Dancing Dudes (6 page)

“Underwear, underwear!
” I yelled.
“UNDERWEAR! ”

Heidi, Diane, and everyone else in the class turned to see why I was screaming “Underwear.” I just stood there with a blank look on my face, trying to pretend that nothing had happened. Everyone started laughing.

That wasn’t funny or clever,
I thought to myself. And definitely not manly. Just then Lizzy spotted Mrs. Gibson walking down the hall.

“Mrs. Gibson, Mrs. Gibson, Raymond just yelled ‘Underwear’ for no good reason,” Lizzy tattled, running out to meet our teacher.

“Not now, Lizzy,” Mrs. Gibson answered, passing her and entering our class. Lizzy stormed back into the room and gave me a mean glare.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Mrs. Gibson said. She was wearing a necklace made of big red, white, and pink hearts. “Is everyone having a happy Valentine’s Day so far?”

“No,” David blurted out.

Mrs. Gibson must have been in a good mood, because she didn’t get mad at David. Instead she said, “Then we’ll just have to make sure your day gets better, won’t we?”

“I am!” Lizzy blurted out. “I’m having a great day. By the way, that necklace is very beautiful. It goes well with your . . . hair.”

It goes well with gray hair?
I thought to myself. Lizzy is such a weirdo.

“Thank you, Lizzy,” Mrs. Gibson said. “I hope you all brought your valentines. We’ll deliver them to the boxes this afternoon at our party. But first, we need to get through all of our work.”

Suddenly, as Mrs. Gibson was talking, I realized drinking four cups of hot chocolate this morning might not have been a good idea. I had to go to the bathroom . . . and
bad
. I looked at the clock. We still had an hour and a half until recess. There was no way I could wait that long. I raised my hand.

“Yes, Raymond,” Mrs. Gibson said.

“May I use the restroom?” I asked, squirming around in my chair.

“Fine, but hurry back.”

I jumped up and ran out the door. “Walk, please,” I heard Mrs. Gibson calling from the classroom. I slowed down to a fast walk. But as soon as I turned the corner I started to run again. I ran as fast as I could. When I tried to push the bathroom door open, I bounced back and fell to the floor.

Huh, how can this be locked?
I thought. A little stand-up sign stood on the floor in front of the door. CLOSED FOR CLEANING, it said. I must have run right past it. I knocked on the door, but no one answered. I needed to get in there. There was no way I would make it down to the bathrooms at the other end of the school. The kindergarten class had bathrooms in it, but I wasn’t going to burst into the kindergarten class to use their bathroom. I jumped around like crazy in the hall, waiting for the janitor to come back. If I couldn’t get into the bathroom quick, I was going to have a serious accident.

After what seemed like forever, I had an idea. I couldn’t believe I was even considering this, but it was the only thing left: the girls’ bathroom. I had never set foot inside the girls’ bathroom, and I’m sure if Graham were here he’d say, “Manly rule number five: Never go inside a girls’ bathroom.” But this was an emergency. I took one last look both ways down the hall and then burst through the door. It was pink instead of blue like the boys’ bathroom. But that didn’t matter at this point. I finished my business, washed my hands, and strolled back out the door.

“What are you doing, Raymond?” I heard a familiar voice say. It was Heidi. “Are you using the pink bathroom because it’s Valentine’s Day?” She laughed. “Isn’t that going a little too far to celebrate a holiday?”

“No . . . I . . . I just went in there . . . I mean, I had to use the girls’ because the boys’ bathroom is closed for cleaning. See?” I said, pointing to the sign in front of the door. Only now the sign was gone. “Wait, it was here a minute ago,” I said. I pushed on the door, which was open now, too.

“Sure,”
she said. “Your secret’s safe with me.” Then she walked into the girls’ bathroom, and I turned and went back to class. I thought about how this day was not turning out so manly. I mean, right in the middle of talking to her, I yell out “Underwear!” and then she sees me coming out of the girls’ bathroom. I hoped my poem to her would make up for all of this unmanliness.

