It was two o’clock in the morning when Jeff rolled over and came suddenly awake. He stared into the silent darkness. The thought that had been nagging at his dreams became clear. He and Wiley had spent three hours at the old Gunhold place. Played four games of Endangered Species Monopoly! Not once in all that time had nicknaming Cassandra even crossed their minds. It was like they’d forgotten the whole purpose of going there! How could he have missed that? How could Wiley?
He climbed out of bed and looked out the window at the Adamson house.
Wiley’s light was on.
JEFF SMACKED A hard grounder to the shortstop. He raced down the line and dove into first base just ahead of the tag.
He stood up and dusted himself off. “How’s it going, Snoopy?” he puffed.
Charles, the first baseman, glared at him. “Cut the Snoopy business,” he growled. “I won the bet fair and square. Mike Smith is the Iceman, and you owe me a new nickname.”
“The bet isn’t over yet,” snapped Jeff. “A week from now no one will remember that the guy got called ‘Iceman’ a couple of times.”
“I don’t care about next week. I care about now. I win.”
Jeff took a leadoff, then dove back to the bag when Stan, the pitcher, threw to first.
“I’ve got a few ideas for you and Wiley to think about,” said Charles. “Last night I overheard my parents talking about what a great athlete I am—”
“You mean you were snooping?” Jeff cut in.
“I just happened to hear,” Charles defended himself. “I was hiding in the stairwell.”
Jeff hooted with laughter. “To call you anything but Snoopy would be a crime against science! You’re a born snoop!”
“I am not—”
But then Christy got a hit, and Jeff was off with the crack of the bat.
Enraged, Charles forgot all about playing first base, and chased after him. “Come back here, Greenbaum!”
Jeff broke off the base path and kept on going straight into left field. Charles followed, shouting threats.
Wiley, the next batter, stared after them. “I have no idea how you score that,” he commented. “This never happens in the major leagues.”
“I think the runner’s out,” Dinky mused. “And the first baseman is—”
“Gone,” burped Raymond.
Jeff and Charles disappeared behind the school portables.
“Well, we need someone to play first,” Wiley decided, looking around.
There were no draftees nearby—only little kids, and a couple of fifth graders trading basketball cards. Except—
“Hey, Iceman,” Dinky called to Mike Smith. “Want to play?”
The tall boy from 6A gawked. He had never been asked to join anything before. His first thought was that Dinky was talking to somebody else. But he had said “Iceman,” and that was definitely Mike.
He took a step forward and hesitated. Maybe this was all a joke. When he walked onto the diamond everyone would break out laughing.
“Come on—uh—Iceman,” sighed Wiley, shaking his head. “We need a first baseman. Help us out.”
“Sure,” Mike said cautiously. And when nobody snickered, he jogged onto the field and took Charles’s place.
Gordon pounded his catcher’s mitt and went back into his crouch. “Batter up!”
After the morning announcements, 6B boarded the bus for their field trip to Valley Forge.
They were barely out of the school driveway when Mr. Hughes began to rile himself up.
“Hit the turn signal!” he cheered the driver. “Merge onto the interstate!”
The man glared at him. “I got a driver’s license.”
“Sorry.” The big teacher looked sheepish. “This is my first field trip,” he admitted. “We really won the coin toss getting Valley Forge. 6A is stuck with the botanical gardens.”
The driver glanced at the sky. Thick dark clouds were rolling in. “Not much of a day for an outdoor tour.”
The rain held off through the nature hike. Then, halfway through the picnic lunch, the heavens opened up—not just a drizzle, but a drenching downpour that sent 6B running for the bus.
“Picture this, men,” lectured Mr. Hughes, directing traffic with his half-eaten sandwich. “George Washington’s army, wintering here at Valley Forge. And it isn’t just raining; it’s snowing! And they don’t have great bologna sandwiches like these, and no nice dry bus to shelter in! And two years later, this wild-card team defeated the most powerful army in the world, and formed our country! See what can happen when you give a hundred-and-ten percent?”
A deafening crash of thunder shook the bus.
