The Sixth Grade Nickname Game

  “Keep trying,” encouraged Mr. Hughes.

  “Don’t start cheering!” the principal warned him in an undertone. “Every parent in Old Orchard is here tonight! Let’s just take down the piñata, and cut it open.”

  “No!” Cassandra was horrified. “It has to break so the candy can fall out for all the children of the village!”

  The principal removed Cassandra’s blindfold, took the yardstick, and pushed it into Mr. Hughes’s big hand. “You do it. And make it fast.”

  “Wait! Wait!” Cassandra stood up on tiptoe, and placed her sombrero on her teacher’s head. Then she stepped back to give him room to swing.

  Whack! Whack! The yardstick sang as it whipped through the air. But the armadillo held fast.

  Mr. Doncaster was starting to panic as he watched Mr. Hughes break into one of his famous sweats. “Well,” he said hastily, “we did our best, but—”

  “Mr. Hughes!” called Wiley from the Canadian area. “Try this!” A hockey stick came sailing over the row of exhibits. Mr. Hughes lifted a massive paw, and snatched it out of the air.

  Silence fell as the football coach took a baseball grip on the hockey stick. The armadillo hung before him, unbroken and defiant.

  “Come on, Mr. Hughes!” piped Jeff. “Give it a hundred-and-ten percent!”

  That was all the teacher had to hear. With a mighty roar, six-foot-five, two-hundred-eighty-pound Mr. Hughes swung the stick at the Mexican piñata.

  POW!!!

  The armadillo vaporized, spraying candy to the four winds. Shocked, wide-eyed parents looked on as the airborne sweets pelted down on them like a hailstorm.

  “Ca-a-andy!” came a high-pitched cry. There was a stampede from the direction of France. Thirty-five kindergartners swarmed the exhibits, scrambling after the fallen treats. They crawled under tables and ransacked displays. They scaled Mount Fuji in a single bound and flattened the Great Wall of China, chasing after the brightly wrapped candies.

  Cassandra watched them in awe. “Wow,” she breathed. “Just like the children of the village.”

  Mr. Doncaster tried to ignore the ruckus and keep International Night rolling. “And finally,” he announced, “our last presentation honors our neighbors to the north, Canada!”

  “Not yet!” Miss Hardaway hissed urgently. “First get these kids under control!”

  She received the deer-in-headlights look in reply. “We’ve been here for three hours! Let’s get this thing over with so we can all go home!”

  Resentfully, Miss Hardaway gave the signal to Peter to dim the lights. A lone spot shone on the toothpick Niagara Falls. Christy, the narrator, began: “Canada, the true north, strong and free…”

  “Hey, kid, get out of here!” Wiley whispered to a kindergartner who was searching for lollipops in the horse’s head.

  Miss Hardaway was visibly upset. After two weeks of hard work and rehearsal, she felt it was unfair for all their efforts to be wasted. The gym resounded with the shrieks of the five-year-olds. Parents rushed around the exhibits trying to corral their little ones. The rest of the audience was bored and tired. A few families were already heading for the exits.

  But the show must go on. The hockey players slid around on stocking feet, the lumberjacks cut down cardboard trees, and the railroad workers pushed the line through the wooden Rockies. Miss Hardaway scanned the bleachers. Surely even a restless audience couldn’t help but appreciate their grand finale—the Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman on his trusty steed.

  Peter came rushing over to Wiley and Jeff, ripping off his hockey helmet. “Skywalker says to get ready this instant! It’s time for the big finish!”

  “Yeah, okay, Skunk.” Wiley put on the horse’s head. “How does my mane look?”

  “Who’s the Mountie, anyway?” asked Jeff.

  Peter shrugged. “Who else?”

  There was the tapping of leather boots. The Mountie appeared, eyes clear, back ramrod straight. Splendid in his scarlet tunic and tan Stetson, Mike Smith marched smartly up to take his mount.

  “It figures,” Wiley mumbled.

  “All right, Iceman,” Jeff sighed. “How does this work? We’re not a real horse, just in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Leave everything to me,” promised Mike, and Jeff could have sworn that his voice was deeper than before. He pulled the costume over Jeff’s head and buttoned it to the back of Wiley’s half.

