“Just sit your butt down in your chair and study,” he says all the time. “If you study, spelling is a can't-lose situation.”
So I walked out of my room and sat my butt down on a chair in the living room. My dad was in his favorite chair, watching a TV talk show where a bunch of grown-ups talk all at once. And they say kids have bad manners. His glasses were up on top of his head, which is where he puts them when he's not reading or doing a crossword puzzle. He always forgets they're up there. Lots of times, he walks around, looking for his glasses, and we have to tell him they're on top of his head. He needs glasses to find his glasses.
“Do you want me to quiz you?” my dad asked.
Should I impress him? Should I try one word?
No
. I decided to just let the words rest up in my head so they would come flying out of my mouth when I needed them in class.
“Thanks, Dad,” I answered, “but I've studied enough. I think I'll just get a good night's sleep.”
I kissed him goodnight. I always kiss him on the left cheek. It's dangerous to kiss him on the right oneâyou could get poked with a pencil. My dad keeps a pencil tucked behind his right ear. He keeps it there in case he suddenly remembers a word he's been trying to think of. If you're as much of a crossword-puzzle maniac as my dad is, you don't want to let something as important as a four-letter word for nostril get away from you.
I went in the bathroom to get ready for bed. As I brushed my teeth, I let myself imagine what it would feel like to win the spelling contest. Ms. Adolf would smile at me for the first time ever. I closed my eyes and I saw her handing me an
A
. Not a paper one either, but a solid gold one, like the statues movie stars get at the Oscars. My gold
A
would be so heavy that I'd have trouble carrying it back to my seat. I'd put it up on my desk so that everyone in my class or passing by our door could see it. Every kid in the class would congratulate me, even the class bully, Nick “The Tick” McKelty. Oh yeah, he'd smile at me with his big snaggly teeth and say, “I wish that was mine.” That would be sweet.
I opened my eyes, looked into the mirror, and imagined my classmates slapping me on the back. I smiled. My teeth were blue from my gel toothpaste.
“Thank you very much. Yes, I am very proud of myself. Very, very proud.”
As I said the word “proud,” a big wad of toothpaste flew out of my mouth and splattered all over the bathroom mirror. I started to wipe it off with my Mets washcloth. I looked around to see if anyone was watching and then scooped a little of the gel onto my finger. I used it to write on the mirror.
“R-h-y-t-h-m,” I wrote in sparkly blue letters. I stepped back and stared at the word. For once, it was spelled correctly. I did my wiggly victory dance.
I could hardly wait for the next day. I was going to get my first
A
.
CHAPTER 2
I MUST HAVE slept through my alarm, because the next morning I woke up ten minutes later than usual. The last thing I wanted was to be late for schoolâor “tardy,” as Ms. Adolf says. Ms. Adolf told us that tardy pupils don't get to participate in spelling contests. If you're even thirty seconds late to class, she writes a big, red
T
next to your name in her roll book. She once sent Ryan Shimozato to Principal Love's office for having two
T
's in a row, even though he had a sprained ankle from soccer and had to walk with crutches. I don't know if Ms. Adolf is the meanest fourth grade teacher that ever lived, but she's in the top three for sure.
I threw on some clothes, grabbed a waffle from the toaster, and flew out the door and into the elevator. I wished I had the time to soak the waffle in syrup, but I knew Ashley and Frankie were already waiting for me in front of our building. Frankie lives on the sixth floor and Ashley lives on the fourth. It's so great to have your best friends live in the same building. We don't have to schedule play dates like lots of other kids in our class. Whenever we want to get together, we just pick up the phone and say, “Meet me in the basement.” That's where we have our clubhouse, which is also the World Headquarters for Magik 3, our magic act.
