by Ali Benjamin
Principal, The Mitchell School
Interview: Timothy, Thomas, and Yumi
CAITLYN:
Okay, so I want you to think back to last month, the first day of seventh grade. Remember how you all started cheering when I knocked on the door?
TIMOTHY:
Yeah, that’s because we thought Paulie had arrived. We couldn’t wait to find out what he was going to do to kick off the new year.
THOMAS:
Just like he did last year, on the first day of sixth grade. Do you know about that one, Caitlyn?
YUMI:
She doesn’t know anything about Paulie. Remember? That’s the whole point of these interviews.
THOMAS:
Right. Okay, so when we got to the sixth-grade classroom on the first day, there was a note taped to the door in Paulie’s handwriting. It said GLEBUS IS GIVING OUT CANDY IN HER OFFICE. HURRY, BEFORE THE OTHER GRADES EAT IT ALL!
TIMOTHY:
And Caitlyn, you probably know that sixth graders crave candy the way zombies crave brains…
YUMI:
That metaphor is highly disturbing. But also oddly poetic.
TIMOTHY:
It’s also a fact. So we all went tearing through the building and burst into Glebus’s office, like, “Yo, Glebus, where’s the candy at?”
THOMAS:
Spoiler alert: There was no candy. Just Glebus, standing in front of that desk of hers, looking furious. Her desk is huge—way too wide to fit anywhere but in the corner. Anyway, she started lecturing us, going all, “You’re in sixth grade now… remember you’re the role models for all the younger children… ”
TIMOTHY:
…when all of a sudden, behind her, one of the desk drawers popped open. Out of the blue, almost like a ghost had opened it.
THOMAS:
Glebus didn’t think anything about it at first. She turned around and closed the drawer. But as soon as she did, a different drawer opened. She shut that one, too. Then, bam, it happened again. And again.
YUMI:
Finally, it dawned on Glebus to look behind her desk.
TIMOTHY:
That’s when Paulie Fink popped up. He’d wedged himself into the gap between the desk and the wall, and he’d been pushing open the drawers from behind.
YUMI:
Like everything Paulie did, it was highly juvenile. But also highly entertaining.
THOMAS:
Anyway, on the first day this year, we figured Paulie was late because he’d been up to no good. We couldn’t wait to find out what had happened.
TIMOTHY:
But then it turned out you were standing there, Caitlyn. And you looked like someone was forcing you to eat boogers—
THOMAS:
Dipped in decades-old mayonnaise.
I’m Not Him
Well, you’re not Paulie Fink. That’s what the girl in the pantsuit just said.
I look around the classroom, trying to take it all in: the confused faces, the haunted-house vibe, the fact that this is everyone, the whole seventh grade. From behind a teacher’s desk, a woman rises. She’s small, but what she lacks in height she’s apparently decided to make up for in layers of fabric—flowy pants, tunic, mile-long scarf.
She swishes over to me. “You must be Caitlyn! I’m Miss Magruder, though most kids call me Mags.” Then she turns to the class. “Everybody, this is Caitlyn. She just moved to Mitchell, isn’t that a thrill?”
And just like that, I’m officially the New Kid.
Every year at my old school, there were always a handful of New Kids. Teachers always introduced them by saying things like I know you will give so-and-so a great welcome. I’m sure you’ll let them know how happy we are to have them join us. But most of the time, we weren’t happy to have them join us. We were too busy trying to figure out who they were and how they fit in. If the New Kid wore a Star Trek T-shirt, we knew that by lunchtime she’d be sitting with the sci-fi geeks in the cafeteria. If it was an athletic-looking boy in basketball shorts, he’d sit with the jocks. The whole thing reminded me of one of those coin-sorting machines: You take a jar of jumbled-up change, dump it all into the machine, and within about twenty seconds all the dimes are neatly stacked, and all the nickels, and all the pennies and quarters, too. That’s what middle school feels like: a giant sorting machine.
Which means that right now, everyone’s trying to figure out where I fit.
