I have to tell you that I am a little disappointed because after my parents homeschooled me last year I now have to repeat a grade. I guess they used the wrong book to teach me. It was titled Homeschooling for Dummies and it must have worked pretty good because now I feel like one.

“It will be for the best,” Mom had said after I went to where she was camped out in bed and showed her the principal’s letter telling me the bad news. “You’ll get a fresh start,” she added, and smiled just a little because smiling big takes too much out of her.

“How many fresh starts can you have in life before even fresh turns stale?” I replied, and took the letter out of her slack hand before it drifted from her grip and slipped under the bed. She had a way of forgetting she was holding things, which is another reason why I liked holding Carter Junior.

The night before school started I turned the house upside down and inside out looking for where Mom might have hidden my meds, because I wanted to be the best of me when I started school. But I couldn’t find them anywhere and I was beginning to feel a little desperate, so I went to her bedroom where she was lying down and gazing up at the ceiling stains.

I leaned over her until we were nose-to-nose. “Think!” I said, staring into her watery eyes like I was dipping into her memory. “Where are my meds? Think,” I repeated, and tap-tap-tapped a finger on the side of her head. “Hello?”

She suddenly sprang up and pushed me back. “Think!” she replied, and in a mocking way tap-tap-tapped me on the head with her fingernail, which was like the needle beak of a woodpecker. “Have you seen my meat cleaver?”

That conversation went nowhere.

So, on my first day back for a fresh start at my old school, I kept reminding myself to be strong, and in control of myself, and to stay on task like Special Ed had told me to do, because as I walked there I felt a little jangly inside like old Mr. Trouble was spying on me through a telescope and snickering while I marched directly toward an invisible trip-wire that would blow up my whole day.

It seems like the last time I was at school I was really, really happy and my meds were keeping me on the straight and narrow, and Mom was energetic, and Dad was out of our picture, but now so much had changed that I was really wishing I had my meds to back me up. I mean, why else was I high-stepping down the sidewalk with my head thrown back and arms pumping up and down like I was the conductor of an All-Star All-Roach marching band while singing one of Dad’s old favorites, “Hey look me over, lend me your fearrr…” By the time I strutted up the curved school driveway I was bug-eyed and sweaty from all my fancy-dancey footwork.

I marched past the row of dusty yellow buses that wanted me to reach out and draw funny faces on them, but instead I jammed my left hand into my pocket. If my hair-pulling yips got the best of me, my left arm would spaz up and down like a demon windshield wiper and I’d pluck my little yarmulke off and in a flash I’d be half bald. Plus, I could see Mrs. Jarzab, my old principal, not too far in front of me, and she was all smartly dressed up in a red suit with foamy ruffles at her neck and sleeves like she was made of whipped cream under her jacket. She was shaking everyone’s hand as she sang one of her three cheery greetings that harmonized into one complete song. “Why, welcome back,” she cried out to the kid on her left, and, “Hope you had a lovely summer,” she chirped like a cardinal to the kid on her right, and “I missed you so much!” she gushed to the next one on her left. I could have used her in my marching band but instead, as she repeated those three little verses over and over to the kids that streamed by, I held my hands up to the sides of my eyes like horse blinders and high-stepped right past her so she wouldn’t notice me. But she had a case of the kid-snatching yips and her arm snapped back and she hooked a finger through my rear belt loop.

“Is that my old friend Joey Pigza?” she asked warmly, and slowly pulled me back like she was reeling in a dog by its tail.

I turned and beamed at her with my chunky carved-pumpkin smile with the extra orange glow inside because I was secretly happy to be called an old friend. “I bet you are pleasantly surprised to have me back again,” I said, and really meant it.

She gave me a hug to hold me still as she stared deep into my eyes and hummed like a little engine picking up speed as she shifted through all the many gears of my past behavior. Finally she backed away and cocked her head to one side like a pirate’s parrot as she fixed her gaze on my yarmulke. “Are you having a good day?” she asked.

