Just Call Me Stupid

by Tom Birdseye

  Then Mr. Gordon, the school principal, announced over the intercom that there would be a school writing contest. “I realize this is short notice,” he said, explaining that stories entered had to be in by the next Monday, “but Mr. Miller, an editor at the Daily Sun, has agreed to be our judge, and due to certain newspaper deadlines, must have your entries by the beginning of next week.”

  Mr. Gordon’s voice echoed over the intercom speaker in Mrs. Romero’s room. “Don’t let that discourage you, though. Polish up an old story, or get your creative juices going quickly on a new one. Enter the contest. The winner will have his or her story printed in the Sunday ‘Accent’ section, and be awarded a special plaque in front of the entire school at an assembly.”

  The intercom clicked off, then right back on. “Excuse me, I almost forgot,” Mr. Gordon said. “Mrs. Nagle has volunteered to collect all of the contest entries. Please take them directly to her in the Reading Resource Room. Thank you.”

  Andy immediately started bragging about how he was going to win the writing contest. “I’m going to make up a great story,” he said, turning in his seat so that Celina was sure to hear every word. “It’s going to be about giant chickens that attack Tucson from outer space. Zap! Blammo! Colonel Sanders to the rescue! Fried chicken everywhere. I can do that by Monday. No sweat. I’ll win for sure!”

  Celina bristled like an angry dog.

  Patrick leaned over and said, “Remember, ignore him.”

  She took a deep breath and, to Patrick’s surprise, held her tongue, even later at lunch when Andy said, “Hey, Celina, you going to write a wetback story to enter in the contest?”

  After school, Celina went home with Patrick, following him as he carried the mural into the living room, just as he had for the past few days. Quickly, he pushed the furniture back, got down on his knees, and started to work. He had transferred all of the practice drawings onto the big paper. They were stacked in a messy pile on the coffee table, right beside the Questing Beast, which Patrick had brought in to use as a model when drawing the dragon. Celina sat on the couch. She started reading aloud from The Sword in the Stone. (The battle with the horrible griffins and wyverns was over. Wart was asking Merlyn to change him into a snake.) After a few pages, though, she stopped and set the book down.

  “Hey, Patrick, are you going to enter your story in the writing contest?”

  “No,” he said without looking up.

  “‘The White Knight’ is so good,” Celina said, ignoring his answer. “It could win.”

  Patrick stopped drawing and looked up at her. “No,” he said again.

  Celina ignored this, too. “I know we said it was just for us, but you wouldn’t have to do any of the writing.” The words then came pouring out. “I could play the tape and write down everything just the way you said it. It would still be your story. You could use your practice pictures for the mural as illustrations, and make a nice cover out of construction paper. I’d do fancy lettering for the title. It’d be so good. You could—”

  “No!” Patrick cut in, this time with so much force in his voice that Celina squirmed uneasily in her seat. He glared at her. Couldn’t she see he was busy? He liked hearing her read The Sword in the Stone; the setting was so much like the mural. But he didn’t like her badgering him. The writing contest? She really thought he’d want to enter? Look what had happened the last time, at the chess club. He knew she meant well, but still …

  “Forget it,” he said, “OK?”

  Celina nodded. “OK.” She picked up The Sword in the Stone again and ran her thumb over the cover. “I just couldn’t help but think about how … you know, how it could probably beat …” Her voice trailed off, sounding hurt and disappointed. “Oh, well …”

  Patrick went back to the mural. He was carefully drawing each and every stone of the castle walls, even shading two sides to make them seem three-dimensional. He wanted the whole scene to look so real, people would reach out and touch it.

  Celina got down on her knees beside him. “This mural is turning out great!” she said. She ran her fingers over the drawing of the White Knight on horseback. “I think it’s neat how you practice each part of it until you’ve got it just right.”

  Patrick nodded as he drew, glad she had dropped the writing-contest subject. “Thanks.”

  Stretching over the mural, Celina picked up the pile of practice drawings from the coffee table. “They’re so good.” She leafed through them, then looked at each one again more carefully. “Like illustrations in a book.”

  Patrick sat back from his work again. His neck was getting stiff from leaning over so much. He rubbed it and watched as Celina lay his practice drawings out in a row on the couch, then arranged them in some sort of order.

