Summer School! What Genius Thought That Up? (8 page)

“I'm thinking that I could do my Einstein report dressed up as him.
I vill discuss zee theory of relativity dressed as Einstein zee genius.
”

Big Eddie burst out laughing.

“You got a lot of imagination, kid,” he said.

Yes, imagination. That was the key. Didn't Einstein himself say “imagination is more important than knowledge”?

Frankie and Ashley bought some plastic Hawaiian flowers and palm leaves. Me, I bought the collar and bow tie, the wig and the mustache. And a bottle of something called spirit gum, which Big Eddie said is what real actors use to stick fake hair on their skin. I didn't want my mustache falling off in the middle of my report.

If I had been the skipping type, I would have skipped out of Big Eddie's store. I felt fantastic. Suddenly, I couldn't wait until Friday. I was going to morph into Albert Einstein, right in front of my summer-school class. I would be
zee great man of zee science world
.

It would be just like Mr. Rock said—I was going to become the famous person I admired. I would get an A for sure. As Albert Einstein himself would say,
it was in zee bag
.

OF COURSE, I STILL had to study. I knew that. I wasn't going to get an A on my report just by standing up and talking in a bad German accent with a crazy wig on. But wouldn't it be great if things could really happen that way in real life?

So I spent the next two days at school hard at work on my project. On Wednesday, I brought my library books to class in a shopping bag, and Mr. Rock helped me read them during free time. I took notes on index cards, so I'd remember the important parts of Einstein's life and his theories when I got up to give my report.

The more I learned about Albert Einstein, the more I liked him. I'm not sure exactly how, but his theory of relativity showed that time travel to the future is actually possible if you fly fast enough through space. Where do I get a ticket? Also, he refused to wear socks because they would get holes in them. I am so glad he can't open my sock drawer. Anyway, those are both pretty interesting facts, if you ask me.

“Hank, I'm really proud of the way you're working,” Mr. Rock said to me on Thursday, right before lunch.

That made Joelle mad. She had been especially crabby since Mr. Rock took away her cell phone.

“What about me?” she said. “My work is way better than his.”

She was doing her report on a famous gymnast named Mary Lou Retton who won an Olympic Gold Medal. All Joelle was doing, though, was drawing pictures of her in different-colored leotards.

Before Mr. Rock could answer Joelle, a fifth-grader named Lauren let out a scream from the other side of the room.

“What's wrong, Lauren?” Mr. Rock asked.

“Luke Whitman is trying to smell my lunch!”

Mr. Rock left us in a hurry to try to get Luke's nose out of Lauren's lunch bag.

Joelle leaned over to me. “Your handwriting looks like a monkey wrote it,” she whispered.

“At least I'm writing important facts,” I snapped. “You're just coloring tights.”

“For your information, I'm going to be a world-famous leotard designer when I grow up,” she said. “My boyfriend, Nick, says I'm going to make a million dollars.”

“Right, and my name is Bernice.”

“Why do you always say that?” she said. “Your name isn't Bernice.”

I could see that Joelle and Nick had the same sense of humor, which, by the way, does not exist.

By the time lunch came around, I couldn't wait to get away from her. I went out on the playground to see if I could hang out with Frankie and Ashley, but the Junior Explorers had gone over to the pool at the Paris Hotel up the street for swimming lessons. So I went back to class, got my Einstein book, and sat down at one of the lunch tables to read.

That's right, you heard me correctly. I was reading. By choice. For fun. Well, maybe not for fun, but still, it's pretty amazing, huh?

“What are you reading, Hank?”

It was my little pal, Mason.

“Hey, Mason. This is a book on Albert Einstein.”

“He has funny hair.”

“I agree, dude, but under that hair, he's got quite a brain.”

“Why?”

Mason pulled himself up on the bench and sat next to me. He didn't just sit next to me, he snuggled right in close to me and put his head on my shoulder so he could see the pictures in the book. By the way, if you're keeping track, that's the twelfth cutest thing about kindergartners. When they sit next to you, they snuggle like little puppies.

