Wise Acres

by Dale E. Basye

  Mr. Dickens suddenly tossed the eraser at Mr. Crump’s furrowed forehead.

  “Hey!” the boy exclaimed angrily.

  “You should have seen it coming,” Mr. Dickens replied, his thick beard twitching with suppressed laughter. “Such is the danger of foreshadowing.…”

  Foreshadowing, Milton thought as he drew a pair of wings on a knight that some bored “Wise Acre” had doodled generations ago. Preparing for what comes next without it looking like you’re preparing for what comes next …

  Angelo Fallon, the fallen angel Principal Bubb had hired to get rid of Milton—to slit his throat with a razor-feather and capture Milton’s last breath as proof—was still out there somewhere.…

  Milton scanned the scornful faces of the boys surrounding him. They were furiously exchanging insults with one another like stockbrokers trading shares.

  But that was back in Precocia, back in the other reality. Maybe here, in Wise Acres, Principal Bubb sent a different angel to “off” me, and he could be right in this classroom. Or Bubb simply hasn’t thought of it … yet. But if it happened before, it could happen again. At least this time I know that there is a group of fallen angels for hire here in the underworld and that Principal Bubb is despicable enough to recruit one of them to rub me out: completely.

  Milton drew a question mark halo above the knightangel’s head.

  The question is, what good does this do me? How can I prevent Bubb and some angel assassin from editing me out of my own story?

  6 · SPELLING DISASTER

  “ROSES ARE RED, orchids are black, why is her chest as flat as her back?” Cookie Youngblood taunted.

  “Ugh! Nice perfume … did you marinate in it?” chimed in Cookie’s blond second-in-command.

  The walk from the door to the empty seat at the front of the lecture room felt like an eternity. And considering that Marlo was dead, she knew a thing or two about what eternity felt like. It wasn’t that she didn’t have a quippy comeback. Far from it. Dozens of withering one-liners were backed up in Marlo’s throat like a frantic crowd trying to flee a burning building through a mail slot. That was the problem. There were too many options.

  What Marlo needed was something so utterly devastating, so perfect in its absolute, undeniable supremacy that it stifled all hopes of counterattack. What she needed was the snappy-retort equivalent of the atomic bomb.

  “I’d slap you, but that would be animal abuse” … no, too blunt. “What did you have for breakfast, Booger-Frosted Loser Flakes?” … no, too kindergarten.

  Suddenly, Marlo found herself standing beside an unoccupied pile of old textbooks at the front of the class and was gripped by a terrible realization. The moment has passed. It’s all about timing. A late comeback is worse than no comeback at all.

  Marlo sat down on the shaky pile of ancient textbooks. She had to switch gears. Instead of fighting fire with slightly hotter fire—dousing the girls’ flaming defamation with something that burned up all of their oxygen—Marlo had to act like she was so cruel and clever as to be miles above their reindeer games. This would get their imaginations working against them, so Marlo wouldn’t have to try so hard.

  Marlo crossed her arms and leveled her violet eyes at the girls, willing her pupils extra-wide and unfathomable.

  “Is that all you’ve got?” Marlo croaked, her tongue not quite depressed but still a little glum. She punctuated her statement with a sarcastic “couldn’t be bothered” stare at the ceiling.

  A thin mousy slip of a woman slunk into the lecture hall, carrying a shabby doctor’s bag. After quickly regarding the snickering crowd of disrespectful girls, the woman—her brown-gray hair tied into a tight bun—scuttled to the blackboard with all the mad desperation of someone rushing across the deck of a sinking ship for a life preserver. She scratched hastily on the chalkboard with loopy, wide-spaced letters:

  RUDE-IMENTARY GRAMMAR

  “Who’s she?” Marlo muttered. “She’s like a walking nervous breakdown in support hose.”

  “She’s like a walking nervous breakdown in support hose,” repeated a sour-faced little girl in a mocking tone.

  A girl with granny glasses and flat-orange hair that looked like it had been gooped on with tempera paint leaned into Marlo and whispered, “Don’t mind Bree Martinet. She can’t help obnoxiously repeating everything.”

  “She can’t help obnoxiously repeating everything,” Bree both echoed and proved.

  The orange-haired girl held out her clammy, pale hand. “Flossie Blackwell.”

  Marlo gave the girl a limp, cautious handshake in return. She cast a wary gaze at Cookie Youngblood and her friend.

