The World's Greatest Underachiever and the Crazy Classroom Cascade Read online

  “OK,” said Ashley. “Since I’m the business person, let me do the talking.”

  “Go for it, Ashweena,” said Frankie, slapping her a high five.

  We went back over to Papa Pete.

  “In the last few minutes, we’ve formed a partnership,” said Ashley. “We’ve considered your offer, and my partners and I believe that for seventy-five dollars, we can put on a magic show that will never be forgotten.”

  “I believe,” said Papa Pete, tugging on his moustache, “that for thirty dollars, you can put on a magic show that I’ll like even better.”

  “Take it,” I whispered in Ashley’s ear. “It’ll only go down from here.”

  “Deal,” Ashley said. And she stuck out her hand.

  Papa Pete shook it and said, “And of course, for this kind of money, I’d hope to see a small live furry thing coming out of a top hat. I always enjoy that.”

  “No problem,” Ashley said.

  Frankie and I shot each other panicked looks. Why was she promising that? We didn’t have a small live furry thing.

  We grabbed Ashley by the arm and pulled her over to the video game room. I knew I had to get her away from Papa Pete before she agreed to make the Empire State Building disappear.

  “What were you thinking?” I said to Ashley.

  “I was thinking about a rabbit,” she said. “It’s always nice to pull a rabbit out of a hat.”

  “Earth to Ashley,” said Frankie. “We don’t have a rabbit.”

  “That’s a good point,” she said.

  “Now what are we going to do?” I asked. “You promised Papa Pete we’d pull a live furry thing out of a top hat! He’s counting on it.”

  Ashley just smiled. “You’ll think of something, Hank. You always do.”

  On the walk home, we couldn’t stop coming up with names for our new magic business. When we left McKelty’s, we thought The Magic Trio sounded really good. Smooth and simple. By the time we crossed the road, we had switched to something flashier, like The Three Magicteers. When we saw a neon sign in front of the all-night laundrette, we came up with Magic: Open All Night. By 83rd Street, Frankie was convinced we should be The Mystical Magical Dudes. By 82nd Street, Ashley was pushing for The Disappearing Act.

  By the time we reached 78th street, we had decided. We were Magik 3. Frankie thought we should definitely spell Magic with a k because it looks cool. That was fine with me, since that’s the way I thought it was spelled anyway.

  It felt so great to have a name. And a plan. We figured we’d start our career at McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl. Then we’d move on to kids’ parties and become known all over the entire West Side. Next, we’d take our show downtown. And finally on to Madison Square Garden where there’d be thousands of fans, chanting our name: “Magik 3! Magik 3! Magik 3!”

  We decided to start rehearsals right away, so we scheduled a kick-off meeting for right after dinner. I was so excited about Magik 3 that I couldn’t wait to go upstairs and tell my parents about us. I buzzed our flat number. My sister, Emily, answered the intercom.

  “Who’s there?” she asked.

  “Open sesame,” I said in my magician assistant’s voice.

  “Hank? Is that you? Why do you sound so weird?”

  “The Mighty Zengawii requests that you let him in … in … in…” I gave my voice this really cool echo. Frankie and Ashley cracked up.

  “Mum!” Emily yelled. “Hank’s downstairs and he thinks he’s being funny but he’s not.”

  “Just buzz him in, honey,” I heard my mum say over the sound of the blender in the kitchen.

  “I’m letting you in,” Emily said. “But if it were up to me, I’d leave you standing down there until you acted normal.”

  That’s a strange thing to say coming from Emily, who’s about as unnormal as a person can be.

  Frankie, Ashley and I got into the lift and pressed for our floors. I live on ten, which is the top floor. Frankie lives on six and Ashley lives on four. As we rode up, I imagined the three of us dressed in black capes and top hats. We’d all have moustaches. Ashley would look so funny in a moustache. The lift stopped at her floor. I pushed the door open and held it with my foot. We all put our hands out and placed them on top of one another’s.

  “Magik 3 rules,” we chanted.

