “Be my guest.”

  I went to the dictionary. It sits on its own little table, called a podium. Mrs. Simms spelled the word for me. I looked it up. I read aloud: “On a farm, growing crops and raising animals.”

  A couple kids clapped. Joey whistled. Mrs. Simms glared at him, but I could tell she wasn’t really mad.

  In the playground I did a nice thing. We chose sides for a basketball game. I was a chooser. I chose the best players — until the last one. Then I chose Walter Glipner. Everyone was shocked, including Walter. Nobody ever chooses Walter. When he shoots the ball, forget about the basket — he can’t even hit the backboard! When Walter got over the shock, he stuffed his glasses in his pocket and cried out, “Let’s go!”

  I never saw a kid so happy and excited. It made me feel good. Mrs. Simms was at the fence talking to another teacher. I wondered if she saw what I did.

  At lunch we had sloppy joes. And a green vegetable. Peas. Three days a week we have a green vegetable. I never take it. This time I did.

  I was the only one at my table with peas. Joey picked one out of my dish and flicked it at Bernard Webber. Secretly I hoped the other guys would dig in and start a big pea fight until there weren’t any peas left. I ate my sloppy joe as slow as I could. I drank my chocolate milk. And still my dish was full of peas, minus one. Lunch hour was almost over. I gobbled them down. I tried not to taste.

  But on the way back to class I felt good. I felt like an angel.

  That’s how I felt for the rest of the day. As I walked out of the classroom I said, “Good-bye, Mrs. Simms.”

  She said, “Good-bye, George.” And the way she smiled at me — it was like she was sending me a message: You were perfect today.

  I was first onto the bus. As I sat there, I replayed the day in my head. Mrs. Simms was right — I was perfect!

  I sat up straight in my bus seat. I looked out. I saw Mrs. Simms standing at our classroom window. I’m pretty sure she was looking at me. I’m pretty sure she was smiling.

  In a couple minutes, the bus was mobbed. Zippernose flopped into a seat right across the aisle from me. She had to lean forward because her pink backpack was so stuffed. She didn’t look at me. She was gabbing away with some other second-grader in the seat in front of her. It was the weirdest feeling when I realized I was looking at her. I never look at her. But I was.

  And that’s when a really scary question came to me.

  “Does it count if the teacher doesn’t see it?”

  My mother was in the backyard. She was cutting stuff from her herb garden. Her head came up. “Say again?”

  “If Mrs. Simms doesn’t see me being good, how am I supposed to get credit for my halo?”

  She snipped a couple stems and stood up. She turned around. I laughed. She was wearing the supersize movie-star sunglasses I gave her as a joke for her birthday. “In other words,” she said, “you want to know if it’s okay to be bad when you’re not at school.”

  Another word trick. I was thinking it over when Zippernose came screeching. “Mommy! Mommy! Let me wear them!” She was jumping up, grabbing for the glasses.

  I smacked her hand away. “No.”

  She punched me. (Her punches don’t hurt.) “You shut up. They’re Mommy’s glasses.”

  “I gave them to her,” I said.

  “Which makes them mine,” said my mother. She took them off and handed them to Zippernose. “One minute and give them back.”

  Zippernose went dancing across the yard.

  I heard a chuckle. My mother was grinning down at me. “So,” she said, “what you really want to know is if you have to be nice to your sister — right?”

  My mother is unbelievable. She not only knows the answers, she knows the questions.

  “Well …” I said, “… sorta.”

  She nodded. The grin was gone. A serious answer was coming. “Okay, here’s what I think. You like Mrs. Simms, right?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You like her because she’s nice, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And nice people usually have a lot of friends, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I guess so.”

  “So” — she sniffed her handful of herbs — “Mrs. Simms — nice Mrs. Simms — probably has a lot of friends. You with me?”

  It’s funny. My dad is the lawyer, but my mom often sounds like one. “Yeah,” I said.

  “So here’s what I think.” She jabbed the herbs at me. “I think it’s not just Mrs. Simms keeping an eye on you. I think it’s her network of friends too. They’re probably all over the place. If they see one of her students acting up, they report back to her.”

  “You mean, like spies?” I said.

  She nodded. “Sort of.” She brushed the herbs across my nose. I smelled mint. “If you ask my advice, I’d say you better not take a chance. You better be nice to everybody all the time. And that” — she poked the herbs at the dancing Zippernose — “sad to say, ol’ Sudsie, includes your dear little sister.” She called, “Amy, time’s up!”

  Zippernose squealed. “One more minute!”

  Mom held out her hand. “Now.” She said it in her don’t mess with me voice.

