by Jody Feldman
This is your first and last warning.
My teeth vibrate. I’ve never gotten a yellow card in a soccer game. I play hard but fair. I don’t cheat. I don’t hog the ball. I don’t trip anyone or even try. The goal is to win, and that means being a team and working together and not accusing innocent people.
I bite on my finger to stop my teeth from shaking. “Ahh!”
Great. Mrs. Pinchon comes in mid-scream. “Travis?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, “but I’m really angry.”
She sit-leans at the front of her desk. “Go on.”
“Why? Nothing’s gonna change.”
She looks as if she’d lean there all year, waiting for me to talk.
“For one thing, why’d you have to summon me over the intercom? I can handle people calling me Johnny Flood, but calling me over the intercom? That makes me look guilty.”
Mrs. Pinchon wheels her chair from behind her desk to the front. She sits. “When police work to solve a crime,” she says, her voice too calm, “they speak with anyone who might have knowledge of or potential involvement in the case. They will bring innocent people into the station to ask them questions in order to get at the truth.”
“But you didn’t have to handcuff me in front of the whole school.”
“You do have a vivid imagination, Mr. Raines.”
“Well, it felt like that.”
“I understand,” she says. “But if you look at it from our perspective, we had good reason to suspect you. You knew about the toilet paper, and Mr. McKenzie saw you with the carton.”
“I didn’t see him.”
“Your head was inside.”
“Because it was already empty. That proves I didn’t do it.”
She shakes her head. “The police could argue you were making sure you used it all. Or you were reaching in for the last rolls.”
I throw my hands into the air. “Let people believe what they want. I know the truth.”
“Yes, you do,” she says. “That’s what’s important.”
Why doesn’t it feel that way? “Can I ask you something?”
Mrs. Pinchon has started to roll her chair away, but she turns back.
“If someone like my friend Kip had the same knowledge and opportunity I had, would you have called him over the loudspeaker? Would people be calling him Johnny Flood?”
She doesn’t say anything right away. “Fair question.”
I should remember phrases like that when I need to stall for an answer.
“Under the exact circumstances? Kip being who he is? It may not be fair, but I have an inkling we’d have handled it differently.” She shakes her head. “You have a strong spirit, Travis. You just need to find a way to haul it in a bit.”
“Fine.” There’s not much more I can say.
I pull out my social studies book and wonder what it feels like to be Kip, who would keel over if he dreamed about dumping a single roll of toilet paper into one toilet. How does a person get to be that way? Not that I’d want to be Kip, but maybe knowing how his brain works could help me haul in my spirit. Or kill it, and reinvent me as Travis Raines the Perfect.
And Travis Raines the Perfect would not be filling in the Os in his social studies book with his pencil. Especially if he’s on his last chance to stay in The Legend.
I pull out a full eraser—less chance of ripping the page—and make my scribbles invisible. I wish it worked that way in real life. I’d make a fortune selling giant erasers. Just to myself.
At 5:20, Mrs. Pinchon tells me to visit my locker before she takes me home.
The only good thing to come from detention is I finish all my homework for the weekend so I can dump off my books. And yes! There’s another envelope. The big shiny kind.
That’s gotta mean I’m still in. Right?
CHAPTER 13
Hoo-hah! We have a puzzle.
It’s after dinner, the first chance I have to open this envelope. The second I got home, my mom drove us straight to a new Chinese restaurant. We didn’t have the carryout menu, so we ordered there, came home, and ate. And now I have coin number two and a new puzzle.
I am toward the edge of the river,
In the midst of the tropical tree,
At the very start of the island,
But never inside of the sea.
Tack a representative of me onto the bulletin board next to the drama room.
Deadline: Tuesday, end of school.
Don’t let anyone see you do this.
“There’s the representative thing again, Curry.” We’re on my bedroom floor, and she’s leaning against my leg. “Glad they didn’t ask me to tack a trash can onto a bulletin board.”
