by Raymond Bean
This year’s eve, after we got home from clothes shopping, my sisters tried on outfits in their rooms and packed supplies in their backpacks. I played video games, went outside to search for snakes for a while, and looked at my hockey cards.
I went online to check the prices for a bus ticket to Canada. I was still fifty bucks short of the seventy-three-dollar ticket. I clicked on the calculator and figured if I saved fifty cents a day for a hundred days, I’d have enough to take off in the spring.
I imagined getting on the 8:00 a.m. bus that arrived in Canada at 4:00 p.m. If I went, I’d wait until I got there and then send three letters. One would be addressed to my school, letting them know that I wasn’t coming in anymore. The other would be to the president of the United States, letting him know that I didn’t need my education and he could feel free to give some other kid my spot. The third letter would be to my parents, apologizing for skipping town on them.
I was completely in my fantasy when I noticed the advertisement on the bus schedule.
It was fate. It was meant to be. It was destiny! The contest rules said all I had to do was enter my e-mail address and my reason for entering. I typed in the e-mail address, and then for the reason wrote: I need to escape.
The contest rules didn’t say anything about how many times you could enter, so I kept entering and entering. I’m not sure how many times I entered, but filling out the e-mail box and my reason for getting away only took a few seconds, so I must have entered a few hundred times. My click finger was starting to hurt when Mom called me down for dinner.
“I’m soooo excited about tomorrow,” Becky said.
“Me too!” Mindy added.
“Mom, can we get up early tomorrow? I love the first day so much, I want to savor the morning and be completely ready when I head to the bus stop,” Becky said.
“Sure,” Mom said. “We can make a great big breakfast, and you guys can make sure all your stuff is ready to go.”
Dad was messing with his phone. “Dad, did you like school when you were growing up?” I asked.
“Nooo! It was like torture,” Dad said without looking up.
“Don’t say that,” Mom scolded.
“You have to remember things were a lot different back then,” he said, trying to recover. “They hit us with rulers and tied pencils to our hands.”
“Dad, you went to the same school I’m going to. You even had Mrs. Cliff in fourth grade. The woman’s been teaching so long she’s getting the son of one of her students from the thirties,” I said.
“I was not even born in the thirties, Justin, and Mrs. Cliff was all right,” he lied.
“She was all right? That’s not what you told me last year when you said you wanted to jump off a cliff when you had Mrs. Cliff.”
“Your father never said any such thing!” my mom said.
“Yeah, he did,” Becky and Mindy said at the same time.
“I was kidding. Mrs. Cliff was very nice. You’re going to have a great year.”
6
Cock-a-Doodle-Doo
Opening your eyes on that first day of school is like no other morning. It’s the opposite of the feeling you get on your birthday. On the first day of school, my eyes opened, and I immediately shut them. I heard my sisters getting ready and smelled coffee, which meant Mom was up. It was raining. Great, I thought, there goes outdoor recess!
Dad opened my door and pulled out the huge plastic horn we got on our vacation to Vermont. It sounded like the horn on a ferry. It was so loud that when I blew it in my sister’s ear on our vacation, she said she was deaf for the rest of the day. I think she was faking it a little, but it was hard to know for sure.
“Come on, Dad! Just five more minutes,” I begged.
“Can’t do it, kiddo. You’re kind of running late already. Get up and hurry up,” he said, blowing the horn long and hard.
I covered my ears and hid under the covers. “Take all the money in my bank account and do whatever you want with it. Just don’t send me to school.”
“You have to go to school. It’s the law, and you only have about twenty bucks in your account, so it’s not such a tempting offer.”
“Name your price. I’ll owe you the rest and pay it off when I grow up.”
“Out of bed, son! I’m off to work. Have a fun day with the Cliff! Try to earn some marbles for your class.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said, pulling off my covers and giving the horn one final blow.
