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FOR LINDSEY AND CARTER
CHAPTER 1
I have a question for you.
Which would you rather sit at: the command center of a spaceship or a boring old school desk?
It’s the spaceship, right? I thought so. Me too!
Now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you something about me. My name is Elvin Link. I’m in fifth grade. I like to draw. I mean, I really like to draw. I’ll draw humans, animals, monsters, aliens, half human–half chickens, you name it. I don’t even need paper. As long as the surface is flat, I’ll draw on anything: walls, floors, clothes, furniture, whatever. I like to draw at home, on the bus, at school, and on vacation. And I’ll draw with anything: pens, pencils, markers, chalk, crayons, brushes, or erasers. You never know what you might need or when you might need it, so I’ve always got drawing stuff in my backpack:
That’s why I decided to turn my boring old desk at school into a spaceship. Check it out: the swivel laser cannon, the auxiliary rocket engines, even the rocket-fueled legs! This was going to be a fully functioning extraterrestrial vehicle. And it was something I would have been far more excited to sit at than my boring earthbound desk.
In other words, this might have been the coolest thing ever.
Here’s who didn’t agree: my teacher, Mrs. English.
None of my teachers approve of my drawing on surfaces other than paper. But I like Mrs. English, which is why this was a bummer. As teachers go, she’s pretty cool.
Here are a few things you should know about her:
1. She lives on a farm.
2. She likes to teach math.
3. She can’t see. Well, what I mean is that she has really poor eyesight and wears glasses that are as thick as a pair of ice cubes.
That last fact is also why she writes in REALLY BIG letters. And on this particular day, she wrote this on the whiteboard:
I was excited about the planet thing. Who doesn’t like imagining what it would be like to live on another planet? The part about getting into teams and looking up information together in books or online—not quite as interesting.
So, as my group was getting organized, and discussing which planet we were going to look at, and deciding how to split up the work, it occurred to me that the best way to get to know a planet would be to go there. And to go there, you’d need a spaceship.
Which is why I turned my desk into one.
The funny thing is, when Mrs. English saw it, she didn’t even know what it was.
“Elvin! Why did you turn your desk into a piñata?”
A piñata? I knew Mrs. English had vision issues, but wow! If I’m going to get in trouble for drawing on my desk, it better be for an awesome space vehicle, not a pony covered in crepe paper. In the end, though, it didn’t matter what Mrs. English thought it was.
“I will see you in the principal’s office immediately after school, Mr. Link.”
This was not the first time I’d been in trouble for drawing on things. I’m a regular in after-school detention, so they might as well name it after me.
In fact, it’s where I met Carlos, who is my best friend. But more on him later.
Here’s who else didn’t go for my desk spaceship: well, a lot of people, actually. And they lined up in the principal’s office after school to tell me. Mrs. English went first.
Because sometimes pictures say things better than words?
Mr. Trinkle, a science teacher, went next.
I hadn’t “defaced” a tray. I’d drawn utensils that were way cooler! But this was not my time to talk.
Next was the school principal, Principal Weeks.
The cityscape had been for a class project. The lockers basically look like the outlines of buildings, so I added some details.
“We’ve got a project for you, Elvin,” Principal Weeks continued. “Some people keep a daily journal or diary. They write down things that are important to them: their thoughts, their feelings, or even just stuff they find interesting. Whenever you feel inspired to draw something on a wall or a locker or a tray, we’d like you to draw it here instead. And we’d like you to do that from now until the end of the school year.”
Turdmuffins, I thought.
Or maybe I said it out loud.
“Elvin!” Principal Weeks said, handing me a blank notebook. “Put that in here.”
“You can draw whatever you’re feeling, Elvin—anything, good or bad. You won’t get in trouble for it. But if you’re going to stay out of summer school, you’ve got to keep your drawings in this journal. Understood?”
* * *
The school janitor, Mr. Torres, was also there. He had carried my desk all the way to Principal Weeks’s office. It was his turn to speak, but he didn’t say anything.
He just handed me cleaning supplies and nodded at me and then at the desk. I didn’t have to ask what the nods meant. I don’t cheat or steal or swear or push kids down the stairs. I draw. Drawing is good, right? How could it be that the one good thing I liked was going to ruin my life?
What might have seemed like the beginning of the worst week ever turned out to be the best. This is the story of how that happened.
With pictures, naturally.
CHAPTER 2
It was the end of the school year, when all that was on our minds (besides summer, of course) was Field Day. Exactly one week from today.
