by Thomas Tosi
In this round, Dewey was one of the guys running. He froze near me.
“Why’s he keep looking over at the girls?” Dewey asked. He was watching Bernard, too.
“He likes Bridget,” I said. I didn’t know if Bernard wanted me to tell anyone, but he was the wait‐and‐you’re‐lost guy who made me miss out on the parfaits, so I didn’t really care.
Bernard stopped pacing. He jammed his hands in his pockets. He took a breath so deep that I could see it from where I stood. Then, he started walking. He wasn’t pacing this time. The kid was moving like he knew what he had to do—and where he had to do it. He was headed toward the big rock—and Bridget.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Dewey said, just before the grungy rubber ball hit him square in the back, between his shoulder blades. The ball dropped to the ground at Dewey’s feet. I could see some dirt stuck to the spots where I thought there was dog drool.
“C’mon, Dewey,” someone yelled. “Get over here. You’re it.”
“No way. I’ve got to see this.” Dewey picked up the ball but didn’t throw it back.
“What are you boys so fascinated by?” Miss Sorenson said. She was on playground duty. She came over to Dewey and me when she saw us staring. Miss Sorenson knew something was up—she had pretty good Spidey sense.
Bernard was now about ten feet away from the girls. They had formed a half‐circle with Bridget at its center. She stood with her feet shoulder‐width apart and her hands on her hips. I didn’t know much about body language, but this didn’t look too promising.
When Dewey didn’t go to them, the rest of the SPUD players gathered around us.
“He isn’t going to—” Miss Sorenson said, noticing Bernard moving toward the girls.
“Tell her that he likes her? Yeah, I think he is,” I said.
“Oh, no. That poor boy,” Miss Sorenson said. “Quick, one of you go stop him.”
“Are you kidding?” Dewey asked. “This recess could be historic.”
“You’re his friends, maybe if you all ran over there together—”
“Dude, we’re not his friends,” Dewey said. “Besides, you gotta make your own decisions in this life.” He was tossing the SPUD ball up and down with one hand, but his eyes didn’t leave the scene by the big rock.
Miss Sorenson was so wrapped up in what was happening with Bernard, she didn’t even flinch when Dewey called her dude.
“Aren’t you his desk buddy?” Miss Sorenson said.
“Aren’t you his teacher?”
“That’s exactly why I shouldn’t get involved in this,” Miss Sorenson said. “It really should be one of you.”
While Dewey and Miss Sorenson were arguing about who should go over and save Bernard from humiliation, I was thinking about storms.
Last summer, lightning hit our neighbor’s weeping willow tree. Just before it struck, Faye, Peg, and I were in the backyard playing croquet. We were all shouting about whether or not Peg’s ball had gone through the wicket or around it. Even though each one of us was in mid‐sentence, we all stopped talking at the same time—just like that. Strands of Peg’s hair started floating straight up. I had tingling goose pimples on my arms. Something was in the air. We all sensed it—electricity.
Nobody’s hair was standing up that day on the playground. All the same, a different kind of electricity was in the air. Something big was going to happen. A lot of people caught onto it. And they were all looking over at the big rock.
“Dewey, please,” Miss Sorenson said. “You know how girls can be.”
“Of course I do. Why do you think I’m not going over there?”
“They…they…” Miss Sorenson said.
“Giggle,” I finished for her.
“Exactly. Then you’ll go help him?”
“Too late.”
Bernard had gotten down on his knee.
The Tuna Pea Wiggle Secret
I didn’t think there was anything worse girls could do to a guy than giggle. There was. They could laugh. They could laugh out loud and point. And they could do it as a group. And they could do it in front of a lot of other people. In fact, Bridget and the other giggling girls could crush Bernard’s will to live in front of an entire playground full of people.
“Dude,” Dewey said as Bernard trudged by us on his long death march back from the big rock. It was only one word, which was unusual for Dewey, but that one word said so much. It was dripping with emotion.
