Niagara Falls, Or Does It? #1

by Winkler, Henry

  “Robert,” I said, “why don’t you go sit with the third-graders.”

  “They’re not interested in what I have to say,” he said.

  “We’re not interested either,” I said.

  “Why not?” he answered. “Spelling is a very challenging subject.”

  “Challenging?” I said. “That’s the understatement of the century. I can’t spell to save my life. And it really bothers me, too.”

  “I can’t imagine not being able to spell,” Robert said. “Doesn’t it make you feel stupid?”

  “Robert, will you cut Zip a break?” said Frankie, giving him a noogie on the head. “Can’t you see he’s a troubled man?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Robert asked.

  “Ms. Adolf is making us write an entire five-paragraph essay,” I answered. “Neatness counts. Punctuation counts. Everything counts. Do you realize how impossible that is?”

  Just then, Ashley slid onto the bench next to me and put her tray down. She had chosen both the mac and cheese and the tuna melt. Ashley likes variety—in everything. You should see her clothes. She covers them all with rhinestones—even her sneakers. She’s got one pair with a family of dolphins swimming in the ocean, in blue and green rhinestones. She glues them all on herself.

  “What’s impossible?” asked Ashley.

  “Spelling,” I said.

  “Spelling is hard,” she agreed. “But this is impossible.”

  She picked up a cherry that was sitting on top of her fruit salad. She popped it into her mouth and ate it. Then her face got all twisted up and busy, like a chipmunk shelling an acorn. In no time, she stuck out her tongue and there was the cherry stem, tied in a perfect knot. Is Ashley Wong an amazing girl or what?

  “Ashweena, that is so cool,” said Frankie. Frankie has a nickname for everyone. He even calls my dad Mr. Z. No one else I know even talks to my father.

  “Does nobody care about my problem?” I said. “Is anybody listening?”

  My friends stopped eating and looked at me.

  “How am I going to write five perfect paragraphs by next Monday when I can’t get what I’m thinking about down on paper?” I said. “My handwriting looks like a chicken stepped in tar and ran across the page.”

  “If a chicken stepped in tar, it would get stuck and couldn’t run anywhere,” Robert pointed out.

  “Shut up, Robert,” we all said together.

  “I put commas in the wrong places,” I continued. “My capital letters look weird. My lowercase letters look even weirder. My spelling—well, we all know about my spelling.”

  “Take a breath, Zip,” said Frankie. “We’ll figure it out. Hey, make friends with the dictionary. Let your fingers do the walking, if you know what I’m talking about.”

  Frankie is really good at school. He thinks math is easy and, get this—he reads for fun. I wish I could do that. I wish it were easier for me to read a book.

  “You sound just like my father,” I said. “He’s always telling me to look up words in the dictionary.”

  Suddenly, Frankie grabbed his chest and fell to the ground, flopping around like he was some kind of alien. He’s cool enough to be able to do a thing like that in the lunchroom. Even Kate Sperling and Kim Paulson were laughing. Not at him, either, but with him.

  “That hurts,” he screamed. “Comparing me to Silent Stan, the crossword-puzzle man.” (That’s another one of Frankie’s nicknames for my dad.) Frankie got up and sat back down at the table. “Someone, please. What’s a four-letter word for a root vegetable?” he said, doing his perfect imitation of my father working a crossword puzzle.

  We all cracked up. Milk came shooting out of Ashley’s nose. It spewed all over her T-shirt, spraying the rhinestone self-portrait she had done. Drops of milk hung off of the purple stones she had used for the frames of her glasses.

  “Does anyone have a napkin?” Ashley asked.

  “Here, take mine,” I told her. “My sandwich is never going to make it to my mouth anyway.”

  Frankie climbed back onto the bench.

  “Do me a favor, Zip,” he said. “Don’t ever tell me that I sound like your father again.”

  “Then don’t bring up the dictionary again,” I said. “It’s such a useless invention. At least for me.”

  “Don’t tell that to Ms. Adolf,” said Ashley. “She’s in love with dictionaries.”

