The New Kid (5 page)

“Being away from Grandma and Grandpa stinks,” Carson said.

“Boy, you can say that again.”

“Being away from Grandma and Grandpa stinks,” Carson said.

And sometimes Valley Oak stank.

For the past two weeks, Carson hadn’t known if he was coming or going.

He heard the Chill-Time Chimes and looked up.

Okay.

Was he coming or going?

He glanced again at the schedule written on the board, just to make sure: Going.

This time to the computer lab.

After that, lunch.

Carson took his lunch from his Valley Oak backpack hanging on his hook—right next to Chloe’s, near the rolling book cart by the classroom door.

He stood in line, carefully holding the brown paper bag with
Carson
written on the front. He was starving! Inside was a tri-tip sandwich on whole wheat bread with lettuce and tomato, three home-baked oatmeal cookies, a small handful of all-fruit gummy bears that were
not
candy, and a foil container of guava juice
without
added sugar.

All the other kids had canvas lunch bags. Shelly’s sparkled: on the side it had a unicorn with twinkly wings and a twisted white twinkly horn flying over a rainbow.

Carson was fine with his regular old plain brown paper lunch bag, but there was quite a bit of lunch in it today. He would carry it carefully and remember to bring home the small plastic packet of Eskimo Ice so his dad could freeze it again.

Carson surveyed the line of lunches. Nancy’s
MONTEREY BAY AQUARIUM
bag was the best. It had a brown baby sea otter lying on its back in the white foam, holding a clam on its belly and looking right at you.

“Where’s the Monterey Bay Aquarium?” Carson asked her.

“In Monterey by the bay.”

Nancy cracked a smile.

“I have a sea otter named Ethel that looks just like this.” She held the bag up so Carson could get a really good look. “Or she did when she was young, anyway. Ethel’s a bit ratty-looking at the moment, but she was once a very sleek lady. You’ll meet her on Stuffed Animal Day. She’s getting all dressed up and wearing lipstick. Are you bringing a stuffed animal on Stuffed Animal Day, Carson?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

Carson kept quiet.

“Last month that kid named Parks in Ms. Parker’s class brought in a badger wearing green goggles and a mini Burton snowboarding beanie.”

“He did?”

A Burton beanie was fine for a badger. A little lipstick was okay for an otter. But Moose kept it real: he just wore his own fur. Au naturel! His birthday suit was bedraggled due to severe snuggling when Carson was a toddler, but it was not ratty by any stretch of the imagination.

Or not
that
ratty by any stretch of the imagination.

Mr. Lipman stood in the doorway and waved to Mrs. Crabbly as she approached. “Hello, Abby! How was the seminar?”

“Good. Free pamphlet on PowerPoint pointers, free PowerPoint tote, free gold PowerPoint pen. Which I immediately lost. Unfortunately.”

Mrs. Crabbly was wearing a plastic battery-operated cuckoo-clock pin, and Carson wondered if a bird popped out of the hole in it.

“How was my substitute?”

“Lousy!” moaned Sydney. “She made us label pictures of laptops in the library and didn’t let us go into the lab! And it was bor-ring.”

“Any-way! We have a new student,” Mr. Lipman announced. “Carson Blum.”

“Welcome to the New Kid!” Wes sang out. He slung his arm around Carson and tripped on him. Both boys toppled over.

“Wes? Please. Take it easy!” Mr. Lipman helped them to their feet. “You okay, boys?”

Carson picked his lunch bag up and inspected it.

“Carson? This is the famous Mrs. Crabbly, computer teacher extraordinaire!”

“Wonderful to have you at Valley Oak, Carson!” Mrs. Crabbly said.

They shook hands.

“Be baby ducks!” called Mrs. Crabbly cheerily. “I’m the mama duck. Straight line please! And no quacking!”

Carson hugged his lunch against his chest. The kids followed Mrs. Crabbly across the playground, steering clear of Wes, who was swinging his canvas gorilla lunch bag around and quacking.

The computer lab was in the library, and no food or drinks were allowed inside. The class stopped at the back entrance to the lab to line their lunches up along the outside wall on a ledge protected by the overhang of the roof.

Wes got a little dizzy and off balance, and clobbered Carson on the back.

“Wes?” said Mrs. Crabbly. “You gotta be kidding me. Put that bag down, this minute. Are you okay, Carson?”

“He’s fine,” said Wes. “Put your lunch here next to mine, Cars. Between King Kong and the muskrat.”

