And then, yesterday, four things happened.
The First Thing happened in the morning. At recess.
I saw a candy wrapper on the ground and picked it up. Joey poked me. “Why do you keep doing that?”
“I told you before,” I said. “I want the first halo.”
“But look —” he said. He pointed at the school and all around the playground. “Mrs. Simms isn’t even here. You’re not even getting credit for it.”
I grinned. “Yes I am.”
He blinked. “You are?”
I got closer. I whispered, “She has spies.”
He boggled. “What?”
“Mrs. Simms can’t be watching everywhere all the time. So she has spies. Her friends.”
His eyes darted around. “How do you know?”
“My mom said.”
The boggle went away. He did more blinking. Then he was grinning. I mean, not just any grin. The grin was so big it was almost scary.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
“Your mom,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
He poked me. “She was joking you, dude. There ain’t no spies.”
“You calling my mom a liar?”
“I’m calling your mom a joker.” He tossed a gummy bear at me. It bonked off my nose. “There ain’t no spies.”
There ain’t no spies?
Now it was my turn to boggle.
The Second Thing happened in the afternoon.
We were riding home on the bus. My sister sat behind me. She kept taking off her seat belt and reaching over my seat and sticking her finger in my ear. She knows I can’t stand that. It was getting harder and harder for me not to strike back.
So I got off the bus early.
“Hey!” she called. “It’s not our stop!”
I kept walking. I prayed she wouldn’t follow me. She didn’t.
Two other kids got off with me. Heather Furst and Constantina Pappas.
Heather said, “This isn’t your stop.”
“I know,” I said. I started walking for home.
I heard a scream: “Buster! Buster!”
A little black-and-white dog came around the corner. It had a leash, but there was no person on the other end of the leash. Then the person — a teenage girl — came around the corner, chasing the dog and yelling, “Buster! Buster!”
The dog was heading straight for me. It was almost close enough for me to grab the leash when it turned and started across the street. I went after it. I dove after the leash. I grabbed it. I felt the tug of the dog on the other end. I heard screaming. The teenage girl. But something else screaming too. Even louder. Brakes. I was lying in the street. I looked up. The dog at the end of the leash was inches from the front fender of a car.
Suddenly the girl was picking me up along with the dog and wrapping us in hugs and tears and a lady was coming out of the car saying, “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
I can’t even remember walking the rest of the way home. What I remember is the Third Thing.
The Third Thing happened in my room. On my bed.
I was still shaking too hard to make it to the tub. I closed my eyes. I took deep breaths. I finally started to calm down. When my brain started to work again, this is the first thought it sent to me: Hey man, you just did the best good deed ever! Slam dunk! The halo is yours!
Then my brain sent me Joey’s words: There ain’t no spies.
What if he was right? What if there were no spies reporting back to Mrs. Simms? What if I wasn’t going to get credit? What if The Best Good Deed Ever was going to go to waste?
The Fourth Thing started with my brain talking to itself:
So don’t let it go to waste.
How do I do that?
Make your own report.
So that’s what I did. With my best cursive, I wrote down what happened with the dog. I included everything. “Buster! Buster!” The brakes screeching. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”
I filled up the page. I folded it real neat. I put it in an envelope. I sealed the envelope. I put the envelope in my backpack.
When I got to school today, I put the envelope on Mrs. Simms’s desk. And I couldn’t believe what I saw. Another envelope was already sitting there!
Oh no! I thought. Darren Tapp must have done a slam-dunk good deed too. And wrote a report. And beat me to it!
I was shell-shocked. I didn’t raise my hand in class all day. I was more zombie than human by the time Mrs. Simms said, “Well, angels, tomorrow’s the big day. One of you will be the first to get a halo.”
“Suds … Suds …”
I heard a voice calling me. A far, far away voice.
“Suds … Suds …”
Suddenly the voice was shocking, like a smashed window: “SUDS!” I was being yanked out of warm darkness. I was sitting on the edge of my bed. My mother was yelling at me. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you ready for school? Your bus is coming in five minutes.”
“I’m not going,” I said. I crawled back under the blanket.
“Are you sick?” I heard her say. She put her hand on my forehead.
“No,” I said. I burrowed into the pillow.
She yanked the cover off. “Then get ready for school.”
“No.”
“No?” She said it again, like she couldn’t figure out what the word meant: “No? Pray tell why not?”
“I lost.”
“What?”
“It’s halo day. I lost. I’m not going in.”
“How do you know you lost? Your teacher hasn’t even announced the winner yet.”
“I just know. Darren Tapp won. He’s better than me. I’m not going in.”
What happened next was pretty embarrassing. My mother grabbed my clothes, including my underwear, dumped them on my head, and said, “You have sixty seconds to get dressed.”
I never made it to the bus. My mother had to drive me.
When I walked into class, everyone looked up. A roomful of eyes staring at me. Mrs. Simms smiled. “Welcome, George,” she said. “You’re just in time.” She was holding the first halo.
