Fourth-Grade Disasters

by Claudia Mills

  4

  On Tuesday morning, at 7:45, Mason and Brody walked in the door of Plainfield Elementary for the first rehearsal of the Plainfield Platters.

  Mrs. Morengo, the retired music teacher who had stayed on at Plainfield Elementary to direct the Plainfield Platters, was a tiny woman, hardly taller than Mason. She was the teacher who had written the words to “Puff the Plainfield Dragon.” During his first four years at Plainfield Elementary, Mason had watched her conduct Platters concerts, standing onstage in front of the chorus on a wooden box. As she conducted, she leaped about with such energy that there was always the possibility that she would fall off the box. So far, to Mason’s knowledge, she never had.

  After Mrs. Morengo’s words of welcome, the first song of the day was “Puff the Plainfield Dragon.”

  “Yes, you all know our Puff,” she said. “You have been singing about Puff since the first day of kindergarten, yes? But we begin each year with Puff because he inspires us. We are called the Plainfield Platters. But we are really the Plainfield Dragons. Hear us roar!”

  Mason noticed that the real-life Puff—the stuffed toy—had been taken out of the glass display case and now sat propped up on a chair next to the piano. Puff leaned to one side, as if he were slightly tipsy.

  When the students took their places on the risers in the music room, Mason carefully chose a spot at the very end of the second row behind one of his taller classmates. There was no way he was going to stand next to Brody, front row, center. Mr. Griffith, the dad who played the piano for the Platters, began the opening chords of “Puff.” Mason bent his knees and slumped his shoulders so that Mrs. Morengo would hardly be able to see him.

  Mason Dixon, invisible dragon, the dragon with the silent roar.

  He mouthed the words successfully without attracting any notice to himself. Looking toward Mrs. Morengo, out of the corner of his eyes, he could see Brody belting out the tune as if it were opening night on Broadway for Plainfield Platters: The Musical. Brody’s second-best friend, Sheng, was standing next to Brody, singing with almost as much enthusiasm.

  Mason felt a twinge of jealousy that the two of them were having so much fun together. But it was better to share a love of Dog with Brody than a love of Puff the Plainfield Dragon.

  Unfortunately, standing next to Mason was Dunk, who had also chosen a hidden spot on the second row. Dunk seemed to have made it his project for the day to shove Mason off the end of the riser. Mason knew that Dunk didn’t have anything against him, particularly; it was just Dunk’s hobby to shove people.

  “Puff is loved by everyone!” Dunk sang, taking two steps toward Mason while bopping in time with the song.

  Mason had no choice but to take two steps closer to the edge of the riser. In the process, he wobbled forward and bumped into the tall girl in front of him, who turned around and gave him a dirty look. Mrs. Morengo’s eyes turned briefly in his direction.

  “Because he is so cool!” Dunk took another step toward Mason.

  Now there were no steps left for Mason to take. He tried to hold his ground, but it was hard to shove back against Dunk while pretending to sing.

  “Every day we shout hooray that Puff lives at our school!”

  Dunk won the shoving contest: Mason was off the riser, sprawled on the music room carpet. Once again he was a tipped-over teapot, but this time tipped with considerably more force and falling a considerably greater distance.

  Kids near him burst out laughing.

  Oh, how comical to see Mason lying on the floor!

  Mr. Griffith broke off playing, and Mrs. Morengo’s eyes turned Mason’s way as he sat rubbing his left knee and elbow. He’d probably be crippled for life, and instead of telling everybody that it was an old football injury, he’d have to say that it was an old Plainfield Platters singing-group injury.

  “Boys!” Mrs. Morengo said sternly, as if Mason’s landing on the floor had been as much his fault as Dunk’s, a deliberate attempt to arouse his classmates’ mirth.

  He didn’t bother to correct her.

  “Here,” she said, pointing to the spot in the front row on the other side of Brody. “You. What’s your name?”

  Mason hoped that she was talking to Dunk, but her eyes were plainly fixed on him.

  “Mason,” he mumbled.

  “Mason. Come stand here, so I can keep an eye on you.”

