Happy Kid! (11 page)

“No, thanks,” I said.

Finding out what was going on with Mr. Kowsz and my grandmother was definitely not something I was looking forward to.

Lauren was looking forward to hearing all the details of anything that happened between Mr. Kowsz and our grandmother, though. And when the third week of school passed with no Nana boyfriend news, Lauren took matters into her own hands.

Late on Sunday afternoon Nana, Lauren, and I were sitting out on my family's deck. Nana had come over to read our newspaper and drink our coffee the way she does every Sunday after she closes the office. Lauren was painting her toe-nails. I was finishing the next chapter in my vocabulary book. I didn't have any real homework because SSASie testing started the next day. I was spending the weekend trying to get ahead on my schoolwork so I'd have some free time after school. My mother had finally finished her background check on Mr. Goldman and scheduled my private taekwondo lessons. I would start actual classes in October.

Everything was very quiet and restful. Or as quiet and restful as it can be when you're trying to finish three pages of fill-in-the-blank vocabulary statements.

And then, all of a sudden, Lauren said, “How's your love life, Nana? Everyone wants to know, so I thought I'd ask before I leave to go over to Jared's for dinner.”

“I don't have one,” Nana answered.

“No tall, skinny guy has called to ask you to go to the casino or on one of those senior citizen bus trips?” Lauren asked while she put the finishing touches on her pedicure.

I wondered if I had time to get up and run away from home before this conversation went any further.

“I did have a nice man ask me to stop by the middle school any Wednesday or Thursday afternoon so he could show me the lamp bases he makes out of metal and wood,” Nana admitted.

I shouted, “No!” and Lauren said, “Oh, what a lame way to get a woman's attention.”

“He couldn't just ask me out for real,” Nana explained as she flipped the pages of the newspaper. “We'd only met in the school lobby. It's not safe to go out with a man you've met like that. He could be anybody. That's how serial killers meet their victims, you know.”

Lauren tried to say, “In school lobbies?” but I drowned her out by asking, “You know who he is, don't you?” Maybe I yelled it.

Nana nodded. “He introduced himself. I remembered his name because I remember everything that goes on in your life, Kyle. But, in case I didn't, he explained how he knew you. He was quite a gentleman.”

“A gentleman?” I repeated. “Jake Rogers says he saw Moo put his hand on your backside. Gentlemen don't do that. Do they?”

She laughed. “He did not put his hand on my backside. Or anywhere else. But somebody said he did, huh? Oh, stop looking like that. I'm not going to go to see your ‘Moo's' lamp bases. I work on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.”

Nana was not going to be seeing Mr. Kowsz again. Maybe finding out about that was what
Happy Kid!
had meant by “something to look forward to.” It was definitely what I had wanted to happen, and I had had to wait for it, too. Everything fit into the
Happy Kid!
message.

What a relief.

I looked over at Nana, who was reading an article about security delays at airports. That was how I always thought of her—bending over a paper or watching a television reporter while she took in bad news. I had never noticed before that she was also always alone.

“How come we, like, have to take these tests?” Beth asked the next morning.

We were still in our advisory classroom because our advisory teachers give us the SSASies. Mrs. Haag was standing in front of us, her arms filled with our English test booklets and scoring sheets.

“All the schools in the state are being tested to make sure they're providing you with a high-quality education,” she explained.

“Wait,” Melissa said. “The schools are being tested, but we're taking the tests?”

Mrs. Haag laughed. “Funny, isn't it?”

Melissa and I were the only ones who laughed. I actually thought Mrs. Haag had said something funny, but Melissa was probably just sucking up.

“Oh, come on. Perk up, everybody,” Mrs. Haag said to the rest of the class. “Listen, those of you who have health and living with me this afternoon will be getting a real treat. We're going to watch videos. I thought that would be a nice, relaxing way to spend some time after taking a big test.”

Beth and Jamie started squealing and making their “ick” faces, and even Melissa had a hard time acting all excited about something a teacher had planned for her. We'd all seen the kinds of sex education videos health and living teachers like to show in class. They have this really strange way of being both embarrassing and boring at the same time.

Most of that morning's English test involved vocabulary. The hardest part about that was making sure you filled out the bubbles on the answer sheet correctly.

When we ran out of time for vocab, Mrs. Haag gave us permission to go on to the writing portion of the test. We had to write an essay on one of the two topics printed in the booklet. The first one was “What do you think someone your age can do to help achieve world peace?” I didn't think I could even squeeze out a couple of sentences on that subject. But the second topic was “Are we alone?”

I thought I could do a little better on that one.

I glanced over at Melissa just in time to see her turn toward me with this puzzled expression on her face. We looked away fast because the two of us just don't want to see that much of each other, plus we had to get writing. I didn't know what Melissa was thinking, but I couldn't believe my luck. How often do you sit down to take a big test and find an essay topic you've already had a chance to practice on the page in front of you?

My pencil stopped moving. Could this be what
Happy Kid!
meant by something to look forward to? Was my life so pitiful that a good essay topic was what I'd been waiting for? I would have liked to have gone nuts and got down on the whole world about that, but I really didn't have time just then.