“Am I gonna be tested on that?” I replied, because before I left the house my mom did say through her locked bedroom door that I was “going to be put to the test this year.”

“Remember,” Mrs. Jarzab answered as she carefully reached up and removed my yarmulke and tucked it down into my shirt pocket. “A good day doesn’t happen to you, Joey. You happen to it.”

Then before I could think of something clever to say in response, she spun me back around and I lurched forward as she turned toward a kindergartner and sang out, “Why, welcome back. I missed you so much, and I hope you had a lovely summer.”

I marched through the school’s front doors with a smile on my face and wondered what nice thing I could do right away to make my new teacher like me better than anyone else in the class. My favorite teacher, Mrs. Maxy, had quit. Everyone said I did her in. One year of having me spinning around in my seat all day while yelling out “Can I get back to you on that? Can I get back to you on that?” really tried her patience. But she was strong. She held up for a good long while before I wore her down with a few of my tricks. First, I got a plan to remove my fingerprints and crammed my skinny little finger into a pencil sharpener and gave it a good turn, but only yanked my fingernail to one side like shelling a shrimp. That hurt, but Mrs. Maxy didn’t panic. She was even okay with me after I swallowed my house key in class and then brought it back for a show-and-tell sniff test. I saw her smile when I said in a Pepé Le Pew French accent that it smelled like “Pew-de-toilet.” It was only after I went running a little too fast with a sharp pair of do-not-run-with scissors and accidentally cut off Maria Dombrowski’s round nose tip which sprayed blood like a showerhead … well, I guess that was just too much for Mrs. Maxy or anyone else, and I was taken out of her class and sent to special-ed school. For Mrs. Maxy, that short time with me was like a whole fifty-year career.

I bet if I asked her why she quit she would look at me and scratch her chin like she was giving the question a lot of thought, and then she would suddenly holler out, “Can I get back to you on that?” She probably has my school picture—the one with my bandaged finger—on her bedside table to remind her that if she even dreams of getting another job she should take on something easy like wrestling alligators or being a crash-test dummy.

I liked her and those were fun times to think about as I walked down the main hall. I looked at my reflection in the glass trophy case and put my yarmulke back on. Then before I found my new classroom I passed the Health Office. My old school nurse, Mrs. Holyfield, who always took care of me, had her door wide open. I poked my head around the corner of her doorjamb and yelled out, “Guess what? Joey Pigza is back!”

She dropped her pen and popped up from her old desk chair like she had just sat on a splinter. “Joey!” she cried. “Get your sweet self over here and give me a death-grip hug!” She swung her soft tan arms out wide and gave me a love target as big as her heart. I grinned my impish grin—the one I save for best friends—and lined her up in my sights.

Since there was a desk between us I just took a few steps back, and then revved up. “Incoming!” I shouted, and launched myself headfirst over her desk like a missile. She didn’t have time to duck and we slammed back against her wall so hard the display shelf of bad dental hygiene came unhinged. Rotten teeth scattered across the hard yellow floor as if they had been knocked out of my own jaw. I counted up the cavities like I do when I open my mouth real wide in the mirror. The black spots in my teeth look like sea urchins hiding in the cracks of coral. I like to gaze past them and dive deep down my throat as if it’s a secret tunnel leading to a trap door where I can crawl out and escape myself, and later come strolling back home like a totally normal kid as shiny and fresh as Lincoln rolling in on a new penny.

But when I give it some thought I don’t really want to be a totally normal kid. It is so much easier to be in trouble all the time because then everyone wants to help you, which makes the other kids jealous because when you are normal it is never your turn to get help, because somebody like me is always at the front of the line like a circus seal bouncing a ball on its nose and slapping its flippers while arfing out “Me! Me! Me!”

“Joey,” Mrs. Holyfield suddenly said, locking my face in front of hers. “Look into my eyes.”

I did.

She didn’t blink. “You still got meds?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said breathlessly. “I got a med patch.” I wished she hadn’t asked because when I left for school I swiped the old Out of Order patch off my front door.

