Setting up the aquarium is a lot of work. It takes me the whole rest of Saturday. But it’s worth it. By Saturday night my aquarium’s air pump is humming softly, my artificial ferns are securely planted in the gravel, the water measures a steady seventy-five degrees on my new thermometer, my six hardy new fish are swimming around their new home, and Victor, the little diving man, is anchored among the ferns, watching over this miniature underwater world.

“Good night, guys,” I whisper to the fish as I turn out their light before going up to bed. “Good night, Victor.” I feel a little silly, but only a little.

Sunday morning I rush downstairs. Mr. Newman knew what he was talking about, right? Still, I’m worried. But I cheer up when I see the six fish swimming just as they had been the night before. Way to go, guys! I feed them—just a little—that’s what Mr. Newman and Handbook for the New Aquarist said. One by one the fish wiggle to the surface to gobble a few flakes. They are excellent eaters.

I spend a lot of Sunday watching the fish. I invite Evan to come look at them, and he thinks they’re cool. On the computer room floor, we make a giant setup of an underwater battle station, using action figures and all kinds of vehicles and weapons from different action figure sets. The good guys are protecting the endangered species ecosystem, which is the aquarium. They are commanded by me, Jacques Cousteau. The bad guys are trying to invade the ecosystem so they can mine all the uranium-rich gravel, which is worth thousands of dollars per pebble.

It’s a terrific game. Of course, we don’t touch the tank. Once, when Evan was playing the bad guys, he had one of the action figures tap on the front of the aquarium. I told him that really bothers the fish, and he didn’t do it again.

“Good night, guys,” I whisper Sunday night. “Thanks for being here.” I turn out their light. I no longer feel silly talking to them. I bet Jacques Cousteau talked to fish, too.

Back at school on Monday, before class begins, Sam asks me about my weekend. He’s not really a friend of mine, but he’s not a bad kid, so I tell him about the new aquarium.

“That sounds cool,” Sam says.

“Yeah, it is,” I say.

“Really cool,” Sam says. “It’d be neat to see.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Well, anyway. . . .”

Sam nods. “I was at Zach’s house last week. He had a new video game he wanted to show me.”

Now I nod. And Sam is telling me this because?

“Well, anyway,” he says, “if you want to show me your fish someday . . .” and then he trails off.

I’d never thought about inviting Sam over before. Is that what he was getting at? It might be okay. But what would we do?

I worry about things like that. It’s one thing to have Evan come over. But what if some new kid came over and wanted just to hang outside the whole time kicking a soccer ball or riding bikes? I know kids who can do that for hours. I’m bored after fifteen minutes. With Evan I know that’s okay. With someone new, what if it’s not?

By now Sam is organizing his folders for the morning’s science and math classes. I don’t have to think about this right now. I see Amy Wheeler come in. She usually walks right to her seat, but today, to my surprise, she walks right over and stands in front of me.

“Gabe, did I see you coming out of Tanks for You on Saturday?” she asks.

Her question stumps me for a second. I mean, I don’t know whether she saw me or not. On the other hand, I was there so if she thinks she saw me, she probably did.

“You probably did,” I say. “I was there with my dad buying stuff to set up an aquarium.” And I tell her about my new hobby.

Amazingly, she’s interested. “What size tank did you get?” she asks. “Glass or acrylic? Real or fake plants? Salt- or freshwater?” When she sees how shocked I am at her questions, she adds, “Oh, my father keeps a huge aquarium in our living room. It’s awesome.”

“Oh,” I say. Then, not sure what else to say, I ask, “How big is it?”

“A hundred and twenty-five gallons,” she says. “It’s five feet long.”

My eyes must be popping out of my head, because Amy laughs and says, “You’ll have to come see it sometime. Dad loves to show it off.”

“Okay,” I say.

Look how easy it was for Amy Wheeler to invite me over to see her dad’s fish. I guess it’s perfection like that that makes her part of the Ferris Wheel.

“What does your dad like to show off?” asks Derek. “And why would he want to show it off to Gabie the Baby?” He’s just come in and is settling in at his desk, right across from mine.

Amy explains about her father’s aquarium while I seethe at Derek’s remark.

“And I just got my own aquarium this weekend,” I say. “It’s not huge, but it’s twenty-five gallons. I put six fish in it so far. Black mollies and flame tetras. They’re beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” Derek says with a laugh. “What fun is beautiful?”

“You already put the fish in?” Amy asks. She’s frowning.

I turn to Amy to tell her that my fish are hardy, but what Derek is saying interrupts my train of thought.

