Happy Kid! (20 page)

“Thank you, anyway, but I already have an article for current events.”

“These articles are all about other teachers and schools that made mistakes with their standardized tests. It was a mistake for us to practice that essay before the SSASies,” Melissa insisted.

“That's right. It was a
mistake.
Mistakes happen. Get over it. Get over yourself,” I added for good measure. “You're being really negative about this, by the way. You're only seeing the worst in this situation.”

“What would be a positive way of looking at this situation?” Melissa asked.

“I have a good shot at getting into the ninth-grade English class offered for eighth-graders because I accidentally practiced that essay is a positive way of looking at it. I want to be in that class next year. And since no one really cheated, I don't see any problem with this situation. Just the opposite. It's all good.”

“So you would have to take the test again. Big deal! So what?” Melissa exclaimed.

“That's easy for you to say. You're an A-kid,” I reminded her.

“You are, too.”

“Yeah, well,” I said uncomfortably, since I knew that wasn't exactly true, “you do not want
me
to go see Mr. Alldredge with you. I am the guy who sat in Alldredge's office with a state trooper last year. I am the guy he thought was going to use a screwdriver as some kind of weapon of mass destruction.”

If she were a really nice person instead of Melissa, she would have said, “Oh, that's all in your head! No one ever thought that!” Instead she said, “I think that could work for us. We'd be a student leader and a—whatever you are—banding together for a common cause. That would make our argument a lot stronger.”

“Mr. Alldredge also thinks I'm part of Jake Rogers's posse. Will that work for us?”

Melissa made a face. “Why do you insist on hanging around with Jake?”

“He hangs around with me.”

“Well, it can't be helped.”

“I'm not going with you! You're just going to make trouble,” I told her. “You'll have to do it by yourself.”

“Why is it so wrong of me to want to do the right thing?” Melissa asked.

“If you're so sure you're right, why don't you go by yourself?”

“I don't want to go there alone. I've never done anything like this before,” Melissa explained.

“No? I heard you used to tattle when you were in second grade,” I said.

Melissa gasped. “I was seven years old! I didn't know any better. Why won't people forget about that? Who told you, anyway?”

“It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have said anything.”

She grabbed my arm as I started to go into advisory and made me stay out in the hall with her.

“Do you remember that
Happy Kid!
book?”

“What about it?” I asked suspiciously.

“If you don't come with me on Monday, I'm going to tell everyone you were reading it. Everyone will know you're a loser who needs a self-help book.”

I pulled my arm away from her. “Go ahead. I've had people talk about me before.”

I hoped I looked cool as I walked across the classroom to my desk because inside I was screaming, Everyone is going to know!

 

 

“Kyle's got himself a woman,” Jake said before he even had his flabby self settled on his stool in the art room.

“Who?” I asked. I didn't actually “have” Chelsea, so I didn't think he could be talking about her.

“I saw you walking with Melissa Esposito in the hall this morning. Did you get her to rub her great big chest all over you?” Jake asked.

“People who really know Melissa hardly notice her great big chest because of her great big mouth,” I answered.

“Oh. Did she rub
that
all over you?”

“She's trying to get me to go with her to see Mr. Alldredge,” I said between gritted teeth.

“Tell her that if she rubs her great big chest all over you, you'll do it,” Jake suggested.

“She wants us to tell Mr. Alldredge about that essay question we practiced before we answered it on the English SSASie,” I told him.

“Why?” Jake asked.

“Because it's the ‘right' thing to do. She's very big on doing the ‘right' thing.”

Jake looked thoughtful and said, “Hmmm. The ‘right' thing. You'll have to explain that to me. I don't think I've ever heard of that before.”

Luke had stopped working on his paper and was looking at me. “You practiced answering one of the essay questions that we had on the SSASies? That's not fair.”

“It was an accident,” I explained for what seemed like the millionth time. “Our English teacher found old SSASies in a filing cabinet, took essay questions off of them, and gave the questions to us for writing assignments. Nobody knew one was going to be on this year's test.”

“It's still not fair,” Luke objected. “You guys are going to get better scores than everyone else.”

“They would have gotten better scores than the rest of us, anyway,” Jake said. “One essay won't change anything. They're just going to beat us by more, that's all.”

“It's not a contest,” I objected. “We just don't want to have to take the test over again. And if Melissa tells Mr. Alldredge about it, we'll have to.”

“You
should
have to take the test over again. You're cheating because you want to look smarter than the rest of us. You guys are already the smart kids,” Luke said angrily.

“What's going on over there?” Mr. Ruby called from the back of the room.

“We've got a fight going. Don't worry about it. I'll break them up,” Jake shouted over his shoulder. Then he turned back to us. “Best two out of three rounds? And, yes, you may bite and punch below the belt.”

“Luke,” I whispered because a lot of people were turning to look at us. “I've never wanted to look smarter than you. I couldn't, even if I wanted to. And I'm not cheating. I told you how it happened. The whole thing was an accident. No one did anything wrong.”

“Maybe what happened with the test was an accident, but what you're doing now isn't an accident. You're intentionally doing something wrong because you don't want to fix what happened the day of the test,” Luke told me. “
Now
you're cheating.”