  Bent over and smothering, Jeff gasped, “Don’t sit on my head!”

  But when Mike mounted up, he was perched on Jeff’s shoulders.

  “Hold it! Time out—” Jeff wheezed.

  At that moment they heard Christy’s voice over the PA: “…those defenders of truth and justice, upholders of the law of the land, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police!”

  Wiley stepped forward, and Jeff almost overbalanced and fell on his face. Somehow, he managed to stumble along. What the audience saw was a tall handsome Mountie riding toward them.

  “A horsey! A horsey!” The kindergartners ceased their candy hunt, and ran to mob the horse. Even the weary crowd came back to life and applauded the spectacle.

  “Hey, slow down! Not so fast!” Jeff shuffled at top speed, trying to keep up with Wiley.

  “Don’t be such a wimp!” Wiley tossed over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, I’d like to see you carry around a thousand-pound guy!”

  “At least I wouldn’t make a big stink about it, like you!”

  Enraged, Jeff reached forward, grabbed Wiley by the shoulder, and spun him around. Perched above the costume, Mike Smith lurched with the sudden movement, but steadied himself.

  “You lousy creep!” Jeff raged. “I’m not even supposed to be here! It’s hot, it’s dark, it smells, and I’m sweating like Mr. Huge! I can’t find my mustache, my back is breaking, and it’s all your fault!”

  Wiley snorted. “Does Cassandra know what a crybaby you are?”

  Taking a shot in the dark, Jeff punched him in the side of the head. Wiley wheeled and jabbed Jeff in the stomach. Jeff grabbed Wiley around the neck, and the two began to wrestle.

  Mike Smith lurched forward, and then back. He grabbed the reins and held on, bouncing wildly as the costume wrenched with the violent motions of the fighters below.

  Mike’s heart was pounding in his throat. What was going on down there? And what could he do now? He was in the spotlight in front of hundreds of people!

  He was about to panic when a voice called out, “Ride ’em, Iceman!”

  He stared. His classmates had assembled in front of the Canada display. They were rooting for him, the way they always did.

  “Hang on, Iceman!”

  “You can do it!”

  Mike felt a surge of emotion. And suddenly he knew that he could do it. He would ride this bucking bronco, and make his friends proud.

  As Wiley and Jeff fought inside the costume, the intrepid Mountie rode his kicking horse, hanging on to the saddle horn with one hand. With the other, he waved his Stetson to the crowd.

  The audience rose to its feet in a tumultuous standing ovation. With the guests rose the teachers and students of OOPS in howling tribute to the star of the show, Mike Smith.

  Mr. Hughes and Cassandra were jumping up and down, screaming with exhilaration. Mr. Doncaster applauded madly, yelling, “Bravo!”

  Nobody could see that none of this was in the script—that the “bucking” was really two longtime friends brawling inside a horse suit. And when Wiley and Jeff finally collapsed from sheer exhaustion, the audience saw only the amazing Canadian Mountie taming his wild steed.

  Mike Smith hopped down and tore the costume off Wiley and Jeff. “Take a bow, you guys!”

  The three stood in the spotlight, drinking in the roar of the crowd. In all the excitement, no one noticed that the two halves of the horse both had bloody noses.

  JEFF BARELY SLEPT a wink all night, and it had nothing to do with his cuts and bruises.

  Even as babies, he and Wiley had never laid a hand on e
ach other. They had always “played nice,” as their mothers put it. Jeff snorted, which made his nose throb with pain. That eleven-year streak had come to an end in a hurricane of flying knuckles last night.

  He climbed gingerly out of bed and examined himself in the mirror. Grotesque was the only word for what he saw. Dried blood was caked under his nose, which meant it must have started bleeding again during the night. A black eye and two fat lips completed the grisly picture.

  Jeff watched his battered features form into a lopsided smile. Next door, he knew, Wiley looked just as bad, if not worse. In Mr. Huge language, he and Wiley had put a hundred-and-ten percent into pummeling each other. Cassandra had screamed in shock at the sight of them. Of course, she thought their injuries had come from the Mountie’s kicking feet, not from World War III.

  Mrs. Greenbaum had been a lot harder to convince.