“I had a goldfish bowl in second grade,” he tells Zach, who’s joined our cluster of desks. “It wasn’t so beautiful when all the goldfish poop piled up on the bottom.” They snicker.

“My cat ate my goldfish,” Zach says. “I was in second grade, too. I won the fish at a carnival where you throw ping-pong balls into the little bowls the fish are in. I won two fish that way.”

“So, Gabie Baby, now you have a goldfish bowl, too,” Derek says. “Well, better late than never. Too bad you’re still stuck in second grade.” He and Zachary are howling.

I know they’re being stupid. I know this is just teasing. But it makes me mad. Before I know it, my desk is crashing into Derek. Then I throw his three-ring binder at his head. I have such bad aim that I miss his head, but the three rings pop open and Derek’s papers scatter across the floor.

“Idiot!” he yells at me.

“You’re the idiot!” I yell back. Five minutes later we’re in Mrs. Mead’s office.

“And we haven’t even said the Pledge of Allegiance yet,” she says, shaking her head in disapproval. “You boys will have to sit and wait. I have other things to take care of before I find out why you’re here so early in the morning.”

We sit, Derek and I, in the trouble chairs outside Mrs. Mead’s door. But she’s not in her private office. Instead, she’s busy in the outer office where the secretary sits and where the teachers’ mailboxes are. She reviews the morning song and announcements with the three kids who are in charge of them this morning. When she’s satisfied that everything is on track, she pushes the button that turns on the public address system and hands the microphone to Miguel Ruiz, a third grader.

“Good morning,” he begins. He stops when he hears his voice echoing in the hallway outside. Then he grins widely—it is cool to hear your voice over the public address system—and continues. “Today is Monday . . .”

After Miguel makes a few announcements, the second kid recites the Pledge. Then the third kid introduces this morning’s song, “This Land is Your Land,”—who chose that? I wonder—which plays for about fifteen seconds on a boom box with the microphone held up to it. Finally, the trio hand the microphone over to Mrs. Mead.

“Thank you, Miguel Ruiz, Ellie Jamison, and Cory Stadler. Now, boys and girls, I have Hugs to announce—”

Hugs again. Hugs for someone else.

“Congratulations to Derek Dempsey. This morning Derek turned in three comic books that he found on the playground after school last Friday. Thank you, Derek.”

Mrs. Mead looks right at Derek sitting next to me in a trouble chair and raises her eyebrows as if to say, So this is how a HUGS student behaves?

I sigh so loud that Mrs. Mead shoots me a look, too. The look I get is different from the look Derek got. The look I get is, Another Monday, another problem with Gabe Livingston. At least that’s how her look looks to me.

Then it sinks into my brain how Derek earned his Hug. He found comic books on the playground and turned them in! Just like I did! And Derek took the comic books home over the weekend. He got to read and re-read them. I didn’t do that when I did my comic book good deed in the pre-Hugs days.

I sigh loudly again. Derek pulls his body away. “What’re you trying to do?” he mutters. “Pollute the whole room with your breath?”

“Shut up,” I mutter back. “It’s already polluted because you’re sitting here.”

“Ouch!” he says. “I’m gonna cry.”

Ms. Gamboling, the secretary, looks up from her desk and scowls. “Quiet,” she commands. Mrs. Mead is now in her private office, but she’s not ready for us yet.

“Gabe!” I hear a voice that sounds way too happy under the circumstances. “Hi, Gabe! Why are you here?”

It’s Maxie. “I’m just here, Maxie,” I say. “I’m not supposed to talk to you right now.”

“Maxie, what brings you here?” asks Ms. Gamboling. “Are you delivering your class’s lunch money?”

Maxie shakes his head. “Ms. Carroll isn’t done collecting it yet.”

“Did she send you to the office?”

Maxie nods. “I’m supposed to talk to Mrs. Mead.”

I hear Mrs. Mead finish the telephone call she’s been on. She comes out of her office. “What are you supposed to talk to me about, Maxie?”

“About sitting like a pretzel in the rug area,” he says.

“About sitting like a pretzel,” Mrs. Mead repeats.

“In the rug area,” Maxie says.

“Ms. Carroll wants you to sit like a pretzel when you’re in the rug area, is that it?” Mrs. Mead says.

“Yes,” says Maxie.

“Can you show me how you sit like a pretzel?”

Maxie looks around. “Right here?”

“Right here,” says Mrs. Mead.

Maxie sits down on the floor near my chair. He crosses his legs in front of him to form a sort of lap. Then he looks up at Mrs. Mead.

