Summer School! What Genius Thought That Up? (3 page)

Yeah, that would be a little more embarrassing. But not much.

I felt like all the kids were staring at me as I slinked over to the right side of the stairs. I looked around to check out who I was standing with. There were kids from both the fourth and fifth grades at my school. I noticed they weren't exactly the school geniuses. There was Luke “I'll pick my nose at the drop of a hat” Whitman. Matthew “I'm not toilet-trained yet” Barbarosa. Salvatore “I don't like Hank Zipzer very much” Mendez. And a girl I had only seen in Mr. Sicilian's fourth-grade class who was talking on a cell phone saying, “Okay, Nick, I'll meet you at the bowling alley.” She was smiling a loveydovey kind of smile.

Nick? Could she be talking to Nick McKelty? His dad does own a bowling alley on 86th Street. And the only other Nick at school insists on being called Nicholas so he won't be confused with Nick the Tick.

I looked over at the kids standing on the other side of the stairs. Sure enough, there was Nick McKelty standing at the back of the crowd, clicking off his cell phone and putting it in the pocket of his jeans.

Wait a minute! How could Nick McKelty get a girlfriend? Hasn't she watched him eat, with all of the food in his mouth squishing through the openings in his snaggly teeth? Hasn't she seen the size of his super humungous feet? Hasn't she gotten a whiff of his dragon breath that has actually melted the gel in my hair?

“Joelle,” I heard Mr. Rock saying, “turn off your phone. No cell phones in class.”

My brain flipped over in my head and spun around, throwing itself against the inside of my skull. It refused to go on with the rhyme. I could hear it yelling “
Ptueey
” like it was trying to spit out the picture of Nick and Joelle k-i-s-s-i . . . Oh, I can't go on.

“Those of you in summer school will follow Mr. Rock to Ms. Adolf's classroom on the second floor,” Principal Love announced. “Those of you in the Junior Explorers Program will come with me to the Hawaiian Isles.”

“We're flying to Hawaii?” Ashley asked.

“In our minds we are, Ms. Wong,” Principal Love said. “Oh, the joys of imagination running wild.”

“I guess my imagination is walking slow,” Frankie said, “because I don't get it.”

“The theme of this week's Junior Explorers Program is Passport to Hawaii, a salute to our fiftieth state,” Principal Love explained. “We will be learning to hula dance, and we'll all be finding out how low we can go as we limbo the night away at Friday's Hawaiian luau extravaganza.”

There was a buzz among the kids. A luau and a limbo contest. Wow, it sounded like so much fun.

“May I introduce you to your hula instructor,” Principal Love said in his tall-man, sports-announcer voice. That big voice always seems so funny coming out of such a small man.

At that very moment, the hall doors to the teachers' lounge swung open and Ms. Adolf, my fourth-grade teacher, came out into the hall. She was wearing a grass skirt and a bikini top made out of two coconuts, which she wore over gray Bermuda shorts and a gray long-sleeved shirt. No, I am not kidding you. She had an entire hula-dancer outfit on
over
her regular clothes. And you're not going to believe this: The coconuts even had smiley faces on them. It was a sight that for a second made me actually grateful I had not gotten a Passport to Hawaii.

“Aloha, pupils,” she said, shaking her hips in a move that looked like a hippo looking for a place to pee. Ms. Adolf isn't exactly the hip-shaking type.

I glanced over at Frankie and Ashley. Frankie was biting his lower lip really hard to keep from laughing. Ashley was actually holding her top lip over her bottom lip so she wouldn't start to giggle. Once she starts giggling, there's no stopping her.

“All you explorers follow us out to the white sand beaches of Waikiki.” Principal Love pointed to the sandbox on the playground. They had propped up two huge paper palm trees there and spread beach blankets on the ground in the area around the swings.

“Those of you in summer school, follow me upstairs,” Mr. Rock said.

The Junior Explorers all ran after Principal Love and headed out the doors onto the playground. The rest of us marched up the stairs and into the classroom. There were no palm trees, no beaches, no blankets.

What was there was a blackboard, chalk, and—oh, goody—brand-new erasers.

WE TOOK OUR SEATS in the classroom. Mr. Rock said we could sit anywhere we wanted, so I took a seat next to the window where I could see the Junior Explorers. They were already starting to play beach games on the playground. Boy, that was a tough sight to see. There I was, sitting at my desk looking through my backpack for a sharpened number-two pencil. And just on the other side of the glass, two floors down, were all the rest of the kids, doing the normal summer thing—having fun. If you're thinking that looking out the window at everyone else having fun put me in a bad mood, then you're a great thinker.

We were in Ms. Adolf's classroom, my old fourth-grade room. Same old pale green walls. Same old clock on the wall with the same old hands ticking soooooo slowly from one minute to the next.

There are thirty-two seats in our classroom. I know this because I spent the last year counting them every time I wasn't paying attention to Ms. Adolf, which was most of the time. It's not that I don't want to pay attention. I start every day thinking that today I'm going to pay attention from nine to three. It's just that my mind will not cooperate. By ten after nine, I'm thinking about the Mets game, and by nine-fifteen, I'm wondering if my dachshund, Cheerio, is licking the bricks over our fireplace, and by nine-sixteen, I've already gone into orbit around the outer rings of Saturn.

