The Perfect Score

  “What is this, preschool?” Trevor mumbled.

  Mrs. Woods ignored his comment. “The first book I’ve decided to read is Wonder.” She held it up for us to see. “It was written by R. J. Palacio.” She held the book under her nose and smelled it. “When you love books and learn to appreciate the written word, you can smell the beauty of a good story.” She took another big whiff. Tommy and Lenny thought she was crazy, but I was going to smell all my books when I got home.

  I’d already read this one, but it was different when Mrs. Woods started reading it. For one thing, it mentions a farting nurse in the first few pages, but that didn’t stop Mrs. Woods. She read that part and all that followed with the best read-aloud voice in the whole wide world. Her voice was so good I had to get closer, so I got out of my seat and went and sat on the floor by her feet. I settled in and got lost in that story just like she said I would. When we ran out of time, she closed the book and looked up.

  “Don’t stop,” Gavin blurted out, just like I blurt out sometimes. He’d been lost in the story, too.

  “I’ll read more tomorrow, Mr. Davids.” Mrs. Woods said this to Gavin, but her gaze was elsewhere. She was eyeing Trevor. “Mr. Joseph, I’ll take whatever it is you and Mr. Kassler seem to find so funny back there.”

  “It’s nothing,” Trevor said.

  “I’ll take nothing, then. Please bring it up here.”

  Trevor scuffed his angry feet to the front and handed Mrs. Woods his paper. Then he went and sat back down, all the while huffing and puffing like the big bad wolf.

  Mrs. Woods studied his paper and then walked over and stuck it on top of his collage. He’d drawn a horrible picture of her. It had her name on the top, and on the bottom he’d written the words “Farting Teacher.”

  “I’m glad you were listening to the story,” Mrs. Woods said, “but you just bought yourself another day of no recess.”

  Trevor had lost two recesses in one day! I didn’t even know you could do that. It’s safe to say that after our first day of sixth grade I knew this for a fact: Mrs. Woods was tougher than Dolores Umbridge, that nasty teacher from Harry Potter.

  I was supposed to give the note to Mrs. Woods as soon as I made it to my classroom this morning. That was the plan, but the first day of school is scary when you don’t know all the rules and procedures—or your teacher. So I still had my note at the end of the day. I had to give it to Mrs. Woods before going home, though, because the thought of telling Jane I hadn’t handed it in was even scarier.

  I got my things packed, and then I took a deep breath to steady myself, same as I did before my gymnastics events, but instead of sprinting toward the vault this time, I eased over to my teacher’s desk. I was hoping to slip the envelope in her basket and quietly leave, but Mrs. Woods noticed me before I was able to do that. The old woman didn’t miss much. I’d learned that about her in just our first day. I’d learn a lot more about her before our year was up.

  “May I help you, Miss Cunningham?” she asked.

  “I was just dropping this in your basket,” I said, showing her the envelope.

  “I’ll take it.”

  I didn’t expect Mrs. Woods to open it right in front of me, but that’s exactly what she did. I wanted to run, but I stood there picking at my calluses and staring at the floor.

  “You’ll be missing school next Thursday and Friday for a gymnastics competition,” she said, raising her eyebrow. “And it’s all the way in South Carolina?”

  “Yes,” I answered. What did Jane write on that paper? I wondered.

  Mrs. Woods put the note down. “It must be a big meet to go that far—and to miss school for it.”

  I nodded. That’s what Jane says, I thought. Originally, the plan had been to stick with only a few smaller competitions leading up to the state championships, but once Jane saw this South Carolina meet advertised, that all went out the window. Coach Andrea, my real coach, tried telling her this wasn’t a must-do, but Jane wasn’t the best listener, especially after she had her mind made up.

  “Must be important, too,” Mrs. Woods said, bending her neck so she could look me in the eye. “I’m surprised there was no mention of gymnastics in your collage. You must really love it.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, that’s exciting,” Mrs. Woods said. “Good luck to you, Miss Cunningham. You can tell your mother I’ll have all the work you need ready for you to take.”

