Potato

It was a really bad day today.

First of all I was late getting up, so I was late getting dressed and I had to run out the door while I was still buttoning up my shirt so Mr. Butts (who is the meanest bus driver we've ever had) wouldn't drive off and leave me. And of course I buttoned it up wrong, so when I got on the bus Jimmy and Stacey the fifth grader (not Stacy W., who is OK) laughed and made fun of me for a long time. It was worse because I had to unbutton the shirt so I could button it back up right and of course they made a big deal about that. But the bus wasn't so bad, because Jimmy and Stacey are always like that and they are like that to everybody, so you get kind of used to it.

It got really bad when we got to school. After the morning stuff -- the pledge and the roll and the principle doing the announcements over the intercom -- we have reading. They put us into reading groups today. School just started last week. Well, really it started the week before that, but it was on a Thursday and we only had a half-day on Friday, so really last week was the first real week of school. Anyway.

So Miss Porter is announcing the reading groups. And I'm in the PURPLE group. The purple group is like the third group. It goes red, white, purple, blue then green.

Sometimes I think adults think we are all stupid. We aren't stupid you know. Miss Porter gives us this big long speech about how one group isn't better than another group and it what group you are in doesn't mean you are smarter or dumber or anything. Which is a bunch of bullcrap and everybody knows it. All the smart kids (except me) are in the red or white group and the dumb kids are in the blue group. Green is for the really bad kids, they just sit around and fart off during reading. Purple is for the people who are not good or bad.

But I am a good reader. I am a very good reader. I think I am the best reader in our class. I read all the time, even when I don't have to. I go to the library – not the school library, the public library. Reading is important to me.

I got so mad because it was so unfair. Mark B. and Tina were in the red group. I can read better than both of them and Mark was looking at me and smiling. I wanted to hit him. I wanted to cry, I think. It was hard not to. I think my face got real red.

It was really hard to pay attention after that. I wanted to go ask Miss Porter why I got put into the purple group because I thought she knew about me and reading. Then I figured it out. It wasn't because I'm not a good reader, it's because I'm not a good talker. I have speech twice a week to help me learn to say my “R's” properly. I hate it and I hate not being able to talk right. I sound like a baby sometimes, and that makes me not want to read out loud sometimes and sometimes I take extra time to sound things out to make sure my tongue is in the right place and I'm am making the sounds properly like Mrs. Lyle the speech teacher wants me to. So I think that makes it sound like I am not a good reader, when I really am a very good reader.

This made me even madder. It was not fair to punish me for something I didn't do wrong and I was working to fix my speech. I couldn't go ask Miss Porter now because there wasn't a good time, plus I probably wouldn't be able to talk right when I asked her. She wouldn't listen anyway.

So I got really mad and I ended up doing something bad that I knew I shouldn't do even when I was doing it. But I did it anyway. I don't know why I did. I felt bad about it right after I did it, and I still do feel bad that I did it.

I didn't listen to much of Social Studies because I was making my plan. I guess I got the idea about the potato because I was looking out the window while I was thinking. The class has potato plant in a jar sitting on the shelf by the window that looks out on the little kids' playground. We started it on the first day of school. It's in water in a glass jar and it just has some short green vines coming out of it because we just started it on the first day of school. Miss Porter was real proud of it and talked about how it would be our earth sciences project for the whole year.

Here was my plan – I was going to poison that damn potato. Even though I shouldn't have done it, I think I made a pretty cool plan. On our way back from music class we always take a bathroom break. I was going to smuggle some pee back and pour it in the potato jar, which should kill it because pee has acid in it. Here's what I did. I took a cap off one of my magic markers (the pink one, who cares if it dries up. Dang.) and slipped in into my pocket. It is in the shape of a hollow cylinder.

After music was over and we went to the restroom, I hung back a little bit so I would be one of the last ones. I was real careful so nobody would notice what I was doing, and I was real nervous while I was sneaking the cap out of my pocket and peeing into it. It would be bad enough if somebody saw me, but I didn't want to spill pee on myself either. But I pulled it off and I hid it in my hand the way I learned to do with a quarter from my magic book.