  Suddenly she turned to him. “Can I keep them?”

  Patrick hesitated. “Hmmm … I don’t know …” He’d planned on keeping them himself; he kept everything he drew. Still, Celina liked them so much. And the real work was on the big paper, not on those little pieces. He bet Mrs. Romero would let him keep the mural after the class was finished studying Europe. He shrugged. “Well … I guess so. OK.”

  “Wow! Thanks!” Celina bubbled, and scooped the drawings up before running out the door.

  Chapter 19

  The Winner

  On Monday, Patrick was headed down the hall to the Reading Resource Room when he saw Celina stride out of Mrs. Nagle’s doorway and head in the opposite direction.

  “Hey, Celina!” he called after her. But she didn’t hear him.

  For a moment Patrick wondered why Celina had been in the Resource Room. And was that an angry expression on her face? He didn’t give either question much thought, though. There were other, more pressing things to worry about—like Mrs. Nagle.

  Would she act as though there was no tension between them, like she sometimes did? Or would today be another rerun of the bad scene with the race-car game and nonsense words? Patrick almost tiptoed into the Resource Room, as if treading lightly might make things easier.

  But like a bad dream come true, Mrs. Nagle did insist that Patrick play the race-car game again, until he could get all the way around the track once without a mistake. He did make it almost halfway on Tuesday, but then couldn’t seem to get past three rolls without a goof. Wednesday was about the same. By Thursday, he had to force himself to sit down at the game board.

  So when the intercom system clicked on, he was more than a little relieved. A break, any break, was welcome. Only ten minutes left until the end of the day. He had the rolled-up mural beside him. He would take it home and do the finishing touches tonight.

  “Excuse the interruption,” Mr. Gordon began. His voice was scratchy and sounded as if it were coming from very far away instead of right down the hall. “I thought you’d want to hear the news.”

  Mrs. Nagle let out a sigh. She turned to face the speaker. Patrick looked at the clock. Actually, there were only nine more minutes until the bell rang. Maybe Mr. Gordon had a lot to say.

  “I have the results of the writing contest,” Mr. Gordon went on.

  Mrs. Nagle sat up straighter. “Well, good,” she said to herself, picking up her clipboard and pencil.

  Patrick picked up his pencil, too, and began to draw in the margin of a worksheet he was supposed to do at home. He sketched in the rough outline of a tree. He’d been working on trees for the mural lately, putting in more limbs for detail.

  Mr. Gordon said, “Although many excellent stories were submitted, the winning story is so good that Mr. Miller, our judge at the Daily Sun, said he had no trouble picking it out.”

  “Cream rises to the top,” Mrs. Nagle murmured to the intercom speaker on the wall.

  Patrick decided to practice leaves, complete with tiny veins. Now that would be a nice finishing touch on the mural.

  Mr. Gordon cleared his throat. “In fact, Mr. Miller likes the winning story so much that he is going to take time from his busy schedule to personally hand out the award at
the assembly next Wednesday. There will be press coverage and an article with photos in addition to the winning story being printed in the Sunday ‘Accent’ section.”

  “The schools need good publicity,” Mrs. Nagle said, tapping her pencil on her clipboard.

  “So, keeping all of that in mind,” Mr. Gordon said, “I am pleased to announce that the winning story of the Dewey Elementary School Writing Contest is …”

  Mrs. Nagle shifted in her chair.

  “‘The White Knight.’”

  Patrick felt a wave of pure terror rush up his spine. He looked up at the intercom speaker in total shock. “That’s impossible.”

  “‘The White Knight,’” Mrs. Nagle said as she wrote it down. “Nice title, but for some reason I don’t remember seeing it in the pile I turned in to Mr. Mill—”

  “Written by Patrick Lowe.”

  Mrs. Nagle and Patrick both let out small gasps. Patrick dropped his pencil. Mrs. Nagle dropped her clipboard. It landed with a thunk, directly on her toe.

  Chapter 20

  Traitor!