  I gave her my best weak smile, and then I left to catch my bus.

  I didn’t like talking about gymnastics, because if I didn’t do well, then I’d have to explain that to everybody, and there was no way to explain it so people would understand. But Mrs. Woods was different. It seemed silly, but I felt like she was asking me questions she already knew the answers to, and she was only asking to see how I’d respond. But how in the world could my teacher understand anything about gymnastics or my feelings?

  I wanted to ask Mrs. Woods if we could study rocks again this year, like we had in fifth grade. I liked learning about them. I like how they’re formed, the result of years and years of extreme pressure. Sometimes I wished I could be one of those igneous types with the crystals. I’d like to have my own crystal ball so I could be a fortune-teller and see my future. I wanted to know my destiny, and not the one Jane had mapped out for me.

  I made my way around Grandpa’s towers of newspapers and junk mail, careful not to knock anything over, and found him where I always found him, sitting in his green recliner and staring out the window.

  “Hi, Grandpa.”

  “Huh? What? What’re you doing here?”

  Mom and my little brother, Mickey, check in on Grandpa every morning after dropping me off at school, but I came along to get him early that day because he had a doctor’s appointment.

  “You’ve got a doctor’s appointment, remember? Mom and Mickey are out in the car.”

  “Oh, jeez. The dumb doctor. That’s right. Give me a minute.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  While Grandpa went to get ready, I crammed a bunch of his junk mail in my backpack. There was no way I’d ever get rid of all of it, but if I didn’t keep taking as much as I could every time I came over, Grandpa was going to be buried alive. Once he had his shoes on, we walked outside. I slid in the backseat next to Mickey, and Grandpa got shotgun.

  “Doctors,” Grandpa grumbled, buckling his seat belt. “I swear they just make all these appointments so they can keep taking my money. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “Dad, you don’t go to the doctor only when you’re sick,” Mom reminded him, backing out of his driveway.

  “Then what’re we going for?”

  “I told you yesterday. Today is a physical.”

  “A physical! What for?”

  “So you don’t get sick,” I said. “Today is routine service, like you do to your car. We’re keeping you in tip-top shape, Grandpa.”

  “Tip-top shape, all right. For what?”

  “For Cheerios!” Mickey yelled. He lifted his plastic bag high in the air for everyone to see before shoveling another handful of cereal into his mouth.

  “For Cheerios. Now, that’s a good reason,” Grandpa said, and chuckled.

  I was glad we had Mickey, because even though I was good at blurting stuff out, I never knew what to say when Grandpa started talking like that. If I’d been the doctor seeing him that morning, my diagnosis would’ve been loneliness. Grandpa had been suffering from loneliness ever since Grandma died two years ago. He’d aged more since then than he had in all my life before that. I never used to think Grandpa was old, but he was old now. Mom said the best medicine was family, which was why she and Mickey checked in on Grandpa every morning and why they’d pick me up after school so we could all go back again.

  With no other family around and my dad busy with his job, Mom is the one left to take care of Grandpa while also making sure we’re okay. Luckily, Mom works from home, so she’s able to do that. She takes on those
extra responsibilities without complaint, but it’s a lot. My mom is a superwoman, but she gets tired.

  “I don’t know if I’m coming or going anymore,” she sometimes says.

  I don’t like to see Mom exhausted, so I do my best to stay out of trouble and help whenever I can. I’m good at helping.

  We pulled up in the drop-off lane in front of Lake View Middle. I had to hurry so I wouldn’t be late.

  “Hey, there’s my teacher,” I said, spotting Mrs. Woods on her way into the building.

  “Well, I guess you can’t be late if she’s just getting here,” Mom said.

  “That old woman is your teacher?” Grandpa asked, pointing.

  “Yup.”

  “Yup, that’s her,” Mickey said. “Her is old.”

  “Old and mean,” I mumbled.