7
Soup Mix
I was in a rotten mood. I ran to the bathroom and slammed into the door because it was locked, which put me in an even more rotten mood. Mindy was in the shower and singing at the top of her lungs.
“Justin,” my mom shouted, “your snake is loose again!”
I flew down the stairs and sprinted into the den. The cover to my boa constrictor Mr. Squeeze’s cage was off again. I dropped to the floor and crawled along the front of the couch to see if he was hiding under it. He loves to get out and hide under things. The week before, I found him under the fridge. Dad had to get help from Harvey next door to help slide it out and not crush him. Mom was furious. The girls cried and told Dad they weren’t safe in their own home. Mom and Dad told me if my snake got out one more time, I’d have to get rid of him.
Half my body was under the big chair in the den when Becky screamed so loud it would have stopped a train. I bolted up as if I’d been electrocuted and slammed my head hard on the wooden edge of the couch. Somehow I made it to my feet and stumbled toward the downstairs bathroom. She was blasting Mr. Squeeze with hair spray.
“Stop!” I shouted. “You’re going to hurt him!”
She didn’t stop. My snake was in the cabinet under the sink, and she was unloading on him.
“Stop!” I screamed again. “You’re getting it in his eyes!”
She didn’t care. She blasted away. I leaned over to grab him and accidentally knocked into her. She lost her balance and fell hands first into the toilet.
“Mom!” she shouted.
I snatched up Mr. Squeeze and ran him back to his cage, passing Mom in the hall.
“Good! You found him,” she said. “That thing has to go, Justin!”
I put Mr. Squeeze back in his tank, lifted up the whole thing, and raced it up to my room. Mindy stuck her head out of the upstairs bathroom and asked me what was going on.
“Mr. Squeeze got out again and scared Becky,” I said.
She smiled, pumped her fist, and said, “Yes! That thing is finally out of here.”
“I’m not getting rid of him,” I announced, running toward my room. I put the cage in my closet and covered it with a blanket.
I heard Mindy singing from the shower, “He’s gone, oh yeah! That sliiiimeee, stinkin’, no-good snake is fiiiiiinally gone! Oh yeah! That sliiiimeee, stinkin’, no-good snake is gone!”
I slammed my closet door and sprinted down to the kitchen. Mom and Becky were still in the bathroom washing her hands and being completely overdramatic. “It could have killed me,” I heard her say through her tears. “I can’t wait until that beast is out of our house forever!”
“I’m not giving him away!” I shouted back, grabbing a packet of French onion soup mix and racing back up the steps.
Mindy kept singing, “He’s gone…”
“Cut it out!” I yelled, tearing off the top of the soup mix packet and pouring the brown powder into my hand. She kept on singing. I gave it a sniff. It smelled like a combination of beef, salt, and onions. “I’m telling you one last time, cut it out!” She kept on singing. I knew what I did next was going to land me in epic trouble with my parents, but it was worth it. She was begging for it. I went into the bathroom, stood on the toilet, and threw the soup mix over the curtain. Then I ran for my life.
8
We Missed the Bus, and
Your Sister Smells Like Soup
I’d never actually soup-mixed a person before, but I�
�d heard kids talk about it. The soup mix powder mixes with the hot shower water and creates a disgusting mixture of soapy soup. The worst part is it gets in your hair, and the smell is really hard to get out. It’s about as close to getting sprayed by a skunk as you can get, except you smell like soup instead of a skunk.
Mom spent about twenty minutes in the bathroom trying to help Mindy get the smell out. I sat in my room waiting for what would most likely be my death. Becky appeared in my doorway.
“What?” I asked.
“Thanks to you, we missed the bus!”
She was right. I pulled up my shade and saw the back of the bus rolling away from the house.
“Awesome!” I said.
“You’re not going to think it’s awesome when Mom realizes it. Mom! We missed the bus!” she yelled.
I heard Mom say, “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Mindy cried, which made Becky cry, which made Mom cry.
