Holy Enchilada (9 page)

I walked down the main hall toward the Multi-Purpose Room and past the trophy case. I noticed a picture of Principal Love right in the center of all our school trophies. Don't ask me why it was there. You sure wouldn't want to win him in a game.

I passed the attendance office, where Mrs. Crock was sitting at her desk, squinting at her computer screen.

“Hi, Hank,” she called out. “What do you have there?”

“Cheese enchiladas. For Multi-Cultural Day.”

“Isn't it yummy to be multi-cultural?” she said.

Wow, she was in a good mood. In fact, everybody I passed in the hall was, too. There was a feeling of a party in the air. The kids in the kindergarten room were busy making paper plates into African masks.

“I'm going to dance at the lunch today,55 one of the little guys said as I passed by. ”Wanna see?”

He burst into a wild and crazy dance, shaking his butt and making up weird steps as he went along. I remember doing that in kindergarten. Frankie and I danced like total goofballs in front of the whole school, and we weren't ashamed or embarrassed even a little bit. Those were the good old days.

By the time I reached the Multi-Purpose Room, I was dying to put down the pan of enchiladas. It's a long hallway, and my arms were aching. The first person I saw was Mr. Rock. He was on a stepladder, hanging the welcome sign we had made for Yoshi. I noticed Ashley's pink rhinestones on the sign, sparkling out at me like cherry blossoms.

“Hi, Hank. That's a mighty big load you're carrying,” Mr. Rock said.

“I didn't know enchiladas were so heavy,” I answered.

“Here, let me give you a hand with that,” Mr. Rock said, hopping off the ladder. Before I could object, he had grabbed the pan from my hands.

“You make these yourself?” he asked.

“A bunch of us made them together,” I said.

“Well, since these were made by kids for kids, I think they should go right in the middle,” he said, plopping them down smack in the center of the table.

I was hoping to slide the enchiladas onto a side table so I could sneak a bite without anyone noticing. This center table development put a minor wrinkle in my plans, but I could deal with it. Mr. Rock would go back to his sign hanging in a minute, and I'd creep over there and grab my test taste.

Squeak, squeak, squeak.

“Well, well, well. If it isn't Mr. Zipzer,” said a tall man, bushy haired voice.

I turned around and there they were—the three of them: Principal Love, his hairy blue and yellow scarf, and his mole. They all looked happy to see me. I was not happy to see them.

“Mr. Morimoto reported that his son had an excellent evening last night,” he said. “Good job, young man.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Remember this, Mr. Zipzer, because I'm not going to say it twice. We build bridges between people so boats can sail under them.”

I counted to ten, waiting.

“Yes, siree,” he repeated, right on schedule.

“We build bridges between people so boats can sail under them. Do you understand, Mr. Zipzer?”

“Yes, sir. Every word.”

I did understand every word. I just didn't understand what they meant when you put them all together.

“And might I inquire why you're here and not in class?” Principal Love asked me.

“We made a dish for the Multi-Cultural Day Lunch,” I answered. “I was dropping it off.”

“Hank contributed those fine-looking enchiladas there,” Mr. Rock said.

“Ah, enchiladas,” Principal Love said. “A delicious taste treat from south of the border. There is no such thing as a bad enchilada. No, siree. There is no such thing as a bad enchilada.”

I hoped he was right about that. I was afraid that I had just cranked out a whole pan of really bad enchiladas.

“Now that your mission is accomplished, I'll take you back to your classroom,” Principal Love said. “I was just heading there to check on young Mr. Morimoto.”

“Oh, uh, th-thanks, sir, but I still have m-more to do here,” I stammered.

“There's nothing for you to do here,” said Principal Love. “None of the other dishes have even arrived yet.”

“I'd like to stay,” I said.

“And I'd like to ride a yak through Tibet,” said Principal Love. “We can't always do what we like.”

But I HAD to
stay.
I didn't have the chance to taste the
enchiladas
yet. My mission was not
accomplished.

Principal Love was heading for the door. He stopped and waited for me to join him.

“I have to stay, sir.”

“No, you don't. Now come with me right now.”

“Sir, I really want to go back to class with you,” I began, “but the reason I have to stay involves my friend Ashley Wong, who worked long and hard to glue all those pink rhinestones on that sign over there.”

“What's that have to do with you?” Principal Love asked in a gruff voice. This wasn't going so well. I had to kick it up a notch.

“Well, sir,” I whispered. “She asked if I could stand guard because—I don't mean to alarm you—but rhinestones have been disappearing from that sign in record numbers. We suspect two or three of the kindergarteners. Have you noticed how sparkly they have been lately?”

It wasn't my mouth's best work, but it was all I could come up with at the time.

“This is ridiculous,” Principal Love said, rubbing his face with his hand. His index finger brushed across the Statue of Liberty, poking her somewhere between her rump and her armpit.

“I don't know what you're trying to do, young man, but I'm not going to let you do it. Come with me. I'm taking you back to class.”

I looked over to Mr. Rock. Even he couldn't help me now.

PRINCIPAL LOVE DROPPED ME OFF in Ms. Adolf's room and picked up Yoshi. He was taking him to spend the morning with the fifth-grade classes and then on an exciting tour of the library. Yoshi wasn't going to be back with us again until the buffet lunch.

I was stuck in class all morning. Three times I asked Ms. Adolf for a hall pass to go to the Multi-Purpose Room. Three times she said no.

She said I had to stay in my seat and work on our assignment. We had to write an in-class essay on Multi-Cultural Day. This is what mine said:

BECAUSE OUR CLASS WAS HOSTING the luncheon, we had to go to the Multi-Purpose Room a few minutes before lunchtime to make sure everything was all set up. I was nervous as we walked down the hallway. I knew it was too late to sneak our enchiladas out of there. The ship had sailed, as Papa Pete likes to say. There was nothing I could do now but hope they weren't going to be hotter than firecrackers.

