The Boy Who Made Everyone Laugh

by Helen Rutter

  When I put Bannerdale down as my first choice on the application form, I felt great, even though everyone else in my class is going to Hillside.

  “Won’t you miss Ash?” Mom said just before she clicked submit.

  “I wiiill still see Ash. You seee his mom all the time.”

  “I suppose so, honey. I just don’t want you to feel alone, that’s all.”

  I didn’t tell her that I always feel alone anyway. That Ash didn’t really hang out with me much at school. No one did. He tried to be part of the cool gang at lunch. They all hung around the steps talking about YouTubers, while I shot basketballs with the fourth graders.

  On the last day of fifth grade when everyone was signing each other’s shirts, Ash said, “Now that we’re going to different schools, it’s probably best if we make new friends, and anyway Mom says I’m old enough now to stay home on Thursday till she gets home. So I won’t really see you anymore. Good luck at Bannerdale!”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “D-d-d-do yoou waaant me to siign yoour … ?” but he had already gone off back to the cool gang. He was never mean to me, though, not really. He never once laughed at my voice.

  The others sometimes did, when I was reading out loud in class or when I had to say, “Baaa,” in the holiday show at school. The director thought a sheep was a perfect part for me. She knew I loved jokes and asked me to find some sheep jokes. It was a good idea really; the sheep character always said, “Baaa,” to what everyone was saying and it always made sense, like Tiny Tim said something, and before Scrooge said “humbug” I was supposed to say “Baaa.” It was meant to be a joke, but I could not even get the B out so it made no sense.

  All the kids in the class were giggling, I think even some of the moms and dads were laughing and covering their mouths. It was one of the worst days of school, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for the whole of Christmas. People’s faces, laughing but not looking at me, mean mouths and rolling eyes, but not Ash. I looked over at him through my sheep mask and he just kept looking at me waiting for me to finish my “Baaa.” That’s why he was my best friend. That’s also one of the reasons I have to go somewhere new, where no one remembers the holiday show and all of the other times I got stuck. Maybe somewhere where I can find more people like Ash, who don’t join in with the giggling.

  My biggest fear about Bannerdale is everyone laughing at me. I want them to laugh with me, at my jokes, not at me. But I can’t even tell them any jokes until my stammer has gone. If I did, they would be laughing for the wrong reason, just like in the Christmas play. I would be the punch line.

  They can’t laugh at my voice if they don’t hear it, though, can they? That’s why I’m going to try my hardest to keep quiet. Not say a word. Until I have made my way through the list. Until my stammer has gone. Then I won’t be Billy Plimpton, The Boy Who Stammers—I’ll be Billy Plimpton, The Funniest Boy in School.

  Wish me luck.

  Why do dragons sleep during the day?

  So that they can fight knights.

  I’m looking into the mirror again, yawning. My hair is like a nest and I have sleep in the corners of my eyes. I can see my Bannerdale uniform hanging up on the door behind me. It looks important, scary, and exciting all at the same time.

  “Good morning,” I say to myself as I stretch my arms above my head. Then I lean in, thoughtful, looking harder at my reflection. My eyes aren’t tight, my face looks relaxed. Different. All of a sudden I am wide awake. At first just a glimmer of hope, a faint idea that something could have changed. This has happened before, usually before a big event when I know I am going to have to speak. I allow myself to get carried away and imagine a miracle has occurred. Maybe this time it’s true. My heart starts to pound in my chest as the hope inside me grows. Has it happened? Have I been cured in the night?

  “My name is Billy …”

  I’m doing it. I’m really doing it! It’s gone, my stammer’s gone, and just in time for school! My stammer has gone! Then I carry on: “P-P-P-P-P-Plimpton.” My heart sinks and I feel instantly and utterly ridiculous. I blow a big raspberry at my reflection.

  Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to stop letting the hope sneak in. It just ends up making me feel sad. Fed up, I put on my new uniform and hear Mom shouting up the stairs for me to hurry.

