Fourth-Grade Disasters (8 page)

“Does someone poop in it?” another kid called out.

Before Dunk could answer, Coach Joe said, “Team, I think it’s cool for you to write about whatever character you choose, and we’re going to listen to everybody’s story with attention and respect. If Dunk’s
story is about a toilet, we’re going to help Dunk make sure that he has created an
interesting
toilet with a
well-developed
problem. We’re not going to judge Dunk’s story one way or another just because of his choice of a character. It’s what he
does
with it that matters. Okay?”

The class settled down.

“All right, Dunk, go ahead. Introduce us to your main character.”

“It’s not a toilet,” Dunk said sadly.

Some of the boys groaned in disappointment.

“My dad wouldn’t let me write about a toilet. So my story is about a football. His name is Footie.”

Dunk began to read. Footie the football played in a football game. The center snapped him to the quarterback, who passed him to a wide receiver, who ran down with him to the end zone, and Footie won the game.

“And Footie was very happy,” Dunk concluded.

Dunk’s story was very short, as Sheng pointed out.

“I like stories that are short,” Dunk said. “Then nobody gets bored reading them.”

“Yeah, but some stories are too short,” Sheng shot
back. “I mean, you could have just said: ‘Footie was a football. Someone kicked him over the goalposts. He won the game. The end.’ ”

“What’s wrong with that?” Dunk demanded.

“Well, it isn’t very much of a story.”

“Okay, boys,” Coach Joe said. “Dunk, I think Sheng just means that readers would like to hear more about Footie’s adventures, right?”

Sheng gave a half nod. Mason knew that Sheng really meant he thought Dunk’s story was bad. Which it was.

“My dad should have let me write about the toilet,” Dunk muttered.

Mason himself didn’t want to hear very much about a toilet’s adventures. Then again, he didn’t want to hear very much about Footie the football’s adventures, either.

After school, Mason went with Brody to the music room to pick up Puff and bring him home for mending. Puff wasn’t there.

“He’s probably back in his display case,” Brody figured out. “That’s where Puff lives. He just comes to
Platters practice to give us moral support, especially now that we have our big televised concert coming up.”

Sure enough, that’s where they found him. Mason noticed that Brody was right: Puff’s tail did badly need to be sewed.

The case was locked.

“Now what do we do?” Mason asked.

Going home to Dog and forgetting all about Puff was one good option.

“We’ll ask the secretary in the office if she can open the case for us,” Brody said.

Mason was glad that Brody did all the talking. “Mrs. Morengo said we could take Puff home so that Mason’s mom can mend him before the concert,” Brody told Mrs. Boyer, who sat at a desk behind an open glass window in the front hallway by the principal’s office.

Mrs. Boyer hesitated; then she said, “I suppose that’s all right.”

After all, it would be hard for anyone to look less like a dragon-stealing criminal than Brody Baxter.

The principal came up behind her.

“Mrs. Miller, is it all right if these boys take
Puff home for mending?” Mrs. Boyer asked. “Mrs. Morengo wants Puff to look his best for the concert on Friday.”

That wasn’t quite right. Brody was the one who wanted Puff to look his best for the concert.

Mrs. Miller smiled at Brody the way grown-ups always did.

“That’s fine. Just get him back to school by Thursday morning. And make sure you take good care of him. Did you know that Puff is almost twenty years old? For twenty years, Plainfield students have loved Puff just the way you do.”

The principal herself unlocked the display case and placed Puff in Brody’s outstretched arms. Puff was almost as big as Brody.

Mason could tell that Brody was overwhelmed that such an enormous honor had been bestowed upon him. Compared to the honor of carrying home Puff the Plainfield Dragon, being named a Beulah Brighton Belvedere School for the Arts was nothing.

“You don’t have far to go, do you, boys?” Mrs. Miller asked, her face darkening with concern.

“Just five blocks,” Brody piped up from behind Puff’s head.

Then the two boys, and one dragon, headed out the front door of Plainfield Elementary School.

Mason hoped they wouldn’t run into Dunk. Dunk might try to grab Puff (singing a few more loud
la-la-la
s in the process), and there might be a scuffle, and Puff might fall into a mud puddle or get ripped even worse than he already was.

Luckily, Dunk was nowhere in sight. Brody carried Puff proudly down the street, Mason bringing up the rear in their royal procession.

Dog came bounding to the door to greet them.

“Down, Dog!” Mason commanded as Dog tried to jump up on Brody to get a closer look at a possible new dragon friend.

Dog definitely seemed interested in Puff.

As interested as he had been in the stuffed monkey that no longer had an arm and the stuffed elephant that no longer had a trunk.

Mason’s mother examined Puff with care once Dog was lying obediently on the floor, his head on his paw.

“It will be easy to fix him,” she said. “What a good idea to bring him here, Brody! I’ve been hoping for a chance to help with the Platters this year, and what better way than to do some sewing surgery on Puff himself?”

After their snack—three Fig Newtons and milk—Mason and Brody took Dog for a long walk to give Mason’s mother a chance to sew on Puff in peace.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Mason said as they stopped in front of a neighbor’s tree to let Dog pee.

“A bad feeling about what?” Brody asked.

“Bringing Puff home. With Dog. You know how Dog is these days about chewing.”

“Mason!” Brody sounded shocked. “Dog wouldn’t chew
Puff
!”

