by N. Griffin
“Of course she’ll be there,” said Jacinda. “She’s one of the town’s leading citizens.”
“Now, that,” said Mr. Carper, “is of interest.” His lip curled as he passed by Patches’s cage. “Disgusting,” he said.
“What!” squawked Cyrus.
“Hamsters,” said Mr. Carper. “Totally gross. They spend the day sitting around in their own filth.” He shuddered. “I can’t stand them.”
The class stirred angrily.
Smashie drew in her breath sharply.
It was awful but true. Despite his rude personal comments and stance against interesting schoolwork, Smashie felt a deep kinship with Mr. Carper.
Little did she know that their shared hatred would come back to haunt her after Patches had been stolen.
“All right, let me finish reading the rest of this nonsense.” Mr. Carper’s eyes slid down the page of morning announcements as he paced and continued to read: “‘We know all our students are in for a fine day of learning. . . .’ Blah and blah . . .‘Think hard and work well. . . .’”
Mr. Carper crumpled the paper. “Okay, whatever, that’s enough.”
Charlene furrowed her brow. “Does it really say blah and blah, Mr. Carper?”
“Oh, Girl with the Shirt.” Mr. Carper glanced at the clock. “Hope that you grow up beautiful.”
Charlene’s outraged gasp was drowned out by a crash as the door of Room 11 flew open. In its frame stood Mrs. Armstrong, principal of the Rebecca Lee Crumpler Elementary School.
“Mr. Carper!” boomed Mrs. Armstrong, twin snorts of air puffing through her nostrils and her eyes practically on fire.
Mr. Carper wheeled around and put a friendly hand on Charlene’s shoulder. Charlene shrugged it furiously off.
“Why, hello, Mrs. Armstrong!” said Mr. Carper, making his voice extra deep. He smiled winningly at the principal.
“I am ill, Mr. Carper,” cried the principal. “I am SIMPLY ILL!”
“I misspoke, Mrs. Armstrong,” said Mr. Carper, his smile rather strained. “I’m sure she’ll grow up to be a real stunner —”
The principal looked at Mr. Carper with furrowed brows. “What are you talking about?”
“Are you ill with the flu, Mrs. Armstrong?” Smashie asked anxiously.
“No.” Mrs. Armstrong swept her eyes toward Smashie. “I am not. Though it is very kind of you to ask, Smashie. What I meant, children”— she raised her voice —“is that I am SIMPLY ILL ABOUT THE BEHAVIOR OF ROOM 11!”
Mr. Carper sagged. “Thank goodness.”
Mrs. Armstrong eyed him with distaste.
“I mean,” said Mr. Carper hastily, “how awful that my little charges have misbehaved.”
“Mr. Carper,” said Mrs. Armstrong tersely, “this has nothing to do with you.”
“Great,” said Mr. Carper.
Mrs. Armstrong raised her brows at him briefly before turning her glower to the class. “But it has everything to do with you, Room 11. I am heartily disappointed!”
“What did we do?” cried Jacinda.
“THIS!” Mrs. Armstrong stepped into the room and flung her hand dramatically toward the door. “Enter, Mr. Flange!”
Mr. Flange, the art teacher, stepped reluctantly into the room. He stood before the class, his large mustache drooping over his mouth.
“Your hand!” Mrs. Armstrong commanded.
Silently, Mr. Flange held up his left hand, the fingers of which were curled over a ruler. Slowly, he unfurled them. Astonishingly, the ruler did not fall to the ground but remained stuck straight across the palm of his hand.
“Magic,” breathed Smashie.
“No.” Dontel shook his head. “Glue.”
He was right.
“Who glued Mr. Flange’s hand to this ruler, Room 11?” thundered Mrs. Armstrong.
Nobody answered.
Smashie’s and Dontel’s eyes met. Plastic tarantulas, rude phone calls — who else would glue a teacher to a ruler? Dollars to doughnuts, it was Billy Kamarski.
They were not alone in their thinking. All eyes had turned to Billy.
“Hey!” shouted Billy, looking from child to child. “What are you all looking at me for?”
“Mr. Kamarski?” Mrs. Armstrong said sternly. “Have you something to say?”
