“A T-shirt—gray or blue, something like that. It had a number on it. I’m pretty sure it was a one. Like from a sports uniform.”
I know exactly what those numbers look like. They’re big and blocky on the ends.
“Yeah, that’s pretty good,” he said. “Really good, actually!”
“It looks good to me, too,” Principal Weeks said.
It was a great likeness. I was happy with how the drawing had turned out, but I wasn’t happy about the realization.
Because I knew I had just drawn a picture of my best friend, Carlos.
“I think I know who this is,” Principal Weeks said. “Do you?”
“I do,” I answered. I didn’t say his name, but she knew that I knew.
“I’ll need to speak to this person on Monday.”
“Turdmuffins,” I mumbled.
Principal Weeks smiled and motioned to my journal.
I turned a page and doodled:
CHAPTER 6
When I got home, I was pretty excited to talk to my mother about my day. I especially couldn’t wait to get to the part about being a sketch artist. But her face was speaking louder than I was.
Obviously, Principal Weeks had called Mom about the desk. My dad may be a police officer, but it’s my mom who lays down the law in our household.
“No summer camp for you, Elvin. It’s going to be summer school.”
Whatever, I thought. I wouldn’t necessarily miss camp. The only thing that made it fun was that Carlos was there, too.
“Go to your room until I call you to set the dinner table.”
I didn’t like being sent to my room. But I also didn’t mind being in my room. There, I could draw without fear of being punished.
Plus, I wasn’t alone. I had Otto.
Otto is a betta fish that I won at a fair last year. Well, that we won.
Carlos and I had been throwing beanbags, trying to sink Mr. Trinkle (he asks kids to call him Steve because he wants to seem cool) at the dunking booth, when we heard “Last call for entries!” over the loudspeaker.
There was a contest to see who could guess how many jelly bears were in this big jar. Carlos didn’t want the fish—he just wanted to see if we could guess correctly.
I first wrote down 358, but Carlos didn’t like that number.
He scribbled it out and wrote 1,004, but I definitely disagreed with that.
I scribbled that out and wrote 417. Of course, Carlos thought it was still too low, so he scratched that number out as well. We went back and forth this way until there was no more room to write. What a mess.
Panicking, Carlos said, “It’s last call, Elvin!” I reached over to get a new piece of paper, but Carlos grabbed our entry form and shoved it into the box.
“Sometimes you just gotta react,” Carlos said, shrugging his shoulders.
Mrs. Rho announced the winner:
But when she opened the jar to count the jelly bears, just to make sure that the count was correct, this is what happened:
They had all melted together into one giant brick. The teachers couldn’t pull them apart, so it was impossible to confirm the actual number. That’s when Carlos did some quick thinking.
“The number is one!” Carlos yelled. “We got it right!”
He retrieved our entry form and held it up. From a distance (and turned vertical), it did look a lot like a one—a big, fat, messy number one, his favorite number.
“Good enough for me,” Mrs. Rho said. “You guys are the winners!”
So Otto was my fish, but Carlos won him for me, which was cool.
People say that fish aren’t great pets. Otto may not be as fun as a dog, but I like him. I’m kind of jealous of Otto, too. He’s a fighting fish, alone in his tank with nobody to fight.
But that also means there’s nobody to bother him.
I needed to draw, so I pulled out my journal. I imagined what it might be like to swim in my own tank, just like Otto, surrounded by things. It didn’t include any kind of cleaning products.
CHAPTER 7
No matter how bad things got during the week, there were always pancakes to look forward to on Saturday morning.
My dad doesn’t usually like to cook unless it involves fire.
Pancakes were his one exception. My mom was out for a run, which is what she typically does on a Saturday morning.
Today my dad was making blueberry pancakes. He likes loading up the pancakes with extra treats. Which is why I was surprised when I sat down at the table to an empty plate.
“No pancakes?” I asked.
“Based on your activities yesterday, no. That’s according to your mom.”
“Not even plain?”
“Not even plain.”
In our house we were granted different pancake rights depending on our behavior during the week. My status was the one you don’t want.
“But I helped Principal Weeks identify the—”
“You’re lucky she is allowing you to participate in Field Day.”
* * *
As if eating cereal wasn’t bad enough, I had to eat cereal that made fun of me.
That’s what was written on the Post-it note that tumbled out of the box.
I hate being called Baby Bro for two reasons.
Or maybe reason #1 is Amanda and reason #2 is Andrea. Put them in whichever order you want. They’re my identical twin sisters, and they like to say “Baby Bro” in that sarcastic way that makes it seem like they don’t really care if they have a brother or not, because they have each other. They are only thirteen months older than I am, but they make me pay for it. They also go to my school, since it goes up to sixth grade.
It’s funny that they’re called “identical” twins, because they’re opposite in a lot of ways. But I guess that’s true of all family members: everybody is different. There are some things family members have in common.
