I Got a D in Salami #2

by Winkler, Henry

  He reached inside the brown grocery bag and pulled out several long strands of fresh, purple garlic.

  “Now, this is the food of the gods,” he said. “Garlic. This will make your taste buds stand up and salute.”

  My mother shook her head. “Pop, that much garlic will overwhelm the taste of the soy,” she said.

  “Nonsense, Randi,” he answered. “Garlic puts hair on your chest. Isn’t that right, men?” He looked at Frankie and me and winked.

  We laughed. That’s what must have happened to Papa Pete, because he has more hair on his chest than a gorilla—on his face, too. He has a mustache that’s so big that he calls it his handlebars.

  “Let’s get to work, Randi,” he said. “I’ll help you whip up a batch of salami that tastes like something.”

  “All right, Pop.” My mom sighed. I could tell she had given up the fight. When Papa Pete has a plan, it’s pretty hard to talk him out of it. “Hank, we’ll continue this conversation tomorrow,” she said.

  That was good enough for me. I had bought myself another day to figure things out.

  Papa Pete reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. He rolled it up and slipped it into the palm of my hand.

  “On the way home, stop in at McKelty’s and get yourself and my other grandkids some root-beer floats,” he said. “And tell the Chopped Livers I’ll bowl tonight, but I’ll be a little late. Your mother and I have some high-level delicatessen work to do.”

  “So you and Mom aren’t going to use the stuff in there for Mr. Gristediano’s salami?” I asked, pointing to the bowl with my report card in it.

  “I wouldn’t give that to a dog,” said Papa Pete. “The only thing that stuff is good for is to lie at the bottom of the trash Dumpster.”

  As we left the back room, I gave Frankie and Ashley a big thumbs-up. My report card was going bye-bye into the trash Dumpster. This had worked out better than I could have hoped for.

  “Robert, you’re a genius,” I whispered, slapping him on the back so hard that he almost fell over. He acts like such an adult that sometimes I forget that Robert’s just a pencil-neck eight-year-old. I could feel the bones in his back. He really should eat some more mashed potatoes or something.

  “I have an IQ of one hundred thirty-seven,” Robert said. “Technically, a genius is someone with an IQ of one-hundred forty and above.”

  “Do you ever lighten up, Robert?” asked Frankie.

  “Actually, no,” said Robert.

  My dad walked us home, and we had the greatest afternoon. We stopped and had root-beer floats at McKelty’s Roll ’N Bowl. When we got back to our apartment, Emily wasn’t there. She was playing at her friend Jenna’s house, so we had the place to ourselves. Frankie and I played video games while Ashley made a rhinestone mouse pad for her mom’s birthday. Robert helped my dad with his crossword puzzle. When Robert told him that a “spider relative with two pairs of eyes” was a horseshoe crab, I thought my dad was going to blast right out of his chair. Those thirteen letters put him in such a good mood that he let us watch cartoons on TV until it was time for everyone to go home for dinner.

  My mom was really happy when she got back from work. She was so filled with her salami dreams that she seemed to have forgotten all about my report card. She could hardly wait until the next day. She said she had a feeling Mr. Gristediano was going to give her a big order. If he did, she promised to take us all on a vacation somewhere. She suggested a weekend in Vermont. My dad wanted to go fly-fishing in Canada. I voted for Costa Rica, because I’ve always wanted to see a real rain forest. Besides, I figured that if they found out about my report card and got really mad, I could hide in the rain forest and live on bananas. Maybe a monkey family would adopt me. Emily said she wasn’t going anyplace where there weren’t crocodiles. I suggested we leave Emily at home.

  We ate tuna melts and chicken noodle soup for dinner.

  “So, when will we find out Mr. Gristediano’s decision?” I asked.

  “Carlos is delivering the trays of salami to him tomorrow morning,” my mom said. “Mr. Gristediano is having all his managers over for a tasting party. If they like it, we should hear right away.”

  “They have to like it,” I said. “I’m sure you and Papa Pete came up with a great recipe.”

  “Actually,” my mom said, “I have a little secret. Don’t tell Papa Pete this, but I went back to my first version of soy salami. I thought his had way too much garlic.”

  I stopped eating.

  “You don’t mean that original batch of salami,” I said. “The one you were making when I was there at about, say, three-thirty-five?”

  “Yes,” my mom said. “That’s the one. That’s the winner. I asked Carlos to roll it up and put it in the fridge. He’ll slice it tomorrow morning and deliver the platter first thing.”

  Oh, no. That was the batch of salami with the special ingredient—my report card. I reached for a glass of water and gulped it down all at once.

  “Is anything wrong, honey?” my mom asked.

  “Wrong?” I asked. “What could possibly be wrong?”

  CHAPTER 12

  “MAY I BE EXCUSED?” I asked, trying to sound calm, which I wasn’t.

  “Don’t you want dessert?” my mom asked. “I made carrot pudding.”

  “Wow, Mom,” I said. “You really know how to use those vegetables. It’s hard to say no to carrot pudding, but I’ve got to run, if you know what I mean.” I glanced toward the bathroom. Parents never say no to the bathroom.

  “Of course, darling,” my mom said.

  I shot out of my chair like a rocket and ran down the hall. My socks had no traction on the wood floors, and I went flying like a speed skater right through the bathroom door. I landed on my tush, wedged between the toilet and the tub. I pulled myself up and turned on the cold water in the sink. I had to splash my face with cold water to stop my cheeks from twitching, which they do when I panic.

  I needed to think clearly. Too many thoughts were running through my head all at once. Why hadn’t I just told my parents that I got a lousy report card in the first place? Why did Robert have to throw my report card in the meat grinder? What was he thinking? What’s wrong with just a regular wastebasket? Would it be against the law for Robert to do a normal thing for once in his life?

  I splashed more water on my face. My cheeks had pretty much stopped twitching, except for the right one, which still moved every now and then.

  Lying is hard, I thought. You have to keep everything straight, and that’s hard for me normally. Then I had a radical idea. Maybe I should just tell my parents the whole truth—that I’m not cut out for school. That no matter how hard I try, I’m just never going to make it as a student. My mom would be sad, and my dad would be mad, but I’d tell them, “Hey, you got Emily. She’s brilliant. I’m wired differently, and my wires are crossed.”

  Just thinking about that made my cheeks start twitching all over again. The cold water wasn’t helping. I needed a clear head to sort this all out. I slipped out of the bathroom, went to the telephone, and dialed Frankie’s number. His dad answered.

  “Hello, Dr. Townsend,” I said. “This is Hank. May I talk to Frankie?”

  “He’s just finishing dinner,” Dr. Townsend said. “Can he call you back?”

  “Normally he could,” I said, “but I have an emergency here. Not the kind with an ambulance or anything. It’s the kind that could wait, but shouldn’t.”

  “That sounds important, Hank,” said Dr. Townsend. “Hold on.”

  When Frankie got on the phone, I blurted it out: “Emergency meeting. Basement. Now. Pass it on.”

  I slammed down the phone, ran to my room, and pulled on my shoes. There was something else I needed, but I couldn’t remember what it was. It had just been on my mind and now it was under it. I looked around, hoping it would come to me. I don’t have time for forgetting now. Then, thank goodness, I saw my sweatshirt hanging on the back of chair. That was it—my sweatshirt.
I knew I wanted to take it, because the basement where our clubhouse is can get cold in November.

  “I’m going downstairs to Frankie’s,” I called to my parents.

  “I’ll come with you,” my mom said.

  “You will? No! I mean, why?”

  “It’s yoga class night,” my mom said. Frankie’s mom holds her yoga classes in their living room.

  “Oh, right.”

  “We’re going to learn a new position. It’s called the cobra.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” I said. “Don’t bite yourself.”

  My mom laughed. I thought about what a nice, cheerful person she is and for a minute considered telling her about my grades right then and there. Maybe she’d be really sweet and understanding. Then my dad walked into the room.

  “I’m going play Scrabble with Emily,” my dad said. “Hank, why don’t you join us?”

  Right, me play Scrabble—the guy who got a D in spelling would play Scrabble with a girl genius and a crossword-puzzle nut. Sometimes I think my father doesn’t have any idea who I am. Any thought I had of telling my parents about my grades went right out the window.

