The Boy Who Failed Show and Tell

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  Thank God the last two babies are safe at Jonah Carp’s house. His dad is a scientist, and they have tons and tons of animals, from his older brother’s boa constrictor to his older sister’s rabbits to the three turtles that live in their upstairs hall. If anybody knows how to keep reptiles alive, it’s the Carps.

  * * *

  On Monday, Presidents’ Day, it snows more than a foot! That means we are off from school on Tuesday. Jonah calls me on Tuesday morning to see whether I want to walk the mile to his house, because he has an excellent snow day plan. His brother is taking apart and rebuilding a 1960s Volkswagen Beetle, and Jonah wants to drag the car’s hood down the street from his house to Dead Man’s Hill, the best sledding spot on the whole island. Jonah is pretty sure we can turn the hood upside down and use it as a five-person sleigh.

  That’s so crazy it just might work!

  My mom doesn’t want me to walk all the way to Jonah’s house in the snow, but I convince her that it is good exercise. She must feel really sorry for me after the recent snake homicide, because she says she will walk over there with me and spend the afternoon hanging out with Mrs. Carp. Walking a mile each way in a foot of snow is SUPER exhausting, but the sledding is unbelievable!

  Okay, it turns out that you can’t actually steer an upside-down car hood as it is zooming down a hill with five boys trying desperately not to fly off it. You can go incredibly fast, though, and laugh as all the single sledders have to swerve to avoid getting flattened by your massive Sled of Doom. We have so much fun doing this that I forget all about Hecky’s last two babies until sundown forces us to head back to Jonah’s house.

  I ask Jonah if I can visit the baby snakes, and he says very casually, “Oh, I forgot to tell you—they died a month ago. How are the other ones doing?”

  I decide two things right then and there.

  Number one is that I can’t trust anybody.

  Number two is that I will never love anything again.

  By the end of February, everything is depressing. Mrs. Fisher is worse than ever, and now it is even making my parents fight. One night, after I go up to bed, I hear them snapping at each other downstairs in the kitchen. I tiptoe over to my closet and climb up on the shelf next to the heat vent to listen.

  “Carol, if we move him to another school, what are we teaching him?” my father asks. “We don’t want him to think he can just quit whenever life gets difficult.”

  “Harv, his teacher hates him. She really hates him.”

  “I think that is an exaggeration, honey.”

  “No, it isn’t. You weren’t at the parent conference. You didn’t see her face when she said he would never amount to anything. I did.”

  For the first time ever, sitting there in my closet, I start pulling hairs out of my head when my mother isn’t even at her night class. It’s one thing to feel like my teacher hates me. It’s another thing to hear my mom say it as a fact.

  “Maybe you should cut back on your night classes for a while. It seems that Jordan’s behavior is worse when you take this many.”

  “I can’t just cut back on my classes, Harv. I’m in the middle of the semester! Maybe you can cut back on doing rounds at the nursing home at night.”

  “You know that is not an option. My patients need me.”

  Oh boy. They can go on and on about this for hours. My father hates my mom’s PhD program. He thinks it’s her job to be at home with Lissa and me. But he works a million hours a week, so we only really get to spend time with him on Friday nights and Sundays.

  On Friday nights, my father takes Lissa and me to Baskin-Robbins for sundaes. On Sunday mornings, we go out to one of the little stores that sell newspapers, and Dad gets the New York Times. He always lets me buy three comics. Three is the limit, because he is trying to teach me to be responsible with money.

  But that isn’t working, because my mom takes me to a different store on Saturdays and lets me buy more.

  Maybe it’s none of my business, but I think maybe my parents need to work on their communication skills.

  I start to fall asleep right there on the shelf as they drone on at each other. But my head snaps back up when my mother says, “Harvey, that’s IT! Tomorrow, I am talking to Joan Purow about P.S. 54. AND I am calling the board of ed to see what it would take to get a transfer. At least then we’ll know what the option looks like.”

  “I still think you’re being hasty with this.”

