Six Thousand Doughnuts

by Thomas Tosi

  As refreshments for Green Hill Academy parents’ night, I promised Mr. Richards ten percent—six hundred doughnuts and not a tuna pea wiggle in sight. Mr. Richards would never again have to burn cookies, set off his smoke alarm, and have his dog pee on the kitchen floor.

  It turned out I wasn’t going to need writing help from Bernard. Miss Sorenson told me my makeup essay wouldn’t be due until after we came back from the show. But I decided to make the doughnut deal with him anyway.

  I owed him.

  Bernard making his goofball move and telling everyone he liked Bridget was kind of a warning for me. If he hadn’t done that, if Bridget hadn’t publicly ground his tender heart into the sharp dry gravel beside the big rock, it might have been me out on the playground one day saying something stupid and mushy about Marlene. Then, I’d be the one having the psycho meltdown instead of him.

  The only condition left to fulfill so that I could go to the show was getting Marlene and her dad to agree to be on it. All I needed was for Marlene to be in a terrible mood and ready to sign up and fight me.

  But there was no promissory note deal to be made there.

  If being nice to Marlene meant not getting on the Judge Sally Rules show and winning my six thousand doughnuts, then so be it. It sure wasn’t going to be me that made Marlene mad this time.

  As things turned out, it wasn’t me—it was the ants.

  “What’s that smell?” Marlene asked, sniffing me up and down as she took her desk buddy seat.

  I took a deep whiff and also smelled something—something sour and rancid.

  “It’s not me,” I replied, looking across the aisle toward Dewey.

  Dewey sniffed Bernard.

  “What?” Bernard asked, instinctively raising his arms and sniffing under his pits. See what I mean about Bernard being more mature than me? That would not have been my first move.

  Dewey shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not over here, dude.”

  “It’s closer than them,” Marlene said.

  “Stop looking at me,” I said, but Marlene kept staring. “Okay, how do I know it’s not you?”

  “Girls don’t smell. Guys are the stinky ones.”

  Looking back on it, I probably should have argued that point. But honestly, I believed her. I ducked down to check the bottom of my sneakers to see if I’d stepped in anything.

  Nothing.

  Except, while I was bent over, I noticed a trail of ants marching up and down the leg of Marlene’s desk. They had a little two‐lane highway going. It was actually pretty cool—and shiny, too. You probably already guessed it but, by the time it occurred to me that this might possibly have something to do with the parfait that had been sitting inside Marlene’s desk all weekend, it was too late.

  Marlene lifted her desktop.

  “Ew!”

  I think she wanted to slam the desk closed, but it was like she was hypnotized by the soft flowing movement of the swarming pile of ants.

  “Um…I got you one of the parfaits you like,” I said.

  “Parfait?” Marlene looked at me like I was suddenly speaking Klingon. All she could see was a mini mountain of ants—crawling and flowing over something—that stank.

  “Well, I’m sure there’s a parfait under there, somewhere.”

  “What’s going on back there,” Miss Sorenson said, as Dewey, Bernard, and a few other kids huddled around to see.

  “You did this!” Marlene said to me.

  “Dude!” Dewey said, this time meaning…dude.

  I bet Marlene would have thought there was nothing worse than lifting a desktop and finding a pulsing mound of ants eating a parfait. But there was something worse.

  “I don’t think those ants are eating the parfait,” Dewey said, leaning down so close his head was partly inside the desk.

  “Nope,” he continued. “Look at that slimy gray belly they’re all biting into. It’s a slug that’s eating the parfait—and the ants are eating the slug.”

  Yup.

  Over the weekend, the parfait I had worked so hard to get for Marlene had become a slug’s feast. And it was the slug who had become the ants’ feast.

  It amazed me. Marlene always seemed to find nothing but trouble.

  “Why would you do this to me?” Marlene asked.

  And when she shouted once more and slammed the lid of her desk down—this time missing her fingers—I knew she was mad.

