by Adam Selzer
“But aren’t you worried that one day you’ll eat something that makes you sick?”
“Heck no! My mom never disinfected anything when I was a kid.”
“So?”
“So I built up an immune system that can’t be beat!” he said. “It’s great! It’s probably a more useful thing to have than anything they teach you in school.”
It kind of freaked me out that Jake’s mom, who happened to be the lunch lady, didn’t disinfect things at home, but saying so wouldn’t have been too polite.
“You have a point there,” I said. “Very rarely will knowing how to spell some disease actually keep you from getting it.”
“But I still want to win the bee,” he said. “At Hedekker’s Appliance Store, they have this awesome set of nonstick cookware for seventy-five dollars. That’s what I’d get if I won the gift certificate!”
“You know, Jake, you may be the first person ever to enter the all-school bee for the prizes.”
He grinned, then stood up to throw out his trash, and promptly stepped on a banana peel.
My dad always says that there are two kinds of losers in the world. The first is the kind who can’t walk across the room holding a bowl of soup without spilling it. The other kind is the guy he spills the soup on. I’m not sure that getting soup spilled on you really makes you a loser—unlucky is a better word—but that’s Jake, all right. Everything always happens to him. If a meteor crashed through the roof of the school, it would surely be his desk that it destroyed.
For instance, after Harlan Sturr’s attempt to start the Rubber Band War to End All Rubber Band Wars, the school added rubber bands to their list of objects that violated the school’s zero-tolerance weapons policy, which meant that you could get suspended for being caught with rubber bands. And poor Jake was the first person to be caught with one. It wasn’t even a weapon, either—he was just using it to hold plastic wrap over a couple of broccoli crowns that he brought with his lunch. But he got in trouble, anyway.
One thing I’ll say for Jake—he took it all in stride. And he seemed to have his life pretty well figured out. He knew what he was good at, and he stuck with it. I suppose there’s no shame in that. At least he wasn’t letting the stress from the spelling bee get to him, like it was doing to lots of other kids. He walked around grinning most of the time.
But the person who seemed most stressed about the bee wasn’t a student at all—it was my father. And, for some reason, he had no confidence that I could win it without cheating, which was pretty annoying, because I totally could. But I guess no one worries about hurting a new kind of cola’s feelings, right?
When Dad came home from work on Thursday night, he showed me the new outfit he’d bought—a black turtleneck with black pants and a black ski mask.
“It’s perfect!” he said, holding it up proudly. “It’s what all the guys who break into buildings wear!”
“Don’t you think it’ll look suspicious?” I asked. “I mean, if anyone sees you in the school wearing something like that, they’ll know right away that you’re up to no good.”
“Honey,” he said, “leave this to me. I know how to sneak into buildings, okay? They taught me a few tricks when I was in military school.”
“They taught you how to break into buildings?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” he said. “But they taught me some things that I’m sure can be applied to this sort of job. You learn very practical things there.”
“Dad, I’m begging you,” I said. “I can win the bee without the word list. Please don’t break into the school.”
Just then, the phone rang, and he went to answer it.
He talked on the phone to somebody for a long time—like, twenty minutes. I couldn’t make out what he was saying at all, because he was more mumbling than talking. But every now and then he would poke his head into the room and give me a thumbs-up. Finally he said, “Thank you, sir,” and hung up.
“Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “I’ve just made arrangements that will keep me out of trouble. The break-in is on for tomorrow!”
“Who was that on the phone?” I asked.
“No one,” he said. “No one at all.”
I sat in my room thinking for a long time after this. Dad was actually going to break into the school and try to make me cheat. I didn’t even need to cheat—I was feeling like I was going to do fine on my own.
It made me really, really nervous to know that some creep out there wanted me to win badly enough to help Dad break into the school. What did anyone else care if I won? Was he bribing someone? It was enough to make me lose the bee on purpose, just so that that person didn’t get what they wanted.
In fact, I had almost made up my mind to lose on purpose when I crept downstairs for a midnight snack. I happened to look down at Dad’s desk and saw that there was a brochure sitting around for a place called Orthogonian Academy. A military school. And he had circled a section about how attractive Orthogonian graduates were to colleges.
I took the brochure up to my room and tore it into tiny little pieces, but I knew that if Dad was set on me going there, he could always get another brochure. If I didn’t want to go there, I’d probably have to win that bee.
But I couldn’t let him break into the school, one way or the other. One of us had to be the sane one in the house, and it sure wasn’t going to be him. And I didn’t know how to stop him, but I knew someone who would.
You, Chrissie.
12
JAKE
okra—noun. A slimy green vegetable common in the southeastern United States. Paul refused to eat okra on the grounds that it “looked way too much like snot.”
Most people think I’m not that smart. I guess I kinda see why. People see me in the cafeteria eating bags of bread mixed with yogurt and stuff, and they think, How smart can a person who eats stuff for dollars be?
But it’s all a secret plan, ha ha.
You see, I want to be a chef. And being the lunch lady’s son might seem like a good place to start, but it isn’t. Not if you want to be a great chef.
