CHAPTER 10
PUNCTUATION MADE ITS MARK
It was three days into the sixth grade’s Nation’s Best chocolate bar fund-raiser, and my worrying had begun to fade.
In the cafeteria each morning, kids lined up to turn in their money, and Marquis would help me check them off the list. José was too busy “helping out with customer relations and motivating the sales force”—which apparently meant roaming around the cafeteria asking kids if they were going to eat their Pop-Tarts or drink their chocolate milk. It was hard to believe that such a skinny kid could eat so much.
To tell you the truth, I was glad José was roaming around. At least this way he wasn’t torturing me about anything.
When sixth graders turned in their money, a few of them called me Zack—not Shrimp or Loser or That Short Kid. I thought about asking Dad to measure me because I felt like I had grown. If not inches, I was starting to feel less afraid of everything. Not needing to avoid everything or worry about everything. Now I was in things.
“All we need is Janie and two other sixth graders to turn in their money tomorrow”—my numbers man, Marquis, slid a mechanical pencil behind his ear—“and we’ll be set, boss.”
At that point, even I was sure we’d have the whole thing wrapped up by Friday. Even Mr. Numbers backed me up.
“I reminded Mr. Akins to make the announcement that tomorrow is the last day to turn in the fund-raiser money,” Marquis said.
I smiled at him and patted him on the back. “You da man, Marquis.”
“You know that’s right,” Marquis said, collecting his papers.
“Seriously.”
He stopped and looked at me. “Thanks. You da man too.”
The bell rang and we rushed to math, Marquis’s favorite class.
Later that day, we walked into English, but for some reason everyone stopped at the door before they entered.
“Hey, Miss.” Sophia looked suspicious. “Why are you wearing a dress?”
I did a double take when I saw Mrs. Harrington. That day, instead of her untucked faculty polo shirt and a khaki skirt, she wore a red dress with a black collar. It even looked like she had brushed her hair.
“Why are you so dolled up, Miss Harrington?” Cliché raised her eyebrows.
“Today is …”—Mrs. Harrington couldn’t contain herself—“National Punctuation Day! Ladies and gentlemen, grab a pen and pick a punctuation station.”
The class looked different too. The rows were gone.
Punctuation stations were everywhere. Four desks were pushed together with big laminated punctuation marks hanging over them: question marks, colons, periods, semicolons, dashes, quotation marks, and exclamation marks. Everything.
“This way, Zack.” Marquis grabbed my arm and led me to the empty station by the window: the colon.
“It takes guts to start with the colon, boys,” Mrs. Harrington snorted.
Sophia and Cliché waved their hands from the exclamation point station.
“Miss, we used explanation thingies in our sentence,” Cliché said.
“Exclamation points!” Mrs. Harrington yelled. Punctuation must’ve been the Rapstar Energy Drink of language arts because Mrs. Harrington was hyper.
“Whatever.” Sophia tossed back her hair behind her shoulders, cleared her throat, and shouted: “I can’t wait to go to the dance!”
“Fantastic, Sophia!” screamed Mrs. Harrington, jolting the class again. “Exclamation points are for extreme excitement or YELLING!”
“Yeah!” Cliché screamed a little too loudly, jumping up from her chair. “Sophia will dance cheek to cheek with RAYMOND!”
“Can I yell something out, Miss?” Chewy asked, squinting.
“Well, you’re at the question mark station; can you?”
“Mrs. Harrington, can I go to the restroom?!” he shouted, then broke down giggling and wiping his runny nose. “Can I say anything that’s not a question?”
“Will you?” jumped in Mrs. Harrington. When she moved her hands, I noticed her fingernails were painted red. It was like she wanted to date punctuation.
Chewy’s legs were folded. “No, seriously, Miss, can I go to the restroom?”
She nodded, and Chewy sprinted to the door.
Janie Bustamante was at the comma station—alone. What did kids hate more: Janie or the comma? It was a toss-up.
“No one else wants to pause for a comma today?” Mrs. Harrington joked, smoothing her red dress. “This is a group activity, Janie. Why don’t you join Marquis and Zack at the colon station?”
“I want to be alone,” Janie mumbled.
Something was different about Janie today. She seemed off. More than usual.
“The boys are glad to have you.” Mrs. Harrington looked to us.
“Yeah, I know Zack is,” José taunted, his eyes burning a hole in me.
Like Ima Goodfriend, Mrs. Harrington didn’t get middle school students. She was all peace, love, and understanding. Middle school wasn’t any of those things. Did she think everything was good because we’d gone to a forty-five-minute Goodfriend Express assembly on Monday?
Frowning, Janie slammed herself down in the chair next to me.
“Zack and Janie, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g …,” Sophia cheered with pencil pom-poms.
“Explanation point!” Cliché yelled.
Mrs. Harrington desperately searched her notes for something to distract us. Hurry, Mrs. H., hurry! I thought. I ran my hand over my spiky hair.
El Pollo Loco sprang up from the period station. “The branch broke off. Zack was crushed. Then came a medic in an am-bu-lance.”
I slumped down in my chair so much I almost slid under the desk.
“I’m glad you’re at the period station, José,” Mrs. Harrington said as she crossed her arms, “because you. Need. To. Stop.”
For the first time, the class honestly laughed at one of her lame English teacher jokes. But all the laughter, all the wild behavior had spoiled her super-special English teacher day for good.
She slipped off her black high heels and shook the heel of one of them at us. “And you all need to stop, class,” she warned through gritted teeth. “Or we can take a punctuation quiz. Period.”
She parked herself behind her desk and started reading her e-mail, not looking back at us. That was how a teacher let you know she was done with you.
Even though Janie had sold the most boxes of Nation’s Best chocolate bars on her own, this whole thing about Janie being my girlfriend was destroying me. All I could think about was how on one hand, she was saving my reputation by selling candy, but on the other hand, she destroyed it by making everybody think we were a couple.
Just then, Janie slid another note to me.
Great.
I prayed no one had seen it.
I shoved it in my pocket and stared out the window at the cars in the teachers’ parking lot.
The rest of the class was an ellipsis …