By the time we all got in the car, it was 8:20. The girls were puffy-eyed and very quiet. Mom looked about as mad as I’d ever seen her. The smell of French onion soup hung thick in the air. It made me kind of hungry, and I realized I hadn’t eaten any breakfast.
“You smell delicious,” I said to Mindy. I was already dead. I might as well go down in a blaze of glory.
The girls didn’t look at me. They were giving me the silent treatment, which was a win in my book because I didn’t have to listen to them anymore.
“I can’t believe you threw a pack of soup mix on your sister!” Mom said. “Where did you learn to be so aggressive?”
“Mom, she was asking for it. She was singing that I had to get rid of Mr. Squeeze.”
“You do. That was the deal. We agreed the next time he got out, he was gone. Now he’s gone. That thing is getting too big, and you can’t contain it anymore.”
“I just need a heavier lid or a bigger tank,” I said.
“You won’t need either because that snake is going back to the pet store today.”
“Please, Mom! Give me one more chance.”
“You used up your ‘one more chance’ this morning when that thing almost ate your sister in the bathroom.”
“Can’t we talk about it?” I knew it was a lost cause, but I had to try.
“Your father will bring it to the pet store on his lunch break and figure out what to do. That thing is not spending one more night in my house. When you get home from school, your father and I will let you know your punishment for throwing soup mix on your sister.”
9
I Don’t Know Anyone
I knew before I walked into Mrs. Cliff’s room that I was going to hate it. Every kid I had asked about her had told me how mean she was. The kids all said that she made her class work all day long. No breaks, no games, no fun.
I had exactly zero friends in the class too. We all got our teachers’ names a few days before the first day, and I immediately called everyone I knew, and not one of them was in my class.
Of course my three best friends were all in the same class and had the coolest teacher in the school, Ms. Fiesta. She gave out all kinds of snacks, had parties, and everyone wanted to be in her class. Everyone who had ever had her said she’s the best. I was hoping all summer long that I’d be in her class, but that’s not the way it worked out.
On my way to class, I passed Ms. Fiesta’s class. I could hear music. I peeked through the door to see kids doing the limbo, wearing tropical shirts and smiling.
I walked into my class, and it felt like a prison library. No one was smiling. Mrs. Cliff said, “Good morning, Justin.”
“Hi,” I managed, quickly panning the room. I didn’t see one friendly face. The only desk left was the one closest to Mrs. Cliff’s desk. Great, I thought. I had to sit at the edge of the Cliff, all the way in the front.
“You can unpack your things and settle in. The class is busy writing about their favorite summer memory.”
Perfect, I thought. She’s started with the most predictable first-day-of-school activity known to man. I think the first time a teacher assigned that activity, kids rode dinosaurs to school.
“Cool,” I said, heading to my desk. I dropped my backpack on the floor and plopped heavily into the seat. It was missing one of the little metal caps on the bottom of one of the legs, so it wobbled. The top of the desk had a bunch of stuff scratched in the top. There were a few names in big letters, and on the top corner it said:
That’s a nice welcome, I thought, unzipping my backpack. I pulled the zipper open, and it hit me: I left all my supplies at home. Mom had told us to load everything into our backpacks the day we went supply shopping. I took the shopping bags up to my room, but never got around to putting the stuff in my backpack.
I didn’t have any supplies, but I had everything I’d brought on our trip to Vermont that summer. There was a bunch of rubber reptiles, a Wiffle ball, a foam football, a few comic books, a bunch of rocks I brought home, a moldy bathing suit, and a ziplock bag full of candy. I reached in, pretending to get my stuff while I figured out my next move.
“Is everything all right? Justin?”
“Oh yeah,” I lied. “Everything is just fine. It’s just that I grabbed the wrong backpack this morning. I left all my supplies at home.”
Mrs. Cliff smiled, but I wasn’t buying it. She was annoyed. I can always tell when an adult smiles but is really frustrated with me. She calmly walked to her desk, took a preprinted slip from a small stack of papers, and handed it to me.
