Happy Kid! (19 page)

“Bummer,” Kenny replied.

“What did you tell me that for?” Brian complained. “What's the point of seeing the movie now?”

“Oh, come on. They're not going to kill off Master Lee. They need him so they can make a third movie,” I told him.

“He's right. I was lying,” Jake admitted.

“You're ugly. I'm not lying,” Brian said.

The lights went out, and I sat up a little straighter since I figured I was safe in the dark.

The movie
was
good. And I
was
seeing it on opening night. I would be able to talk to people about it on Monday. They didn't have to know how I came to see it. I had not gone off the deep end over this bad situation, I had made the best of it the way
Happy Kid!
said I should.

I had just noticed one of Master Lee's zombies doing some moves I'd seen some of the higher-ranked students doing at the dojang when I suddenly noticed an odor settling around us like a cloud. People around us were wiggling in their seats and trying to lean away. There were mutters and groans. Brian and Kenny started to laugh and poke at Jake.

“Can you believe it?” he said in a loud whisper that carried so far that people five rows ahead of us were turning around and scowling. “Gus cut one.”

I just froze in my seat. Mr. Alldredge turned around to look at us. He looked far, far madder than he had when he'd thought I had a weapon on a school bus.

I didn't think he knew how to make the best of his bad situation.

“Why did we go to an early show?” Luke wailed while we stood in line in the cafeteria on Monday. “Why couldn't I have been there?”

“Oh, there were about ten minutes when you wouldn't have wanted to be there,” I assured him. “No one wanted to be there. Jake doesn't even try to control himself.”

“I think he can fart at will. You have to admit, that's impressive,” Luke said.

“What impresses me is that he never, ever gets embarrassed. He's not like normal people,” I pointed out. “Maybe he's not really human.”

We'd paid for our lunches and were walking to our table.

“So Mr. Alldredge didn't think you accused him of farting, did he?” Luke asked.

“Nah. Jake called him Gus. No one does that except for him. I'm just going to get blamed for being with Jake.”

Luke started to laugh hysterically. He just managed to say, “Maybe Mr. Alldredge thought you were the one who farted.”

Yeah, that was real funny. I wasn't too concerned about Mr. Alldredge thinking I'd farted in a movie theater, though, because I was so busy worrying about what I'd read over the weekend.

The title of the latest new chapter in
Happy Kid!
was “Help!”

I saw that and thought, Good. This message will help me out in some way.

Hardly.

Call me negative, but somehow I just knew it wasn't going to be someone good like, say, Chelsea who needed my help.

Two more days passed. Wednesday came and no one had needed my help. But I knew someone would because
Happy Kid!
was still opening to that same page. I made it safely through the first three periods of the day. Then, just after I left social studies, I felt someone grabbing at my arm.

“I called your name two or three times,” Melissa complained. “I need you to help me with something.”

“If you're looking for my scene for Borden's Playhouse, I finished it over the weekend,” I said.

“Oh. You didn't think to make copies for the other people on the creative team, did you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“That's great. That's really great.”

I'd helped her! That was all I had to do. What a relief.

Then Melissa blurted, “Will you also go to Mr. Alldredge's office with me to tell him about that essay question we shouldn't have seen before we took the SSASies?”

“Are you out of your mind?” I gasped.

“I'll make the appointment and do all the talking,” Melissa said.

“No, I won't go with you!”

“Why not?” Melissa demanded.

“Because I don't want to. Nobody did anything wrong. Intentionally. It was an accident. It was an irregularity.”

“That's right!” Melissa exclaimed. “I read some newspaper articles about school testing, and they used that exact word! You're the only person who knew that.”

“Jake Rogers knows it. So do Brian Coxmore and Kenny Ferris.”

“You're kidding! How did
they
know that when none of the kids in any of my accelerated classes knew it?”

“I'm in a couple of your accelerated classes, remember? And I knew it,” I pointed out.

“So you understand why it's wrong to just pretend it didn't happen? You understand why it should be reported so we can take the test again and get correct scores?”

“What do you mean ‘we'? You wrote on the other essay topic, remember? You wouldn't even be involved with this. You just want to make everyone else do extra work,” I said.

“That's not the way the system works,” Melissa explained, as if she were some kind of expert on the subject. “Mr. Borden explained it in class that day. If there's an irregularity in giving the test to a
group
, the whole
group
has to be retested. I had the same advantage everyone else did. Who knows what I would have done on test day if I hadn't already seen one of the questions?”

My mouth dropped open for a moment and then I said, “You wrote an essay on the
second
question because Mr. Borden told you the answer you wrote to the first one for class would have received a low score. I'll say you had an advantage.”

Melissa looked as if she was going to burst into flame right in front of me.

“That's not why I used the second question! I never even thought of that! Never! I was just trying to behave like a decent person. Which question did you choose, as if I have to ask. And why did you choose it? Again, as if I have to ask.”

This argument wasn't going to lead to anything good for me. Besides, if Melissa didn't calm down, I was afraid people would start to stare at us.

