Happy Kid! (17 page)

“That happens to me, too!”

“But I was involved with that school board inquiry about the incident on the bus last year, and because of that, I had to take a computer class at a community college and change some plans for a trip I was supposed to take with one of my kids. What with one thing and another, I couldn't keep my mind clear,” Mr. Kowsz sighed.

“Oh, wow. I'm sorry,” I said again.

“Ah, it was nobody's fault. Things don't always go the way you expect them to.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I guess . . . I guess you can't get down on the whole world when those things happen.”

Mr. Kowsz nodded. “That's right. Well, you'd better get going, Kyle. You're going to miss lunch. But first—when do you go to taekwondo classes?”

“Tuesday and Thursday nights.”

He flinched. “Part of my black belt training involves helping with a class one hour a week. I've just been assigned Thursday nights, and sometimes I'm going to have to fill in for one of the other black belts on Tuesdays. Is that going to be okay with you? I'd rather not have the people there know we've had some trouble between us. I've been going there for years. At the dojang I'm just Tim a Black Belt. Except for those years when I was Tim a Brown Belt or Tim a Blue Belt, or whatever I was, of course.” He smiled and lowered his voice. “I have never been Moo there.”

“Oh, no! Don't tell them anything! I want to just be Kyle a White Belt, too. Or Kyle a Yellow Belt or Kyle a Green Belt. You know. Whatever.”

“Okay,” Mr. Kowsz said, sounding relieved. He patted my shoulder. “Go get some lunch. I've got to go check another one of the boys' rooms, anyway.”

I rushed off to the cafeteria. I had taekwondo back. Now all I wanted was to get into some of those ninth-grade courses so I could be with Chelsea in eighth grade. If I could just manage that, my life might not stink.

“I told you so,” I whispered to Luke and Ted when Tim the Black Belt stepped out of the men's locker room into the dojang at the beginning of that Thursday's class.

They hadn't believed me when I told them that Mr. Kowsz was a black belt and that he trained at our school. All during warm-up they kept staring at him. Then Mr. Goldman yelled at them because they weren't concentrating, and they got down to work.

About halfway through the class we broke into two groups and formed lines in front of long punching bags that were weighted on the bottom like those kids' toys that pop back up when you hit them. These bags were a whole lot harder to knock over, though. And if you did, they didn't come back up.

I know because I did it.

When Mr. Goldman told us to form two lines, I came
this close
to getting into the wrong one. Then I noticed that everyone under eighteen was in the other group. I just managed to join them before we started a kicking drill.

Chelsea was right behind me. Since I am much better at kicking than I am at any of the things she sees me doing at school, I was really glad she was going to get a close-up view of me doing it.

I was careful not to look at her after I kicked the bag. I just did it, and then turned and ran to the end of the line as if I were too cool to care. Then, while I was standing there in fighting stance, bouncing up and down, staying loose, she came running back to the end of the line after her kick.

But the only kick I could do on a heavy bag was a roundhouse kick. It got boring doing the same kick over and over again while the higher-ranked students were doing spin kicks and combinations I hadn't learned yet. So after I'd been through the line a couple of times, I started trying to place my kicks higher up on the bag or to kick harder so the bag would wobble more. Before long, each time I hit the bag, it would wobble so hard that Chelsea had to wait for it to stop before she could kick.

“You're going a little overboard, Kyle,” Tim warned from where he was watching us and instructing people on how to improve their form. “Use a little less power.”

I nodded my head. And I was going to do that. I was going to stay in control and be more careful the next time I kicked. But then Chelsea came running past me so she could get in line, and for just a second our eyes met.

I forgot what I was doing and when I got my next turn at the bag, I kicked it so hard it went right down on its side. And Chelsea actually laughed when I leaned down to pull it back up.

Mr. Goldman shouted across the dojang and said I had to do ten push-ups, so I lost my place in line ahead of her. But so what? So what? I made Chelsea laugh!

 

 

The next morning the book opened up to a new page.

Oh, no, I thought as I finished reading the passage. This was definitely a warning. Wasn't it? Didn't it mean there was a new problem coming?

On the way to school, I jumped whenever the bus driver braked or even slowed down for another bus stop. I kept looking for signs that something was wrong in advisory. But the only unusual thing that happened was Melissa's late arrival without a pass. That was her brushfire to fight, not mine.

I started to relax a little after math because we had a pop quiz that I couldn't possibly have done well on. That might have been what
Happy Kid!
was trying to warn me about. Then in art Mr. Ruby told us we'd be handing in all our class work—which, in my case, was not a lot—the next week. If that was what
Happy Kid!
had been tipping me off about, I definitely wished the message had been clearer and come earlier.

By the time I got to social studies, I thought I'd already found my problems for the day. So when I noticed the room was a little quieter than usual, I didn't think much about it. Melissa was whispering excitedly with Chelsea and another girl at the back of the room. Chelsea kept shaking her head no and looked mad, which was exactly how I thought any girl Melissa was hassling ought to look. But instead of wondering what they were whispering about, I imagined the two of them fighting. In my mind, Chelsea took care of Melissa with a few well-placed kicks. Melissa never got close enough to her to land a punch.

