by David Yoo
“No!”
“This,” I said, holding up a piece of mica and waving it in front of his face, “is physical proof that we’re pathetic. We’re in middle school and we still collect mica?! What the heck were we thinking? Everyone was getting to know each other at the pool and playing basketball together while we were slaving away in the woods, peeling this junk off the boulders? It may be worth something, but what difference does it make if nobody in school thinks so?”
Drew held both hands out trying to calm me down.
“Peter, first of all, I’m not questioning how pathetic we are, and second, PUT DOWN THE FRICKING MICA!”
He wasn’t moving, and the only thing I could think to do was squeeze the mica in my hand and growl. The piece shattered immediately. I watched the tiny splinters fall to the wooden floor. “Please don’t do this!” Drew screamed.
We rode our bikes over to the pawnshop in town. Drew tried the entire way to convince me to turn back, but I just pretended I couldn’t hear him because of the wind. We went inside the store, I opened up the canvas bag for the creepy-looking owner, and he peered inside. The fluorescent light reflected off the precious metal inside and it made his cheeks light up.
“What’s in there?” he asked.
“It’s mica. Two hundred forty pieces,” I said. “Well, I went over a speed bump pretty hard, so maybe it’s closer to five hundred at this point. How much will you give us for it?”
The guy just stared at me for a little while.
“Kid, do you know why they call mica and pyrite fool’s gold?” he finally said.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” I replied.
I tried to convince the guy to buy our mica stash, but he refused to believe that there was a market for it in the future. Drew was relieved. Eventually we pedaled back to the tree house. Drew took the bag from me because he could tell I was just going to let it drop onto the floor. He unzipped it and started gingerly taking out some pieces. He whimpered as he held up a jagged shard.
“I don’t even recognize this piece,” he cried. “You broke it!”
“You broke it!” I mimicked him, making my voice sound all weepy like Drew sounded when he said it, the big baby. “Now just give me the bag, Drew.”
“No, leave me alone. This is my mica as much as it’s yours, and I’m keeping it.”
“Didn’t you hear what that creepy guy at the store said?” I asked him. “He was right, it is fool’s gold.”
“You’re both wrong,” he said. He took out the clipboard. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some mica to recount.”
For dinner my mom made lamb chops with applesauce, the only meal I kinda look forward to, only because it’s like having dinner and dessert at the same time. But then afterward you get dessert, too, which is why I secretly call it double-dessert night.
“That’s enough,” she said as I scooped more applesauce onto my plate. “You’ve only had two bites of your lamb chops and six scoops of applesauce.”
“Lady, you’re the one who made the meal,” I said, forcing myself to eat a piece of lamb chop. It caught in my throat and I made a fake hacking sound. “See? I need the applesauce because it helps the meat go down.”
“Just drink some water,” Dad said.
I made a big show of it, cutting up my lamb chops into really tiny cubes, and then chewing on them ninety times apiece. Sunny stared at me with her mouth open.
“So why don’t each of you tell us one interesting thing you learned in school today,” Mom suggested.
“I’ll go first. In science class we learned about eutrophication,” Sunny said. “It’s when a lake builds up nutrients and so there’s excess plant growth, which is why year after year Frost Lake is getting smaller!”
“That has to be the boringest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” I said, winking at my dad, but he didn’t wink back.
“Don’t be rude, Peter. Honey, that’s very interesting,” Mom said, before turning to me. “How about you?”
I thought about every class I’d had that day, but I hadn’t paid any attention during any of them because I was so busy collecting stuff. It wasn’t fair—Sunny was already queen of the school and could actually focus on her classes and stuff happening all around her, while I had to do extra work just to remind people that I even existed. I racked my brain but couldn’t remember a single second of anything my teachers had said, besides gushing about how amazing Sunny was.
“In science class we learned about, um . . . hair,” I finally said.
“We never learned about hair in science class,” Sunny said, with a suspicious look on her face. “But I know everything about it.”
“Well, they must have realized they didn’t teach your grade the right things and have been changing the curriculum,” I said. “Did you know that even kids lose hair?”
“Of course,” Sunny said. “Humans have between 100,000 and 150,000 hair follicles on their scalps. The hairs grow back when you lose them.”
That’s another annoying thing about Sunny. Anytime I try to say anything, she jumps on it to prove that she’s already an expert on the topic, so I didn’t ask her what a follicle was, even though I was really curious.
“And then in my other classes I found a ton of hair on the carpets at school,” I went on. “Janitors collect them in these human hairballs, and I was thinking maybe for my invention I could set up a factory where they straighten it out and glue it together to make wigs. That way we wouldn’t waste the hair that we lose.”
“That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard in my life,” she replied.
“Well, I like that it’s giving you ideas for inventions,” Dad said.
I was grateful that he backed me up, but my good feelings toward my dad only lasted a few minutes. After dinner he laid a bombshell on me, as if the first day of school hadn’t been upsetting enough. Now that I was in middle school, he expected me to spend two hours every night after dinner studying, and even worse, I couldn’t watch TV or play video games until after study time was over!