I opened my mouth to tell Luke that he didn't understand, that the tests didn't mean anything for us because they were a test to see if the schools were doing well. But they did mean something to me. I was hoping they would get me into those special courses.

Jake sighed dramatically and shook his head. “I'd go tell Gus about this whole thing, myself, because it would be so much fun to see him have to take care of a screwup that I didn't have anything to do with. But I don't think I can bring myself to snitch. Even on a teacher. A guy's gotta have some standards, you know.”

Cheating? Snitching? There was no way I could get out of this mess without doing something that somebody wouldn't like.

Why didn't
Happy Kid!
do something about this? Why didn't it help
me
?

I had to force myself down the hall to social studies, where I was greeted by a cluster of A-kids who had heard about Melissa grabbing me in the hall.

“Better you than me,” one of them said, laughing.

“I can't believe she won't give this up,” one of the girls complained. “What is she thinking?”

“She hasn't bothered anyone else since Wednesday. She's determined to get you now,” the first speaker told me.

“I'm her last chance,” I agreed.

Brad slapped me on the back. “Don't give in. Like I said before, if she can't get anyone to go with her, I'm betting she'll go by herself. Once she does that, she'll leave the rest of us alone.”

Us.
Which included me.

“She has an appointment with Mr. Alldredge on Monday afternoon,” I told them. “So I only have to put up with her for about three and a half more days. And two of those are Saturday and Sunday. I should be able to do that.”

“She made an appointment?” a girl gasped. “Shouldn't somebody try to stop her?”

“Any volunteers?” Brad asked.

Oh, wow. What if this is it? I thought. What if I'm supposed to help the A-kids stop Melissa?

“The next time she tries to convince
me
to go with her, I could try to convince
her
not to go at all,” I offered.

The others seemed very satisfied with that suggestion. They didn't have to do anything, and I had only promised “to try.”

Helping the A-kids was going to be easy.

I was part of a group that walked together to English class. And in English class my creative team finally performed “Scenes from
The Odyssey
.” The five of us were all together at the front of the room, waiting our turns to speak, helping each other find our parts on the pages. It was like being at taekwondo because after a while I forgot Luke was mad at me and Melissa was trying to get me to do something no one else wanted to do. I got totally into playing my parts. So they weren't great parts. I played one of Odysseus's men who are turned into pigs by Circe and then one of the men who wanted to force Odysseus's wife to marry him and let him take over Odysseus's kingdom. But everyone was laughing between scenes, even Melissa. There was applause and shouts of “Again! Again!” after the guy playing Odysseus got me with his imaginary sword and I spun around and died.

When we finished the scene I'd written, in which I made Odysseus stupid and greedy and showed him stealing from the Cyclops and picking on him, Mr. Borden said I'd done some original work.

And he made it sound as if it was a good thing. He said it right out loud in front of everybody. In front of Chelsea.

The A-kids were right. Mr. Borden was a real nice guy. Well, maybe he wasn't a real nice guy. But he was okay. He was definitely okay.

I think Chelsea was impressed, because after class when a group of us gathered out in the hall for a few minutes to talk about Melissa, she and a couple of her girlfriends joined us. She got there just in time to hear someone say, “If Melissa tells Mr. Alldredge about it, we'll have to take the test over. It's not fair. Why should we be punished like that when we've done nothing wrong?”

Chelsea nodded her head in agreement, and so did I. A couple of other kids said things, and Chelsea and I nodded again, agreeing with them and agreeing with each other. It was almost as if I was having a conversation with her. Except that someone else was doing all the talking.

I was going to have to walk right past Chelsea to get to the cafeteria, anyway, so I started slowly moving in that direction along with all the other kids who were walking past us in the hallway. I was hoping I could stop and stand beside her for a little while. I was almost next to her when I heard someone come up behind me and stop.

“You on your way to the cafeteria?” Luke asked.

“I, uh, need a couple of minutes,” I said.

“I'll wait,” Luke offered.

He sounded particularly nice and even kind of serious, which made me think he was feeling bad because we'd been arguing in art class. I wanted to go with him, but I wanted to stay with the A-kids, too. And they had stopped talking and were waiting for me.

“I'll meet you later, okay?” I said to him.

Luke noticed everyone watching and took the hint. His face fell, and he muttered, “Yeah. Right.”

He started to move again, and then one of the A-kids said, “Sure, it would make a difference if a mistake had been made with some of the other kids' SSASies. But we're going to get good scores on the test no matter what essay question they use. So what's the point of making us do it over?”

Luke heard every word. He stopped, turned around, and stared right at me for a moment. He had this look on his face as if he'd just been slapped.

I should have at least said “see ya later” or something to Chelsea, but I didn't think of it because I was in such a rush to get to Luke so I could try to fix things.

“I'm ready for lunch,” I said as I caught up with him.

“It's okay. You can meet me later.”

“I'm ready to meet you now,” I told him.

“I didn't mean to interrupt you when you were with . . . those guys.”

“Luke? Does it bother you that I'm in accelerated classes?” I asked.

“Of course it does! We stopped doing things together after you got into classes with those better kids.”