“My, my.”
She still didn’t seem impressed. “Mom, do you hear what I’m saying? Gerald Willis.”
She touched her ears and quick pulled her hands away. “My ears are burning.”
I laughed. Then stopped. “But that wasn’t the main thing,” I said.
“So what was the main thing?”
I reached deep in the suds for my dinosaur. I took a deep breath. “Joey told Judy Billings I love her.”
Mom’s eyebrows went up. That was the only hint that she was impressed. Then she gave a shrug. “So? What’s the big deal? You’ve been in love with Judy Billings since first grade.”
I screamed: “Mom!”
She patted my head. “Calm down, boy. Don’t scream at your mother. Did I just say something that’s not true? Did I lie?”
All I could do was stare at her. She does this to me. She tricks me with words.
She laughed. “What you’re trying to say is, ‘Mom, that’s not the point.’” She pressed the end of my nose with a sudsy fingertip. “Right?”
“Right,” I said. “That’s not the point.”
“So, Kokomo, what is the point?”
“The point is, he said it. Out loud. To her.”
“And you don’t want her to know it?”
“No,” I said, like Why would I?
“But you tell her you love her in every Valentine’s Day card.”
Sometimes even my own mother can be dumb. “Mom — that’s Valentine’s Day.”
She nodded. “Oh. Right. I forgot.”
“So,” I said, “you see the problem?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“What’s going to happen when I go to school tomorrow? When she sees me?”
She looked at me. “Well, let me ask you a question. What are you afraid is going to happen?”
I tried to think about it, but I wasn’t having any luck. “I don’t know,” I said. “Something really bad.”
“Want to hear what I predict?”
“What?”
“I predict nothing will happen.”
I stared at her. “Nothing?”
“Nothing. Zero. Zip.” Her face tilted. “You don’t believe me?” I shrugged. She laughed. “Sudsy … Sudsy … Why are you always complaining to me about Judy Billings?”
I tried to think. “I don’t know.”
She pressed my nose again. “She ignores you. She doesn’t smile at you. She doesn’t say hello —”
“She does if I say hello first,” I said.
“Okay, but basically she ignores you, right?”
It was true. I just didn’t like hearing it from my mother. “I guess,” I said.
My mother smacked her knee and stood up. “Okay, then. So, I predict” — she held up one finger — “nothing bad at all will happen. Judy Billings will not laugh at you. She will not spit on you. Nothing will change. Judy Billings will simply ignore you — like she always has.”
I felt better.
“I also predict” — she held up two fingers — “you will stop chipmunking about it. And my final prediction” — three fingers — “is that you and Judy Billings and everybody else will forget about who loves who because you’ll all be too busy being super-star angels.” She opened the bathroom door. She sent me a thumbs-up. “Got it?”
I sent a thumbs-up back to her. “Got it.”
She left. I settled deeper into Bubble Tubble. I wasn’t sure if I believed all of her predictions. But I did believe one. Already the chipmunk was gone.
Mom was right.
Judy Billings didn’t spit at me or say hello or look at me or anything in school today. In other words, she ignored me like every other day. Even when she dropped her pencil on the floor during Silent Reading and I picked it up and handed it to her, she didn’t say thank you.
And my mother was right about the angel stuff too. From the moment Mrs. Simms said “Good morning, angels!” and we all answered “Good morning, Mrs. Simms!” you could feel the angel buzz in the air. Darren Tapp, who never says please or thank you, raised his hand and said, “Mrs. Simms, may I please go to the bathroom?” And when Darren came back, Missy Haverbeck, who is the shyest person in class, whispered to him as he went past her desk, “Your fly is open.”
All day long pleases and thank yous and pardon mes were flying around like bees at a picnic.
A lot of who did its? too. Because from the first minute, all eyes were on Mrs. Simms’s desk. Sitting right there was an apple. A really big red apple. A really big red polished apple. Buffed to a shine like it was a new car.
Whispers raced up and down the aisles:
“Who did it?”
