The New Kid (16 page)

“But Shelly didn’t answer any of the questions!” moaned Sydney. “And she put up six points against us!”

“It has a horn,” said Shelly.

“It’s a Dodge Ram truck!” yelled Wes.

“I quit,” said Sydney.

Shelly drew another line.

Nancy raised her hand. “Does it love lots of lovely little leaves?”

“Certain ones.”

“
Caterpillar!
” Wes called out.

Mr. Lipman took off his cap and threw it on his desk.

“Is it bigger than a flea?” asked Zoe.

“Yes.”

“Is it smaller than a horse?” asked Chloe.

“Not really.”

“Is it a pony?” asked Matthew.

“Nope.”

“Flat feet or pointy feet?”

“Flat.”

“Is it Carson’s little lost brown mammal?” Cody asked. A little smile crept across his face.

Wes turned to him. “How about you shut your trap.”

Mr. Lipman borrowed the marker from Shelly and wrote
Weston Walker
on the board.

“Please continue,” he told the class.

“Can it fly?” asked Nancy.

“Yes.”

“A mammal cannot fly!” said Sydney.

“I thought you quit,” said Shelly.

“A bat is a mammal. And a bat can fly …,” said Zach.

Shelly’s eyes were twinkling. “He’s right. A bat can fly. You guys have one more question. Go on: ask it.”

“Okay,” said Sydney. She paused.

“Don’t ask it!” cried Cody. “Bats don’t have flat feet. I don’t think bats even have feet!”

“Yes they do!”

“All righty, then,” said Sydney. “I’ll ask it: Is it a bat?”

“No. It is
not
a bat. Your twenty questions are up. I won.”

Shelly took the cap off the bottom of the marker, replaced it over the top, and clicked it closed.

She skipped back to her seat.

She sat down and Nancy looked over at her. “It was a unicorn, wasn’t it?”

“Yip.”

Mr. Lipman reluctantly gave Shelly a Bonus Buck.

After school, the first question Carson asked when he got into the car was: “Have you ever heard of a hair frog, Dad?”

“A hair frog? No, I can’t say as I have.”

“Wes said there was one hopping behind his hamper. What do you think about that?”

His dad turned off the radio. “What I think about that is that a hair frog may well be related to a dust bunny. And somebody in Wes’s house needs to get with a vacuum.”

“Well, he said hair fell off the frog in the birdbath. Then it was bald.”

“I rest my case.”

“Wow. I can never figure out whether Wes is telling the truth or making stuff up,” sighed Carson.

“Well, maybe you will as you get to know him better. Maybe at the campout.”

“He’s not allowed to come because he poses a supervision problem.”

“Ah.”

The night before the campout, Carson woke up to the sound of wind swirling in the trees and rain splattering against his window. He got out of bed and looked into the darkness. It was black outside, except for the streetlamp that marked the end of his driveway. Rain was steadily falling through the light. He climbed back into bed.

Soon he was fast asleep.

In a dream he was chased by a huge furry frog. It had big clumps of hair growing out of its back. Carson was running as fast as he could, but he kept hearing the flap-flapping of the frog’s enormous flat webbed
feet coming closer and closer up behind him. He jumped into a stream and the huge frog flopped in after him, and when it came up from the bottom of the stream, it was a gigantic bald gorilla. Birds were circling around its head, and it was snapping at them with slimy, pointed yellow teeth. Carson tried to get away, but it grabbed his ankle and pulled him under the water.

Carson awoke to the sound of the phone ringing. Yay! It was just a dream. He heard his dad say, “Nick Blum here.” Then a pause. “Yeah, that’s what we figured. Yup. Came down in buckets all night long. Okay then, five o’clock in the multipurpose room.”

As it turned out, the morp was fine—in fact, fun.

Carson was happy that Wes was allowed to come, especially because he brought his grandma.

The Stink Eye came in handy, too. Wes’s grandma had the ability to raise just one eyebrow in his direction and at the same time lower the other eyebrow, which was effective.

