The Next Great Paulie Fink

by Ali Benjamin

  “It’s not a huge deal,” says Fiona. “You just have to open their milk carton, remind them to take bites of their food.”

  “Occasionally pick tuna fish out of their hair or wipe their nose or whatever,” Diego adds.

  “The tuna fish and boogers are the worst parts,” Lydia offers. “Otherwise, it’s fine. Sometimes it’s even fun.”

  No, I think. Fun is talking with your friends at lunchtime. Fun is not feeding goats or forced babysitting, and I don’t understand why none of you seem to understand the most basic things.

  “It’s just…,” I say, “at real schools, you get to sit wherever you want.” But they’re already wandering off to find their Minis.

  I’m assigned to a kid named Kiera. She’s wearing a poufy dress, and her hair is pulled back into two tight buns, like mouse ears. In one hand, she holds a lunch box. In the other, she clutches a stuffed bunny.

  When Mr. Twilling introduces us, she just stands there staring at her feet.

  “Uh… so… come with me?” I say, like it’s a question.

  At our table, kids of all ages are chattering away happily, like it’s totally normal for kids of different grades to mix. I glance around. For some reason the other seventh graders all look perfectly happy with their buddies. Even Henry looks at ease, reading to his Mini from a fact book. My Mini just stares at her lap.

  “You—uh—want help with your milk carton or whatever?” I ask Kiera. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t move at all. I’m not sure I’ve talked to a kindergartner since I was one.

  I try again. “Um… I, um, like your stuffed bunny. Does he have a name?”

  “His name is Rabbit,” she says.

  Then she whispers something I can’t quite hear. I lean in. “What’s that?”

  She whispers again: “And he’s real.”

  “Ohhh,” I say. “Okay, yeah. Well… uh… real rabbits need to eat and drink, you know? And if you ask me, Real Rabbit looks a little thirsty.”

  I open up her milk carton, just like Fiona said. I bring it first to the rabbit’s mouth, and I pretend he’s taking a sip. Then I offer it to Kiera. She takes one tiny sip, then she whispers again: “I miss Mommy.”

  “Yeah.” I swallow before saying, “I miss everything.”

  And I do. I miss knowing who to talk to, or what to talk to them about. Knowing where I’m going, instead of having to follow people around. At this moment, I even miss my mom, although I’m furious with her, since she’s the whole reason I’m here in the first place.

  Most of all, I miss not feeling like some sort of space alien trying to navigate an unfamiliar planet.

  Ms. Glebus breezes into the cafeteria, still wearing those yellow boots. She bangs on a pot with a wooden spoon until everyone quiets down. “Welcome to a new school year,” she says. “Welcome to our new goats. Welcome to our new students: Caitlyn Breen in seventh—can you wave to us, Caitlyn?—and Alonzo Ferroni in third, and of course a tremendous welcome to our kindergartners.”

  Then she starts telling the kindergartners about the Good Day Bell in front of the school, the one I noticed when I arrived this morning. At the end of each afternoon, if you had a good day, you’re supposed to ring it. “I hope I hear that bell ringing many times!”

  Across the cafeteria, Fiona’s Mini raises his hand. “But what if we don’t have a good day?” he asks. Ms. Glebus smiles in that tight, forced way that adults do when a little kid asks a dumb question. She tells him that he doesn’t have to ring the bell; it’s up to him.

  Then all these other Minis start asking questions: What if the day is sorta good and sorta bad? What if it’s a good day but they don’t feel like ringing the bell? What if it’s a bad day, but they forget, and they accidentally ring the bell anyway? Finally Glebus calls on a little boy who holds up a plastic snack bag. “My daddy packed me Goldfish crackers in my lunch,” he announces, totally out of the blue. Which makes a bunch of other little kids start showing Glebus what they have in their lunch boxes. By now, Ms. Glebus’s smile is tight as a drum.

  I glance at Kiera. She’s still clutching her bunny to her chest, and now there’s a trail of snot running from her nose, down her lip. I grimace, then grab a napkin and reach over to wipe her nose.