  Patrick scooped up the mural and sprinted out of the Reading Resource Room and down the hall. In seconds he was out the front door of Dewey Elementary School. He ran from the intercom. He ran from Mr. Gordon’s words. He ran from Mrs. Nagle’s blank stare. Down the sidewalk toward home Patrick ran, mural clamped awkwardly under his arm, feet pounding the concrete as fast as unthinkable thoughts pounded in his head. He had to get away. He had to get to The Kingdom.

  But hiding there did no good. In what seemed like only seconds, Celina was rushing through the back gate and ducking into the oleander bushes.

  “Patrick, you won!” she blurted. In one hand she waved a small, handmade book. The cover was red construction paper decorated with sparkle and a border of shiny ribbon. In the other hand, she held The Sword in the Stone. She gulped air and laughed. “You won!”

  Patrick clutched the mural to him, as if gripping it tightly would keep Celina’s words back.

  She shook the two books in Patrick’s face. “You’re as good as T. H. White. You won the contest. Didn’t you hear? I looked all over for you, but I couldn’t find you. Mr. Gordon gave me ‘The White Knight’ to bring to you. Here it is. You won. I knew you would. Mrs. Nagle didn’t believe the story was really yours when I took it to her on Monday. She said there was no way you could have written it. Boy, that made me mad. She wouldn’t even look at it. I told her that it was your story; I just wrote it down. But she wouldn’t listen. So I went straight to Mr. Miller at the Daily Sun—to his office—and showed it to him. And now you won. You beat Andy. Ha! You should have seen his face when Mr. Gordon made the announcement! You won, Patrick! ‘The White Knight’ will be in the Daily Sun, and you’ll get an award, and they’ll take your picture, and …”

  On and on Celina went, building speed as she talked, her words spilling out so fast they began to run together into a jumble of excited squeaks.

  Patrick sat in The Kingdom, clinging to the mural and the fantasy world he had created on it, trying with all of his might to keep everything else out. But he couldn’t. Celina had done this thing to him. No matter what he said to himself, there was no denying it, no escaping that fact, no keeping her words from his ears. So he turned like a cornered animal and attacked.

  “You traitor!” Patrick yelled, tossing the mural in the dirt and yanking both books out of Celina’s hands.

  Celina sat back, stunned.

  Patrick glared. “You promised that the story would be just for us!”

  “I … I …” Celina stuttered as she tried to defend herself, then finally got it out. “I thought you would want to beat Andy. I thought you wouldn’t mind. The story is so good I thought—”

  “Well, you thought wrong!” Patrick exploded, cutting her off. The idea of winning the contest, of a total stranger having read his story, brought the world closing in. The weight pressed on his chest. He suddenly felt hot and couldn’t get enough air.

  “I did it for you,” Celina said, pleading with him to understand.

  “You did it for you!” Patrick lashed back, fighting for breath, fighting to keep the closet door from slamming shut. Gathering up his anger and then unleashing it on Celina was the only way out. “You wanted to prove something!” he yelled. “You wanted to make Andy look bad. I’m stupid and can’t read and write. You tricked me into taping the story so you could use it against Andy. You used my story. You used me!”

  “No, I …” Celina wilted under Patrick’s fire, unable to find the right words to defend herself. She fumbled around in her pants pockets, finally pulling out the cassette tape of “The White Knight.” She held it out to him. “Here, take it back. I didn’t … I didn’t want to …”

  Patrick ripped the tape from her hand. “You’re a traitor!” he yelled. He took a deep breath and aimed it at Celina. “YOU LIED TO ME!” Then he tore “The White Knight” in half, right in front of her face, and threw it at her. “There! You want my story. You got it!”

  “No!” Celina cried. She scooped up the pieces and held them close to her. “Patrick, stop!”

  But Patrick wasn’t done. He ripped The Sword in the Stone apart at the binding and threw it at her, too. “And take this one! I don’t care how it ends. It’s a stupid story, just like mine!”

  One piece of the book hit Celina on the side of the face. “Ow! Patrick, don’t!” She picked up The Sword in the Stone, her voice growing shaky. “Please don’t … I really thought you wouldn’t mind.” She started to cry. “I thought I was doing the right thing … It wasn’t bad … Please, Patrick, listen to me.… Please …”

  But he wouldn’t. “GET OUT OF HERE!” he yelled. “AND DON’T COME BACK! THIS IS MY PLACE! KEEP AWAY!”

