Simon Ellis, Spelling Bee Champ

by Claudia Mills

  Just as Jackson might say that a secret language for a tuba and a violin was stupid.

  “Simon?” Dr. Lee asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  Simon picked up his bow and began to play his scale for the week, trying to make each note sound as pure and glowing as Dr. Lee’s notes had been.

  3

  At school the next day Simon beamed a secret, silent message of his own to Mrs. Molina: No teams! No teams!

  Even as he did it, he knew it was a silly thing to do. The teachers had already met after school yesterday to decide whatever they were going to decide. It was too late to change their minds now.

  Sure enough, Mrs. Molina told the class, “Each of you will compete in the spelling bee on a team with four members.”

  Oh, well.

  Then Simon cheered up. Maybe he and Kelsey could be on the same team, with two of the other best spellers in the class. Maybe the four best spellers in the class could all be on a team together!

  But if he and Jackson were on different teams and Simon’s team won, Jackson would be really mad at him, even madder than he had been when Simon beat him at Galaxy Warriors. At least the Galaxy Warriors winner didn’t get the reward of Mr. Boone’s pie buffet.

  Mrs. Molina picked up a piece of paper and said, “Here are your teams.”

  Simon listened, tense, as she began to read.

  “Kelsey Green, Izzy Barr”—the two girls beamed—“Ryan Alito, and Tyler Tedesco.”

  Simon tried to figure out the teacher’s reasoning. She had put some friends together (Kelsey and her best friend Izzy), but not all friends (not Kelsey’s other best friend, Annika). There was a mix of girls and boys, a mix of good spellers (Kelsey and Ryan) and not-so-good spellers (Izzy and Tyler).

  He felt sorry for whichever team got stuck with Cody.

  His ears strained to hear his own name as Mrs. Molina read out the next team, and the team after that.

  Then: “Simon Ellis, Jackson Myers…” He was relieved that Jackson flashed him a big grin. “Annika Riz…” Annika was great at math, as good as Simon, but not as great at spelling. “And Cody Harmon.”

  Terrible! The absolute worst!

  If Simon’s team went down in flames over to, two, and too, he couldn’t bear it. But he was so grateful to be on the same team with Jackson that relief swamped disappointment.

  Simon waited until the last team had been announced, and then he raised his hand. “So how do the teams actually work?” he asked.

  “Good question,” Mrs. Molina said. “All teams from all three classes will get the same word to spell. You’ll confer among yourselves for thirty seconds and come to an agreement on the spelling. Then you’ll write the word, spelled as you think it should be spelled, on a large piece of paper. At the signal, you’ll hold up your paper and show it to the judges. Three wrongly spelled words—three ‘stingers’—and your team is out.”

  Whew! Simon could just tell the others how to spell each word, and that’s what they’d write down. Cody couldn’t ruin the team’s chances, after all.

  Unless Cody didn’t listen to Simon.

  Unless Jackson thought Simon was being too bossy, showing off how good he was at everything.

  But they wanted to win, too, didn’t they?

  They wanted to go to the pie buffet and eat Mr. Boone’s famous honey pie, too.

  Didn’t they?

  * * *

  That evening, Simon sat hunched over his parents’ huge, heavy dictionary, trying to find the longest word in it to write on the word wall. There were lots of dictionaries in Mrs. Molina’s third-grade room, one for every student in the class. But those were special dictionaries for kids. Simon didn’t want to find the longest word in an easy kids’ dictionary. He wanted to find the longest word in the whole world.

  It was slow going. There were so many long words in the dictionary! There had to be an easier way than flipping through the entire dictionary page by page.

  He found his parents downstairs in the family room, reading. Whenever his computer scientist father wasn’t busy on his laptop, he was reading in his overstuffed armchair. Whenever his musician mother wasn’t busy on her cello, she was reading on the couch. If anybody would know the longest word in the world, it would be his parents.