  After breakfast Mom keeps messing with my tie and saying things like “You look so tiny! You’re too small to go to middle school.”

  “Mom! Ssstop it!” I snap, buttoning my blazer up to protect my tie from any more twiddling.

  Dad just smiles at me over his cornflakes.

  Dad’s at home now. All the time. He started a job as a cameraman at the local news place last week, filming the news and weather. He used to film sports events, so he was away a lot. It sometimes felt like he wasn’t really part of the family—not like the rest of us anyway, more like a fun visitor. Once, when I was meant to be asleep, Mom and Dad were arguing in the kitchen and I heard Mom say, “Ian, I swear it’s easier when you’re not here.” She sounded really tired. I crept down and sat on the bottom step to listen in like I always do, until I heard Mom shut the fridge too hard and her angry footsteps came towards the door. I just made it up to the top of the stairs without her seeing.

  I read a book once about a kid whose parents divorced, and it started with secret nighttime arguing. So when I heard them, that was the first thing I thought of. Sitting on the stairs, panicking, trying to think what I could do to stop it. Wondering if it was all my fault. Now I try my hardest not to think about divorce, but it always pops into my brain as I’m going to sleep. I haven’t heard them arguing since, apart from about whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher. I don’t think people get divorced over cleaning the kitchen, do they?

  Dad says filming news isn’t as interesting as sports, “but sometimes there are more important things in life, Bill.” I assume he means us. He seems happy to be at home all the time, and Mom seems to like it too. They have started being really silly with each other. Mom hid in the laundry basket and jumped out at him the other day. Like they were kids. I’m glad they’re having fun, and that the divorce looks like it’s on hold, but it’s still embarrassing.

  The school bus stops at the end of our road. I had to tell Mom and Dad that they were definitely not allowed to wave me off. They wanted to bring Chloe and her pom-poms to the bus stop. Can you imagine? Could there be anything more embarrassing than your little sister with her pink pom-poms, doing a dance at the bus stop with your mom and dad? They pretended to look really sad when I said, “No way!” and Dad started fake-crying really loudly. “But we love you!” he wailed.

  The school bus is pretty cool. It’s like a fancy bus with high-backed velvety seats. There aren’t many kids who go to Bannerdale around here, so I’m the only one at my bus stop in a Bannerdale uniform. That’s fine by me.

  From our class, just me and Skyla Norkins chose Bannerdale. She’s a bit of a loner too. Everyone else is going to Hillside. They wear red sweaters with the Hillside logo, and they can wear whatever else they want. I saw a girl with ripped jeans, sneakers, and pink hair wearing a Hillside sweater, so the school really doesn’t mind how you look! At Bannerdale, you get a warning if your shirt is untucked.

  When I got fitted for my new uniform, we had to go to the upstairs of this little sports shop through a brown door. I thought it was a very strange place to be buying school uniforms. I asked Mom if she was buying me a fake. She laughed so hard I could see her fillings, but she didn’t answer the question. It wasn’t meant to be a joke. I sometimes get confused when Mom laughs—is she laughing with me, or at me? She didn’t laugh at all when I told her my latest number one joke.

  What does a meditating egg say?

  Ohhhhm-let.

  I mean, how is a meditating egg not funny? I pulled a stupid hippy face when I told it and sat in a meditating pose. I thought she would love it because she does yoga and is always trying to get me to meditate by putting stupid audiobooks on
about floating through clouds with idiotic music in the background. They definitely don’t relax me. They do the opposite. They wind me up.

  She just ruffled my hair when I said the egg joke. I don’t think she was really listening. Or maybe I need to work on my delivery. I’ll try it again on Granny Bread—I test all my jokes on her. Granny Bread looked so proud when she first saw me in my uniform. It’s navy blue with red trim on the collar and the Bannerdale crest on the front pocket. The crest is a peacock, and it’s beautiful. I keep touching it to check it’s still there. It feels stiff and important. I feel important when I have the blazer on.

