Homerooms and Hall Passes

by Tom O'Donnell

  “Now,” said Ms. Levy, “does anybody have a serious answer to my question?”

  The rest of the class passed much in this way: a deluge of nonsensical history and fictional place names that they were expected to remember. Occasionally, Thromdurr or Vela would attempt to answer a question posed by Ms. Levy and get it spectacularly wrong. (“No, Roger Williams did not found the colony of Rhode Island to honor the brave warrior spirits of his ancestors,” “No, the thing Peter Minuit purchased from the Lenape tribe was not a magical scepter capable of transforming its bearer into a raven,” etc.) Throughout the class Ms. Levy appeared progressively more concerned.

  The bell rang, marking the end of fourth period and bringing sweet relief to the confused and beleaguered heroes. Yet the respite was all too brief. (Again, four minutes between classes, which is barely enough time to even get there!) And if anything, the next period was worse. At least ancient lore and odd-sounding place names were familiar to them. (Indeed, add an umlaut or two, and “Philadelphia” might well have been some long-forgotten kingdom in Bríandalör.)

  But Ms. Snow’s earth sciences class was utterly baffling. She seemed to be describing, in excruciating detail, the process by which rocks were made. In Bríandalör, rocks were made by the gods (specifically Cragnar, the god of rocks). Here, not so much, apparently. Toward the end of class, they took a quiz that Albiorix was certain they all failed. By the time they made it to their seventh and final period, their brains were nearly too scrambled to make papier-mâché heads for art class. Mr. Armstrong was still fairly encouraging of their middling efforts, and it seemed to the outlanders that in this strange place, success or failure in art might be more subjective.

  At last the final bell rang, bringing an end to the school day at JADMS. Kids filed out of their classrooms and filled the halls. They laughed and talked as they headed toward their lockers on their way out the door. The weary party regrouped in a quiet alcove near the library, away from the prying eyes of any peers.

  “So . . . who makes the rocks?” said Devis.

  “I think . . . I think maybe it’s other rocks?” said Vela, rubbing her temples.

  “That makes no sense,” said Devis. “What kind of sick mind dreamed up this place?”

  Thromdurr appeared dazed. “Somehow I thought Douglas the Nerd would be . . . smarter?”

  “Middle school is truly brutal,” said Sorrowshade, “and I say this as someone whose entire family was eaten by minotaurs.”

  “Our resolve must not flag,” said Vela. “Though I admit this was the single longest day I can ever remember.”

  “Er, we actually got here at lunchtime,” said Albiorix quietly. “A normal school day would be about four hours longer.”

  At this, the rest of the party groaned.

  “How come playing Homerooms & Hall Passes is fun,” said Devis, “but actually living it isn’t?”

  “Because when we play the game, we’re only pretending to feel bored,” said Sorrowshade. “That’s an emotion we rarely have to endure in Bríandalör, thank the gods.”

  “The scenario ends when the semester is over,” said Vela. “How long is that, Albiorix?”

  “Two more months,” said Albiorix, “give or take.”

  At this, the party was so demoralized they couldn’t even bring themselves to groan. They merely stared at the wizard in shocked silence. At last Thromdurr shook himself all over, like some great, wet beast.

  “Bah!” said Thromdurr. “If a task is easy, it is hardly worth doing. The purest joy in life is meeting great challenges head-on and bludgeoning them into submission. Otherwise the empty feeling returns. Mark my words: I will master earth sciences yet!”

  “Yes, yes,” said Vela. “That’s the spirit!”

  “Yeah, and the pizza with yellow sauce isn’t bad,” said Devis. “I can handle Suburbia for a couple of months.”

  “Glad to hear it, Devis,” said Vela.

  They all turned to Sorrowshade. The gloom elf shrugged.

  “We’re all stuck in this miserable place, so we don’t really have a choice, do we?” said Sorrowshade. “Besides, happiness is an illusion.”

  “I’ll take it,” said Vela, patting the gloom elf on the back. “Albiorix, what say you?”

