by Lenore Look
Miss P has a habit of calling on you just when the New Ice Age arrives.
I snapped out of it in time to see three flakes fall at 1:08.
This time everyone saw them.
And rushed to the windows.
Outside, a TV crew was interviewing our principal in front of the school.
She was probably announcing an early dismissal!
Hooray! I felt like dancing!
But Miss P said a few flakes was nothing to get excited about and that we should sit down and be on our best behavior because the TV people were about to interview us.
Gulp.
And before I knew it, a video camera came into our room. Then a lady with a microphone. Then a very bright light, like the kind you should avoid on account of it can only mean one thing: You’re dead.
“We’re here today with a special class and a very special young man,” the lady began.
I squinted into the light.
“A second grader gave up his life savings and inspired his entire school to make donations to help earthquake victims in Haiti,” said the lady.
Flea sprang from her seat next to me. “That’s right, that’s him right there,” she said, pointing at me.
The lady smiled.
“I did the report,” Flea said. “But it was Alvin who gave up everything. My report was good, but it was Alvin’s donation that makes you want to jump up and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to help too!’ ”
“How does it feel to be an inspiration?” the lady asked.
“It feels great!” Flea answered for me. “Alvin’s a perspiration to everyone.” Her one good eye sparkled like a marble.
“I mean, Alvin never says anything in school or does anything well,” Flea continued. “He doesn’t pay attention. He can’t punch-you-wait. He never remembers his library book. My mom says never underestimate a kid like that—they could amaze you.”
The big glass eye of the camera looked smack into the bottom of me.
My liver twisted.
My vision blurred.
“Who would ever have guessed that Alvin would give away all his money to help people so far away?” Flea asked. “He even gave away his PDK!” Her arm flew up in a big exclamation mark. “But I made sure he got another one,” she added.
“Another one?” asked the lady.
“I made him a Pregnancy Disaster Kit!” Flea said, pointing to the thing under my desk.
“A what?” said the lady.
“He’s pregnant, you know,” Flea said, smiling proudly. “That’s why he’s so big.”
The classroom spun one way.
My desk spun in the other.
The only thing that kept me from DDOTS (Dropping Dead on the Spot), was—I saw it out of the corner of my eye—another snowflake.
maybe being on tv wasn’t so bad after all.
That night, my mom watched the five o’clock news.
“Oh, Alvin!” she cried. “This is beautiful.”
Then she really cried.
My mom’s that way. She cries at movies. She cries at books. And she cries when something is so beautiful that it makes you want to hug the world.
She pressed a button and watched the news again.
There I was; my face filled the screen.
“Hey, there’s Alvin!” Anibelly said, for the fiftieth time. She was so excited.
My mom sniffed. She touched her eyes with her tissue.
“Oh, Alvin,” my mom said again. “I just love this. I can’t believe you did something so magnanimous.”
I couldn’t believe I did something so magnetic either.
That was the good news.
The bad news was that the next day was not a snow day.
But it was not a normal, ordinary day either.
“Did someone hide our PDK?” Miss P asked first thing in the morning. “Where’s our PDK?”
She looked under her desk.
We looked in our art supply cabinet.
We pulled out our science supply drawers.
Then Miss P picked up the phone and called the principal.
Worse, the principal said all the other PDKs were missing too.
Gone.
Overnight.
Just like that.
It was the worst thing that had ever happened at our school.
Then the police arrived with the K9 unit.
It was the best thing that had ever happened at our school.
The dog sniffed everywhere. It was super-duper!
Then the fingerprint dusting kit came out.
Black powder clouds filled the air. It was fantastic!
But the news from our principal later in the day was not so good.
“The police said that whoever stole our donations for earthquake relief is the same person who has been breaking into homes,” Miss Madhaven said. “Fingerprints here matched fingerprints from homes that were burglarized.”
Everyone gasped.
Then fell silent.
Except for Flea. She jumped from her seat and blurted, “If we hadn’t gotten on TV yesterday, we’d still have our PDK! The thief got the idea from watching the news!”
I could have told her that.
“mommmmmmmmm!!!” I screamed all the way up my driveway as soon as I got off the bus.
I can never remember which days my mom works from home and which days she works in an office. I just know that some afternoons my gunggung is there to watch us, and other afternoons my mom is home. It’s always a surprise. Today, her Grocery Getter was in the garage, which is a dead giveaway.
“MOMMMMMMMMM!!!” I chased my voice into the house. I was going so fast, Anibelly jumped out of my way—right before I crashed like a flying squirrel without brakes into my mom’s arms.
“Alvin,” I heard my mom say before I burst into tears.
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!” I cried. “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”
I clung to my mom and sobbed.