  Like a doomed man walking to his execution by firing squad, Mason took his place next to Brody. It was small comfort that Brody greeted him with a radiant grin.

  “All right,” Mrs. Morengo called out. “Let’s try this again. Mr. Griffith, take it from the top.”

  “Puff the Plainfield Dragon!” everybody sang.

  Mason could feel Mrs. Morengo’s beady eyes boring into him.

  Against his will, he sang, too.

  During writing time that morning, Mason read over the start of his story, “The Piano That Went on Strike.”

  Once upon a time there was a piano named Pedro. Pedro had a big problem. He did not like playing music.

  Mason felt Coach Joe looking over his shoulder. “Great start, Mason! Do you want to tell us a little bit more? Why doesn’t Pedro the piano like playing music? What does Pedro like to do?”

  Mason didn’t exactly want to tell anything more about Pedro’s likes and dislikes, but he supposed he could try to come up with something.

  As Coach Joe continued on his way around the room, Mason sat thinking.

  “Is Pedro out of tune?” It was Nora, who sat next to Mason on the other side from Brody. “Maybe Pedro doesn’t like playing music because he needs to be tuned.”

  Mason didn’t reply right away.

  “There has to be a reason why he doesn’t want to play.”

  Mason thought this over.

  “There’s always a reason for everything,” Nora said.

  “Is there?” Mason asked.

  “Of course! Things don’t just happen. Like, when an apple falls on the ground, the reason is gravity. Have you ever heard of Sir Isaac Newton?”

  Mason hadn’t.

  “He was the person who first discovered the law of gravity. And a whole bunch of other laws that explain why things happen the way they do. So you need to figure out why Pedro is the way he is.”

  “Maybe he’s shy,” Mason suggested.

  Pedro just felt stupid having people plunk on his keys, plink, plink, plink, playing whatever dumb notes they felt like playing. “Chopsticks.” Did any piano really want to play “Chopsticks”?

  “Then there has to be a reason why he’s shy. There’s always a reason for everything,” Nora repeated.

  Maybe Pedro had a bad experience once, making some terrible, embarrassing mistake playing “Chopsticks” in front of everybody. Or maybe Pedro had been shoved so hard during a practice session that he tipped over and crashed against the floor, to the hysterical amusement of all.

  “What’s your story about?” Mason asked, to change the subject. Coach Joe didn’t mind if they talked, so long as they talked quietly about what they were working on.

  “A hundred-dollar bill. Since that is the biggest bill that gets made.”

  “What happens to—him? Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “It’s an it.”

  “Does it not want anybody to spend it?”

  “It doesn’t have thoughts or feelings. It’s a very realistic hundred-dollar bill. Someone spends it to buy a bicycle, and then the person who gets the hundred-dollar bill uses it to buy a cell phone. I know, it’s a boring story. But at least it could really happen. I like stories that could really happen. If Pedro doesn’t like to play music, what does he like to do?”

  Nothing? “He likes to have people put stuff on him, like piles of music. And coffee cups. And he likes when people dust him. Except when they dust his keys—sometimes it tickles.”

  Nora laughed. Mason laughed, too.

  Usually Mason and Brody walked home from school by themselves, except on days when Brody had soccer p
ractice or a playdate with one of his next-best friends. Mason and Brody went to Mason’s house because Brody’s parents both worked full-time outside the home, while Mason’s mom edited her knitting newsletter from her upstairs home office. And this year, Mason and Brody also went to Mason’s house because Mason’s house had Dog.

  On special days, Mason’s mom walked over to Plainfield Elementary to meet them. She must have thought today was a special day, because there she was, standing outside the door of their classroom, chatting with some of the other parents.

  “So?” she asked eagerly.

  Mason knew what the question meant, but he pretended he didn’t.

  “How was it?”

  He could continue to pretend; he could ask, “How was what?” But there was no point in postponing his answer.

  “Not good,” he said grimly. She might as well know the truth of what she had signed him up for.

  “Dunk Davis pushed me off the riser, and I fell, and I think I sprained my elbow and my knee, so I won’t be able to be in the Platters anymore.”

