by Adam Selzer
But I didn’t exactly get any peace and quiet, because my phone rang off the wall that night. Reporters were calling. Relatives were calling. Even Harlan called to say some creepy old ladies were out to get me, which was about the last thing I needed, even though I was pretty sure it was just one of his pranks.
This was one more thing that I didn’t need. Part of me didn’t want to win the bee because some creep out there wanted me to win so much that he had helped Dad organize a break-in. But now there were apparently a couple of freaky old ladies who wanted me to lose—I didn’t want them to get what they wanted, either.
The only thing I could do was forget about everyone else in town and what they thought, and just win that bee for myself. Then I could drop a couple of activities and stay out of military school. And, in the process, beat Marianne and impress Mutual.
I couldn’t wait for the bee to be over. I know some kids in class had looked forward to their chance to be competitors in the bee all their lives, but I just wanted it to end.
Still, over the previous couple of weeks, I had managed to get out of flute lessons, Spirit Squad, the recycling club, the Just Say No Club, Junior Farmers, Junior Motivational Speakers, and indoor soccer. As upset as I was, it was hard not to think of it as one of the best weeks of my life, in a way.
27
MUTUAL
synonym—noun. A word that means the same thing as another word in the same language. “Rear” is a popular synonym for “buttocks.”
The evening before the bee, my parents made me “do” words most of the night. It seemed strange to me that this had been my favorite thing to do only days before. Now I did the words dutifully, but I spent the whole evening wanting to go to my room and listen to Paranormal Execution, whose songs were running in my head as though the player Jason loaned me had been implanted in my brain. My parents had once told me that certain songs were written in a tricky manner that made them get into your head—they were not quite sure of how this was accomplished, but it was said to involve Druidic manuscripts discovered by the Brickcutters.
I no longer believed this. I had received the music from Jason Keyes, and I trusted his judgment. He may have acted like a corrupt troublemaker, but, deep down, he was a noble student whose bravery had gotten him a girlfriend.
They had been right, however, about the tricks and manners of many people in the outside world. I was steering clear of Marianne Cleaver as much as possible—she sort of frightened me. And there were lots of rumors that Principal Floren himself was corrupt—I still did not understand why he had given me the sloppily written list of spelling words, but, based on the way that Chrissie Woodward was acting, I suspected foul play. Plus Harlan Sturr had been sneaking up behind me all afternoon on Thursday, for some reason. I had no idea what he was up to.
As we sat at the dinner table, my mother asked me to do “compendium,” “solvency,” “fiscal,” and “rigmarole.” When I did those correctly, she asked for “suspicious.”
“Suspicious,” I said. “Adjective. Inclined to believe that something is wrong. As in ‘I was suspicious of Principal Floren in regard to the spelling bee. S-U-S-P-I-C-I-O-U-S. Suspicious.”
“Excellent,” said Mother. “Are you really suspicious of him?”
“There are lots of rumors,” I said, “that he authorized the break-in.”
“Makes sense to me,” said Mother. “You will show them all tomorrow, Mutual. You will show them how much better it is to be educated the old-fashioned way, like children were educated back in the good old days. You will come in first, then sweep the districts, then win the nationals! We will show them all!”
I was, in fact, determined to win the bee. If I did not at least qualify for districts, I would surely be pulled from Gordon Liddy. I would not be able to hang out with Jason and Amber anymore. And I would probably never see Jennifer again.
I had to win the bee.
28
CHRISSIE
Excerpt from notebook #32: They sure don’t do a lot of cleaning at the Burger Baron, and there’s almost never anyone eating there. How do they stay in business?
Thursday. January 31. The night before Bee Day.
I felt like I was getting closer to figuring out what was wrong with the faculty.
The recording I stole of the previous Thursday night cleared up a lot for me. It showed Floren making a phone call to someone named Mitch—obviously Jennifer’s dad—followed by about eighteen minutes of fuzz. Floren had apparently tried to erase that conversation from the recording, but, well, technology just wasn’t his strong point. He had missed erasing enough of it to give him away. My guess was that sometime during those eighteen minutes, he had given Mitch Van Den Berg the combination to the locked filing cabinet and told him to go ahead with the break-in.
But it didn’t all make sense. He had given Mutual a word list. Why was he also helping Jennifer? And why was he recording himself in the office like that in the first place?
I just hoped that, in the time I had left before the end of the bee, I could put the rest of the pieces together. I didn’t want to present all my evidence if I didn’t know the motive, and time was running out. I imagined myself being in a cop movie, on the verge of being fired for playing by my own rules. And the chief was giving me twenty-four hours to solve the case and prove that I was a good detective, which they always do in movies.
But on Friday morning, Mutual finally remembered to bring me the list that Floren had given him. I took one look at it, and the last pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place.
The list was full of misspelled words.
Floren wasn’t trying to help Mutual. He was trying to sabotage him by giving him a messed-up word list!
So now I knew that he wanted Jennifer to win. And he was so determined that Mutual lose that he was resorting to sabotage.
I just needed to know why.