  “What Mountie?” she had asked last night while dabbing at his cuts with stinging iodine. “They don’t have Mounties in Mexico. They have Los Federales.”

  “My country got switched.”

  “By who?” she’d persisted.

  “By the rottenest person in the world.”

  Tenderly, Jeff washed his face. He felt like he didn’t even know Wiley anymore. His best friend had turned total stranger almost overnight. How could Wiley stab him in the back again and again and again? The guy would stop at nothing to get Cassandra to ask him to the Sadie Hawkins dance. How long would it be before he kidnapped D. D. and took him over to the old Gunhold place without Jeff?

  He threw on jeans and a sweatshirt. Calling, “Mom, I’m going to Wiley’s,” he left the house. His destination: the toolshed. He, not Wiley, would be the one to take D. D. to Cassandra. It was time to double-cross the double-crosser.

  As he slid open the metal door, he had a vision of himself and Cassandra on Sadie Hawkins night. Hmmm. He should probably sign up for some dancing lessons….

  He stepped inside the shed and froze. The laundry basket wasn’t there. D. D. was gone!

  “Wiley!” he gasped. His best friend had nabbed D. D. first!

  Jeff ran like he’d never run before, ignoring the fact that every pounding footfall made his aches and pains explode. He sprinted past OOPS, and through the sprawling subdivisions on the other side of the school. There still might be time to stop Wiley from claiming all the credit for D. D.

  He turned the corner onto Farm Lane and froze. There, fifty feet up the dirt road, was Wiley, struggling along with the laundry basket.

  Jeff swallowed the impulse to cry out. He crept up behind Wiley and yanked the basket away, holding the screen in place with his elbow.

  “What the—” Wiley’s eyes bulged, then narrowed.

  “I used to have a really good friend,” seethed Jeff. “His name was Wiley. He looked a lot like you, only he wasn’t the biggest slimeball sleazebag who ever lived!”

  Guiltily, Wiley studied the ground. All at once, his battered face snapped back up. “Hey, how did you know D. D. was missing?” He reached out a lightning fist, and locked it onto the plastic mesh of the laundry basket. “You were going to take him yourself, weren’t you?”

  “Let go!” rasped Jeff.

  “Make me!” panted Wiley.

  D. D. darted around his blanket, warbling his distress as their tug of war twisted and shook his home.

  The earsplitting blast of an air horn made them both wheel. A bulldozer was approaching, its raised blade bouncing as it roared along the rutted dirt road.

  Both boys jumped back, releasing their grips at the same instant. The screen fell to the ground, but the basket overturned, trapping the sparrow inside. The agitated bird flapped helplessly against the bars of his prison as the bulldozer bore down on him.

  “D. D.!!” Wiley and Jeff cried out in agony.

  Both covered their eyes as the heavy caterpillar treads squashed the laundry basket flat as a tortilla. There was a warble of anguish, and then—nothing.

  Wiley and Jeff turned accusing fingers on each other. “This is your fault!” they chorused.

  As the dozer churned past in a cloud of dust, the plastic basket popped back up to its original shape, rolling on the uneven road. A blur of brown and blue shot out of it, flying high above them. D. D. circled in the air, gliding and soaring, free at last. The blue-crested warbler sparrow swooped one last time over the laundry basket and disappeared into the bright autumn sun.

  “Way to go,” growled Wiley. “Now we’ve lost our bird.”

  “I only let go because I thought you were holding on,” Jeff defended himself.

  “I thought you were holding on.”

  “Wiley? Jeff ?” came a distant call.

  The two looked around. They were alone except for the tall oaks and weeping willows.

  “Up here!” the faint voice insisted.

  A glimpse of white woodwork poked out above the tops of the trees at the end of Farm Lane. It was the third floor of the old Gunhold place. At the window stood Cassandra, waving and beckoning. “I’ll meet you in the yard!”

  The two stood scowling at each other for a long moment.

  “Okay, we’ll go,” Wiley said finally. “But only to ask Cassandra once and for all which one of us she’s taking to the dance. After that, I’m never going to say another word to you as long as I live.”

  “Suits me just fine,” Jeff agreed. “Eleven years is eleven too many to be friends with the likes of you.”

