The Trouble with Rules

by Leslie Bulion

  “Mrs. Wolfowitz tells me you have additional cafeteria responsibilities during recess on Monday and Tuesday. As you know, Nadie, Monday and Tuesday are the days we edit new Spark submissions—”

  “But I can still meet at lunch,” I broke in.

  Mr. Allen shook his head. “No, Nadie. I’ve already spoken to Gordon about next week’s issue. He’s been wanting to try his hand at art editing for some time now. I think he deserves a chance, don’t you?”

  I most certainly did not.

  “Nadie.” Mr. Allen’s voice softened. “Everyone slips up now and then. Part of growing up is learning to deal with the consequences of our mistakes.”

  Just how, exactly, had I “slipped up”? How was any of this my mistake? I had to mop the floor again next week—and I’d lost my art editor job—all because Summer Crawford had set Owen off like a spark to the fuse on a stick of dynamite. All I wanted was the Springville Spark, not Summer’s troublemaking kind of sparks. Getting blamed for something you didn’t do was part of growing up? My eyes stung like needles and I had to get out of there, fast.

  “And since we didn’t get to finish this week’s magazine layout—”

  “I’m going to do it at home.”

  “All right,” Mr. Allen said. “I’ll tell the office that you’ll e-mail it in and they can print it first thing Monday morning.”

  I ran for the door. He hadn’t said anything about telling my parents about the lunchroom, and I wasn’t going to give him the chance.

  It had stopped sleeting. The thin spring sunlight struggled to warm me through my fleece jacket. Nick was waiting for me at our corner, same as every day since the second day of school this year. The first day of fourth grade had been the day that everything had changed. We’d left school together like we’d done every day of every other year at Springville Elementary, except this time we’d walked out the door of the upper school building. A horde of fifth graders thundered past us, and Nick grabbed the strap of my backpack to pull me out of the way.

  “Oooh. Is that your girlfriend?” a fifth grader yelled at Nick.

  “Why don’t you hold hands instead of backpacks?” another kid jeered.

  “Leave them alone—they’re probably heading out behind the backstop for privacy.”

  “Gross me out!”

  That was Owen. Some of the other kids in our class said HA HA HA really loud, like they’d always been in with the fifth graders and their great jokes. Nick and I got the “joke,” too. Nick let go of my pack strap like it was a snake with poison fangs. The fifth graders jostled in between us and swept us the rest of the way down the steps. Nick and I didn’t even look at each other. I walked toward home, and Nick went the other way. The long way. New school, new rules. In Upper Springville Elementary, boys and girls aren’t friends.

  So now we always left school separately. We walked in opposite directions, then cut back in to meet at the corner of Broom and Laurel. Today, of course, Nick had left school long before me. I stomped past him at the corner and he fell into step beside me.

  “Why wasn’t Summer in class at the end of the day?” I asked him. “Did they beam her back to wherever she came from?”

  “No.” Nick shook his head. The way he could never be sarcastic was usually one of the things I liked about Nick. “She had to go to the nurse to read the eye chart.”

  That figured. Well, my plan was just to ignore her on Monday. Nick didn’t say anything, and we kept walking.

  “I hate getting into trouble!” I yelled.

  “Didn’t think you’d like it much,” Nick agreed.

  “Mr. Allen thinks I threw food and jumped out of my seat. He thinks I dumped dirty water all over the lunchroom floor.”

  I felt mad all over again.

  “Wow,” Nick said, looking impressed. “You did all that?”

  I gave him a little shove.

  “Right, right,” he said. “You didn’t. Right.”

  “But I’m off the Spark next week.”

  “Off the Spark? You can’t be!” Now Nick got serious. “Who could take your place?”

  I swiveled my head toward him, bent my arms at the elbows, and swung one forward and one back.

  “Not Gordon!” Nick slapped his forehead. “You’re kidding! Is that what he was talking about with Mr. Allen? The magazine’ll be all about robots. But,” Nick said, rubbing his head, “you know, he is good at computers—”

  “Nick!” He hopped ahead of me before I could give him another shove. “Listen,” I said, running up to him. “No one is taking my place. At least not permanently.” I told him my plan to impress Mr. Allen. “We’re going to put together our best issue ever over the weekend. He said I can e-mail the file to school and the office will print it Monday morning.”