  I escaped into the hall and pushed the elevator button. It always takes a while to get up to the tenth floor. When it landed, I pulled the door open and was face to face with our neighbor, Mrs. Fink.

  “Why, thank you, Hank.” She smiled as she got out, and I noticed with relief that she was wearing her false teeth, which she doesn’t always do. “You’re growing into such a gentleman.”

  My mother came into the hall just as Mrs. Fink stepped out of the elevator.

  “Hello, Randi,” Mrs. Fink said. Uh-oh. This was bad timing, because Mrs. Fink’s “Hello, Randi” usually turns into a forty-five-minute conversation about what eating spicy food does to her digestion. I had a crisis on my hands, and there was no time now for intestine talk.

  “Mom, you don’t want to be late for class,” I said, pulling her into the elevator. “The cobra is waiting.”

  As we were riding down to the fourth floor, my mom looked at me funny.

  “You seem nervous tonight,” she said. “Is anything going on?”

  “Nope,” I said, not looking her in the eye.

  She pointed to a spot on her hand and smiled. “I know you like the back of my hand, buster,” she said. “Something’s cooking.”

  Thank goodness the elevator jerked to a stop on Frankie’s floor, and I didn’t have to answer her. Frankie yanked the door open and was about to say something to me, when he saw my mom. Instead, he just gestured politely to his front door.

  “Go right in, Mrs. Z,” he said. “There’s great karma in there.” You can always count on Frankie to be cool in a hot situation.

  After my mom was out, he jumped into the elevator with me. I pushed the B button about ten times, as if that would get us to the basement faster.

  “Is Ashley coming?” I asked.

  “On her way,” he said.

  Finally, we reached the basement. As we walked out of the elevator, I could tell that someone had just finished doing laundry. It was warm and the air smelled like soapsuds and bleach. We passed the laundry room and went into the storage room that we use as our clubhouse. Ashley was waiting with a chocolate-chip cookie for me and an oatmeal-pecan one for Frankie.

  “What’s the big emergency?” she asked.

  I dropped myself into one of the sofas that line the wall of our clubhouse.

  “You’re not going to believe this. You know the batch of soy salami that Robert dropped my report card into?”

  “Tell me not to think what I’m thinking,” said Frankie, “because what I’m thinking is a bad, bad think.”

  “I can’t, Frankie, because I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking.”

  “Will you guys stop thinking and talk to me?” screamed Ashley.

  “My mom decided to send her original batch of salami to Mr. Gristediano tomorrow,” I said.

  “I think I’m starting to think what you’re thinking,” Ashley said. She twirled her long ponytail around in her fingers, the way she does when she’s worried. When she wears pigtails, she twirls both of them, one with each hand.

  I took a deep breath and spilled out the whole ugly truth.

  “It’s bad, guys,” I said. “The salami that is being delivered at ten-thirty tomorrow morning is the very same one that has my report card mushed and squished in it.”

  “Maybe it’s not so bad,” Ashley said, trying to sound upbeat. “Maybe the paper got ground up into tiny little bitsy bits, and you can’t even tell it’s in there.”

  “Ashweena,” said Frankie, “there’s no way all that paper could get lost in the salami. We’re talking a manila envelope, a report card, and a letter written on legal-size paper. I assume it was legal size. It’s got to be. When you have so many nasty things to say, you use legal size.”

  I put my head in my hands.

  “I’m sure the whole batch is ruined,” I said. “Now my mom will lose the sale. Her hopes and dreams for the future of lunch meats will go right down the drain, and it will be all my fault.”

  This was a total nightmare. I was singlehandedly putting The Crunchy Pickle out of business. And I was still in trouble. Ms. Adolf was going to want to see a signed report card from my parents. Where was that supposed to come from? I’d have to Scotch tape twenty slices of salami together, and even then, you’d have to be really good at reading meat to decipher it.

  “I am such a loser,” I said, to no one in particular.

  Frankie flopped down next to me.

  “Snap out of it, Zip,” he said. “You’re not going to just sit there and let this happen. That’s not the Hank Zipzer I know. Breathe, Zip. Let the oxygen flow to promote thinking.”

