Lucky Cap (4 page)

I got one day between coming home from the Kap trip and returning to school, one day to shift from Drive to Neutral to Park. I shifted so fast, I think I blew my transmission.

At least that's how I felt the morning after Labor Day, after the barbecue, on my first day of middle school. I couldn't get into gear. I hadn't gotten to sleep the night before till well after midnight. I was still in the habit of staying up late. I was still in the habit of having fun. Plus I was kind of jittery about going to Stan for the first time.

Stanislaus Middle School was its real name, but everyone called it Stan. All four Pasadero elementary schools emptied into it after fifth grade. That meant there were going to be a lot of kids I didn't know, a new enormous building to get lost in, a new principal, new teachers, new everything. And I wouldn't be staying in one classroom anymore. I'd have a new room, a new teacher, and a new subject every fifty-five minutes. With all this to look forward to, it's no wonder I had trouble getting to sleep that night. And trouble waking up the next morning.

Mom opened my curtains at seven and told me to get up. I rolled over and fell back asleep. She came back again and again, bouncing my mattress, pinching my nose, pulling off my blankets, threatening to pour a glass of cold water on me. I didn't so much as open my eyes.

It took her and Dad together to drag me out of bed and downstairs. They dropped me into a chair at the kitchen table. I dropped my head on the table and fell asleep.

“He's tired,” Mom said brilliantly.

“He's faking,” Dad said more brilliantly.

Mom put food in front of me: cheesy scrambled eggs and toast and melon.

“Coffee,” I groaned.

Mom laughed. “How about orange juice?”

I pounded the table with my fist. “Coffee!”

“Did you let him have coffee on the trip?” Mom asked Dad.

“Sometimes… a little decaf…,” Dad said. The rat.

Mom poured some decaf into a mug and set it down beside me. I stirred in my usual six spoonfuls of sugar and some half-and-half to cool it off, and gulped it down.

I banged the table, making my mug dance, and roared, “Coffee!”

They didn't refill my cup. Instead, they hustled me out the door.

As I leaned against the bus stop sign, waiting for the bus, I went over in my mind the advice Evan had given me at the barbecue.

“Wear T-shirts, jeans, and athletic shoes, preferably ones made by Kap.”

No problem there, especially about the Kap gear. I was wearing it head to toe.

“Don't wear jewelry. No bling. Nothing a wise guy could grab hold of.”

No-brainer. You'd never see bling on me. But then I bet that's what poor Ink had thought…

“Take off your cap in the halls, or lose it.”

What a horrifying thought!

“Don't carry your schoolbooks in your hands. Stow them in your backpack.”

“Duct-tape over any vents in your locker from the inside so that no one can slip things in.”

“Don't bother talking to your upper classmen. Avoid them like the plague, especially your first year.”

“Keep your priorities straight. Number one: athletics. Number two: athletics. Number three: Kap athletic wear and gear. Number four: never run for elected office. That's for chumps. Number five: athletics.”

I was going to follow his advice. I figured if I focused on athletics, I would stay fit (take that, bullies!), stay alert (take that, pranksters!), have some fun at least (take that, parents!), and be able to show off my cool new gear (take that, all you middle schoolers whose dads didn't work at Kap!). Athletics was my game plan for surviving middle school.

Lupe was at the bus stop with me. She had finished sixth and seventh grades and was starting her last year at Stan. She looked wide awake and even eager, and wore a new outfit and plenty of makeup. Her eyelashes were caked with little black clumps. This was her first year of wearing makeup to school.

We didn't stand near each other, of course, or act like we knew each other. Lupe had big plans for eighth grade. She wanted to be Stan's queen, so she wasn't going to risk her reputation by being seen with a lowly sixth-grade boy.

When the bus pulled up, Lupe hopped up and down and waved at girls through the windows. She squealed after she boarded the bus, then raced down the aisle into the arms of her squealing friends. They all hugged and squealed and chattered. Girls are like rodents.

I was still leaning against the no-parking sign. The bus driver asked me if I was coming. She looked pretty frazzled for Day One. I bet bus drivers dread school, too.

I trudged onto the bus. No one mobbed me.

Kai trudged onto the bus a few stops later. No one mobbed him, either. I sat and waited for him to trudge down the aisle and plop down next to me. He wasn't happy about this back-to-school thing, either.

It had been a long time since we'd seen each other, but I didn't want to make a big fuss about it, especially on a school bus. Also, I don't like big, stupid, gooey helloes any more than I like big, stupid, gooey good-byes.

Kai understood. He just said, “Hey, Enz.”

“Hey,” I answered.

He looked pretty much the same as he did in July, except he was way frecklier. The sun always did that to him. His freckles got bigger and bigger till they fused together into a giant brown blob covering his whole body. He still had his dark, rusty, tangly mop of hair, like Annie's in
Annie
. What middle-school guy wants to look like Annie? Not me.

I realized right then what I needed to do to my cute, long blond hair.

“We should get crew cuts,” I said.

He nodded.

“You seem bigger,” he said, looking me up and down.

This made me uncomfortable. I didn't like being checked out by another guy.

“What do you mean, ‘bigger'?” I asked.

“Bigger. You know. Kind of… buff.”

He was right, of course. I was buff. And I kind of liked being buff, but I still didn't like it being pointed out, especially by Kai, who I assumed was feeling jealous. The guy had always been as scrawny as a scarecrow. A short scarecrow. And he dressed like a scarecrow. I think he had on the same shirt and shorts he did the day before me and Dad left on the trip. I wondered if they'd been washed in between.

