Bing, bong, binnng! The chimes, indicating that morning announcements are about to begin, sound a little off-key today. Every two weeks, they rotate the student announcers chosen from Mr. Ramella’s Drama class. You’d think Drama would be an easy A, but Ramella’s a hard grader, and so far, unbelievably, the only person I know who’s gotten an A this year is Bo. Apparently, he wowed Ramella with his impression of a dying Orc from Lord of the Rings and was rewarded with a two-week stint as student announcer.
Ramella’s making a huge mistake. A dying Orc is one thing. Bo Tauber armed with a microphone in front of a captive audience—that’s just asking for trouble.
“Wake up out there, bed-heads!” shouts the familiar voice over the PA system. Everyone in my homeroom laughs, and most recognize Bo’s voice. “Hey, it’s Taub! Taubman. Yay, Bo boy!”
“Quiet during announcements!” hisses Mrs. Uridel.
“Urinal,” someone snickers from the back of the room.
“Shhh!” she insists, finger up to her mouth in a classic librarian pose, which is surprising since she teaches Spanish.
“Hellooo, Clarkstown cool cats! This is Bo-the-beast Tauber, coming at you from the main office, where the secretaries are hot and the coffee’s cold—”
Abrupt loud crackling sounds are heard over the PA, and then silence.
Homeroom boys pound the desks, laughing. Uridel’s shushing us so hard she sounds like a deflating bus tire.
“That was the shortest announcing debut in the history of the school,” says Ibby.
“He’ll be back,” I predict.
Sure enough, we hear a loud click. “I’m baaack! Sorry, we’re experiencing a little technical difficulty here in office-land. Moving right along and comin’ at ya with today’s announcements!”
Bo reads them out loud, managing to mangle not only the room numbers for the after-school meetings, but also the dates and times. I guess he forgot to mention to Ramella that he’s mildly dyslexic. We overhear Mrs. Korn, the vice principal, in the background, correcting Bo item by item.
In closing, the announcer is supposed to lead the school in the Pledge of Allegiance. Only, when Bo comes to the part where he’s supposed to say, “And to the Republic for which it stands…,” he substitutes his own version. “And to my soccer team for which I stand, one goalie, between the posts, blocking shots and penalty kicks from all!”
Static again—silence.
No chimes signaling the end of announcements. Boy soccer players in our homeroom go wild, chanting, “Bo, Bo, Bo!” The bell rings, dismissing us from homeroom.
It rained earlier this morning, and in the hallways, we hear the squeak-squeak-squeak sound of our sneakers against the tile floor. Ibby and I take a quick peek in the girls’ bathroom mirror on our way to Metzer’s for Science.
“Why does it always have to rain on picture day?” asks Ibby. “Look at my hair! It’s so frizzy, you’d never know that I spent over an hour blowing it dry this morning.”
“Forget your hair. Look at my humongous zit! Whenever anyone looks at our eighth-grade yearbook, they’ll see Tess Munro with Mt. Vesuvius on her chin.”
“Don’t make eye contact with it,” advises Ibby. “If you stare at it, it’ll just grow bigger. Here, dab a little Purell on it.”
“Isn’t that for cleaning your hands?”
“Yes, but it’s sixty-two percent rubbing alcohol. Maybe it’ll dry it up before pictures this afternoon.”
I laugh and dab. “Come on, Ibs. Metz hates it when we’re late.”
The bell rings as we walk in the door. Metz looks up from his laptop computer. “Third tardy, Tess. You’ll need to serve a detention.”
I wonder if he’d let me off if I told him I was in the bathroom formulating a scientific hypothesis on pimple eruptions.
“From the earliest moments of the history of the universe,” says Metz, “protons smashed into each other, producing radiation. This accident, at the beginning of time, resulted in extra particle matter. Look around you—we’re here today because of a series of cosmic accidents. We’re here because stars explode. All of you are made up of the same stuff as stars!”
Wow! Impressive … I think. But I can’t concentrate because I’m too busy running my finger over the ginormous bump on my chin, imagining that it’s about to have a cosmic accident of its own.
Georgie Taxus’s hand shoots up in the air. Last month, his mother petitioned the school board to put warning stickers on all Science textbooks: EVOLUTION IS JUST ANOTHER THEORY!
Georgie pesters Metz like an annoying horsefly whenever the topic of evolution comes up in class. We should have warned Metz. Georgie can’t help it. Last spring, his father sold a bag of potatoes on e-Bay, claiming they resembled Jesus and the twelve apostles—“spiritual spuds” he called them. High bid was $79.99 for the bunch.
* * *
The rest of the day goes downhill from there. Some jerk pulls the fire alarm and we have to stand outside for twenty minutes in the rain until the fire department gives the all-clear. Mrs. Korn comes over the PA and says that they’re in the process of studying the video from the hallway surveillance cameras to determine who the prankster is and, rest assured, he or she will be prosecuted.
By picture-taking time, Ibby’s hair has expanded like a Chia Pet on steroids and my zit looks like a third eye. Thank God, I have soccer practice today after that stupid levy meeting. Kicking the ball into the back of the net is the only thing that will make this day worthwhile.
