My Homework Ate My Homework

by Patrick Jennings

  “And how many times do I have to tell you that I don’t like responsibilities, or consequences?” I pinch my eyebrows together, which I know wrinkles my forehead, making me look filled with despair.

  “But you are showing so much more independence these days,” Mother says. “You help in the kitchen, and you clean your room.…”

  That’s true. I don’t mind helping in the kitchen when it means chopping or mixing or stirring. But I don’t like the washing or drying or putting away. I do not like taking out garbage or compost. And I guess I do keep my room pretty clean. It doesn’t look like an earthquake hit it, like my friend Wain’s does, that’s for sure. But then I don’t do a lot in here except rehearse in the mirror and sleep. I have a lot of costumes, but I have a big trunk to stuff them into.

  “For the most part, you’re being a good role model for Abby,” she goes on.

  “For the most part? Don’t I brush my teeth and make my bed? She doesn’t even have teeth. Or a bed! She doesn’t have to do anything. She doesn’t even go to the bathroom by herself!”

  “She really looks up to you, Zee. I’d like her not to make excuses when she loses something, or blame other people. Like your glasses, or the necklace you borrowed from me?”

  It’s the old bait and switch. She hooks me with compliments, then starts complaining.

  “I’m sorry about the necklace.” I cast my eyes down. “I left it in the bathroom. Someone else probably knocked it into the sink. And I’ve been looking everywhere for the glasses.”

  “They were very expensive, Zee. We bought them because you need them.”

  “I know,” I say, and slouch. I do feel a little bad about this, even though I know exactly where they are. They aren’t lost; they’re hidden. I don’t want to wear glasses. Actors only wear them onstage, as part of a costume.

  “Here’s the thing. Bandito already ruined my vacation. Now he ruined my math homework, and I don’t want to spend the little time I have left doing math. I want to enjoy my time off. I deserve it.”

  “But—” she starts to say. I cut her off.

  “I’m sure Mr. O. will understand. I’m sure he’ll count the homework even though I can’t turn it in. What matters is that I did it, right? That I understand it?” Of course, I didn’t do it or understand it.

  I pause, awaiting Mother’s verdict. She musses my hair, a good sign, then stands up.

  “You can take it up with Mr. O. after the break if you like. But if you don’t get a passing grade this semester, there will be—”

  “Consequences. So I’ve heard.”

  Mother leaves and, because she doesn’t close the door behind her again, Abalina crawls in.

  “Zuzza!” she says. “Zuzza! Fur!”

  “He’s not—oh, never mind. Come here.”

  I hold my arms out, and she crawls to me across the carpet. Then she rolls back onto her huge, diapered butt. She wobbles when she sits, like she’s a gigantic egg turned up on its end. I reach out for her fat little hands and she latches onto my thumbs. The kid has an iron grip.

  “Okay, Abalina, stand up,” I say, and tug a little. “Uppy.”

  She pulls my thumbs and rises up to her feet. She’s wearing a pale yellow onesie with a picture of a bright red ladybug on it. CUTE AS A BUG it reads in curly letters. Her fat thighs stick out of the leg holes. How will her little feet ever hold up so much weight?

  “It’s time you learned to walk,” I say, and start slowly pulling my thumbs free.

  She giggles, then her body folds in the middle. Her diaper swings forward, but, before it hits me, she straightens up and the diaper swings back.

  “Dah!” she says.

  This is her idea of dancing.

  “Yeah, dancing. But I’m going to let go now, Abby, so stop dancing.”

  She doesn’t. She probably only heard the word dancing and thinks I’m encouraging her.

  “Look, kid, I’m your role model. You’ve seen me walk, right? Now you do it. It’s easy. Ready? Walk!”

  “Wah!”

  “No, with a K at the end, Abby—Walk!”

  “Wah!”

  “Fine, have it your way. I’m going to let go. Ready? Wah!”

  Instead of letting go, she grips my thumbs tighter. I try a different tactic.

  “Clap, Abby!”

  She claps, which, of course, means she lets go of my thumbs. I tricked her into standing up by herself. If I tell her she’s standing, she’ll freak out and fall right on her huge butt. That’s what she always does.

