by Steve Bryant
“He is,” Korie said. “Nobody ever comes back a free man after an early morning parent-teacher conference with Bartholomew.”
“Well, at least in Crunch’s case, he probably made sure he got a great last meal.”
“This is one of those times I wish I had a garbage truck or something really big that we could ram into his parents’ car, send it crashing over on its side, pull Crunch from the burning wreckage, and then …” Tank said.
We all stared at him.
“And then we need to turn the TV off.” Mouth laughed. “You’ve been watching waaaaay too much of it.”
***
Riding up to Hickory Wind Middle School, we locked up our bikes at the end of the third bike rack. It had taken a little time to figure it all out, but even though the third bike rack was a little farther from the front door, it was just behind where the last bus parked, waiting for all the kids to come out of school. We could run out, get our bikes, and take off before any of the other kids from the first and second racks could get around the buses and on the road.
Taking the stairs up two at a time, we crashed through the doors and headed right for Bartholomew’s English class. By the time we got there Crunch and his parents were already inside but the door was cracked open … so we peeked in.
Crunch was sitting quietly with his parents on either side. I thought my head was going to explode with laughter because those little wooden sixth grade chairs were not made for the six-foot-three, two hundred-and-eighty pound Mr. Newton, even when he was in sixth grade.
“How did he even get into that chair?” Korie asked.
“How’s he going to get out?” Tank asked.
“He must have folded himself one way and then twisted around in another,” Mouth guessed. “From the look on his face, I think his head might pop off.”
“Mrs. Newton looks like she’s going to cry,” Korie said.
“You’d be crying too,” I said. “Crunch has to go to summer school now.”
“I don’t think she’s crying about summer school,” Mouth said. “I think she’s crying because Crunch can’t go away to Camp Runamuck for two weeks. She was probably looking forward to the break.”
“Yeah.” Korie sighed. “A break from Crunch is nice sometimes.”
“What do you think they’re saying?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s easy,” Mouth said.
As their mouths started moving, so did his.
“Oh, please, Mr. Bartholomew,” he said in Mrs. Newton’s high voice, “please let Crunch pass so I can get him out of the house for two solid weeks. I can’t stand it anymore.”
“Hey,” he continued in Mr. Newton’s much deeper voice, “how did I get in this chair in the first place? I’m like a giant man and this is a teeny tiny little bit of a chair. It’s like a torture chamber and something really sharp is poking my butt.”
Then came Crunch. “Hey Mr. B. I know I’m a dope, but I can hand in anybody’s papers you want me to. They don’t have to be my brothers’.”
I slapped my hands over my mouth and Korie’s so they wouldn’t hear us laughing.
After a few minutes of going back and forth, the meeting was over.
The Newtons didn’t say another word and it looked like Bartholomew couldn’t care less. He just shooed them away and went back to his work.
I watched Mr. Newton hold his breath and try, like, five times to squeeze back out of that chair. Each time was funnier than the last. Finally, he ripped off the top of the desk, stood up, and handed it to Bartholomew.
It was awesome!
“It doesn’t look like it went too well,” Korie whispered.
“Yeah,” Mouth cackled, “that desk got crushed!”
“I was talking about Crunch, you idiot.” Korie smacked him.
Mr. and Mrs. Newton shook Bartholomew’s hand, put their arms around Crunch, and walked toward the door.
“Oh, no. That’s the arm-around-his-shoulder death march,” I said.
“Oh, gosh, we won’t see him until high school,” Korie said.
“Well, that’s one less happy camper for Camp Runamuck,” Mouth said. “Maybe they’ll let me have all of his stuff when we get there.”
“Keep talking like that you won’t get there, either,” Tank said.
As the door opened, the Wahoos settled down and the Newtons walked out past us with Crunch straggling behind them.
“Boys.” Mr. Newton nodded.
“Hey, Mr. Newton,” I said. “Crunch, how’d it go in there?”
Crunch shrugged.