So I read to him. Wow, that was a first. I was actually reading to someone else. If I got stuck on a word, I'd take a guess, and that was good enough for Mason. Amazing as it seems, there were plenty of words I did know how to read, and he seemed to really like hearing them. We read about where Einstein was born and his two children. We read about how he became the most famous scientist in the world. We read how he liked to play the violin, and that he even gave his violin a name. He called it Lina. We read how he loved to do puzzles and sail on boats. And we learned that even though his theories led to the creation of the atomic bomb, Einstein himself said, “I am willing to fight for peace.”

Mason didn't move a muscle the whole time I read to him. He just sat there listening. And me, I had only one thought:

THAT NIGHT AFTER DINNER, Frankie, Ashley, and I met in the clubhouse for what Frankie called a dress rehearsal of our magic trick. Frankie loves to be prepared. He would have made a great Cub Scout except that he wouldn't like wearing that yellow scarf. If the Cub Scouts would ever decide to lose the scarf, Frankie's in.

“Okay, guys,” he said, checking his watch. “In exactly twenty and one half hours we're going to wow 'em and zow 'em. Ashweena, talk to me.”

“Costume, completed,” said Ashley. She twirled around to show us her blue pants and top that she had covered with green rhinestones in the shape of ocean waves. There were yellow rhinestones for the sun, and red rhinestones for coconuts. She was very sparkly.

“Princess Leilani, you look great,” Frankie said. “Music all set?”

“Ukulele, tuned,” Ashley answered, strumming the first notes of her crazy
hooky lau
song. “All four strings pulled tight.”

“Zip, where are you?” Frankie called out. “Report in.”

I had been standing behind a column of cardboard boxes, where I had gone to change into my costume. I had the green velvet pillows strapped on my feet and the palm leaves we got at Big Eddie's wrapped around my waist. I had tried to tie the coconuts around my upper arms, but it was hard, using only one hand and my teeth. I stepped out from behind the boxes and raised my arms in a very kingly manner.

“Your coconuts are sagging,” Ashley said.

“So help me. There's only so much a guy can do with his teeth.”

I took a step over to Ashley, but I had forgotten about my pillow shoes. I tripped over the boxes big time, and landed headfirst in the couch.

“King Kahuna Huna, your butt is flapping in the breeze,” Frankie said, cracking up.

“Go ahead and laugh. I need a hand here, friends of mine.”

Ashley and Frankie were laughing too hard to help, so that left me bent over like a pretzel, wedged between the cushions and the back of the couch. There was a lot of dust in that couch, and when I breathed in, it flew all the way up to the top of my nose.

Man, I sneezed so hard that the force of it unwedged my head. That made Frankie and Ashley laugh even harder. I have to admit, it was pretty funny. I laughed too.

“Can we be serious here?” I said, after I had caught my breath. “I want to finish in time to rehearse my Einstein speech. If I blow that, King Kahuna Huna is a no-show.”

“Zip, you're freaking yourself out,” Frankie said.

“I'm a little nervous,” I confessed. “There's a lot of information to remember.”

“You've got it all written down on note cards,” Ashley said. “You'll be fine.”

“You'd be fine, Ash, but I may not be.”

“Zip, what's the rule?” Frankie asked, looking me in the eyeballs.

“Breathe,” I answered.

“Right. Take air in through your nose and let it out through your mouth. Remember, oxygen is power.”

“I know.”

“Don't just know. Do.”

I took a deep yoga-style breath, the way Frankie's mom, who is a yoga teacher, had always taught us to do. I must have dislodged some of the dust that was still hanging around up there in my nose, because I sneezed so hard, my coconuts sagged again.

“Let's run through our act before you lose your coconuts altogether,” Frankie said.

