The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco

by Janice Repka

  “By yourself?”

  “The other kids are downstairs,” Phillip lied.

  “I see,” said Sam.

  No, you don’t, thought Phillip bitterly.

  “What are you having today?” Sam asked.

  Phillip always ordered a bag of chips and a root beer. “The usual,” he said.

  Sam pressed his cash register. “Fifty cents,” said the cash register.

  Phillip noticed a box full of candy bars next to the cash register.

  “Your total,” said the cash register, “is one dollar.”

  He handed Sam a dollar while he slipped a candy bar into his pocket. He scooped up the chips and root beer and went to his usual table. Phillip watched Sam work with the young woman behind the counter and ring up customer orders.

  A sheriff came in. While he waited for his food, he removed his hat. Sam touched a spot on the sheriff’s head. Phillip felt the stolen candy bar burning in his pocket. Did they make prisoner uniforms in junior sizes?

  Phillip was so caught up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice Sam walk over.

  “You forgot ketchup,” he said, plunking down a half-used bottle.

  “Thanks,” said Phillip.

  Sam sat down.

  “Did you see the sheriff?” he asked.

  Phillip nodded. “I mean, yes.”

  “Got a lump on his head courtesy of some bank robber. Says the thief got his start in crime stealing candy bars.”

  A chip seemed to stick in Phillip’s throat. He took a hard swig of root beer.

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  Phillip took the candy bar out of his pocket and slid it across the table into Sam’s hand.

  “How did you know?” Phillip asked.

  “I may be blind, but I’m not stupid.”

  Phillip made a puzzled sound.

  “Beverly saw you do it,” Sam said.

  Phillip glanced over at the counter. Beverly, the young woman who worked with Sam, was scraping mayonnaise out of a jar. If Phillip had been as flexible as Angela theAmazing Acrobat, he would have kicked himself. Why was he so stupid? He hung his head and rubbed his sore eyes.

  “Are you going to turn me in?” Phillip asked.

  “Which table is the sheriff at?” Sam replied.

  When a trapeze artist falls into the net at the end of the show, he must land flat on his back in the center of the net. Otherwise, he can hurt himself.

  Phillip felt like he was falling from a trapeze so high he couldn’t even see if there was a net.

  “Please don’t turn me in,” he begged Sam. “I’ll make it up.”

  After a long silence, Sam said, “Okay. How about you answer some questions?”

  “About what?”

  “About why you ditched school today.”

  “Ditched?”

  “Cut class. Played hooky. Went truant,” explained Sam. “What’s the reason you aren’t in school?”

  “I don’t know,” said Phillip.

  “You wouldn’t be running away from home, by any chance?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let me guess. No one understands you. You feel different.”

  “Are you making fun of me?”

  “It’s natural for a new kid to feel he doesn’t fit in.”

  “You don’t understand,” said Phillip. “I’m not just a new kid. I really am different.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. How are you different?”

  “Before I came to Hardingtown, my life was a two-ring circus.”

  “You mean a three-ring circus,” said Sam. “The expression is: ‘My life is like a three-ring circus.’”

  “No, I really mean it. Two rings. The Windy Van Hooten Circus is a two-ring circus.”

  “For real?”

  “For real,” said Phillip. “My parents are circus people.”

  “Awesome,” said Sam.

  Phillip leaned in and raised his voice a measured notch.

  “You don’t understand,” Phillip said. “My dad is Leo Laugh-a-Lot. He wears a rainbow wig and a flower pin that squirts water. His signature gag is trying to stuff more than six clowns into a telephone booth. They never fit.”

  “That’s funny,” said Sam.

  “No, it’s not. Know what else? My mom is the fat lady. Not a fat lady, the fat lady. She wears polka-dot dresses as big as tents. Her neck is thicker than my waist. Do you know how much you have to weigh to be the fat lady at the circus?”

  “How much?” said Sam, waiting for the punch line.

