The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Best Worst Summer Ever
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I had finished brushing my teeth, so I was all clear to say everything I wanted to say.
“But, Dad, summers were invented for kids to kick back and relax. To journey into uncharted territories of new fun.”
Wow, where’d I pull that out from? Even I was impressed.
“You’ll have plenty of time to relax,” my dad said, obviously not as impressed with me as I was. “We’re going to the Jersey Shore for a week.”
“That’s not until the end of August.”
“Well, after school, I’ll pick you up and we’ll play exciting games of Scrabble Junior,” my dad said, looking like he had just had the best idea of the year.
“We’ve tried that already, Dad. Remember? I can’t spell.”
“And there you have the reason for summer school.”
Point. Set. Match. Face it, Hank. You’ve lost this argument, hands down.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just stormed off to the kitchen to eat my breakfast.
Wouldn’t you know it, it was alphabet cereal.
“Aloha, campers and students alike!” Head Teacher Leland Love was inside the main door of PS 87, all five-feet-four inches of him, wearing a Hawaiian shirt that was so big I could have used it as a tent for a sleepover in the woods.
“Check out his outfit,” Frankie whispered to me as we walked into reception. “Great shirt, if you’re a dancing elephant.”
“I just read in Teens in the Know that people express themselves with their clothes,” Ashley said. “Obviously, he’s trying to tell us something.”
“That there’s a short Hawaiian wrestler inside him, dying to get out,” Frankie said.
“Let’s hope he doesn’t succeed,” Ashley answered, and we all cracked up together.
Head Teacher Love saw us laughing, but he was clueless, as usual. He never suspects when we’re laughing at him.
“Ah, laughing faces of children always make my heart burst into song,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder as I tried to sneak by. And, get this. He actually started to sing:
“Aloha to Summer Fest at PS 87.
Welcome, my children,
To a little bit of heaven.”
If this song was even a tiny sample of what summer school was going to be like, I was going to have to run for parts unknown. The only thing that stopped me was Mr Rock’s friendly face, greeting us as he jogged down the stairs to reception. Mr Rock is the music teacher at PS 87, and trust me, if you could pick any teacher in the world for your teacher, he’s the one you’d pick. It’s as if he knows what kids are thinking before they even think it.
Like he could see that I was thinking about how I could escape to the Central Park Zoo and spend the summer living in the monkey enclosure. Hey, I love monkeys. They’re so funny.
“Hi, Hank,” he said. “You’re in my class.”
That was the first good news I had heard all morning. Well, let’s be honest. It wasn’t truly good news like, “Hey, there’s an all-night kung fu movie marathon on TV tonight.” After all, I still had to go to summer school. Let’s just say it was OK news, which is better than terrible news, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Mr Rock could definitely see that I wasn’t jumping up and down with joy.
“I promise you, Hank, summer school will not be the worst experience you’ve ever had on this planet or any other.”
“Mr Rock,” I whispered, “I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but it’s not working.”
Before Mr Rock could reply to me, Head Teacher Love held a megaphone to his mouth.
“If you’re a Junior Explorer, stand to the left of the stairs. If you’re in summer school, stand to the right, please.”
Almost everyone went to the left of the stairs. I did too. That’s because I still can’t figure out my right from my left. I almost got it a couple of weeks ago when I fell during dodgeball and skinned my left knee. For a whole week, I could tell my left from my right by where the scab was. But when it healed and fell off, I was just as confused as before.
“Mr Zipzer,” I heard Head Teacher Love saying through the megaphone, “you are to go to the RIGHT side of the stairs. The summer-school side.”
Could this be any more embarrassing? Well, maybe. If Head Teacher Love was on the top of the Empire State Building with a massive megaphone, shouting out across the entire city: “Hank Zipzer does not know his left from his right, and that is only one of the many reasons he has to go to summer school!”
Yeah, that would be a little bit more embarrassing. But not much.
