Fourth-Grade Disasters (4 page)

When he didn’t answer, she went on. “Your father and I talked some more about it, and we’ve decided that if after giving it a fair try—a fair try, Mason—you really don’t want to do it, we’re not going to force you. But we think it’s important that you give it a fair try.”

“What counts as a fair try?” Mason asked. He had tried it out already in his mind and hadn’t liked it one bit. Would a fair try be one practice? Two practices? He hoped it wasn’t going to be two whole weeks.

“Three months,” she said.

Mason felt the color draining from his face.

“Just until the first concert. And then, after that, it’s your decision.”

After
that
? She might as well have said,
Just try it for fifty years, and after that, it’s
your
decision
.

“Okay?” she asked.

What could Mason say?

He shrugged, which he knew she took as a yes, and swallowed melted ice cream from the bottom of his half-finished float. He had the dread, dread, dread, dread down in his heart, down in his heart to stay.

On Tuesday morning, at 7:45, Mason and Brody walked in the door of Plainfield Elementary for the first rehearsal of the Plainfield Platters.

Mrs. Morengo, the retired music teacher who had stayed on at Plainfield Elementary to direct the Plainfield Platters, was a tiny woman, hardly taller than Mason. She was the teacher who had written the words to “Puff the Plainfield Dragon.” During his first four years at Plainfield Elementary, Mason had watched her conduct Platters concerts, standing onstage in front of the chorus on
a wooden box. As she conducted, she leaped about with such energy that there was always the possibility that she would fall off the box. So far, to Mason’s knowledge, she never had.

After Mrs. Morengo’s words of welcome, the first song of the day was “Puff the Plainfield Dragon.”

“Yes, you all know our Puff,” she said. “You have been singing about Puff since the first day of kindergarten, yes? But we begin each year with Puff because he inspires us. We are called the Plainfield Platters. But we are really the Plainfield
Dragons
. Hear us roar!”

Mason noticed that the real-life Puff—the stuffed toy—had been taken out of the glass display case and now sat propped up on a chair next to the piano. Puff leaned to one side, as if he were slightly tipsy.

When the students took their places on the risers in the music room, Mason carefully chose a spot at the very end of the second row behind one of his taller classmates. There was no way he was going to stand next to Brody, front row, center. Mr. Griffith, the dad who played the piano for the Platters, began the opening chords of “Puff.” Mason bent his knees and slumped his shoulders so that Mrs. Morengo would hardly be able to see him.

Mason Dixon, invisible dragon, the dragon with the silent roar.

He mouthed the words successfully without attracting any notice to himself. Looking toward Mrs. Morengo, out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Brody belting out the tune as if it were opening night on Broadway for
Plainfield Platters: The Musical
. Brody’s second-best friend, Sheng, was standing next to Brody, singing with almost as much enthusiasm.

Mason felt a twinge of jealousy that the two of them were having so much fun together. But it was better to share a love of Dog with Brody than a love of Puff the Plainfield Dragon.

Unfortunately, standing next to Mason was Dunk, who had also chosen a hidden spot on the second row. Dunk seemed to have made it his project for the day to shove Mason off the end of the riser. Mason knew that Dunk didn’t have anything against him, particularly; it was just Dunk’s hobby to shove people.

“Puff is loved by everyone!” Dunk sang, taking two steps toward Mason while bopping in time with the song.

Mason had no choice but to take two steps closer
to the edge of the riser. In the process, he wobbled forward and bumped into the tall girl in front of him, who turned around and gave him a dirty look. Mrs. Morengo’s eyes turned briefly in his direction.

“Because he is so cool!” Dunk took another step toward Mason.

Now there were no steps left for Mason to take. He tried to hold his ground, but it was hard to shove back against Dunk while pretending to sing.

“Every day we shout hooray that Puff lives at our school!”

Dunk won the shoving contest: Mason was off the riser, sprawled on the music room carpet. Once again he was a tipped-over teapot, but this time tipped with considerably more force and falling a considerably greater distance.

Kids near him burst out laughing.

Oh, how comical to see Mason lying on the floor!

Mr. Griffith broke off playing, and Mrs. Morengo’s eyes turned Mason’s way as he sat rubbing his left knee and elbow. He’d probably be crippled for life, and instead of telling everybody that it was an old football injury, he’d have to say that it was an old Plainfield Platters singing-group injury.

“Boys!” Mrs. Morengo said sternly, as if Mason’s landing on the floor had been as much his fault as Dunk’s, a deliberate attempt to arouse his classmates’ mirth.

He didn’t bother to correct her.

“Here,” she said, pointing to the spot in the front row on the other side of Brody. “You. What’s your name?”

Mason hoped that she was talking to Dunk, but her eyes were plainly fixed on him.

“Mason,” he mumbled.

“Mason. Come stand here, so I can keep an eye on you.”

Like a doomed man walking to his execution by firing squad, Mason took his place next to Brody. It was small comfort that Brody greeted him with a radiant grin.

“All right,” Mrs. Morengo called out. “Let’s try this again. Mr. Griffith, take it from the top.”

“Puff the Plainfield Dragon!” everybody sang.

Mason could feel Mrs. Morengo’s beady eyes boring into him.

Against his will, he sang, too.

