The Infinity Year of Avalon James

by Dana Middleton

  “Avalon,” she said. “Please spell the word handsome.”

  Even though this was an easy word and I could spell it in my sleep, I am a trained professional and I am allowed to ask certain questions. So I did.

  “Could you repeat the word, please?” I asked.

  “Handsome,” she said.

  “Could you please use the word in a sentence?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Jackson said. “The handsome man walked down the street and stopped three times to look at his reflection in the department store’s window. Handsome.”

  It was a good sentence.

  Then I asked, “The definition, please?”

  Mrs. Jackson smiled a little. She knew I didn’t need the definition. “Handsome,” she repeated. “A fine form or figure. Good-looking. Or generous, as in a handsome present. Handsome.”

  “What’s the word’s origin?” I asked. I heard Elena groan.

  “Old English. Before that it relates to the Germanic. Handsome.”

  It was great. We were doing it just like we did in the drills.

  “Handsome,” I said. “H-A-N-D-S-O-M-E,” I spelled. “Handsome,” I said again.

  I waited for a moment. No bell rang. “Correct,” Mrs. Jackson said. “You may take your seat, Avalon.”

  I sat down happily. I had spelled my first word in my very first spelling bee.

  Each round the words got more difficult. Mrs. Jackson rang the bell twelve times during the third round. By the fourth round, there were only three of us left. There was me, Isabel Fernandez, and Elena Maxwell. Isabel Fernandez is one of those quiet girls who wears glasses and reads a lot. I knew she would be trouble. And then there was Elena. She would just love out-spelling me. I could not let that happen.

  Isabel went up first. She got the word tributary and spelled it correctly. Next, it was my turn. I got the word odyssey. I found myself looking at Elena. She squinted her eyes and gave me such a horrible look. I wanted to beat her so bad.

  I asked Mrs. Jackson about the word. I asked her the part of speech. I asked her to use the word in a sentence. She told me odyssey comes from the Greek meaning “voyage” or “journey.” But I wasn’t listening. I was thinking about Elena.

  Ever since the bathroom incident, I had felt myself getting more and more nervous. It had been almost two months since I overheard Elena plotting my demise, but it still hadn’t happened. Whatever she was planning had to be coming soon. I was starting to expect it at almost every moment.

  Mrs. Jackson cleared her throat. I knew that was her way of telling me to hurry up and answer.

  “Odyssey,” I finally said. “O-D-Y-S-E-Y,” I spelled. “Odyssey,” I said again.

  There was a painful moment when I realized I had not spelled the word out in my head before I spelled it out loud. I had violated a major rule of spelling.

  The bell on Mrs. Jackson’s desk rang. Friday the thirteenth had struck and it had struck hard.

  My odyssey was over.

  I sat down at my desk and put my head down on my arms. I knew that word. I knew it had two Ss. What had I been thinking?

  I felt Elena brush past me as she walked to the podium. She was going to be insufferable from now on. I-N-S-U-F-F-E-R-A-B-L-E. I didn’t think I could stand it. I had worked so hard, and I let one dirty look from her ruin it all.

  Note to self: Infinity Year power DOES NOT help with spelling.

  I heard Mrs. Jackson give Elena her word. Congenial. How easy. HOW EASY! I listened as she spelled it:

  “C-O-N-G-E-N-E-A-L,” she spelled. “Congenial,” she then said.

  My head popped up off my desk. Just as the bell rang.

  “I’m sorry, Elena, but that’s incorrect,” Mrs. Jackson said. “Congenial is spelled C-O-N-G-E-N-I-A-L. Please return to your seat.”

  Elena walked past me in a real huff and accidentally-on-purpose knocked a book off Marcus’s desk.

  “This leads to a very interesting situation, class,” Mrs. Jackson said as she stood up from her desk. “First, we must congratulate Isabel Fernandez—the winner of our classroom spelling bee. Let’s give her a round of applause.”

  Everybody clapped and I could see Isabel’s face turning red.

  “Isabel will be representing our class in the school-wide spelling bee in January that will take place in the Grover Cleveland Lunchroom and Auditorium.” She looked at Isabel and crinkled her eyes. “And I know you will represent us proudly, Isabel.