Most of me truly believed the enchiladas were going to be okay. I just wished I could get all of me to believe that.

When we walked into the Multi-Purpose Room, I was completely blown away. Wow, did it look different from how it had early in the morning.

It was wall-to-wall food. There were probably twenty tables set up, covered with tastes from all parts of the globe. Next to each dish was a sign explaining where it came from. Kidney pie from England. Squid floating in its own ink from Spain. I wondered if you ate it with a fountain pen. Puffy bread called naan from India. Olives from Greece. Bird's nest soup from China—without the bird of course. And our very own, very cheesy Killer Cheese Enchiladas from Mexico. Next to them were pigs in a blanket from Kansas. I think we all know what fool brought those in.

Good old Nick McKelty. He still thought Kansas was a foreign country near Brazil.

The room was an amazing sight. This wasn't just a multi-cultural lunch. It was a multi-multi-multi-cultural lunch. There was food from countries I hadn't even heard of, like Tonga and Burundi, and it was so colorful. Red and green and chocolate brown sauces were practically waving at you, saying, “Come on, try me. I'm delicious!”

“Look! Snails!” shouted Luke Whitman about two seconds after we had walked in.

He found them first thing, like a heat-seeking missile. They were over by the crepes filled with apricot jelly from France. A whole plate of snails, just lying around in their shells, with some butter and garlic and parsley on top. Wouldn't you know Captain Disgusto would grab one and pop it into his mouth, shell and all? The crunching sound was so loud, everyone in the room stopped talking.

“This tastes awesome,” Luke said, spitting bits of shell out into his hand. “But they could use a little more slime.”

“Eeuuww,” Katie and Kim screamed. They went running over to the cake and pie section, which they were sure would be a slime-free zone.

Our enchiladas were still right there in the center of the main table. I could see that there was steam rising up from the pan and the cheese was all nice and melted. One of the room parents must have warmed them up while we were in class.

Ms. Adolf had told us to wander around the room and arrange all the dishes nicely on the table. She was doing the same thing herself. At least, that's what she was pretending to do. I noticed that she was sampling a taste here and there. She wasn't fooling me. I saw her pop that Greek olive in her mouth, and swipe a sweet-and-sour shrimp.

“Look, there's the Yosh Man,” Frankie said, pointing across the room.

Yoshi was just entering the room, with Principal Love on one side of him and his dad on the other. He looked like he was asleep on his feet. Obviously, the library tour hadn't been all that exciting for him. So many books and so hard to read.

When he saw us, his face lit up.

“Cowabunga, dudes,” he hollered from across the room.

“Why don't you jerks teach him something new to say?” Nick McKelty shouted. “He's getting annoying.”

If anyone would know anything about being annoying, it would be Nick the Tick. He was the master, the commander, the prince of annoying.

Frankie, Ashley, and I ignored McKelty and went to say hi to Yoshi.

“Hey, Yoshi, you've got to see our enchiladas,” Ashley said. “They're over there on the center table.”

“Ah, enchiladas,” Mr. Morimoto said. “Yoshi and I love them. I'll have to taste one.”

I wished I knew how to say, “I'd think twice about that if I were you,” in Japanese, but since I didn't, I just smiled and said,
“Ikeru,
Morimoto-
san
. ”

“Oh, you speak Japanese.” Mr. Morimoto smiled. He turned to Principal Love. “This is a very impressive young man.”

“That he is. That he is,” Principal Love said, giving me a friendly slap on the back. I was so unprepared for his sudden display of affection that I almost fell over into Ryan Shimozato's beef sukiyaki.

Suddenly, we heard a commotion coming from the center of the room, near the table with our enchiladas. Several of the parents had gathered in a circle, surrounding someone.

“Step away, and give her some air,” one of them was saying.

When the parents moved away, we saw who it was they were surrounding.

Ms. Adolf!

Oh, she didn't look good. Not that she ever looks good, but at that moment, she looked especially not good. Her face was turning bright red. I had never seen color in her face before.

The next thing we knew, Ms. Adolf let out a noise that wasn't like any human sound I had ever heard. It was somewhere between a cough and a hiss and a gasp.

“Water!” she hissed. “Get me water!”

She sounded like Golem in
The Lord of the Rings.
She was hissing pretty loudly, and her face looked like a tomato about to explode. Then she started hopping around the room, like a kangaroo with its feet on fire.

“You go, girlfriend,” Frankie whispered under his breath as he watched her hop.

Ashley burst out laughing. I didn't want to laugh, so I just concentrated on smiling very, very hard. Sometimes that keeps the laugh inside.

“What happened to that poor woman?” Mr. Morimoto asked.

“Must have been something she ate,” Principal Love said. Then he turned and looked directly at me. “I hope it wasn't your enchiladas.”

That wiped the smile off my face really fast.

“No, sir,” I said. “Like you always say, there's no such thing as a bad enchilada, sir.”

Ms. Adolf grabbed an ice cube from the punch bowl and rubbed it all over her tongue. Then she rubbed it on her face, too, eyebrows and all. Then it went back on her tongue again. Face. Tongue. Face. Tongue. She couldn't slide that cube around fast enough. And then her face started to drip.

Ashley had tears in the corners of her eyes. That happens to her when she's dying to laugh but has to hold it in.

As I watched Ms. Adolf mambo around the room, I started to think how interesting it was that she had been standing right next to our pan of enchiladas when her tongue attacked her. I wasn't the only one to be thinking about that little fact. Frankie shot me a suspicious look.