Class Dismissed

by Allan Woodrow

  “Soda’s a girl,” says Ryan.

  “Then help me find her!” I shout, louder.

  But, really? Soda is a girl?

  Everyone in class stops what they were doing to crawl around the floor, checking under desks and in the corners. Even Brian and Seth quit throwing erasers to join the search.

  Maggie looks in the teacher’s desk, opening drawers as if our hamster suddenly acquired the magical power of opening and hiding in drawers. But I suppose we need to check every inch of the room.

  Cooper looks in the supply cabinet. I check the bookshelf.

  Nothing.

  Soda is gone. Vanished. And it’s all my fault.

  I really am good for nothing.

  I can’t believe Soda is gone. Our pet rat! Missing!

  Or hamster. Or whatever it was.

  I always try to ignore the rodent. I touched it once, because Ms. Bryce passed it around class on the first day of school. Everyone had to hold the creature and pet it.

  I rested it in my hand. I stroked its fur.

  And it peed. Right. On. My. Hand.

  I screamed. It was awful. I washed and washed and washed, yet my hand still smelled like rodent pee all day. I vowed never to get near it again.

  Who thought that keeping a live rodent in a classroom was a good idea, anyway?

  The mere thought of a rodent in our penthouse apartment gives me the shivers.

  And now, thinking of that creature lurking somewhere in the room, hiding in the shadows or in my desk, is a terrifying picture that I need to get out of my head. I bet I’ll have nightmares tonight.

  What if it pees on me again?

  I peek in my desk. Thankfully, it’s not there. But still! It could run up my pants or something.

  That’s it. I’m only wearing boots to school from now on. I’ll order a new pair or three tonight.

  The other kids in class seem really upset about Soda missing, though. Kyle looks like he’s going to cry, which is something I never imagined I’d see.

  I could ask Daddy to buy a new hamster for the class—a hamster that’s specially trained not to run away, has hypoallergenic fur, and only goes to the bathroom on command.

  But maybe, just maybe, buying a new Soda wouldn’t be as awesome as actually finding the old Soda. My legs would still be in danger of a rodent crawling up them.

  Most important, everyone would still be upset.

  I thought when Ms. Bryce quit, things were going to be perfect. I really did. I could read magazines and help the girls in the class with fashion advice. I’d have less homework, which would mean more time for online shoe shopping. I wouldn’t have to worry about being yelled at in class.

  But things aren’t working out anything like I thought they would. One bad thing happens after another. And I care about it much, much, much more than I would have ever thought.

  Maybe we’re just not ready for a teacherless class.

  I mean, take a look at poor Maggie. She’s exhausted grading homework, giving assignments, and directing our play. I never want to work that hard at anything.

  I’m glad I’m not Maggie, that’s for sure.

  Brian and Seth high-five each other. Kyle yells his silly “Yow! Yow!” thing. They found Soda under the teacher’s desk! What a relief—wearing boots every day would be so monotonous.

  No … wait. Never mind. Kyle frowns again. That wasn’t Soda under the desk at all. It was an enormous dust ball. Brian just blew the ball at Gavin and it clings to his cheek. Yuck. Don’t they clean these rooms, like, ever?

  Our weekly housekeepers would never allow dust bunnies and dirt clods in our penthouse apartment. Aunt Karen wouldn’t stand for it.

  She might not always make the best eggs or lemonade or remember to cut the toast diagonally, but she is a big help. I’m glad she’s living with us. Maybe I should tell her that sometime.

  After all, I’ll need her help keeping my boots shiny and polished if we don’t find that rodent soon.

  “Samantha?” It’s Emmy and she’s shuffling over to me slowly. Her jeans are too baggy and she cuffs them at the bottom. Those are two basic jean do not dos. I don’t say anything, though, because I’m realizing that people don’t want to hear that sort of stuff even if it’s for their own good. Besides, I’m looking at the card in her hand, which she holds up. “It was pretty great that you invited Mr. Chips to be our teacher yesterday,” she says.

