Fuzzy Mud

by Louis Sachar

  Most everyone else always moaned and groaned when they heard the prompts. It didn’t seem to matter what the prompts were. Some people just liked to complain.

  Today Ms. Filbert wrote the prompt on the whiteboard, then said it aloud.

  “How to blow up a balloon.”

  Along with the usual moans and groans, there were a lot of Huh?s and What?s. Hands were raised all around Tamaya.

  “I don’t get it.” Jason spoke out without raising his hand. “You just stick it into your mouth and blow.”

  “Oh, you mean like this?” asked Ms. Filbert.

  Tamaya watched, wide-eyed, as her teacher took a red balloon and placed the whole thing inside her mouth. Ms. Filbert took a big breath, then blew, spitting the balloon out onto the floor.

  Everyone laughed, including Tamaya. She smiled at Hope, who sat next to her, then tried to catch Monica’s eye on the other side of the room. Monica was looking back at her, sharing her amazement.

  Ms. Filbert scratched her head, as if she were greatly confused. “That didn’t work,” she said.

  “No, you don’t put the whole balloon into your mouth,” said Jason, again without raising his hand. “Just one end.”

  Ms. Filbert slapped herself on the forehead. “Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

  She chose another balloon and this time put only one end into her mouth—the wrong end.

  “No, the other end!” called Monica.

  Ms. Filbert turned the balloon around.

  “Now blow,” said Monica.

  Once again, Ms. Filbert spit the balloon onto the floor.

  All around Tamaya, kids were shouting instructions, trying to tell Ms. Filbert what she had done wrong. Others were repeating to their friends what they’d just seen, even though their friends had just seen it too.

  Ms. Filbert held up two fingers and waited for everyone to quiet down.

  “Don’t tell me,” she said. “Write it. Pretend that what you write is going to be read by someone who never, ever saw a balloon before in her whole life. And she’s none too bright neither.” Ms. Filbert knocked on the side of her head, as if testing to see if it were hollow.

  Tamaya laughed. Her mind was already working on her how-to-blow-up-a-balloon instructions.

  “So your instructions have to be clear and precise,” Ms. Filbert continued. “Later, you can read them aloud, and we’ll see how many balloons I manage to inflate.”

  The complainers were moaning and groaning again, but Tamaya was up for the challenge. She picked up her pencil, thought a moment, then wrote:

  You start with a flat balloon. You want to fill it with air from your lungs.

  The rest of the class was still buzzing about their teacher’s spitting balloons.

  From across the aisle, Hope tapped Tamaya on the shoulder. “What happened to your sweater?” she whispered.

  Tamaya’s heart sank. She’d hoped it wasn’t so noticeable. “What do you mean?” she whispered back.

  “It’s all torn.”

  Tamaya shrugged. “Who cares?” she said, trying to prove she wasn’t the Goody Two-shoes that Hope thought she was.

  She returned to her journal, reread what she had written, and then added, Look for the end with the hole.

  No, she didn’t like that. A hole was the last thing you wanted in a balloon! For all she knew, Ms. Filbert might stick a pin into the balloon, just to put a hole there!

  She tried to think of what else to call it. The knobby round thing?

  She tried to erase what she had written but instead made an ugly gray smudge on her paper. Tamaya’s pages were always clean and neat, and she had excellent handwriting. She tried rubbing harder but not hard enough to tear the page.

  A red drop fell on top of the smudge.

  At first, Tamaya was more worried about her journal being ruined than anything else. But when she looked at her hand, she was horrified to see it was covered with blisters and blood.

  She dropped her pencil. It rolled across her journal, leaving a red track behind it, then continued across her desk and fell to the floor.

  “Ms. Filbert!” called Hope. “Tamaya’s all bloody!”

  2 × 256 = 512

  2 × 512 = 1,024

  There was still no sign of Chad when Marshall walked into his classroom and took his seat. His relief quickly turned into anxiety, however. He turned his head toward the door every single time he heard it open. He knew Chad would come waltzing in at any moment, telling everyone about what had happened in the woods, and about how Marshall had needed a little fifth-grade girl to protect him.

