Summer School! What Genius Thought That Up? (4 page)

THERE WAS ONE GOOD THING about summer school and that was recess. I would have included lunch, too, except that I was still nauseous at the thought of having to sit in a classroom during a summer month.

The minute Mr. Rock let me go, I bolted outside for recess. When I first hit the playground, the city sun felt great on my face. But by the time I ran across the yard, I was dripping with sweat and my Mets T-shirt was sticking to my skin. New York gets really hot in the summertime. I think it's because the buildings are so tall that they don't let the air move around.

Papa Pete always says that the sidewalk gets so hot, you could fry an egg on it. Once, when it was my turn to walk Cheerio, I took an egg from the refrigerator and tried frying it on the sidewalk. Cheerio sucked the egg up before I got a chance to see if the experiment worked. He was so happy, he tried to lick my face to say thanks, but I don't let dogs with raw-yolk mustaches lick me. I think that hurt his feelings, but I'm sure you understand my thinking.

I headed for the Hawaiian Islands, otherwise known as the area by the swings where the Junior Explorers had their camp. They were learning the limbo. You probably know this, but in case you do the limbo, it's a dance where you see how low you can go while inching yourself forward underneath a pole. Ms. Adolf was holding one side of the long bamboo pole, and Principal Love was holding the other. All the Junior Explorer kids were standing in line, waiting their turn.

I watched for a minute as Robert tried to go under the limbo pole. He kept falling down flat on his back and then looking over at Emily and laughing. Finally, he flipped over onto his stomach and slithered under the pole like a snake. He is so skinny that when he was lying flat on the sand, you almost couldn't see him. He looked like one of those bony fish that bury themselves in the sand at the bottom of the ocean.

After Robert, Frankie took his turn. He was the coolest. He didn't just get down low, he got down low with real style, shaking his shoulders one way and his hips another.
Man oh man,
I thought.
My friend Frankie is good at everything—magic, math, and even the limbo.
You should have seen him—he looked like a crab racing for the ocean. It was awesome.

“Let's hear it for Frankie Townsend,” I called out to the other kids, and started clapping my hands like crazy. All the other kids joined in the applause. Everybody but Nick McKelty. He hates to see anyone but his garbage-Dumpster self get attention.

“What's so great about Townsend?” McKelty said. “Any idiot can do the limbo. Like Zipperbutt here. Let's see you do it, moron.”

“As a matter of fact, Nick, I am a limbo expert,” I said.

Now, between you and me, I've never done the limbo in my life, but in the heat of the moment, I couldn't stop the words from shooting out my mouth.

“It so happens that Hank could go under a toothpick with a top hat on,” Ashley chimed in.

She loves to give McKelty a hard time.

I shot her a look. If she could have heard my eyes, they would have been saying, “Ease up, Ashweena. I don't even know if I can do this.”

I stepped up to the limbo bar. I never thought I would say this, but I was really happy to hear Ms. Adolf's voice calling out to me.

“Henry,” she said, “I'm afraid that doing the limbo is out of the question for you. It is a privilege reserved for Junior Explorers only.”

“That is so disappointing, Ms. Adolf,” I said, not meaning a word of it.

“Don't be disappointed, Mr. Zipzer,” Principal Love said. “This will give you something to strive for. Young people need a destination before they board the train of life.”

“You are absolutely right, Principal Love,” I said, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. You never know what Principal Love is saying. You just agree with him and sooner or later he stops talking. Usually later.

I walked away from the limbo pole.

“Too bad, loser!” McKelty shouted to me.

“Looks like you'll just have to take my turn,” I said to him.

“No can do,” he said. “Joelle needs me to program the speed dial on her new phone. Don't you, Joelle?”

I looked over to the side of the limbo area. Joelle was waving frantically to Nick. Her cell phone was strapped around her wrist, and as she waved, it looked like a tetherball spinning around the pole. Why did she always have her cell phone with her? Who would be calling her, anyway? Oh, I know. The Society of Girls with Disgusting Boyfriends, offering her a lifetime membership. She should be president of that group.

