Watch me.
Trouble & Feeling #1: mad. Jake got in trouble in third grade. The teacher, Miss Ottinger, got fed up with our messy cubbies—except Jake’s, of course, which was always perfect. So she told us to straighten them up and she would inspect them. Anybody with a messy cubby would get a detention. So we all cleaned up our cubbies—except for Jake, because he didn’t need to—and Miss Ottinger inspected them. Imagine our shock when she told us that everybody’s cubby was neat except for one—Jake’s!
To this day nobody knows how it happened. Maybe somebody was mad at Jake and messed up his cubby. Whatever, Jake blew a fuse. “That’s a lie!” he shouted. “My cubby is neat!”
I don’t know what was more shocking, that Jake had a messy cubby or that he blew a fuse. The teacher’s eyes boggled. Jake was her little angel. “I’m sorry, Jake,” she said (and she looked it), “but fair is fair. You know what I said. You’ll stay after school today.”
Jake screamed, “No! No! I’m being framed! I didn’t do it!”
I already knew some things that Jake couldn’t stand, like strawberry ice cream and mushrooms and me putting my finger in his ear. But now I was finding out the thing he hated most of all: getting accused of something he didn’t do. For the rest of the afternoon he sat there wagging his head and mumbling, “I didn’t do it…I didn’t do it….”
Late bus for Jake. When the bell rang and everybody else got up to go home, Jake stayed put. So did I. I didn’t have any big reason or anything. I just did it. I guess I figured if Jake got detention, so did I. We would both get the late bus.
Jake looked over and growled, “What’re you doing here?”
“I’m waiting with you,” I said.
“You don’t have detention. I do.”
“I know,” I said.
He practically shoved me off my seat. “So go!” He was screaming again. “It’s not you! It’s me! I don’t want you here!”
I ran from the class. I didn’t even get my coat from the cubby. My face was burning.
Trouble & Feeling #2: scared. Jake broke something. One of those tulip-shaped wineglasses. He was snooping in the cupboard where Mom keeps the good dishes and stuff. He decided it would be cool and grown-up to drink water out of a wineglass. So he did. “You better wash it and dry it and put it back so Mom won’t know,” I warned him. He was washing it when it fell in the sink and broke. Jake went into shock. A funny, squeaky sound was coming out of him.
“Clean it up,” I said, “and just don’t say anything.” For once Jake obeyed me. He knew that when it came to dealing with trouble, I was the expert.
He cleaned it up and that was that—for a while. And then one day at dinner Mom said, “I’m missing a wineglass. Do either of you know about it?”
I’ve heard of people freezing with fright. That’s what Jake did. He froze. He stared at his mashed potatoes. I’m pretty sure Mom noticed and figured it out, but right then I piped up: “I did it.”
Why? Who knows? Maybe just out of habit. Maybe I confessed because I took pity on Jake. I knew how he hated getting in trouble.
Or maybe I was just being selfish. Maybe I didn’t want to pass up a chance to get sent to the Cool-It Room and work on my burping.
Anyway, they were Jake’s two big troubles: The Detention and The Broken Wineglass. So one day I reminded him about them. Of course he denied everything. He said he never got mad about the unfair detention and was never scared about breaking the glass. And anyway, he said, even if it was true, it just shows how different we are, because I would not have blown a fuse if I had gotten a detention. And about the broken glass, he said he let me take the punishment because “I knew you love the Cool-It Room so much.”
And so the silly argument went on and on—
“We’re different.”
“No we’re not!”
I emailed Poppy from our family computer: “Jake says we’re different. He says we’re different about everything except we came from twin eggs. Tell him he’s wrong, Poppy!!!!!”
Poppy BlackBerried back: “Cool it. It’s just a phase. He’ll get over it.”
Everybody was telling me to cool it. How was I supposed to cool it when I had an aggravating moronic brother?
“We’re different.”
“No we’re not!”
On and on…
until…
One Day at the Beach….