Iggy Is Better Than Ever

by Annie Barrows

  You have learned that you must never, ever throw balls around on the playground! (What the heck else are you going to do with a ball, though?)

  You mustn’t throw a ball, because you might hit someone!

  And that would be dangerous.

  You should never, ever do anything dangerous.

  Safety first!

  Safety is the most important thing in the world!

  So, kids, don’t throw balls. Don’t run. Don’t talk with your mouth full.

  Promise me you’ll never, ever do any of these things!

  Never, never, never!

  Great! You are so safe now!

  Plus, you are so much better than you were before you started reading this book.

  CHAPTER 11

  THERE ARE SOME QUESTIONS YOU SHOULDN’T ANSWER

  Way back before you were a better person, you learned that the school secretary taught Miss Hackerman’s class after Iggy hit Miss Hackerman with the basketball. Guess why it was the school secretary, who wasn’t even a real teacher, who taught the class, instead of Mrs. Wander.

  That’s right! You’re so smart.

  Because Mrs. Wander was busy yelling at Iggy.

  Actually, she wasn’t yelling the whole time. She talked, blah-blah-blah, and then suddenly she yelled when she got to words like “ir­res­pon­sible” and “dan­ger­ous” and “self-control” and “lack of respect” and “rules” and “if you can’t” and “then we’ll have to” and “we cannot have this kind of” and “you are lucky you didn’t” and, in the end, “Do you understand what you’ve done wrong, Iggy?”

  (If this book were about Iggy becoming a better person, this is the place it would happen. He would think back to the gardening tape and realize that all his troubles had started there. He would say to himself, If I had never played that trick with the gardening tape, I wouldn’t be in trouble now. I am going to stop playing tricks and start planting flowers by the side of the road. He would tell this to Mrs. Wander and add, “Thank you, Mrs. Wander, for teaching me how to be a better person.” And then she would smile at him, because she was really nice underneath it all. And then they would dance or something.)

  (However, this book is not about that.)

  “Do you understand what you’ve done wrong, Iggy?” asked Mrs. Wander.

  “Yes,” said Iggy. He knew exactly what he had done wrong. He had tried to be quiet and good. He had tried to be good so Mrs. Wander wouldn’t call him into her office and yell at him about gardening tape, and what happened? He had ended up in her office with her yelling at him about basketballs.

  Obviously, he had tried too hard. If he had not waited patiently but had busted into the fifth graders’ game, he wouldn’t have been so mad at the end of recess. If he hadn’t been so mad at the end of recess, he wouldn’t have tried to make the long shot to the basket near the fifth-grade line. If he hadn’t tried to make the long shot, the ball wouldn’t have hit Miss Hackerman. And if he hadn’t hit Miss Hackerman, she wouldn’t have crumpled to the ground, and he wouldn’t have lost all chance of getting her instead of Ms. Keets for his teacher next year. Now Miss Hackerman would never allow him in her class. He was going to be stuck with Ms. Keets. His life was ruined.

  So, yes, Iggy had learned his lesson. He would never try to be that good again. Was he going to try to be bad? No. No, no, no! He didn’t want to be bad. He wanted to be the way he was. And the way he was, it wasn’t bad. He might do something bad, but he wasn’t bad. BAD and IGGY were not equal. He didn’t think so, anyway. So maybe he would try to stop doing this bad thing or that bad thing. But trying to be one hundred percent completely good? It just led to trouble.*

  “Tell me what you’ve learned, Iggy,” asked Mrs. Wander.

  This is what’s called a trick question.

  Iggy knew he shouldn’t tell Mrs. Wander what he had, in fact, learned. So this is what he said: “I learned I should go to basketball camp this summer. I mean, I know I’m going to get better when I’m taller, and it’s not like anyone else could’ve made that basket—it was like three hundred feet, so no way—but still, I need to work on my outside shot. I wasn’t aiming for Miss Hackerman,” he added. “So could I please be in her class next year?”