“Heck no!” Billy cried. “It wasn’t me!”
Siggie snorted.
“Like heck it wasn’t,” muttered John Singletary.
“Who, then?” Mrs. Armstrong trumpeted. “This class was the last to have art. You were the last to use the rulers. Nobody else has entered or exited the art room this morning!”
Smashie and Dontel did not believe in pointing fingers, but they did believe firmly in people taking responsibility. Smashie drew together her brows and glared in Billy’s direction. Dontel fixed him with a very stern look.
The students were silent.
Finally, someone whispered, “Come on, Billy.”
Billy’s head whipped round. “I told you, it wasn’t me!”
The children stared at him accusingly.
Mrs. Armstrong waited.
Silence.
“Fine!” she said. “Come along! Immediately! All of you!”
“All of us?” cried Smashie. “Do you think all of us glued Mr. Flange to a ruler, Mrs. Armstrong?”
“Certainly I do not,” said Mrs. Armstrong. “But I believe one of you did, and until that person comes forward, you will all spend from now until the end of morning break — a silent morning break, Room 11 — with me. In my office.”
“But, Mrs. Armstrong, that’s not fair!” cried John.
“Neither is gluing people to things!” Mrs. Armstrong cried. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Flange?”
Mr. Flange looked gloomily at his hand and nodded.
“Punishing them sounds like a good idea, Mrs. Armstrong,” Mr. Carper said.
John shook his head in disgust.
“I’ll just wait for them here,” Mr. Carper continued. “More practice time for me.” He cast an eye over the stacks on Ms. Early’s desk. “There’s got to be something I can pose with around here. Every teacher has a secret stash of granola bars or something lying around, right?”
Mrs. Armstrong eyed him distastefully.
“Our staff takes its snacks in the teachers’ lounge, Mr. Carper,” she said. “Feel free to join them if you wish.” She turned back to the children. “Form a line, Room 11. File!”
“Mr. Carper is happy that we’re in trouble!” whispered Smashie to Dontel as the class headed down the hall.
“I think he’s just happy to be rid of us,” Dontel whispered back.
They were not the only ones talking out of turn. The line of children fairly hissed with upset speech as it filed past Miss Dismont’s empty classroom next door.
“I wish we were at the Natural History Museum, like Miss Dismont’s class.”
“Me too!”
“That Billy —”
“If we have to miss recess because of him —”
Willette stopped short just ahead of Smashie. “Who will take care of Patches while we’re gone?” she cried.
“Patches will be fine, Willette,” Dontel reassured her.
“We will only be out of the room for fifteen minutes,” said Smashie.
“But he’ll be all alone! With Mr. Carper, who hates him! You might not care if Patches is happy, Smashie McPerter,” she cried, eyes narrowing, “but the rest of us do!”
Better Patches in there with Mr. Carper than us, thought Smashie. Aloud, however, she said only, “I never said I wanted Patches to be unhappy, Willette!”
But Willette was inconsolable. “Oh, Patches!” she cried.
Smashie and Dontel exchanged looks. Willette, they agreed, loved Patches almost Too Much.
They filed into Mrs. Armstrong’s office.
It was awful. The children were cramped together in tight rows on the floor. Mrs. Armstrong glowered over them.
“It wasn’t me!” Billy crie
d for the thousandth time.
“Sure, it wasn’t, Billy,” said John.
“Why do you always think things are my fault?”
“Because they always are!” Jacinda shouted back.
“We must not accuse others unfairly, Room 11,” said Mrs. Armstrong. “Did anyone see Billy perform this terrible act?”
The children looked at one another. Nobody had.
“See?” cried Billy. “You’re just blaming me because I have an awful reputation.”
“And because you were supplies monitor in art today,” Smashie muttered darkly to Dontel.
The conversation only deteriorated from there.
“Enough!” Mrs. Armstrong said. “If no one will take responsibility, Room 11 must continue to be punished as a body. You will have silent morning breaks in your room each day. And lunch recess privileges will be closed to you until further notice as well. You will be permitted to talk quietly amongst yourselves at the rear of the blacktop, but athletics — playing on the swings and climbing on the play structure — will be quite off-limits.” She stood up. “That is all. You may go.”
