Kristy in Charge

  Cary laughed. “It’s not that revolting. I didn’t blow my nose on it or anything.”

  Ewwww! I almost dropped the paper. Nothing would have pleased him more, though, so I ignored the comment and read.

  Not that there was really much to read.

  Have some fun. Give the kids a break from the usual torture of gym. Let them blow off some steam, hang loose. Play soccer like it should be played, nothing held back.

  I looked up from the paper in disbelief. “You’re not handing this in, are you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Aren’t you worried about what Mr. De Young will say?”

  “What’s he going to do to me?” Cary scoffed. “I’m not even in his class.”

  “Don’t you want the extra credit?”

  “Give me a break. Like half a point is going to make any difference in my grades.”

  I put my lesson plan on top of my folder and showed it to him. “Well, luckily, I’ve worked out a very detailed lesson plan, so it really doesn’t matter that you don’t have one. We can follow mine.”

  He glanced at my plan for a moment, then leaned closer to me as if he were about to confide something. “Kristin, I think you’d better take a moment for a reality check.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, annoyed.

  “You are never going to get those kids to follow that. What do you think they are, little robots?”

  “No, but Ms. Walden advised me to —”

  He cut me off again, this time with a wave of his hand as he turned toward the boys’ locker room. “See you inside. I’m out of here.”

  I drew in a deep, infuriated breath. He was possibly the most aggravating person I’d ever met.

  Girls were beginning to head into the locker room, so I couldn’t stand there any longer. I hurried in and changed into a clean white T-shirt and a pair of soccer Umbros, put on my whistle, and went out into the gym.

  In one hand I had the phys. ed. boom box. In the other were three handouts I’d photocopied on Watson’s home office copier. One handout was a list of all the new exercises we were going to be doing and a brief description of how to do each one. The second paper explained the rules of soccer. The third noted how the teams would be divided.

  As the classes entered the gym, I handed each of the students the three sheets, which (with Karen’s help) I’d stapled together.

  Then Ms. Walden and Mr. De Young arrived. Like the last time, they hung back against the far wall, standing together. Today they were going to see a very different class than they had on Monday.

  I loaded a tape into the boom box. Sam had lent it to me when he came home the night before. It was called Jock Jam, and it had only high-powered, super-energizing music on it.

  Before turning it on, I blasted my whistle. It was great for getting immediate attention. “Hello, everyone,” I said to the class. “You’ll see on your first sheet that we’re going to do a new warm-up.”

  “How can it be new if we did it on Monday?” a girl with heavy eyeliner objected.

  “This is a newer new warm-up,” I said with a smile. “You can follow me. If you get lost, refer to your sheet.”

  There was a low buzz of conversation as the kids glanced at their papers. “These are girls’ exercises,” a boy protested.

  “What do you expect? She’s a girl,” Cary offered.

  I ignored him. “No. They’re basic warm-up exercises taken from the most up-to-date workout tapes,” I said to the class, smiling at them. “Before I put on the music, let’s do some neck rolls. Follow me…. And to the right …”

  The kids didn’t mind this. It was easy. “This is my kind of exercise,” a girl said, and everyone laughed. I hoped Ms. Walden noticed. The class was more fun already.

  After neck rolls, we turned to stretching, then to bending. I asked the class to do a light jog before I turned on Jock Jam. Now we were in for some heavy aerobics.

  “All right, everybody!” I shouted over the pounding music. “Kick your legs out.”

  I didn’t see much kicking.

  So I demonstrated. “Like this, kick right, kick left.” Although umbros are shorts, they’re loose fitting and not ideal for kicking your legs up without revealing your underwear. It was a problem I hadn’t considered until that exact moment.

  I had to keep my kicks low, and I saw that the class was doing the same. “No, higher!” I told them.

  “You’re not kicking high,” someone pointed out.

  “Just kick!” I barked more forcefully than I intended to.

  “Sheesh, what a grouch.”

  Luckily, I’d planned jumping jacks next. I could do those in my Umbros with no problem. As I jumped, I wondered what Cary was doing. From the corner of my eye I saw him doing jumping jacks in front of the class too.

