Skinnybones (2 page)

Mom’s eyes widened. “Oh, Alex, no! Those things will swell up in her stomach and make her sick! She’s not supposed to have too many!”

She looked seriously worried.

I would have been seriously worried too. But just then Fluffy walked over to where I was standing, and she threw up on my shoe.

It was the most disgusting thing that ever happened to me.

My mother busted out laughing.

“Not funny!” I yelled.

But Mom couldn’t help herself. She left the room all doubled over. I’m not kidding. For a mother, she can act extremely immature at times.

Anyway, as it turned out, she was laughing so hard, she forgot to punish me for lying.

I knew getting her to laugh would work.

It’s just too bad I couldn’t have done it without getting hurled on.

The first time I ever remember making people laugh was in kindergarten. Each morning, the teacher would ask if anyone had anything special for Show and Tell.

At first I was pretty shy about it. I would just sit there quietly at my desk and keep my mouth shut. But there were lots of kids who didn’t.

Like there was this one kid who we called Weird Peter Donnelly. Every single day, when the teacher asked if anyone had anything for Show and Tell, Weird Peter Donnelly would raise his hand.

Mostly, he brought in his hobbies. Weird Peter had the stupidest hobbies in the whole world. One of them was collecting different-colored sweater fuzz. Scary, right?

One day he brought his fuzz collection to school. He kept it in a shoe box. When he passed it around, I felt stupid just looking at it.

Then all of a sudden, I got this funny idea. Just as I was about to pass the box to the next person, I pretended that I was going to sneeze.

“AH … AH … AH … AHCHOO!”

I sneezed right smack in the middle of Weird Peter Donnelly’s sweater fuzz! Fuzz balls went flying everywhere!

The whole class went nuts laughing.

Weird Peter freaked out. He ran over to my desk and began gathering up fuzz and putting it back in his box.

The teacher told me to help him, but I was laughing too hard to get out of my chair. I had to admit, making people laugh was a lot more fun than sitting quietly at my desk.

From then on, I began to use Show and Tell to tell the class funny things that had happened to me. When I ran out of true things to tell, I started making them up.

One time I told the class that my father was Mr. Potato Head. I don’t know what made me say such a stupid thing. It just came out.

The teacher made me sit down. She said that there was a big difference between Show and Tell
and Show and Blatantly-Lie-Right-to-Our-Faces.

Personally, I don’t think teachers like it when their students are funnier than they are. So far I’ve been funnier than every teacher I’ve ever had, and not one of them has liked me. My goal in life is to try and find a teacher who appreciates my sense of humor.

Last year—in fifth grade—I had a teacher named Miss Henderson. Out of all the teachers I’ve ever had, Miss Henderson is the one who disliked me the most.

It makes sense, though. In fifth grade, I was the funniest I’ve ever been.

On the very first day of school, I knew we weren’t going to get along. Miss Henderson made everyone stand up next to their desk and introduce themselves to the class. You had to say your name, where you were born, and something about your family. How lame is that?

Allison Martin went first. She said, “My name is Allison Martin. I was born right here in Phoenix, and I have two brothers.”

Oooh … let me write that down
, I thought to myself.

Then Brenda Ferguson stood up. “My name is Brenda Ferguson. I was born in California, and I have a baby sister.”

And blah, blah, blah
, I thought.

This had to be the most boring first day of school I’d ever had. After about six kids had spoken, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I raised my hand.

“Yes?” asked Miss Henderson. “You there, in the yellow shirt.”

I looked down at my shirt. Yup. That was me, all right.

“Miss Henderson? I was just thinking … maybe we should try to tell something a little more interesting about ourselves, instead of just the usual stuff,” I said.

Miss Henderson considered it a second. Then she gave me a little smile.

“Okay,” she said, “why don’t you start us off? Tell us who you are and something interesting about yourself.”

Wow!
I thought.
Maybe for once, I’ve got a teacher who is actually going to appreciate me
.

“Okay. I’m Alex Frankovitch,” I said. “I brought a sandwich for lunch today. And I’d just like everyone to know that my bologna has a first name … it’s O-s-c-a-r.”

