The next morning, Richard is relieved to see the lighted school office windows and the open front door—open for the early-bird teachers. But then he thinks of Mr. Blaggart and his relief evaporates. That brings on a lot of what-ifs.
What if Mr. Aubrey hasn’t unlocked the classroom door so Richard can sneak in and get his homework? What if Mr. Blaggart is at school already and sitting at Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s desk, correcting papers or something? Or what if he’s already discovered Richard’s homework packet and is composing some lecture about responsibility and being a team player?
Richard’s shoulders slump as he gets out of the car.
“Good luck,” his mother calls to him as he heads up the walkway.
Richard doesn’t stop by the office. He hurries down the hall toward his classroom. The lights are on. He slows. What to do? Dare he look through the window in the door to see if Mr. Blaggart is in there? Before he can decide, the door starts to open. He hurries into the boys’ bathroom across the hall from Room Ten just in time. It could be Mr. Aubrey. Maybe he didn’t get a chance to sweep the floor the day before, and he’s doing it now. Richard opens the restroom door a crack and sees Mr. Blaggart exit the classroom and head toward the teachers’ lounge.
This is my chance, Richard thinks. He has to be quick. He scoots across the hall, through his classroom door, and over to the cubbies, and snatches his homework packet off the top. He’s out the door in a flash while stuffing the packet in his book bag. What a relief. But suddenly, at the end of the hall, there’s Mr. Blaggart, exiting the teachers’ lounge, with a steaming cup of something in his hand. He stops.
“Richard?”
Richard swallows. “Hello, Mr. Blaggart.”
“What are you doing here so early?”
“Um . . .” He has to think fast. “My mother had to drop me off early.” That was kind of true. She did have to drop him off early—so he could get his packet and have a chance at getting his homework done.
“I think you know you’re not supposed to be in the school building before school starts,” Mr. Blaggart says sternly. He seems to be looking at him suspiciously. His eyes settle on the homework packet sticking out of Richard’s unzipped backpack. “You want to turn that in?”
Richard follows his gaze. “No . . . I want to— Um, I want to . . .”
“Spit it out,” Mr.Blaggart says. “You want to what?”
“I want to check it over first,” Richard blurts.
Mr. Blaggart nods slowly with his mouth turned down at the corners. “Well, get to it, then.”
Richard hurries down the hall. When he bursts through the double doors leading to the schoolyard, it feels as if he’s been let out of detention. He takes a deep breath and jogs over to the lunch tables.
He’s able to get the Math worksheets done in record time. It’s review: multiplication tables. That’s no problem, since his mother made him memorize his multiplication facts all the way to the twelves table. Then there’s the three Language Arts worksheet pages on adjectives and the words they’re modifying. The instructions are “Underline the adjective once and the word it’s modifying twice, then compose five sentences on your own and underline the modified nouns and adjectives.” Mr. Blaggart had even added a space for writing a paragraph on a place anywhere in the world that they’d like to visit, and why.
Now, that was going to be a problem. That was going to take time. Richard sighs. How’s he going to get everything done?
He looks up to see Nikki and Deja heading his way. It’s too late to get everything into his backpack, away from their prying eyes. Deja seems to speed up as she nears. Before he knows it, she’s standing over him with her hands on her hips.
“Are you doing your homework? I can’t believe it! You’re doing your homework? You’re going to ruin everything for us. You’re going to make it so we don’t get the pizza party!”
“I accidentally left my homework in the classroom and I tried to get my mom to bring me back here to get it, but she couldn’t because—” He stops. Why is he telling all this to Deja, anyway? He doesn’t owe her an explanation.
“You’re going to be the one to make it so we don’t have one hundred percent of Room Ten doing everything they’re supposed to do.”
“Ruin what?” Khufu asks, walking up to them. He’s wearing something Richard has seen only old men wear: suspenders. And pants that look too big. Leave it to Khufu.
“I accidentally left my homework packet at school yesterday. So I got here extra, extra early to do it real quick.” He looks at Deja. “And I’m almost finished.”
Khufu reaches down and turns Richard’s paper toward him. “Oh, you only have the paragraph about a place you’d like to visit left to do. Just copy mine and change it a little bit.”
“That’s cheating,” Nikki says in a quiet voice.
Deja looks at Nikki but doesn’t say anything. Richard purses his lips. He thinks about Khufu’s offer. He really doesn’t want to be the one to ruin it for the class. He worried about that all night. Quickly, he reaches for the paper Khufu is now offering him. Time is running out. He has to do it. He has to.
Deja raises an eyebrow. She loops her arm through Nikki’s and they walk away. “Glad I did my homework” are her parting words.
Richard finishes just as the lineup bell rings. He’s still stuffing papers in his backpack as he takes his place.