  “It’s not a joke. They call our family the Stupendous Stanislaws,” he concluded miserably.

  “Let me get this straight,” Sam said. “Instead of working boring jobs like my parents, your folks are in show business. Your dad laughs and plays all day, and your mom gets paid for sitting and eating goodies?” Sam raised his shoulders and spread his arms out. “You don’t think that’s cool?”

  “If coming from a circus family is so cool, why did B.B.’s friends laugh at me?”

  “Because they don’t know what cool is,” said Sam.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Phillip said.

  “What is?”

  “Dodgeball,” said Phillip. “Dodgeball is the worst.”

  “You mean the game?”

  “It’s not a game. It’s target practice for B.B. Tyson.”

  “The same B.B. whose friends laughed at you?”

  “She’s the reason I got this,” Phillip said. He held up his bandaged wrist.

  “Got what?” asked Sam.

  “I sprained my wrist yesterday. Playing dodgeball. B.B. hit Shawn O’Malley, who fell on me, and I sprained my wrist.”

  “Then you don’t have to worry about dodgeball,” said Sam. “If you have a sprained wrist you won’t be able to play for two or three weeks.”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “Sure. Have the school nurse write you a note.”

  “What do I do after that?”

  “Let’s worry about that in two or three weeks.”

  “Okay,” agreed Phillip.

  He finished his bag of chips and crinkled the bag.

  “Here, give it to me,” said Sam. “Watch this.”

  Sam shot the crumpled paper into a corner, where it landed dead center into an open trash can.

  “Sam,” said Phillip, “I’m sorry about the candy bar.”

  “I know,” said Sam. He went back to the counter, where a man with an expandable folder was waiting on a Dodgeballburger.

  The next gym class, Phillip handed Coach the nurse’s note and climbed to the top of the bleachers. Made to watch the other kids get hit, he wasn’t alone for long. A thin girl with a red face huffed her way up next to him. Slowly they were joined by others still feeling the sting of the ball.

  On the floor, two of the tough kids were battling like they were firing grenades. One of them raced from a screamer smack into the wall. Coach stopped the game to make sure the boy was still alive, then had Shawn O’Malley help him to the bleachers.

  “You should go to the nurse’s office,” Phillip said.

  “Shut up,” said the tough guy, still teetering as he sat.

  “It’s not right,” Phillip said.

  “What?” asked Shawn.

  “Kids shouldn’t be allowed to purposely hit each other. Somebody ought to do something.”

  “That’ll be the day,” said Shawn.

  “Dream on,” said the girl with the red face.

  “You’ll get used to it,” a boy holding his side explained to Phillip. “That’s all you can do.”

  Phillip didn’t want to get used to it. It’s not fair, he thought. Whenever something happened in the circus that seemed unfair, he would talk about it with his mom. If it was important enough, she would discuss it with the other circus performers. Then they would hold a circus meeting to debate and vote on a solution. If the vote was a tie, the governor of the circus would make the decision. Whether it was the wrong kind of
net for a dangerous stunt or a bigger lion picking on a smaller one, at least somebody tried to resolve the problem.

  Unfairness had always made Phillip sick to his stomach. At dinner that night, he had no appetite. By lunch the next day, he still wasn’t hungry. Phillip went to clean his locker. Two boys saw him and raced over.

  “Hey, did you hear what happened?” asked one.

  “A couple of stampeding elephants escaped from a traveling circus,” explained the other. Phillip dropped his math book. Stampeding elephants could crush cars, knock down buildings, trample people, not to mention the poop problems.

  “Yeah,” said the first kid. “The cops found them in the public swimming pool with their trunks down.” The boys laughed.

  “Get it? Elephant trunks, swim trunks. With their trunks down,” said one.

  “You should have seen the expression on your face,” said the other.

  Phillip watched them gallop down the hallway, punching each other’s arms until they disappeared around a corner. He picked up his math book and returned it to his locker, wondering if he still even wanted to be a “regular” boy. Then he grabbed a bunch of papers from the top shelf and began sorting.

