She nodded her head, and I said in a low voice, “Would you check your list to see if I'm supposed to be here? My name's Kyle Rideau.”
Ms. Cannon froze for a second before looking down at a computer printout.
“Your name's here,” she said, and I groaned.
Her eyes narrowed. “Is that a problem?” she asked. “Because if it is, let's get it taken care of right now. Education is very important to me. I'm working on a Ph.D., and I expect all my students to be as committed to their studies as I am to mine. So if you think you're going to want out of here, let me write you a pass to the guidance office before we waste another minute of each other's time.”
I promised myself I would get my hello problem under control and never use the word again. Then I looked over my shoulder at Chelsea. I decided I'd skip the trip to the guidance office.
“I'm fine,” I said to Ms. Cannon. “I was just checking. Nice outfit you have on,” I added as I backed away.
I slunk off to an empty desk. It just happened to be behind Bradley Ryder. Bradley is smart, but he's not weird about it the way Melissa and some of the other kids in accelerated classes are. He doesn't act as if he thinks he's on some kind of mission from God to make the world a better place or find a cure for cancer or something just because he's always read above grade level. That's why people don't hate him even though he's in all kinds of accelerated classes, plays first trumpet in the band and first base in baseball, got the best part in the Drama Club's play last year, and goes skiing over winter vacation with his family instead of sitting around waiting for his mom to get home with the car. He never even had to wear braces, and you just know he's never going to have acne.
He turned around to me and whispered, “Bet she assigns a lot of homework.”
Brad is also always right. In addition to covering our social studies textbook, Ms. Cannon told us to read the first section of chapter one and prepare to discuss the review questions. We had to do three pages in our SSASie preparation packets for Thursday, and she warned us that on Friday we would be discussing current events, so we should start watching the news for something to talk about.
On my way to my next class, I thought about all the hours I'd put in on social studies projects back in sixth grade and wondered if seventh grade social studies could be that much worse. Of course it could. Things can always be worse.
With my mind occupied like that, it took me a while to notice that a lot of the kids from social studies were walking along with me to English. Just as I realized that I must have accelerated English with them again this year, I heard “Hellooo, Kyle!” being shouted at me from somewhere in the crowded hallway. I pretended I didn't hear it and followed Melissa and Chelsea into our next classroom.
But Jake had seen where I was going.
“Hellooo, Kyle,” he repeated from the doorway. The words roared out of him as if he were using a microphone and speaker.
He didn't actually come into the room, though. He held on to the door casing with each hand and leaned into the room as if there were some kind of force field keeping him from entering honor roll airspace.
Did this mean that in an accelerated class I was safe from him?
“Hel-hello,” I said, to make sure I didn't tick him off and because I really couldn't help myself.
“What are you doing in here with these snots?” he asked.
What could I say that would satisfy him but not get the accelerated kids on my case? They had to notice he was there talking to me.
Suddenly a man in a dark dress shirt and tie marched to the back of the classroom and closed the door in Jake's face, which took care of the problem for me. Jake pounded on the door from the outside a couple of times and finally gave up and moved on.
Mr. Borden, my new English teacher, turned around and looked at me. His hair was a little too long, and he had to toss his head so his bangs wouldn't hang in his eyes. “A friend of yours?” he asked.
“Ah . . .”
The room was totally quiet. All the other students were looking at me, as if they'd been wondering about that, too.
“He's more like a stalker,” I explained.
A couple of boys behind me laughed.
Mr. Borden stared at me. Then all of a sudden he said, “Stalking is not funny,” and marched back to his desk before I had a chance to say something like “Tell me about it!” or “Was I laughing?”
For homework we had to cover our English textbook and do three pages of vocabulary words. We also had to write an essay for Friday. The topic was “Are we alone?” Mr. Borden said he had gotten it off an old SSASie test and that it should give us practice writing the kinds of boring things the people who score those tests like.
My classmates disappeared at the end of the period, probably for another accelerated class. I was left to face my lunch section by myself.
Lunch on the first day of school is worse than gym because gym is supposed to be an ordeal but lunch isn't. You're supposed to enjoy it. But there are three lunch sections, and on the first day of school you have to walk into the cafeteria not knowing who has been assigned to yours. Will your friends be there? Will you be able to eat with them? Will you have to sit by yourself at the end of a table pretending to read a book or doing homework while everyone around you
knows
that you're really just putting on a show for them?
I got into line. Water freezes faster than that lunch line moved, which meant I had lots of time to worry about where I would actually eat. I pulled the first two things I could find that wouldn't damage my braces onto my tray, paid for them, and started looking for a table.
The cafeteria was crawling with desperate kids trying to find people to eat with. I passed the first row of tables. No one I knew. I passed the second row of tables. Full of new sixth-graders.
When I got to the third row, I noticed that there was a table way at the back of the room with only three people. One of them was Jake Rogers. He was sitting with a couple of eighth-gradersâBrian Coxmore, who is sixteen years old and still in eighth grade, and Kenny Ferris, whose older brother is in jail. Kenny is expected to follow him there soon.
I had to find a table before I got back to them. I had to find a table before Jake saw me.
I moved closer and closer to the point where Jake's Kyle Radar would pick me up. Once he sucked me into eating lunch with him, my future would be crystal clear. No one would ever believe that I wasn't one of Jake Rogers's badass friends. My hands were sweating so badly, I could feel my Styrofoam tray dissolving from the moisture. My head swung from side to side as I scanned the cafeteria, looking for a friendly face near a free chair. Or even just a free chair.