  Amazing. Was he actually cooperating?

  I should have known better.

  In a second I realized that everyone in the class was out of sync. They were bumping into one another and slapping hands as they jumped. Why were they so spastic? It took me only a second to realize: Half of them were following Cary, who was not jumping in time with me.

  “Hold it!” I yelled as I hit the STOP button on the boom box. “Hold it!” I blasted my whistle.

  The class stopped, breathless, and stared at me.

  “What was that?” I asked Cary.

  “Jumping jacks?” a girl offered.

  “Not you!” I snapped at her. “I was asking him!”

  Cary gave me a wide-eyed look, as if to say, Surely you don’t mean me? “Jumping jacks?” he asked.

  “You were completely off beat. You confused the whole class.”

  A seventh-grade boy called out, “You were the one off beat.”

  “Come to think of it, Kristin, you are sort of offbeat,” Cary joked, which caused the class to laugh.

  “Kristy, Cary,” Ms. Walden interrupted, walking toward us. “This is going a bit long. Didn’t you want to play soccer today?”

  I checked my watch. Wow! The fifteen minutes were nearly up and the warm-up was just starting.

  Ms. Walden’s words launched a stampede toward the door as the class raced to the soccer field. A blast from my whistle stopped everyone in their tracks. “Walk!” I shouted. “And look at your team lists while you’re walking. When you get outside, stand with your teammates.”

  Cary hurried after me. “You didn’t put all the dweebs on my team, did you?” he asked.

  “I don’t even know which kids can play and which can’t,” I snapped. “And don’t call them dweebs. That’s just the kind of attitude that turns kids off to sports.”

  “I see,” he said seriously. “You think screaming at them and blowing that whistle in their ears is the way to go.”

  “No! I don’t blow it in their ears!”

  He rubbed his ear. “Oh, you mean it’s just my eardrum that’s busted?”

  “It gets their attention,” I insisted stiffly.

  Most of the kids had left the gym. I couldn’t stand there letting Cary fire off his witticisms. Whether he knew it or not, we had a class to run.

  I hurried out to the field, with Cary strolling casually behind me. I expected to see the kids standing with their teams, but they were scattered around in small groups. I blew my whistle and clapped my hands sharply. “Get into your teams!”

  They didn’t move.

  A short, burly kid with a buzz cut pointed at another kid. “There is no way I will be on a team with him,” he shouted, pointing. “He is my sworn enemy.”

  Sworn enemy?

  The other kid sneered back.

  “We’re not having any of that,” I scolded them. “You have to learn to work with your teammates.”

  “Yeah, like you and Retlin do,” another boy called out. “Smooth teamwork.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “This isn’t fair,” a girl whined. “You separated me from my best friend. I’m always with Jennifer.”

  Jennifer then stepped up
to me. “That’s right. Ms. Walden always lets us be together.”

  “Everybody, forget those sheets and split into two teams,” Cary told them. Before I could object, the kids were running around and — amazingly — in minutes were in two fairly even groups. Cary turned to me with a snide smile. “See? You just have to go with the flow, Kristin, and things work out.”

  “That’s your team,” I said, pointing to the right. “And this group will be mine.”

  I have to make a little confession here. It had only taken me seconds to size up the two groups in terms of athletic ability. And my kids were definitely bigger and more athletic looking.

  There wasn’t any chance I would let Cary’s team win today. He wasn’t going to show me up with his sloppy go-with-the-flow attitude.

  “My team, over here!” I shouted. I was about to blast my whistle, but Cary had made me self-conscious about it. I waved to them instead.

  “Okay, now,” I said, after they’d assembled in a half circle around me. “We’re going to win. Who here is a strong goalie?”

  “Anson,” a boy said.

  “Yeah, Anson,” a girl seconded. The other kids murmured agreement. They turned toward Anson, a large kid with white-blond hair, vivid blue eyes, and freckles.