How come bared teeth is a sign of aggression in the animal world, but in humans is supposed to mean friendliness? Olivia’s false smile doesn’t fool me one bit.
“I understand, Tess, that you’re busy with soccer, school, and whatever,” she whines, “but you and Bo are in charge of the haunted house and yard signs, and so far, you’re totally letting us down!”
“I don’t mean to,” I say. “I just haven’t…” Oh, why am I wasting my time at this meeting when I could be outside, like Bo, who’s ditched this to go to soccer this afternoon. “I’m working on it, Olivia. I just don’t have any definite answers yet from the people I’ve contacted.”
The problem with canvassing my neighborhood is that I take too much time at each house. After being at the Workmens’ for half an hour and at the Henrys’ for another twenty minutes or so, while eighteen-year-old Amanda Henry quizzed me on Luke’s love life at college, there just wasn’t time to knock on any more doors before I had to get home and study. And I’m still waiting to hear what Ibby’s parents say about the haunted house. “Some things take time,” I tell her.
“But, there’s only three more—” Olivia catches herself, eyes darting around the room, ready to duck incoming objects. A look of relief on her face—Bo’s absent.
Instead, I promise to get back to them tomorrow on the haunted house and double my efforts with the yard signs by spending all day Saturday and Sunday knocking on doors, until my knuckles bleed. That ought to make Olivia happy. She understands blood sports, at least when it comes to cheering from the sidelines.
* * *
When I finally make it to soccer practice, the only thing that changes is the number of laps coach makes me run as punishment for being late again.
“Six today, Munro.”
As I complete my last lap, Coach shouts, “Next fall, you ought to go out for cross-country with all the long-distance mileage you’re racking up!”
“Ha!” I say, sprinting to her side. Putting my arms over my head, I struggle to catch my breath. “How would you win any soccer games, then?”
“Humble little smart-aleck aren’t you!” she teases. “I lose you anyway, toots—remember, you’re up at the high school next year. And I can guarantee you, Coach Magaletta is not going to put up with tardies to practice.”
“It’s for a good cause,” I say as I finish stretching.
“I know, Tess, and you’re a good kid for trying. You know the rules, though. You’re late. You run.”
“Yeah, yeah, the rules,” I mumble. I jog to the end of the line for a three-person weave down the field. With so much pent-up energy and frustration from the day, it feels fantastic to nail the ball, one-timing it into the back of the net—score!
“Nice shot, Tess!” Katie calls.
“Thanks!”
We divide our team in half and scrimmage ourselves this afternoon, and before the end of practice, I could kick myself for rushing and not putting on my shin guards for protection. Brittany, who’s playing defense for the red-shirt team, nails me hard in the shin during a scramble in front of the net. Now, I have a throbbing red bruise the size of an orange on my left leg. Coach makes me ice it after practice.
On our team, soccer bruises are a badge of honor. We compare size, shape, and color—the reddish purple ones are the newest, and as the weeks pass, they turn from blue to green and finally to a faded light brown. This lump on my leg is a pulsing red mass. Alison jokes, “Hey, hematoma, what’s growing on your leg?”
“Forget her leg,” says Katie. “Check out the chin!”
“Shut up.” I pitch a piece of ice at Katie from the plastic bag.
“Ouch!” It nails her in the back, and she uncaps her water bottle and dumps some in my direction.
“Disgusting, backwash—thanks, Katie!”
“Don’t tell Ibby. She’ll avoid you—contaminated!”
“It’s not Ibby. It’s her mother who’d want me sterilized.”
“Find out about the haunted house, yet?”
“Nope. Ibs says she’ll have an answer for me tomorrow.”
“It’d be so cool if we could have it there. I’ve never even been inside Ibby’s house.”
“And you never will—dressed like that.”
Katie basically wears the field. Sweaty streaks of dirt down the side of her face. Mud covering her entire left side, from shoulder to shorts, due to an amazing goal-saving slide tackle at the end of the scrimmage. Cleats caked with tufts of grass and dirt. Not to mention the occasional green smudges from the goose crap covering the field.
Katie grins. “Beautiful, huh?” She extends her hand. “At least we clean up well.”
“Sure, potential runway models,” I say, getting up off the ground. “Oowah, my shin.”
“You mean, run-away models, which is what I’d do if I had to wear a pouty look on my face and four-inch heels on my feet! I’ll take muddy cleats any day.” She kicks them off and claps them together in order to dislodge the dirt and matted grass from the rubber spikes.
Slipping into our flip-flops, we follow the rest of our team to the locker room.
I take a deep breath, inhaling the smell of wet fall leaves. “This is the best time of day,” I say.
The rain clouds have cleared and the western sky is a pinkish purple color, casting a warm glow all around us. It feels like the earth’s being wrapped in a velvet blanket. Mourning doves coo goodnight, and in the distance, someone’s hungry dog barks for dinner.
“Any time we finish playing hard is the best time of day,” Katie says. She shakes the last bit of water from her bottle, sprinkling it over our heads like a blessing.