  “Mom! Dad!” he shouted. He had learned that he had to shout to get their attention when they were lost in a book.

  His thin, balding father looked up.

  His thin, red-haired mother looked up.

  “What’s the longest word in the world?” he asked them.

  “The longest English-language word?” his father clarified.

  Simon nodded.

  “When I was growing up,” his mother said, “we were told that it was antidisestablishmentarianism.”

  Simon liked the word already, just from the sound of it. “What does it mean?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea. It’s not a word anybody ever says in daily life. It’s just famous for being long.”

  His father chuckled. “We were told that the longest word was pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.”

  Both Simon and his mother stared. “What?!” they said together.

  “And don’t ask me what it means, either,” his father said. “All I know is that it’s the name of some kind of disease.”

  Simon made his father repeat the word for him until he could say it himself: NEW-mun-oh-ultra-microscopic-SIL-ico-volcano-cone-ee-OH-sis.

  It wasn’t in the big dictionary, but his father let him look it up on the family-room computer. His parents limited his screen time, but they were always willing to help him find things he needed.

  There it was, spelled out on the monitor: a lung disease caused by inhaling tiny particles of volcanic dust.

  Simon was going to learn how to spell it even if it took him a whole hour. And then he was going to write it on the word wall tomorrow.

  4

  The word wall loomed bare and majestic on Wednesday morning, like a ski slope’s new snow awaiting the tracks of the day’s first skiers.

  Simon knew that he and Kelsey would be the day’s first spellers.

  After the flag salute and morning announcements, he tried beaming a silent message to Kelsey, not that his silent messages to Mrs. Molina ever did any good.

  Ask when we can start writing our words on the wall!

  He didn’t want always to be the one waving his hand in the air with a question.

  Either Kelsey got the message or she was already as eager as he was.

  “When can we put our words on the word wall?” she asked.

  “Any time that I’m not asking you to do something else,” Mrs. Molina said. “During math time”—she fastened her gaze on Kelsey, who was often reading a book on her lap during math—“I expect you to be paying attention to math. During science time, I expect you to be paying attention to science. But during free time, you may go quietly to the word wall.”

  “Is it free time now?” Kelsey wanted to know.

  “Because it’s the first day for the word wall, yes, I’ll give you some time now to write on it.”

  Before Mrs. Molina even finished her sentence, Kelsey was out of her seat, marker in hand.

  Simon grabbed his marker and followed her. Half the class—though not Jackson or Cody—dashed over to the word wall, too. Jackson’s handwriting was so messy that even if he had written a word on the wall, nobody would have been able to read it.

  In his neat, careful printing Simon wrote pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

  Then he waited to let the full impact of his word sink in.

  “Look at Simon’s word!” he heard one kid say. Other kids—but not Jackson or Cody—left their seats to come gaze at that long string of letters stretching practically all the way across the wall.

  “Wow!” another kid exclaimed.

  “Is that really a word?” a third kid asked.

  Kelsey had stopped copying her own long list of words on the boar
d. “How do you say it?”

  Simon was happy to oblige. It was a good thing he had practiced it over and over again last night.

  “It’s even longer than supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!” Kelsey marveled.

  “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious isn’t a real word,” Simon told her. “It’s a fake word, made up for the Mary Poppins movie.”

  “Aren’t all words made up?” Kelsey demanded. “Your big word—didn’t someone have to make that up, too?”

  Simon had to admit that Kelsey had a point. But his word still seemed more real somehow.

  “How many letters does it have?” Annika asked.

  “I don’t know,” Simon said. “I didn’t count.”

  “That’s the first thing I’d do!”

  That made sense, for math-whiz Annika.

  “I think it’s silly to make a word be so long,” Izzy said. “I could run all the way around Franklin School—twice!—in the time it takes to say it.”

  That made sense, too, from running-star Izzy.

  Simon was glad that so many of them thought it was an awesome word, even if Jackson hadn’t. Jackson was still back in his seat, laughing at some apparently funny thing that Cody had just said.

