The Curtain Went Up, My Pants Fell Down Page 2

  I would die right there in front of everyone in my class.

  Which is what I wanted to do, anyway, when Ms. Adolf made her announcement, so the answer is…

  No, it couldn’t have gotten any worse.

  CHAPTER 4

  I COULDN’T WAIT FOR RECESS. When the bell finally rang, I bolted from my chair like a baby zebra heading for the watering hole for a refreshing dip. After Ms. Adolf made her public announcement about my learning issues, I needed a refreshing something, that was for sure.

  “Tough morning, huh, dude?” my best friend Frankie Townsend said as we rushed down the stairs toward the school yard. “Adolfosaurus must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. And stepped on a pushpin when she did.”

  “Yeah, how about the way she just blurted out that I have learning problems?” I said. “Next, she’ll be telling everyone about my rash.” Frankie shot me a look. “Not that I have one,” I added quickly. Sometimes you can gross out even your best friend.

  “Hey, guys, wait up!” It was Ashley Wong, our other best friend. “What’s the big rush?”

  “Zip needs to get out to the yard and blow off some steam,” Frankie said. “He’s still stinging from the Adolfosaurus attack.”

  “I don’t know why you always get so embarrassed, Hank,” Ashley said, falling in step with us. “So you’ve got learning challenges. But you’re extremely resourceful.”

  “Definition, please, Ashweena. Remember me? Hank Zipzer? Mr. Limited Vocabulary.”

  “Resourceful. It means you come up with creative solutions to problems other people can’t figure out.”

  “I do? Can you give me an example?”

  We had reached the bottom of the stairs where the big glass double doors led to the yard. Everyone was squishing their way through, trying to be first to get outside. I smelled something yucky, like old banana peels and sour milk. Only one person I know smells that bad—Nick McKelty.

  “Out of my way, dummy,” he said, shoving his way around me. “You’re as slow on your feet as you are in math.”

  As McKelty pushed his hulking frame out the door, he tripped over his own size sixty-two shoes and went down on his rump.

  “Don’t worry, man,” Frankie said. “We won’t tell anyone that you can’t walk and talk at the same time, will we, Zip?”

  “Especially not Katie Sperling and Kim Paulson,” I said, really loud as Katie and Kim passed right by us.

  Katie and Kim laughed as they stepped around McKelty. That did give me a little satisfaction. Okay, a lot of satisfaction.

  “So, you were about to tell me how I have a lot of natural resources?” I said to Ashley as we walked over to the handball courts.

  “Right idea, wrong words,” Ashley said. “Natural resources are things like coal and natural gas.”

  “I have that after I eat beans,” I answered, and we both laughed. It’s great to have friends who think you’re funny.

  But before Ashley could go on, a fourth-grader named Zoe Howe grabbed her hand and dragged her over to get in line for handball. So I followed Frankie, who was heading over to the equipment room to check out a ball.

  “I can’t believe you need to hear compliments, dude,” he said, taking a soccer ball from the bin. “Like you don’t know your good points.”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” I answered him in all honesty. “I know that I’m the guy who always seems to screw up—in every subject except for lunch.”

  I could tell Frankie didn’t understand what I was saying. He’s so good at everything—school, sports, magic, electronics, even talking to girls—that people say positive things to him all the time. When you have learning issues like me, it can be a long time between positive comments from the outside world. Very looooooong. Dr. Berger once explained that because of the way I feel about myself, sometimes I don’t even believe positive remarks when people say them right to me.

  “We’re losing valuable tutoring time, if you know what I mean,” I heard a bossy voice say.

  I whipped around and there was Her Tallness, Heather Payne. She was holding a stack of books so big, it looked like she had used up her whole year’s limit on her library card.

  “It’s recess, Heather,” I said. “In case you don’t know what that means, it’s a time when kids have fun.”

  “Ms. Adolf says that fun won’t make you a high achiever,” Heather answered. I wondered how it was possible for a person so young to act so old.

  Frankie dropped the soccer ball on the ground.

