by N. Griffin
“I don’t imagine Mr. Carper is all that interested in thinking more about things later,” Smashie muttered back.
Mr. Carper walked on, whistling slightly. The whistling broke off.
“I’d like to give you a little something,” he murmured.
“You would, Mr. Carper?” asked Smashie, who was puzzled. “What do you want to give us?”
“What?” said Mr. Carper, wheeling round. “I wasn’t talking to you, Ears.”
Smashie glowered. But Mr. Carper wasn’t paying any attention. He reached Ms. Early’s desk and sat down, settling in with a magazine.
An hour later, things were deteriorating in Room 11.
“What do you mean you can’t list four brands of hair gel?” Mr. Carper snarled at Charlene when she asked for help with question number six. “Don’t you kids ever go to the drugstore? Think! And, you back there — Kid in the Sneakers — quit looking at that disgusting hamster!”
It went on and on until noon finally came and Mr. Carper led Smashie and the rest of her seething classmates to the cafeteria.
“I hate today,” said Smashie as they reached the double doors.
“Me too,” said Dontel. “What does the man have against thinking?”
“Could I go to the nurse, Mr. Carper?” Billy Kamarski gulped. “I don’t feel so good.” He certainly was not looking tip-top.
“He’s probably feeling terrible because of the scorn of his classmates,” said Smashie.
“More likely that stomach flu that’s going around,” said Dontel. “Poor guy.”
“Poor guy, nothing,” said Jacinda firmly. “He’s a big glue-pants.”
“Yes, yes, go, Sick-Looking Kid,” said Mr. Carper. “Contain your germs. The rest of you — into the cafeteria. I swear,” he said, turning and heading into the teachers’ lounge next door, “there are days when the only thing that gets me through is the thought of a glass of wine and two hours’ research with a copy of GQ.”
The door shut behind him.
After lunch, Room 11, barred from sports and playing, huddled in little disgruntled groups on the blacktop for recess.
“No running,” muttered John to Smashie and Dontel. “What a waste of recess.” He glared toward the opposite end of the blacktop, where Billy stood, pale and subdued, near a group of boys.
The nurse must not have thought he was very sick, thought Smashie.
It didn’t look like the other kids were very happy to see him back.
“I think we better do something about all this,” said John. He moved purposefully across the blacktop until he reached Alonso, who stood twirling his balaclava helmet in his hands.
“Why do you think Billy won’t confess?” Smashie asked Dontel.
Dontel shrugged. “Maybe he’s telling the truth about not being the gluer.”
“But there isn’t anyone else in our class who would glue people to things! Let’s go yell at him with John! Let’s threaten to glue him to a ruler and see how he likes it! Let’s make Scary Suits and leap out at him frighteningly for the rest of the week! Let’s —”
“Smashie,” said Dontel, “that isn’t fair. There’s no proof Billy did anything. You can’t just punish someone because you think they might be guilty.”
“Yes, I can,” Smashie muttered, but she subsided. “You are right, Dontel. I got carried away. You know how that happens sometimes.”
“Yes,” said Dontel. “I do. No sweat, Smashie. You keep things interesting.”
“I try,” Smashie admitted. “But I don’t want to be mean.”
“You’re never mean, Smash,” said Dontel. “Not like some people.”
Smashie followed his gaze across the blacktop to where Mr. Carper’s hair tossed and quivered in the teachers’ lounge window.
“We are never free of Mr. Carper,” Smashie sighed. “It is just as bad as when we were in the cafeteria.”
The teachers’ lounge had a window that looked into the cafeteria as well, and Mr. Carper had sat directly in front of it as they ate, holding his milk carton up at various angles and peering around every few minutes to make faces in the window. It had taken Smashie some time to realize that he wasn’t looking at them but rather practicing expressions in the window’s reflection.
“He is probably in there telling the other teachers how awful we are,” said Smashie grimly.
“More likely boasting about his chances of getting in the TrueYum circular,” said Dontel.
Beyond the blacktop, the playing fields rang with the shouts of other, unpunished children. John and some of the other members of Room 11 huddled to one side of their allotted area, plotting. Only Billy stood alone. Smashie felt a pang of sympathy for him. Still, she felt, if you are going to glue people to things, you have got to accept that people might get mad at you for it.
Kind of like when you say rude things about hamsters.
Smashie shook the thought away and shivered. “I’m kind of cold,” she said.
“Probably because you forgot to bring your hoodie outside,” said Dontel. He didn’t add “again,” for which Smashie was grateful.
“How can I warm up without it if we aren’t allowed to run around?” she said. “I’m going to go get it!” And she dashed across the blacktop toward the building.
“My hoodie!” she called to the yard lady as she whizzed by. The yard lady rolled her eyes but didn’t blow her whistle.
Smashie burst through the door into the building.
“Watch where you’re going!”
It was Cyrus and Willette, who were heading out to the blacktop. The two of them read to the first-grade classes every Tuesday at recess, and although Room 11 was on punishment, they had been permitted to read to them today.
“Sorry!” Smashie cried, and tore down the hall and into the empty classroom. Her steps slowed as soon as she was through the door.
Something about Room 11 was not right.
