Cassidy's Guide to Everyday Etiquette (and Obfuscation)

by Sue Stauffacher

  “It’s like this,” I said, trying to figure out how to politely say I almost offed my great-grandma and this was her revenge. “I…inherited it.”

  “From your great-grandmother. I understand it wasn’t your first choice for how to spend your summer vacation.”

  I shook my head.

  “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. It’s not mine, either.”

  Was that a sigh that came out of my manners teacher’s mouth?

  “It’s called work, Miss Corcoran. It’s what you do when you’re a grown-up. I enjoy my work, but there are moments”—Miss Melton-Mowry paused and looked at me—“when I wonder if there might have been a better choice, long-term.”

  “Maybe you could teach Frisbee golf. Or fishing. I know lots of things in the normal world you’d like.”

  “I have decided to stick it out for the duration; so shall we agree to make the best of this? There really are advantages to learning how to be polite.”

  The phone rang in her office, which was probably a good thing because it kept me from asking her to name a single one.

  Looking at her watch, Miss Melton-Mowry said, “Where is your mother, I wonder? That will be London calling. I have a phone con—”

  “I say we call the police,” I offered. “And make a missing-person report.”

  “Why don’t you sit here—quietly—and review your place settings. Knock on the door when she arrives. If I’m still on the phone, just have her leave a note on the table.” With that, she disappeared behind the door with her name on it.

  I did what I was told—my way. First I practiced slouching with my arms at “never.” Then I threw my knees so far apart the king of England could’ve seen my underwear if I’d been wearing a fancy dress. Next I pulled my chair over to Miss Information and had a staring contest; the deck was stacked against me there.

  I bent her arms until her elbows were on the table. Which took some doing, I can tell you.

  “Cassidy, what are you doing?”

  Delton Bean again!

  “No, Delton. What are you doing?”

  “I forgot my spring jacket. I always do that when the weather changes.” Delton went to the coat closet in the back of the room and took his jacket off the hanger.

  “Well, since you’re here, I’m going to give you your first lesson.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know, the kind full of do-daring.”

  “My mom’s waiting. Maybe we can set up a playdate or something?”

  “Sit down, Delton. It’s called a prank. All you have to do is put Miss Information’s wig in Miss Parker’s soup bowl.”

  Delton’s head swung back and forth between me and the door. He did not sit down.

  “Just pick it off—it’s a wig. And drop it in the bowl. This is rank-beginner stuff. Here, I’ll hold her steady.” I grabbed Miss Information’s shoulders. “Go on.”

  Delton put his hand out and touched the dummy’s wig. “I don’t think—”

  “Delton! Don’t you want to get a backbone?”

  Delton pressed his lips together and yanked.

  Nothing.

  “Pull a little harder. There must be some glue.”

  He tugged.

  “Geez, Delton. Put some muscle into it.” Being a teacher was harder than I thought. “Trade places with me.”

  “My mom—”

  “This is exactly what your mom wants you to do. It’s called a prank—it’s harmless fun. Don’t worry. No one gets hurt.”

  Delton exchanged places with me. It’s possible by this time I was trying to show off a little or maybe it was the pent-up energy caused by all that sitting still; I grabbed a handful of Miss Information’s hair and yanked as hard as I could. Sometimes I don’t know my own strength. There was an awful scraping noise, and then Miss I’s head came right off her shoulders and landed facedown in her soup bowl.

  “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness,” Delton kept repeating, squeezing his hands until his fingers were white.

  “Delton, pull yourself together. When a prank goes wrong, it’s like…a plane going into a nosedive. You just get back to where you started, put it back the way it was.” I picked up the head and examined it. There was a screw poking out of Miss Information’s neck. I stuck it into the hole between her shoulders, where her neck would fit, and spun her head around. Every time I thought I’d got it in, the head wobbled and fell out again.

  “You broke it when you yanked on it, Cassidy! Those shavings are from her neck. You stripped the screw and it won’t hold anymore.”

  “When we yanked on it, Delton. Calm down. Your cheeks are twitching.”

