The New Kid, page 2
“Hmmm. I have an idea,” his dad said. “How about for your birthday, we go on a trail ride! And you can bring a new friend! And your new friend can bring a parent to supervise.”
Carson said, “If I don’t have a new friend in time for my birthday, maybe just I could go and you could supervise me.”
His dad put his arm around Carson’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, son. You’ll have a new friend in time.”
Suddenly, without any warning, Carson’s heart sank like a stone. He couldn’t imagine a birthday without his grandma and grandpa.
“You okay, Carson?”
“Sure I am, Dad.”
As okay as he could be, under the circumstances of being about to become the lonesomest cowboy in Green Gulch Park.
On his first day of school, his dad took out his phone and photoed Carson standing in front of a sign that said VALLEY OAK ELEMENTARY SCHOOL with a bucktoothed squirrel holding an acorn carved into the wood.
Carson managed a smile.
In some ways, Valley Oak was a little bit different from Rainbow Ridge Montessori, but in most ways it was, well, completely and totally, utterly 100 percent different.
At Rainbow Ridge, kids wore clothes to school, like T-shirts and shorts or sweatshirts and jeans.
At Valley Oak, kids wore uniforms to school, like white shirts and tan pants or white shirts and tan pants. Or white shirts and tan skirts or white shirts and tan skirts. And various other garments and accessories with a Valley Oak logo embroidered on them: either a squirrel or an acorn. Carson opted for the acorn logo. He had a whole new set of clothes, and all were carefully marked Carson B. on the labels with a fine-tip permanent marker.
He had a brand-new white shirt and tan pants, a brand-new white shirt and tan pants, a brand-new Valley Oak zip-up hoodie with a silhouette of an acorn on the front, a brand-new Valley Oak jacket with a silhouette of an acorn on the sleeve, and a brand-new Valley Oak backpack with a silhouette of an acorn on the flap in the back.
Carson didn’t have a brand-new Valley Oak beanie with a silhouette of an acorn on the side. Carson didn’t wear hats with green pom-poms that looked like pesto piled on top.
Carson had to carry his brand-new acorn backpack back and forth to school, packed with homework and papers for his dad to sign and send back.
He would have liked a brand-new Valley Oak friend, who would one day become his good ol’ Valley Oak old friend.
He hoped to be invited to play with one of the kids after school, but he hadn’t.
Not yet.
He felt like the New Kid that he actually was. And he felt like he was on the outside of a circle, looking in.
Friends like Case and Gavin, well, you can’t make those overnight.
Carson knew that.
The principal, Ms. Pierson, had placed Carson in Mr. Skip Lipman’s class. Mr. Lipman seemed to be a good guy. And Carson saw right away that he and Carson’s dad had certain similarities; for starters, they both liked quizzes. And Mr. Lipman liked props! Whenever there was a classroom guessing game of any sort, Mr. Lipman put on his woolen tweed detective’s cap, with a brim in the front and a brim in the back. He strolled around like Sherlock Holmes, his hands clasped behind his back.
In Mr. Lipman’s class, there were no rules.
Only life skills, like respect, responsibility, integrity, compassion, loyalty, friendship, and the others. And guidelines, which were rules in disguise.
Mr. Lipman made sure the kids shared the responsibilities of the classroom, and he had deputies to help him. He also had Shape It Up to Shipshape for ten minutes every afternoon, so he wouldn’t get stuck with cleaning up after a bunch of kids at the end of every day.
There were many, many guidelines. In fact, there were more guidelines than Carson could keep straight.
Guidelines for this, guidelines for that.
There were even guidelines for school celebrations, and they were posted on the wall: limit drinks with added sugar; limit overly sweet, too-sugary birthday treats.
The guidelines were reasonable enough; Carson liked making healthy food choices. At Montessori school, a nutritious lunch and snack were provided for the students every day, which often included fresh produce from the garden.
But at Montessori, birthday days were different. The birthday kid walked around carrying a globe while the parent told stories about the kid’s life, like how old Carson was when he was adopted by his dad. When he first took the training wheels off his bicycle, and his first home run playing T-ball.
Then came the birthday cake, and all bets were off.