Frankie is an amazing magician. Ashley and I are his assistants. Magik 3 has performed in public two times. The first time, at my grandpa's bowling league party, we were a smash hit. The second time was at Tyler King's fourth birthday party. His family lives across the hall from me. His mom had heard how good we were at the bowling party and she offered us fifteen dollars to do a magic show at Tyler's party. For our opening, Frankie said his special magic word, which is “Zengawii,” and made a quarter appear out of Tyler's ear. The problem was Tyler said he wanted a million more quarters. When Frankie tried to explain that he didn't have a million quarters, Tyler went bonkers and said he hated the zengawii man and wanted him to go back to his magic castle and never come back. He's still saying that to everyone he sees, so we're waiting until he calms down before we hand out our business cards in the building.
Frankie and Ashley were outside, hopping up and down to keep their feet warm. I shivered when I hit the cold air. It was the first week in November, and I could feel the New York winter just around the corner.
Unlike myself, Frankie and Ashley were dressed for the weather. Ashley was wearing a purple parka with a matching purple hat that she had decorated with rhinestones. She glues rhinestones onto all her clothesâeven her tennis shoes and the frames of her glasses. That's Ashley for you. Frankie had on a Yankees jacket.
“Did you have to wear that?” I asked him, like the loyal Mets fan that I am.
“Yes, I did, Zip,” he said, “because I dress like a winner.”
“Fine, then I'll let you borrow my Mets sweatshirt.”
“The Mets? Those losers?”
“Our day will come,” I shot back. “Mets fans are patient.”
“You two have to stop this right now or we'll never get to school,” said Ashley, who isn't a baseball fan at all. Believe it or not, she watches professional Ping-Pong.
I don't know how much you know about baseball, so let me just tell you this right now. If you live in New York and like baseball, you're either a Mets fan or a Yankees fan. You can't be both. Mets fans like the underdog, the team that comes from behind. Yankees fans go for the easy win. But that's just my opinion. It says a lot about my friendship with Frankie that we can be such good friends even though we're on different sides of the fence, baseball-wise.
“Hank, you're going to be cold,” said Frankie's father, Dr. Townsend, who was walking us to school. Dr. Townsend isn't the kind of doctor you go to when you have a sore throat. He's a doctor of African-American studies, which is what he teaches at Columbia University. “Where's your jacket?”
“Oops,” I said. “I'll be right back.”
My father always says, “What you don't have in your mind you have in your feet,” meaning I had to go all the way back upstairs to get my jacket. There was no time to wait for the elevator, so I ran up the ten flights to our apartment. I dashed inside and grabbed for my jacket, but it wasn't in the closet where I had left itâor at least, where I thought I had left it.
“Mom, have you seen my green jacket?” I hollered. I was breathing hard from the run upstairs.
My dad came out of the bedroom in his T-shirt and boxer shorts, which is not really something you want to see first thing in the morning. Actually, it's not something you want to see any time of the day.
“Your mother already left,” he said. “She had to take Emily to a dental appointment.”
Now, ordinarily, I would've asked something like, “Why, were her fangs bothering her?” But Frankie is always telling me about good karma. He got that from his mom, who is big believer in karma. Basically, karma means that if you put out something good, you get something good back. If you put out something rotten, it comes back and bites you in the tush.
Since I really, really wanted to win the spelling contest, I figured this was no day to take any chances with my karma, so I decided to hold off on the fangs remark.
Instead, I said to my dad, “Poor Emily. I sure hope the dentist doesn't do anything that's going to hurt her.” Boy, if that didn't guarantee me some excellent karma, I don't know what would.
My dad was looking around for my jacket, grumbling about how I never put anything where it belongs.
“There it is,” I said, pointing to our dachshund, Cheerio. Cheerio was lying on the couch, looking so cute all curled up on my jacket. I gently pulled it out from under him.
“Don't go nuts on me, boy” I whispered. “I'm in a hurry.”
Cheerio went nuts anyway. He jumped off the couch and started to spin around in a circle. When he does that, which is pretty often, he looks like a big, furry cheerio, which is how he got his name. Our vet says his spinning thing is a reaction to stress. I don't know what he's got to be stressed about. I mean, all he has to do is eat and pee. No one's asking him to spell
receive
or
rhythm
.
I put on my jacket and ran downstairs. Frankie was looking at his watch.