Another thing my sisters have in common is that they love to prank me. Andrea and Amanda were looking down, knowing that I had seen the Post-it note, but they still kept straight faces.
Andrea is pretty good at looking down, because she loves reading. She has her face buried in a book a lot. She is also fascinated with insects. (She calls herself a scientist, but I think it’s better to say she just likes bugs.) Staring into a book with grasshopper diagrams or peering at a butterfly through a microscope lens is what she enjoys.
On the other hand, Amanda is good at looking up. Usually it’s at theater lights, because she likes to be onstage, singing or acting. (She calls herself an actor, but I think it’s better to say that she just likes it when people look at her.) Since she has experience acting, she was pretty convincing as she ate her pancakes. She flipped her head to the side and then started to sing.
Which was the melody of whatever show tune she was currently obsessed with. This was irritating. It was also overacting. She was trying too hard. She was the one who’d written the stupid Post-it note, I was sure.
Andrea had brought her final class project to the table, a papier-mâché moth that she carried around everywhere and called Mothy. She was looking at the statue but had a smirk on her face. That wasn’t like her. Maybe the Post-it note had been her idea?
The reality is that Andrea and Amanda probably wrote it together. They do this all the time. Whichever one I accuse, the other says:
And then they try to act innocent and avoid punishment. They love doing this, because even if they both get punished, at least they have the satisfaction of knowing that they fooled people.
Sisters, am I right?!
“I bet there are some pancakes in your spaceship,” Amanda piped up, giggling with Andrea.
“That’s enough, girls,” my dad said. “You want me to exchange those for plain pancakes?”
The girls put their heads down and finished up.
“I heard you’re all on the same Field Day team this year,” my dad continued. “I’d like to see you root for each other for a change.”
CHAP
TER 8
“We want to do something special with our shirts again this year,” Andrea said. “Bedazzle them, maybe. Make them different from each other.”
Every student gets a T-shirt for Field Day—a gold shirt or a blue one, with a number on the back.
The school gives them to us the day before Field Day so that people can decorate them if they like—stickers, patches, buttons. Last year, for some reason, the teachers decided it would be a good idea to separate the twins—one on the Gold Team, one on the Blue Team. My sisters didn’t really go for that. Amanda took her gold shirt and cut it in half, and Andrea took her blue shirt and did the same. They had my mom stitch them together so they each had a half-blue, half-gold shirt. Or, as they told everybody:
Get it?
“Maybe you can help them, Elvin,” my father said. “Put that talent to good use. That would be a cool thing to do, right?”
None of us were sure who that comment was directed to.
My mom came through the front door, looking sweaty but happy. “How are the pancakes today?”
“Why don’t you see for yourself,” my dad said, smiling. He handed her a plate with the last of the blueberry pancakes. “Elvin isn’t the only artist in this house.”
I didn’t need to watch my parents eat pancakes together. I decided it was a good time to take the garbage out—my Saturday chore. Walking back to the house, I saw a giant centipede on the sidewalk. Andrea would be fascinated by this, I thought.
I almost stepped on it. But didn’t.
Instead, I drew a chalk outline around the centipede.
CHAPTER 9
That afternoon, Carlos came over. He was wearing another number one shirt.
“Number One Suspect” is what popped into my head.
Carlos is bigger and more active than I am. Notice that I didn’t say athletic—just active. The fact that my father is a police officer is exciting to Carlos. He thinks it’s the coolest job in the world.
“What up, Mr. L! Chased any bank robbers lately?” Carlos said as he walked through the door and did some action-movie poses in front of my dad.
“I’ll let you know when I catch them, Carlos.”
“Awesome! Then I can ride around in a cruiser with you.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Dad said as he picked up the vase and flowers.
On Monday, Carlos was going to get sent to detention—or worse—for being Mrs. English’s glasses smasher-and-runner. He would eventually find out that it was because of the drawing I had done.
is what I was thinking.
is what I said instead. I prefer games over difficult conversations.
Carlos and I invented flipdisc. The rules are easy: it’s basically just throwing a Frisbee back and forth. But right before you catch it, the thrower gets to name what the Frisbee actually is, and so you have to make a quick decision whether it’s something you want to catch …
… or not.
The identity of the disc can flip in a second, hence the name.
I let Carlos throw first.
And then it was my turn.
“I saw that you’re on the Gold Team for Field Day,” Carlos said, releasing the Frisbee. “That’s a bummer! Peanut-butter-and-Fluff-flavored vegetables!”
“I know,” I said. “I wish we were on the same team. But I’m glad I don’t have to look at the blue Gatorade again.” Pez container full of tiny puppies!”
“Aw, who even remembers that?” Carlos said. “Hey, were you at the ice cream truck yesterday? Screaming jellyfish that pulls your ears off!”