“It’s.
“All.
“Gone.”
Then I sank into my mom and cried some more.
“I know, darling,” said my mom, holding me tight. “Miss Madhaven called and told me. I’m very sorry.”
“It’s not faaaaaaaaair,” I bellowed.
“Oooooowooooooo!” Lucy cried.
“It was a LOT of money,” I said. “And MOST of it was MINE!”
My mom nodded.
She smoothed my hair.
She rubbed my back.
“I’m sorry,” my mom said. “When bad things happen, it’s always unfair.”
“Waaaaaaaaaaah!” I cried. “Waaaaaaaaaaaah!”
My mom held me close.
I didn’t want her to let go, ever.
I stayed in her lap and leaned against her big, round belly and didn’t say anything. And Anibelly hugged me from the other side and didn’t say anything either. I love it when she does that.
But maybe the baby did not.
First it was round.
Then it was square.
Then it poked me in the eye.
“Older moms like you face a greater chance of having something wrong with the baby, don’t they?” I blurted. “That’s what the kids at school said. It was in a book.”
Anibelly gasped.
I’m not sure Anibelly should have heard it, but she did. Her ears were open, like two car doors, one on each side. And the scary news hopped in and buckled itself right in.
“Please don’t worry,” my mom said, giving both of us a hug. “Our baby is healthy and fine.
“Alvin,” my mom said gently. “You can’t worry about every little thing.”
But I wa
s. I was very worried.
And I put some fear in Anibelly too, I’m sure of it.
And when you’ve done that, you know what’s coming next.
Psycho therapy.
Anibelly had never needed psycho therapy before, but she sure looked like she needed it now. So I read her the rules before we left:
“I sure wish Anibelly and I could be home playing right now,” I said nicely from the backseat of the car.
My mom said nothing.
Anibelly said nothing.
“I sure wish I weren’t missing my calligraphy lesson with GungGung,” I said, also very nicely. Calvin was at an after-school club, and normally, GungGung, Anibelly and I would be doing some sort of ancient Chinese torture at home, like calligraphy or ribbon dancing.
My mom looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“When’s the next hockey practice?” I asked, nicest of all.
Then surprise, surprise! When we arrived at the doctors’ building, we didn’t go through the frightful door where the psycho works as a therapist.
We went through a different door.
We sat down.
I looked around.
There I was with Anibelly and my mom, in a roomful of other moms just like mine.
“Mrs. Ho,” said a lady with a clipboard and a big smile.
My mom got up. “C’mon,” she said, touching my arm. “It’s our turn.”
Our turn?
My legs were stuck like fence posts. My feet wouldn’t lift. My arms wouldn’t swing. My head wouldn’t turn.
And poor Anibelly, she was stuck too!
My mom had to chip us off the floor and cart us in. The problem was, there was no cart. But boy, is she strong. I bet my mom could lift a couple of pianos if she wanted to!
“What a nice young gentleman you are to bring your mom,” the lady with the clipboard said to me.
She weighed my mom. Then she slipped a band around my mom’s arm and it squeezed my mom like a python squeezing its dinner.
“Would you like to be weighed and have your blood pressure taken too?” she asked, giving me a wink.
No way!
But wait a minute.
Maybe I’d better get checked too, just in case.
I stepped on the scale.
Clonk! went the weight.
I heard my mom gasp.
Oops.
As if that weren’t scary enough, the doctor swooshed in.
“Hi, Anibelly,” she said to Anibelly. “And you must be Calvin,” she said to me.
I said nothing.
I made no eye contact.
“It’s Alvin,” said my mom.
“I don’t believe it!” the doctor said. “It seems like only yesterday I delivered you!”
Delivered me? I was Chinese takeout?
“They’re terribly worried about me and the baby,” my mom said. “So I thought bringing them to my appointment might help.”
“It always helps,” said the doctor.
Rrrrrrrrrrrh? said my belly.
“Oh dear,” said the doctor. “You’re sympathetically pregnant too!”
“He is,” said my mom. Then she and the doctor looked at one another in that way that said a million things in a language I couldn’t hear.
Rrrrrrrrrrh! My stomach complained even louder.
The doctor smiled. “After we take a look at your mom,” she said, “we’ll have a peek at you.”
Then the doctor squirted something slimy on my mom’s belly.
“This is an ultrasound machine,” said the doctor, rolling something on my mom’s skin. “It uses sound waves to look at your brother or sister growing inside your mom.”
“It doesn’t hurt,” my mom assured us.
“Do you see the baby?” asked the doctor, pointing to the computer screen.
I looked.
“Sweetheart, I think the baby is waving to you,” my mom said.
All I saw was the UFO. The same one with the search beam that’s in the pictures on our refrigerator!
“Would you like to say hello?” the doctor asked. “It can hear you.”
It?
I said nothing.
I don’t talk to aliens.
But Anibelly does.
“Hi,” said Anibelly. “I’m Anibelly Ho. I’m your big sister and we’ll play mermaids together.”
“The baby looks fine,” the doctor said to my mom. “Everything is healthy and right on schedule.”
“See, honey,” said my mom, “there’s nothing to worry about.”
Nothing to worry about?
I was in a scary doctor’s office, looking at a baby UFO inside my mom’s big body.
Worse, the doctor’s alien detection wand was now pointing at me!
“Would you like a quick look?” she asked. “Then you can have your very own picture to take home.”
WHUUUUMP!
BOOOOONK!
CRAAAAAASH!
“you’re the only person who goes to the doctor’s office to get hurt,” Calvin said. He was working on his Rudy Goldburger machine again when I got home.
I carefully touched the bump on my head.
This wasn’t the first time I’d fallen or fainted or knocked something over at the doctor’s office. The good news is that they can sew me right up. The bad news is that it hurts.
Worse, a bump on the head wasn’t the only thing that left the doctor’s office with me.
“What’s that?” Calvin asked. He was gluing train tracks to our bookcase. I could swear Calvin has eyes in the back of his head; he sees everything in the room even when he’s not looking.
“Nothing,” I said.
“It’s something,” said Calvin. “C’mon, what is it?”
“A doll,” I said, trying my best to hide the thing behind me.
“What are you doing with a doll?” Calvin asked, pulling some books out so that they sat halfway off the shelves. I love it when Calvin is in a tinkering mood. Not only is he building something useful, but he’s calm and nonviolent, which is a lot better than when he comes home from karate, which always puts him in a mood to kick my butt.
“Mom’s doctor loaned it to me,” I said. “She said I should carry it around for a while. It’ll help me get used to having a baby and make everything less scary.”
“You’re so lucky,” said Anibelly, who was coloring on my bed. “I wish she had given it to me.”
Before I knew it, Anibelly scooped up my doll and gave it a kiss.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
“Why not?” asked Anibelly.
“It’s covered with a million germs,” I said.
“But babies need kissing,” said Anibelly. “You’re not a good daddy.”
“I’m not its daddy!” I said.
“You are.”
“Am NOTTTTTTTT!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, and stamped my foot.
The doll burst out crying.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
I froze.
But Anibelly didn’t. She rubbed the doll’s back and rocked it gently. The crying stopped.
Anibelly smiled.
“You’re a great mommy, Anibelly,” said Calvin, who always has a good word for her.
“I think it has a computer chip inside,” Calvin added, inspecting the doll. “It makes different cries for hunger, pain, fear, loneliness … and diaper change. And you have to figure out which cry means what, or else.”
“Or else what?” I asked.
“Or else it’ll keep crying, like a real baby,” said Calvin.
Just then a racquetball dropped from the top shelf and zigzagged along the top edge of the books, setting off a train on the tracks, which dumped a load of marbles into a net, which pulled a string, which rang a bell. It was super-duper!
“What’s that fo
r?” I asked.
“That’s the alarm for me to shoot,” said Calvin.
“Shoot the robber?” I asked.
“Yup,” said Calvin. “No one messes with donations for earthquake victims.”
“I thought you didn’t want a dead body,” I said.
“I don’t,” Calvin said. “I just want to scare him so he’ll give back the money.”
“Oh,” I said.
“When he trips the wire,” said Calvin, pointing toward our door, “the ball will drop, the train will run and the alarm will sound. Then I’ll shoot him.”
“What are you going to shoot him with?” I asked.
“Dunno,” said Calvin. “Okay, maybe that will be the alarm for me to call 911 instead.
“Anyway, the dolls are for practice,” Calvin said, remembering what we were talking about before his Roob Gober device went off. “Once you crack the code, they’re easy to take care of, just like a regular baby.”
“What code?” I asked.
Calvin ran to the computer and I hurried after him.
Clickclickclick. Scroll.
“Here it is,” said Calvin. And there on the screen was the following menu:
“It’s like the list of ice cream flavors at Kimball’s,” said Calvin. “You just pick the cry of the day!”
Calvin hit the Print button.
Then WHUUUUMP!
I was down for a second time in the same afternoon. And Calvin was on top of me.
The only problem with a tinkering afternoon is that it can turn into a karate one, just like that.
And I was crying numbers one through seven, all at once.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!
Crying is really great no matter what number you use. You always feel better afterwards.
Except when you have a doll with the computer chip inside that cries when you do.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!! the doll howled.
I had no idea which flavor it was.