Rules, Tools, and Maybe a Bully Read online

  Sometimes I fully don’t get the rules at all.

  September 12, Sunday

  I had to go to Elizabeth’s soccer game this morning. Montana C. was there too, since her younger brother, Buckey, is on Elizabeth’s team, The Purple Swizzles. Elizabeth had had the winning name choice for her team. My team ended up being The Flash. Cash suggested it, and since everybody says yeah to Cash, that was that. Luckily The Flash is a pretty cool name, probably better than The Blobs of Jam in Yogurts, at least. Or even The Purple Swizzles.

  Montana C. poked me in the side with her elbow while I was thinking about team names. “What?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t said The Blobs of Jam in Yogurts out loud.

  She pointed at the field. I looked. Elizabeth and Buckey were running around in circles at midfield.

  “What are they doing?” Montana C. whispered to me.

  I shrugged.

  Elizabeth and Buckey crashed into each other and fell down and then just stayed there plucking grass and giggling while the game went on around them.

  “Is that the cutest thing you ever saw?” Montana C. asked me.

  “It kind of is,” I admitted.

  When Elizabeth and Buckey got up and started running in zigzags, holding hands, Montana C. yelled to her mom, the coach, to take a video from her phone.

  “We were never that little,” Montana C. said to me.

  “Never,” I agreed.

  “Come on, let’s set up their doughnuts for them. Their first post-soccer doughnuts! How awesome is this?”

  “Pretty awesome,” I had to say.

  Later there was a cookout at the town pool. A lot of the fourth-graders were hanging out at the playground. We decided to play Tag. It was fun, even though the girls were playing too and Cash hates girls, so we are all trying to also hate the girls but we’re not too skilled at that.

  Well, Gianni might hate them for real.

  Noah likes girls and admits it.

  To show the girls who’s boss, we did boys-against-girls Freeze Tag. After all the boys were frozen, pretty much, we decided Freeze Tag was kind of boring so we flopped down onto the grass.

  “Flop Tag,” Montana C. said.

  “Who’s it?” Cash asked.

  “Nobody!” Montana C. said.

  We all just lay there in the grass for a while, like the end of a big bloody battle.

  We aren’t usually so quiet and still, but I guess we were all worn-out from getting back to school or running so much or maybe growing or something. Or maybe it was because the sunset was turning everything a little bit gold right then, which was a nice thing to watch happen.

  Then some moms called us to come eat. It was good timing. My stomach was starting to grumble.

  Montana C. turned to look at me, like, What?

  My stomach said, Blurble blurble bloop again, even louder.

  Montana C. laughed.

  It didn’t hurt my feelings, having Montana C. laugh at me and my loud belly. The opposite. That’s the kind of laughter Montana C. has, which is why she is the most popular girl in third grade even though she knew transition words, which gave us extra homework.

  Not third grade. I meant fourth.

  I am not fully transitioned to fourth grade yet, I guess.

  September 13, Monday

  My used-to-be-best friend, Daisy, is secretly afraid of Friday the Thirteenth. That is one thing I am actually not at all afraid of. But maybe from now on I will have to be afraid of Monday the Thirteenth.

  Because today I sat on a tack. I don’t know who put it on my chair or if it just appeared there. I did not cry very much, not nearly as much as I could have, with all that pain. No matter what Xavier Schwartz thinks.

  “That’s enough, young man,” Mr. Leonard said to Xavier, who right away stopped singing “Butt a-Tack! Butt a-Tack!”

  Mr. Leonard asked if I wanted to go to the bathroom. I said no. The bathroom? In school? No way!

  “Maybe you should pay the nurse a quick visit.”

  “Yeah,” Noah agreed. “He could get tetanus!”

  I mostly wanted everybody to stop looking at me and move on with the rest of the day—for instance, snack time. So I looked at my desk and tried becoming invisible. Mr. Leonard took my invisibile-ing as a Yes, I would like to go to the nurse, please. Daisy got chosen by Mr. Leonard to walk me there.

