A Zombie Middle School Diary, Book 4: My Home Economics Teacher is a Pigman

by Mark Mulle

PARTY!

  I invited over Grunt and Will to have a sleepover with me today. Middle school is a lot busier than I thought it would be. My friends and I don’t have as much time as we used to for hanging out as we did in elementary school. Today was going to be a boy’s only day.

  Roarbert was at a sleepover with his friends, so my friends and I had the whole place to ourselves, well, not counting my parents. I didn't know what to do with my friends. We just decided to do everything that we could think of. We played video games, played board games, and even baked stuff together. This cooking club and home ec class is really making me appreciate the finer arts of making and eating snacks. My mom took a lot of pictures of me cooking. She thought it was cute. I thought it was embarrassing.

  Anyway, I had a great time with my friends. I’m going to hang out with Snow and Tibby tomorrow since I didn’t hang out with either of them today. I’m sure it’ll be pretty cool, and I’ll make sure that I write all about it.

  Day Twenty-Two: A Day Out with the Girls

  Dear Diary,

  Since I hung out with my bros yesterday, I figured that today would be a great time to hang out with my girl friends. It’s very important that I keep that space between the word ‘girl’ and ‘friends’. I only like Snow and Tibby as friends. I only like all girls as friends right now. I mean, I’m twelve. I don’t need to start thinking about getting a girlfriend until I’m at least thirteen. Having girls who are my friends is cool, though.

  I let the girls pick what we should do today. When Tibby said, “We should go to the mall,” I was a little grossed out. Every boy knows that it means when a girl wants to go to a mall. It means that the boy will go in, and then never come out because he’ll die of boredom while the girl shops. Of course, I did tell the girls they could pick, so I agreed to go with them.

  Snow’s mom drove us to the mall in the next village over. “This mall is way cooler than the one that we have in our village,” Snow said. “It’s way bigger. There’re way more stores to shop at.” I tried my very best not to complain. I thought about the ten gold blocks in my inventory. I hoped it would be enough to buy something.

  The mall was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It was also really clean, which is kind of weird for monster buildings. I mean, there was spider webs all over the place, but I guess that’s just what a mall is asking for when they hire giant spiders for janitors. As I looked around the store, I noticed just how many stores there were, and how not all of them were clothes stores. The place wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it was going to be.

  The girls did want to do some shopping for clothes, but while they did that they made sure to point out a video game store me to look in so I didn’t get bored. That store was actually really cool. A lot of the video games were old and used, but that also meant that they were pretty cheap. I was able to get a game that came out two years ago for only three gold blocks! When the game was new it would have been close to ten gold blocks!

  I met up with the girls later and we went to a toy shop. I bought some mini blocks to play with. I can build a replica of my house when I get home if I want to. After that, the girls showed me the arcade. That was the best part of the whole mall. I have to admit that I used up the rest of the money here. Luckily, Snow’s mom had given us money for dinner, so I didn’t go hungry.

  We got some burritos from the food court and waited outside for Snow’s mom to pick us up. I had a really good time. I’m starting to think that I’ll ask the girls to go to the mall with me more often, as soon as I get my allowance. Today was a really good day. I’ll make sure to write more tomorrow.

  Day Twenty-Three: The Cooking Club, Again

  Dear Diary,

  Today is Monday, which sadly meant that I needed to go to school today, but it also meant that I was able to go to the cooking club meeting. I know that I signed up for this club on a dare, but I’m actually really glad that I signed up for it. I mean, Mr. Nocab is a lot cooler during the club than during class. We also got to make a lot cooler stuff. Today we were learning how to make ice cream!

  Mr. Nocab made everyone group up. I partnered up with a pigman named Tyler. He was pretty cool. All of the kids were handed two bags. We had a little bag for ice cream and a bigger bag for ice. I had to mix milk, sugar, and a tiny bit of salt into a bag. Then I was allowed to choose a flavor. A lot of kids picked vanilla, but I thought that was lame. I put in chocolate syrup and chocolate chips into my bag.

