The Waffler

by Gail Donovan

“Okay, Waffles,” said Tristan.

  It was going to be a long day, thought Monty. It was going to be a long year.

  “One two three, eyes on me,” said Mrs. Tuttle as she grabbed a marker and printed HIDDEN TREASURES on the whiteboard in big block letters. It was the name of their new Learning Expedition. They were going to be discovering some treasures hidden “right in plain sight!” And on Wednesday they would kick off their expedition with a field trip.

  Monty wondered if Mrs. Tuttle did the slow pull or the fast pull when she took off a Band-Aid? And how was he supposed to prove to the principal that he wasn’t a waffler and could sit wherever he wanted at lunch? He had a lot of questions. Unfortunately, so did Mrs. Tuttle.

  “What sort of behavior will I be looking for on Wednesday?”

  Ella Bakunda and Emma Robinson both shot their hands up in the air.

  Mrs. Tuttle called on Monty. “Monty,” she said. “Are you listening?”

  The truth was that Monty had been so busy worrying about the waffler thing that he hadn’t been listening. But he’d heard the behavior lecture before so many times he couldn’t count. He averaged not this time together with a million times.

  “Sort of,” he said.

  “And what did I just say?”

  Emma Robinson had her hand in the air again, but Mrs. Tuttle still wasn’t calling on her. She wasn’t going to let Monty off that easy. “Monty?”

  He could feel the class tuning in. A mini-battle between him and Mrs. Tuttle was more interesting than the usual school stuff.

  “Monty? What did I just say about what sort of behavior I expect?”

  Why didn’t he just give up and admit that he wasn’t listening? Because he didn’t want Mrs. Tuttle to win! Besides, field trip behavior was a no-brainer.

  “Our best?” he tried.

  Lagu Luka cracked up, laughing. “Our best behavior!” he blurted.

  Mrs. Tuttle fixed a stare of disapproval on Lagu for laughing at Monty’s joke, and then on Monty for making it. “Monty, I’d like you to make up your mind to be on your best behavior for the rest of the day, please,” she said, and without waiting for him to say anything, she asked everyone to go over to the window and look outside.

  “What can you see from our window, right in plain sight?”

  From up here on the second floor, Monty could see a lot. The spot where he always hung out at recess, by the chain-link fence. The new “satellite classrooms” stuck on the playground because there wasn’t enough room for all the kids this year. The Eastern Promenade, which was the last street before the ocean. Bright orange sumac on the hill that sloped from the Eastern Promenade down to the water. At the bottom of the hill, the huge dome shapes of the sewage-treatment plant. Then the ocean. And out on the ocean, islands. That would be cool, if the field trip was to one of the islands.

  Kids were raising their hands and calling out answers to Mrs. Tuttle’s question.

  “Swings!”

  “Trees!”

  “There goes a car!”

  “The ocean.”

  Lagu came up beside Monty. “She’s strict!” he whispered.

  Monty didn’t want to talk about Mrs. Tuttle. He wanted to make Lagu laugh again. He pointed to the big domes of the sewage-treatment plant. “Maybe our field trip will be there,” he whispered. “Hidden Treasures from your toilet!”

  “Hidden Treasures!” echoed Lagu with a yelp. “From your toilet!” He clapped his hand to his mouth to hide his laugh.

  Tristan Thompson-Brown asked, “Hidden Treasures from where?”

  A hundred yellow smiley-face barrettes turned toward him. Jasmine Raines was listening.

  “Your toilet,” said Monty. “I heard our field trip is to the sewage-treatment plant.”

  “It is not!” objected Jasmine.

  Tristan agreed with Jasmine. “No way!”

  “Way,” said Monty. “Go ahead. Ask.”

  Monty didn’t think Tristan would really do it. Tristan wasn’t a get-in-trouble kid. He was the kind of kid teachers sent on errands, like delivering a message to the office. But Tristan called out, “Mrs. Tuttle! Mrs. Tuttle! Is it true our field trip is to the sewage-treatment plant?”

  Mrs. Tuttle made a perplexed face. “No,” she said. “Who told you that?”

  Jasmine Raines raised her hand. “Monty!” she answered. “He said it!”

  Tristan explained, “He said it was Hidden Treasures from your toilet!”

