Losers, Inc.

by Claudia Mills

  So why should Ethan feel weighed down with worry? He was obviously forgetting something important—and terrible. But what?

  He was halfway to school before he remembered.

  The valentine poem.

  He had taken care not to sign his name, but he had forgotten to disguise his handwriting. Ethan had very distinctive handwriting—square and blocky, almost like printing. If Ms. Gunderson had the slightest bit of curiosity about the poem, she’d be able to figure out who had written it from the handwriting alone. She already knew that he and Julius had searched out her apartment the other day. Now she would know that he was the author of the bunsen-burner poem as well.

  Was that so terrible?

  Yes.

  Ethan didn’t want Ms. Gunderson to think of him the way he thought of Lizzie. He wanted her to think of him as a promising young scientist, not a promising young lovesick, poetry-writing scientist.

  In science class first period, she seemed the same as always, though when she spoke to Ethan her voice sounded even more gentle. But perhaps that was because she was using it to make a special request.

  “Boys and girls, we’re going to be working at the lab tables again today. Marcia, would you and Julius be partners? And, Ethan, why don’t you be partners with Lizzie?”

  Great. Now he was Lizzie’s partner in math and science. Ethan knew why Ms. Gunderson had reassigned the lab partners: She didn’t want Marcia spending the whole class period teasing Lizzie about not being able to light a bunsen burner. Once again she had cast Ethan in the hero role, so once again he had no choice but to be a hero.

  At the lab table, he lit the burner for the two of them, sort of like the lead in an old movie lighting a cigarette to hand to the woman he loved. Only Ethan was lighting it for Grace and handing it to Lizzie. So to speak.

  The others teased Lizzie anyway.

  “Spazzie? I mean, Lizzie? Can we borrow your matches?” That was Alex, from the table next to them. “Unless you’re afraid to touch the matchbox.”

  Ethan handed Alex the matchbox in silence, without dignifying Alex’s remark with a reply. He sometimes wondered why some people were so mean. He had met Alex’s dad a couple of times, and Mr. Ryan was mean, too. So maybe Alex thought that was how you had to act to be a guy.

  As the bell rang, Ms. Gunderson again asked Ethan to stay for a minute. Private after-class chats with her were becoming routine.

  “Ethan, I hope you don’t mind that I asked you to work with Lizzie.”

  Ethan shook his head. He tried to strike a gallant pose.

  “I think you have a lot to offer Lizzie. And she might have something to offer you, too.”

  Like endless love until her doom, Ethan thought glumly, but he kept the gallant, heroic look on his face.

  “Lizzie is such a talented poet … You write poetry, too, don’t you, Ethan?”

  Ethan shook his head again, more emphatically than before, but he felt the color rising in his face, and he couldn’t meet Ms. Gunderson’s eyes.

  “Well, anyway, thank you, Ethan.”

  She bent to straighten the papers on her desk. Ethan didn’t know if she was thanking him for helping Lizzie. Or for his poem. Or both. But he felt a rush of grateful relief as he turned to go.

  Then another, even more terrible thought struck him. Two more weeks. That was all the time Ms. Gunderson had left at West Creek Middle School. Two more weeks.

  * * *

  At lunch on Wednesday, Marcia sat down next to Ethan and Julius.

  “Ta-dah!” she said, producing a piece of paper from her immaculately neat notebook.

  Ethan’s heart sank. Was it another love poem stolen from Lizzie? But what Marcia had was even worse.

  “I wrote the letter.”

  Ethan must have looked blank.

  “The letter. To the Lizard. Telling her she won first prize in the contest. Do you want to hear it?”

  Neither Ethan nor Julius replied. Marcia began to read:

  Dear Miss Archer:

  We are pleased to tell you that your poem “Snow Bird” has won first prize in the entire nation out of all the entries in the National Poetry Contest.

  The judges were particularly impressed by its lovely imagery. You are a young poet of extraordinary talent.

  Congratulations on winning this prestigious award.

