Mrs. Hiatt took her position at the center of the cafeteria and braced herself. She was ready for today’s lunchroom battle, ready to change chaos into order, ready for anything these kids could dish out.
But nothing could have prepared her for what happened next.
CHAPTER 8
SCIENCE FICTION
It was four minutes into the fifth-grade lunch period, and Mrs. Hiatt was pretty sure that any second now, her alarm clock was going to start making that awful sound—BRRAP! BRRAP! BRRAP! BRRAP!
Because the principal was almost certain that she was still at home in her own comfy bed, dreaming away. She had to be dreaming. But no, she looked at her watch and it showed the same time as the large clock above the stage in the school cafeteria—12:04.
On any other day Mrs. Hiatt would have already used her bullhorn at least once, because when half the fifth graders were standing in the food line, and the other half were in the milk line or rushing toward their seats, there was always a terrific burst of yelling and calling out and wild chatter—sort of like feeding time at the zoo.
Not today.
There was no talking at all. Not one word. Over one hundred twenty-five children milling around the lunchroom, and not a peep from any of them.
Today the principal could hear the clattering of the worn-out motor in the milk cooler. And she could hear the kitchen workers talking softly to each other. And she could hear the children’s feet on the tile floor, shuffling along through the lines.
The quiet almost frightened her. Mrs. Hiatt felt like she was in a scene from a creepy science fiction movie.
She actually liked a good scary movie now and then, but she did not like the ideas in her mind at this moment. Because it seemed like aliens had possessed these fifth graders and zapped their brains. Or maybe some strange creature had nipped off all their tongues—nothing left but little stubs that couldn’t make a sound.
The principal shivered. Then she noticed a girl staring at her. Mrs. Hiatt realized she must have had a strange look on her face.
As the girl sat down with her lunch tray, Mrs. Hiatt forced herself to smile, and said, “Hi there, Sheila. How are you today?” Her voice almost echoed in the quiet lunchroom.
Every boy in the milk line turned and stared at
Sheila.The girls turned and looked too.
Sheila gulped, gave the principal a nervous smile, and, speaking softly and slowly, she said,“Fine, thank you.”
Mrs. Hiatt turned toward the milk line, and all the kids looked away. Silently.
And again, the principal felt like she was in the middle of a science fiction movie.
It suddenly seemed silly to be standing there in a silent room with her huge red plastic bullhorn. So Mrs. Hiatt walked over to the playground door, where Mrs. Escobar was standing. She tried to look as casual as possible, tried to act like it was perfectly normal for the lunchroom to be stone silent except for the clattering of plates and the squeaking of sneakers on the waxed floor.
The principal set the bullhorn on the floor by the wall and whispered to Mrs. Escobar, “What in the world is going on here?”
Mrs. Escobar whispered back, “I have no idea. But it’s something weird, that’s for sure.”
Mrs. Hiatt did not like this feeling, this feeling that something strange, something new was happening. Because this new activity was happening at her school, and no one had asked for her permission. This new activity was unauthorized.
Mrs. Hiatt didn’t simply like being in charge of her own school. She felt like she needed to be in charge.
And that’s why she felt like she had to say something, do something, to break the spell. So she stepped away from the wall and in a loud voice she said, “Good afternoon, fifth graders. Are you enjoying your lunchtime today?”
All the kids looked at each other. The whole room seemed to take a deep breath, and then almost everyone said,“Yes, Mrs. Hiatt.”
And then silence again.
After an awkward few seconds, the principal said, “It’s so quiet in here today. I’m very . . . impressed. With your good behavior.”
Some kids smiled, some nodded. But no one said a word.
Mrs. Hiatt said,“Is there some special reason why no one’s talking today?”
The whole room went still. Even the chewing stopped.
No hands went up, and no one answered her question.
But Mrs. Hiatt was a keen observer, and in that sudden stillness she noticed something. Right after she asked her question, it seemed like almost every
boy looked at Dave Packer, who was standing beside the milk cooler.And it seemed like almost every girl took a quick look at Lynsey Burgess, who was just sitting down at a table.
And the principal thought, That’s odd.
But the whole situation was odd.Very odd. And now it seemed like the room was stuck in a complete calm, as if all the kids had even stopped breathing.
Everyone was waiting to see what she was going to do next.
After a few more seconds of suspense, Mrs. Hiatt cleared her throat and said, “Well, students, please enjoy the rest of your lunchtime.”
And the cafeteria came back to life. Silently.
CHAPTER 9
THE RIGHT WORD
As Dave sat down at a lunch table with his friends, he couldn’t get the grin off his face. He was having so much fun he could hardly chew his first bite of grilled cheese. And he didn’t like chewing right now because chewing made noise, and when he munched he couldn’t hear the silence.
The silence—Dave thought it was amazing. And watching Mrs. Hiatt try to figure out what was going on? That was amazing too. It was like they had trapped her in a force field.And she couldn’t get out of it, because the silence filled the cafeteria.
Dave looked around, and he saw the same amazement on the faces of some other kids. They were all thinking about the same thing.Together.
Then suddenly:“Hey, give it back!”
