by Adam Selzer
“That sounds nice,” said Jake Wells, moving over to talk to us. “That sounds really nice. Sometimes we forget why we’re spelling, huh?”
“What are you going to do after it’s over, Jake?” I asked.
“Hey,” said Jake, wistfully. “I’m no great student or nothing, I’m just a kid who eats things for dollars. I’d like to win that gift certificate and all, but it’s a long shot. All I know is that, as a student, it’s my right to compete in the all-school bee, and I’m proud to be here, win or lose. And when it’s over, I’m going to eat a great big hamburger. Medium rare, so it’s a bit charred on the outside, but pink all through the middle. With mustard, lettuce, ketchup, onions, pickles, and a toasted bun, with a chocolate malt.”
“We’re getting burgers for lunch,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Jake. “But I’m talking about a great big one. Not fast food. One thing about eating nasty stuff for a living is that you learn to appreciate the finer things when you can get them. And that stuff from the Burger Baron ain’t finer than nothing!”
We all smiled and passed around the picture of Tony’s TV set. More people came over to talk about their plans for after the bee. Even Amber and Tony seemed to be acting friendly toward each other, and just a few days earlier he’d been calling her a witch. It was a really nice feeling—we were all about to be rivals, going head to head, and we could hear the sounds of the battle being set up right behind the wall, but for right then, we were all friends. It was like something out of a Shakespeare play.
At eleven o’clock, a couple of old ladies wandered in, pushing a cart with the Burger Baron logo on it.
“Ooh!” I heard Jason say. “Old ladies!”
“Watch out, Jennifer!” I heard Chrissie shout.
If you’ve never been in a position where the world was going crazy to start with, but then you hear that old ladies were out to get you, and then a couple of old ladies walk into the room, well…you’ll never know what I felt like right then. Sometimes you hear people say their blood turned to ice, right? Well, it really does feel like that. Like everything inside you is suddenly frozen.
The old ladies wheeled the cart up to the front of the room and smiled at us. Their teeth looked like little kernels of moldy corn. And they were looking right at me. Both of them.
“Good morning, spellers,” one of them said. “Principal Floren has graciously allowed us to come bring you lunch.” And both of them started laughing, which sounded like two chalkboards being rubbed together with fingernails in between them. It was a hideous, frightening sound.
“Do you have a visitor pass?” my playground monitor asked them.
“Tut, tut,” said one of the ladies. “Surely you don’t think a couple of old ladies are up to no good, do you?”
“If you don’t have one,” said the monitor, “then you need to go to the office and get one.”
“In good time,” said one of the ladies. “First we need to talk to our little spellers!”
A few kids groaned. “Little spellers”? Did they think we were five? Somehow this only made them scarier to me. It made it seem like they didn’t have a firm grasp on reality, which meant they were a couple of nuts. Possibly a couple of dangerous nuts.
One of the old ladies pulled a little black book out of her purse and opened it up.
“Mutual Scrivener,” she said, reading a name out of the book. “Is Mutual here?”
Mutual very meekly raised his hand.
“Are you feeling like a good speller today, Mutual? Studied the way you should have? Because I have a feeling that if you lose, there could be real trouble!”
“Shut up, Helen!” shouted one of the old ladies. “You’re going to ruin everything!”
“I know what I’m doing, Agnes!” shouted the other one. “I’m just making sure little Mutual is in good shape today! You’re the one who ought to shut up!”
“You should, you limp-livered old ninny!” the first one shouted.
I overheard the recess monitors muttering and looking nervous—they didn’t seem to like the old ladies any more than I did.
Mutual, meanwhile, sat still, looking terrified. Mutual had probably never seen anyone so creepy; the poor kid was probably just about ready to wet his pants. I understood.
“Madam, please,” said my playground monitor. “No one without a visitor pass is allowed to harass the students.”
“No one is doing any harassing,” said the other old lady.
Mutual’s lower lip was trembling. I saw him lean over and say something to Jason, and Jason said something back.
“And Jennifer?” said one of them. “Is Jennifer Van Den Berg here?”
I didn’t raise my hand. I ducked my head between my knees and tried to hide.
“Excuse me, ladies,” said Jason, standing up. “But I’ll speak for Mutual. He’s in perfect shape today!” He was speaking in a superpolite voice. I poked my head back up to see what he was up to.
“Wonderful,” said the first old lady. She opened her mouth to say something else, but Jason stayed standing up and started walking up toward them. Everyone had heard him talk about how he loved to freak old ladies out, but this was the first time I, for one, had ever actually seen him in action.
“Let me be the first to welcome you both to Gordon Liddy,” he said. “I’m Jason Keyes, student body president.”
“You are not!” shouted Marianne. We don’t actually have a student body president. If we did, Marianne would be all over that gig.
“He is too!” shouted Harlan, laughing and playing along with him. Harlan jumped up to stand next to Jason. “I’m Captain Harlan Sturr, deputy chief of staff to President Keyes.” He bowed deeply.
The recess monitors looked at each other and sort of half shrugged. Their jobs were to guard me and Marianne from each other, not to guard old ladies from Jason and Harlan. From the looks on their faces, I’d say that they were almost relieved that someone was standing up to Helen and Agnes. They seemed a bit confused as to what to do about them.
