Standing Up to Mr. O.

by Claudia Mills

  Friday morning, Maggie listened tensely to morning announcements. If the contest winners were going to be announced this week, they would have to be announced today, though perhaps Ms. Bealer was going to announce them later on, in English class.

  Finally, following a long list of notices about basketball, wrestling, the science fair, and the math team, Maggie heard Mr. Dworkin say, “I am pleased to announce the winners of the first annual seventh-grade opinion essay contest.” Maggie clenched her hands so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. This was it.

  “First prize, Kate Tyler. Second prize, Alycia Eagen.”

  So Alycia’s essay had come out ahead of hers, even though Alycia hadn’t given any arguments for the other side.

  “Third prize, Seth Tomacki. Honorable mention, Matt Dixon…”

  Yay, Matt! But please, oh please, oh please, oh please, let my name be next.

  “… Rudy Fejer, and Sally Scott. Congratulations to six outstanding writers.”

  He hadn’t read Maggie’s name. Alycia and Matt had won, but Maggie hadn’t, nothing, not even honorable mention.

  Nothing. And one of the judges had been Mr. O.

  11

  Maggie saw Alycia in the hall on the way to first-period art. “Congratulations,” she made herself say as enthusiastically as she could. At least this wasn’t like the Academy Awards, where they had a close-up camera focused on all the losers’ faces for the moment when the announcement was made. At least Maggie had had time to put on her fixed, forced, best-friend-of-the-winner smile.

  Alycia accepted Maggie’s hug. There was an awkward pause. Then Alycia said, “I can’t believe you didn’t win, too. I mean, I just don’t get it.”

  “Well, maybe next time.” Maggie kept her smile in place. She didn’t want to spoil Alycia’s triumph. And maybe Alycia’s essay had been better than hers.

  But it hadn’t.

  As Maggie took her seat at the art table, she felt someone’s arms go around her from behind. Jake.

  The two of them, as if by mutual agreement, had never touched each other in public, or given any sign that they were friends. The secrecy somehow added an extra dimension to their relationship, placing it beyond anybody else’s scrutiny or judgment. Maggie still hadn’t told another living soul that Jake had kissed her. So now it was a shock to feel his public embrace.

  It lasted only a moment, and then he withdrew, before anybody else had a chance to see.

  “Bummer,” he said softly. Maggie knew he was talking about the contest. “I told you, they’re all cretins, every last one of them. But we’ll get even someday, wait and see.”

  Jake’s obvious contempt for the judges should have made Maggie feel better, but in an odd way it made her feel worse. Not only had she lost the essay contest to Alycia but she had lost some different, unspoken contest to Jake. The judges’ verdict seemed to show that she was wrong and foolish to have dreamed about the contest. She should have been like Jake, refusing to let herself care about winning in the first place. And Jake’s remark about getting even sounded vaguely threatening. Maggie didn’t want to get even with the world. She just wanted the world to appreciate her, at least as much as it appreciated Alycia.

  In biology, Matt arrived at their lab table a few moments after Maggie.

  “Congratulations!” Maggie said brightly. This time it came out easier.

  “On what?” Matt asked. He didn’t sound puzzled as much as angry.

  “On the essay contest. Didn’t you listen to morning announcements? You won honorable mention.”

  “I heard it.”

  “So congratulations!”

  “You don’t think it’s strange that you didn’t win?”

  Of course Maggie thought it was strange that she hadn’t won. She thought it was absolutely unbelievable that she hadn’t won. But she also recognized that she might be the tiniest bit biased.

  “I’m sure there were a lot of good essays,” Maggie said, as if she were reciting a line from The Good Loser’s Handbook. “Everybody couldn’t win.”

  “Maggie, I heard yours. You might even say I helped you to write yours. And I’m telling you, it should have won. It was better than mine. It was ten times better than Alycia’s. I don’t know about the other kids who won; I haven’t read their stuff. But your essay was better than at least two of the essays that did win. I know that for a fact.”

  Matt’s indignation on her behalf helped more than Jake’s had. Matt wouldn’t have said she should have won if he hadn’t believed it. Maggie knew from experience that Matt never said anything to make somebody feel better. If anything, Matt specialized in making people feel worse.

