The Trouble With Mark Hopper

The note was wedged between the slits of Mark’s locker door. It had been a week since Mark mailed his Mastermind application, portrait and all, and so far no one had said anything about it to him. But this note got his hands shaking. This was it. He was caught. He envisioned opening the letter to find a message made of letters cut out of magazines and signed with blood: “I saw you take the painting.” He imagined having to meet someone under the bleachers after dark with a suitcase full of completed homeworks for the rest of the year in order to keep his secret a secret.

Mark glanced around before taking the note into his hands. His name was printed on the front in round, girlie letters, and it was underlined twice in purple pen. Did blackmailers use purple pen and draw curlicues in their ps? Maybe this was just an ordinary note. Back in elementary school he was used to finding notes on top of his books, having been slipped inside his desk surreptitiously. In fifth grade, when he had a desk with a top that opened up, he’d occasionally found a note Scotch-taped to the inside of the top. Once he opened the lid of the desk and a whole scroll unraveled, revealing the word loser in multicolored letters. Most of the other notes Mark got had similar messages. Only once had he gotten one that wasn’t mean, and that time it was a chain letter that the rest of the class had been talking about for weeks—he was the very last name from his class on the letter—and the girl who’d put it in his desk made it clear to him that she either had to give it to him or risk having bad luck until she got married. “And if I have bad luck until then, I probably won’t be lucky enough to get married, so I’ll always have bad luck,” she explained to Mark. She’d thought about her options thoroughly.

Mark had found a few mean notes in his locker (and once taped to his butt) at the very beginning of the year. But since he’d started being nice and spending time with the other Mark, there had been hardly any. As relieved as he was that the note was probably not an anonymous threat related to his Mastermind crime, he felt his stomach sink at the prospect of getting a mean note. He thought he had come so far. He ripped it open, figuring he might as well read it and get it over with. As though he were the other Mark, his eyes grew wide as balloons when he saw what was inside. A birthday party invitation. To a birthday party. For someone named Laurie Campbell. The invitation was printed from a computer and was cluttered with graphics of cakes and streamers and candles in a conga line. But there was a handwritten note at the bottom:

Dear Mark,

I know we don’t really know each other, but I hope you’ll come!

From, Laurie

Mark had to restrain himself from jumping up and down in the hallway. He knew all of his work was paying off. Now that his Mastermind application was in, he had time for friends and birthday parties. Laurie’s party would be the perfect start. Everyone would see him there and decide to invite him to theirs. He wondered how many people were going. He hoped Frank Stucco or Pete Dale would walk by right now. Then he would casually ask them if they were going to Laurie Campbell’s birthday party. If they said they were, he could just say, “Oh yeah, me too. See you there.” And if they said no, then he could say, “Oh, no? Well, I guess I won’t see you there!” But it was comments like that that caused him to find rude notes in his locker. It was comments like “good job” and “do you need help?” that got him birthday-party invites—well, just one so far. But he was making progress! He didn’t want—what was her name?—Laurie . . . to take back the invitation. He would have to be a perfect gentleman about it. And if he did see Frank or Pete there, they would see him hanging out with everybody, and they’d be jealous of the way Laurie would like his present best. He could picture the scene now . . . except for the minor detail of not knowing what Laurie looked like. And if he didn’t see Frank or Pete, then he could say to them the next day in school that it was too bad they weren’t there because it was so much fun!

Mark practically glided home, he was so excited. The party wasn’t for almost two weeks, but he wished it was for that night. When he got home, he called his mom at work.

“Is everything okay? Is Beth there with you?” she asked. He hadn’t called her at work since the first week of school when she had insisted he call to say he had made it home safely, and Mark had complained that that was baby stuff.

“Yes,” Mark said. “I just wanted to make sure you don’t have to work on November seventeenth. It’s a Saturday.”

“I never work on Saturdays.”

“Okay,” Mark said. “I was just checking.”

“Okay,” Mrs. Hopper said. “See you later, Mark.” She hung up.

Mark hung up the phone angrily. Why couldn’t his mother just ask what was on November 17? He could have just found out that he was going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize that day, for all she knew. Or he could have just scheduled an appointment to have his left kidney operated on that day. Or he could have been invited to a birthday party for someone other than a cousin or Jasmina for the first time since he was seven years old, which was just as big of a deal.

Mark picked up the invitation and knocked on Beth’s door. “What?” she shouted.

“Can I open the door?” Mark asked.

“Who is it?”

“Oh, come on.”

“I don’t recognize your voice. I’m not going to invite a stranger into my room! I’m not stupid. I could get murdered!”

“Yeah, because a murderer would knock, moron. And you’re pretty stupid if you don’t recognize your brother’s voice.”

The door flew open. “Oh, you’re my brother? Why didn’t you just say so?” Beth gave him the signature Hopper smile and popped her gum.

Mark wanted to give her his I-don’t-bother-with-idiots look, but it would have involved looking away from the invitation, which he was pretending to read. “Do you know where Orchard Lane is?”

Beth shook her head. “Look it up,” she said, before shutting the door.

