5

Julius knew he was going to have to make some new goals for the coming week. He definitely didn’t want the second week of summer vacation to be anything like the first. Reviewing the week’s goals: he had made the biggest possible fool of himself in French class; he hadn’t gotten Edison to stop throwing sand or gravel; he and Edison had watched more than an hour of TV on several days. He had had a conversation with Octavia, but instead of finding out more about her, he had let her find out more about him, which wasn’t on his list at all. The only accomplishment he had to show for the week, when you got right down to it, was that Edison hadn’t pooped in his diaper. That was it. Period.

Well, that wasn’t quite all. He had earned the first non-allowance money of his life, and that felt pretty good. But what could he possibly buy with it that was worth what he had gone through to earn it?

His mother seemed worried about him, too, but for different reasons. “Honey, you didn’t read any books this week?” she asked him on Sunday night, when he came home from playing water basketball with Ethan and some of the other guys at the pool. “I know you’ve been busy with your class and your job and your friends, but everyone needs to make time for reading.”

Of course, she had been reading herself when he came in. She was always reading. Too bad he hadn’t caught her at the end of the book. When his mother was within the last hundred pages of a book, the house could burn to the ground and she wouldn’t notice. She usually cried at the end, too. Julius was invariably relieved when he saw that it was a book she was crying over, rather than the memory of his last report card.

Julius hesitated. “I started one, but I haven’t finished it yet,” he lied.

“What is it?” she asked eagerly.

“I—um—I don’t remember the title.”

She looked so disappointed that Julius tried to think of a title, any title. Ethan had read A Tale of Two Cities last year when he was trying to impress Ms. Gunderson.

“It was something about cities. Two cities. A Tale of Two Cities. That’s it.”

Her face brightened. “You’re reading A Tale of Two Cities? Julius, that’s a wonderful book! No wonder you didn’t get it finished in a week. That’s hardly a book you whip right through. And it fits in so perfectly with your French class, too.”

Why did it fit in well with his French class? Were the two cities somewhere in France? Julius felt his face betraying him.

“You’re not reading it.” His mother turned away.

“But I’m going to,” Julius said. He hated it when the light went out of her eyes that way, all because of him. “Ethan read it last year, and he said it was really good.”

“I don’t want you to read a book for me, I want you to read it for yourself.”

“That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to read it for myself.”

His father came in. Julius’s dad was a tall, heavyset man, not a Mr. Cow, but someone who could stand to lose twenty pounds around his middle. Julius had seen pictures of his dad as a tall, skinny boy like himself. He sometimes wondered if he would have a middle like that someday, and wear a suit and carry a briefcase to his accounting office. The thought made his heart sink, although there wasn’t anything else he was planning to become.

“You’re going to read what for yourself?” his father asked.

“A Tale of Two Cities.”

“Good luck,” his father said.

“Dan! Don’t discourage him! A Tale of Two Cities is a perfectly thrilling book. I loved it when I was his age.”

His father gave Julius a look that said: I doubt you’ll like it, but you might as well humor your mother. Come to think of it, his father didn’t read books. He read two newspapers every morning, but Julius couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his father reading a book.

Julius made a quick call to Ethan. “How long is A Tale of Two Cities?”

“Four hundred twenty-two pages.” It didn’t surprise Julius that Ethan could still give the exact answer. “Why?”

“My mom wants me to read it.”

“It’s good,” Ethan said. “It starts out kind of slow, but then it gets good.”

So Julius put it on his list.

Goals for the Week of June 16–22

1. Make Ethan do all the cooking on cooking day.

2. Limit Edison to three tantrums a day, none in front of Octavia Aldridge.

3. Keep Edison from pooping in his diaper—VERY IMPORTANT!!!!

4. Start reading A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (422 pages). Find out if the cities are in France.

This week’s list seemed even more gruesome than last week’s. Week two of summer vacation looked as if it was going to be, if anything, worse than week one.

*   *   *

On Monday, Julius and Ethan passed Lizzie as they biked together to West Creek Middle School. She was walking. Julius had never seen Lizzie on a bike. Maybe she was the only kid in Colorado who couldn’t ride one, just as last year she had been the only kid in Colorado who couldn’t light a match to start the bunsen burner in science class.

Lizzie caught up with them while they waited at the next traffic light. “Hi,” Julius said, to break the awkward silence.

“Hi,” Ethan echoed.

Lizzie flushed with pleasure. Julius thought she’d probably sit all morning writing “Hi” over and over again in the notebook she always carried with her.

The light was taking a long time to change. Ethan was beginning to get the desperate, trapped look he often got around Lizzie. Julius tried to help out. “How’s it going?” he asked her.

“Wonderful! Don’t you love French? I dreamed I was in Paris last night, living in a garret on the Left Bank, in the Latin Quarter, selling flowers on the streets all day and then writing poetry all night. By the light of one flickering candle.”

“They have electricity in France,” Julius couldn’t resist pointing out.

