The Boy Who Failed Show and Tell
Page 15
Just before the championship round, Chuck pulls up his shirt and we all see that he has rope burns all around the back of his waist. Walter P. switches spots with him, and as we all pick up the rope, they both nod at the rest of us. This is it! Off to one side, I see Miss Tuff smiling at us in encouragement. We have to win this for her.
We don’t. Instead, we all lose our footing almost right away, and even when I turn my back on the other team, I can’t get my feet to grip. I feel myself being marched backward toward the other team, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. Someone near the back starts chanting, “Heave! Heave!”—but you can’t heave when you can’t stand. Thanks to Louise Boily, I refuse to let go of the rope, so I get dragged across the middle ground on my chest.
That’s okay. My shirt art was pretty terrible, anyway.
But I can’t believe we have lost! We were so close!
As the tug o’ war team limps our way back to the rest of the class, B.J. says, “Great effort, guys!” I want to shout and stomp. I want to curse at the sky! It wasn’t a great effort, because we lost.
But then Miss Tuff calls us all together into a huddle. We all have our arms around one another, and as we lean in, she says, “I am so proud of all of you. You are the best! Now, on the count of three, I want you to all yell, ‘TUFF’S TEAM!’ One, two, three!”
I shout so hard that it feels like my throat is tearing. When I catch Miss Tuff’s eye, she smiles, just at me. Then she moves her head slowly from one end of the huddle to the other. I think she is trying to smile at each kid in the class, one at a time. She really is proud of us.
Maybe I didn’t really lose today. I mean, I definitely lost a tug o’ war. And a T-shirt. But I gained a team.
I spend the end of June packing for camp and panicking. What if camp isn’t as amazing this year as it was last year? Will Hecky and J.P. be okay without me? And when I get back, how am I going to survive fifth grade without Miss Tuff?
My room looks like the staging area for a military attack. There are piles of stuff on every surface, including the floor, and nothing can be moved into my huge, open camp trunk until my mom has checked it off. Here is the camp packing list:
All that stuff takes up a lot of space. Also, we have to label everything with my name, which takes forever. That is a super-important step, though, because everything from all the boys in my cabin will get thrown into one huge laundry bag each week, and if my stuff isn’t labeled, there will be no way for me to get it back when the laundry returns a week later. Last year, Paul Golin almost ended up with my Yankees shirt, with Ron Guidry’s name on the back. That would have been an epic tragedy, in my opinion.
Also, I am completely sure that Michael Fein went home with my toothbrush AND my collapsible drinking cup.
Slowly, the piles get moved into the trunk. My baseball mitt can’t go in until the last minute because I am going to a Yankees game with Peter Friedman and another kid named Billy Burns the day before we leave. We do this every year for Pete’s birthday, and our seats are always in the upper deck where the ball never goes—but I am not taking any chances. If there is the slightest possibility of catching a real baseball that has been touched by real Yankees, I need that glove.
As my mom is looking over everything three days before the beginning of camp, I make her go over all the snake-care plans. Does she remember where to buy the fish for them to eat? Does she remember the schedule? Does she promise she will change the water in their bowl at least once a week? Will she take their skins out of the tank if they shed?
Will she hold them so they don’t get too lonely or sad?
This is when my mother does something great. She goes downstairs, gets our Kodak disc camera, and takes a few photos of Hecky and J.P. She swears she will get the film developed in time for me to take the photos to camp.
Once we are done with this first round of packing, my mom tells me that she and my dad have decided to give me my birthday present early. I was born on the Fourth of July, which means I will be at camp for the real day, so this makes sense. At dinner, my parents tell me to close my eyes. When I open them, there is a gift on the table in front of me. It’s big.
I tear the wrapping paper off. Inside is a cardboard box that says D’AGOSTINO DRUMS. My heart pounding, I rip the flaps of the box open. Inside is a beautiful, shiny black snare drum.
I can’t believe it! I must be a real drummer now, because I have a real drum! I hug my parents so hard it is a miracle that their ribs don’t break. Then I ask to be excused, run to grab my best pair of nylon-tipped Fibes 5As, and charge back into the kitchen. Pulling the drum out, I ask my mom where the stand for it is.
She looks confused. “There’s supposed to be … a stand?” she asks.
I try not to sound sad as I say, “Don’t worry about it. The drum is perfect! Thank you!”
Then, with my parents watching, I balance the drum on my lap and play my best long roll. It still doesn’t quite sound like paper tearing, but I’m pretty sure my hands are starting to look a bit blurry.
