In Memory of Gorfman T. Frog

by Gail Donovan

  Chapter 4

  Severe Consequences

  Josh bounded off the bus, ran up the stairs into the classroom, and hurried over to the terrarium. He drew a plastic bag from his backpack and pulled out three moths he’d caught on the porch light.

  “Breakfast,” he announced, dropping the moths into the tank. “Come and get it!”

  The frog didn’t come and get the moths. The frog didn’t look so good. Its black spots looked sort of . . . gray. Josh started trying to count them. One, two, three . . . He was up to twelve when Charu with her long braid came over.

  “What are you doing,” she interrupted, “studying for the quiz?”

  “Quiz!” hissed Payson. “What quiz?”

  “Math?” she said in a mocking voice. “The quiz we have every Friday?”

  Josh hadn’t studied, but he wasn’t worried about the quiz. He did okay in math. Besides, he had more important things to worry about. His frog. “Eat,” he said. “Come on, just one little bite.”

  Good morning, came a voice over the intercom. Today is Friday, June 2.

  “Hey!” said Charu. “It’s Lisbet!”

  “Good,” said Josh.

  The upper grades took turns making the morning announcements. If Lisbet was announcing, that meant other students in Ms. O’Reilly’s class would get a chance soon. Josh hoped his turn came before school let out for summer.

  Payson poked Josh. “Did you study?”

  Hot lunch today is taco boats and fruit cup.

  “No.” Josh shook his head. “Do you think the frog looks sick? Maybe I should take it to a vet. You think there are vets for amphibians? I bet a vet would look at a turtle, right? So maybe one would look at a frog.”

  “Maybe,” said Payson.

  “Don’t you even care?” asked Josh.

  When the school had first separated him and Payson, they’d still played together at recess. But it wasn’t the same as having your buddy in your class. So when Josh found out that he and Payson were going to be in fifth grade together, he had figured they’d be instant best friends again.

  Happy Birthday to Kolby Tinkham!

  But Payson hadn’t acted like a friend this year. Mostly he ignored Josh and hung out with the two Bens. Then yesterday he had banged on the frog’s tank. Today he was back to ignoring him.

  Josh repeated, “Don’t you even care about the frog?”

  “Sure I do,” said Payson. “But my mom says I can’t play baseball if my math grades get any lower. She says I might have to go to some math-tutoring place after school instead of practice!”

  “She can’t do that! You’re like the best kid on the team!”

  “She can if she wants to,” said Payson glumly.

  “Quick!” said Josh. “Go practice multiplying or something!”

  “It’s hopeless,” said Payson, but he went to his desk and started rummaging around for his math notebook.

  Josh turned back to his frog. “Eat,” he pleaded. “You can do it. I know you can.”

  Through the glass tank Josh saw Michael come into the classroom with Mariah and Lisbet. Michael made a beeline for the terrarium.

  “How’s the frog?” he asked. “Hey, it looks like he hasn’t moved!”

  “I know,” said Josh.

  “All right, fifth graders, listen up!” Ms. O’Reilly slipped her glasses off her nose and let them dangle from the chain made of sea glass. “I’m depending on all of you to be cooperators this morning, because we’re going to do something very special. We are going outside.”

  For a second the noisy class was stunned into silence. Ms. O’Reilly hardly ever took them outdoors. Too much opportunity for chaos.

  Charu’s hand shot up in the air.

  “Yes, Charu?”

  “What about the math quiz?”

  “No quiz today,” announced Ms. O’Reilly. “In order to learn more about Joshua’s frog, we’re going to do a special activity on the food chain.”

  Charu put her arm down, looking pouty, but everyone else looked thrilled. Kendra closed the book she had open inside her desk. Payson shouted “Yes!” and pounded Josh in the arm. No math quiz meant no danger of not playing baseball.

  Normally Josh would have been as excited as everyone else to go outside instead of taking a math quiz. But not this time. His frog needed help. He raised his arm—which was getting sore from all of Payson’s congratulatory punches—and said, “Ms. O’Reilly! Ms. O’Reilly!”

