The New Kid (15 page)

“Me,” squeaked Carson.

“Me,” he said in a regular voice.

She handed Moose to Carson. “Sorry about the mix-up. I really am. But … what kind of a critter is this?”

Carson pretended he didn’t hear her.

The class was quiet.

Carson balled up the
RETURN BROWN STUFFED MAMMAL HERE. NO QUESTIONS ASKED
sign, and they switched out the packs.

Parks’s mom waved to everybody. “Have a great day, everyone! Buh-bye!”

“Wait!” cried Chloe. “Did Parks accidentally also grab the wrong sweatshirt, by any chance? My hook is right by Carson’s.”

“I’ll ask.”

“I really would like to have my sweatshirt back!”

“We’ll look.”

Chloe’s shoulders slumped.

“That sweatshirt’s very special to me.”

“Okay, yes, I understand. I’ll look.”

“I really need it!”

“Okay, fine. I’ll look.”

When Carson’s dad pulled up in the Porsche after school, Carson couldn’t resist: he stood on the sidewalk, sadly looking down at the cement. His dad asked, “No luck?”

Carson climbed into the car.

“Where do we go from here?” his dad asked him.

Carson said, “I dunno. Just forget about him, I guess.”

Carson’s dad slowly pulled out of the parking lot. “I’m not sure I agree, Carson.”

“It’s hard, I know. But you’ll just have to deal with it, Dad. You’re almost fifty!”

“I’m forty-six years old, Carson.”

He shifted from first, to second, to third. Then he slowed and stopped at a red light.

Carson snuck Moose out of his pack and bonked his dad on his neck and ear and said, “Hello, Nick.”

When Carson’s dad turned his head, he was looking directly into Moose’s eyes.

“What the?! Ha! Are you
kidding
me?”

“Nope! He spent the weekend in my pack in the back of Parks’s mom’s car parked out back in Parks’s driveway when they went to Tahoe in his dad’s SUV.”

“You’re not serious!”

“I
am
serious. Parks was in such a hurry to leave school early he accidentally took my pack and left his.”

“Well,
duh
. Like a pack rat! Take one, leave one. Between the two of us we didn’t think of that,” said Carson’s dad. “But so it goes. All’s well that ends well.”

“Boy, Dad. You can say that again!”

“But so it goes. All’s well that ends well.”

Carson didn’t have quite as much enthusiasm for paragraphs as Mr. Lipman did. In fact, on a scale of one to ten, Carson’s enthusiasm for paragraphs was maybe a five, at the most.

But he was still determined to get it right.

Mr. Lipman called out, “Paragraphs! Ready?”

The kids answered all at once, “Eeeee-yeah!”

Mr. Lipman began his paragraph cheer—and the kids joined in:

He plopped a red day pack on his desk. “Let’s do this!” He walked to the whiteboard and wrote:
When I go on a day hike, I always bring my day pack with me, filled with essential items
.

He turned to the class. “This is the topic sentence.”

He rapped on the words. “Stick to it!”

Then he paused. “Once I was in Yosemite Valley. I was lying in my sleeping bag under the stars, on my back, with my day pack for a pillow, snoring. A bear smelled my mouth.”

“What did you do?” Wes asked.

“I can’t elaborate. We’re in the middle of writing a paragraph.”

Wes threw up his arms. “Come
on
!”

“Sorry. We have to stick to the topic. What’s something important that I would carry in my day pack?” asked Mr. Lipman. “Sydney?”

“A water bottle,” she grumbled.

“Fact!” Mr. Lipman wrote:
The first thing I put in my day pack is a water bottle
. He folded his arms on his chest. “Why?”

“So you won’t get dehydrated,” mumbled Sydney.

“Detail!” Mr. Lipman wrote:
I bring water so I won’t get dehydrated
.

Sydney said, “I see no good reason why you can’t tell Wes about the bear sniffing your teeth. Other people want to hear it, too!”

Mr. Lipman ignored her. He unzipped one of the outside pack pockets and took out a flimsy, see-through, bucket-shaped army-green object made of lightweight mosquito netting. He pulled it over his head and face and stared at the class through the green gauze.

The kids stared back.

“Shall I include my mosquito mask?”

Nobody answered.

“Do I
always
bring a mosquito mask? No. I don’t. Stick to the topic: items I
always
bring. Essentials.”

Mr. Lipman pulled the mask off and stuffed it back into the pocket. “Carson?”

Carson jumped.

“You listening?”

“Yes!”

