The Rule of Threes

by Marcy Campbell

  “The kid’s mom, I guess.”

  “Is he nice?”

  “Who?”

  “The kid,” Olive said impatiently. “What’s his name?”

  “Anthony. Tony. I mean, geez Olive, don’t get all cranky with me. I don’t know if he’s nice because I’ve barely spoken to him for more than five minutes, but he’s in my house sleeping in the spare bedroom right as we speak and he snores and . . . and he stole Mittens!”

  “He stole Mittens?” Olive exclaimed, drawing looks again from some kids.

  “Well, not really stole, it’s just, Mittens was sitting on his lap and sleeping on his bed.”

  “Oh, thank goodness.” She put her hand to her heart. Then she stared out the bus window for a minute, though there was nothing much to see. Beauty parlor, coffee shop, dry cleaner, coffee shop. Everything was clean and neat. It looked pretty nice, our downtown. There were always potted flowers or, in the winter, holiday lights, hanging from the lampposts on the main streets. But the boring stuff was the same boring stuff as everywhere. If you’ve seen one Dunkin’ Donuts, you’ve seen them all.

  Olive looked back at me suddenly, then slapped her hands on her thighs as though she’d just had some great insight.

  “Well, this is just about the most amazing thing I have personally ever heard,” she said. “To think, you had a brother out there all this time, and now, now you’re reunited! It truly is the most amazing thing. Here you are, this whole family, and Tony, just coming out of nowhere in the middle of the night to be with you, just tiptoeing into your life, to make it complete.”

  I noticed Olive’s lip quivering again. She cried when she was happy, or sad. She cried a lot. Her reaction made me wonder whether I was looking at this situation the wrong way, but that thought only lasted a second.

  “Tony didn’t ‘come out of nowhere in the middle of the night,’ ” I said. “He came in the daytime, remember? And he didn’t ‘tiptoe into my life.’ He crashed around like an annoying boy with a basketball.”

  I stole a glance at Olive. Her face had hardened. She didn’t say anything else. Olive always acted like everything was fantabulous, when it often wasn’t. The bus pulled up to the school, its brakes squealing, like it didn’t want to be there any more than I did.

  Most School Spirit

  What was 6-6/10 times 8/12? I clutched my pencil tightly and stared at the empty line, which was waiting for my answer. I couldn’t remember how to do it. I hated fractions! I was okay in math in general, but why did we have to start with fractions? I kept waiting for it to click, but so far, no such luck. My dad always said when you learned a new concept, not just in math, but anything, that it had to bump around in your brain for a while, and then everything would just click, like a puzzle coming together, or a light bulb flicking on, or fingers snapping.

  “Wow, Dad, too many similes,” I had said to him. We’d been studying figurative language in English at the time, which I had no trouble understanding.

  Part of my problem with the test was that I was obviously distracted, thinking about Tony hanging out in my house with Mom, and maybe Dad, too, if he’d gotten some time off work. Talk about a new concept bumping around in my brain. Instant brother.

  Somehow, I’d kept the news to myself all day, only telling Olive. The next time I saw her was at lunch, when we met up at our usual table that we shared with Rachel and a few other kids from our language arts section. Today, though, Katelyn was there. She was at the end of the table, with her legs crossed and sticking into the aisle, so I could see her boots. Black suede, just like Rachel’s.

  They were laughing as Olive and I walked up, and for a minute, I got that burning feeling in my chest because I was worried they were laughing about me. But Rachel smiled and patted the spot on the bench next to her.

  “How’d you do on the math test?” Olive asked everybody.

  “My group didn’t have a test today,” Katelyn said through her perfectly glossed lips. She was “gifted” in math, and didn’t like anyone to forget it.

  “I think I bombed it,” Rachel said. “I couldn’t remember how to multiply fractions when there’s a whole number.”

  “Me neither!” I exclaimed, grateful for one little thing Rachel and I could share.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Katelyn said, waving her hand. “You just convert the mixed number into an improper fraction, then you, you know, just do the rest.”

  Rachel and I both looked at her with confused faces.

