by Janice Repka
Phillip grinned. He filled Sam in on the details of the lawsuit and told him about the meeting.
“Maybe you should leave before the lawyer gets here,” said Phillip, trying to be polite. “It’s a business meeting.”
A man with a suit and tie entered the snack bar and went to the front counter. Phillip strained to see if it was him. Sam went to the counter and took the man’s order for an egg-salad sandwich and a cup of coffee to go.
Phillip was disappointed that Sam, and not the important-looking man, sat back down at his table. After what seemed like a long time, Ms. Johnson came in. She was alone. She headed straight for Phillip’s table.
“I see the two of you have met,” she said.
“How have you been?” asked Sam as their hands found each other. The handshake lasted a long time.
“I thought you were going to bring the lawyer,” Phillip said to Ms. Johnson.
“Didn’t he tell you?” she replied. “Sam is the lawyer.”
Phillip felt he had misjudged Ms. Johnson. She didn’t seem like the kind of person to joke. But she had to be joking. Sam was a cashier. A blind cashier.
“Sam works at the snack bar,” Phillip said. “He’s not a lawyer.”
“Then I guess they’ll have to take down that portrait of him at the law school,” she said. She blew a grape-scented bubble. It burst like one of his dad’s exploding cigars.
Phillip looked at Sam. “Are you a lawyer?” he asked.
“I don’t practice anymore,” Sam said. “But I still have my license.”
“He retired a few years back,” explained Ms. Johnson. “He was a pioneer for blind lawyers in his younger days, successfully forcing the state to make them give blind law students special accommodations so they could practice law.”
Sam and Ms. Johnson talked about a case that Sam had argued before the United States Supreme Court. They also talked about Sam retiring, and Ms. Johnson kidded him about taking the part-time job at the snack bar because he missed being part of the legal community.
“Are you going to be my lawyer?” Phillip asked Sam.
“I don’t know,” said Sam. “I have to be selective when I decide whether or not to take a pro bono case.”
“Why?”
“Because some clients are quitters,” said Sam. “They want you to work for them. But in the end, when the case gets tough, they run away.”
Phillip knew what Sam was referring to—the time he left school so he didn’t have to play the one-on-one game with B.B. and the time when he decided to run away after B.B. teased him about being a circus boy.
“If you’ll be my lawyer on this case,” Phillip said, “I won’t quit.”
“No matter how hard it gets?” Sam asked.
“I promise,” said Phillip. “I’m done with running away from my problems.”
Sam stood up and extended his hand. Even as Phillip shook it, he wondered if he could live up to his promise.
Walking in floppy shoes and breathing through a rubber nose is not as easy as it looks. If you want to be a clown, you need to spend a lot of time in baggy pants.
Phillip knew that if he wanted to sue B.B., it was not going to be easy. He would have to spend a lot of time in the law library. Sam would supervise, but Phillip was to get the papers ready. He found a book about drafting a complaint—the paper that tells a person why you’re suing them. The back of the book had fill-in-the-blank forms. Phillip found a form for assault and battery and made a photocopy using his lunch money. He filled in the blank spaces.
Where it said plaintiff, he put his name. Where it said defendant, he put B.B. Tyson. In the section for what the lawsuit was about, he wrote about his glasses getting broken. For damages, he wrote: The cost of replacing my glasses because it wasn’t Aunt Veola’s fault.
“What are you doing?” asked the librarian, Mr. Chang, who was suddenly looking over his shoulder.
“Nothing,” said Phillip, flipping his notepad upside down to cover the complaint.
“You’re up to something,” Mr. Chang said. He reached over and picked up the notepad.
“It’s just a lawsuit,” Phillip said as he tried to grab it back.
“Stanislaw versus Tyson,” said Mr. Chang. He read the complaint out loud. “Suing the school bully,” he observed. “You are either the bravest kid in school or the most stupid.”
Phillip shrugged.
“I give you credit. You got guts, kid. Wish I’d thought of it when I was your age.” He tossed the complaint back on the table. “Too bad you’re wasting your time.”
“What do you mean?” Phillip asked.
