The Spelling Bee Scuffle Read online

  “We’ll have a real pretend spelling bee at recess tomorrow so you guys can see how great a speller Josh is,” I announced to our side. “Everyone come prepared with really tough words to give him.”

  “That’s a great idea!” Ezekiel said.

  “I can’t wait for tomorrow!” Tiger shouted.

  The bell rang. I took Giselle’s hand so if the mean hide-and-seek girl saw us, she would know that some people liked to play with Giselle. I didn’t notice the sad-looking boy until we were nearly off the field. He was standing in the trees again, watching, and when he caught me looking at him, he nodded as if he’d just heard everything I said and knew what I meant by it.

  * * *

  “Ms. Bloomen?” a voice said over the intercom later that afternoon, during the middle of silent sustained reading.

  Ms. Bloomen’s head jerked up from off her desk. “What’s the matter?” she cried. “Be quiet!”

  “Ms. Bloomen?” the voice said again, and I recognized it now. It was the voice of my good friend, Mr. Root, the assistant principal. “I need Sylvie Scruggs down at the office right now, please.”

  “Sylvie?” Ms. Bloomen said. She pushed at her messed-up hair with her hand. She looked at me as if I’d been the one to mess it up.

  “Sylvie didn’t do anything wrong,” Mr. Root said. “It’s her brothers. They’re missing.”

  One second later, I was in the main office. “Have you checked the toilets?” I asked Mr. Root. “When they were little, they used to climb into the toilets to play. Sometimes they’d get stuck.”

  “I believe the bathrooms have been checked,” Mr. Root said. He was a shortish man with a jolly smile. His head reminded me of my baby sister’s head, because they were both mostly bald. “Your mother is on her way, but do you have any other ideas?”

  I thought as hard as I could imagine thinking. “They want to be magic bunnies,” I told him. “Are there any thickets nearby?”

  A wrinkle popped up on his forehead. “No, not on school property.”

  “What about briar patches?”

  Two wrinkles appeared. “All plants with thorns have been banished from the playground, but you’ve given me an idea. Will you stay here in the office, in case your mother arrives? I’ll be right back. Don’t touch anything!”

  Suddenly, I was alone, and then, suddenly, I wasn’t, because the door opened again. It was that big kid always standing in the trees by the field! He was very unusual-looking, with messy dark hair and large, squinty eyes. His nose looked like an enormous shell tilting downward. He reminded me of a high school person, only sleepier.

  He walked toward the secretary’s desk where I stood, and I noticed something else: He walked funny. One foot fell down faster than the other, as if it wasn’t sure what it was supposed to do. Was that his robot leg?

  “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Root.” The boy’s voice was quiet and grumbly.

  I did not want to stand too close to him, so I walked around the secretary’s desk and sat down in her chair. “He’s not here,” I said.

  Without my permission, the boy sat down in a chair against the wall.

  “He might not get back for a long time,” I said.

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  “Waiting will be boring,” I warned.

  “S’okay,” he said.

  “You could be here forever.”

  “S’all right,” he said.

  I puffed out my lips. I sighed a big sigh. I tried to look busy and annoyed, but he did not leave.

  “You sure you don’t want to go?” I said.

  “Yep,” he replied. Then he sat there, watching me. Watching watching watching.

  I don’t like it when people watch me. It makes me feel like I have a sign on my forehead that says, I AM REALLY WEIRD! PLEASE STARE AT ME! I needed to look busy so he would stop watching me, so I began to straighten up the secretary’s desk. I picked up three papers and tapped them neatly together. I was very good at this, so I kept picking up papers and straightening them until all of the papers on the secretary’s desk were in one neat stack. Underneath the papers was a folder. CHERRY HILL SPELLING BEE it said on the front, in bright red ink.

  Oh my gosh! I thought. It was a folder about the spelling bee! I wondered what might be in there. A list of the class winners, a list of the judges, a list of the rules …

  A list of the spelling bee words.

  My insides exploded with tingles. I put my hand on the folder. I began to open it up.