  “It was nothing. He was glad to help.” I’m grateful that Emmy doesn’t mention the screaming match he had with the security guard and all his strange quotes.

  Emmy hands me her card. “I’m having a party at my house this weekend. I hope you can come. Um, I forgot to give one to you the other day.” I thank her for the invitation, and she walks back to her friends. I turn the card over in my hand. I know it’s only a piece of paper, and it’s only a party with a bunch of girls I’m not even friends with, but I place the card inside my notebook, careful not to bend the corners. Then I walk over to the other kids and start to help look for our missing hamster, smiling more than I can remember smiling in a long, long time.

  Soda is missing and it’s just another nail in my rotting wooden coffin. It’s just one more excuse for Harvard to laugh at me. It’s just one more reason why my future is doomed.

  But I don’t have time to worry about our missing hamster. I don’t even have time to worry about poor, miserable me. Not now. Not with a class to lead and a play to direct.

  Of all the lousy things happening, of all the problems staring at us, the school play is the biggest worry of them all.

  “Are you okay?” Lacey asks. She stands next to me, a look of genuine concern on her face.

  “Why wouldn’t I be fine?” I answer, lifting my chin.

  But I’m not fine, no, not at all. The actors don’t know their lines, and they don’t seem to care. Adam and Lizzie are too busy staring at each other to pay attention. Gavin, who plays John Hancock, has one line—one crummy line—and he can’t even remember it.

  Trevor, our Paul Revere, keeps yelling, “The British are here! The British are here!”

  “No, they’re coming!” I yell. “The British are coming!”

  “They are? Where?” he asks.

  “No! That’s your line!”

  “Well, I think ‘The British are here’ is a way better line than shouting that they are just coming,” he says. “Sometimes my grandparents say they are coming over for lunch, and they don’t show up until dinnertime.”

  I just throw up my arms and scream. Sometimes screaming makes you feel better, but not in this case. All it does is hurt my throat.

  This morning, I thought I found a gray hair in my bed. A gray hair! I’m ten years old. Ten-year-olds don’t have gray hair. Although, when I looked at it closer, I may have been wrong. The hair might have been a thread from my gray-and-white bedspread.

  We’re practicing the second act, and Cooper reads a line. Cooper, who plays Thomas Jefferson, actually knows most of his lines, and he has a lot of them. Which is great, except he just might be the most terrible actor to ever try to act. He’s supposed to be passionate about freedom! American independence! Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, after all. But Cooper sounds as soft and oozy as a marshmallow.

  Thomas Jefferson was not a marshmallow. He was a leader. Like me.

  “Put some heart into it!” I insist. “Can’t you act?”

  “I am acting. I’m acting great,” says Cooper, who wouldn’t know great acting if an Academy Award fell on his head.

  “Just do it my way!” I recite his line exactly the way it should be recited, syllable by syllable. I am forceful in my delivery and passionate.

  Then he repeats the line, and sounds like a marshmallow.

  I don’t know why I have to do everything myself.

  At least he sings well. He has a lot of singing parts. Still, we’re going to make complete fools of ourselves Friday night—that’s in only two days!—and our secret will be discovered
and we’ll be ruined. I’ll be ruined.

  Samantha and Giovanna are supposed to be building sets, but every time I glance over to them, they’re flipping through magazines.

  I holler at them to get to work, and they look at me, eyes glazed, as if I’m speaking Latin.

  I know quite a bit of Latin, but I wasn’t speaking it.

  But at least they’re mostly quiet. Brian and Seth keep playing their stupid eraser game and shouting. I glare at them, but they just laugh. “Knock it off!” I finally yell. They ignore me.

  Trevor and Gavin watch me and whisper something to each other. I can’t hear them, but they probably think I’m being bossy again. I ignore them. Whatever.

  Leaders need to be a little bossy. That’s why they call them bosses!

  Meanwhile, Kyle works on script changes. He’s not acting like a blockhead, thankfully, but we’re running out of time. Kyle has eliminated some of the more terribly inaccurate parts, such as the scene where George Washington hurls erasers at the British and wins the Eraser War, which made no sense at all. But his play still needs a lot of work.