  Zippernose groaned and slugged over and gave up the glasses. She gave me her best I hate you face and said “Poop” and punched me, like it was all my fault. Usually I would hit her back. Instead I looked at the neighbors’ backyards. At the neighbors’ windows. I wondered if a spy was lurking behind a shade. I let Zippernose go grumping off un-hit. And then Mom was squeezing me and saying, “My little angel.”

  It’s harder to be an angel at home than at school.

  I mean, it’s not like I’m really bad at home. I don’t throw the remote. I don’t make fires in the living room. I don’t say bad words. I’m just a normal kid. I do normal bad things. Sometimes I whine if I don’t get my way. Or leave my underwear on the floor. Or forget to cap the toothpaste or turn out lights. Or stick a banana peel under Zippernose’s pillow.

  But you should see me now. I sit up straight at the dinner table. I don’t pick at my food. When I answer the phone I say, “Morton residence. May I help you?” Every piece of dirty cl
othes goes into the hamper. If I need the salt, I say, “Salt, please.” When somebody passes it, I say, “Thank you.” I don’t have to worry about thanking my sister, because she would never pass me anything. But I don’t call her Zippernose anymore (except in my head). I don’t call her Amy either. I don’t call her anything.

  Now that I think about it, the only really hard thing about being an angel at home is being nice to my sister. And even that seemed pretty easy until my mother had a little talk with me a week ago.

  “So,” she said, “how’s the halo hunt going?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “How many more days till the crowning of the first perfect angel?”

  She knew I was counting. “Eighteen,” I said.

  She whistled. “Eighteen more days. No lights on in empty rooms. No clothes on the floor. This is a new experience for me — a perfect person right here” — she pointed straight down — “in my house.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Or maybe I should say almost perfect.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “Well, there is one little area where … well … you’re not exactly bad, but you’re not exactly good either. You’re just kind of nothing.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes. With your sister. I thought we agreed you’re going to be nice to her.”

  I couldn’t believe she was saying this. “Mom, I am nice to her. I didn’t hit her for a week. I don’t make fun of her. I don’t slam the door on her face. Mom — I don’t even call her Zippernose anymore.”

  She nodded. “True. You don’t do anything. And that’s” — she poked me — “the point, joint. You ignore her. Like Judy Billings ignores you. It’s as if she doesn’t exist. That’s not being nice to her. Being nice means doing something, not doing nothing.” She held out her fist. “Dig it?”

  I nodded. “Dig it.” We fist-bumped.

  So for the past week I’ve been doing one nice thing for my sister each day. Like, yesterday at breakfast, after I used the pancake syrup, instead of keeping it on my side of the table, I pushed it back to the middle where she could reach it. And today, when I saw her Plumpy Donkey on the hallway floor — usually I would step on it. But not this time. This time I just kicked it back into her room.

  So far it’s not so bad. Because every time I do something nice, I think: Maybe one of Mrs. Simms’s spies saw that. I keep sneaking looks at the windows, but so far I haven’t caught anybody peeking in. I can almost feel them. Spying. Taking notes. (Maybe even pictures!) Reporting back to Mrs. Simms. I have to really be on my toes. I have to make up for all that blurting. I can’t lose focus.

  Good. Good. Good.

  Nice. Nice. Nice.

  Perfect in every way.

  Eleven days till October first. Eleven days till First Halo.

  I feel myself getting perfecter and perfecter. Every night I go to bed thinking I can’t get any better. And the next day I find out I can.

  Like, one morning after I pushed through the door at school, I noticed that Constantina Pappas was behind me. Until then, the only girl I had ever held a door for was Judy Billings. Now, whenever there’s a girl behind me, no matter who it is, I hold the door for her.

  I pick up litter. At first I picked up stuff I stepped on in the playground. I put it in my pocket and dumped it in a trash can in school. Then I started walking halfway across the playground to pick up candy wrappers.

  A couple times I caught Mrs. Simms looking my way. Now I pick up stuff from our sidewalk and gutter at home and even at the mall. Every time I do it I picture one of Mrs. Simms’s spies making another check mark after my name:

  In school I got all my two- and three-times tables right. And when Mrs. Simms wrote

  on the board, I was the only one with the right answer: “One hundred thousand eight hundred and forty-one.” And during cursive practice one day, Mrs. Simms whispered to me: “You write better than I do.”

  But even with all this good stuff going on, I couldn’t relax. Because I didn’t know how I was doing compared to everybody else. There were twenty-three other kids in my class. I figured every one of them wanted that first halo — well, except Joey Peterson. Maybe others got all their times tables right too. Maybe I wasn’t the only one Mrs. Simms whispered to. Maybe if I picked up five pieces of litter one day, somebody else picked up six.

