The Trouble with Mark Hopper (9 page)

Jasmina hit him with her backpack. “So—you probably already know this—but the smart thing to do is help him out.”

“I did know that already,” Mark said with a sneer. As he said it, however, he realized that it was true.

“I figured,” said Jasmina. “So just be nice. You may even get something out of it.”

Mark knew that Jasmina probably meant he'd find that being nice would get him far—he'd heard
that
enough in school assemblies—or that he'd actually start to like the other Mark. But he thought about it in other, more important terms: the Mastermind tournament and evidence of artistic talent. He had a plan, and it would be a lot harder to accomplish if he and Mark Hopper were archenemies. “All right,” he said to Jasmina. “But only because I'm a good person.”

Jasmina nodded solemnly before breaking into a grin. She wanted to pat herself on the back, but in keeping with the second rule for arguing with Mark Hopper, she threw her arms around him and squeezed tightly instead.

Mark Geoffrey Hopper had been confused when he'd discovered that his new town already had a Mark Geoffrey Hopper, but he was even more confused when that Mark Geoffrey Hopper became friendly—or tried to, at least. In homeroom, Mark turned around to face him and asked how he was finding it in Greenburgh so far. And when Mark, assuming Mark was asking in order to tell him to move away, replied cautiously that it was fine, the other Mark just gave an even bigger forced smile and said, “Well, let me know if you want me to show you around or something sometime.” The new Mark's mouth dropped open into an
O
, matching the shape of his eyes. He was too shocked to even say thank you. He thought he might be dreaming, until the other Mark added, “I pretty much know everything about the town.” Mark thought that was a little more like Mark, but he pinched a piece of his arm just to make sure.

In social studies that morning, Mark read (quietly) out loud his report about ancient Egyptian superstitions. When Mr. Rocco asked if there were any questions or comments, the other Mark raised his hand. The presenting Mark braced himself for the worst—the other Mark had pointed out mistakes or asked impossible questions to every other presenter so far. But this time Mark simply said, “I thought that was really interesting.”

Even Mr. Rocco's eyes widened in response. “Really?” said Mr. Rocco. “I mean,” he said, remembering that he was the teacher, “did you find any part of it particularly interesting?”

Mark said, “Yes. I didn't know that Egyptians worshipped cats.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Rocco. “Yes, that was a very interesting part.”

The presenting Mark was still too shocked at the other Mark's comments to be proud of himself.

The other Mark raised his hand once more. “Actually,” he said quickly when Mr. Rocco called on him again, “I
did
already know that, but it was still interesting.” He sneer-smiled at Mark, but Mark thought it actually looked slightly more like a smile than a sneer. Convinced Mark was being nice because he had already done something mean, he checked his chair thoroughly for anything pointy, sticky, or Scotch-taped, but it seemed clear. (Actually, he didn't get a chance to check it as thoroughly as he wanted to because Mr. Rocco said, “Is something wrong with your chair, Mark?” and he had to say no and sit down quickly.)

“Mark Hopper is being really, really nice,” Mark whispered to Jonathan in the locker room before gym.

“Serious?” said Jonathan, glancing around for the other Mark, whose gym locker was one aisle over.

“Yeah,” Mark whispered. “It's really weird.”

“That's scary,” Jonathan said. “Maybe you're going to get home and find that he killed your cat or something.”

“I don't have a cat.”

“Maybe he got you a cat and then killed it.”

Mark stood far away from the other Mark while the gym teacher led the class through the presport stretches. But after stretching, Mark came next to him and said, “You're really good at that hamstring stretch.”

Jonathan, who was still standing on one foot and stretching the other leg, fell over.

“Um, thanks,” Mark said.

“A lot of people don't realize that stretching is really important,” Mark continued. “But you're pretty good at it. Like me.”

