Happy Kid! (21 page)

“It wasn't because I was with them. It was because you and I weren't in any classes together last year the way we are this year. We never saw each other,” I explained.

“So what? You could have asked me to do things with you, but you didn't,” he said.

“
You
could have asked
me,
but you didn't,” I reminded him. “And those kids aren't ‘better.' They're just smart. That's not the same as better.”

“If they're not better, then how come they don't have to follow the same rules the rest of us do? How come it's okay for them to cheat so they don't have to take that test over again?”

“It's not cheating!” I yelled in the middle of the hallway.

“If you and your friends don't see what's wrong about not reporting this ‘mistake,' then you aren't really all that smart,” Luke said just before he marched ahead of me into the cafeteria.

“We are so!” I shouted after him and took off in another direction.

Then I was stuck. It was lunchtime, and I was supposed to be in the cafeteria, too. But what was I supposed to do? Sit with Luke? We were fighting. My only other option was sitting at Jake's table.

I headed off for a boys' room. I leaned against a wall and slid down until I was sitting on my backpack.

This is nice, I thought as I sat with my back against the cool tile wall. Schools should have rooms like this where people can go when they want to be by themselves for a while. Rooms where they don't have to sit on the floor between a trash can and a urinal, though.

The door out to the hall suddenly opened, and I heard someone's shoes hitting the floor as he walked in. I didn't look up until he spoke.

“What are you doing here?” Mr. Kowsz asked.

“I totally lost control of myself a little while ago.”

“Oh? Did you kick anybody?”

“No!”

“Break anything? Shout obscenities at a teacher?”

“No. I yelled at somebody in the hall.”

“It's probably nothing that can't be fixed, then.”

“I don't know how to fix it.”

Mr. Kowsz hesitated and then asked, “Does this have anything to do with a girl? If it's a girl, you'll get over it. With some girls it takes longer than others. For instance, if the girl was your wife for twenty-five years who left you—”

“No, no, no. It's not about a girl,” I said before Mr. Kowsz could say any more.

“Where are you supposed to be now?” he asked.

“This is my lunch period. I just want to stay here.”

“You can't. I'll give you a pass so you can go to my classroom until your next class starts. I won't be there,” Mr. Kowsz added, as if that would make staying in his classroom more desirable. Which it did. “I'm on my lunch break. I've got to hit all the bathrooms and then get my coffee down at the teachers' lounge. You'll be by yourself in my room except for a couple of kids who play cards there at this time of day.”

I stood up. “You let kids play cards in your room?”

Mr. Kowsz shrugged. “Some people really don't like being in the cafeteria. If they're kids I know and I'm sure they won't play with any of my equipment, I'll let them use my room for something quiet like cards or chess. Don't tell anybody. There aren't that many kids I trust to leave alone in there.”

He trusted me.

“Listen,” I said as we walked along the hallway together. “How bad would it be if a teacher accidentally gave a class an essay assignment to help them practice for the SSASies and the essay later ended up being on the actual test?”

Mr. Kowsz's head swiveled toward me, and he had that look he gets when he thinks he smells smoke or hears someone out in the hallway during class time.

He never finished his tour of the boys' rooms or got his coffee in the teachers' lounge. Instead, he stayed in his classroom with me for the rest of the period, which was how long it took for me to tell him the whole story.

 

 

It seemed pretty clear to me that Luke thought I ought to help Melissa report the SSASie irregularity. Melissa definitely thought I ought to help report the SSASie irregularity. I was pretty sure Mr. Kowsz thought so, too, because he kept talking about how taekwondo students have some kind of code about right and wrong and helping others in need (another detail nobody mentioned before I started taking classes). Even Jake agreed with them since he said the only thing keeping him from reporting the whole screw-up was his refusal to snitch on other people.

Which I was afraid meant that his standards were better than mine, because the only thing that was keeping
me
from reporting the irregularity was my hope that the essay mistake would mean a higher SSASie test score for me and a chance to stay with Chelsea in eighth grade. To be truthful, it wasn't the only thing that was keeping me from agreeing to help Melissa.
Not
helping her was giving me an in with the A-kids that I had never had before.

I was willing to ignore . . . an irregularity . . . for a girl and popularity. A girl who had never even spoken to me. Popularity with kids who didn't even know my old friends like Luke. Yes, I was well on my way to becoming a worse human being then Jake Rogers.

On top of everything else, there was no doubt what
Happy Kid!
was telling me to do. That “Somebody needs your help” message just wouldn't go away. There was no beating the book. I decided I might as well give in.

Melissa's appointment with Mr. Alldredge was after school on Monday, though, so I was going to need a ride home. Sunday night, while both Nana and Jared were at the house, I decided I'd better start looking for one.

When we were clearing the table after dinner and Nana was talking about leaving, I said, “Oh, can one of you guys give me a ride home from school tomorrow? I have to stay late.”

Dad just said, “What time? I have a meeting around two.”

Mom nearly dropped a glass and asked, “Why? Why do you have to stay late?”

“I have to help Melissa Esposito with something.”

“Really? Help her with what?” Mom asked, sounding as if she'd just heard I'd made honor roll or won a scholarship somewhere.

“It's something to do with our English class. We have to go see Mr. Alldredge about it tomorrow. We have an appointment,” I explained.

