by Raymond Bean
My classmates were definitely giving me the silent treatment because when I asked May, who sits right behind me, to borrow a pencil, she kept on working like she hadn’t heard me.
Her friend Karen, who sits next to her, said, “Do you hear something?”
“No,” May said. “I don’t hear anything at all.”
“Come on, guys,” I said. “You’re going to ignore me like I’m not even here?”
“Justin!” Mrs. Cliff said sternly. “After the drama that’s taken place this week, I shouldn’t hear a peep out of you.”
“It’s just that I don’t have a pencil and the girls are totally ignoring me.”
Mrs. Cliff handed me a pencil and sat down. The mouse tank was on the small table next to her desk. I couldn’t help thinking about the other mice that were still loose in the classroom. I read online that mice usually give birth to about twelve babies. We’d found four babies, which meant there were about eight more baby mice hiding around our classroom.
I raised my hand.
“Yes, Justin?” Mrs. Cliff asked.
“Can we try to catch the other mice?”
“The custodians and I have been putting out safe traps every night since they went missing, and we’ve only caught a few.”
“I know. Maybe the safe traps aren’t working so well. We’re studying mammals, right?”
“Yes...?”
“What if the class broke up into groups and studied the behavior of mice and each group worked on a different way to try and capture the mice safely?”
I think Mrs. Cliff was as surprised as I was about my suggestion.
“That’s a good idea,” May said.
“I’d love to do something like that,” Karen said, purposely not looking at me. “Mice totally gross me out, but the thought of those poor babies roaming around in here at night all lost and hungry makes me really sad.”
I could tell Mrs. Cliff was thinking about it. She walked slowly up my aisle and then down the next. The entire class watched her every move. I didn’t think she’d agree because she usually doesn’t want to hear what I have to say.
“Fine,” she said without even looking at us. “It’s a good idea and a good way to help the class heal from the loss of poor, helpless Calamity. We’ll start tomorrow.”
I couldn’t believe she’d listened to my idea. I’d been pretty sure she’d treat me like garbage for the rest of the year after the mouse fiasco, but suddenly there was hope. I figured that if we could find the rest of those babies and Myrtle, she’d forgive me for what happened to Calamity.
2
Yuck Mouth
“What do you mean you’re going to work in groups to find the mice?” Mom asked at dinner that night.
“Isn’t that unsanitary?” my sister Becky asked.
“It’s not like we’re going to kiss them or anything. We’re going to create safe traps to catch them and make sure they’re safe.”
“I don’t know,” Mom said. “It seems like everything you get involved with this year at school turns into a disaster. Why not just let the custodians and Mrs. Cliff deal with the mouse problem?”
“I don’t think they should even let the kids stay in that class,” said my other sister, Mindy. “There’s probably mouse poop all over the place in there. It’s gross.”
“They’re tiny little mice. It’s not like we have eight hogs roaming around the place,” I said.
“It’s still gross,” Becky insisted.
“Well, that’s another reason for us to catch them,” I said.
“What’s your idea?” my dad asked.
“I don’t know yet. I’m going to go on the Internet later on and see what mice like to eat and start with that.”
“Why don’t you just bring your snakes to class and let them slither around and eat the rest of the mice?” Mindy asked.
“That’s not nice,” Mom said. “Your brother feels terrible about the fact that Calamity was eaten by his snake.”
“He feeds mice to his snakes all the time,” Becky said. “He doesn’t care that much. He just wants to get back on Mrs. Cliff’s good side.”
“Mrs. Cliff doesn’t have a good side,” I said.
Mom looked really angry. “You know, Justin, just when I thought you were making a change and taking things seriously, you have to go and say something like that.”
“It’s true. She’s really mean and totally doesn’t like me.”
“I don’t think she’s that mean, but I completely get why she doesn’t like you,” Mindy said sarcastically.
Mom and Dad weren’t in the mood for my sisters and me, I guess, because they sent us all to bed early. Becky complained that she hadn’t done anything, but they didn’t seem to care.
“Thanksgiving is in a few weeks, and you kids need to think a little more about how thankful you should be and quit all the arguing!” Dad said.
“And we’re going to have company this year, so you guys better start working on your best behavior,” Mom added. “I don’t want to tell you what to do the entire time your cousin is here.”
The girls smiled because they knew Mom was talking about my cousin Darwin “Yuck Mouth” McGee. Darwin lives in Florida, and I’d met him only one other time in my life, but Mom acted like we were best friends. The only thing I remembered about Darwin was his mouth. He once bragged to me about how he doesn’t brush his teeth, ever! I believed him, too, because the night he slept in my room, his mouth smelled so bad I had to sleep with the covers over my head to keep the stink out. My sisters named him Yuck Mouth.
“Does anyone know if Darwin’s started experimenting with brushing his teeth?” I asked.
“Go to your room, Justin,” Mom ordered.
I didn’t mind being sent to my room one bit. I didn’t like the fact that Mom and Dad were mad, but I loved having a break from my sisters.
In my room, I put Mr. Squeeze over my shoulders and went online to figure out how to make the perfect mousetrap.