There was a gasp as every boy and girl in the room sucked in a breath, and all heads turned to see where those words had come from.
And there at the ice cream freezer, Ed Kesey had one hand over his mouth while his other hand reached for a cherry Popsicle that Bryan DelGreco had grabbed.
Dave swung around and looked at Lynsey. Lynsey knew a lot of kids were watching her, but she pretended not to notice. She slowly reached into her back pocket, slowly pulled out a pen and a small red notebook, slowly opened the cover, and slowly made four little marks on the first page.
And as she flipped the notebook shut, Lynsey looked right at Dave and gave him a big smile.
Just like that, and the girls were ahead by four points.
But Dave wasn’t worried.The contest had barely begun.There were two whole days to go.
Dave was absolutely sure that the next forty-eight hours were going to be very . . . interesting.And he thought, Is that the right word? How about . . . fascinating? No, more like . . . exciting.Yeah—exciting!
Then Dave happened to glance at Mrs. Hiatt. And he could tell from the look on the principal’s face that she had been watching everything—the way Ed had shouted those words and then covered
his mouth, the way all the other kids had reacted, the way Lynsey had marked her notebook.
And at that exact moment the principal turned and locked eyes with Dave. She stared right at him, with her eyebrows all bunched up in a puzzled knot.
Dave quickly looked down at his lunch tray, and as he did, a new word popped into his mind.And he was pretty sure this one was also going to be a good word to describe the next few days: dangerous.
CHAPTER 10
RECESS
Mrs. Marlow was the fifth-grade science teacher, and it was her day for outdoor recess duty. As she was gulping down a quick lunch in the teachers’ room, Mr. Lipton, the custodian, stuck his head in the door and said, “Anybody want to see a miracle? Go check out the cafeteria. The fifth graders aren’t talking today—not even whispering. It’s
like a funeral in there.”
But Mrs. Marlow didn’t have a moment to spare. She finished her lunch, grabbed her coat, and hurried outside to the playground through the gym.
Even without the heads-up from the custodian, it wouldn’t have taken her long to figure out that something was different at outside recess today. Every teacher knows the sound of a normal, happy
playground at lunchtime—kids talking and yelling and chasing, and all the arguments about who’s it and who’s out and who ran faster.
Not today. Mrs. Marlow could tell that a whole layer of spoken sound was missing. Gone. Absent.
Except . . . not completely. Because the kids did make some slipups during their first wordless recess.
Allie Bedford got caught whispering to Lena Henderson by the swing set, and when a group of boys stood and shook their fingers at her, she held up eight fingers to show how many illegal words she had said.
Christina Farley didn’t have to confess, because half the kids on the playground heard exactly what she said, loud and clear. She stomped her feet, stuck out her tongue at Rachel Morgan, and then shouted, “You’re a terrible friend, and you lie, and you’re selfish, and I don’t care how many words this is! And you’re mean, too!”
Which was twenty-three words.
Christina’s goof, plus the eight words Allie whispered, meant that Dave got to record thirty-one points against the girls on his official score sheet, which wasn’t as fancy as Lynsey’s red notebook—just a couple of folded index cards stuffed in his pocket.
But the boys weren’t perfect either.
Scott Vickers booted a kickball down the third-base line, and when two boys made the “foul ball” motion, he yelled, “Foul? Are you crazy? No way! That ball was fair!” And Scott would have kept on yelling, but Bill Harkness tackled him and clamped a hand over his mouth—which Scott bit, but not hard enough to make Bill yell any words.
That incident cost the boys ten points. And then there was the first case of trickery. Katie Edison snuck up behind Jeremy Stephens, who was standing by the sliding board, tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned his head, she gave him a big, noisy kiss on the cheek.
Jeremy howled and wiped his face and flew into a fit of cootie-itis. “Eeew, YUCK! Why did you do that? That was so gross!YUCK! Help me get this stuff off my face!”
Which was twenty more points for the girls. Plus Katie actually enjoyed her sneak attack—she’d had a top secret crush on Jeremy for two months.
Even though there were only a few word blasts, it certainly wasn’t quiet out there, and it got noisier and noisier as the end of recess got closer. That’s because everyone began to realize that this was not a contest to see who could be silent. It was just about
not talking. Sounds were allowed—as long as they weren’t words.
Dave was near the door of the gym and began whistling. He was instantly joined by four other boys. They whistled every song they could think of—“Row, Row, Row Your Boat”; “Now I Know My ABCs”; “London Bridge Is Falling Down”; Barney’s “Marching Song”; the Star Wars theme song; “Old MacDonald Had a Farm”; “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”; “Rubber Ducky”—on and on.The whistling was mostly off-key, but it was a grand performance anyway, with lots of clapping and hooting between tunes.
Somewhere near the middle of the whistling concert, six or seven girls began screaming. These were not the kind of screams that make grown-ups come running.They were just an ugly assortment of squeals and yelps and shrieks that everyone else found very annoying. Spaced out around the edge of the playground, the girls bounced their high-pitched sounds around like a beach ball at a baseball stadium:“EeeeOww!”“OooWhee!”“WooHoooh!” “Yeeyeeyeeyeee!”They made lots of noise, but they weren’t talking.