As I walked away, I saw Joelle doing a cartwheel over to where Nick was standing. The cartwheel wasn't so great, but if they had a cell-phone Olympics, she'd get a Gold Medal hands down.

I still had fifteen minutes of recess left with not much to do. I saw Luke Whitman crawling around in the bushes, looking for slugs. He'd probably like it if I joined him, but I don't feel very at home with slimy things. On the other side of the playground, I saw Matthew and Salvatore playing handball, and I thought maybe they'd let me in their game. I headed over there, taking a shortcut through the sandbox where the little kids play.

“Hey, you're stepping on my city,” I heard a squeaky voice say.

I hadn't bothered to look down, but when I did, I saw this micro-kid drawing the Manhattan skyline in the sand with the handle of a red plastic shovel.

“What?” I said to him.

“You just destroyed the Brooklyn Bridge. See?”

“Oh, sorry, little dude. I didn't see it.”

He pointed to his drawing in the sand. When I looked down at it, my eyes nearly popped out of my head. He had drawn the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, and even the Statue of Liberty right in the middle of the Hudson River. It was really good.

“You drew all this?” I said to the kindergartner.

“Uh-huh,” he answered, shaking his head so his red curls bounced around like they were on springs.

“And your teacher didn't help you?”

“Nope. I did it all by myself. And now I have to do the bridge over again.”

“Can I help you?”

He handed me a blue plastic shovel.

“You can make a tugboat on the river.”

“I've never drawn a tugboat before. I'm not sure I know how.”

“It's easy,” he said.

“Just because it's easy for you doesn't mean it's easy for me. Maybe I'll just sit here and watch you draw. Is that okay?”

“Yup.”

“What's your name?” I asked him. He stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth while he drew. I do that sometimes when I'm concentrating.

“Mason Harris Jerome Dunn.”

“My name's Hank.”

“Oh.”

“Are you going to pre-kindergarten, Mason?”

“I'm a Bobcat.”

“I was a Bobcat, too, before I went to kindergarten.”

“Did you like to finger paint? Because I think it's fun.”

I tried to remember back to the summer before I started kindergarten, when I went to the Bobcat summer program at PS 87. It seemed like so long ago—when school was still fun.

Mason went on drawing while I watched. Suddenly, from behind me came the booming voice of a Gila monster. I could smell the bad breath heading my way. I think I even saw Mason Harris Jerome Dunn's nose twitch. Poor little nose. It was so new to the world, I'm sure it had never smelled anything like McKelty's mud breath.

“Well, look who found a friend!” McKelty smirked, kicking up some sand with his size-twelve feet. “Finally came up with someone who knows less than you do, huh, Zipper Face?”

“I don't like him,” whispered Mason.

“I'm with you, dude,” I whispered back.

McKelty took a giant step forward into the sandbox and looked down at Mason's drawing.

“What's that supposed to be?”

Mason didn't answer him, just went on drawing.

“It looks like scribble scrabble,” McKelty said.

“McKelty, sometimes you just amaze me,” I said. “Anybody with eyes can see it's New York. Why don't you leave the kid alone?”

“No problem,” McKelty said. “Unlike some people I know, I have kids my own age to play with.”

He ran over to the handball court, kicking up more sand as he left. I noticed that when he reached the court, Salvatore and Matthew stopped mid-game, dropped the ball, and left. So much for McKelty having friends to play with.

I turned to Mason. He had put down his red shovel. He looked sad.

“Hey, dude, why'd you stop drawing?”

“That mean boy called it scribble scrabble.”

“Are you kidding? He doesn't know what he's talking about. This is great art.”

The recess bell rang.

“Listen, little dude,” I said, “I got to go. Maybe I'll see you again, okay?”