3
Scan It
The next day was Friday, and I had to go shopping after school with Mom and the girls for Thanksgiving supplies.
“How come we’re shopping so early for Thanksgiving?” I asked. “Halloween was only two days ago.”
“If you wait too long to get stuff for the next holiday, everything will be gone,” Becky said. “Isn’t that right, Mom?”
“It’s true. I want to be ready for Thanksgiving. We’re having it at our house this year, and if I don’t start planning now, I’ll be way behind.”
The supermarket was jammed with people rushing around the store, buying everything they’d need for Thanksgiving. I was completely bummed that I was in the supermarket on a Friday night. There were about a zillion other things I’d rather be doing.
The only cool part was that Mom let me use the price gun for the groceries. We usually get all our stuff and then get up to the counter and pay the old-fashioned way, but the supermarket has these scanner guns where you scan the bar code on whatever you want to buy and it tallies it up for you. When you check out, all you have to do is hand the gun to the cashier, and out the door you go. I love anything that cuts down on time in the store, and I loved the scanner.
I was so bored I created a game where I tried to guess the price of an object and then scanned it to see how close I was. Each time after I scanned something, I deleted it from the order so we weren’t charged. I was getting pretty good at it. I even guessed the price of a couple of things exactly.
“Why does everything end with ninety-nine cents?” I asked Mom.
“What do you mean?” she said, flipping over a turkey on a quest for the perfect one.
“Everything is priced two ninety-nine, three ninety-nine, twelve ninety-nine—you know what I mean. Why can’t stuff just be an even number, like two dollars?”
“You’re a weirdo,” Mindy said.
I tried to scan her forehead with the scanner. “Stay still so I can scan your bar code.”
&
nbsp; “Mom! Justin’s scanning my head.”
Mom was elbow-deep in turkeys. About five other moms and a grandpa-looking guy all flipped and flopped the turkeys over, reading the weight and price as if they were looking for some hidden clue. They need to get a clue, I thought.
Mom didn’t look up. She was in the zone. “Will you two please stop? This is important,” she ordered.
I held the scanner up to Mindy’s head again and pretended to read the price. “It says here that the item scanned is rotten.”
“Cut it out!” Mindy growled.
“Leave her alone,” Becky said, pinching me on the arm.
“Ouch! You two both belong on the rotten rack.” I pointed to the discounted rack of old fruit and veggies. I scanned Becky’s shoulder. “Yours says you expired about a month ago. Off to the Dumpster you go.” I pretended to pick her up and carry her away.
“Stop it!” she demanded.
“Isn’t it enough that you spoiled Halloween? Now you’re going to spoil Thanksgiving too?” Mindy asked.
“I didn’t spoil Halloween! I had a string of bad luck. And I don’t know how you ruin Thanksgiving. It’s already one of the lamer holidays, if you ask me.”
“Mom, Justin said Thanksgiving is lame,” Becky tattled.
Mom finally surfaced with what she must have felt was the best turkey in the bunch because she was beaming with pride. You would have thought she’d tracked it in the wild and killed it herself.
“Here it is!” she exclaimed. “It’s perfect—not too big, not too small. We’ll have leftovers, but not so much that we can’t eat it.”
“Great job, Mom,” Becky said.
“Looks perfect!” Mindy added.
“Looks like a turkey,” I said. They all looked at me as if I’d said the worst thing ever. “What? It does.”
Mom shook her head and rolled the cart away from the meat section. The cart was already filled almost to the top, and we’d been in the store for over an hour. We’ve got to be almost done, I thought.
“Girls, can you go up to the front of the store and grab us another cart? This one is about full.”
“Another cart!” I cried. “Are we inviting the entire town over?”
“Justin, Thanksgiving is a feast, and a feast takes planning and a lot of ingredients,” Mom explained.
The girls skipped off toward the front of the store. I followed sadly behind Mom. It felt like we’d never get out. I imagined what it would be like if the supermarket had a game room where kids could play while their parents shopped for food.
4
Pay Up, Pilgrim
Mom filled the second cart over the next hour of shopping. By the time we got to the register, we’d been in the store for over two hours. It felt as if we’d climbed to the top of Everest. We stood before the cashier, and everyone looked at me.
“Justin, hand her the scanner,” Mom said.
“You’re all set,” the clerk said. “If your Ultra Mega Market account is linked to your credit card, you can just click ‘done,’ put the scanner back on the charging wall, and you’re all set.”
I nodded approvingly. That’s how it’s done, I thought. If I’d been in charge of this mission from the beginning, we’d have been out of there a long time ago.
“Great thinking, Justin,” Mom said. “That saves us some time.”
It was the first time in a while that I felt like I wasn’t getting in trouble. The girls didn’t seem to like it very much. We jammed all the food into Mom’s little Honda Civic and headed for home. There was so much stuff that grocery bags stuffed the trunk, filled the front passenger seat and the floor, and were on all of our laps. I was so thrilled to finally get out of the supermarket. I felt like I’d been released from some kind of hostage situation. The smell of all the food was making me hungry, and I hadn’t had dinner yet.
