Happy Kid!

by Gail Gauthier

  “You on your way to the cafeteria?” Luke asked.

  “I, uh, need a couple of minutes,” I said.

  “I’ll wait,” Luke offered.

  He sounded particularly nice and even kind of serious, which made me think he was feeling bad because we’d been arguing in art class. I wanted to go with him, but I wanted to stay with the A-kids, too. And they had stopped talking and were waiting for me.

  “I’ll meet you later, okay?” I said to him.

  Luke noticed everyone watching and took the hint. His face fell, and he muttered, “Yeah. Right.”

  He started to move again, and then one of the A-kids said, “Sure, it would make a difference if a mistake had been made with some of the other kids’ SSASies. But we’re going to get good scores on the test no matter what essay question they use. So what’s the point of making us do it over?”

  Luke heard every word. He stopped, turned around, and stared right at me for a moment. He had this look on his face as if he’d just been slapped.

  I should have at least said “see ya later” or something to Chelsea, but I didn’t think of it because I was in such a rush to get to Luke so I could try to fix things.

  “I’m ready for lunch,” I said as I caught up with him.

  “It’s okay. You can meet me later.”

  “I’m ready to meet you now,” I told him.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt you when you were with . . . those guys.”

  “Luke? Does it bother you that I’m in accelerated classes?” I asked.

  “Of course it does! We stopped doing things together after you got into classes with those better kids.”

  “It wasn’t because I was with them. It was because you and I weren’t in any classes together last year the way we are this year. We never saw each other,” I explained.

  “So what? You could have asked me to do things with you, but you didn’t,” he said.

  “You could have asked me, but you didn’t,” I reminded him. “And those kids aren’t ‘better.’ They’re just smart. That’s not the same as better.”

  “If they’re not better, then how come they don’t have to follow the same rules the rest of us do? How come it’s okay for them to cheat so they don’t have to take that test over again?”

  “It’s not cheating!” I yelled in the middle of the hallway.

  “If you and your friends don’t see what’s wrong about not reporting this ‘mistake,’ then you aren’t really all that smart,” Luke said just before he marched ahead of me into the cafeteria.

  “We are so!” I shouted after him and took off in another direction.

  Then I was stuck. It was lunchtime, and I was supposed to be in the cafeteria, too. But what was I supposed to do? Sit with Luke? We were fighting. My only other option was sitting at Jake’s table.

  I headed off for a boys’ room. I leaned against a wall and slid down until I was sitting on my backpack.

  This is nice, I thought as I sat with my back against the cool tile wall. Schools should have rooms like this where people can go when they want to be by themselves for a while. Rooms where they don’t have to sit on the floor between a trash can and a urinal, though.

  The door out to the hall suddenly opened, and I heard someone’s shoes hitting the floor as he walked in. I didn’t look up until he spoke.

  “What are you doing here?” Mr. Kowsz asked.

  “I totally lost control of myself a little while ago.”

  “Oh? Did you kick anybody?”

  “No!”

  “Break anything? Shout obscenities at a teacher?”

  “No. I yelled at somebody in the hall.”

  “It’s probably nothing that can’t be fixed, then.”

  “I don’t know how to fix it.”

  Mr. Kowsz hesitated and then asked, “Does this have anything to do with a girl? If it’s a girl, you’ll get over it. With some girls it takes longer than others. For instance, if the girl was your wife for twenty-five years who left you—”

  “No, no, no. It’s not about a girl,” I said before Mr. Kowsz could say any more.

  “Where are you supposed to be now?” he asked.

  “This is my lunch period. I just want to stay here.”

  “You can’t. I’ll give you a pass so you can go to my classroom until your next class starts. I won’t be there,” Mr. Kowsz added, as if that would make staying in his classroom more desirable. Which it did. “I’m on my lunch break. I’ve got to hit all the bathrooms and then get my coffee down at the teachers’ lounge. You’ll be by yourself in my room except for a couple of kids who play cards there at this time of day.”

  I stood up. “You let kids play cards in your room?”

  Mr. Kowsz shrugged. “Some people really don’t like being in the cafeteria. If they’re kids I know and I’m sure they won’t play with any of my equipment, I’ll let them use my room for something quiet like cards or chess. Don’t tell anybody. There aren’t that many kids I trust to leave alone in there.”

  He trusted me.

  “Listen,” I said as we walked along the hallway together. “How bad would it be if a teacher accidentally gave a class an essay assignment to help them practice for the SSASies and the essay later ended up being on the actual test?”

  Mr. Kowsz’s head swiveled toward me, and he had that look he gets when he thinks he smells smoke or hears someone out in the hallway during class time.

  He never finished his tour of the boys’ rooms or got his coffee in the teachers’ lounge. Instead, he stayed in his classroom with me for the rest of the period, which was how long it took for me to tell him the whole story.

  It seemed pretty clear to me that Luke thought I ought to help Melissa report the SSASie irregularity. Melissa definitely thought I ought to help report the SSASie irregularity. I was pretty sure Mr. Kowsz thought so, too, because he kept talking about how taekwondo students have some kind of code about right and wrong and helping others in need (another detail nobody mentioned before I started taking classes). Even Jake agreed with them since he said the only thing keeping him from reporting the whole screw-up was his refusal to snitch on other people.

  Which I was afraid meant that his standards were better than mine, because the only thing that was keeping me from reporting the irregularity was my hope that the essay mistake would mean a higher SSASie test score for me and a chance to stay with Chelsea in eighth grade. To be truthful, it wasn’t the only thing that was keeping me from agreeing to help Melissa. Not helping her was giving me an in with the A-kids that I had never had before.

  I was willing to ignore . . . an irregularity . . . for a girl and popularity. A girl who had never even spoken to me. Popularity with kids who didn’t even know my old friends like Luke. Yes, I was well on my way to becoming a worse human being then Jake Rogers.

  On top of everything else, there was no doubt what Happy Kid! was telling me to do. That “Somebody needs your help” message just wouldn’t go away. There was no beating the book. I decided I might as well give in.

  Melissa’s appointment with Mr. Alldredge was after school on Monday, though, so I was going to need a ride home. Sunday night, while both Nana and Jared were at the house, I decided I’d better start looking for one.

  When we were clearing the table after dinner and Nana was talking about leaving, I said, “Oh, can one of you guys give me a ride home from school tomorrow? I have to stay late.”

  Dad just said, “What time? I have a meeting around two.”

  Mom nearly dropped a glass and asked, “Why? Why do you have to stay late?”

  “I have to help Melissa Esposito with something.”

  “Really? Help her with what?” Mom asked, sounding as if she’d just heard I’d made honor roll or won a scholarship somewhere.

  “It’s something to do with our English class. We have to go see Mr. Alldredge about it tomorrow. We have an appointment,” I explained.

  “Wonderful. You’ve never stayed after school to wor
k on something before. What’s the project?” Mom wanted to know. “Come on. Tell us about it.”

  This was going to be harder than I’d thought. My plan had a flaw, the flaw being that I never expected my mother to get so excited. I didn’t want her making a big deal out of going to see Mr. Alldredge. I was already making as big a deal out of it as I could stand.

  “Melissa knows more about it than I do,” I explained. “She’s going to do all the talking.”

  “I wish you had called me at work Friday afternoon and told me about this. I could have shifted one or two of Monday’s appointments then. But it’s way too late now. Bobby? Is there anything you can do?” Mom asked my father.

  “I’ll have to wait until after I get to work tomorrow morning to find out,” Dad said.

  “Maggie, I hate to ask you,” Mom said, turning to Nana.

  “Well,” Nana said as she pulled on her coat, “I have to get home. Walk me out to my car, Kyle, and we’ll talk about it.”

  Then Nana grabbed me by the ear and dragged me out of the living room with her.

  “What’s up?” she asked when we got as far as the garage and no one else could hear us.

  “Nothing. I’m not in trouble or anything. Really! I just have to do something with this girl, Melissa. She likes to do those ‘let’s make our school a better place’ kinds of projects. We’re going to talk to Mr. Alldredge about one of those.”

  “She may like to do those kinds of projects, but since when do you have anything to do with them? No one in our family has done anything like that since my mother had to help with an Easter egg hunt sponsored by the Future Homemakers of America at her high school. Remind me to tell you how that turned out someday. I repeat: What’s up?”

  The government ought to put my grandmother to work questioning suspected terrorists. She could get anything out of anybody. I ended up telling her everything. Though I did leave out the part about not wanting to take the test over so I’d get a higher score and be with Chelsea next year. And I said absolutely nothing about Happy Kid! I like to think my grandmother would believe me when I said I had a book that provided advice and warnings to whoever held it, but I wasn’t certain enough to take a chance.

  When I finished, Nana shrugged and said, “This shouldn’t be your problem. This should be the teacher’s problem. He’s making it your problem by not reporting the mistake himself. If you tell the principal, it will become the principal’s problem, and you can be done with it.”

  “That’s exactly what Mr. Kowsz said when I told him about this!” I exclaimed.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. So, now that you know the whole thing, will you give me a ride home tomorrow?” I asked.

  “What time?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Sometime after three o’clock. If you come to get me and I’m not ready, why don’t you go find Mr. Kowsz’s classroom and look at those things he wanted to show you. What were they?”

  “Lamp bases,” Nana answered immediately. “He makes them out of metal and wood. Are you sure you don’t mind if I go see him? You’re not just saying this to get me to come pick you up, are you?”

  “Yeah, I am,” I admitted. “But I don’t mind if you go see him. I’m not going to be at Trotts forever. Once I’m gone, if you want to go out with a guy who spends his lunch hours going through the boys’ rooms hunting for juvenile delinquents, it’s no skin off my back.”

  “Oh, you make him sound so attractive.”

  “If you do go see him tomorrow, ask him where Mr. Goldman gets the small paddle-shaped targets we use in taekwondo class. I want one for Christmas.”

  Nana kissed me good-bye. I shut the door after she left and thought, Oh, no. I’m really doing this.