  “They don’t make any sense,” I said. “I can’t spell words because I can’t sound them out. So how am I going to find them in a dictionary if I can’t spell them in the first place? Do you know my dictionary has one thousand two hundred and fifty-six pages? Words get lost in there.”

  “Zip, you’re forgetting to ...”

  “... breathe. I know, Frankie. I am breathing.”

  Frankie put his hand on my shoulder. “Look, it’s just an essay, my man.”

  “Maybe for you,” I said. “For me, it’s torture.”

  Frankie reached into his lunch bag and pulled out a package of Ding Dongs. He took one for himself and gave one to me.

  “Listen up, Zip,” he said. “We’re supposed to write about what we did on our summer vacation, right? So just write about what happened to you. You had an awesome summer vacation—going to Canada and to Niagara Falls and getting to steer the boat all by yourself when the captain fell overboard. Man, that’s cool stuff.”

  Ashley nearly gagged on her second cherry stem.

  “That’s not what you told me,” she said. “You told me your sister got seasick and barfed all over your plastic raincoat.”

  Okay, okay, so sometimes I tell stories. But they’re not lies or anything. It’s just that I think the world needs to be entertained. I happen to be good at it. Like Papa Pete says, “If you got it, flaunt it.” Flaunt. There’s another word I can’t spell.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere came a hand bigger than an average hand. Bigger than a tabletop. Then a head the size of Rhode Island appeared. Next came the smell of bad, bad breath—the kind that makes the gel in your hair lose its hold.

  “That Ding Dong is mine,” Nick McKelty said as he smashed what was once my chocolate cake into his oversized mouth. “I wuffofv deese.”

  Robert dove for cover under the table. Ashley shot milk again.

  “Be my guest,” I said. It was either that or have Nick the Tick pound my skull with his knuckles. Nick thinks that because he is the biggest guy in the fourth grade, everybody’s lunch is his personal meal. We are his menu and he just takes whatever he wants.

  Nick was looking for his second course. My instincts told me he was headed for Ashley’s tuna melt.

  “Nick!” I said, yelling to catch his attention. “You don’t want to eat that.”

  “Like you’re going to stop me,” he said, flashing me his stupid grin. The Ding Dong chocolate was wedged in the gap between his teeth so it looked like he had three front teeth.

  “Did you hear about the tuna they just caught off Cape Cod that ate a license plate from a car from Ohio?” I said to him, thinking fast. “There was so much metal ground up inside him that by the time he got to the store he didn’t need a can.”

  I pointed to Ashley’s sandwich. “That’s him in there.”

  You could almost hear the small wheels grinding inside his huge blond head.

  “I didn’t want that pathetic sandwich anyway,” he said. “I’ve got to save my appetite for the Knicks’ game tonight. My dad’s got tickets right next to the players’ bench.”

  Nick’s father owns the bowling alley in our neighborhood, McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl. Maybe that’s why Nick the Tick thinks he has the right to act like a big shot all the time. All he does is brag, and none of it is ever true.

  Okay, like I said before, I tell stories sometimes too. But let’s get one thing straight: My stories are for pure entertainment purposes. Nick’s stories are to make him seem cool. Which he’s not, I might add. Like he says his father has the best seats for every sporting event in the United States of America.
The truth is, mostly they watch the games on the TV at the bowling alley. That’s what we call The McKelty Factor. Truth times a hundred.

  In any case, Nick walked away.

  Ashley smiled at me. “Thanks, Hank,” she said.

  I felt proud. I had saved her lunch.

  “You are amazing, Zip, ” Frankie said. “You have so much trouble with so many things, but never with your mouth. It’s a brilliant mouth.”

  I thought about that. If my brilliant mouth worked on Nick McKelty, why couldn’t it work on Ms. Adolf?

  I took out a piece of paper and a pencil. I had a plan.

  CHAPTER 4

  BEFORE LUNCH ENDED, I decided to find Ms. Adolf and have a little chat. She was sitting at her desk, finishing her lunch. Two big napkins covered most of her. Just her shoes were showing. They were gray. She was eating a banana that was so brown you couldn’t even tell it had ever been yellow.