  “Of course you do! This is just like what happened with your arm!”

  What happened with my dad’s arm? I have no idea. But I guess he knows what my mom means, because he says, “I don’t know what you want from me! I’ve already made the appointment with Dr. Suarez.”

  “That’s great, Harv. But I feel like I have to push you for three months every time there’s a problem. If we wait three months for this, Jordan’s year will be over and the damage will be done! I’m calling Joan in the morning.”

  “Fine! But can we please see whether Jordan wants to move before we make a decision?”

  Oh, yikes! I don’t want to switch schools in the middle of the year. At least, I don’t think I do. I have been at P.S. 35 my whole life. I have friends at P.S. 35. I know what to expect at P.S. 35. I like our traditions, like having grade-wide kickball tournaments twice a year and decorating the maypole every spring. I know the school song:

  The Clove Valley School, we’ll always remember you,

  The teachers that we had, and all the lessons, too,

  To learn to spell, to read and write,

  Learning what’s wrong and learning what’s right!

  Come to think of it, the song is pretty dumb. But still, I don’t want to leave. That’s like letting Mrs. Fisher win.

  She’s the one who should leave.

  On the other hand, B.J. has been my best friend since preschool. In fact, his real name is Benjamin, but everybody calls him B.J. because when we were three years old, all the kids in our class had trouble pronouncing his name—which means I’ve known him since before I could even talk right. Maybe it would be okay to be in class with him. Also, he’s even smarter than William Feranek. If other kids in his class are that smart, maybe I won’t be so bored with how slow things are, like I am now. And Peter Friedman is in fifth grade there, so I would probably see him around sometimes.

  On the other other hand, Louise Boily said I’m not zee kind of boy who lets go of zee rope. And running away from my mean teacher feels like letting go of zee rope.

  I don’t know how long I sit there, but eventually, my parents stop arguing and my mom stomps out of the kitchen. Then she starts walking up the stairs. I know she is about to peek into my room to check on me!

  I rush back to my bed and dive under the covers just in time. Mom stands in the doorway for ages. I can tell because I hear her breathing, and because her body is blocking the shaft of light from the hallway that usually crosses my bedroom floor. When she finally goes back down the stairs, I realize my hands are clenched into fists.

  And my left hand is grasping a big clump of hair.

  * * *

  For the next few days, I feel like I am having an asthma attack every second. I am in such a panic that I can’t breathe right. I have a bald spot! It’s on the left side of my head, above and just in front of my ear. Every morning when I wake up, I rush to the bathroom and twist my head to the side to look at it. The hair doesn’t show any signs of growing back.

  Now I am not just an obstreperous boy who can’t pay attention in class, or a terrible pet owner who lets all his snake’s babies die, or the third-shortest kid in my grade. Now I am the first kid ever to go bald before his tenth birthday. And I did this to myself. I am a freak.

  Forget about sending me to a different school. My parents should probably just ship me off to the circus.

  At school, I keep holding my breath, waiting for somebody to say something about the baldness. The only thing in the world I have to be thankful for is that the spot is on the left side
of my head, and Britt Stone sits on my right side.

  Things have gotten as bad as they possibly can with Mrs. Fisher, too. Now that I am not allowed to read comics, I am even more bored. I finish reading the last of the dark purple SRA cards, and then I have absolutely nothing to do, so I begin to find little art projects to keep me busy.

  Basically, this consists of making little glue men inside my desk.

  It’s easy and fun! Here’s how it works: First, I take my container of Elmer’s Glue-All and carefully make a glue outline of a man on the metal bottom of my desk drawer. In about ten minutes, when the outline is dry enough that I don’t get any glue on me if I poke it, I fill in the middle by pouring a puddle of glue until the whole inside of the man is covered. About half an hour after that, when the middle is dry enough to touch, but not dry enough to get stiff or brittle, I carefully peel the glue man up off the bottom of the drawer.

  If everything goes right, he’s like a stretchy little puppet and I can use him to play superheroes in my desk until Mrs. Fisher is finally done with the slow readers at the back table.

