Cheesie Mack Is Not Exactly Famous

by Steve Cotler

  How does Goon hypnotize people into thinking she is nice? I don’t get it!

  But I have to admit Goon is very excellent at dance and knows everything about ballet. And the music from Swan Lake and The Nutcracker (another ballet) is really good. You’ve probably seen The Nutcracker on TV. They show it every Christmas. Both ballets were written over a hundred years ago by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Pyotr is how Russians say the name Peter. Same for Pedro in Spanish, Pierre in French, Pietro in Italian, and Petr in Czech. In German, Peter is Peter. (I asked Granpa—he knows lots about languages.)

  Goon saw me come into the room. She gave me a huge smile. That was weird.

  I pointed to the back of the room. “Let’s sit here,” I said to Georgie. “My sister is up to something.”

  And she was.

  A few seconds later, while Mr. Stotts and Mr. Amato were in the front of the room talking to eighth grader Jake Mitaro, RLS student body president, Goon, accompanied by several of her girl-ballet-drooling fans, came back to where we were sitting. She was very polite, which made me very suspicious.

  “Alyssa, Hailey, Camden … this is my little brother, Ronald.”

  She really emphasized the word little.

  “He’s not a student officer. He’s a guest. He’s going to talk to us today about something really important.”

  She made the phrase “really important” sound totally bogus. Then she smiled a fake smile.

  Now I was super suspicious!

  “Don’t be nervous, Ronald,” Goon said with an even fakier smile. “The kids in here are really nice.”

  Huh? I never get nervous in front of people.

  Goon looked at me like she felt really, really sorry for me. Then she turned to her fans. “He gets the hiccups.” Then she spun around like she was in a ballet and sort of glided back to her chair. I have to admit she is very graceful. The other girls followed her like servants following a queen.

  Hiccups? Why had she mentioned hiccups? I wondered.

  The meeting started. Georgie leaned over and whispered, “When you tell about the thingie, you better be on high alert.” He pointed at Goon. “Your enemy is planning some sort of surprise attack.” You can probably tell Georgie plays lots of war video games.

  Hiccups? When was the last time I had hiccups? I stared at the back of Goon’s head and listened to the first discussion. It was about wearing costumes to school on Halloween, which was less than three weeks away. Decision: optional for kids, required for teachers.

  Georgie whispered, “If Mrs. Wikowitz comes dressed as herself, she’ll for sure win Best Witch.”

  I had to slap my hand over my mouth and nose to keep from snort-laughing.

  Then the discussion switched to the Thanksgiving food drive for needy families. Decision: the homeroom that collects the most food gets to represent RLS in the city’s annual holiday parade.

  Georgie whispered, “No biggie if our room doesn’t win. Now that we’re pals with the mayor, we can ask to ride on her float.”

  I slapped my hand over his mouth to get him to shush.

  Then Jake Mitaro called on Georgie.

  “Cheesie’s going to tell about it,” Georgie said.

  (If you read my last book, you know Georgie hates getting up in front of people unless he’s doing his Great Georgio magic act.)

  I walked to the front of the room. As I passed Goon, she quietly went, “Hic!” And that’s when I realized what her plan was. She was trying to get me to think about hiccups … and if I did think about hiccups, maybe I would actually get hiccups. No way! I thought. I will not think about hiccups. I will not. I will not.

  “After school yesterday,” I began … and just then the word hiccup went right through the middle of my brain!

  Stop it! I told myself, looking out at all the kids staring back at me. Goon sat, her hands folded on her desktop, smiling her most evil smile. She quietly pretended to hiccup.

  I pretended not to notice.

  “After the sixth-grade basketball game,” I continued, “Georgie and I trespassed—”

  My chest felt weird. Kind of like way down inside, there was a bubble or something. It is NOT a hiccup, I told myself. Do not even think about hiccupping.

  I took a deep breath. “We trespassed—I admit it—into that construction area. We were just goofing off, messing around, and we found—”

  As I told my story. I realized I was doing three things at once:

  1. I was speaking aloud, explaining how we found the Captain John Smith artifact.

  2. I was thinking about hiccups even though I had told myself not to, and my mind was jumping from one question to the next.

