Losers, Inc.

by Claudia Mills

  Ethan tore a sheet of paper from the back of his sketchpad. He knew what he was going to do. Sitting right there in art class, he was going to write Ms. Gunderson a poem.

  He had written poems before, for school assignments, but they had all been terrible. How did you go about writing a good poem, a poem that would really tell another person what you wanted to say?

  Ignoring the bowl of bananas, Ethan picked up his pencil and wrote: “My love for you is like…” But he didn’t know how to finish the line. Like what? What was it like?

  How did Lizzie do it?

  He thought about Grace Gunderson standing in front of the class that morning, giving the bunsen burner demonstration, looking beautiful even in safety goggles. But safety goggles weren’t poetic enough to put into a poem.

  Suddenly he had an idea. Quickly he wrote: “My love for you is like / A bunsen burner burning bright.” Then another line came to him, and another after that. Some of his lines didn’t rhyme, but every year teachers told them that poems didn’t have to rhyme. Lizzie always managed to get hers to rhyme, though.

  When Ethan’s poem was done, he read it over one last time. It was actually pretty good—not as good as Lizzie’s poems, but definitely the best poem he had ever written. Best of all, it said what he wanted to say.

  For Grace Gunderson

  My love for you is like

  A bunsen burner burning bright.

  It burns all day.

  It burns all night.

  However cold it gets outside

  There’s a part of me inside

  That stays warm.

  When it gets dark outside

  There’s a part of me inside

  That is light,

  Like a bunsen burner burning bright.

  At the bottom he signed it: “Your Secret Admirer.” His banana still life ended up looking like a bowl of yellow hot dogs, but he didn’t care.

  On the way to math class, he stopped in the office and slipped the paper into Ms. Gunderson’s mailbox. The Russell Stover and Whitman’s candy boxes were gone, but now there was a foil-wrapped Russell Stover chocolate-covered strawberry-cream heart and a small bag of those candy hearts with corny messages on them.

  And one poem. No long-stemmed red rose. But one poem.

  Ten

  As Ethan made himself walk into math class third period, he felt like Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities walking to his execution at the guillotine.

  It had been bad enough being Lizzie’s partner for Peer-Assisted Learning before she had “spoken her love.” Then he had known she had a crush on him, but he hadn’t officially known. As of today, he knew. And he knew that she knew that he knew.

  And today was the day that he had made his solemn vow to tell Lizzie about the contest, or be forever unworthy of Grace Gunderson.

  As if Ethan weren’t already miserable enough, he overheard Julius talking to Barnett and Ryan.

  “Do you want to come over on Saturday to help me with my science fair project?” Julius was asking them.

  “Nah,” Barnett said.

  “It has to do with pigging out on ice cream,” Julius added.

  “Yeah!” Barnett said.

  “Count me in,” Alex said, gesturing with an imaginary spoon.

  Ethan couldn’t blame Julius for not inviting him. And yet he did. Were he and Julius best friends or not?

  Luckily, Mr. Grotient didn’t make them begin Peer-Assisted Learning right away. As he laid out some new, complicated problems on the chalkboard, Ethan had time to consider his situation.

  He decided to pretend that he had never read Lizzie’s poem. After all, twenty minutes ago he hadn’t read it. He might not have read it until after school. Or tomorrow morning. Or sometime next week. He might have lost it before he ever had a chance to read it. He would act as if nothing had happened. He’d start in with some question about today’s math problems as if February the fourteenth were a day like any other.

  Except that, at the same time that he was acting as if nothing had happened, he also had to break the truth to her about the contest. It wouldn’t have been as awful if he hadn’t been the one who had told her about it in the first place.

  Oh, Lizzie? Remember that contest I was talking about last week? The one you said I was so nice to tell you about? Well, it was all part of a mean joke that Barnett and Ryan and Marcia and I were trying to play on you.

  How could Ethan say that?

  He couldn’t.

  But he had to.