  Fighting mad.

  Courtroom fighting mad.

  The chances of her agreeing to go up against me on the Judge Sally Rules show were in way better shape than the slug.

  Fight for the doughnuts or stay Marlene’s buddy…

  I guess sometimes the world just decides things for you. I was going to be on national television with a chance finally to win my six thousand doughnuts.

  So, why wasn’t I happy about it?

  Judge Sally Rules, Abe Drools

  All rise for the honorable Judge Sally,” said the bailiff—a guy dressed like a cop standing beside the judge’s bench.

  Bright, too much air conditioning, and fake—I won’t describe any more of the whole TV courtroom to you because, if you haven’t seen Judge Sally Rules, I’m sure you’ve seen one of the gazillion other courtroom shows just like it. I don’t know why they’re so popular. The audience at home must just like watching people on TV who are more messed up than they are.

  I’m not talking about me, of course. I had a good reason to be there.

  Really.

  “Ain’t she a tiny little thing?” Celia whispered to me about Judge Sally as she made her entrance.

  Celia and I were at a podium in front of the judge’s bench. We were set to battle with Marlene and her dad, who stood side‐by‐side at the other podium. I noticed Marlene’s hair was in the fancy braid again. Except for a fuzzy blue sweater, she was wearing the same piano recital clothes from the day of the food fight. The sweater was a little too big for her.

  Why do her hands—just peeking out from that oversized sweater—have the same effect on me as those swimming pool eyes?

  “Be seated,” Judge Sally said.

  She hadn’t even looked at us yet.

  “You’ve all been sworn in, so let’s meet our litigants. Abraham Mitchell, I’m reading on the paper in front of me that you are suing the Sweetly Crisp Corporation in the amount of six thousand doughnuts. Is that correct?”

  “Yeah…”

  Celia elbowed me in the ribs.

  “I mean, yes, ma’am.”

  Another elbow from Celia.

  “Ow! I mean, yes, Your Honor.”

  Judge Sally looked like she was getting irritated, and we were only twenty‐seven seconds into the trial.

  “About these six thousand doughnuts—”

  “You mean, why would anybody need six thousand doughnuts?”

  “Young man, I have zero interest in why you would need six thousand doughnuts. This is a court of law. I only care about the rules. What I want to know is, why do you think you are entitled to six thousand doughnuts?”

  Entitled to instead of needing? Holy smokes! Somebody finally gets it.

  “This here,” Celia whispered to me, “is what you call a friendly judge.”

  Judge Sally wasn’t what I considered to be a particularly friendly person, but I think I understood what Celia meant.

  The judge didn’t ask why anyone would need six thousand doughnuts. She didn’t ask where I’d put six thousand doughnuts, or how many I could eat, or if I was going to get fat and have Mom buy my school pants in the husky section, or anything like that. She was going to look at things strictly according to the rules. The judge—and judges are supposed to be smart—understood things just like I did.

  I’m as smart as a judge.

  I was feeling pretty proud of myself, and, for some dumb reason, I thought that Marlene would be impressed. I gave her a smile. I wasn’t gloating or anything. I was just happy, and she was the first person I wanted to share it with—even if she
was standing at the enemy podium.

  Marlene slowly shook her head no. The corners of her lips were scrunched, and her eyes were down like she…like she felt sorry for me.

  Why would she feel sorry for me? I’m the one doing awesome.

  “And the defendant, Sweetly Crisp Corporation,” Judge Sally flipped down through a couple of papers, “I see here that you have filed a countersuit claiming damages to a doughnut shop during a food fight?”

  “Countersuit?” Celia hissed at me.

  “Wait. What? Countersuit? What does that mean?” I said.

  Glaring in my direction, Mr. Paczki picked a pencil up from the podium and snapped it in two like it was one of my bones or something. Then, he put it back down and gave it a gentle pat while a grin stretched across his lips and widened his mustache.