  Once everything was in the bag, Tyler and I put both of our bags into the ice bag. We had to also add salt to the ice, which I guess made it even colder. I was wondering why we needed to have partners as I rolled the ice cream bag inside of the ice bag, but it didn’t take me long to figure it out as I tried to make the ice cream. The ice bag got super cold. I gave it to Tyler to use, and we kept switching when we got too cold.

  By the end of class, everyone was eating ice cream out of their bags. Mine didn’t work as well as the vanilla kids, but it was worth it for every chocolatey bite. I’m going to finish eating this ice cream and then clean up. I’ll make sure to write more tomorrow, and maybe even make some more ice cream at home.

  Day Twenty-Four: Grunt’s Grunts

  Dear Diary,

  Something weird was up today, and I don’t even know what it is. It’s about Grunt, not me. I’m fine. It’s just that every once in a while, Grunt gets really upset about something. He bottles up his feelings and then he takes it out on other people later. Grunt and I almost stopped being friends during the summer school program because he got jealous that I was doing better than him in class. I mean, I’m doing better than him in class right now, but I don’t think he’s mad at me for that. He hasn’t said anything about it, anyway.

  I could tell that something was up with Grunt, but Grunt didn’t seem to want to tell me what was up with him. I even made sure to ask him directly, “Are you feeling okay?” instead of trying to be sneaky and figure out what was wrong. Grunt said that he was fine, but I don’t think that he’s telling the truth.

  I’m going to wait for Grunt to tell me what is wrong on his own. It’s rude to try to force someone to tell you what’s wrong, and it only makes friendships more complicated. I know that Grunt will tell me what is wrong once he’s ready to. I guess that I’ll just have to wait until he feels ready to tell me what is wrong. I hope that Grunt knows that he can tell me whatever he needs to. That’s just what best friends are for.

  I’ll write more tomorrow if Grunt tells me anything. Until he does, the best I can do is be patient with him.

  Day Twenty-Five: Roarbert’s Brotherly Advice

  Dear Diary,

  Grunt still hasn’t said anything about what’s bothering him, but he was definitely still acting like there was something wrong. I still haven’t talked to him about whatever it is that’s bothering him because I don’t really know how to talk to him about his troubles. It’s never gone super well when I’ve tried to talk to Grunt when something is going on with him. He’s not exactly the best listener, especially when he gets his mind stuck on something. He’s the most stubborn friend that I have, that’s for sure.

  I didn’t really know how to talk to Grunt, but I did know how to talk to Roarbert. He was always around to give me advice when I needed it, and he was really good at giving me advice about Grunt, which was probably because half the time I needed advice it was so that I could learn how to talk to Grunt better. I wonder if Grunt ever asks for advice about how to talk to me.

  I went into Roarbert’s room and told him all about what was going on with Grunt. I asked him what he should do about the whole thing. He didn’t have much to say, but what he said was important. “It actually seems like you’re handling this really well. I think you should just keep doing what you’re doing.” Roarbert paused for a minute before finishing his thought. “You know, you’ve gotten a lot more mature since you started middle school. Pretty soon you won’t even need my advice.”

  I left Roarbert’s room
after talking to him. It felt pretty good to get some props from my big brother. I think that Roarbert and I are getting to be better friends every day. Maybe I really am growing up and getting more mature.

  Day Twenty-Six: Finally Talking

  Dear Diary,

  I knew that I should be patient, but being patient is really hard sometimes. I was so curious about whatever was bugging Grunt. I might have also been a little worried that he was mad at me for something. I couldn’t really think of anything that I could have done to make him mad at me, but with a guy like Grunt, I can never be sure that I didn’t do something. I was actually just about to straight up ask Grunt what was wrong when he walked up to me and shyly said, “Can I talk to you about something?” Grunt had never been shy about anything since I met him. I knew that this was important. Grunt was finally about to open up to me.