  When it was time for Peer-Assisted Learning, Ethan took the lead in moving his desk. Lizzie’s face was scarlet, redder than her hair. It occurred to Ethan that, in addition to the poem, she had the bunsen burner business to blush about, too. Ethan wouldn’t have wanted to be Lizzie today.

  “So,” Ethan said in his best fake, cheerful, nothing-has-happened voice, “did you get any of what Grotient was saying?” He certainly didn’t.

  “A little bit,” Lizzie whispered, looking away, her face hidden by her hair.

  “Like, on that first problem he did, I didn’t really get his explanation of why he was doing it that way.”

  “Well, I think he was trying to show that it doesn’t matter if x is in the numerator or in the denominator. You solve for it in basically the same way in both cases.”

  Leave it to Lizzie to understand math perfectly even when she was overcome with shame and humiliation. Ethan had to admire her for that. And she had been pretty brave to put her initials on the valentine poem. She hadn’t signed her poem “A Secret Admirer.”

  After Lizzie had shown him how to do a few of the new problems, Ethan forced himself to face his confession.

  “Um—Lizzie?”

  “What?”

  He had to say it.

  He couldn’t say it.

  “That contest? The one I told you about? Did you ever enter it?”

  “Oh, yes. I sent my poem in right away. I forget when you’re supposed to hear. I don’t think it said on the announcement. Usually they tell you, but I don’t think this one did. Not that I expect to win or anything. I told you before, I’ve never won a contest. But I love entering them, anyway.”

  “These contests—do you think—I mean, are they always—like, real?”

  Lizzie looked puzzled. “Real? You mean, do they really give you a prize if you win? I guess so. Since I’ve never won, I don’t know much about what happens if you do. But maybe this time I’ll find out, right?”

  Ethan tried again. “I read somewhere that some contests are phony. Like some lotteries. They get you to buy something, but you don’t have any real chance of winning.”

  “With writing contests you don’t have to buy anything,” Lizzie said.

  And in this case it wasn’t that Lizzie had no chance of winning but that she had a one hundred percent chance of winning.

  Ethan gave up. “Well, I hope you win,” he said. What else could he say?

  At least he’d tried to tell her, Ethan told himself defensively. But he knew, as much as he knew anything, that trying wasn’t good enough.

  * * *

  “How was school?” Ethan’s mother asked at dinner.

  “Fine,” Peter said.

  “Fine,” Ethan said, but today the lie was too much for him. “Except that it was Valentine’s Day,” he added.

  His father looked over at him sympathetically. Ethan had never seen his father give his mother a valentine. But it was clear that they loved each other. They showed it in other ways—like looking proud when the other one was dressed up, or holding hands when they took a walk.

  “Did you both get some valentines?” his mother asked.

  Peter nodded, but didn’t volunteer any more information. Ethan knew that a couple of girls at school liked Peter, because they called him all the time. As far as he knew, Peter didn’t like any girls, except as friends. He and Peter never talked about things like that.

  “What about you, Ethan?”

  “I got a couple.” A
nd he had given one Valentine’s Day poem. He wondered if Ms. Gunderson had read it yet, and, if so, if she had any idea who had sent it. He hoped she wouldn’t think it was from Julius. Though Julius didn’t look like the type to write poetry. Not that Ethan was the type to write poetry, either. At least, he hadn’t been until today.

  “I take it that Valentine’s Day is not your favorite holiday?” Ethan’s mother patted his hand. “Well, you should have been at Little Wonders this morning. Imagine twenty children, each with nineteen valentines to hand out, in my class alone. That’s almost four hundred valentines. None of them can read. Their parents are frantic to get to work. So the teachers are trying to take off jackets, boots, snow pants, hats, and mittens—while stuffing four hundred valentines into the flimsy little paper bag mail pouches that I had the bright idea of making. Then the four hundred valentines have to be opened, and read aloud to their recipients, and counted, and crumpled, and lost, and found again, and stuffed back into the bags, which are now beginning to tear.”