They wait and wait for Mr. Blaggart, standing tall like soldiers with mouths zipped and eyes straight ahead. While they wait, Rosario rushes up to the line, out of breath and peering at the double doors. She finds her place and says in a not-so-quiet voice to anyone who cares to listen, “Guess what?” But she doesn’t wait for a guess. She just dives in. “I saw Mr. Blaggart at Big Barn!”
Without turning around, Deja says, “Are you sure it was him?”
“I’m positive. And he was with a kind of older woman and a little girl.”
Looking straight ahead, Antonia, who’s in front of Deja, says, “He has a little girl?”
Deja replies, “I think he’s too old to have a little girl. I bet it was his granddaughter.”
“Or his great-granddaughter,” Yolanda adds.
“Or his great-great-granddaughter,” Nikki whispers.
Then it’s all they can do to keep from laughing out loud.
“And the little girl had an ice cream cone,” Rosario continues.
“So?” says Deja.
“And it fell onto the floor.” Now Rosario has the attention of everyone in the line.
“Then the little girl started to cry. And guess what?”
“Will you just hurry up and tell us?” Antonia says, glancing at the double doors.
“He hurried and got her another cone while the lady cleaned up the mess.”
“That couldn’t have been Mr. Blaggart, then,” Deja states.
It was.
“I think Mr. Blaggart has a twin,” Nikki says. She looks toward the doors and draws in her mouth while her eyes get big. All the talkers suddenly fall silent and exhibit tiptop line behavior.
All morning—during journal writing, during silent reading, during workbook activities, during recess—Richard worries. Any minute, Mr. Blaggart is going to get to Khufu’s homework. Then he’s going to get to Richard’s. What’s going to happen when he reads their responses to the question If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? It could mess everything up. Richard glances over at Khufu, who looks like he has no worries. His expression is calm and unreadable as he writes in his workbook.
Khufu had written that he would like to go to Egypt so he could see the place where his name comes from. Richard had written that he would like to go to Egypt so he could see the place where Khufu’s name had come from.
That’s the problem. Their two topic sentences are practically identical—and everything after that is too similar as well. So it isn’t a surprise when Mr. Blaggart looks up from correcting the homework packets and says, “Khufu and Richard . . . come up here, please.”
Everyone stops working and watches. Slowly, Richard gets out of his chair. Slowly, he makes his way to Mr. Blaggart, sitting in Ms. Shelby-Ortiz’s special chair. Khufu looks nonchalant as he too stands and makes his way over.
“The rest of you can get back to work,” Mr. Blaggart says. “This doesn’t concern you.”
Standing next to Khufu, Richard looks down at his feet. Then he looks out the window behind Mr. Blaggart, wishing he could be somewhere else. He glances at the desk and sees his and Khufu’s papers placed side by side. He swallows.
Mr. Blaggart frowns down at the homework. “I’m going to ask you both a question and I want you to answer me honestly.” He turns the two papers so they’re facing Richard and Khufu. “I’ve noticed that your paragraphs are nearly the same.” He looks up and studies their faces. “Listen to this. Here’s Khufu’s response to the question.
“The place I’d like to visit is Egypt. Lots of people want to go to Egypt because they want to see the pyramids and the sphinx and the desert and ride camels and go shopping at the souk. But I want to see it so I can learn about the name Khufu, which is my name. I was named after Khufu, the ancient Egyptian pharaoh who ruled during the Fourth Dynasty. So I’d like to see where that Khufu lived.”
“And . . .” Mr. Blaggart continues, drawing it out, “here’s yours, Richard.”
Richard doesn’t want to look at it. He feels tingly all over. Mr. Blaggart begins.
“The place I’d like to visit is Egypt. Lots of people want to go to Egypt because they want to see the pyramids and the sphinx and the desert and ride camels and go shopping at the souk. But I want to see it so I can learn about the name Khufu, which is my friend Khufu’s name. He was named after Khufu, the ancient Egyptian pharaoh who ruled during the Fourth Dynasty. So I’d like to see where the real Khufu lived.”
Mr. Blaggart glances first at Khufu, then at Richard. “So who wrote the original?” he asks in a calm, even voice.
Richard swallows again. “I copied Khufu’s paper,” he says quietly. He barely gets it out. He knows this is going to be a big, big problem—not just for him, but for the whole class. He is probably going to lose all his tally marks. And Khufu will, as well. Which means the class’s total tally count is going to be below ninety. Which means no pizza party.
“You’re both benched for lunch recess,” Mr. Blaggart states. “You will each write a new answer to the question. You can get your lunch from the cafeteria if need be and bring it to the classroom, where you will finish the assignment while you eat.”
Khufu raises his hand even though he’s standing right next to Mr. Blaggart.
“Yes, Khufu.”
“Can I still write about Egypt?”
“No.”
“But—”
“You’ll be writing about a new place.”
Khufu returns to his seat.
Almost all the kids are looking at Richard as he returns to his seat, too.
That bigmouth Deja. He has a feeling she’s behind the looks. He plops down and takes out his notebook. He stares at the blank page and thinks. What can he write about?