11

The restaurant turned out to be easy to find. Luckily, it had a French-restaurant-type name: Chez Jacques. Julius didn’t want to go in. Facing Madame Cowper after he had run off on his class trip felt like facing his mother on report card day.

He made himself push open the restaurant door and peer into its dim interior. He could see small tables with red-checked tablecloths; on each one stood a wine bottle holding a candle. Toward the back, a large group was seated at two long tables. His class.

“Alors! Monsieur Zimmerman, what have you to say for yourself?” Madame Cowper left the table and came forward magnificently to confront him.

“Nothing,” Julius muttered. The less he said, the sooner the conversation would be over with.

“Rien? Come, come, Monsieur Zimmerman. We have been waiting for you for une demi-heure. Half an hour. You must have some explanation to give us.”

When Julius didn’t answer, she went on, as if to prompt his memory, “Monsieur Winfield told us that you saw une amie. A friend. Is that true, Monsieur Zimmerman?”

Glad that the others were out of hearing, Julius replied, half under his breath, “She was crying, okay?”

“And you leave your class in the middle of a class trip whenever you see une amie qui pleure—a friend who cries?”

Well, how often was that? Finding a crying friend on the street in Denver was hardly an everyday occurrence. And finding a crying Octavia was like being struck by lightning and winning the lottery on the same day: the odds were definitely against it.

“Yes,” Julius said, a note of defiance in his voice. “I do.”

Madame Cowper’s expression softened. “Asseyezvous, Monsieur Zimmerman. Sit down. It is too late for you to order a meal—you must tell your friend not to cry so long next time. But perhaps you would care to join us for dessert.”

Julius took the seat Ethan had saved for him and tried, without success, to slip into it inconspicuously as Marcia Faitak giggled and the rest of the class stared. For dessert, everyone ordered crepes filled with various kinds of jam. Julius chose strawberry. It was delicious.

*   *   *

Julius’s mother was out at some kind of boring computer meeting all day Friday and Friday evening, too. So Julius didn’t see her until Saturday morning, when she settled down on the couch next to him while he was watching some cartoons. He hoped she wouldn’t get on his case about watching them. He hadn’t seen Rugrats in ages.

“So how was the class trip?” she asked him.

“It was okay.” He kept one eye on Rugrats as he answered. Tommy and Chuckie in their dopey, drooping diapers reminded him now of Edison.

“What was the exhibit like?”

Julius shrugged. “It was a bunch of pictures. Some of them were pretty cool.”

“Which was your favorite artist?”

Julius tried to remember the name of the guy who had painted all the haystacks. It started with “M.” On the TV, Tommy and Chuckie were stealthily climbing out of their cribs.

“Um…” Julius said. “I forget his name.”

“Julius!” His mother clicked off the TV with emphatic abruptness. Julius knew she was mad at him now. “What happened to all your goals and resolutions? I thought you were going to give up cartoons this summer. Remember? Less TV, and educational programs only?”

“There’s nothing on but cartoons on Saturday mornings,” Julius said.

“Then why watch anything?” she said. “Tell me, Julius, tell me honestly, have you read any of A Tale of Two Cities this summer? Have you read even the first chapter?”

There was no point in stalling. “Well, not yet.”

“Three weeks of summer vacation have gone by, and you haven’t read anything!”

“I’ve read a bunch of books to Edison.” That much was true. He had started with Once Upon a Potty, for obvious reasons, but then he had found a little bookshelf in Edison’s room with a whole bunch of books he had loved when he was a little boy: Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, Curious George, The Happy Lion. One afternoon last week he and Edison had been so busy reading the books they had forgotten to watch their cartoons. Did that count?

“Julius, I’m glad you’re taking your job seriously, I really am, but when we talked about your reading goals for the summer, we were talking about something more ambitious than picture books.”

So it didn’t count.

“Julius, I know you have a lot on your plate this summer, and you need some time to relax on the weekends, but it’s just as easy to relax with a good book as with TV. Reading is so important! It’s the foundation of everything else you do in school, and your schoolwork is the foundation of everything else in your life. Honey, you’re going to grow up and have a job someday. Have you given any thought to that, any thought at all?”

Julius shook his head. So far all he knew was that he didn’t want to write computer manuals like his mom, or be an accountant like his dad.

He hoped his mother wasn’t going to cry. That was the worst, when his mother cried. She had cried over his final sixth-grade report card, and the memory of it had made Julius feel sick inside for days. She wasn’t crying this time—yet—but she was looking pretty close to it.

As he fiddled with the remote control for the TV, he accidentally turned it on.

“Julius!” His mother snatched the remote away from him and clicked the TV off again. “I think we’re going to have to make some rules limiting television in this house if your resolutions aren’t working. I don’t want you watching any more TV until you’ve made some real progress on your reading goals.”

As if to make the banishment of TV more concrete, she laid the remote on the highest shelf of the built-in bookcase in the family room. There might have been something funny about the gesture, for Julius was taller than his mom now and could reach higher than she could. But nothing was funny when his mother was so upset with him.

She stalked out of the room, leaving Julius alone with the blank TV screen.

*   *   *

Should he call Octavia over the weekend to ask her if she was okay? Julius could imagine Octavia giving one of two answers to the question. A scornful no, as in: Of course I’m not okay. My whole life as an actress has been ruined forever. How could I possibly be okay? Or a scornful yes, as in: Oh, that. I’ve already forgotten about that. But thanks for reminding me about one of the most humiliating afternoons of my life.

He decided against calling.

Midmorning he made himself ask his mother if he could go to Ethan’s house. “He asked me yesterday if I could sleep over.”

She hesitated.