  Mr. O. blew his whistle. Was Maggie right to think that he was avoiding her with his eyes? That he was looking everywhere except at the front-center lab table? “Campers! How many college football players does it take to change a light bulb?”

  Maggie hardly listened to the answer: “The whole team, and they each get three credits for it.” A terrible suspicion was stirring in her. Had Mr. O. voted against her essay for the prize because it disagreed with his own views? Had he downgraded her because he was angry at her for opposing dissections in his class and she had angered him further by daring to oppose them in her essay?

  No. She remembered her own thoughts in his defense the other day: Mr. O. had his faults, but he wasn’t unfair. He wouldn’t have voted against her as a punishment for her protest. Alycia’s essay had been beautifully written; Matt’s, too. There was a large subjective element in judging any writing contest. You couldn’t go around boo-hooing that the world was unfair every time someone honestly preferred someone else’s essay to yours. Even with major prizes, like the Nobel Prize in Literature, people disagreed all the time about who deserved to win.

  “All right, campers,” Mr. O. said. “Today I introduce to you—our classroom frog! The frogs we’ll be dissecting will arrive prepared for dissection next Friday, but I’ll be using this fellow here—he’s a young male—for a special procedure called pithing, which has to be done on a live frog.”

  Maggie’s heart, already overfull, swelled even further as Mr. O. carried a small terrarium from the windowsill to his desk. Unlike worms and fish, frogs were cute. The one on Mr. O.’s desk was an itty-bitty thing, no bigger than Maggie’s fist. She could already sense his impatient, curious personality. He hopped against the glass eagerly, restlessly, as if to say, “There’s a whole world out there I need to explore!” His goggly eyes were alert, inquiring. Maggie hadn’t meant to name him, but, unbidden, a name came to her: Froggles.

  Maggie hoped that whatever pithing was, it wasn’t too terrible. But it certainly sounded terrible.

  “What’s pithing?” someone asked, so Maggie didn’t have to.

  “When you pith a frog, you cut off its head with a pair of scissors to get access to the spinal cord. That way you can pull on different nerves to see how the various muscles operate.”

  Maggie thought she was going to be sick.

  “When it’s alive?” Kip asked eagerly. “You cut off its head when it’s alive?”

  “That’s right,” Mr. O. said. “It all happens so quickly the frog feels no pain.” Was this said for Maggie’s benefit? “But it stays alive briefly afterward. That’s what lets us observe the action of the nerves. I’ll explain more about it between now and next Friday.”

  No. Mr. O. couldn’t be serious. He was not going to cut off the head of a live frog in front of the class. But Mr. O. didn’t seem to be joking. He acted as if pithing was common practice in biology. And, after all, every single frog that was killed for dissection was alive while it was being killed. Pithing was just another form of killing for the so-called sake of science.

  Somehow Maggie endured the rest of class, trying not to think about Froggles’s fate. But the only other thing she could fasten her thoughts on was the essay contest she had lost.

  As soon as the bell rang, Matt turned to her. “Let’s go.”

  Go where?
But Maggie followed him out of the biology room, hoping Jake wasn’t watching the two of them leave together.

  “I want to get to the bottom of this,” Matt said as he strode purposefully down the hall toward the front office and the teachers’ room.

  “The bottom of what?” Maggie had to hurry to keep up with him.

  “Of the contest. You should have won, and you didn’t win. I want to find out why.”

  Matt stopped in front of the teachers’ room and rapped twice on the door. One of the P.E. teachers opened it.

  “Is Ms. Bealer here?” Matt asked, as if he summoned teachers out of the teachers’ room every day.

  Ms. Bealer appeared in the doorway. “Matt, Maggie, what can I do for you?”

  Maggie suddenly felt terribly embarrassed. What if everyone who’d lost the contest came whining about how he or she should have won? She could already hear Ms. Bealer’s explanation for the judges’ decision: Well, Maggie, I’m afraid the judges simply didn’t think that your essay was good enough. I’m sorry, dear.