  “Care to dribble, Zip?” he asked.

  “He can’t even think about dribbling,” Heather answered. “Recess is the perfect time for us to work together. Should we start on decimals, Henry? No, I’ve got a great idea! Long division!”

  Her face lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Wow, I didn’t know long division could be such a rush.

  “I’ve got a better idea, Heather,” I said. “You go solve the division problems. I’ll dribble the soccer ball. And we’ll meet up later and compare notes.”

  “Or not,” Frankie chimed in.

  “An even better idea,” I agreed. “Not.”

  “Principal Love alert,” Frankie whispered to me. “Incoming at ten o’clock.”

  There he was walking right up to us—our principal, the one and only Leland Love, who has this weird knack of showing up at principal-type moments, like when you’re in the hall without a hall pass or about to refuse to be peer tutored.

  “What’s this little gathering about?” he asked, giving Heather that special smile principals reserve for the straight-A students.

  “I was just trying to get my tutee to come with me to the multipurpose room so we can start our peer tutoring. We’re starting with long division.”

  “Outstanding idea,” Principal Love said in his tall-man (even though he’s a short man) voice. “There’s nothing like making long division your friend.”

  “I’m really looking forward to doing just that, Principal Love,” I stammered, “but my math-problem friend-making time during the day is usually from five after three to seven after three.”

  “That’s only two minutes,” Heather pointed out. Leave it to her to get all mathy about it.

  “I find that I learn best in short bursts.”

  Even I had to pat myself on the back. That was an excellent comeback. A resourceful answer, if I do say so myself.

  Principal Love didn’t appreciate my resourcefulness. I could tell because the mole on his cheek, the one that’s shaped like the Statue of Liberty without the torch, started to twitch. She does that when he’s upset. Once when he stepped on a soggy sandwich and got supermoist tuna salad all over his brown shoes, he was so frustrated the Statue of Liberty actually danced the Electric Slide.

  “Look at it this way, young man,” Principal Love began. “Heather is volunteering to give up her recess to help you. And helping one another is vital in a society created on the basis of helpfulness. That is to say, helpfulness is essential in accomplishing what it is you wanted to be helpful with in the first place.”

  Huh?

  Leland Love has a way of speaking English so it sounds like a language you’ve never heard before. And this was a classic Principal Love-a-thon. We were all speechless, even Heather.

  “Therefore,” Principal Love continued, very happy with the sound of his own voice, “I suggest you find your way to the multipurpose room, so Heather can get on with the business of being helpful.”

  Even though I didn’t understand a lot of what he said, there was one thing I did understand loud and clear.

  From now on, recess was going to totally suck.

  CHAPTER 5

  I FOLLOWED HEATHER to the multipurpose room, walking as far behind her as I could. My feet wanted to go fast, but I kept telling them to slow down.

  “Do you always walk this slowly?” she asked me.

  “My feet are refusing to cooperate,” I answered. “I guess they don’t like long division any more th
an my brain does.”

  Looking around the empty multipurpose room, the only word that came to mind to describe it was “dungeon.” It was dark and cold and empty in there, with chairs stacked around the sides of the walls. It looked like a hold of an Egyptian ship I saw once in a movie, where the men were chained to their oars and had to row for days with no food.

  I’ve had some good times in that multipurpose room. The International Day food festival we had there last year was a lot of fun, especially when Ms. Adolf ate my spicy enchiladas and got the gas attack of the century. The awards ceremony for the School Olympiad, when I got my first and only gold medal for pitching on the winning softball team, took place right in that very room. And kindergarten graduation was a blast, when we all wore caps and gowns made out of paper grocery bags. That was the day Frankie, Ashley, and I swore to always be best friends.

  But as I stood there watching Heather set up two plastic chairs on either side of a long wooden table, those fun memories seemed to fade right out of my mind. The only thought in my head was, Help, somebody get me out of this dungeon right now.

  Heather sat down on one of the chairs and motioned for me to sit down across the table from her.