The children squabbled their way back to their classroom.
“The whole class is being punished, and it’s all because of you, Billy!” cried Joyce.
“I was looking forward to a good game of flag football today,” said Cyrus. “And now — nothing!”
“Nothing,” echoed Dontel, shaking his head. Although he and Smashie often played together at recess, when Dontel played sports, Smashie did not join him. Mostly because she was the sort of person who forgot to pay attention to the game and got bonked on the head with the ball.
“This puts me in a mood, Kamarski,” said John.
“I didn’t do it!” Billy shouted again.
“Sure, kid. Tell us another one,” said Cyrus, one eyebrow raised.
“But it wasn’t me!” Billy cried as they reached the classroom door.
“Why can’t he just admit it?” said Smashie. “Poor Mr. Flange.”
“Well,” said Dontel, “maybe it wasn’t him.”
“Tchah,” said Smashie, and pushed open the door to Room 11.
Mr. Carper, standing at the back of the room by the cubbies and Patches’s cage, leaped up as if stung.
“What are you doing back here?” he cried.
“It’s our classroom, Mr. Carper,” Dontel explained. “We’re supposed to come here to learn things.”
“Learn things,” muttered Mr. Carper. “Sweet mercy.”
He straightened up.
“I hope that talking-to made you all feel bad,” he said. “Things are going to be a lot tighter in here from now on.”
“Tighter!” said Smashie to Dontel. “How could they get any tighter?”
“Sit,” said Mr. Carper. “Now.”
As he spoke, his eyes were fixed on the front of the room, and he tossed his head up, then down, then to the side.
“What is he doing?” Dontel whispered as the children headed to their spots.
Smashie craned her neck. “I think he is trying to catch sight of himself in the mirror on the top of the overhead projector.”
“Quiet, Girl with the Ears!”
What!
“Who does he think he is!” Smashie whispered furiously, grasping her ears. “Sub with the Meanness, is who! Why, I ought to —” She took a deep breath. Mr. Carper might be in a bad temper, but that was nothing compared to what he would be once she started shouting.
But Mr. Carper was already talking again.
“First of all,” he said, “none of you is to come near this hamster for the rest of the day. It’s closed to you.”
“Closed to us!” cried Willette.
“But, Mr. Carper!” cried Charlene. “We have to feed him and give him water!”
“I already fed the awful thing,” said Mr. Carper.
“Thing!” squawked Billy just as Siggie, whose day it was to feed Patches, emitted an outraged yelp.
“And it has plenty of water.” Mr. Carper threw a baleful look over his shoulder at the little rodent. “So stay clear.”
“But why? Are you punishing us, too?”
Mr. Carper pushed himself away from the cage. “Yes,” he said. “And also because those things carry germs like crazy and this school is already full of people with the flu. I’m not about to increase my chances of getting sick, not with the circular gig on the line. So stay away from that rodent,” he said. “And from me, too. As much as possible.”
“Mr. Carper hates Patches as much as he hates us,” Willette whispered to her tablemates.
“No kidding,” said Charlene. “What kind of awful person wouldn’t love Patches?”
“Hmm,” said Joyce, and turned and frowned under her heavy bangs in Smashie’s direction. The two other girls followed her gaze and shook their heads, lips pursed.
Smashie broke off thinking vengeful thoughts about Mr. Carper and stared at her knees. Her shoulder blades scrunched uncomfortably. Dontel looked hard in the other direction.
Scrabble, scrabble, scrabble, went Patches in the back of the room.
How could Smashie have known that those were some of the last scrabble, scrabble noises that Room 11 would hear from Patches that day? How could she have known that in just a couple of hours, Patches would go missing and that she herself would be the person most concerned with his recovery?
“Ten thirty,” Mr. Carper moaned, glancing at the clock. “What am I going to do with you until lunch?”
“We should do what we missed this morning.” Dontel got up and moved to the back of the room. “I’ll get the aluminum foil we need for our science projects.”
“I’ll pass out the directions,” said Jacinda, hopping up to join him.
“I’ll pour out the black paint,” said Smashie.