It could be worse. Watch this answer be sofa. How would I get a sofa up there? A toy sofa? Like from a dollhouse? Or…
I almost slap myself upside the head. “I didn’t have to spend all that money, Curry. Or get into trouble with Mom. Or ask Mrs. Pinchon for a favor. Or volunteer for detention Monday morning. I could’ve shoved a picture of a trash can into that locker.”
At least I won’t get into trouble this time, if I can figure out the answer. But how do I solve this thing? The locker was easy. It was math. And the trash can? Okay. So I didn’t know how to solve that, but I did it. How’d I do it?
Maybe if I take this one line at a time. I am toward the edge of the river.
What’s at the edge of the river? Which river? The Mississippi? I know that one, the edge of it, too. “Remember, Curry? Remember when Dad took us to the cobblestone levee. We looked at the paddle wheelers and skipped rocks into the river? And I wanted to pretend you were a seeing-eye dog so we could take you to the top of the Arch?”
Bad idea, then. No ideas from the first line of this puzzle now.
Second line: In the midst of the tropical tree.
Like a palm tree? With fronds and coconuts? All of which are not on any river I know.
Line three: At the very start of the island.
Where does an island start? Where does a bagel start? “Or your water bowl, Curry?”
Line four: But never inside of the sea.
Wait a minute. Seas are filled with islands. Islands can have palm trees and rivers. And none of this makes sense. None of it.
If someone wants me in the group, they should yank me from behind, drag me to a deserted room and say, “You’re part of The Legend. Now let’s have fun.” What does solving puzzles prove? I had to qualify to get this far. Shouldn’t that be enough?
My hands itch. They want to wad up the paper and forget all this. For three reasons. One: I am not Cambridge. If people think they’re recruiting some genius, they’re delusional. Two: If I have to keep a secret from everyone I know—except Curry, who doesn’t talk back—we’re all in trouble. And I don’t want to think about three, that if I can’t solve these puzzles then I really must be Johnny Flood the Worthless.
That’s what stops me from walking away. Plus someone thinks I’m good enough for this test. And if that someone’s The Legend, I’m here.
Maybe my brain’ll think of another idea if I’m not thinking about the puzzle. Instead I can…what? I can’t watch TV or play computer or video games. My mom would play cards if I wanted, but she’s all happy on the couch watching her show and reading a magazine at the same time.
I decide to make her happier and ask to start my weekend chores tonight.
She gushes like I gave her a diamond necklace or saved the world from monsoons. And even though I find myself standing at the living room window with a bottle of Windex and a stack of newspaper, which she says wipes the glass cleaner than paper towels, it’s not so bad because I’m actually accomplishing what I’m supposed to.
The next morning I power wash the garage door, which I do three times a year to get rid of my soccer ball marks. Next, I pick up the foam packing peanuts I knocked over in the basement last month. That’s fun because I launch handfuls of them toward the garbage bag and see how few make it. After lunch my m
om gives me a break, and I get to go with her to the airport to pick up my dad, who’s coming home from Japan. First we take a detour to the library.
She lets me use the computer there—for school, I tell her. It sort of is. I type The Legend poem into a search engine, which is a waste of time. Most entries for “toward the edge of the river” are from nobody bloggers who walked to the edge of one.
For “tropical trees” I keep picturing monkeys until I discover they might jump into the sea if they’re in danger. Other birds and animals fit every line, but which one would I choose?
All this research is hurting my brain, but I can’t exactly let my mom catch me playing computer games. Idea! And it’s school related. The Legend’s web page!
It’s no secret there’s a link on the Lauer Middle School home page to a Legend page. It’s just the group symbol, and all it says is “The Legend Lives!” But what if that’s not all?
I pull up the black page with the blue words and symbol. I move the cursor around and click every piece of blue just in case. Nothing. But it feels good to click and click and click some more. And I keep clicking even when my mom calls my name and I swivel around.
