A Brand-New Me! Read online

  Wait a minute. Was that supposed to be a compliment, because it felt like someone had just kicked me hard in the shins.

  My mom, bless her heart, went back in for another shot at the goal.

  “We were hoping that there might be a special program for Hank in middle school that would make great use of all of his wonderful abilities.”

  “Mrs. Zipzer, you’re not getting the big picture, so let me be even clearer. Hank, here, while a very energetic and popular comedian, is, academically speaking, a regular student. Now mind you, there is nothing wrong with regular. As a matter of fact, most regular people are regularly important to the functioning of our society as a whole. And a regular middle school like MS 245 is a perfect place for a regular person to train to be adequately regular. And I know for a fact, it has special classes for those students who are having trouble with their academics.”

  Boy, my shins were burning now . . . oh, in a regularkind of way, of course.

  My dad startled awake. He must have dreamed that he had heard someone near him say the word regular at least fifty-five times. For a guy who loves crossword puzzles so much, his ears are very sensitive to words.

  “So if I can paraphrase what you’re saying,” my dad chimed in. “You think Hank should go to this school?”

  “I know he should, Mr. Zipzer.”

  So there it was. My fate was being decided by three people who forgot to ask me my opinion. Did anyone care that I don’t consider myself regular? That even though I’m not a great student, I do learn things, just in my own time, in my own way. And you know what else? I’m interested in things. I like learning. I’d like to go to a special school where the teachers are really interested in helping me learn the best way I can. Did anyone take my imagination into account? Is there a school for kids who have an imagination filled with personality? Because if there is, I would get in for sure. And maybe even get straight As.

  And while I was thinking all these thoughts, Principal Love was opening the door of his office and showing us out.

  Where were we going? My mom was going to the Crunchy Pickle to make soylami sandwich platters. My dad was going home to stare at his computer screen.

  And me, I was on my way to MS 245.

  CHAPTER 11

  As if that meeting wasn’t bad enough, I still had a makeup math quiz staring me in the face. And if thatwasn’t bad enough, I had to take it during my lunch period. And if thatwasn’t bad enough, I really studied for it and I still couldn’t even figure out the first question. And if that wasn’t bad enough, Luke Whitman, the class nose-picker, was taking a makeup test at the desk right next to mine and spent the whole time digging around in his left nostril. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he tried to wipe his finger on my answer sheet.

  By the end of school that day, I was ready not to ever go to middle school or any other school for that matter. But I had promised Mr. Rock that I would report to the music room every day for ten days, and I wasn’t about to go back on that promise.

  “Hey, Hank,” he said as I strolled through the doorway of his class. “You don’t look like your typical irrepressible Zipzer self.”

  “No, I’m not. And by the way, Mr. Rock, I have no idea what that word means.”

  He laughed. That felt good and already I noticed that the gray cloud above my head was starting to lift.

  “Irrepressible, Hank, means that even if things get you down, you bounce back.”

  “Well, I’m not too bouncy right now.”

  “I have just the solution,” he said, loosening his tie that I noticed had musical notes on it. “French horn polishing. It is an ancient remedy proven to cure the blues.”

  “Count me in,” I told him. “My blues are so dark blue, they’re navy.”

  Mr. Rock laughed again.

  “You’re funny, Hank. Everything you say is so original.”

  The gray cloud lifted even higher. It’s amazing what a little appreciation from one human being can do for you.

  Mr. Rock went to the instrument closet and came back carrying a beat-up, brown leather case. He opened it, and inside was a curvy large horn, sitting on a velvet cushion. The cushion looked great, but the horn, which was shaped like an oversized letter C, looked pretty beat-up. Not that I have much to compare it to, in the horn department. But it wasn’t shiny and seemed to have a general layer of crud covering it.

  “This French horn was returned today by one of your fellow fifth-graders,” Mr. Rock said. “It needs a good cleaning, because for some strange reason, the inside is coated with food.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “It was Nick McKelty’s instrument.”

  “That’s amazing, Hank! How’d you know that?”