  “What grade are you in?” asked a girl who had crept up behind him. It was Carmen, a tanned-skin, dark-haired sixth-grader, wearing stylish black jeans and a glittery shirt. She was one of B.B.’s friends. Why was she talking to him?

  “I’m in sixth,” he answered.

  “Good. Then you can sign this,” she told him, holding out a paper on a clipboard and a strawberry-scented pen.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “A petition.”

  “What’s a petition?”

  “How can you not know what a petition is? What was your job at the circus? Court jester?”

  “Court jesters,” Phillip said, “are medieval entertainers.”

  “Whatever,” she said, flipping back her thick, wavy locks. “Look, do you want ice cream in the cafeteria?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Then sign this.”

  Phillip took the clipboard and began to read. It said:

  We, the undersigned members of the student body of the Hardingtown Middle School, hereby petition the school to serve ice cream in the cafeteria.

  The form was typed, except the part about serving ice cream, which was written in long hand. Underneath it was line after line of student signatures.

  “You mean if I sign this, the school will start serving ice cream?”

  “Don’t be a moron,” the girl said, taking the signed paper back from him. “I need to collect one hundred signatures before I can turn it in to the office.”

  Phillip thought about kids sitting in the cafeteria licking double-dip ice-cream cones, all because of the petition he signed. After school, at the courthouse, he told Sam about it.

  “Can anyone petition to change anything at school?” asked Sam.

  “I guess,” said Phillip.

  “What about dodgeball?”

  “You can’t stop dodgeball with a piece of paper,” said Phillip.

  “Maybe not stop it completely,” Sam said. “But you could petition for a second sport option for kids who don’t like dodgeball.”

  “I don’t know,” said Phillip. Hadn’t he already stirred up enough trouble? Wasn’t it better to keep quiet if you wanted to fit in?

  “I’ll bet plenty of kids dislike playing dodgeball as much as you,” said Sam. “It would mean a lot to them.”

  Phillip knew scads of kids who didn’t like dodgeball. The bleachers were full of them at game’s end. It would feel great if he could do something to help those kids.

  “But why me?” asked Phillip.

  “Don’t ask yourself why it should be you,” said Sam. “Ask yourself why it shouldn’t.”

  Phillip thought about it. If Carmen could petition about ice cream, why couldn’t he petition about dodgeball? Then he remembered why. Phillip could see B.B. and her gang closing in on him with their dodgeballs cocked and ready to fire.

  “B.B. Tyson will kill me if she finds out I’m petitioning against her favorite sport,” he said.

  “You don’t know, do you?” asked Sam.

  Phillip played with the pull tab on his soda-pop can. “Know what?” he asked.

  “There’s a story they tell in Hardingtown,” said Sam. “An old but true story, about an overweight girl who was lonely and wanted to make friends.” Sam settled back in his chair and crossed his arms. Phillip leaned in to listen.

  “She wanted to try out for the dodgeball team,” Sam continued. “But she was overweight; she was an easy target. So she tried out for the Dodgeball Cheerleading Squad instead. At first, they laughed because she was too fat. But she was so incredibly strong she could easily toss the lighter cheerleaders up.”

  Phillip could see a picture in his mind of thin young girls sailing through the air in tiny skirts and tights. It reminded him of the circus.

  “They made her a base,” Sam said. “That’s the person on the bottom who holds the other cheerleaders up.”

  “Did she make friends?” asked Phillip.

  “Some,” said Sam. “But there was this kid—Stinky. He was captain of the school dodgeball team, the Hardingtown Hedgehogs. He liked to embarrass her in front of the other kids.”

  “What does this have to do with the petition idea?” asked Phillip.

  “Hear me out,” said Sam. “On the day of the Regional High School Championship, Stinky was having a bad game. The Hedgehogs had lost one their best players. The cheerleaders began doing a special routine to cheer them up.

