by Lorri Horn
What
Dewey answered him. Dropped my phone! checking if it still works
After he confirmed Dewey’s test, Colin sent a meme of a kid laying on his bed accidentally dropping a phone on his own face.
Dewey laughed and sighed.
At noon on Sunday, William came sliding into the office, right on time, to find Clara and Dewey waiting to meet him. William’s father was born in India and his mother in Germany. He and his sister were born in America.
The top of his head reached about Dewey’s chest. He had thick brown eyebrows that hung like fuzzy caterpillars over each of his warm almond-shaped brown eyes, an easy smile, and a small dimple in his chin. Today, like most days, he wore a plain white t-shirt with blue jeans. He sat before them, his chocolate brown hair still flattened from his late Sunday morning sleep.
“Good day, William.” Dewey pulled his chair closer to his desk as he greeted his client formally. “After thinking over your problem, we’ve come up with a plan of action.
“As you know, Mr. Nisano is perhaps one of the most boring men on the planet,” outlined Dewey. He got up from his chair and began to pace. “So we are going to give him a taste of his own medicine.”
“Huh? How do you mean?” William asked with intrigue.
Clara offered William some cookies, sliding the plate toward him. Surprisingly, he politely shook his head and mouthed silently, No, thank you.
“No one likes boredom, not even Mr. Nisano. We are going to make sure Mr. Nisano finds himself bored stiff in his own class so that he can’t help but get the message.”
“Oh, I think I get it, sort of,” nodded William slowly, and he reached over mindlessly for a cookie. “But how?”
“We’ll take care of that,” reassured Dewey. “Just make sure that you do whatever you get prompted to do. Follow our lead. We’ll handle the rest.”
William left, without much detail about the plan, and Clara raised her chin and eyes to look up at Dewey. “Well, I guess we have our work cut out for us.”
“We sure do.”
It’s a Terrible
Thing to Waste
“I’ve been thinking. Do you think removing the vending machines relates somehow to the t-issue?” proposed Seraphina as she and Colin brainstormed at her kitchen table.
Seraphina raised her socked feet up on the table as she leaned back in her chair. Colin had his shoes off as well, but he didn’t think he should put his feet up on someone else’s table, so he stretched his legs out beneath it, his colorful socked feet tapping together like a butterfly expanding and drying its wings before its first flight.
“I can’t really see how it would.” replied Colin. “I mean the t-issue seems to be about waste and resources. They’ve got to be making money on those machines, don’t they?”
“I don’t know,” replied Seraphina. “We need to find out why they’re taking them both. It just seems weird timing, if you ask me.”
“So what do we do? I’ve got all this information about toilet paper that I wanted you and Dewey to help me use with Mrs. Mayoral. We didn’t evolve from using corn cobs and clay to the modern luxury of two-ply paper just to have them dispense it in itty-bitty-minuscule-meager-pint-sized-stunted pieces! Humans ought not stand in the way of that kind of progress!”
Seraphina laughed. “We can still help you with that,” she assured him. She took her feet off the table, sat up, and removed her sweatshirt exposing two bare arms. Her olive skin felt as warm as it looked, and she got up to get some ice water from the refrigerator. As she got up, Peewee slowly pulled up from under the table to follow her.
“Want some?” she asked as the ice fell noisily into the cup.
“Naw.” Colin replied. “Hey, I didn’t even know he was under there.”
“He’s kind of hard to miss,” Seraphina chuckled, sticking an ice cube in his large mastiff mouth. Peewee swallowed it whole. He would have gladly sat his full 150-pound, apricot-furred self on her lap if she’d sat on the ground with him, but she sat back in her chair, so he retreated to a cushion the size of a small kiddie pool in the living room.
“Let’s do this,” she continued, sitting back down with her glass and smoothing out the hair she’d fuzzed up when she removed her sweatshirt. “You draft a letter about why this t-issue is unacceptable. Be sure you do more research though. You have to balance your argument, you know? It can’t be all emotion. You need to get some facts in there too.”
“Yeah, I can do that. I already have some. I know just where to look for more,” replied Colin, “I’m going to prove this t-issue is top-shelf, dude.”
“Ha! Good! I’m going to talk to Shawn and see what I can find out about the vending machines.”
“What about Dewey?” asked Colin.
“We can catch him up tomorrow at school,” she replied. “He’s busy working on that case. Besides, I know he’ll throw himself into this when he can. No one loves those vending machines more than Dewey.”
“That’s true,” smiled Colin. “I don’t think Dewey could actually live without them. I’m serious. It might stop his perspiration completely.”
Seraphina laughed again. “I don’t think you mean ‘perspiration.’ I think you mean respiration. And I don’t think anyone ever died from a vending machine.”
“Oh, yeah. Right, respiration. It says here that three men have died!”
“From a vending machine, not perspiration, I assume?”
