“It might seem silly when you first read it,” Mallory said, “but Emily Dickinson wasn’t stupid or silly.”
“No, she was a nobody — like Spaz Girl,” Shane said in a too-loud whisper.
Mrs. Simon stood up abruptly. “If I hear one more rude comment from this class, you will all have an extra report to do.”
I caught Mary Anne’s eye. She shook her head sadly and rolled her eyes.
“Does anyone have any thoughts on this poem?” Mallory asked. I didn’t have a single thought. I could barely think at all after what I’d just been through. But no one else was responding and Mallory looked as though she might cry, so I shot up my hand.
“Yes, Kristy,” she said with a grateful half smile.
“I think everyone feels like a nobody sometimes,” I ventured. “But wasn’t she a famous poet? Why should she feel that way?”
“She wasn’t as famous in her lifetime as she is today,” Mallory answered. “In fact, she lived a very quiet, secluded life in the country. She never married or had children.”
Parker raised his hand and Mallory called on him. Parker has a definite obnoxious side, so I felt nervous. “So, what you’re saying, then,” he began, “is that Emily Dickinson was a Spaz Girl, much like yourself. Is that correct?”
Mallory froze. She was too nervous to think of a snappy comeback.
And I was too angry to keep quiet.
“No, dirt-for-brains!” I shouted. “She means Emily Dickinson couldn’t deal with living in a world full of morons like you!”
Parker was about to reply nastily, but Mrs. Simon spoke first. “That’s it! You will all write a ten-page report on Emily Dickinson, due next week.”
“That’s no fair!” Cokie whined.
I looked to the front, wondering how Mallory was taking all this. I was just in time to see her tearstained face as she walked out the door.
“What a rotten day you guys have had,” Mary Anne said sympathetically that afternoon. She was walking home from school with Mallory and me. I was going to spend the afternoon with her. Everyone else had gone directly off to sitting jobs.
Mary Anne was the only one of the three of us who was in a decent mood.
“Everyone in the entire school is now calling me Spaz Girl,” Mallory stated dully.
“Not everyone,” Mary Anne protested.
“Practically,” Mallory insisted. “Some sixth-grade boys called me that name. How would they know about it if it wasn’t all over school?”
I wanted to say something helpful, but she was right. It was all over school. I’d heard it myself. I don’t think most of the kids meant to be really hurtful. They just thought it was funny and never stopped to consider how it would affect Mallory.
“The program should be called ROT instead of TOT,” Mallory grumbled. “Because that’s what it does. It rots.”
“My class is going well,” Mary Anne said. “I’m sorry it’s not working out for you, Mal.”
“Or me,” I added. “It landed me in Mr. Kingbridge’s office.”
“You had the bad luck to have Cary as a partner,” Mary Anne said.
“No,” I disagreed. “It wasn’t only him. I was as much to blame.”
“I doubt it,” Mary Anne replied.
Mary Anne is loyal to the end, which made me smile. For a second. “Thanks, but I was just as competitive a maniac out there as Cary was. I screamed at him and called him a jerk in front of everyone.”
“He is a jerk,” Mallory said.
“Yeah, but I shouldn’t have said it in front of the class.” I thought of how it had annoyed me that teachers rarely spoke ill of each other. Now I understood why they did it. It wasn’t right to undermine the authority of someone else who was trying to run a class.
I understood a lot more about why teachers did some of the things they did. I certainly understood why they yelled. And I saw now that you had to be tough sometimes. There could never be any doubt about who was in command.
Which gave me an idea about Mallory. “You know, Mal,” I said thoughtfully, “you’re too nice to those kids. That’s the problem.”
“Too nice? How can you be too nice? Don’t kids like it when you’re nice?”
“Not always. I’m not nice whenever anyone is late for a BSC meeting.”
“Yeah, but we understand,” Mary Anne said. “That’s how you are.”
“How am I? Do you guys think I’m mean?”
