Fourth-Grade Disasters

by Claudia Mills

  Mason hoped Brody was right. He was also going to make sure that Puff was locked up tight whenever his mother wasn’t working on him. He hoped she finished very soon. And he hoped she wasn’t going to talk to Mrs. Morengo while she was working on Puff—about voice lessons or anything else.

  Mason felt sick inside from hoping.

  During Platters practice on Tuesday, Mrs. Morengo spent half the time on rain dripping and dropping, and half on the patriotic medley, which was called “America!” It was a smushed-together mixture of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “America the Beautiful,” and “God Bless America.” The important thing for this song, Mrs. Morengo told the Platters, was to look as patriotic as possible.

  “Stand up tall!”

  The Platters, including Mason, stood up taller.

  “Shoulders back!”

  The Platters, including Mason, pulled their shoulders back.

  “Tummies in!”

  Mason wondered what was especially patriotic about a tucked-in tummy, but he tucked his in.

  “Now gaze into the distance. You see a sweet land of liberty. You see spacious skies and amber waves of grain. You see the ocean, white with foam!”

  Mrs. Morengo must have decided that her singers looked sufficiently patriotic, because she signaled to Mr. Griffith to begin playing.

  “Sing!” she commanded majestically.

  The Platters sang, except for one lip-synching Platter on the end of the second row.

  As he stood in patriotic pose, not singing, Mason thought about Puff. His mother had finished mending Puff yesterday evening, but she decided that Puff needed to be cleaned so that he would be returned to school almost a brand-new dragon. Mason had reminded her three times that morning to be sure to leave Puff in her office with the door shut all the way.

  The only difficult part about the “America!” number was that eight students in the front row had to hold pieces of cardboard behind their backs, seven printed with the letters of A-M-E-R-I-C-A and one with the exclamation point. At a signal from Mrs. Morengo, the students were to produce their letters, in order, to spell out the word and trigger the crowd’s applause.

  On the first try, two students held their letters upside down. Mason couldn’t see their mistake, but he heard Mrs. Morengo’s cry of anguish.

  “M! Exclamation point!”

  She showed those two students exactly how to hold their cardboard letters, and they tried it again. But this time it was the R that was upside down.

  Mrs. Morengo looked ready to cry. Evidently she was picturing thousands—tens of thousands?—of Plainfieldians, perhaps even people from all over the state of Colorado, watching Channel 9 News and seeing that upside-down R.

  Mason was gladder than ever that he wasn’t standing in the front row. Brody, holding the I, could be counted on, of course. Brody would never hold the fifth letter in “America!” the wrong way. Though come to think of it, the I would look the same either way.

  Mason wasn’t about to make any suggestions. He had to conserve his suggestion-making energy for asking Mrs. Morengo whether he could flash the lights during the raindrop song.

  As soon as rehearsal was over, he forced himself to approach her while she was gathering the letter cards from the fourth graders in the front row.

  “Mrs. Morengo?”

  She didn’t seem to hear him, so he tried again, more loudly.

  “Mrs. Morengo? I was wondering—”

  “T-shirts!” she shouted suddenly, as if alerting the students to T-shirt-shaped missiles about to tear through the classroom wall. Mason half expected the Platters to drop to the floor and cover their heads with folded arms.

  “I forgot the T-shirts! Fourth graders, I need you to stay a little longer.”

  Handing out the shirts took long enough that the second bell was ringing as everyone hurried to Coach Joe’s class, all wearing their green Plainfield Platters T-shirts, with Puff’s face in a big yellow circle on the front. Kids had grabbed the shirts in a great frenzy, without checking whether they ended up with small, medium, or large.

  Brody, the shortest boy in the class, had on a large T-shirt that hung to his knees like a dress.

  Mason, one of the tallest boys in the class, had on a small T-shirt that made him feel like a sausage stuffed into its casing. A big, fat sausage stuffed into a bright green casing.

  He glanced over at Nora. As he would have expected, her T-shirt fit just right.

