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  After a while, Mrs. Fink stuck her head in and gave us all big slices of her apple-cinnamon sugar cake.

  Some days just work out perfectly.

  CHAPTER 17

  My spurt of happiness kept right on going for the next month.

  Ms. Adolf’s rumba injury was still keeping her home in bed, so she wasn’t around to make us participate in her usual fun activities like pop quizzes and mini-tests and end-of-chapter questions and extra homework assignments.

  It was great to have Mr. Rock for a substitute teacher. He told at least one joke every day in class. And if you messed up on a test, he gave you a chance to study harder and take it again. Using his system, I got two B’s and a C-plus. Those grades actually got my dad to look up from his online crossword puzzle and say, “Much improved, Hank. Keep it up.” And coming from him, that’s a major compliment.

  Tuesday quickly became my favorite day of the week. After school, Frankie and Ashley would change into their gis and go into the gym for Tae Kwon Do. Zoe and I would meet in the library for Reading Gym. We were partners, helping each other put together our autobiographies.

  I decided to make mine a scrapbook type of thing, because writing a really long essay was totally impossible for me. I brought in cool stuff from home, like photos and my drawing doodles and tickets from Mets games and the first poem I ever wrote. Mr. Rock said it was okay to make a scrapbook, as long as I used everything that was there to practice my reading and spelling skills.

  Being a drummer, Zoe decided to do a multimedia presentation. She wrote about her life in words that sounded like song lyrics. After each piece of writing, she made a tape of her favorite music from that time. She actually recorded herself singing “Wheels on the Bus” like a three-year-old and “Itsy Bitsy Spider” like a five-year-old. When she presented her autobiography to the class, she was going to keep time with the music using her drumsticks.

  Now that’s a creative person, wouldn’t you agree?

  The only problem in this otherwise very perfect month was that there were a few glitches in my plan not to tell my dad that I had switched out of Tae Kwon Do. Don’t worry, he didn’t find out, because Emily kept her mouth shut (although she did get an extra week of bed-making out of me). But I had a lot of close calls because when you’re keeping something from your mom or dad, you can easily get caught. Trust me on that.

  Like every Tuesday, I had to switch into my gi before I got home from school, so it looked like I had been in martial arts. Usually, I changed clothes in the gym bathroom, but one day I forgot. I walked home, rode up the elevator, and was about to put the key into our apartment door when I realized I was still in my regular school clothes and my gi was in my backpack.

  I couldn’t go back down to Frankie or Ashley’s to change, because their parents were already home and they’d wonder why I was changing in their apartment. I couldn’t go into the elevator to change, because what if it stopped on another floor and when the door opened I was standing there with no clothes on. Try explaining that to Mrs. Park on the fourth floor!

  So I did the only thing a person could do. I decided to change right there in the hall. I was going to have to be quick, because one thing you don’t want to do in the hall of your apartment building is stand around half naked. It’s considered bad manners.

  I took my gi out of my backpack and laid it out in front of me on the floor. My plan was to take my jeans off first and replace them with the gi pants. Then I’d do the top part. That way, if the worst happened and someone saw me, at least I’d always be half covered.

  I took a deep breath, so I could concentrate with all my might. Then, like a track star coming off the blocks, I pulled off my jeans and jumped into the gi pants. I did pull off one shoe in the process, but all in all, I was pretty pleased with how quickly my bottoms went on. Now all I had to do was get the top part changed, and I was home free.

  I took another deep breath, yanked off my sweatshirt and my T-shirt, and tossed them on the floor. Brrr, it was freezing cold. But before I could even reach for my gi top, the door across the hall opened and little Tyler King stepped out. He’s five, and was wearing his Spiderman pajamas like he always does.

  “Hi, Tyler,” I said, trying to sound really casual, as though hanging around in the hall with no shirt on in the middle of a snowy February day was something I did all the time.

  “Why are you naked, Hank?” he asked.

  “I’m not naked, Tyler. I’m just not wearing a shirt.”

  “That’s fun. I’m going to take my shirt off, too,” he said, pulling off his Spiderman pajama top.