  But I can’t help myself.

  “You’re standing!” I say, and applaud.

  She stops laughing and stands there a second, staring at me with her gooey mouth open. Then she looks down at the floor, and down she goes. Air puffs out of her big diaper.

  I clap louder. “Yay, Abby! You stood up!”

  She smiles and claps back. “Uppy!”

  “Yeah!” I say. “You stood uppy! All by yourself! Want to do it again?”

  She stops smiling and points at Bandito’s cage. “Fur!” She’s changing the subject. She doesn’t want to stand up anymore.

  “You want to see the fur? Okay, come on.”

  I hoist her off the ground, stagger over to my desk, and plop her into my chair. She loves riding in my desk chair, so I give her some zigzags and spins on the way to the cage.

  “Fur!” she says.

  Bandito clucks.

  This makes her totally crack up. Her giggling sounds like a machine gun in a bubble bath: HUH GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH! [big breath] HUH GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH-GUH! It cracks me up, too.

  When we’ve calmed down, I roll her over to my rolltop desk and take out a box of stroopwafels from a cubby.

  “Key! Key!” Abby says.

  “I keep telling you they’re not cookies. They’re stroopwafels.”

  I hand her the box, then roll her back to the cage.

  “I know you didn’t eat my stroopwafels,” I say to Bandito, as I pull one out of the box. “I know there was nothing left in my pocket but crumbs.”

  “Key!” Abby says with her hand out. Her arms are so short. They barely reach over her head.

  “I don’t know about giving you a cookie. It’s close to dinnertime.”

  She tilts her head and makes a little pout.

  Maybe I’m her role model after all.

  “Peas?” she asks. That’s her please.

  “Okay, but only one.”

  Now, like I said, stroopwafels are expensive, almost a dollar each, which is why my parents won’t buy them for me. I have to buy them myself, with my own money. I don’t get an allowance, so I have to rely on money I rake in from relatives on my birthday and Christmas and stuff. My mother makes me put most of that in a bank account for college, but she does graciously allow me to keep a tiny bit of my own money to buy things I need, like stroopwafels.

  I’m not crazy about the thought of wasting one on a baby who would be just as happy with a Nilla Wafer, so I break one in half. Then I break it in half again and hand her a piece. A quarter of a stroopwafel is more than enough for a baby. She snatches it in her iron grip, stuffs it in her mouth, and starts sucking on it.

  I stuff the other quarter through the bars to Bandito. I don’t know why. Maybe to entertain Abby. Maybe because I feel bad that I accused him of stealing from me when I knew he didn’t. If someone did that to me, I would be so mad and would demand at least a quarter of a stroopwafel.

  Bandito creeps cautiously toward it, sniffs it, knocks it around with his paw, then turns and creeps away.

  I can’t say I’m disappointed. I prefer he doesn’t like stroopwafels. And I like the way he made Abby and me laugh. Maybe he’s not so hideous after all.

  It may be a new year, but it’s the same old school year. I’m still in fifth grade, I’m still behind, and Mr. O. is still being difficult.

  “I appreciate your taking good care of Bandito,” Mr. O. says, “and I’m sorry he ate your homework, but I can’t
give you a passing grade in math without the completed assignments.”

  “But it isn’t my fault my homework ate my homework!”

  “That was amusing the first time you said it, Zaritza,” he says without laughing, or even smiling, “but it doesn’t explain why Bandito was able to eat your homework. How did he access it? If he was out of his cage, he should have been with you, under your supervision. How could he have chewed through pages of math homework without your noticing?”

  “He’s fast! He just—zzzoom!—got my notebook and before I could stop him—chomp! chomp! chomp!—chewed it to bits!”

  “If that’s true, why didn’t you simply redo the assignments? Considering you’d already completed them, doing them again should have been a snap.” And he snapped his fingers.

  Mr. O.’s a pretty nice teacher, but he gets like this: logical, detail-oriented, nosy. Like a lawyer. Or a mother. He can never just accept what I tell him and leave it at that.

