The Spelling Bee Scuffle Read online

  * * *

  When I walked into the kitchen later that afternoon, I found my brothers in the depths of despair. This was not entirely a surprise, because Cale is always in the depths of despair, while Tate is usually in the depths of trouble, but today, they looked like two Cales and no Tates. Both of them were flopped across the kitchen table like limp pieces of asparagus.

  “What’s the matter?” I demanded as I sat down with them.

  “Lizards,” Tate croaked.

  “Eighteen lizards!” Cale moaned.

  “You found eighteen lizards?” I asked. This would normally make my brothers really happy.

  “Their kindergarten class is having a vote about which class pet to get,” my mom explained. She was at the table too, feeding my baby sister, Ginny, something that looked like smashed asparagus. “They can choose between a rabbit and a lizard.”

  “Oh,” I said, because everything made sense now. Thanks to a book about superhero rabbits with magic powers and vegetable weapons, Cale and Tate had recently decided to become magic bunnies. Not the kind of magic bunny that can jump out of a hat, but the kind of magic bunny that shoots lasers from its paws, strikes down enemies with one smack of its mighty powder-puff tail, and uses its teeth as boomerangs to retrieve stolen objects.

  “There are eighteen other kids in our class,” Cale said. “And they want a lizard.”

  Tate stabbed the table with an invisible carrot he held in his fist. “Thanks to Mary Fink and her robot brother.”

  “Robot brother?” I said. Hadn’t the munions called that sad-looking boy a robot?

  Cale put his forehead on the table. “Mary Fink is new and cool, and everyone wants a lizard just like her.”

  My brothers looked as slumpy as my friends had looked just minutes ago! I was fed up with slumpy people. One hundred percent fed up. “Stop it!” I said. “You can’t take this lying down like lizards! You have to fight for your bunny!”

  Tate looked at Cale. Cale looked at Tate. They both looked as if they wanted to fight for their bunny, but they didn’t know how.

  “She doesn’t mean actually fighting, boys,” my mom explained as she wiped smashed asparagus off Ginny’s earlobe. “She means fighting like in a campaign.” She took Ginny out of the kitchen to change her diaper.

  “What’s a can pane?” Cale said.

  “A campaign is where you do things to make people pick what you want them to pick,” I explained. I knew a lot about campaigns because my dad had told me stories about when he ran for student representative of his elementary school, and he almost won. Back in third grade, I ran for Cherry Hill student representative, and I also almost won.

  “We’re not picking anything,” Cale said.

  “Except for when Cale picks his nose,” Tate said. “But that was yesterday.”

  “First, you’ll need to make posters,” I told them. “Positive pep talk posters that convince people that rabbits are the best. Second, you’ll need a mascot — a really clever symbol that reminds people how awesome rabbits are.”

  “Wow!” Cale cried, jumping to his feet. “Those are great ideas! We’ll make posters that say, Lizards are bums!”

  “Yeah!” Tate shouted. “And a bloody lizard can be our mascot!”

  “No,” I said, because that was not positive pep talk. “Your mascot should be an awesome magic bunny, and your posters should have pictures of muscley rabbits. They should say stuff like Rabbits Rock and Rabbits to the Rescue and Rabbits Can Perform Feats of Amazing Wonder!”

  “Rabbits do have amazing feet,” Cale said, and without even saying, “Thank you for your brilliant idea, great sister,” my brothers jumped up from the table and ran to their room to start their campaign.

  I smiled as I watched them go. Josh would study and do a fantastic job and win the spelling bee. My brothers would work hard on their campaign, and the kindergarten would get a rabbit for a class pet. Everything would work out just fine. No problem.

  On Wednesday morning, I walked across the street and picked up Miranda. We went to Georgie’s house next, then up the street to where we usually met Alistair and Josh. I was very excited to see Josh. I’d planned out five positive pep talk things to say to him about spelling, just like I’d used on my brothers the day before. I was sure they would give him the extra happiness he needed to become a brilliant speller.

  But Alistair was waiting for us alone.

  “Where’s Josh?” I said.

