Simon Ellis, Spelling Bee Champ

by Claudia Mills

  Then he saw: he could add es to his mother’s word mailbox. The s would fall on the triple-word space, so he’d get triple for the whole nine-letter word. He could count x three times, and get sixty points total. It wasn’t as big as his mom’s score, but all he had done was add two measly letters!

  With a flourish, he put his two tiles in place.

  “Ratfink!” his father moaned.

  “Stinker!” his mother wailed.

  Simon beamed.

  Then his father clapped him on the back, and his mother leaned over to give him a smothering hug.

  7

  Jackson hadn’t invited Simon over since the Galaxy Warriors quarrel, and Simon had been afraid to ask. But Jackson’s mom texted Simon’s mom to set up something after school on Tuesday at Jackson’s house. Mrs. Myers picked the boys up at school to drive them home.

  “You two are awfully quiet,” she commented.

  As if to prove her point, neither boy replied. In the backseat of the car, Jackson gazed out the window to his left, and Simon gazed out the window to his right.

  “I remember how the two of you would be in gales of giggles playing that game you made up with the stuffed animals. What did you call it? You gave it some kind of name.”

  “Bird War,” Simon answered, since Jackson was still staring out the window.

  “That’s right,” Jackson’s mom said. “And remember that time…”

  Simon knew exactly which time she meant. Jackson did, too, because he grinned at Simon and spoke for the first time on the ride.

  “The police pulled you over!”

  “I was swerving a little bit, on purpose, on this empty stretch of country road with no other cars around anywhere, trying to get more birds to fall off. I loved how you both got so hysterical whenever one of them toppled. And then that police car appeared out of nowhere!”

  “The siren was so cool,” Jackson said. “And the flashing lights! My mom—busted!”

  “Thank goodness he didn’t give me a ticket,” his mom said. “He took one look at the two of you in the backseat, with those heaps of stuffed birds flung everywhere, and I think he felt sorry for me.”

  It had only been last year, but it seemed so long ago now.

  “Okay,” Mrs. Myers said as she drove into their three-car garage. “At least we made it home today without getting the police involved.”

  Inside their big farm-style kitchen, she set out cheese, crackers, and grapes for a snack.

  “I’m glad Mrs. Molina put you two Bird Warriors on the same spelling team. It’s nice when friends can be on the same side.”

  “Yes, it is,” Simon said politely.

  Jackson was starting to look sullen again, cramming a cracker into his mouth as if to avoid having to talk about the spelling bee.

  “Do you want me to quiz you on any words to help you get ready?” Mrs. Myers asked. “The bee is just three days away.”

  “No thanks,” Simon said. He couldn’t imagine Jackson would want to drill spelling words when they could be playing video games.

  “Simon can already spell every word in the universe,” Jackson said, talking with his mouth still full. It didn’t come out sounding like a compliment.

  Simon shook his head in protest. There were probably millions of words he couldn’t spell; he made a mental note to find out how many words there were in the English language.

  Jackson’s mother gave her son a quizzical look. “Simon’s spelling talents will be a big help on Friday, I’m sure!” she said brightly.

  “Yeah,” Jackson said, not even trying to hide his sarcasm. “It can be like one big long game of Simon Says. Simon says, Take two giant steps. Simon says, Take two baby steps. Simon says, This is how you spell dog. Simon says, This is how you spell cat.”

  Simon remembered another game they used to play. Back in first grade, Jackson had complained about the unfairness of having a game named after Simon, when no game was named after him. So they had invented Jackson Says. In Jackson Says, they didn’t tell each other to do things like hop on one foot or turn around twice. It had to be something gross: Jackson says, Pick your nose. Jackson says, Squish a bug.

  Simon wondered if Jackson remembered that, too.

  “Now, Jackson,” his mother said. “Don’t you want your team to win?”

  “Sure,” Jackson said.

  But he didn’t sound as if he meant it.

  * * *

  Upstairs in Jackson’s room, Ferrari seemed a lot more overjoyed to see Simon than his owner did. Released from his cage, the ferret jumped from Jackson’s neck to Simon’s and settled there like a furry scarf.