  When Granny Bread saw me in it, I thought she was going to cry. She kept touching my tie. “A proper uniform, with a proper tie. Not those scruffy Hillside sweaters. They look so uncared for. A proper school has a proper uniform, in my opinion.”

  As I’m waiting at the bus stop I see them all in their “scruffy” uniforms squashed on the other bus, hands pressing against the steamed-up windows. I see faces I know, like ghosts peering from rubbed-out circles on the glass. The girls from the cool gang all take out their phones. Ash gives me a tiny nod as he notices me looking in. I feel a bit silly, like maybe I should have stuck with him, with them all. They weren’t that bad; maybe that’s as good as it will ever be for me? Then my bus pulls into the stop and I have to forget about them and start thinking about my new life.

  There’s loads of space on the bus, so I sit in the middle on my own and sneak a look around. It’s the usual: loud kids at the back, nerds at the front. In the middle with my bag on my knee is the perfect spot to remain unnoticed. Elementary school wasn’t totally useless. It taught me some very important rules for life.

  Too eager. Chloe always wants to do everything first and be at the front of the line, no matter what it’s for. When we went to the dentist the other day and the receptionist said, “Okay, who’s going to go first?” Chloe jumped up and shouted, “ME!” like it’s a good thing to have someone poke around in your mouth. I hate going first, no matter what it is. Let someone else get all the attention and then, by the time it’s my turn at whatever it is, no one will be interested in me. By the time the dentist had finished listening to Chloe going on about unicorns, they didn’t have much time to ask me any questions, so I got away with being silent.

  Much like going first, going last is too much pressure. You always notice the kids who come in last from break and the kids who finish their tests last. Even the saying Last but not least says it all. What if you want to be “least”? I tell you what—go in the middle.

  My dad always sings, “Achoo, pussycat, whoa whoa,” every single time he sneezes, which apparently is some old song. Mom laughs so hard every single time he does it as though she’s never heard it before. I think it’s the most embarrassing thing ever. Once he did it at school pickup, and everyone heard. The next day was a nightmare—everyone was pretending to sneeze all day!

  Once in fourth grade, Hattie Hislop had something wrong with her and her burps stank like rotten eggs. Every time she burped she would start crying and that’s when everyone knew to hold their noses. Honestly it was the worst smell in the whole world. She got better, but no one ever forgot it. People were using it as a would you rather for years.

  “Would you rather have burps like Hattie Hislop’s or farts that electrocute you?”

  “Would you rather have burps like Hattie Hislop’s or worms as fingers?”

  And for a while everyone’s favorite as they just could not decide:

  “Would you rather have burps like Hattie Hislop’s or speak like Billy Plimpton?”

  Laughing too much = intense try-hard

  Laughing not at all = deeply weird

  Lily Cresswell used to laugh so much, all the time, usually at things that were not meant to be funny. When she read out loud a poem about war in class (which was definitely not funny), she started giggling. I could tell that Mrs. Jackson was getting really cross, but that just made Lily worse. On the other hand, Fraser Thompson never ever laughed and kids called him strange and dared each other to try to make him laugh. It never worked.

  No one will ever, ever let you forget it. I don’t even need to explain this one. Surely every kid anywhere on the planet knows this rule? After the age of about seven, farting in school is a terrible idea. I farted once in silent reading but luckily I was sitting next to Alma, who farts all the time, especially when we do stretches in PE, so everyone thought it was her. I felt a bit bad when they were all holding their noses and pretending they couldn’t breathe, but not bad enough to admit it.

  * * *

  Lessons one to six could apply to any eleven-year-old in any school. Number seven is the biggest and most important rule. The rule that’s just for me:

  Any of the things on this list can draw unnecessary attention. I don’t want to alert anyone to the fact that I exist, but speaking is the big one.

  * * *

  I have brought Life Without Stammering by Sophie Bell in my bag. It could give me the answer. I could get off this bus and be a whole new person. I hold it in my hands and take a big breath in, closing my eyes. I make a wish. I check around and no one can see me; I’ve made myself really small. I don’t want anyone to know what I’m reading, so I have taken off the jacket and am hiding the middle of the book inside the jacket of an old Dragon Quest book. I still feel nervous that someone might look over my shoulder and read the words. I check behind and no one is looking, so I relax and open the first page.

  It’s pretty boring. It doesn’t tell me any tricks, or anything to do, it just talks about self-confidence. How can I have self-confidence when I sound like a broken robot? I bet Sophie Bell doesn’t even have a stammer. I flick through the pages and look ahead, through all the chapters. There are no lists, facts, or rules anywhere. I shut the book hard, and a kid looks over at me. Maybe I should add that to my Ways to Stay Hidden list.

  I shove the book into my backpack. It definitely won’t work—not in time for school, that’s for sure. I wish I had bought the new Rick Riordan book instead. That’s number two crossed off the Ways to Get Rid of My Stammer list. Next I need to move on to number three—the tea. I just need to find a place that sells it. The thing is, I was hoping the book might give me something new to try when the teacher takes attendance. I’m really worried about that. I can be silent for a week, easy—apart from having to answer when my name is called. I have been practicing different techniques in the mirror. I think it just made me more nervous, though. The pressure.

  Have you ever noticed that when you desperately want something to go a certain way, it never really does? That is what I’m dreading, when I step off the bus and walk into Bannerdale for the first time.

  Why did the boy throw his watch out of the school window?

  He wanted to see time fly.

  I know that he’s the one I need to watch from the moment I walk into my homeroom. You get a radar for these things after a while. He’s sitting sideways on his chair, with his legs spread wide, as though he wants to take up as much space as possible. His tie is loose and I know he will get a warning for it, but he looks like the kind of boy who doesn’t care about warnings. He loves warnings. He probably collects warnings and puts them on his wall at home like certificates.

  He’s whistling and looking around the room for his first victim. I avoid eye contact and sit as far away as possible. I see Skyla sitting near the back, drawing, and give her a little nod. She looks much less scruffy in the Bannerdale uniform than she did last year. People used to laugh at her because her clothes were too small and her hair was really messy. Now her uniform looks massive but it’s clean. Her hair still looks a bit tangled but not as bad as it used to be. Maybe she brushed it for her first day.

  Skyla is SO good at drawing. At our old school she spent every single lunchtime sitting in the corner of the playground with her sketchbook and pencils. Once, when Jack Rouse snatched the sketchbook off her and started throwing it around, it flew through the a
ir and I got a glimpse of the most amazing faces looking out of the pages. Beautiful eyes but a bit scary too, like ghosts. She got her book back by punching Jack Rouse in the nose. Skyla doesn’t care what people think of her.

  I consider going to join her at her table, but I can’t sit next to a girl—that would draw too much attention. Also, since the punch, I’m a bit scared of Skyla. So I choose to sit next to a boy with floppy blond hair who looks pretty normal. That’s what I’m after, someone whose normalness might distract people away from me, make me seem normal too. The blond boy looks at me.

  “Hi,” he says casually, moving his bag so I can sit down. I just nod and smile, trying not to look weird by smiling too much. He keeps on chatting to two boys sitting at the desk behind his. They look like they already know each other pretty well.

  I wonder if I’ve chosen the right seat, when I look at the boys he is talking to. One of them is really tall. I mean, REALLY tall. I can tell even though he’s sitting down. He looks like a cartoon character with his legs folded under the desk. His body is hunched over the top in a long curve. The other boy looks normal enough, but he’s rubbing his hands together fast like he can’t stop doing it and jiggling his knees under the table like there’s too much energy in them and it has to come out. It’s too late, I can’t move now, so I sit and pretend to look through my bag.

  I have a plan for attendance. In the mirror, during the years that my reflection and I have been getting to know each other, my jokes and I have discovered that there are four different techniques I can use.