by Bill Harley
Alex and some of the other kids laughed.
Mrs. Burke didn’t even crack a smile. She gave me a big frown and shook her head.
Samantha Grunsky was waving her hand like a big smelly flag or something.
“Yes, Samantha,” Mrs. Burke said.
“It’s in South America,” said Samantha. “It’s a long, skinny country and it has mountains called the Andes.”
Mrs. Burke smiled. “Very good, Samantha.”
I turned and looked at her. “Very good, genius,” I muttered, wagging my head and screwing up my face.
“What you said was dumb,” she whispered.
“Not as dumb as you,” I hissed back.
POW! POW! Mrs. Burke’s fingers exploded again. Everybody got quiet. “Rule number two in my empire: We will all show respect to our neighbors.” She looked down at the notebook on her desk. “It just so happens that Hector and his family are from Chile. Isn’t that right, Hector?”
Hector the New Kid barely looked up.
I guess what I said had been dumb. I’d made fun of his country by mistake. Now I was the bozo.
“Hector, can you tell us why you moved here to the United States?” Mrs. Burke asked.
Then Hector the New Kid did a weird thing. He stood up by his desk to give his answer. Maybe that’s how they do it in Chile. He spoke in a voice so soft some kids on the other side of the room probably couldn’t hear him. He was looking down at the floor while he spoke.
“My father is a businessman. His company asked him to work here in the United States,” he said with his Chile accent. “We are living here for three years.”
A couple of kids giggled. I was starting to feel sorry for Hector the New Kid. All he did was answer the question, and kids were laughing at him.
“Thank you, Hector,” Mrs. Burke said. “You may sit down now.” Hector sat, but Mrs. Burke wasn’t done with him. “Maybe you can help us this year,” she went on. “We’re going to be studying Spanish. A language teacher will be coming to our class twice a week.”
She smiled at him, and then she glared at me like she was warning me not to be a bozo again.
She told Hector that there were some other kids in our class who could speak Spanish already, like Joey Alvarez and Carmen Torres. Their families had moved here from Mexico and the Dominican Republic a long time ago. I think Mrs. Burke was trying to make him feel comfortable.
“I already know some Spanish,” said Samantha Grunsky.
That figures, I thought. She always has to already know everything.
“Buenos días,” Samantha said in a loud voice, so everyone could hear how smart she was.
Hector looked like he was going to throw up. I couldn’t blame him. I figured kids threw up in Chile, too.
“Buenos días,” he said back to Samantha.
“Very good,” said Mrs. Burke. She was beaming. She was probably congratulating herself on doing such a good job keeping Charlie Bumpers in line, surrounding him with kids who were always good and could speak other languages.
And I was supposed to learn from them.
I would never learn from Samantha Grunsky.
I would rather be a bozo.
When we lined up to go to lunch, Hector the New Kid was behind me. Right before we walked down the hall he asked, “Did you color those shoes yourself?”
I nodded.
“With a marker?”
“It took two,” I said. “It was a dumb idea.”
He just shrugged. He was too polite to say how dumb it was.
I looked at his clean white shoes. They didn’t look that bad.
7
Supreme Commander of Soccer Balls
After lunch, we were about to go outside for recess when Mrs. Burke said, “Charlie?”
“Yes?” I answered. I knew from her tone of voice that something was wrong.
“Is that your desk with all the things still on it?”
I looked across the room. I had left my math folder out and some pencils. And an eraser. And a ruler.
“Yes,” I said.
“Please clean them up,” she said. “We’ll wait for you.”
I hurried across the room and stuffed the folder and pencils and eraser into the desk. It was bad enough having to waste my own recess time to pick up my things—but it was worse that everyone was staring at me and waiting to go outside.
When I got back in line, Mrs. Burke said to everyone, “Rule number three in my empire: Always remember to put things away.”
Everyone nodded and looked at me.
Samantha Grunsky said, “Charlie always has a messy desk.”
“Not this year,” Mrs. Burke said. Then she turned and led us down the hall.
When we finally got to the playground, I couldn’t find Tommy anywhere. While I was standing there looking, a little kid came up to me.
“Charlie! Charlie!” he shouted in a hoarse voice. I’d never seen him before, and I wondered how he knew my name.
“Yeah,” I said. “Who are you?”
“Brady Bernhart,” he said. “I’m in first grade. Will you tie my shoes?”
I looked down at his feet. Both of his shoelaces were untied and were dragging on the ground.
“Uh … sure.” I knelt down and double knotted the laces like my mom taught me so they wouldn’t come undone.
“Thanks, Charlie,” he said in his croaky little voice.
It was strange that he hadn’t asked his teacher to tie his shoes. “How come you asked me?”
He turned and pointed to where a bunch of second graders were playing. “They said you’d do it,” he said. Then he ran off.
Little kids are weird.
Just then, Tommy ran up to me bouncing a brand-new soccer ball.
“Hey, Charlie. How’s Mrs. Burke?” he asked.
“Worse than I thought,” I said. “She’s already shot Alex with her exploding fingers.”
Tommy groaned. “Poor Alex.” “And I said something stupid about where this new kid Hector is from and Mrs. Burke frowned at me and then she made me clean up my desk while the whole class waited to go outside for recess. I’m doomed.”
“It sounds like it.”
“But here’s the worst part—she put me in a seat right in front of Samantha Grunsky!”
“Oh no!” he said. Then he laughed and tossed the soccer ball up in the air. “Guess who’s in front of me.”
“Who?”
“Darren Thompson. And he’s even bigger than he was last year.”
“Uh-oh,” I said.
Darren Thompson is the kind of kid who’s acting all friendly one minute, and the next minute he’s giving you a wedgie, which is what he did to me when we were in second grade.
He pulled on my underwear waistband so hard that it totally stretched out. I could barely fit it back into my pants. I never wore that underwear again.
“You’ve got to watch out for him,” I said. Tommy threw me the soccer ball. It was shiny and new, white with blue spots.
“Hey, where’d you get this?” I asked him.
“Found it in the gym,” he said. “The new gym teacher must have ordered new ones this year. You want to play a game?”
We found some other kids and chose up sides and started to play. It was a close game. After my team scored its second goal, I noticed Hector the New Kid standing off to the side, watching.
“You want to play?” I called out, waving at him.
He just shrugged his shoulders and didn’t say anything.
“Hey, wait a minute!” I called to my team.
“Hector wants to play!”
Everyone stopped and stared at me.
No one knew who Hector was.
“He can’t,” Sam Marchand said. “The teams won’t be even.”
I looked at Hector the New Kid. He shrugged again, like he didn’t care. But I could tell that he did, and I felt kind of bad for him. It wasn’t his fault he was new and no one knew him.
“No problem,” I told S
am. “He can play for me.” I turned to Hector and pointed down the field. “You’re on the team shooting at that goal.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t have to—”
“Go ahead,” I said. “I don’t mind. There’s just a little time left.”
Hector the New Kid took off his glasses and put them in his pocket, then ran out onto the field. I stood on the sideline and watched. The ball went back and forth, up and down the field, but no one scored. Kids passed the ball to their friends, but no one passed the ball to Hector.
I guess they hadn’t noticed what I had.
Hector the New Kid was really fast. Whenever there was someone chasing the ball, Hector got to it first. Then he would pass it right away to a kid on his team.
When it was almost time to go in, someone kicked the ball out of bounds right to me, so I caught it.
“Hey, look,” said Sam, pointing toward the gym. “It must be the new gym teacher.”
A man in a dark blue warm-up suit was marching out onto the field. Mrs. Burke was with him. When they reached us, the man blew his whistle.
“Everyone over here!” Mrs. Burke called.
We all ran over. The man stood there with his arms folded like he was a general in the army. I was holding the new soccer ball. It wasn’t quite as white and shiny as it was before.
The man stared at me. “May I have that, please?” he asked.
I handed it to him.
He put it under his arm without saying thank you. “Listen up, fourth graders,” he said. “I’m Mr. Shuler. Gym equipment needs to stay in the gym.”
“We needed a soccer ball,” said Tommy. “Mr. Collins always let us borrow them.”
“Mr. Collins isn’t here anymore. I’m your new physical education teacher, and I’d like to keep track of the new equipment. Before you borrow a ball, you’ll need to ask permission from me. You have other equipment for the playground.”
Tommy said, “Yeah, but—”
Mr. Shuler held up his finger for Tommy to be quiet. It was a big finger. At the end of a big arm. On a big body. “Excuse me,” he said.
We all stood there. Most kids looked down at the ground. Mr. Shuler wasn’t anything like Mr. Collins.
“No use of gym equipment without permission,” he said. “Does everyone understand?”
We all nodded.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll look forward to seeing you in class.”
We nodded again. There was nothing to say to a new gym teacher who didn’t let you play with the new soccer balls.
“Let’s line up,” said Mrs. Burke. “It’s time to go in.”
“Why can’t we use the soccer ball?” I asked her after Mr. Shuler went back into the school building.
“Mr. Shuler is just doing his job,” she said.
If his job is keeping soccer balls away from us so we can’t have fun, I thought, he’s really good at it.
Right then and there, I gave Mr. Shuler a new name: General Shuler, Intergalactic Supreme Commander of Soccer Balls.
8
A Colossal Mistake
Our family eats dinner together almost every night. Some evenings my dad has to work late. Sometimes my mom, who is a visiting nurse, has to be away at dinnertime. But mostly, we eat together.
And every weeknight, Dad makes us give reports on our school day. If you don’t say enough, he makes everyone else be quiet until you say more. He doesn’t care what you tell about. You can make up something silly if you want. Once I said, “Today the entire third grade threw up from eating moldy chicken fingers.” My dad laughed. He’s a pretty funny guy, and he likes it when we make jokes.
But that night I didn’t feel like being funny. For one thing, Mrs. Burke had given our class more homework than I’d ever had before.
“You first, Squirt,” Dad said to my sister.
She talked for a million hours. It took her longer to talk about her day than the day itself. At the end, she looked straight at me and said, “And her name is Mrs. Diaz, not Dizzaz.”
“I told you that,” I said.
“No, you didn’t,” she said.
Dad asked my brother to go next. Usually he asked me second, but I think he could tell I wasn’t in a talking mood. I was busy scowling at the Squid.
My brother had plenty to say about his first day at middle school. “We go to different rooms for different classes. We have to carry around a map of the school so we won’t get lost. Jason’s in all my classes but one. It’s really cool, and at lunch you can sit anywhere you want.”
That made me even grumpier. If Mrs. Burke was in charge of the middle school, they’d probably have to sit in assigned seats even at lunch.
Then my father looked at me.
“Well, Charlie, I see you’re still breathing after your first day.”
“Too bad,” said Matt.
“Matt,” Mom said.
“I have a whole hour of homework tonight,” I grumbled.
“I don’t have any homework,” said the Squid. “I want homework.”
“You can have mine,” said Matt.
“You don’t usually complain about homework, Charlie,” my father said. “Is something else wrong?”
“Mrs. Burke has a million rules.”
“Wow,” said Dad. “That’s a lot of rules! Does she write them all up on the board, or do you have to memorize them?”
Sometimes when my dad’s being funny, it isn’t funny. I ignored him.
“And we have to sit in assigned places,” I added.
Dad just gave me a look. He still didn’t seem to feel very bad for me.
“And Samantha Grunsky sits right behind me.”
“Uh-oh. I seem to remember you talking about her,” Dad said and took a bite of potatoes.
“You know, Dad,” Matt said, “that’s the girl Charlie wants to marry when he—”
“BE QUIET, YOU IDIOT!” I shouted.
“Charlie!” said my mom.
“Oh my,” said Matt. “What language!”
“You’re not supposed to say ‘idiot,’” said the Squid.
“Hey, Mabel,” said Matt. “You just said ‘idiot.’”
“But not like Charlie!” she yelled. “I was just saying not to say it!”
“But you did say ‘idiot,’ “ said Matt.
“You said ‘idiot,’ too,” she said. Now she was laughing because she knew she was saying it. Everyone had forgotten that we were talking about what happened to me.
“Enough!” said my dad. “No more idiots!”
“Now you said it!” squealed the Squid.
They were all laughing. Ginger was barking. She always barks when people laugh, like it’s her way of laughing. Everyone was laughing or barking.
Except me. I still thought Matt really was an idiot.
When the laughing died down, my mom spoke up. “Mrs. Burke can’t be that bad, Charlie. Did she talk about the play you’ll put on?”
“You mean when Charlie gets to be the bunny?” Matt asked.
I ignored my brother’s comment.
“I’ll be the bunny,” the Squid said.
“Something good must have happened today at school,” Mom said to me.
“Nothing I can think of. Even the new gym teacher is like an army general and won’t let us use the new soccer balls. And Mrs. Burke isn’t going to like me no matter what I do.”
“Mrs. L. liked me right away,” Matt said. “We got along great.”
“Matt!” Dad said. “That’s not helpful.”
“I’m sure Mrs. Burke will grow to like you,” Mom said.
“She hates me,” I said. “I can tell by the way she looks at me.”
“Everyone always likes you, Charlie. Wait until she sees all the things you’re good at.”
“Like what?” I said.
“You’re good at math,” Mom said.
She was right. I was pretty good at math.
“And reading.”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
<
br /> “You’re good at being an idiot,” said Matt.
“Stop it, Matt,” Dad said. “I mean it.”
“You’re good at a lot of things,” Mom went on. “And you’re a good kid.”
That’s what moms do. They tell you you’re good when you think you’re not.
“Mom, Mrs. Burke just doesn’t like me,” I said. “And I’ll never like her. I can’t believe she was ever Teacher of the Year.”
Dad put his fork down. “Charlie, you don’t have to like Mrs. Burke, but you do have to learn to get along with her because you’re stuck with her for the whole year.”
“You mean like you’re stuck with Mr. Grimaldi?” I asked.
My dad screwed up his mouth and looked at the ceiling. Mr. Grimaldi was his new boss. Dad wasn’t happy when his old boss Mr. Ralston left and Mr. Grimaldi took his place. He was always complaining to Mom about him. I guess sometimes parents don’t realize that their kids hear what they’re saying to each other. But we do.
“Charlie,” said my mom, “you shouldn’t say things like that.”
“I agree completely,” said Matt.
“Hold it.” Dad held up his hands. “That’s a fair question. Yes. You’re stuck with Mrs. Burke just like I’m stuck with Mr. Grimaldi.”
“Do you get along with Mr. Grimaldi now?” I asked.
“I’m working on it,” he said.
“Well,” I said, “when you learn to get along with Mr. Grimaldi, maybe I’ll learn to get along with Mrs. Burke.”
It was quiet at the table. Dad looked at Mom, then back at me. He held up a finger. “Okay. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll learn to get along with Mr. Grimaldi if you learn to get along with Mrs. Burke. Is it a deal?”
Trick question! No good answer!
Dad stuck his hand out across the table for me to shake.
I looked at it. I didn’t want to shake it, because that meant I would have to learn to get along with Mrs. Burke. But he was my dad. So I shook it.
“I already like Mrs. Diaz!” said the Squid.
“You mean Mrs. Dizzaz?” asked Matt.
“No! Diaz, Diaz, Diaz!” said the Squid.
Everyone laughed again. Ginger barked. But I didn’t laugh. I knew I’d made an enormous, colossal mistake by making a deal with my dad. Because I would never be able to get along with Mrs. Burke.