In big cities, chefs don’t just make sloppy joes and hot dogs and Salisbury steak. The really popular chefs make really weird stuff, like swordfish with grape jelly. And then they charge, like, a hundred dollars for it. They talk about it on the food shows on TV all the time. I watch them every day. I may not get very good grades, but if cooking were a subject, I’d probably do a lot better!
I stay after school every day while Mom cleans up the kitchen and starts cooking the food for the next day. Usually I just hang around in the gym shooting baskets. Sometimes Floren comes in and bets me a handful of cookies that he can make more baskets than me, and I always win. If I ever get really fat, it will probably be Principal Floren’s fault. He’s kind of a jerk, you know. He got me in trouble just for bringing a rubber band to lunch one day. Even Harlan eventually apologized to me when he heard about it, since he was the one who really should have been in trouble.
On days when Floren isn’t around to shoot baskets, I hang out in the kitchen. I’ll bet I know everything you can learn about cooking from a school cafeteria. But that isn’t much. I can’t learn about swordfish and grape jelly from there, ha ha!
But every day, some kid gives me something weird to try, and pays me a dollar for it. And maybe one day I’ll discover a great new flavor from it. And then I’ll become a chef and serve it to people and charge them a hundred dollars for something people used to pay ME to eat. Most of the great food discoveries have probably been accidents made by regular people. Like, the guy who first put chocolate and peanut butter together was probably just some guy who was down to nothing but a candy bar and some peanut butter in his pantry and mixed them up. And he probably won a Nobel Prize! Or, if he didn’t, I think he should have.
And that’s why I entered the bee. They have some very fine cookware for sale at Hedekker’s Appliance Store, you know. If I get it, then I can cook better things at home. Mom doesn’t cook foo
d at school because she loves to cook, ha ha. When she gets home, she doesn’t feel much like cooking anymore. It’s sort of like how Mr. Ruggles, the janitor, probably never mops his own floor.
And I’m not that bad at spelling. You just kind of have to think of things like the recipe for a word. That’s what I do. Judging by my spelling grades, it works about seventy percent of the time, ha ha!
I know I’m not as smart as Marianne or Jennifer, but I’m not stupid. And sometimes I think my mom thinks I am. Because she never seems surprised when my grades aren’t good. She always tells me to do my best, but sometimes I think she maybe thinks my best is only B-minus work. Maybe because that’s the best grade I ever get, ha ha.
But just watch. In fifteen years, when people come into my restaurant, I’ll bet they won’t say, “That chef has trouble retaining what he learns about long division.” They will say, “That chef is a genius.”
13
CHRISSIE
Excerpt from notebook #40: Jennifer’s dad drives a red car with a “My Daughter Is an Honor Student at State” bumper sticker on it. Probably about Val.
I had advance word about the break-in, as everyone knows. But I wasn’t the only one. I made sure of that.
Jennifer told me everything she knew first thing Friday morning and begged me to stop it from happening. I told her I’d do whatever I could.
So I wrote a memo to Floren suggesting that there was a rumored break-in that night, and they might want security to be tight around the office. I put it in a sealed envelope and gave it to Mrs. Boffin to deliver to him.
In a way, giving him the memo was like giving him one last chance to prove that I could trust him to do the right thing. But I never heard back from him. Not even a thank-you memo and an offer of an extra cookie.
I officially no longer trusted him. In fact, I was starting to think something fishy was going on in regard to the bee. Maybe the reason he never responded was that he was involved! Or, anyway, maybe someone in the office was. And I was going to find out what was going on and get anyone involved fired.
My whole world was upside down. I was starting to investigate the school instead of the students, and I was actually considering helping Harlan with a prank rather than turning him in. Even though I’d gotten Harlan in trouble many times, I did sort of respect him. You sort of have to take your hat off to a kid who knows as many verses to “Diarrhea Cha Cha Cha” as Harlan does. And I know that he apologized to Jake about the rubber band incident as soon as I told him about it, which was really nice of him. And it was probably true that he couldn’t get in trouble just for planning to burp. In fact, there’s no way he’d get in trouble if he did it, because if he was in the top five, he’d be going to districts. People going to districts are treated like heroes—he could probably shout a swearword into the mike and get away with it if he was in the top five. But the very fact that I was considering helping him with, instead of turning him in for, the prank he had in mind felt very strange indeed.
Then, on Friday, things got even stranger.
There I was, standing at the edge of the playground, when I heard someone calling my name. I turned around to see a couple of old ladies standing at the other end of the wooded area, by the street. I recognized them, of course—I recognize everyone in Preston. They were the two old ladies that I sometimes saw sitting in the Burger Baron, shouting at each other—I’d sort of always wanted more data on them. I walked over to them very slowly.
“Hello, Chrissie,” said one of them. She sounded as sweet as honey, but she was looking at me like a spider at a fly.
I pride myself on never being afraid, but I have to admit, there was something scary about these old ladies, and the “sweet” voice only made them scarier. What were they doing on school property? They weren’t allowed without a visitor pass. Were they going to kidnap me? I’ve heard stories about old ladies who kidnap girls and make them be their new granddaughter. Any minute one of them could have held a chloroformed hankie up to my nose, and when I woke up, I’d be in some old house full of doilies and appliances they’d ordered off of the Home Shopping channel. They’d make me wear frilly dresses, bake banana nut bread, and watch beauty pageants. Naturally, every good detective is trained in self-defense, but I couldn’t very well attack old ladies, now, could I? The school puts a lot of trust in me, but if I used a roundhouse kick to break an old lady’s hip, I doubt they’d believe it was self-defense.
“Hello,” I said, nervously.
“Relax, dear,” said one of them. “We just want to ask you some questions.”
“That’s right,” said the other. “Just some questions.”
I’ve seen enough cop movies to know perfectly well that absolutely everyone who says “We just want to ask you some questions” is up to something.
“Shut up, Agnes!” said the first one. “I already told her that!”
“Can it, Helen, you old ninny!” said the other one, Agnes. “I’m trying to be reassuring!”
“Well, you’re doing a lousy job of it!” said the first one, Helen.
“Ladies!” I said. “Settle down!” They stopped shouting, and Helen reared her head back and hawked a loogey, which landed square on one of the trees. It was among the most disgusting things I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been watching Jake Wells eat things for dollars in the cafeteria since I was six.
“Nice shot,” said Agnes.
“Thank you,” said Helen. Then Agnes handed her a dollar, which she put in her pocket.
It was then that I knew it for sure: I was dealing with a couple of kooks.
“We want to know about Mutual Scrivener,” said Helen.
“Get in line,” I snapped. I know I’m supposed to be courteous to my elders and all, but you sacrifice some courtesy when you hawk a loogey in front of someone. “I don’t know much.”
It wasn’t that unusual for people to come up to me and ask me who I thought was going to win the bee. In fact, every time I went anywhere with my parents, SOME old person who was all excited about the bee would come up and ask me questions. But this was the first time anyone had come up to me during the school day like that. And the first time I’d seen old people spit so much.
“Is he as good of a speller as people say he is?” asked Helen.
“I think so,” I said.
“But is he studying good and hard, like he should be?” asked Agnes.
“I don’t know about what he does at home,” I said. “But he’s not studying much at school anymore. He spends most of his time talking about heavy-metal bands now.”
Helen spit on the ground. Agnes whacked her in the arm with a purse.
“Ouch!” Helen shouted. “That hurt!”
“That’s the idea, you ninny!” shouted Agnes.
Agnes started snorting, like she was getting ready to hawk a loogey, too. And a good one. You don’t have Harlan in your class for years without learning the sound of a good loogey in the works.
I turned around and ran as fast as I could. I knew I had to get away before they started spitting at each other instead of trees. They’d be spitting at me next.
When I turned back to look at them again, they were nowhere to be seen.
Things were getting stranger and stranger, all right.
But with a break-in about to happen that night, old ladies seemed like the least of my concerns. They were probably just two of the many old people in town who seemed like the only thing keeping them alive was their devotion to Gordon Liddy Community School’s spelling program.
14
Jason—
Did you see those old ladies on the playground? You should’ve done something to freak them out! Mutual’s never seen you in action.
—Amber
Amber—
Yeah. I was busy continuing Mutual’s “education.” Where were you?
—Jason
I was in the tree. You can make spells more powerful by being close to nature, so I climbed up it to cast a certain kind of spell.
/>
—A
What kind?
—J
It’s a secret!
—A
Okay. Maybe I’ll ask Chrissie Woodward!
—J
That’s who the old ladies were talking to. I saw the whole thing from up in the tree. One of them came THIS CLOSE to spitting on me. It was nasty!
—A
Ew! What were they talking to Chrissie about?
—J
About Mutual. That’s why I’m writing. Don’t wanna freak him out. But they were really interested in whether he’s going to do well at the bee. I think they may be out to get him.
—A
Well, we’ll have to protect him, won’t we? Don’t worry. No old ladies bug my friends on my watch!
—J
15
MUTUAL
kyoodle—verb. To make loud, useless noises. “I like nice songs about rivers and huckle-berries,” said Grandma Pat. “All those rock bands ever do is kyoodle!”
Jason loaned me a device that would allow me to listen to the music of Paranormal Execution at home over the weekend—with headphones, so my parents would not know. I wanted to learn more of their music, now that I had learned that rock music was not just loud, dangerous noise, and he was happy to help. I knew that Jason and Amber were corrupt—Jason talked frequently about things that he had done to frighten his elders—but, for corrupt troublemakers, they were very nice. And Amber had promised not to curse me on the day of the spelling bee, so it was lucky for me that I had made friends with them.
I was still studying hard for the bee, but often, when I appeared to be reading a dictionary, I was actually very sneakily looking at the covers of the Paranormal Execution albums, which I had slipped into the dictionary. One showed rows and rows of gravestones with lightning bolts and ghostly men in Civil War uniforms. Another showed several men pointing at the camera and sneering—from the pictures Jason showed me of other heavy-metal bands, it was clear that they were all very much in the habit of pointing at cameras and sneering. But I did not see any harm in that. Sneers do not hurt anyone.