  “No, Tyler,” I said. “It’s cold. You have to put your shirt on.”

  “But you don’t have one on.”

  “That’s because I’m a big boy,” I said.

  Okay, I know it was a lame answer, but I was under a lot of pressure.

  I reached out and picked up his pajama top.

  “Come on, let’s put this on,” I said. “Arms up.”

  “No!” he said.

  “Look up there, Tyler,” I said, pointing to the ceiling. “It’s Spiderman!”

  He looked up and I took the opportunity to slip his pajama top over his head.

  “I don’t see Spidey, Hank!”

  “That’s because he’s over there now,” I said, pointing to the elevator. “Can you wave to him?”

  Tyler waved, and while his arm was out, I slid the pajama arm over his arm. One down, one to go.

  “Now he’s over there, on the other side. Wave to Spiderman, Tyler. Say ‘hi, Spidey’!”

  Tyler waved, and I managed to get the pajamas over his other arm. At least he was dressed, but now he was sad.

  “I didn’t see him, Hank! Did Spidey leave?”

  “I think he went into your apartment, Tyler. Back inside the TV where he lives.”

  “I’m coming, Spiderman!” Tyler yelled. “Be right there.”

  He turned around, ran back inside his apartment, and slammed the door.

  Phew! That was hard. And cold. I took a second to recover, still with no top on, when I saw the other apartment door on our floor open just a crack.

  “What’s going on out here?” Mrs. Fink said, peeking out from her door. “Hank, is that you? Where’s your shirt? You’ll freeze out there!”

  “Sshhhhhhhh,” I whispered to Mrs. Fink. She’s not known for speaking quietly, and the last thing I wanted was for my dad to hear her and come outside.

  “What’s with the ‘sshhhhhhhh’? You have a secret?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me,” she said. “I love secrets.”

  I heard footsteps in my apartment, coming toward the door. I had two seconds, maximum, before they reached me. I had to come up with something. And quick!

  CHAPTER 18

  FIVE POSSIBLE SECRETS I COULD TELL MRS. FINK TO GET HER TO CLOSE THE DOOR

  1. I am trying out for a Speed Clothes Changing contest, but I can’t tell my family because I want to surprise them with my trophy.

  2. I have a rare disease called Shirt Off Syndrome that causes me to pull my shirt off in weird places like hallways and supermarket aisles.

  3. I suddenly got allergic to my shirt and if I didn’t get it off right away, I would break out in hives as big as strawberries.

  4. I decided to become a nudist, but I chickened out, so I’m becoming a half-nudist instead.

  5. I am rehearsing for a school play in which I have to play an ancient Siamese king, and everyone knows ancient Siamese kings didn’t wear shirts.

  CHAPTER 19

  I had no time to make a good decision, so I just blurted out the first thing that popped into my mind.

  “I’m in a Speed Clothes Changing contest,” I told Mrs. Fink. “Don’t tell my family, because I want to surprise them with the trophy.”

  “Oh,” Mrs. Fink said. “How exciting. I’ll make you a lemon poppy-seed cake when you win.”

  I pulled the top of my gi on and tied the belt just a
s my apartment door opened. It was my dad.

  I tried to assume a really relaxed pose, like someone who had been sweating up a storm in his gi all afternoon.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hank, why didn’t you just come in?” he asked. “And why do you only have one shoe on?”

  Whoops. I forgot about the shoe. Leave it to my dad to notice.

  “I asked him to take it off,” Mrs. Fink said, “so I could see his sock. I think I found a matching one left in the dryer.”

  Nice recovery, Mrs. Fink. Way to go.

  “Oh,” my dad said. “Well, come on in, Hank. You can show me what you learned in karate.”

  I glanced at Mrs. Fink as I went inside, and she gave me a big wink.

  “Let me know when I should get started on the lemon cake,” she whispered.

  Things didn’t go that much smoother inside the apartment. My dad meant it when he asked to see what I’d been learning in karate. He sat down in his rocking chair and put his feet up on the coffee table.

  “So show me some karate,” he said.

