“And no new detentions,” says Mrs. Turner, checking a file folder where, I guess, she keeps her Jacky Ha-Ha scorecard. “Good work, Jacky.”
“Well, I made a solemn vow. On top of a Ferris wheel, too.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing.”
“Jacky?”
Uh-oh.
Why do I have the feeling that Mrs. Turner has dreamt up another crazy idea for me, to go along with the whole “be in the school play” thing?
“I want you to see Mrs. Jordan today.”
“The social studies teacher?”
“She’s also the debate team coach. I want you to enter the school oratory contest.”
For once in my life, I’m speechless. Oratory contest?
Ignoring the dumbstruck look on my face, Mrs. Turner continues. “The contest takes place a few days before Charlie Brown opens, so you should be able to do both. I’ll talk to Ms. O’Mara to work out any schedule conflicts.”
“B-b-but…”
“I have to run. Keep up the good work, Jacky. We’re all very proud of you.”
I watch Mrs. Turner walk away while my jaw bangs against the floor.
Is she nuts?
I don’t like the sound of this. At all. I have a feeling that an oratory contest means the contestants have to make sp-sp-speeches in front of an audience. My stutter might miraculously go away when I sing, but talking about boring stuff to a roomful of grown-ups doesn’t have the same magic powers.
So I decide to blow off Mrs. Jordan. It should be no big deal. I’m sure she has more than enough kids from her debate team for the oratory contest.
Because no way am I getting up in front of an auditorium full of p-p-people to make a sp-sp-speech.
Not without Snoopy to hide behind.
CHAPTER 26
At play practice that afternoon, Ms. O’Mara tells us we have to be “off book” in two weeks. That means we have to memorize all our songs and lines in fourteen days! I have a long monologue that takes up a whole page in the script—and a monologue means I’m the only one talking. It’s all about Snoopy pretending to be a World War One flying ace soaring high over France searching for his enemy, the Red Baron.
Bill Phillips has it worse. He has a ton of monologues.
“Too bad the speeches can’t rhyme like the songs do,” Bill says when he, Meredith, Jeff Cohen, and I are walking home after rehearsal.
“Indeed!” I say, getting goofy with a fake British accent. “It would be sublime if they, too, did rhyme.”
Jeff builds on my bit. “Memorizing speeches? I’d rather have my blood sucked by leeches.”
I grin because Jeff just gave me a great idea for a new stunt.
There just happens to be a McDonald’s on our walk home from school. “Let’s go in there and rhyme ’em!” I say. “First person who can’t think of a rhyme has to pay for everybody else’s milk shake!”
“I’ll gladly partake!” says Jeff Cohen.
“I’ll do it for Shakespeare’s sake,” adds Bill Phillips.
“I think this is a big mistake,” says Meredith, who, don’t forget, has been down this road with me before. “But I’ll do anything for the sake of a creamy, frosty shake!”
Laughing, we run into Mickey Dee’s and find the shortest line.
“May I take your order, please?” asks the chipper counter girl.
“Yes,” says Jeff, going first. “The McDLT. What exactly is in it for me?”
“It has lettuce and tomatoes,” says Bill, before the counter kid can. “Order it with some French-fried potatoes.”
“I think I want the Happy Meal McDino,” I say. “That triceratops toy looks like a rhino.”
“I just want to attack a Big Mac,” says Meredith. “For a snack.”
We keep this up for about five minutes. It’s hysterical. Well, we think it is. The counter girl? Not so much.
“Are you guys ever going to order anything?” she asks.
“I’ll just have a small Coke,” I say. “Nothing else, because I’m broke.”
“Here, take it and go!” she snaps.
“You sure you don’t want that Happy Meal before we leave?” says Bill as we head for the door.
Jeff, Meredith, and I stop and stare at him.
“What?” Bill says. “I thought you wanted the toy.”
“And we have a loser!” I shout.
“I meant… that Happy Meal deal. It has a certain appeal!”