I felt like all the kids were staring at me as I slunk over to the right side of the stairs. I looked around to check out who I was standing with. There were kids from both the fourth and fifth grades at my school. I noticed they weren’t exactly the school geniuses. There was Luke “I’ll pick my nose at the drop of a hat” Whitman. Matthew “I’m not toilet-trained yet” Barbarosa. Salvatore “I don’t like Hank Zipzer very much” Mendez. And a girl I had only seen in Mr Sicilian’s fourth-grade class, who was talking on a mobile phone saying, “OK, Nick, I’ll meet you at the bowling alley.” She was smiling a lovey-dovey kind of smile.
Nick? Could she be talking to Nick McKelty? His dad does own a bowling alley on 86th Street. And the only other Nick at school insists on being called Nicholas so he won’t be confused with Nick the Tick.
I looked over at the kids standing on the other side of the stairs. Sure enough, there was Nick McKelty standing at the back of the crowd, clicking off his mobile and putting it in the pocket of his jeans.
Oh, no! I was going to be in summer school with Nick McKelty’s girlfriend.
Wait a minute! How could Nick McKelty get a girlfriend? Hasn’t she watched him eat, with all of the food in his mouth squishing through the openings in his snaggly teeth? Hasn’t she seen the size of his super humungous feet? Hasn’t she had a whiff of his dragon breath that has been known to melt the gel in my hair?
“Joelle,” I heard Mr Rock saying, “turn off your phone. No mobiles in class.”
Joelle and Nick sitting in a tree,
K-i-s-s-i-n-g.
My brain flipped over in my head and spun round, throwing itself against the inside of my skull. It refused to go on with the rhyme. I could hear it yelling “Ptueey” like it was trying to spit out the picture of Nick and Joelle k-i-s-s-i… Oh, I can’t go on.
“Those of you in summer school will follow Mr Rock to Ms Adolf’s classroom on the second floor,” Head Teacher Love announced. “Those of you in the Junior Explorers Programme will come with me to the Hawaiian Isles.”
“We’re flying to Hawaii?” Ashley asked.
“In our minds we are, Ms Wong,” Head Teacher Love said. “Oh, the joys of the imagination running wild.”
“I guess my imagination is walking slowly,” Frankie said, “because I don’t get it.”
“The theme of this week’s Junior Explorers Programme is Passport to Hawaii, a salute to our fiftieth state,” Head Teacher Love explained. “We will be learning to hula dance, and we’ll all be finding out how low we can go as we limbo the night away at Friday’s Hawaiian luau extravaganza.”
There was a buzz among the kids. A luau and a limbo contest. Wow, it sounded like so much fun.
“May I introduce you to your hula instructor,” Head Teacher Love said in his tall-man, sports-announcer voice. That big voice always seems so funny coming out of such a small man.
At that very moment, the doors to the staffroom swung open and Ms Adolf, my fourth-grade teacher, came into the hall. She was wearing a grass skirt and a bikini top made out of two coconuts, which she wore over grey Bermuda shorts and a grey long-sleeved shirt. No, I am not kidding you. She had an entire hula-dancer outfit on over her normal clothes. And you’re not going to believe this: the coconuts even had smiley faces on them. It was a sight that for a second made me actually grateful I had not received a Passport to Hawaii.
“Aloha, pupils,” she said, shaking her hips in a move that looked
like a hippo looking for a place to pee. Ms Adolf isn’t exactly the hip-shaking type.
I glanced over at Frankie and Ashley. Frankie was biting his lower lip really hard to keep from laughing. Ashley was actually holding her top lip over her bottom lip so she wouldn’t start to giggle. Once she starts giggling, there’s no stopping her.
“All of you explorers follow us out to the white sand beaches of Waikiki.” Head Teacher Love pointed to the sandpit on the playground. They had propped up two huge paper palm trees there and spread beach blankets on the ground in the area around the swings.
“Those of you in summer school, follow me upstairs,” Mr Rock said.
