Fourth-Grade Disasters

by Claudia Mills

  Ha! The only dragon that lived at Plainfield Elementary was a faded, oversized stuffed animal that sat in the display case by the front office. Somebody’s mother had bought him for the school a million years ago to be the school mascot, and the music teacher had written new words to “Puff the Magic Dragon” in honor of this new Puff. But nobody loved Puff or thought he was cool, as far as Mason could tell. Well, Brody probably did.

  “Go, team!” Coach Joe called out once the song had ended.

  “Go, team!” everybody shouted back.

  Everybody except for Mason.

  That afternoon, Coach Joe called the class into a second huddle. In Mason’s opinion, two huddles in one day was excessive.

  “This year,” Coach Joe said, “we are going to be doing a lot of writing in our class. We are going to be making a full-court press on writing.”

  Mason didn’t know what a full-court press was, but it had to have something to do with sports. It sounded as if it would require a lot of work and effort.

  Most of the girls looked excited, except for Nora. That didn’t necessarily mean that Nora didn’t like writing; it just took a lot to make Nora look excited.

  Most of the boys looked pained, except for Brody. Mason knew that he himself must look pained, too. He could feel the misery of a full-court press on writing radiating out from the core of his being. The misery had probably reached his face by now.

  A full-court press on writing was another clue that this was not going to be a good year.

  “Stories!” Coach Joe said. “Autobiographies! Poetry!”

  At the word “poetry,” Dunk gave a groan loud enough that Coach Joe could hear it.

  “Winning attitude, team!” Coach Joe reminded them. “Let’s try that again. Poetry!” He pumped his fist into the air.

  A few kids feebly pumped their fists into the air in response.

  “Let’s try that again. Poetry!”

  This time the whole class went along, except for Mason. Nora’s fist didn’t go up very high. But it went up higher than Mason’s. Mason didn’t want to make Coach Joe mad, but he wasn’t the type of person who pumped his fist into the air, any more than he was the kind of person who sang in front of other people. He just wasn’t.

  Coach Joe continued his pep talk.

  “Today we’re going to start on our first writing assignment for the school year. Are you ready, team?”

  “Ready!” the class chanted back. Mason moved his lips, but he didn’t actually say the word out loud.

  “All right! A story starts with a character. A character can be a girl, or boy, or a grown-up person, but it doesn’t have to be a person at all. Who else could be a character?”

  Brody’s hand shot up. Some kids didn’t like Brody because he was always so eager and enthusiastic, but Mason knew that Brody couldn’t help being that way. If Brody tried to keep the answer inside, he’d explode.

  “Brody?”

  “An animal!”

  “Great! A character can be an animal. What kind of animal?”

  “A kangaroo!”

  “Great! Other animals?”

  Various kids suggested a dog, a cat, a saber-toothed tiger, a mongoose, and a butterfly.

  “Great!” Coach Joe said to each one.

  Mason didn’t think having a dog or a cat as a character counted as a great idea. Those were ordinary ideas.

  “Let’s open this up some more,” Coach Joe said. “Your character doesn’t have to be an animal, either. What else could it be? Let’s get some ideas from way out in left field.”

  “A flower,” one girl suggested.

  “Great!”

  “A toaster,” a boy called out.

  “Great!”

  Now the ideas came thick and fast: a baseball, a skateboard, a cell phone, a million-dollar bill.

  Nora raised her hand. “There’s no such thing as a million-dollar bill,” she pointed out.

  “This is a story,” Coach Joe said. “In a story, we can have a million-dollar bill if we want.”

  Nora looked as if she wanted to disagree, but she let it drop.

  “A toilet!” Dunk shouted.

  Everyone laughed. Even Mason laughed. Coach Joe laughed, too.

  “All right!” he said then. “I want you to pick an inanimate object—that means something that isn’t alive, not a plant, not an animal, not a person—and write a story about it. At least three pages long for your first draft.”

  Mason didn’t like how Coach Joe said “first draft.” That made it sound as if there would be a second draft, too.

  Back at his desk, Mason gripped his pencil and stared down at a blank piece of paper. Maybe he could write about a pencil that didn’t want to write a story. He could write about a blank piece of paper that didn’t want to have a story written on it.

  If only the story could be about a person instead of a thing. Then he could write about a fourth-grade boy who didn’t want to be in fourth grade. Or about a fourth-grade boy who didn’t want to be in the Plainfield Platters, but whose parents were probably going to make him be in the Plainfield Platters.

  Mason kept thinking. During concerts, somebody’s father accompanied the Platters on an old upright piano. The piano could be the character. Maybe the piano hated playing for the Plainfield Platters. If Mason were a piano, he would hate that, too.

  The piano could go on strike and refuse to play.

  The piano could wait until the night of the first big concert and then refuse to play.

  In spite of himself, Mason felt a stirring of interest in his idea. It was, he had to admit, a truly excellent idea.

  Mason could guess what Nora would say at this point: A piano can’t refuse to play. A piano has to play whether it wants to or not.

  He could guess what Coach Joe would say in reply: This is a story. In a story, anything can happen.

  In a story, a made-up piano could refuse to be in the Plainfield Platters.