“
Wonderful
. You've never stayed after school to work on something before. What's the project?” Mom wanted to know. “Come on. Tell us about it.”

This was going to be harder than I'd thought. My plan had a flaw, the flaw being that I never expected my mother to get so excited. I didn't want her making a big deal out of going to see Mr. Alldredge. I was already making as big a deal out of it as I could stand.

“Melissa knows more about it than I do,” I explained. “She's going to do all the talking.”

“I wish you had called me at work Friday afternoon and told me about this. I could have shifted one or two of Monday's appointments then. But it's way too late now. Bobby? Is there anything you can do?” Mom asked my father.

“I'll have to wait until after I get to work tomorrow morning to find out,” Dad said.

“Maggie, I hate to ask you,” Mom said, turning to Nana.

“Well,” Nana said as she pulled on her coat, “I have to get home. Walk me out to my car, Kyle, and we'll talk about it.”

Then Nana grabbed me by the ear and dragged me out of the living room with her.

“What's up?” she asked when we got as far as the garage and no one else could hear us.

“Nothing. I'm not in trouble or anything. Really! I just have to do something with this girl, Melissa. She likes to do those ‘let's make our school a better place' kinds of projects. We're going to talk to Mr. Alldredge about one of those.”

“She may like to do those kinds of projects, but since when do you have anything to do with them? No one in our family has done anything like that since my mother had to help with an Easter egg hunt sponsored by the Future Homemakers of America at her high school. Remind me to tell you how
that
turned out someday. I repeat: What's up?”

The government ought to put my grandmother to work questioning suspected terrorists. She could get anything out of anybody. I ended up telling her everything. Though I did leave out the part about not wanting to take the test over so I'd get a higher score and be with Chelsea next year. And I said absolutely nothing about
Happy Kid!
I like to think my grandmother would believe me when I said I had a book that provided advice and warnings to whoever held it, but I wasn't certain enough to take a chance.

When I finished, Nana shrugged and said, “This shouldn't be your problem. This should be the teacher's problem. He's making it your problem by not reporting the mistake himself. If you tell the principal, it will become
the principal's
problem, and you can be done with it.”

“That's exactly what Mr. Kowsz said when I told him about this!” I exclaimed.

“Really?”

“Yeah. So, now that you know the whole thing, will you give me a ride home tomorrow?” I asked.

“What time?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “Sometime after three o'clock. If you come to get me and I'm not ready, why don't you go find Mr. Kowsz's classroom and look at those things he wanted to show you. What were they?”

“Lamp bases,” Nana answered immediately. “He makes them out of metal and wood. Are you sure you don't mind if I go see him? You're not just saying this to get me to come pick you up, are you?”

“Yeah, I am,” I admitted. “But I don't mind if you go see him. I'm not going to be at Trotts forever. Once I'm gone, if you want to go out with a guy who spends his lunch hours going through the boys' rooms hunting for juvenile delinquents, it's no skin off my back.”

“Oh, you make him sound
so
attractive.”

“If you do go see him tomorrow, ask him where Mr. Goldman gets the small paddle-shaped targets we use in taekwondo class. I want one for Christmas.”

Nana kissed me good-bye. I shut the door after she left and thought, Oh, no. I'm really doing this.

I ran upstairs to my room. Maybe I'd find a new message in
Happy Kid!
And it would be really nice if it were a message that would help with what I had to do the next day.

But no, I let the book open up, and all I got was the same old thing. “Help.”

Why didn't it change? Was it going to wait until after we went to the principal's office?

I thought of one more thing I could try to make a new page turn up. I went downstairs to get the phone book. There were five Espositos listed in our town. Of course, Melissa's number was the fifth one I tried.

“Melissa!” a little girl shouted at the other end of the line when I told her who I was looking for. “A boy wants to talk to you! A boy is calling for Melissa! Mom! There's a boy on the phone for Mel!”

Her family called her Mel?

“Hello?” Melissa said, sounding all eager and happy.

“Ah . . . Melissa, it's Kyle.”

“Oh.”

“I'm calling to tell you that I'll go with you to see Mr. Alldredge tomorrow. Unless . . . you found someone else? Did you?” I asked.

“No. I haven't even been trying. It was hopeless.”

“Well, I'll go with you. But you have to do all the talking the way you said you would.”

“Fine,” Melissa agreed. “I want to do that, anyway.”

“And once Mr. Alldredge knows about it, I'm done. If he says we should just figure we were lucky the way Mr. Borden did, then we were lucky.”

“Do you think he'll say that?” Melissa asked, sounding worried.

“I don't care what he says. It doesn't matter to me. All that matters is that I go and get this over with.”

“That's not a very good attitude,” Melissa complained.

“I wouldn't be fussy if I were you! I'm going. What more do you want?”

“Okay. Okay. You don't have to yell.”

I said good-bye and hung up as fast as I could. Then I went back upstairs and picked up
Happy Kid!

All right, book, I said, but not out loud because I'm not actually crazy. I arranged for a ride home,
and
I told Melissa I would go with her. So there's no reason for you to tell me the same old thing. Tell me something I don't know.

Then I let the covers of the book fall apart, and the pages just dropped away from each other. I looked down at a new page.

“Watch your step.” Oh, yes. That was just what I wanted to hear.