My new class stares. I swallow. Soccer Boy hiccups. Then one of the identical kids in camouflage shouts, “But where’s Paulie?”
“Yeah,” says his twin. “Why isn’t Paulie here yet?”
Then everyone starts shouting that name.
“Yeah, where is Paulie?”
“You think Paulie got in trouble already?”
“Uh-oh, what’d Paulie do!?”
Then Pantsuit Girl stands up, jams her fist in the air. “Paul-ie!” she chants. “Paul-ie! Paul-ie! Paul-ie!”
And suddenly they’re all chanting, like sports fans demanding the star player be allowed in the game. They’re looking at me as if I’m the one who’s holding him back.
“Pau-lie! Pau-lie! Pau-lie!”
The girl with the pink hair and the tiny guitar even starts strumming along, like she’s writing music to go with their cheers.
Just for a moment, I let myself imagine that I’m not really here. That I’m back home, with my friends. I can picture the seventh-grade hallway at my old school: my friends waiting for me by the lockers. All of us huddled together, checking out kids’ back-to-school haircuts and first-day outfits. Peering at our schedules to see which classes we’ll have together.
I realize my friends are doing all that right now, at this very second. They’re just doing it without me.
That’s when I feel a swell in my throat, almost like my insides are flooding.
Sometimes this is how it is. Sometimes I go all swampy inside. My insides slosh and rise, and I know that if I’m not careful, I’m going to start crying. I’ve learned that there are three things you have to do when your insides get swampy:
1. Stare at something. Anything. And then don’t blink, not even once. I choose the portrait hanging above the fireplace. It’s some old man with bushy eyebrows and eyes like ice. There’s a big gold plaque attached to the frame. It says JULIUS HEWITT MAYBERRY OXTHORPE, 1869–1931.
2. Take a breath. I use what Mom calls a “cleansing breath”—in through the nose, out through the top of my head—even though that is technically impossible.
3. Turn to stone. I imagine that all my swampy insides are hardening into something dense and cool, so strong I’ll never cry again.
Everyone knows the first two tricks. But the third trick is all my own, and it’s the one that works best of all. When your insides are made of stone, nothing can hurt you.
“Paulie!”
The teacher, Mags, must take some sort of pity on me, because she doesn’t force the whole I know you will give Caitlyn a great big welcome thing. Instead, she points to a chair between Pantsuit Girl and Soccer Boy and tells me to take a seat.
When she finally quiets the class, Mags leans against the fireplace. “Originals, I have some news,” she says. “For some reason, Paulie Fink is not on my class list this year. It looks like he’s no longer enrolled at Mitchell.”
Next to me, Pantsuit Girl leaps out of her seat again, this time so fast her chair crashes backward. She throws her arms out to the sides, practically smacking me in the forehead with the back of her hand. “What?!” she shouts. “I mean… WHAT?!”
“Sit down, please, Fiona,” says Mags reasonably.
“But where is he?” asks Pink Hair. She’s wearing a T-shirt that says THERE IS NO EARTH WITHOUT ART, and she’s got a million woven bracelets on her arm.
Mags shakes her head. “I really don’t know any details, Yumi. I double-checked as soon as I got the list, and apparently it’s true. Paulie Fink is no longer a student here. I’m sure we’ll find out more soon enough
.”
“Maybe this is one of his pranks,” says one of the three kids in matching pom-pom ears, a girl with pink cheeks, frizzy red hair, and a mouth full of braces. The other two pom-poms nod along. It’s funny, because these three kids look nothing alike—in addition to the redhead, there’s also a wispy girl in yoga clothes with perfect posture and a kid who could be either a girl or a boy, lean and wiry, with hair buzzed practically to stubble—but somehow you can tell they’re a threesome. It’s not just the pom-poms, either. It’s the way they’re leaning into one another. You can tell they’ve known each other forever.
“Yeah,” the girl in the MEGASTAR sweatshirt pipes up. Her dark hair’s piled into a high ponytail and spills out in every direction. “Maybe Paulie wants us to think he’s missing, but it’s all part of a dramatic setup!”
