Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time

by Lisa Yee

  4:31 P.M.

  Yin-Yin always asks how I’m doing with Millicent. She really wants us to get along. One time I said, “We’re making a lot of progress.”

  Yin-Yin nodded and smiled. “So I’ve heard from Maddie,” she said, which means that Millicent must be lying about tutoring too.

  As I head to Vacation Village, I rehearse what I’m going to tell my grandmother this time. When I get to the lobby, old ladies try to pinch my cheeks and pat my head. I grip my Celtics cap to keep it safe and run down the hall to get to Yin-Yin unharmed. She smiles when she sees me. “I’m doing really well in English,” I tell her before she can ask. “Mr. Glick says that I am one of his best students. Millicent’s been a big help, and she’s really nice too.”

  Yin-Yin beams. It’s easy to make her happy. All I have to do is lie.

  There’s a knock on the door and a perky Vacation Village lady comes in.

  “Come on, Mrs. Wong. It will be fun.”

  “No, really, I’d rather not,” Yin-Yin tells her.

  The lady is practically pushing my grandmother down the hall. “Now, you know the doctor said you need to move around more. Come on. Give it fifteen minutes. If you still don’t want to dance after that, you can quit.”

  “Fifteen minutes?” asks Yin-Yin.

  “Fifteen minues,” the perky lady promises.

  Now they’re herding lots of old people into the dining room. The tables are pushed against the walls. It’s really scary. All the geezers are swinging their arms in the air and trying to wiggle their bottoms as music plays. Some of them look like they have no bottoms; others look like they have several. I can’t watch.

  The Roadrunners go to most of the school dances. Usually we just sit in the bleachers and look cool. Sometimes girls ask us to dance, and we do. I make sure that wherever I am dancing is really crowded so I don’t have to move around a lot. Gus goes wild on the dance floor. Tico’s more like me, though he’s famous for this one move, the Tico Tornado. Digger’s actually a really good dancer, even though he doesn’t look like he’d be. Stretch refuses all offers. Girls ask him the most.

  “Young man, please join us!”

  Oh no, oh no, oh no! Yin-Yin’s instructor is asking me to dance and all the old people are smiling at me. I think I’ve seen something like this in a horror movie.

  “Uh, no thank you.”

  The dance teacher twirls around and asks, “How can you say no to the cha-cha?”

  I have no clue how to cha-cha and I don’t want to find out. Without warning the music starts up and the old people are shuffling toward me with their arms out like zombies!

  “Gotta go,” I shriek.

  I run to Yin-Yin’s room and lock the door. That was close! I hope they don’t send one of those perky Vacation Village ladies to find me. I hate perky. Recently one of them tricked Yin-Yin into making a birdhouse. It’s on her coffee table. I pick it up and examine it. It looks like her old house, white with columns in the front and a green door. If I were a bird I’d be proud to live in a house like this.

  I’d like to be a bird. To be able to just fly away whenever I wanted. I know Yin-Yin hates being cooped up. She hasn’t said so — in fact, she’s getting better at pretending she likes it here. But I can’t forget the day she made me promise to help her run away. I’ll bet, if she could, Yin-Yin would fly right out of here.

  JULY 13, 11:23 A.M.

  I’m guarding Tico and we’re heading downcourt when Gus tries to get the ball from Stretch using my famous Stanford Shake ’n’ Bake move. Only Gus adds a pirouette like some sort of doofus ballerina and then trips over his own feet. We’re pushing each other around and laughing hysterically when Digger shows up.

  “What’s so funny?” he asks as he sets a bag down on the ground.

  “I’m Gus the ballerina basketball player,” Tico says, running in circles on tiptoes.

  Soon Stretch, Digger, and I are leaping and twirling all over the court. At first Gus tries to pretend we don’t exist, but soon he’s laughing and joins us. Some kids from school are watching, but we don’t care.

  When we finally get tired of prancing around, Digger retrieves his bag. “Guess what I got?”

  “Triple-decker tuna salad sandwiches on wheat?” asks Tico.

  “Does this look like a sandwich?” Digger pulls out a Roadrunners baseball cap and puts it on. His red hair sticks out from the sides.