The Junior Explorers all ran after Head Teacher Love and headed out the door and into the playground. The rest of us marched up the stairs and into the classroom. There were no palm trees, no beaches, no blankets.
What was there was a blackboard, chalk and – oh, goody – brand-new rubbers.
We took our seats in the classroom. Mr Rock said we could sit anywhere we wanted, so I took a seat next to the window where I could see the Junior Explorers. They were already starting to play beach games in the playground. Boy, that was a tough sight to see. There I was, sitting at my desk looking through my rucksack for a sharpened number-two pencil. And just on the other side of the glass, two floors down, were all the other kids, doing the normal summer thing – having fun. If you’re thinking that looking out the window at everyone else having fun put me in a bad mood, then you’re a great thinker.
We were in Ms Adolf’s classroom, my old fourth-grade room. Same old pale green walls. Same old clock on the wall with the same old hands ticking soooooo slowly from one minute to the next.
There are thirty-two seats in our classroom. I know this because I’ve spent the last year counting them every time I wasn’t paying attention to Ms Adolf, which was most of the time. It’s not that I don’t want to pay attention. I start every day thinking that today I’m going to pay attention from nine until three. It’s just that my mind will not cooperate. By ten past nine, I’m thinking about the Mets baseball game, and by nine-fifteen, I’m wondering if my dachshund, Cheerio, is licking the bricks by our fireplace, and by nine-sixteen, I’ve already gone into orbit round the outer rings of Saturn.
Anyway, back on earth, there were a lot of empty seats in the class because there were only eleven of us lucky enough to make the summer-school cut. I wish I wasn’t so good at failing. It’s one of the only things that comes really easily to me – that and flossing my teeth. Even my dentist says I am an excellent flosser. I can get out a raspberry seed stuck between my two back molars faster than you can say the Museum of Natural History, which by the way is about five blocks from my house if you take the shortcut.
In spite of the fact that most of the seats in our class were empty, Miss Joelle “I can’t stop checking my mobile” Adwin sat down in the seat right next to me.
“Hi,” she said. “Do you like gymnastics?”
That was a friendly start.
“Hi,” I said back. “I can do a somersault.”
Maybe she’s nice, even if she does like Nick the Tick.
“Somersaults are dorky,” she said. “I hear you get all Ds.”
Well, so much for the nice theory.
“Who told you that?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.
“My boyfriend, Nick,” she said. “He also said that I’m much smarter than you.”
My throat started to feel all funny, like it was going to close up. I needed to have a great comeback because I knew that whatever I said would be the first thing Joelle would tell Nick when she talked to him.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.
Hank? Why aren’t you talking? Say something. Anything. Don’t just sit there.
But I just sat there. I think I made a little throat noise, but it definitely didn’t come out sounding like words.
“Funny, I don’t see it,” Joelle said, staring at me like I was some kind of screeching monkey in the zoo.
“What are you looking for?”
She was staring at my forehead. I reached up and felt around to make sure there wasn’t any dried cereal stuck up there. It was just my normal forehead. So what was she staring at?
“Nick said there’s something wrong with your brain, but I can’t see a bump or anything.”
“Don’t you and Nick have anything better to talk about than my brain?” I said. “And by the way, I have learning difficulties. A lot of kids do.”
Luke Whitman came strolling up to us, holding something in his left hand. Or maybe it was his right hand. It was one of them. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be too interested what he held in his hand, because you know it’d be something truly gross. But at that moment, I wanted to grab him and hug him. I would have rather talked to just about anyone than Joelle.
“Want to see my bogey?” Luke asked, opening up his hand. “It’s shaped like Florida.”
“Oh, look, there’s Disney World,” I said.
Luke cracked up.
“There’s more where this came from,” he said.
“Come back when you get one that looks like Texas,” I told him.
This time, Joelle laughed.
“You’re pretty funny for a slow learner,” she said to me.
“Thanks.”