  On the way, she asked, “Does it hurt?”

  I was thinking about snack at that moment and what if we didn’t get back in time to get any or what if there was a zombie attack before snacks could get passed out so we didn’t get any pretzels, which is my favorite snack item. So I asked Daisy, “Does what hurt?” thinking she was talking about zombie attacks.

  She pointed at the part of me that did actually still hurt a tiny bit.

  I shook my head because what hurt most by then was my pride. The nurse gave me a throat lozenge, which tasted like shoes. I spit it out in the trash can on our way back to class. Mr. Leonard had saved us pretzels, at least.

  At Free Play after lunch, the most popular song was “Butt a-Tack.” I laughed along and sang it too, but on the inside I was the opposite of laughing and singing along. Maybe it was that horrible lozenge that gave me a stomachache or maybe I was getting tetanus from the tack. Or maybe rabies. Those are two of Noah’s favorite diseases. It felt in my belly like probably I was getting one of those.

  September 14, Tuesday

  Things there should not be tests in:

  Anything.

  Things there especially should no way, never be tests in:

  Recorder.

  But tough tomatoes on me, apparently.

  September 15, Wednesday

  If they are going to give us a test on recorders, they should really give us more time than just two weeks. And maybe a soundproof room to practice in, so if we have a little sister, she won’t go running around the whole house with her hands over her ears, screaming.

  And if we have a big drooly dog, he won’t act like somebody set him on fire when we just for goodness sake try to practice that horrible screechy thing.

  September 16, Thursday

  Mr. Leonard said to choose buddies for the Make a Colonial Times Diorama or Poster—Your Choice Project.

  Cash sits next to me. He turned to me right away and asked, “Buddies?” Of course, I said yeah to him about that.

  At lunch Noah asked me whether we should do a diorama or a poster for the Colonial Times Project.

  Which is why I had to say, “Oh, I already said I’d work with Cash.”

  “You did?” he asked. “Cash?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The new kid?”

  I nodded.

  “Really?” Noah looked like he might cry. “I just … I thought…”

  I waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. He looked very sad, so I said, “Sorry.”

  He walked away with his head down like he was looking for some poop to not step in.

  September 17, Friday

  Noah punched me in the belly while I walking back in from recess.

  He said he was just swinging his arm.

  But he didn’t say sorry.

  September 18, Saturday

  Mom and Dad’s anniversary is tomorrow, so they went out to dinner tonight to celebrate. Gingy and Poopsie are babysitting. They are excellent babysitters. They don’t believe in bedtimes or limits on screen time. They let us have ice cream and also gummy bears and also cookies for dessert.

  They probably made a bad judgment about that.

  When I eat so much junk food, I get very sparky inside me.

  They finally decided it was time for me to go to bed. So now I am stuck here, wide awake in my bed, while my stuffties Wingnut and Really Giraffe, who have been best friends for a long time, fight. Really Giraffe is mad because Wingnut was hanging around with Snakey at the foot of the bed, where the rough stuffties play. Wingnut tried to explain that he was just thrown there, but Really Giraffe twisted his long neck and turned away.
/>   Wingnut felt terrible. Even when I placed him gently on the Pillow of Honor, he looked glum.

  I tried talking with Really Giraffe about placement on the bed being random sometimes when I am in a rush in the morning, but he wouldn’t listen. Some of the other stuffties are taking sides. Even Bananas, who is President of the Bed and usually stays out of disagreements, is annoyed with Wingnut now.

  This bed is a very unfriendly place right now, full of grumbling and grudges. It is almost eleven P.M. and Mom and Dad are still not home. I think enough celebrating their anniversary is enough.

  September 19, Sunday

  I talked with Mom about Noah and his swinging punching arm. She asked if I wanted her to talk with Noah’s mom about it.

  “No,” I said. “Please don’t.”

  “Well, Noah’s mom and I are friends,” Mom said. “I know she feels very strongly about no violence and anti-bullying rules.”