Anyway, back on Earth, there were a lot of empty seats in the class because there were only eleven of us lucky enough to make the summer-school cut. I wish I wasn't so good at failing. It's one of the only things that comes really easily to me—that and dental flossing. Even my dentist says I am an excellent flosser. I can get out a raspberry seed stuck between my two back molars faster than you can say the Museum of Natural History, which by the way is about five blocks from my house if you take the short way.

In spite of the fact that most of the seats in our class were empty, Miss Joelle “I can't stop checking my cell phone” Adwin sat down in the seat right next to me.

“Hi,” she said. “Do you like gymnastics?”

That was a friendly start.

“Hi,” I said back. “I can do a somersault.”

“Somersaults are dorky,” she said. “I hear you get all Ds.”

“Who told you that?” I asked, as if I didn't know.

“My boyfriend, Nick,” she said. “He also said I'm much smarter than you.”

My throat started to feel all funny, like it was going to close up. I needed to have a great comeback because I knew that whatever I said would be the first thing Joelle would tell Nick when she talked to him.

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

But I just sat there. I think I made a little throat noise, but it definitely didn't come out sounding like words.

“Funny, I don't see it,” Joelle said, staring at me like I was some kind of screeching monkey in the zoo.

“What are you looking for?”

She was staring at my forehead. I reached up and felt around to make sure there wasn't any dried cereal stuck up there. It was just my regular forehead. So what was she staring at?

“Nick said there's something wrong with your brain, but I can't see a bump or anything.”

“Don't you and Nick have anything better to talk about than my brain?” I said. “And by the way, I have learning challenges. A lot of kids do.”

Luke Whitman came strolling up to us, holding something in his left hand. Or maybe it was his right hand. It was one of them. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be too curious about what he held in his hand, because you know it'd be something truly gross. But at that moment, I wanted to grab him and hug him. I would have rather talked to just about anyone than Joelle.

“Want to see my booger?” Luke asked, opening up his hand. “It's shaped like Florida.”

“Oh, look, there's Disney World,” I said.

Luke cracked up.

“There's more where this came from,” he said.

“Come back when you get one that looks like Texas,” I told him.

This time, Joelle laughed.

“You're pretty funny for a slow learner,” she said to me.

“Thanks.”

To my relief, Mr. Rock decided to start class at that very moment. Anything he had to say was going to be better than me talking to Joelle about my learning speed, or lack of it.

“Okay, kids, I know this isn't your first choice of a way to spend your summer,” Mr. Rock began, “but I'll try my best to make this a rollicking good time for all of us. Luke, put your booger in a Kleenex and take your seat.”

Mr. Rock was pretty cool. Ms. Adolf would have sent Luke to the office for walking around with a booger in his hand.

I looked out the window again. I could see Frankie on the playground, playing volley-ball with a multi-colored beach ball. He was setting for Ryan Shimozato. They were laughing. Ashley was at a crafts table, making a Hawaiian necklace out of paper flowers. I hoped they had rhinestones there for her. She glues rhinestones onto everything.

Mr. Rock asked each of us to say one word that best describes our personality, so that we'd get to know one another. Joelle said
popular
. Who was she kidding? Being liked by Nick McKelty does not make you popular. It makes you a creepette. Salvatore said
tough
. I'd say he had a point there. When it came to me, I said
Hankish
. Mr. Rock laughed out loud.

“That's very creative, Hank,” he said. “We're going to have fun this summer, I can tell.”

“Are you ready, kids? Here's the plan,” Mr. Rock said. “This summer, we're going to be reviewing our math skills, which will help you this coming fall. And I've thought of a creative way to combine your reading, vocabulary, spelling, and note-taking practice.”

“Wow,” Luke Whitman said. “I'm shaking with excitement.”

“Give me a chance, Luke,” Mr. Rock said. “Wait until you hear the idea. You might actually quiver like jelly.”

You're not going to believe this, but I was curious to hear his idea.

“I want you all to pick a person in history that you admire,” Mr. Rock said, leaning on the edge of Ms. Adolf's desk. “On Friday, we'll all meet your famous person, when you present everything you've learned about him or her to the class.” Mr. Rock seemed pretty excited about this assignment.

“Sounds like an oral report to me,” Luke Whitman said.

“In a way, it is,” Mr. Rock said without sounding even a little annoyed. “After all, this is school. But I hope it will be fun, too. I encourage you to be as creative as you can be. Try to become your famous person.”

I SAT THERE at my desk, watching my leg bounce up and down like it does when I'm nervous. It was quiet time, and we were each supposed to be making a list of some famous people we'd like to report on.

I couldn't think of one.

There was George Washington, but he had wooden teeth. That's gross. There was Abraham Lincoln, but he had a mole that always reminds me of the one Principal Love has on his face. That's annoying. There was good old Thomas Edison, but he invented so many things that by the time I'd get through listing them, my report would be too long.

Mr. Rock went around the room, asking kids what famous person they had decided on. By the time the bell rang for recess, I still hadn't come up with anyone. On my way out of class, Mr. Rock stopped me at the door.

“Well, Hank, have you made a decision?”

“Here's the problem, Mr. Rock,” I said. “There are so many people to choose from, I just can't decide.”

“I have six words for you, Hank,” Mr. Rock said.

“You don't have to do it?” I said, hoping like crazy those were the words he was thinking of.

“You should report on Albert Einstein,” he said. Not the six words I had in mind.

“Albert Einstein. Did he play for the Mets?” I asked.

“No, but he did figure out that the fastest fastball could never travel faster than the speed of light,” Mr. Rock said. “Albert Einstein was the greatest genius of the twentieth century. I think you have a lot in common with him.”