  Maybe in real life, a real, live boy could refuse, too.

  3

  On Saturday morning, Mason awoke to Dog’s long, feathery tail brushing across his face. Dog didn’t like it if Mason slept too late. Dog wanted both of them to be up and out, making plans for walks to take and sticks to throw and things to chew.

  Lately, Dog had been doing too much chewing of things he wasn’t supposed to chew. It had been so hot during the last couple of weeks before school started that Mason hadn’t been outside playing fetch often enough with Dog; that made Dog look around for other things to put in his mouth. Or at least that’s what Mason’s father said.

  Right now, as if to prove Mason’s father’s point, Dog was gnawing the arm off of Mason’s hand-knit stuffed monkey. Mason’s mother edited an online knitting newsletter, and their house was full of odd hand-knit objects. Mason himself didn’t think it mattered if there were one fewer of them, but he knew his mother would be sad if Dog destroyed something it had taken her hours and hours to make.

  “Stop it, Dog,” Mason said.

  He grabbed the monkey from Dog and threw it across the room.

  That was the wrong thing to do. Dog leaped off the bed, sprang after it, and brought it back in his mouth for Mason to throw again.

  “Oh, Dog.”

  Mason forced himself out from under his covers and put the poor monkey on a high shelf in his closet. He had never really liked having it on his bed, anyway. Mason liked to keep his room, and his life, simple and uncomplicated.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing uncomplicated about having to break the news to his parents that he was going to be the first fourth grader in the history of Plainfield Elementary not to be in the Plainfield Platters. If he told them today, he’d get it over with. But then they’d have an entire weekend to try to talk him out of it. Still, maybe it would be good to give them a few days to get used to the idea before the first practice on Tuesday, the practice that Mason was planning on not attending.

  He found them both in the kitchen, eating quiche and cr
oissants and sipping coffee.

  “Bonjour, Mason!” his mother greeted him. She was obviously in a French mood.

  Mason poured himself a bowl of plain Cheerios with milk. He was in a plain-Cheerios mood. He was always in a plain-Cheerios mood for breakfast.

  “Do you and Brody have any plans for today?” his mother asked.

  Mason shook his head. “Brody is doing something with Sheng.”

  Sheng was Brody’s second-best friend. Brody had a third-best friend, too: Julio. And a fourth-best friend: Alastair. And a fifth-best friend: Bradley.

  Most of the time, Mason didn’t mind. He knew he was Brody’s first-best friend. It used to get lonely sometimes when Brody did things with his other best friends. But now Mason had Dog, who really tied with Brody as Mason’s first-best friend.

  “Do you want to call another friend?” his mother asked.

  Mason didn’t dignify that suggestion with a reply.

  “Or we can go downtown to that free outdoor Indonesian gamelan concert,” she suggested. “You’ve never heard Indonesian gamelan, have you, Mason? It’s a unique kind of musical ensemble, sort of like an Indonesian orchestra; they play various instruments, mainly gongs. It’s very spiritual music. I read that the players have to take off their shoes before they play. What do you think, Dan?”

  Mason’s father didn’t like strange music and exotic food as much as Mason’s mother did, but he was always a good sport.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “It’ll be perfect, since this is going to be your year of getting involved with music,” she said to Mason. “Starting on Tuesday!”

  Now was probably as good a time as any to tell her.

  “Mom, I don’t want to be in the Plainfield Platters.”

  That didn’t sound forceful enough. So he tried again.

  “I’m not going to be in the Plainfield Platters.”

  She exchanged a worried look with his father, a look that suggested that they had already discussed this alarming possibility and decided how to respond.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “We know how you feel about trying new things, but it would be so good for you to do it. Your father and I don’t want you to miss out on any of the fun of fourth grade.”

  What exactly was it about fourth grade that was going to be fun?

  “And the more you don’t want to do something, the more important it is to do it,” she added.

  That sounded like a strange idea to Mason. Did it mean that the more you did want to do something, the more important it was not to do it? Wasn’t that completely backward?

  His mother looked imploringly at his father for his support.

  “Don’t you think it would be fun to sing in that group?” his father asked, eyes darting back and forth between Mason and Mason’s mother.

  In his entire life, Mason had never heard his father sing a single note. At Rockies games, Mr. Dixon never joined in for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch. On their occasional Sundays at the Unitarian church, he moved his mouth during the hymns, but no sound ever came out. That was how Mason had learned to lip-synch in the first place.

  “No,” Mason said. “I don’t think it would be fun.”

  What could he say to make them understand?

  “I’m a little teapot?” he reminded them. “Short and stout?”

  Mason’s mother looked utterly mystified.

  “Tip me over? And pour me out?”

  Unbelievably, she seemed to have no idea what he was talking about.

  “The assembly? In kindergarten?”

  Comprehension dawned on her face, immediately followed by renewed bewilderment.

  “But, Mason, that was years ago! And something like that could happen to anybody!”

  But it hadn’t happened to “anybody”; it had happened to him, Mason. And if it could happen to anybody—if this kind of thing was a commonplace, everyday occurrence—didn’t that just serve to prove Mason’s point, that singing in front of people was an inherently risky business?