  That’s when I make a decision. My mom can make me move to Vermont. She can send me to this school where nothing is the way it’s supposed to be and where the only semi-normal person is a kindergarten kid with boogers on her face who doesn’t even want to look at me. And the teachers here can make me open milk cartons, and apparently they can even make me feed a goat.

  But they cannot make me do everything.

  “I’m never going to ring the Good Day Bell,” I declare. And as soon as the words are out, I know they’re true. I’m not going to ring it. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.

  My Mini nods. “Me neither,” she says.

  I’m so relieved to feel a little less alone, I hold out my little finger. “Pinkie promise?” She wraps her own finger around mine. I feel her pulse beneath her skin.

  When lunch is over, I turn to her. What I want to say is, Come on, and Don’t forget your fuzzy little rabbit. But what comes out instead is simply, “Come on, Fuzzy.”

  “Who’s Fuzzy?” she asks.

  “You are,” I say. “You’re Fuzzy.”

  “No, you’re Fuzzy,” she says. The edges of her mouth curl up into something that’s not quite a smile, but maybe isn’t so far from one.

  “Sorry, kid,” I say. “I am the opposite of Fuzzy.”

  “What’s the opposite of Fuzzy?”

  I don’t answer her, but I think about that stone inside my chest, hard and cold.

  Silence and More Silence

  At the end of the day, I watch everyone line up at the Good Day Bell. First the Originals take their turns ringing the bell. Then they stand around high-fiving the younger kids as they do the same.

  Me, I stand off to the side. I wait around just long enough to see Fuzzy get in line like all the others. When it’s her turn, she shakes her head. She glances at me, and I hold one pinkie in the air. Pinkie promise kept.

  Then I march to my mom’s car.

  “So how was it?” Mom asks. Her voice is eager, like she’s expecting me to say, Great, Mom, it was just a terrific day, thanks for uprooting me from everything I’ve ever known, it was totally worth it!

  I slam the door and turn away from her. I stare out the window and I don’t say a word.

  “I see,” Mom says. She puts the car in drive.

  On the way home, she tries a few more times. Did you meet anyone nice? How were your teachers? Did you learn anything interesting?

  I don’t answer, and I don’t ask her about her first day at the clinic. Instead, I watch this depressing town roll past: the brick carcass that used to be Oxthorpe Textiles. An old shuttered movie theater. The Donut Lady bakery (IT’S ALWAYS DONUT TIME!!! says the sign in the window, although the place is closed for the day, so I guess it’s not always donut time). Each storefront is sadder than the last: The Clothes Off Your Back Consignment Store. The Squeaky Clean Laundromat. Big Esther’s Diner (SORRY WE’RE OPEN and LUKEWARM COFFEE, LOUSY FOOD, BAD SERVICE, COME ON IN). When we arrive at the house that is not my house, I get out of the car and march straight to the room that is not my room. I close the door, pull out my phone, and check if I have any messages from my friends back home.

  I don’t, so I send a few to them:

  You won’t believe the day I had.

  One word: goats.

  And another: kindergartners.

  How are things back home?

  I wish I’d been w you today instead of here.

  Hello?

  Helloooooooooooo

  No one replies. I don’t know if that’s because cell service in this town is so bad, or if it’s because my friends are too busy to respond. Either way, it feels terrible.

  When Mom calls me to the kitchen for dinner, I don’t get up. Eventually, she taps on my door. She opens it
a crack. “You ready to talk about it, kiddo?”

  I turn away from her, toward the wall.

  “Why are we even here?” I ask.

  “You know why,” she says, sitting down on the bed. “I got a new job.”

  “You had a job. It was fine.”

  “It was,” she says. Then after a beat, she says, “But that’s all it was: fine. I don’t want my life to be fine. This move was my chance to do something different. To be in charge of something for a change. It feels like a window opening for me. Can you understand that?”

  “Everyone in my class is weird. All they talk about is some stupid kid who’s not here anymore. They kept chanting his name and everything. The whole day, like I wasn’t even there.”