Scary, actually!

She did bring the hot dogs and make-your-own-pizza
ingredients. The oven in the multipurpose kitchen didn’t work. But Chloe and Zoe discovered a big toaster oven way, way in the back of the cupboard marked
PTA
.

Wes’s grandma dragged it out, dusted it off, and plugged it in. Then she rolled out the pizza dough, cut it into strips, and wrapped the hot dogs up in the strips, with just the tips of the hot dogs sticking out.

They were kind of like pigs in a blanket, but gorier!

She baked them in the toaster oven till the dough was crispy and the dogs were steamy hot. She took them out and dunked one end of each wrapped hot dog in pizza sauce. And served them on a big aluminum tray.

They looked like old cutoff mummy fingers, wrapped up in bloody gauze.

Wow!

They were delicious!

Carson’s dad, Oswaldo’s dad, and Luciana’s dad barbecued outside in the rain in the breezeway. Nancy’s mom stood by to check the interior temperature of the meat with a thermometer. Abby and Lee
Crabbly stopped by and listened intently to the tri-tip tips.

Quite a bit of sampling went on.

After dinner, everybody played board games. Then Carson’s dad, Wes’s grandma, and Mr. Lipman figured out how to make s’mores in the toaster oven. Later they plugged it into a thick black extension cord and put it on the floor in the middle of the multipurpose room.

Everybody sat in a big, wide semicircle around it, with the lights off.

They all stared at the pretty orange toaster coils, all lit up, listening to the rain drumming on the rooftop.

They sang a few songs, including “La Bamba.”

There was impromptu entertainment: Zach juggled hats, Shelly did an interpretive dance with scarves, Sydney recited part of a depressing and creepy poem about a raven.

Chloe and Zoe showed Mr. Lipman some Halloween decorations they found in a closet, including a huge, sparkling orange harvest moon.

Mr. Lipman taped it to the wall. He had forgotten
to clean out his day pack after the paragraph lesson, so in addition to the roll of masking tape, he also still had a big box of crayons, his bow tie, and his mosquito-netting face mask, which he put on—and told a scary story.

And laughed like this:
“Whoooohahahah hahah ha ha ha ha!”

And the kids all screamed.

And the thunder rolled.

Nancy brought Ethel and boldly sat with the stuffed otter on her lap. When she was little, she had scribbled under Ethel’s nose with a wide-tipped red marker; she was trying to draw lipstick and overshot the mark.

It looked okay.

Sitting on the multipurpose room floor on blankets next to Nancy and Ethel was okay. It wasn’t anywhere near as good as sitting around a campfire on the ground.

On the other hand, it was better than sitting in a soggy tent in the rain in a mud puddle in a campground with a fire ring filled with water and floating charcoal. With mammals peering through the soggy trees.

Carson didn’t have thick all-wool hiking socks like Patrick’s. But having a secret furry four-legged footwarming snoozing Moose at the bottom of his sleeping bag worked out just as well.

In the morning after breakfast, with Chloe and Zoe’s help, Liliana’s mom located a huge old roll of waxed paper in a drawer that had been stuck shut for a hundred and ten years and hosted an arts-and-crafts project: stained glass windows—grating crayons on a cheese grater and ironing them between sheets of waxed paper with Mr. Lipman’s travel iron.

It would have been more fun for Carson if he had been able to report to Gavin and Case about an actual camping trip.

On Sunday afternoon, Carson and his dad returned home from the morp, and thunder began to roll again.

That called for another cup of hot chocolate on the front porch, with Genevieve safely attached to the end of her leash. Carson had a thought:
Would thunder scare a doe and her pups?
He told Genevieve, “Be right back.”

He patted the top of her head and set his mug on
the small end table. He hurried inside into the guest room.

Carson’s dad had remodeled the cage so that the second Dan Post cowboy boot was now incorporated into the architecture: it was poking out of the side of the cage and functioning as a spare room, nursery, or den.