  “What about Edison Blue?” Ethan asked. “Was he there today?”

  “Yes.” The single syllable had a great deal of misery compressed into it. “He was there. Edison decided he didn’t want to give away his valentines. He wanted to keep them all for himself. I wouldn’t have made an issue of it, but Edison’s mom had obviously spent a lot of time making the valentines and was determined to get them delivered. What a battle that was.”

  “Who won?” Ethan’s dad asked.

  “Who do you think? That was how most of the mail pouches got torn—with Edison trying to get every last one of his valentines back. Complicated, of course, by the fact that he had only a vague idea of which ones were his, as one small white envelope looks very much like another. The only good thing I can say about Valentine’s Day is that it’s a whole year until we get another one.”

  Ethan’s sentiments exactly.

  * * *

  Ethan spent most of Saturday bouncing balls for his science fair project. He wondered if Julius was spending the day eating ice cream with Barnett and Ryan. Ethan tried to ignore his hurt. He needed to stay home and work on his project, anyway, for the fair was only a week and a half away.

  Ethan planned to drop ten different balls onto five different surfaces: the wooden floor of the living room, the carpeted floor of the family room, the linoleum floor of the kitchen, the concrete floor of the garage, and the old trampoline he and Peter used to jump on when they were little. On the wall behind every bouncing zone he hung a measuring tape. Then Ethan dropped each ball in turn, and Peter measured the height that it bounced.

  “This is a really cool project,” Peter said as Ethan began dropping the tennis ball onto the concrete floor of the garage. “Three feet. I wouldn’t be surprised if the judges picked it to go to the regional fair. They get sick of the same old stuff. Like mine. Mine is the hundred-thousandth project on electromagnetism. Yours is something really different.”

  “You’ll get picked,” Ethan said. “You always get picked.” He tried to keep the hint of bitterness out of his voice.

  Peter couldn’t contradict him. He always did get picked. “Three feet one inch. Well, if you want some pointers, neatness counts. Neatness counts a lot. The judges go in for the really spiffy displays. Every year I’ve seen kids with terrific projects not get picked because their displays are a mess. And the judges like it if you act real enthusiastic about your project. I mean, you shouldn’t put on an act or anything. But if you’re enthusiastic about a project, chances are they will be, too.”

  Ethan dropped his golf ball. It hardly bounced at all.

  “Two inches,” Peter read off the tape. “How come you and Julius aren’t working together this time?”

  Ethan shrugged. He dropped the ball again.

  “Two and a half inches. I think it’s a good idea, going off on your own. Julius is a good kid, but…”

  Ethan felt his face flushing. Nobody had asked Peter to critique his friends. “But what?”

  “It’s just that he—you know. He likes being—well, I wouldn’t call him a loser, exactly, but he’s a…”

  Loser.

  “No, he’s not,” Ethan said. “He’s just not into grades and things. And impressing people. But he’s smarter than he looks. This year he has a great science project, too. He really does. And he’s nice.” A series of memories flashed through Ethan’s mind. Julius defending Ethan against Alex’s teasing. Julius defending Ethan against Ms. Leeds’s accusations. Julius being the only one not to agree to the prank against Lizzie. “He’s the best kid I know.”

  “Look, don’t get mad.” Peter handed Ethan the basketball. “I said he was a good kid. I just think you have a better chance at winning the science fair on your own, that’s all.”

  Ethan dropped the basketball.

  “Three feet,” Peter read out.

  Ethan dropped it again.

  “Two feet ten inches.”

  Winning the science fair isn’t everything, you know, Ethan wanted to say to Peter. He didn’t say it. For the truth was that Ethan wanted to win the science fair. He couldn’t remember the last time he had wanted anything as much.

  * * *

  By four-thirty all of Ethan’s data had been collected. He and Peter gave each other exuberant high fives. Now if Ethan won the Nobel Prize, in his acceptance speech he’d definitely have to thank Peter along with Grace Gunderson. Peter had helped him for four solid hours, even though his own project still wasn’t finished. It was more than a lot of brothers would have done.