The whole class cracked up at once. Miss Henderson had to beat on her desk with a ruler to quiet everyone down. I almost felt sorry for her.

That was before she came over to my desk, bent
down next to my ear, and whispered, “I’ve got your number, funny boy.”

As soon as she got the class under control, we started all over with the same boring stuff we had been doing before.

After about an hour, we were almost finished. That’s when I first saw T.J. Stoner. He was sitting all the way in the back of the room, so he was the last person to talk about himself.

He stood up real slow and cool. “My name is T.J. Stoner,” he said. “I just moved here from San Diego, and I have an older brother who plays baseball for the Atlanta Braves.”

Then he sat back down just as slow and cool as when he’d stood up.

I knew right away I wasn’t going to like old T.J. Stoner.

Miss Henderson did, though. She was totally impressed.

“Really, T.J.?” she gushed. “Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about him?”

T.J. stood up again. “Well, his name’s Matt Stoner and this is his second year in the majors. He’s a pinch-hitter,” he added.

“How exciting!” said Miss Henderson. “Do you play baseball, too, T.J.?”

He nodded. “I’m a pitcher. Last year my team
won the California State Championship, and I was voted the Most Valuable Player.”

By this time I was ready to barf.

I raised my hand again and waved it all over the place.

You could tell that Miss Henderson didn’t want to call on me, but I was pretty hard to ignore.

“Okay, Alex. What?” she asked, annoyed.

“Well, I just thought that the class might like to know that I play baseball, too,” I said.

Miss Henderson stared. “So?”

“So last season, I played right field,” I told her. “I didn’t get voted MVP. But I
did
come in second in the swimsuit competition.”

That did it. The whole class went crazy again. Brenda Ferguson laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

Two people didn’t laugh at all, though.

One was T.J. Stoner.

The other one was Miss Henderson.

I sat down and shut up.

I may be funny. But I’m not totally stupid.

Sometimes I think it would be fun to be a school principal. Especially in the summer. In the summer, a school principal spends his time composing lists of all the kids in the school who hate each other. Then he makes sure they end up in the same class together.

My principal really must have had a good laugh when he put T.J. and me together again this year. Ever since my music teacher sent me to the office for getting my head caught in a tuba, my principal hasn’t seemed to like me much.

When I first discovered the news that T.J. was in my class, I went straight to my mother. I was hoping that she would call the school and have me switched.

But no such luck. All Mom did was tell me I
should try to
ignore
him. Seriously. She’s always giving me great advice like that. Then she hands me my lunch, shoves me out the door, and her problems are over for the day.
Mine
are just beginning.

Last year, T.J. Stoner grew to be the biggest kid in the whole fifth grade. When I began to notice how gigantic he was getting, I decided it might not be a bad idea to try to get on his good side. But T.J. didn’t seem too interested. When I asked if he wanted to be friends, I believe his exact words were, “Get out of my face, toad-sucker.”

“Would that be a
no
?” I asked.

T.J. grabbed me by the shoulders.

“That would be an
I hate your slimy guts, Frankovitch
,” he said.

I smiled. “Oh, come on, T.J. Can’t our slimy guts be friends?” I asked.

T.J. didn’t think that was quite as funny as I did. I could tell by the way he pushed me down and pinned my face under his foot.

“You think you’re such a funny guy, don’t you, you skinny little bag of bones?” he said.

It’s too bad my mother wasn’t there. Maybe she could have told me how to ignore someone’s Nike in your mouth.

I think the worst thing about being in the same room
with T.J. is having him in my P.E. class. I hate to admit it, but he really
is
a great athlete. For a kid, T.J. Stoner is the best ballplayer I’ve ever seen.

There’s only one sport that I’m better at than T.J.

It’s square dancing.

I figure I can count square dancing as a sport because we do it in P.E. You ought to see me. I can do-si-do better than any other kid in the whole school.

One time I asked the P.E. teacher, Mr. McGuinsky, if he had ever thought about starting a school square dancing team. I told him that if he did, I would volunteer to be the team captain.