During writing time that morning, Mason read over the start of his story, “The Piano That Went on Strike.”

Mason felt Coach Joe looking over his shoulder. “Great start, Mason! Do you want to tell us a little bit more? Why doesn’t Pedro the piano like playing music? What
does
Pedro like to do?”

Mason didn’t exactly
want
to tell anything more about Pedro’s likes and dislikes, but he supposed he could try to come up with something.

As Coach Joe continued on his way around the room, Mason sat thinking.

“Is Pedro out of tune?” It was Nora, who sat next to Mason on the other side from Brody. “Maybe Pedro doesn’t like playing music because he needs to be tuned.”

Mason didn’t reply right away.

“There has to be a reason why he doesn’t want to play.”

Mason thought this over.

“There’s always a reason for everything,” Nora said.

“Is there?” Mason asked.

“Of course! Things don’t just happen. Like, when an apple falls on the ground, the reason is gravity. Have you ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton?”

Mason hadn’t.

“He was the person who first discovered the law of gravity. And a whole bunch of other laws that explain why things happen the way they do. So you need to figure out why Pedro is the way he is.”

“Maybe he’s shy,” Mason suggested.

Pedro just felt stupid having people plunk on his keys,
plink, plink, plink
, playing whatever dumb notes they felt like playing. “Chopsticks.” Did any piano really
want
to play “Chopsticks”?

“Then there has to be a reason why he’s shy. There’s always a reason for everything,” Nora repeated.

Maybe Pedro had a bad experience once, making some terrible, embarrassing mistake playing “Chopsticks” in front of everybody. Or maybe Pedro had been shoved so hard during a practice session that he tipped over and crashed against the floor, to the hysterical amusement of all.

“What’s your story about?” Mason asked, to change the subject. Coach Joe didn’t mind if they talked, so long as they talked quietly about what they were working on.

“A hundred-dollar bill. Since that
is
the biggest bill that gets made.”

“What happens to—him? Is it a boy or a girl?”

“It’s an it.”

“Does it not want anybody to spend it?”

“It doesn’t have thoughts or feelings. It’s a very realistic hundred-dollar bill. Someone spends it
to buy a bicycle, and then the person who gets the hundred-dollar bill uses it to buy a cell phone. I know, it’s a boring story. But at least it could really happen. I like stories that could really happen. If Pedro doesn’t like to play music, what
does
he like to do?”

Nothing? “He likes to have people put stuff on him, like piles of music. And coffee cups. And he likes when people dust him. Except when they dust his keys—sometimes it tickles.”

Nora laughed. Mason laughed, too.

Usually Mason and Brody walked home from school by themselves, except on days when Brody had soccer practice or a playdate with one of his next-best friends. Mason and Brody went to Mason’s house because Brody’s parents both worked full-time outside the home, while Mason’s mom edited her knitting newsletter from her upstairs home office. And this year, Mason and Brody also went to Mason’s house because Mason’s house had Dog.

On special days, Mason’s mom walked over to Plainfield Elementary to meet them. She must have thought today was a special day, because there she
was, standing outside the door of their classroom, chatting with some of the other parents.

“So?” she asked eagerly.

Mason knew what the question meant, but he pretended he didn’t.

“How was it?”

He could continue to pretend; he could ask, “How was what?” But there was no point in postponing his answer.

“Not good,” he said grimly. She might as well know the truth of what she had signed him up for.

“Dunk Davis pushed me off the riser, and I fell, and I think I sprained my elbow and my knee, so I won’t be able to be in the Platters anymore.”

At the first part of his sentence she had looked concerned, but at the end of the sentence she just reached over and gave his shoulders a comforting squeeze. Mason should have remembered to fake a limp.

“Now, honey, I think you’re exaggerating,” she said. “Did Mrs. Morengo scold Dunk?”

“No. She scolded
me
.”

Her face showed a flicker of concern again, but
then she made a visible effort to summon her own positive attitude. “Mrs. Morengo has never worked with any of you fourth graders before. I’m sure that once she gets to know all of you, she’ll realize what kind of boy Dunk is and what kind of boy
you
are.”

By “what kind of boy
you
are,” did she mean a boy who doesn’t like to sing?

As if to salvage the situation, and rekindle her hopes about their upcoming happy year in fourth grade, she turned to Brody. “What about you, Brody, honey? Did you like your first day in the Platters?”

Brody started telling her everything—what songs they were going to learn for the fall concert, when they’d get their T-shirts, ways that parents could sign up to help.

Mason tuned out. Later, when he was all alone with Dog, he’d tell Dog everything. And Dog wouldn’t think he was exaggerating. Dog would know that everything he said about his first day in the Plainfield Platters was completely and absolutely true.

At Platters practice on Friday morning, Mrs. Morengo clapped her hands to call the students to attention just as Mason claimed his spot in the second row, this time safely on the other end of the riser from Dunk. He assumed that Mrs. Morengo hadn’t meant to condemn him to the front-row center spot for the rest of his life.

“Today,” she said, “the fifth graders are going to practice in the auditorium with Mr. Griffith. The fourth graders will stay here with me. You are our newest Platters! It is easy for new Platters to feel lost with so many fifth-grade Platters who are so tall! So confident! So today I want to give
special
attention to my
special
fourth-grade Platters.”