“What else do you think might be in my pack here that you consider important enough to include in the paragraph? Are these?” Mr. Lipman pulled out a box of crayons. “I might like to color on some tree trunks or rocks along the way.” He pulled out a roll of masking tape. “This okay?” He pulled out a small travel iron by the cord. “How about this, then?”

Mr. Lipman pulled out a bow tie. He opened his closet door, looked in the mirror, and tied the tie into a perfect bow. He turned around and smiled at the class. “All dressed up and ready to hike to a prom. Right? I’ll bring my travel iron in case I need to iron my shirt, and the masking tape to tape up my pants if the cuffs are too long. So I won’t step on them.”

Oswaldo raised his hand. “At my brother’s school, instead of a prom you can go to a morp, which is ‘prom’ spelled backward.”

Mr. Lipman rubbed his nose. “Dusty closet.”

“Kids who don’t want to get all dressed up and go to the senior prom have the choice of going to the senior morp instead.”

“Ah …”

“They wear flannel pj’s and bring stuffed animals.”

“Ah …”

“And eat pizza …”

“Ah …”

“And stay up all night watching scary movies.”

“Ah-
pooch
!” Mr. Lipman sneezed into a wad of tissues, dropped them into the trash, and then helped himself to a squirt of hand sanitizer. “Nancy? Please say thanks again to your mom for the Germbegone pump bottle.”

“I will. Mr. Lipman?”

“Yes?”

“Is ‘ah-
pooch
’ an onomatopoeia?”

“Negative.”

“Can we have a morp like at Oswaldo’s brother’s school?” asked Sydney.

“No. No morp, Sydney. If it rains on the campout, as I have explained, I have rented six six-person, freestanding tents with special tarps that go underneath—and rain flies.”

“In other words,” said Wes, “everybody will have to suck it up.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Lipman.

“But what if it pours? What if it soaks the ground?” asked Sydney. “Then can we have the morp? What if it’s raining cats and dogs and the Green Gulch group campground turns into a huge mucky mud puddle?”

“If it rains cats and dogs, I suppose we’ll have a soggy grouchy group of woofing and meowing mucky wet muddy mammals to deal with,” Mr. Lipman said.

Nancy took out her onomatopoeia list and added “woof” and “meow.”

“What if the stream in the meadow swells up and floods our tents!” said Sydney.

“Stop saying that!” cried Shelly. “You’ll make it happen!”

“No she won’t,” said Mr. Lipman. “You can’t make it rain a week from now by talking about it. But since you’re what-iffing—as you know, we have a phone tree. We’ll call off the campout.”

The class moaned.

“Call off the campout? Completely? Why?!” cried Sydney. “We can morph it into a morp! The parents can bring Weber grills and set ’em up in the patio area right here at the school. Or we can eat pizza in the
multipurpose room. Like the kids in Oswaldo’s big brother’s school.”

“Yeah!” cried some other kids.

“Fine. Fine. Fine. If we get rained out, we’ll have ourselves a morp. Onward! What else is in my pack?”

“But wait a minute. What about s’mores?” said Sydney. “We’ll have to skip s’mores if we have a morp.” She sadly added, “No campfire. No singing around the campfire. What a bummer.”

“Sydney? We’ll have morp s’mores,” said Mr. Lipman. “Cold morp marshmallows, chilly chocolate bars, and snappy graham crackers. Sound good?”

“No.”

“Well, too bad. The Complaint Department is closed.”

“Are there black bears in Green Gulch?” asked Oswaldo.

“No.”

“Snakes?” asked Oswaldo.

“No. Not poisonous ones, anyway.”

“Cougars?”

“No.”

“Bobcats?”

“Bears! Bobcats! Cougars! All mammals. Snakes—are not. Because?” He looked at Sydney.

“They’re not hairy.”

Carson heard a rattly sound. Wes was creeping toward Mr. Lipman, rattling a small see-through plastic box of Fresh Breath Refresherettes in one hand and holding his other hand with two fingers sticking up and curled a little bit, like fangs.

He suddenly struck them into the back of his hand.

“I got bit!”

He slid onto the floor and writhed around, squeezing his wrist. “I got bit! I got bit!”

“Get up, Wes. Fresh Breath Refresherettes are the same as candies! Fork ’em over.”

Wes sat up and tossed the box to Mr. Lipman.

“Adios till June,” said Mr. Lipman as he dropped them into the June Box. “In you go with the Teenie Weenie Jelly Beanies.”