“I hate the first day of school
so
much,” I said.

“Me, too,” he said.

“And I hate the second day.”

“And the third one,” he said, starting to grin.

“All right,” I said. “Let's not go through the whole school year.”

“Hey, did you really meet LeBron James?”

I took off my cap and showed him where LeBron signed it with a metallic silver marker.

“Can I touch it?” he asked in a whisper of awe and respect.

“Are your hands clean?”

“Huh? Yeah. I guess…”

“Kidding,” I said, and handed him the cap.

He touched the signature lightly, tracing it with the tip of his finger. Then he held the cap at arm's length to admire it. He kept shaking his head, like he couldn't believe it was real.

“This is the amazingest cap in the history of the whole megaverse.” His eyes were kind of wet.

I had to agree. “Yeah, and it was the most amazingest
trip
in the history of the whole megaverse.”

“It sure sounded like it in your texts.”

“Oh, man, the texts didn't even come close to what it was really like.”

He nodded. I think he could tell that something earth-shatteringly major had happened to me. When he looked at me, it was like I wasn't Enzo Harpold anymore. It was more like I was famous. Maybe superhuman.

That made me uncomfortable, too, but in a way I was way more comfortable with.

Stan was a big brick block of a building. It looked like a prison, but then don't all schools?

Aren't all schools?

Kids were pouring out of buses and cars and into Stan's front doors, all of them probably thinking pretty much what I was thinking:
Blah
or
Ugh
or
Burn down the school!

I'd been to an orientation in the spring, so I knew the basic layout of the place. But that didn't mean I knew where to go. I'd gotten a schedule during the summer in the mail that listed what classes I had, what rooms they were in, and what teachers taught them. I had it in my hand, but in my fog of sleep deprivation, it looked like Chinese.

A dull electronic tone came over the intercom.
MOOOOOP!
What did it mean? Was it a warning bell? Tardy bell? I waited for a voice to explain, the way flight attendants do.
The principal would like all students to return to their seats…
Or homerooms, or whatever. I wanted to return to my bed. No one explained anything.

“Should we send up a flare?” Kai asked.

“Got one?”

“We could ask for help?”

You don't start middle school by asking for directions. Everyone knew that. Even I knew that. Kai was so clueless.

“Go ahead,” I said, deciding that giving humiliating tasks to inferiors was acceptable middle-school behavior. I mean, I was definitely better looking, better dressed, and, let's face it, hotter than Kai, so why shouldn't I start right off asserting my superiority? Over one person, at least.

“Who should I ask?” Kai asked.

There was probably a New Students Help Center somewhere, but again, I knew by instinct that standing in a line of clueless underclassmen would tattoo me a dork. I remembered Evan's advice about staying away from upperclassmen, but if we didn't ask one of them, we'd have to ask some other lost sixth grader.

“Ask an eighth grader,” I suggested, a bit surprised at how easily I was willing to sacrifice my friend to protect my reputation. It was every kid for himself in middle school.

“How can you tell which ones are in eighth grade?” Kai asked.

My opinion of him was sinking fast—though it hadn't been too high for months. Picking out members of the older class did not require special knowledge. The eighth graders were taller, cooler, cockier, and laughing their butts off at the dopey sixth graders standing around in a daze, their schedules drooping in their hands. Like us.

I pointed to a knot of jocks in gray hoodies and baggy pants and said, “Try one of them. They look eager to help.”

Kai gulped.

“Go on,” I said, shoving him into the lion's den.

He stopped going forward when the shove wore off and peeked back at me.

“Go!” I mouthed.

He made a face like the Cowardly Lion, then tiptoed toward the jocks. When he reached them, he asked his question. I couldn't hear it over the hall noise, but I sure heard the jocks bust out laughing. One of them poked Kai in the chest, then brought his finger up and flicked Kai's nose. More yuks. When Kai turned to leave, the poking jock stuck out his foot and tripped him. Luckily, Kai didn't fall onto his face. He just did some herky-jerky robotic moves trying to keep his balance till he ran into some girl.

I walked away quickly, like I didn't know him. He caught up to me. I walked faster. He cornered me when the traffic jammed.

“Look,” I said out of the corner of my mouth, not looking at him. “We have different homerooms. Let's split up and meet outside at the end of the day.”

“What about lunch?” Kai asked.

I glanced back to see if the jocks were still looking at us. I couldn't see them.

“Maybe,” I whispered.

The bottleneck cleared and I slipped into the crowd, trying—yeah, I admit it—to ditch him. He kept after me for a while, until at last I was forced to glare at him and whisper,
“Go on!
” Which he got. He turned around and joined the flow of traffic going the way we'd come.

“Congratulations,” a voice beside me said.

It was Iris Pok, a girl from my elementary school. We had been in fifth grade together.

Iris loved running guys down, as if it were a sport, or her job. She was one of those girls who thought girls were smarter, more mature, and just all-round
better
than boys—and she was constantly trying to prove this by messing with guys' heads so much they went insane.

“Congratulations?” I asked.

“For dumping your loyal best friend in the first moments of your middle-school career,” she said, then did a triple eyelid flutter. (All my sisters—except Nadine—did this when they felt better than me. I think it's supposed to mean,
Can I trust my eyes? Are you really as
[add insult here]
as you seem?
)

“Step off, Iris,” I said. “I'm looking for my homeroom.”

She snatched the schedule from my hand.

I started to yell “Hey!” but stopped myself. I didn't want people to think some girl could get me all worked up.

“We're in the same homeroom,” she said, reading the schedule. “We can walk together.”