  “May I talk with you for a minute, Ms. Adolf?” I asked from the doorway.

  She waved me inside.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about my essay,” I began.

  “I’m glad to hear that, Henry,” she said.

  “What I’ve been thinking about, exactly, is that it would really benefit you if I don’t write this essay.”

  “Is that so?” she said. She tossed the banana peel into the wastebasket.

  “In fact, I’ve spent a good part of my lunch period writing a list of ten really excellent reasons why I shouldn’t write this essay.”

  I pulled the piece of paper from my back pocket and flattened it out on her desk with the palm of my hand. There was a big, greasy smudge on it. And it really, really smelled like tuna fish. I have to admit it was pretty disgusting.

  “Sorry,” I said, trying to rub it off. “It was tuna-melt day. Just pretend it’s a scratch-and-sniff.”

  I smiled. Ms. Adolf didn’t.

  That wasn’t a good start, but I had to think positively. I stood very quietly while she read the list.

  TEN REASONS WHY HANK ZIPZER SHOULD NOT WRITE A FIVE-PARAGRAPH ESSAY ON WHAT I DID THIS SUMMER

  1. Every pen I own runs out of ink.

  2. My thoughts are controlled by alien beings who make me write in a strange language.

  3. We couldn’t go anywhere over the summer because my dog had a nervous breakdown.

  4. I’m highly allergic to lined paper.

  5. When I write, my fingers stick together.

  6. If I sit too long, my butt falls asleep and snores, which keeps my sister awake.

  7. Every time I write an essay, my dog Cheerio eats it for breakfast before I can get to school. So why try?

  8. My computer keyboard is missing eleven letters—v, c, t, s, m, and all the vowels including y and w.

  9.

  10.

  The last two reasons were on the tip of my mind, but I just couldn’t get them to the tip of my pencil.

  Ms. Adolf put down the list and looked up at me. “This is very creative,” she said.

  Creative. Creative is good. My plan was working.

  “I hope you’ll use some of this creativity in your essay,” she went on. “I look forward to hearing you read your written words on Monday morning.”

  Then she took my list, crumbled it up, and tossed it in the wastebasket. There was my creativity, I thought—stuck to the top of a brown banana peel.

  CHAPTER 5

  THREE, TWO, ONE. Brrriinnngg. The bell. After an endless afternoon of alphabetizing practice, the first day of fourth grade was finally over. Frankie and I looked at each other. We were free men.

  Frankie, Ashley, and I ran downstairs and practically flew out the front door of the school building. Papa Pete was waiting outside to walk us home. Papa Pete is my mother’s father. He also happens to be one of the greatest human beings on the face of the earth. He was helping Mr. Baker, the crossing guard, take the little kids across the street.

  “There he is,” said Frankie, waving to Papa Pete. “Get your cheeks ready.”

  When Papa Pete sees you, he gives you a big pinch and says, “I love this cheek and everything that’s attached to it.” I know this sounds like it’s annoying, but actually it makes you feel really good.

  Papa Pete gave us each a pinch and a hug. “I hardly recognized you kids,” he said. “You look so much older now that you’re in the fourth grade.”

  We had hoped this was the year we’d be allowed to walk home from school by ourselves. After all, Frankie, Ashley, and I lived in the same apartment building, so we could all walk together. Safety in numbers, we all told our parents. But we were all turned down flat. New York City is not a place for kids to be wandering around alone, our parents said.

  Okay, we could live with that, because having Papa Pete walk you home is actually pretty fun. He walks ten feet behind us to make it look like we’re walking alone. Papa Pete is so big that there was no way we could lose him in a crowd, even if we tried. It’s not that he’s tall, he’s just large the way a grizzly bear is large. My Grandma Jennie used to call him her big, cuddly grizzly bear. Maybe that was because he also has a ton of curly black hair on his arms and a huge mustache he calls his handlebars. After he eats something messy, he’ll always say, “Tell me, Hank. Do I have anything hanging off the old handlebars?” I always tell him if he does, because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed.

