He rushed out the door.
“Hello, Bradley,” said Colleen.
He stopped cold.
Colleen closed her eyes tightly, then opened them. With the determination of a Zen monk, she asked, “Would you like to come to my birthday party on Sunday?”
Bradley stared at her.
“Jeff will be there,” said Colleen. “He’s the only other boy. Everyone else will be girls. I would have invited you sooner, except, um, I just found out when it was.”
Bradley nodded his head until his mouth worked. “Yes!” he said.
“Good,” said Colleen, then scooted away.
Bradley stared after her, then turned around in a circle as he tried to remember which way he was going.
“Bradley!” called Andy. “Hurry up! We need you.”
He ran to the basketball court. He forgot everything he had learned about dribbling.
“Is he coming?” asked Melinda.
Colleen nodded.
Lori stuck out her tongue and screamed.
“It’ll be fun,” said Melinda. “Bradley’s not the same as he was. I think he’s gotten better.”
“Oh, you can’t come anymore, Melinda,” said Colleen.
“Why not?” she asked, obviously very hurt.
“Because they’re coming, and you beat them up!”
“But they started it.”
Colleen stared at her, hands on hips. She couldn’t believe Melinda was being so unreasonable.
“I thought I was your best friend,” said Melinda.
“You are,” said Colleen. “But they’re boys. Oh, okay. You can come. But you better not cause any more trouble.”
“I thought I was your best friend,” said Lori.
That night Bradley lay in bed, too excited to sleep. He couldn’t wait until tomorrow when he’d see Carla again. He had so much to share with her. And it was all because of her magic book.
He turned on the light above his head and read aloud to Ronnie and Bartholomew. They laughed whenever he did.
“I just met Ace.
He’s my parents’ lawyer. Guess what? He’s crazier than my Aunt and Uncle put together.
The first thing he said to me was, ‘Do you like peanuts?’
‘They’re okay,’ I answered.
‘Good,’ he said. He gave me a peanut and I ate it.
‘Do you want another peanut?’ he asked.
I shrugged.
So he gave me another peanut and I ate that one, too. Big deal.
‘You must really like peanuts a lot,’ he said.
I told you he was crazy.
‘I want you to remember that,’ he said. ‘If anybody asks you, you really like peanuts a lot.’
‘Okay, I really like peanuts a lot,’ I said.
Then he gave me three more peanuts! ‘Eat these!’
I ate them.
‘You just ate three peanuts in five seconds,’ he said. Can you believe it? He had timed me. Tell me he isn’t crazy!”
“He isn’t crazy,” laughed Ronnie.
“Why is he making such a big deal over peanuts?” asked Bartholomew.
“I don’t know,” said Bradley.
There was a loud knock on his door, then his father entered. “It’s past your bedtime, Bradley,” he said.
“Okay,” said Bradley. He reached for his light.
“Oh, you were reading,” his father noticed. “Well, that’s all right then. You can stay up if you want to read.”
Bradley smiled. Once again, the magic book had kept him from getting into trouble.
“So, what did the kids think of your dribbling?”
“I forgot how,” Bradley admitted. He hated to disappoint his father.
“I guess we need to practice more,” said his father. “Maybe this weekend I’ll put up a backboard on the garage.” He said good night and walked out of Bradley’s room.
“Come on, I want to hear about the peanuts,” said Bartholomew.
Bradley continued reading.
“So then he asked me, ‘Are you good at math?’
Well, I don’t like to brag but math happens to be my best subject. Big deal.
‘Okay, here’s a math problem for you,’ he said. ‘If you can eat three peanuts in five seconds, how long would it take for you to eat fifty thousand peanuts?’
I got out a pencil and paper and figured it out. ‘About twenty-three hours and nine minutes.’
‘That’s less than a day, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘There are twenty-four hours in a day.’ He’s supposed to be my parents’ lawyer and he doesn’t even know how many hours there are in a day!
‘Remember that,’ he told me. ‘If anybody asks you, you can eat fifty thousand peanuts per day.’
I laughed. ‘Who would ask me that?’
‘The police.’ ”
The chapter ended there.
36.
Bradley giggled as he walked to Carla’s office for his regularly scheduled appointment. He couldn’t wait to tell her all that had happened to him. She’ll be so happy! he thought.
She was waiting for him in the hall, just outside her office. But before she could say anything, he beat her to it. “Hello, Carla,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to see you today. I appreciate coming to see you.”
She smiled. “The pleasure is mine,” she replied.
He laughed. He got a kick out of being polite.
They shook hands, then went inside to the round table. She was wearing a dark blue shirt, almost black, with little white stars on it. She looked like nighttime.
“So what’s new?” she asked.
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He didn’t know why, but for some reason he didn’t want to tell her. “What’s new with you?” he asked.
“With me?” asked Carla. “Nobody’s ever asked me that before.”
“You’re always asking me what’s new,” he said. “Why can’t I ask you?”