Nancy raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s a sea otter, Weston. And you know it.”

Mrs. Crabbly invited them into the lab. “I’m going to begin with a short PowerPoint demo. Nancy? You’re Carson’s helper.”

Nancy sat down and tapped the chair beside her. Wes sat down on Carson’s other side. “I’m also your helper,” he told Carson. “Ask me anything.”

Chloe and Zoe stood quietly in the doorway.

“Girls? How can I help you?”

Zoe pointed to Chloe. “You ask.”

“No. You.”

“You.”

“You!”

“You.”

“You!”

“Girls! Please! I’ve got nineteen kids waiting for me. What can I do for you?”

“Okay. May we please be PowerPoint partners, Mrs. Crabbly?” Zoe asked politely.

“Again?”

The girls nodded.

Mrs. Crabbly sighed. “One of these days I’d like to see some independent work out of you gals. You two stick together like glue!”

“Can we?” said Chloe. She poked her bottom lip out at Mrs. Crabbly. “Please?”

Mrs. Crabbly threw up her hands, and the girls scurried over to the computer on the other side of Nancy’s and hopped onto the chair.

Mrs. Crabbly went to the demonstration computer. With her back to the class, she sat up straight in her chair, yanked on the hem of her skirt, placed her two feet on the floor, round toes of her shoes pointing straight ahead, and put both hands lightly on the keyboard. “Oops! Minor detail.” She stood up again.

A little bird popped its head out of her cuckoo-clock pin and squeaked eleven times in a tiny voice. More like a beep than a squeak or peep. Carson couldn’t see if its beak opened and its wings flapped or not.

“Machines work best when you turn them on,” Mrs. Crabbly told the class. She pushed the button on the DVD player and the TV above it, then sat back down.

There was a rattling sound.

“Is that you, Wes?” Mrs. Crabbly said without looking away from her screen. “Leave the seat adjuster alone.”

“Okay, everyone, so today we’ll continue on with your PowerPoint slide show that showcases you, you, the wonderful you!

“We’ll all add a favorite-foods slide. If you want to creep, crawl, fall, bounce, fly, or roll the letters in, just click on whatever it is that you want to animate and …”

She demonstrated.

“Anyone have a question?”

Wes began rolling his chair up to Mrs. Crabbly. “I do.”

“That chair is not a vehicle. Stop!”

Wes made loud brake noises and screeched to a stop. “Can I go to the boys’ room?”

“The pass is on my desk. No fooling around! I mean it!”

Mrs. Crabbly started to slowly proceed down the row of computers.

“I hate PowerPoint!” Sydney grumbled as Mrs. Crabbly approached her screen. “I hatehatehatehatehate it.”

Wes picked up the laminated hall pass strung on yarn and put it around his neck. He spied
Mrs. Crabbly’s missing gold pen, which had rolled under her chair.

Wes picked up the pen and held it like a sword as he jumped through the doorway and out onto the asphalt.

Carson could hear him outside, making his awesome imitation of a semi blasting its horn.

Mrs. Crabbly closed her eyes, shook her head, and sighed deeply.

“However, Mr. Noiseman out there does remind me that if you want to, you can explore adding sound effects to your presentation. Listen up.” She selected “frog croak” from the list of sounds on Sydney’s computer.

“I hate frogs,” grumbled Sydney.

“It’s just an example!”

“I hate examples of frogs croaking even more than I hate frogs!”

With Nancy’s help, Carson logged on, launched PowerPoint, and typed
Carson Blum
in the title box and
That’s Me
in the subtitle box.

“Watch,” she told him. Nancy dragged a mini spring roll onto a slide and typed
Dim Sum—Yum!
above it. Then she clicked on the words and bounced them in, to the loud sound of a drumroll.

“Go,” said Nancy.

She supervised as Carson typed
barbecue
in the search box. Carson chose a guy in a chef’s hat standing near a grill holding a barbecue fork.

“Nice,” said Nancy. “Now drag it on over.”

Carson dragged it over and typed
Barbecue + My Dad = Rad!

He flipped the words in, to applause: the loud sound of a crowd clapping.

Mrs. Crabbly glanced over at Carson’s screen. “Your dad is a good barbecuer? What’s his specialty?”

“Tri-tip.”

Carson heard rapid Fourth of July rocket and explosion sounds outside the building. Wes stumbled in, panting. “I had to defend myself out there!”

Mrs. Crabbly said, “Sit. Down. Be. Quiet. Weston. I’ve had enough of this.”