  “Because Nick McKelty is a food grinding machine. I swear, he’s got parts of lunch in his mouth that are still there from the third grade.”

  Mr. Rock laughed again. I felt the gray cloud over my head drift up and away, through the ceiling, out the roof, and into the sky above the Upper West Side. Maybe it was going to make someone else feel bad, but not me. I was starting to feel like a brand-new guy.

  “So what you’re going to do is clean every inch of this instrument with a soft cloth,” Mr. Rock began.

  “No problem,” I nodded. “I can do that.”

  “Then you’ll apply brass polish and rub out all the finger prints and scratches until the surface gleams.”

  “No problem. I can do that.”

  “Then you’ll remove any collected saliva from the spit valve.”

  “We’ve just come across our first problem,” I said. “This is Nick McKelty we’re talking about. I cannot be in personal contact with his mouth liquid. I mean, there’s a good possibility it will eat away my fingers and then I wouldn’t be able to polish any more instruments, and I happen to know, you have a whole closet full of horns that need my attention.”

  By now, Mr. Rock was practically howling. But that didn’t stop him from sitting me down at a table, handing me a soft cloth and a can of brass polish, and putting McKelty’s cruddy French horn in front of me.

  “You have your work cut out for you,” he said, tossing me a pair of rubber gloves. “We only have an hour. I’m going to sit at my desk and enter my end-of-term grades. If you have any questions, ask me first before you take action. These are expensive instruments.”

  Mr. Rock went to his desk and started typing on his laptop computer. I picked up the horn in front of me. I didn’t know where to start, but I certainly didn’t want to start with the spit valve, so I turned my attention to the big opening.

  “Wow, this probably makes a loud sound because the hole is so wide,” I said.

  Mr. Rock looked up from his desk and smiled.

  “That part of the instrument is called the bell,” he explained. “The French horn was actually developed from the hunting horns that European people used while hunting foxes.”

  “Poor foxes,” I said. “The sound coming out of this baby would make your bones rattle.”

  As I started to polish the horn, I kept thinking about those foxes, running as fast as they could away from the fifty men and women chasing them on thundering horses. There was something about rubbing the brass over and over in a circular rhythm that allowed my brain to wander and I found myself thinking just like that fox . . . being chased.

  “Wow, it’s dangerous being a fox. Those guys on horseback are really on my tail. And the one in front, with the red coat and the white wig, he’s got a gun. A gun! And he’s aiming it at me! Legs, don’t fail me now!”

  Maybe my body was cleaning the bell of a French horn in the music room of PS 87, but my imagination was out in that field, being chased by those thundering horse hooves.

  “I’ve got to find some cover. Good, there’s an overgrown fallen tree at the bottom of that hill. If I can just make it there, I’ll crawl under it and they’ll never find me. Oh no, my leg’s caught on this vine. Now what? Don’t panic. Think. Okay, I’ll chew through the vine. It’s not tha
t thick. Oh no, it’s bitter. Yuck! Can’t let that stop me now. I’ll spit it out. Ptooey! All right, I can move my leg now. No time to see if it’s bleeding. The horses are almost on top of me. Got to run. Got to run. Like the wind.”

  I hadn’t actually intended to say all that out loud. But when I stopped for a second, I saw Mr. Rock staring at me. He wasn’t touching his computer. He was just listening.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Rock,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be talking out loud, but sometimes my imagination gets carried away.”

  “That’s one of your most unique qualities, Hank. Go on. I’m on the edge of my seat. What’s the fox going to do next?”

  I put the French horn down and stared at my reflection in the one shiny section I had already polished. Within a second, I wasn’t looking at my face anymore. I was back in the body of the fox, running for my life.