I sat at my desk looking at the class outlines I’d received, and then flipped through the two textbooks I’d brought home. I’d left the rest of the books in my locker back at school. I opened my notebooks, but of course they were completely empty.
Ten minutes later my mom checked in on me and saw me staring at the wall.
“Peter, let’s focus now,” she said. Then she went into Sunny’s room, and I heard her mutter, “Wow, your notebooks are almost a third full already, and it’s only the first day of school!”
“Do they give out a medal for that?” I muttered, but they didn’t hear me. I pictured Sunny in her room, beaming up at my mom, and it made my ears burn. I reminded myself that deep down Sunny was jealous: In order to be the queen of everything, she had to spend all her free time busting her butt just to hold on to the position, while I could coast and get the same grades.
Mom left Sunny’s room, so I quickly opened up a notebook and started scribbling random numbers in it. When she reentered my room, I held my arm out stiffly, as if I was trying to maintain deep concentration. I even closed my eyes, and started muttering. “Okay, square root of 3, minus the subtotal of negative 42, carry over the x, and—”
I peeked out of the corner of my eye and saw that she was backing out of the room with a smile on her face. When she was gone, I stopped pretending and looked down at the paper. I hadn’t been paying attention as I scribbled, and across the top of the page it read:
3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+
I continued pretending I was doing homework for a couple minutes. I wrote random numbers down on the page and kept babbling made-up formulas and stuff. It was kinda fun to pretend at first, but it turns out that faking doing homework is actually really tiring, and I wondered if it would be less of a hassle to just do my homework for real. But since I hadn’t written down the assignments, I couldn’t test out this theory, even if I’d wanted to. So instead I put down my pen, sat back, and just thoug
ht about the day, and how things had gone so horribly, and it made me feel bummed again. To make myself feel better, I thought about my life before sixth grade started, back when me and Drew were kings. Next thing I knew, I was daydreaming about my family’s trip to Maine last summer.
We’d rented a summerhouse for a week, and my parents loved hearing the waves out their bedroom window every night so much that when they came home, they bought a sound machine at Target. It’s this little plastic box that you plug in next to your bed, and it has these different settings for relaxing sounds that help you sleep. You can listen to a recording of a rainstorm all night, or crickets, or the one my parents love—the sound of waves crashing on the shore. They got it so it would make them feel like they live next to the ocean year-round, and now they can’t sleep without it. I know this because my dad went on a business trip earlier this year and complained that he couldn’t sleep because he missed the sound of fake waves crashing onto the bedside table.
I bolted upright in my seat and took out my inventions notebook, because I suddenly had an idea for a new one. Maybe I could make a sound machine for people who miss living in the city! Carson moved here from Manhattan in third grade, and he always used to complain that Fenwick was way too quiet. Even though he’d already been here for a year before I moved in, he was still always whining about how naturey it is out here, because I think it makes him feel cool, being from the city. My version of the sound machine would make sleeping out in the sticks feel like home for city people. There would be three settings on the dial:
Car Alarm
Opera Singer
Home Invasion
A city person could set it to “Car Alarm,” and all night long they’d enjoy a deep sleep as the machine imitated the sound of a car alarm outside going off all night long down the street. “Opera Singer” would be that annoying opera singer who practices singing her scales at all hours of the night and who seems to live next door to everyone in the city, according to the movies. “Home Invasion” would be for those nights you really have trouble sleeping out in the country. You turn the dial up and fall asleep to the sound of glass breaking, followed by menacing footsteps coming from the kitchen. “And it will be called . . . the Urban Sound Machine,” I whispered. Apparently I brainstormed the invention for two straight hours, because the next thing I knew, my dad was standing at the door.
“You look wired,” he said. “I think you’ve worked hard enough tonight. Why don’t you brush your teeth and go to sleep.”
I hate brushing my teeth—it always puts me in a foul mood when I’m forced to do it—and this time it made me remember how horrible things were at school. Usually I play video games before bed because it helps me have funner dreams, but I felt so depressed that I voluntarily got into bed extra early for the first time ever. It wasn’t even nine p.m., but I just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to cheer myself up by telling myself that I might have just come up with the invention that would win the competition. And as for the situation at school, at least things couldn’t get worse.
I was wrong about that last part.
Chapter Eight
THE NEXT MORNING DREW AND I stood in the lobby torturing ourselves by watching everyone enjoy each other’s company. Drew looked like he was about to cry. “I know you’re bummed,” I told him, “but it’s going to take a little time. We’ll figure out how to change things around, but it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s like grass seeds . . . you don’t just plant them and then immediately watch the grass sprout, right? You have to be patient, and water the seeds every day, and then eventually the grass starts to grow.”
“How do we water our seeds?”
“I don’t know, I just came up with that,” I admitted.
“Now I really have to pee,” Drew said.
I have this weird disease where if someone says they have to pee, it makes me immediately have to pee, too, so we headed over to the bathroom next to the main lobby. The second we stepped inside, we realized our fatal error: The Sweet brothers were standing over by the sinks.
