by Mary Amato
Mosquito Boy calls after me. “Um. How could you possibly think 218 was 333?”
First two minutes of school and I’m stuck between Mosquito and Microphone Mouth. Not a good sign.
“Here you go,” Diamond says, and flashes me a hero smile, like if it wasn’t for her I’d be trying to find locker number 333 for the rest of my life.
“Oooh,” Celine says. “You’re neighbors.”
Diamond laughs, and Celine pulls her away.
Locker number 333. Straight-up unlucky number. Why couldn’t I be neighbors with Xander and Langley?
It’s stupid but my heart is going bam bam bam while I’m dialing up the combination. I always wanted a locker, but my old school didn’t have them, so I’m not sure if I’m doing it right.
I turn the lock too far past the last number of the combination and have to start again. Focus. Focus. Focus.
Ka-ching! It opens!
The skinny blankness of it is just plain beautiful. My locker. My space.
Have to do it again. Ka-ching! Feels so good when it swings open.
I’m dying to write my name on the door. Just small on the inside to make the locker really mine. Trevor Musgrove. Wish I had a cool name like Xander Pierce. I could do a lot with that.
“Eh-eh-eh—” A passing teacher grabs the fine point out of my hand. “We do not deface school property.”
“That’s my only good marker,” I call out.
“It’s mine now,” the teacher says without turning back.
“I promise I won’t write on it. Please—”
Down the hall, Diamond saw the whole thing and now she’s laughing.
I borrow a piece of paper and take out a regular pen. Wish I had some thick plain paper and a new permanent fine point. I like quality. But as my mom says, you have to make do with what you got.
I write Trevor Musgrove on a scrap. Then ask around and nobody has tape so I run to the nearest room and successfully beg some off a teacher because I’ve got finesse. I’m almost late to class, but almost isn’t late, and now my locker door is officially Musgroved.
3.
MR. FUNGUS
I’m hoping all day that I’ll be in a class with Xander and his buddy. But who do I have in almost every class so far? Microphone Mouth. At lunch I waste a lot of time in the line so that everybody else is sitting down, and then I choose the table with zip-lipped Juan, and I get the lay of the land, which is my strategy. First impressions stick like glue, my mom says. I need to scope things out before I make mine.
Xander and Langley’s table definitely looks the best. The guys are playing table football with a folded-up piece of paper. There’s a bunch of girls at the other end, all flirty.
Easy to notice the table where lots of kids from the Deadly Gardens bus are sitting, because Microphone Mouth is there … standing out. Seriously. She’s standing at the table, dancing and singing her routine.
“Have a seat, Diamond!” the lunch lady says. They’re on a first-name basis and I’m guessing it’s not because they’re friends.
The lunch lady can’t see it, but Xander flicks the paper football at Diamond, and it hits her right in the back.
Xander’s table cracks up.
Diamond turns around and throws a Tater Tot in their direction, and the lunch lady marches over and gives her a detention.
“Hey, Juan,” I say. “What did you mean about those guys being in something called the Summit?”
“The Summit Program. It’s like special classes you had to apply for,” he explains. “The smart kids are in it. That’s a Summit table.” He nods at Xander and Langley’s table.
There goes my chance of being in class with those guys.
I’m bored all day—except when I get lost three times, and then I’m humiliated—but when I get to my second-to-last class, Science Investigations, room 18, I’m stunned. Xander and Langley are sitting at one of the lab tables.
My jaw is still hitting the floor when the teacher says, “This is room 18. Summit Science Investigations. My name is Mr. Ferguson. If you are in the right place, find a seat quickly. If you are in the wrong place, find the exit quickly. We have a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time.”
Right away my stomach gets a little sick because I know I’m in the wrong place. This is a Summit class. I check my schedule card twice. Room 18. Ferguson. Somebody made a mistake.
I should tell the teacher, but Xander is looking at me, so I pick the table next to theirs and sit down. Stools instead of chairs. And the stools all have tennis balls stuck on the bottom of each leg. I’m closest to Langley, so I lean over and ask him, “What’s with the tennis balls?”
