Pickle (2 page)

I could have stayed there all night, throwing them in one by one, but I had to get back home before my dad freaked out. I poured the rest of the bags through the opening, and then it was done. I shut the window so everyone would be more confused about where the balls came from, but the smell sticking to my hands was already grossing me out. I didn't want to sit in a class that smelled like that tomorrow, so I reopened it. I couldn't see into the classroom very well, but it looked like the balls were pretty deep. I just stood there taking it in until I heard footsteps. I ducked into the bushes and Leo and Hector walked by. I worried that they had heard me giggling to myself and would investigate, but they didn't. I stayed hidden until I heard the gym door slam and the night was quiet again.

 

3

In the Morning

I woke up about ten times that night to check the clock. It felt like the balls were bouncing around in my stomach, but in a good way. I got dressed before my mom finished making her morning coffee and went downstairs to grab Hector. He sat waiting for me in the hall outside of his apartment, with his breakfast on a paper towel in his lap. Hector had been on the dried fruit and protein bar train for a while. He held a brown rectangle out to me.

“It's a date bar. My grandma made them. Want one?” he said. I took half of one and jogged down the sidewalk. “Dude, why are you going so fast? We're going to be early.”

“I'm just in a good mood,” I said.

“I was in a good mood until I tasted this date bar. Yech.” He shook his head. I nibbled the corner off of mine. It tasted like peas, even though I couldn't see any green stuff in there. We stopped at the bodega for
pan dulce
and orange juice to wash the taste out of our mouths.

“Come on, Hector!” I held the door open, but he'd stopped to check the baseball scores in the paper.

“What's the hurry?”

“I just don't want to be late,” I said. He looked at me like I was crazy, but he put the paper down and followed me out. I tried not to walk too fast, but it was hard.

Ms. Ruiz keeps the classroom locked, and she doesn't come to open the door until the bell rings. I bounced from foot to foot while we waited in the hall and Hector talked about some shark show he'd seen on TV. I spotted Ms. Ruiz down the hall. She seemed to be dragging her feet even more than usual. There are posters up all over our room saying things like “Excellence Through Determination!” with marathon runners and rock climbers, but the posters are the only enthusiastic thing I have ever seen about Ms. Ruiz. I could have crawled to the classroom faster than she walked.

The bell rang just as she finally stopped in front of the classroom door. It's like she timed it precisely so she wouldn't have to get there a second too soon. She opened the door, and a couple of the people closest to the front of the crowd gasped. Everybody got quiet, beholding the awesomeness. The balls sat in a pile three feet high under the windows. They were spread across the floor, under desks, all the way to the other wall. The open windows hadn't done much for the stench.

“It's like one of those ball crawls!” Hector said. I raised my eyebrows and made my eyes big, which hopefully looked like surprise. Then everybody was pushing into the room at once and the smell didn't stop anybody from diving in. We jumped around like a bunch of sugared-up four-year-olds. A few kids ran around kicking balls. Frank Lenny grabbed a couple of balls and started juggling.

Finn yelled, “Ball fight!” And then it got really crazy. Balls were flying everywhere. Maggie Rubio did a belly flop and hit her head on the math center. Bean Lee pulled her camera out and started filming a video. I whacked Hector in the stomach with a dented green ball.

“Cut it out! That hurt,” he said. He rubbed his stomach with one hand and threw a ball at Bean Lee with the other. I know I didn't hit him that hard, but I apologized anyway. I definitely did not hit him as hard as he hit me in the eye a minute later. He didn't say he was sorry, he just laughed.

Ms. Ruiz called someone on the phone, and I tried to read her lips to see if it was Principal Lebonsky. I'd passed her in the hall on the way into class, and she did not look particularly happy. Not that she ever did. Even when she was smiling it was more like she was just showing her teeth. Frank grabbed three more balls and tried to juggle five at once. Ms. Ruiz hung up and yelled, “Everybody just calm down.” She watched Oliver Swanson lie down on his stomach and pretend to swim through the balls across the room. Then she gave up and sat down at her desk. I kind of wanted her to freak out a little bit more, but I guess freaking out is not her style. A ball landed smack in her coffee and she pulled it out and chucked it back onto the floor. Then she yawned and took a drink. Yuck.

I ducked a flying red ball and kept an eye on the door. I was waiting for Principal Lebonsky, but Rick the janitor opened it. Rick came in, muttered something that sounded like “Sweet cheeses,” and left. He came back with a box of trash bags and handed one to each kid without a word.

“Come on, man! Just let us have a few more minutes,” Oliver said.

“Why don't we ask Principal Lebonsky if
she
thinks you should have a couple more minutes,” Rick said. We started scooping, even though I think he was bluffing. He didn't want to talk to her any more than anybody else. I've seen the look on his face after she's told him to clean the toilets.

Even scooping up the balls was fun. Everybody got into the cleaning. Except Maggie. She played the head-injury card and sat down at her desk while the rest of us scooped. Ms. Ruiz said she had to go back to the teacher's lounge for a few minutes. Kids tried to throw balls into other kids' bags across the room until Rick said to cut it out.