  “This was her present from Sheikh Jaaved! It’s priceless.”

  “I’m going to wrap her scarf around your neck, if you don’t shut it. I need to think.”

  “This isn’t a prank in a nosedive. This is a prank in a death spiral!”

  I crossed my arms and tried to generate some thoughts, but it was impossible with Delton making those squeaking noises.

  “Look, just go. I’ll figure this out. And don’t tell your mom or your snitch karma will follow you through the next five lifetimes.”

  “Sorry we’re late, Cass.” Magda burst through the door, breathless. “There was a ginormous line at Family Fare and then the lady in front of us was one of those coupon collectors who made the clerk so upset insisting he use her expired coupons he had to call the mana— What’s this?”

  “It’s a head. What’s it look like? Now scat, Delton!”

  Delton transferred his squeezy energy to his jacket, wringing it like a washrag. He tried to say something to Magda, but I think he was officially in shock.

  “I mean it. Not a word.”

  He ran out.

  “What have you done now? Where’s your teacher?”

  “She’s talking to London. In there.” I pointed to Miss Melton-Mowry’s office door. “Help me put this back on, Magda. Hurry!”

  But Magda wasn’t any better at it than I was; turns out, she’s only good at watching things fall apart. “What should I do? I can’t just leave her head lying here. She’ll know it was me.”

  “Maybe not. The door’s open. Maybe it happened after you left.”

  For the record, Magda would make a very bad criminal. My fingerprints were all over this. “We’re going to have to make her disappear,” I said.

  “You mean…kidnap her?”

  “No! Disappear. Just until Monday. Delton said the screw is stripped, so if I get a bigger screw…”

  That was it. I had it! Stuffing Miss Information’s head into my backpack, I gave Magda the plan. “I’ll get a bigger screw from Jack and put her head back on before class on Monday. I’ll come early and do it while she’s not looking.”

  “Not a good plan, Cassidy. She’s sure to notice the missing head.”

  “That’s why I need you to help me hide the body.”

  “What?”

  “Just for a few days.”

  One of the great truths of a prank is that, most times, people won’t notice when something is missing as much as they notice when something’s messed up. Miss Melton-Mowry might not notice Miss Information was gone from the room; but if she walked out and Miss Information had been beheaded…well…if there was an etiquette purgatory, I’d be sure to end up there.

  “Here, help me straighten her legs.”

  Magda did what I told her to do, but not without a running commentary. “There are so many holes in this plan I don’t know where to begin. Wow, she even has stockings on.”

  When we’d stretched Miss Information out straight as a board, I started for the back of the room—to the closet.

  “You can’t be serious. Her raincoat’s in here.”

  “I have eyes, Magda.” I shut the door—a little too loudly for someone who was trying to dispose of a body. “What is wrong with these places? There’s nowhere to hide.”

  Magda nodded her head in the direction of the back door. “I can’
t believe I’m helping you do this,” she said as I shouldered my way through the door and into the alley.

  We stood there, blinking in the sunshine. The alley didn’t look much better—who knew alleys could be so clean? This one was almost empty, with only a trash can and a recycling bin to separate it from the perfectly mowed grass on the other side.

  “You can’t leave her back here. It might rain. Someone might steal her.”

  “Miss Information is not a ‘her,’ Magda. She’s an ‘it.’ And I do think we could put it in here…just until Monday.”

  “The recycling bin?”

  “Sure. It says they pick up on Tuesdays—I’ll be back Monday. And look. It’s almost empty. How much recycling can one tailor have?”

  “Cassidy, I…”

  But I’d made up my mind; after dragging an empty milk crate over to the bin, I flipped the top open. With the extra height, I could just about shove Miss Information inside. “Help me out, Magda. Make sure the feet go into that empty box. Here, take off her heels.”

  “This doesn’t feel right, Cassidy.” Magda bleated about it, but she did what she was told. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you just told her?”

  “Told her I messed with the big doll she got from the sheikh of Arabique—and broke it? No, Magda. It would not be easier. After her call, Miss Melton-Mowry will turn off the lights and leave. She won’t be back until the next class and I can get this fixed before then. You have to fix it and put it back. Then it’s like it never happened.”

