by David Yoo
“Dude, that’s crazy,” I said, gaping at Drew.
“Note-to-self . . . must-not . . . ever-get . . . detention,” Drew said in a funny robot voice, and I giggled.
“Yeah, no kidding, and I’ll pretend you didn’t just talk in a stupid robot voice,” Lance replied, and I casually changed my giggling to coughing. He added, “Anyway—they were the biggest bullies in school last year, too.”
“So what’d you guys do all summer?” Trent asked Drew.
“Funny you should ask—,” he started saying with a big smile on his face, but I cut him off.
“Nothing, really,” I said, glaring at Drew. “So Trent, did you do anything else besides play hoops like a weirdo all summer? Did you spend any time in, say, the woods?”
“Huh?” Trent said, and his new Hemenway pals just stared at me as if I’d just asked the dumbest question ever.
The bell rang, and everyone started heading upstairs to the classrooms.
“Jackpot,” I whispered to Drew, and he stared at me funny, too.
“Why would Trent spend any time in the woods? What’s in the woods?”
“Don’t you get it?” I said. “He totally forgot about the mica contest because he was too busy playing basketball all summer! And he’s our main competition. This is turning out better than I expected.”
“That is good news!”
“Oh, and one more thing,” I added. “Don’t ever use that robot voice again with those guys, you’re embarrassing both of us.”
“Sorry.” Drew blushed. “You should’ve told me it wasn’t the right moment to bust it out.”
“I assumed you knew,” I said, not looking at him.
Drew and I had homeroom together because our last names are close together. The school is set up like this: The lobby and gym and teachers’ lounge are out front, facing the parking lot on one side and a soccer field on the other. The academic wing of the school is behind this section—it’s two floors, and completely circular, with the classrooms on the outside. On the inside of the second floor is the library, and on the first floor the middle is the cafeteria and auditorium. We got to room 27 and our homeroom teacher, Mr. Davis, handed us our class schedules. We compared them and discovered that we didn’t have any classes together! I groaned. This was bad news, I’d never had a class without Drew in it up to this point. It was kinda like we were teammates in class back in elementary school.
“At least we have homeroom and lunch together,” Drew said.
We grabbed some seats near the back.
The Human Calculator and his brainiac pals were sitting in a cluster behind us.
“How-was-your-sum-mer?” I asked him in a robot voice, winking at Drew so he could see that this was one of those situations where a robot voice made perfect sense. I talk like that to Carson to secretly make fun of him being such a nerd. He never gets it—which means he’s not nearly as smart as everyone thinks.
“I visited my grandparents in Mexico City for most of it,” he said.
“What kind of rock formations do they have in Mexico City?” I asked.
“Why would you care, are you a geologist or something?”
“Just curious, and for the record, yes, I probably am a geolowhatever-you-just-called me,” I said, winking at Drew. It seemed like everyone had forgotten about the mica contest! We’d win just by default, which was fine by me.
Sally Leathers was also in our homeroom. In fourth grade, all the girls worshipped Sally because she was really fast—during one recess she actually beat Trent and some other guys in a race, but then in fifth grade she gave up her running career to focus on riding horses, and as a result her legs weakened and she fell to third-fastest girl in the grade, and people just weren’t as crazy about her as before. She looked different, I noticed. Not just taller, but she was wearing makeup and looked older than us.
“What’d you do this summer?” I asked Sally. “I mean, besides age ten years.”
“It was boring. I hung out at the pool every day, but I met my new BFF, Angie. She went to Hemenway,” Sally said, pointing at the girl next to her.
“Hi,” I said to Angie, and she kinda just stared back at me.
“What about you guys?” Sally asked.
Drew looked at me. I figured Trent and his basketball buds spent the entire summer playing hoops, and Carson spent his time in Mexico City, and it sounded like everyone else hung out at the pool, so I assumed we’d definitely collected the most mica. Everyone was paying attention to us, so I figured it was a good time to make the official announcement. I nodded at him.
“Pete and I more than doubled our mica collection,” he said.
At first nobody said anything.
“You guys collect mica?” Angie asked.
“That’s what we do at our school,” I reminded her. “I guess you don’t have any on your side of the town. Drew and I had the most at the end of the year, but we barely had thirty pieces, remember, Sally?”
“Nobody plays with mica anymore, Pete!” Carson snickered. “That is so fifth grade.”
Everyone laughed.
“We don’t play with it,” Drew shouted. “Mica’s not a toy. If you knew anything about it, you’d know that you have to be really careful with it, and besides, you don’t—”
Thankfully, the bell rang for first period, so Drew couldn’t continue doing what he mistakenly thought was effective damage control. Everyone raced out of the room, including Drew, while I sat back in my seat, thinking about what Carson had said. “So fifth grade”? What was that supposed to mean?
Chapter Six
IN ADDITION TO FINDING OUT I didn’t have any classes with Drew and then discovering that nobody seemed to remember the mica contest, I found out that all the teachers were in love with Sunny. I mean, I’d already assumed this, but it weirded me out that in all my classes that morning, the teachers introduced themselves to me and raved about how great Sunny was.
“Any relation to Sunny Lee?” Mrs. Ryder, my first-period math teacher, asked.
“That’s my sister,” I said.
“Sunny was my brightest student last year,” she said, then added, “I expect big things from you this year, Peter.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Peter may be smartest,” Sally said. “But he still plays with mica!”
Everyone laughed.
“I’m not sure you’re in a position to tease me like that—let’s not forget that last we checked, you were only the third-fastest girl in the grade,” I pointed out.
Sally stared at me.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
Mr. Vensel, my English teacher, and even Mrs. Lewis, my art teacher, both noted my relationship to Sunny. Then they’d start talking about the class, and kids would pull out their notebooks and take notes. I didn’t feel like I had to do this because I’ve always been ahead in class, so instead I stared out the windows all morning, thinking of things Drew and I could collect outside during recess. That was the key, I figured. Everyone had forgotten about mica, so we just had to remind everyone how good we were at collecting stuff in general.
I realized we couldn’t just collect something we’d already collected back in elementary school. It would have to be something different. I stared out the windows and wondered, what’s different outside that they don’t have at Fenwick Elementary? But the grass and trees all looked the same. Where the heck was the playground, for that matter?
Drew was already waiting for me at an empty table when I got to the caf for lunch. He waved at me, and I nodded over at the lunch lines. I did a double take. There were two lines for lunch? Back in elementary school there was only one line, and we all got served the same thing. In middle school I discovered that there was now a line for “hot lunch” and another for “à la carte.” I had no clue what “à la carte” meant, but I saw that they were serving plastic lasagna for hot lunch, so I got in line behind Carson and tapped him on the shoulder.
“You speak Spanish
. What does ‘à la carte’ mean?” I asked him.
He grimaced at me.
“It’s French, for one thing,” he snapped. “And it just means you pick and choose what you want to eat. But you won’t be able to buy anything—they only accept cash, not mica.”
Why was Carson talking so tough with me? Just a few months earlier, in fifth grade, he’d almost been too shy to even approach me, and sometimes I’d catch him just staring at me fondly from a distance after I’d done something really impressive, like juggle the blackboard erasers for ten seconds or catch an out in kickball during recess.
He turned away from me. I figured he was just still feeling nervous about being in this new place. I bought a lukewarm cheeseburger (apparently, a red lightbulb isn’t a reliable heat source) and an apple juice and brought my tray back to Drew’s table. “Why are you sitting alone?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, as if he was noticing this for the first time. “Maybe everyone’s talking about their classes or something.”
“Did you know there was going to be an à la carte line?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t like Spanish food anyway,” he said.
“It’s French,” I corrected him.
“You’re so wise,” Drew said, and I didn’t bother admitting that I’d just learned this little factoid myself, because the guy considered me a genius and I didn’t want to let him down.
“So what are we going to do about the mica situation?” Drew asked. “We collected so much of it for nothing.”
“The way I see it, okay, so mica may have gone out of style, but we just have to get everyone collecting stuff during recess and they’ll remember how cool we were.”
“Thank God you’re good at thinking on your toes,” Drew said.
I blushed.
“I’m no different from any other great inventor,” I said humbly.
We sat there eating our lunches, watching everyone laugh and talk with kids from Hemenway as if they’d been best friends since birth. Lunch was divided by grade, and this was our first time seeing the entire sixth grade together at once. Sally and her horse-riding friends were sitting with a group of girls from Hemenway who probably rode horses, too. Carson and his brainiac pals were sitting with some new kids who looked really smart—one of them had easily the biggest head I’ve ever seen in my life. Trent and his basketball buddies were sitting with Kyle and Mark, the two kids we’d met before homeroom. The band kids were with Hemenway band kids, I could tell because they had their instrument cases on the ground next to them. Even the quietest people from our grade were sitting with new kids. It didn’t look like they were talking much—they were probably the quietest kids from Hemenway, too. But the fact is they were sitting together, and looked like they’d been sitting together for years even though this was only the first day of school. The part that bugged me the most was that Drew and I were definitely the only ones sitting at an unfilled table.
After lunch everyone got let out into the main lobby of the school, where we stood in a big confused group, like cattle.
“Why aren’t they letting us out for recess?” I whispered to Drew.
“Maybe they’re waiting for someone to take the lead?” he suggested, and I got all excited.
“Follow me,” I said, and we made our way through the throng of students to the double doors. I pushed them open, and immediately a teacher shouted at me and charged over.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded.
Students looked over at us.
“Uh . . . recess?” I said.
Sally and Angie were standing near the doors at that moment.
“There’s no recess in middle school!” Angie cried. She turned around and shouted, “Peter and Drew are trying to go outside for recess!”
Everyone laughed at us.