  “I didn’t have time! Bandito ate them yesterday!” Which isn’t true, but what difference does a day or two make? “Then my baby sister, Abalina, got very ill. Really ill.” I almost said “deathly ill,” but stopped myself. I feel bad enough pretending Abby is sick, when she isn’t. “We’re not sure what it is yet. But my sick, crying baby sister definitely affected my ability to concentrate.”

  I stare off into the distance. Staring off into the distance is good when you want to look like you’re really upset about something. It’s like you’re so upset you don’t even notice reality. Actually, I was staring at Bandito, who didn’t seem happy to be back at school. I was with him on that.

  “So you don’t have your homework, which you promised to turn in today, because the ferret ate it,” Mr. O. says. “And you didn’t redo it because your sister got sick. Is that your story, Zaritza?”

  “No, it’s not my story. It’s the truth.” Though it isn’t.

  “I’m sorry, then,” he says, shaking his head. “No credit for the homework.”

  “Listen,” I say, and lean forward and set my palms on his desk. “Why don’t you just tell me what I have to do, and I’ll do it.”

  “Your homework,” he says, then he blinks three times. Blinking three times is Mr. O.’s way of saying you knew what he’d say before you asked. “Including the assignments I give you today.”

  “I mean, besides doing my homework. Can’t I do some extra credit or something?”

  “Extra credit is available only to students who have turned in all their work.”

  “You were going to let me use watching Bandito over the break as extra credit, and I didn’t have all of my homework turned in.”

  I knew when I started that sentence it wasn’t going to work out, but thought I’d see where it led me. In a way, I had him, because he broke his own extra credit rule, but in another way, I didn’t have him, because he broke his own extra credit rule making a deal that was supposed to help me.

  “It was only going to be extra credit if you finished your homework, Zaritza, which you didn’t do. But I’ll give you till Friday to turn in your work. All your work. The homework you didn’t finish and the new homework. You’ll receive no higher than a passing grade for the past due homework, but you can score higher on the current homework, of course, if you complete it on time. You can work during recess and lunch. I’m happy to find you a tutor if you want. And, of course, you can work on it at home.”

  I blinked at him five times, my brand-new way of saying I thought he was crazy.

  “I was thinking something more like washing the whiteboard for a week. You know how much I hate washing the whiteboard.”

  I think it’s fun, actually. I just pretend to hate it. That’s called “reverse psychology.” You pretend to hate things you like so the adults will use it as punishment. It doesn’t work very often, but it’s always worth a shot in a desperate situation. Like this one.

  “Zaritza, you should know something,” he says, looking at me seriously.

  “So that’s a ‘no’ to the whiteboard washing?”

  “As you know, the Laramie Traveling Children’s Theater Troupe is coming to our school to stage a play with our class next week.”

  Know? “Of course, I know! I’ve been counting down the days all year. I can’t wait to land the lead role in this year’s production. I’ve already watched the movie Calamity Jane four times.”

  He just nods at me. And that’s when I get what he’s telling me. The horrible thing he’s telling me. I clutch my heart and howl, “No!”

  Everybody looks up at me.

  “I’m afraid students with non-passing grades are not allowed to participate,” Mr. O. whispers. “And without the math homework, you won’t pass.”

  “You don’t mean it! You’re joking, right? Tell me you’re joking!”

  He blinks three times.

  “Doesn’t he know the show will flop without you?” Wain asks.

  “Apparently not,” I say. “I ask you, what does math have to do with theater?”

  Wain shrugs sympathetically. He sits next to me in class and is a big fan of my work. He sees himself as an actor, too, but knows that one day I will be a big star of stage and screen and that, at best, he’ll play supporting roles.

  I don’t mean to be mean. Wain is just pretty ordinary. He has ordinary short brown hair, and an ordinary face, and an ordinary voice, and ordinary charisma. He even dresses ordinarily. About the only thing unordinary about him is his name, Wainwright, but, of course, he goes by the more ordinary Wain.

  “You must be in the play,” he whispers, his eyes shiny with devotion.

  I consider asking him to let me copy his homework, but Mr. O would see right through that old trick. Wain’s penmanship is tiny and perfect, while mine is bold and sweeping, like me, and the movie Titanic.