“Not as well as we had hoped,” Mr. Newton whispered. “Clarence …”
I love when Crunch’s parents call him Clarence.
“ … won’t be able to start the summer with you. He has some work to catch up on that will take him into July.”
“It’s a bunch of malarkey,” Crunch snapped.
I winced at that word. Crunch’s parents were so against any type of cursing that Crunch developed this whole vocabulary to take the place of the bad words. Most of them were stupid, but they made perfect sense to Crunch.
“Yeah,” Crunch continued, “it was such a bunch of BS …”
“Clarence,” Mrs. Newton warned him.
“Bunk,” Crunch corrected himself, “it was such a bunch of bunk.”
“Sorry, Crunch,” Korie said.
Seeing the sad look on Korie’s face had me go a little bit … amuck.
“Wait a minute,” I said, grabbing Crunch’s shirt and dragging him back into Bartholomew’s room. “Hey, Mr. Bartholomew!” I called as we powered across the floor, stopping just short of his desk.
Uh-oh. Maybe I didn’t think this all the way through.
“Hello, Jackson,” Bartholomew said.
I hate when he calls me Jackson.
“I believe we’re done with the conversation over Clarence and his … reports,” Bartholomew said. “There’s no more to discuss on this matter. Although, we could start talking about you and your grades if you’d like.”
I brushed him off. “My grades are fine!”
“Ooooohhhh!” I could hear the rest of them behind me.
“Look at this face!” I squeezed Crunch’s cheeks between my thumb and forefinger and pointed it at Mr. Bartholomew. “Does this look like the face of a report copier?”
Bartholomew’s eyebrows knitted and he looked very closely at Crunch. “Jackson, I applaud your valiant effort to save your friend from the horrors of summer school, instead of being whisked off to the wonders of camp, but I found his brothers’ papers in the files myself. I know how well they were written.”
I had nothing. “Mr. Bartholomew … things are not always what they seem.”
Wait. What does that even mean?
Korie’s face fell, the Wahoo brothers collapsed in laughter, and Crunch … knew he was a dead man.
Then Bartholomew, of all people, came to my rescue.
“Mr. Murphy, are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Bartholomew asked.
I shot Korie a look because I had no idea what I was saying. “Yes, I … think … I am,” I said slowly but confidently.
“Are you trying to tell me that Mr. Newton’s brothers took Clarence’s original work?”
Bartholomew waited for my answer.
“That’s it!” I agreed. “No. Wait.” I wanted to make sure everything was clear before we left that office, a white lie possibly, a little misdirection maybe, but clear. “What I’m saying is that my client—”
“Your client?” Korie elbowed me and reminded me of where we were.
“What I’m saying is that Crunch read the books, wrote the reports, and then his brothers put their names all over them.”
Bartholomew thought for a minute. “Well, I think that could be quite possible …”
I was floored. “You do? I mean … Crunch, can you help me out here?”
Crunch hemmed and hawed for a min
ute and then finally spoke up in his own defense. “I love those books and my brothers never even opened them up. When the reports were due, they made me write them so they could hand them in.”
Mr. and Mrs. Newton slowly came back into the classroom, and while she slipped into one of the chairs … he wasn’t about to try it again.
“Clarence, why didn’t you say anything when I first accused you of not doing the work?” Bartholomew asked.
“I didn’t want to get my brothers in trouble,” Crunch said. “I wasn’t sure if you could drag them back from high school to take the class over again …”
I thought the Wahoos were going to explode.
For the next ten minutes, Crunch and Bartholomew talked, and even laughed in all the same places, as they discussed the book.
I was shocked.
“This did not turn out the way I expected,” Korie said, sitting down in one of the chairs, waiting for the discussion to be over.
“Me, either. Whoever would have thought that Crunch liked to read?”
“Whoever would have thought that Crunch could read?” Mouth said.
“I know you can’t read,” Tank said.