“Hey,” said Mr. Carper. “‘Who said you could just get up and mill around?”
“We’re getting ready for science,” said Smashie.
“Science,” said Mr. Carper as if Smashie had suggested the class have a go at pole-vaulting. “What do you mean, science?” He glanced at the packet of lesson plans Ms. Early had left.
“We’ve been studying light in science for weeks, Mr. Carper,” said Alonso. “Today we’re supposed to make pinhole cameras.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Mr. Carper, holding up his hand. “Whoa. No. Black paint? Spilly children? No way. I’d rather put a fork through my temples than deal with that combination.” He crumpled Ms. Early’s plans in his hand.
“Only the painting part is messy, Mr. Carper!” said Smashie. “And we wear big shirts over our regular shirts so we don’t wreck them.”
“Well, I don’t wear big shirts over my regular shirts,” said Mr. Carper. “And I’m not risking any damage to this outfit.”
“But, Mr. Carper!”
“But nothing. It’s called school. Not Pinhole Camera Land. Where are those worksheet packets I made? Ah, here.” He took up a stack of papers in his hand. “Sit down, Passing-Out-Stuff People. We’re going to do these instead.”
“But we brought in oatmeal cartons from home to make the cameras and everything!” Siggie gestured to the back of the room, where the cartons lay in a large cardboard box near Patches’s cage.
“I could pass those out as soon as I’m done with the aluminum foil,” said Dontel.
“I SAID NO!”
The class jumped.
“Sit down.”
Smashie and Dontel sat down. So did Jacinda.
“Grr,” said Smashie.
“Hoo-boy,” said Siggie. “Here we go.”
“The man is in a temper,” John agreed.
“What, Athletic-Looking Boy? Here, pass these out.” Mr. Carper dropped the stack of papers in front of John, who gave him the eye but rose from his seat.
Scowling, Smashie put down the paint containers beside her chair. All around her, the normal happy buzz of Room 11 was replaced by a grim silence as the children took out th
eir pencils and started to work on Mr. Carper’s worksheets.
Smashie took up her own packet and read:
She looked bleakly at Dontel, who shook his head in disgust.
“How does this count as school?” he said hopelessly.
But there was nothing for it. He and Smashie settled in to work.
“We better make these neat, too,” said Dontel. “Or he’ll make us rewrite them, just to waste time.”
Smashie frowned. Her handwriting was terrible.
Mr. Carper began to pace around the room, stopping in front of the math manipulatives to pick up one of the little mirrors Room 11 used when they worked on symmetry.
Mr. Carper winked at himself. Then he made his face look friendly, yet knowing.
“Well, hello there, Mrs. True,” he murmured, passing a hand over his hair. Forming his fingers into the shape of a little gun, he winked at himself again and clicked it. Then he put down the mirror and continued around the room.
“Sharpen that pencil, Big Feet,” said Mr. Carper, absently twirling some keys on a chain around his neck as he passed John’s desk.
“I thought I was Athletic-Looking Boy,” said John.
“Don’t be a baby — you’re both. Slow down, Hair,” he warned Alonso. “These sheets take some thought.”
“Just take it, Singletary,” John muttered to himself. “This is just one moment in the day.”
“Mr. Carper?” Alonso asked. “Why do you wear your keys around your neck? Why don’t you just stick them in your pocket?”
“I never put anything in my pockets,” said Mr. Carper. “Mars the line of the clothes.”
“Oh,” said Alonso.
“Now, get to work.”
Dontel’s mouth fell open. “If he won’t put anything in his pockets,” he whispered to Smashie, “where does he put stuff he wants to think more about later?” Dontel’s pockets were always stocked with items of this ilk. Like his astronomer idol, Dr. Tyson, Dontel loved nothing more than figuring out how things worked and applying what he learned to new situations. So when he came across something that was potentially useful or interesting, it went right into his pocket to await further study or application. Right now, for example, he was carrying a miniature flashlight, a packet of mayonnaise, and a complex set of tiny interlocking parts from his family’s old dishwasher, among other things. He’d figured out and explained to Smashie how the flashlight worked, as well as how to make mayonnaise, but was still figuring out the dishwasher parts.
