Adam Canfield of the Slash (2 page)

“Great,” squeaked Phoebe. “Can I do Eddie the janitor, too?”

Adam could tell, this Phoebe was one of those young people who could push you to the edge, but all he said was, “We’ll see.”

After the meeting, Adam was chatting with two middle-school boys when he felt a sting at the back of his neck.

“Got to go,” said Jennifer, waving her straw. “You know how Mr. Landmass is if we’re late for Geography Challenge.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “Geography Challenge? Isn’t it Quiz Bowl Gladiator Tuesday?”

“That’s every other Tuesday and Thursday,” said Jennifer.

“I forgot this wasn’t the other Tuesday,” said Adam. “Aren’t we on A schedule today?”

“Close,” said Jennifer.

“It’s B schedule?” said Adam, banging his palm against his forehead. If they were on B schedule, it meant he had a baritone lesson right after Geography Challenge. He’d just put the horn back in his locker — for nothing. Now he had to go down to the first floor and back up to the third in two minutes, lugging that three-foot-long, ten-pound piece of brass. Right.

Jennifer said, “Thank you, Jennifer. You saved my butt again, Jennifer.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Adam, “thanks.” Jennifer did save him, practically daily. It was embarrassing, and he raced off. At his locker, he twirled the tumbler but was in such a hurry, he messed up his combination and had to do it a second time, then a third. The hallway was emptying, the last kids disappearing into class. He got slowed up again trying to wedge the baritone out of the locker. Adam was sure the person who designed the lockers at Harris Elementary/Middle had played the harmonica.

“Excuse me. Hey, excuse me.”

What was that squeaky noise? Adam gave the baritone one last hard tug and it sprang loose, the momentum landing him on the floor.

“Excuse me. Hey, excuse me.”

He felt like he was in one of those nervous dreams he’d been having a lot lately, where he kept trying to get to the finish line of a big running-club race, but for some reason he’d veer off the track and could not get back.

He stood up, whirled around, and pinpointed the squeak. Phoebe! Just what he needed, a third grader who didn’t know her place.

“Excuse me, but I really wanted to talk to you alone about this Eddie the janitor story,” Phoebe squeaked. “I didn’t want to say too much at the meeting. Thought we ought to keep it a little hush-hush.”

Secret Agent Phoebe, Adam thought. He could already hear Mr. Landmass in Geography Challenge: “Ah, Mr. Canfield, late again. If you can’t locate room 328 in a timely fashion, tell me how will you ever locate the Serengeti Plain at the next meet?”

“Look, kid,” Adam said to Phoebe. “Do you happen to notice the corridors are empty? Do you happen to notice we’re late for eighth period?”

“This is important,” said Phoebe. Adam glared at her. He was rushing toward the up stairway, hunched forward, trying to maintain the exact center of gravity needed to balance a full backpack plus an instrument case as big as a bathtub. She would not go away. Finally he stopped.

“What?” he screamed. “What is so important that I’m going to be late for Geography Challenge? Go ahead, Secret Agent Phoebe, you can tell me. I used to be in the FBI myself.”

Phoebe ignored his crabbiness. She had three older brothers, so it was normal for her to be hollered at by big boys. She stared right up at Adam. “Eddie the janitor could be really important for us,” she said. “Have you seen all those keys on his belt? He can get in anywhere in this building.”

“What are you talking about?” said Adam.

“I mean, I think he’s more than a pine tree,” said Phoebe.

“A pine tree?” said Adam.

“You know,” said Phoebe, “a pine tree, a story that’s good at any time.”

“Evergreen,” said Adam. “Evergreen. Not pine tree. Evergreen.”

“Whatever,” said Phoebe. “The point is, a good story on Eddie might help us —”

“STOP!” Adam yelled. “Are you out of your mind? I’m late for class and you’re telling me the guy who empties the wastebaskets is the news scoop of the century?” He bolted off.

But when he’d put a safe distance between them, he turned and shouted, “Do it! I don’t care. Do the stupid story! I warn you, though. If it turns out so boring we can’t use it, don’t come crying to me. . . .”

As he raced around the corner, a piercing sound echoed through those empty halls, a loud, squeaky Phoebe “YES!”