It seemed like the afternoon would never come. You could tell everyone was excited for our Valentine’s Day party. Nobody could sit still.

Finally, it was time. “All right, students, while I am setting up for our party, why don’t you get your valentines from your backpacks and deliver them to each box,” Mrs. Gibson said.

Everyone jumped up and ran to their backpacks. For the next few minutes we all bunched around the boxes in the back of the room, stuffing valentines into the small slots cut into the tops of the decorated boxes. Mrs. Gibson even had a box on her desk. A huge valentine was next to her box that must have been too big to fit inside. I took a closer look to see who it was from.
Happy Valentine’s Day to the best teacher in the world, from your favorite student, Lizzy,
it read on the front of the big heart.

After we finished our valentine deliveries, Lizzy’s mom came in to help out. She’d brought a big box of cupcakes. Graham and I ran over to her to get the first ones. But just as we both reached for a cupcake, she pulled the box away.

“Not so fast,” she said. “The first one goes to your wonderful teacher.” She flipped her hair around, walked over, and handed Mrs. Gibson the cupcake. I couldn’t believe it. She was a teacher’s pet just like Lizzy. She even had that same crinkled-up look on her face. Graham and I grabbed the next two cupcakes and went back to check on our boxes.

“Okay, kids,” Mrs. Gibson said when the bell rang, “have a wonderful Valentine’s Day. Please do not open your valentines in the school . . . wait until you get home.” We all raced to the back and grabbed our boxes. Mine felt really heavy.

Graham and I went to his house to open our valentines together. We sat down in the middle of his room. “Okay, Raymond,” Graham started, “the only rule is that you can’t keep anything a secret. If you get something interesting from anyone, you have to tell.”

“That works for me,” I said. I never get anything interesting anyway. Neither does Graham, for that matter. But for some reason, he thought this year was going to be different.

“Okay, here’s my first one,” I said, opening the first valentine I pulled out of my box.
“Have a Happy Valentines or I’ll punch you, From ? . . . P.S. I’m going to punch you tomorrow anyway.”
I could tell from the handwriting and from the punching that it was from David.

“Well, that one wasn’t so good,” I said, reaching for another.

“How about this?” Graham said. “It’s from Eden. It just says,
To Graham, From Eden.”

“That’s pretty boring,” I said.

“But wait, look what it says on the candy hearts in the envelope,” he said, dumping three colored candies into his hand. “This one says
Be Mine
and this pink one says
Your Girl
and, whoa—this one says
Hot Stuff!
Do you think Eden likes me? I mean, she obviously thinks I’m hot stuff.”

“Are you serious? Those hearts all say stuff like that. I never read them, I just grab a few and drop them in the envelope.”

“Not me,” Graham said. “I read each one and carefully choose which goes in each valentine. I’ll bet everyone does that except you.” He looked at me like I was a moron.

“Wow, listen to this,” I said. “This one says I’m cute!”

“What? Who’s it from?” Graham yelled. He looked a little mad that I got that one instead of him.

“I don’t know, it just says,
From ?
” I said, trying to examine the handwriting. It didn’t look like Heidi’s. Actually, the handwriting was really bad. “Maybe whoever it was tried to disguise their writing so I wouldn’t be able to figure out who they were.”

Graham dug through his box faster and faster. “I’ve got to find Kelly’s,” he said, ripping open envelopes.

“Oh my gosh!” I said. “Here’s another one. It says my eyes are beautiful. Wow, I never thought I had beautiful eyes, but I guess someone thinks I do.” This was turning out to be the best Valentine’s Day ever. I tore open another, wondering if I had more secret admirers.

“Whoa, this one stinks like perfume or something,” I said, waving my hand in front of my nose.

“Give me that, Raymond,” Graham said, grabbing the valentine from me. “What did you say that last one said?”

“You mean the one that says I have beautiful eyes? ”

“Yeah, that one. Let me see it.”