  Ashley got out. Frankie and I headed for six.

  “Watch this,” said Frankie. He snapped his fingers and said, “Zengawii.” The lift stopped and the door opened on his floor.

  I rode by myself up to ten. When I got out, I shoved my key into the lock and made my entrance into the flat.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen of the Zipzer family,” I said, with a sweep of my im-aginary cape. “Welcome to the most astounding show you will ever behold, featuring the amazing talents of Magik 3! I am one of them.”

  I took a bow.

  No one said a word.

  My dog, Cheerio, ran up to me to say hello. At least someone in the family appreciated me. I took another bow. A really deep one. A really long one.

  “I’m going to my room until dinner,” Emily said. “This is too strange for me.”

  My father was sitting in his boxers at the dining-room table, working on a crossword puzzle. He was wearing a pair of glasses on the top of his head. He does that sometimes, even though I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have eyes up there. He looked at me like I was a short stranger.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “We were with Papa Pete at McKelty’s.”

  “You should have called.”

  “But I was with Papa Pete. Not some stranger,” I told him.

  “You have to learn to be responsible, Hank,” he answered back.

  Responsible? I’m a small-business owner. How much more responsible can you get? But I didn’t tell my dad that.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said. “I’ll call next time.”

  My mother came in from the kitchen. I could tell she’d been cooking because her hair was pulled back with a hairband. Her hair is blonde and curly, and when she wears it loose, bits of the food she’s cooking sometimes land in it. She’s had all kinds of things in her hair – flour, chunks of chocolate-chip-cookie dough. Once, she even found a bean. The hairband is her new discovery, and it’s been working really well for her.

  Mum started to push my father’s papers to the end of the dining-room table. We eat at one end of the table and his office is at the other. He does something with computers. I’m not sure what it is, but I know it’s pretty boring.

  “How was your first day, my big fourth-grader?” my mum asked, kissing me on the cheek. “Did you remember to bring home your homework sheet?”

  “That would be a first,” said Emily the Perfect. She came out of her bedroom carrying her iguana, Katherine, on her shoulder. Who names a lizard Katherine?

  Some people say that Emily and I look alike. Even though she’s fifteen months younger than me, we’re almost the same size. We both have blue eyes and blond hair that goes in a lot of different directions, like my dad’s. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s where the similarity ends. For one thing, I don’t paint each fingernail a different colour like Emily does. And for another, I don’t have to use Chapstick all the time because I lick my lips too much. And most importantly, I don’t walk around with an iguana on my shoulder.

  My sister Emily calls herself a reptile person. I call her a creepy reptile person. I mean, you’re trying to enjoy your dinner and all of a sudden, her iguana snaps its long tongue out and snatches a carrot off your plate. How can a guy digest? And my parents don’t say anything. Not a word!

  My mum went back to the kitchen and brought out some soup for dinner. It was mushroom. I could tell it was Papa Pete’s recipe because it smelled great. She served everyone up a big bowl, took off her hairband and apron, and sat down at the table.

  “Who wants to share their day?” Mum asked. She says this every night at dinner. The great thing is that she really wants to hear all about your day.


  I let Emily start.

  “Who do you think got appointed rubber monitor?” she said. “Me. And our teacher, Miss Springflower, said I have the neatest handwriting she’s ever seen. And she was really impressed with my summer reading list. She said she’s never met a not-even third-grader who could read a three hundred and twenty-nine page book. I think I’m her favourite, and it’s only the first day.”

  The only thought that came to my mind was, Could you barf?

  The iguana’s elastic tongue shot out for some soup. She missed, and her tongue made the soup splash high out of the bowl, hitting my father smack in the eye.

  “Emily, take that thing and put it back in your room,” he said.

  Finally, he was reacting in a normal way.

  “This so-called thing is an iguana whose natural habitat is the Galapagos,” Emily said.

  “So, can we FedEx it back home?” I asked.

  My father chuckled.

  “Stanley,” said Mum. “Katherine is a member of this family, too.”