  “However,” she continued. “We must send one more representative.” She looked at me and Elena. “This is how this is going to work. Avalon and Elena will continue spelling. The one who goes the longest without getting a word wrong will win. Avalon, you’re first.”

  I took a deep breath. Then I stood up and walked to the podium.

  Over the next eight rounds, these were the words we got:

  We both spelled them all correctly. I couldn’t help but think that my words were a little harder than hers, but I knew that couldn’t really be true.

  Until I got my ninth-round word.

  Psoriasis.

  I did not know this word. It had not been on any of my flashcards and I had never seen it on any of my spelling lists.

  I didn’t mean to but I looked at Elena for just a second. She had a little mean smile on her face. I could tell she knew I had no idea how to spell my word.

  I looked down and closed my eyes. Psoriasis.

  “Could you please repeat the word?” I asked.

  Mrs. Jackson did.

  “Could you please use the word in a sentence?”

  She did that, too. I listened hard but I still didn’t know how to spell it.

  I started thinking about how it sounded and tried to look at it inside my head. S-O-R-I-A-S-I-S. Yeah, that looked right. That could be right. At least, it was the best guess I could come up with.

  “Could you please tell me the word’s origin?” I asked.

  “Yes, it comes from the Greek. Psoriasis,” she said.

  I started to smile. It came from the Greek. Those wonderful Greeks and their silent Ps.

  “Psoriasis,” I said. “P-S-O-R-I-A-S-I-S,” I spelled. “Psoriasis,” I said again.

  I waited and looked at Mrs. Jackson.

  “Correct,” she said, and I let out the biggest sigh ever.

  Elena and I passed each other as I went back to my desk. Marcus patted me on my shoulder as I sat down. I looked up at Elena at the podium.

  “Nightingale,” Mrs. Jackson said.

  “Could you repeat it?” Elena asked.

  “Nightingale.”

  “Could you give me the definition?” she asked.

  “Nightingale. A small reddish-brown migratory thrush. The male of the bird species sings powerfully and melodically in the day and night. Nightingale.”

  “What is the word’s origin?” she asked. Elena had been paying attention.

  “Old English,” Mrs. Jackson responded.

  This time I caught Elena looking at me. I fought the impulse to stick out my tongue at her. I wanted to win this fair and square so I stayed completely still, my tongue staying firmly inside my mouth.

  “Nightingale,” she said. “N-I-G-H-T-I-N-G-A-I-L,” she spelled. “Nightingale.”

  There was a long moment of silence in Mrs. Jackson’s fifth-grade class. Then the little bell rang.

  Everybody looked at me and started clapping. I had won. Well, I had really come in second, but I had beaten Elena and that was a win for me.

  As Elena stomped back to her desk, Mrs. Jackson called me and Isabel up to the front of the class.

  “First of all, I want to say, good job, Elena,” Mrs. Jackson said. “You did extremely well today and should be very proud.” Elena smiled at Mrs. Jackson and then she glared at me.

  I didn’t care. Because what Mrs. Jackson said next made everything else okay. “Let’s all congratulate Isabel and Avalon, who will be representing our class in the Grover Cleveland School-Wide Spelling Bee!”

  Everybody
clapped and yelled. Isabel and I smiled at each other.

  It was probably the best morning of my life.

  By the time I told Atticus what happened at lunchtime, I was completely out of breath.

  “Don’t you want to know how I did?” he asked after I finished.

  “Yes,” I said excitedly. It would be so great if we were both in the big bee.

  “I made it all the way to the second round,” he said, and grinned.

  I laughed. “Congratulations. I’m so proud.”

  * * *

  After Atticus left to join his class line at the end of lunch, I felt a humongous smile growing inside. I looked up at the stage in the Grover Cleveland Lunchroom and Auditorium and pictured myself there. The big school-wide spelling bee was in January and January wasn’t that far away.

  There was a tap on my shoulder and I turned around. Hari Singh was looking down at me. “Hey, little speller,” he said.

  “Hi,” I answered. “I’m Avalon.”

  “I know, dork,” he said. “Don’t you think I’d remember you?”