  “This wasn’t violence or bullying,” I explained. “Noah said he was just swinging his arm and my stomach was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  Mom scrunched up her face like a combination of I doubt it and Wow, that was a sour lemon I just ate.

  That made me smile. I like when Mom is funny and on my side.

  She said a bunch of stuff about how Noah should use his words instead of his fists. And also, best of all, that she was very proud of me for saying, “Please stop,” instead of just hitting Noah back, because violence doesn’t solve anything.

  However: I might have made up the part where I said, Please stop, instead of just Oof.

  Still, though, maybe Mom is right to be proud of me. Other than that little lie I told. I mean, exaggeration. But maybe I am pretty good at friendship and behavior, because of not hitting Noah back in his belly. I didn’t think of doing that, is the truth. But maybe it’s not because I am a scared kid or a not-think-of-the-idea-of-punching-back kid. Maybe I am a good kid. Maybe I am good at being nonviolent, and at being a friend.

  A lot better than I am at the recorder, anyway. Well, Gingy and Poopsie love how I play the recorder. They could listen to me play the recorder all day long.

  It probably helps that they don’t hear very well, but I appreciated the praise anyway.

  September 20, Monday

  Luckily, I don’t have to take violin after school anymore because I was terrible and also my teacher moved to Nebraska. I don’t think she moved just to get away from me, but I am not sure.

  Instead of violin lessons, I have more free time, so today I went over to Cash’s house after school to work on our Colonial America project. He walks home. No school bus, no grown-up picking him up. He just points himself toward home and then walks there. I don’t think my mom knew that, but it was too late.

  Cash has two older sisters, it turns out. They are in eighth grade, and they look exactly alike because they are identical twins. So they are exactly as pretty as each other.

  Which is very.

  They were in the kitchen when we got to Cash’s house and they both said hi, but the way they say it, it’s more like haaaaaaa, like a long happy sigh. I don’t know what their names are because of their accents from Tennessee. Both names sounded like just a lot of vowels. But with a giggle hidden inside and also maybe some singing. So I didn’t call either of them any name.

  I said, “Oh, okay. I am Justin.”

  Which they thought was adorable! I don’t know why exactly.

  I meant to say they had a beautiful home, but I wasn’t sure if you just say that to grown-ups, so then I just said hi again. But in the regular way, not like haaaaaaa.

  They made us a snack of ice cream in bowls. The reason I got ice cream all over one of my cheeks was because I forgot where my mouth was, with those extremely pretty teenagers giggling and saying stuff like adorable! One of them said that I was just the cutest thing ever! and would I be her boyfriend? Then the other one said, No, I saw him first!

  I didn’t say much of anything.

  After our snack, Cash and I went to his room and played with all his stuff at once. No grown-ups came to say Not So Wild in the House. Because no grown-ups were in the house. Just two teenage girls and us.

  We didn’t get one single thing done on our Colonial America project and there was my dad, picking me up. Cash said, “So what? We’ll throw something together eventually.”

  I said, of course, yeah.

  In my family kids are not allowed to stay in the house without grown-ups. We are not even allowed to say So what.

  Cash is the luckiest guy on the planet.

  September 21, Tuesday

  There was a surprise math test today.

  Division.

  I love division.

  I love fourth grade.

  I love coming in from lunch and seeing 100% on the top of my paper.

  Sometimes life is so excellent.

  September 22, Wednesday

  At recess there was a choice of stay in to work on recorder with Ms. Zhang or go outside to play. Ms. Zhang recommended stay in for extra help for anybody who was having trouble with hitting the right notes or getting a nice flowing sound.

  Noah picked up his recorder in its velvet bag and my recorder in its velvet bag. With one in each hand, like he was going to twirl batons, Noah yelled, “Come on, Justin!”

  Cash, at that same exact second, was also saying, “Come on, Justin Case!” But he was going in the opposite direction, toward the playground.

  I stood there in between them, looking one way and then looking the other way.

  “Justin!” Noah waved the two velvet bags at me. “You know you need extra help! Let’s go!”