“No,” Mary Anne was quick to answer. “You’re … you’re … in charge.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say! Exactly! Mallory, if you act more in charge, the kids won’t drive you nuts. You know how it is. Some substitute teachers come in and the kids go berserk. They know the teacher isn’t really in charge. But other teachers come in and that craziness doesn’t happen.”
“I wonder why,” Mary Anne said.
“Because they just take over like they’ve been there all along,” I suggested, pretty sure I was right.
“How can I do that with a bunch of eighth-graders?” Mallory asked hopelessly.
“Half of them act like first-graders,” I reminded her. “Go in on Friday and pretend that’s what they are.”
“But they’re calling me Spaz Girl,” Mallory cried.
“So? If they really were first-graders they’d be calling you Poo-poo-head. Would that upset you?”
Mallory laughed. “No. That would be too silly to bother me.”
“It’s no sillier than Spaz Girl.”
Mallory didn’t answer, but she seemed to be thinking about what I’d said. We’d reached the corner where Mal usually turned off. “We’re going to work on our lesson plans before the BSC meeting,” Mary Anne said to her. “Would you like to come over and work on yours with us?”
“Okay. I don’t have to go home because I told Mom I might want to stay late to talk to Mrs. Simon again after school. After today, though, I don’t think I can face her.”
“I know,” Mary Anne said. “Abby is sitting while your mom takes the triplets to soccer.”
Leave it to Mary Anne to know this. As club secretary, she’s probably aware of what half of Stoneybrook is doing at any given moment.
We continued on to Mary Anne’s old farmhouse. It was quiet because her parents weren’t home from work yet. We climbed the steep, narrow stairs to her room.
“Do you have any poetry books?” Mallory asked. “I had planned to do another poem by Emily Dickinson, but I don’t think I should teach her again, not since I’ve turned her into Emily ‘Spaz Girl’ Dickinson.” She raised her eyes ceilingward, as if searching for the invisible spirit of the poet hovering there. “Sorry, Emily,” she said.
“I’m sure Emily forgives you,” Mary Anne said as she handed Mallory several poetry books from her shelf. “Although I’m not sure she forgives the kids in our class.”
“Idiots,” I muttered, flopping onto Mary Anne’s bed.
Mary Anne took out her social studies books. Mallory began flipping through the poetry, and I put my hands behind my head and laid back on the bed. I had serious thinking to do. After that day’s disaster, how could I plan a lesson that could work?
I couldn’t take the chance that things would turn out the same way. And if they weren’t the same, they would have to be … opposite. I sat up, knowing I was on to something.
The opposite of fierce competition was fierce cooperation. “A Passathon!” I said.
Mallory and Mary Anne both put their books down and stared at me. “What?” they asked in unison.
“A big game in which kids pass the soccer ball to one another. And if the kid you pass to misses the ball, he or she isn’t out — you are,” I explained as the idea took full form in my head.
“Cool!” Mallory said. “That encourages everyone to pass well. And it sounds like fun too.”
Coming from Mallory, who hates gym most of the time, that was good to hear.
We spent the next hour and a half working on our lesson plans. I wrote up
a plan — complete with a new, new, new, shortened, simplified warm-up.
“I’m going to teach this one!” Mallory announced. “ ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’ by Robert Frost.”
“I love that poem,” Mary Anne said. “But do you think it might be too serious for those kids?”
“I don’t care. I’m already Spaz Girl. What have I got to lose?”
“Good for you,” I said. And I meant each word.
At the meeting that afternoon, Abby told us about her crazy sitting job at the Pikes’. “Oh, I’m so glad I wasn’t there,” Mallory said while the rest of us fell over laughing.
The moment Mrs. Pike left, Abby looked around the house to get an idea of where everyone was. After a few minutes, she found Claire, Margo, and Nicky lying on the floor playing a video game. “Where’s Vanessa?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” Margo said. Something in Margo’s amused expression made Abby suspicious.
“Nicky, do you know where Vanessa is?” she asked.
Nicky waited until Super Mario had bounced up three levels and been killed by a giant mushroom before answering, “Nope.”