Why, exactly, did Brody think that?

“Give Dog some credit!” Brody almost sounded cross at this aspersion on Dog’s character. He stooped and gave Dog an extra-big, defensive hug when Dog finished peeing. “You wouldn’t chew Puff, would you, boy?” he asked him seriously.

Dog barked his answer.

“See?” Brody said. He clearly took Dog’s bark to mean,
Of course not, dear Brody. How could Mason possibly think I would do such a thing?

Mason hoped Brody was right. He was also going to make sure that Puff was locked up tight whenever his mother wasn’t working on him. He hoped she finished very soon. And he hoped she wasn’t going to talk to Mrs. Morengo while she was working on Puff—about voice lessons or anything else.

Mason felt sick inside from hoping.

During Platters practice on Tuesday, Mrs. Morengo spent half the time on rain dripping and dropping,
and half on the patriotic medley, which was called “America!” It was a smushed-together mixture of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “America the Beautiful,” and “God Bless America.” The important thing for this song, Mrs. Morengo told the Platters, was to look as patriotic as possible.

“Stand up tall!”

The Platters, including Mason, stood up taller.

“Shoulders back!”

The Platters, including Mason, pulled their shoulders back.

“Tummies in!”

Mason wondered what was especially patriotic about a tucked-in tummy, but he tucked his in.

“Now gaze into the distance. You see a sweet land of liberty. You see spacious skies and amber waves of grain. You see the ocean, white with foam!”

Mrs. Morengo must have decided that her singers looked sufficiently patriotic, because she signaled to Mr. Griffith to begin playing.

“Sing!” she commanded majestically.

The Platters sang, except for one lip-synching Platter on the end of the second row.

As he stood in patriotic pose, not singing, Mason
thought about Puff. His mother had finished mending Puff yesterday evening, but she decided that Puff needed to be cleaned so that he would be returned to school almost a brand-new dragon. Mason had reminded her three times that morning to be sure to leave Puff in her office with the door shut all the way.

The only difficult part about the “America!” number was that eight students in the front row had to hold pieces of cardboard behind their backs, seven printed with the letters of A-M-E-R-I-C-A and one with the exclamation point. At a signal from Mrs. Morengo, the students were to produce their letters, in order, to spell out the word and trigger the crowd’s applause.

On the first try, two students held their letters upside down. Mason couldn’t see their mistake, but he heard Mrs. Morengo’s cry of anguish.

“M! Exclamation point!”

She showed those two students exactly how to hold their cardboard letters, and they tried it again. But this time it was the R that was upside down.

Mrs. Morengo looked ready to cry. Evidently she was picturing thousands—tens of thousands?—of Plainfieldians, perhaps even people from all over the state of Colorado, watching Channel 9 News and seeing that upside-down R.

Mason was gladder than ever that he wasn’t standing in the front row. Brody, holding the I, could be counted on, of course. Brody would never hold the fifth letter in “America!” the wrong way. Though come to think of it, the I would look the same either way.

Mason wasn’t about to make any suggestions. He had to conserve his suggestion-making energy for asking Mrs. Morengo whether he could flash the lights during the raindrop song.

As soon as rehearsal was over, he forced himself to
approach her while she was gathering the letter cards from the fourth graders in the front row.

“Mrs. Morengo?”

She didn’t seem to hear him, so he tried again, more loudly.

“Mrs. Morengo? I was wondering—”

“T-shirts!” she shouted suddenly, as if alerting the students to T-shirt-shaped missiles about to tear through the classroom wall. Mason half expected the Platters to drop to the floor and cover their heads with folded arms.

“I forgot the T-shirts! Fourth graders, I need you to stay a little longer.”

Handing out the shirts took long enough that the second bell was ringing as everyone hurried to Coach Joe’s class, all wearing their green Plainfield Platters T-shirts, with Puff’s face in a big yellow circle on the front. Kids had grabbed the shirts in a great frenzy, without checking whether they ended up with small, medium, or large.

Brody, the shortest boy in the class, had on a large T-shirt that hung to his knees like a dress.

Mason, one of the tallest boys in the class, had
on a small T-shirt that made him feel like a sausage stuffed into its casing. A big, fat sausage stuffed into a bright green casing.

He glanced over at Nora. As he would have expected, her T-shirt fit just right.

Mason and Brody took one look at each other and began peeling off their T-shirts to trade. Mason heard the seams of his rip as he yanked it over his head.

More mending for his mom to do. Mason hoped that by the time he got home from school, Puff would be mended and cleaned and ready to go back to his nice, safe display case at school tomorrow.

There was a quiz in math: multiplication and division, mainly a review from third grade. Mason was pretty good in math, so he thought he got most of the answers right. In social studies, they were going to spend all year studying the first half of American history, starting with the Native Americans. Coach Joe told the class that next month they would have an Indian powwow, complete with costumes and war paint.

Mason hated costumes; he despised Halloween. Although he had never yet worn any war paint in his
almost ten years of life, he strongly suspected that he would not enjoy war paint, either. Maybe he could be absent that day.

But, as his mother would say, he’d cross the war-paint bridge when he came to it. Far more terrifying bridges lay closer at hand.

During writing time, Mason finished the scene with the piano cleaner who came to school to scrub the spilled Coke from Pedro’s sticky keys. Then he started writing the climax scene: Pedro’s stunning refusal to play on the night of the big concert.