  After that, I made the decisions. I put the biggest kids in a defensive line in front of Anson. Assuming the kids with the longest legs were fastest, I positioned them closest to the kickoff line.

  From the other side of the field, I heard Cary’s team punching the air and chanting, “Win! Win! Win!” Did Cary know what he was doing?

  I doubted it.

  The kids took their positions on the field. I blew my whistle to begin the game. To my surprise, the teams seemed more evenly matched than I’d thought. Some of the small kids on Cary’s team were fast.

  And aggressive!

  One skinny, wiry girl tripped a boy twice her size. I saw it clearly. She stuck out one bony leg and hooked it up under the back of his knee and dropped him. I wailed on my whistle. “Penalty!” I shouted.

  Cary, full of attitude, barreled toward me, waving his arms. “Give it up!” he shouted. “Do you think a kid her size would intentionally try to knock a big guy like him down? You’re seeing things! He tripped. Look at the size of her.”

  A girl from my team pointed accusingly at the skinny girl. “She’s a green belt in karate. All the kids on that team go to the same karate school in Stamford. That’s why they all wanted to be together.”

  My jaw dropped. Cary grinned at me. “You assigned the teams,” he reminded me.

  I lifted my jaw and put my hands to my hips. “Tell them this isn’t karate class. It’s soccer. If they try any rough stuff, they’re in trouble.”

  “Ooooh, I’m so scared of you.” Cary winced, pretending to tremble.

  I huddled with my team. “If anyone roughs you up, just stop playing,” I advised them.

  “Those shrimps don’t scare me,” said a boy. “We’ll show them. We’ll make shrimp salad out of them.”

  My kids started punching the air, chanting, “Shrimp salad! Shrimp salad! Shrimp salad!”

  The other team picked up the chant, changing it to “Wimp salad! Wimp salad!”

  I blew my whistle to restart the game. The kids played hard. The ball flew, and kids batted it with their elbows and their knees.

  Cary’s team almost scored a goal, but Anson batted it back out with his head. He didn’t seem to feel any pain either.

  The ball was soon near our goal again and Cary’s team gave Anson a run for it. One kid smashed into him. Sticking out his chest, Anson butted him back into one of his own teammates.

  “Hey!” Cary shouted at me. “Tell your goalie to chill out!”

  “He’s a goalie, you jerk!” I shouted back. “He’s doing his job!”

  The boy who’d been knocked back by Anson jumped up again. Red-faced with anger, he smashed the ball toward Anson but kicked too high and connected with Anson’s knee instead of the ball.

  It looked intentional to me so I blew my whistle.

  “Now what?” Cary cried angrily. “My team, disregard that stupid whistle!”

  I grabbed his arm. “He kicked our goalie!” I yelled into his face.

  I suddenly realized that something was happening off to my side. I jumped away from Cary and saw Anson punch the kid who had kicked him.

  Other kids joined the fight. Girls began wrestling. Guys were hitting one another. There was some karate action going on.

  I blasted and blasted my whistle.

  Then a much deeper, louder whistle blared over mine. “Hold it!” a male voice boomed. Mr. De Young had appeared on the playing field.

  His voice did the trick. Everyone stopped. “All of you! Back into the gym!” he bellowed.

  Breathless and sweaty, the kids obeyed.

  Mr. De Young whirled around to Cary and me. “What started this free-for-all?” he demanded.

  “His team was made of karate kids,” I announced.

  “She’s crazy!” Cary countered. “Her kids were all giants and they started pounding on my kids.”

  “That’s a lie!” I shouted.

  “Enough!” Mr. De Young cut us short. “You two are in major trouble.”

  Mrs. Downey, the school secretary, gazed at me with disbelief. “Kristy, you’re here to see Mr. Kingbridge?” Everyone knew that there was only one reason a kid was sent to see the assistant principal.

  I felt like shouting, “You’re right, Mrs. Downey. I’m a good kid and this is all a horrible mistake.” Of course, I couldn’t do that. For one thing, Mr. De Young was standing right there between Cary and me.

  For another, I wasn’t in a shouting mood. I was caught between two moods, in fact.