I’m playing it cool, but I’m prepared at any moment to hear the voice of God saying: “TREVOR MUSGROVE, YOU ARE GUILTY OF IMPERSONATING A SUMMIT STUDENT.”
Langley looks down. “They keep the stools from squeaking.” He jiggles back and forth on the seat to show how the tennis balls keep the feet from making noise.
I’m about to make a brilliantly funny comment when Mosquito Boy zooms in. “Um. Is anybody sitting here?” He takes the seat next to mine. “You’re the one who got mixed up with my locker, right? You thought 218 was 333?”
Yeah, why don’t you speak a little louder because I’m sure the whole class needs to hear how stupid I am.
“This place smells like a garbage dump,” Xander whispers to Langley.
I was so amazed to see them when I walked in that I wasn’t paying attention to the room. The lab tables are clean, but everything else is a mess. Buckets of dirt and sawdust all over. It does smell. But not garbagy. It reminds me of a pumpkin patch I went to on a field trip once. Plastic bags with something weird growing out of them are hanging from the ceiling. It’s mushrooms. A whole lot of white mushrooms with real thin stems are growing from the plastic bags! This teacher must be seriously into mushrooms. There are mushroom posters everywhere. On his desk, which is actually a lab table that’s raised up on a platform, he’s got a mushroom paperweight and a mushroom cookie jar and even a pencil cup shaped like a mushroom.
Xander and Langley notice it at the same time. “What’s with all the mushrooms?” Xander asks.
“Of all the things to be into … why would anybody pick that?” Langley whispers back.
I see my opportunity and go for it. Leaning over slightly I add, “Teacher even looks like a mushroom.” He does. He’s old and short with honey-brown skin and he’s got a little white Afro.
They laugh.
Love the sound of that.
“Like an old dead shiitake mushroom,” I add, and they laugh again.
Score.
Mr. Ferguson starts taking roll, calling each student’s full name with a Mr. or Ms. in the front, and I start sweating. My name is not going to be on the list, and then everybody is going to know I’m Mr. Imposter.
“Mr. Anthony Barringer?”
“Here.”
“Ms. Diana Chen?”
“Here.”
By the time he gets to M, I’m so nervous I think I’m going to puke.
“Mr. Langley McCloud?”
“Here.”
“Mr. Trevor Musgrove?”
I’m on his list! Hearing my name, plus the fact that it sounds all formal, is such a surprise, I blurt out “present” in my fake British accent.
Score more on the laugh-o-meter.
Mr. Ferguson puts down his pencil and looks over his glasses at me, like he’s got X-ray vision and he’s going to figure out in an instant what kind of joker he’s got in his class.
Langley straightens up. He doesn’t want to cross the line with Mr. Ferguson. My mom says everybody has an invisible line, so figure out where it is and don’t cross it. Last year I crossed the line too much, but I want this year to be different, so I look Ferguson right back in the eye with my “I’ll be good” face and then he says—completely deadpan—in his fake British accent, “Ah! Jolly good, Mr. Musgrove. Being present is more important than being here.” Everybod
y laughs and he goes on with the roll.
I’m not sure how it happened, but I’m in.
When he finishes taking roll he stands, and I’m ready for the usual boring list of the same old rules and objectives and grading policies, but instead he picks up a wooden walking stick and a little brown cap like the kind Irish people wear in old movies. “How many of you noticed the precipitation late last night?”
A few people raise their hands.
“Lucky for us. Bring your Identification Notebooks and a writing utensil. We shall begin with a foray! A valuable prize goes to the first person to find a mushroom.” He practically leaps to the door.
A foray?
Everybody is pulling out notebooks and pencils like they know what he’s talking about. Stay calm, I tell myself. Just watch everybody else and figure out what to do. Langley pulls out this high-quality notebook with thick white pages, no lines. I love paper with no lines. Unfortunately, I don’t have a notebook. I borrow a few sheets of paper from Mosquito Boy and take my best pen. We follow Ferguson into the bright hot sunshine toward a grassy and wooded area behind the school. He’s all jaunty with his Irish cap on a tilt, walking fast and tapping his stick like a little old leprechaun, not even looking back to see if we’re following.