“I mean,” said Mr. Chang, “even if you win, what stops B.B. from doing the same thing next week?”
“I don’t know,” said Phillip. He hadn’t thought about it. Even if he did win his lawsuit and got B.B. to pay for his glasses, it wouldn’t stop her from hitting him again.
“What should I do?” asked Phillip.
“Have you heard of the twisted-shoulder block?” asked Mr. Chang. “The shoulder absorbs most of the impact, and you can protect your eyeglasses better.” He gave Phillip a pat on the back, wished him good luck, and went back in his cubicle.
Phillip wrestled with what he had said. After lunch he asked Sam about it.
“The only way you could stop it from happening again,” said Sam, “is if you got an injunction.”
“A what?”
“An injunction,” Sam explained, “is like, when your mother yells, ‘Knock it off or else!!!’ In a lawsuit, when someone is doing something they’re not supposed to do and they keep doing it, the judge can issue an order that says, ‘Knock it off or else.’”
“So the judge could order B.B. not to hit me anymore?”
“That’s right.”
“What about the other kids? Could the judge order them all to stop hitting each other?”
“It’s possible,” agreed Sam. “But the judge would be ordering an end to school dodgeball. To get a judge to do that, you would need good legal reasoning and plenty of case law on your side.”
“I better get back to the library,” said Phillip.
Two hours later, he was two hours older and still hadn’t a clue as to how he could get a judge to issue an injunction against dodgeball. Phillip wondered how he could have expected to figure all this legal stuff out.
Sheer will was not enough. It was like when Helena took Einstein to the racetrack and tried to train him to race. The elephant lumbered away, always keeping three feet on the ground, while animals with shorter legs easily passed him.
Phillip needed to get away from the musty smell of old books. He left the library and went to the lawyers’ lounge, where he found a copy of Dodgeball Today magazine on a couch. The lead article was “How to Get More Force on a Screamer Ball Without Making It Explode.” Phillip placed the magazine in a rack on the wall. Then he curled up on the couch and fell into a troubled sleep. His nap was interrupted by the chatter of lawyers coming into the lounge. Phillip ignored them and pretended he was asleep.
“Someone beat you to the couch, Syd,” a lawyer with a squeaky voice said.
“Looks like Veola’s nephew,” said a deeper voice. “Almost got himself killed the other day dancing with a bookcase. Fool kid.”
“Seems to me,” a more soft-spoken voice said, “if you’re going to make a bookcase, you ought to make it so it doesn’t tip over.”
“There he goes,” said Deep Voice. “Thinking like a plaintiff’s lawyer.”
“Yeah,” said Squeaky Voice. “I’m surprised you didn’t pass the kid your business card.”
“Go ahead and laugh,” said Soft Spoken. “There’s a lawsuit in that bookcase-falling-over mishap. In my opinion, that bookcase was an unreasonably unsafe product.”
“No,” said Deep Voice, “a product isn’t unreasonably unsafe unless it’s unsafe for the purpose for which it was made. If you get hurt using a bookcase as a bookcase, it’s unreasonably unsafe. If you get hurt u
sing a bookcase as a ladder, you’re a fool kid.”
The lawyers laughed, but Phillip was thinking about an “unreasonably unsafe product.” Wasn’t a dodgeball a product? And wasn’t the purpose of a dodgeball to hit other kids with? And wasn’t it unsafe to hit kids with a dodgeball? Phillip bolted upright.
“Excuse me,” he said to the lawyers. He got to his feet and returned to the library.
By the end of the next day, Phillip added a new paragraph to his complaint. It said that a dodgeball was an unreasonably unsafe product, and the judge should issue an injunction to stop the school from forcing kids to play.
Phillip wasn’t sure whom to sue about dodgeball being unsafe. He didn’t think it was B.B.’s fault. It was Coach and the school that made him play. Since Phillip wanted to be fair, he wrote Hardingtown Middle School and Coach Tyson next to B.B.’s name as defendants. Then, as a last-minute thought, he added the American Dodgeball Company and the City of Hardingtown.
Now it was poop-scooping, rope-climbing, broken-glasses sixth-grader Phillip Edward “Coleslaw” Stanislaw (a.k.a. “circus boy”) against the Unofficial Dodgeball Capital of the World.
Elephant tail hair is considered such a good-luck charm that circus folk braid it into bracelets to wear during performances. As Phillip plodded to school the Tuesday after his suspension and saw his bare wrist, he wished he believed in lucky charms. He could use a bit of good luck.
“Hey, look who’s back,” said a kid.
“What’s up, Coleslaw?” said another.
It was weird. They sounded happy to see him. What was weirder was that Phillip felt happy to be back. Not happy to face another gym class, but happy to see his classmates and teachers and get back to his school subjects.
The rest of the week passed quickly. In English, they worked on declarative sentences. In science, they started projects for the science fair. In history, they learned about the Industrial Revolution.
If only there were no gym class tomorrow, Phillip thought Sunday evening. Another stomachache made him skip dinner. He went to bed early but had trouble falling asleep. When he was a little boy and he couldn’t sleep, he and his mom would play war with a deck of magic cards. No matter how they shuffled, they would draw the same cards. Phillip’s eyes would droop, and his mom would tuck him in, pulling the covers up around his big ears.
Phillip wished he were little again.
He looked over at his circus trunk, still where he dropped it on his first day in Hardingtown. Wondering if the cards were in it, he slipped out of bed and lifted the trunk latch. It made a familiar creaking sound. Beneath a rubber chicken and whoopee cushion, he found his pogo stick and juggling balls.
He tossed the three balls into the air and mixed them around, letting them drop back onto his black satin cape in the trunk one at a time. Phillip picked up the cape and unfolded it. A white envelope fell out. His name was written across the envelope, in his mom’s handwriting. His hands began to perspire as he pulled the flap loose and opened the letter.
Dear Phillip:
I am writing this letter as you pack your bag to go and already I am missing you. We love you and hope you will make lots of friends in public school and be happy. Mind your aunt and uncle and try to remember to eat, even when you’re not hungry. If you need us, you can find us on the schedule.
Love,
Mom
There was another paper inside the envelope. It was a schedule of where the Windy Van Hooten Circus would be performing during the year. Phillip scooted back into bed and checked the schedule. The Barlow Street Fairgrounds in Poughkeepsie, New York. That’s where his mom and dad were tonight. He read the schedule from top to bottom, again and again, until he began to doze off.
When he woke the next morning, Phillip devoured a bowl of sugary cereal, three fried eggs, and four pieces of buttered toast. When they counted off at gym class, for the first time, he and B.B. were both “ones.”
Phillip adjusted his broken glasses, careful not to pop the lenses, and watched B.B. playing dodgeball from behind. She pushed down and flung up as if in slow motion and caught a ball intent on whizzing past her.
“You’re out,” Coach screamed at the dejected thrower.
B.B. flung a torpedo ball with such accuracy it sped between two kids standing side by side and grazed both of their arms at the same time.
“You’re both out,” Coach yelled at the disgraced duo.
Sweat formed on the back of B.B.’s T-shirt as she raced after the balls. She dove and stretched like a trapeze artist. No wonder she was the star of the dodgeball court. She wasn’t just a clown throwing pies. She had athletic artistry. He studied her every move. With B.B. on his team, Phillip’s side won easily.
During the next gym class, Phillip counted the number of kids forming in the line between him and B.B. and made sure they were an odd number of spaces away. That way, they would be on the same team again. He tried to stay as far from B.B. as he could so she wouldn’t realize what he was doing. For the next couple of weeks, his system worked. But even a magician sometimes pulls out the wrong card.
“Two,” said B.B, from the front of the line, one afternoon.
“One,” said Phillip from the rear.
The game started slow. Three balls were in play. Phillip dodged a low one. Most of the action was on the other side of the gym, where a couple of the better players had gotten into a skirmish near the ball line.
Where was B.B.? He found her and their eyes locked. She had a ball.
“Get the circus boy,” a boy with bulging biceps barked.
“Go on. Cream him,” shouted another.
B.B. was a statue.
“Get that ball in play,” Coach screamed.
For a moment, Phillip wasn’t sure if B.B. was going to throw it. Then she reared back and shot it like a bullet. The ball headed straight for his heart.
It happened so fast, Phillip didn’t have time to consider what to do. Instead, he reached out and caught the ball.
Phillip Edward Stanislaw caught the ball.
The ball thrown by B.B. Tyson.
“He froze with it in his hands. The force of the ball stung his fingers and made his hands tingle like he was holding his father’s hand buzzer. B.B. was already chasing another ball.
“Holy cow, you caught it,” said Shawn, who was standing near Phillip.
“He caught it,” Shawn yelled to Coach.
Coach blew his whistle.
The world stopped.
B.B. spun and saw Phillip.
Coach forced words from his mouth like an ill-prepared student, answering with an inflection at the end that changed the statement to a question. “You’re out?”
B.B. dropped the ball and marched toward the bleachers.
“That was cool!” one of the kids yelled.
“Yeah, good catch, Cool-slaw,” said another.
“Cool-slaw, Cool-slaw,” the group chanted.
Phillip felt his ears flush.
“That’s enough!” Coach roared. But the cheering continued.
Coach blew his whistle hard.
“I said that’s enough.”
The noise evaporated.
“Go get changed,” said Coach. The color was gone from his face.
A member of the Dodgeballers’ Club objected, “But we still have ten minutes left of class.”
“Beat it,” said Coach. The kids didn’t need telling twice.
Phillip saw B.B. sitting on the bleachers. Her arms were around her knees and she had buried her face in them. She didn’t look up once as the rest of the kids cleared the gym, leaving her and her father alone.
From outside the gym, Phillip could hear Coach’s raised voice. Spying through the wire-covered glass, he could see the anger in Coach’s animated hand gestures. For the first time since he’d met B.B. Tyson, Phillip felt sorry for her.
A “fearless” snake charmer actually has little to worry about. A well-fed snake is sluggish and not dangerous. The gentle-looking
zebra, however, can be an extremely difficult animal.
When Phillip lived with the circus, he knew the difference between a snake and a zebra. But the Hardingtown Middle School was a different jungle. It was hard to tell who wanted to drape around his shoulder and who wanted to kick him in the pants. Phillip had barely gotten out of his gym clothes when he heard an announcement over the loudspeaker telling him to report to the principal’s office. He went to his locker to get his sweatshirt.
“The principal is my pal,” Phillip reminded himself as he recalled the poster he had seen on the wall outside of Mr. Race’s office last month.
“They’re waiting for you in the conference room,” the principal’s secretary said.
An oval table filled most of the room. Two dark suits sat at the table. One of them was the vice-principal, Mr. Race. The other was the principal, Mr. Bellow, a husky, bushy-eyebrowed man with hairy hands wearing a pin-striped suit. His necktie was embroidered with dodgeballs. Sitting across from the principals was Aunt Veola.”
“Come in, Phillip,” said Mr. Race.
Phillip took a seat next to Aunt Veola. She wore a strained expression. In front of her was a copy of the complaint Phillip had filed a few weeks ago, along with his “Request for Preliminary Injunction Hearing.” When Sam had first explained to Aunt Veola about the lawsuit, she had told Phillip she was proud of him for standing up against a bully. But would she still support his decision now that she was stuck in the ice chamber with Mr. Race and Mr. Bellow chipping away at her?
“We were just discussing your little research project with your aunt,” Mr. Race said.
“You’ve done an enormously serious thing,” Mr. Bellow told Phillip as he smoothed down his bushy eyebrows.
“I’m sorry,” Phillip said. “But I don’t think the school should force us to play dodgeball. It’s too dangerous.”
“Have you forgotten where you are?” asked Mr. Race. “In Hardingtown, playing dodgeball is a privilege.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Bellow. “Playing dodgeball is an honor.”
Phillip wanted to be respectful, but he felt his mouth open and heard his voice coming out. “Getting my glasses broken was not an honor.”