Carson peered into the boot.

All the pups were sacked out together, cozy and warm.

Mrs. Nibblenose was having a drink from the water bottle—a moment to herself. When thunder rolled again, she moved to the ceramic food dish and sat on the edge, eating a grape.

Life was good.

Carson went back outside.

“Thank you for sacrificing both boots for the privacy and comfort of the rat pups and Mama,” Carson quietly said. “Think you’ll ever be able to wear those boots again, Dad?”

“Those? Heck yeah I can! Those boots were designed for a hard-ridin’ wrangler who sleeps on the ground, eats grub from a chuck wagon, lives out of
a saddlebag—who wears the same dusty duds for days on end. When he beds down under the stars, prairie dogs and lizards climb in and out of those boots.”

“Will you, Dad?”

“Maybe. I’ll go over them with some sanitizing wipes. All ready with your Whiz Quiz poem?”

“I am. Any final thoughts, Dad?”

“Hit me with one more clue.”

“Okay. One more clue. Sleeps in a weed bed with its head covered as sparsely as parsley.”

“I know, a shrew.”

“Nope.”

Right after Sustained Silent Reading and right before Shape It Up to Shipshape, it would be Carson’s turn to try to trick the class with his Whiz Quiz poem, and then Nancy’s turn to sing her onomatopoeias.

Carson wandered about the classroom, picking up scraps of paper, straightening books on the shelves. He was aware that his hoodie was still behind the rolling book cart.

So embarrassing!

He was glad nobody knew it was there, not even his dad. He’d been wearing his jacket. But he should definitely retrieve his hoodie soon.

In fact, since no one seemed to be looking in his direction, he should definitely retrieve it immediately.

It was so dusty behind the rolling book cart when Carson squeezed behind it that he wouldn’t have been surprised to see a hair frog hop out. He found his hoodie just as he’d left it, except it had a Jolly Rancher candy stuck to the back. When the coast was clear, he came out from behind the cart, put the hoodie on, and wore it, with his wrists poking out of the sleeves.

It was very snug. But Carson liked that. He would feel more confident standing in front of the class with his Whiz Quiz poem if he was zipped up nice and tight. Besides, he had spilled pomegranate juice on the front of his uniform shirt at lunch.

Mr. Lipman settled his detective’s cap properly on his head. “Okay, Carson, let’s hear it,” he said. The class was quiet because Wes was absent.

Carson unfolded his poem. “Face round as a balloon. Nose black as a prune.”

“A fat-faced baby lamb,” whispered someone.

“Shh!” said Mr. Lipman. “Wait till the end, then raise your hand.”

Carson continued: “Sleeps in a weed bed with its
head covered as sparsely as parsley. Can’t get sunk. Won’t soak. Likes to dunk. Can’t croak. Like a froggy, won’t get soggy.”

Mr. Lipman said, “Hmmmmm. Go on, Carson.”

“Braves caves. Air in its hair. Cracks and smacks and bashes and crashes and smashes and crunches its lunches.” He paused. “Has a floaty goatee.”

He paused.

“Not a lumpy seal. Not a grumpy shabby gabby gull. Not a pouchy grouchy cranky crabby pelican with a limp shrimp in its beak. It’s sleek. Bobs for lobster. Gallops with scallops. Floats in its coat like a boat in the water.”

Nancy raised her hand. She and Carson locked eyes. “It’s an Ethel, isn’t it?” she quietly said.

Carson nodded.

Mr. Lipman frowned. “What’s an Ethel?”

Nancy answered, “A sea otter!”

“Ah.”

Mr. Lipman counted out ten Bonus Bucks and gave them to Carson. “Good job!”

“Thanks.”

“So, Nancy? I guess you’re up next.”

Nancy walked to the front of the class. “Ready, everyone?”

She cleared her throat. She unfolded her paper and looked sideways at Mr. Lipman. And to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” she sang: