Fourth-Grade Disasters

by Claudia Mills

  “I’m the stage crew,” Mason said with what he hoped sounded like quiet dignity.

  Dunk guffawed. “Was that your idea or her idea?”

  It had been Nora’s idea, actually, but Mason refused to answer.

  “Either it was Morengo’s idea because she finally realized you stink so bad she didn’t want you to ruin the concert for everybody else. Or it was your idea because you’re a scaredy-cat.”

  Mason tried to keep his face from betraying any emotion, but he could tell that Dunk knew he had guessed correctly.

  “You’re a little scaredy teapot, short and stout,” Dunk chortled.

  “He is not!” Brody almost yelled. “The stage crew is a very important part of a show. It’s the most important part!”

  “It’s definitely more important than singing a dumb solo in a dumb costume like a dumb Puff baby,” Dunk agreed.

  Mason knew it was his turn now to defend Brody, but he couldn’t think of anything stinging enough to say.

  Nora had been walking behind them, evidently listening all the time. Now she caught up to them, her eyes flashing. But her voice, as always, was calm and steady.

  “I found an interesting site on the Internet last night,” she said to the three of them, as if simply offering a tidbit of neutral information. “It had a very detailed description of last year’s Super Bowl game. You’d like it, Dunk, since you’re so interested in football. You know, because of your story about Footie.”

  That was all she said. But it was enough to make Dunk flush a deep, dull red.

  “Oh, and I made a printout of it,” Nora added casually. “I thought Coach Joe might like it, too. Since he loves sports so much. Except, of course, when anybody is cheating.”

  She gave Dunk a last friendly smile.

  Mason didn’t turn to look again at Dunk as they stashed their backpacks and took their seats in Coach Joe’s classroom.

  Dunk ripped up his story. Mason saw him doing it. Not that Dunk ever did anything quietly.

  Rip! Rip! Dunk tore the paper he had already torn, again and again, until his desk was littered with a heap of paper scraps, some of them falling onto the floor as well.

  The sound was loud enough that Coach Joe looked up from his desk. “Hey, Dunk,” he said in his cheerful tone of voice, “what’s up?”

  Dunk looked close to tears. “I ripped up ‘Footie.’ ” He turned to glare at Nora, as if to say, See what you made me do?

  “Whoa,” Coach Joe said softly. He formed his hand into a time-out T. “Dunk, how about our own private huddle, one on one?” He nodded his head toward the hall.

  Dunk stayed in his seat, obviously past caring if anyone else heard what he had to say.

  “My story stinks! Sheng said so!”

  Coach Joe looked expectantly at Sheng.

  “I didn’t say it stank. I said it was short. That’s all I said.”

  “You said it was too short. And I tried to make it longer, but I couldn’t think of stuff to write, so I copied some stuff from Wikipedia, and she”—he gave a baleful jerk of his head toward Nora—“printed it out and was going to give it to you, so now I’ve ripped it up, and I’ll get a zero, and my dad will freak out, and he won’t let me play football, and it’s all her fault!”

  Dunk’s cheeks were red, and his lower lip stuck out, quivering. His eyes were bright with tears; he rubbed them defiantly as he glared again at Nora.

  “Whoa,” Coach Joe said a second time, even more softly, as if trying to figure out how his team could have fallen apart so badly so close to the start of the season.

  Mason sneaked a glance at Nora. She didn’t seem upset that Dunk blamed her for his ripped-up story. It was as if she had just poked a stick into an ant tunnel and was watching with calm curiosity for what the ants would do next.

  There was a long silence, Dunk sniffling and Coach Joe obviously thinking about how to get his team back on the field.

  “Well, Dunk,” Coach Joe finally said, “if you copied your story from the Internet, you did the right thing in throwing it away. It’s better to lose the game than to win it by not playing fair and square. Copying somebody else’s work, and then trying to pass it off as your own, is plagiarism, and it’s wrong, no two ways about it.”

  Coach Joe went on. “Now, the story is due tomorrow. As far as I can see, you have two options. Write your own Footie story, short or long, telling Footie’s story as you want to tell it. But maybe the problem is that you weren’t all that interested in Footie in the first place, and you really wanted to write about someone else. Your friend the toilet.”