The rehearsal was a little shaky, but we got through it. Ashley strummed her ukulele and danced, and Frankie did a few magic chants that he made up himself. When he said the magic word,
zengawii
, I leaped out from behind the couch. Of course, at the actual talent show, I was going to leap out from a cloud of lava smoke. We were going to use chunks of dry ice and pour water on them to create the lava smoke. We couldn't rehearse that part in our clubhouse, because kids can't handle dry ice themselves. It can burn you if you touch it. I think it's so strange that ice can burn you from being too cold, but trust me, it's true. Ashley's mom and dad had agreed to bring the dry ice to the playground for us. They're both doctors, so it was really nice of them to come home early to help. I guess that's why Papa Pete calls them the good doctors Wong.

After we finished our Magik 3 rehearsal, Ashley and Frankie sat down on the couch to listen to me go through my Einstein report. It was getting near bedtime, so I didn't take the time to change into my Einstein costume. I have to confess, it felt a little strange to be talking like a German scientist while wearing nothing but palm leaves and foot pillows.

Maybe it was the Kahuna Huna costume that distracted me. My German accent wasn't bad, but I just couldn't keep my facts straight. Even though I had written them down on index cards, it was like my eyes were looking at the sentences, but my brain was jumbling them up. I kept tripping over my words like my tongue was too big for my mouth.

“I can't do this!” I yelled out, when I couldn't pronounce the word
relativity
three times in a row.

“Remember the Big B, dude,” Frankie said.

“Frankie, what are you talking about?”

“Breathe, Zip. Breathe!”

I took a breath.

“The word is
re-la-tiv-i-ty
,” Ashley said, pronouncing it really slowly. “Come on. You know it, Hank.”

I settled down and kept going. Finally, I came to the end of the report.

“What did you think, guys?” I said, flopping down on the couch, exhausted. “Will I get an A?”

Ashley didn't answer. My heart started to beat faster.

Frankie jumped in. “It's definitely a B-plus. And that is a great grade, dude.”

B-plus? No, not a B-plus.

Without another word, I jumped up from the couch, ran out of the clubhouse to the elevator, and started pushing the button about a hundred times, hoping that would make the elevator come faster.

I rode upstairs rehearsing—not my Einstein speech but what I was going to say to my father.

I had to convince him that a B-plus was good enough to let me go to the luau. He had to say yes.

Hey, I'm not proud. If I had to beg, I would.

1. Fall on the floor and pound the carpet, kicking and screaming. Whining is good too.

2. When he says, “Stop that right away,” stand up, apologize, and say you were just kidding.

3. Make sure you end every sentence with, “Pretty please with a cherry on top.”

4. Tell him it will be your pleasure to polish every pair of shoes he owns or ever will own, even tennis shoes and flip-flops. And no, there is no tipping required.

5. Promise him this is the last thing you'll ever ask for except maybe a car when you're sixteen and a new PlayStation on your birthday. Oh yeah, and the video games that go with it, but only four of them. Okay, five. But after that, nothing.

6. Swear to keep his mechanical pencils always filled with fresh lead. (WARNING: If your dad isn't a crossword-puzzle freak like mine, this one may not work so well.)

7. Try a compliment. Tell him that he's not going bald, he just looks really good in very short hair.

8. Trust me, guilt works. Just mention that you know he loves your sister more than you, but it's okay, because you're fine with it. It only hurts a tiny little bit.

9. Don't try to scare him, but you might mention that if you don't get what you want, you may have to go lie down under your bed until you're forty-five.

10. Whimper like a puppy dog.

11. Go simple and just say please.***

***I can't believe that after all the time we've spent together, you're still surprised that there are eleven reasons on my list of ten. It's me, Hank. You know I can't count!

“DAD, LET'S SAY I only get a B-plus on my Einstein report. Could I still go to the luau and the sleepover?”

I was standing in our living room. He was sitting in his chair, doing a crossword puzzle. He didn't answer.

So I went into begging mode and ran through my list, each and every item. I begged so hard that a rock would have felt sorry for me.