  “They’re catching up to me. Maybe I can make it to Chagford Creek. If I run through the water, they won’t be able to follow my scent. There’s the creek, just ahead. Wow, I just caught a glimpse of my tongue. It’s hanging out of my mouth, which means I really have to stop for a drink of water. No time for that now. Almost there. Just have to get through this thistle patch. Oooowww, my back. It’s burning. I’ve been shot. I’m never making it to the creek, and I was so close. Good-bye, world. Good-bye, Barry Fox, my best friend. It’s been swell. And good-bye, Mama Fox. I really love that gooseberry stew you used to make. And now, I die. WAIT A MINUTE. I’m still running! I must not be dead. I just got poked by the thistles. I live. Now I’m wet. I’m swimming in the creek. And now the hounds are sniffing all over the place. They don’t know which direction I’ve gone. I’m safe! I’m smart. I’m Hank!”

  I looked up and Mr. Rock was standing at his desk, applauding wildly.

  “Bravo,” he shouted. “Well done, Hank!”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “When I’m in my room, my mind wanders and I make up these characters instead of doing my math homework. They just pop into my head to say hi. My dad says it’s a loss of focus and lack of concentration.”

  “I know another word for it,” Mr. Rock said.

  I knew what was coming. I was waiting for any of those words everyone has always used to describe me. Lazy. Unfocused. Distracted. Underachieving. Take your pick.

  “It’s called talent,” Mr. Rock said. “And you were born with it, Hank.”

  Talent? That was definitely not one of the words I was waiting for.

  CHAPTER 12

  The next day, I showed up in Mr. Rock’s room actually on time and looking forward to the hour we would spend together. If you had told me two days before that I would enjoy staying after school to do community service, I would have said that your brain had turned into pea soup without the bacon. But just the chance to hang out with a teacher who thought that my imagination wasn’t a nuisance was an incredible and totally new experience.

  “Have a red vine,” Mr. Rock said, pulling open the bottom drawer of his desk where he kept a humungous container of red licorice. “I find it perks up your afternoon.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Rock,” I said as I chomped down on the top of the vine and pulled hard until it stretched to the breaking point and popped off in my mouth.

  “Are you ready for the string section?” Mr. Rock asked.

  “Sure. I’m into string. Are we flying kites or making a telephone out of two tin cans?”

  “Neither, although those are both fun things to do. The strings I’m talking about refer to string instruments . . . which are instruments that are played with a bow.”

  “Hold it right there, Mr. Rock. Are you talking about a violin, because that has to be the worst instrument made by humans. My sister, Emily, took a lesson once in our apartment. The screech that came out of that thing shot into my ear and gave me goose bumps on my brain. It sounded like somebody being bitten by a vampire, not that I’ve ever been bitten by one.”

  Mr. Rock laughed and took a red vine for himself.

  “Learning to play the violin can be tricky and painful for anyone who’s listening. My older sister studied violin for years, and when she first began, our dog used to jump into the laundry basket and hide under my dad’s shirts. Now she plays in the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra. That’s what practicing anything can do for you, Hank. You get better at it.”

  I thought about that for a minute. The good thing about Mr. Rock is that he says things that make you think. But my thinking time was interrupted by a familiar, thick voice calling me from the doorway.

  “Hey, Zipperbutt,” Nick McKelty shouted in. “I just wanted to see what a jerk doing community service after school looks like. And I was right. You look like a loser.”

  He held up his hand in the shape of an L and waved it in front of me. The only thing was he waved the wrong hand, so the L was backward. Even someone with dyslexia like me could see that.

  “Thanks for the visit, Nick,” Mr. Rock said. “And the next time you feel like visiting, I think you’ll find it more constructive if you keep your negative thoughts to yourself.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” the big lug said. Then, as he was leaving, he turned back and said, “By the way, I don’t have that many negative thoughts.”

  “That’s because you don’t have any thoughts at all,” I said, before I could stop myself.

  “That goes for you, too, Hank,” Mr. Rock whispered. “Don’t stoop to his level.”

  Mr. Rock took me to the corner of the room where a whole bunch of leather cases were stacked up.

  “There should be a violin and a bow inside each case,” he said.

  “Cool. Are there arrows in there, too?”

  We both laughed. Mr. Rock really gets my humor.