The bell rang to end world history class. Mr. Brooks had just reached the part in
The Story of the Roman Empire
when the great mathematician Archimedes runs through the streets of Syracuse naked. “Sorry, boys and girls,” said the teacher, closing the book. “We’ll just have to hold on to that thought until tomorrow. You have the reading for tonight. Hurry, young scholars.
Tempus fugit;
time is fleeting.
Ave atque vale!
”

Adam quickly gathered his books and, keeping his head down, tried to slip out unnoticed. He was hoping Mr. Brooks had forgotten that he had been late for class again today. Adam was almost to the door and could see Jennifer waiting for him in the hallway, when the teacher’s voice stopped him cold. “Adam Canfield,” said Mr. Brooks. “I need a word with you.”

The teacher had his grade book open. He placed a sheet of paper under the row of boxes beside Adam’s name. “Notice anything?” asked Mr. Brooks.

Over half of Adam’s boxes had dots.

“Do you know what those dots are?” asked Mr. Brooks.

Adam was pretty sure he did, but was hoping against hope there was just the teeniest little chance they might be good dots.

“Class participation?” asked Adam.

“Tardiness,” said Mr. Brooks. “We’re three weeks into the school year, Adam, and you’ve been late to my class ten times.” It was true. Adam’s row of boxes looked like it had caught the chicken pox.

He glanced out the door. Jennifer was waving frantically.

“I don’t like to make too much of these things,” said Mr. Brooks, “especially with a good student, but — is there a problem, Adam?”

Was there a problem? Of course there was a problem. Adam was the most overprogrammed middle-school student in America. He was on the verge of being enriched to death. The whole world plus Adam’s parents were yelling at him to hurry up or he’d be late for his next activity. Late for baritone horn lesson, late for jazz band, late for marching band, late for the Math Olympiad club, late for the Quiz Bowl Gladiator meet, late for Geography Challenge, late for soccer, late for swimming, late for snowflake baseball, late for running club, and, yes, late for weekly rehearsals of the Say No to Drugs Community Players. No matter how hard Adam tried to concentrate on where he was supposed to be next, in the end he always seemed to be the late, late Adam Canfield.

And now, because he was getting yelled at by Mr. Brooks — his favorite teacher — for being late to World History, he was going to be late for the principal. Late for his meeting with Mrs. Marris! It was amazing how a few little problems could multiply and destroy a person.

Of course, Adam did not mention any of this to Mr. Brooks; it was way too complicated to explain to a grownup. He just mumbled something about having trouble adjusting to a new school year and promised to try harder.

“Punctuality,” said Mr. Brooks. “Very important. From the Latin,
punctum.
” Adam was nodding a lot now, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that he was sliding sideways out the door.

“Adam,” said Mr. Brooks. “Let’s make the effort.”

“Yes, Mr. Brooks,” Adam said, and unable to restrain himself a second longer, he whizzed off.

The hallway was empty. Jennifer was gone. The bell for the next period was ringing. He raced to the principal’s office.

Adam had hoped to sneak into the office unnoticed and then act totally overlooked, perhaps even make it seem that he was a little offended at having been kept waiting for his turn to see the principal. But hurtling down three flights to the main floor, his baritone case clanging against every step, Adam arrived about as unnoticed as the lead fire truck at the Fourth of July parade. Worse yet, he was speeding and took the turn into the office too wide, losing control and ricocheting into the far wall. The baritone case popped open, his music spilled all over the floor, and Adam fell backward, escaping serious injury only because his overstuffed backpack doubled as an air bag.

“Adam Canfield, I presume.” It was Mrs. Rose, the school secretary, a stern-looking woman with permed white hair that arched upward for a good nine inches, then formed a neat circle.

The office counter was so high, all Adam could see of Mrs. Rose as he looked up was her perfectly circular head. In the lower grades, there were always rumors about Mrs. Rose having no body, that she was just a permed head placed on the counter by the principal to frighten children.

“You
are
Adam Canfield?” the Head asked coldly, glancing dramatically at the wall clock. Adam knew what she was thinking: Only a madman or royalty would show up late for Mrs. Marris.

“The principal is waiting,” said the Head, motioning for Adam to follow. A buzzer sounded, freeing a door latch, and Adam stepped behind the counter.