  For some reason, this answer caused Iggy to get suspended.

  CHAPTER 12

  DAD IS GRUMPY

  I am sorry to say that Iggy had enough experience being suspended to hope that his mom would be the one to stay home with him the next day.

  It was his dad.

  His dad wasn’t terrible or anything. Most of the time, his dad was A-OK. But sometimes his dad got grumpy, and Iggy getting suspended was one of the things that made him grumpy.

  Iggy expected a certain amount of grumpiness when he got suspended. He expected that his parents were going to give him a talking-to and he was going to feel bad. He expected that he was going to have to write an apology. He expected that he was going to get “defunded,” which is what his mom and dad called no allowance. He expected that he would get privileges revoked, which meant no video games for—ugh—two weeks. He expected that he would have to do some really gross chore, like washing the kitchen garbage can. He expected that he wouldn’t be allowed to do anything fun during the suspended day.

  But in addition to all that, Iggy’s dad glared. The whole day, he glared at Iggy.

  Iggy’s mom wasn’t like that. She did the things Iggy expected—talking-to, no fun, chores— but in the end, she always seemed more sorry than mad. And, unlike his dad, on a suspended day, she didn’t want to waste her entire day off work being sorry or mad. By the afternoon, she and Iggy were usually watching a movie. Granted, it was usually some girls-in-long-dresses movie, but Iggy didn’t mind, especially if his mom made hot chocolate. He never would have said it (because he wasn’t stupid), but he liked being suspended if his mom stayed home with him.

  This time, however, it was his dad. Glaring.

  And not only glaring, but muttering.

  He muttered things about “Some of us have a job, you know” and “If I get suspended, you’ll be sorry” and “Irresponsible and immature.”

  Jeez. It wasn’t like Iggy had wanted to be suspended.

  Didn’t his dad like having the day off?

  No. Apparently, he didn’t.

  Iggy wondered what his dad really did. Because what he said he did sounded so incredibly boring that he should have been glad to have the day off. But he wasn’t glad. So he must have a secret job.

  Maybe he was a spy!

  Had to be.

  Because about halfway through the day, Iggy’s dad was so crazy about his job that he said, “I’m going to try to get some work done, and I don’t want to hear a peep out of you. Unless you’re bleeding, don’t bug me.” He put his computer on the dining room table.

  Iggy stood in the hall, not bugging anyone.

  After a minute, his dad looked up, glaring. “Go outside. Go outside and—and—pick weeds. Or something. Don’t bug me.”

  CHAPTER 13

  OR SOMETHING

  Iggy went outside and picked weeds. He really did. For ten minutes, he picked weeds. Then he picked up a big rock in his front yard and looked at all the slimy, wormy things under it. That was fun. He picked up three more rocks. Gross!

  Then he looked at his street. So this was what it was like while he was in school.

  Quiet. Empty. Amazingly empty.

  No cars drove down the street.

  No people walked along the sidewalk.

  It was weird. Why were there no people? Someone should be walking along the sidewalk, at least.

  Iggy went down the front steps to the sidewalk and looked right. No one.

  He looked left. No one.

  Nothing.

  Iggy lived on the most boring street in the world.

  Is this what being a grow
n-up was going to be like?

  Quiet and empty?

  It was horrible!

  Iggy felt like he had to do something, something fast and fun. He looked back at his house. “Don’t bug me,” his dad had said. “Go pick weeds—or something.”

  Or something. That’s what he had said. So it would be okay if Iggy got on his skateboard and—

  Except his skateboard was inside the house. Going inside to get the board might count as bugging Dad.

  Also, Dad might tell him he had to stay in the yard.

  Okay. He would do something fast and fun on his bike.

  Iggy went to the spot next to the fence where his bike was kept and unlocked it. He was pretty quiet about this, because he didn’t want to bug good old Dad.

  He hadn’t been on his bike in a while. It was fun! More fun than he remembered. First, he went super fast down the block and slammed on the brake at the corner. He thought he almost burned rubber. On the next block, he went faster and longer, and then he stood up when he slammed on the brake. Still, not quite.

  On the next block, he mixed it up—wheelies. Fun.

  He wished he had a ramp.

  He turned down the next block.

  Whoa! A ramp!

  It wasn’t a real ramp, of course. It was a big pile of dirt, but it wasn’t really dirt; it was dirt and bark and stuff mixed together.* Iggy didn’t know why anyone would have a big pile of dirt sitting on the sidewalk in front of their house, but he did know that people put things out on the sidewalk when they wanted other people to use them. His mom, for instance, put a bucket of lemons by the sidewalk when their lemon tree went nuts. She was glad when people took them.

  Iggy took a closer look at the big pile of dirt. If he kind of scraped it together it would be about three feet high, and it would be a perfect ramp. He would bike down the sidewalk, up the ramp, and go flying through the air.

  Cool!

  Iggy scraped the dirt together so it was as tall as it could be—maybe even higher than three feet!—and then he got back on his bike and rode to the top of the block.

  He knew that the faster he rode, the farther he would fly through the air. But of course, he didn’t want to fly too far because then he might fall off his bike. He decided on almost-but-not-quite top speed. Say, eight out of ten. Yeah, he thought, that would be good. Fast but not hyperdrive.

  Okay.

  He looked at the pile of dirt. He got on his bike. He started downhill.

  CHAPTER 14

  GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS

  Here’s some good news: The sidewalk sloped downward, but not a lot.

  Here’s some more good news: Iggy stuck to his plan and didn’t go into hyperdrive. He stayed at eight out of ten.

  That’s all the good news.

  Here’s the bad news: Iggy wasn’t thinking clearly about dirt. He wasn’t thinking about the fact that ramps aren’t usually made from dirt. They’re usually made from wood or cement. Why? Because those things are hard. Dirt is soft. It is much, much softer than wood or cement. Even when you whomp it down, it’s still pretty soft. So when you ride your bike into it, your bike sinks.

  And when you are riding your bike fast and your bike sinks into dirt, your bike stops moving.

  But guess what. You don’t.

  Iggy didn’t.

  Picture it in your mind: Iggy is riding down the sloping sidewalk, fast and faster. His bike reaches the big pile of dirt. The bike plows into the dirt and—flump!—comes to a stop. And what happens to Iggy?

  He keeps going. He flies over the handlebars and through the air—

  —and then he lands on his face.

  Wait! Here is some more good news! Iggy didn’t land on his face on the cement sidewalk.

  He landed on his face on the grass between the sidewalk and the curb.

  The grass was growing in dirt, of course. And what have we just learned about dirt?

  It’s soft!

  Yay!

  Because if Iggy had landed on his face on the cement sidewalk, his face probably would have been scraped off. Yuck.

  But since he landed on the grass with dirt underneath it, his face was only a little bit scraped off.

  That’s good news, isn’t it?

  But there’s bad news too: As Iggy was flying through the air, he was saying—okay, he was screeching—

  Unfortunately, that meant his mouth was wide open when he hit the dirt. So the part of his face that was the most scraped-off was the inside of his mouth.

  His nose was not too good either.

  But his mouth was the worst. It was filled with sticks and dirt and grass and blood. For a minute, he just spat things out of his mouth. He hoped he wouldn’t see a tooth. He was pretty sure he didn’t see a tooth, but it was hard to tell, partly because his eyes were—well, let’s just say they were watering—and partly because there was so much stuff in his mouth. He spat out a thing that was probably a rock. After he had spit all the stuff out of it, his mouth started to sting. And blood kept coming out of it too. And his nose hurt. And when he put his hand up to wipe his eyes, his hand came back with blood on it. Ouch. His mouth started to really, really sting.

  The street was quiet and empty. There was nobody running toward him, saying, “Oh my gosh, Iggy! Are you okay?!”

  He was all alone. He tried to say a bad word, but his mouth hurt too much.

  He stood up—ouch—and limped, dripping and bleeding, back to the pile of dirt to get his bike. “Unless you’re bleeding, don’t bug me,” his dad had said. It was time to go home.

  CHAPTER 15

  NOW THAT BLOOD IS POURING FROM HIS MOUTH, IGGY STOPS TO THINK

  When he reached his house, Iggy stopped on the sidewalk. Sure, his mouth was bleeding and there was something wrong with his eyes—he hoped they weren’t bleeding too—and everything was stinging and pounding. He could feel his heartbeat inside his nose, for instance.

  But still, he didn’t want to go inside.

  Why? Because he knew that when he went inside, his dad was going to lose his mind.

  His dad wasn’t going to be mad, not with Iggy bleeding all over the place, but he was going to freak out. He was going to jump to his feet. He was going to yelp. There would be a lot of rushing around. There would be phone calls. His mom would get upset. She might even cry.

  Standing there on the sidewalk, Iggy wished he wasn’t about to walk into the house and ruin his dad’s day. Which he had already ruined once by being suspended. He wished he hadn’t been suspended. He wished he hadn’t slammed Miss Hackerman in the shoulder with the basketball.

  Was there something weird about him that he kept causing all this trouble? Maybe he was, actually, bad. Maybe BAD and IGGY were equal, and he just didn’t know it. He knew for sure that if he hadn’t done the thing with the gardening tape way back on Monday, he wouldn’t have mashed his face today. Maybe mashing his face was a sign that he was supposed to be different. Better.

  Better. Good. Quiet. Was he supposed to start being those things? Was he being taught a lesson?

  Iggy sighed and walked toward the front door of his house.

  CHAPTER 15½

  HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON, PART THREE

  Well, I think you know what’s going on here, kids! Iggy got what he deserved, didn’t he? First he was bad, bad, bad, and then something terrible happened to him.

  What have you learned today, kids?

  You’ve learned that if you’re bad, something terrible will happen to you.

  So you must never, ever do anything bad (for instance, anything with gardening tape). If you do bad stuff, something terrible will happen to you (for instance, you will slam into the ground) and it will be all your fault.

  You understand? If you’re bad, you’ll be sorry.

  So don’t be bad!

  Got it?

  Good.r />
  Now that you have learned this important lesson, you are on the highway to goodness! What a great book this is! It’s a shame it’s almost over so you won’t get much better than you are now.

  CHAPTER 16

  IGGY LEARNS HIS LESSON

  The next day, Iggy went back to school with scabby, bloody scrapes on his face; one black eye that was really purple and green and one black eye that was really yellow; a giant Band-Aid over his nose, and a mouth full of stitches. Yup, that’s right. Stitches on the inside of his mouth. Mostly on the inside of his bottom lip.

  Did everyone look at Iggy and laugh? Did kids say, “You got what you deserved, Iggy Frangi, because you hit poor Miss Hackerman with a basketball.” Did they say, “Ha! This happened because you’re always so bad, Iggy!” Did Mrs. Wander come up to him and say, “I’m glad you hurt yourself, Iggy, because now you’ll be a better person.”

  No.

  Kids looked at him and said, “Eww! Gross!” and “Dude! Wipeout!” and “Aaaaah!” and “I heard you got stitches in your mouth!” Then he would open his mouth, and they’d scream.

  It was great.

  I mean it. Sure, if a magic guy had shown up and said, “Iggy, would you like to go back in time and not mash your face up?” Iggy would have said yes. But since he couldn’t go back in time, and his face was mashed up, it was fun to make people scream. It was fun to have the most mashed-up face in the school. It was fun to have everyone bunch around him, looking at his mouth and pretending to puke.