Mark huffed. “Well, I was just wondering because I was invited to a birthday party at someone’s house on Orchard Lane!” he shouted through the door.

Mark waited a whole minute, but Beth didn’t respond. His family was good for nothing. He walked over to Jasmina’s house and knocked on the door. He saw the ruffle of curtains as someone checked to see who was there before Jasmina herself opened the door. “What’s up?” she said.

“Oh, nothing,” said Mark casually. “I was just wondering if you know Laurie Campbell.”

Jasmina raised her eyebrows. “Why? Do you have a crush on her, too?”

“What? No. Who has a crush on her?”

“Oh, just about everyone.” She rolled her eyes and fiddled with one of her braids.

Mark had been invited to the birthday party of someone everyone had a crush on! He felt his heart start beating faster, and worried that Jasmina would be able to somehow see it through his shirt, he crossed his arms. “But you know her?” he asked.

“Yeah. This tall. Long blond hair. Her locker is just around the corner from ours. Kylie has just about every class with her, so we talk sometimes. Why?”

Mark shrugged. “She invited me to her birthday party.”

Jasmina hid her surprise, but not so well that Mark didn’t notice it. “Cool,” she said.

Mark couldn’t help but grin. “I know!”

Mark’s grin was contagious. “Yeah, not bad,” Jasmina said. She patted him on the back. “I told you being nice would pay off.” Mark shrugged and stood there grinning, and Jasmina laughed. “Very cool,” she said again. “I was invited, too, actually. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go, but I’ll go if you go.”

Mark pretended to consider it for a moment. “Well, all right,” he said. “I guess I’ll go.”

After a few seconds, both he and Jasmina burst out laughing.

With having to wait to hear from the Mastermind committee and having to wait to go to the birthday party, the next two weeks passed more slowly than ever. Mark and his mother went shopping for some new dress pants and a nice tie that he could wear if he was a Mastermind finalist. His mother also suggested that they buy a nice sweater for him to wear to the party. He usually just put on whatever she bought him, but this time he went to the store with her and carefully considered each of the sweaters his mother held up, even though they all looked and felt pretty much the same to him. His mom picked out a pair of earrings to give Laurie as a present, and she asked Mark if Laurie would want something else. Mark had no idea—he still wasn’t completely sure of which girl with long blond hair was Laurie Campbell, though he’d been trying to figure it out since he got the invitation—but after much thought he decided that he should also get her a copy of his favorite book, Einstein: A Biography, in hardcover. He wrapped it himself using the Sunday color comics as wrapping paper—he had seen someone do that in a movie once and thought it was a neat touch.

He wanted to bring up the birthday party every time he talked to anyone, but he decided to keep it a secret. Maybe it was a very exclusive party, and Laurie would get angry if she found out that he was blabbing it all around. He wanted to ask the other Mark about it, but he decided not to unless he brought it up first, just in case he wasn’t invited. And when the other Mark didn’t bring it up at all, Mark began to wonder if he was invited, too, but was trying not to mention it in case he wasn’t invited. He thought of one day back in fourth grade when some girls asked Jasmina to join a club they’d formed called the Kewl Girls, and Jasmina made Mark promise not to tell Kylie, who wasn’t a member. The Kewl Girls ended up fighting with one another and disbanding into six individual clubs just hours after Jasmina joined, but for the first time Mark understood why Jasmina had wanted to make sure Kylie didn’t find out. He realized that if the other Mark was invited to Laurie’s party and wasn’t telling him, he would be happy.

The day of the party finally arrived. Mark woke up early and chatted with his mom excitedly at breakfast. He had so much time that instead of a shower he took a long bath, which had the added benefit of annoying Beth by keeping her locked out of the bathroom for longer. After his bath, he cleaned his ears and brushed his teeth. He put his new gel in his freshly cut hair and made sure each strand was perfect. He wanted to try shaving—he had done it once with his dad with a bladeless shaver—but he didn’t have a razor or any shaving cream, and he couldn’t feel even a single dot of stubble on his face anyway. He put on his nice dress pants and tucked in his shirt, then put on the new sweater. Looking in the mirror, he knew he looked sharp. Jasmina arrived at one-thirty and she and Mark piled into Mrs. Hopper’s car to drive over to Orchard Lane. Jasmina and Mrs. Hopper chatted throughout the five-minute ride, but Mark was too busy trying not to show just how nervous and excited he was to say anything.

Mark and Jasmina jumped out at the Campbells’ house, which was marked with balloons wrapped around the mailbox. They walked slowly up to the door, waiting for Mrs. Hopper to pull away before ringing the bell. A girl with long blond hair pulled into a ponytail with a ribbon around it opened the door. Mark had seen her in school. She must have been Laurie Campbell.

“Jasmina! Hi!” Laurie said. “I’m so glad you came.”

“Happy birthday, Laurie!” Jasmina said. She gave her a hug.

Laurie hugged back and then glanced at Mark. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

Mark froze. Was that a joke? He chuckled nervously in case it was. “I’m here for your party,” he said. He held out his two gifts. “Happy birthday, Laurie!”