  “Well, first of all, Dad, it’s Tae Kwon Do.”

  “Right,” he said. “You’ve mentioned that. So, have you learned any kicks or blocks you can show me?”

  “Oh, all kinds,” I said. “But they’re not really things you can do by yourself. You need a sparring partner for that kind of thing.”

  “Call up Frankie,” my dad said. “Maybe he’ll come up and you boys can show me what you’re learning.”

  I went to the phone and dialed Frankie’s number.

  “Hey,” I said when he answered the phone. “My dad wants us to show him what we’re learning in Tae Kwon Do. Can you come up?”

  “Are you crazy, Zip? You’re not in Tae Kwon Do, therefore, you haven’t learned squat in Tae Kwon Do. What are we supposed to show him?”

  I grinned at my dad, and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

  “I know you have a lot of homework,” I said into the phone, “so we’ll just show him one or two moves and then you can get to work.”

  “Listen, Zip,” Frankie said. “If you want to keep what you’re doing from your dad, that’s your business. But don’t get me in the middle of it. That is not fair.”

  “Oh,” I said, looking at my dad. “That’s right. I forgot about the essay on the Constitution. Sure, I know you’ll be up all night finishing it.”

  “You’re really something, Zip,” said Frankie. “Tell him whatever you want. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I hung up the phone and flopped down on the couch.

  “No deal,” I said to my dad. “Frankie says he’d love to show you some stuff, but he has a lot of work to do on the social studies essay that’s due tomorrow.”

  “What social studies essay?” my dad asked. “I didn’t know you had one due tomorrow.”

  Uh-oh. Now I had really gotten myself into a corner. Of course, we didn’t have an essay due—I made it up on the phone with Frankie. But now my dad thought we did have an essay due the next day. And there’s nothing he likes better than to supervise me while I’m writing an essay.

  If you think lying is easy, let me just tell you this. I had to spend the whole night in my room, writing an essay on the Constitution that was never even assigned.

  I tell you, friends. Think twice before you tell your parents a story.

  CHAPTER 20

  Every Thursday, Zoe and I would meet at McKelty’s Roll ’N’ Bowl to have a root beer and do some extra work on our Reading Gym project. Most Thursdays, Frankie and Ashley came along, too, and did their homework while we did ours.

  One day, we were sitting at the usual booth in McKelty’s when Nick came up to us.

  “Hey, Zipper Dork, I challenge you to a bowling duel,” he said. “Are you in the mood for losing?”

  “I can’t right now, Nick,” I said. “I’m doing my schoolwork.”

  “Come on. The loser buys the winner a root beer.”

  “That doesn’t work,” I said. “There’s four of us and only one root beer, so let’s just forget it.”

  He wasn’t letting me off the hook so easy.

  “Tell you what,” McKelty said. “If I lose, which is not going to happen, I’ll buy all four of you root beers. If you lose, you buy me a root beer float, some red licorice, and a chunky chocolate bar.”

  I figured that was a typical snack for him. One thing you could definitely say about Nick McKelty was that he had a giant sweet tooth.

  Frankie got up from the booth and stretched to his full tall-bodied self.

  “My pal Hank is busy right now, Nick, but it just so happens that I’ve finished my homework, so I’ll take you on,” he said.

  McKelty’s face turned purple. It’s one thing to challenge me, Hank Zipzer, to a competition, but it’s a whole other deal to challenge Frankie Townsend. Frankie had been telling me how McKelty was always challenging everyone in their Tae Kwon Do class to a match—everyone but him, that is. McKelty’s the kind of guy that likes to pick on people weaker than him, but will never stand up to someone he thinks is better.

  “Come to think of it, my thumb is kind of sore,” McKelty sputtered. “It’s probably best if I give it a rest.”

  “Your thumb looks fine to me,” Frankie said. “Come on, dude. I could use a little exercise.”

  Before McKelty had a chance to think of another lame excuse, all of us had scooted over to the first available lane and taken a seat at the score table. This bowling duel was going to be fun to watch.

  Let me just say two things about what followed.