  Mason and Brody took one look at each other and began peeling off their T-shirts to trade. Mason heard the seams of his rip as he yanked it over his head.

  More mending for his mom to do. Mason hoped that by the time he got home from school, Puff would be mended and cleaned and ready to go back to his nice, safe display case at school tomorrow.

  There was a quiz in math: multiplication and division, mainly a review from third grade. Mason was pretty good in math, so he thought he got most of the answers right. In social studies, they were going to spend all year studying the first half of American history, starting with the Native Americans. Coach Joe told the class that next month they would have an Indian powwow, complete with costumes and war paint.

  Mason hated costumes; he despised Halloween. Although he had never yet worn any war paint in his almost ten years of life, he strongly suspected that he would not enjoy war paint, either. Maybe he could be absent that day.

  But, as his mother would say, he’d cross the war-paint bridge when he came to it. Far more terrifying bridges lay closer at hand.

  During writing time, Mason finished the scene with the piano cleaner who came to school to scrub the spilled Coke from Pedro’s sticky keys. Then he started writing the climax scene: Pedro’s stunning refusal to play on the night of the big concert.

  Then it was the night of the concert! The gym was filled with hundreds of people. The people could hardly wait for the concert to begin.

  A TV crew was there, too. They set up a big camera, the biggest camera Pedro had ever seen. Soon thousands of people from all around the state of Colorado would be watching Pedro play.

  Maybe even from all around the country.

  Maybe even from all around the world.

  Mason put down his pencil. His fingers were sweaty from gripping it so tightly. He didn’t think he could stand writing any more today.

  He heard Dunk’s voice. “My story’s long now!” Dunk was saying to Sheng, who sat next to him.

  Dunk picked up his story and waved it in Sheng’s face. Even from where he was sitting, Mason could see that Dunk had three sheets of paper entirely covered with his messy writing.

  “So?” Sheng asked.

  “So, you can’t say it’s too short anymore.”

  Sheng shrugged, as if to say that he hadn’t been lying awake at night worrying about the length of Dunk’s story. Sheng’s own story was about a B-52 bomber that won World War III practically all by itself; he had shared part of it with the class last week.

  “Do you want to hear it?” Dunk asked Sheng.

  “Not really.”

  Despite this lack of encouragement, Dunk began to read:

  “The Tigers won the toss and chose to receive, but their first possession resulted in a punt of Footie after going three and out. The Lions took the field for the first time, with Footie at their own twenty-seven-yard line. The Lions put together a drive that went fifty-three yards and resulted in a thirty-eight-yard field goal by the kicker who kicked Footie.”

  Sheng cut Dunk off before he could read any more. “So it’s long. Long isn’t the same thing as good.”

  But Dunk’s story was good—maybe not good as a story, but good as a description of a football game.

  “Wow, Dunk,” Brody said. “You should be a sportswriter for the Plainfield Press.”

  Dunk beamed at Brody’s praise.

  Mason looked over at Nora. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. But he could tell that she was thinking something.

  After school, Brody had soccer prac
tice with Julio; Julio’s dad drove them. So Mason walked home alone.

  If Nora was going to be a famous scientist or bridge builder, and Brody was going to be a famous bridge builder or singer, and even Dunk was going to be a famous sportswriter, what was Mason going to be?

  Maybe he didn’t have to be a famous anything. His own parents weren’t famous, but they were happy, most of the time, give or take their worries about Mason’s attitude toward being in the Plainfield Platters. Dog wasn’t a champion dog, entering national dog shows on TV, but he was still the best dog in the whole world. His full name was even D.O.G.—Dog of Greatness.

  Mason quickened his steps as he turned up the front walk to his house, where Dog would be waiting. He felt sorry for people who didn’t have a dog to come home to. He felt sorry for people who didn’t have this Dog to come home to.

  He pushed open the door and, sure enough, Dog came racing down the stairs to greet him, with something hanging from his mouth that looked like a green plush dragon tail.

  It was a green plush dragon tail.

  “Oh, Dog!” Mason wailed. “How could you?”