  “I’ll show you later, Rakell,” Katelyn said. I noticed she had turned her body as far away from me as possible. Turn an inch more and she’d fall right into the aisle.

  “Oh, who cares,” Rachel said. “I’m probably not going to need much math for the rest of my life! Why get upset about it?”

  I stopped chewing my PB&J and glanced at her, remembering when she and I were younger and she wanted to be an astronaut, and I was in a veterinarian phase. Then she got interested in interior design with me. You needed math for design, a little at least, to figure out placement of things and stuff like that. And you sure as heck needed math to be an astronaut. Everybody knew that. But lately, Rachel didn’t seem interested in much besides which boys in our class were cute.

  “Well, all the kids I’ve talked to thought the test was really hard,” Olive said, “and I studied for it. You did, too, Maggie, right?”

  I was about to answer when Rachel said, “How could she study, with all that chaos at her place?” She turned her body so she faced me. Katelyn leaned in, grinning.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. I felt my face getting hot, like I was breaking out in hives, even though that was Rachel’s thing, not mine.

  At the table behind us, a couple boys were arguing, one loudly calling the other a dillweed, which was the new insult of the week. Last week, boys would start yelling “Yeet!” for no reason. First a boy on one side of the room would yell it, then someone on the other side (“Yeet! Yeet! Yeet!”), so the lunchroom supervisor never knew for sure who was doing it. Today we had the mean lunchroom lady, who, unfortunately, had been at my elementary school. Guess she got transferred here, so she could have a chance to terrorize some middle school kids as well.

  She went walking quickly toward the corner where the shouting came from, her sandals slapping the linoleum floor. She always wore sandals and socks, even in the winter.

  “I’ve had just about enough out of you boys!” she yelled. “How would you like to eat lunch with Mr. Villanueva?”

  I watched her closely, rather than look at Rachel, whose eyes were burning a hole into the side of my skull. I could feel it.

  “Were you not even going to tell me you have a brother?” she asked, drawing out every word. “After we’ve been friends for, like, forever?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be the BFFs?” Katelyn said, snotty-like. “That’s what you guys call your little club, right?”

  I ignored Katelyn and shot a look at Olive, who had bent her head so low over her lunch tray that her bangs were nearly dipping into her applesauce. I’d deal with her later.

  The lunchroom was getting noisier, while our table was this little island of quiet. I took a deep breath and turned toward Rachel. “I only just found out last night,” I murmured. “Of course I was going to tell you—privately,” I said, with a glance at Katelyn, who was stirring her pudding, which obviously didn’t need stirring.

  But when would that be? I thought. We were hardly ever alone anymore. We used to be alone a lot, before Olive moved to our neighborhood, not that I regretted having Olive around. I loved Olive, and Rachel. Friend threesomes were great, most of the time, though if you ever wanted to have a private conversation with one of the threesome, the other was bound to feel left out. Now I had a feeling that maybe Olive and Rachel had been having some private conversations of their own.

  I said, “It’s not exactly the kind of thing I can blurt out, like, ‘Oh hey, I’ve got a brother I never knew!’ I mean, it’s crazy! I ha
ven’t even had twenty-four hours to get used to it myself.”

  “Rakell says he’s super cute,” Katelyn added, and I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. Tony looked like my dad, so I couldn’t think of him as cute. Was my dad cute? Who knows?

  “We were having a private conversation,” I shot back. Stupid Katelyn with her stupid lip gloss.

  “Whatever you say to me, you can say to Katelyn,” Rachel said. “We’re all friends here.”

  I laughed. Yeah, right. “Fine,” I said, “if we’re friends, then maybe you could be there for me, instead of talking about the chaos in my house.”

  I was raising my voice. I had to. It had gotten so loud in the lunchroom, and kids were out of their seats. No one was supposed to get out of their seats unless they raised their hands and got permission. “We can’t all have your perfect family, Rachel,” I added, thinking of her Barbie-and-Ken parents.

  Now it was Katelyn’s turn to laugh. Rachel didn’t say anything, but she turned her body toward the front of the room and started picking at the bun on her chicken patty. She looked more sad than mad.