When we were about halfway home, Mom’s phone started ringing. She asked me to answer it and put it on speaker.
“Hello?” Mom said.
“Hey, it’s me,” Dad said.
“Dad, help!” I joked. “I’m trapped in the shopping trip that will never end!”
“Justin, I need to talk with your mom for a second. Honey, are you aware that you spent close to seven thousand dollars at the supermarket!”
“What are you talking about?” Mom asked, panicked.
“I just got a call from the credit card company to let me know we had a major purchase on our card that looked suspicious. How much food did you guys buy?”
Mindy and Becky looked at me and smirked.
“What?” I asked.
“I’ll bet I know how Mom got seven thousand dollars charged to her card,” Becky said.
“That was an expensive game of Guess the Price you played back there,” Mindy added.
“What’s Guess the Price?” Mom asked. “Please tell me you weren’t playing with that scanner, Justin.”
“I wish I could, Mom, but...”
“How many things did you scan?” she demanded.
“Everything he passed,” Mindy said.
“I did not,” I said. “I scanned a lot of things, but then I deleted them. Do you want to know how much cow intestines cost?”
“I’m sure I can find out when I check my receipt,” Mom said, turning the car around. “We’re going back.”
“No!” I pleaded. “We’ve already been gone forever. Take the money out of my future earnings. I don’t care how much it costs. Don’t make us go back there!”
“What’s a scanner?” Dad interrupted.
“I’ll call you back,” Mom said. “We’re going back there!” Mom ignored me, of course. She was freaking out and had stopped listening to anything I said minutes before. It took us about ten minutes to get back to the parking lot.
“Where’s the receipt?” Mom asked, pulling into a parking spot.
“I threw it out on the way out of the store,” I said.
Mom fixed her hair in the rearview mirror. I tried to avoid eye contact. I could feel Becky and Mindy glaring at me from each side. There was nowhere to look, so I looked down at the floor. I felt like a dog that’s in trouble and can’t bring itself to look its master in the eye.
“Let’s go,” Mom said. “Hopefully they can fix this.”
“We’ve been here for so long,” I complained.
Mom ignored me and led the march back into the store. The girls followed behind her like baby ducks following their mother to the pond. I trailed behind, knowing we weren’t going to get out of the store quickly.
Mom got in a big argument with the manager of the store when he suggested that if she’d kept an eye on her son—that’s me—the situation wouldn’t have happened.
He also said he had to charge her because we’d left the store and there was no way of proving that we didn’t buy all the items on the receipt, take them home, and then come back to the store. He was basically calling Mom a liar, which was terrible to see. I even got involved and showed the guy what I’d been doing.
“Look,” I said. “I scanned an item…” I looked around and decided to scan a People magazine. The scanner read $4.95. “And then I clicked this green button to delete it.”
“That green button adds the item to your total,” the manager said.
Mom was furious as we marched out of the store a half an hour later. She cried the whole way home, which made the girls cry too. I sat sandwiched between my sisters, wishing I had $7,000 to make it all stop. In that moment, I would have paid $100,000 for a little peace and quiet.
5
Thanksgiving = Honesty
Mom and Dad spent most of the weekend on the phone with the credit card company and the managers at the supermarket. They finally agreed to split the bill, which meant Mom and Dad had to pay about three thousand dollars for a Thanksgiving dinner that should have cost about three hundred.
Later that night, while I was watching TV, I heard Dad say in the kitchen, “We could have flown to the Caribbean for a week fo
r the same price this Thanksgiving is costing us.”
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Mom said. “We’re never using those scanners again.”
“Maybe next time Justin shouldn’t go to the supermarket,” he suggested.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I called, but the idea of getting out of grocery shopping sounded pretty good to me.
I was grounded all weekend and bored out of my mind by the time Sunday night rolled around. I sat in my room thinking about all the people who were mad at me. The craziest part was that none of the things they were mad at me for were my fault. Mrs. Cliff was mad about the mice: not my fault. Becky and Mindy were mad because I’m smarter and more awesome than them: not my fault. Mom and Dad were mad about the $3,000 Thanksgiving dinner: not my fault.
That’s when I remembered that Mrs. Cliff wanted us to make a list of all the things we were thankful for and turn it in at school on Monday. I got out my notebook and started my list.
Things I’m Thankful For
1. My snakes
2. My friend Aaron
3. Doritos
4. Xbox
5. Candy
6. Shorts
7. Gum
8. Ice cream
9. Sports
10. Tv
I shared my list with the class on Monday morning. “What about your family?” Mrs. Cliff asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’re in my life, but I wouldn’t say I’m thankful for them right now. My sisters treat me pretty bad, and my parents have grounded me for most of the last few weeks. I’m just being honest. Isn’t that what Thanksgiving is all about, honesty?”
I knew what Mrs. Cliff was looking for. She wanted us to write lists saying how thankful we were for our parents, sisters, families, blah, blah, blah. The truth was that I wasn’t feeling thankful for my family. I also knew Mrs. Cliff wasn’t going to let me get away with the list I’d written, but I wasn’t in the mood to give in.