  Sincerely,

  Mr. Archibald Q. Smith

  “Did you like the part about the lovely imagery?” Marcia asked. “I don’t know what lovely imagery is exactly, but I thought it sounded good. I thought the name Archibald Q. Smith sounded good, too.”

  “Did you mail it to her?” Ethan asked.

  “Of course not, silly. I mailed it to my cousin, and she’ll mail it to Lizzie. So that it has a Washington, D.C., postmark. So what do you think? Does it sound okay?”

  It would have sounded okay if it had been a real contest instead of a cruel hoax. Ethan knew that Julius was waiting to hear what he said next. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t think we should tell Lizzie that she won the contest.”

  “You think we should tell her that she lost the contest?” Marcia asked. “Would that be better?”

  Ethan didn’t know. Were you more of a failure if you lost a fake contest or if you won it?

  He tried again. “I don’t think we should tell her anything. It’s like, the joke has gone far enough. I think you should call your cousin and tell her we changed our minds.”

  “Ethan,” Marcia said in a mock-scolding tone, “have you changed your mind? Are you chickening out?”

  Before Ethan could answer, Marcia went on, “Look, I already mailed the letter to my cousin. I’m not calling her again. My mom makes me pay for my own long-distance calls, you know. It’s just a joke. Lizzie should be able to take one little joke.”

  Marcia flounced away from the table. Julius didn’t say anything, but Ethan knew that Julius thought he had failed Lizzie once again.

  * * *

  Over the weekend Peter helped Ethan put all the data for his science fair project into a spreadsheet on the computer. It took a long time, but when everything was printed out, his tables and graphs looked fantastic. How could the judges not be blown away by tables and graphs like these? They looked as if they had been made by a real scientist—a real, Nobel Prize-winning scientist—not by a twelve-year-old kid who, until a month ago, hadn’t even been good at science.

  Peter’s graphs looked like Nobel Prize winners, too. But that was okay. Ethan and Peter weren’t competing against each other. The judges would choose three projects from each grade. Sixth graders competed against other sixth graders, and eighth graders competed against other eighth graders.

  But Ethan was competing against Julius, in a sense. Though both of their projects could end up being picked as two out of the three sixth-grade winners. It would certainly be wild if they were.

  On Sunday, after lunch, Julius called Ethan.

  “You want to come over and eat some ice cream?” he asked.

  Ethan’s mood soared, but he kept his voice casual. “Sure.”

  At Julius’s house, Julius was all business as he led Ethan to a kitchen chair, then blindfolded him.

  “In case fat-free ice cream looks different,” Julius explained. “I have three flavors for people to taste, with regular and fat-free versions of each. Guess which three flavors? No, don’t guess. Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Original, huh? Okay, vanilla first. Open wide! Round and round the airplane goes, and into the airport!”

  Julius fed Ethan the first spoonful. It tasted pretty good. All ice cream tasted pretty good to Ethan. Then Julius fed him the second spoonful. It tasted a lot better—richer, creamier … fatter.

  “Which tasted better?” Julius asked.

  “The second one.”

  Ethan tasted the chocolate and the strawberry. The second one tasted better each time. Then Julius removed the blindfold.

  “And the winner is—the real stuff! Dripping and oozing with s
aturated fat!”

  Ethan laughed. “This is a cool project,” he said. He didn’t know whether he should stop there or not. “I bet it gets picked for the regional science fair. I hope it does.”

  Julius began rinsing off Ethan’s spoons, six of them, one for each taste. Ethan could tell that he had said the wrong thing, but he didn’t see why. He did hope Julius’s ice cream project would be picked as a winner. He just hoped even more that his own ball-bouncing project would win.

  * * *

  The day before the science fair, a heavy snow came in from the plains, but snow almost never closed school in West Creek. Since it was too snowy for the boys to ride their bikes, Ethan’s father dropped Ethan and Peter at school on his way to work.

  It was snowing so hard that Ethan could hardly see out the windows in science class. Lizzie sat beside him at their lab table, staring dreamily out at the storm, probably groping for words for another poem. The flakes definitely didn’t look like floating wisps of cotton today. The snow looked more like—Ethan couldn’t think of a good way to describe it.