Again, everyone starts shouting.
“I mean, a person can’t just vanish into thin air!”
“He’d tell us if he was really leaving, wouldn’t he?”
“This place won’t be the same without Paulie!”
Then the door cracks open and the room goes instantly silent again. By the looks on everyone’s faces, I half expect the ghost of mean old Julius Oxthorpe to come drifting through the door.
Actually, that’s not so far from what does happen. It’s not a ghost that pokes its head into the classroom. It’s a witch.
Witch in Yellow Boots
The witch peers around the room suspiciously. She’s wearing a dark blazer, dark blouse, dark lipstick, and has dark hair cut into blunt bangs across her forehead. I can even see dark veins, like tiny fingers, throbbing on one temple.
“What’s the commotion, Originals?” she asks. “I can hear you all the way downstairs in my office!”
“I just gave them the news about Paulie, Ms. Glebus,” says Mags. “They’re a little upset, that’s all.”
Sharp lines at the corners of the witch’s mouth move toward the floor. She glares around the room until her eyes land on me. “You must be Caitlyn,” she says, not a bit warmly. “I’m Ms. Glebus, Mitchell School principal.” She steps all the way into the room to shake my hand, and that’s when I notice something interesting. Her top half might be all witch, but her lower half looks like it belongs to a different person entirely. She’s wearing raggedy jeans with mud-caked knees. They’re tucked into bright yellow rubber boots. The whole effect is like one of those mix-and-match books, where you turn flaps to create different combinations of outfits.
I guess she sees me noticing her boots, because she says, sort of brusquely, “I spent much of the morning helping settle the goats.”
I force a smile, because I figure she’s trying to make some sort of joke. Helping settle the goats. Maybe because students are kids, and kid is a term that can mean either a child or a baby goat? I dunno, Principal Glebus. You might want to work on your stand-up routine.
Soccer Boy says, “Hey, Ms. Glebus, where’s Paulie?”
“Student records are confidential, Diego,” she answers curtly. “Even in a community as small as ours.”
“Wait,” says Fiona, who’s out of her seat again. “You’re not even going to tell us where he is? Are you kidding me?”
But Ms. Glebus is already out the door, gone as suddenly as she arrived.
When Mags finally settles everyone, she explains that in addition to being our homeroom teacher, she’ll be teaching us a variety of subjects that are rolled up into something called humanities.
“Humanities combines history, mythology, philosophy, and language arts. It’s about the stories people tell, the way they live, the things that they think about and value. Ultimately, it’s a way of exploring the question What does it mean to be human? Last year, we studied ancient China and the Middle East. So we’ll start this year in ancient Greece, beginning with mythology.”
She starts talking about the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, and the boy in the big blue glasses interrupts. “There were twelve of them,” he announces. “Zeus was the king of the gods. There was also Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Poseidon, god of the sea, and Ares, god of war, and—”
“That’s right, Henry.” Mags cuts him off. “But before we go into details about each one, it’s important to understand that for the Greeks, these gods weren’t remote. People believed that gods and goddesses intervened in the daily affairs of mortals…”
As Mags talks, Fiona leans across me like I’m not even there and whispers to Diego: “You noticed that, right? The way Glebus slithered out of the room, avoiding any questions about Paulie? She’s a snake, that’s what she is. She’s a snake and… and… an avoiderer.”
Now Diego leans across me, too. “Avoiderer?” he teases.
“Oh, don’t give me a hard time, Diego,” Fiona snaps. “Not with this missing-Paulie crisis we’re facing.”
“It’s just not a word, that’s all,” he says.
On the other side of Diego, pink-haired Yumi joins the conversation. “Well, technically, avoiderer is a word. It means avoiding a person who avoids.”
Fiona rises from her seat for a high five. “Thank you, Yumi! Sisterhood is powerful, am I right?” But Yumi just ignores her and strums on her instrument instead.