Then I got to English.

Melissa was up at Mr. Borden's desk, the way she was always up at the teachers' desks before class. All the other people in the room had silently slipped into their seats and were sitting there as if they were waiting for something to happen.

Melissa said, “Ah, Mr. Borden?” in a low voice that sounded a little worried, though it was hard to tell because I'd never heard her sound worried before. “Did you see the English portion of the State Student Assessment Surveys?”

Mr. Borden finished writing something on a piece of paper before he answered. “Not until after the tests were given. English teachers aren't allowed to give the English portion of the test to their advisories.”

“So you know they gave us a question that we had practiced in class? The ‘Are we alone?' essay?”

“Yes.”

“And is that okay?”

Mr. Borden shrugged, shook his head, and said, “I don't know. I found the essay question on an old test in a filing cabinet belonging to the head of the English Department.” His voice grew a little louder. He wasn't shouting, just making sure Melissa wasn't the only person who could hear him. “We were told we could use them. I certainly didn't cheat, if that's what you're implying.”

Melissa's mouth dropped open, and she stepped back as if Mr. Borden had taken a swing at her. “No. I just wanted to know if it was okay that we saw the question before the test.”

Mr. Borden looked as if he was a little embarrassed about having accused Melissa of accusing
him
of cheating. Especially since everyone in the class had just heard him do it. He started speaking to all of us, not just Melissa. “Here's the problem: If I start asking questions about whether or not we should have used that essay for practice, this class could end up having to take the English portion of the SSASie over again. That seems like a lot to put so many of you through when no one intended to do anything wrong. I guess the people who make the tests must recycle questions every few years. I happened to pick an old question they were getting ready to recycle. I think it's okay for you to figure you were lucky.”

Everyone in the class looked shaken, the way you do when you've just avoided being hit by a car you didn't see coming in the first place. Except for Melissa, who looked as if she'd just found a dead body. Personally, I agreed with Mr. Borden. I felt very, very lucky to have seen that essay question before the day of the test. My essay was going to have to make up for any mistakes I might have made on the rest of the English SSASie. Oh, yes. I was feeling lucky, lucky, lucky.

“What got Melissa going about the SSASies today?” I asked Brad on our way out of class.

“The article on revising the SSASies that I used for current events last Friday,” Brad said, looking embarrassed. “She's decided that we got some kind of unfair advantage on the English test because we had a chance to practice writing the essay.”

“But it was an accident,” I reminded him. “It wasn't the only essay Mr. Borden gave us in September.”

“We all told her that when she tried to get us to speak to him with her. Nobody wanted any part of that. But she always wants to do the right thing.” Brad sighed.

“Melissa?” I asked in disbelief. “Really?”

“Oh, yeah. I went to grade school with her. I bet she brings it up again. Believe me, she is nuts that way,” Brad told me just before we separated outside the cafeteria.

I believed him.

When I got to science class that afternoon, I started wondering if
Happy Kid!
really had been trying to warn me about that math quiz or turning in my art assignments. Those kinds of things happen all the time. They weren't important enough to be brushfires I had to put out.

Melissa, on the other hand, was another story. The SSASies were my ticket to another year with Chelsea. If we had to take the test over again because of Melissa and write another essay on a different topic, what would be my chances of being able to see Chelsea in that special English class for A-kid eighth-graders?

I was sitting at my desk, getting my science notebook out of my backpack when Luke came rushing down the aisle toward me. “I just got invited to go see
Master Lee II
tonight!” he exclaimed, all excited. “Opening night!”

I dropped my notebook on my desk. “I'd forgotten all about it.”

“A kid from my social studies class asked me. Do you know him? Phil Rook?”

I shook my head.

“He asked Blake Levine, too. What about him? Do you know him?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, Phil's dad is going to drive us there,” Luke said uncomfortably. “It's sort of Phil's . . . thing. I wish you didn't take those accelerated classes so we could hang out with the same people.” Then Luke suddenly brightened up. “Are any of your friends from your social studies or English classes going?”

“Maybe,” I answered. It was only quarter after one. Maybe some of them were going. Maybe, now that we'd been in class together for more than an entire year, one of them would call me this afternoon and ask me to go see
Master Lee.
Maybe Luke wouldn't have to feel sorry for me because I had no one to see it with. “Maybe I'll see you there,” I said.

“Hey, I'll go see ol' Master Lee with you,” a voice said from behind us.

People talk about blood running cold because it really happens. I felt my blood chilling in my veins as I heard those words.

“Ah, gee, Jake—” I stammered.

“Tonight is opening night, right? You look it up in the paper and see when the shows are,” Jake said. “And I don't want to go to any early kids' show, either. Look for one of the shows around nine.”

This was it.
This
was the brushfire I was supposed to put out.

“I'm not sure if I can make it,” I said.

“What do you mean? You hoping for a better invitation?” Jake asked. He sounded really nasty, but in his defense, “You hoping for a better invitation?” was a question that would sound nasty coming from almost anybody.

“Not really,” I admitted.

“Okay, then. Find the show times and let me know when we're going.”