  “A white fury—raving—blind,” Lizzie said, as if to herself.

  Yes, that was what it looked like, all right.

  Ethan wondered if Lizzie had gotten the letter yet about “Snow Bird.” It should be coming in the mail any day now. But he made himself focus on the science experiment instead.

  They were starting distillation of wood. As usual, Ethan lit the bunsen burner. The snowstorm raging outside made the classroom seem bright and safe, almost cozy.

  As Alex lit his burner at the table next to them, he waved his match toward Lizzie. “Fire!” he cackled, in what was plainly intended to be a Wicked Witch of the West voice. “This is what I have for you, my little ugly! Fire!”

  Lizzie flinched, but she didn’t scream. Ethan was relieved.

  “Here, Spazzie, catch!”

  Alex blew out the match first, then tossed it, still smoking, directly in front of Lizzie on their lab table. This time Lizzie did scream.

  Ms. Gunderson hurried over. “What happened? Lizzie?”

  Lizzie didn’t answer, but Alex’s self-satisfied smirk gave him away.

  “Alex, you will leave Lizzie alone, or you will spend the rest of this class period in the office. Do you understand?”

  Alex’s smirk disappeared. Ms. Gunderson so seldom yelled at anyone that it was impressive when she did. But as soon as she turned to go to another table, Alex hissed at them, “Nice scream, Spazzie.”

  That was when Ethan decided: He was going to teach Lizzie how to light a bunsen burner.

  When the bell rang for the end of class, Ethan leaned over to Lizzie. “Lizzie, wait. Look, you’re going to have to learn how to light this thing, or else Alex and those guys are going to keep teasing you. It’s easy. It really is. I’ll show you. It’ll just take a minute.”

  Lizzie shook her head, but she didn’t get up to go.

  “All you have to do, if the match starts to burn your finger, is blow it out. Like a birthday candle. You’ve blown out birthday candles, right?”

  Lizzie nodded.

  “Okay. Here’s a match. Go ahead, light it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sure you can. Come on. Just light it.”

  Lizzie struck the match. It lit. Her hand trembled, but she didn’t drop the match and she didn’t scream.

  “Okay. Turn on the gas. With your other hand. Turn on the gas.”

  Lizzie did it.

  “Now blow out the match. Good. Now turn off the gas.”

  Lizzie obeyed.

  “You did it! You lit the bunsen burner! Okay, do it again. Here’s another match. Light it.”

  Lizzie lit the bunsen burner again.

  The second-period kids were coming in now, but Ethan held out one last match to Lizzie. “One more time.”

  Lizzie lit it again.

  Ethan looked at Ms. Gunderson. She was watching them with a grateful smile. For once he had earned that smile. He could die right now, having done one thing in his life to truly earn her praise.

  Twelve

  On the morning of the science fair, Ethan’s father loaded both boys’ project displays into the back of his van, as Ethan hunted frantically on the floor of his closet for a tie. He definitely owned at least one tie: He wore it to church every year on Easter Sunday. But last Easter was almost a year ago, and Ethan hadn’t seen his tie since.

  He hated having to ask his mom to find it, but his dad was already in the van, honking his horn. “Mom! Have you seen my tie anywhere?”

  Ethan’s mother didn’t show any expression on her face as she took the tie off the hook at the rear of his closet and handed it to him. But once he had managed to remember how to tie it, she gave him a hug. “I can’t help it,” she said. “You and Peter both look so handsome today. I’m so proud of both of you.”

  The tie had been Peter’s idea. “That’s another thing,” he had told Ethan the night before. “Personal appearance. The judges love it if you comb your hair and shine your shoes and wear a tie.”

  Ethan hadn’t shined his shoes; he still wore his old high-tops. But he had jerked a comb through his hair. And he had to admit that he looked pretty sharp in his tie. The guys Ms. Gunderson hung out with at the university probably wore ties all the time. Quickly Ethan drove the thought away.