As Crunch and Bartholomew finally finished, I wanted to make sure that everything was good and that everyone was still able to go to Camp Runamuck.
“Thank you, Jackson,” Bartholomew said. “Clarence most certainly read the books, wrote the reports for his brothers, and has completed that very heavily weighted aspect of his grade.”
“Great!” I shouted, forgetting I was still in school. “Sorry. So does that mean he doesn’t have to go to summer school?”
Bartholomew laughed. I guess you could call it a laugh, maybe it was a snicker. “Clarence still has to go to summer school. When I thought he had copied the reports and he wouldn’t be able to join you at camp, he stopped handing in his work altogether.”
“You what?” Mr. Newton yelled.
“I knew I’d have to do it all over again,” Crunch said. “Why do it the first time when I could wait and do it a few weeks from now.”
I shot a look at Korie, who shrugged.
“So the reason Crunch … I mean, Clarence … stopped handing in his work was because you mistakenly accused him of copying his work?” I asked Bartholomew.
“Well, technically …” Bartholomew muttered.
“Yes or no?” I asked.
“To be truthful, I have to say yes,” Bartholomew admitted.
I knew I had him. “So, either pass him or give him something to make up those assignments.”
“Extra … credit?” Bartholomew offered.
I looked at Crunch, who nodded. “We can do extra credit.”
Bartholomew thought for a moment. “I’ve never done this before, but Clarence, if you come back to my classroom after school, we should be able to forge an agreement which allows you to make up the credit and avoid summer school. Will that work for you and your parents?”
Crunch nodded like a bobblehead doll.
Following Mr. and Mrs. Newton out, we all stumbled out of that classroom with the greatest victory we’ve ever had.
Now we just had to wait and see what Bartholomew had in store for us when we came back later that day.
Little did I know it would be the start of our greatest adventure.
I had never seen my father before my twelfth birthday. Not even once. Up until then, my mother had raised me all by herself in the royal city of Halfax. We lived like all the other gray elves in Maldobar—separated from the rest of society in the heavily guarded wartime ghettos. We had to follow a strict set of rules about where we could go, what we could do, when we got food, and what we could own. If you broke any of the rules, it was an immediate sentence to the prison camps, which I always heard was a fate worse than death. We were supposed to be grateful. After all, we were war refugees. Maldobar didn’t have to take us in, much less provide us somewhere to live. This was their act of charity towards us.
Our house was not much more than a tiny shack made of old recycled wood, and it only had one room. You’d expect a place like that to smell terrible, but my mother was a genius when it came to making anywhere feel like home. She could grow absolutely anything, and that was how she made our living. She grew vegetables, flowers, tiny fruit trees, and strange vines that climbed all over the walls and windows. It made the inside of our house feel like a jungle, and it smelled earthy like fresh soil and the fragrance of flowers. We couldn’t legally sell anything she grew since gray elves weren’t allowed to have any money, but we could still trade. So early in the mornings, my mother packed a sack full of peppers, fruit, vegetables, and anything else ready for harvest, and sent me out to the shops to trade for things we needed.
It was a lot harder than it sounds. Not the trading itself, that part was easy, but I had to be very sneaky about it. I was always on the watch for guards, or humans. Gray elf children were rare, even in the ghettos. Any elf living in the kingdom of Maldobar as a refugee was absolutely not allowed to have children. It was forbidden. Having children was a great way to get thrown into a prison camp, or worse.
But I didn’t just have to worry about that. It was bad enough to be a gray elf kid, hiding until you were old enough to be overlooked. But I was a halfbreed. My father was a human from Maldobar. So instead of looking at me with anger, everyone looked at me like I was a cockroach. The humans didn’t like me touching their stuff because I was mixed with the filthy, wild blood of a gray elf. If they hadn’t liked my mother’s produce so much, they probably would have turned me in to the guards. The gray elves didn’t like me, either. But there was a very strict code amongst them: you didn’t betray your own kind no matter what. So they ignored me rather than ratting me out to the city guards.
