We Dine With Cannibals (9 page)

This was Mr. McNulty's homeroom five minutes before the start of the first day of sixth grade.

When Mr. McNulty—whose name was written on the blackboard—saw Oliver and Celia standing frozen in the classroom doorway, he waved them in.

“Don't be afraid!” He smiled. He was a big man, built like a football player, and his smile took over most of his very wide face. “We thrive on creative chaos here!” He stood up on his chair, which creaked under his weight. “It is my pedagogical approach!”

“Pedagogical?” Oliver whispered at Celia.

“I think it has something to do with feet.” She shrugged.

“I see you have a lizard,” said Mr. McNulty.

“Oh yeah, I have to watch her until—um,” Oliver started to answer, trying to explain why he had a large beaded lizard on his back, but the bell interrupted him.

“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats so I can take the attendance!” Mr. McNulty called out. His voice boomed around the room, and all the kids sat down.

Oliver and Celia shuffled in. There were no
seats together. Celia sat in the back corner, which meant that Oliver had to take the last seat, way up front. He hated sitting in the front. Teachers called on you more and other kids thought you were a suck-up.

“Hey,” a red-faced boy in a baseball jersey next to Oliver whispered. “What's with the lizard?”

Beverly flicked her tongue at the boy.

“Well, I have to look after her until Sir Edmu—,” he started to answer, but Mr. McNulty interrupted.

“Welcome to the sixth grade!” he said. “I am your homeroom teacher, Mr. McNulty. We'll start the roll call. Please raise your hand when I call your name and announce in a loud, clear voice one thing you learned over the summer. Ready? Angstura, Greg.”

“Present!” The boy next to Oliver raised his hand and said, “I mean … um … I learned how to throw a curveball.”

“Excellent!” Mr. McNulty said. “Bessemer, Jill.”

A girl toward the back of the room raised her hand and told everyone how she had learned how to do her own makeup. One of the boys said he'd
learned how to beat every video game he owned. The girl right next to Celia talked about reading over thirty books. One by one, the sixth graders answered.

“Hey,” Greg Angstura whispered to Oliver. “Can I touch your lizard?”

“I wouldn't,” Oliver whispered back. “She's kind of, you know, like … poisonous.”

“Yeah, right,” Greg said.

“Navel, Celia.”

“Here!” Celia said.

“And?” Mr. McNulty asked.

“And what?”

“What did you learn this summer? One thing.”

“I dunno. Nothing, I guess.”

“Nothing? Did you do anything special this summer?” Mr. McNulty was not going to let Celia off the hook. She didn't like all those eyes looking at her.

“I'm going to pet it,” Greg whispered to Oliver.

“Don't do it!” Oliver whispered back.

“I dunno,” Celia said. “Just normal stuff. We went to Tibet. We fell out of a plane. We watched
Love at 30,000 Feet.
Some witches and some explorers
tried to kill us. Then we went to South America and our father's boss tried to kill us to protect some mops or something. Corey Brandt has a new show.”

The class laughed, although Celia wasn't sure why. Corey Brandt's new show was really good. At least four girls had Corey Brandt's picture on their notebooks.

“Celia,” Mr. McNulty said. “You should write short stories when we get to that in English class. But for now, why don't you just tell me one thing you actually learned this summer, okay? No make-believe.”

The class laughed again. Celia was getting annoyed.

“I guess I learned never to trust adults,” she said, looking right at her teacher.

Mr. McNulty's smile froze on his face. He blinked a lot.

“Fine,” he said at last. “We'll just have to work on that. Navel, Oliver.”

“
Hiss
!” Oliver said, and the class gasped.

It wasn't Oliver who hissed.

It was Beverly.

And the next thing anyone knew, the giant lizard had jumped from Oliver's back and landed on Greg Angstura's face.

“Ahhh!” Greg Angstura screamed.

“Ahhh!” Oliver screamed.

“Oh crud.” Celia groaned and rushed forward to help her brother pry Beverly from the boy's face.

At the front of the room, Mr. McNulty fainted. Celia wondered if that's what he meant by his pedagogical approach. The other students jumped up on their chairs and screamed. Celia started to wish they'd been homeschooled.

PRINCIPAL DEAVER LEANED
back in her chair and studied the Navel twins over the rim of her reading glasses. Her office was tidy. Papers were stacked neatly in piles and weighted with antique paperweights. Her books were organized by color and size. A shiny bronze bust of Teddy Roosevelt sat on top of the bookshelf, gazing down at the room.

Principal Deaver was a small woman, but she made up for it with her severe haircut and an expression to match. In fact, she looked a lot like Teddy Roosevelt. And she made it clear that she was not to be trifled with.

“I am not to be trifled with,” she said.

Beverly sat in a cage on the windowsill behind the principal, watching the scene with focused
lizard eyes. Or she was asleep. It was hard to tell with lizards.

“I have been around the block a time or two,” Principal Deaver said. “I'm no spring chicken,” she added, as if Oliver or Celia thought she might be.

In truth, they had seen talking yaks and met a man who called himself a lama. Principal Deaver could have been a spring chicken, whatever that meant. Usually, when someone denied something without being asked, it meant that they were probably hiding the truth.