Laurie crossed her arms. “Um, thanks. But this party is invite only.”

“I—I was invited.”

Laurie snorted. “I think I know who I invited to my own party.”

Jasmina took Mark’s arm and started to step into the house. “You invited him, Laurie,” she said. “And I told you we were going to come together.”

“You said you were coming with Mark Hopper,” Laurie said.

“I am Mark Hopper, stupid,” Mark said. He directed it at Laurie, but he didn’t know who was stupider, Laurie or himself.

A few other kids had gathered around the door to see what was going on. One of them, a girl Mark recognized from his computer class, giggled and said, “You invited him?”

Laurie spun around and assured her friend that she hadn’t. “No, I invited Mark Hopper,” she explained. She spun back around and looked Mark square in the eye. “Not you.”

The crowd inside began to buzz with recognition of what had happened. Some others came to see what all of the excitement was about. Pete Dale stood on a stair to tower over the crowd. When he saw Mark he said loudly enough for anyone who had yet to figure it out, “Laurie invited the wrong Mark Hopper!”

“And he thought the invitation was actually for him?” one girl whispered to another.

“I don’t know why,” the other whispered back. “Clearly he hasn’t been to many birthday parties. Look at his sweater. And at his present.”

“Yeah, what is he giving her—a newspaper?”

Mark just stood there, staring at the situation. He hoped that Laurie’s wooden porch might actually be quicksand, and that it’d slowly engulf him and close up once he had sunk.

Laurie’s parents made their way through the crowd to the door. “What’s the problem, honey?” Mrs. Campbell asked.

“I didn’t invite him,” Laurie said. She waved her hand as though she could shoo Mark away the way she would a mosquito.

“There was a misunderstanding,” Jasmina said. She was still holding Mark’s arm tightly.

“Well, that’s okay,” Mrs. Campbell said. She smiled broadly at Mark. “The more the merrier. We’ve got enough pizza and cake.”

“But, Mom,” Laurie whined through clenched teeth. “I don’t want him here. You don’t understand.”

“Laurie,” warned Mr. Campbell.

Mark had had enough. He pulled his arm back from Jasmina and thrust the presents into Laurie’s hands. “Here,” he said. He whirled around and stomped off the porch and down the driveway. He could hear some laughter and shushing and a whine of “But it’s my birthday.” Jasmina ran after him and called his name, but Mark didn’t stop. Once he turned the corner, his pace slowed into a lame walk. Jasmina caught up with him a block later holding his presents, but she was kind enough not to say anything. The two walked slowly and silently back to their street, not stopping or speeding up when it started to drizzle.

When they reached their block, Jasmina tried to give Mark a hug, but he pulled away and walked into his house.

“Is that you, Mark?” his mother called from the kitchen.

Beth looked up from her magazine. “What are you doing home already?” she asked as Mark climbed the stairs silently. “Did you realize no one would want you at their birthday party after all?”

Mark whirled around and stared at his sister. He wanted to spit out a poisonous remark, but he couldn’t muster it. He turned back around and continued silently to his room, where he collapsed onto his bed facedown and cried quietly into his pillow.

Later that afternoon, after Mark heard his mother talking to someone on the phone—probably Jasmina—Mrs. Hopper knocked gently on the door. Mark didn’t respond, but she entered anyway, and she sat at the edge of the bed and rubbed Mark’s back. She didn’t say anything, but she slid an envelope onto Mark’s nightstand. He opened it after she left.

Dear Mark Geoffrey Hopper,

Congratulations! Due to the quality of your application, the Mastermind Committee is pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a Mastermind finalist. We received a record number of applications this year, and we selected only twelve finalists. You should be extremely proud of yourself.

All of the finalists are invited to complete the remaining part of the competition, a personal interview and a teamwork exercise, on Saturday, December 1, which this year will be hosted by Marius College in Greenburgh. Details are enclosed. We look forward to seeing you in December. Congratulations once more, and good luck in the final round of the competition!

I should just stick with what I’m good at, Mark thought. I should just focus on winning the Mastermind competition. I’m good at getting A’s and writing essays and playing the bassoon. Clearly I am, because I am a finalist.

The thought cheered him up, but only slightly, because clearly he was not good at being a person other people like being around. No matter how many “how was your weekend”s and “thanks for your help”s he said, no matter how genuine his smile, no matter how many impolite remarks he stopped himself from saying, he was still the Mark Geoffrey Hopper who reminded the teacher to give the quiz she seemed to have forgotten about, not the Mark Geoffrey Hopper who got invited to birthday parties on purpose. No one liked him. And there was no way he could win the teamwork component if no one liked him.

If I have to do the teamwork part, Mark thought, I am not going to win. The truth weighed heavily on his body, and he sank deeper into his bed. I’m not going to win.

From the crack of the door his mother had left open, Mark could see the empty glass shelf where his father’s trophies used to be. Not even his own dad liked him enough to stick around. And he was going to fail in the only way he knew to bring him back. He whispered it out loud, his hushed voice sad but certain. “No one likes me, and I’m not going to win.”

For the second time that day, Mark cried.