The essay was the last thing we had to do for testing that day. After Mr. Alldredge announced over the intercom that we were out of time, the seventh-grade students left their advisories. We were all bunched up in the hallway together for just a couple of minutes before we separated again and headed for our next class. Kids were asking each other which essay topic they'd chosen and talking about how long they'd had to sit staring at their paper before they could think of a first sentence.

I passed Bradley Ryder and a few of the other A-kids just as Brad said, “Well, I guess I don't have to ask which essay question anyone here chose, huh?”

There was a lot of laughing until Melissa said, “I chose the topic on achieving world peace, of course.”

Oh, of course, I thought. Melissa was sure to believe everyone was desperate to hear her ideas on the subject. She was probably hoping someone would send her essay to the U.N.

The A-kids, however, thought she was out of her mind.

“Are you crazy?” one of them asked her.

“It was a
test
,” Melissa said, as if the people she was speaking to ought to have understood that without her having to tell them. “To be really tested, I had to write an essay on a new topic, not on a topic I'd written about before.”

“Some of the words on the vocabulary portion of the survey we've had on tests in school over the last couple of years,” Brad pointed out. “Did you not answer those because you couldn't
really
be tested on them now if you'd been tested on them before?”

“It's not the same thing,” Melissa said.

“There are only so many words, and there are only so many questions. Some people are going to have seen some of these things before,” Brad told her.

Even Melissa had to admit that was true. That's how logical and reasonable Brad is. He can even win over Melissa, who is not at all logical and reasonable. She's more on the bossy and know-it-all side.

She smiled and said, “I did a really good job on the world peace essay. I wish I had a copy.”

I was guessing she wanted to send it to the U.N. herself.

 

 

The school schedule was all mixed up because of testing. At lunchtime I ended up having to wait in line at the cafeteria by myself, so I quickly snuck
Happy Kid!
out of my backpack and let it fall open. I'd been checking it whenever I had a chance for two weeks, but it had always opened to the “Something to Look Forward To” chapter. That probably meant that it was just an ordinary book with a bad binding that kept it from opening properly. I wanted to chuck the thing into a corner of my room. I really did. But I kept thinking, Maybe this time it will open somewhere else and have something else to say. Even though I knew that books don't actually
say
things.

Still, I kept
Happy Kid!
with me all the time and let it open up whenever I could do it without someone catching me. If the book ended up not having some kind of mystical thing going on, then it was just jerky, and I didn't want anyone seeing me with it.

There, in the cafeteria line, all my effort was finally rewarded. For no reason at all that I could see, I was face-to-face with a new chapter.

I smiled as I put the book back in my backpack before anyone could see it. “Kick-start.” I was meeting Mr. Goldman after school later that week, so the message had to be about taekwondo. The book wanted me to take taekwondo. And since I wanted to take it, too, I was feeling very kindly toward
Happy Kid!

It was nice to have something to feel good about during the next few days as our teachers forced us to do relaxing, fun activities so we could unwind after taking tests each morning. Mrs. Haag was right. Compared to what some of the other teachers had planned, watching her sex education videos really was a treat.

Mr. Borden, for instance, made us read plays. Out loud. While standing at the front of the classroom. He said that role-playing helps people learn things and that we'd be doing theater-type activities all year long. All the A-kids cheered.

When I told my mother about “Borden's Playhouse,” which was what Mr. Borden started calling his classroom during the SSASies, she got on me right away. She said I was complaining about something fun that most students would be grateful to have an opportunity to do. Okay. That
might
have been true—if Mr. Borden hadn't written the plays
himself
. They were these depressing things about people who were dead and watching their own funerals, or families sitting around a table at Thanksgiving and fighting, or adults crying in their living room because they didn't get what they wanted for Christmas.

And people say
I'm
negative.

But one day while I was at my locker, I took a minute to see if
Happy Kid!
had a new message. It didn't. It was still telling me to kick-start my life with something new. “Try something you've never done before,” it said. “You need a jolt to get you out of the tired old ways of thinking and living that are keeping you from forming satisfying relationships and enjoying a happy life.”

Wait right there! I thought. What if this message isn't about taekwondo at all? The book didn't have to tell me to take taekwondo. I was already signed up. If the book was supernatural, wouldn't it know I was already planning to do what it wanted me to? Maybe now it was telling me to do something else.

But what? I thought as I walked to English class.

Before I knew it, I was volunteering to read a part in one of Mr. Borden's plays. It was definitely something I'd never done before. Plus, Chelsea was in my English class. Maybe if I read a part, I would form a satisfying relationship with her and enjoy a happy life. That was what
Happy Kid!
was supposed to be about, after all.

Soon I was one of five students sitting in a semicircle in front of the class, reading from the scripts Mr. Borden gave us. I didn't miss any cues, and I don't think I pronounced any words wrong. About halfway through the play I was beginning to think that I could feel myself being jolted out of my tired old ways when Mr. Borden stopped us.