“It’s fruit,” she’d said, pointing to the flashy advertising on the package. “See?”
Looking at Summer’s plastic bag, I wondered if she ate those blue and yellow giraffes, too, or what.
“Why’d you have to go outside to get your lunch?” I asked her. I opened my yogurt and gave it a stir.
“Refrigeration,” she said. “I used that petrified snowbank by the corner of the playground.” She took a family-sized jar of mayonnaise out of her bag. Next came a turkey drumstick big enough to bat a Wiffle ball. It smelled like the day after Thanksgiving. She put the turkey leg on top of the empty bag and opened the jar. Then she ripped off a hunk of meat and used it to scoop out a blob of mayonnaise.
“Mmmm,” Summer said, chewing with her eyes closed. Her knuckles were shiny with grease.
Watching her made me want to take a break from eating. I put my yogurt spoon down on my napkin.
Just as Summer tore off another chunk of turkey, Nick walked by. He was so keen on looking straight ahead that he slipped on an empty juice box and almost dropped his tray. Having to pretend we weren’t friends this year had been a lot of work for Nick and me. But today it was turning out to be downright dangerous. And I knew Nick was wondering what in the world I was doing sitting on the boys’ side. I was wondering the same thing myself.
A loud voice at the other end of our table interrupted my thoughts. “Aw—no other seats.” Owen slammed his tray down. “Guess we have to sit here with the cave girls.” Max and two of their friends from Mrs. Novotny’s class sat with him. They looked over at us and snickered.
“Baked beans,” said Owen. “Great ammo!” He blew the wrapper off of his straw and loaded a bean into his shooter. A bean zinged right past his head from the direction of the next table. Owen aimed his straw for a return shot while the others loaded.
Figuring they’d forget about us now, I turned away and took a bite of my sandwich.
“It must take a long time to make all that.” Summer waved a piece of her slimed turkey at my lunch. “I’m not what you’d call an early riser, so I go for the grab grub.”
“I don’t get up early enough to make my lunch either,” I said. I felt a little embarrassed. “My dad makes it.”
“I don’t have a dad.”
I stopped chewing.
“Don’t worry,” Summer said. She gave a little laugh. “It’s not like I had one that died or anything. He left before I was even born.”
A baked bean flew right by us and smacked into the side of Owen’s head. It came from the table on the other side of us, but he must have thought I shot it. “Let’s get ’em!” he yelled.
“It wasn’t me,” I insisted, pointing. “It came from those boys over there.” Owen turned his attention to the table next to us, and I looked back at Summer.
I thought about what she’d said about her not having a dad. I held up my carrot sticks. “Want some?” I asked her.
She gave me this funny smile, kind of shy and wide open at the same time. “Thanks,” she said, which mostly just looked like her mouth moving because Owen and the others were now in some sort of shouting match.
“Put beans in it!” Max yelled.
“I’m putting Jell-O in it, too!” Owen bellowed. “And I’m shaking it up!”
Summer took a couple of carrots and ate them, smiling and chewing at the same time. “Here.” She pulled a hunk of turkey off the leg and tipped her mayonnaise jar toward me.
“Try some of mine.”
I could see greasy globs of mayonnaise shivering on the inside of the glass.
“NOW!” Owen shouted.
He leaned past me and sloshed the contents of his milk carton into Summer’s open mayonnaise jar.
“HAH-HAH!” he yelled. The other boys pounded his back and cheered.
Summer screwed the lid on the jar and shook it. Mushed beans and dots of mayonnaise swirled in a foamy pink broth. “Thanks,” she told Owen. “I am pretty thirsty.” She raised the jar like she was making a toast, then tipped it back and took a swallow. She smiled at the astonished boys through a chalky pink mustache.
“Yah! Gross!” Max slapped the table and high-fived one of the other boys. The rest of them looked like they might be sick.
Owen jumped up. His face was all red. “You—you can’t do that!” he yelled.
And just like that the lunch lady was at our table. The rest of the cafeteria suddenly went quiet, as if someone had hit the mute button.
“That’s it,” said Mrs. Wolfowitz. “Let’s go.”
