WHEN I GET SOMETHING in my head, I really get it in my head. I mean, once it’s in there, it’s not going anywhere else soon until it’s done. Papa Pete calls this tenacity, which means that once I decide to do something, I see it through to the very end. There’s no stopping me.
So when I decided that I was going to play the King of Siam, the idea crawled into my brain and took up permanent residence there. From the moment I saw the video, I was the King of Siam.
“Turn green,” I ordered the stoplight on the corner of Amsterdam and 78th as my sister, Emily, and I walked home after school that day. “The King of Siam commands it.”
“Apparently, the light doesn’t obey foreign royalty,” Emily said.
Oh yeah? Well, at that very moment, the red light turned green, which shows you how much Emily knows about the power of the king.
When we arrived at our apartment, I pushed the front door open and announced to all that could hear, “The king has arrived. Please show the proper respect.”
The only person who responded wasn’t a person at all. It was Cheerio, our family dachshund, who came running up to greet me, spinning in crazy circles like he always does when he’s excited.
“At least the royal puppy shows me some respect,” I said, scratching him behind both ears at once.
Emily wasn’t having any more of my kingly games.
“Hank, would you please get out of the doorway so I can get into the apartment? Some of us actually have homework to do. But I guess you wouldn’t know about that.”
I hope that you never have to put up with a smart sister, because they are really difficult to live with.
“The king grants you permission to pass this one time,” I said. “But please show the proper respect in the future.”
“Hank, breaking news. You’re not a king,” Emily said in her know-it-all voice. She pushed by me and shook her head all the way down the hall to her bedroom.
“I will find the appropriate punishment for you, peasant woman,” I called after her.
As I hung up my green jacket on the coat-rack by the door and dropped my backpack in the hall, I shouted again, just for the fun of it.
“Hear ye, hear ye, loyal subjects, the king is home for his royal snack.”
Unfortunately, the only loyal subject who heard me was my dad. He was sitting at the dining room table doing whatever he does on his laptop. I’m still trying to understand exactly what he does for a living. I know it involves computers and long columns of numbers, which as we know, I am allergic to. One number, like ten or even fifteen, is okay with me. But when that number becomes a huge pile of numbers, I get a purplish rash on my knees, which is really tough to scratch through my jeans.
I walked through the living room, stepping carefully over Cheerio, who was still spinning in circles around my feet. When I reached the dining room table, I saw that my dad had set out an after-school snack for me—a granola bar and a glass of milk.
“Ah, the juice of the cow,” I said, picking up the milk and gulping it down. “To express his thanks, the king will have a sack of gold delivered to you.”
“Enough of your clowning around, Hank,” my dad said, looking around the table for his reading glasses, which he finally found on top of his head. “I have a message for you.”
“Ah, another one of my loyal subjects wanting my advice?” I asked, a little less kingly this time.
“Heather Payne called,” my father said, reading her name from a scrap of paper he had torn off the bottom of one of his crossword puzzles.
“Whoops, wrong kingdom,” I said, heading for my room as fast as my royal feet could carry me.
“Stop right there,” my dad said. “I am not finished. Her message was that she wants to set up a tutoring time. She said she was your peer tutor in math.”
I ask you, how about that Heather Payne? She should change her official name to Heather “I’ll-Just-Blab-About-Hank’s-Personal-Business-To-Anyone” Payne! What was she thinking? Is there anyone in this whole city she hasn’t told yet? Maybe the guy who runs the elevator in the Empire State Building wants to know about my long division skills, or lack of them.
“What’s all this about peer tutoring?” my dad asked me.
“Oh, it’s an experiment that Dr. Berger thought up,” I said, trying to make it sound like everyone in the school was giving it a shot.
“Apparently, it’s more than an experiment if Dr. Berger feels you need it.”
“Okay, Dad. I’ll tell it to you straight. I didn’t exactly ace my last math test.”
My dad took off his glasses and stood up. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t like the standing up part. I didn’t feel it was necessary.