  What causes hiccups?

  Something to do with your diaphragm?

  What actually is a diaphragm?

  How do you spell diaphragm?

  Is there a silent g?

  Who ever heard of a silent g?

  Oh yeah, how about the g in “Silent Night”?

  And then, believe it or not, the music to “Silent Night” started up in my head, and I wondered what Granpa might get me for Christmas, because he always comes up with really weird and fun gifts.

  If you are a careful reader, you probably noticed I said “three things at once,” but there are only two items in the list above. That’s because while my mouth was speaking about Captain John Smith and my mind was zooming from hiccups to Christmas, it was like I was outside myself observing me doing both. Thinking about those two things was number three.

  “Go on,” Jake said, and I realized I had stopped talking and was just standing there thinking about thinking.

  “Oh yeah,” I said quickly. “So Georgie and I and my Granpa took this thing, this artifact, to the museum …”

  Goon went “Hic!” It was just loud enough for me to hear.

  “… and we showed it to Professor Solescu … she’s the daughter of the man who—”

  Sometimes things happen without warning. This was one of those times.

  “Hic!”

  It just popped out of me. A hiccup so powerful it made me jump backward. Everyone was staring at me. I looked at Goon. Her eyes were wide and her face was all contorted like she was trying to keep from laughing.

  “HIC!”

  This one came out of me even louder. Everyone laughed. Goon’s hee-hee was so big, she actually had to put her head down on her desk. Even Mr. Stotts and Mr. Amato were smiling. I was totally blushing.

  It was in front of others and really embarrassing. Eight points for Goon. The score was now 741–702.

  I am not a quitter. I had hiccups throughout the rest of my explanation—and there were tons of giggles and snickers—but I finished telling everything. “So there will be a team (hic) of scientists from Harvard coming up to our school to dig (hic) around because maybe there are more artifacts.”

  “And that means,” Mr. Stotts said, “construction will be temporarily halted while they do their investigation. For all we know, this school may have been built on a site of great historical importance.”

  “Speaking of historical importance,” I said. “At (hic) lunch today, a bunch of us came up with an idea.” I told Mr. Stotts and everyone else about the time capsule.

  “An excellent, excellent suggestion,” Mr. Amato said. His head was moving up and down so much that several kids began nodding with him.

  Mr. Stotts agreed enthusiastically. “Professor Solescu thinks the construction delay will be very short. Probably no more than a week. If we can put a time capsule together before construction resumes …”

  “Cheesie found that Artie Fact,” Georgie offered loudly without raising his hand, “so I think he should decide what goes into the time capsule.”

  Mr. Stotts puckered his lips and sort of simultaneously nodded and shook his head. “Well, I don’t think he should be the only one to decide. But, yes, we’ll set up a Time Capsule Committee and Ronald can be the chairperson.”

  I looked at my sister. She was mad … and speechless
… and mad.

  (I put mad in that sentence twice because that’s how angry she looked. She hates when I get anything.)

  Georgie wasn’t finished with his suggestions. “And since I was the only other Artie Fact finder, and we’re both sixth graders, the rest of the committee should be all sixth graders. I nominate Diana and Eddie.”

  “That is completely unfair,” Goon blurted. “What about seventh and eighth graders?”

  Mr. Stotts looked directly at me. “June is right.”

  Goon gave me a you-lose look.

  “I’m going to add the presidents of both upper grades to the committee. And Mrs. DeWitt,” Mr. Stotts said loudly to get her attention, “would you agree to be faculty advisor?”

  “Of course! It’ll be fun,” she said from the other side of the library. “The committee can have its first meeting here at lunch tomorrow.”

  Mr. Stotts stood. “Sounds good. Meeting adjourned.”

  Georgie jumped up and shook my hand vigorously. “Congratulations! You have just become the Big Cheese!”

  I grinned. Yesterday morning I was just another sixth grader at Robert Louis Stevenson Middle School. Today I am chairperson of the Time Capsule Committee.

  Oh yeah.

  Uh-huh.

  Cooler than Goon.