By the time 6B had finished their lunches, the storm was just settling in. Forked lightning slashed across the sky. Thunder rattled the windows of the bus, and the glass streamed with water. Everyone agreed that if General Washington’s soldiers had to sit through this, they would have lost the Revolution.
At first it was fun to watch Mr. Hughes inhale all the extra sandwiches, washed down with gallons of Gatorade. Then boredom set in. Charles offered to arm wrestle all comers. Out of the whole class, only Cassandra managed to defeat him.
Then the top five arm wrestlers teamed up against Mr. Hughes’s left hand. Cheers rang out in the bus, most of them from the teacher himself.
“Break my arm off, men!” he encouraged his opponents.
“And me!” grunted Cassandra, who was leading the group against him.
The laughing and joking turned to excitement as it became apparent that the five had a fighting chance against Mr. Hughes. Even the bus driver joined the howling spectators. In the end, Mr. Hughes’s massive arm slowly overwhelmed the challengers. The ovation from winner, losers, and spectators was tumultuous. The bus seemed to rock until Raymond, in one massive rolling burp, announced that the rain had stopped.
6B stampeded off the bus and began splashing around in the sopping wet grass.
Mr. Hughes blew three sharp blasts on his coach’s whistle. “Sorry, men. It’s just too wet out here. There’s no way we can have any of the activities after so much rain.”
There was some grumbling, but eventually the big teacher managed to herd his class back inside for the hour-long ride home.
They drove along the narrow lane that fed the main road of the park. Suddenly, Cassandra leaped up and bellowed right in the driver’s ear, “Hit the brakes!”
Shocked, the man slammed his foot on the pedal. The front wheels jolted to a halt, but the back end skidded on the wet pavement. It fishtailed out to the side, and the rear tires came to rest in the mud of the soft shoulder.
Mr. Hughes was on his feet. “Cassandra, what’s wrong?”
Cassandra looked sheepish. “I saw that groundhog in the road ahead. I thought it might be the rare Pennsylvania needle-nose, which is an endangered species. But now I see it’s just a totally ordinary woodchuck.”
Shaken, the driver grimaced at her. “Okay, is the coast clear? I wouldn’t want to run over any ants.”
“It won’t happen again,” Mr. Hughes assured him. “Let’s go.”
The man put the bus in gear, and pressed the gas. The back tires spun in the soft mud, and sank deeper. He cut the motor and started over, this time in a lower gear. The engine roared, but the rear wheels did not climb onto the pavement. He tried a few more times with no success. The spinning wheels hummed a high-pitched scream, but the bus did not budge an inch.
The driver turned to face Cassandra. “You can tell your woodchuck friend to breathe easy.” To Mr. Hughes he said, “We’re not going anywhere. It’s like bacon grease back there—no traction at all.”
The big teacher looked worried. “What do we do?”
“We wait till another car comes by,” replied the driver, “and we send him to the main gate to call for a tow truck.”
“But what if no one comes by?” piped up Charles.
“Then we ask the woodchuck to recommend a good hotel.”
Mr. Hughes strode to the
exit. “Open the door.”
“It’s three miles to the park entrance,” the driver protested.
“Open the door!”
The teacher stepped down to the ground and marched purposefully to the back of the bus. There he braced himself against the rear bumper.
The driver stared into his side mirror. “What’s he doing?”
Wiley gawked at his teacher through the glass window of the emergency exit. “If I didn’t know better,” he said in amazement, “I’d swear he was planning to push the bus!”
“Okay!” bellowed Mr. Hughes. “Give her the gun!”
The driver stepped on the accelerator, and Mr. Hughes put his considerable bulk into the back end, howling with the sheer effort.
“He’s nuts!” gasped Charles. “He’s losing what’s left of his mind!”
“No, that’s not it,” said Jeff in awed respect. “He’s giving a hundred-and-ten percent!”
“But nobody can push a bus!” exclaimed Christy.
All eyes were riveted on the heroic Mr. Hughes as he did battle with tons and tons of machine. And then there was a second figure out there in the mud of Valley Forge.
“Cassandra!” chorused Wiley and Jeff in amazement.