  One was a killing mood. I wanted to kill Cary.

  The other was a disappearing mood. I was so mortified, so humiliated, that I wished I could simply vanish.

  Mr. Kingbridge stepped out of his office and, for a moment, studied us. “I can see you now,” he said, beckoning us to come inside.

  I felt cold all over. Physically cold.

  Cary and I took the two wooden seats in front of Mr. Kingbridge’s large desk. Mr. De Young sat in a green leather side chair. “I saw what happened,” Mr. Kingbridge began. “I was coming in from lunch at the time. It was quite a display.”

  Cary and I exchanged a darting, guilty glance.

  “What do you two have to say for yourselves?” he asked.

  Somehow, this didn’t seem like the time nor the place to start accusing Cary. This was the assistant principal, after all.

  Cary didn’t accuse me of anything either.

  Not that he would have had much to say. But the way his twisted mind worked, he probably could have come up with something if he tried.

  “Things just got out of hand,” I said quietly, feeling that Mr. Kingbridge expected one of us to say something.

  “And why was that?” he demanded.

  Again, Cary and I looked at each other. It was as if we were searching each other for silent clues as to how to answer. Now that we were in deep trouble, we were finally working together.

  “I suppose we got the kids a little too worked up,” Cary admitted. “And we got mad at each other, so they took their cue from us.”

  I was shocked. And, in a way, impressed. He was more honest than I’d been able to be. I knew he was right. We’d both been so competitive that we’d whipped the kids into a kind of war mode.

  Mr. Kingbridge slapped his desk with angry impatience. My heart was pounding as he went on. “Did the two of you think stirring these kids into a frenzy was a good idea? We currently have a seventh-grade girl in the nurse’s office with a black eye. A boy is being rushed to his dentist with his missing tooth in a jar filled with milk. We’ve sent another girl to the hospital with a possible broken arm. Was this what you wanted to accomplish?”

  “No, sir,” I mumbled.

  “No,” Cary agreed.

  “Then, wha
t did you think was going to happen?”

  “I guess we each just wanted to win,” I said in a voice so low that Mr. Kingbridge made me repeat myself. “We each wanted to win.”

  “Are you two the kind of future teachers we can expect? I certainly hope not,” Mr. Kingbridge continued. “You have obviously not learned anything from the TOT program so far. If this is the behavior of our TOT volunteers, you can bet we won’t repeat the program next year. I will give you one more chance. Your next class had better be taught perfectly.”

  I felt so guilty. They might cancel the TOT program because of something I’d done. I was used to hearing about other kids messing up like this — but not me.

  I was waiting for some kind of punishment to follow. Mr. Kingbridge just cast a disgusted look at us, waved his hand, and said, “You can go.” He asked Mr. De Young to stay behind. “I think you can kiss that extra credit good-bye,” Cary commented as we walked out of the office.

  I nodded. He was probably right.

  Then, to my amazement, he began to laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” I demanded.

  “You thought you were giving me the geeks and they turned out to be karate commandos.” He laughed, falling against the tiled wall.

  I was too shaken to find any humor in the situation. I left him there, laughing like an idiot.

  We’d spent so much time waiting for Mr. Kingbridge to see us, that I’d missed my entire lunch period and the beginning of English.

  Class was in full session as I slipped through the back door and into my seat. I had forgotten that Mallory would be teaching.

  She stood in front of the class, looking as pale and miserable as she had on Monday. “I’d like to recite one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson, one of my favorite poets,” she said in a voice so small I could hardly hear her.

  “Talk louder!” Lane Reynolds shouted.

  Mallory cleared her throat and raised her voice a little, but not enough to make a strong improvement. “ ‘I’m Nobody! Who Are You?’ by Emily Dickinson,” she said shakily. “ ‘I’m nobody! Who are you?/ Are you nobody, too?/ Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell! / They’d banish us, you know.’ ”

  “That’s pretty stupid,” Cokie said.

  “Cokie!” Mrs. Simon scolded sharply from her seat in the back of the class.