“There was green in it,” Bruno said.
“Then why didn’t you swap it?”
Bruno sat up. “Swap? What’s swap?”
“You know—trade,” Dad said. “When I was a boy, I always swapped the things I didn’t like in my lunch.”
“For what?” Bruno asked.
“For a better lunch.”
Bruno said, “I’ll swap you my green sandwich for some macaroni.”
“It’s a deal,” Dad said.
The next morning, Mom made Bruno’s lunch. Bruno asked her to please, please, please put lettuce in his sandwich.
“Call nine-one-one!” Mom shouted. “Quick! We need an ambulance!”
But she did what Bruno asked. She sent him to school with a very green sandwich.
At lunch, Bruno opened his lunch box and took the sandwich out. He looked around at what all the other kids had. Some of them had green in their sandwiches too. But some of them were eating sandwiches Bruno liked: cheese sandwiches, ham sandwiches, ham-and-cheese sandwiches. His friend Ravi had something even better.
“Is that a macaroni sandwich?” Bruno asked Ravi.
Ravi said, “Yes.”
“Is it good?”
“Yes. But I’ve had macaroni sandwiches for three days in a row.”
“I’ll swap you,” Bruno said. He showed Ravi the inside of his sandwich: ham and butter and six pieces of lettuce. They took the sandwich apart on the desk. They counted all the leaves.
“That’s not dirt,” Bruno told Ravi. “That’s pepper.”
“It’s a deal,” Ravi said.
The macaroni sandwich was good. It was so good that the next day Bruno asked Mom for a macaroni sandwich. It was his favorite sandwich now. At lunch, he didn’t want to swap it.
But after he ate the macaroni sandwich, he was too full to eat his cookie. He went up to Ms. Allen’s desk. “Ms. Allen? Would you like this cookie?”
Ms. Allen smiled. “Aren’t you sweet, Bruno.”
“I want to swap it,” he said.
“Oh.” Ms. Allen’s smile went away. “All right then, Bruno. What do you want to swap it for?”
Ms. Allen’s pencil sharpener was on her desk. It was one of Bruno’s favorite things in the classroom. It was electric and whirred so loudly that everyone jumped when a pencil got sharpened. It also had a window that showed all the shavings inside. Bruno asked to trade the cookie for the pencil shavings.
“That cookie,” Ms. Allen said, “for those pencil shavings?”
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s a deal, Bruno.”
Bruno collected pencil shavings. When he got home from school, he added his class’s pencil shavings to his collection. The box was nearly full!
He was so happy he looked around for other things to swap. He found an eraser shaped like a heart in his toy box and plastic teeth under his pillow. The teeth had been there for a long time. The tooth fairy was probably never going to come. And he had three of the same hockey cards!
The next day was very busy. When you are busy, the day goes by very fast. Usually school lasted forever. Today school lasted a minute and a half. Already, Bruno was back home eating supper with Mom and Dad.
“Where did you get that funny hat?” Mom asked him.
“I swapped for it,” Bruno told her.
Dad looked proud. “Did you? What did you swap?”
“I swapped Mom.”
Mom put down her fork. Her face turned white.
“Don’t worry,” Bruno told her. “I got you back.”
Dad said, “Thank goodness! I like your mother.”
“Me too,” said Bruno. “I like her so much I swapped my plastic teeth to get her back again.”
“Plastic teeth?” said Mom. “The pointy ones?” Now her face turned very red.
“Yes,” Bruno told her. “First I tried a pickle. No deal.”
“I hope not!” Mom cried.
“What were you doing with a pickle?” Dad asked. “You don’t eat pickles. They’re green.”
Bruno said, “I swapped for it.”
“What did you swap?”
“A huge bug I found at recess.”
“Now that’s a deal,” Dad said.
“It was dead,” Bruno said.
“Even better!” Dad patted Bruno on the back.
The hat had flaps over the ears. Strings hung from the flaps. If Bruno wanted to hear better, he tied the strings in a bow on the top of his head. He showed his parents how it worked. “For math, I put the flaps down. For recess, I put them up.”
“Well,” Mom said, “it’s hardly school anyway. It’s more like a swap meet.”
The doorbell rang. Mom and Dad looked at each other. “Who is that?”
“Ravi’s dad,” said Bruno. “Ravi traded him. I have just the hockey card he needs.”
Bruno, Level 5
On the last day of swimming lessons, Bruno had to take a test. He had to show the teacher what he’d learned. He showed her his flutter kick. He showed her his side glide. He showed her his back float. Bruno could float on his back for a very long time. He was an excellent floater.