  She rubs my leg. “Give it time. Before you know it, they’ll be chanting your name, too.”

  “Could you please stop talking to me like I’m a baby? You don’t know how this stuff works!”

  She gives my foot a quick squeeze, then stands. “There’s pasta on the table when you’re ready, Cait.” She closes the door so quietly I have to check if she’s really gone.

  A few minutes later, my phone dings. It’s my friend Ash:

  OMG. I can’t wait to hear.

  Hi!!!!

  Can’t talk now though—my mom is screaming her head off, LOL

  How was the first day?

  This school has goats.

  Did you know that goats have four stomachs?

  Haha, I guess that’s the sort of stuff I’m going to learn here.

  But I guess she meant what she said, because she doesn’t write again. I fall asleep with my phone cradled next to me. I never make it downstairs for dinner.

  Interview: Henry

  CAITLYN:

  How did you think the first day of seventh grade went, Henry?

  HENRY:

  It was bad. Catastrophically horrible. Cataclysmically distressingly terrible. But then of course I have precisely zero chill.

  CAITLYN:

  Really? You seemed okay to me. Every time I looked at you, you were sitting there calmly reading your fact book.

  HENRY:

  I wasn’t calm, actually. All day, my brain was whirring in circles like one of those spinning-teacup rides at a carnival—not that I like carnivals. They make my mouth turn dry, my palms sweaty. Other things that freak me out: ambulance sirens. TV shows about hospitals. Shows about police investigations. Shows about the news. Throwing up. The scale of the universe. Cat saliva. Ladybugs.

  CAITLYN:

  Okay, but we were talking about the first day of school.

  HENRY:

  That’s what I’m saying. When my brain goes all spinny, facts calm me down. I like how steady facts are, you know? Every time you look at a fact, it’ll always be exactly the same. It’s very reassuring.

  CAITLYN:

  So… like the facts you told me about goats?

  HENRY:

  Exactly. More than a month later, they’re all still true. And on the first day of school, I needed as many facts as I could get. Even before I learned Paulie was gone, I’d been freaking out. See, I had a secret that first day—one that was going to affect all of us. Even you, Caitlyn.

  This wasn’t just the beginning of a new school year. It was the beginning of the end. And I was the only one who knew it.

  A WEEK WITHOUT PAULIE

  Interview: Sam

  The first day any of us ever met Paulie Fink? Sure, I remember that. It was the beginning of fourth grade, back when me and Lydia and Willow first started playing Creatures of the Underlair—

  Wait, seriously? You’ve never played?

  It’s a role-playing game. You each pick a character, and then you go on campaigns all over the universe seeking treasure and stuff. You go through different battles by rolling dice and… oh, never mind. I’m just saying, the three of us were all checking out Paulie like he was a new character in our game, trying to figure out if he was friend or foe.

  What did he look like? Ordinary, I guess. T-shirt, jeans, brown hair, sort of shaggy in his eyes. But that’s the thing you learn from playing Underlair: You can never tell exactly who a creature is just by looking at them.

  Anyway, Glebus came into our classroom on Paulie’s first day. She was making the rounds, going on about rules and respect and responsibility or whatever. And as she talked, Paulie was just sitting there, very calmly, looking straight ahead as he stuck two pencils in his ears. They were pointy-side out, so they looked like crazy antennae.

  Then, while we were watching him, he picked up two more pencils. And he stuck those in his nostrils.

  Glebus stopped talking. Mid-sentence. Just closed her mouth and stood there staring at him. After a while, we started shifting in our seats. Uncomfortable, you know? I mean, any idiot, even a brand-new idiot, knows that something’s wrong when a grown-up just plain stops talking.

  After a while, Paulie started whistling. Like he was taking a stroll on a summer afternoon, not a care in the world.

  Glebus cleared her throat. She was all, “Could you remind me where you are from, Mr. Fink?” We all knew that whatever he answered—Seattle or Chicago or Iowa—Glebus was going to say something like, Well, I don’t know how they do it in Seattle/Chicago/Iowa, but here at the Mitchell School we do not place our pencils in our orifices.

  But Paulie didn’t give her that chance. Instead, he stood up, spread his arms out wide, all those pencils still sticking out of his head. And he said, all dramatic-like, “I come from the stars!”

  He drew out the last word. Staarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrssss. Like he was an alien or something. Let me tell you: Things only got more interesting from there.

  The Real Megastar

  On the second day of school, I wake early, not quite dawn. Eerie gray light filters through my window. I’m still in my clothes from the day before, and my stomach feels empty and gnawing. Even though I fell asleep without dinner, my shoes are off, and there’s a blanket over me. Mom must have come in to cover me up.

  I get up and pad into the kitchen, but Mom’s not awake yet. I pour myself some cereal and turn on the TV, looking for something to stream. All I want is to forget about the fact that I have to go back to that school again in a few hours.

  I’m scrolling through different options when I see The Search for the Next Great Megastar. I find season two—the best season, Gabby says. I turn on the first episode, and I watch with the sound down low. By the time Mom comes into the kitchen, the episode is half over.

  I expect Mom to be mad at me for watching television this early in the morning—especially reality TV, which she calls unscripted garbage. Mom doesn’t scold me, though. She just sits down next to me on the sofa.

  After a minute, she shifts a little. “C’mere,” she says.

  I decide to forget how furious I am with her. I curl up on the sofa, place my head in her lap, and let her wrap her arm over me. Like I’m a little kid or something.

  And then I’m crying just like a little kid, too.

  Mom doesn’t ask me why or give me a pep talk or anything. She doesn’t even mention that I’m making her pants all snotty. She just sits there. Holding me.

  When I’m all cried out, she asks. “What are we watching?”

  “The Search for the Next Great Megastar.” I sit up, wipe my nose against her arm, so now her shirt’s snotty, too. “A girl in my class is obsessed with this show.”

  We watch as Jadelicious stands alone in a dressing room, talking to her own reflection. Most of the Megastars are hanging out together in a different room. They’re all gossiping about Jadelicious, and you can tell she knows it. Her gray eyes are puffy and bloodshot, like she’s been crying.

  “I see that I’m going to need to learn a new set of rules.” She leans into the mirror and begins applying fake eyelashes so big they look like spiders. “Well, okay. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep playing the game. But I will not let anyone make me forget who I am.”

  We watch together as Jadeliciou
s steps back from the mirror, blinks a couple of times. It’s pretty amazing, because once the eyelashes are on, you can barely tell she’s been crying. She eyes her makeup from one angle, then another. She places a lavender wig on her head, so gleaming and smooth it looks almost like a helmet. She slips on a pair of metallic-purple heels, tosses her hair behind her shoulders, and looks directly at the camera.

  “Now,” she says, “it’s time to show the world who’s the real Megastar.”

  Well, good for you, Jadelicious, I think. While you’re proving to the world that you’re a Megastar, I’ll be stuck here in the middle of nowhere, feeding goats.

  Interview: Gabby

  When you watch enough seasons of Megastar, you begin to notice certain personality types emerge. Like, there’s always a Fighter, someone who’s ready to argue—that’s sort of like Fiona, you know? And the Fighter needs an Archenemy, which I guess for Fiona would be Diego. Except that Diego’s also her sidekick, so maybe that’s not quite right. There’s also some sort of Authority Figure—kind of what Ms. Glebus is to us. Usually they judge the whole competition, enforcing the rules, and they’re always a little scary.

  But there’s another personality type, too: the Disruptor.

  The Disruptors are the ones who refuse to follow the rules. Or, I don’t know. It’s not exactly that they don’t follow rules, it’s that they know something the others don’t: Most rules aren’t even actual rules. We like to call them rules, and most people think of them as rules, but it’s not like they’re written down anywhere. They’re just the things people do to be polite, or because they want others to like them.

  But that’s the thing about Disruptors: They don’t care about being polite, and they don’t care whether you like them. So they’re able to get away with all sorts of outrageous things.