  10

  “Mom!” Mason bellowed from the front hallway. “Mom!”

  She came running from the backyard, where she had been hanging out laundry on the clothesline.

  Mason was trying to get Dog to drop Puff’s tail without making Dog think this was a game of tug-of-war, otherwise known as “let’s see if we can completely destroy Plainfield Elementary School’s twenty-year-old mascot.”

  “Drop it, Dog,” Mason said in his authoritative fetch-game voice. But for some reason, Dog didn’t feel like dropping Puff’s tail. He seemed to know this was a prize far grander than a tossed stick or tennis ball.

  Finally, Mason’s mother disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a can opener and a can of Dog’s favorite brand of dog food. Dog dropped Puff’s tail at Mason’s feet and sprang toward his reward.

  Mason glared at his mother. “Mom, I told you to keep Puff where Dog couldn’t get at him!”

  If Brody had been there, Mason would have glared at Brody, too: Oh, Dog would never chew PUFF!

  Mason’s mother had the grace to look guilt-stricken. “Mason, honey, I did keep the door of my office shut all day. But then the doorbell rang, and it was the FedEx truck, and I ran down to get my package, and then I remembered the laundry that needed to come out of the washer.…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “Well,” she said, “I guess we should go see what’s left of Puff.”

  Mason trailed behind her as she slowly climbed the stairs. There was no point in running now.

  On the floor in her office lay half of Puff. Unfortunately, it was the bottom half, minus Puff’s tail. Puff’s tail was in good enough condition, even after the tug-of-war, that Mason’s mother could have sewed it back on. But apparently Dog had eaten Puff’s head.

  Doggy footsteps came padding up the stairs. Dog, contented now from a full can of dog food plus one stuffed dragon head, looked ready to lie down on the floor for an after-meal siesta.

  “Dog!” Mason yelled.

  He took Dog by the collar and dragged him over to where Puff’s headless, tailless body lay on the carpet. “Look what you did!”

  Dog gave a whimper of shame and dropped his head on his paw, gazing up at Mason with pleading, bewildered eyes: I didn’t know! I would never do anything to make my boy look at me that way!

  Mason couldn’t stay angry at Dog. “Oh, Dog,” Mason said sadly, and stooped down to hug Dog tight.

  It wasn’t Dog’s fault that Puff had gotten chewed. It was his mother’s fault, and Brody’s fault—and most of all, Puff’s fault, for existing in the first place. Mason had never liked Puff, anyway, and thought that nobody really did, except for Brody, and Mrs. Morengo, and the school secretary, and the principal, who were paid to like him. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a pleasant thought that he would have to go into school tomorrow and tell everyone what had happened.

  In his head he could hear the principal’s voice during morning announcements: It is my sad duty to inform you that three days before his scheduled appearance on television, Puff the Plainfield Dragon suffered a terrible misfortune. His head was eaten off by Mason Dixon’s dog, Dog.

  “What are we going to do?” Mason asked his mother.

  She stood up straight, shoulders back, tummy tucked, as if ready to start singing “America!”

  “I’m the one to blame for this, Mason. So I’m the one who’s going to have to take care of it. I think I have a plan.”

  “What kind of plan?”

  Her face had brightened. She obviously thought her plan was pretty terrific.

  “Trust me on this one, Mason. I’m going to call Mrs. Morengo right now.”

  After supper—Pakistani lamb curry for his parents, a plain hamburger patty and plain green beans for Mason—Mason did some homework, trying hard not to think about Puff’s demolition, Dog’s disgrace, or his mother’s conversation with Mrs. Morengo. His mom hadn’t said anything about voice lessons to him during the meal, but a mysterious smile had played ominously around the corners of her mouth.

  He finished writing the full draft of his story. The music teacher in the story, whom he was calling Mrs. Borengo, signaled to the piano-playing parent, Mr. Biffith, to begin the opening chords of the first song of the concert. It had taken a while for Mason to come up with the song for Pedro to refuse to play, but he finally settled on “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”

  Mr. Biffith pressed the keys. No sound came out.