“Too late!” I bend my straw and blow a trickle of Coke at Bill. He retaliates by opening a pepper packet and flinging it at me.
That’s when we go nuts.
Jeff grabs a ketchup packet while Meredith goes for the mustard. Bill and I scoop up handfuls of both. We’re all laughing like crazy and squirting condiments all over each other while the customers and McDonald’s workers gape at us like frozen guppies.
“Stop!” shouts the girl who served us, but then she gets hit with a splotch of mayo.
Two minutes later, we’ve given up and collapsed on the floor, still cracking up. We’re covered in red and yellow glop and dripping with Coke. The floor tiles and walls around us are smeared and splattered even worse. We might have also flung a little mustard on a nearby toddler and her mom, but it could also have been pureed squash.
“What’s going on here?” roars a man in a white shirt, polyester pants, and a Ronald McDonald tie as he stomps over. He, of course, glares at me. Yes, somehow, Jacky Ha-Ha always looks like the ringleader when anything fun goes down.
“You and your friends need to vacate these premises. Now!”
“Okay, okay. We were just—”
“I know what you were doing, and you’re never setting foot in here ever again.” Then he stares at me, hard. “Do I know you?”
“Nope,” I say, fast as I can. “Don’t think so. Bye!” I herd my new friends toward the exit.
Because I recognize the McDonald’s manager.
Two summers ago, he was a lifeguard. Working for my father.
Oops.
CHAPTER 27
That night, I write another letter to my mom.
I tell her how great things are going at play practice and how cool the theater kids all are. I do not mention Mrs. Turner’s harebrained scheme about me standing up in public and making a speech. If I did, my mother would probably think I was making it up as a joke. After all, she’s heard me stutter my whole life.
The next day at school, I have one of my special appointments with Ms. Alvarez. She’s very nice. She’s the school counselor.
Okay, she’s a shrink. A psychologist.
Ever since last year, when I got in trouble on the first day of sixth grade for replacing all the presidential photos on the classroom calendar with teen magazine cut-outs of adorable Keanu Reeves, Johnny Depp, Joey from the New Kids on the Block (a terrible boy band I was obsessed with), and Will Smith from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, she’s been trying hard to get to the bottom of this whole Ha-Ha mystery.
“I see a noticeable drop in your rate of detentions,” she starts.
“I’m having fun being in the play,” I say.
“More fun than causing trouble in class?”
“I guess. Ms. O’Mara is pretty neat.”
Ms. Alvarez nods. She also acts like she’s waiting for me to say something else, so I do.
“Tickets go on sale next week. Teachers get a discount. Probably counselors, too. Of course, you probably shouldn’t come to a performance when my family’s there.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll take up half the seats.”
She opens her folder and checks her notes. “You come from a large family, correct?”
“Well, no one is actually large. Hannah is what you might call pleasantly plump. She has a sweet tooth. Not sure which one it is. Probably a canine.” I know I’m babbling, but I just can’t stop the awful puns from spilling out. “Not that all canines are sweet. Old Mrs. Smilofsky up the street has the meanest Schnauze
r I’ve ever met.”
“Jacky, does everything have to be a joke with you?”
“Huh?”
“I get the sense that you feel a need to constantly be ‘on.’ To always be entertaining.”
“You’re not going to tell me to stop being funny, are you? Because Mrs. Bucci already worked that angle. ‘Beware of wanting to be liked too much.’ Wooooo! ‘Beware the Ides of March.’”
“That’s a line from Julius Caesar. I take it you like Shakespeare?”
“Never met the guy, but he seems okay. I’d like him better without the ruffled collar and all the rhymes.”
“I understand that you and your friends like to rhyme. Especially at McDonald’s.”
Oh, boy. Somebody ratted us out.
“We were just having fun.”
“Mrs. Jordan didn’t find it amusing, and neither did the customers whose clothes you ruined and the workers who had to clean up your mess.”