“You can!” she replied. “You can ask me anything you want. Let me see. What’s new? I bought a new shower curtain yesterday. But that doesn’t sound like very interesting news, does it?”
“What color?”
“Oh, sort of beige, I don’t know, it doesn’t really have a color.”
“That’s a good color,” said Bradley. “It sounds beautiful.”
“It’s okay,” said Carla.
“What happened to your old shower curtain?” he asked.
“It started getting a little rotten,” said Carla.
“Was it also beige?”
“Um, no,” said Carla. “I think it was yellow when it was new, but it was sort of a greenish brown when—”
“Colleen invited me to her birthday party!” he blurted. Then it all came pouring out of him.
“Jeff’s invited too. We’ll be the only boys. Everyone else will be girls. Jeff and I are friends now. The other guys like me too. We play basketball together. At first I was afraid to shoot the ball, but then everybody said, ‘Shoot, Bradley, shoot,’ so I shot and made it! Everyone was amazed. So was I. I still miss a lot more than I make, but I’m getting better. Everyone says so. My father taught me how to dribble. He’s going to put a basket over the garage. At first they wanted to beat me up, but I said, ‘Hello, Jeff,’ and he said, ‘Hello, Bradley,’ and then Andy asked me if I wanted to play basketball. Then Colleen asked me to her birthday party and I said, ‘Yes,’ and she said, ‘Good.’ She would have asked me sooner except she just found out when she was born.”
Fortunately, Carla had heard most of it already, otherwise she wouldn’t have understood a thing he said.
“It’s all because of you,” said Bradley.
“You did it, Bradley, not me.”
“It was your magic book!”
“My book? What’s that got to do with—Bradley, what’s wrong?”
He was crying. One second he was beaming about her magic book, and the next he was sobbing and shaking all over.
“Bradley?”
He covered his face with his hands. Tears spilled out of his eyes.
“What is it?” asked Carla. “What happened?”
He shook his head.
Carla rose from the table, got a box of tissues, and placed it in front of him.
He pulled out a tissue, but didn’t use it. “I’ve never been to a birthday party,” he blubbered. Then he hiccupped. “Not a real one, where other kids are there.” He hiccupped again, then blew his nose. “A long time ago, when I was in the third grade I went to one, but then they made me go home because I sat on the cake.”
“Well, you’re a lot smarter now than you were when you were in the third grade,” said Carla.
“But I don’t remember what to do!” Bradley whined. “Do I have to bring my own chair?”
“Why would you have to bring your own chair?”
“For musical chairs. That’s why I sat on the cake. I got mad because there was no place else to sit.” He sniffled. “Will there be ice cream?”
“Don’t you like ice cream?”
“What if they don’t have enough for me? What if they only have enough for everybody else? And what about pin the tail on the donkey?”
“You don’t have to bring your own donkey,” said Carla.
He laughed through his tears. “But what if I stick it in a bad place?”
“You want to know what I think?” asked Carla. “I think you’re a little overwhelmed by all that has happened to you. It’s scared you. You think you’re Cinderella.”
“Cinderella?” he repeated, and laughed again.
“You’re Cinderella and you’ve just been invited to the ball and now you’re afraid that right in the middle of Colleen’s birthday party, everything will suddenly turn into a pumpkin!”
He wiped his eyes on his tissue.
“You’re afraid all the good things that happened will suddenly disappear. You’re afraid everyone will suddenly stop liking you. But this isn’t a fairy tale, Bradley. Your friends like you for who you are. My book wasn’t magic. The magic is in you.”
“Do I have to bring her a present?” he asked.
“You don’t have to do anything,” said Carla. “But it’s a nice thing to do, don’t you think? Colleen invited you to her birthday party because she likes you, and you give her a present because you like her and because you want to help celebrate her birthday.”
“What should I get her? Should I get her a doll? Is that what girls like?”
“I don’t know. Everyone likes different things. Give her something you like. If you like it, then she probably will too. Give her a gift from the heart.”
“How about a shower curtain?” he asked.
“If it comes from the heart,” said Carla.
He smiled.
When it was time for him to return to class, Carla said, “I enjoyed our visit very much. Thank you for sharing so much with me.”
“The pleasure was mine,” he replied. He had been waiting to say that.
37.
The meeting between Carla Davis and the Concerned Parents Organization was held after school in room 8, a second-grade classroom.
Carla sat in a chair that was too small for her and faced the parents. She crossed her ankles and folded her hands on her lap. The five members of the school board sat behind her. The principal sat next to her, at the teacher’s desk.
Bradley’s mother wasn’t there. She was out with Bradley, shopping for Colleen’s birthday present. Since she didn’t have any complaints, she didn’t come to the meeting. The only parents who came were those who had complaints.
“I’d like to know what we need a counselor for?” asked a father. “Kids have enough counseling. What they need is more discipline. If they’re bad, they should be punished!”
The other parents clapped their hands.
“We need to get back to basics!” said a woman. “Reading, writing, and arithmetic. And, of course, computers.”
Her husband had a chart that showed that if the counselor was fired, there would be enough money to put a computer in every classroom.
Everyone got very excited about that idea. They all loved computers.
“No one is being fired,” said the principal. “The purpose of this meeting is to give you a chance to ask Miss Davis questions.”
“She told my son it was good to fail!” shouted a woman standing under a poster of an octopus. “She told him grades didn’t matter.”
“I never said it was good to fail,” Carla calmly replied. “I simply tried to help him relax. Children learn better when they’re not under pressure. They do better when they can enjoy school.”
“My son doesn’t go to school to have a good time,” said the woman. “He has to get good grades so he can get into a good college!”
The principal reminded the parents that Miss Davis wouldn’t see any of their children without their permission.
“But why should our tax dollars pay for her to counsel other people’s children?” one of the mothers complained.
Several other parents agreed.
A woman with red hair stood up. “My daughter came home with one of those forms for us to sign, and we refused to sign it. We didn’t want her seeing the counselor. We try to give her all the counseling she needs at home. But then we found out the counselor’s been talking to her anyway.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?” asked the principal.
“Colleen Verigold.”
Carla admitted that she had seen Colleen without her parents’ permission. “Colleen came into my office very upset and said she had to talk to me. She said it was an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?” asked the school board president.
“It was something very personal,” said Carla.
“But what was it?” asked the school board president.
“I’m sorry,” said Carla. “I never repeat anything a child tells me.” She knew Colleen wouldn’t want everybody to know she had gone into the boys’ bathroom.
“You’re not supposed to see a child without her parents’ permission,” said the school board president. “Now if it was an emergency, then you might have been justified. But we have to know the nature of the emergency.”
“I’m sorry,” said Carla.
“You can tell me,” said Mrs. Verigold. “I’m her mother. If there was an emergency, don’t you think I should know about it?”
“Ask Colleen. If she wants to tell you, she will. I can’t break my promise to her.”
“But Colleen’s just a child,” said a member of the school board. “You don’t have to keep promises to children.”
“I do,” said Carla.
“She’s been trying to make her change religions,” said Colleen’s mother. “Colleen came home from school and announced she didn’t want to be Catholic anymore. She wants to be a Zen monk!”
Carla laughed, though she knew that was a mistake. She tried to explain about saying hello back to someone who says hello to you, but nobody seemed to understand what that had to do with being a Zen monk.
“You’re not allowed to teach religion in public school,” said the president of the school board. “And you weren’t even supposed to talk to her child in the first place.” He apologized to Colleen’s mother and assured her it wouldn’t happen again.
A woman in the front row raised her hand. “I never had a counselor when I went to school,” she said. “I don’t understand what they do, exactly.”
“Why don’t you explain to the parents what you do and how you help different children?” the principal suggested.
“Mostly, I just talk with them,” said Carla. “I listen to their problems, but I never tell them what to do. I try to help them to learn to think for themselves.”
“But isn’t that what school is for?” asked the woman. “To tell kids what to think?”
“I believe it’s more important to teach them how to think, instead of what to think,” said Carla.
&nb
sp; “But if they do something bad, don’t you tell them it’s wrong?” asked the man sitting next to her.
“No,” said Carla. “I think it’s much better if they figure that out for themselves.”
“What if there was a boy who bit his teacher?” asked a father.
“What?” Carla exclaimed.
“Wouldn’t you tell him not to bite her?” he asked.
“No, I’d talk to him about it and try to find out why he bit her, but—”
“What if he keeps on biting her?” asked the man. “What if every day he sneaks up behind her and bites her on her butt? Then what would you do?”
“This is getting ridiculous,” said Carla.
“Tell him what you’d do,” said the principal.
Carla sighed. “I’d try to help the boy understand the reason he wants to bite his teacher, and then help him reach the conclusion that he shouldn’t do it.”
“How long would that take?” asked a woman.
“I don’t know.”
“A month?”
“Possibly.”
“And meanwhile he keeps biting his teacher!” said the first man. “She could get seriously hurt!”
“She could die,” said another man. “How would you feel then?”
“What if the kid had rabies?” someone else shouted. “Don’t you think he should get a rabies shot?”
“I bet you’d feel differently if he bit you on your butt!” someone called from the back of the room.
Everyone began talking at once.
“What if he bit you?”
“You’d punish him then, wouldn’t you?”
“Then you wouldn’t wait for him to think for himself, would you? Not if he bit you!”
“What if he bit you?”
Carla uncrossed her ankles, then crossed them the other way. As she looked at the angry group of parents, she had the horrible feeling that they all wanted to bite her butt.
38.
Bradley Chalkers
Homework
Book Report
My Parents Didn’t
Steal an Elephant
By Uriah C. Lasso
Mrs. Ebbel’s class
Room 12
Red Hill School
Last seat, last row
Next to Jeff