3
COLLISION COURSE
March!” Mrs. Wolfowitz pointed toward the wall. Owen glared at Summer. She grinned at him. Summer Crawford might think she was funny, but I knew that the look on Owen’s face meant trouble.
“Now!” Mrs. Wolfowitz ordered.
Owen stomped off toward the side of the room. Everybody else in the lunchroom sat at their tables and watched him go. There was no talking, no laughing, no slurping, no chewing. The only other sound in the room was the gurgle-gurgle-gurgle of the water fountain.
“WHAT ARE THE REST OF YOU WAITING FOR? GET MOVING!”
Max and the two boys from Mrs. Novotny’s class got up and slunk over to join Owen at the wall. Summer and I hurried after them double-time.
Mrs. Wolfowitz made us stand in a line with our backs against the side wall. “And stay there until I tell you to move,” she warned, then returned to her seat in the center of the room.
We stood there so long I thought I might keel over. I watched the kids at the tables like I was watching a movie of a lunchroom. Or a movie of a teacher’s idea of a lunchroom. It was weirdly quiet. All the other kids finished eating their lunches in a kind of careful slow motion. No one looked at us, not even when the bell rang and they had to file out right past where we were standing. They avoided contact with us like they thought our trouble might be contagious. Even Nick didn’t look at me. He just blinked and blinked as he walked by. His face was about as white as a freckled face could get.
After everyone else had left, Mrs. Wolfowitz pulled a big ring of keys from her pocket. She marched to the wall next to the food counters and stuck one of the keys into a lock. I’d never noticed a door there before. The door creaked open. It was very dark on the other side.
“Go,” she said.
One by one we filed into the darkness. Mrs. Wolfowitz stepped in and slammed the door behind her. I gulped. I shut my eyes and opened them again to make sure my lids were up. They were. Was this how that kid had disappeared? What would Nick tell my dad when I didn’t come home today? The smell of wet cat filled my nose and I started on a slow burn. I knew whose fault this was. Owen would always be Owen, but none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for Summer Crawford.
There was a deafening crash. Then a light came on. The first thing I saw in the harsh glare was the lunch lady holding the pull cord from a dangling bulb. Just behind her was Owen, sprawled in a collection of janitor’s buckets. Mops stuck out from the wringers at crazy angles.
“Get up,” Mrs. Wolfowitz said to him. “Then all of you, in line.”
We stood shoulder to shoulder facing the lunch lady. She looked us over, sizing us up for something—jail cells…or worse. The dim bulb swung back and forth with a slow eek-eek-eek.
“You!” We all jumped. She was pointing to the bigger boy from Mrs. Novotny’s class. He let out a whimper.
“No talking!” Mrs. Wolfowitz grabbed a big trash barrel and pushed it toward him. She handed the short, round-faced boy a broom. Max and I got sponges and spray bottles shoved into our hands. Summer got a dustpan and whisk broom. “You clear off the tables and clean up after the broom boy,” the lunch lady said.
“Since you like the buckets so much, you get this.” She rolled a bucket at Owen, holding it by its mop. The wheels squeaked and soapy water sloshed around inside. “As soon as the others clear a row, it’s your job to mop the floor.”
Mrs. Wolfowitz opened the door again.
I had never been so glad to see the zoofeteria.
“Clean this place until it sparkles,” she said, “and then you can go back to class.”
I looked around at the tables gobbed with food. I surveyed the floor, ankle deep in greasy napkins and popped milk cartons. Then I kind of wished she had just made us disappear. Forget recess, forget class, and forget free time. It would take hours to clean all this up. It seemed entirely possible that we’d find that missing fifth grader buried under a pile of mushed-up hot dog buns. Now I get it, I thought. We’ll never leave here. This actually is how Mrs. Wolfowitz makes kids disappear.
“C’mon, Nadie. I bet we can finish way before these guys,” Summer said, louder than she needed to. She looked at Owen and pushed her hair behind her ears.
“No talking!” Mrs. Wolfowitz snapped.
Summer started sweeping trash from the tables into her dustpan. Owen ran to the end of the row, pulling his squeaky bucket with him. I followed Summer, sponging the tables she had cleared, but I kept my distance. This was already the worst trouble I’d ever been in. No good could come of challenging Owen to a cleaning race, and I knew it.
