by Anne Kalicky
I went back to confront her and put my blackmail plan into action. But when I went in, they were all sitting on the floor reading their history books. I still tried to bug my sister, who was more than happy to show me that her phone only had pictures of last summer with Grandpa Joff and Grandma Ragny. Then she told me to “beat it.” I stayed there and watched them through the keyhole to catch them in the act, but . . . nothing—they continued to pretend they were “studying.”
In the evening, Marion snitched that I had played video games all afternoon with Tom; I didn’t know what to say in my defense.
When I went to bed, I opened my phone, and what did I find?
Thursday
Tonight at dinner, Lisa said that her teacher is allowing them to do presentations this year. My parents were very impressed. Hmph! Lisa is always their favorite.
“Super! What a great idea!That’s wonderful!” my dad said.
“What are you going to do your presentation on? The pyramids? Volcanoes?” asked my mom.
“No, Romane and I are going to do a presentation on Ben Didji.”
Ben Didji is Lisa’s idol. Last year, this heart-melting idiot won a reality TV show called The Choice. All summer it was The Choice or nothing. One time my mom took her to an autograph session at the supermarket close to our house. Lisa begged me to come along too. We waited in line three hours to see him for about three seconds. I had to hide the entire time we were waiting. I kept imagining Raoul Kador showing up and torturing me in line.
I also found it a bit unfair that her teacher would let them do a presentation on their idol instead of on a more cultural subject. I, for instance, would have loved to do a project on Pietro, my favorite soccer player.
Anyway, Lisa showed us what she’d started to sketch for her presentation:
OK, I’ve made a decision: I’ve got to find a way out of this field trip to the retirement home. It isn’t that I doubt my ability to sing in front an “undoubtedly” appreciative audience, but this sort of performance is beneath me.
Friday
Dear future human
I dreamt the entire night that I was a rock star performing at a concert and Raoul was in the front row. He was screaming, “Max Didjiiiii, Max Didjiiii!” Forget it—it was a
This morning we had PE with Mr. Ramoupoulos. In the gym there were mats spread around with all sorts of torture devices. I sensed that the next two hours weren’t exactly going to be a picnic. The teacher told us that we were going to begin “rhythmic gymnastics,” and he twitched his nostrils. It’s not exactly my strong suit. Personally, I’m better at team sports: soccer, basketball, dodgeball, Zombieland, etc. So you can imagine I found his announcement totally delightful.
Next, he passed out a paper with drawings of a guy doing a series of movements.
I felt my stomach sink. Mr. Ramoupoulos told us how to do the exercises, all the while remaining seated on his bench. I don’t know how it is for you, future human, but in our times, gym teachers are always ready and willing to EXPLAIN how to do a backward somersault but rarely actually DO it.
When it was my turn, I perfectly executed a forward roll. On the other hand, when I did a backward roll, I got stuck with my butt in the air. As my head was upside down, I didn’t know exactly where I was or how I could get out of this mess. And since everyone was in front of me, I didn’t have anyone to help me.
It was a good five minutes before the teacher noticed that I was just on the verge of dying because my face was all red and I couldn’t breathe.
Mr. Ramoupoulos blew his whistle, but that wasn’t enough to untangle me, so he actually got up. He pushed me so I could finish my backward roll and then sat back down without giving me much technical advice on how to avoid this sort of incident in the future. That was the first exercise. Then, our group had to run on a mat, jump on a trampoline, land on the pommel horse, do push-ups, and then finish on a big foam mat (that reeked of dirty socks ). Dear future human, know that my century is BARBARIC. Forcing poor innocents like us to experience this sort of torment is a crime against humanity.
From afar, I could see that Naïs’s group didn’t fare too badly. I knew in advance that it was a lost cause, but I gathered what strength I had and launched myself with heroism. I sprinted, jumped on the trampoline, and . . . hopelessly missed the pommel horse before crumpling up on the big mat. A painful, predictable failure!
I came out unscathed, unlike Chloe, who had completely broken her shoulder last year. Her arm was all twisted, and it started swelling weirdly for the rest of the day. Still, the teacher had told her it was nothing and it would go away. Result: two months in a cast. I was unscathed . . . well . . . unfortunately, because while thinking of Chloe’s twisted arm, I told myself that a really good injury with firemen and paramedics could have the added bonus of getting me out of the retirement home—I mean field trip. In the locker room, Raoul, who didn’t miss my accident on the pommel horse, didn’t deprive me of insults.
Monday
The field trip to the retirement home is rapidly approaching—it’s next Friday. I have to do EVERYTHING in my power to
GET SICK.
Plan
Methodically forget my coat so I can catch a cold.
Plan
Locate all sick students and try to get their germs.
As it so happens, Theo’s seat was empty this morning. Right away, I asked Mrs. Boulet, the French teacher, if I could take his homework to him. All day I demonstrated my extreme helpfulness as I took detailed notes for Theo.