  Simon hoped they weren’t laughing at him.

  Then, as the others drifted away, he wrote a few of his favorite e words: exuberant, exhilarating (it did have an a in the middle—he had checked), and electrifying. That was enough words for today. He wasn’t going to try to write the most words of anybody. That would be too much of a Super Simon thing to do. He wasn’t going to cover the whole wall with his words so that there would be no room for words from anybody else.

  But he was going to try to write the best words of anybody.

  He forced himself to stop and read what other kids had written.

  Some had written ordinary, everyday words: chimney, umbrella, microwave. Bor-ing! Another really good speller, Diego Lopez, had written the names of animals: chimpanzee, leopard, cheetah. Those were good words, Simon decided. It was cool that Diego had a theme. His own list of e words had a theme, too, but he wasn’t planning on sticking with one letter forever.

  He was pleased to see that his teammate Annika had a great word: hypotenuse. As Annika’s fellow math whiz, Simon knew it was a math term, the name of the longest side of a right-angled triangle. Kelsey’s teammate Izzy had a good word, too: kilometer. Simon knew that races were often measured in kilometers.

  Then he let himself look at Kelsey’s words. She had written at least twenty. Apparently she wasn’t afraid of being called Super Kelsey. Maybe she’d even like that name. Simon wouldn’t have minded being called Super Simon if Jackson hadn’t laughed after Cody said it.

  He ran his eyes down Kelsey’s list.

  She had started with supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Simon didn’t think Mrs. Molina should let a made-up movie word be posted on the word wall.

  Extraordinary. She probably thought she was an extraordinary speller. Well, she was awfully good.

  Extravagant. Was she copying him by using e words?

  Viola. That was a kind of musical instrument, like Simon’s violin but bigger. Was Kelsey taking private music lessons? Maybe he could tell her about Dr. Lee’s secret music language. But he’d rather save it for Jackson’s tuba, if Jackson would be willing to go along with him.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Jackson and Cody were still busy talking and laughing.

  Then it was time for Mrs. Molina’s class to head off for P.E.

  Simon pretended he didn’t notice Jackson and Cody lining up together.

  * * *

  During language arts time, Mrs. Molina told the class to meet with their spelling teams.

  “Just find a quiet corner where you can talk without disturbing the others,” she said.

  What were they supposed to do in the meeting? Was this the moment for Simon to ask his teammates, Now, you’ll just let me tell you how to spell all the words, right? He dreaded the thought of how that discussion would go. But maybe it was better to have it sooner rather than later.

  Mrs. Molina continued, “Start by practicing the third-grade spelling words you’ve been tested on so far this year.”

  Jackson had already jumped up to claim the couch in the reading nook for their team, another reason for Simon to be grateful that Mrs. Molina had put them together. Simon hurried to occupy the other end of the couch. Cody and Annika plopped themselves down on the oversized beanbag chairs on the floor nearby.

  “So now what?” Jackson asked, lolling on the couch, eyes focused on the ceiling.

  Simon didn’t know how to ask the question he had planned. He just couldn’t do it. “I guess we should practice our old spelling words,” he said.

  Looking around at his teammates, he saw that he was the only one who had remembered to bring his spelling notebook. Not a good sign. But maybe it did show that they’d be willing, even eager, to leave most of the spelling up to him.

  “Okay,” he said, opening his notebook to the first list of words from back when school started in September. Oh, what pitiful words they were! Words that nobody in the universe could spell wrong!

  “High,” he read out.

  “H-i,” Jackson said.

  Well, maybe somebody could spell it wrong.

  Actually, one of the strangest and most wonderful things about the English language was how many words were spelled completely different from how they sounded. Why would high have that extra, silent gh added on at the end? Why would taught and fought have that gh in the middle? Simon himself got confused by words like that sometimes. The only mistake he had made on a spelling test all year was when he spelled taught as tought because taught rhymed with fought. If you stared at words like that too long, you could totally lose your grip on how to spell them, even if you had read them a million times in books.