  Just before dinner, while I was playing a video game with Georgie in the living room, Granpa came up from the basement carrying bottles of his homemade root beer. “I don’t share this with just anyone,” he announced loudly. “But tonight is special.”

  Granpa makes his own root beer from a recipe he says he invented. It is really delicious, but he makes only two dozen bottles in a batch, so I don’t get to drink it often.

  My dad asked, “What’s the occasion, Pop?”

  Granpa set the bottles on the dining room table and strode into the living room. “We’ve got a big celebrity eating with us tonight. Just watch what I recorded off the five o’clock news.”

  A guest? I had no idea what he was talking about. Mom, Goon, and Dad followed him. Granpa grabbed the remote and clicked off our video game.

  “Hey,” I moaned. “I was winning.”

  “Too bad,” Georgie said with a fake I’m-so-sorry face. “I would’ve caught up anyway.”

  Granpa waited until everyone was seated, then clicked the remote until a newscast he had recorded came on.

  “… migration of whales along the New England coast should continue for another couple of wee—”

  He fast-forwarded until the screen switched from spouting whales and ocean shots to a woman in a museum.

  “Harvard archaeologist Dr. Elizabeth Solescu announced this afternoon the discovery of—”

  “That’s the lady we met!” I said loudly, pointing at the TV screen. The professor was holding up the compass thingie we’d found.

  “Shh!” Goon hissed.

  The newscaster’s voice continued, “—a four-hundred-year-old artifact from one of the earliest British explorations of Massachusetts, unearthed by two schoolboys in Gloucester.”

  Georgie elbowed me in the ribs. “That’s us!”

  “I can’t hear!” Goon shouted.

  The image then showed our school construction site, and there was Georgie, looking up at the excavator. I was pointing into a trench and yelling over the construction noise, “Right there’s where I found it!”

  The rest of the news report talked about how important our discovery was. The whole thing was only a minute long, but it ended by showing me and Georgie walking through our school with the mayor.

  “You’re famous, kiddo,” Granpa said, ruffling his hand through my hair.

  How cool was that?! Georgie and I jumped up and high-fived. Mom and Dad were smiling. Goon wasn’t.

  I had a bottle of Granpa’s root beer at dinner. Dee-lish! Goon didn’t drink any. She said she wasn’t thirsty.

  *

  As Georgie and I walked to our homeroom the next morning, it seemed like the whole school was buzzing with talk about us.

  Here are some of the things kids said:

  1. “Can I have your autograph?” (a girl I didn’t know)

  2. “May I have your autograph?” (another girl I didn’t know)

  3. “May I please have your autograph?” (Georgie … being a jerk)

  4. “I uploaded your newscast appearance onto YouTube. And now it’s been shared all over Facebook.” (Glenn … who showed us the video on his phone, which caused lots of kids to gather around and peer over our shoulders)

  5. “You guys must think you’re hot stuff.” (This was Drew, Goon’s so-called boyfriend. Goon walked right past us.)

  Even in our classes, we were kind of like celebrities. In homeroom, Mrs. Wikowitz led a special lesson about the exploration of New England and the importance of archaeology in understanding how people lived back then. In science, Mr. Amato explained why some artifacts decay and others don’t. Most articles made of iron rust (they oxidize), while things made from plants or animals get eaten up by bugs or bacteria or mold (they rot). In math, we were supposed to review converting fractions to decimals and vice versa, but Ms. Hammerbord took the first fifteen minutes of class to tell us about how she went to Montana one summer when she was in college to dig for fossils. (She found a bone from a duck-billed dinosaur, a hadrosaur, that was eighty million years old!)

  At lunch, we had barely taken two bites when I looked at the wall clock and jumped up.

  “Georgie! C’mon! We’re late for the Time Capsule Committee meeting.”

  Georgie shouted, “Doin’ a Dutcher!” and shoved his entire hot dog into his mouth. (If you read Cheesie Mack Is Cool in a Duel, you know who Dutcher was and what he could do.)

  I turned to Lana. Once Oddny started sitting at our table, so did Lana. “You and Oddny come, too. I want you to be part of the committee.”