  “Ben Franklin did not have superpowers,” I argue.

  “But that’s the best part,” says Kyle with a frown.

  I yawn. I was up all night creating today’s assignment sheets. I don’t have time to correct Kyle’s mistakes. I rub my eyes and yawn again. Doesn’t the class understand the sacrifice I’m making for them?

  Being a teacher has been way harder than I ever imagined. I hate to admit it, but we could use Ms. Bryce right now. I picture her swooping through the window on a broomstick to take control. Since witches fly on broomsticks, that would be particularly appropriate.

  So, maybe we don’t want Ms. Bryce returning to teach our class. Not her. But we need someone. Better yet, maybe the entire Friday night event will be pushed back a month, or two. Or forever.

  “Do you need any help preparing homework?” asks Paige, Lacey by her side. They ask this same question four times a day.

  “We can totally help out,” says Paige.

  “I’m fine,” I insist. “Splendid, magnificent, and exceptional, thank you.”

  But I’m doomed, doomed, doomed.

  They turn away and I swallow the spittle that’s forming in puddles inside my anguished mouth. Maybe they can help. Maybe leaders don’t have to do everything.

  Sometimes, a little help can be, well, helpful.

  I’m about to speak up and call them back, but two door raps interrupt me. At first, I brighten. Maybe our Friday night event has been canceled! My wish came true, like in a fairy tale. We’re saved.

  But then my brain settles. Fairy tales don’t come true. Two door raps equal our warning sign. The eraser throwers sit. I sit tall, my chin up.

  Principal Klein enters the room. He scans the class. We’re all seated, frozen smiles on our faces. “Where’s Ms. Bryce?” he asks. Before anyone can respond, he shakes his head and says, “I know. The bathroom.” He clears his throat. “I was just checking to ask how the play was coming along. I’m excited to see your performance Friday night. We’re anticipating a big turnout from the community.”

  “It’s going great,” I answer, forcing an extra-wide grin to spread across my face.

  I may be doomed, but I won’t show my defeat. That’s what leaders do.

  I don’t want to pick the short pencil, really, truly. I try not to pick it. I study the eraser ends of the pencils. They all seem the same height. If one looks a little shorter, I purposely avoid that pencil. I remember where the short pencil lurked the last time I chose, and so I nab a pencil from a completely different location.

  Yet here I go again, with the short pencil in my hand.

  “Oh, come on!” I complain. I don’t want to go. I need to stay and rehearse the play. I have the biggest part! I want to help look for Soda, too—we need everyone to search for her. All hands on deck! We shouldn’t be sending kids to the principal’s office now.

  “Don’t forget your detention slip,” says Eli.

  I growl at him.

  When I arrive at the school office, Mrs. Frank shakes her head at me. She doesn’t have to say, You again? Really? Can’t you behave? but I know that’s what she is thinking. She holds out her hand without saying a word, and I place my slip on her palm. She reads the note.

  “You ate Lizzie’s sneakers?” she asks.

  I shrug.

  “For heaven’s sake, why?”

  “I was in the mood for some fast food.”

  She groans and points to the empty row of chairs. “Take a seat.”

  Maggie directs our class play, but honestly, I think she is in over her head. She keeps screaming at everyone, pulling her hair, and complaining that we’re all blockheads.

  Maybe I should talk to Maggie. I could show her the revisions I’ve made to the play. I’ve scribbled a few pages of notes, rewritten scenes, added some new ones, and eliminated others. I think I’ve made it a lot better.

  A musical has three parts: the lyrics, the music, and the script. The script consists of all the parts that aren’t sung. I can’t fix the music or the lyrics, that’s not what I’m good at, but I can improve the script a lot. I have improved the script a lot.

  For example, the Boston Tea Party wasn’t a tea party hosted by Martha Washington. So I took that scene out of the play. The Boston Tea Party was actually about a bunch of people throwing tea into Boston Harbor to protest taxes. I bet Kyle could write a good song about tea.