“Who did it?”
“Who did it?”
Nobody knew.
Except me.
As the whispers were flying around, I was doing my usual thing in my seat behind Judy Billings: staring at her perfect, uncovered right ear. I started to notice something. The perfect curve at the top of her ear was getting pink. Then red. The whispers were flying and Judy Billings was blushing. Ah hah! I thought. The apple came from her.
Some of Judy Billings’s blush sank into my chest. We shared a secret. I closed my fist and made a vow. Nothing — nothing — not a hundred spiders or torture by tickling or ten Gerald Willises would ever make me rat her out.
During Silent Reading, Mrs. Simms was writing something. It was hard to concentrate on my book. I kept looking up at her. So did everybody else. We were all wondering the same thing: Is she writing something good about me?
Perfect in every way.
I kept remembering what Judy Billings said about angels yesterday. And that’s what we were today — perfect in every way. We sat straight in our chairs and raised our hands for every question and stood to give our answers and were quiet as mice the rest of the time. I kept reminding myself to keep my lip buttoned and not blurt out stuff like yesterday. Only Joey was bad. He kept making noises and funny faces. He was trying to make us laugh, but nobody did.
Even in the lunchroom we were perfect. Everybody smiled at the lunch ladies and said thank you whenever they handed us something. And everybody chewed with mouths shut. Except Joey.
Then came after-lunch recess.
It was a warm and sunny day, but really windy. Swings were flapping when nobody sat on them. Basketball shots were curving. Besides the wind, everything was going along pretty normal until a yellow baseball cap came flying onto the playground. On the other side of the fence a lady in a sweat suit was stopped, jogging in place. She was pointing to her hat, which had blown off and landed among a bunch of us third-graders.
For a second, nobody moved. And then it hit all of us at once: Good deed! About ten of us pounced on the hat. There were so many hands the best I could do was grab somebody’s wrist. We were wrenching and pulling and twisting ten different ways.
“I got it!”
“I got it!”
“Let go!”
“I was first!”
“I was first!”
“Oww!”
Suddenly we all snapped apart like a broken wishbone. Eddie Shank was holding the rim of the cap. Diana Briggs was holding the rest.
Somebody said, “Uh-oh.”
Everybody just stared at the hat pieces. Except Joey, who was laughing.
A screech came from the sidewalk: “You little hoodlums!”
The jogger lady kicked the chain-link fence and started running.
Mrs. Simms was standing in the doorway, watching.
Silence in the classroom. The two pieces of the yellow hat sat on Mrs. Simms’s desk. In between them was the apple.
“That was disgraceful,” said Mrs. Simms. “Very un-angelic behavior.”
Judy Billings raised her hand. Mrs. Simms didn’t call on her, but Judy stood up and spoke anyway. “But I didn’t do it. I was just watching.” It sounded like she might cry.
Mrs. Simms didn’t even look Judy’s way. Judy sat down.
“You’re all
guilty,” said Mrs. Simms. “You’re guilty of doing it. You’re guilty of watching and doing nothing to stop it. How many of you went over to the lady and told her you were sorry for the bad behavior of your classmates?” No hands. “Didn’t think so. You’re guilty of that too.”
She looked at us like we were burnt toast. “Angels? Hah! This may be the first class where nobody gets a halo. Angels? You were no better than a pack of sharks after a piece of meat.”
Joey burst out laughing.
“Button it, Peterson,” said Mrs. Simms.
Joey buttoned it. The rest of us stopped breathing.
“I guess it was all just words, huh?” said Mrs. Simms. “Angel talk. No angel do. This” — she held up half a hat in each hand — “will never happen again.” Her eyes went up and down the rows, zapping each of us with a yeah, you glare. She put the hat-halves down. “Got it?”
No sounds came from us. We just boggled and nodded.
“It was amazing,” I said at dinner.
“You’re just having one amazing day after another,” said Mom.