Everyone sort of snickered as Jason walked closer and closer. “On behalf of the school,” he continued, “I’d like to thank you for attending the spelling bee. We’re always happy to entertain a couple of geezers.”
“Young man!” shouted Helen. “In my day, we did not refer to our elders as geezers!”
“President Keyes is terribly sorry,” Harlan said, smiling. “But, in answer to your question, Mutual has studied hard, and is ready to kick some serious butt. So don’t you geezers worry!”
“I beg your pardon!” said Agnes. “In my day, you’d have been paddled across your behinds!”
I’d never seen anyone so upset over the word “geezers.” I guess she was surprised to hear it from a “little speller.”
“Paddled?” said Harlan. “Well, be my guest!”
And he turned his back to them, bent over, and unbuttoned his jeans like he was going to moon them.
Everyone gasped, and a lot of people laughed. I couldn’t help giggling myself, especially when he put his thumbs into the belt loops and started to act like he was actually going to pull down the back of his pants. It looked like he was really going to do it!
“Yeah, I think we both need it!” said Jason. And he turned around and acted like he was going to moon them, too!
“Come on, guys!” said Harlan. “Everybody get up!”
Tony got up. Then Gunther did. Then Mutual, who looked very nervous, stood up. Harlan gave him a nod of encouragement. Most of the kids who were sitting were practically cracking up.
I felt like I was watching history unfold. This was the kind of thing that kids would tell their younger siblings about—the day that all the guys had mooned a couple of old ladies before the spelling bee!
Harlan was the first to actually lower the back of his pants. I don’t think anyone but the old ladies could actually see any more than a glimpse of his boxers, but we were all in hysterics. Then Jason lowered his even further. I looked over at t
he recess monitors, who looked like deer caught in headlights. Mutual looked sort of confused, but he followed suit, unbuckling his belt and starting to undo his slacks.
Now, let me make this clear, since I know that there are a lot of stories going around about what happened—no one ACTUALLY mooned the old ladies. A couple of the guys lowered the backs of their pants an inch or two, but that’s all. It was enough to freak the old ladies out. They made horrified faces at each other and started backing up.
The recess monitors jumped into action. They ran up to the old ladies while they were too busy being stunned to argue and hustled them out the door and into the hallway. In the process, Helen dropped the black book she had been holding, and I noticed that Chrissie jumped forward and grabbed it.
When the recess monitors came back in—alone—a second later and locked the door, everyone applauded.
I’m sure that in years to come, the story will get changed around as kids retell the story over and over. We’ve all heard stories like the one about Johnny Dean painting Principal Floren’s dog purple, but I don’t think I’d ever actually witnessed the sort of event that would go down in school history. Not until then.
This would make legends out of some of us. Maybe all of us.
Jason rebuttoned his pants and bowed. Harlan and Mutual followed. Everyone applauded and laughed. One of the recess monitors went over and scolded them a little, but you could see that her heart wasn’t in it. It was some time before things calmed down, but, when they did, it felt even more like there was a spirit of camaraderie in the room. I was proud to be spelling with these people. They might not have been just like me, but they were my friends. All of them.
Well, all except Marianne, of course. She spent the whole episode sitting in the corner, scowling like a regular little troll. I smiled over at her, and she looked so mad that I thought that she was going to jump up and attack me.
Meanwhile, Chrissie was sitting in the corner, reading through the little black book they had dropped. Then she shouted, “Aha!” and ran out of the room—I had to wonder what the heck had been in that book.
The recess monitors told us not to touch the burgers the old ladies had brought in, which was fine with us. I would have sooner eaten candy from a stranger. Instead they put in a call to a pizza place that was able to bring us a whole stack of pizzas in fifteen minutes.
Through the intercom, I could hear the Good Times Gang starting into their opening number, a song called “It’s Cool to Stay in School.” They were booked at least once a year—they did a lot of songs about why smoking and drinking were bad, why you should listen to your parents, and how to cope with peer pressure. Things like that.
You know what? The chorus of “It’s Cool to Stay in School” actually sort of says that you should listen to peer pressure.
Now I’m a homeless junkie and
I live on crumbs and gruel
‘Cause no one ever told me that
It’s cool to stay in school.
See? The reason the guy in the song ended up a junkie is that there was no peer pressure to stay in school!
We all knew the words by then, since they hadn’t changed their act in years. So we sang along as loudly as we could, laughing our heads off. The next song was called “My Aunt Judith Smokes,” and we sang along with that, too, while we ate our pizza.
It was as good a way as any to keep our minds off the fact that the bee would be starting in less than twenty minutes. We were going to have to stop being friends and go out onstage to be enemies.
30
MUTUAL
rosaceous—adjective. Resembling a rose. Most kids would blush so hard at the very thought of showing an old lady their butt that they would be positively rosaceous.
I freely admit that I was terrified when the old ladies showed up and began to ask me questions. How did they know who I was? Why did they care if I felt like a good speller? Why were they spitting? Were they going to spit on me? And what did they mean when they said there would be trouble if I did not win?