  Besides, it would mean having to write out all the answers for all the assignments. That’s a lot of answers. Plus I’d have to show my work—or, in this case, Wain’s work.

  “No, we’ll have to come up with something else.”

  “So what do I do?” I ask.

  “How about we go over Mr. O.’s head? Take it up with Ms. Tsots. She loves the arts.”

  Ms. Tsots is pretty arty for a principal. She wears sparkly cat’s-eye glasses and colorful vintage dresses. She has a bumper sticker that says ART SAVES LIVES, which I don’t really get. I mean, exactly how does it do that?

  “That’s not a bad idea,” I say.

  “Come in, Zaritza!” Ms. Tsots says like I’m her niece and she hasn’t seen me in ten years. She’s like that with everyone. Perky and positive in an over-the-top way. I think it’s a performance. No one’s like that in real life.

  “Thank you!” I say, just as perky.

  “So how can I help you today, Zaritza!” she says with this huge smile. She has a really big mouth, filled with really big teeth, which I’m pretty sure she had whitened. They’re as shiny and white as our toilet at home. That’s a pretty gross simile, but it’s true.

  She sits down behind her desk and gestures for me to sit in one of the guest chairs. I do, then go into my pitch.

  “I came to tell you how super excited I am about the Laramie Traveling Children’s Theater Troupe coming next week, and to say thank you so much for inviting them!”

  “You came here to celebrate?” She gasps like adults usually do when I do something good, like it’s a big shock to them. “Thank you, Zaritza Dalrymple! Thank you! It’s so refreshing and gratifying to have a student come in here just to applaud one of our programs! Especially one of our arts programs! You know what an enthusiastic supporter I am of the arts!”

  “Art saves lives!” I say.

  “Exactly! It certainly does! Thank you, Zaritza!” She pops out of her chair and walks around her desk to me. “Now please forgive me, sweetheart, but I’ve got an exceptionally busy schedule this morning, so I’m going to have to scoot you on your way. But, again, thank you so much for dropping in to say ‘Yay!’ ”
/>   “There is another teeny matter I wanted to discuss with you, Ms. Tsots. It won’t take a teeny second.”

  “Oh?” She glances at her watch. “Okay, but be quick.” She leans back and sits on the very edge of her desk.

  I swallow hard, like what I’m about to say is so painful that even speaking about it is difficult.

  “It’s too bad ……” I hang my head. “… that I …… won’t be able to participate in the play.” I bury my face in my hands.

  “Oh, no!” she says. “What a pity. I remember you in Little Pig! Little Pig! You have great talent.”

  “Thank you,” I say into my hands. Her compliment sends electricity through me—I love praise!—but I hide it. I’m playing grief-stricken here and must stay in character. “You see, I’m … well … a bit behind in my math right now … and so Mr. O. has decided I can’t participate in this once-in-a-lifetime theatrical event if I don’t catch up.” I peek up at her, pitifully.

  “I’m certain Mr. Osojnicki made his decision fairly. He’s a fine teacher. And classwork does comes before special programs.…”

  “I offered to do extra credit. I took care of the class pet all during my winter break. And I really did my best to make up the work. Really, I did! Unfortunately, Bandito—he’s our class pet, a ferret—well, he …” I choke up. “… he chewed up my math homework!”

  I try producing faux tears, but I feel too rushed, so I consider trying the my-homework-ate-my-homework line on her. It didn’t go over so well with Mr. O. It sounded rehearsed, which made it sound like an excuse. A lie.

  I glance up at Ms. Tsots. She’s showing signs of ending this discussion and leaving. I decide to give it a shot. It can’t hurt.

  “That’s right,” I say, shaking my head with faux disbelief. “My homework ate my homework!” Then I sell it with an exaggerated, palms-up shrug.

  “HA!” she blasts so loud I almost swallow my tongue. “You are too much, Zaritza Dalrymple! Too … much!”

  That’s more like it. Ms. Tsots gets me.

  But then she stands up and straightens her skirt and her smile vanishes. “I’m sorry, Zaritza, but this is your teacher’s call. Now I really must get to my meeting.”