I was thinking that it would be a perfect time for a fire drill when I saw Luke. And there, at the end of his table, was an empty chair. I held my breath while I slid between seats and kept my face turned away from Jake, just in case he tried to signal to me. I didn't ask if the free seat was taken, I didn't wait to be invited, I just dumped my tray on the table and collapsed onto the chair.
“You guys have got to let me sit here,” I pleaded. “Otherwise I'm going to get stuck sitting with Jake and those guys he hangs out with. He's already in two of my classes, and he follows me in the hall. I can't get away from him.”
“Oh, Kyle, man, having Jake like you is almost as bad as having him
not
like you,” Luke said, sounding pretty sympathetic when you consider that he'd had to sit with Jake in art because of me.
“It's worse,” I insisted. “At least if Jake pounds on you on your way to the buses after school, you might get some pity. Nobody pities Jake's friends.”
“Most people are afraid of Jake's friends,” a guy named Ted added.
I looked around the table. In addition to Luke and Ted, who I recognized from my two months in Boy Scouts, there was someone who'd been in a study hall with me last year, plus two guys I didn't know. None of them acted as if they were thrilled to see me, but they didn't seem to think I was going to grab a plastic knife off someone's tray and use it on them, either.
“Jake has already been sent to the office today. He's in my English class,” Luke explained. “Mrs. Hooker was walking up the aisle, and Jake waits until she's right next to him and then he . . . and then he . . . farts! It sounded just like a dog howling! A wolf! Mrs. Hooker turns to him with this really mad look on her face, and she starts to say something, but Jake holds up his hands and says, âIt's okay, Mrs. Hooker. I'll take the blame for you. I don't mind.' So she sends him to the principal!”
I was laughing around my french fries, a safe item for me to eat because I can stick them way back and chew them where they won't make a disgusting mess all over the front of my braces.
“What do you think he said when Mr. Alldredge asked why Hooker sent him there?” Luke gasped, hardly able to talk, he was laughing so hard. “She farted?”
“Remember when we were kids and we took swimming lessons with Jake and he farted in the pool?” I asked.
“There's a memory that definitely makes me glad I decided not to take swimming lessons this year,” Luke said.
Swimming lessons was another one of the things, like Boy Scouts, that I quit last year because of homework.
“I'm taking taekwondo with Ted instead,” Luke announced, nodding at Ted, who was sitting across from me.
Those french fries I'd been eating suddenly felt as if they'd re-formed into a solid potato down under my ribs. Luke was taking taekwondo with Ted. Luke used to do things with me. Seeing that you've been replaced by someone else is the strangest feeling. It's like when people in movies find out they have a clone and realize that there's nothing special about them anymore because someone else can be them as well as they can.
“How can you start taking taekwondo in seventh grade?” I asked him, hoping I didn't sound upset. “You can't start any sport in seventh grade. It's too late. You have to already know how to play so you'll be good enough to make the middle school teams.”
“Trotts doesn't have any martial arts teams. We started taking taekwondo at the taekwondo school in the next town this past July,” Ted said. “It doesn't matter how old you are when you start.You can even start when you're an adult.The guy who runs the school gives new students a private lesson to show them kicks and stuff, and then you start training in classes with other people on your level. And guess what? Mr. Goldman says we're big enough and strong enough to train with adults.”
“We thought taekwondo would be a cool thing to do while we're waiting for the next Master Lee movie to come out in November. Besides, Holly Cappa takes taekwondo,” Luke confidedâto everyone at the table. “If we're in class together, it will be like going out on a date.”
Ted rolled his eyes. “Holly Cappa is a high green belt. She won't even practice with us because we're three ranks below her. She's always trying to hang around Chelsea and this high-school girl who are both red belts.”
“Chelsea Donahue?” I squeaked casually.
“Yeah. She's been taking taekwondo for a while. She and Holly started when they were little and moved up to the adult classes when they were big enough. That's why they're so far ahead of us,” Luke explained.
“How often do you have to go to class?” I asked.
“Two or three times a week,” Ted said.
“Two or three times a week!” I repeated. “And you still go to Boy Scouts, too? How do you do all that and get your homework done?”
The bell rang and Luke got up to carry his tray to the trash can. “We don't have that much. Besides, there are taekwondo classes every night and on Saturday morning. You just go to the ones you can get to.”
But I can't get to anything. And if I could get to things, who would I go with? Oh, yeah. That's right.
Nobody!
The rest of us stood up. Right at that moment, someone grabbed my arm. I turned around and saw Jake.
He signaled to his two buddies. “We're off to the bathroom to have a smoke. You wanna come?”
It was the first invitation I'd had since before I started sixth grade.
“I have to go to my locker before my next class,” I said.
“You wussing out?” Jake asked, looking as if he might be beginning to suspect that I was trying to avoid him.
“No. No,” I assured him. “Maybe another time.”
My fifth-period class was health and living, and Mrs. Haag from my advisory was my teacher. Health and living isn't included in State Student Assessment Surveys, so all we had to do for homework was have our parents sign a form stating that it was okay for us to watch sex education videos. This happens every year. My mother not only thinks it's okay for me to watch sex ed videos, she insists that I see them.
I'm not sure what happened during sixth period because none of it was in English. Everyone said
hola
to the teacher because she made us, so for the first time all day I wasn't the only one sounding like a reject. I had to guess that our homework was to cover our textbook because she gave us the assignment in Spanish.
You'd think I'd look forward to seventh period, it being the last one of the day. But seventh period was going to be science. Science is always disappointing because it's never like the stuff you see in science fiction shows.
When I got to science class, Beth and Jamie were already there. They were all excited because they hadn't been together since lunch. They had spent the last two periods writing in notebooks they were trading so both girls could read all about what each of them had to say during the last hour and fifty-three minutes of their lives. Not much would be my guess.