  “Are you supposed to be touching that?” the boy said.

  I pulled my hand away from the folder. “Mr. Root told me to —”

  “Go through those papers?” the boy said. “You’re Sylvie Scruggs, right? You play baseball?”

  “Maybe,” I said, careful not to look amazed because he knew who I was. “How did you know?”

  “I like baseball too,” the boy said as if this answered my question. Then he just sat there, watching me again, a statue of jerkiness.

  “What’s your name?” I demanded.

  “Daniel Fink.” He leaned forward so he could see the folder. “Does that say Spelling Bee?”

  “No!” I said, putting my hand over the words.

  “Sylvie!” my mom shouted as she stomped into the office, a giggling Ginny on her hip. “Where are your brothers? What are you doing at that desk?”

  “Sylvie!” Mr. Root said, flying into the room with Tate and Cale. “I’ve found your brothers — what are you doing at that desk?”

  I slipped the folder underneath my neat stack of papers and hurried over to Tate and Cale, so everyone would remember that they were in big trouble, not me. The hurrying worked. “Boys!” my mom said. “You’re covered in dirt! What’s that in your hands?”

  Tate held up a mess of sticks tangled up with string. “We were making this.”

  “It’s a rabbit,” Cale said. “He’s our mascot. For our campaign.”

  “Mascot?” my mom said, looking at me with great suspicion.

  “We named it Tree,” Tate said. “Do you think the other kids will like it, Sylvie? We tried to build Tree a cage with some rusty old nails, but the cage fell apart.”

  “Because we didn’t have any Popsicle sticks,” Cale said.

  “I found the boys in the bushes,” Mr. Root explained. “They were finishing their creation and couldn’t be bothered to go back to class.”

  “We didn’t hear people calling our names,” Tate said.

  “We thought they were saying Pate and Gale,” Cale said.

  “And we don’t know how we got in the bushes,” Tate said.

  Cale nodded. “It was an accident that Tate pushed me.”

  My mom sighed because my brothers are so hard.

  “Wasn’t Daniel in here?” Mr. Root said to me.

  Surprised, I looked where Daniel Fink had been sitting, but he was gone. Mr. Root knew Daniel’s name. This meant that either Daniel was Mr. Root’s good friend, like me, or he was in trouble a lot.

  “He must have left,” Mr. Root said. “I’d better go check on him. Sylvie, I’ll escort you back to class. Boys, I think you’d better go home with your mother. You are very dirty, even for kindergarteners.”

  “Yes,” my mother said sadly. “I suppose they must come home. But, boys, you will hand me that thing you made. I don’t want branches shedding all over my car.”

  “He’s not a thing, he’s Tree!” Cale said.

  “He doesn’t shed branches, he sheds carrots,” Tate said.

  As Mr. Root waved me out of his office, I looked longingly back at the secretary’s desk. There it was, the spelling bee folder. It was practically begging for me to open it and find something to help Josh win. But unless there was a sudden earthquake and everyone ran from the room screaming, there was no way I could.

  When I got home from school that day, I called Josh.

  “Are you still sick?” I said.

  “Hi, Sylvie,”
Josh said in a croaky voice. “Yes, I’m sick. Stomach flu.”

  “That stinks,” I said. “And I don’t mean smells bad. I mean it stinks stinks.”

  “I know,” Josh said.

  “You mean, you know that it stinks or you knew what I meant?”

  “Both,” Josh said.

  “Oh,” I said.

  Then we sat there for a while because I was trying to figure out something to say that would help Josh be healthy again, until Josh said, “What did you guys do at recess today?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing to do if we don’t play baseball. Most of the kids on the playground are too mean.”

  “Really?” Josh said.

  “Yep,” I said. Then I waited for him to figure out what I was trying to say without me having to say it. When he didn’t, I said, “So, you know, it would probably be a good idea if you studied really hard.”

  “Okay,” Josh said.

  “Because it would probably be a good idea if you won the bee,” I said.