“I did! I had to launch a missile to fend off an air attack!”

Mrs. Crabbly heaved another sigh.

“I barely made it to the boys’ room and back alive! I crawled here on my elbows! Look how dirty my pants are.”

“Weston?” said Mrs. Crabbly. “Last warning.”

She continued down the row of computers.

“How do you spell ‘prosciutto’?” Eva asked her.

Weston sat down and looked over at Carson’s
screen. “Your dad has a Porsche, doesn’t he? I saw that old Porsche.”

Carson stayed quiet.

“Do you know my grandma is a demolition-derby driver?” Wes asked.

“Here we go again,” mumbled Cody.

“She drives a ’74 Buick LeSabre demolition-derby car,” continued Wes. “Which is better than a Porsche because it doesn’t matter if you smash it up. You’re supposed to!”

“Suresuresuresure,” Cody said under his breath.

“Go back and do a slide on family,” Nancy instructed Carson. “Then pets. And you’ll be caught up!”

Carson searched for a dad carrying a briefcase and a house with flowers in the garden. He typed
Grandma
and found a woman fishing from a folding chair, and
Grandpa
and found a man fishing from a folding chair.

Chloe leaned in front of Nancy’s computer screen and got really, really close to Carson and said behind her hand, “Have you ever heard the whopper Wes tells about his great-grandpa Daniel?”

“There’s an ant on the end of your pinkie,” Nancy
told her. “And if I were you, I’d get busy. Mrs. Crabbly is watching.”

Chloe softly blew the ant off at Carson and giggled.

Her breath smelled like peppermint, like mint chip ice cream, like he always got when he went out for ice cream with his grandma and grandpa. And when Carson caught the scent of that hint of mint, a wave of being homesick washed over him.

He looked at the screen, and the images got blurry; there were tears in his eyes. He blinked them away.

A birthday without Grandma and Grandpa?

What would that be like?

Carson was grateful that Nancy wasn’t watching him. She had turned her focus to Wes, trying to help him focus.

“We’re on favorite foods now, Wes. So get with the program, okay? Mrs. Crabbly is getting really irked at you, mister. No more noises! Use the sound effects on the computer. And why don’t you put on your headphones. Just a thought.”

Wes put on his headphones.

“They work best when you plug them in!” Nancy
added. She plugged them in for Wes. “Remember. Favorite food!”

“Huh?”

Wes took off his headphones.

“Huh?”

“Favorite food!” Nancy told him.

Wes clicked on the little speaker at the bottom of the screen and cranked up the volume.

There was a loud explosion and Wes tumbled off his chair. “Whoa!!!” he yelled.

Suddenly Mrs. Crabbly said, “Wes? You’re outta here.”

Wes stood up. “But my chili cheese dog blew up!”

Mrs. Crabbly stormed to her desk and jerked open the drawer. “Where’s my pen?” she muttered. “Never mind …” She took out a pencil and scribbled a note. “Take this to the principal’s office. I’ve had it.”

Mrs. Crabbly shook the note at Wes. “Take it.”

He stared at the ground.

She pointed to the door. “Out! And pick up your lunch when you go. Eat on the bench outside of the office.”

“But—”

“Outoutout!” cried Mrs. Crabbly.

“But …”

She began to count. “Ten … nine … eight—”

“But …”

“Seven …”

“But …”

“Six …”

“But …”

“Don’t but, but, but, but, but me, Mr. Walker! Out you go!”

Wes pointed at her large black clog. “But you’re standing on my shoelace!”

Mrs. Crabbly frowned. “Sorry. I’ll suspend the count while you tie it.”

“Will you start at ten again?”

“No. We’re at five. And double-knot that bow.”

Wes tied his shoelace and stood up.

“Ready?” asked Mrs. Crabbly.

“Yup.”

Starting the countdown: “Five …”

Wes s-l-o-w-l-y sauntered to the doorway, and paused on the threshold.

“Four …”

He casually rested his hands on both sides of the doorjamb and leaned out.

“Three …”

He gazed at the landscape.

“Twoooooo​oooooooo …”

Mrs. Crabbly marched to the phone and punched in the office number. She covered the receiver with her hand.

“One!”

Wes sprang out, twirled in the air, and landed on the asphalt. He glanced skyward, made a few karate chops in the air, and then disappeared from view.

Mrs. Crabbly crabbily spoke to the office manager: “I’ve had it. I’ve absolutely positively completely and totally had it with—