  “And what am I?” said my dad. “A lowly fly on the wall?”

  I love it when adults say things like that – things that sort of make sense but don’t really.

  “Let’s not spoil a nice dinner,” said my mum. She turned her attention to me. I was crumbling a cracker into my soup. I like to float the pieces, watch them get soggy and eat them just before they sink.

  “Hank,” said my mum. “It’s your turn. Let’s hear about your day.”

  “My teacher, Ms Adolf, is so strict,” I began. “We have to write a huge essay about what we did in our summer holidays. Five paragraphs.”

  No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I knew I had made a big mistake. My father wanted to know when it was due. My mother wanted to know when I was planning to start. Knowing me, they both suggested I begin tonight.

  “I want to start on it, because you know how much I believe in getting an early start on things,” I said with my fingers crossed. “But tonight I have a very important meeting in the clubhouse at seven.”

  “Honey, you know how long it takes you to do your homework,” said my mother.

  “This is the first homework assignment of the year,” added my father. “You have to make a good impression on your teacher.”

  “But my business partners are counting on me,” I pleaded.

  “What business partners?” my father asked, getting irritated.

  “Now, Henry…” my mother said.

  Uh-oh. The H-word. Whenever she calls me Henry, I know it’s all over.

  “We’ve talked about starting this school year off on the right foot. I know you want to do that, don’t you?”

  “But I have six whole days to write it,” I said. “That’s less than a paragraph a day. And this meeting could change my entire life. And yours.”

  “That’s enough,” my father said. “Right after dessert, you’re going to march into your room, sit down at your desk and start writing. I want one paragraph completed tonight.”

  Just then, Katherine flipped out her disgusting tongue and snapped up the last piece of cracker that I’d been saving.

  This night was going nowhere fast.

  I love my room and I hate my room.

  My bunk bed can be turned into a fort. All I have to do is tuck the blankets under the top mattress and let them hang down to the floor. I sleep on the bottom bunk and my desk is directly opposite the window. Everything is where I want it to be. My clock radio is by my bed. My CD player is portable, so it can move to where I need it. Inside my cupboard I have a secret panel where an old cigar box holds the most important items on Earth. There’s a dollar note that Mum gave me for helping to clean up our dog’s poo, a red star that my first-grade teacher gave me for telling the best story, my very first Hot Wheels car – a silver Ferrari F-50 convertible that I named Shiny – a load of baseball cards that will be very valuable someday and … that’s pretty much it.

  Those are the things I love about my room. What I hate about my room is that’s where homework calls to me day and night like a monster. “Finish me. Finish me. Pick up your pencil.”

  I sat down at my desk and took out a piece of lined paper. Let’s not forget that I’m allergic to lined paper. But I was determined to concentrate and get some of my essay done.

  Cheerio ran into my room. He started to spin round in a circle. Now let me ask you this: how can a guy concentrate when his dog spends most of his waking hours chasing his tail? Cheerio, who is a very long dachshund, has been trying to catch his tail since he was a puppy. That’s how he got his name. He’s beigeish-brownish. So is a Cheerio. He looks like a circle. So does a Cheerio. Sometimes he spills his milk on himself, and then he looks like a bowl of Cheerios.

  Watching Cheerio spin is like watching clothes twirling around in the dryer. It’s boring, and you try to look away. But somehow you’re just sucked in.

  I was finally able to unhook my eyes from Cheerio and look at my desk. The lined paper stared up at me. My pencil was sharpened and ready. So why couldn’t I just pick it up and write … something … anything? The piece of paper looked like it was spinning around the desktop … like my dog. I pushed my hand straight out to stop it. My thoughts were spinning. Niagara Falls… I wrote that down. At last, something was coming. My family is in raincoats and boots and rain hats. We had to rent them. I wrote that down, too.

  All of a sudden, I looked down and saw that my desk drawer was open a crack. My hand just shot down and pulled it open even further. Boy, was it a mess! How did that happen? I felt this powerful need to straighten up everything in my drawer.