“Hey, it’s that kid, Pete,” Hugh said to his twin brother, Hank, before draping a meaty arm around my shoulder. I was shocked at how heavy it was. “You’re Sunny Lee’s little brother, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I said quickly, hoping my relationship to the queen of the school would get us out of trouble.
“I hate Sunny Lee,” Hugh continued, and put me in a headlock from behind. “I bet you’re a goody-goody just like her, huh? Ruining the curve in class for everybody, winning everything, president of all the clubs?”
“No, I hate her, too!” I tried to shout, but he had me pinned, and my own left arm was blocking my nose and mouth. “Drew, tell him!”
“It’s true,” Drew said. “They aren’t close at all! They should be going to family counseling.”
I stared at Drew. He shrugged.
“Who asked for your opinion?” Hugh snapped at him.
“Nobody,” Drew squeaked. “My mom says I speak out of turn all the time.”
“What’s your name?”
“Duh-duh-rew,” he stuttered.
“Well, Doo Doo Roo, congrats, you two just made the list.”
“What list?” Drew asked.
This made the Sweet brothers angry.
“Now you made the top of the list!” Hank snarled.
“And again, this list is . . . ?” Drew asked.
“Shut up, Drew!” I managed to shout.
“We’re going to make you wish you didn’t go to Fenwick Middle,” Hank said, shoving Drew against the wall.
“We already kinda wish that, so you don’t have to bother,” I explained between gasps for air.
“Boy, you two don’t know when to keep your mouths shut,” he said, and shoved Drew against the wall again.
“Why’d you shove me again?” Drew wailed.
“I guess you were just closer,” he replied. For a guy generally considered to be one of the dumbest kids ever, I had to admit he had a decent handle on common sense.
“We’ll be seeing you two around,” Hugh said.
And then they left. I fell to my knees and took in huge lungfuls of air.
“Are you okay, Pete?” Drew asked.
“I think I almost just choked to death.”
Drew patted me on the back.
“Well, at least it’s over,” he said.
It didn’t cheer me up because he was only halfway right. It was over but only temporarily. (I’ve gotten food sickness twice in my life, and the second time it happened I’d learned to not be happy after I threw up, because I knew I was just going to boot twenty minutes later.) I turned to Drew. “Did you hear what they said, though? They hate Sunny! At least someone at this school doesn’t worship her.”
Drew cracked a half smile. Then his face got all scrunched up.
“So what’s this list Hugh kept talking about earlier?”
“Are you serious?” I shouted.
Drew was walking really slowly on the way home, focusing on his shoes.
“What are you doing?” I asked, matching his pace. “Are we having a slowest-walker race? You know you have to announce it before it starts, or else it isn’t fair.”
“The slower we walk, the longer it takes to get to Corbett Canyon, and the longer it takes for tomorrow to come,” he said, not looking up at me.
“Buddy, I don’t think time works that way,” I explained.
“I know, but it makes me feel a little better to do this,” he said, and stopped. “I can’t believe we now have the Sweet brothers after us. It’s like one problem after another.”
“Well, there is one thing we could do that might solve things,” I said.
“What’s that?”
I sighed.
“As much as I hate to do this, we could try to glom on to my sister, and people will start respecting us, since she’s the queen of the school.”
Now Drew sighed.
“The Sweet brothers hat
e her, remember?”
“That’s just the Sweet brothers, because they’re bad at school, so of course they hate her. But all the teachers worship her, and everyone knows she’s the star of everything.”
“Do you think it would really work?”
“Think of it this way: It’s like being one of those little fishes that hang on to the bellies of great white sharks in those Animal Planet videos. They eat the barnacles or whatever on the sharks, and all the other fishes that get eaten by great whites respect these little fishes because they’re in tight with the great whites. The little fishes hate great whites just like all the other fishes, but they swallow their pride in order to take advantage of them. We can be those little fishes!”
“But you can’t stand Sunny—would you really be able to do this?”
“I have no choice at this point. This is business, not personal.”
“Okay.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said. “So, starting next week, we’ll just hang all over her whenever we see her in school, to remind everyone that I’m her brother and you’re her brother’s best friend.”
On Monday Drew and I paced back and forth outside the band room before homeroom, waiting for Sunny’s rehearsal to end.
“Why don’t they play more modern music?” Drew asked me.
“How many modern songs do you know that feature the tuba?” I said.
“Good point.”
The bell rang, and Sunny was the first one out of the room. Immediately Drew took her flute case from her.
“Here, buddy,” he said. “Let me carry that thing for you. Boy, it’s heavy!”
An eighth-grade trombone player snickered behind us.
“Hey, everybody, this wimp thinks a flute’s heavy!” he shouted, and Sunny’s bandmates laughed.
“I’ll carry your schoolbag,” I offered, but she turned her back so I couldn’t pull it off her.
“What are you two doing?” she said.
Drew beamed at her.
“We’re just being helpful, Sunny, since you’re my BEST FRIEND’S SISTER,” he said loudly, looking at the rest of the band kids.