“Why do you even want me to go with you, anyway?” I asked. “You hardly ever speak to me except to complain about something. I would have thought you'd have asked one of the A-kids.”

“The ‘A-kids'?” Melissa repeated. I'd definitely distracted her from her rant.

“You know. The kids who are in all those accelerated classes you take.”

Melissa laughed. “That's what you call them? That's good. That fits.”

“You're one of them!” I exclaimed.

“So are you. You're in two accelerated classes. Remember?”

Oh, if she only knew how I'd gotten into those classes. I very carefully didn't tell her.

“Ask someone else to go with you,” I said instead.

“I already have,” she admitted.

“Who?”

“Everybody in our English class. They all said no.”

“All of them? Brad? Chelsea?” I asked.

“That's what I just told you,” Melissa snapped. “They all said no.”

“Then you shouldn't be surprised to hear that I'm saying no, too.” If Chelsea said no, I sure wasn't going to say yes.

“Why won't you go?” Melissa asked.

“For the same reason they wouldn't go,” I answered.

“Which is?”

We were right outside our English class, which was not the greatest place to be talking about this. We also were running out of time.

“Whatever they said,” I answered vaguely.

“You think Mr. Borden's a real nice guy and don't want to get him in trouble?”

“Oh, come on! They said that?” She had to be making that up.

“ ‘A-kids' like their teachers,” Melissa pointed out.

“I've noticed that,” I admitted.

Any fool could see that Melissa was the somebody who needed the help
Happy Kid!
was talking about. I didn't care. When I thought of the phrase “working together with others,” Melissa was not the first “other” who came to my mind. She didn't even make the Top Ten.

“Class is going to start,” I told her and walked past her into our classroom.

 

 

I was able to avoid Melissa most of Thursday morning because I had an orthodontist appointment and got to school just as third period was starting. I latched on to Brad on the way to English so she wouldn't be on me during the walk between classes. One of the other guy A-kids rushed up to join us.

“I don't want to be alone in the hall.” He laughed. “I'm afraid Melissa might get me.”

“Me too,” I said.

“She asked
you
to go see Mr. Alldredge with her?” Brad asked.

I could have gotten all upset because he sounded surprised that Melissa would ask for my help with a job no one else wanted. Then I decided to take the attitude of hey, two A-kids are walking and talking with me. What more do I want?

“Yeah, I couldn't believe she was asking me, either. But once all you guys said no, I was all that was left,” I said. “How long do you think it will be before she gives up?”

“She'll go by herself before she gives up,” Brad answered. “When we were in fifth grade, she was the only kid in her classroom who would eat lunch at the special-ed kids' table. She didn't do it all the time, and there weren't any kids there she was friends with. She said it was the right thing to do.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “She went around bugging everyone else, trying to make them do it, too?”

Brad laughed. “She got me to do it once. The really funny part is the special-ed kids didn't like her. They wanted her to leave them alone.”

“You know what the funny part about this testing business is?” the other A-kid asked. “Melissa is right. We did have an unfair advantage because we had a chance to practice that essay question. It's just . . . I don't know how to put it, but . . .”

“Sometimes you can be
too
right?” Brad suggested.

The other boy laughed and said to me, “We've known her since first grade.” He turned back to Brad and asked, “Do you remember back in second grade how she used to run tattling to the teacher all the time when other kids did things they weren't supposed to?”

“Oh, yeah,” Brad recalled. “She wasn't even trying to get anyone in trouble. She just thought she was doing the right thing. She just didn't understand that—”

“—sometimes you can be
too
right!” the other A-kid recited along with him.

For a fraction of a second, a really short one, I almost felt sorry for Melissa because she couldn't quite figure out how to get along in life the way all the other A-kids had. But it passed quickly because the three of us there in the hallway were laughing, and then a couple of other A-kids joined us. By the time I entered our English classroom, I was surrounded by people and not thinking about Melissa at all.

I kept checking
Happy Kid!
hoping it would open to a new message. No such luck. At taekwondo on Thursday night I got confused while I was doing my form, and Mr. Goldman sent me to the back of the dojang to practice on my own for a while. He said I still wasn't controlling myself. (I
may
have stopped and stamped my foot or something when I realized that another white belt was going one way while I was going the other.) I thought for sure after that there'd be a new message from
Happy Kid!
It seemed like a good time for it to pop open to a page on how everyone loves people who are humble and listen to their teachers or how it takes patience to form satisfying relationships.

But no. All I found was “Help!”

 

 

Melissa was waiting at my locker Friday morning.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Alldredge at three o'clock on Monday afternoon,” Melissa began.

“Good for you!”

“It would be really helpful if you came with me,” she said. “I should have someone else there who knows that we had a chance to practice the essay.”

“No, it would not be helpful to have me there,” I said.

Instead of arguing with me, she reached into her backpack, which she had propped on the floor next to her feet, and pulled out some papers. “I want you to read these. They're the newspaper articles I found on the Internet.”