“Yumi, no ukulele during class,” Mags says. “And Fiona, if you can’t sit quietly, I’m going to have to ask you to hang out with Ms. Glebus for the morning. As I was saying: The Greek myths were carried down, generation upon generation, in the form of stories…”
Diego leans across me again and whispers to Fiona: “Ha, you got in trouble in the first minute of class!”
“Did not!” Fiona insists, too loudly.
“Fiona,” Mags warns.
Fiona sits up straight in her seat, but as soon as Mags turns away, Fiona whispers to Diego, “Mags said my name twice so far. It’s only trouble when a teacher has to say your name three times.”
Diego looks skeptical. “I’m not sure that’s how it works…”
“It is too the way it works.”
On the other side of Fiona, the MEGASTAR girl leans over. “Actually, I think Diego’s right.”
Fiona whips around to glare at MEGASTAR. “Don’t you dare take his side, Gabby. You’re supposed to be the nice one.”
Mags stops talking. “Fiona,” she says, exasperated.
Diego bangs the desk. “Now it’s three times! Boom! Official trouble!”
“Who cares what sort of trouble I’m in?” hollers Fiona. She looks around the classroom. “Our classmate has vanished! For all we know, we’ll never see him again!”
That’s when the whole class starts shouting a bunch of theories about what happened to this Paulie Fink kid. It’s hard to hear over all the noise, but I’m pretty sure I catch “beamed up!” and “locked in Glebus’s closet!”
Yumi rolls her eyes and starts plucking out a tune on her ukulele again. On the opposite side of the table, I see Henry, the know-it-all kid, open up a book called 1,001 Nature Facts, as if none of this chaos is even happening. He furrows his brow in concentration, like he’s studying for a test.
Me? I’m just sitting there like a big nobody. Like I’m not even in the room.
The Rules
I reach into the pocket of my hoodie for a folded piece of paper. I don’t need to pull it out; I know what’s on it by heart. Right before I moved, each of my friends had given me a piece of advice, which they compiled into a list. I hold it now between my fingers, like it’s some sort of good-luck charm.
CAITLYN’S RULES OF LIFE
AKA HOW TO WIN SEVENTH GRADE
1. Make a great first impression. Remember, you never get a second chance!
2. When in doubt, stay quiet. People will think you’re all mysterious and stuff. Also, it’s easier not to make a mistake than it is to fix one.
3. Act as if you couldn’t care less about anyone. The best way to make people care about you is to show zero interest in them.
4. Hahaha, remember that coin theory of yours? About how the point o
f middle school is to sort us all into clusters? Don’t let anyone forget: you’re the silver dollar!
5. Play to win! You got this!!!
6. Whatever you do, don’t do anything humiliating. Do not be an Anna Spang!
Anna showed up a few weeks into sixth grade. As the teachers did their usual I know you will welcome her thing, her eyes darted over the room. We could just tell: Anna wouldn’t be sitting with anyone in the cafeteria. In the coin-sorting machine that was middle school, she was a coin without a cluster.
That’s how I feel right now. As I sit here clutching the list of rules in my pocket, everyone shouting past me and no one talking to me: I feel like a coin without any matches. I feel like Anna Spang.
Make a great first impression, the rules said. But apparently I’ve failed to make any impression at all.
Interview: Gabby
I am an expert in the art of making impressions. It’s not that I make such a big impression on people myself. It’s because I am literally the world’s biggest fan of The Search for the Next Great Megastar. Megastar is the best reality show there is, and I should know—I’ve watched almost all of them: American Hermit, Man vs. Toddler, Are You a Secret Superhero?, Extreme Scrapbooking, Stunt Grandmas, Project Photobomb, Dumpster-Diving Divas, and a whole bunch of others.
Like I say, literal expert.
Here’s one of the things I’ve learned from Megastar: You can’t always know who a character is based on the first impression. Sure, some—like Jadelicious, who is the greatest Megastar of all time—make a bang right from the start. Others sneak up on you and surprise you.
But every time a new character joins the show? Or gets eliminated? Things change. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. And when one character disappears, like Paulie? And another comes waltzing through the door, like you, Caitlyn?
