Happy Kid! (5 page)

That was better.

“Kyle, why were you holding the screwdriver in your hand on the bus?” the state trooper broke in. “What were you going to do with it?”

“It fell out of my backpack,” I explained. “And then the bus driver took off—we thought she was kidnapping us, you know—and I just sat there with it. I didn't think to try to put it away.”

As the trooper went to pick my backpack up off the floor next to Mr. Alldredge's desk, Mr. Kowsz knocked on the door and entered the office.

“I'm sorry to have to call you back to school, but this young man was caught with a weapon, which he claims he made in your second-period class,” Mr. Alldredge said.

“A weapon? We don't make weapons in second period,” Mr. Kowsz said as he was sitting down. As if maybe “we” made them in another period.

“Do you make screwdrivers?” Dad asked.

Mr. Kowsz blinked. He blinked again. Then he nodded his head once. “I try to do a hands-on technical design activity-related project at this time of year that interfaces with our exploration of manufacturing and construction technology.”

Mr. Alldredge and the state trooper just stared at him, but my father smiled and said, “Ah. Screwdrivers.”

“The kids are supposed to use them for Father's Day presents,” Mr. Kowsz continued. He gave me this really serious look. “Not for weapons.”

The state trooper shoved the bottom of my backpack up for everyone to see. “There's a hole in the bottom of this thing,” he pointed out. “The screwdriver just slipped through it.”

There was a pause while everyone thought about that.

“So, we're agreed that Kyle hasn't done anything wrong?” Dad finally asked, standing up.

“I agree,” I said.

The principal did, too. He wasn't so sure about Mr. Kowsz, though. He made Mr. Kowsz stay after the rest of us left. He said they had something to discuss.

Dad and I walked out to the parking lot with the state trooper.

“I cannot come back to school tomorrow,” I said after we left the trooper at his cruiser and headed on to our car. “Everyone will know.”

“What will they know? That the principal made a fool of himself over a screwdriver?” Dad asked.

“They'll know the principal and the state police—the bus driver, even!—thought I was some kind of weirdo who goes around attacking people with hand tools! I've never even been in a fight. I've never been in any trouble at all. But everyone was willing to believe I was a maniac armed with a screwdriver.”

“That's not your fault,” Dad said.

“It's not my fault, but I was the one who was blamed,” I reminded him. Had he already forgotten where we'd just been? “All kinds of people saw me in that state trooper's car. Parents saw me! Kids from my classes saw me with the state trooper and the principal. You know what they're thinking?”

“No, I don't, Kyle. And neither do you.”

“Yes, I do! They're thinking Kyle Rideau must be the kind of guy people suspect when there's trouble. They're thinking I would never have been in that cruiser if there wasn't a
reason
. Why did that bus driver think I would use a screwdriver as a weapon? She's known me all year. Mom made me give her a Christmas present. I gave her cookies, and look what she did to me!”

Right in the middle of the parking lot Dad stopped and hugged me. “She was just scared,” he said.

“Of me? She was scared of me?” I said into his shoulder.

“She was just scared, period. And you just happened to be there. That's all it was. It's all over now.”

I should have given him a shove or something because we were both way too old for a father-son hug. But a hug from your father reminds you of all those times you broke your best toy and your dad said, “Don't worry. I can fix it. Everything will be okay.” And then everything was. That hug out in the parking lot convinced me that what had happened really was over and done with.

Boy, was I wrong.

When I went back to school the next day, everybody knew. And if anyone didn't know, they found out by last period. Because instead of a shot of the girls' track team, the next day's
Daily Report
carried a blurry picture of me being hugged by my daddy in the Trotts parking lot. “Unidentified student is comforted by his father after bus incident,” the caption read because, though reporters can get basic information about police investigations since they are part of the public record, they can't print the names of people under eighteen without their parents' permission. So all the article said was that the student in the photo was questioned by state police regarding possession of a weapon on a bus filled with middle- and high-school students. That was enough.

Jamie Lombardi and Beth Pritchard don't read the newspaper, but they didn't need to. An amazingly large number of people do, and they told everyone else. Melissa Esposito actually brought that morning's paper to school with her that day. My teachers must have been passing a copy around in the faculty lounge because they were all being extra nice to me, as if they were afraid I'd snap and start twitching right in front of them. My afternoon classes were very, very quiet and a path magically cleared for me in every hallway.

Later in the week there was a newspaper story about the PTO holding a special meeting on school violence because of a recent act of aggression by “an unidentified student.” Then came a story about the school board requesting an inquiry because of a confrontation on a bus with “an unidentified student.” One day the paper carried an interview with Mr. Alldredge in which he said he couldn't comment on this incident because it would violate the “unidentified student's” privacy. As if I had any left. I swear, for weeks the newspapers were full of articles about an “unidentified student” who was always described as having been involved in some kind of “assault” or “attack.”

My mother saved them for her scrapbook.