  I said, “No, I’m good.”

  That was a lie. I am not good. My recorder-playing breath isn’t a smooth steady breeze like Ms. Zhang wants it to be. It’s more of a gasping. Or a burping.

  I know that. I know I need extra help. I know the test is coming up next week. But I also really needed to just play outside for a little while.

  And I guess I was a little mad that Noah yelled out to everybody that I needed extra help. He didn’t have to do that. So I went on with the kids who were going outside to play.

  Now that I am in my room, setting up my Knights for an epic battle, I am starting to wonder if maybe I made a very dumb choice.

  Wingnut thinks I should just practice extra tonight to make up for it.

  Really Giraffe thinks Wingnut should butt out.

  Snakey thinks if I make those horrible noises on my recorder again, somebody might bite me in my sleep. Even though his teeth are soft and stuffed, they could be magically venomous.

  And the Knights, who are also big Not Fans of “Hot Cross Buns,” have weapons.

  September 23, Thursday

  Noah had three Oreos in his lunch box. Three Oreos is one serving, he said; it’s on the box. That is why he couldn’t share even half of one Oreo with me. Because then he wouldn’t have his full serving.

  I had only carrots as my to-go-with-the-sandwich part of my lunch. Noah knows this sometimes happens to me. Usually he is very generous during the hard times of my mom’s Health Kicks, when I have dried-out carrot planks in a Baggie next to my lunch box and a frown on my face.

  “Don’t your parents own a candy store?” Cash asked.

  “Yeah,” I answered.

  “So they should be all about junk food.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “You obviously don’t know Justin’s parents,” Noah said.

  “No packaged candy or cookies,” I explained. “And sometimes my mom goes on a Health Kick, so there’s only vegetables and wheat germ.”

  “Youch,” Cash said. He held out his bag of potato chips to me. I took a couple. They were just the shards, and very greasy.

  Not as delicious as an Oreo, but still good. Better than dried-out carrot planks.

  “Maybe if I had four Oreos,” Noah said, biting into his first one, “then I could help you out.”

  Cash held out his p
otato chips to me again. I shook my head. I didn’t want to take advantage of his generosity. Also maybe I wanted Noah to see I wasn’t a greedy kid.

  “Maybe you could sneak me one tomorrow,” I asked Noah. “Or, like, just one part, the bottom half. You wouldn’t even have to share the creme filling.”

  Bartholomew Wiggins came over and sat down at our table. “I was doing some extra recorder practice with Ms. Zhang. Why didn’t you guys come? It was very helpful,” he said. “Hey, Oreos! Can I have one?”

  Without looking up at me, Noah gave Bartholomew Wiggins a whole Oreo, creme filling and all. Which made me think maybe the problem was not just about the size of a complete serving.

  But when I mentioned that, Noah answered that he and Bartholomew Wiggins had to discuss their Colonial Times Diorama so please stop interrupting them about my food issues.

  September 24, Friday

  Today in music class we sounded like a traffic jam.

  Ms. Zhang smiled a lot, but maybe that is the kind of smile called wincing.

  September 25, Saturday

  Cash came over to work on the Colonial Times Project while Dad and Elizabeth were at Elizabeth’s soccer game and Mom was trying to read the paper in peace for a few minutes, please. So we just ran around outside with Qwerty instead of figuring out a Colonial Times Project to be working on.

  “We’ll get it done, Justin,” Cash said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  I am trying that, but Not Worrying is not my best skill.

  September 26, Sunday

  Tomorrow is our recorder test. All my stuffties and knights are very relieved we will be done with that thing finally. Really Giraffe thinks chess would be a better thing for them to teach in music class. I tried to explain that chess is not a musical instrument, but Really Giraffe ignored me. Maybe because giraffes have no vocal cords.

  I don’t know if that is actually true, but it is what Noah said one time.

  Today at the soccer game, after scoring his second goal, Cash said he is going to be a professional soccer player when he grows up. Noah said Silly Putty is actually a liquid.