Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym)

  “Boo!” shouted Jamie, sneaking up behind me.

  I nearly jumped to the ceiling. I hadn’t heard him approaching at all. “Ohmigosh!” I breathed, clutching Lucy.

  Jamie doubled over with laughter. “Got ya! Got ya good!”

  “You scared me to death!” I cried angrily. “I didn’t know where you were!”

  “I know. I was hiding,” Jamie told me proudly.

  “That’s not a funny trick,” I told him. “Don’t do it again.”

  “It is so funny,” Jamie said, pouting. “You’re just an old grouch-head!”

  “Well, you’re a hider-head,” I replied. This may have been a very immature response, and it made no sense, but there was no reason to stay mad at him.

  “Then you’re a spider-head,” he replied.

  “You’re a fighter-head,” I shot back. That was a bad choice.

  “No, I’m a fighter pilot!” Jamie shouted. He spread his arms and, with loud engine noises, began to zoom around the house.

  Lucy laughed at the noise as I unbundled her. But in seconds, a loud crash came from the living room.

  “Uh-oh,” I heard Jamie say.

  With Lucy in my arms, I ran into the room and found a glass vase smashed across the floor. Tiny slivers of glass glistened everywhere. “The wing of my jet accidentally knocked it over,” Jamie said sheepishly.

  “I hope it wasn’t an expensive vase,” I replied.

  Jamie shrugged. The way my luck was running today, it was probably priceless.

  “Hey, pew, she stinks,” Jamie observed, pointing to Lucy.

  “I know,” I replied. “Let’s go upstairs and change her. Then we’ll come down and clean up this glass.”

  “No way! I’m not getting near that diaper,” said Jamie, backing away. He spotted a jagged piece of glass on the floor and bent over it. “Hey, this one looks like a little glass —”

  “Don’t touch that,” I said. He didn’t listen.

  “Ouch! Ouch! Ouuwwww!” he howled, clutching his hand. A ribbon of blood flowed from his thumb.

  I rushed him into the kitchen and put Lucy back in her high chair. I could see that the cut wasn’t that deep, it was just bleeding a lot. I put pressure on his thumb to help stop the bleeding and pretty soon it was only a trickle. There was no need to call a doctor or the hospital. All I had to do was clean the cut and put on a bandage.

  Unfortunately, Jamie wasn’t nearly as calm as I was. He screeched hysterically and struggled with me as I tried to hold his hand under cold running water at the sink. With all the commotion, Lucy started screaming.

  Glancing at the kitchen clock, I saw that I had only been at the Newtons’ for a half hour! It felt like years.

  In fact, this was turning out to be one of the longest — and worst — days I could remember.

  Usually Jessi doesn’t have to sit for Becca and Squirt. Aunt Cecelia is almost always there to look after them. But last Sunday Aunt Cecelia needed to go to the hospital to visit a friend of hers who was a patient. Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey had volunteered to work at a PTA-sponsored craft show. So Jessi was baby-sitting.

  That was fine with her. Becca and Squirt are never any trouble. But that’s what I said about Jamie Newton. And look what had happened! This turned out to be a similar situation.

  Now that Squirt can walk, he’s into everything. As soon as Aunt Cecelia left, he pulled a lace runner off a side table, sending everything crashing to the floor. Jessi no sooner picked up the stuff (luckily nothing broke) than he pulled open the drawer where the Ramseys keep their phone books and began tearing pages from them.

  Jessi is a patient person, but Squirt never let up. She even made him his latest favorite food, macaroni and cheese. When she presented it to him, he flung it away, spraying the kitchen with sticky, orange macaroni.

  Speaking of spraying the kitchen, Becca wound up making quite a mess even though she was trying to be good. She was studying nutrition in school, and her weekend homework assignment was to make a healthy drink in the blender and bring a thermos of it into class on Monday. The kids were going to sample each drink and vote on which was the best.

  “I think the noise of the blender is making Squirt even crankier,” Becca said to Jessi as she fed a carrot into the machine.

  “Everything is making him cranky,” replied Jessi, who was helping Becca with the project. She’d borrowed a health-food cookbook from Dawn. Dawn had even pointed out one of her favorite drinks. Now Jessi was reading the instructions as Becca pureéd the ingredients in the blender.