  —

  Back home, I sat in my room, my stomach feeling the way Delton’s jacket must have felt—wrung out. I remembered what my dad said after I’d convinced Magda to help me find the sandbar in Lake Michigan and we almost drowned in the undertow: “When in doubt, Cassidy, Magda’s seniority wins. Promise me that from now on!”

  I’d promised. And since this wasn’t a life-or-death situation, I felt it was okay to make Magda go along with my plan. But, if Miss Melton-Mowry found out what I did, it might become a life-or-death situation.

  “So how was Manners ‘R’ Us, Cass?” Jack asked, pushing open my bedroom door. He was holding one of his stunt-performer catalogs. “Whoa! I haven’t seen that look since you thought a can of spray paint was artificial snow and you dusted your mom’s car.”

  “I need help.” I grabbed my backpack from under my bed and pulled out Miss Information. Well, her head.

  “You beheaded your teacher? On the second day of class?”

  It took a while, with Jack interrupting me every ten seconds, to get the story out.

  “So you hid the body and swiped the head. Why didn’t you confess and take your punishment?”

  “Because I wasn’t caught red-handed! And…it’s not very polite, is it? To break somebody’s stuff? Especially stuff like this you can’t replace. It would have been such a great prank to have her wig in Donna’s soup bowl.”

  “Would have been.” Jack sat down next to me. I could see he’d been marking his catalog with Post-its. “But that’s not what happened.”

  “No, that’s not what happened. Because of my outlaw karma.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Cass, but I think you’ve got it worse than outlaw karma. This ranks right up there with”—Jack riffled the pages of his catalog, thinking—“maybe Titanic karma. You remember the Titanic, don’t you?”

  I nodded. No one at Stocking Elementary could forget the Titanic. Our librarian, Mr. Pinter, had an ashtray from the worst shipwreck in history. Every year on April 15, the day the ocean liner went down, he set up a display in the media center with the ashtray in a fishbowl.

  “I was just trying to do Delton a favor and show him some do-daring!”

  “The fact that Delton followed you to manners class means he’s got a thing for you, Cass. It’s probably not fair to use that to get him to break the law.”

  “I wasn’t trying to get him to break—”

  “Hey, do you think your parents would pay me to mow your lawn? Because if I can get three more lawns, I might be able to buy…um…a crash pad.” He held up the catalog, his finger pointing to the picture.

  “Since when do you use a crash pad? And why would they hire you when they have slave labor to do it? You gotta help me fix her, Jack. Maybe we could ride our bikes over and reattach her to the body. That’s it! Break in, and—”

  “Didn’t you say this place was on the other side of the river? Our moms would never let us ride that far. Besides, I have some handyman work to do over at the Bensons’. Sabrina needs a hook for everything. She’s got a makeup mirror, a hair dryer, a little cabinet for her—”

  “Talk about a thing. You’ve got a thing for Sabrina Benson.”

  “Why would you say that? I need money, is all. I’ve got goals.”

  “You didn’t used to need money. Last summer, remember how we made hobo stew in the fire pit with those old coffee cans—that didn’t cost anything.”

  “That’s called playing, Cass. There are no Knights of the Road anymore and you know it.”

  “But we’ll bring ’em back. They’re putting in a new high-speed train to Chicago. By the time we’re fifteen—”

  “Cass, wanting to be a stunt performer is crazy enough; at least I can join a circus or be in a Wild West show. But being a hobo?”

  “I can’t believe this. We’ve been planning our whole lives for this.”

  “I guess—if you count from five to eleven. Let me see that head again.”

  Jack held up Miss Information by the hair and peered into the hole in her neck.

  “Delton says we stripped the screw.”

  “Yep. You need a special headless screw for this.”

  “Very funny.”

  “No, I mean it. It’s got two thread ends and no head. I might have one in my workshop.”

  “Well, let’s go get one.”

  Jack handed me back the head. “Maybe you should put this in a pillowcase…to keep my mom from asking questions.”