  Sitting behind Marlene was her mom and a wicked tall bald guy who wore a gleaming white suit with a silver doughnut belt buckle—a Sweetly Crisp guy…correction, one of the Sweetly Crisp whales that Celia said I had to go after—a great—white—whale.

  The whale leaned forward and whispered something into Marlene’s ear.

  “That’s right, Your Honor,” Marlene said. “We have a countersuit.”

  Sweetly Crisp is going to sue ME?

  Suddenly, my knees felt like a wobbly Jenga tower when you’re pulling out the last piece. I heard a sound rising in my ears.

  I knew I’d heard that sound before when I was watching the show on MyVids.

  A woman standing off to the side, wearing a headset and a gizmo clipped to the belt of her jeans, held up a sign to the audience. The sign told them to go ooh—and boy, did they ever.

  A Case of the Giggles

  Hold on a minute, they can’t do that,” I said. “Everybody knows Marlene started the whole thing.”

  “Oh, I’m the one that came in the shop and tried to cheat my father out of six thousand doughnuts?” Marlene asked.

  “I bet you planned this whole countersuit thing. I know you were mad about the ants!”

  Judge Sally shuffled through her papers like she was missing something and then turned to the bailiff. “The ants?”

  “Maybe he means the defend—ants,” the bailiff said.

  Just great. A comedian.

  Marlene’s face was red, but she was gripping the sides of the podium so tightly that her fingers were white.

  “I’m not mad about the ants! I knew you were just trying to do something nice.”

  Something nice. I thought of what Bernard had told me about the things a guy does when he crushes on a girl. Stupid, childish, he had said.

  “And I didn’t want to come to this courtroom,” Marlene said. “They made me. I hate being in courtrooms!”

  “When have you ever been in a courtroom?”

  “The day I asked you about being buddies—and if you’d take notes for me.”

  “You were at the doctor’s that day.”

  “No I wasn’t! Court.”

  “You were in court?” I giggled. “What did you do? Steal a parfait?”

  Marlene pilfered a parfait.

  My giggling really took off. But I noticed that Marlene’s eyes were shining. They were watery. The edges of her lips curled down, and the skin on the front of her chin was scrunched up and puckered.

  She was struggling.

  I knew that look. That look was how my gut felt when someone giggled at me.

  “You see this as a place to get something wonderful for yourself,” she said. “Well, good for you.”

  Her voice was all shaky. And then it broke.

  She said the next part through sharp hitches of breaths. “I see it as the kind of place where I have to choose between my mom and dad. It’s an awful place.”

  She rubbed at the sides of her eyes with her oversized sweater.

  Judge Sally was banging her gavel as if her bench was about to fall apart, and she was pounding in nails to keep it together.

  Marlene flinched at each hit.

  After all the times it happened to me—after knowing how bad it felt to be on the receiving end—I giggled at a girl. And not just any girl—at Marlene. I was not only at the top of my own crap list, I was the entire list—beginning, middle, and end. I was ashamed.

  But somehow, that didn’t stop me.

  “You threw the first doughnuts,” I let slip quietly, hating myself as soon as I said it.

  The words might have come out of my mouth, but they landed in my belly like a rock.

  “Both of you, just zip it!” Judge Sally shouted.

  You’d think with Judge Sally slamming her gavel and telling everyone to zip it that she wanted us all to be quiet. But the woman with the headset was flapping her arms up and down like the football players sometimes do when they want the crowd to make a lot of noise.

  I turned to see that the people behind us were whooping and clapping. I don’t mean Faye, Peg, and my parents, of course. They all looked worried. Brian and James were nowhere in sight.

  “Is he telling the truth?” Judge Sally said to Marlene. “Did you throw the first doughnuts?”

  The great white whale leaned forward again and whispered something in Marlene’s ear. Her breathing settled down. Mr. Paczki tried to put his arm around her shoulders, but she shrugged it off, closed her eyes, and pinched her lips together. Finally…

  “It’s true, Your Honor,” Marlene said.

  As instructed, the crowd went aah.

  “Order! Order!”

  “But that’s not how the fight started,” Marlene said.

  “Well, if it’s not too much trouble, do you mind telling me how it did start?”

  Those words might seem polite, but the way Judge Sally said them, they weren’t. She was pretty snarky.

  Marlene checked back with the whale and her mom and then looked over at Celia and me. She unbuttoned her sweater so that everyone could see the front of her white piano recital blouse.

  “Oh my God, they shot you,” Judge Sally let loose again with more pure snark.

  The ghost of the red stain from the doughnut that Celia had accidentally exploded with her law book was still on Marlene’s shirt.

  The woman with the headset actually had a sign that said…

  GASP!

  …in all wiggly letters.

  The audience was happy to do so.

  “No, Your Honor,” Marlene said through a sniffle. “This is jelly from a jelly stick.”

  “That’s the first doughnut they ruined,” Mr. Paczki said. “So, that’s another buck they owe us, right there.”

  “His sign said ninety‐nine cents, Your Honor,” Celia pointed her finger at Mr. Paczki. “And it was the defendant’s own negligence in leaving that jelly stick—”

  “I don’t recall asking either of you a question,” the judge said, bringing her fingers to her lips and squinting up at the lights, faking that she was wondering whether she had asked them a question.

  “We’ve established that the young lady was not shot and that a jelly stick costs ninety‐nine cents,” Judge Sally said. “What I would like to start with, though, is the original suit.”

  “What brought you to the Sweetly Crisp doughnut shop that morning?” She pointed the handle end of her gavel at me like it was a pistol or something. “I have been briefed that you entered the defendant’s place of business with the intention of purchasing six thousand doughnuts for the sum of three dollars. Is that correct?”

  I’d been worried about Marlene and didn’t realize the judge had asked me a question. Celia had to nudge me.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  Judge Sally leaned back in her black leather chair and said to the bailiff with a sigh, “Tell him not to ma’am me.”

  “The litigants will refer to the bench as Your Honor or Judge.”

  “What?”

  “You got to call the bench Your Honor,” Celia said to me.

  “I thought the judge was called Your Honor?”

  “The bench is the judge
,” Celia said.

  “The bench is the judge? I don’t get it.”

  I had faraway buzzing in my ears. My stomach felt sick. And my ribs and shins hurt from where Celia kept poking and kicking me every time I said something wrong.

  I noticed a camera pointed at me. A red light on it lit up. What got me, though, was the lens. The glass wasn’t like what’s on a window—this glass had some kind of oily coating on it.

  And something was moving inside it, turning.

  That lens was like a big, living eyeball—staring at me, daring me to do something dumb.

  The worst part of it all was that, deep down inside, I knew I probably would.

  To Tell the Truth

  Six thousand doughnuts for three dollars is quite a deal.” Judge Sally was twirling her gavel in her hand like she just couldn’t wait to hammer away with it again—or to throw it at me. “The defendants and even your own counsel…cousin say that one doughnut costs ninety‐nine cents. What made you believe you were entitled to buy six‐thousand doughnuts for three dollars?”

  I dug the game piece out of my pocket. It was still in the zipper‐lock bag, which was now all crinkly and foggy. Celia must’ve reminded me a million times not to forget it.

  “This, Your Honor.” I held up the bag.

  “Hand that to the bailiff.”

  Judge Sally raised the bag up before the lights and adjusted her glasses so she could get a good look. Then, she delicately removed the game piece using her bright red fingernails like tweezers.

  “This says you’ve won a doughnut.”

  “The other side, Your Honor,” Celia said.

  It took a really long time for Judge Sally to read the back—the side with all the fine print stuff. Mr. Paczki looked like he was getting pretty antsy waiting—not that I want to bring up ants again.