“What a perfect day for a foray with utensils!” Langley whispers in his fake British accent, which cracks me up.
“Any day is a perfect day to get out of prison,” I say.
If this were one of my other classes, everybody would be fooling around—Diamond, who is in almost all of my morning classes, got in trouble twice already, once in history for mouthing off and once in math for singing during class—but all these guys have their eyes to the ground, wanting to be the first to find a mushroom. Maybe that’s what it means to be in the Summit Program.
It’s nice back here behind the school. The grass is spongy and smells fresh. Maybe because of last night’s precipitation, as Mr. Ferguson would say.
Eyes to the ground, Musgrove. It would be very cool if I could find a mushroom first. What’s ironic here is that I hate mushrooms. Once when my mom and I had to stay in the shelter before Michael and Tish were even born, it rained all night and when I woke up I saw something sticking up along one wall … brown mushrooms with long thin stems right by my cot. That place gave me the creeps.
“My dad did a photo shoot of mushrooms for National Geographic,” Xander says. “Sometimes they’re on dead wood and sometimes in grass around trees or near a wet place. You just have to zone in.…”
I don’t find anything but a dead leaf and a stick. After a minute Xander bends down. “Bingo. Check it out.”
“Hey, we found one,” Langley calls out to the teacher.
Mr. Ferguson hustles over like we just found a golden goose egg. “We have a winner! Take a look!” He calls everybody over.
“What’s our prize?” Langley asks.
“Hey, I’m the one who found it,” Xander says.
Mr. Ferguson bows to Xander. “You have won my respect as well as your own satisfaction in a job well done. A valuable prize, indeed.”
Xander bows back. Some of the girls clap and giggle.
Mr. Ferguson points at the mushroom in the grass with his walking stick. “Snow-white cap and stalk. Mr. Pierce, gently bend the mushroom so we can look under the cap. What do you see?”
“Pink ridges,” Xander says.
“Those are gills. Agaricus campestris. Commonly called meadow mushroom or pink bottom.”
Langley grins. “When my dad asks me what I did in science today, I get to say I saw a pink bottom.”
Everybody laughs. Mr. Ferguson, too. Then the teacher asks if mushrooms belong in the plant kingdom or the animal kingdom. When everyone votes for plant, he gets a big kick out of it, pumping his stick on the ground. “Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.”
“Wait! It’s a fungus, right?” Xander blurts out.
“Ha! Another gold star for Mr. Pierce. The kingdom of fungi! A mushroom is a fungus!” He looks at us. Even though he’s old, he’s got these twinkling little-boy eyes and a spray of big brown freckles by his nose like maybe his mom sneezed pepper on him when he was born.
“The fungus among us,” Langley says.
“Yes!” Mr. Ferguson laughs.
Wish I’d thought of that one.
“A fungus is neither plant nor animal,” Mr. Ferguson goes on. “By the end of this unit, you will be fungal experts. Now, a scientist’s most important feature is his or her—”
“Foot fungus,” Langley whispers to me under his breath.
“—eyes.” Mr. Ferguson points to his eyes. “Take Leonardo da Vinci. Who was he?”
“An artist,” a girl says.
“He was an artist, but he was also a scientist. Before photography was invented, scientists drew sketches to record observations and make identifications. Photography is a great thing, but it has made our powers of observation lazy. You cannot be lazy when you draw! Impossible! Why?”
“You have to pay attention to what you’re drawing in order to draw it,” Xander says.
“Yes! When you draw, you must look, and when you begin to look, you begin to see.” He leans on his stick and looks from face to face, showing what it means to really look. His eyes are the deepest brown I’ve ever seen. Then he snaps out of it and waves his stick. “There are several other meadow mushrooms around. Get close to one. Draw, label, and date it in your Kingdom of Fungi Identification Notebooks. This will be entry number one. Any questions?”