“I won’t watch any TV while I’m there, if you don’t want me to.”

His mother sighed. “Oh, honey, that’s not the issue. Of course you can go, and if Ethan’s family is watching TV, you can watch it with them. I really don’t want to be an evil ogre here. It’s just that cartoons are such a waste of time. They’re a complete and utter waste of time. I want you to use your time better than that this summer. And I think turning off the TV here at home is going to help.”

She brushed back his hair from his eyes. At least she didn’t seem mad anymore.

“You’re not mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” she said, with an attempt at a smile.

But he knew that even if she wasn’t angry at him, she wasn’t happy with him, either. By now Julius thought he understood how his mother’s mind worked. When she was upset about one thing, it acted as a magnet in her mind for all the other things she had ever been upset about. So he was sure she was walking around thinking: My son likes TV better than reading. My son got three C’s on his last report card. My son got nothing at the sixth-grade awards assembly.

*   *   *

Sunday evening, back at home, he remembered to make up his goals list for the coming week. Needless to say, he hadn’t made much progress on A Tale of Two Cities at Ethan’s house, though he had taken the book along with him. Still, carrying it around wasn’t the same thing as actually reading it.

Reviewing his other goals: Julius had made some progress on toilet-training Edison, though so far nothing had been deposited in the potty besides cars and pinecones and sand. He hadn’t humiliated himself a single time in French class, if you didn’t count missing half of the class-trip lunch as humiliating. And he had had money with him when he invited Octavia to have ice cream in Denver. The week wasn’t a total loss.

Goals for the Week of June 30–July 6

1. Get Edison to make pee-pee in the potty. Or at least to try.

2. Cheer up Octavia. If she still needs cheering up. And if she’ll let you be the one to cheer her.

3. Keep up the good work in French class (ha ha).

4. Read Chapter 1 of A Tale of Two Cities. Read it or die!

On Monday morning Alex was quieter than usual. He must have minded missing the class trip more than he’d let on. He spent the first half of the morning staring down at his desk instead of spouting his usual wise-cracks.

At the break, he became more himself again, coming up to Julius to say, “I hear the Cow had a cow on the dumb class trip. Give me five, man.” Alex held up his hand; reluctantly, Julius high-fived him. You couldn’t leave somebody’s hand up there in the air, waiting for nothing.

“It wasn’t like that,” Julius said then. “I didn’t mean to upset anybody. I just saw this friend I had to talk to.”

“Yeah, yeah, but first the Lizard gives the Cow the slip, then you.”

But Madame Cowper hadn’t seemed all that flustered after either incident on the trip. The class trip from hell, Julius knew, would have been one with Alex Ryan on it.

And this morning Madame Cowper seemed positively exuberant. “Il est temps, mes amis, it is time, my friends, for us to plan la présentation spéciale, the special presentation, which we will give to your families and friends on the last day of class, a week from this Friday.”

Was the last day of class coming so soon? Julius had the surprising thought that he would almost miss French class, miss the sight of Madame Cowper adjusting her funny-looking glasses. Since the class trip, when she had been so understanding, Julius had begun to forgive her for the private tutorial in le Hokey Pokey.

“So,” Madame Cowper went on, “we will sing for your families, yes? And show them our collection of French paintings? And dance le Hokey Pokey. And we will give a performance together of Cendrillon.”

Julius didn’t recognize the name.

“You know it, I believe, as Cinderella.”

Cinderella! Seventh graders acting out Cinderella! The last time they had acted out a fairy tale, Julius remembered, was when they did Thumbelina back in second grade. Lizzie was Thumbelina because she was then, as now, the shortest girl in the class.

Apparently oblivious to the horrified silence that had fallen over the room, Madame Cowper began handing out copies of the French script for Cendrillon.

“Now, as Cendrillon has beaucoup de lines à dire, to speak, we must choose a Cendrillon who has shown herself an outstanding pupil of French, n’est-ce pas? Is it not so? Mademoiselle Archer, you will be our Cendrillon.”

Lizzie flushed with pleasure. At the compliment? Or at the thought of starring in the play?

“Now we must choose our prince,” Madame Cowper went on.

Julius shrank back in his seat to make himself as inconspicuous as possible. He knew that every other boy in the class was doing the same.

As Madame Cowper’s beady eyes surveyed the room for possible princes, Alex called out nastily, “How about Ethan? He’d make a great prince. He and Lizzie are both short, and besides…” He let his voice trail off meaningfully. It was clear that he meant to say they liked each other. Alex had been merciless in teasing Ethan about Lizzie’s crush on him last winter.

“Monsieur Winfield,” Madame Cowper said approvingly, “will you serve as our prince?”

She didn’t wait for an answer. Julius would have defined true misery as the look on Ethan’s face when he heard his fate.

Marcia was chosen as the wicked stepmother. Two other girls volunteered to be wicked stepsisters. A pretty girl named Alison was the natural choice as fairy godmother. Julius felt lucky that there were so many more major speaking parts for girls than for boys in Cinderella.

“Now we need a rat who will turn into a coachman.”

Julius shrank back again, but not far enough, for Madame Cowper said, “Monsieur Zimmerman, will you be our rat?”

At least the rat would have few, if any, lines to speak, unlike the royal trumpeter, who had more lines to speak than any boy except the prince. That part went to a tall kid named Joey. Alex was picked to be one of the mice who became horses. Other boys became pages at the royal court.

As they began laboriously reading through the play, Julius suddenly thought of Octavia. He and Ethan hated being in plays, but Octavia loved it. Or had loved it. Was she really through with acting? She couldn’t be. If only he could find some way to make her see that. The question was: How?