“There’s always one,” she said. “Please bring this note home tonight and have your parents sign it. I’ll expect your supplies tomorrow.”
“Okay, but I have them. They’re just not here.”
“Exactly!” she said, not as nice this time. “And here is where we need them, isn’t it?”
This is the beginning of my nightmare, I thought. 182 more days with Mrs. Cliff was going to feel like 182 million years.
“Isn’t it?” she repeated.
“Yes,” I said, shrugging and giving her my cutest smile. “What can you do? Stuff happens, right?”
“Yes, stuff happens. In this case, I would say that stuff did not happen. Do you have anything in that pack that you can use today?”
“I have a bunch of candy I can share,” I said, trying my cute smile one more time. It didn’t work.
10
How About a Summary?
Mrs. Cliff gave me a notebook and a few pencils. Then she told me that since I was late, I’d missed her explanation of the class reward system. On her desk there were three large antique-looking containers. The middle jar was full of colorful marbles. On each side of the full jar was an empty jar. One of the empty ones had a happy face on it, and the other had a sad face on it. She explained that each time a member of the class was caught doing something good, a marble was placed in the happy face, and each time someone in the class was caught doing something wrong, a marble went in the sad face.
“Normally your lack of preparation would earn the class one negative marble, but since it’s the first day, I’m willing to let it go. However, the next time I will not be so forgiving.”
I couldn’t believe she would punish the whole class for one kid’s mistake.
“Also,” she continued, “under no circumstances are you to touch the marbles or any of the three jars. They are very delicate antique glass. I’ve had them since my very first day of teaching. I am the only one to touch them, understand?”
“Sure, no problem. I won’t.”
“Very good then. Let’s get to work on your summer writing.”
I tried to think about my summer. I loved summer more than words could say, but I didn’t have one magical moment that I wanted to write a whole paragraph about. I decided the best thing to do was write about how I loved all of summer. It was a unique twist.
I was about four sentences in when Mrs. Cliff strolled by. She looked over my shoulder and said, “Justin, you are to select one moment from the summer that was
your absolute favorite and write about that one moment. You seem to be writing about several moments.”
“I am. I couldn’t think of just one, so I’m giving more of a summary.”
“We’re not writing a summary. We are writing about one moment,” she reminded me.
Oh boy, I thought. I might as well be in cuffs. I can’t even pick what to write about on the first day of school. I didn’t mind doing writing. I like writing. It was the fact that I wasn’t allowed to decide for myself what to write about. I was feeling hungry and frustrated. “I didn’t have any super amazing moments that were the number one moment kind of thing. I just had a great summer. I wish it had never ended.”
“I suggest you pick one moment and start writing about it. We’ll share in ten minutes.”
The girl sitting on my left, who was picking at her teeth with a paper clip, smiled and held her hands up as if to say, what can you do? The girl on my right, who was in my class the year before, tapped her watch to tell me to get to work.
Why? I thought. Why do I have to be here for the next ten months? I started counting the days until the first three-day weekend. There was one or two at the end of September and then one sometime in October. I drew a calendar on the page to help me out.
I was counting the days and making tally marks when Mrs. Cliff said, “Okay, everyone. Please come to the rug on the side of the class, and we can have our first writing share.”
11
Breakdown
The writing share didn’t go very well for me. Mrs. Cliff said, “It’s only nine a.m., and you’ve already been unprepared twice today, Justin. I do hope this is not a sign of things to come. Remember, marbles start tomorrow.” Kids eyeballed me and made it clear they didn’t appreciate putting the class marbles at risk.
The rest of the day was more of the same old first-day stuff. We took a math quiz, read for thirty minutes, reviewed the continents on a world map, answered a bunch of questions about ourselves, and Mrs. Cliff read us some corny book that I’d heard a hundred times before.