The gym teacher selected two boys to be captains for a soccer game, and they stepped in front of the group to choose their players. Kenny Yolent took Jonathan and Paul Grotosky, and Pete Dale chose Tyrell Smith and Cole Zitoff. Then Pete pointed to Mark Hopper, who was standing next to Mark Hopper. “I'll take Hopper,” he said.

Both Marks stepped forward. They stopped and looked at each other.

“I'm really good at soccer,” said the Mark who had been acting strangely friendly.

Pete rolled his eyes and pointed to the other Mark. “I want
that
Hopper.”

“Are you sure?” asked Mark in a way that suggested Pete was choosing creamed spinach over chocolate cake.

“It's okay,” said the other Mark. “You go be on Pete's team.”

“What?” said Pete. “I'm the captain. I pick
you
Hopper, not
you
Hopper.” He turned to the second one. “Get over yourself,” he said.

Mark glared at Pete and said, “Your team's loss, diaper breath.” Then he patted the other Mark on the back and said, through his teeth, “No offense.”

Mark walked to stand by Pete and Jonathan with his eyes as round as soccer balls. A few rounds of picking later, no one was left but the other Mark Hopper and Jim Sewell, who, no matter what the sport, picked up the ball and threw it. Kenny picked Jim, and Pete had no choice but to take the other Mark after all.

The Mark chosen last usually tried to score every time he got the ball, no matter how far he was from the goal. But when the ball came to him at the very end of the class period, he passed it to the other Mark, who kicked it to score the winning goal. The whole team cheered and patted Mark on the back, including the other Mark, who patted so hard he almost knocked Mark over.

The Mark who scored, still concerned that Mark's friendliness was all a front, decided to fight fire with fire—or, in this case, roses with roses. He took Mark's hand in his, shook it tightly, and then raised it in the air. “That was a great assist!” he shouted.

The other teammates looked at one another. Then Jonathan stepped up and patted both Marks on the back. “Awesome pass!” he yelled. “All right, team!”

Tyrell and Cole followed. They jumped on Mark's back and hollered. Even Pete Dale shook Mark's hand. The gym teacher blew his whistle, and all of the boys ran back to the locker room chanting “Mark and Mark! Mark and Mark!”

Being friendly was exhausting. After a whole day of being nice to Mark Hopper, Mark left school straight after eighth period. He wanted to just walk home alone and collapse on his bed for a little while, but Jasmina caught up with him and started talking. She talked about Kylie's new haircut (“Don't you think it's cute?”) and Becky's skirt (“I thought Becky had better fashion sense than to wear something with leopard print!”) and that day's school lunch (“The soup was pretty good but, really, who would want pot roast for lunch—especially when it looks green?”), and Mark didn't have the energy to say that he didn't care about Kylie's haircut and he cared even less about Becky's skirt. He didn't even bother pointing out that if she was half as smart as him, she would bring lunch instead of eating the cafeteria food. He also didn't tell Jasmina about his assist in the soccer game. He just kept quiet. Yet when they arrived at their houses, Jasmina gave Mark a big hug for the second time that day and told him that he really was a good friend. “Want to come over?” she asked. “You can help Timmy with his homework.”

Mark didn't ask what kind of homework a first grader gets and what kind of dummy would need help with it; he just shook his head.

“Okay, we do have a lot of homework,” Jasmina said. “Do you want to play running bases later?”

Mark shrugged.

Jasmina shrugged, too. “Talk to you later!”

Mark went inside and sank into the couch, backpack, bassoon, and all. He rubbed his cheeks—they hurt from all of his forced smiling—and sat staring at the blank television. All day he'd been reminding himself silently of how making the other Mark like and trust him was the key part of his plan for the Mastermind tournament—
artistic talent, artistic talent
—and it gave him the drive to continue. He was trying so hard to be nice to the other Mark Hopper, yet Mark just kept looking at him with that same deer-in-headlights look. It was so frustrating. Mark thought about how he would have to help the other Mark Hopper with math after school on Wednesday and of all the long days in between during which he'd have to—
ugh
—keep making himself smile. But then he started thinking about that afternoon's soccer game and his success—well,
their
success—and how it wasn't really
that
bad that he had to share it. He felt his mouth turn into a smile all by itself.