Some other girls were jumping double Dutch, and since they couldn’t chant the rhymes, the kids who weren’t jumping or turning the ropes clapped out the rhythm of the words with their hands.
The quietest activity involved four girls who had a printed folder that showed how to use American Sign Language. They sat in a circle on the ground and practiced their hand signals.
And to round out the soundscape, Bradley Lang and Tyler Rennert were cruising around the playground bothering as many girls as possible by making all sorts of mouth sounds—clicks, pops, roars, quacks, barks, burps, and especially those loud bathroom noises created by putting the palms of both hands over the mouth, puffing up the cheeks, and blooping out a blast of air.
Mrs. Marlow could see there was plenty of activity, but those high-pitched playground voices, all that buzz and chatter and calling out, all that was definitely missing.There was no mistaking it:These kids were not talking, which would have been unusual for any bunch of students. For this group of kids, the custodian had called it right: It was practically a miracle.
But why? There had to be a reason they were all acting this way. And as a science-minded person, Mrs. Marlow was curious.
So, as she stood there thinking, Mrs. Marlow began to adjust her afternoon lesson plan. Because in about ten minutes, twenty-six of these fifth graders would be sitting in her room, ready for science class.
And there was nothing Mrs. Marlow liked better than a good experiment.
CHAPTER 11
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
In all her years of teaching—seventeen in total—Mrs. Marlow had never walked into a quieter classroom full of students. It was a new experience for her.
It was also new for the kids.
Dave watched Mrs. Marlow go to the front of the room and pick up her attendance book.The teacher looked at the list of names in the book, looked up and down the rows of the class, looked at the book again, and said,“I thought maybe I was in the wrong room. Pretty quiet in here today. Can someone tell me why?”
No hands went up.
But Mrs. Marlow was watching for anything that might give her a clue about this unusual behavior.
And after her question, she saw a few sly glances between kids, and she noticed some of them trying to hide a smile. She knew what those looks and smiles meant:These kids were keeping a secret.
Time for her first experiment.
Looking over the class, Mrs. Marlow settled her eyes on Seth Townsend, smiled, and said, “So, Seth, did you do your science homework last night?”
With no hesitation, Seth smiled back and said, “Yes, I did.”
Mrs. Marlow looked at Amy Gilson and said, “How about you, Amy?”
She nodded and said,“It was hard.” “Really? What did you think was hard about it?” she asked.
Amy scrunched up her face and then said, “Too much math.”
Her answer got a lot of nods and a few laughs from the other kids, but then it went completely quiet again.
Mrs. Marlow couldn’t get over how beautifully these children were behaving. Just yesterday, she had asked one student a question, and about fifteen others had blurted out answers, and then the whole class began arguing, and that had started a huge free-for-all that didn’t end until she banged on her desk with a book. It was always like that with this class, and with the other fifth-grade classes too.
But not today. No one talked at all . . . unless she asked a question.
Which gave Mrs. Marlow an idea. “Please get out your homework sheets.” There was a lot of rustling and bustling as the students obeyed.
“Now,” she said.“Ellen, look at problem number one. How did you decide if the given quantities were reasonable?”
Ellen riffled through her papers, and the look on her face surprised Mrs. Marlow: Ellen looked scared.
It was one of the standard questions about science problems, a question the whole class was used to. But the girl seemed completely confused. Mrs. Marlow could see that she’d done the assignment. Plus, Ellen was one of the best science students. What was she so scared about?
After a few moments of what looked like absolute panic, Ellen calmed down. Then, very slowly, she said, “The numbers . . . wo
rked.”
Mrs. Marlow waited for the rest of her explanation. It didn’t come.
“Right,” she said,“and . . .” “I . . . made estimates,” Ellen said.
Again, her words came slowly. And then there was another long pause.
“And . . . ,” the teacher urged. “I used . . . math.”
Mrs. Marlow nodded.“Of course you used math. But I want to hear about your process,your thinking.”
Ellen said,“I did . . . comparing.”
Frustrated, Mrs. Marlow turned to the other side of the room. “Dave, tell us the answer you got for problem one. And explain your process.”
Dave didn’t look scared, but he also took a long time to respond—too long for Mrs. Marlow. She said,“I’d like your answer today, Mr. Packer.”
Slowly, Dave said,“Four hundred forty.” “ ‘Four hundred forty’ what?” prompted Mrs. Marlow.
“Barrels of oil,” said Dave. Slowly. “Per ...,”said Mrs.Marlow.
Dave said,“Per ...day.” “Wrong,” said Mrs. Marlow.“Look at your work and tell me what you forgot.” She was losing her patience.
Dave frowned and squinted at his paper. He nodded and then slowly said,“Um . . . the first day.”
A ripple of giggles swept through the room—girl giggles.
Mrs. Marlow snapped, “Since when did wrong answers become funny?”
The science teacher thought, Are they all pretending to be stupid today? Is that it?
Whatever was going on, she didn’t like it. It was disruptive. It was slowing down her class. It was annoying.
And suddenly Mrs. Marlow was in no mood for games. She was not going to play along. If these kids wanted quiet, then that’s what they were going to get.