Every year, Carson’s grandma baked Carson’s all-time favorite: her famous You Gotta Be Kidding Me! Chocolate Calamity Cake. It was made of three layers of fudgy chocolate cake, with creamy chocolate icing between every layer and piled on top, and it had HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CARSON written across the top.
Everyone had a small piece.
Keyword: small.
Carson had no clue as to what he and his dad might do about a classroom birthday celebration at Valley Oak, but at least he had something to go on: there had already been one, Nancy’s. Actually, it was Nancy’s Faux Birthday celebration, with “faux” pronounced like “pho,” rhyming with “toe,” and basically meaning phony.
Nancy’s For-Real Birthday was over the summer. In cases such as Nancy’s, a Faux Birthday was celebrated in the classroom sometime before school was out.
For Nancy’s Faux Birthday, her mom had provided the Ultimate Not-Too-Gooey Faux-Birthday Birthday Treat. It even had a theme: endangered species, which they were studying in science.
First, Nancy’s mom set up shop. She wiped off the counters with disinfecting wipes and fanned them dry.
Nancy had voiced one small request: that no one sing “Happy Faux Birthday,” because she hated the “Happy Birthday” song.
Instead, she asked that everyone sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and sing “Oakland A’s” after the “root root root” part.
Weston Walker screamed “Giants!” instead.
Mr. Lipman wrote Weston Walker on the board.
Nancy’s mom then asked everybody to wash their hands carefully and line up.
There were two endangered choices: endangered choice number one was a generous scoop of vanilla frozen yogurt in a white bowl with two red grapes for eyes, a big, round purple grape for a nose, and shredded coconut piled on either side of the grape for whiskers.
Endangered choice number two was a scoop of chocolate frozen yogurt with two purple grapes for eyes, a shiny, wrinkled pitted prune stuck in the middle for the nose, and some shredded coconut for whiskers.
Carson went for the vanilla polar bear. He liked chocolate sea otters but wasn’t a prune fan.
Nancy’s mom had also brought individual recyclable packets of 100 percent cranberry juice with straws attached in germ-free plastic sleeves.
Weston unwrapped the straw, threw the plastic on the floor, poked the straw into the packet, and spritzed Cody.
Mr. Lipman put a check by Weston Walker on the board.
“I always have a cake made out of turkey for my birthday,” Wes announced.
He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “I kid you not!”
“Use a napkin, Weston,” Mr. Lipman told him.
Yikes, thought Carson.
A turkey cake?
That was going overboard on the not-overly-sweet-or-too-gooey guidelines.
“Put the napkin in the trash, Weston, not on my desk.”
“I’m just setting it there for a minute! I may need to wipe my mouth again. Or blow my nose.”
“Weston? Trash can. And if you want to apply for the Deputy Dustbuster position on the next jobs rotation, as you say you do, you’re going to have to demonstrate that you have the life skills required to make appropriate use of a trash can and recycle box.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve got to be responsible, hardworking, and willing to put in the extra time and effort needed to do a good job.”
“Fine, I will.”
Wes crumpled up the napkin, jumped up for the long shot, and threw it into the corner. It sailed across the room. “Eeeeeeee-yeah!” he shouted when it landed in the trash.
“Sorry,” he said.
Wes was pretty good at basketball.
That would have been a three-pointer.
3. HELLO,
Mr. Nibblenose
Dustbusting didn’t require much talent, but it was a position of trust and responsibility. Chloe and Zoe were the current Co-deputy Dustbusters. And they were an extraordinary team, even taking extra time during Shape It Up to Shipshape to painstakingly dust things high up, low down, and way back—on the shelves and inside the cupboards.
Carson wouldn’t have wanted the position.
He wasn’t sure if he would want Nancy’s position on the next rotation, or qualify for it, either: Nancy was Numbers Deputy—in charge of all number-related things, such as counting, dividing kids into equal teams, and helping Mr. Lipman correct math homework.
But Carson most definitely had his eye on Patrick’s job: Deputy Pet Care Giver. That would be his goal. He wasn’t sure if he would be ready to apply on the next jobs rotation, but maybe on a rotation after that.