  A couple of kids giggled, not in a mean way, but just because they couldn’t help it. Even Dunk’s mouth twisted into a shaky grin.

  “You said your dad didn’t want you to write about the toilet. Maybe your dad didn’t know that on Coach Joe’s team, any subject is A-okay. Because you know what the first rule of writing is for my class?”

  Mason tried to guess, but couldn’t.

  “Have fun. If the writer is having fun writing, the reader will probably have fun reading. So maybe it’s goodbye, Footie the football, and hello, Tommy the toilet. Or maybe you want to give Footie one more chance—your best shot. Either way, it’s up to you.”

  Coach Joe sat back down behind his desk. “So that’s my locker-room pep talk, team.”

  The next time Mason looked over at Dunk, Dunk’s hand was racing furiously across the page and Dunk was grinning to himself as he wrote a line he seemed to think was particularly hilarious. Mason had a feeling that Tommy the toilet was busy flushing something very interesting.

  13

  That night, the night before the concert, Mason and his mother finished reading Ballet Shoes. The book ended with Pauline going off to Hollywood to be a movie star, Posy going off to Czechoslovakia to be a ballerina, and Petrova going off to fly planes with “Gum,” their great-uncle Matthew. It was a completely satisfying ending.

  Dog thought so, too. He gave a low whimper of appreciation when Mason’s mother shut the book after the last page.

  “If you liked Ballet Shoes,” she told Mason, “there’s a whole series of Shoes books. Theatre Shoes, Dancing Shoes, Movie Shoes, Skating Shoes, Tennis Shoes, Circus Shoes. All kinds of shoes.”

  “Do they all have shoes in them?”

  “No, they’re all about talented children following their dreams.”

  “Are any of them about ordinary, nontalented children who don’t have any dreams?” Mason hadn’t meant for his question to come out sounding so bitter.

  “Oh, Mason, you’re only in fourth grade. There’s still plenty of time for you to find your talents and your dreams. Anyway, there’s Jane in Movie Shoes. Her talent is loving her dog. Really.”

  “Then why is it called Movie Shoes and not Dog Shoes?”

  “Because Jane does end up being in a movie. She plays the part of Mary in a movie version of The Secret Garden. But what she really loves is spending time with her dog, Chewing Gum.”

  That was a strange name for a dog, in Mason’s opinion. But he guessed all dogs couldn’t be named Dog.

  His mother kissed Mason goodnight and dropped a kiss on Dog’s head, too.

  “Get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s your big day!” she said as she turned off Mason’s light and closed the door.

  Mason wished she hadn’t said it.

  Mason was surprised, at the dress rehearsal before school on Friday morning, to find that the Platters were only part of the Beulah Brighton Belvedere School for the Arts celebration concert. First the fifth-grade handbell choir performed, and then some kid—a third grader!—played a showy piece on his violin, and a group of girls did Irish step dancing. The Platters performed last, beginning with “America!” and then “Summer Storm,” and finishing, of course, with “Puff the Plainfield Dragon.”

  The Platters’ portion of the rehearsal was a disaster, from start to finish. It took forever for the singers to find their places on the risers, even though they’d sun
g on risers every day that week. Four letters were upside down in the finale of “America!” One kid came in too soon for the first “Drip, drop” of the raindrop song. The mike didn’t work for Brody’s solo.

  Worst of all, Mason was so fascinated by the spectacle of all these mistakes and mishaps that, standing at the light switches by the side door of the gym, he forgot to flash the lightning until the storm was almost over. Not that anyone could see the flashing lights in broad daylight. But he knew he had failed miserably.

  Mrs. Morengo tried to be encouraging. “Now, Platters, you know what they say in the world of theater, don’t you? The worse the dress rehearsal, the better the show!”

  Mason was sure that saying had been invented only to give false hope after terrible dress rehearsals.

  “I would be worried if the dress rehearsal hadn’t been like this,” Mrs. Morengo insisted.

  A lie if Mason had ever heard one.

  All day, Coach Joe’s students were unable to settle down to division, Native Americans, the life cycle of a crayfish. Finally he gave up and took them outside for extra recess.

  Mason, Brody, and Nora found a cool spot at the edge of the blacktop, sitting at a picnic table under an enormous oak tree.

  “Are you nervous?” Nora asked Brody.

  “No!” Brody appeared shocked by the question. “We’ve been singing ‘Puff’ since kindergarten! And if the mike doesn’t work, I’ll just belt it out.”

  He stood up on top of the picnic table, as if preparing to demonstrate his show-stopping technique.

  “That’s okay,” Nora said. “We believe you.”

  “Plus, no one else will have seen my costume yet, so think how amazed they’ll be.”

  The plan was for Brody to slip off the risers during the applause following the raindrop song—assuming that there was any applause—and dart offstage to zip into his costume, while the last fifth-grade speaker announced the final number of the program.

  Mason hoped the zipper didn’t get stuck.

  Or break.

  He knew he shouldn’t be thinking things like that.

  But he always did.

  “When they see me?” Brody continued. “When the audience sees me? They’re going to go like this: Awwwwww.”

  He imitated the audience again, their long, slow sigh of awestruck appreciation at his outstanding cuteness: “Awwwwwwww.”

  Nora swatted him, and Brody sat down next to Mason on the picnic bench, his eyes still shining from his anticipated glory.

  Mason hoped Dunk didn’t push anyone off the risers during the concert, though at least this time it wouldn’t be him.

  He hoped the piano didn’t break right in the middle of a song—that Pedro would decide to wait a little longer before going on strike and refusing to play.

  He hoped all the letters for “America!” would be right side up.

  He hoped he remembered to flash the lights.

  Most of all, he hoped his mother would think it was okay that he was flashing the lights instead of singing with his voice-lesson voice.

  He knew he shouldn’t be thinking things like that.

  But he always did.

  The students were supposed to be at school at 6:15; the concert was set to begin at seven o’clock. There was really no reason why they all had to arrive forty-five minutes early. Mason figured the early time was Mrs. Morengo’s way of making sure that even her straggler Platters wouldn’t be late.

  Even though he wasn’t going to be singing with the others, Mason wore his Platters T-shirt, the one that had originally been Brody’s, before they traded shirts. So his parents still had no clue about the stage-crew surprise.

  The gym was packed, each folding chair occupied by a proud parent, a squirming sibling, or even a teacher. At his post by the light switches, Mason saw Coach Joe, who gave him a big thumbs-up, and Mrs. Prindle, who shook her head warningly at him for no reason at all. In the back of the gym, the cameraman from Channel 9 News was staggering under the weight of the largest camera Mason had ever seen.

  Mrs. Morengo gave Mason a signal. He flipped the three switches for the lights that lit up the seating area in the gym, leaving only the lights shining upon the stage.

  So far, so good.

  Mrs. Miller came out, to loud applause from the audience. She made a speech that went on too long about the great honor for Plainfield Elementary of being named a Beulah Brighton Belvedere School for the Arts. Mason still had no idea who Beulah Brighton Belvedere was or why she liked the arts so much.

  The handbells chimed, and the violin prodigy played his violin, and the Irish dancers danced.

  Mason could see the Platters standing in line in the wings, waiting for their moment to take the stage. Part of Mason thought it would be better to go first and get it over with. On the other hand, if you were last, there was always some chance of an earthquake or a tornado that would keep you from having to perform at all.

  “And now,” Mrs. Miller said into her microphone, “last but certainly not least, our beloved Plainfield PLATTERS!”

  The audience cheered as the Platters marched in formation up onto the stage.

  Mason felt a teensy-weensy pang that he wasn’t with them. He knew his parents would be craning their necks for a first glimpse of him there on the risers and wondering why they couldn’t see him anywhere.

  He concentrated on gathering his strength for his big moment as lightning guy. And hoping that the “America!” letters would all be right side up this time.

  And they were! The first number was definitely fine, even better than fine. Maybe that old saying about the bad dress rehearsal wasn’t bogus, after all.

