The principal repeated her question. “Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I have told all your teachers to watch you closely, and if they see you reading in class or not paying attention, they are to send you directly to me. I’m also sending a registered letter to your parents, explaining how serious this has become. And after we see your behavior report and your grades for the first term, we’ll take any further steps that are needed.”
She filled out a yellow hall pass, ripped it from the pad, and slid it across the desk.
“Now get to your second-period class, and I don’t want to see you in here again all year long.”
Alec stood up, took the pass, and left her office without a word.
Six weeks of summer school? To learn study skills? It was a terrible thing to hear from the principal on the first day of sixth grade. But…as much as Alec hated that idea, Mrs. Vance had also said that he was smart and that he already knew what changes he had to make. It seemed pretty simple, really: All he had to do was stop reading during his classes and pay more attention.
So as Alec walked away from Mrs. Vance’s office, he felt a little less worried with each step he took. Then he thought, Did she really tell my teachers to keep a special lookout for me…or is that just something she says to all the kids who get in trouble?
It was a fair question, and he got his answer quickly. Because when he arrived late for his second-period math class, Alec discovered that Mrs. Seward had saved him a seat in the very front row, smack in the center.
And when he got to Mr. Brock’s third-period language arts class, again there was a front-row seat with his name on it. Alec was impressed with the principal’s power to reach out and make him sit wherever she wanted him to.
However, this seating plan wasn’t completely the principal’s doing. Long before Mrs. Vance had spoken with them, his new teachers had already decided that Alec Spencer was going to sit front and center in each class—every single day of his sixth-grade life. And there was a reason for that.
Behind the closed door of the teachers’ workroom, Alec was famous. At least once a week for the past four years, one of his teachers had blurted out something like, “You know how that Alec Spencer always has his nose in a book? The kid is an amazing reader, but it drives me crazy!” And two years earlier, Mrs. Vance had added a special notice to the Parent and Student Handbook—and all the teachers called this paragraph the Alec Rule:
READING LIBRARY BOOKS OR OTHER LITERATURE DURING CLASS TIME IS ALLOWED ONLY WHEN A TEACHER GIVES PERMISSION. EVERY STUDENT IS EXPECTED TO PAY CAREFUL ATTENTION AND FULLY PARTICIPATE IN ALL CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES.
However, the Alec Rule had been a total flop. It had failed to change the behavior of the one kid it had been written for.
But on this particular first day of school, the front-row treatment was working for Alec—especially after what Mrs. Vance had said to him at their meeting. He did not want to spend next summer stuck in a classroom, and from second period on, he didn’t even think about trying to read during class.
In math, Mrs. Seward had given a speech about “the Future”—about how mathematics was the foundation for so many different careers. Alec had listened to every word she said.
During language arts, Mr. Brock had talked about the different kinds of essays they would have to write during middle school and high school, and how every student needed to get ready for all the hard work to come. And again Alec paid close attention, and he took careful notes about how to organize a five-paragraph essay. Sitting up front actually helped.
Then in fourth-period science, Mrs. Lowden started out with a slide-show speech that was a lot like the one in math class, except this talk was about how physics and chemistry and biology were going to be the keys to all the best careers in “the Future.” The room was darkened so everyone could see the screen, and about two minutes into her talk, Alec switched off his ears and started thinking about The High King, about how the whole Chronicles of Prydain led up to this book…and how Taran had become a true warrior…and what it would feel like to swing a real sword, and how each battle was…
“Alec—don’t you agree?”
Mrs. Lowden was staring into his face.
Alec blinked and said, “Oh—yeah…sure, I agree.”
She said, “Good. Because I’d like you to be the one who keeps the list of the key concepts we’ll need to review before our state tests in March and April. I’ll make some space on a bulletin board for you.”
There was a flutter of laughter from the class, which Mrs. Lowden silenced with one look. Alec sat up straight. He felt his face get warm, and he promised himself that he wouldn’t daydream again. Tracking the key concepts in science class was going to be a miserable job…but Mrs. Lowden could have just yanked him out of his seat and sent him to Mrs. Vance. Which would have been worse—much worse.
The textbooks seemed thicker than ever, and class by class, Alec’s book bag got heavier. This was the first year he had to change classes, and dashing to a different room every fifty-seven minutes made him feel like he was running a relay race. And, of course, each academic teacher assigned homework.
Alec had been looking forward to lunch—there was always some time to read in the cafeteria or out on the playground. Not today. The food lines seemed longer and slower, and he barely had time to gobble a plate of spaghetti and guzzle some milk before the bell rang. Then he had to check his schedule and rush to the far end of the building for social studies—he’d heard that Mrs. Henley was super strict about tardiness.