  “Hey, I have an idea,” Peter said. “Let’s go outside and bounce some basketballs.”

  Ethan laughed. “I’m going to dream about bouncing balls tonight.”

  “What about dinner?”

  Satisfaction in the afternoon’s work made Ethan feel ready for anything. He had a sudden urge to make something fancy. Like crepes Suzette. Whatever they were. Or something on fire. Though, on second thought, the bunsen burners had been enough fire for one week. Maybe a cake like the ones he liked to look at in the window of the French bakery in the shopping center.

  “Let’s bake a cake,” he said.

  “A cake?” Peter sounded surprised. The boys almost never made desserts. The most ambitious desserts they had ever attempted were Betty Crocker brownies and instant chocolate pudding.

  “Yeah. For the dinner part, we can just have scrambled eggs or something. But for dessert, let’s make a cake.” In his mind Ethan already had a name for the cake, though he’d never tell it to Peter.

  La Grace.

  Peter found an easy-looking recipe in one of the cookbooks on the kitchen shelf. Ethan gathered all the ingredients.

  But the cake was a failure. For starters, the layers wouldn’t come out of the pans. Ethan turned the pans over onto the cake racks, burning his hand on one of them, and then pounded the bottoms again and again.

  “You’re not doing it right,” Peter said. He took over, whacking the pans until he dented the metal. The cakes still wouldn’t come out.

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with the pans,” Peter suggested.

  “They’re the same ones Mom uses all the time,” Ethan couldn’t resist pointing out.

  Finally, the top half came out of one pan, but the bottom half stayed in, stuck to the pan as firmly as if they had glued it there with household cement. And when Ethan ate a chunk of the part that was stuck in the pan, it had a funny, rubbery texture. Ethan was sure that if they dropped the cake into a sink full of water, it wouldn’t fall apart; it would just sink to the bottom, and then they’d be able to wring it out and put it back on the plate.

  “I think we forgot to put something in,” Ethan said.

  “Yeah,” Peter agreed ruefully. “Like whatever the stuff is that gives cakes their flavor.”

  Their parents came home from shopping as Ethan was scraping both pans of La Grace into the trash. He hoped the cake wasn’t an omen. He shouldn’t have called it La Grace. He should have
called it La Lizzie. But he felt oddly cheerful that he and Peter shared the blame for its failure.

  “Something smells…”

  Ethan could tell that his mother had planned to say good, but at the last minute changed her mind.

  “Terrible?” Peter asked.

  “Interesting,” she said.

  “It was a cake,” Peter told her. “It was interesting, all right. I hope I don’t make anything that interesting again for a long time. Scrambled eggs, anyone?”

  “Let’s get a pizza,” their dad said, coming to the rescue.

  At dinner, Peter didn’t need much coaxing to tell their parents about the work they had done all afternoon on Ethan’s science fair project. “It’s looking great,” he said.

  “It certainly sounds it,” Ethan’s mother said. “I have a feeling that this is the year we’re going to have two Winfield projects chosen for the regional science fair!”

  Ethan wished she hadn’t said it. She always tried too hard to act as if he were as successful as Peter. And he wasn’t. He had never had a project chosen for the regional science fair. Peter had never had a project that wasn’t chosen.

  But maybe this year would be different. Peter honestly seemed to think that the sports project was good. So did Grace Gunderson. Of course, Julius had said she thought his ice cream project was great, too. Maybe both their projects would be picked for the regional science fair: Three projects could be chosen from each grade. That would really be something for Losers, Inc. Maybe it was time to start drafting that Nobel acceptance speech, after all.

  Eleven

  On Monday morning Ethan awoke with a vague sense of uneasiness. But he couldn’t think of anything to be uneasy about. He had survived Valentine’s Day. He had collected all the data for his science project. Julius had come over on Sunday, and they had watched a really funny Pink Panther video. It had almost seemed like old times.