  “Sure, social studies was soporific and earth sciences was utterly impenetrable, but I think my papier-mâché head turned out pretty good!” He held up a soggy, misshapen bust that looked more like a sick goblin than a person. “As far back as I can remember, I’ve spent all my free time reading Homerooms & Hall Passes books, to the detriment of many arguably more important things. If ever there was a place I was meant to understand, it is James Alexander Dewar Middle School. Trust me, friends. We can do this. We can break the curse. I’m ninety . . . no, ninety-five percent sure!”

  “Huzzah!” said Vela.

  “But before we go home,” said Albiorix, “I’m afraid it’s time for all of us to go home.”

  “Wait, we’re going to split the party midadventure?” said Vela. In Bríandalör, this was only done in the most extreme of circumstances.

  “Afraid so. It’s two forty p.m. and school is out,” said Albiorix. “See you all tomorrow. First bell is at seven thirty. Don’t be tardy.”

  And so the brave Bríandalörian heroes went their separate ways, some on foot, others by bus, across the town of Hibbettsfield in the Realm of Suburbia to return to the most important people in their lives and meet them for the first time: their families.

  Though the school day should obviously remain the focus of play, it is important to remember that in Suburbia, school isn’t everything. Optometrist appointments, long waits in grocery-store parking lots, flossing before bed—a creative Hall Master can turn such experiences into miniature nonadventures all their own!

  —Excerpt from The Hall Master’s Guide

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” cried the woman at 17 South Euclid Street.

  “I have returned from J. A. Dewar Middle School,” said Vela the Valiant, who was quite confused—this was the home address listed on her character sheet. Vela stopped herself from bowing. Nervous habit.

  “Yes, I know that, Valerie,” said the woman. “But why?”

  “Because this is my home? And it is after two forty p.m. on a weekday?” said Vela. “And you are, presumably, my . . . mother?”

  “Is she sick?” said a man—Vela’s father—who nudged past his wife in the doorjamb. “Are you sick, honey?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” said Vela. “Though I did come perilously close to a slice of cafeteria pizza today.” She shuddered.

  “We sent a lunch for you,” said the woman, throwing up her hands. “You didn’t eat your lunch?”

  Before Vela could answer, the man pressed the back of his hand against Vela’s forehead. “She feels hot, Marie!”

  “Stop babying her, Andy,” said the woman. She turned back to Vela. “Anything less than a fever of a hundred and four degrees, and you should be at band practice, Valerie. First-chair flute is a responsibility you must take seriously! There is a recital on Thursday.”

  “There is? I mean, I will,” said Vela, suddenly ashamed she wasn’t doing a thing she didn’t know she was supposed to do. She quickly glanced at her character sheet. Sure enough, Monday 3 to 4:40 p.m.—band practice was scrawled on the back.

  “Is this some sort of teenage rebellion?” said Marie to no one. “Where did I go wrong?”

  “Perhaps,” said Vela, “if I return to school now, I can—”

  “No!” said Marie. “By the time you make it all the way back, you will have missed twenty-five minutes of practice. It’s a wash. We need contingency here. . . . Think, Marie, think!”

  “Here’s a cold compress, honey,” said Andy, handing a bag of ice to Vela. “Put it on your face.”

  “Uh, okay?” said Vela, smooshing her head right into the frosty bag.

  “I’ve got it!” said Marie. “You can use the rest of the hour to study for the PSAT before your fa
ther drives you back to debate club practice at five. Then tomorrow you can offer a written apology to Ms. Peco, the band director, for missing practice.”

  “It—it would be an honor to study for the PSAT before proceeding to debate club practice. Tomorrow I shall make my remorse known to Ms. Peco,” said Valerie, whose training as a young squire had inured her to a life of order and strict discipline. “I shall not fail again!”

  “Thank you for saying that, sweetie,” said Marie. “We only want what’s best for you. Which is an Ivy League college followed by a top-tier medical school.”

  She hugged Vela close. “We don’t want you to end up a dentist.”

  Andy joined the family hug. “Do you think you have strep throat?” he said.

  And at this very moment, not far away, Thromdurr the mighty barbarian entered the modest ranch house at 45 Crescent Drive, which he found to be quiet and empty. And so, Thromdurr sat upon the great recliner and watched television until his father returned from his job at Bowers Heating and Cooling around six thirty p.m.

  “Oh, hey, Doug,” said a plump, pleasant-looking man as he walked in the door and set a pile of mail on the counter.