  “We know this is going to be a stretch for you, honey,” his mother continued, keeping her voice gentle. “And we’re going to be so proud of you for being willing to step outside of your comfort zone.”

  Luckily, Dog was standing by the back door, looking very much as if he needed to step outside himself.

  “Dog needs to go out,” Mason said.

  “All right, sweetie,” his mother said. “We can talk about this more later.”

  Goody, Mason thought.

  The gamelan concert wasn’t too bad. Dog came, too. Dog was very good at not barking during concerts. The gamelan players wore silk costumes. One lady sang. It was sad that in a world where so many people wanted to sing, somebody who didn’t want to should have to do it, anyway.

  That evening, Mason was afraid his mother would want to have another conversation about the Platters, but instead she just read to him and Dog without saying any more about it. Even though Mason was obviously able to read perfectly well to himself, she liked to read him books that she had loved when she was a girl. Although Mason wouldn’t have admitted it out loud, he liked it, too.

  Right now they were partway through a book called Ballet Shoes, about three English girls named Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil who attended a dancing school in London long ago. Pauline loved to act and Posy loved to dance, but Petrova hated all of it. But so far Petrova was doing it anyway, because she needed to be trained for the stage to earn money for her guardian, whom the girls nicknamed Garnie.

  Mason supposed he should be glad that he didn’t have to prepare for a career as a professional Plainfield Platter. His parents earned their money in other ways: his mother with editing her online knitting newsletter, and his father with his job working downtown for the city—something to do with roads.

  He was that much better off, at least, than Petrova Fossil.

  On Sunday afternoon, Mason and Dog were over at Brody’s. Dog couldn’t come inside the house because of Brody’s father’s allergies, so they were playing together in the dead garden at the edge of Brody’s yard, digging a long channel and filling it with water from the hose. It was Brody’s idea. This week Brody wanted to be a bridge builder when he grew up, and he needed a river so he could practice building bridges over it. Dog seemed entirely thrilled with the project, rolling in the fresh dirt, dashing in and out of the water from the hose.

  Brody sang as he worked. Loudly.

  “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!” Brody sang. Then he shouted out the question: “Where?” And sang the reply: “Down in my heart!”

  “No singing,” Mason told him.

  “Where?” Apparently Brody couldn’t stop himself. “Down in my heart!”

  “Brody!”

  The singing ceased, but Mason knew that Brody was still humming the song silently in his head. Unfortunately, now the song was stuck inside Mason’s head as well.

  “We need to sing,” Brody said. “The first Platters practice is Tuesday, remember?”

  As if Mason could forget.

  “We’ll have Plainfield Platters T-shirts!” Brody shoveled harder in his enthusiasm.

  Where? Down in my heart!

  “And stand on risers!”

  Where? Down in my heart!

  “And sing!”

  “I’m not going to be in the Platters,” Mason said.

  Brody stopped shoveling. “Of course you are. Everyone is in the Platters. It’s the best thing about being in fourth grade.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “For everybody.”

  “Not for me.”

  Now Brody looked worried. “How will we walk to school together on Tuesdays and Fridays if you’re not in the Platters?” Then Brody’s frown lifted, as if the solution to the problem had become clear. “Your mother will make you be in it.”

  “No,” Mason said. “I already told her, and she said she understood completely and respected my decision.”
>
  Brody looked even more worried. Then he burst out laughing. “Liar!”

  Mason tried digging deeper with his shovel, but it struck a rock. He and Brody had been digging for half an hour, and so far all they had was a stupid, muddy hole.

  “Down in my heart to stay!” Brody sang.

  After another half hour, even Brody was tired of digging, though he kept saying that their pathetic, totally lame river was “awesome” and “totally cool.” Dog had given up, too, and lay panting in the shade.

  They went back over to Mason’s house to make themselves root-beer floats, but before Brody could finish his, Brody’s mother called on the telephone and told him that he needed to come back home and turn off the hose. Brody got so excited that he forgot to do things sometimes.

  Mason’s mother came into the kitchen.

  “Did you and Brody have fun?” she asked.

  Mason nodded. Even digging a pointless hole in the hot sun was sort of fun if he did it with Brody and Dog.

  “Did you think any more about the Platters?” she asked then, in a tone obviously intended to seem casual.

  When he didn’t answer, she went on. “Your father and I talked some more about it, and we’ve decided that if after giving it a fair try—a fair try, Mason—you really don’t want to do it, we’re not going to force you. But we think it’s important that you give it a fair try.”

  “What counts as a fair try?” Mason asked. He had tried it out already in his mind and hadn’t liked it one bit. Would a fair try be one practice? Two practices? He hoped it wasn’t going to be two whole weeks.

  “Three months,” she said.

  Mason felt the color draining from his face.

  “Just until the first concert. And then, after that, it’s your decision.”

  After that? She might as well have said, Just try it for fifty years, and after that, it’s your decision.

  “Okay?” she asked.

  What could Mason say?

  He shrugged, which he knew she took as a yes, and swallowed melted ice cream from the bottom of his half-finished float. He had the dread, dread, dread, dread down in his heart, down in his heart to stay.