I took my seat — and got the shock of my life. Judy Billings turned around and smiled at me and whispered, “You’re gonna win.”
I had a flash fantasy. I heard Mrs. Simms call my name. I saw Judy Billings put the halo on my head like a crown. Then she gave me that smile and whispered in my ear, “Congratulations, Suds.” Then she kissed me.
But then I heard my mother’s voice from the ride in to school: “If you lose, be a good loser. It’s easy to be a good winner. Any old slob can do that.”
I knew the fantasy would not come true. I knew the winner would not be me.
I was right.
I knew the winner would be Darren Tapp.
I was wrong.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Mrs. Simms in her special this-is-a-big-deal voice, “the first halo of the year goes to … Constantina Pappas!”
“I think I was a bad loser.”
I was talking to my mother after school. I wasn’t in the tub, because I wasn’t stressed out. All the nervousness was gone. I felt limp as a noodle.
“How so?” said my mom. “Didn’t you congratulate Constantina?”
“Yeah, I did,” I told her. “When Mrs. Simms said her name, I clapped with everybody else. And when Mrs. Simms put the halo on her head I clapped again.”
“Sounds to me like you did pretty good,” said my mother.
“But then something even worse happened.”
“What was that?”
“In the playground. After lunch. Kids were going up and saying ‘Way to go, Constantina’ and stuff like that —”
I was watching the tree in our backyard. One leaf was orange and red. Fall is coming.
“And?” said my mother.
“— and then Constantina was coming toward me. She had a funny look on her face.”
“Funny how?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “
Kind of like she did something wrong. And then she took off her halo and she said, ‘I think there was a mistake. I think this is yours.’ And she held out the halo to me and … I took it … and … and …”
I was crying.
Mom pulled me close to her. “Tell me.”
I looked at the red leaf. I took a deep breath. “I couldn’t help it, Mom. I shouldn’t have took it, but I did. I worked so hard for it. I believed her. It was a mistake. It really was mine.”
I looked up. I think my mother was looking at the red leaf too. Finally she said, “And then?”
“And then — I don’t know, I looked at Constantina’s face and for some reason I just gave the halo back to her and walked away. I might have said ‘Congratulations, Constantina,’ but I’m not sure.”
She pulled my ear. “You gave it back to her. Sounds to me like you’re a good loser.”
“But that’s outside, Mom. Inside I feel like a really bad loser. Maybe the baddest loser there ever was.”
“Because?”
“Because I wanted to keep it. I wanted to put it on my head and everybody would come up to me and say ‘Congratulations, Suds.’ Mom — I was only good on the outside!”
I was crying again.
Now both of my mother’s arms were around me. That’s when we heard the doorbell ring. I opened the door.
It was Mrs. Simms.
I almost fell over.
“Hi, Mrs. Morton,” she said, a big smile on her face. “Hi, Suds.”
I almost fell over again. “You called me Suds.”
She laughed. “Well, I’m in your territory now. So Suds it is.”
My mother invited her in. We sat in the living room. My mom offered her tea or coffee or juice, but she said no thank you. The smile didn’t go away, but it changed. She took a deep breath. She spoke to my mother. “I felt I should stop by because” — now she spoke to me — “I could see how the events of the day were affecting Suds.”
What was she talking about?
“Did your son tell you that the first halo went to Constantina Pappas?” she said.
“Yes, he did,” said my mother, “as soon as he got home from school.”
Mrs. Simms reached over and gave me a knee-pat, as if I did something great. “Good,” she said. “And I was happy to see you joined the others in congratulating Constantina. I know how badly you wanted that halo, Suds. I know how hard you tried.”
I didn’t know what to say. And I still didn’t know what she was doing in my house.
Now she was looking at me like I was the only person in the world. “Suds, you are an angel. You’ll get your halo soon enough.” I got the feeling she could see inside me. “You were disappointed you didn’t get it this morning, weren’t you?”
“A little,” I said.
“But not really surprised?”
“Not really.”
“Why not?”
“I thought Darren Tapp would get it.”
“Ah. Darren Tapp. Yes.” She looked at my mother. “Another boss angel.”
“And the blurts,” I said.
Her eyes went wide. “The blurts?”
“The first couple days of school,” I said. “I kept blurting out stuff without raising my hand. I guess that sunk me.”
Mrs. Simms and my mother both broke out laughing. I don’t know what was so funny.
When Mrs. Simms stopped laughing, she said, “So you must have been really surprised that Constantina Pappas got it.”
I nodded.
“Because you didn’t even think she was very interested, did you? You didn’t think she was even trying.” She poked my knee. “Did you?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, guess what?” she said.
“What?”
“You were right. She had no interest in getting the halo. Not at all. She wasn’t even trying.”
“Really?” I said. This was getting more and more confusing.