  “Greetings, Ron, my father,” said Thromdurr. “I have been watching the television and have learned much about the Spinco Roastmeister home rotisserie. It can cook one six-pound chicken or two three-pound chickens, side by side, using less than one quarter the energy of a conventional oven. It is available for $89.99. An amazing price, if this tan fellow speaks the truth.”

  “Ha ha, sounds good, buddy,” said Ron, who didn’t always understand his son, but who always tried. “So how was school today?”

  Thromdurr flinched. “I . . . answered all of the questions correctly, humbling my academic opponents,” said the barbarian quietly. “On the field of educational battle, Douglas the Nerd has no equal.”

  Ron frowned. “Aw, c’mon, son. You’re not a nerd,” he said. “You’re just . . . you know, into stuff most other people aren’t. Speaking of which, this came for you.”

  He tossed Thromdurr a package. On the box were the words “eStar T6-010 Electronic Minicar Model Kit,” and it bore the picture of a small, peculiar wheeled vehicle. Thromdurr cocked his head.

  “I am very excited to receive this box,” said Thromdurr. “Because I know perfectly well what it is!”

  “You’re telling me,” said Ron. “The little dancing robot you made last time was hot stuff. Look, dinner won’t be ready for another forty-five minutes, if you want to go up to your room and crack it open. I’m sure you already finished your homework and whatnot. . . .”

  “Of course I did,” said Thromdurr, remembering, “Douglas the Nerd creates clockwork automata as his hobby. My eagerness for the eStar T6-010 Electronic Minicar Model Kit knows no bounds.”

  Ron shot him a thumbs-up. Thromdurr retired to Douglas’s room—a space cluttered with books, computer parts, and pristine action figures, still in their original packaging. He opened the eStar T6-010 box. Inside were four wheels and countless tiny, fiddly little electronic components. After reading the instruction booklet for a full thirty minutes (which was in the Common Tongue but might as well have been written in Old Dragonian) and then shocking himself eight times in thirty seconds, Thromdurr flew into a berserker rage.

  “Doug?” said Ron, as he cracked the door. “What’s going on up here, buddy?”

  “THE ESTAR T6-010 ELECTRONIC MINICAR MODEL KIT WILL SLEEP IN THE UNDERWORLD TONIGHT!” cried Thromdurr, as he snapped a circuit board in half and crushed one of the wheels in his hand. “I WILL DESTROY IT!”

  “Ah, okay,” said Ron. “Well, um, the chili is ready. . . .”

  Meanwhile, in another home in the Realm of Suburbia—this one a two-story Victorian house at 29 Sierra Avenue—another concerned parent knocked upon the door of another Bríandalörian adventurer’s room.

  “Melissa?” said Pam McElmurray through the door. “Do you want to join us for family game night?”

  “Nope,” said Sorrowshade. The gloom elf sat upon the bed of a room decorated in blacks and grays, with the walls adorned in grim-looking band posters.

  “Okay, but tonight we’re playing Traders of Oogoo,” said Pam.

  “That sounds horrendous,” said Sorrowshade.

  “It’s not horrendous. You can trade oats for beef or logs,” said Pam. “It’s fun.”

  “I don’t like fun,” said Sorrowshade. “Never have.”

  “All right, sweetheart, well, I just want you to know that we all love you very much,” said Pam. “And whenever you’re ready to join us, your father, your brother and your sister, and I would be delighted to have you.”

  “Don’t hold your breath, Pam,” said Sorrowshade.

  And Sorrowshade sat on the bed for nearly an hour listening to the sounds of wholesome laughter echoing up to her room from the first floor, until it became unbearable.

  “Fine!” she said at last, as she descended the stairs to a warm, inviting dining room. There was Pam, along with Sorrowshade’s father, Keith, her brother, Josh, and her little sister, Carter, all sitting around a board covered in colorful game pieces with ear-to-ear smiles on their faces. As Sorrowshade reached the bottom step, they all turned and stared at her.

  “I’m here to play the game, Pam,” muttered Sorrowshade.

  “Hooray!” the whole family said in unison. “Melissa came to family game night!”

  “Ugh,” said Sorrowshade, as she sat down at the table.

  Pam dealt her in. Sorrowshade glanced at her hand. All oats.

  Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the town of Hibbettsfield (800 North Pineknoll Avenue, to be exact), another Bríandalörian sat down with another family at another dinner table.

  “So . . . what’s on the menu, Dad?” said Devis the thief, who was eager to sample all the delicious cuisine this fantastical realm had to offer.

  “Well, not to mix business with pleasure, but . . . we’re having soup!” said his father, who set a heavy pot onto a trivet in the center of the table. “This is a Cullen skink, a traditional Scottish soup made with potatoes and smoked haddock.”

  “Yum! That sounds delicious, Stinky,” said Devis’s mother to his father. She began ladling soup into each of their three bowls. “You know, when I became the official soup/stew critic for Haute magazine, I was secretly worried I might get tired of soup.”

  “Are you serious, Stinky?” said Devis’s father to his mother. “I thought exactly the same thing when I became vice president of quality assurance for the Clemons International Soup Company. I figured there’s got to be a thing as too much soup, right?”

  “Well, I’m glad we were wrong!” said Mom Stinky.

  They both burst out laughing, then began to voraciously spoon Cullen skink into their mouths.

  Devis sipped a spoonful. Not bad. “So . . . tell me again how come we’re all named Stinky?” he said.

  His mother and father looked at each other.

  “We’ve told you this, haven’t we?” said Dad Stinky.

  “How can you not know this, son?” said Mom Stinky.

  “I just want to make sure I get the details straight. It’s for a school project,” said Devis, who, unlike Vela, had never had many qualms about lying to anyone for any reason. “If I get an A, they said I get a special medal that says ‘Number One Guy’ on it.”

  “Wow,” said Mom Stinky. “Well, my real name is Christina, which got shortened to Stina by my family. But when your uncle Max was a baby, he just couldn’t say it. He called me Stinky! We all thought it was so cute and so funny and somehow it just . . . stuck.” Mom Stinky laughed.

  “And as for me,” said Dad Stinky, “my great-grandmother’s surname was Tinkhauser. But somebody made a mistake when she emigrated from Austria and copied it down as Stinkhauser—with an S at the beginning—and that became the family name! When my parents had me, they knew they wanted to honor my mother’s side in some way, so that’s how they decided that should be my first name.�
��

  “Can you believe it?” said Mom Stinky, shaking her head. “Two Stinkys who are both professional soup tasters. It would almost have been crazier if we didn’t get married!”

  Devis’s parents laughed again and then gazed affectionately at each other.

  “Hmm. Great story. Lots of surprises,” said Devis. “But what about me? Why am I Stinky?”

  “Well, son, you’re named after me, of course,” said Dad Stinky.

  “Wait, so my whole name is Stinkhauser?” said Devis. “Interesting.”

  Dad Stinky smiled and took Devis’s hand. “It sure is. You know, I like to think Great-Grandma Stinkhauser is somewhere up there, looking down on her beautiful great-great-grandson with pride, knowing that the family name lives on.”

  “Sure,” said Devis. “And just for the record, what’s our last name?”

  “Smith,” said Mom Stinky.

  “Whew!” said Devis.

  “Anyway,” said Dad Stinky, “for dessert I’ve made a chilled watermelon gazpacho that I’m sure both of my Stinkys will love.”

  And so, as four brave Bríandalörians made the acquaintance of families they had never known and attempted to live strange lives they had only yet imagined, the final member of the adventuring party passed his evening in a very different way.

  Albiorix watched from the window as the last of the big yellow buses pulled away from J. A. Dewar Middle School. The halls were virtually empty now, but there were were still a couple of hours of various school programs and team practices on school grounds. He would need to stay put for a while until Ms. Rhee, the security guard, went home for the day. To keep out of sight, the third-floor boys’ bathroom was his safest bet. According to his H&H books, it was the least popular bathroom in the whole school (arguably because the locks on all the stalls were broken). According to Table 119e: Lavatory Usage, Albiorix only had a fifteen percent chance of encountering anyone here after regular school hours. And if someone did happen by, he’d already devised a decent cover story: he had just joined the chess club, which was meeting in the library until five, but today’s cafeteria pizza didn’t agree with his stomach—hence the bathroom. Believable (if a bit embarrassing).