  One: There were no orange swirly balls at this match, thank goodness.

  Two: I really enjoyed that root beer afterward. It tasted especially sweet.

  CHAPTER 21

  The following week, Principal Love announced that the first exhibition matches would be taking place in Tae Kwon Do class.

  Ashley was paired up with Joelle Atkins. Joelle loves her cell phone so much that none of us thought she’d be able to stop talking on it long enough to take part in the match.

  “That’s fine with me,” Ashley said. “I’ll sneak up on her while she’s speed-dialing.”

  Frankie was paired up with the blowbag himself, Nick McKelty. For the whole week before, McKelty had been telling everyone that he was going to take Frankie down. Even though McKelty weighed twice what Frankie did, I knew there was no way he could beat him. Frankie moves at the speed of light. McKelty moves at the speed of a snail. A really slow snail.

  As I sat in Reading Gym that week, writing captions underneath the photos in my scrapbook and double-checking to make sure I used capital letters for all the proper nouns, I could hear the kids across the hall getting ready for the match. They were sliding chairs around the gym, and Principal Love was shouting out directions in his overly deep voice. A few times, Zoe and I got out of our seats and went to the door so we could hear what he was saying.

  “Make a circle, young masters,” he called out, “so we can gather in a circular shape, which, as we all know, is the best shape to gather in when sitting in a circle.”

  “I must really have big-time learning challenges,” Zoe said with a laugh, “because I don’t understand anything your principal says.”

  “What’s even more scary is that I did understand him,” I said. “He’s telling the kids to sit down so the matches can start.”

  We went back into the library to continue our work. Zoe was sitting at a computer, watching an animated purple dog trot in and out of his doghouse on the screen. It was an exercise to build up her tracking eye muscles.

  “I wish we could go see the matches,” Zoe said, looking up from the screen. “I’d love to see how Frankie and Ashley and Nick do. Besides, this yapping purple dog is getting on my nerves.”

  My hand shot up in the air.

  “Do you need some help, Hank?” Mr. Rock asked, walking quickly over to me. He had been working with Luke Whitman, whose nose was running like a faucet. Judging from the fast pace he wa
s setting to get to me, I think Mr. Rock wanted a break from the mucus flow.

  “It’s about the Tae Kwon Do class, Mr. Rock. They’re having their first matches today. Please can we go?”

  “What about your capital letters, Hank?”

  “I’ll finish them tonight at home. I promise.”

  “Hank, we have work to do in Reading Gym,” Mr. Rock said. “You guys are going to start the presentations of your life stories next week, and you need time to prepare.”

  “But Frankie and Ashley are competing today,” I said. “I need to support my friends, don’t I?”

  “My cousin Nick is participating, too,” Zoe said, “and I know he’d like me there. I think being a close family is very important, don’t you, Mr. Rock?”

  Way to go, Zoe McKelty. Play the old close family card!

  Mr. Rock scratched his chin and thought. “If I let you go, I have to offer the same opportunity to the rest of the group,” he said.

  “How about if those of us who go write a report about it?” I said. “For reading and writing practice.”

  “I guess I could live with that,” Mr. Rock said. “Okay, kids, who else wants to go?”

  Oddly enough, Zoe and I were the only two who raised our hands. The Wilson sisters, Kacey and Sloane, had a brother named Austin in Tae Kwon Do, but they said they saw plenty of him at home and watching him kick and punch sure wasn’t worth writing a report about. Luke Whitman said he had spent the whole weekend glued to a kung fu movie marathon on TV, and he was up to his nostrils with martial arts. (When it comes to Luke Whitman, friends, it’s all about the nose.) Chelsea Byrd said she was too nervous about her presentation to take any time off. Felipe Aguilar was being picked up early for a dentist appointment, and Mr. Rock felt that Brandon Clarke was just a little too hyper that day to be able to sit still for the match.

  So Zoe and I were the only ones to go into the gym for the matches, which was fine with me. I mean, who wants Luke “The Nose Faucet” Whitman sitting within wiping distance of your shirtsleeve, anyway?