Max wiped down the benches while I wiped the tables. He brought along a dishpan of soapy water for rinsing the sponges.
Mrs. Wolfowitz called Mr. Allen and Mrs. Novotny on the intercom and told them we’d be late coming back to class. “That’s right, Mr. Allen,” she said, nodding. “Owen, Max, Nadine, and the new girl.”
She went into the kitchen area and sat down on a stool. Mr. Jacobs, the cook, handed her a mug of coffee. I wondered for a minute why Mr. Jacobs, who had a total of maybe six hairs, wore a hairnet every day. Then I went back to sponging. There’d be plenty of time to ponder this and other lunchroom mysteries if getting in this kind of trouble meant my noon meetings at the Springville Spark were over.
How much trouble will I be in because of this? I worried. What if someone else gets to take over my job on the Spark? Mr. Allen had already mentioned to me that Gordon was interested in being art editor. I didn’t want to give up my job on the magazine, but even more important, I didn’t want to give up our lunchtime meetings, the only time in the whole school day when I could just be normal with Nick.
All Gordon ever wanted to draw were robots anyway. What kind of a magazine would that be? I squeezed the sponge into the dishpan. The water had turned greenish brown, and now it gave off a moldy kind of smell. I thought I might throw up, but I held my breath and kept wiping.
After a few rows my arms and shoulders ached from scrubbing, so I stretched and looked around. Summer had almost finished clearing off the tables and was already sweeping up the trash piles on the floor. The bigger boy from Mrs. Novotny’s class was following her with the trash barrel, and the boy with the broom was working his way down the rows, sweeping steadily to make way for Owen and his mop.
When I bent back to my scrubbing, I thought I saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye—a quick, sneaky kind of motion. But when I looked over, all I saw was Owen, mopping the floor. He didn’t seem to be racing Summer at all. For some reason that gave me a bad feeling in the bottom of my stomach.
I kept checking on Owen, but he always just seemed to be concentrating on his job. Then I caught him. I saw him quickly scoop a pile of stuff from a trash can and dump it on the floor. He was making more messes for Summer to pick up. I heard Mrs. Wolfowitz and Mr. Jacobs laughing in the kitchen. I had to get Owen to stop before things got too out of hand. I mean, how much more trouble did he want us all to get into?
“Owen,” I hissed.
Too late. Summer had seen him, too. She grabbed her dustpan and whisk broom and made a beeline for Owen. Now he was dumping trash piles as he went, dragging his bucket along with him and slopping water everywhere. This could only end in disaster. I shook my head. I waved my sponge. But I might as well have been invisible. They were on a collision course and the crash point was me. Max and the other two boys just stood there and watched Summer and Owen close in.
Owen veered around the end of my row carrying a handful of trash to dump somewhere. Summer raced toward him from the other end of the row, holding the dustpan in front of her. I dropped my sponge and held my hands out to keep them apart.
“Yah!” Owen shouted. He shoved the mop and bucket at Summer. It rolled past me and I grabbed for the mop handle. The bucket skidded over with a sickening crash. Gray-green water streamed across the floor and slopped over the feet of Mrs. Wolfowitz, who had reappeared on the scene with enormously bad timing.
The lunch lady looked down at her shoes. Then she looked long and hard at me. I was still holding the mop.
4
TWO THOUSAND POUNDS
OF ROCKS
Back to class!” Mrs. Wolfowitz sputtered. Not one of us needed to be told twice. Owen was out the door in a blink. Max dropped his sponge and lit out after him, with the two boys from Novotny’s class on his heels. Summer set the dustpan and broom on a table and breezed out. I quickly righted the bucket, shoved the mop in its wringer, and turned to go.
“Not you.”
I stopped where I was. Everyone else was already out the door, so Mrs. Wolfowitz had to be talking to me. Okay, I thought. I get it now. This is one of those never-ending nightmares— like when you can’t find your homework and you’re late for school and you’re wading through quicksand and your mother is about to tell you something awful. And even after you wake up it feels like you’re trying to breathe with two thousand pounds of rocks on your chest.
This was just like that.