  At the moment, Jessi was allowing Squirt to play on the floor with the pots and pans he’d pulled from the kitchen cabinets. It would be a pain to put them back later, but Jessi was willing to do that if they would keep Squirt happy for a while — at least until she and Becca could finish making the health drink.

  “Do you have the can of beet juice opened?” Jessi asked. Becca nodded. “It says to pour that in while blending on a low speed,” Jessi read.

  “While the blender is running?” Becca questioned.

  Jessi checked the book and nodded. “That’s what it says.”

  “Okay, here goes,” said Becca. She found the lowest speed on the blender, turned it on, and slowly began to pour.

  Jessi glanced at Squirt. His lower lip was trembling. The slow drone of the blender did seem to be annoying him. He picked up two wooden spoons and banged on the pots, as if to drown out the noise.

  Finally Becca turned off the blender. “Whoaw! It’s almost over the top,” she commented. Gingerly, she lifted the blender off the stand.

  Bang! Clang! Squirt had climbed to his feet and was now throwing the pots and pans across the kitchen floor. “That’s enough, Squirt,” said Jessi. She tried to take a pot lid from his hand. “Give me that and we’ll go look at some books,” she added. But Squirt was not going to give her the lid.

  “No!” he cried. (That’s one of Squirt’s few words.)

  “This doesn’t taste bad at all,” Becca said as she sipped some of her drink from a teaspoon.

  “Dawn said it was good,” commented Jessi. Then she turned back to Squirt. “No more throwing pans, okay, Squirt?” she said.

  “No!” Squirt shouted again. And this time, he hurled the pot lid just as Becca was turning to carry the full blender to the refrigerator.

  Bang! The lid hit Becca.

  “Oh, no!” she cried as the blender fell from her hands, splashing purple juice everywhere.

  Jessi closed her eyes briefly.

  “Sorry,” whispered Becca.

  “It’s not your fault,” Jessi told her. “But look at this place!”

  “Look at my new sweater,” added Becca.

  Jessi sighed, noticing that Squirt was tracking purple footprints across the kitchen floor and was about to go into the living room. “Stop, Squirt!” she cried, grabbing him.

  “This is impossible,” she added. Jessi thought quickly. She couldn’t let Aunt Cecelia come home to this mess. “I know,” she told Becca. “How about inviting Charlotte Johansen over? The two of you can watch Squirt while I clean up.”

  “Sure,” said Becca. Charlotte is her best friend, so she was happy to ask her over.

  Ten minutes later, Charlotte arrived. “Don’t let him out of your sight,” Jessi instructed the girls as she sent Squirt off with them. Then she set to cleaning the kitchen. This took awhile. Beet juice was everywhere! She had to do a whole load of purple-stained laundry. The tablecloth, the kitchen curtains, dishcloths, and Becca’s sweater all had to be put in the washer. The drink had sprayed all over the pots and pans, so every one of them had to be washed as well. Not to mention, the floor, the cabinets, and the legs of the kitchen chairs. Furthermore, the blender had cracked up the side. What was left of the drink ran down Jessi’s arm when she picked it up. Yechh.

  By the time Aunt Cecelia returned, the kitchen was clean. And Jessi was extremely happy to see her aunt. Becca and Charlotte had managed to keep Squirt out of trouble. They’d accom
plished this by allowing him to throw his blocks all over the rec room. Poor Jessi. She felt obligated to pick them up, too. After all, she’d been left in charge.

  “I was exhausted,” Jessi told me. “I don’t know what was wrong with Squirt.”

  I didn’t say anything to her then, but I was beginning to develop a theory about Squirt. Also about Jamie Newton, Robbie Mara, and my brothers. What did they all have in common? That they were big pains? Yes. And also that they were boys.

  It’s amazing how fast time flies when you don’t want gym class to come again. But, in a flash, it arrived. Before I knew it, it was Wednesday. Time for Gym Class 2. The horror continues.

  And boy was it horrible!

  The night before, my mother nearly fainted when she saw me ironing my gym shorts. I thought it would make a big difference. The only difference it made was that in class the next day, I no longer looked like a rumpled gangly scarecrow with bony knees and elbows. Instead, I looked like a neat scarecrow with bony knees and elbows. Not a huge improvement.

  So, there I was once again, standing out on this gigantic court with kids I barely knew, ready to be mocked, humiliated, shouted at, and possibly stepped on. I’m sure you can understand this put me in a pretty bad mood. Bad is not the word. Foul, livid, murderous: those are probably more accurate words.

  And my theory about boys being major pains — much more so than girls — was beginning to seem very true. I now saw that it was a wise person who orginally decided to separate boys and girls during gym classes. Boys are crazed when it comes to sports. Take that day, for example. They were throwing the ball around, grunting and shouting. And the game hadn’t even started yet. They reminded me of a bunch of toddlers who had somehow gotten their hands on too much sugar.

  Once the game did start, they were out of control. They didn’t care who they knocked over, or elbowed out of the way. They hit that ball as if they were trying to hurt somebody.

  During the first game, came the moment feared by everyone on my team — especially me. It was my turn to serve. Just in case I wasn’t already nervous enough, Ms. Walden wandered over to terrorize me with her less-than-helpful advice.

  As I was about to serve the ball, she shouted: “A fist, Pike! Hit it with your fist. Not open-handed!”

  She rattled me so that I let the ball roll out of my hand and had to go chasing it through the gym. Talk about your embarrassing moments!

  Everyone looked impatient when I returned. So, just to get rid of the stupid thing, I served the ball quickly.

  I served it into the net.

  “Don’t tap the ball, Pike! Hit it hard!” (In case you couldn’t guess, that was the ever-helpful Ms. Walden.)

  My next serve went under the net.

  “Straight arm, Pike! Your arm is wobbling all over the place,” Ms. Walden shouted.

  You can’t imagine how much I wished Ms. Walden would go away. If I could have, I would have paid her all my baby-sitting money to shut up and leave.

  “Pike, this is your last serve. You better make it count.”

  It counted, all right. For the other team. I shot the ball up in the air, and watched it bounce right back down at my feet.

  “When Gallway serves, watch her,” Ms. Walden advised me.

  “Okay,” I muttered as I rotated out of the serving position and up to the front line, making room for Helen Gallway to serve the next time my team got the ball.

  “You watch her closely,” Ms. Walden added as she moved on to harass someone else on another team. “Gallway has a mean serve.”

  Well, I was very happy for Helen Gallway, but having a mean serve was not exactly my ambition in life. What did Ms. Walden think? That they were going to put that on my grave? Here lies Mallory Pike. She had a mean serve! Not! It didn’t matter to me, so I didn’t see why everyone had to make such a big deal over it. I couldn’t imagine some editor saying to me: “Yes, Miss Pike, we love this children’s book you’ve written, but I’m afraid we can’t publish it. You see, we’ve heard that you can’t play volleyball. We don’t publish non-volleyball-playing writers.” That wasn’t too likely to happen.

  So, in the big picture, none of this mattered. But right now, I was trapped inside the little picture. Trapped with a maniacal gym teacher, and a bunch of half-crazed volleyball players. Most of whom were boys.

  Don’t get me wrong. A lot of the girls were good players, but (except for Helen Gallway) they weren’t out of their minds. If the ball came to them, they hit it over the net. They didn’t knock anyone out of the way to get to it. And they didn’t try to maim their opponents with the ball.

  It was while I was in the middle of some of these thoughts that disaster struck. Actually, it was a volleyball that struck. It struck me, right in the face.

  Whap! Ow! I didn’t even see it coming. I felt as if I were in one of those cartoons in which the characters see stars when they get clobbered. The ball hit me in the left eye area. My nose, my eye, my left cheek! They stung like crazy.

  “Are you okay?” asked Tom Harold, who had served the ball for the other team. “I didn’t mean to hit you.”

  “No, I’m not okay!” I exploded, still holding my face. “My nose feels like it’s broken!”

  In a second, my pal Ms. Walden was back on the scene. “Pike, calm down. What’s the matter?”

  “That idiot smashed the ball right into my face,” I shouted. I had completely lost my cool.