“And were you not sitting like this in the rug area this morning while Ms. Carroll was trying to collect the lunch money?” Mrs. Mead asks.

“I was,” says Maxie. “Only then it got hard, so I stopped.”

“It got hard?”

“Yeah—my legs got tired.”

“Your legs got tired just sitting there on the floor?” A few seconds ago Mrs. Mead looked sympathetic, but now she’s beginning to look aggravated.

“Mrs. Mead,” I say. “I don’t want to interrupt, but—”

“But you are,” she says.

“It’s about what Maxie is saying,” I continue, even though I know she’s not happy with me. “I think he means his legs fell asleep. That’s what he means when he says his legs got tired.”

“That’s what I mean!” Maxie exclaims. “They got sleepy and prickly so I had to uncross them.”

Mrs. Mead’s aggravation seems to be changing into something else. “Oh! So your legs fell asleep. And what did you do then?”

“I sat regular—like this,” and Maxie sticks his legs out in front of him. He’s not big, and they’re not long legs, but unfortunately at just this moment Ms. Carroll walks into the office. She doesn’t seem to notice that there’s a kid sitting on the floor.

“Oh!” cries Ms. Carroll as she trips over Maxie’s legs. She catches herself, but only after she hops thuddingly to stop the fall. Derek snickers, but quickly catches himself. Looking down, Ms. Carroll finally sees Maxie—and boy, is she steaming!

“Max Livingston!”

“Max was just telling me about his problem in the rug area,” Mrs. Mead says. I could be wrong, but it looks to me as if she is working to keep from smiling.

“Yes! He needs to sit like a pretzel,” Ms. Carroll says. “There are twenty-five children in the class. If everyone just decided they couldn’t sit like a pretzel . . .” Her voice keeps rising, “Just imagine! They’d be flipping all over each other!”

“Do you understand what Ms. Carroll is saying, Maxie?” Mrs. Mead asks. “What would happen if everyone stopped sitting like a pretzel?”

Maxie thinks. “Our legs would all wake up?”

Now there’s no question about it. Mrs. Mead is definitely tightening her mouth to keep from smiling. “And what else?” she asks.

He thinks some more. “I know!” he says in the excited voice he uses when he knows the answer to something. “We all couldn’t fit on the rug!”

Mrs. Mead reaches down to help Maxie get to his feet. “Try to sit like a pretzel in the rug area,” she says. “If your legs are falling asleep, see if it helps to shake them a little while they’re crossed. Or raise your hand to tell Ms. Carroll.”

Maxie looks like he wants to say something, but Mrs. Mead puts her finger on her lips and shakes her head. “Ms. Carroll, I think Maxie is ready to rejoin the class now,” she says. Mrs. Mead smiles at Maxie and gives him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. She gives Ms. Carroll a displeased look. I think Mrs. Mead is still trying to figure out why Maxie was sent to the office.

Now it’s Derek’s and my turn.

“What happened?” Mrs. Mead asks us.

“He can’t take a joke!” Derek begins, always first to explain, always ready with a theory of what’s wrong with me. This time, I don’t even listen. I answer Mrs. Mead’s questions with half my brain; the other is back in the classroom, remembering Amy Wheeler’s worried look when I said I already had fish in my new aquarium. Mrs. Mead gives us both notes that our parents have to sign.

We’re walking out the door when Mrs. Mead calls me back. Again. She talks to me about calming down, not being so hard on everyone, not being so hard on myself. Just focus on my schoolwork. Maybe if I didn’t expect to find fights and insults everywhere, they wouldn’t happen. “You need to work on letting things go, Gabe,” she says. “Just calm down when you get into situations with the other kids.”

Easy for her to say. Nobody called her an idiot today.

“When you sense a conflict with other kids brewing,” Mrs. Mead continues, “step back. Disengage. Float above it.” She smiles what I suppose is meant to be an encouraging smile.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I think I’m more into diving below than floating above.”

The smile disappears. It suddenly occurs to me that what I just said could be viewed as a smart-alecky answer.

“Okay, Gabe,” Mrs. Mead says. There’s no smiling in her voice; she’s back to all business. “Maybe that’s what you need to work on—diving below trouble. You can go back to your classroom now.”

But wait! I want to say. All I meant was . . . I’m not sure what I meant.

Maybe diving below and floating above are about the same thing. Maybe if I just dove below the waves churned up by people like Derek, I’d be better off. The good thing is I wouldn’t be splashing around on the surface and getting in trouble. The bad thing is I’d be submerged, alone, and I feel like that already. A lot.