Mrs. Wolfowitz ordered me to clear away all the trash piles and mop up the dirty water on the floor. Then she stalked over to the far side of the room and buzzed the intercom.
“Yes, Mr. Allen.” She raised her voice. “I said Nadine Rostraver.”
I knew Mr. Allen would never believe that I’d made all this trouble, no matter what the lunch lady told him. He just couldn’t.
It took a really long time to clean up the mess. I didn’t think I’d make it home for supper. Or tomorrow’s breakfast. I kept my eyes wide open in case any tears tried to get themselves started. I pretended that the mop was a brush and that the floor was a gigantic canvas. At first the mop went swish, swish in big, angry arcs. Then I concentrated on making smaller and smaller swipes, pretending to fill in the lunchroom floor with a mop painting of the woods at the end of my street. By focusing on my floor painting, I managed to get the rocks on my chest down to maybe one thousand pounds.
By the time I made it back to class, free time was over. In fact, last period was nearly over. I stood outside the classroom door. Would Mr. Allen have to tell my parents what had happened? Thinking of that made those rocks get heavier again.
I could see through the little window in the door that Summer wasn’t in the classroom. That seemed fair. First she’d sat me on the boys’ side of the lunchroom, and then she’d trapped me in the middle of her stupid race with Owen. Maybe she’d disappeared.
Owen was there, shoving papers into his backpack. Nick was copying homework from the board. I turned the doorknob slowly and sidled in.
“Affir-ma-tive,” I heard Gordon say to Mr. Allen. “I-will-accept-the-assignment.” He nodded several times, chin up chin down. He tilted his head toward his desk and moved one arm and one leg, then the other arm and the other leg. He stopped, tilted his head the other way, and started the whole process again. Great, I thought. Am I being replaced as the Spark art director by a robot?
I flopped into my seat.
“Why’d you go and sit on the boys’ side?” Lacey whispered.
I huffed. It wasn’t like I’d done it on purpose. Now she was going to act like I was contaminated or something.
Max walked by and kicked the leg of Lacey’s chair. “Quit it,” Lacey complained. It was hard to believe that last year they used to get along.
I opened the lid of my desk. Inside was a note from Nick. “What happened??” it said.
Summer Crawford,
I said to myself. That’s what happened. I slammed my desk and didn’t look at Nick or anyone else. I copied the homework and dug around for my science lab notebook and my math book. At the bottom of the desk was the folder of edited submissions for this week’s Springville Spark. I’d already sketched out illustrations for some of the stories. No way was I letting Gordon get his mechanical fingers on those. Nick and I could do the layout at home on my computer. I was going to make this issue the best ever so Mr. Allen would beg me to take my old job back. Actually, now that I thought about it, he might not have been talking to Gordon about being art director at all. Maybe Mr. Allen had suggested that Gordon try drawing something besides robots for a change, before his drawing parts wore out.
The last bell rang. I shoved the Spark folder into my backpack.
“Have an active and inventive weekend, fellow learners,” Mr. Allen said. I had to smile a little. At the end of every week our teacher came up with a new way to say “Don’t sit all weekend with your eyes plastered to the tube and video games.” Then he turned toward me. “Nadie, may I speak with you for a moment?”
I felt like a soda that had lost its fizz. He moved some papers around, and I knew he was waiting for the rest of the kids to leave. I waited, too.
Mr. Allen’s eyebrows were raised in sharp, upside-down Vs. “I must say, Nadie, that I am surprised at and quite disappointed in your behavior today.”
“But…but I—”
Mr. Allen held up his hand. “I counted on you to set the very best example for Summer on her first day here at Upper Springville Elementary. Instead, you put yourself in the center of a lunchroom brouhaha.”
Brew-ha-what? Any other day the word would have made me laugh, but nothing seemed funny to me right then. How could Mr. Allen think I’d caused all that trouble? He wouldn’t even let me tell my side of it. It was so unfair! Right then I would’ve liked to point out that it was MR. ALLEN who’d put Summer Crawford’s desk in our group with Owen, and MR. ALLEN who’d cancelled our lunch meeting so I had to go to the zoofeteria, and MR. ALLEN who’d made me sit with Summer on the boys’ side.
The Trouble with Rules Page 2