“That’s great, Bruno!” the teacher called.
Bruno kept on floating.
The teacher called, “Bruno? Bruno?”
Bruno floated on.
“Hello, Bruno? You can stop floating now!”
“Hey,” Bruno told her. “You woke me up!”
Next he showed her his rollover glide with flutter kick. Bruno added two extra rollovers. “That was a screwdriver glide with flutter kick,” he said.
The last thing Bruno had to do was swim from one side of the pool to the other. Mom came and cheered him on. “Yeah, Bruno!” she called. When he got to the other side, Mom was there again. “Bruno! Bruno! Rah, Rah, Rah!” Bruno was a little bit embarrassed. All the other parents were sitting on the benches like they were supposed to.
Afterward, the teacher handed out the report cards. A badge was stapled to Bruno’s card. It read: Swim Star 2.
“You did it!” Mom cried. “You passed! You’re in level three now! You really are a Swim Star!”
Mom was so happy. She was happier than if she’d passed level two herself. But she hadn’t. She couldn’t swim at all. At the cabin in the summer, Mom usually stayed on the beach. Sometimes she went in the water up to her knees. She always said, “I’m more of a wader than a swimmer.”
“Swimming is easy,” Bruno told Mom as they were leaving the swimming pool. “Watch.” And he swam all the way across the parking lot to the car.
“Easy for you,” Mom said. “I sink.”
“You sink?”
“Yes.”
“Then I think I know what your problem is,” Bruno told her. “I think you have rocks in your bathing suit.”
Back home, Bruno noticed that things looked different now that he was in level three. The bathroom sink was lower. Also, the toothpaste was easier to reach. “When you are at a higher level, everything looks lower,” he told Mom and Dad.
Even bending over to tie his shoes was different. “Hello down there!” he called to his shoes. They seemed so far away. They looked lonely. He knelt down to tie them so they wouldn’t feel so alone.
Bruno asked Mom to sew his swim badge on his coat. The next day at recess, he showed everyone. “Now I’m in level three.”
“Then why is there a number two on the badge?” Isabel asked. She wasn’t a Swim Star, Bruno could tell.
“You get the badge when you finish a level,” Bruno explained. “I finished level two.”
His teacher, Ms. Allen, was standing nearby. She asked him if he had a badge for level one.
“I do,” Bruno said. “But I put it somewhere safe. I put it somewhere so safe that I can’t find it.”
“When you do find it,” Ms. Allen asked, “will you sew it on your coat?”
“No,” Bruno said. “I can’t sew.”
“All right,” Ms. Allen said. “But if you did have both
badges on your coat? How much would they add up to?”
Bruno turned and ran away. That Ms. Allen! She was always sneaking in the math!
The bell rang and Bruno went back in the school. He did the math. He tried not to, but he couldn’t help himself. In the classroom he told Ms. Allen, “Three. They would add up to three.”
“You’re a Math Star,” Ms. Allen told him.
Now Bruno really wanted to find his level one badge. If Mom sewed his level one badge next to the level two badge on his coat, they would add up to his level—level three. He looked in all his drawers. He looked under his bed. He looked in his piggy bank.
“Where’s my level one badge?” he called.
Mom came into his room. “This badge?” she asked, pointing to it. Bruno was using his level one badge for a bookmark.
Mom sewed it on his coat for him. “See?” Bruno showed her when she was done. “One plus two is three. I’m in level three.”
“And you’re only in grade two!” she said proudly.
“That’s right. I’m in level three in swimming and grade two in school. Three plus two is five. That means I’m really in level five.”
“Level five in what?” Mom asked.
“In life.”
“No!” Mom cried. “I want a little boy a little longer!”
At dinner that night, Bruno cut up his meat himself. Usually Dad cut it for him, but now that he was in level five in life, he did it himself. When he finished drinking his milk, he went to the fridge to get the jug. He poured out another glass for himself. Mom or Dad used to do that for him, back when he was in level two.
“Level five in life?” Dad said. “It seems like only yesterday you were in level one.”
Mom sniffed and wiped her eyes with her napkin.
“I remember being in level five,” Dad said.
“Really?” Bruno asked. “What did you do when you were in level five?”
“That was when I started eating things that were green.”
Bruno looked around the table. Luckily, Mom and Dad had already finished all the salad. It was safe for him to say, “Yes, I’ll eat green now that I’m in level five.”
“And level five was when I started washing the dishes.”
“Really?” Bruno said. “Level five? That sounds more like level eight.”