On every other school day, we’re either doing multiplication tables or reading about Thomas Edison. Or worse, both.
Field Day is different. Everybody gets to go outside and compete in all kinds of games and sports. There are always two teams, the Blue Team and the Gold Team, based on the two main colors of the Villadale town flag.
Today was the day the team lists were posted. At the end of the day, everyone ran to the front entrance to find out their teams. Then everybody went outside to the parking lot, where Eazy Freezy, the ice cream truck, was serving up scoops.
Well, everybody but me. Instead of hanging outdoors and eating mint chocolate chip, I was hunched over a desk, breathing cleaning fumes in the principal’s office.
This was especially difficult for me because I really needed Field Day to happen. Or I guess it’s more accurate to say that I really needed Field Day to be over with.
That’s because I was
You know That Kid: the one person who does something so completely embarrassing that everybody talks about it like …
And that’s how people remember you for the summer: not by name, but by the fact you did that amazingly stupid thing. You don’t want to be That Kid.
The legends of previous That Kids are almost as popular as Field Day itself. For instance, a boy named Zach Walker once vomited on a balloon during the water balloon toss and then tried to toss the balloon to somebody else—as if anybody would touc
h an exploding puke bomb! He is now known as Yak Walker.
Two years ago, Clarissa Gomez and Mai Lin Lee ran in the three-legged race, shrieking while holding their noses. As they fell across the finish line and wriggled out of the sack, they found that a frightened squirrel inside it had pooped on their feet in terror. The squirrel was okay, but the girls got teased about it forever.
But instead of being That Kid, they were Those Girls, so at least they had each other.
Unfortunately, I was That Kid last year. It happened at the Gatorade relay. That’s a relay where you run back and forth with cups of water and pour them into a bucket filled with powdered Gatorade. Once the bucket is full, you have to mix it, pour it back into the cups, and drink it. Whichever team drinks the full bucket first wins.
I was the first one to run. I tripped and did a massive face-plant into the blue powdered Gatorade. (It’s always the blue kind and the yellow kind, because of our school colors.)
I was already sweaty, so the blue powder stuck like glue. I couldn’t see well, obviously, and I stumbled around for a few moments, trying to figure out where I was. I didn’t get a nickname, but people said I looked like a tranquilized Smurf.
And they had to do the race over because everybody was laughing too hard to continue. So last summer I had to live with the fact that in the final memory anybody had of me, I looked like a stumbling zombie who had been hit with a blueberry pie. But it couldn’t happen two years in a row, right? Surely there would be a new That Kid this year. I needed this to happen. I needed a new team, new teammates, new memories.
“Don’t forget the legs, too, Elvin,” Principal Weeks said. “I want the whole desk spotless before I let you go.”
At this moment, scrubbing the desk in the principal’s office made me feel like I was always going to be
CHAPTER 3
If the desk could have talked, it would have said
But I finally finished cleaning it back to its boring old self.
“There’s still time to catch the Eazy Freezy truck,” Principal Weeks said. “So why don’t you check the list to find out your team, then get an ice cream. And, Elvin…”
“Well, let’s just say, don’t let this happen again.”
Message received.
I left Principal Weeks’s office and headed to the front entrance, where I found my name on the Gold Team.
New year, new color. That was a good sign.
Then I made my way outside. I could tell by the lack of noise that the crowd had thinned out. It sounded suspiciously quiet.
When I arrived at the parking lot, I saw a scene that looked like this:
The ice cream truck was there, and a few groups of kids were scattered around. In the middle of the parking lot, Mrs. English and Mr. Trinkle were staring down at a splattered ice cream cone. Principal Weeks came outside and joined them. They all looked pretty angry.
“I don’t know what just happened,” Mrs. English said. “I got my cone, and as I turned around, someone plowed into me and knocked it out of my hand.”
“Are those yours?” Principal Weeks asked, pointing at the ground.
Poor Mrs. English. Adios, glasses!
“Did you see what happened, Steve?” Principal Weeks asked, but Mr. Trinkle didn’t say anything. He seemed more interested in his mountain of fudge caramel swirl.
Principal Weeks raised her voice and asked the kids outside, “Did anyone see who knocked into Mrs. English?”
They didn’t see, or they didn’t want to tell. It was probably the second one. Either way, there was one frustrated principal, one upset teacher, one pair of broken glasses, and two splattered scoops of cherry ice cream on the ground.