“
What did you do when the bear smelled your tongue?!
” cried Sydney.

“Calm down. Please! I closed my mouth. And I
promised myself I would never eat pan-fried trout again. And I vowed never to use for a pillow a pack that had gorp in it.”

“Which is what?” asked Sydney.

“Which is a healthy mix of nuts, raisins, et cetera. We’ll eat gorp at the morp. Okay? Now. Despite my excellent props, I must admit this paragraph lesson has been a complete bust.”

He put the iron, bow tie, and masking tape back into his pack. “Let’s move on to Twenty Questions.”

“You should have eaten a few Bad-Breath Bullets before you went to sleep,” Wes told him.

“I thought you said they were pellets.”

“The bigger ones are bullets. The biggest ones are Bad Breath Bombs.”

“Well, bears may be attracted to Bad-Breath Bombs, too. They’re attracted to all kinds of smelly stuff: toothpaste, shaving cream, deodorant, et cetera. Anyway, onward to Twenty Questions.”

Weston asked, “Am I kicked out of the morp or just out of the camping trip?”

Mr. Lipman pinched his upper lip. “Camping trip, yes. Morp, no. But your grandmother has to come
with you. And spend the entire night. Tell her I said so.”

“Can she bring the ingredients for make-it-yourself pizza? To bake in the oven in the multipurpose room? And put little sliced circles of hot dogs on top?”

“Whatever you say, Wes. Twenty Questions, let’s go. Who’s up?”

Mr. Lipman reached into the Star Jar.

“Okay, who’s first this time? … Num-ber …”

“Watch, it won’t be me. And it better not be fourteen,” grumbled Sydney.

Mr. Lipman read the number. “… eighteen? Who’s eighteen?”

“Meeeeee!” Shelly squealed. “I knew you would pick me! I thought positively and it happened.” She ran to the whiteboard and uncapped an erasable marker. “I visualized this moment and it worked!”

Mr. Lipman turned to Sydney. “The power of thinking positively,” he told her. “Try it sometime!”

“I am. I’m closing my eyes and thinking that tongue depressors with numbers on them are positively depressing,” Sydney told him.

“Can we start?” said Shelly.

“Wait! Wait! Wait! I forgot my cap,” Mr. Lipman told her. He put on his detective’s cap. He yanked down the brims. Front, then back. “Okay, ready.”

Luciana raised her hand. “Can it run fast?”

“Very.”

Shelly drew a small vertical line on the board.

“Is it a rabbit?”

“No.” She drew another line next to the first one.

“Does it have fuzzy ears?” asked Eva.

“Yes.”

Shelly drew another line.

Zach asked, “Is it fuzzy all over?”

Shelly said, “It’s hairy all over.”

“A hair frog!” yelled Wes.

Shelly drew two more lines. Sydney frowned at him. “There’s no such thing as a hair frog.”

“Yes there is! There was a huge, hairy hair frog hopping in my house behind a hamper. My grandma released it back into the wild—into the birdbath. Its hair fell off in the water.”

“Once upon a time in Whoppersville there lived a hair frog …,” began Cody. “And a beautiful princess sat by the birdbath and kissed it, and it turned into an ape prince.”

“Cody? Be appropriate. Let’s move on,” said Mr. Lipman. Carson heard him whisper “Heaven help me” under his breath.

Zach asked, “Does it snort?”

“A little bit.”

She drew a line.

“Is it a bull?”

“No.” She drew a line.

“Kids?” interrupted Mr. Lipman. “Strategy. Twenty Questions is a thinking game, not a guessing game. Begin with general questions, then move to specific questions. Like: Does it have pointy teeth or flat teeth? Or: Does it have hooves or pads on its feet?”

“Is it Mrs. Nibblenose?” asked somebody.

Shelly drew a line and shook her head. “Rats don’t snort.”

“Wait a minute,” said Mr. Lipman. “Are any of you listening to me? You’re running out of questions, fast. Before you ask a specific animal, ask general questions, like: Herbivore or carnivore? Does it eat grass? Or other animals? Does it have antlers, or a horn?”

Shelly drew six more lines. Mr. Lipman tried to defend himself. “I was making suggestions. Not asking questions.”

“They were questions,” said Shelly. “Several in a row, and you’re only supposed to ask
one
. One at a time, please.”

“Referee?” Mr. Lipman said.

Matthew thought a minute. “They were questions,” he decided. “Your voice went up at the end.”

“Okay, next time I’ll keep my mouth shut,” said Mr. Lipman.