  “Cookie Youngblood and Concordia Kolassa,” Flossie explained. “Stay out of their way. They’ll tear you apart like a toddler unscrewing an Oreo.”

  “So our teacher—”

  “So our teacher—Miss Dickinson—was a terrific poet up on the Surface. One of the best. My faves are ‘I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died,’ ‘I Felt a Funeral in My Brain,’ and ‘Heaven Is What I Cannot Reach.’ ”

  “Apparently she couldn’t either,” Marlo replied. “Reach Heaven, that is.”

  Flossie shifted in her seat, now knee to knee with Marlo.

  “That’s the funny thing … not funny ha-ha but funny strange,” the bright-eyed girl whispered. “Miss Dickinson was agoraphobic when she was alive.”

  “Someone afraid of being gored by a bull?”

  Flossie stared back blankly at Marlo.

  “I’m totally kidding,” Marlo replied. “So she was afraid to go outside?”

  Flossie smiled. “You do good deadpan.”

  “I’ve definitely got the ‘dead’ part down pat,” Marlo said, allowing herself a crooked smile.

  “So Miss Dickinson was invited upstairs, to Heaven,” Flossie continued. “But all of that wide-open-space stuff freaked her out, so she got herself transferred down here to this dark, cramped Heck-hole.”

  Miss Dickinson cleared her dainty throat. “Yes … um … good afternoon, young ladies,” she said quietly.

  “WE CAN’T HEAR YOU,” a large Latino girl thundered from the back.

  The teacher winced. “Right … thank you, Miss Caustilo,” Miss Dickinson continued, raising her voice exactly one decibel louder. “Today I thought we’d try something a little different.”

  The girls in the back row gave the teacher a sarcastic round of slow-clapped applause. They stopped suddenly when burly badger demons pushed in three glass enclosures on wheels, like old-style telephone booths with collapsing doors.

  Miss Dickinson noted the confused looks plastered upon the girls’ faces. The girls found it difficult to bad-mouth something they didn’t fully understand.

  “A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day … so I’ve decided to have you experience the power of grammar, rather than have me rattle on about it. Hopefully this exercise will have you young ladies appreciating the intoxicating allure of a truly grammarous life!”

  Miss Dickinson smiled nervously amid the awkward silence. She sighed and scratched off USE MORE PUNS from a list of suggestions lying on her lectern.

  “So, do we have any volun—”

  “I’ll do it,” Marlo said, taking off her coat and swaggering over to the nearest booth.

  While Cookie and Concordia had already marked their turf with their sassy mouths, few could match Marlo for her reckless abandon. Hopefully this would shift the “new girl is incredibly lame” dynamic a few ticks in Marlo’s direction.

  Cookie Youngblood glared at Marlo as she tugged open the booth’s collapsible door.

  “Think you can run away, new girl?” Cookie said with a sneer of her lip-glossed lips as she rose from her bench of old books.

  Cookie slid into the second booth while a round-faced girl with short brown hair rose to her feet and shuffled down the aisle.

  Miss Dickinson allowed herself a smile as the girl entered the third booth.

  “Wonderful
!” she exclaimed. “Let us commend Misses Marlo Fauster, Cookie Youngblood, and Annabelle Graham—”

  “Banana Hall Merge,” Annabelle mumbled from inside the booth.

  “Hey! She’s doing her weird letter scramble thing again … freak,” observed Pansy Cornett over her granny glasses.

  “Those are called anagrams, Miss Cornett,” the teacher corrected.

  A girl rolled her large, expressive eyes, mouthing, “Oh my God.”

  “And, please, no face-texting in class, Miss Duckworth,” the teacher scolded. “Anagrams are a delightful way to keep one’s mind sharp. In any case, I am most indebted to the girls’ initiative! It is far better to be the hammer than the anvil.”

  Moxie Wortschmerz vibrated in her white straightjacket.

  “Oo oyon-eyed, ilk-ivered, eef-ained, atsbane!” the little girl spat, her silver-sheathed tongue twitching in her mouth like a metal finger on the trigger of a gun.

  Miss Dickinson frowned. “Now, now, Miss Wortschmerz. Saying nothing sometimes says the most.”

  The teacher pulled out three crowbars from her shabby leather doctor’s bag and walked to the booths in tiny, uncertain steps.

  “You young ladies have all heard of spelling bees, I trust?” Miss Dickinson said.

