The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Crunchy Pickle Disaster Page 2

  “Don’t go nuts on me, boy,” I whispered. “I’m in a hurry.”

  Cheerio went nuts anyway. He jumped off the sofa and started to spin round in a circle. When he does that, which is fairly often, he looks like a big, furry cheerio, which is how he got his name. Our vet says his spinning thing is a reaction to stress. I don’t know what he’s got to be stressed about. I mean, all he has to do is eat and pee. No one’s asking him to spell receive or rhythm.

  I put on my coat and ran downstairs. Frankie was looking at his watch.

  “We thought maybe you went upstairs and went back to bed, didn’t we, Ashweena?” he said. Frankie has nicknames for everyone. He calls his dad “Double T”, because his name is Thomas Townsend.

  “We better get a move on. We don’t want to be tardy, do we?” Ashley asked, doing a pretty good imitation of Ms Adolf.

  It’s two blocks from our building to our school. We had to walk really fast to get to there on time. Luckily, we arrived just before the bell rang. We said goodbye to Dr Townsend, raced upstairs and slid into our seats just as Ms Adolf was closing our classroom door.

  Ms Adolf was wearing a grey skirt and blouse, just like she had worn the day before and the day before that and every day since school started. I guess she figures grey looks good on her because it matches her grey face. You should see her hairdo. It looks like she has a stack of hairy grey doughnuts piled up on top of her head. I’m sorry if this grosses you out, but I have to tell it like I see it.

  The other teachers on our floor still had their Halloween decorations up, but not our class. In fact, Ms Adolf had never put any up in the first place. She thinks Halloween is a silly occasion, because all you do is dress up and eat sweets and have fun. I bet her favourite holiday to celebrate is the Day of the Dead.

  Instead of ghosts and goblins and pumpkins, the walls of our class are decorated with artwork from our states project. We each picked a US state and outlined it in the colour of the product it’s most famous for. For example, Florida is orange because of its orange groves and Vermont is brown because of its maple syrup. I picked Rhode Island because I like the shape of it. I outlined it in red for the red hen, which is the state bird. Rhode Island is the smallest state and its motto is “Hope”. If people had mottos, I think I’d pick “hope” for mine. I really do hope a lot. In fact, I was hoping that I would win the spelling contest that morning.

  “Now, pupils, today is our spelling contest,” Ms Adolf said, “and we’re all going to have great fun. I know I am.”

  Call me crazy, but I don’t know how anyone can think spelling is even slightly fun, let alone great fun. Rollercoasters are fun. Riding bikes in the park is fun. Baseball games are fun. But spelling is definitely not fun, unless you’re the type of person who enjoys having injections at the doctor’s. Then you’d probably think spelling is a barrel of laughs.

  “Here are the rules,” said Ms Adolf. “Pupils will be asked to spell fifteen words, the ones I assigned to each of you at the beginning of the week. Those pupils who get all the words on their list correct may participate in the final round, which covers all the words on all lists. As soon as you miss a word in that round, you must sit down. The last pupil standing will be the winner and will receive an A on his or her school report. Are there any questions?”

  Luke Whitman put his hand up.

  “Can I go to the nurse’s office and lie down?” he asked. “I feel sick.” Luke Whitman asks if he can go to the nurse’s office every single day and Ms Adolf’s answer is always the same.

  “Absolutely not,” said Ms Adolf. “Now, who wants to go first in today’s spelling contest?”

  Nick McKelty put his thick arm in the air and waved it around like he had a gigantic toilet emergency.

  “I’ll go first!” he grunted. “I am totally, two hundred per cent prepared.”

  He always says things like that. He claims his parents are best friends with the mayor of New York or he tells you he got the highest maths score ever recorded in the Western hemisphere. We call it The McKelty Factor – truth times a hundred.

  Even though Nick the Tick was acting like a total nerd, secretly I was glad he put his hand up. At least it meant that Ms Adolf wasn’t going to pick me. Usually she picks me first. I think it makes her happy when I don’t have the right answer, no matter what the subject.