  “Totally cool!” Gus says.

  “It’s yours,” Digger says, tossing him a cap.

  “Me too,” shouts Tico.

  “I’m in!” I add.

  Stretch nods and Digger gives one to each of us.

  “These are great,” says Tico.

  “They’re from my dad.” Digger doesn’t sound too happy, but no one else seems to notice.

  As we try the caps on, we grin at each other. We look good and we know it. No one would mistake us for ballerinas now. We’re the Roadrunners.

  JULY 15, 10:35 P.M.

  On Top Cop tonight, Top Cop’s long-lost girlfriend showed up and turned to him for help. Bad guys were after her because she had double-crossed them. Top Cop got the bad guys, but first they kidnapped his girlfriend and tossed her off a bridge. Bummer.

  I’ve never had a girlfriend. Digger has had lots of them, or so he claims. We’ve never seen any of them, though plenty of girls act like they’d rather shove pencils in their ears than talk to him. Tico has lots of girls after him. It’s because he’s nice. Girls seem to like that sort of thing. Ever since Stretch started growing and stopped talking, girls have been doing strange things when he’s around. Like they gather in small groups and walk back and forth in front of him a hundred times a day. I don’t think Stretch notices. If he does, he hasn’t mentioned it. (Ha-ha!)

  Gus and I talk about girls a lot, but we can’t figure them out. They are so confusing. Like, if you look at them, they get mad. And if you don’t look at them, they get mad. And if you’re nice to them, they think you like them. And if you’re mean to them, they think you like them. And if you do like them, they think you hate them.

  When I was in grade school, it was a lot easier to figure out if a girl like liked you. All you had to do was hit her. I don’t mean slug her, but just sort of hit lightly and laugh lightheartedly while you were doing it. If the girl hit you back and smiled, she like liked you. But if she screamed and then slugged you really hard or worse, kicked you, it meant that not only did she not like like you, she hated you, which automatically meant that all her friends did too.

  Girls stop by the park all the time and watch us play basketball. We pretend not to notice them, but Digger gets louder, Gus goofs off more, Tico smiles wider, and I stand taller. Only Stretch acts the same. I’m convinced they come to watch him the most.

  There are lots of kids at Rancho Rosetta Middle School who are boyfriend/girlfriend. It’s just sort of known who’s a couple. Only if you didn’t know who was together, then it would be impossible to tell. Being together doesn’t necessarily mean that the couple talk to each other or even sit together at lunch.

  From what Gus and Tico and I can figure, you can be boyfriend/girlfriend with someone and not even have to say anything to her. We’ve heard that sometimes all you have to do is nod at a girl and if she smiles back at you in a certain way, then that’s it. It’s official. In fact, we think that Gus once had a girlfriend, broke up with her, and then went out with her best friend, all without him even knowing it.

  Then there are the couples who want everyone to know they’re together. The girls write the boys’ names all over their notebooks and make a big deal about wearing their jackets, even when it’s hot. Some of the eighth graders hold hands and a few even kiss on campus. There’s this one couple that we nicknamed Rescue 911, because it looks like they are giving each other mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. All day long, all they do is kiss in the quad, near the big tree. They don’t seem to care who looks at them, and believe me, everybo
dy does. They have hickeys all over their necks, which, Gus swears, can kill you if it’s done wrong.

  None of us are really sure how to give (or get) a hickey. I’ve practiced on my arm, but it hasn’t worked. Digger says, “You just bite the girl’s neck, like a vampire.” Right, like he’d really know.

  There’s talk that all the Roadrunners have gone to second base with girls. We don’t deny the rumors. I’m not too clear on what second base is, but I’m too embarrassed to ask anyone. They’d probably laugh at me if they found out I’ve never even held hands with a girl before.

  I keep thinking about that girl who was with Millicent Min at the store. There was something about her. Maybe it was her sparkly eyes or that she looked right at me and smiled. I wouldn’t mind if she like liked me. That girl can slug me anytime.

  JULY 16, 4:05 P.M.

  Millicent is staring at me like I’m sort of alien. Who knows? Maybe I am an alien. After all, aliens live on planets, and Earth is a planet, and I live on Earth. So that makes me an alien, right?

  Sometimes I feel like an alien. Maybe I’m the leader of Planet Stanford, where we just float around all day and watch The Three Stooges.

  “Just try,” Millicent whines. “Just give the books a chance. Would that be so hard?”

  “I can’t,” I tell her. “Reading zaps my energy for important things like basketball.”

  “Well, what about your homework?” She sounds upset. Good. “What did Mr. Glick say about it? According to my chart, you’ve only completed sixty-seven percent of your homework so far this summer. Did you turn in your homework today?”

  “I did it, I swear,” I say. “But then, when I was going to school, there was this little brown dog and he was running away. Then Tico showed up on his skateboard, the red one, not the blue one, and he had to swerve to miss the dog. But instead of slowing down, the dog sped up, which was probably hard for him because he only had two legs. Instead of back legs, the dog had these two little wheels strapped to him, and they were spinning so fast …”

  I am beginning to actually get interested in my own story. Maybe I’ll tell stories for a living. “So then, the FedEx man is thanking me, but the dog is still running straight toward a bus when one of the dog’s wheels falls off —”

  “Enough!” Millicent commands, holding both hands out like she’s stopping traffic. “What does any of this have to do with your homework?”

  “What homework?”

  “Precisely what I’d like to know,” she snaps. “Here, read this. If you don’t start completing all your homework, I’m going to tell your parents. Honestly, Stanford, if you would just listen to me, you’d pass your class. Why can’t you just do what I tell you?”

  I snatch the book from her and pretend to read. Millie-the-Dog-Hater gets up to sharpen her pencils. She does that a lot. The words begin to blur on the page. I am so tired. This place just puts me to sleep. It’s so quiet in here. Maybe I ought to suggest to Mrs. Martinez that she play some music to liven things up.

  “Ouch!”

  “Wake up!” Millicent hisses. She kicks me again. I grab my leg. It really hurts. Millicent gives me a smug smile. Maybe since we aren’t discussing my “deplorable lack of academic ambition,” this would be a good time to ask her about that sparkly girl.

  “Who was that person you were with?” I try to sound casual.

  “What person? Stanford, as usual, I have no idea what you are blabbering about.”

  “The person with you at the drugstore the other day,” I remind her.

  Millicent tenses up, which surprises me. I didn’t think it was possible for her to get any more tense than she already was. “No one you know.”

  “She seemed nice. What’s her name?”

  “Emily,” Millicent mumbles.

  Emily’s a good name. I like that name. Stanford and Emily. Emily and Stanford. Yeah, that works.

  “Did she ask about me?”

  “No,” Millicent scoffs. “Though we did laugh when you set off the emergency alarm.”

  My jaw locks. I wonder what the penalty would be for dunking Millicent in the book-return bin. Hey, wait! “Emily seemed pretty cool,” I point out. “What’s she doing hanging around with a nerdling like you?”

  “Better me than you,” she shoots back.

  I know it’s a long shot, but here it goes. “Maybe you could introduce us?”

  “Maybe not.”

  I lean in and lower my voice. “Hey, Millicent. Remember, you promised not to tell anyone you’re tutoring me, right? I mean, if that girl or the guys ever found out, it could ruin my reputation.”

  I can tell she’s thinking about it. She did swear on her mother’s life, and if she broke the contract it could kill her mom. Should I remind her of that? That she’d be responsible for the death of her very own mother? I’ll bet there’s a law against that.

  “Well,” Millicent finally says, “I guess if it’s so important to you then I won’t mention it to her.”

  Wow! She’s going to do it. “Thanks,” I tell her. I never expected Millicent Min to help me out. Sometimes she’s okay, I guess. I remember this one time when we were little kids. I was in second grade and Millicent was in fourth or fifth on account of her being a genius. Even with all the noise on the playground, I could hear Digger yelling, “I see London, I see France, I see Bettina’s underpants!”

  “Excuse me!” Millicent called. I came out from behind my tree to watch her drag her briefcase to the climbing bars. “London is a city, whereas France is a country,” she corrected Digger. “So if you knew anything, you’d know that your song is inconsistent.”

  The playground went silent. Even back then, Digger had a reputation.

  That day at lunchtime Digger threw a Tater Tot at Millicent Min. He missed, but since she was sitting alone nobody got hit.

  “Hey, Mill the Pill, duck!” he shouted.

  The second one landed on her tray and made this popular girl Bettina and her friends giggle. Soon Millicent was being showered with Tater Tots. It took about forever, but when the lunch monitor finally figured out what was happening, she ordered both Digger and Millicent to Principal Powell’s office.

  Digger marched away, waving as the boys cheered. Millicent slumped over like a question mark, hugging her books and looking like she was going to cry. I remember feeling bad for her, but I didn’t do anything to make her feel better. The last thing I wanted was for Digger Ronster to beat me up. I didn’t even want him to look at me. We weren’t friends then. That would come later.

  The next day, Digger started throwing hamburger buns at Millicent. Every day, when the lunch monitor’s back was turned, he threw something else, like French fries or green beans. Digger never threw dessert, though. I guess he thought it wasn’t worth wasting his dessert on Millicent Min.

  After a while the kids got used to Digger throwing things at Millicent. But apparently she never did. One day the cafeteria was fairly calm when all of a sudden, boom! Digger’s covered with foam and the whole room’s laughing at him. That was the last time Millicent got sent to the principal’s office. Later I overheard my parents talking. Millicent got kicked out of school for rigging a salt shaker to explode. Lots of kids thought this was unfair, because Digger started it. Still, no one came to her defense.

  I have never told Millicent this, but I sort of admire her for what she did to him when we were little. It takes an awful lot of courage to stand up to Digger.

  JULY 19, 7:35 P.M.

  Exactly how many birdhouses can one person make? There must be at least eight of them here. Some are small, others are two-story numbers, and all are painted in bright colors. My favorite is on top of the television. There’s a small satellite dish on the roof of that one.

  Yin-Yin’s named her latest birdhouse “Family Reunion.” It has little photos of our family all over it and bits of jewelry and stuff.

  “These are cool,” I say, picking up a birdhouse that looks like
a log cabin.

  “They have a really nice arts and crafts teacher here, and the beauty shop is actually quite good.”

  Today my grandmother’s hair looks better than it did when she first arrived. She says she paid a visit to Mr. Arturo and he gave her a bob. I pretend to know what that means. “You look really pretty,” I tell her.

  Yin-Yin holds out her hand. I slip her the Sugar Babies. Mom’s down the hall trying to get someone to fix the TV.

  “Do you still shout at the television?” I ask.

  “Of course I do,” my grandmother states matter-of-factly. “That’s half the fun. Besides, everyone here is so old and hard of hearing it doesn’t bother them.”

  I guess Yin-Yin knows she’s in an old people’s home. I wasn’t sure if she knew, because she was so spacey when she first got here. Lately, though, she’s been more like the old Yin-Yin. The doctor says it’s because she’s “acclimating to her new environment.” I think it’s because she’s getting used to it here. With all of the old fogies hanging around, I wonder if Yin-Yin feels like one of them. Some walk; some are in wheelchairs. A lot of them have those metal rolling things they lean on. I want one of those. I’ll bet it would be fun to run up to one, grab the handles, lift up your feet, and sail away.

  “Do you still watch Top Cop?” Yin-Yin asks.

  I nod and examine one of the birdhouses. It’s shaped like a stove.

  “Caught any bad guys yet?” Yin-Yin gives me a wink. Only it looks more like a big squint. She’s never been good at winking. I keep telling her she needs to practice.

  My grandmother and I have this bet. Either she’s going to win a big prize or I’m going to catch a bad guy. Whoever reaches their goal first gets to make the other person do anything they want. I’m going to make her wear her underpants on her head. Yin-Yin says she’s going to make me kiss a girl. I wonder what it would be like to kiss Emily? Would she slug me really hard? Would she kiss me back?

  “Nope,” I tell Yin-Yin. “Haven’t caught any bad guys yet, but I will.” Stanford Wong, Top Cop’s Top Cop.