“It’s in that pile,” I said, pointing to the pile of papers and valentines. I opened another one while he sorted through my opened valentines.

“No way,” I said. “Here’s another:
Your lips are so shapely
. I have shapely lips? What does that mean?”

“Okay, give me that one, too,” Graham yelled, grabbing the valentine. “I thought you said Kelly’s valentine box was the one with the perfect hearts on it!” He grabbed my box. “Look at your box, Raymond: ten perfect hearts.
Ten!
”

“So what? What are you saying?” I said, pulling my box out of his hands.

“I’m saying I put all the extra valentines I made for Kelly in your box!” he shouted, looking sad and angry.

“Oh, no!” I said. “I forgot Kelly gave me a handful of hearts for my box. The hearts I cut out looked like eggs, so she gave me her extras. But didn’t you see her name on her box? I told you it was spelled out in little hearts.”

“No, I just saw this big
K
on the front and thought it stood for
Kelly
,” Graham said.

“That’s an
R
for
Raymond
,” I said. I copied her idea. Although, as I looked at it again, it did kind of look like a
K
.

“Well, that’s just great!” Graham said, waving a handful of valentines in the air. “Now Kelly isn’t going to have
any
valentines from me! She’ll think I don’t like her at all.”

“So does this mean my lips aren’t shapely?” I said, trying to make Graham laugh. But I couldn’t even get a grin out of him.

“Come on,” I said. “We can fix it. Let’s gather up all of these valentines you wrote to Kelly and bring them to her house. We’ll ring the doorbell and run. . . . It’ll be fun.”

Graham’s face broke out into a smile. “Great idea! It’s more personal that way.” He picked up the valentines and we headed for the front door.

“Hey, Mom, I’m going outside with Raymond,” he yelled.

“Be back before dinner,” she called back from somewhere in the house.

Kelly’s house was about three blocks away. When we got there, we looked around and made our plan.

“Okay,” Graham said, “you set the valentines in front of the door. After I ring the doorbell, we’ll run over there behind those bushes by the street. From there we can see her open the door.”

We crept up to the door. I set the valentines down while Graham rang the bell. I was setting them up in a nice, neat pile when all of a sudden I heard the bell ring. I tried to stand up, but Graham ran right over me and tripped. He fell on top of me and we both struggled to get up. I pushed Graham off of me, made it to my feet, and ran like crazy. Unfortunately, before Graham could get up, the door opened. I could see it was Kelly. Graham finally jumped up and started running.

“Hi, Graham,” Kelly said.

Graham didn’t answer and just kept running. I watched Kelly pick up the valentines and close the door. We waited for a couple of minutes, then began walking home.

“Man, Raymond, what were you doing in my way? Why didn’t you move when I rang the bell?” Graham asked in a frustrated voice.

“It was kind of hard to move with you
sitting on me
!” I answered.

“Well . . . I was . . . um . . .” I could tell Graham was trying to say something but didn’t know what it was. “Okay, I guess I was sitting on you.” We both started laughing.

“At least she’ll know who gave her the valentines,” I said, patting Graham on his shoulder. We walked home feeling pretty good about the day.

THE NEXT DAY
at school, everyone was talking about their valentines. Heidi came up to me and said, “I think you’re pretty tidy, too, Raymond.” It sounded funny being called tidy. I wondered if Heidi thought my poem to her was a little weird.

“Sorry,” I said. “
Tidy
was the only word I could think of that rhymed with
Heidi
.” She just laughed and sat down at her desk. I went to my desk as well. Just as I sat down, Kelly walked up to me.

“Hey, Raymond,” she said. “Why did Graham give me this valentine at my house yesterday? I mean, the others he gave me were so nice.” She dropped a valentine on my desk and stood there waiting.

I picked it up and read it out loud. “‘Have a happy Valentine’s Day or I’ll punch you . . . P.S. I’m going to punch you tomorrow anyway.’”