  “Total duh,” a heavily made-up girl seated in the back said tartly.

  “Well, this is something a little different,” Miss Dickinson said with a sly smile as she slid the crowbars between the handles of the booths’ doors.

  “Um … what’s with the crowbar?” Marlo said from behind the glass as she tried to open the door. “Isn’t that against fire code?”

  Miss Dickinson lifted a large jar full of buzzing insects out of her satchel.

  Marlo, Cookie, and Annabelle smacked the glass with their palms and yelled.

  “This is a spelling wasp,” Miss Dickinson said, her dark bulging eyes gleaming as she connected the jar to three tubes leading out to the booths.

  “Wasp?!” Marlo gasped, fogging up the glass. “Are you, like, totally off your rocker, Betty Crocker?!”

  “People in glass booths shouldn’t cast aspersions,” Miss Dickinson replied as she unrolled a sheet of paper. “Especially if the booth in question is filled with stinging insects.”

  The teacher cleared her throat.

  “The rules are simple. You spell a word correctly, and nothing happens. You make a mistake, and you become booth-mates with a wasp. The harder the word, the more wasps are introduced. Are you ready to play?”

  “LET US OUT OF HERE, YOU PSYCHO!” Cookie screamed.

  “Excellent. First word, Miss Graham: extract.”

  Annabelle’s brown almond-shaped eyes settled nervously on the ceiling of her booth.

  “Extract. E-X-T-R-A-C-T. Extract.”

  “Wonderful!” Miss Dickinson said as she walked to the next booth.

  “Now you, Miss Youngblood: wistful.”

  Cookie swallowed, then blew a strand of streaked metallic-red hair out of her fearful eyes. “Wasteful?”

  “Wistful … and stop stalling. I know stalling when I see it.”

  “Wistful. W-I-S-T-F-U-L-L … no … WAIT! Just one ‘L’!”

  A faint shadow of disappointment crossed the teacher’s plain face. “That was very close, Miss Youngblood.”

  Miss Dickinson sidled over to Marlo’s booth. “Miss Fauster: Spell antediluvian.”

  “Auntie who?” Marlo gasped.

  “Antediluvian,” Miss Dickinson repeated. “It means before the biblical flood. You do know the story of the Great Flood, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, yeah … where Noah and Joan of Arc took all of the twin animals to America to prove that the world was round.”

  “I’ll just get the wasps ready, then,” Miss Dickinson said as she secured the corrugated hose to the buzzing jar.

  “Antediluvian,” Marlo said with exasperation. “A-N-T-I-D-I-L-O-O-”

  “WRONG!” the teacher exclaimed in a voice louder and deeper than anyone thought possible. She opened a tiny trapdoor on the roof of Marlo’s booth, allowing a wasp to pass through.

  “Now back to you, Miss Graham,” the teacher said as Marlo yelped and flailed inside her booth. “Complex.”

  “Um … complex,” Annabelle replied warily. “C-O-M-P-L-E-X.”

  “Correct. Now you, Miss Youngblood: vigilant.”

  Cookie bit her shiny lip. “Vigilant. V-I-J-”

  “Oww!” Marlo yelped as a wasp stung her on the arm.

  “No,” Cookie gasped. “V-I-G-I-L-A-N-T. Vigilant.”

  “Correct,” Miss Dickinson said with a frown as she stepped in front of Marlo’s booth. “Now you, Miss Fauster: antidisestablishmentarianism.”

  “What?!” Marlo shrieked. “That is SO unfair! That is the state fair of unfair! Pass!”

  “You can’t pass, Miss Fauster. And, judging from your atrocious spelling skills, I’m assuming that this isn’t the first class you haven’t passed. Now spell the word or feel the sting of learning.”

  Marlo fogged up the glass with her breath and tried to spell out the word with her finger. “Antidisestablish-whatever. A-N-T-I-D-I-S … um … E-S …” Marlo sighed. “Just send in the wasps,” she said with defeat.

  Miss Dickinson tipped the wasp jar into the tube. Marlo pressed her hands against the open slot on the ceiling.

  She screamed as angry wasps attacked her hands. A swarm darted inside the booth.

  “Owww! Double-dipping diaper monkeys!”

  As Marlo squealed in pain from inside the locked booth, Lucky poked his head out from the pocket of Marlo’s coat, left behind on her stack-of-books seat.

  A little blond girl screeched. “Teacher! The new girl brought one of those cruelty-free mink stoles with her!”