Patrick knew a lot about caring for animals. His mom had founded the Wildlife Rescue Center. On Career Day, Patrick’s mom brought in a Cooper’s hawk named Coop. Coop had flown into a car windshield out by Green Gulch. After many weeks of rehabilitation, he had recovered from a broken wing and was almost ready to be released back into the wild.
Coop glared out from inside a pet carrier with his intense, beady orange eyes. He was zeroing in on something across the room.
Coop tipped his head, lifted his wings.
Then he screamed and everybody jumped.
Patrick’s mom handed her blue Wildlife Rescue Center jacket to Patrick, and he covered Mr. Nibblenose’s cage.
Mr. Nibblenose was a very reclusive, very wide, very well-fed, very glossy, somewhat socialized brown and white rat with a pink nose, soft pink ears, and a long, scaly gray tail.
He, too, was new—a gift to the class from a neighbor of Mr. Lipman’s, a woman named Belinda who had moved to Belize.
Mr. Nibblenose was spending most of his time in his cage in an empty Fluff Puff tissue box with his tail sticking out of the hole. He was just getting used to the classroom, and the kids weren’t allowed to handle him yet.
Except Patrick.
Carson wasn’t sure how he felt about confining a rat to a cage for such a big part of every day. And he didn’t know if Mr. Nibblenose would ever learn to enjoy the attention and company of the children.
He seemed quite shy.
When Coop spied him, Coop fluffed his feathers, flapped, opened his beak, poked his tongue out, and screeched.
Carson wasn’t sure how Mr. Nibblenose felt about being cooped up in a cage, but he was 100 percent positive it freaked Mr. Nibblenose out to have a hawk scream at him.
Releasing Mr. Nibblenose into the wild, however, wouldn’t be an option. He wasn’t a wild rat—like a roof rat, jumping from roof to roof through the city with a group of rowdy rodent friends.
He wasn’t a pack rat, either. And he wouldn’t enjoy scuttling around in an automotive-repair garage, leering over the tops of empty cans, hoping to set up shop in an engine compartment.
He wasn’t a sly dump rat like Templeton in Charlotte’s Web, scavenging through garbage for stinky, rotten morsels of food, although Mr. Nibblenose certainly didn’t look like he’d skipped many meals.
He was a meek splotchy-brown and bright-white domesticated pet rat with no experience in the wild. If released and allowed to go free, he would be quickly pounced upon by a cat or spotted from above by a predatory bird such as a Cooper’s hawk. Being extremely hefty, Mr. Nibblenose would find it hard to scurry to safety.
When Carson was a veterinarian, he’d have to know how to evaluate and treat pet rats for various injuries and ailments, so he’d better get used to the idea of people having them for pets.
He would encourage his clients to create a Free-Range Roaming Rat Arena somewhere in their homes so rats could get out and about as much as possible.
Mr. Lipman must have noticed how interested Carson was in Mr. Nibblenose. And must also have guessed how much Carson wanted to make a new friend. So he suggested, “Why not be Patrick’s Assistant Deputy Pet Care Giver?”
Patrick showed Carson how to make entries in the Nibblenose Classroom Care Notebook. They skimmed through the Caring for Your Pet Rat book together.
At recess, Carson helped Patrick clean the cage. And Patrick demonstrated how a rat can come when called. He called Mr. Nibblenose’s name, and Mr. Nibblenose ran to his cage and squeezed back into his Fluff Puff hideout.
In the Caring for Your Pet Rat book, it showed examples of inexpensive and entertaining rat toys, such as the Birthday Prize in Disguise Surprise.
To make a Birthday Prize in Disguise Surprise, you had to individually wrap treats like yogurt drops, seeds, nuts, and other edibles inside small pieces of paper towel or newspaper. One by one, you then dropped them into a paper-towel roll until the roll was stuffed with individually wrapped treats. The next step was to fold both ends closed and hang it from the top of the cage.
Let the fun begin!
An alternative birthday treat was a sock piñata filled with goodies.
Carson didn’t know when Mr. Nibblenose’s birthday was, or if he would be interested in opening any presents.