  As McKelty got up to go to the front of the classroom, he walked close enough to me that I got a mega-whiff of his bad, bad breath. He must have eaten an entire raw onion for breakfast because his breath smelled like a rhinoceros with tooth decay. Not that I know what a rhinoceros with tooth decay smells like, but I bet it’s pretty foul.

  “Hey, girls,” McKelty said to Frankie and me as he walked by. “Ready to see a spelling master at work?”

  “Sure, Nick,” Frankie whispered. “Who you got in mind?”

  I laughed and Ms Adolf shot me a wicked look.

  “Since you seem to find this so funny, Henry, you’ll go next,” she said.

  I wish she’d call me Hank. No one calls me Henry, except my mum when she’s really angry and Paula, the woman who makes appointments at my dentist’s surgery. No one but Ms Adolf, that is. I’ve told her a million times that all my friends call me Hank. She says she sees no need for that, because my real name is Henry. Besides, she’s not my friend.

  My heart started to beat faster. I looked over at Frankie, who gave me his famous smile, the one we call The Big Dimple. He says a lot with that smile. This time, it said, You can do it, Zip. Just breathe.

  Frankie must tell me to breathe four times a day. As a matter of fact, he tells everyone to breathe if he thinks they are getting too tense about things.

  Ms Adolf gave Nick fifteen words to spell. As usual, he was all talk and no walk. Out of the fifteen words, he spelled seven right and missed eight. No A for him, that millipede.

  All during his turn, I tried to review my words. My brain was swimming in letters. They were all over the place but were not making themselves into any words I knew. Breathe, I said to myself. You can do this, Hank. Piece of cake. I tried really hard to talk myself into believing my own words. But in my brain, right underneath those words, were the other more familiar words: no way, Hank.

  Ms Adolf must have called my name, but I was concentrating so hard, I didn’t hear her at first. All of a sudden, I saw her standing over me. The entire class was staring at me. Every eye was burning into my skin.

  “Daydreaming, are we?” Ms Adolf asked.

  “No,” I answered. “Just practising my words. I guess I can’t spell and hear at the same time.”

  The kids cracked up, and I had to smile. There it was, the old Zipzer attitude. I still had it. I hadn’t meant to be funny, but the sound of the kids enjoying my answer did feel good.

  The feeling didn’t last, however.

  “Come with me, young man,” Ms Adolf commanded. I walked up to the front of the room and turned towards the class.

  As I looked out at all the faces, my ears stopped working for real. It was as if everything was moving in slow motion. I looked over at Ms Adolf and saw her lips move, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

  Ms Adolf repeated the word “rhythm”. I read her lips. Come on, Hank, breathe. You know this word.

  My body started working again.

  “Rhythm,” I said. “R-H-Y-T-H-M, rhythm.” Without realizing it, I high-fived myself. The class laughed again.

  “Quiet! This is not a laughing matter,” Ms Adolf reminded them. “All right, Mr Comedian. Try ‘receive’.”

  “R-E-C…” I paused. So far, so good. Then my mind went totally blank.

  R-E-C-what? I know there’s an E and an I, but which comes first? What’s the rule? I before E except after – Oh no, what’s the word? I forgot the word. What word was I spelling? How can I be so stupid? Breathe… I am breathing. I’m just not remembering.

  “Well, Henry, there is more to the word receive than R-E-C,” Ms Adolf said.

  Oh yeah, thank goodn
ess – receive!

  “I know this; don’t tell me,” I blurted out with confidence.

  “Oh, trust me, I won’t,” Ms Adolf assured me.

  “R-E-C-I-E-V-E, receive.” Oh please, oh please, let that be right.

  “I thought you said you knew it,” she said. “I’ll give you one more chance. Try ‘neighbour’.”

  “Neighbour,” I said. “N-A…”

  Where did it go?

  Last night I knew every one of these words forwards and backwards. This morning, I’d lost them. From the time I left my flat to the time I arrived in class, they must’ve fallen out of my head. Maybe I lost them on the street or in the hallway or the stairwell coming up to the classroom.

  I started to hit my forehead. Maybe I could shake them loose from their hiding place in my brain. How can this be happening?