  “Not hi like hello,” Simon explained. “High like the opposite of low.”

  This time Jackson spelled it correctly.

  Simon read the next word on the list. “Pencil.”

  Annika got it right.

  After two or three dozen easy words—Jackson did spell scream as screem, and Annika did forget the u in laundry—Simon noticed that Cody hadn’t volunteered to spell a single one. Cody sprawled on his beanbag chair with his eyes closed, asleep or pretending to be.

  Should Simon say something or not?

  If he did, Cody might say back, “Who made you the teacher?”

  If he didn’t, wouldn’t he be treating Cody like he wasn’t even a member of the team at all?

  Simon scanned down the list to find the easiest easy word. Which was easier: full, feeling, or family? Full was the shortest.

  “Hey, Cody,” he said, trying to keep his tone casual, “how do you spell full?”

  A snore came from Cody’s direction. Simon knew it had to be a pretend snore. Jackson cracked up.

  “Hey, Cody,” Jackson asked, “how do you spell snore?”

  Still pretending to be asleep, Cody made a series of snoring sounds as if he were spelling out the word: five snores, one for each letter.

  Annika giggled.

  “How do you spell poop?” Jackson asked the fake-sleeping Cody.

  Four sharp, staccato snores followed.

  “I can snore pee,” Jackson offered, giving three short snores to prove it.

  By now Jackson was laughing hysterically. Cody was howling with laughter, too. He had fallen off his beanbag chair onto the floor, and Jackson was starting to tickle him with his feet.

  “Jackson, Cody, Annika, Simon!” Mrs. Molina called over to them. “You have officially lost your couch privileges!”

  Thanks a lot, Cody! Thanks a lot, Jackson!

  “You don’t even care whether or not we win, do you?” Simon demanded as they abandoned their comfy couch and squishy beanbag chairs to return to their hard, boring desks. At least Annika was also rolling her eyes in frustration.

  Cody didn�
�t answer. Neither did Jackson.

  Instead, under his breath, Cody asked Jackson, “How do you spell Super-Duper-Pooper?”

  Both boys laughed so hard through their chorus of fake snores that finally even Annika started laughing, too.

  5

  On Saturday afternoon, Simon found himself doing something he would never in his whole life have expected to do.

  He was at Annika’s house, with Jackson and Cody, trying to teach Annika’s dog how to spell.

  At the close of the spelling bee teams’ second practice on Friday, which for Simon’s team was almost as pointless as their “snoring” practice had been, Mrs. Molina had told the teams to try to find some time over the weekend to continue practicing together.

  “We could meet at my house,” Simon suggested.

  Both Jackson and Cody groaned. Simon hoped they were groaning at the idea of having to practice at all, not at the idea of going to his house.

  There was a long silence.

  “If we did it at my house, we could play video games afterward,” Jackson offered.

  This time Cody brightened, but Annika said, “I hate video games. If we did it at my house, we could teach my dog to spell.”

  “What’s your dog’s name?” Cody asked, just as Jackson said, “Dogs can’t spell.”

  “His name is Prime,” Annika told Cody, flashing a smile at Simon.

  It took Simon a moment to figure out why Annika was grinning specially at him. But then he got it. Prime, for prime number, a special kind of number that couldn’t be divided by any other number except for itself and 1.

  “And he’s an unusually smart dog, he really is,” Annika told Jackson.

  “What has he ever done that’s so smart?” Jackson wanted to know.

  “Lots of things.”

  “Like what?” Jackson persisted.

  “Like, we have a bell hanging from the doorknob on the back door, and he jingles it when he wants to go outside. That’s the same thing as talking. Well, practically the same.”

  Simon didn’t think it was the same thing as talking at all.

  “And once I almost taught him to count,” Annika added.