  “Not now, Joshua,” said Ms. O’Reilly. “I’ll answer questions when we get outside.” Her eyebrows were arched in expectation. “Lead the way, please!”

  One teacher was giving him the evil eye, and seventeen kids were jostling and pushing, waiting for Josh to go.

  So Josh went.

  He marched down the second-floor corridor, past the rooms of the fourth graders, then the third graders, who all peered out of their doorways to see what was happening, then down the stairs, along the first-floor hallway, past the kindergartners’ construction-paper tulips and daffodils and “things that come up in the spring!”

  Josh pushed open the big double doors to the playground. A warm breeze made it feel more like summer than spring. It should be against the law to keep kids in school when the weather was this nice. Worst of all, they’d had so many snow days this winter that they were trapped here until the end of June.

  “Listen up!” called Ms. O’Reilly. “We’re going to play a game that explores the food chain. You will each have a role to play in our make-believe food chain. I’m going to assign your roles now, so pay attention.”

  Payson, Michael, and Kendra were frogs. Everybody else was a grasshopper, except Josh. He was a hawk.

  “He’s an apex predator!” shouted Payson. “Right at the top of the food chain!”

  Everybody laughed, except Josh. He couldn’t stop thinking about his frog, locked up in a glass box. He tried raising his hand again. “Ms. O’Reilly?”

  “Not now, Josh,” said Ms. O’Reilly, handing out small brown paper bags to the kids who were grasshoppers. “These are your stomachs. When I blow my whistle, you grasshoppers will have sixty seconds to collect your breakfast and put it in your bag.”

  Charu’s hand shot up. “What do we eat?”

  “This.” Ms. O’Reilly walked around sprinkling little scraps of paper on the grass. She blew her whistle.

  Charu, Lisbet, Mariah, Ben B. and Ben T., and all the other grasshopper kids started running around like crazy, snatching bits of paper and putting them in the bags. Everyone was shrieking and laughing and having a good time.

  Everyone except Josh. His frog might be dying. And every time he tried to talk to his teacher, she ignored him. What was the point of raising your hand and asking for permission anyway?

  “Ms. O’Reilly,” he said quickly, “can I go get my frog? ’Cause it’s really warm out here and maybe it would like that. Maybe it needs fresh air. I could put it in that bucket and bring it outside, okay? ’Cause I think there’s something wrong with it.”

  Ms. O’Reilly didn’t answer. She blew her whistle and called, “Stop! No more eating, grasshoppers. Hold onto your paper bags.” Turning to Josh, she said, “I wish you had thought of that before we came out here, Joshua. I don’t want to interrupt our activity.”

  “I tried asking!” protested Josh. “And you said, ‘Not now’!”

  Pointing out that he was right and she was wrong didn’t win Josh anything. Ms. O’Reilly ignored him and shouted instructions. “Time for part two: the frogs are looking for their breakfast. Now remember, this is tag, not tackle. There will be severe consequences for any frog tackling a grasshopper!”

  Josh tried again. “I can run up right now and you can keep going.”

  “No, Josh, not in the middle of our activity,” she said, and blew her whistle. Kids started yelling and running. The three frog kids were chasing and tagging out the grasshopper kids.

  “Can I go now?” pleaded Josh. “I promise I’ll be really really qu
ick!”

  “It’s not a good time, Josh,” she said, “because now the hawk is looking for breakfast!” Turning away from Josh, she split the air with a screeching whistle.

  Josh was standing so close he thought his ear-drum might split, too.

  “Josh, go!” shrieked Charu. “It’s your turn!”

  Josh looked around. Michael, Payson, and Kendra—the three frog kids—were watching him warily, ready to run. The grasshopper kids were watching. They all wanted him to chase the frogs. Nobody cared that the real frog was back in the classroom, all alone.

  Payson came hopping over. “Come on,” he said. “Try and catch me!”

  “No,” said Josh. What was the point of doing an activity on the food chain when his frog might need actual food? “I’m not running.”

  Payson gave Josh a look. “Ms. O’Reilly,” he called. “What should I do?”

  “Josh,” said Ms. O’Reilly. “What’s the problem?”

  “I told you what the problem was,” said Josh. “And you don’t even care!”

  Payson fell silent. The other kids stood nearby, not knowing what to do.

  “Nobody cares,” Josh went on. “They think it’s weird or gross, but they don’t actually care. They just make jokes and call it names and bother it by knocking on the glass. The only thing they care about is getting to go outside instead of being locked up in the classroom like my frog is locked up in that terrarium!”

  The entire fifth grade was listening as Josh added, in a dead-on imitation, “And every time I try to tell you, you say, Not now! Not now! ”

  Ms. O’Reilly took Josh by the arm and led him a few feet away from the group. She was squeezing his elbow, and she had a look on her face like when his mom was squeezing the lid of a jar she couldn’t get open. Mad.

  “Joshua,” she said. “I know how excited you are about your frog. But I still expect you to participate in our activities. Do you think you can manage that?”

  “No,” said Josh, “because—”

  Ms. O’Reilly held up her hand to stop him. “I’m not listening to any more of this, Joshua. I want you to go inside and report to the principal.”

  Josh felt a blast of heat rush to his face. Breaking the silence, somebody giggled. Josh turned away—quickly, so they couldn’t see his face anymore—and started to walk—slowly, because even if Ms. O’Reilly could send him to the principal, she still wasn’t the boss of him—toward the building.

  Chapter 5

  Gorman & Gorfman

  The office was command central of Hollison Elementary. The secretary’s desk sat next to a big glass window that looked out into the main hallway and the front door. Behind her desk was the door to the principal’s office—you had to get past Mrs. B. to see Mrs. Gorman, the principal. Filing cabinets lined one wall, and in a corner was a low, round kindergarten table with a basket of paper and crayons.

  That was where Josh sat down to wait. He knew the drill.

  “Hello, Joshua,” said Mrs. B. “I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  Josh couldn’t stand waiting and doing nothing. He rummaged through the crayon basket, looking for the right shade of green to draw the frog. Not olive green. Not lime. There—moss green. He grabbed a black crayon for the spots and started doodling.

  Last night he had read the entire Big Book of Amphibians he’d gotten from the school library. It told how a female leopard frog could lay thousands of eggs in the water, and then a male frog fertilized them. Then their job as parents was done. Mission accomplished.

  Except parents was the wrong word. A frog didn’t have parents the way people did.

  Josh finished drawing the frog’s body and started drawing the legs. He knew for a fact that his mom had never been sent to the principal’s office when she was a kid. She had told him. What about his dad? He highly doubted it.

  What about his birth dad?

  Even though it wasn’t a big secret about Jonathan being his birth dad, Josh still felt like he didn’t know that much about him. He knew from the photo album that Jonathan had reddish-brown hair and green eyes, just like him. He knew he’d been a landscaper, and that he went fly-fishing in the summer and ice fishing in the winter. But he didn’t know what his first dad was really like. It wasn’t as if people went around talking about somebody who was dead.

  Josh figured that asking his mom about the guy she’d divorced would make her mad, and asking Matt and Lacey about their son who died might make them sad. He was against giving his mom another reason to be mad at him, and he definitely didn’t want to make the bio-grands sad. Which meant that he knew some basic facts, but not the important stuff, like whether his first dad ever got sent to the principal’s. Like him.

  The door to the principal’s office swung open. Quickly Josh crumpled up his drawing and tossed it in the wastebasket.

  “Joshua Tree Hewitt,” said Principal Gorman.

  She was wearing a navy blue dress with gold stripes and gold buttons, like some kind of captain’s uniform, and she had a look on her face as if whatever she’d eaten for breakfast wasn’t agreeing with her.

  “I have a meeting in ten minutes, so why don’t you tell me why you’re here,” she said, ushering him into her office and pointing to a chair. “And Josh—try to come right to the point, okay?”

  “Well,” he began. “I found a frog with three back legs! And Ms. O’Reilly said we could try to study why it got that way. So she took us outside to do an activity on the food chain. And some kids were grasshoppers and some kids were frogs and I was supposed to be the hawk. And probably we were going to find out that if the grasshoppers eat something and then the frogs eat the grasshoppers and then the hawk eats the frogs, that whatever the grasshoppers ate can end up in the hawk. And if it was something bad, like pesticides, then that’s bad for the hawk. Probably.”