  Meanwhile, Olive put her hand on my arm and quietly shook her head at me.

  “What?” I said to Olive, pulling my arm away.

  “Don’t,” she whispered to me, but was looking at Rachel.

  At that moment, the lunch lady yelled “QUIET LUNCH!” which was a rule Mr. Villanueva had come up with.

  He was the school’s new principal, and he had a lot of rules, which was fine by me. As I kept telling Olive and Rachel at our BFF meetings, without rules, things fall apart—in design, and everything, really. Anyway, when the lunchroom supervisors thought the noise level had gotten out of control, they’d declare Quiet Lunch, and we all had to eat in complete silence like we were in church or prison or something.

  We all looked down at our plates. I was thankful for an excuse not to talk to anyone. I just wanted this day to be over. But then what? I’d go back home, which I didn’t want either.

  During quiet lunch, every little noise was amplified—the squeak of a plastic knife across Styrofoam, a cough, the dozen little snorts of people trying to stifle their laughter. The lunchroom supervisor looked this way and that, trying to figure out who was making each noise, but she couldn’t keep up. It was like a game of whack-a-mole, which reminded me of a birthday party Rachel had a couple years ago at this indoor fun park place with ball pits and arcade games and roller skating. When I asked her last month if she was going to have a party there this year, she said birthday parties were “for babies.”

  Nothing on my lunch tray tasted good, not even the chocolate chip cookie I’d been so excited about. (They only served them one day a week.) Olive was nibbling at some fries. When had she even had the chance to tell Rachel? And why would she do it? I could hear Rachel taking deep breaths next to me, like she was either annoyed or trying to meditate or something. We used to do these “mindfulness breaks” at Jefferson Elementary where everyone was supposed to close their eyes and take deep breaths, but almost nobody actually did it, except the teachers.

  Finally, the bell rang, and a big whoop went up as everyone scattered. I headed to science, Olive close behind.

  “I didn’t tell her,” Olive said, tapping me on the shoulder. “I swear I didn’t.”

  I spun around. “Who did then?”

  Olive had a very guilty look on her face. “I didn’t tell Rakell,” she said quietly, “but . . .”

  “Olive.”

  “Well, I told Neesha in band because she sits next to me and I had to tell somebody or I was going to burst and you know Neesha is so quiet, she never says anything to anybody!”

  “Olive!”

  “I’m sorry, Maggie, I really am, but I mean, you can’t keep it a secret for long anyway, right? You said yourself he was starting here on Monday.”

  Monday. Maybe I could slow down time somehow, just stay in this day forever.

  But I couldn’t. Eighth period came, right on schedule, and all the sixth graders had to file into the gym. It was another of Mr. Villanueva’s assemblies. He’d had an all-school assembly the first day, during which he told us he had a real soft spot for the sixth graders because we were new to the school, just like him. He said his name meant “new house” in Spanish.

  I hadn’t taken Spanish yet, but my grandma knew some. She took a class with Grandpa before their trip to Spain a few years ago. She’d even checked out some interior design magazines in Spanish, and we’d looked at them together. I learned words like coche postal (chaise), hueco (alcove), and estante (shelf). I tried to use some of the words with Grandma occasionally, but ever since Grandpa died, it just seemed to make her sad, so I stopped.

  That first assembly was all about welcoming everybody, and some rah-rah-we’re-going-to-have-a-great-year stuff, and then Mr. V went through a bunch of rules. Like I said, he loved those. But I had no idea what today’s assembly was about.

  We had to sit with our eighth period class, no running around the bleachers to find our friends. I sat next to a girl named Claire, who was pretty nice but always doodling pictures of horses in her notebook, so when she was called on, she never knew what the question was. Olive was a half dozen rows below me, and as soon as she was seated, she turned around and waved with a look that said you forgive me, right? I waved back with a look that said yes.