Colin laughed as he looked back at the article to read more.
“What’s your source?” scoffed Seraphina, grabbing his phone to look instead of waiting for him to answer.
Colin tried to grab it back away from her.
“Just wait!” she yelped, trying to read.
“Alright, alright. Here you go,” she conceded, handing it back to him. “That’s pretty funny. Well, it’s awful, of course. I’m just amazed it’s true, that’s all. They must have been crushed. There’s no way they died lamenting the loss of one.”
“We must never doubt the genius mind of Colin the Great,” he announced putting his socked feet up on the table. “It’s a terrible thing to waste.”
“Ha! You don’t say?!” smiled Seraphina. “I’ll keep that in mind. I wo—”
“Wait-a-minute,” beamed Colin. “‘It’s a terrible thing to waste.’ That can be our first t-issue slogan.”
“I’m not following,” she replied. “Isn’t that what they’re concerned about? Waste?”
“Well, it depends on what kind of waste! It works both ways, get it?”
“Um. No.”
“Holy Narwhal, Seraphina! Don’t you get it?! What do you call the sanitation station?”
“The sanitation station.”
“Another name.”
“A was—t . . . Oh! A waste treatment plant?! Eww. Waste! That kind. Oh, we can’t do that! Can we?”
“It’s too good not to! It’s got both sides’ concerns in one sentence, ours and theirs! How often does that happen?!”
“‘T-ISSUE: It’s a terrible thing to waste.’ It’s perfection!” Colin enthusiastically approved his own idea as he packed up his stuff to go home and work on his research. “You’ll talk to Shawn?” he asked.
Seraphina agreed to do it as soon as she got to school in the morning.
“Maybe ‘It’s a Terrible Way to Waste’ works better,” she suggested, still trying to improve it in her own head.
“Yes! That might make perfection even more perfect,” he had to acknowledge.
Seraphina said perfect couldn’t be more perfect, because that’s what it means to be “perfect,” but she appreciated his vote of confidence.
“I wonder how things are going for Dewey?” she asked as Colin departed. I sure hope he can meet us for lunch tomorrow, she thought.
Donkeys
<
br /> Peering through the glass window at the top of the door, Dewey could hear Mr. Nisano speaking to his students.
“Weren’t the first chapters of The Outsiders marvelous?” he was saying. “There you discovered a world of violence, passion, warring factions, and yes, even romance. Shall we dig into it more today and really get our proverbial feet wet? Our first vocabulary term, then, is ‘editorial.’” He spelled it out as he wrote it on the SMART Board. “E-d-i-t-o-r-i-a-l,” and he hit the board so hard to punctuate that he’d finished it, Dewey felt certain he’d blunted the tip of his marker. “An ‘editorial’ is an article in the newspaper, like an opinion piece where the writer gives his or her point of view. The Socs, I’m sure you recall, get written up in ed-i-tor-ials for helping folks one day and being a nuisance the next.
“Let’s go on to the next word, then. ‘Loping,’” he called out as he wrote on the board, “is to run or move with long, bounding strides. Please look on page seven. You see? Where he lopes to his car?”
As Mr. Nisano droned on and on, students’ heads slumped down on their desks, and the others had a faraway look in their eyes.
Dewey wondered where they went when they got that marble-eyed stare. They were present, but not there. Didn’t Mr. Nisano notice that they were so far away?
Dewey spotted Olivia, the greatest burper in seventh grade. One of the things Dewey loved about Olivia was how she had super long, beautiful black hair and a pretty face, round like the moon when full, but ever since they were young, was always willing to get rough and tumble. Man, could she let one rip. Now, though, she sat in her seat, chin tilted to one side, lips slightly parted, and her eyes like two stagnant pools of water—she no longer looked like the same Olivia. It was as if her soul had escaped leaving an empty vessel. Ugh! Dewey couldn’t take it anymore. It was spooky.
He turned away. Only two more minutes and the plan would go into effect.
Dewey stood at the door with a paper bag filled with little notes. He had picked this class period because it coincided with his study hall. In fact, he hadn’t even had to give his teacher his prepared excuse. She had been speaking on the phone with a counselor, and she nodded and waved him out without taking her attention from the phone.
As the students exited Mr. Nisano’s classroom, Dewey handed each one a small note with information detailing the plan. To put anything in writing risked leaving a trail, but Dewey felt confident that this class of kids were desperate for a solution and would take precautions not to give anything away.
He had taken one safety measure though. Just in case, he’d written the directions in disappearing ink. That had been Clara’s idea. The pen lasted for about an hour before it started to fade away. It seemed prudent to make their instructions disappear; they’d decided he could count on the kids to remember what to do.