I think I gulp. Just like a cartoon. GULP!
“Was she there?”
Ms. Alvarez nods again. “Mrs. Jordan also told me that you skipped your meeting with her.”
So Mrs. Jordan is the one who squealed on me?
I pretend I don’t have a clue what Ms. Alvarez is talking about. I raise my eyebrows and do the sideways-head-tilt thing Sandfleas does when she’s confused and can’t tell whether I want her to sit, stay, or give me her paw.
“The Oratorical Contest.” Ms. Alvarez hands me a slick brochure. “Apparently it’s sponsored by the American Legion. There are contests all over the country. The first-place winner at the national finals takes home a very nice prize. There’s an awards banquet.…”
“I’m k-k-kind of busy with play practice.”
“But, as evidenced by your recent antics at McDonald’s, you still have an abundance of creative energy. Surely you can channel it in two directions simultaneously?”
“I don’t know. You ever see a d-d-d-dog try to chase two squirrels at once? Its head and its butt kind of run in two different directions and snap back together like a r-r-rubber band. Ouch.”
“So how are things at home?”
I slump in my chair. “Not great.”
“How so?”
“Well, for one thing, my mom isn’t there.”
“Why not?”
“President Bush sent her to Saudi Arabia.”
“Oh, I didn’t know your mother was in the military. Operation Desert Shield?”
“That’s the one.” I see Ms. Alvarez is gobbling up my sob story, so I decide to toss her a few more tidbits. “Also, my oldest sister, Sydney, isn’t living with us anymore, either.”
“And where is she? Saudi Arabia?”
“Close. Princeton.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize your sister had gone away to college.”
“Well, she did. Packed her bags and moved out. I know she had to, but it’s been hard for—”
An alarm clock clangs its bell. “Sorry,” says Ms. Alvarez. “Time’s up.”
I leave her office, possibly feeling even worse than when I walked in. The next time I need “psychiatric counseling,” I think I’ll talk to Meredith.
After all, she’s playing Lucy in the show. And when Lucy opens her psychiatric help booth in the Peanuts comic strip, the doctor is always in.
Plus, she only charges a nickel.
CHAPTER 28
That Sunday, we go to church.
And we have to dress up for it. And by dress up, I mean we have to wear dresses. This is not something I like to do on a regular basis. You can’t win a bike race in a dress. You can’t climb a Ferris wheel in a dress. There is very little you can do in a dress unless you’re Barbie; then you can have a Dream House and a Clothing Boutique.
Dad does a quick inspection in the living room and then we all pile into the family van, which is Mom’s car when she’s home.
Just being in it and seeing Mom’s favorite Dunkin’ Donuts travel mug sitting in the cup holder makes me feel the need to talk to God about one very important topic: Him keeping an eye out for her.
We go to a Protestant church called St. Elizabeth’s Chapel-by-the-Sea. It’s not very crowded on most Sundays, only in the summer when tourists flock to Seaside Heights. The pastor, Reverend Zelley, always says a special prayer for Mom and all the other soldiers far from home, serving overseas in Operation Desert Shield.
I say my own prayer that God will do something to solve the Persian Gulf crisis before a single shot is fired in that desert. Sometimes I wonder if He might be the only one who can make a difference over there. Of course, I understand that God works through people, like He did with Ms. O’Mara standing up for Meredith. But if the people He has to work with (guys like Saddam Hussein) aren’t paying attention to what He’s telling them, there’s not a whole lot He can do.
Before Mom deployed to Saudi Arabia, I used to spend my church time doodling on the Bible story coloring book pages they put in the pews to keep little kids quiet. I remember one Sunday when the illustration was “Jonah and the Whale.” I gave it a new caption.
Then I colored the waterspout spewing out of the whale’s blowhole green and labeled it WHALE BOOGERS.