  It was like I was in a race, but I couldn’t see any of the other runners.

  And then all of a sudden I could see them. Because of something that happened on the playground.

  Raymond Venotti spit.

  It happened after lunch. At the swings. Raymond walked over to an empty swing, coughed up a big lunger into his mouth, and dumped it right there on the middle of the swing seat. Wow, I thought, that’s some litter I’m not picking up! I looked across the way. Mrs. Simms was staring and glaring. She saw the whole thing.

  I said to Raymond, “Why’d you do it?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Mrs. Simms saw you,” I told him.

  He shrugged some more. “So?”

  I was shocked. “So? What about the halo? Don’t you care?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. I’m tired of being good.”

  Three things happened after that:

  A second-grade girl sat on the swing. After a minute she stood up. Her hand felt her butt. She screamed.

  Mrs. Simms had a private talk with Raymond Venotti in the hallway.

  I suddenly started seeing other stuff.

  Everywhere I looked, kids were being bad. And messy. And rude.

  When Mrs. Simms had her back turned, Wilson Banner burped out loud — on purpose.

  Dawn Olichek pulled a booger from her nose and stuck it under her seat.

  Four kids had untied shoelaces.

  Even Judy Billings — she dropped a gum wrapper on the ground!

  I told my mother all this after school.

  “Sounds like you got a bunch of regular hoodlums in there,” she said.

  “What’s it all mean, Mom?” I asked her. “Don’t they even care about the halo anymore?”

  She tugged my earlobe. “What it means, Sudser, is they’re just being normal third-graders. Maybe it means that you” — she tugged both ears — “are the only one trying to be a perfect angel.”

  I think she was telling me I didn’t have to worry anymore about winning the race — because everybody else dropped out. I was the only one left.

  Yes! I thought. The halo is mine!

  But my mother was wrong.

  Darren Tapp is still in the race.

  I sneaked a peek at his cursive. It’s as perfect as mine. And I think I saw Mrs. Simms whispering to him.

  I saw him holding a door for a girl.

  He sits up perfectly straight in class.

  I tested him at recess. I stood next to him and dropped a piece of paper on the ground (when I was sure Mrs. Simms wasn’t looking). He picked it up!

  There’s only one thing all this can mean: Darren Tapp wants that first halo too. I guess the big question is: Does he want it as bad as I do?

  I can feel his breath on my neck.

  I’m running faster and faster.

  I volunteered to do the dishes at home. My father thought I was joking. He laughed. “We have a dishwasher!”

  I tried to buy a box of dog biscuits with my allowance at the supermarket. “What’s that for?” my mother asked.

  “For Mrs. Simms’s dog,” I told her. “Mr. Moto.”

  “I thought you told me Mrs. Simms cannot be bribed,” she said.

  “She can’t,” I said. “But this isn’t for her. It’s for her dog.”

  “Put it back,” she said.

  Some people don’t make it easy being perfect. But I’m not giving up.

  When I see students heading for the water fountain, I rush ahead and push the button for them.

  I hold the door for boys.

  I don’t even think the word “Zippernose” anymore
.

  It’s not easy. As soon as I think I’m finally perfect, I think of something I missed.

  And then there’s another problem: People keep messing me up.

  Like the other day in school. I was doing cursive letter P. Then I had to go to the bathroom. When I came back, I found a whole line of letters with an extra curl at the bottom so they looked like Bs. I looked over at Joey. He was doing his letters, but his face was getting red and blue from trying not to laugh. It took me five minutes just to erase the messed-up line.

  That same day after school I couldn’t find my teddy bear, Winky. It’s always sitting up against my pillow. I finally found it in my underwear drawer. Every day I find something else where it’s not supposed to be. I know Zip — excuse me — my sister is doing it. But until I get my halo, I’m afraid to fight back. So I headed for the tub.

  Mom found me in the suds.

  “Oh no —” she went. “Chipmunky again?”

  She was right. I’ve been in the tub almost every day lately.

  “I’m a nervous wreck,” I told her.

  I don’t know why that was funny, but she laughed. “Yes, I can see that.” She sat on the edge of the tub. “Don’t you think maybe you’re getting a little carried away? Maybe you’re taking this angel business a little too far?”

  “I have to stay ahead of Darren Tapp,” I said.

  “He’s just waiting for me to make a mistake.”

  She reached into the tub and tugged my earlobe with soapy fingers. “Suds, by the end of the year everybody will have a halo. It’s okay to not be first. It’s okay to be second. Or tenth. Or even last.”

  It’s okay to not be first.

  I tried to wrap my brain around those words. I couldn’t.