Luckily when we go back to the classroom we kind of move around a lot, so I could go over to the window next to the potato jar. It was just as bad as filling the cap, trying to make sure nobody notice what I was doing. Also, I still didn't want to get pee on me. But I did it, and nobody said anything. I'm pretty sure nobody saw. I threw the cap in the wastebasket under the pencil sharpener by the door.

We had spelling next, then lunch. All during that time I felt pretty good about it. Mostly good. Mostly good that I had been able to pull it off but still a little bad about it. But mostly good.

Until we got back from lunch. When we walked into the room, we could tell something was wrong. Miss Porter was sitting at her desk and she was real quiet and she was frowning. That is not how she usually is. So it seemed like something was wrong, but we didn't know what yet. And she told us all to sit down at our desks which we did.

She stood up in the front of the room and told us something bad had happened and that she wanted to give the person who had done it a chance to make things right. Right then I got a really bad feeling in my stomach. I was busted.

She told us all to put our heads on our desks and close our eyes. Then she started talking. She talked very slow and very serious. She said we all make mistakes sometimes and do things that we should not do. She said the important thing was to take responsibility for our mistakes. She said she wanted to give the person who had done this the opportunity to take responsibility. She said they would not be punished and nobody but the person had to know about it.

This whole time I'm feeling worse and worse. Part of me is remembering the rule that you never ever confess to anything. But she's so serious. And I started to thing that killing the potato with pee is kind of a stupid thing to do anyway and it doesn't have anything to do with the purple reading group and it would make things any better. So I know what I've got to do. I take a couple of real deep breaths to get ready for the bad stuff that is coming and get ready to raise my hand.

Then Miss Porter says that this is the time and that the person who took Ramelle Nevins' plastic pencil sharpener in the shape of a pig out of her jacket pocket while it was hanging up on the coat rack in the back of the room should do the right thing and hold their hand up now.

I think I breathed out really loud. I heard some other people breathing too. But I put my hand back down. We sat that for a long time like that. I don't think anybody ever put their hand up, but I'm not sure. I did start feeling really bad about the potato though. It seemed like a really dumb thing to do now and the potato did not deserve to die and it was the whole class's project.

So I'm thinking about it all through math and I decide I've got to do something about it. The only thing I can come up with (beside telling Miss Porter, which I don't want to do because it would only get me in trouble and what good would that do?) is to spill the water so it will have to be replaced and hope that it is not too late.

And that's what I did. During afternoon break I went over to the potato. I used the same skills I did before to make it look natural. I made sure I was looking in a different direction from the potato jar and kind of swept my arm across the shelf a little bit, just hard enough to knock the jar over, but not hard enough to break the jar.

I guess I hit it too low or something, because it didn't just fall over. It kind of fell over my arm and spilled the water back towards me. Some got on my pants. There was a wet spot the size of my hand just below my pocket. Of course everybody laughed at me. Which did not bother me too much because if it had happened to somebody else I would laugh too. And the guys said I had peed on myself even though they knew it was only the potato water. I was really glad they did not know that in a way I had peed on myself. But it wasn't too bad and there was only 30 minutes until we got on the buses.

Miss Porter came over, and she was not mad, just kind of tired acting. She gave me a kind of funny look, then told me to dry my pants off with some paper towels. She took some too and cleaned up the potato water, stuck the potato back in the jar then took it over to sink and filled it up with water again. She put it back on the shelf, but closer to the window this time. She told us to sit back down (which I was glad to do because it would hide my wet pants) and we worked on a fractions worksheet until the first bell rang and the car-riders and walkers went to the gym.