29
JENNIFER
camaraderie—noun. A feeling of especially close trust and friendship among a particular group. The students who had been involved in the Three-Bean Casserole War and the other events that led to the Great November Food Fight felt a certain camaraderie that lasted a lifetime.
After I disappeared into my room on Thursday, the only communication I had with my family at all was an e-mail from Val that they printed up and slipped under the door. I found it Friday morning.
Hey, sport!
Tomorrow’s the big bee! I know you can do it! Bummer that Dad got in trouble, huh? Just do your best, beleive in yourself, and reach for the stars!
See? It’s like she just copied a bunch of motivational posters. And she spelled “believe” wrong! Like I said. She learned to spell just long enough to get through the bees, then forgot everything.
I remember my sixth-grade year in the bee—people in town wouldn’t leave mealone! The night before, a couple of weird old ladies came up to me while I walked home and made me spell about fifty words! Good luck! I hope I can make it home some weekend soon!
I was so busy thinking about how unlikely it was that she’d come home soon—she almost never did—that it took me a moment to remember the night before when Harlan had told me that a couple of old ladies were out to get me. I hoped it was just a coincidence, and that it really was one of Harlan’s pranks. What else could I do? Call the cops and ask them to pick up any old ladies they saw on the street?
On Bee Day, I crawled out of bed at five o’clock in the morning, and left for school at six. That’s an hour before I normally left, and half an hour before my parents would be getting out of bed. That way I could get ready for class and walk to school in peace without anyone asking me to spell anything. I really don’t think that getting through breakfast without having to spell the names of any gross diseases is too much to ask, but I had to be sneaky to manage it.
I wandered through the snow, expecting the school to be deserted at that hour, but, as it turned out, it was full of news vans and reporters, all standing around in the
cold, drinking coffee. There were a couple of guys with TV cameras and radio stuff every year, but this was ridiculous. There were crews from Shaker Heights and Cornersville Trace. Apparently all the crap with Floren and my dad had made it a bigger story than ever.
In addition to them, there were a bunch of people from around town. Old people who didn’t have kids, even. People who were just really into the school spelling program. I looked around for freaky old ladies, like the ones Harlan warned me about, but I didn’t see any.
“Hey!” one of the reporters shouted. “Can we have a word with you?”
“No,” I called out. “Not until the end of the bee!”
In the twenty minutes that I had to stand around outside before Mr. Ruggles came and unlocked the front door of the school, nine other reporters came up and tried to talk to me—I felt like a celebrity or something. I didn’t talk to any of them, even though I would have loved to tell them all about the None of the Above school of studying ahead of time.
But they were all pretty nice—they even formed a sort of human wall in front of me so that none of the people from town could come up and bug me. I did take the cup of hot chocolate that one of them brought to me, though. I was freezing, after all, and I knew that that first sip of hot chocolate would feel too incredibly super to pass up. And it did. Just like putting on warm socks after walking around in the snow—all the cold inside me just melted away. There’s something about hot chocolate that just makes everything right with the world. I even asked for another cup to give to my playground monitor/bodyguard when she showed up.
Everyone was in class on time that day, and everyone was reading dictionaries. Everyone except for Chrissie, of course, who was still busy scribbling things down in her notebook, and Harlan, who was hanging around Mutual for some reason.
Marianne kept pushing her playground monitor around, telling her exactly where to stand so that no one could look off of her dictionary, then making her move again five seconds later. As upset as I was at her, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her. The poor girl clearly has some serious issues.
A minute or so before class started, my playground monitor/bodyguard stepped away for a second to speak into a walkie-talkie, then stepped back over to me.
“Jennifer,” she said softly, “I just thought I should tell you that your parents called the police and asked them to issue a warrant for the arrest of Marianne’s parents.”
“Why?” I asked.
“They didn’t see you this morning,” she said, “and assumed you’d been kidnapped. But since we can assure them that you’re here, I’m sure they’ll call it off.”
If I could have crawled into my desk, I would have done it. They should really make desks big enough that you can hide inside them.
Mrs. Boffin came into the class precisely the moment school began, and started the day as she always did.
“Good morning, class,” she said.
“G-O-O-D M-O-R-N-I-N-G, M-I-S-S-U-S B-O-F-F-I-N,” said Marianne.
“Here it is,” said Mrs. Boffin, sweetly. “The day that you’ve all been waiting for. As far as I know, everyone has done a fine job of avoiding all of the press so far today, and I want to thank you all for that. And no matter what happens today, I want to congratulate each and every one of you on all of the hard work that you’ve done to prepare for the bee.
“The bee will begin directly after lunch, but those of you who are in the bee will be eating backstage. Lunch will be provided by the Burger Baron.”
Lots of kids cheered—everyone knows the food there is gross, but any meal that doesn’t involve the three-bean casserole is something to get excited about around here. Strangely, I think Chrissie cheered the loudest. And she wasn’t even in the bee. The whole morning, she had looked like she was about to explode. She was scribbling so fast that I half expected to see smoke coming from her pencil.
“Prior to the bee itself,” said Mrs. Boffin, “there will be a performance by the Good Times Gang in the auditorium. Immediately after they are finished, the bee will begin. Those of you who are participating are to report backstage in one hour. Until then, we will be continuing our discussion of explorers.”
