The 6th Grade Nickname Game

by Gordon Korman

  The principal dried his hands with a paper towel. “Well, I can’t help your fish, but it might cheer you up to know that our problems with Mr. Hughes are nearly over.”

  Mr. Richards raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  Mr. Doncaster nodded. “He’ll be back on the football field by Christmas. The superintendent was so appalled by 6B’s practice test that he gave me the go-ahead to start interviewing new teachers. Let me tell you who I’m thinking of….”

  The two men walked out together. A moment later a round face peered out from the center stall. It was Charles Rossi, alias Snoopy.

  The students of 6B were settling into their seats when Charles came charging through the door. Purple and breathless, he ran up to Wiley and Jeff.

  “Go away, Snoopy,” said Wiley, shuffling notebooks. “The bet’s off.”

  Frantically, Charles flapped his arms and moved his lips. But no sound came out.

  “Forget it,” Jeff advised. “We know what you’re trying to say, and the answer is no.”

  Finally, Charles managed to suck up enough air to rasp, “Mr. Huge is getting fired!”

  Silence fell over the room like a drape on a birdcage.

  “How could you know that?” demanded Jeff.

  But no reply was needed. The CIA didn’t gather information as efficiently as Charles Rossi.

  “It’s not fair!” wailed Cassandra. “The other teachers don’t understand how great he is! They just see that he’s big and loud and different—that he doesn’t fit in!”

  “It must be tough to fit in when you’re Mr. Huge,” mused Jeff. “Except to fit in—you know—an aircraft hangar.”

  “Or a football team,” added Raymond. “Maybe he asked to go back to the high school.”

  “Wait a second!” All at once, Wiley remembered Donald’s team picture. “Indy told me Mr. Huge quit the football team! If he gets fired from OOPS, he’s out of a job!”

  “We’ve got to save Mr. Huge!” Cassandra gasped.

  “How?” countered Gordon. “Deer in Headlights is the principal. It’s not up to us.”

  Jeff’s brow furrowed. “Well, what did Mr. Huge do to get in so much trouble?”

  Peter stared at him. “What didn’t he do? Yell the school down, sweat up the world—”

  “Yeah, but there’s got to be one thing that put it over the top,” Wiley interrupted. “Snoopy, did Deer in Headlights give any reason why they’re getting rid of Mr. Huge?”

  Charles thought back. “He said something about how bad we all did on that practice reading test.”

  “Aha!” Cassandra was triumphant. “The real test isn’t for three weeks. If we all do awesome, I’ll bet Mr. Huge can stay!”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” Peter cut in. “We didn’t flub that test because of bad weather, you know. We’re lousy at English. Maybe—” He paused thoughtfully. “Maybe we really are the Dim Bulbs.”

  “Yeah, right,” chuckled Wiley.

  No one else laughed.

  Jeff looked around in concern. “Hey, guys, wait! You don’t really believe…”

  His voice trailed off. The students of 6B stood in embarrassed silence, their heads hanging.

  Wiley and Jeff shared a guilty glance. Bright Lights and Dim Bulbs had come from them. Were the nicknames backfiring?

  Cassandra’s normally fair cheeks flamed red. “This has gone on long enough!” she cried. “It’s okay to have a nickname for fun. But you can’t let it tell you who you are! If I put broccoli in a jar, and stick on a label that says M&Ms, does that make it candy?”

  “Is that a question on the reading test?” Peter asked suspiciously.

  “We are not dim,” Cassandra said through clenched teeth. “We’re going to study our brains out and ace the State Reading Assessment!”

  “We don’t have anything to study,” Jeff pointed out. “No practice questions, no shortcut hints. Nothing.”

  “We’ve got everything we need,” Cassandra insisted.

  They just stared at her.

  “It’s so obvious!” she persisted. “It’s a reading test!” She pointed to the shelves at the back of the room. “We’ve got books in the class, books at home; there are zillions in the media center, zillions more in the public library! How do you get ready for a reading test? By reading!”

  “Reading?!” chorused half a dozen voices.

  “Think!” ordered Cassandra. “If you play basketball, and you want to be a better foul shooter, what do you do? You take free throws—over and over and over. Well, that’s how you get better at reading—by doing it!”