Changing classes made everything seem new today, and even though he felt stressed, the newness was also kind of exciting. But by the time he got back to his homeroom at the end of the day, all the excitement had drained away. Alec felt frazzled and dazed, and he knew what he needed. He needed to dive into a story and stay there, all alone inside a great book.
When the last bell rang at 2:53, he was off at a gallop. Operating on full autopilot, Alec heaved his book bag onto one shoulder and lurched along through the halls and out the front doors, all the way to his regular spot in the bus lines.
He sat down right there on the sidewalk, opened up The High King, and began to read. But after just a few sentences, Alec felt a sharp jab on his shoulder. Startled, he looked up, half blinded by the afternoon sun. It was his little brother, Luke.
“Get lost!” Alec snapped, and turned back to his book.
Luke poked him again with the corner of his iPad. “Where are you supposed to be right now?”
“Duh,” Alec said, “waiting for the bus—and here it comes.”
“No,” Luke said. “Think again.”
Alec stared straight ahead a moment, then said, “Oh…ohh! Right! I forgot!”
He jumped to his feet, grabbed his bag, and followed Luke back into the school. Luke was trotting, so Alec had to walk fast to keep up.
Now he remembered the conversation at dinner one night a couple of weeks ago—except he had been eating and reading and listening all at the same time…but mostly reading. It was a Wimpy Kid book, so he’d been laughing, too.
Still, he recalled his mom and dad explaining that they were each starting new jobs in September—jobs at two different companies near Boston. Which meant they would both have to drive to work every day.
His parents were computer programmers, and for the past eleven years they had worked from home. So this was a big change. And since neither of them would get home from work until almost dinnertime, Alec and Luke had been enrolled in the Extended Day Program—three extra hours at school every afternoon.
Hurrying along behind his brother, Alec felt kind of pleased with himself. Because even though the craziness of this first day had made him forget, and even though he didn’t have all the details clear in his mind, he had captured most of the important ideas—which was sort of
the way it felt when he took math tests…and science and language arts and social studies tests. Except that was going to have to change—and when the letter from Mrs. Vance arrived at home? There would be fireworks…the bad kind.
When they got to where the two main corridors crossed, Luke stopped.
Alec said, “How come you came looking for me at the bus stop?”
“Because after dinner last night, Mom told me I had to check up on you.”
“Oh.”
Luke pointed. “You go to the gym. I’ll be in the cafeteria.”
“What? How come?”
“Because of the directions in the booklet they sent us,” Luke said. “Kindergarten through third-grade kids report to the cafeteria, and fourth, fifth, and sixth graders report to the gym. Did you pack a snack this morning?”
Alec’s face was blank. “Snack?”
“Yes, ‘snack’—that’s what humans call food they eat in between their main meals.”
For a nerdy third grader, Luke was getting pretty good at sarcasm. Alec smiled. “No—no snack.”
Luke reached into his backpack and handed Alec a granola bar and a box of apple juice.
Alec made a face. “You don’t have chips, or Cheetos, or something…good?”
Luke ignored him. He flipped back the cover of his iPad and looked at the time. “You’re four minutes late. If you don’t check in by seven minutes after three, they call the school office and the parents, and if you’re more than fifteen minutes late, they alert the police. Mom’s picking us up outside the gym at six.” Then he turned and trotted toward the cafeteria.
Alec marched straight ahead. The door of the gym was only about a minute away, and during that short walk he realized something.
When this idea had first come up back in August, he had been sure that three extra hours at school had to be the worst possible way to end each day. But if sixth grade was really going to be the way today had just been? That changed everything.
Suddenly, those same three hours every afternoon felt like a gift from the friendly universe—his own personal chunk of time, with no one to bother him and nothing to do but read and read and read.
There was no doubt in Alec’s mind: The Extended Day Program had just become the best part of his whole sixth-grade year.
Alec got to the gym at exactly six minutes after three. He checked in at the table by the door, then walked halfway down the west wall of the huge room, flopped onto a pile of exercise mats beside the bleachers, and opened up The High King—again.
Almost twenty minutes later, a voice interrupted the story—again.
“Excuse me, you’re Alec, right?”
He sat up quickly. “Yes…Alec Spencer.”
It was the woman who had taken his name at the door, looking down at him through narrow glasses with brown plastic frames. She had short blond hair and small gold earrings shaped like cats. A dangly bracelet hung from the wrist of the same hand that had rings on it, and Alec couldn’t help noticing that her fingers were long and thin, finished off with bright red nail polish—which immediately made him remember the warden in the book Holes, the lady who ran a boys’ prison camp out in the desert.
She said, “Did you get the student information booklet about Extended Day, about your program choices?”
“Yes,” he said, “it’s at home…except I didn’t get a chance to look at it.”
The woman said, “I see. Well, I’m Mrs. Case, the program director, and you have three different options: You can sign up for the Active Games Program or the Clubs Program, or you can report to the Homework Room each afternoon.”