  Even after class started, and Chad still hadn’t shown, Marshall’s anxiety only grew worse. He tapped his foot throughout morning announcements. In a way, he hoped Chad would hurry up and get there. Let him do what he was going to do, say what he was going to say, and get it over with. The worst part was the waiting.

  When first period ended, Marshall moved very cautiously through the hall, certain that Chad was waiting behind every corner. He made it safely to algebra, and when he saw that Chad’s desk was empty, he finally was able to relax, but just a little bit.

  Math had always been Marshall’s best subject, and without Chad’s eyes burning a hole through the back of his head, he was able to concentrate for the first time in weeks.

  Mr. Brandt put a pair of simultaneous equations on the whiteboard. Marshall mentally went through the necessary steps to solve them just as his teacher worked them through for the class.

  Mr. Brandt put up two more equations. “Anyone want to try?”

  Chad or no Chad, Marshall still didn’t dare raise his hand.

  Perhaps Mr. Brandt had caught something in Marshall’s expression, an alertness in his eyes. “Marshall,” he said. “You want to give it a go?”

  Marshall flinched at the mention of his name, then slowly rose. As he made his way to the front of the room, he heard none of the usual snide whispers. No legs stuck out trying to trip him.

  He took the marker from Mr. Brandt, studied the two equations for a moment, and then wrote a new equation, combining elements from the other two. He felt his confidence grow as he replaced letters with numbers.

  Behind him, the door opened.

  It couldn’t even have been called a squeak, just an old door rotating on its hinges, but Marshall recognized the sound the moment he heard it.

  His confidence left him as his legs turned to jelly. He tried to concentrate on the equations in front of him, but now it was all just a confused jumble of numbers, letters, and mathematical signs.

  He heard the click-click of hard shoes on the floor. That didn’t sound like Chad. He slowly turned.

  The headmistress, Mrs. Thaxton, was walking purposefully toward the front of the room, a stern and determined look on her face.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Brandt,” she said, then turned her back on Marshall in order to face the class. “I’m afraid I have some very disturbing news.”

  Marshall didn’t know where he was supposed to go. He didn’t want to have to cross in front of Mrs. Thaxton in order to return to his desk. Instead, he slowly edged away from the board, toward the side wall.

  She spoke slowly and deliberately. “One of your classmates, Chad Hilligas, is missing. He hasn’t been seen since he left school yesterday afternoon. As far as we know, he never made it home.”

  Mrs. Thaxton took a breath, then continued. “If any of you know anything about where he might have gone, or what has happened to him, I need to know immediately.”

  Nobody said a word.

  As Marshall stood at the side wall, his thoughts were a swirling mass of confusion. He had become paralyzed at the mention of Chad’s name. He could hear the pounding of his heart echoing inside his head.

  “Does anybody remember seeing Chad after school yesterday?” asked Mr. Brandt.

  “If you saw or heard anything?” coaxed Mrs. Thaxton.

  Marshall knew he ought to say something, but it seeme
d impossible.

  Laura Musscrantz slowly raised her hand.

  “Yes, Laura,” said Mr. Brandt.

  “I saw him.”

  “Where?”

  “On Richmond Road.”

  “Did he say anything to you?” Mrs. Thaxton asked her.

  “No, I was in my mom’s car. We just drove past. You asked if we saw him. That’s all.”

  Marshall wondered if Laura would have noticed him too, if he had been there.

  “Did you notice which way he was heading?” asked Mrs. Thaxton.

  “If you leave the school and turn right. I think. We drove the other way, so I didn’t see him after that.”

  “Did anyone else see or talk to Chad?” asked Mrs. Thaxton. “Either after school or perhaps earlier? Did he say what his plans were for after school?”

  Cody raised his hand, then quickly lowered it, but not before Mr. Brandt noticed. “Do you know something, Cody?”

  “He kind of told me what he was going to do, but I feel weird saying it.”

  “What did he tell you, Cody?” demanded Mrs. Thaxton. “This is not the time to worry about being embarrassed or feeling weird.”

  “Okay, you asked.” Cody shrugged. “He said he was going to beat up Marshall.”