  At the first part of his sentence she had looked concerned, but at the end of the sentence she just reached over and gave his shoulders a comforting squeeze. Mason should have remembered to fake a limp.

  “Now, honey, I think you’re exaggerating,” she said. “Did Mrs. Morengo scold Dunk?”

  “No. She scolded me.”

  Her face showed a flicker of concern again, but then she made a visible effort to summon her own positive attitude. “Mrs. Morengo has never worked with any of you fourth graders before. I’m sure that once she gets to know all of you, she’ll realize what kind of boy Dunk is and what kind of boy you are.”

  By “what kind of boy you are,” did she mean a boy who doesn’t like to sing?

  As if to salvage the situation, and rekindle her hopes about their upcoming happy year in fourth grade, she turned to Brody. “What about you, Brody, honey? Did you like your first day in the Platters?”

  Brody started telling her everything—what songs they were going to learn for the fall concert, when they’d get their T-shirts, ways that parents could sign up to help.

  Mason tuned out. Later, when he was all alone with Dog, he’d tell Dog everything. And Dog wouldn’t think he was exaggerating. Dog would know that everything he said about his first day in the Plainfield Platters was completely and absolutely true.

  5

  At Platters practice on Friday morning, Mrs. Morengo clapped her hands to call the students to attention just as Mason claimed his spot in the second row, this time safely on the other end of the riser from Dunk. He assumed that Mrs. Morengo hadn’t meant to condemn him to the front-row center spot for the rest of his life.

  “Today,” she said, “the fifth graders are going to practice in the auditorium with Mr. Griffith. The fourth graders will stay here with me. You are our newest Platters! It is easy for new Platters to feel lost with so many fifth-grade Platters who are so tall! So confident! So today I want to give special attention to my special fourth-grade Platters.”

  She beamed at the fourth graders as the fifth graders followed Mr. Griffith out of the music room. Mason began to feel uneasy.

  “I know there are some wonderful fourth-grade voices here in this room,” Mrs. Morengo said. “So today I want to hear each and every one of you sing. All by yourself.”

  Mason wondered if he could fall down in a heap and get sent home, or at least get sent to the health room. But they’d call his mother, and she’d take him to the doctor, and the day would get steadily worse from there.

  “Just a few lines of ‘Puff,’ the song you already know so well.”

  Mrs. Morengo looked down at her alphabetical list. “Nora Alpers, will you go first?”

  The teacher’s gaze swept over the rest of the class. “Don’t worry, everybody is going to get a turn!”

  Nora walked slowly to the front of the room. Mrs. Morengo, who could play the piano just fine when she wasn’t hopping around on her conducting box, pounded out the opening chords.

  “Puff the Plainfield Dragon,” Nora sang. Her voice was clear and steady, her face without expression. Mason wondered what she was thinking as she sang. That dragons were made-up creatures? That not a single word of the song was true?

  Second in line, Evan Anderson had a terrible voice. How could anyone live to be a fourth grader at Plainfield Elementary without knowing the tune to “Puff the Plainfield Dragon”? It was a relief, in a way, to have such a terrible voice at the start of the alphabet. That way everyone else could think, At least I’m not as bad as Evan Anderson.

  Mrs. Morengo didn’t say anything critical after Evan finished his verse. She just made a little mark in her notebook, the same way she had done after Nora.

  Brody was the fourth to sing, after Emma Averill. Brody belted out “Puff” as if he had a full orchestra behind him and an adoring audience rising to its feet. Brody’s voice was decent, but it wasn’t his voice you noticed: it was his face, lit up with happiness to be singing about Puff! The Plainfield Dragon!

  Even though Mrs. Morengo was trying not to react either positively or negatively to anybody’s singing, she did flash Brody a big smile when he finished. It would have been impossible not to.

  The rest of the Bs sang, and then the Cs. No one was as awful as Evan or as enthusiastic as Brody. Mason knew he’d fall asleep that night to the endless repetition of “Puff the Plainfield Dragon.” He’d dream about Puff. He’d wake up in the morning to a chorus of birds chirping about Puff. And Pedro the piano had complained about having to play “Chopsticks”!

