Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie

by David Lubar

  Whenever he asked me to hand him a tool, it took me about three tries to find the right one.

  Once in a while, Dad would point to some part of the engine and explain what he was doing. I’d nod and try to say something that showed I was interested. Once in a while, I’d hold up my book and explain about some cool part I’d just read. Dad would nod and say, “That’s interesting.” I didn’t offer to read to him. That didn’t feel like a guy thing.

  Mom was worried about Bobby, but he’d called when everyone was out and left a message saying he was visiting friends in Ohio, so at least we knew where he was. Dad had already stopped by the diner to let them know Bobby wouldn’t be showing up for work.

  In school, the halls started to fill up with hand-lettered posters. Five kids were running for freshman-class president. Including Julia. The other candidates were dorks, so there was no way she’d lose.

  Maybe she could do something about crime when she got elected. After being careful for nearly a month, I forgot to wrap up my change in my backpack. Just when I realized my pocket was jingling, Wesley Cobble approached me for a donation.

  I’m not a complete wimp, and it’s not like I’ll never stand up for myself, but Wesley is flat-out scary. He isn’t the biggest kid in the school. A lot of the football players are bigger. The thing is, he has this look in his eyes like he really doesn’t care what happens to him. There’s no way to predict how he’ll react to something. If I told him he couldn’t have my change, he might just shrug and walk off. Or he might punch me and kick me until there was nothing left but painful memories and calcium dust.

  I wish I could lock Wesley and Vernon in a room and let them destroy each other. At the moment, all I could do was try to avoid him, and make a note on the subject for the benefit of others. I pulled out my notebook and wrote a quick list. The funny thing is that by the time I was finished, I felt a lot better.

  Scott Hudson’s Guide for Spotting Unpredictable People

  They have dried blood on their clothes.

  Their tattoos are scarier than most horror movies.

  They ask questions for which there is no safe answer, like “What are you looking at?”

  They tend not to have a huge circle of friends.

  Patrick, on the other hand, remained painfully predictable. He was always trying to talk me into stuff. “You should run,” he said, pointing to the student-council sign-up sheet on the bulletin board.

  “You’ve got to be crazy,” I said.

  “Hey, I’m serious. There are just eight kids signed up for council. And three spots. You’d have a chance.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. The whole thing is a popularity contest. Even if I did have a chance, why in the world would I want to be on the student council? I don’t even know what they do.”

  Patrick grinned at me. “Because the council meets with the class president.”

  I tried not to let my face show that I’d taken a shot to the gut. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not blind. I see you drooling whenever Julia moves into sight. I can hear your heart beat from the other side of the building. Can’t blame you. She’s pretty hot.”

  “No way. I’m just …”

  Patrick stared right at me, still grinning. I couldn’t lie to him. “God, is it that obvious?”

  He shrugged. “I doubt anyone else around here cares whether your tongue is hanging out. Except maybe the guy who cleans the floors.”

  A thought hit me, along with a second blow to the stomach. “You think Kyle noticed?” I could see him torturing me with that information. Or maybe torturing Julia with it. Or—oh, my God—mentioning it to Vernon just for fun. When we were little, it was always Kyle who did the worst damage to anthills and spiderwebs.

  “Not a chance. He’s too busy noticing himself.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Look. It’s no big deal. I think she’s cute. But there are plenty of cute girls. A whole school full of them. And she doesn’t even notice me, anyhow. It’s really nothing.”

  Patrick tapped the board. “Your choice. But if it was me, I’d go for it. What do you have to lose?”

  October 3

  I decided to run for student council. I think it could be an interesting experience. After all, what have I got to lose?

  I finished The Outsiders. It was good. Started reading Ender’s Game. Another weird title. Which, as we’ve seen, might promise good things to come.

  Oh, you probably figured out Ema Nekaf by now. If not, read it backward.

  Friday morning, I was walking into the building with Mouth when I saw Wesley strolling down the hall. I slowed up and let Mouth get ahead. He didn’t even seem to notice that I wasn’t there. He just kept walking and talking.

  When Wesley reached him, they had a brief conversation. Then Mouth handed over his money. I stepped into a classroom and waited until Wesley went past. On the way down the hall, I saw Mouth at his locker. I almost kept going, but I felt sort of bad for him.

  “Need lunch money?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I guess I do. How’d you know? I had money, but I ran into this guy who asked me for some, and my mom always says it’s better to give than receive, so I figured that was what I should do. But maybe not, because doesn’t that mean that the other guy is receiving? So it’s not better for him. Right?”

  I handed him a couple bucks. He followed me down the hall all the way to homeroom and kept thanking me. I was glad I didn’t give him more. He probably would have asked if we could become blood brothers.

  Later, he even came over to our lunch table and sat down so he could thank me some more and show me how wisely he’d used my money.

  “Seat’s taken,” Kyle said, cutting into Mouth’s monologue.

  Mouth moved to another seat. I glanced across to the popular girls’ table. The new kid with the green hair was sitting there again. I guess girls handle things differently than guys.

  “That one’s taken, too,” Kyle said.

  Mouth got up. “No problem. I don’t have time to hang out right now, anyhow. I have to work on my speech. How’s yours coming, Scott?”

  My gut clenched with a ripple of panic as I wondered whether I’d forgotten about a homework assignment. “What speech?”

  “For student council. You know, we have to make a speech next Tuesday. All the candidates.”

  “Are you serious?” I’d never given a speech.

  Mouth nodded.

  I looked over at Patrick. “Did you know about this?”

  He shrugged. “Why should I? I’m not running.”

  Oh man. I tried to picture myself standing in front of the whole class. I felt like someone was kneeling on my throat.

  “What’s going on?” Kyle asked.

  “Scott’s running for student council,” Patrick said.

  Kyle snorted.

  “So am I,” Mouth said. “Which is good. Because you get three votes. So you can vote for me and Scott, and still have a vote left over for someone else.”

  “Going to the game tonight?” I asked Kyle, in a desperate effort to change the subject.

  “No way. I’ve given up on that.”

  I wish I could have given up on football. But I had no choice. Worse, it was an away game. I rode there after school with the band. I could have gone on the players’ bus, but that would have been suicide. I didn’t even want to think about riding there with a bunch of psyched-up jocks. Or riding home with them after they’d lost.

  And lose, we did. Big-time.

  October 5

  Remember how I hoped Ender’s Game would be good? Well, it was beyond that. I could hardly put it down. I read more than half the book the night I started it. I just finished it on the bus ride back from the game. I know Mouth would like it, but it would kill me to see him review it. I think Patrick would like it, too. I’ve tried getting him interested in books before, but it just doesn’t work. I guess I can sort of understand that. I used to be the same way. Until a while ago, I wasn’t interested in books.
It all changed by accident.

  When I crashed my bike and broke my arm, back in fifth grade, I was banged up enough that I had to spend a couple days in the hospital. There was this other kid in the room. Tobie. He was always reading. One book right after another. He didn’t even look at the television. The third day, after he’d finished this book, he started talking about how it was the best thing he’d ever read. He kept bugging me to read it. I figured he wanted us to have something to talk about.

  So I read it. But not really. I skimmed it, like I did in school. I held it so I could see the TV over the top—not easy with one arm in a cast—and made sure I didn’t turn the pages too quickly.

  The instant I closed the book, he was all over me. “Did you like it? It’s good, huh? What was your favorite part?”

  “It was great. What was your favorite part?” I faked my way through the discussion. Mostly, I let him talk. I don’t know if he caught on. It didn’t matter. He seemed happy. I went home the next day.

  A month later, this box came in the mail. It was from Tobie. Actually, from his folks, because he’d died. But he’d told them he wanted me to have some of his books since we’d become such good friends at the hospital. For a week, I couldn’t bring myself to open the box. Or even touch it. But I had to read those books. And I did. Every single one. I didn’t skip a word.

  They were great.

  I’ve been reading books ever since.

  Here are some of the books that were in the box:

  Sideways Stories from the Wayside School

  The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

  Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher

  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

  Hatchet

  A Spell for Chameleon

  Dragonflight

  Tuck Everlasting

  5,000 Amazing Facts

  Yup. I read 5,000 facts. I know all sorts of things nobody else cares about. Except you. You’re going to be interested in everything I tell you, whether you like it or not. Sorry. You don’t get a choice.

  Enough. I’m going to sleep. And I don’t plan to wake up for a good long time.

  Horses can sleep standing up, by the way. So can freshmen. No lie.

  I ended up writing the article like it was a speech. My fellow spectators, why are we here, and what do we want? I’ll tell you. We’re here to watch football, and we want touchdowns. Which is fine for an article that nobody is going to read, but wouldn’t be all that great for a real speech. Everything I came up with sounded stupid.

  Hi, I’m Scott. Please vote for me.

  My name is Scott Hudson, and I need your vote.

  Hi, friends …

  Crap. Stupid popularity contest. What was the point? Nobody would vote for me. Even though they had three votes.

  Wait. Three votes … That was it. I chucked what I’d written, and started something new.

  {thirteen}

  i’m Scott Hudson. I’m running for student council. I know two things for sure. Most of you have no idea who I am. And all of you are going to vote for your friends. So I don’t have a chance. With nine kids running, I’d probably come in tenth.”

  They laughed at my joke, which I took as a good sign. I needed all the encouragement I could get. As it was, I had so much sweat dripping down my hand that I’d expected to be electrocuted when the principal passed me the microphone. The only thing that kept me going was hearing how pathetic some of the other speeches were. One kid even did his as a poem. A truly sucky poem. I was pretty sure vote didn’t rhyme all that well with thought. And I was positive student and you bet didn’t rhyme at all.

  Another kid promised to try to get free ice cream at lunch and no homework on Fridays. Good luck. Actually, I guess you could promise to try to do anything. I could have promised to try to replace gym class with Victoria’s Secret fashion shows.

  I finished my speech with what I hoped was a stroke of brilliance. “Even if you have no idea who I am, you get three votes. I’d bet that most of you don’t have more than two friends running for student council. So I’m going to ask you to give me that third vote. Who knows? Maybe I’ll bring some fresh ideas to the student council. Thank you.”

  They even clapped when I was done. Sort of. Either that, or the gym had just been invaded by a half-dozen mosquitoes.

  For all his talk about getting prepared, Mouth didn’t seem to have a speech ready. He just rambled along until they told him his time was up.

  Julia’s speech, on the other hand, was great. She seemed so calm and confident.

  My public-speaking efforts didn’t attract any more attention than my writing. Nobody who didn’t already know me said anything to me in the halls. Well, I’d given it a shot. And at least I hadn’t written my speech as a sucky poem. Elections were in a week. Guess I’d find out then how my idea worked.

  In one of those weird coincidences, Mr. Franka started out class the next day by saying, “How many of you don’t like poetry?”

  Many hands went up. Including mine.

  He passed an open book to Vicky Estridge. “Read that out loud.”

  She started reading this poem about a guy freezing to death up in the Yukon. It was pretty cool. Mr. Franka grabbed another book and handed it to Julia. She read a short, funny poem about a pelican. Then I got to read one called “On the Naming of Cats.” I liked it.

  After we’d heard three or four more poems, Mr. Franka said, “There are as many types of poems as there are types of food. As many flavors, you might say. To claim you don’t like poetry because you hate ‘mushy stuff’ or things you don’t immediately understand is like saying you hate food because you don’t like asparagus.”

  He looked around the room again. “So, who can at least tolerate poetry?”

  All the hands went up.

  “Let’s visit Xanadu.” He gave us a page number in our textbooks. “Read ‘Kubla Khan’ to yourself. Listen to the music. Let Coleridge speak to you.”

  I started reading, and was hooked by the fourth line.

  Mr. Franka read us another poem, called “To Augusta.” This one was sort of mushy, but even so the words sounded pretty cool. They flowed, like good music.

  “Byron,” Mr. Franka said, closing the book. “You’ve all heard his work, whether you realize it or not. ‘She walks in beauty, like the night.’ You can’t tell me that line doesn’t kick butt. Byron even wrote a poem filled with ghosts and vampires.”

  That caught my attention. Before I could ask about the poem, he said, “I won’t tell you the name. If you really want to find it, you’ll have to hunt it down. Or should I say, haunt it down?”

  From there, he skipped around to some of his other favorite poets. Not once during the whole class did Mr. Franka utter those deadly words, “Now, what does this line mean?” He actually let us enjoy the poems without analyzing them to death. As he told us, sometimes a dying snake is just a dying snake. Sometimes a leafless tree is just a tree.

  At the end of the period, he said, “April is national poetry month. That’s why we’re reading poetry in October.”

  I couldn’t resist. I raised my hand and asked, “So what are we going to study in April?”

  He flashed a smile at me, and I felt doom approaching. I knew that smile. It’s the one you get when a fish that’s been nibbling at your bait for five minutes finally gulps it down. “Thank you, Scott.”

  “What for?”

  “I usually let the first person who asks that question make the decision about what to study in April. Congratulations. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. Let me know your choice by mid-March.”

  Great. Just what I need—a chance to get an entire English class pissed at me. At least the typical honors English student was a bit less threatening than the typical defensive lineman.

  October 11

  Check this out, Smelly:

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

  A stately pleasure-dome decree:

  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

  T
hrough caverns measureless to man

  Down to a sunless sea.

  Stop. Go back. Read it again. Read it out loud. Listen to the words. Hear the words. I hope you get what I’m talking about. I just love the phrase “caverns measureless to man.” That’s genius. I mean, I would have said something lame like “really big caves.”

  I think I like poetry. There’s an awful lot of it out there. And there’s a lot of it that’s awful. But there’s also a ton that’s good. And a lot that goes way beyond good.

  Dad can hear when an engine isn’t running right. Bobby can hear when his guitar is even slightly out of tune. I can’t do that, but I think I can hear when a poem is good. Or a sentence.

  Go, team, go.

  Yeah, right.

  Another Friday, another football game. Our team scored a touchdown. The crowd was so surprised, nobody even cheered. Their mouths just hung open like measureless caverns. The other team scored eleven times. Final score, 76 to 7. They should have had seventy-seven, but they missed one of the extra points. Not because of our defense. I think their kicker was getting tired. It was hard to tell for sure from up in the stands, but I suspect he might also have been laughing so hard it threw off his aim.

  I figured I could concentrate on our small moment of glory for my article. Since it took us thirteen plays to get down the field, I’d have plenty to write about. I didn’t want to think about any other part of the game. Julia spent the whole second half standing by the fence behind the players’ bench.

  Kyle didn’t come, but Patrick hung out for a while.

  I played around with doing the article as a poem, but it didn’t feel right. I wasn’t worried. I had extra time since we’d get Monday off for Columbus Day. I ended up writing it like it was an infomercial for the greatest hits of the Zenger Panthers. I was pretty happy with the way it came out.

  We voted on Tuesday in homeroom. It felt weird to vote for myself. Sort of like cheating. Kyle and Patrick voted for me, too. So did Mouth. He told me so. Five times. Maybe six. That is—he told me five times. He didn’t vote five times. But even if he had, it wouldn’t make a difference. I voted for him. But I didn’t tell him.