Richard and Khufu carry their lunch trays into the classroom. Richard looks at the whiteboard and notes that Mr. Blaggart has already erased their points. This, along with Deja’s missing point, puts them eleven points down. One point below ninety. Richard’s shoulders slump. Nearly a month of perfect lineup behavior down the tubes. It wasn’t fair! He didn’t leave his homework packet at school on purpose. Things like that happen sometimes. But everyone is going to blame him. He pushes his salad around on his cardboard plate, wishing they still sold tater tots in the cafeteria. He stares at his blank notebook page.
He could write about Palm Springs. That was the last place he and his family went for vacation. It was during spring break and the weather was supposed to be not too hot, but it turned out to be around a hundred fourteen degrees the whole time they were there. He saw a dog under the porch of an old house, trying to keep cool. Boy, was he glad he wasn’t a dog trying to keep cool on a one-hundred-fourteen-degree day. The best part about Palm Springs was the hotel they stayed in and, of course, the swimming pool—which he and his brothers practically lived in. He takes a bite out of his turkey burger and begins to write.
After he’s finished, he remembers to underline the adjectives once and the nouns twice. Then he remembers to read over what he’s written. Ms. Shelby-Ortiz is always telling the class to read over their work before handing it in. So he reads it over and finds a few places where there are missing words. And some sentences that aren’t complete thoughts, and some misspellings, too.
Finally, he hands in his work, then finishes his lunch while Khufu is still writing.
Five minutes before the bell rings, Khufu finally turns in his work and Mr. Blaggart sends them out. “What were you writing about?” Richard asks.
“Paris. I went there with my dad last year. Then I was writing about our case,” Khufu says.
Richard is just about to ask him what he means by “our case” when Deja, Antonia, and Rosario run up to them.
“You lost us the pizza party!” Deja says, looking from one to the other. “And we’ve been working so hard!”
“Yeah, it’s all your fault,” Rosario chimes in.
“Your fault!” Antonia echoes, before the three of them turn on their heels and stomp away. Then Deja stops and looks back at Richard. “And the whole class is mad at you, Richard. The whole class.”
Richard doesn’t know what to say. It is his fault. He watches after them for a few moments, then glances over at Khufu, and is surprised to see him looking “calm, cool, and collected.” Richard has heard his grandmother use that saying, and he’s always wondered what that looked like. Now he knows.
It’s right in the middle of math that Richard realizes this whole thing is actually all Carlos’s fault. Yes. Yes! He can trace this right back to Carlos. Carlos bringing that stupid triceratops dinosaur to school last week. If Carlos hadn’t brought that miniature triceratops dinosaur to school, Richard wouldn’t have asked to see it. He wouldn’t have had to shove it into his desk when Ms. Shelby-Ortiz passed behind him on her way to the whiteboard to write down their homework assignment. Then, later, when she did a surprise desk check she wouldn’t have found that toy and deemed Richard not responsible enough to hang his backpack on his chair.
If that backpack had been on his chair and not in his cubby, he would have put the homework directly into it! But no. Because of Carlos, his backpack was in his cubby, making it super easy to put his packet on top of the cubbies and then forget it when he got distracted by putting on his sweatshirt. Yes. His predicament is all Carlos’s fault. Carlos should have left his miniature triceratops dinosaur at home.
It’s not the whole class that’s mad at him. His friends aren’t mad. Though everyone is kind of quiet on the ride home. Everyone except Khufu (on his ugly orange bike).
“Don’t listen to Deja,” Khufu says as he drops his bicycle on Richard’s front lawn. Gavin and Calvin and Carlos stand astride their bikes.
“Yeah,” Gavin says. “She loves making people feel bad.”
“Yeah,” Calvin and Carlos agree.
Richard could tell them that really the problem began with Carlos bringing that toy to school. And he could explain, step by step, everything that resulted from his bringing in that toy. But Carlos probably wouldn’t see it that way, and it would probably make things worse. So he keeps that realization to himself.
His friends ride off and Richard walks his bike to the backyard. He wonders what he will find when he walks into the kitchen. It’s been a long day. Will his chocolate chip cookies still be in the vegetable bin, hidden under the carton of organic spinach?
Miracle of miracles. No one is in the kitchen, and the cookies are just where he put them! He grabs one and takes a big bite out of it. He feels better already.