by Thomas Tosi
The whole thing started with a doughnut….
You probably already knew that was how my paper would begin. Well, I didn’t think Marlene knew. It sure didn’t seem like she was interested in my stuff. But I had glanced over at her work enough to know that she was writing something about music. I could see the word piano at least three times.
Marlene’s handwriting was neat and easy to read. I wondered if girls were born with good penmanship. I didn’t dare look over too long. I was more afraid of getting caught by Marlene than Miss Sorenson. I went back to my own paper and got lost in thoughts of doughnuts.
“You can’t write about that,” Marlene said, using her angry ventriloquist voice again.
I was on the second paragraph. The first one had been about the game piece from Dad’s coffee cup. In the second, I was explaining what happened at the Sweetly Crisp. I skipped the part about getting the money from Peg by blackmail.
“Mind your own business.” I did my best to talk through my teeth too.
“It is my business—well, my Dad’s business.”
Miss Sorenson got up and started writing a sentence diagram on the board. When she did, Marlene reached over and took my pencil right out of my hand. She’s not stronger than me. I don’t want you thinking that. She just surprised me, is all.
“Well, nothing else interesting happened to me,” I whispered. “Besides the doughnut thing, nothing ever happens to me.”
I reached over and grabbed my pencil back. When I did, my hand touched Marlene’s. Her hand was soft and warm. It surprised me how soft and warm it was. I could tell Marlene was surprised too. She sucked in a breath and looked down at her hand like she just found out that she had one. Shaking off whatever she had felt, she looked back at me, squinting.
“Oh, something’s going to happen to you all right,” she said.
She went for my pencil again, but I was quick and snapped my wrist away. It would have been a great move, except I wasn’t holding on tight, and my pencil went flying across the aisle. It sailed over Dewey. He already had his head down on his paper and was about thirty seconds away from drooling in his sleep. My brand new, only‐been‐sharpened‐once, yellow Ticonderoga pencil got stuck in Bernard’s hair.
Bernard didn’t even notice.
I didn’t tell you this yet, but here’s what Bernard looked like. He was thin. How thin? Well, Green Hill Academy had a roof overhang above its front steps. And the roof had the school’s name on it. The whole thing was held up by six big white columns, three in a tight triangle on each side of the steps.
When we were first‐ or second‐graders, the cool thing was to see if we were thin enough to squeeze through the gaps in one of the groups of three columns without getting stuck. Not every kid in the first couple of grades could fit through. Bernard could still slip through the columns in fifth grade.
At the top of his thin body, crowning his head, he had super thick, curly, bushy hair. Bernard looked like a Truffula tree from The Lorax—except for the fact that he didn’t have stripes.
That bushy hair is what saved him from getting stabbed by my pencil. I could still see the pink eraser, the yellow barrel with the three green bands, and the embossed HD #2. The rest of the pencil was buried in the jungle of his noggin.
Marlene and I were both staring at the pencil.
“What’re you two goobers looking at?” Bernard whispered when he saw us gawking. As he turned and said that, we could see the pencil even better. It was like he had antlers—on one side.
“Um…” Marlene said and then turned to me.
Like I would really know what to say.
“Nothing,” Marlene said.
Bernard shifted his gaze over to Bridget, who was also staring at him. Actually, I don’t think Bridget was staring at Bernard—she was staring at the pencil. But Bernard didn’t know this. He did a double pump with his eyebrows, flirting. The pencil bobbed along. Bridget rolled her eyes—something she was great at, I think she practiced a lot—and turned back to her writing. Bernard blushed. When he saw that Marlene and I were still looking at him, his eyebrows dropped, his lips tightened, and he gave us a squinty look.
He went back to his paper, shaking his head in disbelief at us. With every shake, the pencil came out just a little—but was still hanging in there. I’ve heard some people say that they bite their lips to keep from laughing out loud. Me, I had to pinch my thigh—really hard.
Then, something amazing happened. Marlene ducked her head low behind Bridget again, looked over at me, and smiled. I smiled back.
We were smiling together. We had a secret—a funny secret nobody else was in on. It was ours, and we shared it. Suddenly, it didn’t feel like I had one‐half of the desk pair, and Marlene had the other half. It felt like we were sharing that, too.
I’m not saying that I like sharing or think sharing’s okay. I don’t like it, and it isn’t okay. But, at that moment, it was just a little different, that’s all—like a joke. And sharing a joke isn’t like sharing other stuff, right?
I started to lift the edge of my desk, but Marlene reached over with her hand and pushed it closed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she hissed at me.
“Getting another pencil. I’m pretty sure my other one’s a goner.” I looked over at Bernard’s hair. “I just hope it can find some friends in there, so it doesn’t die alone.”
“Very funny. But why do you need another pencil?”
“Why do you think? I have to finish my paper.”
“Okay,” she whispered more calmly, taking her hand away from my desktop by a few inches. “But write about something else.”
I started lifting my desktop again. “I can’t start over.”
Marlene pushed back down on my desk and slid hers over so that the side of her desktop edged over mine and locked it in place. Then, she held her own desk down with both of her hands.