  The raindrop song, too, was more impressive than Mason had expected.

  Bang, crash came the drums and cymbals.

  Flash, flash went the lights. Mason’s lights.

  He thought he could hear the audience give a small gasp of astonishment at the cleverness of this special effect. But, with all eyes on the stage, nobody—including his parents—would know that he was the one doing it.

  The storm subsided.

  “Drip. Drop. Drip.”

  “Drip.”

  “Drip.”

  A moment of silence—would there be one last raindrop? No. Mrs. Morengo turned to face the audience, so they would know the song was over and it was time to applaud. And they did.

  As Mason watched, Brody disappeared from the risers to put on his costume. Zia read her little speech from Mrs. Morengo’s index card:

  “Our last song is dear to the hearts of all Plainfield Elementary students, parents, teachers, and staff. For twenty years, we have been singing about our love for our wonderful mascot, who inspires us to be our best every day in every way. Ladies and gentlemen, as our final number for this special evening, we give you ‘Puff the Plainfield Dragon’!”

  A small green dragon walked slowly to the middle of the stage.

  “Awwwwwww!” went the audience.

  Mason could see Brody’s face poking through the face hole in his costume. Brody wasn’t smiling. Perhaps he had decided that Puff should have a more solemn expression, as befitted his sacred status as Plainfield Elementary’s tradition and treasure.

  Mr. Griffith began to play.

  Brody did not begin to sing.

  Mr. Griffith smiled up encouragingly at Brody and kept the introduction going for a bit longer.

  Puff the Plainfield Dragon stood silent, voiceless, motionless—paralyzed, Mason could see, by complete and utter terror.

  14

  Sing, Brody! Mason willed with every fiber of his being. Sing!

  Brody continued to stand there, stock still, no sound whatsoever coming out of his mouth. He looked as if any second his face would crumple into tears and he would be crying in front of hundreds of people in the Plainfield Elementary gymnasium and tens of thousands more watching on TV.

  Mrs. Morengo wasn’t facing the audience, so Mason could see the pleading expression on her face, and he could
see her arms raised imploringly toward Brody. Sing, Brody!

  Somebody had to start singing—Brody, all the assembled Platters, or somebody else. If a few more seconds went by without any sounds coming out of anybody’s mouth, Brody would be known forever as the failed Puff at the most disastrous concert in Platters history.

  Sing, somebody!

  And then, to the amazement of Mason himself, he was that somebody.

  More nimbly than he could have imagined, Mason walked out onto the stage and joined Brody at the mike.

  Mr. Griffith came around again to the familiar opening cue, and Mason opened his mouth to prepare to sing, praying that this time he wouldn’t have a spasm of coughing. After all, if there was one song on this earth that he could sing, this was it.

  “Puff the Plainfield Dragon,” Mason sang.

  Brody joined in. “Lives at our school.”

  “Puff helps us to do our work and follow every rule,” the two friends sang together. Brody’s voice was loud and confident now.

  “Puff is loved by everyone because he is so cool! Every day we shout hooray that Puff lives at our school! Oh.…”

  The Plainfield Platters added their voices to the next chorus. Mason couldn’t see them, but he knew that standing behind him on the risers, Nora and Dunk, Sheng, Julio, Alastair, and Bradley were all singing, too. Brody was belting out the song with all his big Brody heart, his face shining once again in its usual Brodyish way, as if it had been buttered with happiness.

  Although they hadn’t rehearsed it like this, Mrs. Morengo turned toward the audience and invited them to sing along. The gymnasium swelled with the sound. Mason wondered if even Mrs. Prindle and the Channel 9 cameraman would be able to resist taking part.

  “Puff the Plainfield Dragon!” Mason sang to the brand-new but still lucky stuffed dragon propped up against the side of the stage.

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

  “Oh, Mason, we were so worried!” his mother said as she crushed him into a hug once the concert was over and kids were meeting their parents in the hallway outside the gym. “We looked and looked and couldn’t find you anywhere! But then—oh, Mason, you didn’t tell us that you were going to have a solo, along with Brody!”