“Are you going to look for mica out there or something?” Sally asked.
We slunk over to an empty corner of the lobby and stood against the brick wall.
“No recess? How do they expect us to calm down after lunch?” Drew whispered.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “You’d think someone would have told us about this earlier.”
In our defense, a lot of the sixth graders also seemed pretty confused about not having recess, but they pretended to be cool with it. Turns out the school didn’t even have a playground anywhere on the premises, just a crummy soccer field outside of the teachers’ lounge, used by the sports teams and gym classes. Instead of having recess, we were expected to just hang out in the front lobby after lunch for fifteen minutes, where we could “talk” like adults or something.
Aside from the short burst of laughter people had when we tried to go outside for recess, it was kinda quiet in the lobby that first day. The sixth graders stood around in groups, just looking at each other.
“Now what?” Drew asked.
“I guess we’re going to have to improvise.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re just going to have to find stuff to collect in our classrooms this afternoon.”
“How do we know they’ll like it? Maybe nobody collects stuff anymore.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “It’s embedded in our DNA to want to collect stuff.”
“What does that even mean?” he asked.
It’s a phrase I learned from my dad during the summer when I threw a rock at the sliding glass door one day in plain sight of my parents, and shattered it.
My parents gasped.
“Why on earth would you do that?” Mom cried.
“Don’t bother trying to understand him; it’s embedded in his DNA,” Dad said.
Anyway, because of this, I still figured collecting stuff was the key to getting people to remember that they used to worship us.
“Kids in our grade are just making fun of us because the Hemenway kids weren’t into collecting mica last year, so they don’t want to look bad, but we just have to show them how cool we really are,” I explained.
“But there’s nothing to collect in class,” Drew complained.
“Use your imagination. Trust me—I’m sure the classrooms are full of stuff.”
Drew had a point, though. Outside you were surrounded by all kinds of interesting stuff to collect, like clovers and twigs and broken glass, whereas the inside of a tiny classroom is slim pickings to begin with, never mind the fact that it gets cleaned every night by a janitor. At the start of social-studies class I searched the room for something to collect, but there wasn’t anything good, and I had to settle. I made sure everyone was watching me (by coughing really loudly for a couple of seconds) before I started emptying out the pencil shavings in the pencil sharpener and stuffing the shavings down my pocket. It made my fingers all sooty, so I wiped the lead off on my white shirt.
“Why did you just wipe lead all over your shirt, Pete?” Lance asked me.
“I’m collecting pencil shavings,” I said casually, pretending I wasn’t horrified that I’d just ruined my new shirt. “Everyone’s doing it. Bet I can collect more than you!”
“But you collected all of it just now,” he pointed out.
I looked at the empty sharpener.
“Oh—look at that,” I said. “I guess that means I win!”
“Congratulations,” he said, but he didn’t look impressed in the slightest.
Drew didn’t have any better luck. He tried getting everyone to collect hair from the floor in his social-studies class, and Donnie accused him of trying to make a wig. It was hopeless. By the time we got let out at the end of the day, I was feeling downright depressed. Everything we’d worked toward all summer had blown up in our faces.
Drew and I started our walk home. At the edge of the soccer field, before the big hill, we turned and watched all the buses pulling out of the parking lot in the front of the school. The buses’ windows were all half-open, and you could hear everyone shouting and laughing as if it had been a really fun day. I
t suddenly dawned on me that we were no longer the kings of the school. This was Sunny’s school, and we were just visitors.
“Are you okay?” Drew asked.
“We’re in serious trouble,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
I put a hand on his shoulder, not so much to calm him down but to steady myself, because I felt a little dizzy.
“I think we might be . . . losers,” I admitted.
“That’s impossible!” Drew laughed, but then he saw I was being serious. “Wait—you’re kidding, right?”
Chapter Seven
I WASN’T. DREW TRAILED BEHIND ME as I marched all the way to Corbett Canyon. I opened the safe, took out the bag, and pulled out a handful of mica, shaking my head. How did I ever think this stuff was cool, I wondered? I started carelessly dropping the fragile pieces back into the bag.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked. “Careful, Peter, you’re going to break the biggest pieces.”
I glared at him.
“Who cares?” I asked.
I zipped up the bag and stood up. Drew blocked the entrance.
“I demand to know what you plan on doing with that,” he said.
“We’re going to sell it in town so at least we make some dough for all our troubles,” I said. “Now get out of my way.”
“But you’ve always said it’s only a matter of time before mica’s worth millions, once all the miners in Pennsylvania run out of gold and silver, remember? You said we have to be patient, that it was our nest egg or whatever you called it, and—”
I made sure to talk real slowly so he’d understand.
“We’ve had a good system going, buddy, you don’t want to mess it up,” I said, but he wouldn’t budge. “Look, you’ve always been really good at assuming I’m always right, that’s how we work so well as friends, so I beg of you, and this is the last time I’m going to ask this, Drew: Step out of the way.”