  Simon remembered how much Annika’s dog had adored Cody. Then he had some uncomfortable thoughts.

  Would Ferrari, too, want to scamper after Cody everywhere, as Prime had?

  Had Cody already come over to Jackson’s house to play Galaxy Warriors with Ferrari on his lap?

  He pushed those thoughts away.

  “We could try teaching Ferrari to spell,” Simon suggested.

  He kept his tone joking, but he was actually serious. Could Ferrari be trained to follow some simple spelled-out commands? Were ferrets as smart as dogs, or smarter, or not as smart? Maybe different kinds of animals were smart in different ways, just like different kids.

  “Ha ha,” Jackson said. He didn’t sound amused. “Do you want to know what I think about spelling? I’m s-i-c-k of it. I don’t l-o-v-e school the way you do.”

  “I bet Ferrari’s as smart as Prime,” Simon said, trying to turn the conversation in a friendly direction.

  “Smart isn’t everything,” Jackson shot back.

  Was Simon supposed to apologize for being smart? He couldn’t help being smart!

  But maybe he could help winning all the time.

  “Do you want to play Galaxy Warriors or Amphibian Apocalypse?” Simon asked hesitantly.

  Jackson shrugged. Then he popped Galaxy Warriors into the game system and handed Simon one of the controllers.

  This time, Simon was determined not to win. This wasn’t like playing Scrabble with his parents, where you could try your hardest to cream the other person and then end the game with a hug and a smile.

  As Satu this time, Simon purposely fired his fireballs when he knew Xalik was ready to leap up and dodge them.

  He deliberately didn’t duck out of the way of Xalik’s lasers.

  He made sure to stop firing when he saw Xalik needed to recharge his laser beam.

  Just as Xalik scored another hit, Jackson clicked off the game. He threw his controller onto the bed, hard enough that it bounced off the bedspread and onto the carpeted floor.

  “You’re letting me win.”

  Simon felt himself flush.

  “No, I’m not. I’m just … I just got distracted. Anyone can get distracted.”

  Jackson glared at him with Xalik’s laser-beam eyes. “You never get distracted.”

  “Yes, I do!”

  “No, you don’t!”

  “Jackson,” Simon pleaded. “You get mad if I win. You get mad if I lose. What am I supposed to do?”

  Jackson shot another piercing laser gaze Simon’s way. “You’re so smart, you figure it out.”

  8

  Mrs. Molina gave the spelling teams another chance to practice on Wednesday. This time Kelsey’s team was cozily settled in the couch area, so Simon’s team had to carry their chairs to a different corner of the room. Simon bet Kelsey’s team wouldn’t lose their couch privileges for misbehaving.

  “Remember,” Simon told his teammates, “Mrs. Molina said the judges can ask us to spell words from the word walls, too.”

  Maybe that would motivate them to work a little harder. At least now, with the spelling bee just two days away, no one was fake snoring yet.

  “I’ve been checking the word walls in the other third-grade rooms,” Simon continued. He had visited Mr. Knox and Mrs. Rodriguez-Haramia twice now. “I made a list of their hardest words. Do you want to see it?�
�

  No one looked particularly eager.

  “Kelsey has been secretly checking their walls, too,” Simon added. In addition to the report from Mr. Knox, he had seen Kelsey leaving Mrs. Rodriguez-Haramia’s room yesterday just as he was arriving. The two of them had glared at each other.

  Jackson and Cody still looked unimpressed.

  Annika fiddled with one of her long blond braids. “I wish Kelsey and Izzy weren’t on a different team,” she said. “I’ll be sad if we lose to them, but I’ll be just as sad if they lose to us.”

  “Don’t be,” Jackson told her, his competitive spirit finally roused. “You have to root for your own team the most. That’s just how it is with teams. Do you want Kelsey’s team to get all the pie, or us?”

  Yes! Now it felt as if Simon and Jackson were finally on the same side. Hooray for the power of pie!

  “Let’s think of a cool name for our team,” Jackson said, on a roll now.

  “Something that starts with S, then Spellers,” Simon suggested. He knew better than to suggest Simon’s Spellers.

  “How about Special Spellers?” Annika asked.

  Even though Annika was trying to stir up some team spirit now, Simon wondered if she’d tell Kelsey that their team was going to have a name, so that Kelsey’s team could try to come up with an even better one. It wouldn’t be hard to find a better name than Special Spellers.

  “Wait,” Simon said as a name popped into his head. “Spectacular Spellers.”

  A spectacular team name should have a spectacular word in it.

  He was glad when Cody and Jackson both nodded.

  “We should have a team mascot, too,” Cody said.

  At the same instant, both Cody and Annika shouted, “Prime!”

  Then Jackson said, “T-shirts!”

  Ten minutes later, after a debate about whether the team name should be printed on the back or on the front (back won), and whether they should try to put Prime’s picture on it somewhere (consensus: too hard to do), they had plans for yellow-and-black team T-shirts. Jackson said his mom knew an inexpensive place that could make T-shirts in an hour.

  Mrs. Molina announced that practice time was over.

  Once again, Simon’s team hadn’t practiced a single word.

  At least now, though, they were acting as if they cared about the spelling bee. That counted for something.

  But from over in the couch area, Simon had heard Kelsey drilling her team.

  Real, hard, actual practice counted for even more.

  * * *

  Simon had his violin lesson that afternoon, on Wednesday instead of Monday, because Dr. Lee had been out of town playing with her chamber music ensemble.

  “How is everything going with the spelling bee?” she asked him. “Did it take place yet?”

  “It’s on Friday,” Simon told her. “We have to do it in teams.”

  Dr. Lee asked, “You don’t care for teams?”

  “No,” Simon told her. “I’m not a team kind of person to start with, and our team has the worst speller in the class, plus this girl who’s rooting as much for our enemy team as she is for us, plus my best friend, Jackson, who isn’t really my best friend anymore, because now he gets mad at me all the time if I win at anything and gets even madder if I lose on purpose, so it’s … hard.”

  “I see,” Dr. Lee said.

  From her tall bookcase, filled with musical scores and recordings, she selected two CDs. She inserted the first one into the portable player she kept on the table next to the piano.

  Slow, sad, almost unbearably lovely music started playing, just one solo violin, all by itself.

  After a minute or two, Dr. Lee said, “Johann Sebastian Bach. Violin Sonata Number One in G Minor.”

  Simon knew it had to be in a minor key; minor keys were the keys of sadness.

  Dr. Lee removed that CD and inserted the second one.

  The next piece opened with a full orchestra playing a more lively, energetic, joyous piece. One violin soared above the rest, sweet and pure, but supported by the glorious music of the rest of the strings.

  “Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,” Dr. Lee said. “Concerto Number One in A Major.”

  Major keys were the keys of happiness.

  Simon knew right away what she wanted him to be hearing, but she spelled it out for him anyway.

  “It’s beautiful to hear the violin playing alone, but it’s also beautiful to hear it playing with others. Perhaps even more beautiful?”

  Simon wanted to tell Dr. Lee, Spelling is different from music.

  He wanted to say, What if the other people don’t really like playing with YOU?

  He wanted to ask, Do you think Jackson and I can ever be friends again the way we used to?

  “There is a proverb, a wise saying,” Dr. Lee said. “‘You travel fastest if you travel alone.’”

  That sounded right.

  “‘But you travel farthest if you travel together.’ Now let me hear a D major scale, two octaves, and the major and minor arpeggios, please.”

  * * *

  On Thursday there was hardly any room left on Mrs. Molina’s word wall for Simon to add his latest treasures, but he managed to squeeze them in.

  Hydrophobia. Fear of water.

  Claustrophobia. Fear of closed-in spaces.

  Acrophobia. Fear of heights.

  His mother had helped him find a list of words online, all names of fears that apparently were common enough that people had bothered to give them long fancy names. How satisfying they were to say!

  After lunch, he saw that Kelsey had spent some free time hunting on the classroom computer for phobia words, too. Copycat! In her loopy printing, on the word wall, he saw agoraphobia, which he remembered was fear of open spaces.

  He hurried over to the wall to write arachnophobia. Fear of spiders.