She nodded. “Really. And then a funny thing happened. In all my years of doing angel halos, it’s never happened before.” She stopped talking and just stared at me.
After a while, it occurred to me that I was supposed to ask what happened. So I did. “What happened?”
“Remember the day you put the note on my desk? Telling me how you saved the runaway dog in the street?”
“Yes.”
“Well, somebody else left a note on my desk.”
“I know,” I said. “Darren Tapp.”
She stared at me, at my mother. She blinked. She shook her head. “No … not Darren Tapp. The note was from Constantina Pappas.”
I just stared at her.
She leaned in toward me. “Would you like to know what Constantina’s note said?”
“Okay.”
“Her note told me the same thing yours did.”
I was more confused than ever. “Huh?” I said.
“She told me she was up the street that day and she saw the whole thing. She saw how you ran into the street and stopped the little dog from being hit by the car. She said it was such a wonderful thing you did that she thought I ought to know. She wanted me to know that you were an angel even after school.”
“Oh oh oh,” I heard my mother say. I looked at her. Her eyes were glittery.
“And that’s why I gave the first halo to Constantina Pappas,” said Mrs. Simms. “Because — yes — she was trying to get the halo, not for herself, but” — she smiled — “for somebody else.”
My mom gave a little whistle. She was fanning her face with her hand.
Mrs. Simms stood up. “Well, gotta go. Speaking of dogs, it’s way past Mr. Moto’s dinnertime.”
At the door, Mrs. Simms turned and gave my mother a hug. Then she hugged me!
The door was shut when suddenly I thought of something. I pulled open the door. She was almost to the sidewalk. I called: “Mrs. Simms! My mom says you have spies! Joey Peterson says no! Who’s right?”
Behind me my mother was laughing so hard I thought she might get sick. So was Mrs. Simms. She was wobbling. She hardly made it to her car.
I never got an answer.
Halos to my three manuscript angels: my editor, Arthur Levine; my copyeditor, Starr Baer; and my wife, Eileen.
Follow Suds to Fourth Grade in …
“First grade babies!
Second grade cats!
Third grade angels!
Fourth grade … RRRRRATS!”
It was the first recess of the first day of school. A mob of third-graders had me and Joey Peterson backed up against the monkey bars.
They were giving us the old chant. When they came to the word “rats,” they screamed it in our faces. Then they ran off laughing.
“I wish I was still in third grade,” I said.
“Why?” said Joey.
“So I could still be an angel.”
“Not me.” He climbed onto the first bar. “I waited three years to be a rat.” He climbed to the next bar.
“And now I am a rat.”
He climbed to the top bar. He shouted over the school yard: “And proud of it!”
I started to climb. My sneaker slipped on a bar, and I went down instead of up. The first thing I landed on was my hand. My thumb got bent back, way back.
Pain!
I howled. As loud as I could.
It still hurt.
I kicked the ground, the monkey bars, the nearest tree. My thumb still hurt, and so did my foot.
Only one thing left to do. I cried.
Joey’s voice came down from the high monkey bar: “Rats don’t cry.”
The bell rang to end recess.
I jogged, sniffling, to the door. When I got there, Judy Billings was behind me. Like a miracle, the pain in my thumb disappeared.
For me, there was no such thing as pain when Judy Billings was around. I loved her. I was sure that any day she would start to love me back. In the meantime, she mostly ignored me.
But I kept trying. Judy was in the other
fourth-grade class, so I didn’t see too much of her. When I did, I figured I had to make the most of it.
That’s why I held the door open for her. She went through. As usual, she ignored me. I didn’t care. For one second, she was inches away. Heaven was a trainload of those seconds.
A little while later, during Silent Reading, a spider crawled onto Becky Hibble’s book. Becky screamed and flipped her book into the air. The book landed on the floor. The spider landed in my lap.
Next thing I know, I’m on my desktop, tap dancing and yelling, “Get ’im off me! Get ’im off me!”
On the way to lunch, Joey’s whisper came again: “Rats don’t get scared of spiders.”
We sat together in the lunchroom, just like last year. And we both brought our lunches from home, just like last year.
We sat at our usual table. I opened my lunch box. I was checking out my stuff when I heard Joey snickering. I looked up. He was wagging his head. His face was smirky.
I looked around the lunchroom. “What’s funny?”
“That,” he said. He was pointing at my lunch box.
“What’s wrong with it?” I said.
“Ain’t that the same one you had last year?”
“Yeah. So what?”
He snickered again. “Look at it.”
I looked at it. “So?”
“What do you see?”
“I see a lunch box. What do you see, a Martian?”
He flipped the cover down. “Look at it. What’s on it? All over it.”
I looked again. “Elephants.”
He broke out laughing. He pounded the table. His face was red. I had never known I could make him so happy. He tried to talk a couple times — “What — What —” but he kept cracking up. Finally he slapped his hand over his eyes and got it out: “What are they doing?”
“The elephants?”
“Yeah, yeah.”