Bernard snatched the SPUD ball away from Dewey. He chucked it up into the air. When it came down, it slapped against the paved area of the playground, where the faded four square lines were painted. It made one high bounce and flew through an open window on one side of the school.
Ordinarily, Miss Sorenson would have gotten angry with Bernard and, at the very least, would have made him go fetch the ball he had thrown. I don’t think she had the heart to do it now, though. It was a pretty sad sight. Bernard ended up balancing his oversized body in the saddle of the metal caterpillar that bobbed slowly back and forth on its spring base.
I volunteered to get the ball.
Why?
It was hard to stand there, watching Bernard swaying all hunched over that flaked green bug with the stupid painted smile—its rusty metal spring crying and groaning. Also, the SPUD ball had gone through the cafegymatorium window—the kitchen window. You know, where they kept the parfaits.
It wasn’t hard to find the ball. I came into the cafegymatorium through the storage room. It sounded like one person was out in the gym dribbling and shooting baskets. The sounds coming from the empty gym—of the ball bouncing and the rasp it made going through the coarse rope net—were hollow.
When I walked into the kitchen, it was empty—but the stove was on. A little ring of hissing, low, blue flames was heating a dented pot with a blackened bottom—not an enormous pot like the ones they used to cook stuff to feed all the kids, but a regular‐sized one.
The pot was full of gluey, lumpy glop. And floating in this glop was the grungy old rubber ball—dirt, dog drool, and all.
I grabbed a ladle from a set that hung on hooks, being careful not to let it clank against the others, and used it to fish out the SPUD ball. A little grit and slime from it remained floating on top of the glop, so I kind of stirred it in.
Don’t judge me. The glop was already gross looking before I got there.
I rinsed the ball off over at the double sink, surprised and nervous at how loud the stream of water was echoing on the metal. The soft foam beneath the mostly‐peeled‐off white paint of the ball acted like a sponge as I soaked it and squeezed. Some tannish‐colored flecks were sticking to my hands. Creamy‐coated round lumps were collecting down by the drain.
From out in the gym, it sounded as if whoever was playing basketball was finishing up.
I set the rubber SPUD ball down on top of the lumpy stuff that was collecting in the drain and let the stream of water from the faucet pour on it.
The refrigerator was shiny and silver. It was way bigger than what we had at home. It had three full‐sized doors on the front. I hadn’t actually seen lunch dude put the parfaits in, so I made a guess and opened the middle door.
I should’ve been on one of those TV game shows. Right in front of me, behind the first door I opened, under the shelf with mega‐cartons of eggs, and beside the bright orange blocks of cheese the size of mailboxes, were the parfaits.
I grabbed one. All I had to do now was snag the ball, and I was out of there.
A built‐in chrome tray on the side of the sink gave me plenty of room to set the parfait aside so it didn’t get splashed by the running faucet. Squeezing the water from the ball as I lifted it, I could see gunk in the drain below—rinsed off. The little round things that had been covered in glop were actually green. Pea green. I shut the water off. Something clicked.
Tuna pea wiggle, who would be—
The door between the gym and the kitchen opened.
“What are you d
oing here?” Mr. Richards asked. I was thinking the exact same thing. Our football‐player school principal was wearing an apron belonging to one of the lunch ladies. It said Good Lookin’ is Cookin’.
“Did you like it?” he said. He had beads of sweat on his forehead from shooting hoops—in an apron—and was rubbing the back of his neck with his hand.
“Huh?”
Mr. Richards pointed at the ladle with the white glop dripping from it.
“The tuna pea wiggle,” he said. “Did you like it?”
“Um, sure. It was great.”
Okay, that was a lie, I know. I hadn’t tasted it, and there was no way that I was going to taste it. But I had to say something. Not so much because I thought I was in trouble—Mr. Richards hadn’t seen the parfait, and I had permission from Miss Sorenson to be in the kitchen. The reason I had to say something was because of the way Mr. Richards looked.
I was staring at his sweat.
Is that really from shooting baskets? Or is it from cooking? Or maybe it’s from being nervous about whether or not the tuna pea wiggle had come out all right. Does a principal—especially a big football‐player principal—get nervous?
“Really?” he said. He stopped rubbing the back of his neck and walked past me over to the refrigerator.
I had opened door number two on the fridge. Mom says that great minds think alike. I sure wouldn’t have figured that Mr. Richards was a great mind, but he also opened door number two.
He waved the door back and forth to fan some of the cool air toward himself. Grabbing the bottom part of the apron, he lifted it and used it to wipe the sweat off his forehead.
Mr. Richards’ meaty hand was practically touching the parfait I had taken out and set on the chrome sink tray. I swear one of the thick black hairs on his knuckles brushed the little drops of water that popped up on the side of the plastic cup.
“So, it’s good?” he said. “Of course, the batch I make for parents’ night will have to be much, much bigger…”
Much, much bigger?
I couldn’t let him do it.
“Mr. Richards,” I said, “I didn’t taste the tuna pea wiggle. And I don’t think I really want to.”
“You didn’t—”
“No.”
“I knew it.” He untied the apron and tried to pull it over his head. It twisted around. The strap got caught on his nose. He yanked, and the apron slid free, but, in the process, it scuffed his forehead red and pulled his sweaty hair into little twirled spikes.
“Who am I fooling?” Mr. Richards asked, wiping more sweat from his face with the apron he had now crumpled into a ball. “I’m no cook.”
“It’s not for sure that it’s bad,” I said, trying not to stare at his hair. “How could I know if I didn’t taste it? I’m just saying—even if it was great—I don’t think that’s the kind of thing people really expect on parents’ night. Don’t they usually just have cookies and things?”
“I tried making cookies at home.”
“There you go. That’s more like it,” I said.
“The smoke alarms went off. My dog wet the floor.”
“Oh.”
“He wouldn’t even eat the cookie I tried to give him to make up for scaring him.”
“Okay, yeah, that’s bad.”
I didn’t like seeing Mr. Richards this way, and I kind of wanted him to snap out of it. Of course, if he did snap out of it, he’d probably notice the parfait.
“Well, I gotta get this ball back to the playground,” I said, giving up on my Marlene mission and showing him the ball. “Miss Sorenson sent me in to get it. And I guess recess is almost over.”
The parfait was too close to him.
Just head for the door. That’s all you can do.
I was almost out when…
“I thought you said you didn’t like yogurt,” Mr. Richards said.
“What?”
“The other day in my office, you said you didn’t like it.”
“Look, Mr. Richards, I—”
“Take the parfait,” he said, picking up the cup from the counter and holding it out to me.
He didn’t look mad but, when I went to take it, he didn’t let go right away.
“There is one thing, though. You never saw me in here making the tuna pea wiggle, right?”
“Right.”
The Sad String Bean
I had no trouble getting the parfait back to Miss Sorenson’s classroom. Recess ended just as I came out of the cafegymatorium. I blended in with the crowd lining up after the whistle.
The problem, when I got to my desk, was that Marlene wasn’t at hers. She must have still been at the doctor’s.
Someone else was missing, too.
“Dude,” Dewey said to me. “Looks like we’re a couple of bachelors.”
I saw what Dewey meant. Bernard wasn’t in his seat.
“Where is he?”
“You didn’t see? Dude couldn’t stop crying. From what I hear, somebody called him a string bean.”
When he said somebody called him a string bean, Dewey glared at the back of Bridget’s head in front of me. But she was messing with the kitty‐head erasers that were on the bright pink pencils in her desk and was paying no attention to us. Or so she tried to make it look.
Girls.
Dewey leaned way across the aisle so he could talk to me in a low voice.
“He was hitchin’ and snortin’, and his face turned Crayola‐brick red. Had a good streamer of snot dangling out of his nose, too.”
“No way,” I said.
“Way. They had to take him down to the nurse’s office—probably going to hit him with a tranquilizer dart. Dude had a psycho meltdown. Can you believe that? String bean?”
He glanced at the back of Bridget’s head again.
“Never, ever should’ve admitted he liked a girl,” Dewey said. “What a dumb thing to do.”
Admitting to liking a girl, I thought, while wondering how long I could hold a parfait in a hot, sweaty hand without it going all gross—or Dewey seeing it.
“Yeah, dumb,” I said.
“Hey, what’s the parfait for?”
“What?”
“The parfait…you’re holding in your hot, sweaty hand?”
I looked down at the parfait like I had no idea how it possibly got there.
“Oh, I…it’s just…”
Dewey shook his head slowly back and forth but kept his eyes on mine.
“Dude, no. Don’t do it,” He straightened back in his seat. And then, a little louder, “Don’t go liking a girl—especially not Marlene Paczki.”
I couldn’t be sure, but when Dewey said liking a girl and Marlene Paczki, I thought Bridget gave a quick tilt of her head—tuning in to our guy talk.
Dewey nodded toward Bernard’s empty seat. “Psycho…meltdown.”
Meanwhile, at the front of the classroom, Miss Sorenson opened a binder on her desk and removed a stack of papers. “Okay,” she said, “I have your writing assessments graded.” She picked the stack up with both hands, flipped them upright, and tapped the bottom edges against her desk to get them all nice and neat.
She swiveled her chair to get up. Just then, the classroom door opened. It didn’t burst open like the saloon doors in a western; it crept open like in a horror movie. Bernard came trudging in. He ground to a stop at Miss Sorenson’s desk. They said something to each other that we couldn’t hear.
Bernard kept his head down and stared at his shoes while he talked—and by shoes, I don’t mean sneakers. He really did wear old‐man‐geezer shoes to school.
Miss Sorenson nodded a couple of times. She smiled—just barely. Even from where I was sitting, I could see that her eyes were all shiny, almost like she was going to cry. Smiling with watery eyes—it was like one of those days that sometimes happen when it rains, but the sun is out.
At that moment, I felt a little worse for Miss Sorenson than Bernard. Out on the playground, she knew ahead of time what would happen
if Bernard told Bridget that he liked her. She really wanted to stop him but didn’t think she should.
Across the aisle, Dewey looked from the pair of them back at me. Standing up there with his slumped shoulders, pale face, and snotty nose, Bernard proved Dewey’s point about what happened when you liked a girl.
Still trying to explain the parfait and Marlene, I stammered out, “It’s not like that…she hurt her fingers. I felt bad.”
“Dude,” Dewey said to me. He sure knew how to use that word. He could say it in so many different ways that it could mean anything he wanted. This time, he said it in a way that translated into: I don’t believe you.
Dewey was the one that said you gotta make your own decisions in this life. I didn’t need him making mine.
“It’s just being nice,” I said.
Miss Sorenson motioned for Bernard to take his seat with a gentle sweep of her arm and a sigh.
“What?” I said when Dewey didn’t reply.
As Bernard got to his row and slunk down in his chair, I could see that his eyes were puffy and raw, like he’d been rubbing them. His face was kind of clammy and pale, and, believe it or not, a few strands of that bushy hair were matted down on his forehead with sweat. He was still sniffling some, too.
“For the most part, I was very impressed,” Miss Sorenson said, now out from behind her desk and carrying the papers. She made her way down the aisles. She set a corrected paper on each kid’s desk as she passed.
I pointed to the parfait and was going to tell Dewey—
“Dude,” Dewey said again, this time meaning: shut up, here comes the teacher.
I lifted the top of Marlene’s desk just enough and carefully set the parfait inside. She could have it later. Right now, Miss Sorenson was turning down our aisle.