  “Okay,” Josh said.

  “We’re going to have a pretend spelling bee at recess tomorrow to help you,” I said.

  “Okay,” Josh said.

  “It’s important that you do a good job so the other kids know how great you are.”

  “Okay,” Josh said.

  “You mean, ‘Okay, I will study,’ or ‘Okay, I will win the bee’?”

  “Okay, I will study,” Josh said. “I don’t know if I’ll win the bee, but I’ll try.”

  “Good,” I said briskly, because this conversation had gone on long enough. “All you have to do is try. Try and win. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Josh said.

  “But right now you should go study,” I said. “Immediately. And probably for the rest of the night. Good-bye.”

  I hung up the phone and took a deep breath. He’ll do it, I told myself. The word okay basically means ‘I promise,’ and when Josh promises something, he does it. The end.

  * * *

  Josh didn’t come to school the next day.

  “He’s still sick,” Alistair said when we met him on the sidewalk.

  “No, he’s not!” I said. “He promised he would come today!”

  “He told you he was better?” Miranda said.

  “He was going to come for our pretend bee!”

  “He must have the weeklong flu,” Alistair said in a wobbly voice. “He probably won’t be better by Monday!”

  I clamped my hand down on Alistair’s shoulder to calm his panic, but panic was all that happened that day. Recess was even worse than the day before. We couldn’t do the pretend bee without Josh, so we played group games in the outfield like stuck in the mud and Red Rover, the kind of games where the rules are always changing and people always get mad and everyone fights. They especially stink when fifth graders are watching you play them, and they are smirking and calling you a bunch of loser babies. Even worse, Daniel Fink was watching us from the trees again. Only this time, he knew my name and he knew I’d touched that spelling bee folder. He was the sad-looking boy who knew too much, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.

  By the end of recess, my baseball friends were as lively as limp asparagus. The fifth graders were as triumphant as a herd of elephants. Something had to be done.

  “We are still going to have our pretend spelling bee,” I announced. “Only we’ll do it at Josh’s house.”

  “But he’s sick,” Miranda said.

  Georgie elbowed me in the elbow and gestured toward the listening fifth graders. “He probably doesn’t want all of us coming over to his house,” he said.

  “We want everyone to come,” I whispered. “It’s part of my plan.”

  “Great,” Georgie said without any happiness in his voice. “You have a plan.”

  “Can we come too?” Giselle said.

  I nodded. “Every one of us. Meet at Josh’s house right after school.”

  “Maybe we should ask Josh first,” Miranda whispered to me.

  “I already told him about it on the phone,” I explained. “I’m sure he’ll want us to come.”

  * * *

  After school that day, ten kids from our baseball team plus Miranda, Alistair, Georgie, and me walked to Josh’s house. One of Josh’s scary older sisters answered his door. Both of his sisters are in high school, and we never speak of them because they drive cars and wear makeup and talk really fast.

  “What in the world?” she said as she chomped her gum and looked us over. “Josh is sick! Why are you here?”

  None of us said anything, because it is not easy to say things to people who are chomping gum.

  “Come back when he’s better,” she said after a gigantic eye roll that must have hurt with all that stuff on her eyelashes. She shut the door and we stood there, frozen, until we heard Josh’s voice above our heads.

  “Hey guys,” he croaked. “What’s going on?”

  “He’s up there!” Ezekiel shouted. “In the window.”

  We stepped away from the front door. Sure enough, there Josh was, leaning out an upstairs window. He looked a little sick. Okay, maybe a lot sick — green with dark circles under his eyes and a red nose and red eyeballs.

  “You look awful!” Alistair shouted up at him. “Are you going to be able to spell on Monday?”

  “We’re here to have the real pretend spelling bee!” I shouted before Josh could answer that. “Can you come down?”

  “No,” Josh said in a wimpy voice. “I’m not allowed to play with anyone until we’re sure I’m not contagious.”

  “That’s a good idea!” Georgie shouted, because he is afraid of stomach flus. “Feel better, dude. See you later!”