“Let’s see it,” she said.

I nervously struggled to pull up my shirtsleeve, and when I did I showed her where I had that old patch rubber-banded onto my forearm. It looked a little crusty.

“Out of order?” she read out loud, and raised an eyebrow. Then she hunched forward and sniffed at it like a police dog. Her nose crinkled up. “Pee-yew! When’s the last time you changed that nasty thing?” She grimaced, like she was talking about one of Carter Junior’s prizewinning diapers.

I started to count days going backward from when Mom hid them but abruptly stopped the instant Mrs. Holyfield yanked my old patch off in one painful rubber band–snapping rip and flipped it toward the trash can. Then she spun around and opened the bottom drawer of her file cabinet. She fingered through a rack of manila folders until she found mine and pulled it up.

“I was hoping you’d return,” she said, and opened my file. “I hate it when the great kids move on.”

“Me too,” I said. “Believe me, it feels a lot better to return to a place you love than to leave a place you love.”

“I still have a few emergency med patches left over from before,” she continued as she plucked one out of the folder and ripped the paper wrapper down the side. “Now stick out your arm.”

I did. She peeled off the nonstick back and slapped it on.

“Thanks,” I said, and then I took a deep breath and leaned way into her like an exclamation point at rest.

After a minute she lifted my chin with a finger and gave me a no-nonsense tell-the-truth look. “How’s your mom?” she asked.

That was a trick question. Once, when I felt bad, Mrs. Holyfield said there was a silver lining to me having parents who were a mess because when I’m a mess everyone blames it on the parents. But how I am isn’t all Mom’s fault.

“She’s pretty great sort of,” I said, and dropped down onto all fours to pick up the jagged teeth. I wanted to sneak a few into my pocket. “She had a baby, which means I have a brother and he looks just like me.” I stressed the me part because I was so proud. “His name is Carter Junior—named after my dad, who is now renamed Carter Senior, or ‘Mr. Adios’ as my mom calls him.”

“What’s your dad up to these days?” she asked casually, but I knew her methods. Her nice questions were really like magnets attempting to extract secret thoughts out of my brain.

So I pulled my face way back into my neck, and then pulled my neck way down into my shoulders like a turtle. “Oh, he’s really great,” I said in a choked-off voice. “He’s turned into a new man.” That part about him being new was true because he had gone through a full-on face-lift that got rotten from an infection. He may have turned himself into something like Frankenstein’s monster, but I don’t know for sure because before he took his bandages off and revealed his new Hollywood Horror face to everyone, he ran away from Mom and me and Carter Junior, and all I ever found of him in the hospital parking lot was the scabby gauze bandage that had been wrapped around his oozing face like an infected flag from a nation of zombies.

“Yeah, Dad is lookin’ good,” I repeated, thinking it would be best to not say another word—which for me is hard to do.

“I’d like to meet up with him someday,” she replied.

So would I, I thought, but my mouth said, “I’m sure you will. He’ll come in for Parents’ Day this year.” The moment I said that I knew it was time for me to go to class before I said more stupid things, like “Why don’t you come over for a big Pig-zah family dinner?”

I took a step toward the door, but she wasn’t finished with me and clamped a hand on my shoulder. That’s the one thing about always being in trouble. Even when you stop being trouble people continue to want to help you, because they are never quite sure you have straightened up. I guess once a nail is bent there is no way to make it perfectly straight again. You can almost straighten it out, almost make it new, but that little weak spot always remains.

“Don’t worry about the meds,” I said. “I’ll do some spring-cleaning and find them in a sock or somewhere.”

“Don’t wait until spring,” she advised, “because you’re already a bit springy. You hear me?”

I gave her my big smile again.

She gave me a pat-pat on the top of my head like a hammer going tap-tap on the head of a nail. Then she lifted my yarmulke and slowly combed her fingers through my hair, where I’m sure she felt around for my old weak spot.