While they were shouting at each other, I leaned over to Jason and muttered, “Help!” I was too scared to say anything else. Jason had leaned over and said, “I’m on it.”
Over the previous two weeks, he had spent lots of time talking about different ways of frightening old ladies—but I had certainly never seen him do so before. In fact, I was coming to the conclusion that he just liked to talk about freaking old ladies out, but never actually did it.
Watching him and Harlan get up and prepare to frighten the old ladies had been an inspiring sight. The applause in the room afterward was like nothing I had ever experienced. I felt as though I was a part of something bigger than myself, and it felt wonderful.
Amber was blushing. “I can’t believe how brave you guys were!” she said to us. “I’m going to cast a spell for both of you right now!”
And she spun around three times, then sat cross-legged on the floor and started chanting intently.
“Thank you, Jason,” I said. “If you had not stood up, no one would have.”
“Hey, man,” he said. “No old ladies freak people out on my watch. Sometimes we have to help each other out, right? But Harlan was the one who started mooning them. That was brilliant.”
He looked over to Harlan, and pointed at him. Harlan pointed back, smiling.
Shortly thereafter, I got my very first taste of pizza. It immediately became my favorite food of all time. It was further proof to me that the outside world was not nearly as bad as my parents had told me. No place that has pizza can be all bad.
Just about then, the sound of what I assumed was the Good Times Gang came over the intercom. The first song appeared to be called “It’s Cool to Stay in School,” which was more like a campfire song than a metal song, but it must have been very popular, since all the other students were singing along and laughing boisterously.
The next song, about a woman who dies of smoking, was equally well received. I particularly enjoyed the third number, which they said was called “Get High on Self-Esteem.” After the last song, “If Y’All Wanna Join a Gang, Join the Good Times Gang!” they explained that we were all now honorary members of the Good Times Gang, and that, if we were ever asked to cheat, steal, drink, or do drugs, we could just say “Hey! I don’t need to do that stuff! I’m a member of the Good Times Gang!”
I suppose it was an honor, even though I’d been raised not to use terms such as “hey,” and had been warned all my life never to join any gangs. Everyone else in the school had probably been made an honorary member years ago, though, and I was glad to catch up. They were a gang of good guys, not a gang of hoodlums, after all. If there were bad gangs around, it stood to reason that there must have been good ones to stop them.
As soon as the Gang left the stage, Mrs. Rosemary came in and led us out of the backstage area and into the auditorium, where the bee itself would take place. I had waited for this moment for most of my life.
I had to squint for a second when I first stepped out onto the stage, since the lights were so bright. When I took my seat on the risers that were set up on the stage, my eyes began to adjust, and I could see that every seat was filled with a student or teacher, except for the first two rows. That, Mrs. Rosemary explained, was where we were to go sit when we missed a word.
There were cameras filming things in the aisles, and another camera was set up right behind the little booth in the middle of the audience where the man running the sound was. Back behind us, a very large screen was set up, showing the microphone. I guessed that it would be showing a large video image of whoever was spelling at the time.
Mrs. Rosemary came out to give a little speech to the audience about how this was not really a competition, but a celebration of spelling, education, town pride, and self-esteem. I leaned over to Jason.
“She is not telling the truth, right?” I asked. “Because if this is not a competition, my parents will be very upset.”
“Nah,” said Jason
. “It’s just the speech she gives every year. It’s a competition, all right.”
When Mrs. Rosemary finished, a woman from Hedekker’s Appliance Store gave a speech about how the store liked to give back to the community. After that, a man at the judges’ table, which was set up on the side of the stage, called Amber Hexam to be the first speller.
Amber slowly rose from her seat, still chanting under her breath. She had been rocking back and forth, and, when she opened her eyes, I noticed that they were crossed. She looked rather dizzy as she made her way up to the microphone.
I looked back to see the video image of her at the microphone. If she had seemed dizzy walking to the microphone, her close-up made her look as though she’d been hit by a truck.
“Amber,” said the man at the table, “your word is ‘pithecan.’”
“Man, they’re starting out tough!” said Jason.
“Can…” She shook her head, then held it in her hands. “Sentence?” she asked.
“What is wrong with her?” I muttered to Jason.
“She must have chanted too hard and given herself a headache!” he whispered back.
“‘Pithecan,’” said the man at the desk, “means of or relating to apes. As in ‘Neanderthals were pithecan.’”
Behind me, I heard Harlan giggle. “As in ‘Principal Floren is pithecan!’” he said.
“Pithecan,” Amber repeated, slowly. “P-I-T-H-A—”
The bell rang.
Amber shook her head and slowly walked down to the front row of seats, where she sat down, looked at Jason, then shrugged.
“I guess her plan backfired,” I said.
“Guess so,” said Jason. “That can happen. If you focus or concentrate too hard, you can end up feeling like your brain is melting. It’s up to you and me now.”
Jennifer was next, and she correctly spelled “apostate.” Then Marianne got “rosaceous,” which she spelled correctly. The next person was a fourth grader who misspelled “beagle.”
Jason’s first word, believe it or not, was “malodorous.” Of course he got that one right—any Paranormal Execution fan would know that one!