  I ran upstairs to my room. Maybe I’d find a new message in Happy Kid! And it would be really nice if it were a message that would help with what I had to do the next day.

  But no, I let the book open up, and all I got was the same old thing. “Help.”

  Why didn’t it change? Was it going to wait until after we went to the principal’s office?

  I thought of one more thing I could try to make a new page turn up. I went downstairs to get the phone book. There were five Espositos listed in our town. Of course, Melissa’s number was the fifth one I tried.

  “Melissa!” a little girl shouted at the other end of the line when I told her who I was looking for. “A boy wants to talk to you! A boy is calling for Melissa! Mom! There’s a boy on the phone for Mel!”

  Her family called her Mel?

  “Hello?” Melissa said, sounding all eager and happy.

  “Ah . . . Melissa, it’s Kyle.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m calling to tell you that I’ll go with you to see Mr. Alldredge tomorrow. Unless . . . you found someone else? Did you?” I asked.

  “No. I haven’t even been trying. It was hopeless.”

  “Well, I’ll go with you. But you have to do all the talking the way you said you would.”

  “Fine,” Melissa agreed. “I want to do that, anyway.”

  “And once Mr. Alldredge knows about it, I’m done. If he says we should just figure we were lucky the way Mr. Borden did, then we were lucky.”

  “Do you think he’ll say that?” Melissa asked, sounding worried.

  “I don’t care what he says. It doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is that I go and get this over with.”

  “That’s not a very good attitude,” Melissa complained.

  “I wouldn’t be fussy if I were you! I’m going. What more do you want?”

  “Okay. Okay. You don’t have to yell.”

  I said good-bye and hung up as fast as I could. Then I went back upstairs and picked up Happy Kid!

  All right, book, I said, but not out loud because I’m not actually crazy. I arranged for a ride home, and I told Melissa I would go with her. So there’s no reason for you to tell me the same old thing. Tell me something I don’t know.

  Then I let the covers of the book fall apart, and the pages just dropped away from each other. I looked down at a new page.

  Be Careful Not to Blame Others

  Many people get very touchy if they think they’re being accused of something. Anything. If someone thinks he’s being blamed for even an accident, he can become a bitter, angry enemy. You’ll have a very hard time forming a satisfying relationship with him after that. Watch your step.

  “Watch your step.” Oh, yes. That was just what I wanted to hear.

  CHAPTER 17

  That night I had a dream about Mr. Borden chasing me up and down the halls of the school. He was waving a screwdriver the size of a broomstick.

  As soon as I got to advisory that morning, Melissa started giving orders.

  “We really need to plan what we’re going to do at our meeting with Mr. Alldredge. Look for me before social studies, and we’ll walk together to class.”

  “The plan is made, Melissa. You said you’d do all the talking,” I reminded her.

  “I will, I will. I just want you to hear what I’m going to say.”

  “I don’t care what you say so long as you watch your step.”

  “I think I know how to be careful and sensitive,” Melissa retorted, as if I’d accused her of something. “I’ll see you before third period.”

  I thought there was a very real possibility that we were doomed.

  “There is something going on between you and Melissa Esposito, isn’t there?” Jake asked during art class. We were standing in line by the cupboard where we kept the projects we were working on, so everyone around us could hear.

  “Oh, please,” I replied.

  “I saw you in the hall with her this morning,” he said.

  “Do you watch everything I do?” I asked, trying not to look up to see who was listening.

  “Always. Last week you picked something up off the floor in the cafeteria and ate it.”

  I didn’t think it was worth making the effort to deny that. I did wis
h I could ask Luke if he’d heard anyone talking about Melissa and me being a couple, though. But after he picked up his project, he took his stool and placed it as far away from me at our table as he could. Not only was he not speaking to me, he wasn’t even looking at me.

  Once Jake and I were back at our table, I said, “Melissa and I are hanging around together because . . . we’re working on something,” so Luke would hear me.

  He did. He knew what I was talking about right away. He really should be an A-kid. After he’d pulled his stool closer to me, I whispered, “We’re going to see Mr. Alldredge this afternoon—about that essay.”

  “Oh, Kyle, man . . . do you think Mr. Borden will be fired?” Luke whispered back.

  “No one said anything about being fired!”

  “Kyle!” Mr. Ruby called. “That was way too loud! Do you want to go down to the principal’s office?”

  “No!” Luke and I shouted together.

  “Why would he get fired?” I asked Luke in a lower voice.

  “He did screw up and give you guys the wrong essay question for practice.”

  “But we know it was an accident. We’re not blaming him for doing something wrong. Why are you bringing this up now? You said I should try to fix what happened,” I reminded him.

  “Well, sure, but it’s going to be so hard to do that.”

  And he didn’t think of that before?

  Jake leaned across the table toward us. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Kyle is going to tell Mr. Alldredge about that essay his teacher showed him before the SSASies,” Luke explained.

  “I’m not telling him. Melissa is. I’m just going with her. I’m just going to be there in the room. Not saying anything,” I insisted.

  “So what did Melissa have to do to get you to go?” Jake asked.

  “She had to be right, Jake.”