“How bad, Hank?”
“Let’s just say I took the long way around long division, and it led nowhere,” I said.
“You failed?”
Not only was my dad standing up now, he was bending down so his face was directly in front of mine. And let me tell you two things about his face. One is that his face looks a lot like mine, only older. And two is that his face definitely didn’t look happy.
“I don’t think a D-minus is technically in the failure category.”
“Hank, have you no pride?” he said, starting to pace up and down on the Oriental carpet. “If you just sat at your desk and concentrated instead of playing toe basketball or any of those other silly games you dream up, you wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of peer tutoring.”
I didn’t answer him because I couldn’t tell him he was wrong. I mean, yes, I was suffering from embarrassment to have to be peer tutored. And it’s even more embarrassing that Heather was telling everyone in the world. Most embarrassing was that I just couldn’t figure out why my brain didn’t work like everyone else’s.
“We have to start cracking down on you, Hank,” my dad said. “Failing math is not acceptable.”
Oh boy, I didn’t like where this was going. I hoped it wasn’t going toward the subject of TV.
“I think I’m going to have to start limiting your television watching, young man,” he said.
Look at that, that’s exactly where it went. I’m a mind reader.
“When is your next math test?”
“Two weeks from Friday,” I answered. I knew that because it was a big unit test on long division. Ms. Adolf had mentioned it every day that week.
“Fine,” my dad said. “Between now and two weeks from Friday, there will be no TV, except maybe an hour on the weekends.”
My heart was going thumpity-thump, and not in a good way.
“Does that include video games?” I asked. “Because technically they’re not really TV, they’re just digital games played on a TV screen.”
I thought I’d wowed him with my excellent and very resourceful point. Apparently, he was wowless.
“Let’s see what it’s like for you to have two solid weeks of no distractions,” he suggested. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow right after school. I’ll walk you home. And you’ll get right to work studying math.”
“Gee, that sounds swell, Dad. But tomorrow after school are the auditions for the winter musical. I’m trying out for the part of the king.”
“This is a prime example of your priorities, Hank. A musical is an extracurricular activity, and can in no way get in the way of your math.”
“But Dad, it’s a school function. Being in a play is part of my education.”
“Nonsense,” my dad said. “Your future will not depend on you being in a play. But it will depend on how proficient you are in mathematics.”
“Dad, I can feel it in my bones. I’m going to get the lead. I’m going to be the king. You can’t stop me from trying out. You have to let me try out.”
My dad paced up and down on the Oriental rug some more. Cheerio had stopped spinning and had started chewing on my socks. The only sound in the room was the grinding of his cute little teeth as he chomped away at my sock’s elastic. My dad was rubbing his chin, something he does when he’s thinking hard.
“All right, Hank,” he said at last. “If you want to be in this play so badly, I’ll make a deal with you. When is the musical?”
“In three weeks.”
“And your math test is in two and a half weeks? So it’s before the musical.”
“Right you are, Dad. You’re pretty good in math, I must say.”
I gave him a big smile, which he didn’t return.
“Okay, Hank. You can try out tomorrow. And if you get the part, you can play the king.”
I threw my arms around his neck.
“Dad, you’re the greatest,” I said, hugging him with all my might. “I knew you’d understand.”
He unwrapped my arms from his neck, and held my face in his hands. I thought he was going to give me a kiss. But instead, this is what I got.
“If you get a B-plus or better on your math test, you can continue in the play,” he said. “If you get lower, you will have to immediately drop out.”
“It’s a deal,” I said, without even thinking.
I danced around in a little circle, and Cheerio twirled around with me. Then I picked up Cheerio and ran into my room before my dad had a chance to change his mind.
I sat down at my desk. I spun my chair around, and as I was doing a three-sixty turn, it hit me like a wet noodle right across the face.
A B-plus.
The last time I got a B-plus…was…let me see…oh, right, it was in…“plays well with others.”
And that was in preschool.
How was I ever going to get a B-plus?