* * *
At the Yankee game, Peter’s parents buy food and programs for everybody, and then lead Pete, Billy Burns, and me to three seats way up high above first base. Then they tell us their seats are two sections away from ours. Billy, Pete, and I can’t believe it! We are on our own at Yankee Stadium!
As the Yankees begin their batting practice, the three of us dig into our hot dogs and French fries, gulp down our huge Cokes, and practice our burping skills. When our meal is finished, we have a bunch of unused ketchup packets. This gives us an idea. Pete’s fifth-grade teacher, Mr. Lord, did a whole unit on flight, which included a big lab project on making paper planes. We start ripping pages out of our programs and folding them into a little air force. When our little fleet is assembled, each of us carefully rips open a ketchup packet, sticks it in the center crease of a plane, and then throws it as far as we can out over the edge of the upper deck.
This is super fun. And the best part is, we still have enough ketchup to launch at least three more missions!
As the teams line up along the basepaths for the national anthem, a huge, muscular man in a sleeveless T-shirt comes storming out of the stairwell next to our section. The T-shirt probably started the day being totally white. Now it has a surprisingly large patch of red on the front.
Heinz red.
The guy starts yelling, “Who’s been throwing ketchup off the upper deck? Huh? Huh?”
Peter, Billy, and I shrink down into our seats. I wait for some other fan nearby to point us out to the guy. Nobody does, though, and after what feels like the longest half minute of my life, the guy ends his speech with “I better not see anything else flying down from here! You hear me?”
We hear him. Half the city hears him.
By the third inning, the three of us are laughing about this so hard that tears actually roll down Billy’s cheek, and I can’t even catch my breath. But on the way home, I replay the whole scene in my head, and I can’t stop thinking that the guy had to sit through the whole game with ketchup all over him. Maybe he is on a subway right now, still covered with it, and everybody is staring.
When I get home, I shove my game program into the bottom drawer of my desk. I don’t like seeing the gap where the missing pages should be. I almost tell my parents what we’ve done, but instead, I just keep seeing it in my head over and over again that night when I am trying to sleep.
I am confused. Sometimes, it’s really hard to figure out when having fun is just fun, and when it is the same as being bad.
* * *
The next morning, I throw my glove on top of the pile, and the entire packing list is completely checked off. I am ready to slam the trunk shut and put on the big, heavy combination lock when my mother realizes I don’t have everything I need.
“Jord, the pictures!” she cries.
How could I have forgotten Hecky? I run downstairs, where the envelope of developed film is sitting on the kitchen table. A lot
of the shots are pretty blurry and dark, but there is one that’s perfect. Hecky’s tongue is flickered out, and J.P. has his head on her back. When I look at it, I can almost imagine my snakes are moving. I dig around in my father’s desk for an empty envelope, put that picture in, and go back upstairs. After I tuck the envelope into the webbing of my baseball glove, my mom starts to close the trunk.
“Wait!” I say. There are a couple of other things I can’t go eight weeks without. I run over to the bookshelf that hangs over my head when I am in bed and grab The Dark Is Rising, along with a few of my newest, most exciting comics. I know I will have a much better time at Rest Hour each day if I can reread The Avengers Annual #9. And Uncanny X-Men #121. And The Amazing Spider-Man #194.
I place the comics carefully between two thick sweatshirts for maximum protection.
Now there is only one thing left that I can’t live without: the drums. There’s no room for a whole snare drum in my trunk, plus my mom points out that the other kids in my cabin would probably want to kill me if I spent Rest Hours pounding on it and chanting, “Ma-ma-da-da, ma-ma-da-da.” I can see her point, so I just throw in my comfiest pair of Fibes 5As, followed by the dictionary, which fits perfectly right on top of the two sneaker boxes in the front left-hand corner.
I nod at my mother. She closes the trunk, and I snap on the lock.
I have books. I have music. I am ready for anything.
Before Jordan Sonnenblick was an author, teacher, parent, and adult, he was a kid who liked drums, snakes, jokes, and baseball … which is what this book is about. His many acclaimed novels include The Secret Sheriff of Sixth Grade; Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie; After Ever After; Notes from the Midnight Driver; and Falling Over Sideways. He lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania with his family. You can find out more about him at jordansonnenblick.com.
Text copyright © 2021 by Jordan Sonnenblick
Illustrations copyright © 2021 by Marta Kissi
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, February 2021
Jacket art © 2021 by Marta Kissi
Jacket design by Baily Crawford
e-ISBN 978-1-338-64724-2
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