  “What are you doing, Henry?” asked Ms Adolf.

  “I’m trying to wake my brain up. Maybe the words are holding on to the sides of my brain and won’t fall down into my mouth.” The class laughed again, but this time I really wasn’t being funny.

  “Try ‘separate’,” Ms Adolf said.

  “Do I have to?”

  “Try ‘separate’ now.”

  “I know it starts with an S.”

  “Sit down, Henry.”

  “But, Ms Adolf, I studied these words. I know this.”

  “I’m going to count to three, Henry. If you’re not in your seat when I say three, you’re going to the head teacher’s office.”

  “Ms Adolf, you believe in second chances, don’t you? I’m sure you do.” I was begging.

  “One…”

  “Just give me another minute. It takes a while for my brain to fire up. I’m like an old car – I just have to give it a little petrol.”

  “Two…”

  “Please don’t say three, Ms Adolf. Just let me try one more word, because I’m feeling like I can…”

  “Three.”

  She said it. She said three.

  I can’t believe she said three.

  As I walked down the stairs to Mr Love’s office, I felt like I had taken that walk a hundred times before. I felt that way because I had.

  Mr Love and I have spent a whole lot of time together, having long talks. And I don’t mean the “How about those Mets?” kind of talks, either. Nope, the kind of talks I have with Mr Love are listening to him tell me what I’ve done wrong, and according to him, that’s pretty much everything.

  I don’t know how this happens. I try to behave in school. I’m not like Nick McKelty, who gets a kick out of being an idiot. And I’m certainly not like Luke Whitman, whose full-time job is getting into trouble. I try to follow the rules. I try hard, but somehow I always end up doing face time with Head Teacher Love.

  For example, take the first day of fourth grade: Ms Adolf said we had to write a five-paragraph essay describing what we did during our summer holidays. It’s really hard for me to write a five-paragraph essay, so I decided to create a living essay. Instead of writing about our visit to Niagara Falls, I made a model of Niagara Falls out of papier-mâché. I even attached it to the sink in our class so that real water could run through it. Was it my fault that the water overflowed and gushed all over the floor? Was it my fault that Ms Adolf got blasted in the face by the water hose? Was it my fault that Mr Love stepped on a floating lunch bag and a tuna sandwich exploded in his face?

  I reached the first floor and walked towards the office. Mrs Crock was in the attendance office and looked up when she saw me.

  “Oh no, Hank.” She sighed. “Not again.”

  “Mrs Crock,” I said, “would you like to hear me spell ‘separate’?”

  “Why, yes, dear, if you’d like me to,” she answered.

  “S-E-P-A-R-A-T-E,” I said.

  “That’s very lovely spelling, dear,” she said. “Have a seat on the bench and I’ll page Head Teacher Love. He’s in the dining room.”

  I sat down on the bench in the hall. Separate. There it was, just waiting on the tip of my tongue. I knew it was there all along. If only Ms Adolf had given me another chance.

  I heard footsteps approaching, but I knew it wasn’t Mr Love. He always wears rubber-soled Velcro shoes that make a squeaking sound on the lino when he walks. These footsteps were clicking, not squeaking.

  “Hank? Is that you?” a man’s voice asked.

  I looked up. It was Mr Rock. Mr Rock is the music teacher at PS 87. I met him at the beginning of the school year, when I did a week of detention in his classroom after school. We did the coolest things, like listen to music and talk about our all-time favourite cars. I was so embarrassed that he was seeing me in the head teacher’s office.

  “Ms Adolf sent me to see Mr Love,” I told him, before he could ask.

  “What’s your crime?” He asked it like he was joking around.

  “I wouldn’t sit down during the spelling contest.”

  “Forty lashes with a wet noodle for you.”

  He smiled. He was joking around! Mr Rock is the nicest teacher you could ever hope to meet.

  Squeak, squeak, squeak. Mr Love and his dancing Velcro feet were coming down the hall. I stood up, feeling nervous. Mr Rock leaned over and whispered in my ear.

  “Speak up for yourself in there, Hank,” he said. “You’re a great kid.”

  Then he gave me a high five and left.