  We headed up Amsterdam Avenue. We walked a couple blocks and passed Harvey’s, our favorite pizza shop. It’s no wider than a hallway, but they have the greatest cherry cokes and pizza there. You can smell it blocks away.

  “I say we stop in for a slice,” Frankie said.

  Papa Pete shook his head. “Hold on, partner. We got bigger bread to butter.”

  When Papa Pete says a thing like that, you don’t argue. He’s always got something great waiting for you.

  We passed the man on the corner selling sunglasses. “Hey, gentlemen and lady,” he said to us. “I got a special pair just for your face.”

  Ashley stopped to look at a pair of rhinestone-covered glasses, but Frankie and I pulled her away. You can’t let Ashley get started on rhinestones or you’ll be there all day. She’s a complete rhinestone nut.

  Messengers on bikes whizzed by us. Moms coming back from the park pushed their babies in strollers. I love to see the babies’ feet hanging out of the strollers. It always amazes me that inside their little bitty feet are big feet waiting to pop out and play baseball.

  A couple blocks up, we passed my mom’s deli, the one Papa Pete started. It’s called The Crunchy Pickle. They serve sandwiches so high they have to be held together with a toothpick. I waved at Carlos, who works at the counter. I could see him shouting something, and even though I couldn’t hear him, I knew he was saying, “Hey, Little Man.”

  “Hey, Big Man,” I called back.

  When we got to our apartment building, Frankie and Ashley started to go inside. Papa Pete steered them back onto the sidewalk.

  “You haven’t forgotten, have you? ” he said. “We have some business to conduct. I was thinking maybe you could come to my office.”

  Papa Pete’s “office” is McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl. It’s his hangout, his home away from home. Everyone there knows him. He’s the best senior bowler on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

  “I have to ask my parents,” Ashley said.

  “I took the liberty of phoning the good Doctors Wong,” said Papa Pete, “and they said you don’t have to be home until six.” Although Ashley’s parents are both doctors, Papa Pete is the only one I know who calls them “the good Doctors Wong.” They don’t seem to mind, though.

  “I don’t think my mom will let me go,” Frankie said. “My dad teaches tonight and she likes me home.”

  Frankie’s dad teaches African-American studies at Columbia University, which is thirty-eight blocks uptown. Once, his dad let me come to one of his lectures. He talked for almost two hours. I don’t think I’ll ever go to college if you have to sit still and listen to someon
e talk for two hours—and take notes at the same time.

  “Fortunately for you, your mother was standing on her head when I called,” Papa Pete said to Frankie, “so I spoke with your father. When I explained that we were discussing important business, he said okay.”

  That was all we needed to hear. We took off for McKelty’s, which is only a couple blocks from our apartment building. It’s located on the second floor above the ninety-nine-cent store, where I do most of my gift shopping. I bought my mom some earrings there for Mother’s Day. She doesn’t wear them much, though, because they hurt her lobes. Lots of people who shop at the ninety-nine-cent store don’t even realize that there’s a bowling alley upstairs. You can hardly see it from the street, but it’s got fifteen lanes, video games, and a coffee shop, too.

  When we got to McKelty’s, the lanes were full of Papa Pete’s friends. They were all wearing their different-colored team shirts. They waved to us as we took a seat in one of the red plastic booths in the coffee shop.

  “Fern,” Papa Pete called out. “Three root-beer floats for my grandkids here.”

  The fact that Frankie is African-American and Ashley’s parents are from Taiwan doesn’t stop Papa Pete from calling them his grandkids. That’s another thing I love about him. And another is that he’ll always buy you as many root-beer floats as you want without ever mentioning that they will ruin your appetite for dinner.

  Fern, who has been working at McKelty’s for like a hundred and fifty years, brought us our root-beer floats.

  As we were slurping down the last of our ice cream, Papa Pete started talking. “Okay, let’s get down to business,” he said, wiping some whipped cream from his mustache. “I believe you’ve got a little something to show me.”