But when I stopped by his house after school, Theo told me he’d been at a funeral for his great-grandmother in Normandy. I felt sorry for him and all, but I was also really disappointed. Not only was he not sick but also he got to breathe fresh sea air the entire weekend: no chance he was getting sick in the next few days.
Wednesday
Yesterday, Raoul bragged during recess that he’d eaten an entire box of expired cereal in order to test his stamina, but then he complained about his upset stomach all throughout math class with Mr. Tamisole. When he got up to go to the bathroom, I realized: a stomachache would be the perfect excuse to get out of visiting the old folks’ home and singing that ridiculous song! Since Raoul sits by me in class, and I spend close to six hours a day next to him, this was my lucky break (I would’ve loved to have made fun of him in front of everyone for the cereal incident—too bad this time). I saw him chew on his pen before putting it back in his pencil box. So, very discreetly, I stole the pen and bit on it myself. A bit disgusting, I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
To increase my chances of convincing Mr. Boulfou I wasn’t the best person for a solo, I pretended to forget all of the words during practice:
You see, dear future human, I’ve got a knack for changing lyrics! But Mr. Boulfou didn’t quite seem to appreciate it . . . at all.
Tonight I told my mom I was beginning to have an upset stomach because Raoul ate an entire box of expired cereal. However, she then explained to me that indigestion isn’t something you can catch.
Thursday
This afternoon Lisa was scribbling on my hands, and it gave me a brilliant idea. I asked her if she could do me a little favor. . . .
The chickenpox marks looked great, even if I did have to add a few personal touches. In order to guarantee Lisa’s silence, I promised her a gift. When my mom came home, I started acting sick and showed her my arms. She said it looked really serious. Then I told her I didn’t know if I was going to be able to eat dinner and that I needed to go lie down. To make me feel better she pulled a bottle of special shower gel out of her bag.
I was SOO happy! I’d wanted it for weeks. I ran directly into the bathroom, I scrubbed up, and it smelled so good. For once I was actually happy to take a shower . . .
. . . but I’d completely forgotten about my fake chickenpox. . . .
Friday
This morning I had to come to terms with the cold, hard truth: I was going to have to overcome the unavoidable humiliation and sing that HORRIBLE song before the entire class and a bunch of strangers. The only upside was that I escaped Mr. Ramoupoulos’s gymnastics gauntlet. I found Tom on the way to school and explained my dilemma, hoping he’d offer a solution. He had plenty of ideas:
Break an arm or a leg
Eat some rocks
Bump into a hornet’s nest
He was on a roll, but I had to pump the brakes. He could see I still had a strange look on my face, and he wanted to cheer me up:
—“Do you know the joke about breakfast?”
—“No.”
—“Well, I guess you’re out of Lucky Charms then!”
That morning when we arrived at the bus for the field trip, Raoul and his clique of losers were already sitting in the best seats at the back.
We sat a couple of rows up, just behind Enzo Danleau—the biggest kid in our class. His mother had made him a tuna sandwich because Enzo hadn’t had the time to eat breakfast that morning and also because it was Friday; at the Danleau house on Friday it’s fish or nothing. He ate it right away. His mother had also prepared an apple pie for the people at the retirement home, which he held on his lap.
The bus started. After about ten minutes, Enzo started to feel carsick. After fifteen minutes, he barfed the tuna sandwich right on the apple pie and immediately started crying. Mr. Boulfou had to stop the bus to clean it all up. But it was too late: the bus already smelled disgusting. It was horrible! Then he moved Enzo all the way up front so that he could see the road, and we took off again.
To distract us, the teacher started playing “Hope and Life” on the radio. At the back of the bus, I saw Raoul pointing his finger at me and whispering, “Shout-out to Max!” In front, the teacher was standing up, gesturing wildly.
I was wondering if Enzo was about to toss his cookies again, but then I heard the driver ask Mr. Boulfou to sit down and respect the bus safety rules. The teacher didn’t dare say a word for the rest of the trip.
Right when we arrived, I summoned up all my courage to take charge of my situation. I went to Mr. Boulfou and told him that I felt carsick too, that I didn’t feel well at all, and that I was too queasy to sing. It was ALMOST true, I swear. But instead he just gave me some mints. This time I was done for.
The director of the retirement home greeted us with a pat on the head, as if we were four-year-olds. Then he took us to the main room where people who looked like Grandpa Joff and Grandma Ragny were waiting. They seemed nice, but it also looked like they’d been sitting there for years, which they probably had.
They had prepared cake, fruit juice, and milk for us. They’d also hung up a banner with different-colored letters:
They must’ve been expecting a class of first-graders to get off the bus.