“We thought maybe you went upstairs and went back to bed, didn't we Ashweena?” he said. Frankie has nicknames for everyone. He calls his dad “Double T,” because his name is Thomas Townsend.
“We better get a move on. We don't want to be tardy, do we?” Ashley asked, doing a pretty good imitation of Ms. Adolf.
It's two blocks from our building to our school. We had to walk really fast to get to there on time. Luckily, we arrived just before the bell rang. We said good-bye to Dr. Townsend, raced upstairs, and slid into our seats just as Ms. Adolf was closing our classroom door.
Ms. Adolf was wearing a gray skirt and blouse, just like she had worn the day before and the day before that and every day since school started. I guess she figures gray looks good on her because it matches her gray face. You should see her hairdo. It looks like she has a stack of hairy gray doughnuts piled up on top of her head. I'm sorry if this grosses you out, but I have to tell it like I see it.
The other teachers on our floor still had their Halloween decorations up, but not our class. In fact, Ms. Adolf had never put any up in the first place. She thinks Halloween is a silly holiday, because all you do is dress up and eat candy and have fun. I bet her favorite holiday to celebrate is the Day of the Dead.
Instead of ghosts and goblins and pumpkins, the walls of our class are decorated with artwork from our states project. We each picked a state and outlined it in the color of the product it was most famous for. For example, Florida is orange because of its orange groves, and Vermont is brown because of its maple syrup. I had picked Rhode Island because I like the shape of it. I outlined it in red for the red hen, which is the state bird. Rhode Island is the smallest state, and its motto is “Hope.” If people had mottos, I think I'd pick “Hope” for mine. I sure do hope a lot. In fact, I was hoping that I would win the spelling contest that morning.
“Now, pupils, today is our spelling contest,” Ms. Adolf said, “and we're all going to have great fun. I know I am.”
Call me crazy, but I don't know how anyone can think spelling is even
slightly
fun, let alone
great
fun. Rollercoasters are fun. Riding bikes in the park is fun. Baseball games are fun. But spelling is definitely not fun, unless you're the type of person who enjoys getting shots at the doctor. Then you'd probably think spelling is a barrel of laughs.
“Here are the rules,” said Ms. Adolf. “Pupils will be asked to spell fifteen words, the ones I assigned to each of you at the beginning of the week. Those pupils who get all the words on their list correct may participate in the final round, which covers all the words on all lists. As soon as you miss a word in this round, you must sit down. The last pupil standing will be the winner and will receive an
A
on his or her report card. Are there any questions?”
Luke Whitman put his hand up.
“Can I go to the nurse's office and lie down?” he asked. “I feel sick.” Luke Whitman asks if he can go to the nurse's office every single day, and Ms. Adolf's answer is always the same.
“Absolutely not,” said Ms. Adolf. “Now, who wants to go first in today's spelling contest?”
Nick McKelty put his thick arm in the air and waved it around like he had a gigantic bathroom emergency.
“I'll go first!” he grunted. “I am totally, two hundred percent prepared.”
He always says things like that. He claims his parents are best friends with the mayor of New York, or he tells you he got the highest math score ever recorded in the western hemisphere. We call it The McKelty Factorâtruth times a hundred.
Even though Nick the Tick was acting like a total jerk, secretly I was glad he put his hand up. At least it meant that Ms. Adolf wasn't going to call on me. Usually she calls on me first. I think it makes her happy when I don't have the right answer, no matter what the subject.
As McKelty got up to go to the front of the classroom, he walked close enough to me that I got a mega-whiff of his bad, bad breath. He must have eaten an entire raw onion for breakfast, because his breath smelled like a rhinoceros with tooth decay. Not that I know what a rhinoceros with tooth decay smells like, but I'll bet it's pretty foul.
“Hey, girls,” McKelty said to Frankie and me as he walked by. “Ready to see a spelling master at work?”
“Sure, Nick, ” Frankie whispered. “Who you got in mind?”
I laughed, and Ms. Adolf shot me a wicked look.
“Since you seem to find this so funny, Henry, you'll go next,” she said.