  I zoomed out of the lunchroom. Georgie, his cheeks ballooned out with hot dog, was right behind, followed by the two girls. When I got to the library, the president of the seventh grade (Bobby Pinkerton) and the other presidents of the sixth grade (Diana Mooney and Eddie Chapple) were already seated. Moments later Lana, Oddny, and Georgie (he had swallowed) came in.

  Mrs. DeWitt handed me the student government gavel. “You can use this to chair the meeting, but let’s wait a bit. The eighth-grade president isn’t here yet.”

  Then Goon walked in.

  “Mikaela couldn’t make it. But I’m vice president, so she appointed me in her place.”

  “She is so lying,” I whispered to Georgie. “She forced her way in.”

  “Let’s get started,” Mrs. DeWitt said, but then her phone rang. “You kids go ahead,” she said, heading for her office, “I’ll be right back.”

  “Why are they here?” Goon asked, pointing to Lana and Oddny.

  “I wanted to have an equal number of girls and boys,” I responded. “And as head of this committee, I have that authority.” I wasn’t sure that was true, but it sounded good enough to shut Goon up, so I rapped the gavel on the table twice and began, “Mr. Stotts and Mrs. DeWitt said we need to make up a list of what should be in the time capsule. Lana, would you please be secretary?”

  She is one of those kids who are always prepared. She took out a pencil and some paper. I rapped the gavel again. (It’s fun to be chairperson!)

  “So, who’s got an idea?” I asked.

  Over the next fifteen minutes there was a lot of discussion. Ideas came from everyone except Goon. She just texted friends and fiddled around on her phone.

  Some of the ideas got rejected immediately:

  1. Eddie: “My fifth-grade class photo. Then they’ll know what a cool kid looked like.” (Diana: “Too conceited.”)

  2. Bobby: “My hand-painted skateboard.” (Me: “Good idea, but too big to fit inside.”)

  3. Georgie: “A shrunken head.” (Me: “Why ever?” Georgie: “To see if it shrinks even more!”)

  And some were instantly accepted:

  1. Bobby: “Las
t year’s RLS school yearbook.” (“Too bad your photo isn’t in it, Eddie.”)

  2. Oddny: “A picture of a manatee.” (“Because they’re funny-looking and will probably be extinct by then.”)

  3. Lana: “A smartphone.” (“Definitely with its user’s guide … even though it wouldn’t work because the battery will be dead.”)

  4. Georgie and Glenn’s school lunch menu/pizza recipe idea.

  5. Oddny: “A science textbook.” (“They’ll be so advanced, our science book will probably make them laugh.”)

  6. Eddie: “A one-dollar bill.” (“Who knows what money will look like in the future?”)

  7. Me: “An official Gloucester letter from Mayor Raglan.” (“It should begin, ‘Dear Gloucester of the Future.’ ”)

  We were brainstorming, and it was lots of fun. What would you have suggested? Please go to my website and tell me.

  We were still going strong when Mrs. DeWitt came out of her office and opened a side door to let Mr. Stotts, two men, and a woman into the library. The woman had a microphone. The men were carrying video equipment. Goon instantly stashed her phone away.

  “These folks are from cable news,” Mr. Stotts announced. “They’re here about the discovery. I told them about our time capsule, and they would like to video you kids in action.”

  “Um, what are we supposed to do?” I asked as the cable news crew began videoing.

  “Just continue with your meeting,” Mr. Stotts replied. “I’ve already contacted all your parents and gotten the okay.”

  “Um, any more ideas?” I asked.

  No one spoke. It’s weird how a camera can make people suddenly shy.

  Everyone, I guess, except Goon.

  “I’ve got an idea,” she said brightly.

  My sister is very clever. If there was a chance to be on cable news, she wanted to be the star.

  “I would like to put a book into the time capsule. One that would be typical of what kids today like to read.”

  My sister is very smart. She knew exactly how a librarian would react to that kind of a suggestion. Mrs. DeWitt raised her eyebrows and nodded several times. “What an excellent idea. Do you have one in mind?”

  “Yes,” Goon replied, smiling at the man holding the camera. “I would like to donate my own personal copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Since it was the first book in the world’s most popular series of children’s books, don’t you think it would be perfect?”