None of this would have happened if it hadn't been for Mr. Kowsz. He was the one who came up with the lame screwdriver assignment because he can barely figure out how to turn on the computers in his classroom. Did anybody write articles for the newspaper about him? He's well over the age of eighteen. The newspaper could have published his name without asking his parents. They're probably dead, anyway. But no, no one wrote a word about how the principal and the school superintendent called Mr. Kowsz in for a meeting and told him he'd have to have his lesson plans checked every morning at the office for the rest of the year to make sure he was teaching what he was supposed to. They also said he'd have to get some computer training, which I think they should have thought of a long time ago. It wasn't as if they were letting him get by because they liked him. Both Mr. Alldredge and the school superintendent are supposed to have been mad at Mr. Kowsz for a couple of years because he made a big fuss about a gym teacher he caught swearing at a kid.

How did I know all this if I didn't read it in the paper? I heard it from Jake Rogers, of course. Jake always knows all kinds of things about the teachers because he listens to as much as he can when he's sent to the office. And he's sent there all the time. Not often enough that June, as far as I was concerned. When Jake wasn't in the office those last couple weeks of school, he was sticking to me like a boil, telling me all about the news he had picked up in the office and the creepy friends he'd made while serving detention. He thought I was some kind of hero or something because, as awful as he is, he had never done anything that involved the police.

I couldn't believe I said hello to him before first period on the first day of seventh grade and that my new math teacher and Beth Pritchard and I don't know how many other people had seen me do it. I couldn't understand how it happened because I really was not a “hello” kind of guy.

Jake Rogers has been known to steal money from smaller kids, knock people off their feet by jerking on their back-packs, kick in lockers so they can't be opened anymore, and rip apart other kids' textbooks so they have to pay fines. His grades were so bad in sixth grade that he had to go to summer school to repeat some of his courses. Lauren heard he had a great time there. I'm guessing no one else did.

So when he thought my saying hello to Mr. Pierce was just so incredibly funny, that was a good thing. Because if Jake's laughing, he's not doing something a whole lot worse. But who wants everyone to know he's the kind of guy Jake Rogers thinks is funny?

Unfortunately, by the time Jake got through laughing and saying hello to Beth and some of the other girls—and sitting next to me—everyone knew.

Our homework for math was to cover our textbook and do three of the sheets in our State Student Assessment Survey preparation packets. The tests were only three weeks away, and Mr. Pierce was all hopped up about them.

I picked up my packet from the stack on Mr. Pierce's desk on my way out of the room while Jake pretended not to notice they were there. “The ass tests,” he said. “I can't wait. We don't have homework during the test week, and we spend the three hours a day of test time just sitting in a classroom doing nothing.”

That pretty much describes every day of Jake's life.

I got out into the hallway and took off, trying to get away from Jake as fast as I could and on to my next class.

Which was art, one of those classes, like music, that everybody is supposed to really enjoy. Ah . . . why? At least my art class was going to be taught by Mr. Ruby, the cool art teacher, and not the old hippy woman who was always spitting sunflower seed shells into her hand.

When I got to the art room, the first thing I saw was Luke Slocum, my best friend from elementary school, putting his backpack down at an empty table. Luke! Empty table! I rushed over, afraid three other people would get there before me and take all the empty seats.

“Hey,” I said to him as I sat down. Luke was the first person I'd seen that day who I actually wanted to say hello to. I hoped that “hey” was a much cooler way of doing it.

“Hey,” Luke said back.

Someone came up behind me and dropped onto one of the empty stools at our table.

“Can you believe it? We're both in this class, too,” Jake said.

I watched Luke turn and start looking around the room for another empty seat. We'd hardly seen each other for a whole year. I couldn't really expect him to stick by me through good times and bad, particularly if the bad times included Jake Rogers.

Luke slowly stood up, as if he wasn't sure what he should do. Three more kids came in and took seats while he tried to make up his mind. That left two tables with one empty chair each—a table of girls and ours. Luke picked up his backpack and started toward the girls' table, but another boy beat him there.

He came back, sighed, and sat down. He was pretty quiet the rest of the period. Or maybe he just seemed that way since Jake was making so much noise whispering hello to everyone.

 

 

My third-period class was social studies, which is probably my best subject. I was walking down the hall toward the classroom when I realized I was following a blond girl who was nearly as tall as I was. A girl who looked smart and cool even from the back. A girl lots of people were speaking to as she walked along. A girl who was turning into my classroom!

Chelsea Donahue was walking into my classroom! Right in front of me! I could reach out and touch her! Which I would never do, but that's how close I was to her.

Chelsea and I are going to be in the same social studies class again this year, I thought as I followed her. I'm going to sit closer to her this time. I'm going to—

Chelsea got away from me because I was distracted by the sight of what I assumed was Ms. Cannon, our teacher—a pretty woman in a heavy sort of way. She was wearing a pair of red leather pants that looked as if they were at least a size and a half too small for her and balancing all her weight on tiny red high-heeled shoes with open toes and no backs.

By the time I was able to take my eyes off her, a lot more people were in the room. Most of them, I noticed, had been in my social studies class—and on the honor roll—the year before. I started to get a bad feeling.

I hurried up to the front of the room and said, “Hello, Ms. Cannon?”

I had done it again—said the “H” word. And what was worse, in my rush to speak to Ms. Cannon, I hadn't noticed that she was busy with—who else?—Melissa Esposito. I hated to interrupt, but I'd sort of already done it with the “hello.” So since I had Ms. Cannon's attention, I went ahead and asked, “Ah, Ms. Cannon, could you tell me if this is accelerated social studies?”