  At school, Ethan’s dad helped them carry their displays into the gym. “Good luck, boys,” he said gruffly and then hurried off to his first carpet-cleaning job of the morning.

  Ethan swallowed hard. He had entered the science fair every year, but this was the first year he had cared about winning. It was embarrassing having his parents see that he cared. And between his carefully constructed display and neatly knotted tie, this year everybody at school was going to know that he cared. Ethan thought about taking off his tie and putting it back on after lunch, when the fair would be open for judging. He decided to keep it on, at least through science class.

  But when Julius saw him in homeroom, Julius looked so betrayed that Ethan turned away. Losers don’t wear ties. Julius hadn’t said it out loud, but he might as well have.

  Ms. Gunderson was dressed up, too, in a new blue dress that had kind of an olden-days look to it. She looked nervous herself as she greeted the class at the start of first period.

  “Today is our big day,” she said. “I know all of you have worked very hard. You have produced some truly outstanding projects.”

  Ethan flushed. He felt as if Ms. Gunderson were talking directly to him. Though maybe Julius thought she was talking directly to him.

  “I hope that some of you will have the satisfaction of having your projects chosen to go on to the regional science fair. As you know, three projects will be chosen for each grade. But, more important, I hope that your participation in this year’s science fair has taught you something about the excitement of conducting your own scientific research.”

  Ms. Gunderson brushed back a strand of hair that had escaped from the rest. “This is our last week together,” she said softly.

  Ethan’s heart tightened, as if Ms. Gunderson had clamped a vise around it. He had known from the start that she was going to be at West Creek Middle School for only five weeks, but he couldn’t believe that the time had passed so quickly. He couldn’t imagine what school—or life—would be like without her.

  “I just want to say that I’m enormously impressed by what you have achieved in the past few weeks. Today is a remarkable day. I’m never going to forget it.”

  For a moment Ethan was afraid that she was going to cry. Then she smiled at them. “Let’s go,” she said.

  She led the class to the gym, to practice the presentations they were going to give the judges that afternoon.

  “Who wants to go first?” she asked, once they were all assembled by the sixth-grade displays.

  Ethan’s hand shot up in the air.

  “Ethan?”

  Ethan had written out his speech and practiced it at home
in front of his bedroom mirror. It came out sounding almost as memorized as one of Lizzie’s book reports. He explained his procedure and gave each of the ten balls a demonstration bounce on the small wooden platform his father had helped him build for his display. Then he pointed to the graphs of his data that Peter had helped him make on the computer.

  “Oh, Ethan!” Ms. Gunderson said when he had finished. The other kids crowded up with questions.

  “Hey, let me try bouncing a couple of your balls,” someone said. It was Alex Ryan, for a change sounding not mean but honestly interested. Lizzie’s eyes were shining. Ethan could imagine the poem about him that she was composing in her head.

  Only Julius held back, staring down sullenly at the gymnasium floor. But from everything Ethan had seen of it, Julius’s project was just as good as Ethan’s. Julius had no reason to be jealous or resentful of what his friend had achieved.

  “All right,” Ms. Gunderson said. “We have so many wonderful projects to admire that we’d better move on. Alex and David, what do you have for us?”

  They had done the same project some kid did every year, the one where you mix baking soda with vinegar to make a gas that blows up a balloon. Their display looked pretty nice, though, with color photos of how the balloon looked when it was blown up and all the explanations of everything typed up on David’s computer.

  Then it was Lizzie’s turn. Her project was called “The Sources of Poetic Imagination.” She had done just as Ethan had suggested. She had written to twenty poets to ask how they got the ideas for their poems; fourteen had written back, and Lizzie had their letters displayed attractively on her poster board, together with a sample poem from each poet. It had turned out to be a pretty decent project, after all, but Ethan didn’t think she had a real chance of winning the science fair. It was still an English project, not a science project, whatever Ms. Gunderson said about how everything and anything could count as science.

  Lizzie had included herself as the fifteenth poet in her display. Ethan gave a quick glance toward the poster board to see which poem she had chosen. It was “Snow Bird,” the same poem that she had sent in to the fake contest.