  “You mean, like, extra reading?” asked Raymond.

  “I don’t know any books,” complained Christy.

  There was general agreement.

  Wiley snapped his fingers. “Mrs. Chang! She knows every book on the planet!”

  There was an uneasy murmur.

  Finally, Stan piped up, “Do sports books count?”

  “Totally!” Cassandra crowed. “All books count. You can read the ingredients off a cereal box, so long as you read. And you don’t have to answer questions or do book reports. It’s just reading, period.”

  “I’ve had a lot of teachers,” Peter said thoughtfully. “But Mr. Huge is the only one who can push a bus.”

  “I never got excited about school until I saw him in action,” put in Dinky. “He’s so psyched that you can’t help getting caught up in it, too.”

  “He always sticks up for us,” added Stan. “I guess it’s time to return the favor.”

  “I’m in,” sighed Kelly.

  “I read a book once,” mused Raymond. “It wasn’t so ba-a-ad.”

  One by one, the students of 6B pledged themselves to a reading marathon for the sake of their teacher.

  “One last thing,” Cassandra added. “We can’t tell Mr. Huge.”

  “Good idea,” Wiley nodded fervently. “That guy could sweat up the North Pole. If he knew his job was on the line, he might drown us all!”

  When Mr. Hughes entered his classroom at nine o’clock, he found no laughing conversations, no baseball cards, no spitball wars—in fact, there were no sounds at all. Instead, the big teacher was greeted by the sight of twenty-five tops of heads. Twenty-five noses were buried in twenty-five books.

  “Good morning, men.”

  Nobody looked up.

  “Those must be MVP books.”

  “Mmmm,” came a few absent murmurs. Most of the class ignored him.

  Mr. Hughes popped his whistle into his mouth and blew an earsplitting blast. The students of 6B were lifted three inches off their chairs. By the time they came back to earth, he had everyone’s attention.

  But it happened again. As soon as Wiley finished his fractions worksheet, out came his copy of The Great Brain. Now Jeff was reading, too. And Cassandra. As soon as the students completed their work, the books reappeared.

  Mr. Hughes was bewildered. Since when was 6B such a bunch of bookworms?

  Peter went to the washroom. When he came back, he had obviously made a side trip to the library. His arms were laden with novels.

  “Hold it.” The big teacher stopped him at the door. “What are you, the Bookmobile?”

  “Oh, ha-ha,” Peter gurgled. “I thought I’d sign out a few extras. You know, just in case the books we have are too boring or something.”

  “This is a little bit sudden,” observed Mr. Hughes. “Why all this reading?”

  “It’s fun,” Cassandra supplied.

  “I agree,” said Mr. Hughes. “But it was fun yesterday, too, and nobody was doing it.”

  The bell rang for recess. In the teachers’ room, Mr. Hughes was too confused to take more than a sip from his Gatorade. What was going on with his class? Were they pulling some kind of quarterback sneak on him? He gazed out the window. In the school yard, the usual games of softball, jump rope, and tag were in full swing. But not a single 6B student was playing. They were all draped in various poses against the building and along the
fence, reading.

  Mrs. Chang sat down beside him at the window. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Ted. Your new novel study certainly has the kids enthralled.”

  Mr. Hughes looked blank. “What new novel study?”

  “That’s why I was late getting down here,” the librarian explained. “A dozen of them showed up looking for books. They’re cleaning me out!”

  “We’re not doing a novel study,” Mr. Hughes said honestly. “It just sort of happened. All of a sudden, the whole class went book crazy. I mean, yesterday I assigned a paragraph, and they acted like I was asking them to kick a hundred-yard field goal. And today—” He gestured toward the window. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Mrs. Chang laughed. “Do? Get down on your knees and give thanks! If there’s one thing that never happens enough, it’s reading for the plain fun of it. Do nothing! Just enjoy it!”

  “IF YOU MESS UP those Rollerblades, the store’s going to make you buy them!” Lisa Adamson shouted out the window of her boyfriend’s Blazer.