  “Where should we start?” she said, pulling out our math workbooks from the huge stack of books she had carried in there. “We can either begin with Chapter Five and go back to Chapter One, or we can start at Chapter One and move right through to Chapter Five.”

  “Are those my only choices?” I asked.

  “Come on, Henry, this is your tutoring session, too. I want you to have some say in this.”

  “Then my first choice is that you call me Hank.”

  “If that will help you learn, then Hank it is. You see how easy this is? We’ve already made a decision together. Now I’ll make one. Let’s start with Chapter One.”

  “Couldn’t we just study the cover for a while?” I asked, hoping to stall until the bell rang. “Let’s look at all the funny pictures. Like this number five with little yellow legs. Where do you think it’s running?”

  “Hank, this is off topic, if you know what I mean.”

  “Maybe it’s running a marathon,” I went on. “I know. Number five is determined to beat nine. Oh, wait, nine isn’t even in the race, because seven ate nine.”

  Man, I love that joke. I cracked myself up and let out a huge chuckle. Midway through my chuckle, though, I noticed that Heather wasn’t even close to chuckling. In fact, she stood up, which took her a long time because she’s so tall, and put her hands on her hips.

  “Hank, are you going to be serious about this, or what?”

  “I’m definitely going for the or what.”

  “Okay, you can sit there cracking jokes with your D in math, or you can come with me as I lead you down the path to mathematical excellence.”

  “I’ve been down that path and there’s man-eating goats on it. I’d much rather go down the path to an excellent lunch.”

  I know, I know. I was giving poor Heather a really hard time. But it’s not because I was enjoying being a jerk. My real goal was to avoid even attempting a math problem, because I didn’t want her to see how really, truly rotten I am at math. My brain is just not math-friendly. As a matter of fact, it totally doesn’t work in the number area. It’s not too hot in the letter area, either, but that’s another story.

  I’m not exaggerating about how much I stink at math. Take the other day when I went to the drugstore to get a package of tropical fruit Life Savers. While I’m opening it up to search for the mango one, Peggy, who is the owner of the store, handed me change, but I couldn’t even tell if the change in my hand was correct. I didn’t know how much I was supposed to get back in the first place. Lucky for me, Peggy is very honest, so I knew I was getting back the right amount. But still, it’s totally embarrassing not to be able to do what any second-grader can do.

  So, I think you can understand why I wasn’t exactly excited about showing Heather Payne my math skills. Cracking jokes came much easier. If only making up jokes was a subject in school, I know I’d get an A.

  “Hank, you just refuse to take anything seriously,” Heather said. “I enjoy taking things seriously. That’s because I am a serious person!”

  “And an impassioned one, too!” came a man’s deep voice from the other side of the multipurpose room. “I like to see the spark of anger in the eyes. Anger is fuel for the soul.”

  “Huh?” said Heather, almost before she could help herself.

  It was the first time I had seen her speechless. I had no idea who this man with the big voice was, but I liked him right away. Anyone who could shut up Heather Payne was my new best friend.

  The man walked across the room to our table. Well, I guess you can call it walking. It was more like floating. You hardly saw his legs moving. It was like his shoes had wheels. He was wearing a black cape that flew out behind him, almost like Superman’s, except there was no S on it. He had shiny black hair and a black goatee. He looked like one of the Three Musketeers. That’s a really hard book that my sister Emily is reading right now. I can’t read it, but I love to look at the pictures. I like guys with capes and swords and cool hats with feathers sticking out of the top. Those guys look like they can take care of business.

  The Musketeer walked over to us, and I noticed he was being followed by Mrs. Crock, who works in our school attendance office. She’s really nice. She’s so nice that I don’t even let myself laugh when she has a big wad of green lettuce stuck in her teeth, which is pretty much all the time. Mrs. Crock likes salads.

  “Well, hello there, Hank and Heather,” Mrs. Crock said with a smile.

  Yippee. No lettuce.