Hank Zipzer, did you just say thanks to that girl? For what? Hello? She called you a slow learner. You don’t thank someone for that.
To my relief, Mr Rock decided to start the lesson at that very moment. Anything he had to say was going to be better than me talking to Joelle about my learning speed, or lack of it.
“OK, kids, I know this wouldn’t be your first choice of how to spend your summer,” Mr Rock began, “but I’ll try my best to make this a rollicking good time for all of us. Luke, put your bogey in a Kleenex and take your seat.”
Mr Rock was pretty cool. Ms Adolf would have sent Luke to the office for walking around with a bogey in his hand.
I looked out of the window again. I could see Frankie on the playground, playing volleyball with a multi-coloured beach ball. He was setting for Ryan Shimozato. They were laughing. Ashley was at a crafts table, making a Hawaiian necklace out of paper flowers. I hoped they had rhinestones there for her. She glues rhinestones on to everything.
Mr Rock asked each of us to say one word that best describes our personality, so that we’d get to know each other. Joelle said popular. Who was she kidding? Being liked by Nick McKelty does not make you popular. It makes you a creepette. Salvatore said tough. I’d say he had a point there. When it came to me, I said Hankish. Mr Rock laughed out loud.
“That’s very creative, Hank,” he said. “We’re going to have fun this summer, I can tell.”
OK, Hank, Mr Rock thinks you’re creative. He said we’re going to have a rollicking good time. Give it a chance. Keep an open mind.
“Are you ready, kids? Here’s the plan,” Mr Rock said. “This summer, we’re going to be improving our maths skills, which will help you this coming autumn. And I’ve thought of a creative way to combine your reading, vocabulary, spelling and note-taking practice.”
“Wow,” Luke Whitman said. “I’m shaking with excitement.”
“Give me a chance, Luke,” Mr Rock said. “Wait until you hear the idea. You might actually quiver like jelly.”
You’re not going to believe this, but I was curious to hear his idea.
“I want you all to pick a person in history that you admire,” Mr Rock said, leaning on the edge of Ms Adolf’s desk. “On Friday, we’ll all meet your famous person, when you present everything you’ve learned about him or her to the class.” Mr Rock seemed pretty excited about this assignment.
“Sounds like an oral presentation to me,” Luke Whitman said.
“In a way, it is,” Mr Rock said without sounding even a little annoyed. “After all, this is school. But I hope it will be fun too. I encourage you to be as creative as you can. Try to become your famous person.”
Hey, Mr Rock. You promised a rollicking good time.
This feels like a rollicking prison sentence to me.
I sat there at my desk, watching my leg bounce up and down like it does when I’m nervous. It was quiet time, and we were each supposed to be making a list of some famous people we’d like to report on.
I couldn’t think of one.
There was George Washington, but he had wooden teeth. That’s gross. There was Abraham Lincoln, but he had a mole that always reminds me of the one Head Teacher Love has on his face. That’s annoying. There was good old Thomas Edison, but he invented so many things that by the time I’d finish listing them, my presentation would be too long.
Wait a minute. How about Spider-Man? He’s famous. Oh, I forgot. He’s not real. I wish he was. Then maybe he’d help me swing out of this classroom on his webs.
Mr Rock went round the room, asking kids what famous person they had decided on. By the time the bell rang for break, I still hadn’t come up with anyone. On my way out of class, Mr Rock stopped me at the door.
“Well, Hank, have you made a decision?”
“Here’s the problem, Mr Rock,” I said. “There are so many people to choose from, I just can’t decide.”
“I have six words for you, Hank,” he said.
“You don’t have to do it?” I said, hoping that those were the words he was thinking of.
“Do your report on Albert Einstein,” he said. Not the words I’d had in mind.
“Albert Einstein. Did he play for the Mets?” I asked.
“No, but he did figure out that the fastest fastball could never travel faster than the speed of light,” Mr Rock said. “Albert Einstein was the greatest genius of the twentieth century. I think you have a lot in common with him.”