  When he saw me at his office door, Mr Love did not look happy. Neither did his mole.

  Mr Love has this mole on his face that I swear looks like the Statue of Liberty without the torch. Ashley and Frankie disagree. Ashley thinks it looks like a cherry stone. Frankie says it looks like one of those crackers that’s shaped like a goldfish. But I say my opinion goes, since I’ve spent way more time in the head teacher’s office than both Frankie and Ashley combined. I’ve had a lot of mole-viewing time.

  “I see we meet again, Mr Zipzer,” Mr Love said in his big-man voice. Even though he’s not much taller than I am, Head Teacher Love has a really loud voice. He always sounds like he’s on the loudspeaker system, even though he isn’t.

  I followed him into his office.

  “Sit down, young man,” he said, pointing to the chair across from his desk. “You’re spending so much time here, I believe that seat is starting to take the shape of your rear end.”

  I laughed. He didn’t.

  “I’ll let you know when something funny happens,” he said. “Until then, keep your laughter to yourself.”

  He read over the note Ms Adolf had sent with me, rubbing his chin as he read. He was dangerously close to touching his mole. I wonder if when he touches it, he screams, “Ugh!” I know I would.

  “I read here that Ms Adolf asked you to sit down and you did not,” he said.

  I cleared my throat and tried to speak. Something came out, but it wasn’t words. It was mostly air, with a croaking froggy sound mixed in. Mr Love makes you nervous, even if you’re trying not to be nervous.

  “Speak up, young man,” he said.

  I tried again, and a few words came out this time. “I hadn’t finished spelling, sir.”

  “But your directions were to sit down,” he said. “Were they not?”

  I didn’t answer, because everyone at PS 87 knows that when Leland Love asks a question, he likes to answer it himself.

  “Yes, they were,” he said, proving my point. “I’m going to tell you something, Mr Zipzer,” he continued, “and I want you to carry this thought with you for the rest of your school years. It may be the best single piece of advice you ever get.”

  Wow. I was ready for that. I slid forward to the edge of my chair. Lay it on me, I thought.

  Mr Love cleared his throat.

  “Following directions will get you where you need to be, no matter where you are,” he said.

  If that is the best piece of advice I’ll ever get, I hope I never hear the worst.

  “It just so happens that you have caught me in a very good mood,” said Mr Love,
“and so I’m going to let you off with a warning.” He reached down and loosened one of the Velcro straps on his shoes. “Do you know why I’m in a good mood, Mr Zipzer?”

  “Because you really, really love your Velcro shoes?” I asked.

  “That’s one reason,” he said. “They are so convenient. But the second reason is that today is fish day in the dining room, and I am about to go and enjoy a fine piece of halibut. Just for the halibut, that is.”

  He threw his head back and laughed so loudly it gave me the creeps. “Something funny just happened,” he said. “You may laugh now, Mr Zipzer.”

  He laughed again, and the Statue of Liberty mole wiggled back and forth as if it was doing the hula. It must like fish too, I thought.

  The only decent thing about the spelling contest was that Ashley won. She is such a good friend that her winning almost made up for the fact that my spelling was a total disaster.

  “Cheer up, Zip,” Frankie said to me, as we sat down at our table in the dining room. “So, you’re not a speller. Big deal.”

  “I’m also not an adder or a subtracter or a reader or a writer,” I said. “Let’s face it, Frankie. I’m a school flop.”

  I was feeling pretty terrible. First, I messed up the spelling contest, for no good reason that I could see. Then I got sent to the head teacher’s office. And if those things hadn’t made the day horrible enough, the halibut made the entire dining room smell like toxic waste.

  “There’s more to life than school,” said Frankie, pulling out his peanut-butter-and-jam sandwich. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

  That’s easy for Frankie to say. He’s one of those kids who’s good at everything. He reads like a grown-up – even the newspaper. He actually reads the sports section every day. Not me. I have to watch ESPN for my updates. He’s also really funny, a phenomenal magician, and all the girls like him too.

  “What’s up, Frankie?” asked Katie Sperling and Kim Paulson as they walked by with their trays.