  Muffled laughter came from the back corner of the room, but one look from Mrs. Thaxton silenced whoever had laughed.

  “Sorry, man,” Cody said, looking at Marshall. “That’s what he said.”

  For the first time, Mrs. Thaxton turned to notice Marshall, standing awkwardly against the wall. “Marshall, what do you know about this?”

  All he could manage was a shrug. It took all his effort just to keep from trembling.

  “Did you encounter Chad on your way home yesterday?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did you know he was looking for you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “You didn’t see him at all?”

  “I just walked home like always. He wasn’t there.”

  Mrs. Thaxton took a long hard look at him. “Do you know why he wanted to fight you? Did something happen earlier?”

  He shook his head.

  “Chad’s been picking on Marshall all year,” said Andy. “For no reason.”

  “Marshall never did anything,” volunteered Laura. “Chad’s just mean.”

  Mrs. Thaxton took another long look at Marshall, then turned her attention back to the rest of the class. “If anybody thinks of anything else, any little thing Chad might have done or said, or something somebody else might have said about Chad, please let Mr. Brandt or me know. If you need to talk in private, I will be in my office. Please think hard, and don’t be afraid to come to me. I will keep anything you tell me strictly confidential.”

  She walked out of the room. Then all eyes fixed on Marshall.

  He quickly returned to his seat. The equations remained on the whiteboard, unsolved.

  Using cotton balls and hydrogen peroxide, Mrs. Latherly cleaned the blood off Tamaya’s hand. “You mustn’t scratch it,” she admonished.

  “I didn’t,” said Tamaya.

  “The more you scratch, the worse it will get,” said Mrs. Latherly. “It will just cause the rash to spread. Plus, anytime you break the skin, there’s the possibility of infection.”

  “I didn’t scratch it,” Tamaya repeated.

  She was seated in a plastic chair in an alcove inside the office. The alcove contained the office printer and the coffee-maker. The medical supplies were on a shelf next to the printer.

  Mrs. Latherly spent most days answering phones or working on a computer, but whenever anyone got sick or needed first aid, she was the person to see.

  “Maybe I rubbed it a little,” Tamaya admitted. “But it doesn’t itch. It feels tingly. You know how like when your hands are really cold, and then you stick them under warm water? The way they get all prickly. That’s how it feels.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mrs. Latherly said as she took a first-aid box off the shelf, but Tamaya didn’t think she was really listening.

  She watched Mrs. Latherly unlatch the lid, then take out various tubes, read the labels, and put them back. Tamaya really wished Mrs. Latherly would hurry. She still hoped she could get back to class in time to finish her journal entry.

  In her mind, she imagined Hope and Jason and Monica taking turns reading their how-to-blow-up-a-balloon instructions to Ms. Filbert. She could see the balloons flying out of her teacher’s mouth and jetting in circles around the room while everyone laughed.

  It isn’t fair, she thought. Why do I always have to miss out on all the fun stuff?

  It seemed to be that way all the time. She’d missed Hope’s limousine birthday party because it had been her weekend to be in Philadelphia. And then Katie, her only sort-of friend in Philadelphia, had invited her to go horseback riding in the country with her and her family, but that too had been for the wrong weekend.

  Mr. Franks, the assistant headmaster, stepped into the alcove. “Hi, Tamaya,” he greeted her. “You’re not sick, are you?”

  “No, just a rash.”

  “Good. We don’t want to ruin your perfect record.” He winked at her.

  Tamaya could feel her face get warm, and she tried very hard not to blush. All her friends agreed that Mr. Franks was movie-star handsome. Summer swore he had a tattoo on the back of his neck, which was why he always wore a jacket and tie. Summer didn’t know what the tattoo was, but it was definitely something inappropriate. If Mrs. Thaxton found out about it, he would be fired.

  Mr. Franks bent down to pour himself a cup of coffee, and Tamaya tried to get a peek at his neck. She couldn’t see anything. She doubted he really had a tattoo. After all, how could Summer know about it, and not Mrs. Thaxton?

  “Hold out your hand,” said Mrs. Latherly.