  “They built a pyramid so high the girl on top looked like she could touch the ceiling. The base was holding it practically by herself. Nobody knew what came over Stinky. One minute, he was standing there holding a dodgeball. The next minute, he was lobbing it at the base of the pyramid.”

  “What happened?” Phillip asked.

  “It collapsed. The cheerleaders came crashing down. Fortunately for them, the Hedgehogs were directly below to help break their fall.”

  “Not so fortunate for the Hedgehogs,” Phillip said.

  “That’s right,” said Sam. “Put the whole team out of commission. They had to forfeit the game. Ended in second place. It was the worst fiasco in Hardingtown dodgeball history.”

  “That’s awful,” said Phillip.

  Sam nodded his head, slowly. “It wasn’t her fault,” Sam said, “but they blamed the base cheerleader anyway. A hundred people must have seen Stinky throw that ball, but none of them had the nerve to speak against him. That’s how it is with bullies.”

  Phillip could feel the punch as the ball slammed into the base cheerleader. He could hear the crowd shouting at her, and taste her salty tears as they slipped down her flushed cheeks onto her trembling lips.

  “You aren’t the first kid in Hardingtown to get picked on by a dodgeball bully,” said Sam. “But if you start a petition, you’ll be the first kid around here to do something about it.”

  Phillip nodded. Sam was right. He had to try to help the other dodgeball targets. If enough kids signed the petition, they wouldn’t have to worry about dodgeball anymore.

  “I’ll get a hundred signatures, same as the ice-cream petition,” said Phillip.

  “Figure out who the biggest dodgeball targets are and talk to them first,” Sam advised. “The more signatures you get, the more people will sign. People like to follow the leader.” Sam stood and offered Phillip his hand. Phillip shook it. It felt good to have a plan.

  The next day, Phillip quickly realized his first signature would be the hardest. After considering a half dozen kids, he decided to ask Shawn, since they sort of had a relationship.

  Phillip reasoned with Shawn as Sam had told him to. “Since dodgeball is won by eliminating as many people as possible, the majority are losers. If all the losers get together, we can make them offer us an alternative sport.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said
Shawn.

  “Please,” Phillip begged. “I need your help.”

  “Why should I get involved?” Shawn asked.

  “Because if you sign the petition,” Phillip said, trying to find a way to appeal to the big boy, “I’ll give you my lunch.”

  It worked. He had his first signature. Phillip looked around. Who would sign next? He saw Carmen. He went over to her lunch table and stood next to her, but she acted like she didn’t see him. When she finally stood up to put her tray away, he made his move.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “Will you sign my petition?” he asked, presenting it.

  “You’re standing in my way,” she said.

  “It’s to make dodgeball optional.”

  “Who died and put you in charge?”

  “I’m not in charge. I’m only trying to help.”

  “Why would I want to sign your petition?”

  “I signed yours,” he said.

  “Mine was important.”

  “This is important,” he said. “There are other sports we could play where kids wouldn’t get hurt.”

  She looked at him for a moment with a serious expression, as if she were thinking it over.

  “Let me see the petition,” she said.

  Phillip held his breath. If she signed, her friends would, too. Carmen took the petition and ran her finger down the page.

  “Aha!” she said.

  “What?”

  “I can’t sign this.”

  “Why not?”

  “It hasn’t been approved by the student council yet.”

  “The what?”

  “The students we elected to represent us.”

  “Oh, the student council.”

  “You can’t circulate a petition until the student council clears it. You need a seal in this space down here.”

  Phillip saw the empty space at the bottom of the form.

  “How do I get the student council to approve it?”

  “Look,” she said, “see that girl in the green sweater?” She pointed to a water fountain where a group of kids were crowded. Phillip could see a piece of the green sweater near the front of the line.

  “She’s president of the student council,” Carmen said. “Go ask her.”

  Phillip made his way to the girl. She was drinking.

  “Excuse me,” he said.