Mrs. Case tried to smile as she talked to him, but Alec could tell she was annoyed that he hadn’t known all this beforehand.
“So, those are your choices,” she said.
Alec said, “But…can’t I just sit here and read?”
Mrs. Case shook her head. “You need to be enrolled in one of the three activities I mentioned—clubs, games, or homework. Now, if that book is a school assignment, then you should be in room 407, the Homework Room.”
Alec said, “This book? It’s just for fun—and I’ve already read it four times!” He smiled, but Mrs. Case didn’t smile back.
She looked over the top of her glasses at him. “But you do have homework, don’t you?”
He nodded. “Oh, yeah—tons!”
“So you could go to the Homework Room and work on that.”
“Well,” he said slowly, “I could, but I’m going to do all that later, at home…because it’s homework—get it?”
Alec was still smiling, and Mrs. Case still wasn’t.
“As it also explains in your information booklet, students have these first two days to decide which of the three activities to start out with. If you don’t want to be in the Homework Room, you could ask Mr. Jenson or his assistants about Active Games. Or you could talk to Mr. Willner—he’s in charge of the Clubs Program, and he can tell you all about that.”
Mrs. Case looked at Alec for a moment and then gave him a real smile. “The games can be a lot of fun—and if you don’t see a club you like, you could always start one of your own. Extended Day is actually a great place to spend time with kids you might never get to know during the regular school year. But whatever you choose to do, you can’t just lie down over here on the gym mats by yourself, all right? So, have a nice afternoon, and if you have any other questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.”
And with that, Mrs. Case turned and walked back toward her command center at the main door of the gym. She was wearing a dark blue pants suit, which made her look sort of like a police officer. Except she also wore orange-and-white running shoes, which was not like a police officer. Alec noticed the shoes because they squeaked on the shiny wood floor.
The big clock above the main door was inside a heavy wire cage to protect it from stray basketballs, and he could see that it was almost three-thirty. In the corner off to the right of the doorway, it looked like a game of kickball was starting up, but Alec didn’t want to play active games for the next two and a half hours—he’d gotten plenty of exercise hurrying from class to class all day. So he tucked his book into his backpack and headed toward the clubs area.
Five cafeteria tables had been set up along the rear wall, each about fifteen feet from the next, and a tall man wearing a blue sweater was helping some kids unload plastic bins from a storage closet in the corner. There was a small hand-lettered sign on each table: CHESS CLUB, ROBOTICS CLUB, CHINESE CLUB, LEGO CLUB, and ORIGAMI CLUB.
Alec didn’t really want to be in a club either…and he really didn’t want to start one. To have to get an activity organized and then keep it going, day after day? That sounded horrible. Because right now, today? All he wanted to do was read.
Alec glanced back to see if Mrs. Case was watching him. She wasn’t, so he hurried toward the table with the most kids, which was the Lego Club—three boys and three girls. The tallest boy was lifting trays of Lego parts out of a large bin and handing them to the other kids. Alec didn’t know any of them—he was pretty sure they were all fifth graders.
When he reached the table, he smiled at everyone, and said, “Mind if I sit here and read? I won’t bother anybody.”
The tall boy shrugged and said, “No problem,” and most of the other kids nodded.
Then one of the girls said, “But if you want to join the club, you have to get on Mr. Willner’s list.”
“Right. I’ll remember that.”
Alec glanced across the gym once more to check on Mrs. Case…all clear. He quickly moved around to the back side of the table, slid onto the seat across from the big plastic bin, and hunched down behind it, nicely hidden. Then he took out The High King and started to read once more.
The story lifted him up and carried him away, just like it always did, and he forgot al
l about the squeak, squeak, squeak of Mrs. Case’s running shoes. Even though he knew this book as well as he knew his own backyard, he still loved every character, still loved every twist and turn of the plot. And after a day like this one, it felt amazingly wonderful to know exactly what was going to happen next.
George Clements
ANDREW CLEMENTS is the New York Times bestselling author of the beloved modern classic Frindle, which has sold over six million copies, won nineteen state awards (and been nominated for thirty-eight!), and been translated into over a dozen languages. Andrew began writing while he was a public school teacher outside of Chicago. He has watched many fads come and go, from the yo-yo to the fidget spinner, and even a paper palm tree fad that once swept his classroom (and was later described in a book). Called the “master of school stories” by Kirkus Reviews, Andrew is now the author of over eighty acclaimed books for kids, including, most recently, The Losers Club, which School Library Journal called “engaging and funny…a laugh-out-loud first purchase” in a starred review. Andrew lives in Maine with his wife, Becky. They have four grown sons and two rascally cats.
AndrewClements.com
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The Friendship War Page 13