She’s waving her cell phone. “Dad’s plane landed. Let’s go.”
I turn back to sign off the computer and—
Wow! There’s more on The Legend screen. A whole mess of writing. How’d it get here?
“Mom. Two minutes, please?”
The way she shakes her head, I can’t change her mind.
“Can I at least print?”
“C’mon.”
I take a quick look at the screen, long enough to read:
It was all Mrs. Blumeyer’s fault.
The pranks.
The punishment.
The Legend.
CHAPTER 14
No matter how creative I get all weekend, I can’t convince my mom to let me on the computer. Then when I try to concentrate on the puzzle, I can’t get my mind off birds and animals. At least the chores don’t make me completely crazy. Just crazy enough so that I’m dreaming a chimp and I are painting skylight glass when the phone wakes me up.
It’s 6:28 on Monday morning, but our phone rings at all sorts of weird hours, with my mom running the engineering business and my dad doing work overseas.
My dad comes to my door, still on the phone, still looking jet-lagged. “Hold on, please.” He lowers the phone against his chest. “It’s Mrs. Pinchon. She can’t pick you up this morning.”
“Hoo-hah. I can ride my bike.”
My dad shakes his head, barely able to hold it up. “Someone needs to take you. Mom’s leaving in a minute, so it’s either me or some Mr. McKenzie, who’s going in early to open up. You know him?”
“He’s fine,” I say. For a snitch.
Why can’t my dad be wide awake? Or even better, why can’t Mrs. Pinchon send that Lookout Transportation Services bus with the couch seats? I guess this isn’t reward time.
I wait outside with my bike, but when Mr. McKenzie pulls up in his black sports car, I know it won’t fit. Before I turn back to the garage, though, he pops open the trunk. “Let’s do this,” he says. Then he maneuvers blankets and ropes to protect both my bike and the car.
We get in, and the way he’s smiling at me, I know I won’t like what he’s about to say.
“So, first thing, Travis, we need to clear the air and discuss toilet paper,” he says. “Not how many times I had to sink elbow-deep into germ-ridden toilets…”
And blah-blah-blah. I want to cover my ears and not listen to the rest of his accusations.
“But after I told Mrs. Pinchon I saw your head in that box, I realized something. I was fixing a sink in the front hall boys’ room right before that, so unless you’re Superman, I told her, there’s no way you could have personally hit that bathroom.”
“I didn’t. Not any of them.”
“Sorry I jumped to conclusions, kid. If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you…”
“You can,” I say, getting an idea. “And no germs involved. Just tell me what you know about The Legend.”
“Oh no,” he says. “You’re not getting those secrets from me.”
“You know their secrets?”
He laughs. “Actually, none at all.”
“But you help set up for Events, right? Someone has to tell you what to do.”
“That information all comes in blue envelopes or through e-mail. Anonymously. And even if I had vital information—well, I know how to keep big secrets.” He shifts in his seat. “So let’s just say I owe you one and change the subject.”
“Not back to toilet paper.”
He laughs again. “How about cars? Do you like this one?”
“It’s expensive, isn’t it?”
He nods. “Which is why I do home repairs after hours. Tell your parents. I can always use the extra bucks, and there’s rarely enough overtime pay at school.”
Overtime pay? Did he flood the bathrooms himself so he could work overtime?
I want to ask, but there’s no way to do that without sounding like a brat or accusing him or worse. He could deny it then set me up again. I pretend-smile instead.
His sandy brown mustache goes up at the corners, raising his matching goatee, like we’re buddies now. Which we’re not.
We get to school, and Mr. McKenzie helps me get my bike out, lets me into the building, unlocks Mrs. Pinchon’s darkened office, then leaves me there.