  “Sick,” Alistair said. “Stomach flu, which is really gross, because it means he’s been throwing up and throwing up and throwing up, and it’s probably gotten all over his house and his bed and in his hair, because he probably wiped it on his face when he was finished. Then he probably threw up again.”

  “Dude!” Georgie said, which in Georgie-talk meant, “That is so disgusting! Shut up!”

  “I know,” Alistair said, because he doesn’t speak Georgie-talk. “Stomach flu is the worst. I got it last year on Thanksgiving, but I didn’t know I had it until I’d eaten turkey and some pumpkin pie, and when I threw up —”

  “Poor Josh!” Miranda said loudly. “I hope it’s not one of those weeklong flus!”

  “Weeklong flus?” Alistair said, forgetting about throwing up turkey. “It can’t last a week. He’ll miss the bee!”

  Georgie shrugged. “It’s probably a three-day flu. Calm down, dude.”

  “But if Josh misses the bee, the fifth graders will win!” Alistair turned to me. “This is your fault, Sylvie. We shouldn’t have made the bet. Now Josh won’t be able to spell, and we’ll lose the baseball field!”

  Alistair had never yelled at me before. He wasn’t a yelling sort of person, but at this moment, he looked as if he might punch me in the elbow.

  I squeezed my brains for something to say that would calm Alistair down. Something my mom might say to my brothers when they were upset. “Even if we lose the bet and the baseball field, the world won’t explode,” I said. “A volcano won’t erupt. A dinosaur won’t eat the baseball field.”

  My friends stared at me for a moment, probably picturing a dinosaur eating the baseball field.

  “If we can’t play baseball, recess will be ruined!” Alistair said. He ran off then as if he wanted to get far, far away from me.

  Miranda patted me on the backpack. “Don’t worry. Even if Josh loses, another fourth grader might win. We haven’t lost yet.”

  “I’m not worried,” I said, stepping away from her pats. “We aren’t going to lose, but even if we did, everything will be fine. Perfectly, totally fine!”

  * * *

  When the bell rang for recess, I looked at the baseball equipment sitting on the shelves and sighed. Georgie and Miranda sighed too. “We’ll find something awesome to do today,” I said. “Something even more fun than baseball.”

  Georgie raised his eyebrows at me, because his eyebrows knew the truth. Nothing was more fun than baseball.

  “It’s just for one week!” I said. Then I stormed out into the hallway where I ran straight into Giselle. I was just helping her up when I saw the rest of the kids we played baseball with. Twelve kids plus Alistair, standing in the hall, waiting for me.

  “Whoa,” Georgie said as he and Miranda left our classroom. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “We don’t have anything to do at recess,” Giselle announced.

  “The baseball field is the only place we can go,” said a big kid named Ezekiel.

  The rest nodded and began telling stories about how they had no friends or they were allergic to the monkey bars or the girls on the merry-go-round threw pebbles at them whenever they tried to get on.

  Miranda, of course, tried to comfort everyone by patting them on the elbows and saying things weren’t so bad. It was just for a week.

  “Unless Josh loses the spelling bee,” Georgie said unhelpfully, which made Giselle cry.

  “What are we going to do, Sylvie?” everyone seemed to say at once.

  I looked at them, looking a
t me, acting as if it were my job to make sure they had fun at recess. “It’s not fair!” I wanted to shout. “Not everything is my fault! Can’t you all think for yourselves?”

  I did not shout this. That would only make the rest of them cry.

  “I’m sure there is something you can do at recess,” I said, and when they opened their mouths to tell me there wasn’t, I flapped my hands so they wouldn’t speak. “You will be fine,” I said with invisible italic letters. Georgie and Miranda nodded their agreement, which gave me a fantastic idea. “Georgie, Miranda, and I will help you find an activity on the playground today. Then you will see that even if Josh loses the spelling bee — which he will not, because he is awesome — you will not die. A sea monster will not leap out of the nearest swimming pool to swallow you whole.”

  “There are sea monsters in swimming pools?” Tiger squeaked.