Mr. Boulfou started getting frustrated because he wanted us to sing right away. Enzo’s throw-up incident had thrown off the whole schedule. Personally, I wasn’t in a hurry. He asked us to stand in front of the audience, and, while rummaging in his big sack, he told me to step forward one step with each refrain. Suddenly, he took out some heart-shaped hats and one in the shape of a sun. Evidently, the sun was for me, but the hearts were for everyone else. That made me feel a little bit better, because at least I wouldn’t be the only one who looked ridiculous.
Raoul turned beet red, infuriated by the idea of wearing a heart on his head. Tom volunteered to pass out the hats.
Mr. Boulfou slid his CD in the room’s stereo system. He turned toward us—his arms raised high, ready to lead like a conductor—and then it didn’t work.
The director stepped in to see what was wrong, and they spent a half hour on all fours in front of all those wires (and we got to take off our hats). Out in the room, I saw a little old woman in a wheelchair who was talking to herself in front of the mirror.
I told myself that at least there’d be one person I didn’t feel embarrassed in front of and that when I began singing, I’d focus on her. My dad always says the trick to public speaking is to look at one specific person. I thought that, for once, maybe he wasn’t wrong.
Seeing as my dignity was about to be lost forever, it couldn’t hurt to try his method. Finally, the music started ringing throughout the room, we put our hats back on, and we started to sing.
The retirement home residents moved their heads to the music. At the refrain, there was even one lady who got up to start dancing, which encouraged me. Then they applauded, and Mr. Boulfou quickly took back his CD. Phew! It was over, and I was relieved . . . almost moved, since all of these old people suddenly reminded me of the good times spent with Grandpa Joff and Grandma Ragny. I told myself that they’d surely be proud to see me doing such a good deed, and if that’d happened, Grandpa Joff would’ve slipped me a buck to “sweeten the deal,” as he often says. . . . Yes, fine, OK, dear future human—but no pain, no gain! Long story short, just as I was telling myself I was awesome and all that worry was for nothing, we sat down to eat with everyone since it was nearly lunchtime. One of them asked me five times in a row when I would come back for vacation while calling me Jules the whole time. We colored, made pasta necklaces, and played with Play-Doh.
As we were leaving, the residents gave us little bags with balloons and soft caramels. I kept the candy and gave the balloons to Lisa.
Saturday
It’s fall break. I’m in bed, sick. I couldn’t take the train to go to Brittany to see Grandpa Joff and Grandma Ragny. It’s all because I didn’t wear my coat last week. . . . So my mom bought me a big down jacket that’s too long—I can’t even walk when it’s zipped up, it’s so long. On top of that, it has FUR around the hood. You can be certain that when I go back to school, Raoul is going to call me a mama’s boy. Dear future human, I’ll write more to you later, because right now I have a fever and I’m starting to hallucinate.
Sunday
Dear future human,
It figures—just when I was finally able to go to Grandpa Joff and Grandma Ragny’s house on vacation, I forgot my notebook. I hope that my parents (or even worse, Marion!) didn’t find it while I was gone. I’d hidden it so well under my bed that I forgot all about it. Also, since I’m so clever, I wrote a warning in the front—which you must’ve seen. It’ll discourage more than one person, I tell you!
In the end, it was an awesome vacation. Far from Raoul the Tool, his gang of idiots, PE, and all that crappy school stuff. The only downside was that I wasn’t allowed to bring my Xbox.
I guess it’s OK, though, ’cause we’re never bored with Grandpa Joff and Grandma Ragny, anyway. I said “we” because Lisa came with me. On the train I had to listen to Ben Didji the entire way. Lisa stuffed one of her earphones in my ear. Only at one point, everyone was staring at us . . . the headphones had yanked out of my phone and Ben Didji was shrieking throughout the entire train car.
Marion decided to stay home and hang out with her friends . . . and take more selfies, no doubt. I went fishing almost every day with Grandpa. I love to breathe the ocean air, and since I’d been sick, Grandma said the salty breeze was good for my health. Grandpa always wants me to come fishing with him.
But as soon as we get set up, he doesn’t let me touch the lines. So I just play with the worms, which ends up irritating Grandpa Joff because I lose them in the sand.
Lisa and Grandma made cakes and knitted the entire time. Lisa was
determined to make a scarf. I encouraged her (to keep the peace), but the result wasn’t all she’d hoped for:
Grandma and Grandpa also took us to the cemetery, because it was All Saints’ Day, a day to celebrate the dead. It was the first time I’d actually been in a cemetery. We put flowers on Aunt Simone’s grave. I saw a big tear roll down Grandma Ragny’s cheek. It was at that moment that Lisa disappeared. It took us a good half hour to find her; she was sitting in front of pots of chrysanthemums, picking flowers to make a bouquet for Grandma Ragny. While I was looking for her, I passed by a few old, broken, half-open tombs. No one must have been taking care of them anymore. They were really dark inside.