“Did you do this?” I asked everyone, just in case anyone suspected that it had been me. I made a let-me-in-on-the-joke face. The other kids wanted to know how the balls got there, but nobody had a clue. By the time Ms. Ruiz got back with a new mug of coffee, the leading theory was that some seventh- or eighth-grade criminal mastermind was behind the whole thing. I just nodded and tried to keep all the happy I was feeling on the inside.

We set the bags of balls out in the hallway for Rick, and Ms. Ruiz started a lecture on Greek myths. I drew balls and stars in my notebook while she wrote names of Greek gods and goddesses on the whiteboard. Then I passed Hector a note.

THAT WAS AWESOME!!!

He nodded and tucked the paper into his notebook. Then he got it back out and scribbled something down on it.

I wonder what's going to happen next.

 

4

Character Building

“We should try something like that,” I said when Hector and I were alone on the way home after school.

“Like what?”

“The balls. Something fun.” Hector picked up a crumpled soda can and threw it into a trash can fifteen feet ahead of us. It didn't even touch the side. Usually when he makes a great shot, he'll make a whoop, or a fist pump or something. He just put his hands in his pockets and kept walking.

“Nah. I can't.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because, dude. Whoever put the balls in there is going to get into trouble. My grandma heard about it from Rick. She asked if I knew who started it, and if I ‘participated in the foolery.'”

Hector made quote marks with his fingers, but I would have already guessed that those were Principal Lebonsky's words, and not his.

“What did you tell her?”

“I said I didn't know who put them there, and I didn't throw any.”

“What does she think, you just sat there at your desk taking notes while everybody else goofed off?”

“I don't know. Whatever. If I told her I'd been playing around she would have given me a character card.”

It sounds like something from a game, but it's not. Principal Lebonsky gives Hector a yellow index card with an inspirational quote anytime she doesn't like something he did. Sometimes the quotes are from Thomas Jefferson and people like that, but most of the time it's stuff she made up. He has to tack them to his bedroom door. Once he gets up to five, bad things happen. Last time, she took his skateboard for two weeks. He tried to tell her that skateboarding is exercise, but she doesn't think it counts.

The worst thing is nothing good happens if he doesn't get cards. He just has to wait until he messes up somehow, and more cards come.

“Those cards are dumber than dog sweaters,” I said.

“Yeah,” was all Hector said.

“Maybe I'll do something. Like, on my own. Then you wouldn't get into any trouble, but it would still be fun.”

“Sure,” he said, but his eyebrows were all squished together. I wondered if he would tell on me and get me busted. He caught me looking sideways at him. “I'm not going to rat you out.” He looked offended, like he'd read my mind, and I felt like a lowly worm. Then he added, “I mean, I probably won't.” The guilt left and I shoved him.

“Dude! You do
not
know what she's like,” Hector said. He was wrong—I did. It was bad enough before, when she was just my friend's grandma in the building, but since we started at Fountain Point, she's our principal, too. Still, unless she slipped truth serum into Hector's buckwheat spaghetti or something, he could try a little harder to keep a lid on it. I didn't talk to him the rest of the way to my parents' restaurant.

“I wouldn't, you know. Tell. If you wanted to do something like the balls,” he said. “I know you're still mad about the last time.” His voice was real low, as if his grandma trailed us down the sidewalk.

We were both thinking about The Graffiti Incident.

Last summer, right before school started, someone wrote “Principal Doodyhead Lives Here” with some really bad stick figures in fat, permanent marker all over the back door of our building. Hector told his grandma about it. Mistake #1. She asked Hector if he did it. She'd put him on a diet the week before, so he might have been my first guess, too. He swore he didn't, so she kept questioning. She asked if I did it. Hector said no at first, he swears, but she said if he didn't start telling the truth he'd be eating salad for a month. Green stuff is his kryptonite.

He told her we'd done it together. Don't ask me why, I guess he just panicked. He knew I didn't do it. As if we would write something so dopey on our own building! Principal Lebonsky made us spend the afternoon painting the door. AND she gave us lunchtime detention for our whole first week of middle school, even though we didn't get in trouble there. It made us look like pretty tough sixth graders, but still. I used to like her. I used to call her Betty. Now, even though she's my best friend's grandma, I call her Principal Lebonsky. She hasn't asked me to stop.

I could tell you about a few other times when Hector spilled his guts. Like when he ratted Bean out for sticking gum under the table at the beginning of the year. But The Graffiti Incident was the big whammy. I never really thought that Hector could've done it, and I'm pretty sure he knows me well enough to know that I didn't do it. But, that didn't stop him from telling his grandma that I did. Hector sold me out for something I didn't even do the second his grandma put the squeeze on him. And, yeah, I'm still mad about it.

“I know you wouldn't tell, Hector. Thanks.” I felt, like, eighty-seven percent sure. “I've gotta go to work.”

We said goodbye, and I went into Lupe's and worked until closing because one of the busboys didn't show up.

 

5

The Stink of Room 121

After a couple of days, the whole school seemed to be waiting to see what might happen next. I went online to check out the free classifieds for inspiration, but nothing jumped out at me. This time it was mostly old carpet that somebody's cat peed on and stuff. There's nothing funny about that, even with the stink factor.