And, as though this wasn’t the biggest day of the year, she just picked up a piece of chalk and started to write on the board about Ferdinand Magellan. I don’t think a single kid was paying attention, though, and she didn’t try to stop the kids who were reading out of dictionaries instead of taking notes.
An hour later, Mrs. Rosemary appeared at the door and said, “Spellers, will you please leave your dictionaries and other study aids at your desks and follow me?”
Practically everyone in the class—including Chrissie, I noticed—followed her out of the classroom and down the hall. We stopped at the fourth-and fifth-grade rooms to pick up the handful of kids from there who’d be entering.
Mrs. Rosemary then led us to the backstage area and told us all to take a seat on the floor. I sat down between Harlan and Chrissie.
“I thought you didn’t sign up,” I whispered to Chrissie.
“Shh!” she said. “I’m sneaking in. There’s some data I still need to get.”
Harlan then leaned over my lap to talk to Chrissie.
“Are you still going to be by the soundboard?” he asked.
“Yeah,” said Chrissie. “But…”
“Don’t worry,” said Harlan. “If I get nervous, I’ll just imagine everyone in their underwear. I’m sure you know how well that works.” He smirked a bit.
“Any progress on that, by the way?” asked Chrissie.
“Not yet,” said Harlan. “But I’m on it. If I don’t find out today, I’ll keep working on it next week.”
“Assuming he’s still here,” said Chrissie.
I’m not into secrets the way Chrissie is, but I sure would have liked to know what the heck they were talking about. I was about to ask when Mrs. Rosemary stood up in front of us to start her speech.
“Spellers, I need your attention, please,” she said. “You will have the rest of the morning to talk quietly and prepare yourselves for the bee. At eleven o’clock, you will be served lunch. At eleven-thirty, the Good Times Gang will perform for twenty minutes, and you may listen to them via the intercom system. You will be led to your places at exactly noon for the beginning of the bee. When you are called, you will go to the microphone. You may ask for the definition of your word, or the root word, or language of origin, and you can ask for it to be used in a sentence. If you miss, a bell will ring, and you will take a seat in the auditorium. When a round ends with five or fewer spellers remaining, those five will be qualified for the district bee. If a round ends with no spellers remaining, everyone eliminated that round will be called back up. Are there any questions?”
“How come you’re letting HER enter?” Marianne asked, pointing at me. “She has the list!”
“No one has the list,” said Mrs. Rosemary. “In fact, we are not using our own master list. We are borrowing a list from Shaker Heights, just to make sure there can be no accusations of cheating. Any other questions?”
No one raised their hand.
Mrs. Rosemary smiled, wished us all great luck, and told us that we’d have the next hour to “reflect quietly on the bee, your studies, and what you hope to accomplish.” She walked out, still smiling brightly.
I leaned over to Chrissie. “Have you ever seen her not smiling?”
“Nope,” she said.
People got up from the floor and started milling about. Marianne started walking over toward me, but our playground monitors both stood in her way, so she scribbled something down on a sheet of paper and passed it over to Brittany, who passed it to a fifth grader, who passed it to me. For a second I thought she was going to offer a truce, and we could be back to being acquaintances, if not exactly friends, and quit being enemies, but the note said:
Jennifer,
I just wish for you to know that, even though there has been no formal declaration of war, it is O
N.
Marianne
I wadded up the note, smiled, nodded, and threw it into the trash.
I walked over to the wall and sat down, leaning up against it and trying to just shut my brain off before it could get me all upset. Out on the stage, we could hear them setting up the sound equipment, with the terrible rumbles and wailing feedback, coupled with the occasional shouts of the reporters, cameramen, and radio guys trying to get the best spots they could to do their jobs. Brittany Tatomir came up and sat next to me.
“Crazy, huh?” said Brittany.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I’m just glad it’s all going to be over after today. What are you going to do when it’s all over?” I asked.
“I’m going down to the Quickway,” she answered, “and getting a tall, frosty orange soda. One of those enormous ones that only cost a nickel more than the mediums. And all the gum I can afford. How about you?”
“Personally,” I said, “I’m going to run through the snow, get soaking wet and freezing cold, then have a superhuge glass of hot chocolate with marshmallow cream.”
“Yeah?” said Tony Ostanek, turning around and joining us. “Won’t you still be busy studying for districts tonight?”
“Heck no,” I said. “I’m gonna need a break. Assuming I qualify at all. And I have a new studying system that isn’t really studying, exactly, anyway. It’s just…learning stuff.”
“Weird,” said Tony. “Hope it works for you!”
“How about you, Tony?” Brittany asked. “What are you going to do when this whole spelling bee thing is over?”
“I tell ya,” said Tony, “I’ve been so busy studying, I’m afraid I’m losing my knack for games. I’m going to go home, kiss my television, and play video games on her until she overheats.” He pulled out his wallet and took out a photo of a big TV. “See that?” he asked, pointing to it proudly. “That’s her. That’s what I’m spelling for. A new game just for being here, and three if I win.”