Right now, all he seemed interested in doing was hiding in the Fluff Puff hut, mostly backward, but sometimes frontward, with his pale pink nose protruding from the hole and trembling in the air.
Carson figured he’d up his chances of becoming Deputy Pet Care Giver if he demonstrated to Mr. Lipman that he was responsible, and a hard worker, and willing to put in extra time and effort.
He’d start by earning some extra credit.
He thumbed through the Extra-Credit Bonus-Bucks Booklet on the counter near Mr. Lipman’s desk, looking for something that would demonstrate his interest in animals.
Word Find: Make a list of fifty-five five-letter words out of the letters in Valley Oak Elementary School. Recite the list.
TEN BONUS BUCKS
Oink! Bark! Honk! Make a list of at least seventy-five onomatopoeias, put them in alphabetical order, and sing the list for the class, set to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
TEN BONUS BUCKS
No thanks on that one.
Whiz Quiz poem: Write a rhyming poem about an endangered species that showcases several examples of alliteration and onomatopoeia. Be accurate in regard to habitat and physical description. Be prepared to present it to the class.
TEN BONUS BUCKS
Carson wasn’t good at talking in front of a class, but he wanted to get better at it. Bonus Bucks were an incentive.
Yay for Bonus Bucks!
When you earned a Bonus Buck, you could write your name on it and drop it into the slot in the top of the Bonus Bucks Box in the office.
Once a week there was a drawing; if your Bonus Buck was chosen, you got to spin the Bonus Bucks Wheel of Fortune and win a prize, such as a No-Homework Pass, which Carson would love to have.
The Wheel of Fortune was a handmade contraption, constructed of plywood and nails, banged together by the office manager, Mrs. Sweetow.
Last week Weston Walker had been awarded one Bonus Buck from Mr. Lipman for leaving Mr. Nibblenose completely alone.
And last week, with just one buck in the box, Wes was the Spinner Winner!
But something unfortunate happened to the Wheel of Fortune. Wes whirled the wheel so fast and hard the base toppled off the table and flopped onto the floor, and the wheel broke into several pieces.
Fortunately, the marker was intact. It pointed to a free Valley Oak sweatshirt.
Mrs. Sweetow reluctantly gave Wes his prize.
Wes told her that squirrels gave him the heebie-jeebies. But Mrs. Sweetow wouldn’t trade for the acorn one because she was mad.
Carson wasn’t sure if she’d repaired the wheel yet, or if it was even fixable, for that matter. But he decided on Whiz Quiz poem.
Hmmmmm. What animal would it be?
Carson stood there thinking.
“Carson?” said Mr. Lipman. “Math time.”
Oops!
The rest of the kids had already lined up.
Three days a week, Carson switched classes for math. Carson, Patrick, Nancy, and some others trooped over to Ms. Parker’s class, and some of Ms. Parker’s kids went to Mr. Lipman’s class.
Carson knew that there were yays and boos about every situation, including being the New Kid at Valley Oak School.
And he had to say it: the biggest, fattest number-one boo was for Math Switcheroo. Ms. Parker herself was great.
One problem, though: she was overly neat.
In fact, a Neat Freak.
She had recently held a classroom event called Clean Out That Backpack, Dagnabbit! Day.
That wasn’t a problem for Carson, first because he wasn’t in her regular class, and second because his pack hadn’t had the chance to accumulate debris.
However, because he had her for Switcheroo, he was subjected to a different Neat Freak issue: her Select Reject Button.
Ms. Parker’s Select Reject Button was a cardboard picture of an apple with a bucktoothed worm poking its head out, and the apple was pushpinned to the wall just above the recycle bin.
If you turned in a math paper that was a rumpled or smudged mess, or if the problems were written with uneven columns, she’d just press the apple and say Beeeep!
Beeeep! meant place your paper in the bin below and begin again. Three beeeeps on the same assignment got you a blue slip: recess confined to a Blue Box.
The Blue Boxes were number two on the Boos List.
They were big, flat, bright blue squares painted on the asphalt on the playground.
And while Carson was on the topic of Boxes to Boo About: a big, fat, resounding boo on the June Box.