“In all my years as an educator,” she continued, “I have never seen a first day of class like this one. What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“I told him not to touch the lizard,” Oliver said, staring at his feet.

“Mr. Rondon, our custodian, was forced to put aside his normal duties to find a cage for that thing.”

Mr. Rondon grunted. He stood behind Oliver and Celia in a crisp blue uniform. He was completely bald, with thick black eyebrows and large, powerful hands. He had very broad shoulders, like a bodyguard. A few dark lines of a tattoo peeked
above the collar of his shirt. He made Oliver and Celia a little nervous.

“Her name's Beverly,” Oliver said. Celia shushed him. Oliver never knew the right time to keep his mouth shut.

“Please tell me,” the principal continued without acknowledging Beverly's name, “who thought it was a good idea to bring a poisonous lizard to the first day of school?”

“I didn't have a choice,” Oliver said.

“Young man”—Principal Deaver leaned forward and laced her fingers together—“there is always a choice.
Always
!” She slapped her desk to make her point. Oliver and Celia stared blankly at her. Adults could be so theatrical sometimes. Behind them, Mr. Rondon cracked his knuckles.
That
made the twins shudder.

“Ma'am.” Celia cleared her throat. She had decided to defend her brother, even though she could have stayed out of the situation altogether. She'd been in the back of the classroom, after all. She had her own problems with all those kids laughing at her. But Oliver was her brother. “Oliver thought it would be good for show-and-tell. He
loves … um … science and stuff. He was just trying to embrace … the … uh … pedagogical approach.”

Principal Deaver raised her eyebrows at Celia. So did Oliver. Mr. Rondon let out a slow breath. Beverly shifted from claw to claw, though it probably had nothing to do with the conversation. She was just a lizard.

“Well,” the principal said at last. “That is an admirable idea, Mr. Navel. I am glad you think so seriously about the method and practice of teaching, but in the sixth grade we do not do show-and- tell. You are very lucky that young Mr. Angstura was not seriously harmed during the incident. You both may return to class. Mr. Rondon shall keep this lizard in his custodian's closet until the end of the day.”

“But she's poisonous,” Oliver explained. “She only trusts me.”

“I take fine care.
Heloderma horridum
is fine lizard, is no problem,” Mr. Rondon said.

“I'm not worried about Beverly,” Oliver said, crossing his arms. “It's you I'm worried about. I don't even like lizards.”

“
Scientia potentia est.
” Mr. Rondon smiled. He
had a thick accent in English, but he seemed to speak Latin effortlessly. “It mean ‘knowledge is power.' You must know your lizards. Is no problem.”

“Don't worry about Mr. Rondon,” Principal Deaver said, looking at the custodian suspiciously. “He seems to know his lizards.”

Oliver and Celia turned to see that he was smiling.

“You may pick your lizard up from him at the end of the day. I do not suggest you bring it back to school tomorrow,” said Principal Deaver, and dismissed the children. Mr. Rondon winked at them as they left the room. The dark curls of ink on his neck bulged as he gave them a reassuring nod.

“Thanks for the quick thinking,” Oliver whispered to Celia as they made their way down the empty hallway.

“What are older sisters for?” Celia answered.

“But we're twins!”

When they returned to their classroom, Oliver and Celia were met by angry stares. The only smiles in the room came from Corey Brandt's picture on the girls' notebooks. There were now two
open seats in the front of the room and the seats had a wide space around them, like a moat.

Mr. McNulty had a small bandage on his forehead. He eyed the twins nervously.

“Come in and take your seats,” he said without any of the friendliness he'd shown that morning. Oliver glanced over at Greg Angstura, who pulled his chair farther away.

“Sorry,” Oliver mouthed.

“You're dead at recess,” Greg hissed back.

No one talked to Oliver and Celia for the rest of the morning, although they talked about Oliver and Celia behind their backs the entire time.

“Freaks,” whispered Annie Hurwitz.

“Weirdos,” said Stephanie Sabol.

“Lizard people,” said just about everyone.

That one stung Oliver particularly hard. It wasn't even
his
lizard!

Finally, recess came, and the twins hoped to be left alone to mind their own business.

“Sixth-grade recess,” Mr. McNulty explained to the class as they lined up to go outside, “is a time to reinforce socialization and cultivate interpersonal relationship skills.”

The class stared back at him, dumbfounded.

“Sixth-grade recess is structured play,” he explained, and led the class down the hall toward the double doors that led to the playground.

“What's structured play?” Oliver asked his sister as they followed the line outside.

“I think it means Mr. McNulty tells us what to do.”

“So it's just like class, only outside?”

“Oh no,” Celia said, squinting out at the blacktop in the glaring sunlight. “It's going to be much worse.”

WHEN A YOUNG BOY
reaches maturity, the San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert send him into the dry savannah on his first antelope hunt. He faces hunger and thirst, and while he hunts for antelope, a pride of lions might be hunting him. Young men of the Satere-Mawe people in Brazil wear gloves filled with bullet ants, and must dance for ten minutes while the ants inflict their hands with hundreds of painful bites.

These are rites of passage that signal a transition from childhood into adulthood, and cultures all over the world have different ones. Some of them seem brutal and violent to outsiders. Some of them are hard to understand.