  Miss Dickinson slid the crowbar from the handles of Marlo’s booth. Marlo wrenched open the folding doors and spilled out onto the floor. The teacher handed her a tube of white cream.

  “Miss Fauster … why do you have an animal with you? Heck has a very strict ‘no-pets’ policy. Even teacher’s pets aren’t allowed.”

  Marlo slathered the soothing cream all over her sting-swollen arms and face.

  “He’s … Lucky,” she groaned.

  “Like a charm?” Miss Dickinson replied.

  “Like a ferret.”

  Miss Dickinson scowled as she tentatively scooped up Lucky in her spindly arms.

  “He’s my muse,” Marlo said, thinking quickly. “You know: to help me write and stuff.”

  “Really?” the teacher replied dubiously.

  “Yeah,” Flossie chimed in. “Marlo told me. He’s … inspiring.”

  “Then he belongs with the Muses,” Miss Dickinson explained as she walked toward the door.

  Marlo peeled her sore, smarting self off the ground.

  “What do you mean?” she asked as she followed her teacher to the door.

  “The Nine Muses—Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, and Urania,” the dead spinster poet said. “From Greek myth. They sat at the throne of Zeus and sang of his glory. They fill writers with the inspiration they need to do great work.”

  “And they’re here?” Marlo replied.

  “Yes and no,” Miss Dickinson said. “Yes, they are somewhere in Wise Acres, and no, the teachers and students don’t know where. Our muses are always kept just out of reach. So we will never again taste the divine satisfaction of our deepest feelings captured with the perfect turn of phrase … and the inspiration that so eludes us is right here, so close and yet so far.”

  A badger demon appeared from down the hall.

  “Snack?” it asked as it settled its dark and shining eyes on Lucky.

  “No … a muse,” Miss Dickinson corrected. “Please take it to the Muses in room, oh … what is that number?”

  The badger grinned a snarl of savage teeth. “Nice try, Miss Dickinson,” it replied as it took Lucky—squirming, hissing, and spitting—into its burly, prickly arms. “I�
�ll take this … thing … there.”

  “He better be okay!” Marlo said as the badger demon loped down the hallway past several cats saddled with leather pouches.

  Miss Dickinson set her frail hand on Marlo’s shoulder. “Your muse will be fine,” she assured her. “He will be more than cared for—he will be worshipped.”

  Marlo watched the strange trio of burdened cats as they padded down the hallway.

  “What’s with the cats?”

  “Furriers with MEOW: the Mail Expressed Overnight Whiskers. They’ve been making deliveries back and forth ever since Mr. Carroll became vice principal last week.” Miss Dickinson shrugged her bony shoulders. “Things keep getting curiouser and curiouser … but, alas, forever is composed of puzzling ‘nows.’ ”

  And meows, apparently, Marlo thought suspiciously as an orange tabby rubbed itself against her leg. I wonder what’s in those pouches.

  7 · PUBLIC RELATIONS

  ENEMY NUMBER ONE

  A TALL, DIGNIFIED man with flowing hair, cropped velvet knee breeches, and a lily for a boutonniere wrote what had to be the longest class name Milton had ever seen.

  IN WHICH WE MAKE EACH AND EVERY WORD COUNT: HOW TO MAKE A LIVING IN DEATH EXPLOITING YOUR ACCURSED FLAIR FOR LANGUAGE … WITH MR. WILDE

  Mr. Wilde straightened a portrait of himself as a young man that was hanging on the wall behind him.

  “I read some of your books, Oscar,” said a thick, surly-looking boy with one long, bushy eyebrow perched across his brow. “And I think they’re wonderful—”

  “Thank you, Mr. Vittorio,” the teacher said with a polite nod.

  “—if you’re having trouble falling asleep,” the boy continued, earning a laugh from his friends.

  Mr. Wilde slammed his delicate hand against the lectern. “You mouthy little malt worm!”

  The teacher smoothed his hair, gathering himself quickly. The portrait behind him, Milton noted with confusion, looked suddenly older, the hair having gone gray along the temples.

  “Mr. Vittorio’s ‘critique’ of my work brings up an important point,” Mr. Wilde continued, folding his slender white hands behind his back. “Literature is so subjective that you will never please everyone, or often anyone. Most classics become so—classics—long after the author has expired. To put it in a way that you boys can understand: writing is no way to make a living.”