“What was amazing?” said Zippernose. Zippernose is my sister. She’s behind me, in second grade. Other people call her Amy. She sneaked a pickle chip into my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich on Saturday, so I’m not talking to her this week.
“Okay,” said my dad, “I’ll ask. What was so amazing?”
“Lots of stuff,” I said. “A lady’s hat blew onto the playground and we went after it like sharks after a piece of meat.”
“You’re a piece of meat!” said Zippernose.
“Mom!” I yelled.
Bubba, my baby brother, laughed and babbled something. It’s the weirdest thing — whenever I get mad, he laughs. My parents understand his babble but I don’t.
“We?” said my dad.
“Huh?” I said.
“You said ‘we went after it like sharks.’ You were one of the sharks?”
“I’m a cat,” said Zippernose. She hates it when I get all the attention.
“I guess I was,” I said. “But it wasn’t me that ripped the hat apart.”
My mother’s eyes boggled. “Ripped it apart? Good grief. What did the lady say?”
“She called us little hoodlums.”
“She got that right.”
“And Mrs. Simms saw it all.”
“Good.”
“But I didn’t rip it,” I told them. “There were too many hands in there. I couldn’t even feel the hat.”
“Accessory to the crime,” said Dad. “You were all equally guilty.” My dad’s a lawyer.
I stabbed a green bean. “That’s what Mrs. Simms said. Even the kids who were just watching were guilty.”
Dad nodded. “I like this teacher.”
“I’m a cat,” said Zippernose. I saw her reaching for the mashed-potato spoon. I got there first. I dumped a spoonful on my plate. She reached for the spoon. I put it on the other side of the table. She screeched bloody murder. “Mom! He always has to be first! He saw me reaching for the spoon and grabbed it!”
“Give her the spoon,” said Dad.
Zippernose’s hand was wagging in my face. I stuck the spoon in the mashed potatoes.
She went on whining. “He just did it to make me mad. He doesn’t even like mashed potatoes.”
I ignored her. “Mrs. Simms was really mad,” I said. “She told us we were disgraceful. She said maybe nobody will get a halo this year. And you know what she said to Joey Peterson?”
“The new kid who’s not afraid of anybody?” said Mom.
“Yeah. Him. He laughed when she called us sharks and know what she said?”
“What?” said Zippernose.
I didn’t answer.
“What?” said Dad.
“She said ‘Button it, Peterson.’”
Dad grinned. “I like this teacher.”
As I said before, I do a lot of talking in the tub (to my mom). As for thinking, I do that in bed. And that’s what I was doing, thinking about dinner and hearing Zippernose’s words over and over: He always has to be first.
It really bugged me because it’s bad enough I have to hear her voice all day long in the house. But now I was hearing it in my own dark and private bed with the door shut and the lights out. It was like she shrunk herself and crawled into my ear and now she was holding a megaphone and shouting across my brain: He always has to be first … He always has to be first …
There was another reason why it bugged me.
She was right.
I could never say it to anybody. I couldn’t even say it to my mother from under the suds in the tub. In fact, until this night, I don’t think I had ever said it to myself.
But as soon as she said it at the dinner table, I knew it was true. And it was about everything, not just mashed-potato spoons.
When us kids have races, I almost always win. If I don’t, I feel bad. I mean, really bad.
When we do art or writing in school, I’m always the neatest. The other kids come to my desk to see my stuff. My lines are straight. My letters are perfect. Even in first grade, I never colored outside the lines. Last year my teacher said, “George, you may be the neatest student I’ve ever had.”
I almost never spell a word wrong. If I do, it bugs me for days.
If I’m in the hallway heading for the bathroom and I see Zippernose coming from the other direction, I run to get there first. I can’t help it. It’s like everything is a race that I have to win.
And now that’s how I feel about getting a halo.
I want to be first.
I have to be first.
Eleven!