Dad shook his head. “That’s level five.”
After dinner, Dad filled the kitchen sink with water. He added dish soap and put all the dirty dishes in. Then he called for Bruno—Bruno, level five in life.
Bruno started washing. Mom came and stood next to him. She said, “How’s my little boy?”
Bruno said, “Help! I’m sinking!”
He was sinking all the way back to level three!
School of Boys
Summer holidays came. No school for two months! Bruno and his mom and dad packed the car to go to the cabin. They brought books and fishing rods, swim goggles and sleeping bags. They brought cards, an air mattress, and the blue-and-white-striped sun umbrella.
When they got to the cabin, the first thing Bruno did was run down to the dock. Last summer they rented this same cabin. Last summer there were fish. He lay on his tummy at the end of the dock and looked into the ocean. The fish were still there! A school of fish. Bruno had moved up to the next level in his swimming lessons. He hoped the fish had too.
Mom, Dad and Bruno unpacked their things. Bruno had a new sleeping bag he wanted to try out. But the zipper was tricky. It was very, very long. “This zipper is six miles long!” Bruno complained. “I can’t get it up.”
Mom showed him how. He got in the sleeping bag and zipped it closed right over his head. Then he unzipped it and got out. He never had a problem with the zipper after that.
Bruno ran out of the cabin to help Dad make a fire. There was a stove in the cabin, but a campfire was more fun than using pots and pans.
“I need newspaper crumpled into balls,” Dad said. “And lots of small sticks.”
Bruno got the newspaper and made balls. He ran around collecting sticks. Dad chopped the firewood with the ax. Then he showed Bruno how to make a little tepee of sticks over the newspaper. “After the sticks get going, we can add the firewood,” said Dad.
Bruno finished building the stick tepee by himself.
“We need one more thing,” Dad said.
“What?”
“Matches!”
Bruno ran to get them.
That evening they cooked their hot dogs and broccoli and marshmallows on sticks around the fire. They heard a loud honking in the sky. It was Canada geese flying over the cabin, just like last summer.
“The school of geese!” Bruno shouted.
“It’s not a school,” Dad said. “It’s a flock.”
“It’s a gaggle,” Mom said.
“It’s a flying school,” Bruno said.
Mom and Dad laughed.
They were still laughing about the school of geese the next morning. Mom had noticed ants on the picnic table carrying her toast crumbs away. “Bruno,” she said. “Here’s a school of ants. What are they learning?”
Bruno watched them for a few minutes. Most of the crumbs were bigger than the ants. “Weight lifting,” he said.
Bruno loved being at the cabin. There were so many different kinds of animals. There were birds, fish, snakes, seals, starfish, deer. Some of these animals didn’t go to school. They had already learned to be snakes and deer. Others still needed lessons. Like the dragonflies. One day, they had a picnic on the beach. Mom said, “Look!” Dragonflies filled the air. They had green bodies and papery wings that whirred.
Just then a helicopter flew over. “There’s the teacher,” Bruno said.
The starfish were learning how to hug underwater. When the tide went out, Bruno climbed on the rocks to count them. They were purple and pink and uncountable. But they could hug. He couldn’t pull them apart no matter how hard he tugged.
The seals were learning clapping songs in the bay. They swam in as the sun went down and had their lessons there. In his sleeping bag at night, Bruno could hear their flippers slapping the water.
His friend Ravi arrived with his family. They rented the cabin next door for two weeks. Ravi and Bruno fished and played hide-and-seek. They swam all day.
Bruno spent almost the whole summer at the cabin, but it wasn’t long enough. “I don’t want to go home,” he said.
“We have to go back to work,” Mom told him. “And you have to go back to school.”
“We need to buy your school supplies,” Dad said. “That should be fun.”
It was true. Bruno liked to go to the store at the end of the summer and pick out new pencil crayons. New pencil crayons meant more shavings for his collection. “Can I get new pencil crayons even if I don’t go back to school?” Bruno asked.
“If you don’t go back to school?” Mom asked. “What are you talking about?”
That summer Bruno had caught three fish. He’d learned to zip up a sleeping bag with a six-mile zipper. He and Ravi had built a fort. One night they were allowed to sleep in it. Bruno could make a fire all by himself. He wasn’t allowed to, but he could.
Bruno didn’t think he needed to go back to school. He had already learned all he needed to be a boy.
In Bruno for Real, the sequel to I, Bruno, award-winning author Caroline Adderson shares more of Bruno’s really real adventures. Caroline lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband and the son who lied to her when he said he’d always be seven.
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