Maxie, Rosie, and Earl-Partners in Grime

  The rest of the class was lining up for lunch. Rosie sharpened her pencil and went back to her desk to grab her lunch sack. She was just on her way out the door when she heard her name called.

  “Miss Swanson? Could you come back here, please? I need to speak to you a minute.”

  Mr. Jolly was sitting at his desk. Rosie made a smooth U-turn and headed back in the door. She liked being called Miss Swanson. It made her feel grown-up.

  Mr. Jolly waited for everyone to leave. Then he reached way back into his top drawer and pulled out several little yellow notes. Rosie watched him smooth each one and stack them on his desktop.

  “I’m sorry to keep you from your lunch, Rosie,” he said, “but I’m afraid I have to speak to you about these notes again. I was hoping that our talk last week was going to put an end to the tattling. But since then, you’ve written this many more.”

  Rosie pushed her red glasses up on her nose and leaned in for a closer look.

  “Did you get the one I just put in there a minute ago? The one about you-know-who cheating on her you-know-what?”

  Mr. Jolly didn’t reply. Instead, he picked up the stack of notes and began to read:

  Dear Mr. J.

  Michael P. was in the girls’ bathroom.

  Your helpful student,

  R.S.

  Rosie nodded. “Yes, sir. And I don’t think it was an accident, either, if you get my drift.”

  Mr. Jolly looked at her for a few seconds.

  “Note number two,” he said.

  Dear Mr. J.

  At lunch, Mona Snyder chewed up her ham salad sandwich and opened her mouth and showed everybody.

  Your eyes in the lunchroom,

  R.S.

  Rosie made a sick face. “It was so gross I couldn’t eat my raisin cookie after that,” she said.

  Mr. Jolly went on:

  Dear Mr. J.

  Ronald M. blew his nose in the drinking fountain.

  Yours sincerely;

  R.S.

  This time, Rosie cringed. “And you understand that he didn’t use a Kleenex, right, sir? He just held this one nostril closed and blew out of the other one.”

  She paused. “I believe it’s called a farmer’s blow.”

  Mr. Jolly held up his hand. “Please. I don’t need the details, okay? In fact, I didn’t need to know any of these things at all.”

  Rosie stretched her neck to see into the drawer. “Yes. But you still haven’t gotten to the one about you-know-who cheating on her you-know-what.”

  Mr. Jolly rubbed his temples. “Rosie, last week didn’t I ask you to stop all of this tattling? Wouldn’t you rather spend the day enjoying your classmates rather than sneaking around like a little spy all the time?”

  Rosie didn’t even have to think about it. “Not really, sir. Actually, I like the sneaking around part.”

  Her teacher sighed. “But you’re in fourth grade now, Rosie,” he said. “You can’t keep tattling for the rest of your life.”

  This was the part Rosie just didn’t get. “But how can you stop all the bad stuff that’s going on if you don’t know about it, Mr. Jolly? You can’t be everywhere, you know? I’m helping.”

  Mr. Jolly shook his head. “I know that you think you’re helping, Rosie. But tattling on every little thing that goes on in this room is not the way to get along with people. What’s going to happen when they find out what you’re doing?”

  “But they won’t find out, Mr. Jolly,” she insisted. “I’m seriously good at this. My grandfather was a police detective. Sneaky is in my blood.”

  Why did she have to keep explaining this stuff—especially to an adult who should understand?

  “Telling on people isn’t really bad, you know,” she said. “I’m doing it for their own good. Like if a burglar gets caught by the police, he gets punished and he learns his lesson. But if he never gets caught, he keeps stealing from people forever, probably. I’m telling you, Mr. Jolly, if we nip Judith’s cheating in the bud, we can steer her straight.”

  Mr. Jolly’s headache was getting worse. “Look, Rosie. I agree that kids sometimes get away with stuff they shouldn’t. And sometimes, it really is your duty to report things that you’ve seen. But you’re carrying this thing way too far. There’s very little that I won’t find out eventually. And in the meantime, if you need to report on something, save it for important things. Things that are seriously dangerous or against the law.”

  “Like?” she asked.

  Mr. Jolly grinned a little bit. “Like if Judith Topper finds out you’ve tattled and she whacks you in the head with her thermos at lunch, you can tell me, okay?”

  Rosie frowned. “Assaults at the lunch table are not a laughing matter, sir. Last year John Paul Rice hit a kid in the head with a frozen banana on a stick, and he almost knocked the kid out. It sounds funny maybe, but it wasn’t.”

  Mr. Jolly stopped smiling and stood up. “I was making a joke, Rosie. All I want you to do is use better judgment and ease up on the notes, okay?”

  Rosie said okay and left for lunch.

  Mr. Jolly took two aspirin and headed for the teacher’s lounge for a bowl of soup. An hour and a half later, when his class returned from lunch and PE, he was feeling much better.

  Rosie Swanson strolled in the door. Mr. Jolly looked up and gave her a wink.

  Rosie smiled. Then, much to his surprise, she walked over to his desk, pulled a piece of napkin out of her pocket, and dropped it in his desk drawer.

  The note read:

  Dear Mr. J.

  During lunch, Mona S. tried to poke my eye out with a carrot.

  Reporting danger,

  R.S.

  Five minutes later, Rosie Swanson was sitting in a yellow plastic chair outside the principal’s door.

  Next to her, a plump, sweaty kid was slumped over in his seat.

  3 MAXIE

  Rosie peeked at Earl through her bangs. She hadn’t expected him to be looking back at her.

  The boy wiped sweat off his lip.

  “I’m not well,” he said.

  Rosie moved down a seat.

  On the other side of the school, Maxie Zuckerman’s temper was about to boil over. The afternoon in Mrs. Trout’s fifth-grade class had started out badly and gotten worse and worse. Lunch had been okay, but when he’d returned to the room, Mrs. Trout had been passing back yesterday’s math tests.

  Maxie knew what he was in for. He was a “Z” name. And when your class was seated in alphabetical order like his was, “Z” names always sat in the last desk of the last row. That meant when papers were passed back, everyone in the row got to see Maxie’s test grades before he did.

  Kids were never nice about it, either. This time, David Underwood was the first to start mocking him.

  “Big surprise. Maxie Zuckerman got another perfect paper,” he said.

  David leaned his head out into the row and looked back. “Get a life, why don’t you, Dorker-man?”

  David passed the test paper to Melissa Waterman. She called him Maxie Geekerman and passed it on.

  Maxie’s muscles tightened. As usual, their teasing was getting to him.

  “Just hand it back,” he said.

  By now, the test was in the hands of Daniel Wieczkiewicz. Or, as he was better known, Daniel “W.”

  Daniel W. sat at the desk right in front of Maxie’s. It was another unfortunate consequence of being seated in alphabetical order.

  As soon as Daniel W. got Maxie’s paper, he spun around in his seat and grinned. There was chocolate milk on his mouth from lunch.

  “Here you go, Brainiac. Another perfect paper to take home to Mumsy and Poopsy. They’ll be so proud.”

  Daniel W. dangled the paper in front of him. Maxie grabbed for it. He knew that Daniel would only pull it away, but he never stopped trying.

  “Give it here, Daniel! I mean it!”

  “Man, it must be terrible being you,” said Daniel. “Don’t you ever wish you were normal like the rest of us?”
>
  Maxie crossed his arms. “I don’t know, Dan. Would I have to wear milk on my face like you?”

  Quickly, Daniel W. wiped his mouth. Then he crumpled the test paper into a ball and dropped it on the floor next to Maxie’s foot.

  “You niblick,” Maxie mouthed.

  “Hey. Watch your mouth,” said Daniel. But Maxie just smiled. Words were almost always his best weapons. It was amazing how upset kids got when they didn’t know what they were being called. Just like now, when he was only calling Daniel a golf club.

  He leaned over and picked his test paper off the floor. If only Mrs. Trout had moved his seat to the front of the room like he’d asked her to do, stuff like this wouldn’t keep happening. Alphabetical order was so unfair. Not only did he have to sit behind the jerkiest kid in the room, but in his heart, Maxie knew he could be a class leader. And leaders had to be in front of people, not behind them. Leaders had to be in the spotlight. But every time he asked to move, his teacher’s answer was always the same.

  “Sorry, kiddo,” Mrs. Trout would say. “No can do.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Trout. Yes can do,” he told her the last time they talked. “How would you like it if every time you made an A on a test or a report, the whole row started making fun of you?”

  Mrs. Trout put her hand on his shoulder. “Maxie, my dear boy, you’re such a smart kid. Why don’t you realize that the kids only tease you because they see how much it bothers you. If you’d laugh it off a few times, they’d stop. I promise.”

  Maxie rolled his eyes. “I laugh when things are funny, Mrs. Trout. And these kids are trying to be mean. They do lots of mean stuff. Like last week when you handed back our history papers, someone made a hat out of my Hats of the World report. And yesterday when you handed out new reading workbooks, mine had this little booger or something on the cover.”

  Mrs. Trout made a face. “Please, Max. Enough. No matter where I put people, there are going to be complaints. Alphabetical order is the best thing I’ve found so far. And unless there’s a medical reason why you can’t sit in the back, you’re in the back.”

  She walked Maxie to the door. “See you tomorrow,” she said.

  When he didn’t leave, she nudged him into the hall and locked the door behind him.

  “But I wasn’t finished yet!” he called. “I still have issues!”

  Mrs. Trout didn’t come back.

  Finally, Maxie Zuckerman stomped his foot and stormed home.

  The memory of that conversation was still clear in his head as Maxie uncrumpled his math test. More than anything, he wanted to squeal on Daniel W. and the others for teasing him again. But in fifth grade, you had to be careful who you snitched on. In addition to being the brainiest kid in the room, Maxie was also the scrawniest. And scrawny snitches didn’t last long on the playground.

  He was still stewing over things when someone knocked on the classroom door. Seconds later, Mr. Bucky, the traveling art teacher, came into the room. He was pulling his work cart behind him. Until this year, Mr. Bucky had always had his own art room. But because the school was overcrowded, they had turned the art room into a new third grade during the summer. And it had put Mr. Bucky into a permanent bad mood.

  Mrs. Trout clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Time for art! Time for Mr. Bucky!” she announced loudly. “Put your books away, people, and clear your desks.”

  The art teacher looked especially tired today. He stooped over slowly and pulled a pile of black paper from the bottom shelf of his cart.

  “Columbus Day is coming up in a couple of weeks, so we’re going to make sailing vessels,” he said dully. “I’ve got black paper for the bottoms, and white for the sails. Questions?”

  Just to be annoying, Daniel W. asked, “What’s a vessel?”

  Vanessa Wainwright shot her hand in the air. “I know! I know! My father’s a doctor. So I happen to know that vessels are little tubular things that carry blood around your body.”

  Maxie let out a groan. Stupid comments like that drove him crazy.

  “Yeah, real good, Vanessa,” he said. “Christopher Columbus sailed to America in a blood vessel.”

  Daniel W. spun around in his seat. “Are you saying he didn’t, Mr. Brain? How do you know, Mr. Brain? Were you there, Mr. Brain?”

  In the front of the room, Mr. Bucky was going from row to row, counting out paper. When he got to Maxie’s row, he looked at the few sheets in his hand and sighed.

  “Sorry, but there’s not enough black paper left,” he said. “Someone will have to use another color.”

  Daniel W. grinned meanly. “Gee, I wonder who that will be?”

  As the construction paper headed back, there were four pieces of black paper and one piece of … pink. Pink? No way! thought Maxie. Any color but pink!

  As soon as Daniel W. put it on his desk, Maxie grabbed the pink paper and went flying to the front of the room.

  “No, Mr. Bucky. Come on. I’ll use any other color for my ship except this,” he said. “A pink ship is just plain stupid.”

  Mr. Bucky looked annoyed. “This is my third class in a row, okay? Pink is all I have left. Deal with it.”

  Maxie stood there a second, wondering what to do next. When nothing came to mind, he headed back to his seat. That’s when he noticed that Daniel W. was at the pencil sharpener.

  Yes! This was his chance!

  In a flash, he snatched Daniel’s black paper off his desk. When Daniel W. came back, Maxie was hunched over the black paper, guarding it with his life.

  “Hey! Hey! He stole my paper!” Daniel hollered.

  Within seconds, the art teacher came storming down the aisle.

  Quickly, Maxie bolted out of his seat and gave the black paper back to Daniel W.

  “Kidding! I was just kidding, Mr. Bucky. I wasn’t going to keep it. I swear. It was a joke.”

  The teacher pointed his finger in Maxie’s face, forever it seemed. Finally, he went back to the front of the room.

  Maxie sat down at his desk again. When the scissors were passed back, he got the rusty ones.

  For the rest of the period, Mr. Bucky showed the class how to fold, cut, and staple the construction paper into sailing vessels. For Maxie, each step of working on his ship got more and more humiliating. Christopher Columbus wouldn’t have been caught dead on a ship like this—not even if Queen Isabella had said, “Pink is all I’ve got left. Deal with it.”

  Across the room, Carlton Bagget accidentally ripped his paper. When Mr. Bucky offered him pink paper, Carlton walked back to his seat empty-handed.

  “Just give me an F,” he said.

  Finally, the hour was almost up. Mr. Bucky held his ship in the air and gave his final instructions. “Before you staple on the sails, I want each of you to write the name of your ship across the bottom of the sail in clear black letters. You have three names to choose from. Who knows what they are?”

  Once again, Vanessa Wainwright’s hand rocketed into the air. “The Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María,” she called out. “I know those because last year we did a play, and I was the Santa María.”

  Suddenly, Daniel W. whipped around and snatched Maxie’s ship off the top of his desk. “Wait! We forgot one!” he hollered.

  He held Maxie’s ship over his head for everyone to see. “What about The Little Pinkie?”

  Maxie grabbed for his ship, but he couldn’t reach it.

  Daniel W. sailed it all around in the air. “A lot of people don’t know this, but The Little Pinkie brought all the flamingos to the New World.”

  Everyone started to laugh.

  “You fuff,” Maxie muttered angrily. It only meant “puff.” But it would have made Daniel W. mad, probably—if he hadn’t been laughing so hard, that is.

  Finally, Mrs. Trout stepped in and made the class quiet down. Daniel W. tossed The Little Pinkie over his shoulder. It landed on the floor again, next to Maxie’s foot.

  That’s when Maxie Zuckerman’s temper finally boiled over. Withou
t even thinking about it, he picked up his rusty scissors, grabbed a loose wad of Daniel’s army T-shirt, and cut a hole.

  Daniel felt the tug and spun around. Calmly, Maxie spread the small piece of camouflage-colored material on top of his desk.

  “Oh dear,” he said quietly. “My scissors slipped.”

  At 1:45 P.M., Maxie Zuckerman was sitting outside the principal’s office.

  A plump kid was lying limp on the seat to his right.

  On his left, a skinny girl with glasses was staring at him through her bangs.

  4 NOT FAIR,

  NOT FAIR,

  NOT FAIR!

  Earl Wilber, Rosie Swanson, and Maxie Zuckerman glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Twice, Maxie and Earl caught each other looking and quickly turned away.

  Rosie had seen Maxie before, but the pudgy one was definitely a new kid. She still couldn’t believe she was sitting here. In a huff, she took off her glasses and cleaned them on her skirt. How could Mr. Jolly have done this to her? He told her to report dangerous situations, hadn’t he? And vegetables weren’t exactly harmless, you know. Just last month a little kid in her neighborhood got a butter bean stuck up his nose, and his grandma had to call the paramedics.

  Maxie Zuckerman was just as upset as Rosie. Not fair, not fair, not fair! he thought. If Mrs. Trout had moved me to the front of the room, none of this would have happened. It’s her fault I’m here, not mine! She’s the one who pushed me over the edge. Mrs. Trout and that stupid Daniel W.

  “Not fair,” he said right out loud.

  Earl sat up in his chair. “Huh? What?” He was hoping that the skinny kid was talking to him. But when Maxie ignored him, Earl slouched back down again. In addition to all his other problems, now he had to go to the boys’ room. He tried shifting positions, but it didn’t help much.

  After a few minutes, Mr. Shivers’ secretary came out of the principal’s office. “I’m sorry,” she told the three of them, “but Mr. Shivers just received another important phone call, so he’s going to be a while longer. You’ll just need to sit here and behave yourselves until he can see you.”