Dinosaur Boy

by Cory Putman Oakes

  “Stegosaurus had an unusually small head,” Allan continued. “with a brain roughly the size of a walnut—”

  “A walnut!” Parker exclaimed, turning to fix his beady eyes on me. He was scowling, as usual, and he looked just as mean as the Angry Bird on his bright red shirt. “You hear that, Sawyer? Did it hurt when your brain shrank?”

  “Shut up, Parker,” Elliot said loyally. “Obviously his brain didn’t shrink.”

  “Stay out of it, Gigantor,” Cici hissed. “We’ll look up what kind of dinosaur you are next.”

  “I am not a dinosaur,” Elliot fumed, then immediately looked guilty. He turned to me. “Sorry, Sawyer. It’s not that I’d mind being one. It’s just that I’m—”

  “You guys, you guys,” Allan interrupted, waving everybody silent. “Listen to this: Because of its small head size and the existence of a mysterious cavity in its upper hip region, some scientists have theorized that Stegosaurus had a supplementary brain located in its hindquarters.”

  “A supplementary brain?” Cici sniffed. “In its hindquarters? You mean its—”

  “Butt,” Allan finished, turning around so that I could see the victorious grin on his oversized face. “I mean its butt. This article is saying that Spikey here probably has a brain in his butt.”

  Every kid in the room, except for Elliot and me, started laughing hysterically. I stared down at the keyboard in front of me, burning with embarrassment. I couldn’t look up. Especially when, over the deafening laughter, I heard Parker start chanting, “Butt Brain! Butt Brain! Butt Brain!”

  It had been a huge mistake to come back to school.

  I sneaked a glance over at Mr. Broome, but he was still passed out like a useless lump. At that point, I doubt he could have done anything to bring the room back to order anyway. Elliot’s weak protests on my behalf were being drowned out by Allan’s booming laughter and Cici’s deafening cackle. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Parker stand up on a chair. His red shirt hung loosely on his skinny frame as he raised his hands like a conductor and led his whole side of the room in the Butt Brain chant.

  I closed my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, so I actually felt the icy chill of the outside air before I saw who was responsible for letting it in.

  “SILENCE!” a voice rang out.

  I opened my eyes.

  The voice, part yowling cat and part booming cannon, caused everybody in the room to freeze. Parker stopped gesturing so abruptly that he almost fell off his chair.

  An extremely small, skinny woman with extremely large, poofy hair stood in the doorway. She was wearing a very stiff-looking suit and glasses that were so large they took up most of her face. She nodded at Mr. Broome, who was blinking sleepily at her from behind his desk.

  “So sorry to wake you,” she said gravely.

  “What? Oh, uh, not at all, Principal Mathis,” Mr. Broome stammered. He cleared his throat loudly and struggled to sit up straight.

  Principal Mathis…so this was our new principal. Principal Kline, our last principal, had resigned suddenly in the middle of the summer and none of us had seen his replacement.

  Until now.

  Principal Mathis turned away from Mr. Broome. Her eyes, squinting behind her enormous glasses, scanned the room until they came to rest on Parker.

  “What is your name, young man?”

  “P-P-Parker Douglas,” he answered, and I thought I saw his knees start to shake.

  “Mr. Douglas,” she said. Her voice was so quiet now, we all had to strain to hear her over the crushing silence. “I see you have come up with a new nickname for one of your classmates.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Parker choked out. “We were just looking some stuff up—”

  “What was it?”

  Parker, still up on the chair, pointed down at the computer.

  “Just a website on types of—”

  “No,” Principal Mathis said quietly. “The name. What was it?”

  “B-B-Butt Brain,” he stammered. And even in the midst of his terror, for tiny Principal Mathis was truly terrifying at that moment, I saw a small smile tug at the edge of his lips.

  I don’t know if Principal Mathis saw it too. I’m not sure it would have made any difference.

  “I believe you are aware, Mr. Douglas, that we have a zero tolerance policy at this school regarding the belittling and harassment of students?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Parker mumbled. The smile was suddenly gone from his face.

  “And you would agree, I assume, that name-calling is a form of belittling? And also harassment?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Parker mumbled, barely audible now.

  “Thank you, Mr. Douglas,” Principal Mathis said flatly. “Please come with me.”

  She turned toward the door.

  Parker climbed self-consciously down from the chair. He took a step toward Principal Mathis, then froze again as she suddenly turned back around.

  “Bring your things. You shan’t be returning.”

  Now that Parker wasn’t hurling insults at me, I felt almost sorry for him as he stooped down to pick up his backpack. He looked very small and pathetic as he exchanged a miserable look with Allan and then followed Principal Mathis out of the door.

  The Zero Tolerance Policy

  At the end of the day, just before the final bell, I received a note that I was wanted in Principal Mathis’s office.

  When I entered the administration building, I shivered at the excessive air-conditioning. And the first person I saw was Ms. Helen.

  I’m not sure what Ms. Helen’s actual job was. She never seemed busy. But every time I walked into the administrative office, there she was. Wearing a sleeveless top and sitting perfectly still right beneath the air-conditioner vent. The only things on her desk were a huge fan, which was always aimed directly at her face, and a small model solar system. And Ms. Helen couldn’t have known that much about space, because her model was totally out of date; there were nine planets in it.

  Nobody had ever seen her get up from her desk. Not even to go to the bathroom.

  Ms. Helen nodded gravely at me as I passed her. She didn’t seem alarmed that a half-dinosaur had just walked into the office. She must have known I was coming.

  Principal Mathis met me at the door of the office that, until this summer, had belonged to Principal Kline. I was still a little bit confused about what had happened to him. The school had sent around a letter telling us that he had won the Oregon Lottery and retired. I had always liked Principal Kline, and I had thought he liked us too, but the letter had also said that the good-bye note he had left behind had been “inappropriate to share with the students.”

  Even in her extremely tall shoes and with her very poofy hair, Principal Mathis was only about an inch or two taller than me. I didn’t have to crane my neck to look up at her, the way I did with most adults.

  Which was a good thing. Because now that I had bony plates sticking out of my neck, craning of any kind was really out of the question.

  “Hello, Sawyer,” Principal Mathis said, shaking my hand and giving me a smile that showed all of her teeth. She kept a grip on my hand and pulled on my arm so that I did a half turn, allowing her to look at me from the side.

  “My, my,” she admired. “What lovely plates.”

  “They’re very rare, you know,” said a familiar voice from inside the office.

  Principal Mathis stepped to one side, and my mom smiled at me from one of the two chairs in front of a large desk.

  “Less than 0.008 percent of the population has the dinosaur gene,” my mom added, giving me a small wave.

  “Yes, I know,” Principal Mathis said, gesturing for me to enter and take the empty seat next to my mom, as she walked to the other side of the desk and sat down in a large swivel chair. “And only 0.15 percent of that number actually manifests any e
xternal dinosaur traits. We at Jack James Elementary School consider ourselves extremely lucky to be one of the only schools in the country to have such an extraordinary student among us.”

  My mother beamed.

  I stared hard at the nameplate on Principal Mathis’s desk and tried not to die.

  “That being said,” Principal Mathis said, clearing her throat as she sat forward in her chair. “We can’t pretend, Mrs. Bronson, that the change in Sawyer’s appearance has gone unnoticed among his peers.”

  “Of course not,” my mother agreed.

  “I was hoping to avoid having this meeting, but given the events of earlier today, I thought we should all take a moment to discuss the situation.”

  “I agree,” my mom said gravely. I got the feeling that Principal Mathis had already told her all about what had happened in the computer lab. I wondered if she had also told her about the Butt Brain chant. Suddenly, I felt very small in my chair.

  “I think we can expect that Sawyer will continue to attract a great deal of attention from the other students. At least until everybody gets used to it,” Principal Mathis continued, pushing her thick glasses farther up her nose. “And not all of the attention will be positive.”

  My mother waved off the principal’s concern with a flick of her hand and gave a resigned laugh.

  “Boys will be boys.”

  Principal Mathis’s eyes narrowed.

  “Not at this school, Mrs. Bronson.”

  She turned to me. The lenses in her glasses were so thick they made her eyes look huge. That, along with her weirdly poofy hair, made me think of a not-so-nice nickname for her: Mathis the Mantis.

  “Sawyer,” she began. She smiled a little bit, which just made her look even more bug-like. “This school has always had a zero tolerance policy regarding bullying. But until now, it has been enforced…well, let’s just say sporadically. I intend to change that. As an educator, a safe and cruelty-free learning environment is my top priority. Therefore, any student who harasses, belittles, or threatens another student will be removed from his or her classroom and expelled. No warnings. No second chances. No exceptions. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled.

  “I can’t always expect to catch a bully in the act, so I’m going to need your help. If any student, anywhere, at any time gives you trouble, I want you to come straight to me. And I will deal with the problem immediately. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said again. Even though I knew that I would never, ever rat out one of my classmates. I wasn’t stupid. Not being a tattletale was like Rule Number One of elementary school.

  Principal Mathis’s big bug eyes held mine for a long moment, as though she knew what I was thinking.

  Finally, she nodded.

  “Wonderful. I’m glad we understand one another.”

  She turned back to my mother.

  “Well, that’s all for today. I certainly thank you both for coming in.”

  “Of course.” My mother stood and shook Principal Mathis’s hand again. “I’m so happy to know that you’ll be looking out for Sawyer.”

  “It is my privilege,” Principal Mathis assured her, walking my mother to the door and showing us both out.

  I was less than a foot away from her office when Principal Mathis called after me.

  “Sawyer?”

  I turned around.

  She nodded to the tennis balls on the tips of my spikes and smiled.

  “A nice touch, those.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed again.

  “Sharp objects that can be used as weapons are prohibited under the school’s code of conduct. See that you keep the tennis balls on during school hours.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Freak Out

  The next morning, the desk next to mine was empty. Parker’s things had been removed, and the whole thing had been cleaned out and scrubbed. With bleach, from the smell of things.

  I guess Principal Mathis had been serious about that zero tolerance policy thing.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Had Parker actually been expelled? Because of me? I wondered if that would make things better or worse.

  Wednesday morning was pretty quiet. Allan didn’t say a single word to me. Nobody else made fun of me, or sang any songs, or recited any stupid dinosaur facts where I could hear them. The four periods before lunch went by so smoothly that I started to wonder if maybe Principal Mathis was a genius. And maybe Parker’s empty seat was serving as a warning to Allan and the others to lay off me, or else.

  Then came lunch.

  My mom had sent me to school with a large plastic bowl full of salad greens, mandarin oranges, and sliced-up avocado. I was so hungry that I dug right in and gulped down several mouthfuls before I felt the first, sickening crunch between my teeth.

  Crunch? There wasn’t supposed to be anything crunchy in my salad.

  Whatever it was, it was stuck between my teeth. I picked it out and examined it. Elliot leaned over to take a look as well.

  My stomach lurched when I saw that it had wings, tiny legs, antennae, and an oval-shaped body that I had almost bitten in half.

  “Ew! Is that a cricket?” Elliot asked, making a face.

  Instead of answering, I gingerly prodded my salad with my fork. I moved aside a couple of pieces of avocado and found more crickets, at least a dozen of them, crawling around the lettuce leaves.

  “How did a cricket get into your lunch?” Elliot exclaimed, then paused to double-check that his sandwich was insect-free.

  I wondered the same thing, until I remembered that Allan had a pet lizard.

  A pet lizard that probably ate crickets.

  Elliot gave me the apple from his lunch, but I was still hungry for the rest of the day.

  Thursday was even worse. Someone hung a sign that said “AND DINOSAURS” on the door to the girls’ bathroom, right underneath the stick figure of the girl. After lunch, another someone tripped me and I fell so hard that one of my plates almost bent in half. And I don’t even know when someone attached a pair of pink underwear to one of my tail spikes, because I didn’t know they were there until Elliot stopped me in the hallway and ripped them off.

  On Friday, the janitor had to bring in a new desk for me, because someone had smeared maple syrup all over my old one, let it dry, and then scratched “BEWARE OF TAR PIT” into it. And that afternoon, a group of kids wearing T. rex masks and carrying water guns followed me home from school. I recognized Allan’s enormous head behind one of the masks, and I’m pretty sure Cici was there too. I ran the last three blocks to my house, dragging my sopping wet tail along behind me and wishing I had never even heard of fifth grade.

  • • •

  When I finally got home, I ran inside and slammed the door to my house as hard as I could. I half-hoped it would make one of those little rectangle panes of glass in it shatter, but it didn’t. It just made the wall shake a little.

  Apparently, I didn’t get to have super-stegosaurus strength. Only the stupid plates and the tail. Just my luck.

  “Hello, dear,” came my mom’s voice from the kitchen. “How was school?”

  I stomped upstairs without answering her. Hadn’t she heard the slam?

  I threw myself into bed, not carrying that I was all wet. I curled up on my side with my legs pulled underneath me and my tail curled around my front. It was the only position that was remotely comfortable. I usually slept like this, with pillows wedged on either side of me to hold me in place. I had read somewhere that Stegosauruses had probably slept standing up. But that didn’t sound comfortable at all. And anyway, those were real Stegosauruses. Not hybrid freak dinosaurs, like me.

  Fanny, who had been sleeping on the other side of my bed, woke up and started wagging her tail at the sight of me. She shimmied her litt
le brown and white self over so that she could rest her head on my damp leg and continue her nap.

  At least she didn’t care what I looked like. Not now that she had gotten used to me. A big part of me wanted to pet her and tell her all of my problems, the way I had when I was little. But a bigger part of me was not in the mood to cuddle.

  Besides, she was probably only snuggling up to me so she could get a chance to steal another one of my tennis balls.

  I spotted my laptop on the floor. I reached down to get it, dumping Fanny off me as I did. She whined, quickly righted herself, and then headed back to her original nap spot.

  I winced as she scrambled over my tail. The underside was all scraped up and raw from being dragged around all day. The asphalt of the school playground, to say nothing of the sidewalks on my way home, were a lot rougher than the smooth wooden floors at the cabin. Or the carpet in our house. Something a real stegosaurus would never have to worry about.

  I opened a search engine on the computer just as I smelled my mom come up the stairs. Well, not my mom, precisely, but the fruit salad she was carrying. My tail twitched with excitement at the promise of food.

  Fanny opened one eye and watched my tail suspiciously.

  My mom opened my door without knocking, holding the bowl of fruit in front of her like a peace offering.

  “So, today wasn’t any better?” she asked.

  I shook my head, not taking my eyes off the computer.

  Mom set the bowl of fruit beside me. Still not looking up from the screen, I grabbed a handful of chopped-up apples and stuffed them into my mouth.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  I swallowed.

  “Looking up how to make it go away,” I said, angling the computer so she could see the search results for “dinosaur gene cure.”

  Mom sat on the edge of my bed.

  “Sweetie,” she said gently. “There is no cure.”

  I grabbed another handful of fruit.