“In my dream they didn’t. Maybe it was long-ago Paris, like in La Bohème, or maybe I couldn’t afford electricity because I was so poor and nobody would buy the flowers I was selling.”

She paused. “Except you, Ethan. You were in my dream, too, and you were the only person who bought any flowers from me.”

“The light’s green now,” Ethan said in a strangled voice.

“See you later,” Julius said for both of them as they pushed off, Ethan in the lead, pedaling as furiously as a rider in the final time trial in the Tour de France.

Julius didn’t usually tease Ethan about Lizzie—Ethan got teased enough by the other kids—but this time he couldn’t help himself.

“What kind of flowers did you buy from her?” he asked when they were locking their bikes.

Ethan punched him in the arm. “Cut it out.”

Lizzie arrived a few minutes later. “You bought a bouquet of purple violets,” she said to Ethan, as if the conversation at the traffic light had never been interrupted. “One small bunch of half-wilted purple violets.”

Julius noticed then that Lizzie was wearing a wilted-looking artificial violet in her bright red, curly hair.

*   *   *

That day they were learning the French words for the parts of the body. La tête. The head. La main. The hand. Le pied. The foot.

“Now we will play un petit jeu, a little game,” Madame Cowper announced. “I believe you all know how to play it. Allons, debout! Get up, everybody! You will form a circle, un cercle. And we will play la version française of le Hokey Pokey.”

The first question that occurred to Julius was: Is this really happening? Were they really going to put their right pied in, take their right pied out, put their right pied in, and shake it all about?

Apparently they were. Madame Cowper produced a portable tape player, and pushed the play button, and the familiar music for the Hokey Pokey began to fill the room, only whoever was singing it was singing it in French. Julius tried to listen for words he knew, the parts-of-the-body words, but they were all jumbled together with the words for put, in, and shake it all about. It was easier to watch Madame Cowper and do what she did.

But Julius almost couldn’t bear to watch her shaking different body parts all about. Instead he watched his classmates. Ethan wasn’t as good at the Hokey Pokey as he was at frying bacon. He kept getting his body parts in and out a second after everybody else.

Lizzie had managed to find a place next to Ethan in the circle. Julius could tell she was really listening to the tape and trying to hear the announcement of each body part as it came. Her face wore the look of rapt concentration that it did when she was writing her poems.

Alex and Marcia were laughing so hard they could barely turn themselves around for the last line of each verse. The more Madame Cowper shook, the more they laughed. Julius hoped she thought they were laughing at the silliness of the game itself.

The French voice kept on singing. The other kids kept on shaking their body parts. Julius tried to shake the same body parts, but he was one of the world’s less talented Hokey Pokey players. If only he could be at the pool doing the backstroke instead.

The tape came to an end. “Monsieur Zimmerman,” Madame Cowper said, turning to him.

Uh-oh.

“I think you are having some trouble with le Hokey Pokey, non?”

Was he supposed to answer? “Um—I guess I got a little mixed up in a couple of places.”

“Monsieur Zimmerman, you must listen to the words—écoutez bien—rather than watching your classmates. Encore.”

The music began to play again. Put your something in, put your something out. Julius tried to listen, he really did, but the words ran together so fast he couldn’t do it. He stole one glance at Lizzie. She was shaking her foot. He looked again. Her left foot. But now the music was on to the next body part.

Madame Cowper clicked off the tape. She was red and panting from the exertion of Hokey-Pokeying. “Alors!” she said. “We have had our exercise for today, non? Go outside, mes enfants, and have a little recess. If we have time at the end of class, maybe we will do le Hokey Pokey again. Monsieur Zimmerman, would you please stay here?”

Alex casually hummed a few bars of Chopin’s Funeral March as he headed toward the door with all the others.

When Julius was left alone with Madame Cowper, she said in what was obviously meant to be a kindly tone, “Maintenant, Monsieur Zimmerman, we will try it again. Allons-y! Come! I will give you une leçon particulière, a private lesson, in le Hokey Pokey.”

Julius knew then that he had reached rock bottom in his life. Lower than a private lesson in le Hokey Pokey you could not sink.

The tape began to play. Put your something in. Julius strained to listen. Pied? Main? Tête? Tentatively, he twitched his right foot.

“Non, non, le pied gauche, the left foot.” Awkwardly, Julius wiggled the other foot. This was like kindergarten, when he couldn’t remember which hand he was supposed to put over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.

As the tape wore on, Julius shook his way through each body part under the sharp eyes of Madame Cowper, who seemed to be correcting practically every one. By the second time through, he still couldn’t hear what that French voice on the tape was saying, but he had managed to get the order of the body parts fairly well memorized. The song ended with shaking your whole self. He knew that much for sure.

As if to celebrate the progress they had made, Madame Cowper joined in on the final verse, shaking her whole self, too. Julius made the mistake of glancing toward the classroom window. Half the class had their faces pressed up against the glass, watching Julius and Madame Cowper shaking themselves frantically in their private little Hokey Pokey duet.

Why couldn’t he have learned something useful in French class, such as what the French Foreign Legion was, and how soon he could join it?