When the second bell rang, we all got up to go. Miss Porter put her hand on my shoulder when I was walking out the door, and asked me to hold on a minute. When everybody else was out of the room she said she could tell I was upset about being in the purple reading group. I did not know what to say and I just kind of nodded. My face got red again. She said she knew I was a very good reader and I wasn't in the purple group because I wasn't a good reader. She said that sometimes the best way to get better at something when you are already good at it is to teach somebody else. She said she put me into the purple group so I could help the other purples with their reading. She said I would be a good example and I could help with some of the harder words. She smiled at me in a very nice way and said I should promise not to tell anybody else about it which I said I would not. Then she told me to hurry up or I would miss the bus, which was good because Mr. Butts was still mean and would leave me if he could.

When I was walking to the bus, I was not sure what to think. I felt good about what Miss Porter had said, but I still felt bad about what I had done. I was glad that I had spilled the potato jar, but it was dumb to have done it at all when I knew it was wrong to begin with. It was a weird day.

School Days

School Days

"Here it is!"

I picked my way carefully among chunks of drywall. The floor tiles were loose as well. It was one thing to do a little trespassing to take a picture for a friend, but breaking a leg was another.

I looked through the doorway that his voice had come from.

"This was my old classroom," Jake said. "This is so cool. I've never done this in a building that I knew before it was abandoned."

He was looking around with wonder in his eyes. I looked around with nothing more than mild interest. There was still a blackboard, half hanging off the wall, and a few overturned desks. Otherwise the room was mostly empty. Many of the windows were broken, with vines and tree branches poking through. If I'd had more imagination I'm sure I could have entertained myself by thinking of the many generations of children who'd gazed out these windows. Instead the main thing I had in common with them is that I was pretty bored.

"So this is where you want the picture?" I prompted. Let's do it and get out of here, I thought.

"Yeah."

He stood in front of the blackboard, wearing his special purple jacket. This was his thing, collecting pictures of himself in the jacket on all his adventures. In the past I'd only seen the resulting photos. But all his urban-exploration friends were off on a trip to an abandoned amusement park when he heard that the demolition of our old elementary school would start on Monday.

"Great," I said after clicking the shutter a few times.

"Let me have it," he said. "We should take some more. It's the last record of the place."

I gave up the camera. I should have seen this coming, of course, even if just from seeing the dozens of photos of decaying factories, hospitals and whatnot. He'd made it sound like this would be a quick trip, but it had been foolish of me to believe him.

Jake had disappeared out the door, clicking the camera at everything he passed. I followed without enthusiasm. Returning to our old school didn't thrill me nearly as much as it did him. Not only was I uninterested in decaying buildings, I had no fond memories of grade school.

He was far down the hall when I smelled something. Something like burning.

"Jake?" I called. OK, this really crossed the line. I had not signed on for dying in a fire. They wouldn't think to look for anyone to rescue, because there shouldn't be anyone in here.

He had disappeared into another doorway. I walked after him faster, slipping on the loose tiles. Dammit, this wasn't funny anymore.

I glanced in the classroom doors as I passed, more peeling paint, more half-mast blackboards. The smell was getting stronger.

"Jake!" I said to his back, just inside the door of the last room in the hallway.

He didn't turn, and I saw what he was looking at. A man – a hobo, you might even say – was sitting by the window. He'd built a fire, and he was cutting the last of a potato into a dented pot hanging over the fire.

I'd have thought it was a ghost or a hallucination, if the man hadn't spoken to us. And if I hadn't recognized his voice.

"Have a seat. This should be done in twenty minutes or so," he gestured at the pot.

"Mr Dell?" Jake said, before I found my voice.

The man peered at us as we walked closer.

"Jake Carter. Oh, and Roy Griffin."

I was sure his tone had changed when he said my name. But surely he couldn't remember me that well. He'd tormented plenty of children in his years as a teacher. I wasn't anything special.

"Yeah," Jake said. "Wow." To him, this was obviously the coolest thing. Almost as good as really seeing a ghost.

"Well, fancy meeting you boys here," Mr Dell said.

I supposed that to him we were still boys. Jake remembered it all so well, he might as well have been. He was off and running, reminiscing about elementary school, about a trip we'd taken to a historic recreation site of some kind, another to some museum, all the kinds of old buildings he'd grown up to be crazy about. I just watched. Mr Dell hadn't shaved or washed in a long time. I wanted to know what had happened that he was homeless, living in an abandoned building, cooking over a fire like a hobo. But Jake had taken hold of the conversation, and he was more interested in the distant past.