  “Tristan,” said Mrs. Tuttle, raising her voice over the laughter of the entire fourth grade, “that was not appropriate. And Monty, did you change your mind again?”

  Monty was confused. He didn’t think so. “No?” he tried.

  She crossed her arms. “Really? You didn’t change your mind about being on your best behavior for the afternoon?”

  How could he change his mind since he hadn’t made it up in the first place? She was the one who had said he should be on his best behavior. That wasn’t his decision. He shook his head. No.

  “No?” she asked. “Then you didn’t make that inappropriate remark?”

  “Yes,” he admitted, “I did. But”—he stopped, confused. It was true that he’d made up the remark, but Tristan was the one who made the remark—said it loud enough for everyone to hear. Except somehow teachers looked at Tristan and thought, not him. Trouble wasn’t his fault. It had to be somebody else’s fault. In this case, Monty’s. Which seemed totally unfair, but Monty didn’t know how to explain all that and besides, he knew it wouldn’t matter. Mrs. Tuttle had made up her mind that he had changed his mind.

  “And how are we going to remind you that you’ve changed your mind unnecessarily?” asked Mrs. Tuttle.

  Monty hated it when grown-ups asked a question just to make a kid say the answer out loud. He might have to answer, but he wasn’t going to say what she wanted him to say. He just held out his arm, and Mrs. Tuttle yanked off a Band-Aid and dropped it in the trash can.

  Monty’s arm stung a little. One down, two to go. What would happen if Mrs. Tuttle ever pulled off all three? It was like a grown-up counting: One . . . two . . . They didn’t really want to get to three. They just wanted you to do whatever it was they wanted. Or else.

  Or else what?

  “Monty, my friend!” crowed Mr. Milkovich, the bus driver. “How is your day?”

  Mr. Milkovich’s big hands gripped the steering wheel. He had a big head, too—“for my big brain!” he always said, and then roared with laughter. Monty always tried to sit right behind the driver’s seat so he could talk to him. The bus ride was the second best part of his day, with recess coming in first and actual school coming in last.

  Monty slid into his usual spot. Somehow he had managed to get through the afternoon without finding out what happened after or else. He didn’t want to tell Mr. Milkovich about that, though. He didn’t want to tell Mr. Milkovich about the principal learning exactly who he was, either. Basically, he didn’t want to talk about anything that had happened today.

  “I got a rat!” he said.

  The bus filled up with kids, and Mr. Milkovich pulled out of the bus circle. “Rats?” he asked, heading along the Eastern Promenade. “You got rats?”

  “Not rats!” explained Monty. “Not like, rats you don’t want! Just one rat. He’s a pet, and he’s totally friendly and nice. He can balance on my shoulder when I walk around. And he has whiskers!”

  “Hmm,” said Mr. Milkovich, making a thinking-about-it noise. “Does he like apples?”

  Mr. Milkovich used to have an apple orchard in the country he came from, before he moved to the United States. Anyone who liked apples was okay in his book.

  “I don’t know,” said Monty. “I’ll check it out when I get home.”

  “Okay,” said Mr. Milkovich as he slowed the bus and pulled over to the curb. At the same time, he pus
hed a button, and the red stop signs on the sides of the bus swung out and its red stoplights started flashing. Monty loved how Mr. Milkovich could stop traffic. Everybody had to stop for a stopped school bus, or else they might get a ticket. Sitting way up high in the driver’s seat, Mr. Milkovich was like a king on a throne. King of the road.

  A few kids trooped down the aisle and climbed down the big steps and off the bus. A little third grader turned and waved good-bye. “Bye, Mr. Milk,” she said, which was what lots of kids called Mr. Milkovich.

  “Good-bye!” boomed Mr. Milkovich. “See you tomorrow!”

  He drove through the neighborhood, stopping and dropping off kids. At the corner of Washington and Monument Streets he pulled to a stop and a couple of fifth graders shuffled up from the back of the bus. Before they got off, one of them turned to Monty.

  “Bye, Waffles!”

  “Bye, Waffles,” echoed the other kid. “And remember, Waffles, no peanut butter for you!”

  Laughing, they sprang off the bus.

  Mr. Milkovich turned off the red flashers, pulled in the red stop signs, and kept going on his route. Looking into the big mirror that showed everybody behind him, he asked Monty, “What is it, this waffles?”