  That’s when the munions arrived.

  “Aren’t you having the pretend bee?” munion number one said. “We wanted to help.”

  “Josh is too sick,” Miranda began.

  “We are having it,” I told them. “We’ll have it through the window. We can stay outside and Josh won’t have to come down.”

  “Through the window?” Josh said.

  “This is going to be hilarious,” munion number one whispered loudly.

  “I’m so glad we came,” said munion number two.

  Before they could say anything else incredibly rude, I began ordering everyone into position. Alistair and Georgie would be the judges, so I sat them on some large rocks in Josh’s flower garden. Miranda, as the word person, stood beneath the window. The rest of the kids — including the stupid munions who would not go away, even when I pointed out that we were having a way better pretend bee than theirs — sat down on the grass, because they were the audience. I climbed the tree nearest to Josh’s window so I could be his coach and give him great spelling encouragement.

  Once everyone was properly settled, I looked at Josh, then wished I hadn’t. Josh really did look awful, as if he hadn’t eaten for days. “Have you eaten for days?” I whispered so the audience couldn’t hear me.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, looking hungry and confused.

  “Well, that’s okay, because I’m your coach,” I said to encourage him. “I can give you positive pep talks and help you with spelling strategies in between words. Though I can’t tell you how to spell the words.”

  Josh put his hand to his forehead. He did some hard rubbing. “Okay,” he said.

  “Let the spelling bee begin!” I called with a thumbs-up at Alistair, who was too busy staring at Josh’s greenness to notice.

  Miranda was looking through the stack of words our friends had collected for our pretend bee. She frowned as if she didn’t like most of them. “Hippopotamus!” she called, giving Josh a toughie right away.

  “Um, let’s see,” Josh said, rubbing his ear. “H-I-P — wait, did I already say i?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Ehhhhhhhhhh!” Georgie shouted, making the sound of a gameshow buzzer. “No talking to the speller while they are spelling.”

  “But he asked
a question!” I said.

  “Ehhhhhhhhhh!” Georgie shouted again. “No questions in the middle of spelling.”

  “Georgie!” I called.

  “He got it wrong!” someone whispered. “Oh no! He got rhinoceros wrong!”

  “It was hippopotamus,” munion number one said. “A word that everyone knows how to spell.”

  “That’s okay,” Miranda called. “Good try, Josh! Here’s your next word: diagonal!”

  Oh no! Diagonal was a really hard word. Maybe no one would notice if he spelled it wrong.

  “D-I-E-A-H —” he began.

  “Ehhhhhhhhhh!” Georgie shouted.

  The munions laughed their horrible laughs.

  “You’re supposed to wait until he finishes the word!” I said to Georgie.

  “That’s a waste of time,” Georgie said. “There is no h in diagonal, so I stopped him.”

  “We’re supposed to be doing this like a real spelling bee,” I said, trying to tell him with my stern eyebrows that he was ruining everything.

  “Josh hasn’t gotten any words right so far,” Giselle said in her almost-crying voice.

  “He’s not going to,” munion number two said.

  “Here’s another!” Miranda called. “Fronds!”

  “Fronds?” Josh said, putting his elbows on the window and his head in his hands. “I’ve never even heard of that word. Is it French?”

  Somebody groaned. The munions snorted like warthogs.

  “Would you like a definition?” Miranda said. “You can always ask for a definition.”

  “Sure.” Josh stretched his arm across the windowsill and laid his ear on it as if his neck was too tired to hold up his head.

  “A big leaf that grows on a fern,” Miranda said. “The kind of thing that waves in the breeze.”

  Josh didn’t move. He didn’t say any letters. He didn’t do anything, probably because he had fallen asleep.

  “Ehhhhhhhhhh!” Georgie shouted. “Time’s up! Spell the word, Stetson.”

  “I didn’t know there was a time limit on spelling!” Ezekiel said.

  “Josh!” I whispered when he still didn’t move. “Wake up! You need to spell fronds!”