Mr. McGuinsky thought I was being a smart aleck. He told me to sit my butt down and shut up. In case you never noticed, P.E. teachers enjoy saying “butt” a lot.

Anyway, I do play other sports besides square dancing. Like T.J., I’ve played Little League baseball for six years now. But to tell you the truth, I’m not exactly what you’d call a real good athlete. Actually, I’m not even real okay. Basically, what I’m trying to say here is, I stink.

I’ve got proof, too. Every single year that I’ve played Little League, I’ve received the trophy for Most Improved Player.

Now, at first, you might think that means I sound
pretty good … which is what
I
used to think, too. But over the past six years, I’ve noticed that none of the really
outstanding
players ever gets the Most Improved Player award. And the reason is simple. The outstanding players are already so outstanding they can’t
improve
much. Let’s face it, the only players on a team who can improve are the ones who reek to begin with.

Last year, at the end of baseball season, I tried to explain how I felt to my father. We were sitting together at the Little League awards ceremony, and the announcer was calling the names of all the players who were going to be receiving trophies.

I started squirming around in my seat.

“Just relax, Alex,” said my dad. “It won’t be the end of the world if you don’t win Most Improved again this year.”

He didn’t get it at all.

“No, see, that’s just it, Dad,” I said, trying to explain. “I don’t
want
to get Most Improved again. I mean, I don’t want to sound like a poor sport or anything, but if they call my name, let’s just pretend we’re not here. What do you say, Dad? We could do that, couldn’t we?”

I could tell by his face that he was shocked.

“Pretend we’re not here?” he blustered. “Why in the world would we pretend we’re not here?”

“Shh … Dad … not so loud! It’s just embarrassing to get another Improved award, that’s all. I don’t want it.”

“You don’t want it? What do you mean, you don’t want it? I can’t believe I’m hearing this. How ungrateful can you get, Alex? Do you know how many kids here would love to get that award tonight?”

“Yeah, Dad. I know,” I answered. “But that’s only because nobody else has ever gotten it five times in a row. Don’t you see a pattern here? Every year I start out totally
reeking
and end up only
stinking
. Then the next year I start out reeking again. Is that supposed to make me proud?”

All of a sudden, we heard it.

My name … being called over the microphone!

“ALEX FRANKOVITCH. MOST IMPROVED PLAYER AWARD FOR TEAM NUMBER SEVEN—PRESTON’S PEST CONTROL!”

Quick as anything, I slid down in my seat so that no one could see me. My father grabbed my arm to make me stand up. But I doubled over and put my head between my knees.

“ALEX FRANKOVITCH? IS ALEX HERE?” the announcer called again.

My father jumped up from his seat and pointed at me. At least that’s what I
think
he did. By then,
I was wadded into a tight little ball

“HERE HE IS, RIGHT HERE! ALEX FRANKOVITCH IS RIGHT HERE!” my dad yelled.

Everyone started clapping. A few of the kids who knew me started shouting, “WE WANT ALEX … WE WANT ALEX!”

Finally, I just had no choice. I stood up and started making my way down the bleachers. On my way down, I decided that me and dear old Dad were
finished
. Kaput! Finito!

When I got to the bottom, I spotted T.J. Stoner. He had already received his zillionth Most Valuable Player trophy and was sitting in the front row, pointing at me and laughing. Just pointing and laughing.

I hated it. I mean, I just couldn’t let him get away with making fun of me like that, you know? So I decided the only thing to do was pretend that I was actually enjoying myself.

I walked to the middle of the gym floor, turned around, and started taking bows and throwing kisses. Then I walked over to the table to pick up my trophy.

The announcer handed me the microphone. I was supposed to say thank you. But instead, I took the microphone …

Held it up to my mouth …

And burped.

The whole audience went nuts like you wouldn’t believe. At least that’s the way it sounded. But looking back, it was probably only the kids who went nuts. Grownups don’t usually think burping is all that comical.

Anyway, after I threw a few more kisses, I ducked out the gym door and walked home.

I knew I was in big trouble. So I went straight to my room and waited for my father. I just wanted to get it over with.