  Tamaya waited for Mr. Franks to leave the alcove. She didn’t want him to see her ugly rash. “I tried some of my mother’s hand cream,” she told Mrs. Latherly. “It didn’t work.”

  “This will,” Mrs. Latherly assured her.

  As Mrs. Latherly applied the ointment, Tamaya read the label on the upside-down tube. Hydrocortisone 1%. She took heart in the words Maximum Strength.

  “Do you have any pets?” Mrs. Latherly asked.

  “Cooper, my dog.”

  “Do you think you might be allergic to Cooper?”

  “No!” she exclaimed. That would be horrible. Cooper was the best part of going to her dad’s. He slept on the same bed with her, and she often woke up with the dog licking her face.

  “Has Cooper had any kind of problems lately, with fleas or ticks or mange?”

  “I hope not,” said Tamaya.

  Mrs. Latherly looked confused. “Has he or hasn’t he?”

  Tamaya explained that she saw Cooper only one weekend a month.

  Mrs. Latherly seemed exasperated. “Tamaya, I’m trying to determine what might have caused your rash. If you haven’t been near Cooper, then it obviously didn’t come from him.”

  “Sorry,” Tamaya said. She felt stupid.

  It felt confusing sometimes, having two different homes. It was like she had two different lives; two half lives. And the two added together didn’t quite equal a whole life. She felt like she was missing something.

  Mrs. Latherly wrapped Tamaya’s hand with gauze. “Is there anything else you might have touched recently that you can think of?” she asked. “Maybe some kind of cleaning product?”

  Tamaya wondered if she should tell Mrs. Latherly about the strange mud. She didn’t want to get Marshall in trouble. Still, she knew it was important to tell the truth to a doctor or nurse, even if Mrs. Latherly was just a part-time school nurse.

  “Well, there was this fuzzy mud,” she admitted.

  “Have you eaten peanuts or peanut butter?” asked Mrs. Latherly, showing no interest in the mud.

  Tamaya’s mind remained fixed on the fuzzy mud. It all had happened so quickly, but replaying it in her head, in slow motion, she could see
herself picking up a handful of the tar-like muck. She vaguely recalled that it had felt warm, although she couldn’t be certain that she wasn’t just embellishing her memory.

  “Have you recently eaten any peanuts or peanut butter?” Mrs. Latherly asked again.

  Tamaya forced herself to focus on the question. “I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich yesterday,” she said. “It might have been the day before.”

  “You may be allergic,” said Mrs. Latherly. “Next time you see your doctor, have your mother ask for an allergy test. In the meantime, I wouldn’t eat any more peanut butter sandwiches.”

  “My mom makes her own strawberry jam,” Tamaya offered up. “Out of real strawberries. Maybe I’m allergic to that.”

  “Maybe,” said Mrs. Latherly.

  “She’s taking me to the doctor after school.”

  “Good.”

  Mrs. Latherly wrapped each of Tamaya’s fingers separately, then her palm and wrist.

  “How does that feel?”

  Tamaya tried to wiggle her fingers. “Like I’m a mummy,” she joked.

  Mrs. Latherly smiled. “I’d like to give you an allergy pill too, but I need to get your mother’s permission. I’ll call her at work. Check back with me after lunch.”

  Tamaya said she would.

  “And remember, no more scratching!”

  2 × 1,024 = 2,048

  2 × 2,048 = 4,096

  By the time Tamaya made it back to Ms. Filbert’s, the class had already moved on to math. There were two inflated balloons taped to the bulletin board. She learned later that only Sam and Rashona had succeeded with their how-to-blow-up-a-balloon instructions. And, according to Hope, Ms. Filbert had had to fudge just a little bit to get those to work.

  Throughout the morning, Tamaya felt a pang of disappointment every time she glanced up at the two balloons. She was sure she could have had a balloon up there too, and with no fudging.

  She had to write left-handed, which was nearly impossible. Even if it was math, she had a terrible time just trying to make the number two.

  “So what’s wrong with your hand?” Hope asked her.

  “I’m not supposed to eat peanut butter,” she whispered.