After a while Jake ran out of breath and paused for a second. Mr Dell said to me, "So I guess you don't remember so much about second grade, Roy."

"Oh, sure," I said. "Like that time you gave me an F for drawing those birds."

Stupid thing to pop into my mind. Stupider to mention it. No way he could remember the lesson where we were supposed to show we knew our numbers by drawing one bird, two birds, three birds. He'd drawn the birds as those abstract curved W shapes. I'd drawn whole birds with feet and wings and heads. I liked to draw, and the assignment was less boring that way. He didn't even give me a chance to redo it.

"Those fancy birds, with patterns on the wings," he said.

I stared at him. He remembered? Impossible. It was just that plenty of children had been given Fs for doing the same thing, I thought. But did they all draw patterns on the wings?

"Yeah," I said. "Boy, I felt terrible about that."

I meant for it to sound casual. How could I still hold a grudge about something so stupid?

I waited for him to apologize. To say that now he realized that that was no way to treat small children. That he'd been too hard on them, and he was sorry.

"Well, it's important to learn to follow instructions carefully," he said.

"Oh no," Jake interrupted. "I have to go. I have a job to get to."

Right. This was why Jake hadn't gone off to see the abandoned amusement park on the Jersey shore with his friends. He was a photographer, and he had a wedding to get to. And he couldn't go in those dirty clothes and that purple jacket.

"Cool to see you," Jake called over his shoulder as he turned to leave.

He trotted down the hall, as fast as you could with all the debris scattered around. I struggled to keep up. I wondered, did Mr Dell know he only had another day to live in his old school building? That the wreckers were coming on Monday?

As we squeezed out the gap between the chained-together exit doors, Jake stopped and turned to me.

"Wait," he said. "Do you think he knows that the building's coming down?"

"He must," I said.

"We should go back and make sure," he said, uncertainly.

"You don't have time."

He looked at his watch again. "Oh god, you're right. You go?"

"OK," I said. "Go ahead."

"Oh, that's great. I really have to go. Thanks for coming. I'll show you the pictures tomorrow," he said as he pushed his way through the overgrown weeds and grass to the gap in the chain-link fence around the site.

I watched till he disappeared down the street. Then I pulled the doors shut behind me and headed home.

Practical Joke

Practical Joke

Tonight:
Keith slouched through the school's empty carpark. He could barely believe how little had changed since he had left: handrails still the same dark green, strips torn off by kids with brand new compass sets or dissection kits to expose the multicolored layers of paint jobs past. He couldn't be sure in the fading light but he thought he could even see the oil stain that marked Mr. Ainsley's parking space right near the front doors, a space reserved by years of persistent griping and cheap mechanics. A chill ran down Keith's spine as he passed, as if the old teacher was about to step out of the building right now and dress him down for trespassing. Shrugging off the feeling he hurried on towards the main building.

Before:
"Check it out man, this is gonna be great." Johnny laughed has showed the Keith the contraband smuggled in the bottom of his schoolbag: a dirty potato. As they hurried down the stairs and through the car park Johnny appeared to trip and fall, only Keith saw him jam the potato hard into the exhaust of a parked car as he pushed himself up. Walking on as if nothing had happened Johnny slowed and pulled Keith to the side as they passed out the school gates. Circling the fence that surrounded the school grounds they found a point where they could see the sabotaged car while being well hidden by the flowering frangipani trees.
They weren't waiting long when Miss Drover, an english teacher who avoided any and all extra-curricular commitments and was always the first out of the building after the students practically ran down the stone steps and threw her meager paperwork into the passenger seat of the potatoed car. The two boys could read her body language from across the grounds: first relief as she turned the ignition the first time, then growing frustration as the motor turned and spluttered but wouldn't catch. Keith couldn't help himself, his laugh rang out across the parking lot, Miss Drover's head turned automatically with that sixth sense granted to anyone who has to deal with young boys for any length of time but the boys were well away, running first and then slouching slowly toward home with the feigned innocence that only the truly blameless use to cover their guilt.