  Wiley was just barely keeping his balance as he attempted to roll from Sports World across the uneven pavement to the car. “Mom and Dad said I could buy Rollerblades with my birthday money if I want,” he managed. His eyes never left the sidewalk and his unsteady feet. “Well, how could I know that if I’ve never tried them?”

  Like a man overboard clinging to a rope ladder, he clamped onto the door handle and hauled himself into the back of the Blazer.

  Donald regarded him in the rearview mirror. “You’re not going to get a great tryout in the backseat of my car.”

  “Oh, I’m going to skate,” Wiley assured him. “I’m just looking for the right spot.”

  “Like where?”

  Wiley made a big show of shrugging his shoulders. “Drive around a little. I’ll know it when I see it.”

  “This makes twice in the same week that you’ve been sighted without your Siamese twin,” Lisa commented as they squealed into traffic. “You’re not getting a life, are you?”

  “Jeff has a doctor’s appointment, like it’s any of your business,” Wiley muttered. Suddenly he sat bolt upright. “Hold it! Stop right here!”

  “We’re in the middle of the intersection!” Donald protested. But he managed to screech to the curb.

  “You’re weird!” Lisa exclaimed. “What’s so special about here?” Her eyes fell on the red-haired girl who was blading toward them on the other side of the street, long skirt billowing. “So that’s it! It’s that girl you like, right? Cassandra?”

  “Shut up!” Wiley was struggling to get out the door.

  “Hey! Hey!” cried Donald. “You don’t have to crush me! I’ll move the seat!”

  “As soon as I’m out,” Wiley instructed as he climbed over Donald, “drive away fast! I don’t want her to see you!”

  “It must be true love,” sang out Lisa. “Wiley and Cassandra, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G—”

  “Shut up!” hissed Wiley. He popped out of the Blazer like a champagne cork, and hit the pavement rolling.

  “Be careful!” shrieked Lisa. “If you get killed, I’m going to wind up grounded!”

  Stiff-legged and frightened to death, Wiley swerved out in front of Cassandra. She swooped skillfully around him, and skated backward, keeping pace as he struggled along.

  “Hey, Wiley, why didn’t you tell me you’re a blader?”

  She looked genuinely delighted to see him. He didn’t have the heart to tell her he was a beginner in grave danger of breaking every bone in his body.

  “Oh, sure,” he blustered, scrambling along. “I haven’t done it in a while, on account of my knee injury. And I’ve outgrown my skates, so my feet hurt. And my ankles—”

  Cassandra grabbed his arm as he stumbled over a twig. “You’re doing fine,” she encouraged. “This is so awesome! We can blade together. It’s the perfect break when you’re reading all the time; you get fresh air and exercise. I do it every day.”

  “Me, too,” panted Wiley. “I mean, you know, before.”

  “It’s so relaxing, too,” Cassandra continued, whirling around him. “I get my total best thinking done. Right before I saw you I was thinking about the purple-back swamp alligator, poor thing.”

  “Why?” puffed Wiley. “Are they endangered?” Picking up speed alongside the traffic, he was feeling pretty endangered himself.

  “Oh, no,” she replied. “There are zillions of them. And everybody hates them because who likes alligators? But the purple-back swamp alligator is completely toothless, and eats only tiny swamp organisms. It’s a bum rap for a sweet animal.”

  “But you still like the blue-crested warbler sparrow, too, right?” asked Wiley, thinking of D. D. in the shed at home. “Isn’t that your favorite endangered species?”

  “Oh, it’s not endangered,” she replied airily. “It’s in danger of being endangered—hey, you’ve got to use your brake going downhill!”

  A gap was opening up between the two skaters as Wiley accelerated. His scared face snapped back to her. “Brake?”

  “Your heel!” Cassandra called. “Use your heel!”

  “For wha-a-a-a-at?!”

  And he was gone down the slope, passing cars, his body locked in a rigid upright position. His anguished cry for help trailed behind him like a streamer.

  “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!”

  A pack of little kids scattered as he shot right through their hopscotch game. Barking dogs chased him, but even they could not keep up. He rocketed through the bottom of the hollow, and started up the other side.

  “I’m slowing down!” he mumbled to himself with relief.