  “All right, class, time for language arts,” Mrs. Molina said. “Simon, back to your seat.”

  As Simon hastily finished his word and returned to his desk, Mr. Boone poked his head into the doorway. Mrs. Molina sighed at the interruption.

  “Tomorrow is our big day for all you champion spellers,” Mr. Boone greeted the class. He was wearing his ruffled pie-baking apron and tall chef’s hat again; this time he had left behind his sifter and rolling pin, but he had a streak of powdery white flour on one cheek.

  “When do the winners get their pie?” someone called out to him.

  Mr. Boone gave a big grin as he bounded into Mrs. Molina’s room.

  “The winning teams from each grade will report to the pie buffet after the bee tomorrow!” he boomed. “With pie for everyone else sometime next week!”

  The class cheered.

  Once again, Mr. Boone pretended to faint at the sight of the word wall, now so crammed full of words there was barely space to write to, too, or two. As a sign of respect, he removed his white chef’s hat and held it solemnly over his heart.

  Hat still in hand, Mr. Boone approached the wall and examined it more closely. He looked at Simon’s phobia words on the bottom left corner of the wall. Then Mr. Boone’s gaze roamed across the board to the far right-hand edge, where Kelsey had started adding phobia words of her own.

  “I think maybe I can find room for one more word,” he said.

  Beneath Simon’s list—not Kelsey’s, Simon was pleased to note—Mr. Boone wrote a very long word in very small letters.

  Then he vanished back into the hallway as suddenly as he had appeared.

  Simon and Kelsey ran over to the board at the same time.

  Sesquipedalphobia.

  They exchanged puzzled glances.

  Mrs. Molina joined them, squinting at the word.

  “What does it mean?” they asked her together.

  “I don’t believe I know,” she said. “I doubt it’s in our classroom dictionaries, either. Why don’t the two of you look it up online?”

  Simon and Kelsey raced to the computer.

  Kelsey did the typing as Simon d
ictated to her what he tried to remember of the spelling.

  “The fear of long words!” they both read aloud, and burst out laughing.

  Simon now knew what he had suspected all along. Mr. Boone was indeed a very good speller, as a principal ought to be: a good speller and a good pie baker, although Simon wouldn’t know that until tomorrow, if he got the chance to taste Mr. Boone’s famous honey pie.

  What if he didn’t? What if Kelsey and her team, or some super spellers from one of the other two classes, were the ones tasting it instead?

  He wondered if there was a long, fancy phobia word for fear of losing.

  And with Jackson acting the way he had lately, maybe there needed to be a long, fancy phobia word for fear of winning, too.

  9

  Simon’s spelling team caused a sensation when they arrived at school on Friday morning in their matching T-shirts: yellow shirts with SPECTACULAR SPELLERS emblazoned in big black letters on the back. Jackson’s mom had dropped the shirts off at everybody’s house the night before.

  Then Simon saw Kelsey’s team standing on the other side of the blacktop, wearing their T-shirts: black shirts with SUPERCALIFRAGILISTIC SPELLERS written in yellow.

  Kelsey’s team name had a longer word.

  If it really was a word.

  Which it wasn’t.

  Annika had been standing with Simon, Jackson, and Cody. Now she looked over at Kelsey and Izzy with longing in her eyes.

  Simon had to ask her, “Did you tell Kelsey about our T-shirts?”

  “Not really.” Annika was a terrible liar. “Well, sort of.” She tugged on one of her braids. “I mean, I couldn’t let Kelsey and Izzy’s team have no T-shirts at all!”

  Simon wasn’t really mad. He wondered if Jackson would have done the same for him if they had been the friends assigned to rival teams. Then he thought how much fun it would have been to have Kelsey on their team, someone else who loved spelling as much as he did.

  No other team in Mrs. Molina’s class had thought of T-shirts, but he saw some kids from Mr. Knox’s class with SPELLING BEE BUZZERS shirts, and some kids from Mrs. Rodriguez-Haramia’s class with shirts that said KILLER BEES. Simon could imagine his parents choosing a name like that if they ever joined a Scrabble team.