Tonight:
The window's latch, it's teeth worn down by years and use and decreased funding gave way with a sharp snap and the window swung gently open. Keith paused for a moment, sure that someone in the nearby houses must have heard him, but there were no shouts, no lights flicked on: the good people of Wilbury slept on. After a couple of minutes he breathed a sigh of relief and eased himself through the library window and dropped gently to the floor, choosing to jump rather than risk one of the shelves taking his weight. Things really hadn't changed if they never even bothered to fix that latch he mused. Not that Keith was complaining, if he'd had to break the glass to get the window open he almost surely would have attracted attention and he needed time if he was going to do this properly. It made him feel better somehow, justified: If the school board could be allowed to forget this place then he should too.
Not daring a flashlight he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark of the moonlit room, walking through the shelves of books he slowly began to make out the signs at the ends of the rows: T... U...V... W.. and there it was.

Before:
"The color purple," Keith stammered at the front of his english class, "is about uh.. a woman named Kelly..." after a couple of minutes of stutters and improvisations Mr Ainsley cut him off, "That will be quite enough Keith. Now you've obviously read some of the book, or at least the Cliff's Notes. Unfortunately it also seems you weren't able to tell the difference between copying other people's reports on the assigned book and let's see," he consulted his notes, " 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'A Tale of two cities' and I think there was a reference to 'Purple Haze' somewhere at the end there but I can't be sure because I don't think you actually understood what the song was about. Luckily you'll have plenty of time to catch up on your reading in detention with me this afternoon and for the rest of the week."
"But sir..."
"Don't try it. Now, next... uh, Emily...."
Keith returned to his desk muttering angrily.
"Sucks man," muttered Johnny, "Could be worse though, I got two weeks."
"You? What for? You're not even giving your report until tomorrow."
Johnny looked bashful.
"Oh... potato?"
"Yeah... Drover was on the look out for me after the other afternoon, totally busted."
"Hey!" Shouted Mr. Ainsley, "Keep quiet unless you both want another week."

Tonight:
Keith was almost through shelves K through X. At first he'd tried stacking the books in an orderly rectangle but it had started to look worryingly coffin-shaped and was starting to tip over anyway so in the end he'd settled for just keeping them all in a largish pile with all the copies of the 'The Color Purple' he could find on top. He tried not to think about where he'd put the pile, pretending to himself he'd chosen at random. Pretending he wasn't terrified of seeing a stain he knew wasn't there anymore.
He heaved one last armful onto the pile. That should be enough.

Before:
As the library clock ticked past 3:25 Johnny caught Keith's eye and sighed dramatically for probably the fifth time in the last two minutes.
"This sucks." Johnny muttered behind his book.
"Yeah, I guess." Keith replied without looking up.
"I can't wait till he lets us out of here."
"Yeah, I guess."
"What's with you?" asked Johnny more loudly, disgusted at his friend's apparent apathy to their predicament.
"Nothing man, I'm peachy," Keith drawled out of the corner of his mouth, he'd been watching a prison movie the other night and been practicing his gangster accent ever since, "looking forward to going home. 'Specially looking forward to Ainsley trying to go home."
Johnny frowned with confusion, "Wha..."
"Quit the chatter you two, get back to your reports." Mr. Ainsley called from the chair behind the loans desk.
Johnny and Keith settled down and joined their fellow detainees in making their best pretence at hard work, trying to emit an aura of intense scholarship that suggested a boy should be rewarded by, say, the reprieve of an unjust sentence. Mr. Ainsley was tragically unreceptive to their plight though, his attention was divided between the racing pages and fidgeting with the box of Pall Malls in his coat pocket. After another ten minutes of shared tedium he stood up and announced, "I'm going to step outside for a moment to uh, get some air. I'll be right outside the door so don't insult me by trying to sneak off. I'll be checking your work when I get back so I expect to see progress from all of you."

