Fourth-Grade Disasters

by Claudia Mills

No.

  Mason could not sing a solo.

  Wearing a costume.

  On television.

  Mason’s prayer now was short and to the point:

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

  11

  “It wasn’t easy making the choice,” Mrs. Morengo continued. “And if anybody is disappointed at not getting this opportunity, remember that you fourth graders will have many chances to shine over the next two years.”

  But not to shine on television.

  The shiniest—that is to say, the worst—shining of all.

  “I’ve decided that our Puff for this first concert of the year will be—”

  Mason Dixon.

  “Brody Baxter.”

  If Mason hadn’t already been sitting down in his place on the second riser, he might have fallen down, fallen clear off the riser again, overcome by the tidal wave of relief that washed over him.

  Brody turned around to flash a delighted grin at Mason, his face alight with joy. Brody had thought it was an honor just to carry Puff home to be mended (actually, to be eaten alive—but Brody hadn’t known that at the time and still didn’t know it). Now Brody was having conferred upon him the far greater honor of being Puff himself.

  “So let’s practice ‘Puff’ right now with Brody starting us off on the first verse,” Mrs. Morengo said.

  Brody came forward from the risers and stood in front of the assembled Platters.

  “For the concert, of course, you’ll be singing into the microphone. And wearing your Puff costume. Mrs. Dixon is designing the costume so that the audience will still be able to see your smiling face. All right, Brody, let’s give it a try.”

  Mr. Griffith began playing the introduction.

  Brody began to sing, his voice strong and true, his face radiant: “Puff the Plainfield Dragon lives at our school!”

  Maybe it was a good thing, after all, that Dog had chewed Puff’s head off. Not good for Puff, naturally, but good for Brody.

  At the end of practice, Mason felt so giddy with continued relief that he didn’t even feel shy about walking up to Mrs. Morengo as she was conferring with another mom about the design for the printed concert program.

  “Puff on the cover, of course,” he heard Mrs. Morengo say.

  “Where is Puff?” the mom asked, casting her gaze around the music room. “I’d like to be able to use him as a model for my drawing.”

  Mason turned quickly to go, clapping his hand on his head as if he suddenly remembered something he had forgotten to do, someplace far away from where he was standing right now.

  It was too late.

  “Mason?” Mrs. Morengo turned to him. “Your mother got me so excited about this wonderful idea of a live Puff mascot that I forgot to ask her how Puff’s mending was coming along. We really do need him back here tomorrow, if at all possible, and definitely in time for the concert. The Platters have never performed without our lucky Puff to cheer us on.”

  So his mother hadn’t told Mrs. Morengo yet.

  Mason wasn’t going to be the one to tell her, either, that lucky Puff, beloved by all Plainfield schoolchildren for generations, was gone forever.

  “It’s coming along,” he said desperately.

  The mending had been coming along just fine. It was the chewing that had turned out to be the problem.

  He thought he felt another coughing fit starting up.

  “Mrs. Morengo, I have another idea.” Mason hurried on with his speech. “During the big storm in the raindrop song? What if someone—like me—turned the lights on and off to be lightning?”

  Mrs. Morengo’s wide face melted into the warmest smile that Mason had seen from her yet. “What a wonderful thought! I told you, Beth”—she said to the program-making mom—“my Platters never cease to astonish me.”

  “Can I be the person?” Mason pressed on. “To make the lightning?”

  Mrs. Morengo hesitated. “Well, I suppose so, Mason, since it was your idea. But then you won’t be up on the stage singing. And we’ll miss hearing your lovely voice.”

  Correct.

  “I thought I could also sort of be the stage crew for the whole show,” Mason explained. “I could turn the gym lights off when the concert starts, and do the lightning, and then turn them on again when the concert’s over. And—”

  Mason tried to think of something else useful that he could do to justify not singing.

  “And I could check if Pedro’s piano bench—I mean, if the piano bench—is in the right position. And if the microphones are the right height.”

  Mason was sorry he had suggested fiddling with the microphones. The last thing he wanted to do was to dash up on the stage and try to adjust the mikes, which probably wouldn’t be working in the first place, as mikes never did at the crucial moment. Mason himself had never spoken into a microphone—or even touched one—in his life. The televised concert would be a bad time to start.

  “Or maybe not the microphones,” he corrected himself. “Just the lights. And the piano bench.”

  “But, Mason, I could have a parent helper do those things.”

  “Yes, but I’d really like to do it,” Mason said. “It’s been a dream of mine to be on a stage crew. And to do the lights for a big concert—that would just be so cool.”

  “All right,” Mrs. Morengo agreed. “You may be our one-man Plainfield Platters stage crew!”

  For the second time in less than an hour, Mason felt his knees go weak with relief.

  Nothing could go wrong just turning the gym lights off, then on-and-off-and-on-and-off, and then on again when the concert ended.

  Could it?

  “Which do you think is grander,” Brody asked Mason as they hung their backpacks on the coat rack at the back of Coach Joe’s room. Brody had waited for Mason outside the music room door while he had his conversation with Mrs. Morengo. “To be a royal can opener in the king and queen’s palace, or to sing on television?”

  Mason would hate both; probably he’d hate the singing more. But he knew what answer he was supposed to give. “Singing on television.”

  “That’s what I think, too.”

  Nora came up behind them. “Congratulations, Brody!” she said.

  In a low voice, as Brody raced over to tell Coach Joe his big news, Nora asked Mason, “What happened to the other Puff?”

  “What makes you think something happened to him?”

  It wasn’t that Mason didn’t want to tell her—he knew Nora could be trusted with a secret—but he was curious about how she had guessed. Nora Alpers: scientist, bridge builder, detective.

  “It just seems strange. You take Puff—stuffed Puff—home to mend him for the concert, and then all of a sudden he isn’t even going to be in the concert.”

  In an even lower voice, Mason whispered one word to Nora: “Dog.”

  “Oh, no,” Nora said.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mason.

  And stuffed Puff was still supposed to be in the concert, or at least there at the concert, and he didn’t exist anymore.

  To change the subject, in case anyone else came into earshot, Mason told Nora, “Mrs. Morengo said I can be the stage crew. So that was a great idea.”

  “Cool.”

  “And I finished my story last night. Pedro does go on strike, and he never has to play in public for anyone ever again. I think it turned out pretty good. It’s not really great, like Dunk’s story, or anything, but it turned out okay.”

  “Dunk’s story—” Nora started to say something about Dunk’s story, but then the second bell rang, and it was time to salute the flag.

  That morning, Coach Joe’s class had art down in the art room. They were working on pointillist paintings, in the style of the French impressionist painter Georges Seurat: paintings that were made up entirely of little tiny dots. From a distance, the dots all merged together, so they didn’t look like dots anymore, but close up you could see the whole picture was nothing but dots, dots, dots. So the goal was to make a picture
out of dots that didn’t look as if it was made out of dots.

  Mason wondered what the point of this particular painting technique was supposed to be, but he kept his thoughts about it to himself.

  Brody’s dots had been neat and orderly, but today his dots were becoming wild and carefree, splashed down on his paper any which way. He was humming “Puff the Plainfield Dragon” as he painted. Mason could tell it was all Brody could do to keep on painting rows of dots instead of flinging down his brush and hugging himself with joy.

  Then a shadow passed over Brody’s face, and he did lay down his brush for a minute.

  “Mason?”

  “What?”

  “Mason, you don’t mind that she picked me, do you?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Instead of you? I mean, she said you were the one who should have a solo sometime. And you’re the one whose mother is making the costume. So if you did mind—” Mason saw Brody swallowing hard. “I could tell her that I don’t want to do it, and that she should pick you instead.”

  “Brody!” Mason didn’t know if he wanted to hug Brody or shake him. “I. Don’t. Like. To. Sing. Remember?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Y-E-S.”

  Happy again, Brody picked up his brush and began painting more bright and sloppy dots, bouncy and springy dots practically dancing off the paper.

  Sitting nearby, Nora was working on her painting with precision. Nora’s dots could have been printed by a machine.

  She started to say something, then stopped, and then finally said, “Did either of you think Dunk’s new, longer Footie story sounded too good to be written by Dunk?”

  Mason and Brody exchanged glances.

  “It was good,” Mason said. “But Dunk does like sports. Especially football.”

  In third grade, Dunk had thrown a football at Brody’s head with remarkably perfect aim.

  “Dunk didn’t write that story,” Nora said. “He copied it off the Internet.”

  “There’s a story about Footie the football on the Internet?” Brody asked.

  A yellow dot of paint was on the end of Brody’s nose now, as if the bright, golden joy inside him was seeping out through his skin.

  “No, silly,” Nora said. She gave Brody’s arm a whack of friendly impatience. “He stuck Footie’s name in whenever the real story said ‘football.’ But all the other stuff about the game—the intercepted pass by the receiver at the thirty-seven-yard line, blah, blah, blah—Dunk copied.”

  “Are you going to tell Coach Joe?” Mason asked.

  “He’s going to know, anyway. I mean, it’s pretty obvious.”

  Obvious to Nora.

  Just the way that Puff’s calamity had been obvious to Nora.

  The calamity that would all too soon be obvious to the entire heartbroken school.

  “I think I might tell Dunk,” Nora said. “That I know.”

  Mason wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to alert Dunk or not. It would be satisfying to see Dunk get in trouble. At art camp last summer, Dunk had ruined practically every single artwork of Brody’s, and yet he had never gotten in trouble. When Dunk’s big bad dog, Wolf, had attacked Dog, Dunk hadn’t gotten in trouble.

  Dunk had said he was sorry that time. Mason had to admit that Dunk had looked extremely sorry, too. But Dunk had deserved to be sorry.

  And if Dunk had copied his story, he deserved to get in trouble and be sorry about that, too.

  Now there was a yellow dot on Brody’s chin, and one on his left cheek. Brody was turning into his own pointillist painting of a very happy boy.

  Mason looked across the room at Dunk, who was busy flicking drops of paint onto the arm of poor Sheng, who was stuck sitting next to him and was obviously too afraid of Dunk to say anything about it.

  Yes, it would be very satisfying if, for once, Dunk got into trouble. Big trouble.

  12

  “So, Mom,” Mason said as he sat down at the kitchen table after school with his three Fig Newtons and a glass of milk. “Mrs. Morengo asked me about the real Puff. She said he needs to be at school tomorrow, because a mom is drawing his picture for the concert program. And the Platters have never performed without Puff to cheer them on. What are we going to do?”

  Dog lay at Mason’s feet, contentedly chewing a rawhide bone. Mason’s mom had called the vet after the Puff disaster for advice on what to do about Dog’s chewing. The vet said to give Dog lots of extra chewing opportunities so he could channel his chewing energies more appropriately. Mason’s dad had been right all along.

  Mason’s mother gave him another mysterious smile. Mason had learned once in art class that a smile like that was called a Mona Lisa smile, after the expression on a famous portrait painted by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. But Mason wasn’t in the mood for a Mona Lisa smile right now.

  “Tell me!” he pleaded.

  “I will in a minute. But first tell me: was Brody thrilled with his solo?”

  Mason stared at her. “How did you know she was going to give the solo to Brody?”

  “Mrs. Morengo told me yesterday, when we were talking on the phone. And who else could be Puff, if not Brody? He’s such a cute size, with that great big personality—”

  Mason’s face must have given him away.

  “Mason, you didn’t think—”

  Was she also going to accuse him of having wanted to be Puff? She couldn’t, not his own mother. It was bad enough coming from his best friend, but at least Brody’s excuse was that he honestly couldn’t imagine that anybody in the universe might not want to be Puff.

  She reached over and smoothed his hair, not that it needed smoothing. “Oh, honey, I should have told you, so you wouldn’t worry. I just thought it would be such a great surprise.”

  Apparently she had forgotten that Mason hated surprises. At least she had remembered that Mason hated singing.

  “But, honey, Mrs. Morengo did say that you’re doing so well in the Platters! And, can you believe it, she even said that we should consider getting you voice lessons!”

  The doorbell rang. Dog abandoned his bone and jumped up to go help answer it.

  “Speaking of surprises …,” his mother said as she exited the kitchen behind Dog.

  She returned carrying an enormous cardboard carton, practically as big as Brody.

  “Dog, sit!” Mason’s mom commanded. Dog sat.

  “Dog, bone!” she commanded. Dog resumed his contented chewing.

  Using a kitchen knife, Mason’s mom slit open the tape sealing the top flaps of the box. Then, to Mason’s great astonishment, she lifted out a large stuffed animal. A large stuffed dragon. A faded, oversized stuffed dragon that looked exactly like Puff.

  It was Puff. But how could that be?

  “I found another Puff on eBay! You have no idea how relieved I was when I found it and they said they could overnight it to me. I came up with the live-mascot idea just in case Puff didn’t get here in time for the concert. And it turned out to be the perfect idea, didn’t it?”

  Mason couldn’t decide if he should feel enormously relieved for the third time that day—he did feel enormously relieved—or sad for the first Puff, gone forever, and now replaced by this look-alike copy. Everyone at Plainfield Elementary—from Mrs. Miller on down to the littlest kindergartners—would think this was the true lucky Puff who had served Plainfield Elementary faithfully for twenty years.

  Everyone except for Mason. And Nora.

  Another thought struck him. Was this cheating? Like Dunk’s copying of his Footie story?

  “Are you ever going to tell Mrs. Morengo what really happened?” Mason asked her.

  She paused, as if asking herself the same question. “You know, I think we should just file this one under the heading ‘all’s well that ends well.’ ”

  She was probably right.

  He hoped that in another two days he’d be able to file his first—and last?—Platters concert under that same heading.

  “I�
�m going right now to put Puff the Second up in my office, behind closed doors,” she said, even though Dog seemed much less interested in Puff the Second than he’d been in Puff the First. Maybe Puff’s head hadn’t been that tasty—or easy to digest—after all. Or maybe he was cured of chewing stuffed animals for good.

  Mason’s mother bustled away with Puff in her arms.

  While she was gone, Mason pondered a question of his own: should he tell her he was going to be the stage crew for the show, or leave it as a surprise, since she was the one who liked surprises?

  He voted for the surprise. He hoped she’d think it was a good surprise. As Nora had said, he’d still be in the concert. Well, sort of in the concert.

  He’d still be giving the Plainfield Platters a fair try. Well, sort of a fair try.

  But he wouldn’t be using his lovely voice, the voice that his teacher had praised, the voice that was worthy of voice lessons. He wouldn’t be standing up on the stage with Brody and the other Platters, singing with all his might about Puff, as his father filmed every second of the concert with his camcorder and his mother wiped proud tears from her eyes.

  Oh, if only he could file the Plainfield Platters forever under “done, done, done.”

  Brody wore his Puff costume for the Platters practice held the next morning, Thursday morning, on the stage in the gym. Mason’s mom had tried it on him the night before and made a few last-minute adjustments so it would fit him perfectly.

  The Thursday-morning practice was also Mason’s first time working as stage crew. Oh, the bliss of not being on those risers with the other singers! He thought he did a good job as lightning guy. It would be a much cooler special effect tomorrow evening, when the gym would be dark, rather than bright with the morning sunlight that was now streaming through the high windows.

  Mason caught Dunk staring at him, and sure enough, Dunk came up to Mason and Brody as soon as the practice was over.

  “Did Morengo kick you out?” he asked hopefully, walking beside them as they headed to class.

  Brody answered indignantly. “No! If she was going to kick out anybody, it would be you.”

  “Well, why aren’t you singing anymore, like a dumb lady opera singer? Why are you just turning the stupid lights on and off for two seconds?”