“I had to go to the principal’s office. Principal’s office!”
“Why did you catch it?” I yelled.
“You didn’t name it,” he answered.
“I did. Principal’s office!”
“That doesn’t count!” he protested. “You were just repeating yourself!”
“I was naming something nasty!”
“Okay, new rule: you can’t repeat yourself, or else you’re the one who has to touch it.”
“Done.”
“Why were you there? Zombie whose skin is covered in toenails!”
“I drew a spaceship on my desk. But Principal Weeks made me stay late and scrub it off. Invisible time-traveling school desk!”
“That’s the worst.” He laughed. “You missed it! I told Todd Quintilla that if he could grab the cone out of my hand, I’d do his homework for the rest of the year. So he and a bunch of others started running after me, but I dodged ’em all! I was like BING BANG BOOM and left them in the dust! And then I ran all the way home. It was spectacular!”
It did sound spectacular, even if he was unaware of the other side of the story.
“Throw the Frisbee!” I said.
Carlos unleashed the disc. “A humongous, gigantic bird! Like a super-eagle! It’s big, bigger than an airplane! But instead of a regular beak, it has this giant robotic beak made out of pure metal, which…”
I let the Frisbee drop. “You took too long,” I shouted. “How am I supposed to know if that’s a cool thing?”
“It was gonna be!”
“New rule: one word only!”
“One word?” Carlos said. “That’s kinda pathetic.”
“Just for today,” I yelled as I tossed the Frisbee back. “Diarrrheeeaaaa!”
“Video games?” Carlos shouted after retrieving the disc from the ground and throwing it back.
“Nope! That’s two words,” I said.
“No, I meant—do you want to play video games instead?”
Sounded like a good plan to me.
CHAPTER 10
Before Carlos left, we had to uphold a certain tradition that we also invented. This one didn’t have a name.
We like to make our own nachos. At first glance, they look normal enough:
Well, normal for us.
We have a friendly competition whenever we’re eating nachos. Whoever is hosting gets to make them. And we season them as hot and spicy as we can, using any secret ingredients we have at our disposal.
Then we start eating chips, taking turns. Chip by chip, mouthful by mouthful. But without any water or any kind of drink to cool our mouths off. The battle is to see who can last the longest. If you can make it through the pile of nachos without drinking, you are the champion. We are pretty even at this, although Carlos sweats more.
Since we were at my house, I got to create the masterpiece. Not only did I jam it full of jalapeños and chiles, but I had a bottle of this stuff:
It didn’t seem too hot at first, but it had a slow burn that got more and more intense. Before we knew it, our mouths were on fire. But neither of us wanted to be the first to break.
The contest was on.
“I want to set the school record for the beanbag toss at Field Day,” Carlos said, fanning his mouth. The beanbag toss wasn’t an entirely accurate name. It was a beanbag chair—the big, squishy kind—that we had to throw for distance.
“I know I can do it. I almost did it last year.” His face was redder than a tomato as he reached for his next chip.
“I know. You were so close!” I wondered: Would they really prevent Carlos from participating in Field Day? He would be so upset. My mouth was now on fire, and it felt like the fire was spreading to the back of my eyeballs. “I just want to make it through Field Day without falling on my face,” I said before eating the next chip.
“I’ve been practicing in the woods behind my house with a bag of wet, dirty laundry.” He was sweating so much he looked like Niagara Falls. “You’ll cheer me on, right? Even though you’re on the Gold Team?”
“Yep,” I said, even though I couldn’t feel my lips. I did want him to break the beanbag toss record. I suddenly felt horrible that he might be kept from participating, like it would be my fault, and he’d be angry at me. My head felt like hot candle wax ready to drip down my body. That didn’t help. I stuffed the next molten-lava chip into my burning mouth.
Carlos looked like he ha
d been stung in the face by a thousand bees.
“It’s going…”
“To…”
“Be…”
“Awesome,” he finally breathed, like a panting dog, totally oblivious to the conflict going on in my head. He put the next chip on his tongue like he was applying a Band-Aid.
“I know!” I said. I could barely get the words out.
“We’re both gonna…”
I didn’t know which was worse: feeling like I could melt steel with my burning tongue, or picturing Carlos sitting inside the school while everybody else was out enjoying Field Day. I was on the edge of breaking.
I broke. But not by drinking.
Carlos looked at me but had no words. We both reached for the pitcher of water at the same time. He wanted to know the full story.
As soon as I got to the part where I volunteered to draw the culprit’s portrait, Carlos ran out of the house. That was the end of the fun and games for Saturday night. Was it the end of our friendship, too?
CHAPTER 11
The next afternoon, I went to the grocery store with my mom.
While she was in the dairy section, I went looking for a new bottle of hot sauce. As I made my way down aisle 6, I saw him: Peter Zorber.
Elvin Link, Please Report to the Principal's Office! Page 2