That’s how many apples were lined up along the front of Mrs. Simms’s desk. Plus two pears, a banana, and a sandwich. And that’s not counting Judy Billings’s apple from yesterday, which Mrs. Simms took home last night. And one other thing: a gummy bear, a red one (from guess who).
One of the apples was from me.
We sat in our seats staring at them. Mrs. Simms stared. We were remembering how mad she was when school ended yesterday. We were all flinching … waiting …
And then it came. It started with a little wrinkle at her mouth. Then it went to her eyes. Then her whole face. Her cheeks bulged out like tennis balls. Her neck got ropey. Her hand shot to her mouth. Omygod, I thought, she’s gonna barf! I inched back in my seat. Sure enough, something exploded from her, but it wasn’t barf. Whatever it was, it wasn’t just a mouth thing. It was a full-body thing. She bent over like she had a stomachache. She twirled away from us and wobbled to the front wall and stopped herself with her hand before crashing into it. When she turned back to us and took her hand away, I didn’t recognize her face. It was blotchy and lumpy and red. Tears were coming down her cheeks. It was scary.
Somebody peeped, “Is she crying?”
Somebody else peeped, “She’s sick.”
Joey Peterson gave a snort. “She ain’t crying, dummy. She ain’t sick. She’s laughing.”
He was right! She was laughing. I never knew a teacher could laugh so hard.
Joey was chuckling to himself. The rest of us were a fishbowl of open mouths.
Finally she started to calm down. She took deep breaths.
I looked around. A couple kids were smiling. So I did too. But I was still afraid to laugh out loud. I had a feeling this might be a trick.
She pulled a tissue from her box of Kleenex. She wiped her eyes and cheeks. She took a long, deep breath. She picked up the sandwich. It was plastic-wrapped. She stared at it. She held it out to us. “Okay …” she said, “what is it?”
Billy Umberger spoke. “Corned beef.”
Mrs. Simms nodded. “Hmmm.”
It looked like she was ready to bust out again, but she took a deep breath. She sniffed. “O-kay. Students. This has never happened before. I guess I wasn’t ready for it. Sorry for losing my self-control there. Disgraceful example for my students.”
“That’s okay, Mrs. Simms.”
She turned
to me and smiled — because I was the one who said it. I kicked myself in the ankle.
“Thank you, George,” she said.
“Go Georgie,” I heard Joey whisper.
“I want you to know —” said Mrs. Simms. She put down the corned-beef sandwich and stepped away from the desk, so we could all see the lineup again. “I want you to know how much I appreciate all this.” She waved at it but she still couldn’t look at it. “But I have to make something clear to you. Very clear. Yes — you must earn your halo. But no — you may not buy your halo. I cannot be bribed.” She looked us over. “Can somebody tell me what a bribe is?”
One hand went up: Ian O’Hara’s.
“Yes, Ian?”
“It means when you pay money to somebody to make them do something you want.”
Mrs. Simms nodded. “Yes. Good, Ian. With one correction. A bribe doesn’t have to be money. A bribe can be” — she waved at the desk — “apples. Or pears. Or bananas. Or corned-beef sandwiches.” A couple kids laughed at that. “Or” — she picked up the candy — “gummy bears.” She studied it for a minute, then popped it into her mouth. Everybody laughed.
Joey fist-pumped. “Yes!”
“You can bring me an apple every day. You can bring me a banana split with cherries and hot fudge and whipped cream up to the ceiling. You can bring me” — she threw out her arms — “a new car!” We laughed. “But” — her voice got lower, slower — “you … cannot … bribe … your way … to … a … halo.” She gave us her waiting-to-sinkin look. “So … how do you get your halo?”
The class called back: “Earn it!”
“Lesson learned, student angels?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. So. Stop putting your energy into bribes. Put your energy into being good. Into doing good. Impress me. Don’t buy me.” She rooted in a desk drawer and came out with a plastic bag. She dumped in the pears and the banana. She sniffed the sandwich. “Corned beef, huh? Mr. Moto will like this.” Mr. Moto is her dog. Into the bag went the sandwich.