  It was hard to stay mad at Olive, and in any case, she was right about Tony. He would be here soon, and I’d have to deal with it. I couldn’t keep it a secret. I was learning that information traveled fast at Long Branch. Just an hour ago, someone told me a kid had spilled milk in the cafeteria and another kid slipped in it and busted his lip. I didn’t need to know any of that, and yet here I was, knowing it. If news of a milk spill could spread that fast, imagine what these kids would do with information on Tony.

  A few rows farther down and to the right, I could see Rachel. That messy bun on the top of her head was unmistakable. She’d once admitted it took her a long time to get just the right amount of messiness. I didn’t understand why she’d take a half hour to make herself look like she’d just woken up.

  Mr. Villanueva was standing in the middle of the floor with a microphone. He wore a dark suit every day, but switched out the ties. Today’s was blue, with some little animal or something on it; I wasn’t close enough to see it clearly. He raised his hand in the air, which was the signal for everybody to listen up.

  All the kids quieted down pretty quickly, and Mr. V said, “I’d like to introduce our guests.” He pointed toward a side door where a dog and a cop entered the gym. “For those of you new to Long Branch, this is an assembly we do every year, with a few changes each time. Maybe our older students think they don’t need to hear it again, but let me tell you, you can always pick up something new.” He cleared his throat. “Now, Police Officer Lutsky had an emergency at the last minute, so he couldn’t be with us, but Officer Bell was kind enough to step in, along with his special friend, Daisy.”

  Daisy was a huge German shepherd who looked kind of cute, but scary at the same time. I liked dogs, but I wasn’t insane about them, like a bunch of other girls who started going awww when the dog walked in. The officer made a series of motions with his hand, and Daisy sat, then lay down, then rolled over, but I noticed she was barely watching the officer. She was more interested in all of us kids in the bleachers, almost like she was trying to size up which kid would be tastiest.

  Officer Bell said he was there to talk about drugs and how terrible they are. I wondered if there were kids in my school doing drugs. I mean, no one had ever offered me drugs, but that didn’t mean anything. Maybe that’s why they did this presentation in middle school. Catch us before that stuff starts. I couldn’t help but think about Tony. Had he ever done them?

  I felt my face getting kind of hot. I shifted in my spot on the hard wooden bleacher and looked at Claire, who was picking at her fingernail polish. I hated how things were sneaking up on me all of a sudden.

 
The officer told us Daisy “hated drugs.” On cue, Daisy growled. A few kids in the front row leaned back into the legs of the kids behind them. I was glad to be a few rows up. The cop said the only way to never get addicted to drugs was to never start using them in the first place. Daisy stood on her hind legs and barked, like she was warning us.

  The officer said you had to be “vicious” with people who offered you drugs, and Daisy growled even louder. I started feeling really nervous and sweaty, wondering how quickly I could make it to the hallway if Daisy started going psycho. How fast could German shepherds run? Meanwhile, down below, a boy had taken Rachel’s scarf and was playing keep-away with it, and Rachel was laughing and not even trying to get it back.

  “You need to just say no if someone offers you drugs.” Officer Bell wanted us to yell it, so some kids did, but then he did that stupid thing grown-ups do where they pretend they “can’t hear you,” and he cupped his hand around his ear and made everybody yell louder. Some boys were really getting into it, standing up and screaming, “Noooooo!” while their faces got completely red, and their heads looked like they were going to explode. Honestly, it was embarrassing. I was glad Tony wasn’t here to see all this. If it was as easy as saying no, his mom wouldn’t be in the mess she’s in. I mean, sorry Daisy, but I’m not buying it.

  Next, the officer held up a cloth doll that had a piece of cardboard attached to it that read “DRUGS.” He threw the doll to the other side of the gym. Then he let go of Daisy’s leash, and she was a blur, on top of the thing in two seconds. She shook it until the stuffing was flying out. It was kind of horrifying to watch, but no one could look away. When she got tired of shaking it, Daisy went to a corner by a bunch of soccer nets and chewed the doll more daintily. Pretty soon, she had an arm torn off.

  The officer stepped back up to the mic. “You might think you kids are too young to hear this talk, but statistics show that one in six sixth graders, that’s sixth graders, people, has used a drug. That includes alcohol, kids, which is a drug, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.”