The back of Smashie’s neck prickled.
The classroom certainly looked the same — tables, cubbies, Ms. Early’s desk. But the very air of the room was changed. It was eerie, somehow. Spooky.
Smashie shivered. Don’t be silly, she told herself firmly. It is the same old Room 11. It’s just weird because there are no kids in it.
Right?
Smashie took a deep breath and gathered her courage. Then she dashed across the room as fast as she could, found her hoodie, and raced out the door, down the hall, and back out to the blacktop, heart pounding and chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath.
She entered a scene of no little confusion. Children were shouting and the yard lady was shouting, too, and blowing her whistle at the same time. The loudest shouts were coming from John and the group of boys in a corner of the blacktop.
“Help! Help!” cried a voice in the middle of their huddle.
It was Alonso Day.
“I’ve been glued to my balaclava helmet!” he cried.
All the children were furious once more and made no bones about the object of their anger.
“Why’d you have to go and do it again, Billy?” cried Jacinda as Mr. Carper led the children back to Room 11. “We’re already being punished!”
“Yeah!” cried John. “You’d better confess this time, Billy, or else.”
“Yeah!”
“Yeah!”
The children waved their outerwear like pitchforks.
Billy slumped miserably before them.
“They’ve turned into an angry mob,” said Dontel, his brows furrowed.
“Well, nobody likes to be glued to things,” Smashie pointed out.
As if in response, Alonso brandished his hand with the balaclava helmet stuck to it. “I don’t want to live with my balaclava helmet stuck to me for the rest of my life!” he cried.
“I didn’t do it, Alonso,” said Billy, his face pale, with circles under his eyes. “Honest.”
The children grumbled.
“Hmmm,” said Dontel.
“All right!�
� Mr. Carper was all irritation. “Get in that room and get straight to work on your packets, all of you. Mrs. Armstrong is already on her way down here to yell at you.”
But the children were too angry to keep entirely quiet as they headed to the back of the room to their cubbies.
“Darned pest —”
“John has the right idea —”
“We’ll make it so he has to confess —”
Mr. Carper thumped Ms. Early’s desk. “What is the matter with you kids?”
“Nothing is wrong with us!”
“Yes, there is! I have a hat glued to me!”
“Come away from the back of the room immediately!” shouted the substitute. “I told you to stay away from that hamster! Take your seats at once and get to work!”
“But we can’t help going near Patches, Mr. Carper,” said Willette. “We have to put our jackets away in our cubbies.”
“Well, do it faster, Girl with the Socks! Come on!”
“I should be feeding Patches right now,” grumbled Siggie as he dug gingerly through his cubbie for his pencil. Since the episode with the tarantula, Siggie was always wary of what he might encounter in there. “He’s supposed to get fresh water now, too!”
“Don’t worry,” Dontel reassured him as the rest of the children clattered away to their seats. “He’ll be okay. We can ask Mr. Bloom to give him some water after school.”
Mr. Bloom was the school custodian at the Rebecca Lee Crumpler Elementary School. His office was in a little trailer set apart from the main building, and it was a wonderful place, full of tools and back issues of Extraterrestrial Times and Sky and Telescope magazines.
“Suits me fine out here by myself,” Mr. Bloom always said. “I’d just as soon be off where no one can hear me! Play me a little music, have me a little lunch, think about alien life-forms. You kids know where to find me if I’m needed.”
They certainly did. All the children looked forward to being asked to run and fetch Mr. Bloom.
But the prospect did not cheer Siggie now. “It’s not right to make Patches wait,” he said, shaking loose some woolly fuzz clinging to his palm. “I bet he’s awful thirsty.”
He slid his gaze toward Patches’s cage.
He froze, eyes wide with shock.
“Patches!” shouted Siggie.
“What’s wrong?” cried Smashie.
Siggie swung toward her, wild-eyed. “It’s Patches! He’s gone!”
Siggie was right. Patches’s cage stood just where it had always been. But Patches was not inside it.
The room erupted.
“Patches!” wailed Joyce. The other children took up the cry.
“Where could he be!”
“Did he escape?”
“If he escaped, we can catch him!”
“Shut the doors!”
“Patches!”
“Patches!”
“Everybody stop yelling!” Smashie shouted into the din. “If he’s hiding, Patches will be too scared of all the noise to come out again!”
Dontel glanced at her, surprised.
“Just because I think he is blucky,” said Smashie, “doesn’t mean I want him to be scared. Or clobbered by somebody’s feet.”
“That is very nice, Smashie,” said Dontel.
But Cyrus, for one, was not convinced of Smashie’s niceness. “Since when do you care so much about Patches?” he asked.
“Yeah!” cried Joyce. “I bet you are secretly happy that Patches is gone!”
“I am not!” Smashie cried. Her cheeks burned. “That is unfair! I —”
But before she could defend herself further, Mr. Carper bellowed from the front of the room: “ENOUGH!” He was purple with rage. “I have had it! Get away from there and sit down at once! All of you!”
“But, Mr. Carper!” cried Jacinda.
“AT ONCE! Get to work on those packets. In silence! The first person who talks or moves without permission is going to get it.”
Roiling, the children sat.
Nobody could concentrate. Smashie’s ears were still burning from Cyrus’s and Joyce’s words. And it wasn’t just the two of them — other kids clearly agreed with their sentiments. Smashie had seen them glaring at her and nodding.
This is terrible! she thought. The whole class is mad and thinking awful things about me! And I never even said a single rude thing to Patches! Though she had, she admitted, said plenty of rude things about him.
Cheeks aflame, she picked up her packet and read:
“ILL!”
The door to Room 11 had slammed open again, and Mrs. Armstrong stood once more before the class, red faced and furious, her accidently apropos exclamation thundering over their heads.
Smashie put down her pencil.
“I am more ill than ever, Room 11! I am ILL IN MY BED WITH AN ICE BAG ON MY HEAD! Twice in one day I am called in to speak to you?”
“They’re awful little things, aren’t they?” said Mr. Carper.
Mrs. Armstrong cut him with an icy look.
“What exactly,” she said, turning back to the children, “has gone on here?”
All of Room 11 began talking at once.
“Patches!”
“He’s only tiny! Anybody could step on him!”
“He’ll be hungry —”
“Frightened —”
“I’ll have to go to college with a balaclava helmet stuck to my hand!”
It was impossible to get a clear account of events.
Mrs. Armstrong clapped her hands. “Stop this shouting at once!”
The children settled down. Eventually, from their broken sentences and the spectacle of Alonso, Mrs. Armstrong understood that Room 11’s class pet had gone missing and that, additionally, one of their number had been glued firmly to his balaclava helmet.
“I am sorely disappointed in you, Room 11,” she said. “Sorely disappointed! Particularly in you, Anonymous Glue Miscreant! How could you? When the class is already on punishment?”
“One . . . two . . . three . . .” muttered John.
On “three,” John and several other children turned and stared penetratingly at Billy.
“What are you staring at me for?” he cried.
The starers gave no answer. Nor did they shift their gaze.
“We will deal with the matter of the glue momentarily,” said Mrs. Armstrong. “In the meantime, I know you are worried about your hamster.” She gestured toward Patches’s cage, empty and forlorn, behind them.
“Not all of us are worried,” said Cyrus, glaring at Smashie.
“I am, too, worried!” The back of her neck grew hot as she confronted her classmates’ angry eyes. “Why would you say I am not worried?”
“Because you kept saying how you didn’t want Patches!” said Charlene.
“That doesn’t mean I am glad he is gone!” cried Smashie despairingly.
“That’s true, you guys,” said Dontel. “You know she’s not like that.”
“Grr,” snarled Joyce.
“I’m not!”
“At any rate,” Mrs. Armstrong continued, “I will ask Mr. Bloom to look around very carefully as he goes through the building this afternoon.” The principal was sympathetic but firm. Smashie could scarcely pay attention. Her classmates were angrier at her than ever!
But even as she writhed under the weight of their unjust censure, a memory, as insistent as a hungry cat, was pricking at the back of Smashie’s mind. What was it? Something she had noticed when Siggie had discovered that Patches was missing. Something about Patches’s cage.
Smashie had to look. Silently, she rose from her seat and made her way toward the back of the room.
“It is very sad, children, but this is part of what it means to own a pet,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “Perhaps you were not careful in latching the cage. Hamsters are sly little things —”
If by “sly” she means “yucky,” Smashie couldn’t help but think.
“And slipping away is something they do from
time to time.”
Smashie reached the cage that had, until very recently, housed her nemesis. In many ways, it looked just as it had this morning. Its metal bars were shiny and wood shavings lined the bottom. Patches’s water bottle was still hooked to the side and his running wheel stood in the middle. But something was not right. It wasn’t just that there was no scrabble, scrabble, scrabble of Patches’s claws, or the fact that Patches did not seem like the sort of hamster who would strike out for adventure on his own. Something about the cage itself did not support the idea of a hamster who had just made good his escape. What was it?
In a flash, she knew.
“That’s it!” Smashie cried, turning to face her classmates. “Excuse me, everybody!”
“Smashie McPerter! Who gave you permission to go back there?” Mr. Carper was enraged. “Come away from that cage at once!”
“I’m sorry,” said Smashie again. “But this is an emergency!”
“Smashie, what are you talking about?” asked Mrs. Armstrong.
“The situation with Patches is much worse than we thought! Room 11, Patches did not escape!”
“What?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Smashie, “that Patches was stolen. And I can prove it!”
Stolen!
“Smashie McPerter!” Mrs. Armstrong beat her hands in an unyielding tattoo.
I should really have on some kind of Discoverer’s Suit, thought Smashie. But there was no time.
“His cage is latched properly, Mrs. Armstrong. The hook is right through the loop on the outside. That means that someone — someone human — must have lifted the latch, taken him out, and then latched the cage up tight again! Patches couldn’t have done that himself. Unless he is very, very smart”— Smashie swallowed to suppress her own views on the likelihood of Patches having a strong intellect —“or grew thumbs while we were at lunch. And we know he couldn’t have grown thumbs!” Smashie gazed, wild-eyed, at her classmates. “That means someone took Patches out of his cage on purpose!”