  I also think we should completely eliminate scene number nine in the second act, in which Thomas Jefferson emails the Declaration of Independence to the British.

  I don’t think it happened like that.

  But I doubt Maggie would listen to me, anyway. She would just get mad and tell me to mind my own business. Kyle would be mad, too.

  I don’t want to make trouble.

  After all, I’m a colorless plant: unnoticed and unplucked.

  So I keep my notes in my backpack, stay in my seat, and write a new story instead, a story that I can keep to myself. I call my new story “Soda, the Magical Disappearing Hamster.” But Soda quickly becomes an invisible rabbit. Eric, the hero of the story, is a shy, quiet kid who captures a rabbit in a field. He doesn’t realize he has actually captured a rabbit that can turn itself invisible. He arrives in class with a towel over a rabbit cage. All the kids in class gather around Eric as he removes the towel.

  The cage is empty.

  Confused, Eric opens the cage to look inside. The rabbit leaps out. It’s invisible, so nobody can see the creature as it runs around biting students, knocking things over, and eating a box of cupcakes one of the students brought for a birthday treat.

  No one knows what’s happening until the rabbit briefly turns itself visible. Everyone yells at Eric to do something, so he lures the critter back into the cage with some lettuce from the turkey sandwich in his lunch bag.

  Eric knew he shouldn’t have shared anything with the class. He should have kept quiet.

  After school, Eric takes the rabbit back to the field and opens the cage to return it to the wild. “Get out of here!” he yells.

  As he stands there, cage open, Eric hears a loud bull snorting from behind him. He spins around, but the field is empty. Still, the snorting grows louder and Eric sees the long grass being crushed beneath mighty invisible bull feet, coming closer and closer and closer until—

  “No! That’s all wrong!” Maggie yells at Lizzie from the front of the classroom. I look up from my page. Adam, back from the principal’s office, jumps in and argues with Maggie. Things aren’t going very well. Maggie complains that the play is a complete mess.

  “One if by sea,” says Eli, who is playing Paul Revere.

  “It’s two if by sea!” yells Maggie. “Can’t anyone do anything right?”

  Eli stomps away. So do Lizzie and Adam. Maggie stands by herself, her eyes red and puffy. I think she might cry.

  I sigh and remove my script notes from my backpa
ck. Something needs to be done, and not just with the script—with everything. The sets need to be set better, the acting needs to be acted better, and the costumes need to be created somehow, too.

  I can’t do everything, but I can do my part. I take a deep breath. I consider approaching Maggie, but instead I turn around and slink toward Samantha, who is huddled with Giovanna in the back reading a magazine instead of creating the sets. I stop three times before I reach her. Each time I stop, I consider returning to my seat. But then I start walking again.

  And then, somehow, I’ve crossed the room and am standing right next to Samantha. I didn’t even realize I had walked so far.

  She looks up at me. “What do you want?” she asks, as if accusing me of something.

  I wish I could disappear, like an invisible rabbit. What was I thinking? She’ll probably laugh at me. I should have kept my idea to myself. I should have remembered I’m a colorless plant. But it’s too late now, so I clear my throat and unlock my arms, clasped in front of me. I take a deep breath. “Um, so, this play. It’s sort of a disaster,” I say.

  Samantha nods. “I’ve noticed.”

  “Well, um, I have an idea, but I need your help.”

  “My help?” she says. A small smile creeps onto her lips. Her eyes lock onto mine. “I’m just the person to ask. I specialize in helping. What can I do?”

  As I walk home from school, I can’t stop feeling all worried inside, my body nervously tingling, head to toe.

  The last time I felt this worried was last year, when this really cute pair of brown leather riding boots were out of stock at all the online stores and I didn’t know when I would get them.

  But this feels even more worrisome, and it’s all about school. School has never bothered me before, either. I mean, sure, Ms. Bryce bothered me a little. But I would stop feeling bothered after the bell rang and I was home.

  So why do I feel like everything matters a whole lot? Why do I care what happens? Why do I want everything to turn out for the best—not just for me, but for Emmy and Jade and everyone?