  “Different kind of bow,” he said. “I’ll bet you didn’t know that a violin bow is made of horsehair, specifically from the tail of a white male horse.”

  “Wow, I’m going to pull that fact out next time Robert Upchurch tries to show me up with one of his weird facts. Last night he told me that it’s physically impossible for an astronaut to burp in space. Where does he come up with this stuff?”

  “I need you to focus now, Hank. Back to business.”

  “Focusing as you speak, sir. Hank to brain, zero in.”

  Mr. Rock opened up a case and took out a violin and a bow.

  “I want you to open these cases and record the number of each violin and each bow. You’ll find the numbers on a white label somewhere on the instrument.”

  “Can do,” I said.

  Mr. Rock walked back to his desk, opened his briefcase, and pulled out a manila folder that was stuffed full of all kinds of papers—yellow pads, blue test booklets, white envelopes, pink post-its. It was so disorganized; it looked like a tornado hit it. He dumped all the papers out on top of his desk and started to put them in piles.

  I picked up one of the violin cases and opened it. The violin and bow were tucked into their own purple velvet spaces. Without really thinking about what I was doing, I picked up the violin and tucked it under my chin. Then I picked up the bow to check out the horse tail hair. I held it to my ear to see if I could hear it whinny, but then I thought, don’t be silly, Hank. Tail hair doesn’t whinny, even if it is on a horse.

  I took the violin from under my chin, held it in front of me and looked closely at it. What a weird shape it had, when you really studied it. It kind of looked like a little person, with the neck and the head and the curvy body. If it looked that weird to me, I wondered what it would look like to an alien from the planet Zork. Before I knew it, my brain was off and running . . . with my mouth running alongside.

  “Hello, my little friend,” I said to the violin. “I am Captain Lorch from the planet Zork. We come in peace. And speaking of peace, can I offer you a piece of our Zork candy? We call it Fudge-Ums. Here, pop one into your mouth. Oops, sorry you don’t have a mouth. I don’t suppose you’d want to pop one between your strings. Yes, I see. That could get very messy if it melt
ed.”

  I heard Mr. Rock chuckle from his desk. I have to admit, I really liked hearing that. For me, having someone enjoy what I’m saying is like gas for a car . . . it makes me keep going. So I did.

  “Did I tell you that you look so much like my brother Gorch. He also has pegs for ears and a long neck. However, he isn’t made of wood, he’s made of something you humans call beets. He’s very red which comes in handy in his line of work. He’s a night watchman who glows in the dark. And did I mention, it’s dark twenty-four hours a day on Zork.”

  I was brought back to Earth from Zork when I saw two smiling faces standing in the doorway. It was Frankie and Ashley.

  “Hey, Zip,” Frankie said. “We thought we’d check in on you and see what’s up.”

  “Yeah, we feel bad you’re staying after school every day,” Ashley added, “so we brought you some chocolate chip cookies we saved from lunch.”

  “I may look like Hank Zipzer to you, earth lings, but in fact, I am Captain Lorch from the planet Zork. I will accept your cookies in good fellowship as a symbol of intergalactic peace between our worlds.”

  Frankie and Ashley are used to me, so they just jumped right in without blinking an eye.

  “Captain Lorch,” Frankie said. “How will you eat these cookies? Are they not a strange foodstuff to you?”

  “Not after you’ve eaten some of the goop my mother makes.”

  Ashley and Frankie cracked up so hard, I thought they couldn’t catch their breath. It must have been contagious, because Mr. Rock started to laugh really hard, too.

  I walked over to Ashley, doing my funny alien walk which I sometimes practice in my room in front of my mirror instead of doing multiplication tables. I reached out, took the cookies and the plastic bag they were in, and stuffed them in my mouth.

  “Your earth cookies look like chocolate, but have no taste.”

  “On our planet, we think it’s more enjoyable if you unwrap the cookies first,” Ashley said, her eyes watering like she was crying, only the tears came from laughing.

  “On Zork, we eat through our bellybuttons,” I said. “I will demonstrate.”