  Oh, yeah. How could he forget me? Last time we talked, I was wearing a carton of milk.

  “I wanted to congratulate you,” he said, and sat down beside me. “Mrs. Jackson said you did really well today.”

  “Did she tell you I missed a word and came in second?”

  “Yeah, who cares about that. Just nerves. You’ll get used to it. Main thing is Mrs. Jackson has taken you under her wing. She doesn’t do that with everyone. You must be pretty talented.”

  I blushed. I couldn’t help it. “How do you know all this?” I asked.

  “Talent knows talent,” he said, and grinned. “I used to be in Mrs. Jackson’s class, too.”

  Wow. I could picture it. Hari Singh doing spelling drills across the desk from Mrs. Jackson in the very seat that I sat in every Monday and Wednesday afternoon.

  He looked up at the stage. “Just remember, it’s all about you and the words. Don’t let anybody else get in your head.”

  I nodded. He was right.

  “Did you win today?” I asked.

  He opened his hands and shrugged. “What do you think?”

  We both laughed. Of course he won. Nobody in this school could out-spell Hari Singh. And, by the way, that’s Singh with a silent h.

  SEVEN

  On Halloween morning, Darth Vader walked into our classroom.

  Darth Vader was extremely tall and, beneath his black Darth Vader robe, he wore white Adidas tennis shoes. Our principal, Mr. Peterson, was also extremely tall and always wore white Adidas tennis shoes.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Jackson’s class,” Darth Vader said through his Darth Vader helmet in that real Darth Vader voice.

  “Hello, Mr. Peterson,” everyone said back.

  “I’m not Mr. Peterson,” he said. “We have taken Mr. Peterson to the Death Star. I am the new principal. I, Darth Vader, am now your leader.”

  Marcus Johnson thought this was hilarious. He started laughing and snorting behind me. I could sense the snot running down his nose.

  “Mrs. Jackson,” he continued, “please let your classroom know that we have arranged certain events around the noon hour that should bring chills and goose bumps to all fifth graders who dare to board our Imperial starship, located in what used to be the Grover Cleveland Lunchroom and Auditorium.”

  I hoped he hadn’t talked to the kindergarten classes like this. Some of them might have wet their pants.

  “I will do that, Mr. Pet—I mean Mr. Vader,” Mrs. Jackson said. She was dressed like a cowgirl, with a cowboy hat and boots and a lasso draped over the back of her chair.

  Before turning to go, Mr. Peterson took a step forward and stopped right in front of my desk. He looked down at me and said, “You should be especially afraid.”

  For a second, I got scared. What was he talking about? Then I remembered how I was dressed. I was Princess Leia, warrior princess, wearing a long white gown and a bun on each side of my head. And he was my evil father.

  I grinned and he turned, whirling his cape. He stomped out of our classroom and headed for Ms. Smith’s room.

  Atticus was going to be so pleased. “Ah, my son!” I heard Darth Vader’s voice bellow from next door. Mr. Peterson had clearly just seen his son (my Atticus), Luke Skywalker.

  Everybody always dresses up for Halloween at my school. Everybody. It’s just the thing to do at Grover C.

  Even after the spelling bee was over and I had more room in my brain, Atticus and I hadn’t been able to figure out who we were going to be until the weekend before Halloween. I was over at his house and we still couldn’t agree on anything. So, we did what we usually did in such situations. We put on Star Wars Episode IV.

  As soon as the hologram of Princess Leia came out of R2-D2, we knew it was right, at the exact same time. Plus, with everything going on with Elena, we thought it was a good idea to have the Force Be With Us this Halloween.

  Mom had been making my costume from the material of an old dress she didn’t wear anymore. I was scared it wasn’t going to be finished in time, and when I woke up on Halloween morning, she was still working on it at the kitchen table.

  “I’m almost done,” she said when she saw me walk out my bedroom door, yawning. “Why are you up so early?”

  I looked at my costume that was lying across the kitchen table. “I had a dream I was the only one in class who didn’t have a Halloween costume,” I said, wiping the sleep from my eyes.

  “Well, that is a dream that will not be coming true.” She made one last stitch and slipped the costume over my head. I put my arms through and Mom zipped up the back.