  Celina backed out of The Kingdom on her knees, tears streaming down her cheeks, clutching the pieces of “The White Knight” and The Sword in the Stone. “I didn’t think you would mind,” she kept saying. “It wasn’t wrong, what I did.”

  Patrick screamed after her. “YES, IT WAS, YOU TRAITOR! YES, IT WAS, YOU … YOU WETBACK!”

  Celina let out a cry, as if wounded, and ran, dropping “The White Knight” and The Sword in the Stone in the dirt.

  Patrick threw the tape of his story at her, wanting to hit her, wanting to hurt her. It lodged in the oleander bushes, beside a particularly large white blossom.

  Chapter 21

  A Closed Door

  Before his anger was finally spent, Patrick destroyed the cardboard castle, tore up the cutouts, kicked over the shelves and makeshift table, and threw it all—including his chess set—into the garbage. He let the chuckwalla go, not caring that it was far from its home range, and then threw the aquarium they had used as a cage away. He dumped all the books Celina had brought in on the desert and Middle Ages over the block wall. He knocked down the plywood roof last, struggling with its awkward weight, but finally, in one great push, heaved it out of the oleander hedge to land in a cloud of dust. Then he grabbed the nearly completed mural, ripped it to shreds, and threw it into the garbage, too.

  Patrick stood in his backyard dripping with sweat and panting. He nodded grimly at what used to be his secret world. Nothing remained of The Kingdom. He hoped he never saw Celina Ortiz again. He didn’t care about her or her family. They were just … just wetbacks, like Andy said.

  Celina telephoned Patrick later. “Let me explain,” she began.

  But as soon as he heard her voice, Patrick hung up. The ringing came again. He picked up the receiver and slammed it right back down. After that, he unplugged the phone.

  Around dinnertime Celina came to the door and knocked. Patrick knew it was her. He could tell by the way she banged with her palm flat instead of a fist like most people. But he stayed in the kitchen eating the leftover burritos Paulette had brought home from Lupita’s the day before.

  “Patrick, please answer the door,” Celina called out. Then she switched tactics. “Paulette. Paulette, it’s me, Celina. Can I talk to you for
a minute?”

  Patrick kept on eating. Celina could yell all she wanted. Paulette wasn’t home. She was working the breakfast, lunch, and dinner shifts for a few days. She was trying to make up for the salary she lost when she was sick, plus save a little for next semester’s tuition at the community college. And after work she was going from the restaurant straight to class. One of her professors had offered to help her prepare for her midterm exam if she could put in some extra time. Patrick had only seen her for a few minutes over a bowl of cereal that morning. “I’m sorry,” she had said at least a dozen times, “this won’t be for long.” That morning he had been sorry, too. Now he was glad she was gone. He didn’t want Celina talking to her. He took another bite of burrito and nodded grimly at the front door.

  The next morning, Friday, Patrick said goodbye to Paulette, waited until eight o’clock, then plugged the phone in just long enough to call the secretary at Dewey Elementary and tell her that he had caught whatever it was his mom had had. “Some kind of bad flu,” he said, coughing into the phone. “I’ll probably be out for at least a week.”

  Celina came back that afternoon. Patrick ignored her continued knocking again. She could knock forever for all he cared. Wear her hand out. He wasn’t going to answer, even when she said, “I know you’re in there and you’re not really sick.” Maybe he’d never go back to school. Maybe he’d just stay inside on the couch for the rest of his life. That would show her.

  But a half hour later it wasn’t Celina’s knock or Celina’s voice that Patrick heard on the other side of the front door.

  “Patrick? Patrick?”

  Mrs. Romero! Patrick jumped up from the couch and started to run in the opposite direction. Celina had gone back to school and told on him. She’d told Mrs. Romero that he really wasn’t sick.

  “It’s me, Maggie Romero.”

  Patrick stopped in the middle of the living room floor. Maggie? He had never heard a teacher use her first name with kids before. Maggie? He liked the sound of it, the way she said it. He also liked the way it made him feel. It seemed special that she had used her first name with him. It was like she really knew him, and that he really knew her.