“I know,” Claire sang with an impish grin.
Margo pushed Claire’s knee harshly. “She doesn’t know. She’s just saying that.”
“Claire?” Abby inquired, not believing Margo.
Claire drew her thumb and forefinger along her lips as if she were zipping her mouth shut. Margo nodded approvingly at her.
Abby wasn’t sure how to deal with this. “I have to find Vanessa,” she told the kids.
Bang! The big stuffed chair in the corner of the room jumped. Abby jumped back. “What the heck was that?” She looked around for Pow, but he was lying by the stairs.
“Unh! Unh!” It was coming from behind the chair.
Abby flew across the room and yanked the chair aside. “Vanessa!” she cried.
Vanessa sat there with her right hand handcuffed to her right ankle and her left hand handcuffed to her left ankle. A gag was tied around her mouth. In seconds, Abby untied it. “You guys are dead!” Vanessa screeched at her sisters and brother.
Claire jumped to her feet. “She’s loose!” she yelled. “Run for your lives!”
With the game still running, Margo and Nicky scrambled to their feet and tore up the stairs.
Abby sat on the floor next to red-faced Vanessa. “What happened?” she asked.
“Those little creeps! After Mom left, Nicky tricked me into trying on his plastic police handcuffs. He said he wanted to see if they still worked. Then Margo came around from behind and gagged me. They dragged me over here and put me behind this chair. Wait until I get them.”
Abby tugged on the cuffs. “You need the key,” Vanessa told her. “Nicky has it. At least I hope he does.”
Abby dashed up the stairs. “Nicky!” she called as she rapped on his door. “Open up.” The door opened a crack and Nicky peered out. “Give me the key,” she demanded.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you let Vanessa free, she’ll beat me up.”
“Worse than that,” Margo said, stepping into the hall. “She’ll make him go to her poetry school.”
“She’ll make all of us go,” Claire added as she joined Margo and Abby. “We’re going crazy!”
“Yeah, we’re desperate,” Nicky agreed. “She gives us homework and then yells if we don’t do it.”
“And she says that since I’m an assistant teacher I’m an advanced student and I have twice as much homework,” said Margo. “Whenever I try to write a poem she says, ‘Not bad, but I expect more from an advanced student.’ ”
“And I can’t even write!” Claire added.
“Hey!” Vanessa bellowed from downstairs. “Let me out of here!”
Abby held out her hand to Nicky. “Give me the key and I’ll talk to Vanessa for you.”
Nicky dug in the pocket of his jeans and produced the key. “It won’t help,” he said as he dropped it into Abby’s open palm. “She won’t listen. She only talks — in rhyme!”
Abby headed back down and freed Vanessa from the handcuffs. Vanessa was about to charge up the stairs after her siblings, but Abby caught her wrist. “Vanessa, let’s talk,” she said. “They’re only going to stay locked in their rooms anyway.”
Vanessa folded her arms. “They’ll have to come out sometime. And when they do …” She punched one hand into the palm of the other.
Abby guided her to the couch and sat down beside her. “Do you know why they did this to you?”
“Yes, because they’re little creeps!” She hesitated and met Abby’s steady gaze. “Little creeps who don’t want to go to poetry school,” she added more honestly.
“If they don’t want to do it, maybe you should let them quit,” Abby suggested.
“They can’t quit. Nicky and Margo could be good poets. And Claire is learning how to write.”
“It’s not fun for them anymore,” Abby explained. “You’re too hard on them.” Vanessa scowled at her. “Vanessa, who is the best teacher you’ve ever had?”
“Ms. James, in third grade.”
“Why did you like her?”
Vanessa didn’t have to stop to think. “She made learning fun and interesting!”
“Exactly! Why don’t you teach me about writing poetry, but do it as if you were Ms. James.”
Vanessa frowned. Then she smiled and asked Abby what she’d like to write about. “Soccer,” Abby suggested.
“Nothing rhymes with ‘soccer’!” Vanessa cried. “Except ‘mock her,’ which is dumb.”
“Would Ms. James say that?” Abby asked.
“Probably not,” Vanessa admitted. “She’d say to try it.” She handed Abby a pen and paper from the coffee table. “So go ahead. Try.”
Abby isn’t much of a poet, but she gave it a shot. After about ten minutes, this was what she came up with: “When Lulu wants to play soccer/She takes her ball from her locker/When Ingrid tried to mock her/Lulu said she’d clock her.”
She handed the paper to Vanessa. “You’re right, ‘soccer’ is hard to rhyme,” Abby conceded.
Vanessa read the poem. “Ms. James would say it was a good warm-up poem,” she told Abby. “While you were writing, I was thinking. To write about soccer, you don’t have to rhyme ‘soccer.’ I was thinking of something like — ‘Running fast on the grass the soccer ball/I pass to a player close to the goal/I’m part of a team, part of a whole.’ ”
“That’s good,” Abby said, impressed.
“Not really,” Vanessa told her. “It needs a lot of smoothing out. But you get the idea. A poem about soccer could be about something more than soccer. How it makes you feel, for instance.”
“I feel great when I play soccer,” Abby said. “I feel like an animal must feel when it’s running at full tilt. No worries, no thoughts. Just motion.”
“Can I try too?” Abby and Vanessa turned to see Margo standing on the stairs. She’d been listening. “It sounds like more fun the way you’re explaining it to Abby.”
“If you want to, okay,” Vanessa replied.
Margo said she’d like to write about cats. “It’s been done too many times,” Vanessa said.
“Would Ms. James say that?” Abby reminded her.
“No,” Vanessa replied. “Um, cats are fascinating,” she said.
Margo smiled and got to work on her poem.
As Abby worked on hers, titled “Animal Grace,” she noticed Claire had joined them and was quietly working on writing letters on the floor near them. Eventually, even Nicky came downstairs. He didn’t say anything but stretched out in front of the TV with some paper and began working on a poem about the Super Mario Brothers.
“We all learned something,” Abby said, concluding her story. “I’m even submitting ‘Animal Grace’ to the literary magazine.” We all wanted to read it, but she insisted we wait until it was published.
I listened to the story and had the f
eeling that Abby, Vanessa, Margo, and Claire might not be the only ones who had learned something from the events of that afternoon.
It was possible that I’d learned something too.
I called Cary after the meeting and ran the Passathon idea past him. I fully expected him to mock it. To my surprise, he didn’t. Not totally.
“It’s a little on the cheesy side,” he said. “The kids might like it, though. And — after what happened today — if we try to start another soccer game they’ll probably take out bows and arrows and shoot each other or something.”
I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
“Kristin, did I actually hear you laugh?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“Don’t go getting all human on me,” he teased. “I won’t know what to do.”
“You could try calling me Kristy,” I suggested.
“Yeah, I suppose I could.”
They don’t think I’m the Idea Machine for nothing.
On Thursday, Cary and I sat down together at lunch and worked out exactly what we wanted to do. “How about I lead the warm-up?” he said. “It’s not like they love your routines.”
I was about to start arguing, but he was right. Why not let him give it a try? “Okay,” I agreed. “Here’s what I’ve scheduled.” I handed him my lesson plan. “Maybe you’ll find something helpful.”
He read it over. “You’re right, Kristy,” he said. “There’s some good stuff in here. Can I borrow Jock Jam?”
“Absolutely.”
* * *
That Friday, the Passathon was a success. After Cary’s warm-up, which went well, we began. There were no teams, so the rivalry didn’t have a chance to heat up. Each kid passed to any other kid. Cary covered one half of the gym and I covered the other, both of us being refs for our own half only.
Ms. Walden and Mr. De Young watched us closely. I knew Cary and I were on big-time probation. Mr. Kingbridge even watched for a while. I tried not to pay attention to them.
As the kids played, I kept Abby’s story about Vanessa in mind. I didn’t yell at kids for not passing correctly. I didn’t call penalties for the slightest little nudges. As much as possible, I let the kids have fun.