  Principal Gorman was looking steadily at Josh with her lips pinched together. Josh wondered if a real captain on a real ship would do as little talking as Mrs. Gorman. She didn’t even have to say anything and he knew exactly what her face meant: Explain.

  “Well, we didn’t really get to the end,” said Josh. “At least I didn’t. ’Cause Ms. O’Reilly told me to come see you.”

  Mrs. Gorman lifted her eyebrows: Explain.

  Josh knew he was almost out of time. And he wanted the principal to get it. Because this really mattered. He started talking as fast as he could.

  “It was nice of Ms. O’Reilly to let us play that game, but I didn’t want to make believe I was a hawk so I could learn about the food chain. I already get it! Pesticides—bad! But there isn’t time to play games. My frog is sick and it needs help now and—I mean—isn’t there some way we could get someone to come look at it?”

  Mrs. Gorman checked her watch. “Joshua,” she said. “Your frog sounds absolutely fascinating. But since it’s Friday, I suggest that you bring it home and see if your parents can help you. I also suggest that in future, you cooperate with Ms. O’Reilly. For not cooperating today, I’m going to take away your recess. When your class goes outside, report back to the office.”

  Josh started to say, “But Mrs. Gorman!” but the principal held up her hand.

  “Every time you speak, you will lose another recess. End of story.” She pointed to the door. “You’re free to go.”

  Josh headed back to fifth grade. How could he make her understand if he wasn’t allowed to talk?

  And what was “free to go” supposed to mean? He still had to go back to his class, and report to the office for recess, and get through an entire day inside Hollison Elementary. What was “free” about that?

  “What’d Mrs. Gorman say?” asked Michael as the bus pulled out of the circle and headed down Route 27.

  “I lost recess,” answered Josh.

  It had been a long afternoon, but finally it was over and Josh was riding home with Michael in the best seat on the bus—the last row. Josh had the bucket wedged between his feet so it wouldn’t tip over. The frog sat in an
inch of water in the bottom of the bucket.

  “I heard in middle school they have two buses,” said Michael. “An early one and a late one. So they can give you detention and make you stay after school. But they can’t do that in elementary.”

  “So all they do is take away recess,” grumbled Josh.

  The bus lumbered on, dropping kids along the way.

  “What about Silent Lunch?” asked Michael.

  Silent Lunch was when the lunch ladies decided the cafeteria was too noisy. Then everyone had to be quiet. Or else you lost recess. Not just the noisy kids, but everybody, because they were supposed to be learning about community.

  “Ooh,” said Josh. “Now that’s a severe consequence!”

  The bus slowed and dropped a couple kids, then picked up speed again.

  Michael pointed to the frog. “Does he have a name?”

  Josh shook his head. “No. Not yet.”

  “How about ‘Severe Consequences’?”

  Josh laughed. He thought about all the phrases the teachers used. “How about ‘Quality Work’?”

  “‘Best Effort’!”

  “‘Involved Citizen’!”

  Michael giggled. “How about Gorman?”

  “No way! What if she found out?”

  “What could she do besides take away recess?”

  “That’s true,” said Josh. He turned the word Gorman over in his mind. Gorman the frog. It wasn’t quite right. “Hey,” he said. “G-O-R are the last three letters of frog, spelled backwards.”

  “So?”

  “So one more letter makes it spell frog backwards. G-O-R-F.”

  “Gorfman!” said Michael excitedly.

  “Gorfman!” echoed Josh. “His name is Gorfman.”

  Michael grinned. “Gorfman the frog.”

  “Gorfman T. Frog,” said Josh. “Middle initial T.”

  The bus slowed again and came to a stop. Time to get off. A few rows ahead, Cady stood up. Josh and Michael stood, too, and Michael started down the aisle behind Cady. Josh was having a harder time because everybody wanted to see the frog one last time. They were standing up in their seats and pushing into the aisle to get a better look as he went by.