On the paper, in very small font it read:
If you are sick and tired of feeling bored in Mr. Nisano’s class, please follow these directions: Whenever you speak in class, do it as slowly as possible and in the least interesting manner possible. Shred this document. More info soon. DF, #teacherproblemsolver
Students read and commented on the small bits of paper as they walked down the hall. Some were laughing. Others shared high-fives. Still others just kept rereading the paper, pointing and whispering. Everyone shredded their note though, and Dewey ran behind and picked up the scraps from the few kids not mindful enough to shove it in their pocket for parents to find later mixed in with the dryer lint.
William’s note, however, was not written in disappearing ink. His note had instructions to follow long after the ink disappeared. Dewey trusted that William would take care not to get caught. After all, Dewey’s clients all wanted their problems solved quietly, and he had made sure none of them had ever been caught.
Ironically, acting out the boredom that his students usually suffered so miserably finally gave his class something entertaining to do. The students had a great time seeing who could speak the most monosyllabically and who could keep their answers the flattest and most dull.
The second day of his students rolling along like a bunch of flat tires, Mr. Nisano, usually a pretty flat person himself, blew up. When he called on Olivia, she read the assigned journal entry on the topic of her experience with reputation.
“Good,” she read.
“Good?” he asked.
She nodded once.
“Just ‘good’? No elaboration? No explanation?”
“Good,” she said.
What made it more infuriating for him, perhaps, was that she uttered the single word as if she had answered the question thoughtfully, without a hint of irony or disrespect in her voice.
He sighed and moved on. “Hector, you’re up,” he said.
“Bad, but I don’t feel good about it.” Hector read.
Mr. Nisano looked at Hector with raised eyebrows, encouraging him to continue.
Nothing.
He moved on to Nina.
“Hmm? Sorry, what?” she asked in a distracted confusion.
“Dan?”
“Sir?”
“Your entry!”
Dan yawned, and a hiccup-burp slipped out as he slowly flipped back and forth in his notebook, half-heartedly looking for the correct page.
“What is the matter with you people? This is the most tiresome, tedious, yawn-inducing, dull drove of donkeys I’ve ever encountered!”
William’s cue! Reaching into his binder, William pulled out the note card Dewey prepared. It was the closest Dewey could get to his teleprompter idea.
“Um, Mr. Nisano,” William raised his hand tentatively in response to the teacher’s outburst.
He had Mr. Nisano’s attention, so William forged on tentatively. “With all due respect, which you deserve as our teacher—” William felt his heart racing and watched Mr. Nisano.
“Yes, what is it, Mr. Sanai? Your deference is noted. Out with it, already.”
“Well, it’s just that, well . . .” As he swallowed, somewhere in some other part of his brain he thought to himself, wow, people really do gulp when they’re nervous. He looked down and read straight from Dewey’s card.
“Now you know how we feel.”
No laughter resulted. No giggles. William noticed a soft hum coming from the lights above and wished he could disappear into the back of his chair.
Mr. Nisano walked away from the front of the class to his desk, where he leaned his bottom back against the front edge. He reached back to grasp the sides, and uttered, “Huh.”
He got that glazed, distant look in his eyes as if he were somewhere else, rather than here in the classroom with them. He looked through them. He looked over them. He nodded his head slowly and repeated, “Huh.”
The bell rang, and for the first time ever, no one spoke as they left the class. What, they wondered, could possibly come next?
Dewey Gets Busy
The bell rang for break, and Dewey headed straight for the vending machines. His mom had packed him a snack bar today. The vending machines had snack bars too. He wished she would stop packing him a snack. He told her not to, but she kept doing it anyway.
He bought a pack of roasted almonds. Just as they dropped with a thud, Colin slid in next to him. “Well, my friend, I hope you’re going to enjoy those because they could very well be your last.”
“No way! They’re not taking these machines away. I’ll tie myself to one, and they’ll have to take me with it first.”
“Haha!” Colin grabbed Dewey’s backpack and picked him up off the ground with it. “I think they can pull that off pretty easily.”
“Hey,” Dewey laughed and kicked out of Colin’s grasp. “Cut that out! Catch me up on stuff,” Dewey said as he popped an almond in his mouth.
“I’m still waiting to hear if Seraphina found out anything from Shawn yet. Are you
done with your case yet? Can you come over after school today?”
“Too much homework today, but tomorrow I can. I gotta meet with Clara first, but I can come over after that.”
“I’ll tell Seraphina that we should meet a little later. Will your parents let you stay for dinner so we can get more planning time?”
“I’ll ask,” replied Dewey, shaking the salt and crumbs from the almond bag into his mouth. “They sure don’t make these packs very big.” He felt around in his backpack for his snack bar.
“Where is Seraphina?” he added.
“I hope she’s getting us information,” replied Colin. “Okay, I gotta go!” He pulled out one of the rolls of toilet paper Dewey had given him.
“Ha!” Dewey laughed. “Okay. Don’t get lost in there!”
“See ya later.”