  As they walked along the dirt road, the rest of the Gunhold property came into view. The Levy property now, Jeff reminded himself. And what he saw astonished him. A shiny new coat of paint made the Victorian home gleam like a jewel against the surrounding greenery. The shutters and gables had been redone in a soft green, giving the old house a fairy-tale appearance. The crumbling rust was gone from the wrought-iron fence. Instead of knee-high weeds there was a green rolling lawn. Could this be the same place that seemed fit only for the wrecking ball a month ago?

  Wiley was thinking the same thing. “Maybe the Levys aren’t so stupid after all.”

  They were perplexed to note that the bulldozer was parked at the corner of the property.

  Cassandra exploded down the brand-new front steps, and came running out to greet them. The folds of her skirt displayed a vast crossword puzzle.

  Wiley pointed at the heavy equipment. “You’re not knocking the place down after all your hard work?”

  She laughed. “They’re digging our new swimming pool today.” She put an arm around each of them. “Listen, I’m glad you’re both here. I have to talk to you about something really important. You know the Sadie Hawkins dance?”

  “I think I remember hearing something about it,” replied Jeff in a strained voice.

  “Well, you guys are my best friends,” she said. “So what do you think of this idea—”

  Wiley and Jeff exchanged a look that was supercharged with tension. Cassandra had reached her decision.

  She blushed. “Do you think I could ask—I mean, would it be a good idea—is it even possible—”

  This was torture! Jeff could feel a Mr. Huge–size sweat building up on his brow.

  “This is so hard,” Cassandra continued, embarrassed. “How can I put it?”

  “Just say it!” they cried in unison.

  She blurted it out. “Do you think I should ask the Iceman to the Sadie Hawkins dance?”

  “The Iceman?!” Wiley repeated in horror.

  Jeff felt his blood run cold.

  “Oh, sure, I know,” Cassandra admitted. “He’s the coolest guy in school, and I’m just the new girl—”

  “But…but…” Wiley stammered. “But you don’t even know Mike Smith.”

  “Sure I do!” Cassandra exclaimed. “He’s up in my room right now!”

  “What?” Jeff croaked.

  “Well, I didn’t get to meet him until last night. After you three put on that amazing show, I went over to congratulate him. Turns out we both like Rollerblading, so I asked him i
f he wanted to go today, and he said yes.” She took a deep breath. “So, what about the dance? Should I invite him or not?”

  “Absolutely not,” Wiley said, white-lipped.

  “Too risky,” Jeff mumbled around a paralyzed tongue.

  She nodded slowly, pacing in a small circle. “What I need is a sign. Something to tell me I’m doing the right thing.”

  At that very moment, Mike poked his head and shoulders out of the third-story window. As he waved shyly down at them, a small bird descended from the sky to land on his outstretched arm. Jeff was the first to pick out the bright blue crest. He and Wiley exchanged a look of shock.

  It was D. D.!

  The normally timid bird hopped up Mike’s arm and perched on his shoulder.

  Cassandra shrieked in pure joy. “It’s—it’s—a blue-crested warbler sparrow!” She turned a bright pink face on Wiley and Jeff. “That’s my sign!”

  “It’s only a robin!” Wiley babbled. “Or a starling! Or a really big moth! It’s a—”

  But Cassandra was already sprinting for the front door, shouting, “Iceman, would you be my date at the Sadie Hawkins dance?”

  Her words rattled between Jeff’s ears. How many thousands of times had he imagined that question? And what was Mike’s answer?

  “Well, okay, but I think I let a bird in your house.”

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t even close to fair. There couldn’t be a millionth of an ounce of fairness in a world where you could nickname a complete zero, then have him become his nickname, and steal away the girl of your dreams. It was too much to bear!

  One look at the thundercloud that was Wiley’s face, and Jeff knew his friend was thinking the same thing. And in a strange way, the pain felt almost right. After eleven years of sharing practically everything, it seemed proper that Wiley Adamson and Jeff Greenbaum should also share their first broken heart.

  By unspoken agreement, the two turned their backs on the old Gunhold place and walked out the gate. Neither spoke until they were halfway down Farm Lane.

  Suddenly, both boys stopped in their tracks and chorused, “Carrot-top.”

  Wiley nodded. “Definitely. That’s the nickname we’ve been looking for.”