  “We have a couple of questions about the judging of the essay contest,” Matt replied.

  Now Ms. Bealer, too, looked embarrassed. “I really don’t have much information about it. As you know, I was not one of the judges myself. Ms. Bellon, Ms. Kocik, and Mr. O’Neill were our judges this year, and all three told me that it was very difficult to select only six winners. The judges’ decision doesn’t affect the grade you received on the essay as an assignment. I’m handing the essays back this afternoon: both of you received A+’s. Does this answer your questions?”

  “No,” Matt said.

  “I’m sorry, dear. I wish I could be more helpful.”

  When Ms. Bealer had disappeared back into the teachers’ room, Matt said, “We need to talk to the judges, to Bellon and Kocik.”

  Not to Mr. O. It was becoming obvious that Matt shared Maggie’s suspicion, that it was Mr. O.’s disagreement with the conclusions of Maggie’s essay that had cost her the prize.

  “I don’t want to,” Maggie said. “I can’t very well stand there and ask the judges point-blank: Why didn’t I win?”

  “I’ll go talk to them by myself, then,” Matt said. “I’ll ask them point-blank: Why didn’t she win?”

  * * *

  All through lunch, different kids stopped at their table to congratulate Alycia on her prize in the essay contest. Over and over again, Maggie listened to Alycia saying, “It was really a surprise to me that I won,” and “I can’t believe they picked my essay.” Alycia was very good at sounding modest and humble. The strange thing was that Alycia really was modest and humble. Maggie couldn’t remember ever hearing Alycia brag. Alycia didn’t need to brag. She just smiled graciously as she accepted all the good things that the world laid at her feet.

  In a break between congratulations, Alycia turned to Maggie. “I don’t think I can dissect a frog.”

  “Well, you didn’t dissect a worm or a fish, either,” Maggie told her. You just made Kip do your dirty work for you, while you kept your A.

  “I know, but I sort of did. Mr. O. thinks I did. But a frog … That one Mr. O. is going to—do those things to—is awfully cute, Maggie.”

  “Don’t dissect them at all, then. Tell Mr. O. You can come to the library with Jake and me.” If you’re willing to pay the price.

  Maggie waited to see what Alycia would say. If Alycia had any conscience at all, any courage to back up her convictions, she would agree to join Maggie in her protest. There was a word for a person who believed one thing and did another. The word was hypocrite.

  Alycia didn’t reply right away. But the way she avoided meeting Maggie’s eyes told what her answer would be.

  “But it’s like the frogs are already dead whether I dissect them or not,” Alycia finally said. “If I refuse to do the dissection, I get an F and my frog is dead, anyway. No offense, Maggie, but I don’t really see how that helps anything.”

  Maggie felt herself flushing. “I think it helps. If enough people say something is wrong, and say it loud enough, it has to help.”

  At least, Maggie hoped it would. But in a way, Alycia was right. So far Maggie had two F’s in Mr. O.’s grade book, and Mr. O. had stopped liking her forever, and she had lost the essay contest, and her worm and her fish were still dead. What had she accomplished with her grand, noble protest against dissections? Had it been worth it?

  * * *

  Jake called Maggie that evening.

  “You and Dixon were sure in a big hurry to run off together after biology.”

  Maggie had known Jake wouldn’t like her leaving with Matt. But Jake’s jealousy, predictable as it was, annoyed her. You didn’t own somebody because you had kissed her once. Since that one kiss in the park, Jake hadn’t kissed her again. Did he know that Maggie wasn’t ready for anything too serious?

  Although Maggie didn’t feel like telling Jake the truth, she couldn’t think how else to explain why she and Matt had gone racing off together.

  “Matt thinks I should have won the essay contest, and he wanted to ask Ms. Bealer why I didn’t win.”

  “How come he’s so fired up about it?”

  “I don’t know. He just is.”

  “He likes you.”

  “Not that way.”

  “Yes, that way. What did Bealer say?”

  “Nothing. She wasn’t one of the judges. She doesn’t know why I didn’t win. It doesn’t matter. Lots of people didn’t win. I’m not the only one.” Maybe Maggie should actually publish a handbook for good losers. She certainly was getting a lot of practice in the part.

  “Do you like him?”

  “Not that way,” Maggie repeated.

  “Not what way?”

  Maggie didn’t answer.

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Not the way I like you.’”

  “Not the way I like you,” Maggie repeated, hoping Jake could hear the smile in her voice over the phone. She didn’t know if she liked Jake the way he wanted her to like him, but she did like him, and in a different way from the way in which she did like Matt.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Maggie said then. “About the frog dissection? Whether we dissect them or not, the frogs are all going to be killed, anyway. They’re dead before they even get here. Except for Froggles, you know, the classroom frog. And Mr. O.’s going to—pith—him, whatever we do.”

  “What’s your point? You’re going to sell out and do the dissection this time?”

  “No!” Maggie would never be like Alycia, never in a million billion years. “I was just wondering—well, I wish there were something we could do. To make a real difference. Like really change how they teach biology in this school.”

  “Talk to Mr. O.,” Jake said, and laughed a harsh laugh without any humor in it.

  “Or at least—do you think we could save Froggles? Like—I don’t know—frognap him or something so he won’t get pithed? We can’t let Mr. O. cut his head off. We can’t.”

  “Let’s save him,” Jake said. “We can do it.”

  Maggie suddenly felt overwhelmed by what she had suggested. “How? Just take him out of the terrarium one day when Mr. O.’s not looking?”

  “No, that guy sees everything. And we can’t do it too soon, or he’ll just get himself another frog to hack up. Here’s what we’ll do.” Maggie heard an unaccustomed excitement in Jake’s voice. “The day before the dissections, after the last bell rings, we’ll hide out somewhere in the school, until all the teachers are gone and the custodians are taking their dinner break. Then we’ll sneak back into the biology room, grab up Mr. Froggie, stick him in a sack, and hightail it out of there. Then when it’s pithing time, there’ll be no frog to pith. That should freak Mr. O. but good.”

  It really didn’t sound much harder than walking out of the library had been on that last springlike morning. But Maggie didn’t want to “freak” Mr. O. She just wanted to save one innocent little frog from slaughter.

  “I want to do it,” Maggie said.
Was this how John Hancock had felt when he signed the Declaration of Independence? As if he had changed the world forever by being willing, for one moment of one hour on one fateful day, to take a stand? Or as if he had just made the worst mistake in his life, but it was too late now to undo what he had done?

  12

  No sooner had Maggie hung up the phone from talking to Jake than it rang again. Maggie let her mother answer it.

  “It’s for you. Matt Dixon.” Her mom put her hand over the receiver so Matt couldn’t hear her next comment. “He called to tell you that King Soopers has a sale on tofu this week.”

  Maggie snatched the phone from her mother, banishing her to the kitchen with a furious glance. Two weeks ago no boy had ever called Maggie. Now two boys had called her in the same evening.

  “I talked to Kocik after school,” Matt said without preamble. “Here’s the deal. All three judges read all the entries, and they each chose a list of semifinalists. The list of finalists was made up of names that had been on all three semifinalist lists. Then the judges voted to rank the finalists, one, two, three, honorable mention.”

  “Was I a finalist? Did she say?”

  “I could tell she didn’t want to talk about it. She sounded sort of nervous, like maybe she wasn’t supposed to be talking to me at all. And she said she couldn’t give me any specific information about any other student, for privacy reasons. But I figured out it had to be that one of the judges didn’t nominate you as a semifinalist, which knocked you out right there, however high the other judges ranked you. In this contest you didn’t have a chance unless all three judges picked you out of the pile.”

  “And one of them didn’t pick me.” Even though it was painfully obvious who it had to be, neither Matt nor Maggie had said the name.

  “It looks that way. Listen, Maggie, you should go talk to Kocik yourself. I can’t get any more information out of her, because I’m not you. But if you went to talk to her, I bet she’d tell you something.”

  Maggie didn’t want to talk to Ms. Kocik, but she felt growing in her an overwhelming need to know the truth. “Will you go with me?”