  “That could work,” Nick said. “You’ll have to stay out of trouble after that, though.”

  “That’s easy,” I said. We turned onto our street, Bramble Way. “All I have to do is stay away from Summer Crawford.”

  5

  A MAZE OF

  CHALK MARKS

  Hey ho, buddy-pals,” my dad said, wiping his hands on a dish towel. The kitchen was full of the smells and mess of baking. A plate piled high with oatmeal raisin cookies sat on the counter. “Perfectly shaped and not a burned one in the batch,” Dad said. “These cookies are so beautiful I was about to take them downstairs to the studio to shoot.”

  “No!” Nick said. “Don’t shoot!” He swiped a cookie and stuffed it into his mouth.

  I got us milk—regular for me and chocolate soy for Nick. When we started fourth grade, Nick’s parents told him he could stay home alone in the afternoons, but none of us wanted to fool around with a routine that had been working great since kindergarten. So Nick still hung out at our house every day until his parents closed their grocery at dinnertime.

  Dad reached for the plate.

  I pulled it closer to me and covered it with my arms. “Why don’t you go pick on fruit or something and leave these poor cookies alone?” For weeks my dad had been photographing covers and spreads for the magazine You’ll Cook It Quick! He called it You Can’t Cook Zip because the recipes were totally impossible to follow.

  “Pick on fruit or something? That shows what you know,” Dad said. He plucked two cookies from the plate, held them up to the window, and turned them in the light. “You’ll never guess what I worked on today.”

  “Kumquats?” I offered.

  “Not even close,” Dad said.

  “What’s a kumquat?” Nick asked me. I nudged him with my shoulder. That, of course, wasn’t the point.

  My dad put the cookies back on the plate and disappeared into the living room. He came back and thunked a big sports bag down on the table.

  “What’s all that?” I reached for the bag.

  “Wait.” Dad grabbed the sports duffel away and looked under the table. “Holy moly, Nicolo! When did your tootsies grow into flippers?” He rummaged in the bag. “I hope these’ll fit!”

  Dad pulled two pairs of inline skates out of the bag. He handed the big yellow ones to Nick and a smaller orange pair to me. “I was doing a shoot for Outdoor Fun magazine featuring gear from a super-hot new sports company, and they let me have these.”

  “Wow!” Nick said. He hugged the skates to his chest. “These are so cool!”

  “Thanks, Dad.” I held up one of the inline skates. Its four wheels looked kind of skinny to me. “Do you think it matters that neither one of us has ever been on these things before in our lives?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” Dad said. “That’s why I also got all of this.” He set aside two extra pairs of skates, then turned the bag upside down. A shower of packages fell onto the table. “Knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, you name it. You’ll need your bike helmets. They tell me these babies have good brakes once you learn how to use them, but for now I think you’d better stick to flat surfaces.”

  “We will,” Nick said.

  “Well, we’ll try,” I j
oked.

  Before it was Laurel Estates—or “the Shrubs,” as we called it—our development had been acres and acres of cornfields. You had to go pretty far before you hit a real hill around here. Our street, Bramble Way, ended in a cul-de-sac, and the lots at the end had never been sold. Beyond the curb, the lots hadn’t even been cleared. Tall weeds led the way into the tangle of woods beyond.

  I eyed the pile of crash pads Dad had dumped on the table. “Hey, Nick,” I said. “Let’s get some chalk and draw a skating course on the cul-de-sac. Want to?”

  “Yeah!” He ran his hand along the wheels of one of his skates, making them spin. “But first I want to try these on.”

  “I’m going to pick up Zack from preschool,” Dad said. “He started his day extra early this morning, so I think he’s going to need a nap. You guys can try the skates at our end of the street while I’m gone if you promise to stay there.”

  I grabbed our big bucket of sidewalk chalk and headed out to the cul-de-sac. I didn’t even notice Dad drive away. Nick ran home to get his helmet, then came back and sat down at the curb to put on his skates. I started laying out our skating course. I had an idea for a kind of town with winding streets, bridges, and rivers.

  “Nadiiiiieee!”

  When I looked up, Nick was rolling away. With all of those pads on, he reminded me of one of Gordon’s robots. He grabbed at the air as he teetered forward and back.

  I dropped my chalk and ran after him. “I’m going to get your hand!” I yelled. “Stop flailing!” When I caught him, he whipped around me in a circle. One of his skates kicked out from under him, then the other one, flippety-flippety. But I held Nick’s arm up high and he didn’t fall.

  “There!” Nick huffed. “Stopping’s not so hard.”

  “Not when it’s a two-person operation,” I observed.

  “Let me try again.”

  I let go and he rolled off again, still a little wobbly. I jogged alongside. “Need help?”

  “No,” he said. He was heading straight for the curb.

  “Nick, here!” I ran next to him with my hand out.

  He didn’t take it. I held my breath. He hopped the curb and ran a few shaky steps in the weeds, then stopped just in time to avoid the tangle of brambles on the edge of the woods. He turned and smiled. “How was that?”

  “Not bad. I’m not sure I’d try it at high speed, though.”

  “Aren’t you going to skate?”

  If all-sports Nick was having this much trouble on the skates, I figured I’d be hopeless. “I want to get all of my ideas down before I forget my plan,” I told him.

  Dad drove up and carried a sleeping Zack into the house. Nick went back to skating and I went back to my chalk. I could hear the rhurr-rhurr of his wheels against the pavement as I worked. A couple of times he zipped by so close he almost knocked over the chalk bucket. “Hey!” I called. “Watch where you’re going.”

  He skated around the circle faster and faster. After a while he barreled over to see what I was doing and I had to jump out of the way.

  “Quit running me over,” I told him.

  “I’m getting better, watch!” Nick skated away, then skated toward me. He leaned back on one heel, slowing to a stop right in front of me. He didn’t even have to wave his arms much.

  “You used the brakes—no more curb!” I was impressed.

  “Come on, put your skates on. It’s really fun.”

  “I will in a minute. I just want to finish this street.”

  “I want to try your skate course,” Nick said. “It’s looking good.”

  I watched him skate along one of the paths I’d drawn. The turn was a little too sharp, and he couldn’t make it. “I can fix that,” I said.

  “That’s okay. I’ll fix it.” Nick sat down and took off his skates and helmet. He got some chalk and started adding more roads. I drew in some houses.

  “Cool!” Nick looked over my shoulder. “This is turning into a whole little town, right at the end of our street.”

  The light was fading behind the trees. I could hardly see to draw. I stood up and surveyed the cul-de-sac, which didn’t feel so empty anymore. “We should give it a name,” I said.

  Nick looked out at the winding maze of chalk marks. He rubbed his head. “What about Skatetown?”

  “Hmmm.” I thought for a second. “I like it, but that could be anywhere. We need something more specific. What about ‘Little Shrubs’?” But that didn’t sound right either.

  “Well, our street is called Bramble Way—and there sure are plenty of brambles around the cul-de-sac,” he said. “Brambleville? Like Springville? No, wait—let’s call it Brambletown.”

  A beam of headlights swung over us. Nick’s parents’ car pulled into his driveway and the doors slammed.

  “Hallo, Nadie!” Mr. Fanelli waved as he went into their house. “Nick! Come help your mama with the bags.”

  Nick and I grabbed our things and ran to meet Mrs. Fanelli.

  “What’s for supper?” I asked her.

  “Eggplant parmigiana.” Nick’s mom waved a paper bag under my nose. “This one is yours.”

  “Mmmm!” I took the bag. “Thanks!” Eggplant parmigiana from the Fanellis’ store was my favorite.

  “Now, Nadie, you don’t forget to leave some for your poor mama,” Mrs. Fanelli warned me. “For when she comes home so tired and hungry in the middle of the night.”