Now, with Mom so close to a serious combat situation, I’m too busy to goof around like that. I spend all of my pew time saying prayers for Mom and all the other moms, dads, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters who are spending their Sundays far away from home, serving our country. I also say a prayer for Nonna. That’s my mom’s mom, my sweet Italian grandmother. It’s been scary for her to have her daughter in a war zone on the other side of the world.
“Lord,” I pray silently, “protect my mom the way she protects everybody else. Bless her and bring her home. I need her. We all do. But to be totally honest, I think I might need her a little more than everybody else.”
CHAPTER 29
After church, I crawl out of my dress, pull on my jeans, and head down to the boardwalk to meet up with Meredith and Bill.
It’s not an official rehearsal, but we’ve decided to help each other learn our lines.
Also, I think I maybe, possibly have a crush on Bill. I don’t know for sure because I’ve never had a crush on anyone before. Plus, I don’t want to end up like Hannah or Sophia and go totally boy-crazy.
But Bill does have very nice hazel eyes. And he’s sweet. Funny, too.
He’s also friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
No. Wait. That’s the Boy Scouts.
Anyway, since it’s very late September, we practically have the boardwalk to ourselves. Most of the food stalls are closed up for the season. I, for one, am pretty happy about that. After our end-of-summer pig-out-and-puke, I’m really not in the mood for any more boardwalk grub.
Bill, Meredith, and I rehearse our first scene together—the lead-in to my song called “Snoopy.”
“I think Snoopy’s such a wonderful dog,” says Meredith’s character, Lucy.
“Me too,” says Bill, as Charlie Brown. “He’s just about the best there is.”
When he says that line, he looks right at me with those big, hazel-colored eyeballs I mentioned earlier. I look at him. He looks at me some more. I look at him. Him, me. Me, him.
“Um, Jacky?” says Meredith.
“Yeah?”
“That’s your cue.”
“Oh. Right. Duh.”
And, with Meredith tapping out the beat with her right foot, I sing the Snoopy song a cappella, which means without instruments, and should not be confused with singing “Acapulco,” which sounds like a song about a beach in Mexico.
The lyrics of the first verse remind me a little of what Mrs. Bucci said to me in English class. Maybe Snoopy’s last name was Ha-Ha, too. He wants people to like him as much as I want people to like me. And, of course, he’s surprised when they do.
We knock off our boardwalk rehearsal around four thirty. I hurry home because I don’t want to be late for dinner. Meredith
hurries home with me because she’s hungry. Bill, unfortunately, already has dinner plans.
But, once again, dinner is delayed because Dad is working late.
“He has to work late? On a Sunday?” Meredith says it before I do.
“Apparently,” I say, “lifeguards have a lot of paperwork this time of year.”
“Paperwork? For what?”
“I’m not sure,” I say. “He might be trying to sue all the jellyfish for physical and emotional anguish.”
Meredith shivers. “Don’t blame him. Those things are nasty.”
“Why doesn’t he come home at night?” grouses Riley.
“Maybe he doesn’t like us anymore,” says supersensitive Hannah.
“I’m sure he has a very mature, adult reason for his tardiness,” says Victoria, “that none of you would understand.”
“Well, I’m not asking him about it,” I say.
No one argues.
They know if I confronted Dad it would come out like “Wh-wh-where w-w-were y-y-you…”
My first question would take three hours.
“Guess what, you guys?” says Sophia, changing the subject. “I broke up with Chad.”
“The prepster?” I say.
“Yuh-huh. I’m back with Mike Guadagno. He’s so nice.”
“Yes,” says Hannah, sighing sadly. “He’s very nice.”
“I’m hungry,” says Emma, the Little Boss. She opens the emergency-cash cookie jar. “We have enough for one pie.”
She picks up the phone and orders another pizza. Plain.
“No sausages, no pepperonis, no meatballs, no anchovies, no nothing,” she tells the guy on the other end of the line. “Just plain cheese.”
We each get a slice and a half for dinner.
Except for Dad. He doesn’t come home until nearly midnight, and by then, the pizza’s all gone.
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