  “Give her a chance, Scott,” Mom said. “And don’t get on her bad side.”

  “Hit her with your charm and she’ll warm up to you,” Grandpa suggested.

  “Stay out trouble and be good boy, Scott,” Mickey said, repeating what he heard Mom tell me every morning.

  “That’s right. And don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Grandpa added.

  “Dad, I’m not sure that’s great advice,” Mom said.

  “I’ll tell you all about my day when I see you this afternoon, Grandpa,” I said.

  “I want to hear a good story, so you better make it a special day.”

  “I will,” I promised.

  I hopped out of the car and booked it into school.

  NATALIE KURTSMAN

  ASPIRING LAWYER

  Kurtsman Law Offices

  BRIEF #4

  September: Rules and Expectations

  Every good teacher knows that day one is when the groundwork is laid; rules and expectations need to be established from the beginning. Unfortunately, Mrs. Woods never got around to that yesterday. Apparently, she felt that attempting to build community was more important. To my amazement (and delight), she did manage to keep Trevor in check, but without something more formal and significant in place, I was doubtful she could keep it up. Trevor Joseph was sure to continue testing her, because he was a Class A jerk, as was his sidekick, Mark Kassler. Honestly, why did I have to get stuck with those two in my class? Needless to say, I was concerned. Very. If Mrs. Woods didn’t put some concrete rules in place by the end of the day, I was resigned to going to Principal Allen.

  —

  As was the case yesterday, Mrs. Woods didn’t arrive early, but the moment morning announcements ended, she began. Mrs. Woods may have moved slowly because of her age, but she did not waste time. From the back of the room she wheeled out an overhead projector. I didn’t even know what it was until she told us.

  “Whoa! Mrs. Woods, that thing might be older than you,” Scott said. “You know we use computers now.”

  Clearly, summer had not rectified this boy’s issue with blurting things out. There was plenty of giggling on the heels of his remark, but I did not participate.

  “Actually, Mr. Mason, I’ve got a few years on this projector,” Mrs. Woods responded, “but like me, you can count on this trusty piece of equipment to get the job done. Wish I could say the same about computers, but those things seem to work only half the time—not so different from today’s youth. But don’t you worry. We’re going to fix that.”

  Was that a warning or a promise? Either way, her words put an end to the giggling. Mrs. Woods flipped a switch, and her trusty overhead came to life. “Who can tell me what this is?” she asked.

  I read the words that were illuminated on the front board:

  We the People of the United States,

  in Order to form a more perfect Union,

  establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility,

  provide for the common defence,

  promote the general Welfare,

  and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,

  do ordain and establish this Constitution

  for the United States of America.

  I raised my hand.

  “It’s the Constitution,” Scott yelled out.

  “Ugh!” I groaned. I was ready to stuff a sock in that boy’s mouth. I appreciated it when Mrs. Woods didn’t bother with him but called on me—the person practicing classroom etiquette—instead. “Yes, Miss Kurtsman.”

  “More specifically, it’s the Preamble to our United States Constitution,” I answered.

  “That is correct,” Mrs. Woods said, “and it dates back to 1787. Now, that’s old.” She smiled at Scott but never said anything to him about needing to raise your hand before speaking. In my opinion, that was a mistake. If she didn’t keep him in line, she would lose control. “The Preamble is over two hundred years old, and yet our country still operates by these principles,” she continued. “And so will our classroom,” she added. “Because sometimes old is the best.”

  “Sometimes old is stupid,” Trevor wisecracked under his breath, but not under his breath enough.

  “Indeed, there are days when I feel that getting old is stupid,” Mrs. Woods remarked. “But being old does not make one stupid—or necessarily hard of hearing. I trust that’s what you meant, Mr. Joseph.”

  Trevor glowered and turned pink under her glare. Despite her outdated clothes and knee-high stockings, Mrs. Woods was still quick on her feet. Maybe she hadn’t said anything to Scott about raising his hand, but she’d put Trevor in his place—again. No stupid boy was going to get the best of her.

  For her next move, Mrs. Woods took the dust-covered box she had sitting under the projector and plopped it on Scott’s desk. “Mr. Mason, please pass these out.”

  Always excited to help, Scott jumped up from his desk and raced around the room, tossing paperback dictionaries with thesauruses to each of us. The books were torn and yellowed and looked older than the projector, but no one complained.

  “The dictionary is another example of something that has been around for many years and is still reliable,” Mrs. Woods remarked.

  Trevor decided not to offer any wisecracks this time. Perhaps he wasn’t quite as dumb as he looked.

  “I want you to look up definitions and synonyms for the words I’ve highlighted in the Preamble so that we may begin to talk about what the fancy language truly means,” Mrs. Woods explained. “I want to see you taking notes. Now get going.”

  I didn’t need to consult the dictionary or thesaurus—I knew what these terms meant—but I did what my teacher asked. It didn’t take me long. I was done before Scott Mason had anything written down.

  After discussing the highlighted terms, we then created our very own Classroom Doctrine:

  We the citizens of Classroom 613 do create

  this official document in order to establish and maintain

  a Safe and Hard-working Community,

  where we will Listen and show Respect, use Common Sense,

  and Think of Each Other before ourselves.

  Without a doubt, this was the best and most interesting activity any teacher of mine had ever used for developing a set of classroom rules. It was simple yet perfect. All that stuff about taking turns and not running with scissors, yada yada, was summed up in our concise document. To make it official, Mrs. Woods had each of us sign the Classroom Doctrine. It wasn’t until we were done adding our names that she mentioned the word “consequence.”

  “When rules are broken, there needs to be a consequence,” Mrs. Woods said. “Unlike with our doctrine, there will be no discussion about consequences. If someone or something disrupts our community, then I will deal with it as I see fit. I am the judge and the jury in this classroom.”

  Mrs. Woods talked like a lawyer! I didn’t need to wait any longer. I already had my verdict. Mrs. Woods wasn’t only old; she was old-school. She was a no-nonsense lady who’d been around the block, and she was going to be an excellent teacher.

  As promised, Woodchuck kept me in from recess today. Her old brain didn’t forget, like I was
hoping. And she didn’t let me sit there doing nothing, either. She handed me a piece of paper.

  “What do you want to achieve? Who do you want to be? These are important questions for a young man to consider, Mr. Joseph. Think it over and then write a page about your goals.”

  My paper was still blank when she collected it from me at the end of recess.

  “I don’t have any goals,” I said.

  “Let’s hope we can change that this year, Mr. Joseph.”

  She didn’t say anything more. That was the first smart thing the dumb old woman had done.

  Recess was my favorite part of the day. I never got invited to playdates outside of school, so this was my chance to have fun with other kids. The only person I knew who wasn’t crazy about recess was Natalie Kurtsman, but that was probably because she never did anything but walk around by herself.

  I spent my recess running all over the place. I wasn’t allowed to play football, because I wasn’t good at it like the other boys, but I was good at running, and I was a monkey on the playground equipment. Lucky for us, Lake View Middle used to be an elementary school, so we had an awesome playground left over from those early days. I loved swinging across the bars and rings and zinging down the zip line, but my favorite was still the twisty slide—even after what had happened.

  A few years ago the teachers at my old school made a special rule that if you climbed the stairs to the twisty slide, then you had to go down it. There were no turn-arounds allowed. Trust me, it was a dumb rule.

  There was a day last year when I raced to the top and flew down the slide without knowing there were puddles of water on its surface. Everyone laughed at my wet butt. They had fun pointing and calling me Wet-butt. They had more fun saying I’d peed my pants, even though they knew that wasn’t true. I was glad everyone was happy and smiling—but I wasn’t. Try spending the afternoon with wet underwear rubbing you raw and you’ll know why. It was no fun, and it was all because of that dumb rule.