  It would cause Mrs. Fanelli actual physical pain to know that Mom microwaved frozen dinners while she was at work. Dad and I had a pact never to let on about that. Anyway, Mom would be glad we were eating the eggplant—I’d mention it when I instant-messaged her later, like I always did.

  A long time ago Dad had tried to tell Mrs. Fanelli that she didn’t need to “pay” us with dinner to have Nick over in the afternoons, but she had just waved her hand in the air.

  “Tuh!” she’d said, like he was talking nonsense. And that was the end of it. She’d been in charge of her five brothers and two sisters in Italy after their parents had died. That was before she’d met Nick’s dad and moved to America.

  But she was in charge here, too. No one argued with Mrs. Fanelli.

  6

  THE PERFECT SPARK

  I set another section of track on Zack’s train table. “Time to see Mama?” he asked me again. “Not yet, Zacky,” I said. “It’s only nine thirty and we have to let Mama have her catch-up sleep.”

  “I don’t like ketchup.” Zack wrinkled his round nose.

  I laughed. I knew he didn’t like either one—not the gooey red tomato stuff, and certainly not letting Mom sleep a little later on weekends.

  “Nadie! Don’t laugh!”

  “Sorry.” I tickled him under his chin. “Don’t laugh,” I teased. He squirmed away from my fingers. “How about seeing if your engine can pull the train over this long bridge?”

  “My engine is strong!” Zack pushed his wooden train toward the bridge with his pudgy hands. I was building him a complicated track layout, trying to stall him until it was time to wake Mom at ten. I liked the way the toy track could weave back over itself in big loopy designs. I was going to have to show this to Nick for Brambletown.

  The steady drizzle outside made the day feel wintery raw. Why had they named this town Springville if we were going to have April days like this one? The bad weather meant no Brambletown today, but that was okay. It was just the right kind of day to work on my dazzling issue of the Springville Spark. I planned to spend plenty of time on it, too. I’d show Mr. Allen that no one could do the art editor job the way I did it.

  “I’m done with the computer, Nadie,” Dad called up from his studio in the basement.

  “I want to play computer,” Zack said. He pushed himself to his feet, knocking over the bridge.

  I looked at the clock. Nine forty-nine. Close enough. “Time to get Mama,” I said.

  “Mama!” He bolted for my parents’ bedroom. I heard the springs creak as he flung himself onto the bed. When I got
to the door, he had already burrowed under the blankets. Mom’s wavy hair trailed loose across the pillow and the outlines of her face looked soft. She turned over and held her arms out.

  “Where’s my vitamin N?” She smiled with her eyes closed.

  “Only a small dose for now,” I said, slipping in and out of her strong hug. “I have to finish up last week’s Springville Spark.” A little part of me wanted to climb into that warm bed with Mom and Zack and let everything that had happened yesterday spill out. But the rest of me was too busy thinking of how to make sure this issue of the Spark wouldn’t be my last.

  I signed in to our homework connection page and transferred the folder for this week’s issue to the desktop. The Springville Spark’s “Life in Space!” There were six poems, three articles, a story by Jess, and one by Max. We’d chosen three of Gordon’s robot drawings after Mr. Allen had suggested he make at least one robot doing something un-robotlike. Lacey had submitted a drawing of flowers blooming on the moon, tended by moon beings dressed in flowing robes. Alima had painted a cool spiral of light and dark colors that was supposed to be the Big Bang.

  An instant message popped up. It was from Nick.

  Are you working on the Spark?

  Just got started, I typed. I hit Send. Why don’t you come over? I added. I hit Send again. I counted to twenty. Nothing. I counted another twenty, then heard steps outside on the walk. Upstairs, the kitchen door slammed. Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, Nick thumped down to our basement.

  He shrugged out of his raincoat and draped it over a chair. You didn’t need a raincoat to run across the street, but no one argued with Mrs. Fanelli.

  “What took you so long?” I asked.

  He held on to the arms of the chair and let himself down slowly. “I’m sore,” he groaned.

  I laughed. “Guess I’d better stay off of those skates.”

  “Nah—it’s worth it,” Nick insisted. He pulled his chair closer. “You have to get on those skates so we can start practicing on our course.”