  Robert starts a glue man factory inside his desk, too, and this is even better. Now we can have superhero battles in our laps! If he holds his glue men down between his knees, I can see them from across the room.

  Unfortunately, we get too involved in the pretend battle one day and don’t notice that Mrs. Fisher has come to stand behind me.

  “JORR-dan!” she thunders.

  Why is it always JORR-dan? ROBB-ert is sitting ten feet away with his hands covered in Elmer’s—how about yelling at him for a little change of pace?

  I look up.

  “WHY are you not working on an SRA card like the rest of the children who have finished their work?”

  Again, is Robert invisible or something?

  “I’ve read all the SRA cards,” I explain. “I’m done with the whole box!”

  “You’re lying,” Mrs. Fisher says, marching over to the file cabinet above the cards. She opens one of the drawers, snatches out a tan folder, looks inside, and says, “HAH!” Then she marches back over to me as the whole class stares. “Look at your folder,” she says triumphantly.

  Folder? I didn’t know I had a folder.

  “Every one of the answer sheets in here is blank! You have not read a single SRA card all year!”

  Answer sheets? I guess that’s the part of the instructions I missed. But still, I have read every card, and I’ve done all the answers in my head. Plus, now I am mad and embarrassed, so I say, “I have read every SRA card!”

  She bends down so her nose is inches from mine and says, “I don’t believe you.”

  “I know every answer for every card. I can prove it. Go ahead—pick a card! Pick a dark purple card.”

  She looks around at the class and hisses, “Get back to work, CHILL-dren!” Then she stomps over to the box and grabs a few cards. She asks me each of the five questions on the back of the first card, and I tell her each answer before she can even begin to read me the multiple-choice options.

  Hey, I am particularly good at something after all! I have a great memory.

  Mrs. Fisher goes through two more cards with me before she believes it: I know all the answers, just like I said. And she is not happy about it.

  “Well, JORR-dan,” she sneers. “Now you will go back to the beginning of the box and write … down … the answer … to every … single … question!”

  Then she grabs my Elmer’s Glue-All and slams it into one of her desk drawers.

  My last day at P.S. 35 feels all wrong from the start. On the way to school, my mother asks me if I want to transfer to P.S. 54, and I feel like I am going to either faint or throw up. I pretend I haven’t heard the question, and concentrate on playing paradiddles with my hands on the tops of my legs.

  “Jordan, are you going to answer me?” she says.

  “Right-left-right-right, left-right-left-left,” I say to myself.

  She repeats what she said, but I just keep slapping away. A great new song called “Heart of Glass” by a lady named Blondie is playing on the radio, and I try to focus on playing my paradiddles in time with the beat. It’s really hard! If I think too much about the beat, I mess up the hand pattern. If I think too much about the hand pattern, I lose the beat. But if I forget about both the hand pattern and the beat, and just play without thinking, everything melts away but the music. I almost get there, but then I mess up. I take a deep breath and start over. Once again, I feel like I am just at the edge of becoming part of the song.

  Then my mom shuts off the radio.

  “Honey, I’m not trying to pressure you. I just hate watching you suffer.”

  “I don’t know,” I whine. How am I supposed to make such a big decision? I can’t even be responsible for a bunch of baby snakes. Who says I should be in charge of the Decision Department? I hate watching me suffer, too. But what if B.J.’s teacher is just as mean as Mrs. Fisher? What if she’s meaner?

  “Well, just think about it, all right? Your father and I will support whatever decision you make.”

  That doesn’t feel true to me at all. My father will support me if I decide to stay. My mother will support me if I decide to go. It’s all just a big, gigantic, stupid mess. I’m a kid! All I should have to worry about is how the Yankees are going to look this season now that they have traded Sparky Lyle, my favorite relief pitcher. Or whether my mom and dad will ever buy me a snare drum of my own.

  I almost wish somebody would just make the choice for me.

  I turn the radio back on. The Blondie song is over, and “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire is playing. It’s too slow for paradiddles.