  My broken watch collection was all over the place. My special marbles had rolled all the way to the back. I took some Scotch tape and taped the marbles down. I was on fire! Then I noticed that the ballpoint pens had somehow got into the pencil part of the divider. I couldn’t have that.

  “Henry Zipzer, are you writing your essay?” my mother called from outside my door.

  I slammed the drawer shut and picked up my pencil.

  “You bet, Mum.”

  I looked down at the paper. I squinted and saw a sentence and a half – that was all I had written. I looked at my clock radio. We had a seven o’clock meeting in our clubhouse down in the basement. How was I going to make it? I’d never get out of my room. I hated my room. I hated my essay. I hated my brain. Why couldn’t I think or write or spell or add or divide? Forget about multiplying.

  It’s not like I don’t try. I do. I go over and over and over my times tables and my vocabulary lists. My sister tests me, and I know everything. But then comes the test, and I can’t remember them. It’s like my mind is a blackboard and the words just slide off it in the time it takes to walk from my flat to school, which is a block and a half away. It makes me so mad that sometimes I hit my head with my fist, hoping I’ll start everything working again.

  The piece of paper was still there in front of me. Still pretty much empty. I picked up my pencil and reread my sentence and a half. Great. I had spelled Niagara wrong. Rubbing out was a trick. My rubber usually ripped the paper to shreds. As I moved it over the sheet of paper, a hole started to appear. Small at first, and then it grew. It finally got so big, I could see the desktop through it.

  I screwed up the sheet of paper and threw it. It hit the rim of my bin. Mum and Dad gave the bin to me for my birthday last year, and they put family pictures all around the outside under plastic.

  Start again, Hank, I told myself. Think. Niagara Falls … or Does It? by Hank Zipzer.

  I wondered if the title could be considered a paragraph?

  Probably not.

  “Man, are you late!” Frankie said, a little bit angrily. “It’s seven-thirty.”

  “We thought you weren’t coming,” Ashley chimed in.

  “Hey, I didn’t think I was coming,” I snapped back. “Parent problems.”

  “I happen to know that your mum isn’t even home,” said Frankie. “I know that because
she’s upside-down in my living room.”

  “My dad went to yoga class tonight too,” said Ashley. “He said he needed to de-stress. I’d be stressed too if I had to look at pictures of people’s disgusting insides all day.”

  “We’ve got to get my dad to go to yoga,” I said. “He could definitely use some de-stressing. He wouldn’t let me come here tonight until I had written a paragraph of my essay.”

  “Did you do one?” asked Ashley.

  “Yeah, I wrote a paragraph.”

  “Great,” said Ashley, throwing an arm round me.

  “Then I rubbed it out.”

  “Not so great.” Ashley looked worried.

  “I assume you didn’t mention the rubbing out part to Silent Stan,” said Frankie.

  “He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.”

  I don’t lie to my parents, but I have to confess, there are times when I don’t tell them everything. I think you know what I mean.

  I fell backwards into one of the sofas that lined the wall of our clubhouse. Cheerio, who had come with me, started to sniff the place out. He always sniffs around like he’s going to find something new. He never does, but as long as he doesn’t lift his leg, I figure he can do whatever he wants.

  Our clubhouse is in the basement of our block of flats. When you get out of the lift, you start smelling soapsuds because the laundry room is to the right. But if you turn to the left, there are three rooms with padlocks on them filled with stuff no one in the building wants. Old chairs and sofas and bird cages, suitcases of every size, boxes of books and food magazines. A lot of parent kind of stuff.

  One of the rooms doesn’t have a lock so we use it for our hideout. It’s a perfect meeting spot. Well, almost perfect. It would be totally perfect if Robert didn’t know about it.

  Ashley and Frankie had already made a list of the tricks Frankie was going to do for Papa Pete’s show. It said:

  “Numbers one to three are no-brainers,” Frankie said, “but number four isn’t going to happen. We’d better face it now.”