  Mr. Biffith pounded on the keys. Pedro refused to play.

  “Mrs. Borengo!” Mr. Biffith called. “The piano is broken!”

  But he didn’t know that the piano wasn’t broken, not at all. The piano could have played perfectly well if he had wanted to. But Pedro the piano didn’t want to. And Pedro the piano wasn’t going to.

  The story would have been more satisfying if Pedro could have said this out loud to everybody and they would have finally understood. It was too bad that they had to think Pedro was just a junky, broken-down piano instead of a piano with a strong sense of his own dignity and the spirit to stand up for himself. But under the influence of Nora’s realism, Mason had made Pedro a piano that didn’t talk.

  Finally, in the story, Mr. Biffith gave up and sadly walked away. The students sang their song a cappella, which means without accompaniment. It all turned out okay.

  Then, at the end of the concert, the custodian wheeled Pedro away to a pleasant storage room where he could spend the rest of his days with a saxophone and a violin that also didn’t like to play in front of other people. But sometimes, late at night, they did play, all by themselves. People walking by the school at midnight said the school was haunted, but nobody believed them.

  In big letters at the bottom of the last page, Mason wrote: THE END.

  At the start of Platters practice the next morning, Mrs. Morengo made an announcement.

  “For our concert, we are going to have three of our fabulous fifth graders announce our songs. Todd, Ella, and Zia, I’d like each of you to come up to the microphone during the concert and read the short speech I’ve prepared for you.”

  Mason sent a silent prayer heavenward: Thank you, God, that I am not a fifth grader! Speaking into the microphone at a televised Platters concert would be infinitely worse than leading the Pledge of Allegiance during morning announcements. It would be worse than singing in the concert, too, and that was going to be bad enough.

  If only Mason could catch Mrs. Morengo after practice and ask her about being stage crew. The concert was now just two days away.

  The three fifth graders who had been selected looked pleased as Mrs. Morengo handed them each an index card. Mason sent up a second prayer of gratitude that this time, as a lowly fourth grader, he had been safe from such a hideous possibility.

  “Aren’t the fourth graders going to get to do anything?” Brody’s friend Julio asked.

&n
bsp; “Yes!” Mrs. Morengo beamed.

  Mason’s prayers had been sent too soon.

  “I’ve decided that one fourth grader is going to be dressed in a special Puff costume! For our concert on television, we should have a live Puff mascot, instead of just a stuffed toy.”

  Mason had never before heard Puff referred to so dismissively, as “just a stuffed toy” rather than “our beloved Puff who inspires us all.”

  “Do we have a Puff costume?” Emma Averill asked.

  “Yes!” Mrs. Morengo said. “Or we will, by tomorrow. One of our very talented Platters parent helpers is sewing it today. Mason Dixon’s mother has offered to use her sewing skills to make a Puff costume for us!”

  She paused, as if expecting the students to begin applauding. When they didn’t, she started them off with a few brisk clap-claps of her own, and they joined in. Mason clapped, too, but his palms felt sweaty.

  This must be his mother’s brilliant plan. He didn’t know if she had confessed to Mrs. Morengo her reason for suggesting it. Mason hadn’t even told Brody yet what had happened to Puff; he couldn’t bear it.

  “Who’s going to be the mascot?” another kid asked.

  Mrs. Morengo’s eyes swept over the assembled fourth graders as if searching for inspiration.

  “I’ve decided that our Puff mascot will also sing a ‘Puff’ solo. Puff will start us off by singing the first verse and chorus of ‘Puff the Plainfield Dragon,’ wearing that adorable Puff costume, and then the rest of us will join in.”

  She smiled at Mason.

  The smile slashed at his already-pounding heart.

  No.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  Even though Mrs. Morengo had made such a big fuss about his lovely voice. Even though she had said that she wanted him to sing a solo at a Platters concert sometime.

  All too well he could imagine yesterday’s conversation between his mother and his teacher.

  Oh, singing a solo would be so good for Mason! And yes, Mrs. Morengo, we will definitely contact that voice teacher you recommended!