“You’re not writing about the doughnuts. Think of something else.”
She was looking into my eyes so deeply it was almost like she was trying to will me to forget about the doughnuts. I almost did.
“There’s no time.” I pushed up on my desktop with the heels of my hands.
Both tops raised a few inches. Marlene’s frog‐covered science book and parfait started sliding down toward the front of the desk.
Marlene pushed down harder. The book settled just in time, dangling over the edge. The yogurt was lighter and hadn’t moved far.
“Quit it,” I said.
“You quit it.”
That’s it, I thought. I decided to give my best shove. I closed my eyes and counted to three in my head.
Here’s the thing about closing your eyes. You don’t know what’s happening while they’re closed. In my case, what happened was that Marlene decided to retrieve her science book before it could fall. That meant that, for a moment, she let go of her desk to hold the book.
The yogurt, on the other hand, was still on the desk when I shoved.
If you’re thinking this part of the story is all about something funny—like the yogurt getting launched into the air and landing in Bridget’s hair in front of us—then you’re wrong. I mean, that did happen, and Bridget was wearing the parfait. But that’s not what this part of the story is about—something funny like that. I wish it were.
Because, after Bridget got her new hat, Marlene got mad. She reached over with one hand and shoved me into the aisle. My chair tumbled over as I crashed to the floor. This woke Dewey, who jolted up straight with a yelp—his blank paper stuck to his sweaty cheek. Funny? Maybe. But again, not what this part of the story is about.
This part is about how, when I fell, I was no longer holding up the desktop. Marlene had shoved me with one hand, but she was holding onto the pencil tray of her desk with her other hand. Her hand, you know, what she used to play the piano.
With no one supporting it anymore, the desktop came crashing down on Marlene’s fingers, which were gripping the pencil t
ray. Like I said, I wish I could tell you that this part of the story was about something funny, but it wasn’t.
Sent to the Office
Miss Sorenson was going to send both of us to Mr. Richards, the principal, but since Marlene was crying about her fingers, she got sent to the nurse’s office instead. I sat alone in Mr. Richards’ office. I would have to face him on my own.
He was busy working at the computer on his desk and talking on the phone at the same time. “Uh‐huh,” he said into the phone. “Of course, but shouldn’t there be an army of moms willing to bake cookies, brownies, and tuna pea wiggle or something, to bring in?”
I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying, but it sounded like someone on the other end of the phone was yelling at him.
“Yes, I realize this is the twenty‐first century,” Mr. Richards replied. “Forget I said anything.”
He slammed the phone down to hang up but kept working on his computer. Every now and then, he glanced over at me. When he did, he had to look over the top of his glasses, which sat way down on his nose.
I know I’m just a kid and not very tall, but I swear that the chairs in front of Mr. Richards’ desk were way lower than normal. They didn’t look like they would be. The fake brown leather seat cushions were puffed up, making me think I’d be sitting nice and high. But, as soon as my butt hit the cushions, they deflated with a squeaky hissing sound, and I sank down. The chair practically ate me. I think Mr. Richards got short chairs on purpose to make anyone sitting in them feel tiny. And I don’t understand why he would have to do that. Mr. Richards is huge. He used to be a football player in college or something.
On the wall behind his desk, he even had an old picture of himself in which he is wearing a football uniform. In this picture, he is squatting down, almost like he is kneeling, and has one arm stretched out in front of him with his fingertips in the grass. I guess it was supposed to look like it was the middle of a game, and he was ready to charge. But he is staring at the camera, and there are no other players out on the field. Who did he think he was fooling?
The picture was positioned and hung just high enough so that somebody who was swallowed in those chairs in front of his desk—like I was—only had three choices. One was to look over Mr. Richards’ left shoulder at the picture of him getting ready to charge, two was to look Mr. Richards in the eyes, and three was to look off to the right—out the window and at the athletic field. I chose option three.
“So, you must have been very hungry,” Mr. Richards said.
“Hungry?”
It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. My attention had been outside on a couple of guys riding bikes across the far end of the athletic field. Someone could really get in trouble for that. Bikes were definitely not allowed on the grass out there. The two guys were bigger than any of the kids at our school.
Mr. Richards gave up on his computer. I don’t think he liked keyboards because his fingers and hands were really big, which must have made it hard to type. Instead, he opened his desk drawer, took out a piece of paper, and began to fold it into smaller and smaller triangles, which—
“Yes, hungry.” Mr. Richards gave me the look that he gives to all the kids who don’t play sports—like somebody put a salad down in front of him when what he really wanted was a cheeseburger.
“I understand you took some food from the cafeteria back to Miss Sorenson’s room—yogurt, I believe.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t even like yogurt.”
“It is gross,” he agreed, shuddering.
He tucked a flap of the paper he was folding in on itself to finish what I recognized to be a paper football. “So, it wasn’t yours?” He set one point of the triangle football down against his desk and balanced it by pressing his fingertip against the top point. He squinted like he was aiming at some unseen goal post across the office. He positioned his other hand to flick the paper football from behind with his fingers.
Back outside the window, the guys on bikes were closer now. I squinted.