  “There’s no way out of this,” I said. “It’s not like we can just find our way over to Mr. Gristediano’s apartment—wherever that is—and happen to arrive just as Carlos is delivering the tray and bump into him so the salami goes all over the street and gets eaten by a dog and has to be replaced by a new batch.”

  “Actually, why not?” came a familiar, uninvited voice from the door.

  We whipped around and there he was—Robert.

  “When Napoleon invaded Russia, he took the shortest route—through France,” said Robert.

  “Who is Napoleon?” I snapped.

  “He’s dead,” said Robert. “But when he wasn’t, he was a very short French general.”

  “Great, Robert. What does a short, dead French general have to do with a platter of soy salami that is polluted with my rotten report card?”

  “I was just using him as an example of basic military strategy,” Robert said. “Napoleon knew that the simplest plans are always the best.”

  “The boy may have a point,” said Frankie, getting up off the couch and starting to pace. “We cut off the delivery. We seize the polluted salami. We destroy it. We replace it with a good batch.”

  Frankie was excited now.

  “Do you really think this could work?” I asked.

  “We’re going to make it work,” Frankie said. “And we’ll make it work with style. Don’t forget, Zip, we are the Magik 3.”

  “So?”

  “So that means we add our own magic touch to this plan, to make sure your mom gets the biggest order possible.”

  “You mean we get to do our magic show?” Ashley asked.

  “I think we should pretend we are the entertainment, sent by The Crunchy Pickle to perform feats of magic for the guests as they munch,” Frankie said.

  “Cool,” said Ashley. “I’ll do my cherry stem trick.”

  “Let’s hold that for another performance, Ashweena,” answered Frankie. “The way I see this performance, we’ll cover the salami tray with my cape. True, my cape may smell like salami for a couple months after, but I’m willing to make the sacrifice. Once we’re in Mr. Gristediano’s apartment, we’ll gather everyone around and Zengawii! I’ll pull off my cape and the salami will appear.
”

  “Then we just sit back and wait for the big order to come in,” Ashley said.

  “I love it,” I said.

  Ashley gave Frankie a high five. Even Robert nodded with approval.

  “You tell your pal Napoleon that he’s got nothing on me,” Frankie said to Robert.

  “Actually, I would tell him, but as I already pointed out, he’s dead,” Robert reminded us.

  “It’s a brilliant plan,” said Ashley. “Don’t you think so, Hank?”

  I didn’t know if it was a brilliant plan or not. But I did know one thing. It was our best shot. It was our only shot.

  CHAPTER 13

  WE COULDN’T LEAVE anything to chance. There was no room for mistakes.

  It took us more than an hour to work out all the details. Ashley got some paper and wrote down the whole schedule. This is what it looked like:

  FRIDAY NIGHT

  9:00 P.M.: Call Papa Pete and ask him to meet us in front of our apartment at 9:45 Saturday.

  9:15 P.M.: Ask parents if we can take Cheerio for a walk in the park with Papa Pete the next morning.

  9:30 P.M.: Phone one another to make any final arrangements.

  SATURDAY MORNING

  9:45 A.M.: Meet Papa Pete in front of apartment building. Don’t forget Cheerio!

  9:46 A.M.: Walk to The Crunchy Pickle. Arrive before ten o’clock and hide outside.

  10:00 A.M.: Carlos leaves The Crunchy Pickle for his delivery. Follow him to Mr. Gristediano’s apartment.

  10:20 A.M.: Carlos arrives at Mr. Gristediano’s apartment. Turn Cheerio loose on him.

  10:21 A.M.: Cheerio runs into Carlos and starts to chew on his pants leg. Knocks tray out of his hands. Salami spills on ground.

  10:22 A.M.: Cheerio eats salami, with help from neighboring dogs.

  10:25 A.M.: Carlos goes back to The Crunchy Pickle for a new tray of soy salami, the one that Papa Pete made.

  10:27 A.M.: Frankie puts on cape and we turn into Magik 3.

  10:30 A.M.: Go up to Mr. Gristediano’s apartment and apologize for the late delivery.