While the others go off in search of more mushrooms, Xander, Langley, and I sit around this mushroom, and they begin to draw it. I draw a picture of Mr. Ferguson as a fungus and show it to the guys when the teacher’s back is turned.
Langley laughs, and it cracks me up because he’s got this funny laugh—it’s kind of wavy like his hair. Of course, when Ferguson looks over, it’s me he catches. “Is there something you’d like to share with the class, Mr. Musgrove?”
“No, sir.”
I slip a blank sheet of paper over the drawing.
“I see you don’t have an Identification Notebook,” Mr. Ferguson says.
“I didn’t know I needed one.”
“You didn’t receive the orientation packet?”
My stomach tightens. This is when he’s going to find out that I’m in the wrong class. “I didn’t know I was supposed to bring it on the first day.”
He straightens up and talks to everyone. “A reminder. This notebook will be seventy-five percent of your first-quarter grade. In it you will keep your notes from class and from your reading as well as the entries. You’ll be drawing, labeling, and discussing the properties of different types of fungi. Keep your eyes open. Once you start looking for mushrooms, you’ll start seeing them in places you never noticed before. Sketch those, too. And—” He lifts one finger in the air. “This is important—I want to read your thoughts about what you’re learning. Not just the facts. Facts I can get from a book.”
I borrow another sheet and get to work on the mushroom.
Tap goes his stick by my foot. “Use your eyes,” Mr. Ferguson says. “Draw what you see. And then you will see more.” He taps his stick again. “If there is any reason why you cannot acquire a notebook, see me after class. Otherwise, I’ll expect to see it tomorrow.”
I forget about everything but the mushroom. I get up close and personal. I draw exactly what I see, every bump, every shadow.
“Discuss the properties of mushrooms?” Xander says under his breath. “How much can you say about a mushroom?”
Langley looks at my drawing. “Dude, that’s ridiculous. You’re definitely getting an A on that. Xander, check this out.”
Langley asks what class I have next and when I say P.E., he looks glad and says, “Us, too.”
I’m in.
4.
GOAL
“Okay, people, the first unit will be soccer,” the P.E. teacher says, and I want to break into my victory dance because soccer is m
y sport. My mom says it’s because I have some Brazilian blood in me. “By the way, tryouts for the school soccer team are two weeks from tomorrow. Just to warn you … it’s a seventh-eighth-grade team, so there aren’t many spots open to seventh graders.”
I didn’t know this was even possible. This is so cool. At my old school they only let eighth graders try out for teams, so I’ve never played on one.
Coach Stevins takes us outside—out of prison twice in one day!—and goes over the rules for soccer. Ordinarily this would be boring, but he’s funny to watch because he paces when he walks and has big shoulders and no neck.
I say to Langley and Xander, “Is it just me or does he look like a walking, talking refrigerator?”
They crack up.
The coach announces he’s splitting us into mini teams for scrimmages.
“Whoever gets with Langley or Xander is going to fry everybody else,” a girl says.
“I’m splitting them up,” Coach Stevins says. Then he smiles. “Hey, I saw the catalog, Xander. Pretty darn cool.”
Everybody looks at Xander in awe because none of us thought that refrigerators could smile.
“Yeah.” Xander nods like it’s no big deal. “I’ve done shoots before, but this was sweet because I got to keep all the gear.”
“Stop by after class. You’ll have to autograph my copy,” Stevins says. “Okay people, let’s get going.”
When Stevins goes to get his clipboard, I do this funny mock-bow to Xander and say, “I bow to the one who can maketh Coach Stevins lighten up.”
He laughs.
I want to know what the catalog thing is about, but I can’t ask because Stevins is back.
He divides us into six teams, making sure Xander and Langley are on different teams. I get on Langley’s team, which is lucky. I won’t be able to show Xander my skills because he’s playing on a different team on the other side of the field, but I can show Langley what I’ve got. One thing’s for sure. Everybody knows Xander and Langley are making the school team.
I jog over to where we’re starting on the field, so excited I could spew.