I reach for the light switch, but I kinda like it dark. I spin in Mrs. Pinchon’s big chair and pretend I’m her laying into Randall. “For making Travis do dangerous deeds, it’s time to taste your own medicine. You’ll climb the flagpole and balance on top, standing on one leg for three hours, drinking two gallons of water. And you’re not allowed to pee. Then you’ll leap onto the school roof and run across the top in five seconds or get mauled by a pack of wolves. The only way down is to jump, so if you break every bone in your body, it’s your own fault.”
That’d serve him right. Not only for taking Kip’s cap, but for elbowing my lunch tray on spaghetti day in fifth grade. When the teachers were looking, he stooped down with the other oafs and pretended to help me clean it up. The only thing he cleaned up was my $5.85 in change. No matter how much I yelled at him, he swore he didn’t take it. Marco saw him, though.
My flagpole punishment would make up for him basically harassing me my whole life.
I smile and lay my head on Mrs. Pinchon’s desk. Problem. With the lights off and the chair so comfortable, I might fall asleep. I need to move.
I open Mrs. Pinchon’s top drawer and use a black Sharpie on a neon orange note.
Mrs. Pinchon,
I went to my locker to get my books for first hour. I’ll be back in five minutes.
Travis
I jam the note into my pocket. There’s no neon orange anything on top of her desk. She’ll know I opened her drawer. I write the same note with my stuff.
I figure I have at least seven minutes.
The fastest way to my locker means turning left. I turn right and walk to the end of the hall then turn left and…Why am I walking? The halls are deserted, and Mr. McKenzie’s my new buddy. I jog down the hall. I sprint up the back stairs. I race a half lap around, then slide down the handrail of the stairs on the other side. I zoom around the school two more times and slide down the banister four more and see the librarian coming out of the library. I slow down until she clears the hallway. Idea!
I slip into the media center, access The Legend page, then click everywhere. I click the corners, I click the sides, I click every blue letter and every corner of the symbol. I even look away like I did on Saturday when I happened to hit the right spot. Nothing. I need a system.
I start at the lower left-hand corner and click in a straight line across the bottom of the screen. I move slightly higher and click another straight line. And another. And another. And…
Bingo! Black screen. Lots of blue writing.
> It was all Mrs. Blumeyer’s fault.
The pranks.
The punishment.
The Legend.
If she hadn’t been such a legendary teacher, herself…
if she’d disappeared midyear instead of announcing her departure two months before the fact…
then none of this would have happened,
and none of this would exist.
For better or for worse.
THE PLAN
The seven students involved called it The Blu Plan, but they never agreed on one best way to persuade Mrs. Blu to finish out the school year. They did agree to disagree and to act simultaneously upon their disagreements. One dewy November morning long before sunrise, each of the seventh graders showed up ready to carry out his or her mission.
THE PRANKS
Prank #1 Perpetrated by Amy Williams (now a business owner), who wrapped all the grammar and reading books from Mrs. Blu’s room in blue construction paper and arranged them on the grass outside the classroom window so they spelled DON’T LEAVE, MRS. BLU.
Prank #2 Perpetrated by Pat Bryan (now our assistant district attorney), who attached a set of blue “jail bars” across the window of her classroom door.
Prank #3 Perpetrated by Chase Maclin (now a singer/songwriter), who broke into the broadcast room and programmed an original song, “The Blumeyer Blues,” to play continuously over the school speaker system.
Prank #4 Perpetrated by Lydia March (now a White House reporter), who constructed a blue cage around Mrs. Blu’s desk and chair, complete with door and lock.
Prank #5 Perpetrated by Susan Stein (now a university math professor), who set one thousand clear plastic, water-filled cups outside the school’s front door, then added blue food coloring to strategic cups so the word stay was visible from above.
Prank #6 Perpetrated by Dan Fletcher (now a video game creator), who programmed the school computer network so all screens booted up with a solid blue background and the continuously streaming words MRS. BLU MUST STAY!
Prank #7 Perpetrated by Griffin Barnett (now an IT consultant), who plastered the halls with 500 blue-paper, photocopied Wanted posters of Mrs. Blu.