  We walked away from everyone else at school so we could be alone. Once Grunt knew that there was no one else around he said, “I’m really stressed out about something, and I need to talk to someone about it. Is it okay if I tell you?”

  I felt touched that Grunt would come to me first. “Yeah, you can always tell me anything, you know that.”

  Grunt continued. “It’s just this whole middle school thing. There’s so much more work than in elementary school. I’m having a really hard time keeping up and my grades are getting really low. I’m just worried that if I don’t get my grades back up I’ll have to go to summer school again.”

  I understood what Grunt was talking about. Even if my grades were not dropping, I still knew that middle school was a lot harder than elementary school. “I get it, man, school is getting pretty hard. Is there anything I can do to help?” I wanted to help Grunt, really, but I didn’t know how I could help him.

  “I know I need some help, but I don’t really know what could help. I’m just too stressed out to think of any ideas. Do you...do you think that you could think of some way to help me out?” Grunt sounded really nervous when he asked me this.

  “Yeah, I’ll try to think of something and get back to you tomorrow, okay?” I pretended to know what I was doing. I hope that Grunt couldn’t tell that I was just as clueless as he was.

  “Thanks, bro,” he said as he left.

  It meant a lot to me that Grunt could talk to me about his troubles, but now I’m a little nervous. I don’t really know how to help him out with his troubles. I’ll try to sleep on it. I’ll write about whatever I figure out tomorrow...if I can even figure out something.

  Day Twenty-Seven: Summer Memories and Autumn Ideas

  Dear Diary,

  I don’t know if other people get this, but sometimes when I’m trying to sleep I start thinking about stuff that I usually wouldn’t think of, like really good food that I had years ago or about that time I fell off a slide and scraped my knee when I was in third grade. Last night I thought of something that could actually help Grunt out, though!

  I was thinking about that time I messed up in my chemistry class during summer school. I don’t know why I was thinking about this, I just was. Anyway, when I messed up Miss Enchantment made me go to tutoring. I didn’t really like it at first, but it really helped my grades and my stress. I think that the same thing can help Grunt.

  I told Grunt about this when I got to school today. He didn’t seem thrilled at the idea of signing up for tutoring, but he didn’t fight me on it, either. He knew that he needed this, even if he didn’t actually want to do it. I came with him to sign up for tutoring in general since Grunt needed help in most subjects. I even signed up for tutoring in math, partially to be nice and partially because that was my worst class.

  Grunt was really glad that I had this idea, and he was even happier that I joined tutoring with him. I really think that I’m doing a good job at this whole middle school thing. I’ll write some more about it tomorrow.

  Day Twenty-Eight: Fencing

  Dear Diary,

  Signing up for tutoring was pretty stressful for Grunt, and it was even a little stressful for me. I didn’t want to think about school today, and I don’t think Grunt wanted to think about it, either. We needed to blow off some steam, and I knew the perfect way to do that.

  In my last month of summer school, I had to take a gym class. I thought it was going to be really lame, but I actually had a lot of fun. I found out that I was really bad at some sports. I’m probably the worst playing volleyball. I also found some sports that I liked, my favorite being fencing, which is pretty much a fancy way to say sword fighting.

  I had gotten some wooden swords for my birthday, so I offered to fight Grunt in my backyard with him. It was going to be for fun, obviously. We were trying to blow off some steam, not beat up each other.

  We were sword fighting for a really long time, actually. I was trying to train Grunt how to be better at it with some of the stuff that I had learned in my gym class. By the time that we were done play-fighting Grunt had gotten a lot better. He wasn’t better than me, but I did let him win a match to make him feel better.

  Today was a pretty good day, and I’m not just saying that because I hustled Grunt and got him to buy me pizza after I beat him at fencing. The weekend isn’t over yet, though! I’ll make sure to write some more tomorrow.

  Day Twenty-Nine: