Mitch and Amy (6 page)

Mitchell's eyes appeared around the door-jamb to see how his sister was reacting to the message on the airplane.

“Hi,” said Amy calmly. “I'm working on my multiplication facts.”

“No kidding?” The rest of Mitchell appeared in the doorway. “Want me to hold the flash cards?” he asked.

“Sure.” Amy handed her brother the bundle of slips. Mitchell would never confuse her by saying, “
Think
, Amy,” the way her mother did. They would both huddle in front of the fireplace while the wolves moved closer and closer….

W
hile Amy was enduring the hardships of learning her multiplication tables, Mitchell was having troubles of his own in the fourth grade. Every morning after breakfast Mitchell brushed his teeth and practiced his French horn until he felt dizzy, as if he had been blowing up balloons. Then he made his bed, pounding down the lumps with his fist, and threw his pajamas either under the bed or into the closet. “'Bye, Mom!” he yelled and ran out
the back door, eager to avoid Alan Hibbler and get to school in time to play kickball before the bell rang. Now that temporary buildings took up so much of the play space, he had to get to school early if he hoped to get into a game.

After the bell rang Mitchell's troubles began. His reading workbook fairly blushed with red marks made by Miss Colby's pencil. The girls in his reading group giggled when he read “mountain tail” instead of “mountain trail.”

When his class wrote compositions pretending they were rats on Sir Francis Drake's ship at the time California was discovered, Mitchell's paper was returned with the spelling of almost every word corrected. He did not think Miss Colby was fair to expect correct spelling and an interesting story at the same time, especially when the story was supposed to have been written by a rat.

Mitchell dreaded the weekly trip to the school library, where everyone was required to take out a book. While the rest of his class browsed, Mitchell passed the time spinning the globe of the world and thinking how interesting life would be if the earth turned so fast that people who forgot to hang on would go spinning off into space—Alan Hibbler, for instance.

When the period was almost over, Miss Colby always asked, “Mitchell, have you found a book yet?” and Mitchell would grab a thick book on chemistry or electricity because nobody was going to catch Mitchell Huff carrying around any babyish book.

And then there was Bernadette Stumpf, the new girl who was given Bill Collins's desk across the aisle. Miss Colby moved Bill to the other side of the room, because she said he and Mitchell paid too much attention to one another and not enough to their
workbooks. Bernadette was a small wiry girl with a lot of long witchy black hair, and on the first day of school she wore only one sock. Mitchell could not help staring at Bernadette's feet. Finally when he could stand his curiosity no longer, he asked, “How come you're wearing only one sock?”

“I couldn't find the other,” answered Bernadette.

“I know what you mean,” answered Mitchell, who often had trouble finding socks himself, usually because he had thrown his dirty socks under his bed instead of into the hamper. After that he looked at Bernadette's feet the first thing every morning to see if she had found both her socks. Sometimes she had, but often she wore one girl's sock and one boy's sock or two boy's socks, because, as she said, she had a lot of brothers and there were always boy's socks around the house.

Mitchell thought that a girl who was so careless about socks would be in his reading group, but no, Bernadette tackled everything she had to do with a sort of furious energy that put her in the fast reading group and the first arithmetic group. She was also good at kickball and streaked around the bases with her black hair flying, which was fortunate because none of the girls wanted to jump rope with her. Mitchell finally formed a grudging admiration for Bernadette, a girl who obviously did not care what others thought of her socks. Amy and her friends were always fussing about their clothes, and Amy often telephoned Marla before school, if Marla did not telephone first, to find out what she was going to wear.

One hot windy morning when Mitchell was bounding along in his sneakers down the hill past a grove of eucalyptus trees, he felt something, some small hard object, hit
him between his shoulder blades. He paid no attention because in the heat and the wind, eucalyptus buds were dropping all around him. When he was struck between the shoulder blades a second time, he stopped and turned. Alan Hibbler was bounding along behind him in
his
sneakers. Farther on up the hill Amy and Marla were coming around a bend in the street.

“Hi, there, kid,” said Alan, stopping to scoop up a handful of eucalyptus buds.

“Hi,” said Mitchell, and went on springing down the hill. Just as he expected, a eucalyptus bud sailed past his shoulder and then another and another. Mitchell's father, when he had heard the story of the skateboard, said there were two things to do about a bully, ignore him or fight him. Mitchell could not see any sense in fighting so he ignored the buds. He did not speed up, he did not slow down, he just continued
as if nothing had happened. The next bud hit him in the middle of the back. He ignored it—at least that is the way he hoped he looked to Alan. A eucalyptus bud, which was as big as a marble, was a hard thing to ignore.

More buds came pelting after Mitchell, some hitting him, some flying past him. One struck him right on the back of the neck and that really stung, but Mitchell kept on going. As much as he longed to stop and peg just one bud back at Alan good and hard, he would not let himself. If he ignored Alan long enough, Alan might get tired of bullying and if he did not, well…. Mitchell would have to think about that problem when the time came.

Mitchell was pretty angry by the time he reached the intersection nearest the school, where he had to wait for the traffic boy to lead him across the street or get reported. Alan
caught up and stood directly behind him.

“Chased you, didn't I?” gloated Alan.

Mitchell gritted his teeth and said nothing. He thought about the spinning globe in the library and imagined what would happen if the world was turning so fast everyone had to make his way to school hand over hand, hanging on to bushes. Then when old Alan tried to throw a eucalyptus bud, he would forget to hold on and go whizzing off into space.