Without a teacher's shadow darkening the room the detainee's moods lifted immediately.
"So what were you saying before about Ainsley?" Johnny asked, dumping his pencil on the desk.
"I gave him a little present for putting me in here," said Keith, now deep in his own jailbird fantasy, "thought I'd show him what happens to snitches."
"What?"
"That potato trick," Keith sighed, dropping the accent in the face of an unappreciative audience, "I did it to his car this morning on my way to class. Shoved it in with a stick too, real deep. Even if he figures it out I bet he won't get it out for ages, maybe ever."
"Heh, sweet."
"Yeah I thought so." Keith smiled basking in the glow of having someone admire his daring and cunning.
"I'm not going to hang around for it though," Johnny continued, not one to be outdone, "I'm out of here before Ainsley comes back."
"How're you going to do that dumbass? He's right outside the door."
"That window up there, the catch never locks properly. Higgins showed it to me, he said he snuck in her last month and nicked some stuff the librarian confiscated off him."
"Higgins is full of it."
"Nah, straight up. Anyway, I'm out of here. I figure no way Ainsley's going to give me more detention if it means he has to explain that he lost me in the first place. It's a thing, Catch 42."
"You're an idiot, he's going to completely nail you."
"Yeah, well, whatever. Enjoy detention."
Without another word Johnny pushed his chair out and moved over to the window with exaggerated sneaky steps. Gripping the upper shelves he slowly eased his weight onto the lower shelves and tried to scramble quietly to the top. As he reached for the window latch Keith swore he saw the shelf detach from it's bracing and leave Johnny's foot hovered in the air for a moment. Then, too quickly to see it happen, Johnny was on the floor. Blood smeared the deadly sharp corner of the opposite shelf and a dark stain was spreading across the floor from a gash in his head.
Mr. Ainsley had rushed back in at the sound of the crash, a still lit cigarette falling from his fingers. The world turned to a blur around Keith as the teacher interrogated the boys and gave out orders: What had happened? No it didn't matter. The school nurse would have gone home but he could drive to the hospital, it would be quicker than an ambulance. Someone should call emergency and let them know they were coming. Two of you come and help me carry him to my car, hold his head gently.

Tonight:
They had cremated Johnny, Keith could still remember the funeral. They'd given him a seat up the front with family, Johnny's mother said it was only right since they were such close friends.
It was what she had said after that haunted him though, the Brownian motion of family and mourning meant they were alone together for a moment as they left the church and all she could talk about was how she just wished she could stop being angry at Johnny. She said she just couldn't understand why he would be so stupid to vandalize Mr. Ainsley's car after he was already given detention for doing it once, why did he have to vandalize the car that could have saved his life if it had started, if he had got to the hospital sooner.
That was the word she used, 'vandalize'. In a distant way Keith thought it seemed extreme to describe a practical joke but that was what she kept saying: "Why did Johnny vandalize that car?". Keith didn't correct her.
Keith stared down at the pile of books, his own little funeral pyre. Stared through it at the stain that wasn't there anymore. He took the box of matches from his pocket.

Later:
"Keith are you even listening to me?"
"What Mom?"
"I said... oh never mind. What are you gawking at anyway?" squinting through the SUV's side window Barbara realized without thinking she had taken the route to her son's old primary school, what was left of it at least. Her mother's intuition told her to tread carefully. Keith had was nearly at the end of high school when the fire had claimed the aging buildings but it had hit him hard just the same. She'd tried to bring it up a couple of times, the story and a half hearted hunt for the arsonist had made the rounds in the nightly news and had a bit of life in the local paper for a week or two afterwards but Keith had always retreated into himself and not wanted to speak about it. It was a sign that her little boy was growing up she decided, he was trying to be a man and deal with having to leave his past behind. She decided to try and reach out and acknowledge what he was feeling.
"It's such a shame, a lot of memories went up with that place."
"Yes," replied Keith, "They did."