I really didn’t fit anywhere, except with my mother. She loved me unconditionally. She was the most beautiful person in the world. Her hair was long and silvery white, and her eyes were like stars. All gray elves had eyes like that. When she smiled at me, her eyes would shine like gemstones in the light, as white and pale as diamonds with faint flecks of blue, yellow, and green in them.
When she died, I had just turned twelve. I got the feeling right away that no one really knew what to do with me. I didn’t fit into anyone’s plans. If I were a pure blooded elf, they would have taken me straight to a prison camp. If I were a human, someone would have adopted me. I wasn’t either, and yet I was both at the same time. I think the guards were just baffled that my mother had done such a good job of hiding me for so long, or that she’d somehow managed to have an affair with a human man.
Ulric Broadfeather was the only one who would take me in, and I’m pretty sure he only did it because my mother had left a letter behind naming him as my biological father. If it weren’t for the public shame of disowning a child, he probably would have just let me go to a prison camp anyway.
From the very beginning, my father was the most frightening man I had ever known. He was hugely tall, like a knight, and stronger than anyone else I had ever seen. Once, I saw him pick up and pull the family wagon while it was loaded with bags of grain all by himself. He could have crushed my neck with one hand if he wanted to. His hair was jet-black like mine, except it was cut short. My mom always insisted I wear my hair long, like gray elves traditionally did. I also had his cold blue eyes that were the same color as glacier water. There definitely wasn’t any doubt he was my father. I looked too much like him for anyone to deny it.
I wish I could say that he welcomed me with open arms into his home; eager to make up for lost time he hadn’t gotten to spend with me. But he already had a family, living on the outskirts of a small city called Mithangol, and he wasn’t interested in adding me to it. I was an unwanted guest right away.
He had a human wife named Serah who made it perfectly clear she didn’t want me in her house at all. Serah absolutely hated me. She glared whenever she looked at me, accused me of being responsible for anything that went
wrong, and refused to let me sleep in her house because I gave her a “bad feeling.”
So I slept on a cot in the loftroom of Ulric’s workshop, instead. As bad as it sounds, I actually preferred it. It was quiet there, and even though it was cold in the winter, I liked the smell of the old hay and the leather that was stored up there.
Ulric also had another son, Roland, who was four years older than me. Roland chose to ignore my existence completely. I got the feeling that he was in survival mode, trying to be as aloof and uninvolved with the family as he possibly could until he was old enough to move out. I couldn’t really blame him for that. Like me, he favored our father. He was really tall, muscular, and had the same ice-blue eyes that looked like they belonged to a powerful bird of prey. I was a little afraid of him, even though he never said more than two words to me at a time. I could sense a lot of anger coming from him, and I was always paranoid I’d be standing too close when he finally snapped.
Ulric had two more children, a pair of twin daughters named Emry and Lin. They were six years younger than me, but they were meaner than a pair of hungry jackals. Every day, they tried to get me in as much trouble as possible. Of course, Serah believed every word they said. They would break things, let the chickens and goats out, or steal jewelry from their mother’s room, and blame it all on me. Once, Emry got ahold of the sewing scissors and chopped up Lin’s hair. When Serah found out, Emry blamed it all on me and told her I had done it. Serah believed it, and I got a beating from Ulric as soon as he came in the house. Inventing new ways to get me into trouble was their favorite pastime, and there was nothing I could do about it. They were sneaky and smart, a lot smarter than me I guess, because they never got caught.
The only good thing about living with my father was watching him work. Ulric was a tackmaster—he made saddles for the dragonriders from Blybrig Academy. But he didn’t just make saddles; he made the very best saddles in Maldobar. I watched him through the slats and gaps in the floor of the loftroom, shaping leather and stitching intricate pieces together. He did it all by hand, and it took him several weeks to craft one saddle. But when it was finished, each one was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. It made me envy him, even if he probably wished I had never been born.