  “I’d like you children to meet Devore,” Mrs. Crock went on. “Or is it Mr. Devore?”

  “Simply Devore,” the Musketeer said.

  “Children, Simply Devore is going to direct our winter musical.”

  “No, my dear Mrs. Crock,” he said. “It is merely Devore.”

  “Oh, so sorry,” she said. “Merely Devore is going to direct our winter musical. He’ll be working with us for three weeks. Aren’t we lucky?”

  “Mrs. Crock,” he said, his deep voice echoing around the multipurpose room like one of those Swiss yodelers on TV. “Repeat after me. Devore. Period. Devore and nothing else. Just one name.”

  “Oooohhh,” she said, looking a little embarrassed. “I get it now. My brother-in-law works with a fellow at the toothbrush plant that has a younger brother who only has one name, which, if my memory serves me correctly, is Sampson.”

  “Wow,” I said. “What part of the toothbrush does he work on? The bristles or the handle?”

  Heather shot me an annoyed look, but Merely Devore didn’t.

  “This boy has a curious mind,” he said, waving his cape at me. “Curiosity is the key that unlocks drama. What is your name, young man?”

  “Hank Zipzer. With two z’s.”

  “And you’re a speller, too! I love a linguist!”

  “Well, I really wouldn’t go that far. My spelling goes downhill after my name.”

  “Mr. Devore,” Heather said. “I mean Devore. We only have a few minutes left, and Hank and I are working to improve his math skills. He is my tutee, if you know what I mean.”

  “Could you please not call me that in public?” I whispered, trying not to move my lips.

  Devore turned to her, his cape sweeping in a circle behind him.

  “How perfect,” he said. “You have the instincts of a teacher. Just like Anna in my musical.”

  “Devore is directing Anna and the King of Siam as our winter musical,” Mrs. Crock said. “He wrote a special script just for PS 87, based on the book.”

  “Oh, I read the entire book over the summer,” Heather said. “Twice.”

  “Very impressive,” Devore said. “How did you know over the summer that Anna and the King of Siam was to be the subject of our winter musical?”

  “It was listed in the PS 87 master calendar,�
� Heather said. “Both online and hard copy. I study the calendar carefully, so I’ll be prepared for each and every event.”

  I watched Devore’s eyebrows shoot up so high they almost touched his shiny black hair. He was getting his first blast of Miss Perfect.

  “Well, you certainly seem like a competent young lady,” he said. “Very much as Anna is, in the play.”

  “That’s why I’m trying out for the part,” Heather said. “I think I could play Anna. I’m told my leadership qualities are superior.”

  “We shall all find that out at the auditions tomorrow,” Devore said. “But your confidence inspires me.”

  I think Heather Payne blushed. No! Does Heather Payne blush? Not possible. It was probably just because it was cold in the room. My mom’s cheeks get rosy when she walks in Central Park in the winter.

  “And you, Mr. Double Z,” he asked, turning to me. “Can I expect to see your smiling face at the auditions?”

  “No, I’m not the drama type,” I said, which was code for what I really wanted to say, which was, “There’s no way I could read a script out loud in front of the other kids.”

  “Oh, Hank, you have a wonderful personality,” Mrs. Crock said. “I think you’d make an adorable King of Siam.”

  “I don’t even know where Siam is,” I answered.

  “It’s in southeast Asia, bordering Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia,” Heather, Miss Encyclopedia, piped up. “Approximately the size of France, with a capital city of Bangkok, today it is known as Thailand.”

  “I love Thai food,” I said.

  “You see, young man,” Devore said. “You are already connected to the material.”

  “Wow, I didn’t know shrimp toast made me an actor.”

  “Well then, I expect to see you at the auditions,” Devore said.

  I shrugged.

  “Perhaps you could prepare a scene with Mr. Double Z,” he suggested to Heather. “What do you say?” he said, turning back to me. “Am I awakening the inner actor who lives inside you?”

  Fortunately, the bell rang before I had to give him an answer. I grabbed my backpack, and my inner actor and I ran off to class.