On the way across the street Alan managed to step on Mitchell's heels several times. Grimly Mitchell ignored him. By the time Mitchell got into a kickball game he was so angry and kicked the ball so hard that he made a home run before the fielder had a chance to catch up with the ball. That home run made Mitchell feel a lot better.

Mitchell began to wish he did not have to walk to school, but unfortunately during the
summer the mothers of the neighborhood had banded together at a coffee party and vowed that they would no longer drive their children to school unless they had broken legs or heavy musical instruments to carry.

Except for one day a week, when his mother drove the cello and French horn to school, Mitchell walked. He tried different routes to school. Sometimes he succeeded in avoiding Alan, but more often he did not. Eucalyptus buds came flying even when there were no eucalyptus trees nearby, and Mitchell concluded that Alan must keep his pockets stuffed with ammunition. Ignoring Alan became more and more difficult. Sometimes Mitchell felt worn out with ignoring Alan when Alan should have been so tired of being ignored that he would stop bullying.

One evening at dinner Mrs. Huff served a new dish that she had learned to cook by
watching the French Chef on television. She said it was stuffed eggplant.

“It looks like a boxing glove cut in half and filled with chopped-up stuff,” remarked Mitchell. Speaking of a boxing glove reminded him of Alan Hibbler. “Say, Dad, how about letting me take judo lessons?” he asked.

“I think you're a little young for that,” answered his father.

“So you could flip your sister through the air every time you got into an argument?” said Mrs. Huff. “I should say not. Anyway, I do enough chauffeuring as it is. Music lessons, trips to the orthodontist, trips to the shoe store—”

“Oh, never mind,” said Mitchell. “It was just one of those out-of-the-question questions.”

One hot Friday morning in October, when a dry wind had been rattling the
leaves of the eucalyptus trees for days and the temporary classrooms had seemed like ovens in the afternoon, Mitchell consulted the mimeographed school-lunch menu that Mrs. Huff had taped to the inside of a cupboard door. The menu was one thing he had no trouble reading. When he saw what he was to have for lunch, he groaned and said, “Deep Sea Dandies for lunch.”

Mrs. Huff laughed. “What on earth are Deep Sea Dandies?”

“An old fish stick in a bun,” answered Mitchell. “The cafetorium just tries to make it sound good.”

“You mean the ickatorium,” corrected Amy.

“So long, Mom,” said Mitchell, as he walked out the back door, reluctant to face a day of reading, Deep Sea Dandies, and Alan Hibbler. His sneakers seemed to have lost their bounce, and he plodded down the
hill with the muscles between his shoulders tight and tense, waiting for the eucalyptus buds that he was sure would strike. He did not relax once all the way to school, and then, when the traffic boy led him across the street and nothing had happened, he felt let down. Alan had not followed him at all. The thought occurred to Mitchell that Alan was now annoying him as much when he did not follow him as when he did.

“Drat!” said Mitchell, kicking the fence and wishing he knew what to do. The burden of worrying about Alan was wearing him out. In the days that followed he found himself thinking about Alan when he should have been thinking about the history of California or arithmetic. He drew an anchor on the back of his hand with a ballpoint pen so he would look tough and tattooed. Miss Colby had to speak to him about wasting time.

One afternoon after school Mitchell walked in the back door, threw his homework and a thick book on electricity down on the kitchen table, and grabbed two bananas out of the wooden bowl on the counter before he went into the living room where his mother was reading her French cookbook.

“Hello, Mitch.” Mrs. Huff looked up from her cookbook. Mitchell knew they would probably have something good for dinner that required so much beating, chopping, and straining that his mother would only have time for hamburger patties or canned fruit to go with it. “What kind of day did you have?” his mother asked.

Mitchell flopped into a chair and pulled back the skin on one of his bananas. “Just a day, I guess.” He took a big bite of banana and chewed thoughtfully. One thing about bananas, they were easy to chew when he was wearing a dental retainer. They weren't tough, and they didn't have any seeds, pits,
or cores to get in the way.

“You don't seem to be your usual happy self lately,” said his mother. “Has something gone wrong?”

For a moment Mitchell was tempted to tell his mother all about Alan, but then he thought better of the impulse. “No, I guess not,” said Mitchell. “What could go wrong?”

“Lots of things,” said his mother lightly. “Seaweedy spinach for lunch in the ickatorium, for example.”

Mitchell smiled, amused to hear his mother talking like a fourth grader. He broke back the stem of the second banana and pulled down a strip of skin. A banana came in a very neat package.

“Sometimes I think you run on bananas the way a car runs on gasoline,” said Mrs. Huff. “Are you sure you aren't worried about something?”

Mitchell made up his mind he was not
going to tell his mother about Alan and the eucalyptus buds, because she might call Alan's mother or the principal and get him into more trouble. “Nope,” he said after the last bite of banana. “Well, I guess I'll go ride my bike.”

Mitchell remembered to put the banana skins in the garbage before he let the back door slam and wheeled his bicycle out of the garage. At the foot of the steep driveway he headed uphill, pumping as hard as he could. Standing on his pedals and using every bit of his strength to push them around made him feel good, and when he made the top of the hill, he coasted down, enjoying the wind on his face, until the road rose again and he had to stand up to pump once more. Panting, he gulped in lungfuls of air and drove out the stuffy, indoor feeling that he always had at the end of a school day or after doing his homework. He even began to feel better
about Alan, who was nothing but a stupid old bully. Maybe one of these days he and Alan would have a showdown, good guy against the bad guy, and the good guy would win
because good guys always won—he hoped. “Pow-pow-pow,” said Mitchell to himself. What were a few eucalyptus buds anyway? A eucalyptus bud never hurt anyone. “Pow-pow-pow!”