“I WOULDN’T WORRY ABOUT FOOTPRINTS,” Rayshawn says over lunch. “I don’t think Mr. Norris is giving them out to anybody.”
Jeremy and I both look at each other. We’re probably trying harder than anyone else and we both know this isn’t true. There are about forty footprints up in the hallway now, at least three of which are in Mr. Norris’s handwriting, all for the kids I would consider the worst behaved in our class. Like Samuel, who is so fidgety he gets a bumpy plastic cushion to sit on at his desk. And Emma T., who has a little problem with taking things from other children and pretending she has no idea how stuff got into her backpack. Once she stole a dollar fifty from the milk money envelope. When Mr. Norris asked if anyone knew anything about the missing money, she cried and said it was accidentally in her pocket. She might have jail waiting for her in the future, but for now she has a footprint thanking her for cleaning up some paint that spilled in art class.
When I point this out, Jeremy has an explanation. “He has to do it for those kids. They get nothing but threes and fours on their report cards.”
At our school we don’t get grades on our report cards, we get numbers between one and five. Jeremy gets all ones on his report card except for a few twos in subjects he doesn’t care about like cooperation and PE. I get numbers that are so far in the middle it’s hard for my parents to remember which end we’re aiming for. “Wait, is five the best or one?” my mom always asks because looking at my report cards, it’s hard to tell.
“Those kids have nothing else,” Jeremy says. “I mean seriously. Look at them.”
I don’t know if Jeremy has forgotten who he’s talking to. Or if he’s forgotten that this morning another orange notice came from the main office and now I’m getting pulled out of class to work on math, too. This means Olga and I might as well get married we’ve walked down so many hallways together at this point.
When that notice came, people were busy. It’s possible Jeremy didn’t even see me leave. I keep hoping he didn’t. I’m not sure how many embarrassing things I could expect him to be nice about.
I want to be great at something. That’s all.
Martin used to be like me—not such a great athlete, not such a great student—then he got tall enough to make the basketball team. When I tell Mom this, she reminds me that Martin used to be terrible at basketball. “He had to work hard just to make it on the team. Don’t you remember the summer before seventh grade when he was out there every day for three months, practicing free throws? You have to choose something and work at it. Look around. Find something you’re passionate about.”
Mom is a big one for saying we need to find our passion. “I don’t care what it is, just as long as it’s not video games.” The thing is, I do have a passion but it’s sort of screen related, so Mom rolls her eyes and acts like it doesn’t count. I like making short videos with my Lego minifigs. I started doing it with Kenneth two years ago. At first they were terrible. The stories didn’t make sense and you could see our fingers moving the minifigs around. Then we worked on it and learned there’s a lot of great special effects you can get using stop-motion photography.
Now that Kenneth is gone, I make the movies on my own and I have about three really good ones so far. I’ll have two minifigs walk toward each other, holding their light sabers. Then I have them get in a fight. Sometimes heads will roll or arms will come off. My best one has a great joke. Just before a battle starts, Senator Palpatine goes to the bathroom right next to Count Dooku’s fort. Dooku turns his head and looks right into the camera like Can you believe this guy? And when Palpatine walks away, the Lego base plate is all yellow.
I’ve showed a few people and they can’t believe how well it works. Martin thinks I should post it on YouTube, but I’m not ready for that yet. I don’t want strangers making comments on my movies. I can just picture Jeremy saying something like, “This is pretty good, but you can tell a fourth grader made it.”
I don’t need that.
Plus, I haven’t made a new Lego movie since Dad’s accident this summer. Not that anyone has said I shouldn’t, it just seems wrong to have Dad sleeping in the next room while I make movies about Lego minifigs knocking each other’s heads off.