“I’m very disappointed no one is coming forward—accident or not,” Principal Weeks snapped. “Field Day is coming up. There will be consequences.”
Here’s how I would describe the scene:
I wanted a mint chocolate chip cone, but it seemed like the wrong time to ask. Some kids were standing still, silently finishing their last few licks. A few teachers were standing in a half-circle with their hands on their hips. Nobody knew what to do. Neither did I. So I stared down at the ice cream splatter.
It was a cool shape. I imagined it as a flying slime monster with wings and a tail.
Nobody was talking. Let’s face it—I was bummed out. It’s sad to see ice cream splattered on the ground, especially when you didn’t get the chance to have any. Since the ice cream was starting to melt, I opened my backpack, found my chalk, and traced the outline of the spill on the pavement. I wanted to preserve the memory of the ice cream.
When the police think somebody has been murdered, they draw a chalk outline around the body so that they can continue to analyze the scene after the body has been removed. I guess I learned it from movies, because nothing like this has ever happened in Villadale.
Then again, I might have learned it from my father. He’s a police officer.
CHAPTER 4
Meet my dad. Or, as he’s known in town, Officer Link.
It’s cool having a police officer for a father, but maybe not in the way you’d guess. When people think of the police, they call up images of high-speed car chases and shootouts at abandoned warehouses—things like that. Nonstop action.
In reality, though, it’s more like this:
Villadale is a medium-size town where people know each other. The criminals are mostly just regular people who do dumb things. And the police are mostly regular people, too, just trying to keep the town safe and peaceful. My dad is one of them.
I’ve observed a thing or two about problem-solving from him. Case in point …
“You can tell by the shape of the splatter that the cone fell like this,” I said, pointing to the wings of the slime monster. “So whoever ran into Mrs. English was running in that direction.”
Principal Weeks looked stunned that I actually said something useful. “That’s a good observation, Elvin,” she said. “Can you tell us anything else?”
The guy in the Eazy Freezy truck finally spoke up.
“I saw who did this,” he said, once he had our attention. “There were a bunch of kids all running around and chasing each other, and one of them knocked into the teacher. I don’t know his name, but I saw what he looked like. I could describe his face.”
When someone sees a crime happen, the police often ask the person to describe what the culprit looks like so they can draw a picture of the suspect. It’s called a composite sketch. The person who draws the face based on the description is called a sketch artist.
“I can draw him!” I responded.
I had never actually done this before, but I thought it might be cool to try. It involved drawing, after all. It wasn’t until after I suggested the idea that I thought, Uh-oh, this could turn me into a snitch.
On the other hand, I realized, this might put me on the good side of the teachers, at least for a moment.
“Great,” said Principal Weeks. “What do we have to lose? Let’s go back to my office and set you up.”
The principal’s office. So many great memories there!
“Do you have everything you need, Elvin?” Principal Weeks asked.
Everything I needed to draw? Of course I did. But there was one thing I was missing.
“Can I have three scoops of mint chocolate chip first?”
Didn’t happen.
CHAPTER 5
“He was around your height, but heftier than you.”
I was sitting in the principal’s office, across from the Eazy Freezy man, sketching as he spoke. Principal Weeks and Mr. Trinkle stood next to us, watching but not interfering.
I knew the word heft meant “weight.” If somebody was hefty, they were kind of bigger.
“His face was round, with curly brownish hair,” the ice cream truck guy continued. “Not brown, but not black, either.”
I started with light pencil first, then darkened it once I thought it looked right.
“The curls w
ent down lower, to his eyebrows.”
“What kind?” I asked. “Tight curls, or the big, floppy ones?”
“The floppy kind.”
“He had a bulbous nose,” he continued. “It was distinctive.” Bulbous means it’s wide and round, and easy to draw. I know that word because an uncle of mine has a nose that he’s described as bulbous.
“His eyes were close together and set deep behind his eyebrows, if you know what I mean.” I did. If a person has deep-set eyes, that means more of them are covered in shadows.
“He had a normal mouth and red plumpy cheeks, I suppose. Maybe because he was running.”
Ears? I asked him about those. He said he hadn’t seen them because of the hair, so I didn’t draw that part. It’s not easy drawing a face from somebody’s description, but I was doing my best.
“Like this?” I said.
“Yeah, that looks a lot like the kid,” he said. “You’re on the right track.” The face was starting to appear familiar to me—and not in a good way.
“What was he wearing?” asked Principal Weeks.
Elvin Link, Please Report to the Principal's Office! Page 1