Mason didn't answer. As I walked off, I turned around to look at him. I saw him pick up his red shovel and start to repair the part of the Brooklyn Bridge that I had stomped on.

AS WE WALKED HOME after school, I told Frankie and Ashley about Mason. We agreed that kindergartners are way up there on the cute scale along with puppies and baby pandas. By the time we got to Mr. Kim's grocery store, where he was putting fresh water in each of the buckets of pink tulips, we had made a list of the cutest things about kindergartners.

See if you can figure out whose reason is whose. I'll bet you can.

By Hank, Ashley, and Frankie

1. They have puffy cheeks.

2. They have the cutest little voices and the cutest little fingernails.

3. Every time you do a magic trick, they say, “Woweeeee.”

4. Their sneakers are so small, they look like toys.

5. They like it when you help them.

6. They love sparkly things like rhinestones.

7. They say funny things like “buffalo” instead of “beautiful.”

8. They're so light that when you pick them up, you feel strong.

9. They don't make fun of you if you can't read.

10. They look up to fourth-graders.

ANSWER GUIDE: 1. Ashley, 2. Ashley, 3. Frankie, 4. Ashley, 5. Hank, 6. Ashley (that's an easy one), 7. Hank, 8. Frankie, 9. Hank (another easy one), 10. All three of us

DINNER AT MY HOUSE that night was really obnoxious. Well, the actual dinner—as in the tofu tacos and Spanish rice—wasn't horrible. At least, it wasn't as bad as the cauliflower-raisin-garlic soup my mom had brewed up a couple of nights before. But the company and the conversation stunk up the dinner big time.

Emily had the bright idea to invite Robert over for dinner. His mother designs pop-up greeting cards, and she had to go to an important meeting for all the pop-up designers in New York. I imagine they probably need to meet a lot because making pop-up cards seems like a really hard thing to do. You know the card that's a giant birthday cake with a candle on top and when you open it up, the whole cake jumps out at you? I've always wondered how they get it to do that. I don't think I could ever be a pop-up card maker. You have to be so exact. I'm not very good with details. I keep losing them all the time.

Anyway, Robert came to dinner and brought his new pet, a gecko that he had named Bruce. If I had a gecko—which I wouldn't, because I'm not a fan of pets with scaly skin—but if I did, I'd name it something cool like Fang or Spike. Only someone like Robert, who wears a white shirt and tie to school every day, would name his pet gecko Bruce.

As we sat down at the table to eat, I noticed that Katherine wasn't there. She usually sits on Emily's shoulder during dinner, hissing at her own reflection in the saltshaker and snatching carrots off our plates with her tongue. Emily said Katherine didn't come to dinner because she was feeling a little under the weather, but I'm sure the old lizard was just jealous of Bruce. She isn't the type who'd want to share her mini-carrots with another reptile.

Bruce was sitting in a plastic box on the table between Robert and Emily. Or at least I think he was in it, because when you looked inside the box, all you could see were leaves and rocks and a water dish. Correction. A water thingamajiggy. That was no dish.

“Hey, Robert, what exactly is that thingamajiggy holding your gecko's water?”

“That happens to be the cap for the cream I use to moisten the dry skin in my ears,” he answered.

“Too much information, Robert. I'm getting nauseous.”

“I think it's a very inventive use of an ear-cream container,” Emily said. “Reuse and recycle, that's what I say.”

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for recycling. It was the dry-skin-in-the-ears part that got my stomach churning. I couldn't believe Robert and Emily were actually discussing ear moistening cream at our family dinner table. I tell you, they are two peas in a freaky, geeky pod. And my parents just sat there through the whole conversation, like we were talking about something normal.

“By the way, Robert, where exactly is Bruce?” I asked, trying to find him inside the plastic container.

“That's him,” Robert said.

I studied the box. To me, it looked geckoless.

“Come on, this thing is empty,” I said. “Stop kidding around.”

“He's right there, Hank,” Emily said. “Isn't he one gorgeous gecko?”