Could that be Brian and James?
“No,” I meant to say to myself but instead said out loud.
“But you did throw it at the young lady who sits in front of you—”
The closer the bike guys got, the more I was thinking they were Brian and James.
“No!”
That was a little too loud, and it startled Mr. Richards into snapping at the football before he was ready. It ricocheted off a picture at the end of his desk and fell straight down to the floor. He looked a little sad—like this reminded him of something from when he played.
“I don’t understand,” Mr. Richards said. “So, educate me, Abe. Why are you here, taking up my time, when I’m supposed to be planning parents’ night with no budget and almost no help from the PTA?”
“Marlene shoved me into the aisle when I wouldn’t stop writing about doughnuts.” I didn’t tell him about flinging my pencil into Bernard’s hair.
I wonder if Bernard had noticed yet.
“I see,” Mr. Richards said.
I guess he’d heard a lot of stories in his time because he didn’t seem particularly surprised or—
Holy crap! It was Brian and James. Walking their bikes down the sidewalk and heading toward the classroom windows, my twin brothers were passing by the office. They noticed me and stopped. Just over Mr. Richards’ right shoulder, Brian and James were now jumping up and down, waving their arms, and making faces at me.
James took a notebook out of his backpack and wrote a message with his pen. He held the notebook up to the window.
U STILL GOT DONUT GAME CARD?
“She didn’t like you writing about the doughnuts, but you did it anyway,” Mr. Richards said.
“Yes,” I said, looking out the window.
“And what makes a few doughnuts so interesting that you would write about them?”
“Oh, it’s not a few. It’s six thousand.”
“Six thousand doughnuts?”
Outside the window, James held up a new note.
U GOT IT ON YOU?
“Yes,” I said, answering both questions at the same time.
“That is worth writing about,” Mr. Richards said. “Were these for the whole school?”
“No, just me.”
“Why would anyone need six thousand doughnuts?” he asked. “Unless…do you really have six thousand doughnuts?”
James had scrawled in his notebook again.
BRING IT HEAR (James’ spelling.)
“No.”
“Can you get them?”
“No. I doubt it.”
“Well, that’s a shame,” Mr. Richards said. “I could have used them for parents’ night.”
“Mr. Richards?” a woman’s voice interrupted over the speaker on the phone.
I couldn’t be sure, but it might have been the same voice that had yelled at Mr. Richards when he was talking about the tuna pea wiggle.
“Yes, Dolores?” Mr. Richards asked into the phone.
“Is Abraham Mitchell still in there with you?”
Mr. Richards gave me a now‐what‐have‐you‐done look.
“Yes, he’s right here.”
There was no answer, and I thought that maybe the phone disconnected. Mr. Richards must have thought the same thing because he asked, “Dolores?”
“Could you come out for a moment, please?” the voice on the phone speaker asked.
This didn’t sound good. Not only did the voice ask whether I was in the office, but it called me Abraham instead of Abe.
Only so many people called me Abraham. It occurred to me that Dolores was Mrs. Stonebottom, who worked behind the counter in the school office. I had never heard her first name before. But I knew her—all the kids did. If anybody could’ve yelled at Mr. Richards over the tuna pea wiggle, it would’ve been Mrs. Stonebottom or, as I would forever think of her from that point on, Dolores.
“I’ll be right there,” Mr. Richards said to the phone.
And then, to me, as he left the office, “Wait right here. We’re not done.”
Brian and James had ducked down and out of view when Mr. Richards stood up, but they peeked over the bottom of the windowsill and sprang back up when they saw I was alone. Brian tapped on the glass and motioned me over. I wasn’t sure how long Mr. Richards would be gone, so I shook my head no.
James had written another note.
BRING DONUT CARD HEAR… (The rocket scientist’s spelling again.)
I shook my head no. James wrote more.
…U WILL B FAMOUS
That note was probably just Brian and James being Brian and James, but it got the better of me. I crossed over to the window.
James wrote.
OPEN WINDOW
I glanced back at the office door, not knowing how much time I would have. Turning to James, I saw…
TRUST US
I mouthed the word no.
Brian had their phone out now and typed on it. He turned the screen toward me.
DONUT CARD?
I dug down into my pants’ pocket and pulled out a small plastic zip‐seal sandwich bag. I kept the Sweetly Crisp game piece on me at all times. When I helped Celia clean the doughnut stuff off her car in the rain, the paper had gotten a little damp. I got nervous it would get wrecked, so from that point on, I kept it in the sandwich bag.
I held the bag up for my brothers to see.
AGAINST THE GLASS
I worked the zipper lock open with my thumbs and removed the game piece. I pressed the You Won One Free Doughnut side to the window. Brian worked the phone while James leaned forward and squinted at the paper. He wrote in his notebook.
OTHER SIDE!
I flipped the game piece over. James smiled. Brian held the phone inches away from the glass and took a picture of the fine print contest rules on the back. Both of my brothers gave me a thumbs up and started laughing. They fist‐bumped each other.
I had no idea what was going on, and it didn’t look like they were in a hurry to tell me.