  Janae was in the kitchen making something spicy. Because his mom’s from India, Jack eats spicy-hot things at breakfast, lunch and dinner—that is, unless Mimi comes around and saves him with some potato knishes. Jack likes to eat at our house to get a boring old plate of spaghetti every once in a while.

  “Mom, cheer up Cassidy, would you? I have to find something in the workshop.”

  “Cassidy. It seems like I never see you anymore. How’s your elocution class going?”

  Maybe elocution is what they call it in India. I let it pass. “Hi, Janae. Okay,” I said. Janae insisted we call her by her first name, which I’m pretty sure we’d lose a finger for in etiquette class.

  “When I went to boarding school in England, it was one of my favorite classes. We recited poetry and learned the importance of posture…come to think of it, maybe that’s one of the reasons I became a yoga instructor. So many of us slouch our way through life, Cassidy.”

  “Fine by me,” I mumbled, but I sat up straighter and took my elbows off the counter. “Janae, I think I need a karma transplant. Or at least I need to trade up.”

  Janae laughed. Janae’s laugh sounds like the wind chimes the Fensters had in their backyard. “Oh, Cassidy, karma is something uniquely yours. It’s like…your eyes or your heart. You wouldn’t wish to trade them away, would you?”

  “Well, no. But Jack says I have Titanic karma. I’m just a kid. It doesn’t seem fair.”

  “You mustn’t worry about what Jack says, Cassidy. He has a flair for the dramatic. I do believe that your thoughts create your reality, however. If you truly believe you have Titanic karma and you tell yourself that, then that could become your destiny.”

  I folded my arms and burrowed my head inside. My karma was in the toilet and now Janae was telling me I made it that way?

  “Don’t look so discouraged. You should come to my Yoga for Teens class.”

  “Except I’m not a teen, Janae.”

  “Yes, you are, dear. You’re eleven-teen. It’s happening
to Jack, too. Can’t you feel it? Last summer all he wanted to do was ride his bike and fish and play Frisbee golf, and this year he’s mowing lawns and doing odd jobs. You used to look at me double when I talked to you about karma and now you’re asking me about it.”

  “You can tell when I’m looking at you double?”

  “Of course I can. Your eyes aren’t crossed, but you get a very odd look on your face. Seven years of elocution taught me a great deal about reading others’ body language.”

  Seven years? Janae was nice to everybody. What could she possibly have done to get a seven-year sentence?

  “Hey.” Jack poked me with something sharp and pointy. “Sorry it took so long. I didn’t get the exact right thing, but this might work.”

  “What might work?” Janae asked.

  “Cassidy’s fixing one of her teacher’s dolls and she needs a special screw.”

  “There you are, Cassidy. When our thoughts and actions are of a good nature, we create good karma for ourselves. That was the subject of my dharma talk in class today. You should come. I think you would feel better.”

  “Oh, yeah, Mom. Bree wants to come, too.”

  “Bree?”

  “Sabrina Benson. From next door. Her friends call her Bree.”

  “What’s wrong with her karma?” I asked, hoping it was something big.

  “Nothing. She read that dancers use yoga to stay in shape. That’s her talent…in the beauty competitions. Jazz dance. I’m going, too.”

  “But you said yoga was for girls.”

  “That’s what I used to think, but Bree’s dance teacher recommends it for balance, and I thought, if it helps me with my wind torque…”

  Janae cupped Jack’s head in her hands. “I have been telling you that for years, Jack Taylor.”

  “I know, Mom, but when Bree said it, it just clicked. You should go, too, Cass. You know, for the trains.”

  I sank back into slouch mode. Was there a shipwreck worse than the Titanic? Jack said I should do it for the trains, not we. And Janae thought I should go to Yoga for Teens in order to get some better karma. But if I did, I’d have to watch Jack be all googly-eyed about Sabrina instead of helping me figure out how to wedge our bodies through the vent in a coal car. What exactly did Janae mean when she said last summer all Jack wanted to do was fish and play Frisbee golf? We’d barely started this summer!