 

The next few days, Mark Hopper found being nice to Mark Hopper to be less tiring. It was less of an effort to talk to him, and his cheeks stopped hurting in the afternoon. It wasn't that he
liked
the other Mark, he insisted to himself. He simply was getting better at pretending to like him. He told himself that being nice to the other Mark Hopper was like a test, and he had never failed a test—ever—so he wasn't about to start now. He especially wasn't going to fail at something because of the other Mark. So by Wednesday, he wasn't
looking forward
to helping Mark with math, but he wasn't dreading it, either.

When they did meet and review for the test, Mark was very attentive and respectful of Mark's fractions expertise. He listened to what Mark had to say and improved his skills throughout the half hour. It still took Mark longer to do one problem than it took Mark to do five problems, but Mark tried not to be too impatient or smug about it. Every time he wanted to say something like “Boy you're slow!” or “You're only on question three? I've already finished the whole page!” he said something like “What type of things do you usually draw?” or “Do you usually write out your whole name when you sign your drawings?” instead.

And after the test the next day, he didn't ask Miss Payley if he could leave class early since he finished first. Instead, he waited until the period was over and went up to Mark as the class filed out into the hall. “How'd the test go?” he asked, truly interested.

“I don't want to jinx it,” Mark said, “but not bad! I think our study session really helped.”

“I'm glad you thought our study session really helped!” Mark repeated loudly in Miss Payley's direction. He continued asking Mark questions about different parts of the test all the way down to the cafeteria, where he sat at Mark and Jonathan's table. Mark pretended to be interested in Mark and Jonathan's conversation about the art club, but he really didn't care about what they had to say. The teacher was going to choose some of their paintings to put up in the local library—big deal. Jonathan asked Mark how his portrait was coming along, and the Mark who thought art was for wimps said with over-the-top interest, “Oh, you're making a portrait?”

“Yeah,” Mark answered. “It's coming along okay.”

“Okay?” Jonathan looked past the Mark next to him to talk to the other. “His is
really
good,” he said. “I mean,
really
good.”

One Mark's ears turned red. The other Mark stuffed some sandwich into his mouth to keep himself from saying something unfriendly.

Jonathan looked back at the Mark who was his friend. “Are you still working on his body? Or did you start adding other things?”

“I finished a rough sketch of the body,” Mark said. “But I still need to work on it. I'm glad it's not due for a while.”

“Yeah,” agreed Jonathan. “I still don't even know who I'm going to do my portrait of. But I narrowed it down to either my godmother or Superman.”

One Mark laughed. The other could not help but make his that's-the-dumbest-thing-I've-ever-heard look, but he was trying to be nice, so he did it facing the other way and into his hand.

“I'm doing my grandpa,” Mark told Mark. “We're only in the sketching stage now. Later we have to paint it, and it's our main grade for this marking period. But if it's picked to go to the library, we won't get it back until later, because they don't know when the library show is going to be yet.” He reached into his backpack and pulled out a sketchbook. He flipped to the page with the drawing of an old man that Mark had seen him showing Jonathan the week before, though it was now a lot more developed. “My grandpa Murray,” Mark told Mark.

The picture was very detailed, and Mark couldn't help but take a small gasp at its beauty. (He tried to pass the gasp off as the beginning of a cough, and said that a bite of his turkey sandwich had gone down the wrong pipe.) The man, Grandpa Murray, was sitting on a sofa. He was wearing a V-neck undershirt tucked into a pair of worn trousers. His wispy hairs were going every which way, and a small smile, as though he was pleasantly surprised to see something up ahead, was on his lightly wrinkled face. A half-eaten apple was in one of his hands and a folded newspaper was on his lap. Even though it was only a rough sketch, the apple looked so real it looked like it would brown if left half eaten. There was no doubt that this drawing was evidence of artistic talent.