  Monty felt like a flat tire. He was dead. Those kids weren’t even in the half of the school he had lunch/recess with. Which meant the entire school had heard what happened.

  “It’s kind of my new nickname,” he explained. “Because the principal called me a waffler.”

  “The principal is calling you this food of breakfast? Waffles is something you eat, no?”

  “Waffles are what you eat, yeah. But waffler means somebody who changes their mind too much. She said I shouldn’t be a waffler.”

  From inside Mr. Milkovich came a noise that sounded like the bus was breaking down. “Waff-ler,” he grumbled slowly, shaking his big head back and forth. “So this is a bad thing, no?”

  “Yep,” admitted Monty. “Waffles are good to eat. But being a waffler is not a good thing. It’s bad.”

  Luckily, Monty’s stop was next. Because no matter how much he liked Mr. Milkovich, he didn’t want to talk anymore about the meaning of waffler. The bus stop signs swung out, and on the street all the cars slowed down and came to a stop, as if somebody had commanded, In the name of the king, halt! When all the traffic had halted, Mr. Milkovich opened the bus door. Monty stood and slung his backpack over his shoulder.

  “Mr. Milkovich, my friend,” he said, “see you tomorrow.”

  Mr. Milkovich roared with laughter. “See you tomorrow, my friend.”

  Monty hopped onto the curb and the bus pulled away. He headed up Atlantic Street, going in and out of the sun as he passed beneath the maple trees’ bright orange leaves. Their roots made the brick sidewalk all lumpy and bumpy.

  The first thing Monty always did when he got to his dad’s house was check out the pumpkin. His dad had planted the seedling right in the compost pile, and now the vine clambered halfway across the backyard, and the pumpkin was bigger than a basketball. Bigger than a beach ball. It reminded Monty of the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, where the bean plant grew right up into the sky. Just like he always tagged the fence at recess, Monty touched the big orange pumpkin. He was home.

  The driveway was empty. No cars. That meant his dad and Beth were still at work. Sierra was at soccer practice. Big A wasn’t there, either. Good. He went inside, grabbed an apple, and ran up the stairs.

  There was the little guy in his cage. Through the glass, the rat looked at him, and Monty looked back at the rat, with its white fur and brown patches, munching its ratty food. It was so cool the way the rat’s paws worked. He could pick up the tiniest seed and hold it while he nibbled. After a while the rat stood up on its hind legs, stretching its whiskery nose toward the cage lid. The guy from the Pet Emporium had given Monty a long lecture about proper animal care, going on and on about how rats were like little Houdinis. They loved to escape from their cage.

  Monty unclipped the lid from the cage and lifted out the rat. He bit off a tiny piece of sweet, crunchy apple and held it out. Would the rat eat from his hand? He held perfectly still while the rat looked at the apple, then looked up at Monty. Looked at the apple again and sniffed. And then—yes!—the rat reached out its tiny paws to take the piece of fruit! Victory!

  Monty didn’t want to make a mistake on something as important as a name—like naming a boy Montana—but he couldn’t just keep calling his pet “the rat,” either. The rat liked apples. Maybe apple? No, that wasn’t quite right. How about McIntosh? Mack for short.

  When the apple was all gone the rat—Mack—scritch-scratched his way up Monty’s arm, scrambled down his other arm, and came to the two Band-Aids. He sniffed them and looked up at Monty, as if he was asking, what are these things?

  Monty was glad he didn’t have to explain the decision-aids to Mack. He ripped them off—one, ouch! two, ouch!—and threw them on the floor so he wouldn’t have to explain them to his dad, either. Unless Sierra told. Or unless Mrs. Tuttle called home. He wondered which house she’d call, if she did call. His dad’s or his mom’s?

  Which reminded him of something he didn’t want to think about. Today was Monday. That meant two days to go until Wednesday. Wednesday was Switch Day, when he and Sierra would go to their mom’s house. The house where there were already enough creatures, according to his mom.

  Monty picked up the rat. “Mack,” he said. “We’re in trouble, my friend.”

  The next morning Mrs. Tuttle saw that Monty’s arm was bare. She put three new decision-aids on him and pulled one off later when he got up in the middle of Quiet Reading to pick a different book. By Wednesday, Monty knew the drill. He went straight to Mrs. Tuttle’s desk, where she said, “Good morning, Monty!” and added as many decision-aids as he needed to start the day with three. After she threw the wrappers in the trash, she clapped her hands.

  “One two three, eyes on me!” she chirped. “As you know, today we’re kicking off our Learning Expedition. We will be going to Mrs. Calhoun’s classroom to meet our Reading Buddies!”

  “Mrs. Tuttle, Mrs. Tuttle!” cried Jasmine Raines, waving her hand back and forth. As usual, she had about a hundred barrettes in her hair. Today they were all butterfly barrettes, which made Monty think of a flower covered with butterflies, like the orange monarchs that had been stopping to feed from the sunflowers in his mom’s garden, hurrying south before winter came. Monty had learned all about monarch butterflies in their third-grade Expedition on Migrations, which he thought was a way cooler subject than Hidden Treasures.

  Because it turned out that Hidden Treasures was actually just Kindergarten Buddies! And their kickoff field trip was going out to the satellite classroom to meet their Buddies! Monty should have suspected something was wrong when Mrs. Tuttle didn’t send them home with permission slips. Because you didn’t need a signed note from a parent to walk across the playground! What kind of an Expedition was that? But according to Mrs. Tuttle, there were treasures hidden inside of books and inside of people, too. Their job would be finding the treasure.

  “I know a kid in Mrs. Calhoun’s class!” said Jasmine. “Can she be my Buddy?”

  Mrs. Tuttle shook her head, “I’m sorry, Jasmine. Nobody will choose a Buddy. Those assignments have already been made. Now, we will line up single file. As we walk through the school, our noise level will be zero. Let’s go.”

  Monty and his class trooped down the stairs, out through the big double doors, and across the playground. From the outside, a satellite classroom looked a lot like a double-wide trailer, which was what it actually was. But inside, the room looked almost exactly like his old kindergarten.

  There was a big Today Is sign.

  TODAY IS: WEDNESDAY. (If you were student of the day, Monty remembered, you got to change this at morning meeting.)

  THE WEATHER IS: SUNNY. (You could
change this, too, but only if the weather changed.)

  THE SEASON IS: AUTUMN. (This was boring because it only changed four times a year.)

  THE NEXT HOLIDAY IS: COLUMBUS DAY.

  There was also a giant pad of lined paper propped on a big easel, and written on it in were the words: Today we are going to meet our Big Buddies. Your Buddy wants to learn all about you, and read you a book.

  The kindergartners were so excited they were squirming and wriggling, like the puppies in the Pet Emporium. Monty remembered how excited he was when he got assigned a Reading Buddy, three years ago. They got to go to the library all by themselves to hang out in the Reading Nook and read stories on the beanbags. By now his Big Buddy would be in middle school, in the eighth grade. It was strange to think that he himself had been a Little Buddy once, and now he was a Big Buddy. And someday he would be in the eighth grade.

  “Monty,” said Mrs. Calhoun. “This is Leo, your Buddy.” She spoke in a soft, singsong voice, just like his old kindergarten teacher. “You and Leo may go find a spot to read.” She gave him a smile and put Leo’s hand in his.

  “Monty,” said Mrs. Tuttle, in a voice that was not soft. “Make good choices.” She gave him a piece of paper for writing down what he learned about his Buddy.

  Leo’s hand was warm in Monty’s. He followed alongside like a little puppy as Monty led the way outside, which turned out to be the best part of the Expedition so far. While the weather was warm, they would be allowed to read outdoors, staying in one corner of the playground where the teachers could see everybody. Monty picked a spot on the top step of the stone amphitheater. On the piece of paper, Mrs. Tuttle had helpfully written a few fill-in-the-blanks. Fill-in-the-blank was boring but easy. The first one was My Buddy’s name is ________________.

  “What’s your name?” asked Monty.

  “Leo!” said the kid with a grin. He had a big smile and big brown eyes, and a buzz cut.

  “I know. What’s your whole name? Like mine is Montana Greene.”

  “Leonard Schwarz the third,” said Leo. “I can write it.” He grabbed the pencil and paper from Monty and worked until he had written LEONARD SCHWARZ III.