  That figures. Now my musical breakthrough is ruined, and I will never, ever get decent at playing drums.

  Or dictionaries. Laps. Whatever.

  When my mom drops me off, I drag my feet all the way up the sidewalk, all the way up the stairs, and all the way down the long hall to the cafeteria to line up with my class. There are already four boys in front of me—with William Feranek right in front. He always gets to school first, because he lives just around the corner, and also because it is yet another sign of how perfect he is. I line up behind Kenneth. Britt Stone is fifth in the girls’ line, so we are standing only a couple of inches apart.

  “Hi, Jordan,” she says in a fake, sweet voice, blinking her eyes at me several times. I hate when Britt talks to me in that voice. It makes me feel like I am blushing, and also nervous. I know if I say hi back, she will laugh and then start teasing me about something. But if I don’t say hi back, then she will tell me how unfriendly I am.

  Like basically everything else in my life, this is a trap.

  I ignore her and start tapping out a double stroke roll on the outsides of my hips. “Ma-ma-da-da, ma-ma-da-da,” I whisper, settling into a rhythm that isn’t fast enough to mess me up.

  “Mama! Dada!” Britt purrs in my ear. “Ooh, what’s wrong, little baby?” I lose the beat completely. I glare at her.

  “Shut up, Brat Stone!” Oh, that’s a good one! I will have to remember—

  “No, you shut up, Baldy!” she snaps.

  My heart stops. I whip my head around to see whether anybody else is listening, but it looks as though nobody is paying attention. Still, this is my worst nightmare. Britt Stone knows I am bald. My life is ruined! I stare down at my feet so she won’t see the tears in my eyes, and she doesn’t say anything else.

  Why should she? She has already defeated me for life.

  Miss Janet comes and leads us upstairs to room 4-210. I don’t look at anybody. Britt could be staring at me! Or worse, other kids could be staring at me. Has she told them about my bald spot? Or have they noticed on their own? What if everybody knows, and Britt is just the only kid mean enough to say it to my face?

  I sit down and put my face in my hands. Everything is spinning around in my head at once. Paradiddles. Double stroke rolls. My mom saying, Honey, I’m not trying to pressure you, while she is pressuring
me. Britt Stone saying, Baldy. I can’t make the thoughts stop!

  Then, suddenly, Mrs. Fisher is grabbing me by the front of my shirt and yanking me to my feet. Her face is clenched up in terrifying fury. What have I done? I look around and see that everybody else in the class is standing with their hands over their hearts.

  Somehow, I have managed to ignore the Pledge of Allegiance.

  “You’ll stand up for your COUNTRY and your GOD!” my teacher shouts.

  The words come flying out of me before I can even think about them. “Any God that would let you teach children—”

  SMACK! Mrs. Fisher has slapped me across the face.

  I have gotten my wish. Somebody has made the decision for me. Just like that, I have no choice but to let go of zee rope.

  My mom keeps me home the day after The Slap, and spends hours on the phone arranging for me to start at P.S. 54 the next day. I am basically in shock. First of all, my teacher hit me. Second of all, now she’s not my teacher anymore. I never have to see Mrs. Fisher or Britt Stone again! But this also means I won’t see Robert Falcone every day, or Steven Vitale. I won’t pass Jonah Carp in the halls, or get to smile at my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Gross, on the way to lunch.

  And I won’t know anything. I won’t know my way around the building. I won’t know the schedule, or how the lunch line works. I won’t know which aides are nice and which ones are mean. I won’t even know who the principal is! I mean, the principal of P.S. 35, Mrs. Coseglia, wasn’t nice—in fact, I was terrified of her. But at least she wasn’t a mystery.

  Plus, what if B.J. acts different when his school friends are around? What if Peter Friedman ignores me because he is a big fifth grader and doesn’t associate with fourth graders? What if none of the kids in my new class like me? What if they all notice my bald spot on the very first day and decide I am a weird nut? What if they find out I had to leave my old school because I am so bad that my teacher hit me?