Immediately he noted that the Head also had legs, long ones. In fact, Mrs. Rose could move them really fast, and he had trouble keeping up as she sped to the next inner office. There, Adam encountered another fearsome grownup, Miss Esther, the principal’s personal secretary. Miss Esther was unbelievably old, a very mysterious figure at Harris Elementary/Middle School. No one had a clue what she did besides making announcements over the loudspeaker.

Miss Esther did not look up — a bad sign, Adam thought — and Mrs. Rose did not break stride, leading him through another door and down a flight of steep concrete stairs to a place that few kids had ever seen, but all dreaded.

The Bunker.

Mrs. Marris’s office was the school’s old civil defense bomb shelter.

It was built long ago, during the 1950s, when Tremble County officials feared the Russians had a nuclear warhead pointed at Harris Elementary/Middle School. The Bunker was an enormous windowless room with an astonishingly long desk. Behind the desk, on the white cinder-block wall, were dozens of photos of Mrs. Marris smiling and posing beside important-looking grownups. Staring at the photos too long could be deadly; Mrs. Marris had the exact same smile in each one, and Adam suddenly felt nauseous from absorbing too big a dose of smiling Marrises.

In a throne-like chair behind the desk sat the actual Mrs. Marris, smiling, of course, and twittering with Jennifer. Adam glanced toward Mrs. Rose for introductions, but she was gone, and it occurred to Adam that with her speed, Mrs. Rose might be a great choice to coach the running club.

“Adam,” said the principal, lifting her smile a few notches. “At last we have the honor. Am I right? Does the Bible tell us that Adam was the
first
man?”

Adam knew where this was leading.

“I assume you must be no relation to your biblical namesake,” Mrs. Marris continued, “since you are always the
last
Adam. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Adam sneaked a knowing look at Jennifer.

“DON’T MAKE EYEBALLS AT ME, YOUNG MAN!” Mrs. Marris hollered in a voice so hot and sharp, Adam feared he would melt and drip off the seat. But in an instant, Mrs. Marris was smiling doggedly again. “Jennifer tells me you had your first meeting of the
Slash
yesterday.”

Adam nodded. Why had he agreed to be Jennifer’s coeditor? At the moment, he blamed her for all his problems.

“Well, good,” said Mrs. Marris, smiling. “What I tell new editors each year is that we do our best to run a tight ship here at Harris Elementary/Middle School. And as editors, I would hope you will always ask yourselves, Is this story helping propel the Good Ship
Harris
forward? Because we certainly don’t want the kind of stories that poke holes in our bow, so to speak — bad stories, unhelpful stories,
negative
stories.”

As Mrs. Marris spoke, Adam and Jennifer smiled and nodded, though they had no clue why. There was something about adults who smiled at Adam while they forced him to do stuff that gave him the creeps. He preferred his mother’s method of yelling and telling. At least he knew where he stood.

“The other thing to remember,” Mrs. Marris said, “is that the
Slash
is not just any school paper. It is an
award-winning
newspaper, and I expect you to continue that glorious tradition.”

Adam understood what she meant. Award certificates and photos were plastered all over the bulletin board in room 306. Every spring for as long as Adam could remember, there was a photograph in the local paper announcing that the
Slash
had again won a prestigious “Citation for Excellence” in the county student-newspaper competition. Each year that photo in the
Tremble County Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser
looked exactly the same: the
Slash
editors stood in the center holding plaques, flanked by Mrs. Marris and Sumner J. Boland, publisher of the
Citizen-Gazette-Herald-Advertiser.

And that wasn’t all. Every year, the local cable company, Bolandvision Cable, sent a Cable TV Action News 12 crew to do a feature on the
Slash
’s citation for excellence. Adam could not figure out what the fuss was. As far as he could tell, any student paper that filled out an application got one of those annoying citations. Adam had been in 306 when News 12 had arrived last year. The News 12 reporter picked out four kids — one white, one black, one Hispanic, one Asian (two boys, two girls) and had them sit at computers, pretending to write award-winning stories. The News 12 reporter asked just one question — “Is it fun working for the paper?” — then, in the middle of the answer, walked away. When Adam and his parents watched Bolandvision Cable that night, there were a few shots of kids, but mostly it was Mrs. Marris and Sumner J. Boland of Bolandvision Cable talking about how quality education was Tremble’s greatest asset.