  She stood there looking at me for the longest time.

  “What’s wrong?” I finally asked. “Do I look stupid?”

  Mom smiled. I hadn’t seen her smile like that for a long time. She grabbed my hand. “Come see.”

  We ran into her bedroom and stood together in front of her full-length mirror. We both just looked at me. I don’t know what I was expecting. But it wasn’t this.

  I looked … good. Here I was, regular me, looking like a space warrior princess.

  Suddenly, we both started to laugh. We couldn’t help ourselves. It was pretty terrific.

  The night before, I’d decided I was going to tell my mom about Elena and her plot against me. Halloween would be the perfect time for Elena to strike. But seeing my mom laughing that morning had changed my mind. I didn’t want to ruin it.

  Atticus and I had been on high alert for the past week though—ever since Adam had overheard Chloe talking to Samantha Cooper on the bus. He couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying but it was something about Halloween and it was something about me.

  The day before Halloween, me and Atticus were still trying to come up with a plan to stop Elena but nothing seemed good enough. At recess, we were sitting at the top of the jungle gym when we officially ran out of ideas.

  “Maybe we don’t need a plan,” Atticus finally said.

  I looked at him funny. “That’s a great idea,” I said. “Are you crazy? We really need a plan.”

  “No, listen, Avie. Have you ever thought that our magical powers are just waiting for something like this to be activated?”

  “Activated?” I asked. “Did you just say activated?”

  Atticus groaned. “Seriously,” he said. “That’s how all superheroes get their powers. When they need them most.”

  “We’re not superheroes.”

  “Yeah, but this is our Infinity Year,” he said, suddenly whispering. “If we’re ever going to get a superpower, it’s going to be now.”

  It all sounded grand. But something in the back of my head had been bothering me. It had been months since our Infinity Year began, and we were still the same Avalon and Atticus. I couldn’t help but wonder …

  What if Pop-pop was wrong?

  * * *

  By lunchtime on Halloween, nothing bad had happened. Mrs. Jackson’s class walked singl
e file into the Imperial starship (the Grover Cleveland Lunchroom and Auditorium) at 12:05.

  There were planets all over the walls and distant stars on the ceiling. There were model starships on every table and the lunch ladies were dressed like stormtroopers.

  Mae waited for me in the lunch line. She was dressed as Snow White and carried a bright red apple. Behind us, I saw three witches. Yes, Elena, Sissy, and Chloe were dressed as witches. Imagine that.

  I carried my tray of mystery meat and french fries across the lunchroom and passed the seventh-grade tables. Vampire Hari Singh was sitting next to two zombies with blood on their faces and really dirty-looking hair. One of them had a hatchet coming out of his head. The other looked like he had lost a hand.

  I sat down at the end of my table next to Luke Skywalker. It was really Atticus, sitting at the end of his table, as usual. Kevin had taken off his Iron Man mask so he could eat. Adam was wearing his cybernetic helmet and shoving french fries up his nose.

  “Hello, Leia,” Luke/Atticus said. “Any activity on the witch front, yet?”

  “Nothing, Luke,” I said. “But I can tell they’re up to something.”

  Kevin banged his fist on their table. “We got your back, Avalon! That Elena better start watching hers.”

  “Yeah,” said Adam as one of the french fries fell out of his nose. Kevin and Adam meant well but I knew they were both a little scared of Elena.

  Darth Vader/Mr. Peterson walked through the lunchroom dramatically, his cape flowing behind him. The lights suddenly went out. There was a crack of thunder and somebody started turning the lights on and off so it would look like lightning.

  Then the lights came back on and Darth Vader was gone. We waited for something else to happen but nothing did.

  “That was the scary thing Mr. Peterson had planned?” Atticus said.

  “Whoa,” said Kevin. “That was super scary.”

  “Look! I’ve got goose bumps!” Adam said, and stuck out his arm so we could see the goose bumps that weren’t really there.

  We all laughed. I decided I shouldn’t worry too much about the kindergartners being scared after all.

  The rest of the day went by without anything unusual happening. Which was weird. The bell rang at 3:15 and I watched with growing relief as the witches left the classroom with the rest of the class.