  Nobody was bothering to listen any longer as their classmates sang, for which Mason was grateful. Instead, they talked quietly among themselves, except for Dunk, whose voice bellowed above the others, ignored for now by Mrs. Morengo.

  “Mason Dixon,” Mrs. Morengo finally called out.

  It was Mason’s turn.

  Like the others before him, he left his spot on the risers and came to stand next to the upright piano.

  Hey, Pedro, he thought, but he was too terrified to be funny, even inside his own head.

  From over on the risers, he heard Dunk singing the first line of “I’m a Little Teapot,” as if the tune had just happened to pop into Dunk’s head.

  Mason opened his mouth to sing, but instead he started coughing. The strange thing was that he wasn’t faking the cough; it just came hacking out of him of its own accord. But Mrs. Morengo would probably think he was faking, and it would be one more thing she could blame him for.

  Now his classmates, once so busily chatting, had fallen silent. He could feel everybody watching in utter silence, listening to Mason Dixon cough.

  From over on the risers, he heard an echoing series of coughs from Dunk. The walls of the music room seemed to ring with the sound of coughing.

  Mrs. Morengo and Pedro stopped playing.

  “Are you all right, Mason?” she asked.

  Mason forced himself to nod. “Something must have gotten stuck in my throat,” he said.

  Something like his tongue.

  “All right, let’s try it again,” she said. “Children, just visit among yourselves,” she instructed the rest of the class, as if that could get them to turn off their suddenly fascinated ears.

  Pedro played the opening chords of “Puff” once more. Somehow, Mason managed to get his mouth open and sing, without tipping over like a little teapot. He knew he wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t think he was frowning, either. He tried to look like Nora.

  “Every day we shout hooray that Puff lives at our school!”

  He had survived and could go back to the risers with the other kids, who had resumed talking once they realized that Mason’s second scene of spectacular humiliation this week had come to its conclusion.

  “Mason.” Mrs. Morengo was apparently talking to him. “Once you got going, that was lovely. Have you ever taken voice lessons?”

  Voice lessons!

  Mason shook his head
, too horrified by the question to speak. In second grade his mother had tried to make him take piano lessons, without success, but even she had not dared to suggest voice lessons.

  Smiling, Mrs. Morengo wrote a name and number on a piece of paper and handed it to Mason.

  “Give this to your parents—this woman is a wonderful voice teacher. One of her students now sings for the Central City Opera.”

  Numbly, Mason took the piece of paper and stuck it in his pocket.

  Mrs. Morengo gave him another huge smile; his crime of falling off the risers on the first day had apparently been forgiven and forgotten. “Maybe we can coax you into singing a solo for us at one of our concerts!” she said.

  Mason meant to shake his head again, but it was frozen motionless on his neck, paralyzed by her words as by the bite of a poisonous serpent.

  Or scalding steam from a tipping teapot. Or the fiery breath of a school-mascot dragon.

  “Maybe we’ll both get solos!” Brody said as they hurried to Coach Joe’s class together.

  Walking past them, Dunk sang a series of la-la-las in a high, quavery, opera-singer voice. Then he tried out a line of “I’m a Little Teapot” in the same exaggerated falsetto.

  Brody ignored Dunk. “I think it’s cool that you might take voice lessons. We could both take voice lessons! We could have our own singing group and take it on the road. What would be a good name for our group? How about the Singing Dragons? Or the Dragon Kids? Or—is there some way to combine our names? The Mason Brodys. Or the Brody Masons.”

  “I don’t like to sing,” Mason said wearily.

  “Oh,” said Brody. “I forgot.”

  Right after the Pledge of Allegiance and the morning announcements, Coach Joe called the class into a writing huddle. At least today they didn’t have to sing “Puff” as part of the opening exercises. Maybe the principal had heard the distant sounds of the fourth graders’ Platters practice wafting down the hall to her office.

  “How are your stories coming along?” Coach Joe asked the class.

  “Good!” a few kids called out.