  “Okay, there’s no need to call names,” Ms. Walden said to me crossly. “It was an accident. And maybe if you hadn’t been daydreaming it wouldn’t have happened.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. She wasn’t in the least concerned that my cheek might be fractured, or my nose broken. No, she was scolding me for getting hit.

  She was crazy.

  They were all crazy.

  “Why don’t you try getting slammed in the head with a volleyball!” I shouted at her.

  Ms. Walden’s face turned pink, then red, then crimson. “That’s enough of your mouth, Pike!” she cried. “You are benched! I want you over there on the bleachers for the rest of the game!”

  By now, as you might imagine, everyone — and I mean everyone — in the gym was looking at me. No one was playing volleyball. Even Mr. De Young was watching.

  I tossed Ms. Walden an angry, defiant look as I walked toward the bleachers. The gym was dead quiet. I felt as if I were going to the gallows or something, the way everyone was so hushed and attentive. (At least I’d ironed my uniform for this big moment.)

  Then, thankfully, Mr. De Young blew his whistle and the games resumed.

  I sat in the bleachers and concentrated on not crying. I wasn’t sure if the pain or the public humiliation was worse. From time to time, I caught sight of Jessi looking my way sympathetically. I couldn’t return her gaze, though. If I did, I’d have cried for sure. And crying would have been too awful. Things were bad enough as they were. If I cried, I would have to change schools, because I could certainly never show my face at SMS again. No, crying was definitely out.

  Staring at the ceiling was a good way not to cry. I did that until, eventually, the urge to cry passed. It was replaced by a feeling of great annoyance. Who did Ms. Walden think she was, anyway? Some sort of great gym goddess? You are benched! I mean, big deal, really. It wasn’t exactly the worst torture on earth. Ironically, this was what I had wanted. Clearly, I loathed volleyball. So to punish me, Ms. Walden tells me I can’t play volleyball. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

  After about a zillion years, gym ended. “I’ll be looking for a better attitude next class, Pike,” Ms. Walden said to me as the kids emptied into the locker rooms. “How’s your face?”

  Like she really cared.

  “Fine,” I said in a voice I hoped was cold. Truthfully, my cheek still stung, but I didn’t feel like telling her that.

  I had almost reached the locker room when Jessi caught up to me. “Are you okay?” she asked, putting her arm around my shoulder.


  Biting my lip, I nodded. That awful crying feeling was coming back. I couldn’t let it get the best of me.

  When I got home from school that afternoon, all I wanted was to be alone. But that wasn’t meant to be. No sooner had I walked through the door than my mother intercepted me. “Mal, could you hold the fort here for a little while?” she asked. This wasn’t a real question. Both of us knew it. It was an order disguised as a question. My mother was pulling on her coat as she spoke. “I have to go get Margo at school.”

  “How come?”

  “The nurse’s office called. She threw up at about two-thirty and they didn’t want to let her walk home feeling sick.”

  “Poor Margo,” I said.

  “It’s probably just a bug of some sort,” said my mother as she hurried to the door.

  The door had barely closed when I heard a banging, pounding sound. It was coming from the kitchen. With a sigh, I ran upstairs to see what was going on.

  “Pass to me! Pass to me!” I heard Adam shout.

  A basketball thudded off the wall in front of me. “What are you doing?” I yelled.

  “What does it look like?” asked Jordan. The triplets and Nicky were breathless from playing ball.

  “It looks like you’re playing basketball in the house, which you’re not allowed to do,” I snapped.

  “Bug off, Mallory!” said Jordan.

  “You bug off!” I yelled back.

  With the ball in my hands, I disappeared into my bedroom. Behind me I could hear the boys grumble, but I didn’t care. I’d come to a decision. The only thing I disliked as much as sports was boys!

  I’ve always tried to learn from my mistakes. On Thursday, Friday, and over the weekend, I considered everything that had gone wrong in gym on Wednesday. And I came up with a realization.

  If I kept getting benched, I would never have to play volleyball.

  There it was. The solution to my volleyball problem. It was so simple. I should have seen it immediately.

  Of course, I know why I didn’t see it. I’m generally considered to be a “good” kid. Being the oldest of eight has made me cooperative to an extreme. Being disruptive and ornery isn’t my nature. I’m never in trouble in school. That day in gym was the first time I’d been singled out for a punishment.