  Even so, his momentum carried him halfway up the opposite slope. In a split second, he experienced the pure joy of stopping, followed by the horrifying dismay of starting down again, this time backward. As he picked up speed, only one thought ran through his mind: facing the wrong way, he would never see the bus that killed him.

  “Oof!!”

  A blow from behind knocked him off his feet as Cassandra tackled him at the knees. The force propelled the two of them sideways. They left the road, flew over the sidewalk, and landed in a bed of pink petumas.

  He lay dazed, his nose bleeding all over the Grand Canyon pattern on her skirt. Incredible, he reflected. This cute, wacky, amazing, sometimes frustrating, unnickname-able girl had very probably just saved his life.

  “Okay, kiddo.” Dr. Brodsky pulled the needle from Jeff’s arm and applied the alcohol swab. “That should take care of the measles into the next millennium.”

  “Thanks, sir.”

  “You don’t have to call me sir.” The doctor smiled.

  Dr. Brodsky thought Wiley and Jeff were the two politest kids in Old Orchard. He never knew that “sir” stood for “Sir Inge,” a nickname he’d acquired for being the doctor who gave a shot for almost everything.

  Jeff checked out at the receptionist’s desk and opened the door to the waiting room. His jaw dropped. There, propped up between Cassandra and her father, sat a dazed Wiley. His nose was buried in a nest of bloodstained paper towels.

  “What happened?” Jeff’s first horrified thought was that his best friend had been run over by the Levys’ Lexus. But then his eyes fell on the Rollerblades hung by the laces over Wiley’s slumped shoulders. And he knew.

  “Hi, Jeff,” Cassandra greeted. “Do you blade, too?”

  “No, I don’t,” Jeff replied sourly. “And neither does he.”

  Dr. Brodsky poked his head into the waiting room. “Okay, let’s have a look at the stuntman.”

  Wiley got up woozily. “Coming, sir.” He tossed a feeble grin at Jeff over their shared joke.

  Jeff scowled back.

  Wiley’s nose wasn’t broken, and the bleeding stopped after some cold packs. So Mr. Levy and Cassandra drove the patient home, and Jeff caught a lift with them.

  The Adamsons were grateful to have their son returned to them more or less in one piece. Wiley was sent to lie down
with his head back. When they were finally alone, Jeff turned on his best friend.

  “You are low,” he accused grimly. “The lowest of the low. You’re lower than those dirt-eating insects Cassandra worries about.”

  “I was just trying to learn to Rollerblade,” Wiley protested nasally.

  “On the Cranston Street hill?”

  “Indy took me there! The guy’s unstable!”

  Jeff folded his arms in front of him. “This is me, remember? I know what you’re thinking before you think it. Stop!” he snapped as Wiley opened his mouth to speak again. “I don’t want to hear about how you did this so you could get nickname ideas. The only nickname to come out of this is ‘backstabber,’ and it’s for you! You waited until my doctor’s appointment, and you went Rollerblading where you knew Cassandra was going to be!”

  “Well, what am I supposed to do?” Wiley countered. “Have myself frozen until you’re available again?”

  “You’re supposed to be reading, not nosing around Cassandra,” Jeff reminded him. “You’re trying to get her to ask you to the Sadie Hawkins dance. I’ll bet you told her about D. D., too.”

  “I did not!” Wiley defended himself. “Not till he’s better. You’ve got my word on that.”

  “Your word plus twenty-five cents is worth a quarter!” Jeff raged. “Pour water on your word, and you’ve got pure H-2-O! Your word in a sandwich equals two pieces of bread!” He fell silent, fuming.

  “You left out how my word is worth all the great nicknames that we’ve thought up for Cassandra,” Wiley offered timidly.

  Jeff looked shocked. Then he snickered. Soon they were both laughing, and all was back to normal between them.

  But now they could sense something else in the room. Something that had never before entered their eleven-year friendship—suspicion.

  THE MONDAY MORNING buzz in 6B was all about books. Plot lines were yammered from excited lips. Reviews were given on a scale of one to ten. Authors were measured up against each other like championship boxers. Every few seconds, someone would shout, “Yeah? Well that’s nothing! In my book—” And another argument would start over which story was the funniest/scariest/saddest/most exciting.