  “Georgie, you take Tiger and Natalie and those other kids down to the soccer field,” I told him, pointing to the kids who were pretty good at baseball and might like soccer. “Miranda, you take Ezekiel and Youmee and those other kids over to the swings and the monkey bars,” I said, pointing to the kids who had long arms and seemed like they might enjoy playing circus. “I’ll take Giselle and Alistair over to the playground.”

  “The playground!” Alistair said. “No way, Sylvie! You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like on the playground!”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, taking Giselle by the hand. “I used to play on the playground before I played baseball. Back when I was in kindergarten. It wasn’t that bad!” I took Alistair’s elbow, and together we walked across the blacktop to the section where kids played games like tag and capture the mountain. It was a pretty new playground with ramps and wobbly bridges and ladders and forts. I’d always thought it might be fun if I didn’t have more important things to do like baseball.

  “This is Giselle,” I said to a girl who was standing in the middle of a wobbly bridge, counting to ten. Giselle began tugging on my shirt, but I ignored her. “Can she play hide-and-go-seek with you guys?”

  “We’re not playing hide-and-go-seek,” the girl said, covering her eyes. “Four, five!”

  “Then what are you playing?” I said loudly so she would pause her rude counting.

  “Six, seven — we’re playing something else,” she said.

  “Can Giselle play?” I said, beginning to get annoyed with this girl, who sounded a lot like munion number one and munion number two.

  The girl spread her fingers apart so I could see one of her eyes. “No,” she said. “That would be too many people. Whenever Giselle wants to play, it is always too many people. Eight, nine, ten! Here I come!” and she darted off like a big jerk who purposely hurts other people’s feelings because she is a big jerk.

  “Hopscotch,” I said before Giselle’s almost tearful face turned into an all-the-way tearful face. “Kids who play hopscotch aren’t mean.” I grabbed Giselle’s hand and Alistair’s elbow and pulled them over to the row of hopscotch squares that lined the edge of the blacktop. There were six hopscotch boards on the playground and all of them were full. I scanned each one, looking for the group of kids that was the smallest and the nicest. One group didn’t wear any smirks and was made up of kids of all ages and sizes, boys and girls.

  “But we don’t know how to play hopscotch,” Alistair said as I led them over to this group.

  “I’ll show you,” I said. I’d never played hopscotch before, but I knew you threw a hopscotch puck-thingy and counted to ten and then hopped on one leg until you got to the other side of the squares. “Can we play too?” I asked a very nice-looking boy whose name was probably Timothy.

  “Sure,” he said with a big smile. I grinned at Giselle and Alistair to show them that some people on playgrounds can be nice. Timothy handed me the hopscotch puck-thingy and told me to take a turn.

  I stood at one end of the squares, the end with the number one on it, took a deep breath, and threw the puck-thingy gently across the squares. “I did it!” I cried, because the puck-thingy did not touch any lines and it made it to the other side, close to the ten. Then I jumped into box number one and began hopping up and down on one leg, because that’s what people did when they hopscotched. I tried turning around in a circle while I was hopping, but this made me dizzy, which made me fall over.

  “Okay, you lose,” said Timothy, still smiling.

  “I didn’t lose,” I said.

  “You did,” said another girl who also probably had a T name, like Theresa or Tasmania. “You missed square one.”

  “I hopped up and down in square one,” I said, demonstrating what I’d done.

  “You have to throw the shooter into square one first,” said another boy.

  “The shooter?” I said, because no one said anything about shooting, which I was against.

  “Here, I’ll show you,” said a girl whose name was probably Brenda. She picked up the puck-thingy and walked over to square one. “Say I’m on number seven,” she said. “I throw the shooter into square seven.” She threw the shooter into the square with a seven on it and turned around so she was standing on one leg and facing me. Then she hopped backward inside the squares from one to six. Like a flamingo, she leaned over on one leg, picked up the shooter, flipped around and jumped backward all the way to square one. “See!” she said. “It’s easy!”

  “You don’t have to jump backward,” said the T-name boy.

  “That’s just a harder way to do it,” said Theresa or Tasmania.

  “I’ve been hopscotching since I was three,” Brenda explained, as if this made hopping backward like a flamingo any less annoying. “You’ve never played before, right? That’s so weird — how old are you?”

  I stood up tall and looked wisely at the hopscotchers. “It doesn’t matter if I’ve never played hopscotch before because it is not a real sport. Thank you for your time.” Then I gathered Alistair and Giselle by the elbows and dragged them away again.

  “Where are we going now?” Alistair asked.

  I stopped for a moment and looked around. Kids were everywhere, controlling the playground equipment, being bossy on the swings, not letting people on the soccer field — telling everyone what to do. There really was nowhere for us to go.

  “The baseball field,” I finally said, because it was the only place left.

  Georgie and his group met us on our way down the hill. “Soccer!” he said with great disgust. “What a stupid sport. That ball is huge! All you can do is kick it!”

  Ezekiel leaned close to me and whispered loud enough for everyone to hear, “The soccer ball hit him in the face.”

  “Wow!” Alistair said. “Right in the face? Does that mean they let you play?”

  “No,” Georgie said in a way that told everyone they’d better not ask how he got hit in the face with the ball when he wasn’t even playing. “They said only the ‘soccer kids’ could play.”

  Miranda’s group appeared then. They looked as if they’d all been hit in the face by a soccer ball. Miranda’s arms were crossed with madness. “I can’t believe how rude people are!” she said. “They said we didn’t belong on that part of the playground! They wouldn’t even share the monkey bars!”

  “Shhhh!” I said, because that meant there was truly nothing for us to do.

  “Hey,” Georgie said, pointing to the baseball field. “Is that those fifth graders? Are they playing ball?”

  We gasped a group gasp, then took off for the field as fast as angry baseballers could go.

  “You aren’t supposed to be here!” I shouted at Jamie Redmond. She sat on the pitcher’s mound with the rest of the fifth graders surrounding her. They weren’t playing baseball, but they had the necessary equipment. They looked ready to play.

  “We’re not playing baseball,” munion number two announced as she tossed a ball up in the air.

  “Yeah,” said munion number one. “We’re having a mock spelling bee.”

  I narrowed my eyes
at this, because spelling bees were not about mocking people. Unless you were a munion, of course. Then you mocked everything.

  “You should probably do a mock spelling bee with Josh,” Jamie Redmond said in her I-know-everything-you-don’t-know way. “It will help him so he’s not nervous.”

  “Josh won’t get nervous,” I said. “And we don’t mock people for fun. Not even in spelling bees.”

  The fifth graders looked at each other and burst out laughing, ha ha ha. “A mock spelling bee works like this,” munion number one said. She turned to munion number two. “Spell radioactive isotope,” she said.

  Munion number two took a deep breath. “R-A-D-I-O-A-C-T-I-V-E space I-S-O-T-O-P-E.”

  “That’s two words,” Miranda said. “You don’t get two words at once in spelling bees.”

  “This is an extra-tough mock bee,” munion number one said.

  “So,” I said, crossing my arms so I looked extra-tough. “Josh could totally spell radioactive isomotrope.”

  “Isotope,” Miranda whispered.

  “Either one,” I whispered back.

  The fifth graders didn’t argue with me like I expected. They just smirked, then, following munion number one’s orders, lined up one by one with munion number two at the head of the line. As they walked by her, they said a really hard word that she spelled lightning fast.

  “This is boring,” I said loudly. Then I pointed in the direction of the school so my team would follow me up the hill, away from those show-offs.

  Miranda motioned to the dejecticated faces of our friends. “This is awful,” she whispered.

  “Josh is going to beat the pants off those jerks,” Georgie said.

  “We should do a mock spelling bee too,” Alistair said. “Tomorrow at recess. We’ll show them how good Josh is at spelling, right, Sylvie?”

  I considered this. It wasn’t a bad idea, as long as Josh had been studying. If he had, it would shut up those stupid munions and make munion number two afraid of losing. Plus, it would help our baseball friends know that they should listen to me more often because most of my ideas are good.