“I can’t believe it!” snorted Charles. “She’s as crazy as he is!”
Straightening her spiderweb skirt, the red-haired girl hunkered down beside her teacher and threw her slim back into the struggle.
Wiley and Jeff were out there like a shot, with Peter, Christy, and Raymond hot on their heels. Soon all the students, even Charles, were positioned around the bus, heaving with every ounce of energy they could muster.
“All right, men! Fourth and goal! Hike!!”
Miraculously, their combined strength moved the bus just far enough, so that the left wheel caught some traction at the edge of the pavement. The bus lurched forward and climbed up onto the road. As it did, the spinning wheels sprayed a shower of mud all over the students of 6B.
The slimy mess did nothing to dampen the celebration.
Mr. Doncaster hurried down the front steps of Old Orchard Public School to meet the bus. A rainy field trip was nothing new, but the day’s thunderstorms had been so violent that he was relieved to see Mr. Hughes’s class back safely.
The door hissed open, and out filed the students of 6B, twenty-five swamp creatures who would not have been recognized by their own mothers. Their faces were brown with mud, their hair was matted, their clothes dripped, and their shoes squished with dark slime. Bringing up the rear was their teacher, a mountain of muck so filthy that only his clear blue eyes identified him as Mr. Hughes.
The deer-in-headlights look burned like a laser beam. The principal’s mouth fell open, but no sound came out. Finally, he managed to croak, “What happened?”
The bus driver supplied the answer. “We saved a woodchuck.” Then he shut the door, and roared off.
WILEY AND JEFF always met at one of their houses for breakfast before school each morning. Today the Adamson home was the spot, with bagels and orange juice on the menu. But the topic of conversation was the same one that had dominated breakfast for the last two weeks: a nickname for Cassandra.
“I still say we should concentrate on the way she can tune out the whole world,” was Jeff’s opinion. “Maybe Dizzy—”
Wiley shook his head. “Too negative.” He took a bite of his bagel and talked around it. “She’s got those combat boots. Why don’t we call her G.I. Jane?”
“Yeah, but she’s more than a pair of boots,” Jeff reasoned. “She creamed everybody at arm wrestling at Valley Forge. How about Miss Schwarzenegger?”
“Not bad,” Wiley approved. “But it leaves out all that other stuff about her.” He slammed down his juice glass. “Man, we’ve never had this kind of problem with a nickname before!”
“Why do you have to call her anything?” came the bored voice of Lisa Adamson, Wiley’s sixteen-year-old sister.
“Butt out,” groaned her brother.
“It’s a legitimate question,” she persisted. “Why does the whole world have to have a nickname?”
“It just does,” groaned Wiley.
“All right,” she challenged. “What’s my nick-name?”
“It’s only for our school,” Jeff said nervously.
Actually, Wiley and Jeff did have a secret title for Lisa: Soap Opera Adamson, or Soap for short. It referred to her love life, which Wiley and Jeff knew well. They had been there for most of it, spying from the bushes or hidden in the basement, usually doubled over with laughter.
Lisa smirked at her brother. “I think you have a crush on Cassandra.”
“No way!” scoffed Wiley.
“Then why are you blushing?”
Wiley glared at her. “Shut up. Shut upper than you’ve ever shut up before.”
“Leave the poor kid alone,” mumbled Donald Briscoe, Lisa’s boyfriend and lift to school. “Come on. Eat up. I’ve got an early football practice.”
“Hey,” said Wiley. “If you play football, you must know Mr. Huge.”
Donald frowned. “Huge? Oh, you mean Coach Hughes. Sure I know him.”
“He’s our new teacher,” Jeff told him.
Donald looked horrified. “They took a football coach and turned him into a teacher?” He snapped his fingers. “That explains why he’s been acting so strange lately.”
“He’s been acting pretty strange in our class too,” Wiley grinned.
“Tell me about it,” sighed Donald. “He’s too quiet, never gets excited, never breaks a sweat at practice. He’s almost a zombie.”
“Mr. Huge?!” chorused Wiley and Jeff in disbelief. Of all the words to describe the new teacher, zombie was last on the list. “Our Mr. Huge?”
Lisa downed her orange juice and stood up. “Ready.”
As the couple left the house, Wiley and Jeff took their usual positions at the living room window. It was always a spectacle to watch Donald Briscoe operate a motor vehicle. He could back out of a driveway like he was racing in the Indianapolis 500. This had earned him the nickname Indy.
His car was an ancient Chevy Blazer with a raised chassis and monster truck tires. He reversed out into the road at breakneck speed, shifting gears with a gut-wrenching screech.
Whump!! A dark blur flew into the cloud of burned oil, and bounced off the Blazer.
Oblivious to the collision, Donald and Lisa disappeared down the street at sixty miles an hour. Wiley and Jeff ran onto the scene, waving their arms to clear the smoke.
“What was that?” asked Jeff.
Wiley was the first to see it. A small brownish bird lay at the base of the curbstone. Cautiously, he turned the victim over with the toe of his sneaker. “I think it’s dead.”
And then the feathers moved.
“It’s alive!” cheered Jeff.
Stunned, the mysterious bird struggled to right itself. It certainly was a strange-looking creature. It was a dark mustard color, except for the top of its head. There, the feathers were a brilliant blue.
Wiley frowned. “I know this is crazy, but it looks kind of familiar.”
Just then, the tiny beak opened and a faint sickly sound was heard, a sort of weak warbling—
lt hit both boys at the same time. “The blue-crested warbler sparrow!” they chorused.
“That’s where we saw it!” Wiley added breathlessly. “Cassandra’s project!”
“She loves the blue-crested warbler sparrow!” exclaimed Jeff. “Let’s go call her!”
“Not so fast.” Wiley grabbed him by the belt. “This bird just took a direct hit from the Indymobile.”
“All the more reason why we should call her right away,” Jeff argued. “So she gets a chance to see it before it dies.”
“Think,” ordered Wiley, tapping his temple. “If we show her a blue-crested warbler sparrow, and it croaks on her, she’ll be crushed. We’ve got to nurse this bird back to health. Then we can take it to Cassandra.”
“You’re righ
t,” Jeff agreed.
Both boys spent a long moment examining the tiny patient. “Uh, know any good bird doctors?” Jeff asked finally.
“How about your mom?” Wiley suggested. “She’s a nurse.”
“Yeah, but for people. And besides, she’s already at work.”
“Well,” said Wiley decisively, “we had a gerbil once, and Indy sideswiped it. My mom pulled it through.”
Mrs. Adamson finished wrapping the gauze around the Popsicle-stick splint that supported the sparrow’s broken wing. “There. That should do it.”
Wiley scratched his head. “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t think he’s going to make it. He can barely warble.”
“He’s more dead duck than warbler sparrow,” Jeff confirmed mournfully.
“That should be his name,” Wiley agreed. “D. D. for short.”
“He might be a girl,” Mrs. Adamson pointed out.
Jeff shook his head. “The ones with the blue crest are the males. He’s a he, all right.”
Mrs. Adamson looked surprised. “I didn’t know you boys were bird experts.”
“Oh, it’s not us,” Wiley explained. “We sit next to the world’s greatest authority on the blue-crested warbler sparrow.”
“It won’t help,” Jeff put in. “I don’t think D. D.’s going to be around for long.” His happy mental image of presenting Cassandra with her very favorite endangered bird was replaced by a new, grimmer picture. It was he and Wiley burying D. D. in a grocery bag in the backyard.
“Don’t be such a couple of pessimists.” Wiley’s mother laughed. “The poor little creature is just dazed and scared. When his wing heals, he should be just fine.”
The boys lined a plastic laundry basket with a soft blanket, and placed the injured bird tenderly inside. They carried D. D. to the big toolshed that stood on the property line between the Adamsons’ house and the Greenbaums’ next door. Both families shared the shed, so the bird was being held in joint custody.
Carefully, Wiley set an old window screen across the top of the basket. “So he won’t fly away,” he explained.
Jeff laughed mirthlessly. “D. D. couldn’t fly if you strapped a jet engine to his tail feathers.”
The 6th Grade Nickname Game Page 3