Tuesday afternoon, after the written test, I was stuck in the Spirit Squad room, making a bunch of stupid posters. That's really all we ever do in Spirit Squad – make posters. Spirit Squad is supposed to be like cheerleading, only there aren’t really any teams to cheer in town. So we make collages and posters for all the school events - or, if there isn't an event going on, we'll make posters about things like diversity, while Mrs. Jonson, the faculty sponsor, sits in the corner grading papers and sipping coffee. I was drawing a large bumblebee with markers and writing "BEE there or BEE square." And I was really, really bored.
"Isn't this a little trite?" I asked.
"Trite?" said Marianne. "As in boring or cliche?"
"Yeah. I mean, a bumblebee on a spelling bee poster? Isn't it the same thing they do every year?"
Brittany Tatomir looked up from the poster she was drawing, which said "who will the winner BEE?," and looked at me. "Yeah, " she said. "Maybe it’s a bit lame, but what do you want to put on them instead? A grasshopper?" "I don't know," I said. "Something different. Maybe a great speller from history."
"Like who?" asked Marianne. "Name any three people who are famous for their spelling skills."
"Noah Webster," I said, after thinking about it for a second. "The guy who wrote Webster's Dictionary."
"Who the heck would recognize him if we put him on a poster?" asked Marianne. "I wouldn't, and if I don't, nobody else will, either."
I didn’t fight her on this. Mostly because I wouldn’t recognize Noah Webster myself unless he showed up on my porch holding a sign that said "Hi, I’m Noah Webster." And even then, I’d think it was probably just some nut in a costume, not Noah Webster. I hate it when Marianne makes good points.
"Fine," I said. "How about Shakespeare? People know what he looked like, don't they?"
Brittany looked up from her poster again. "Was he a good speller?" she asked. "I heard most writers stink at spelling."
"Actually," interrupted Mrs. Jonson, the faculty sponsor, "nobody was a good speller back then. They didn't really have any rules of spelling in Shakespeare's day. They just spelled things however they thought they should be spelled, and figured people would know what they meant."
"Really?" I asked.
Mrs. Jonson barely looked up from grading papers, but she nodded.
"Wow," said Marianne. "If people just spelled things however they wanted, it must have taken weeks for anyone to lose a spelling bee!"
"Yeah," said Brittany. "It would have been a much harder sport in those days, huh?"
"Anyway," said Marianne, "that means we shouldn't put him on a spelling bee poster. As P-R-E-S-I-D-E-N-T of the spirit squad, I say we keep going with the bumblebee theme."
It's not like it mattered what was on the posters, anyway. The real reason to make posters for the spelling bee was just that they needed something for the spirit squad to do. The bee was going to be held during the day, so everyone in school would have to attend whether they liked it or not. And it was the talk of the town, anyway. There was no real reason to advertise it.
Twenty minutes later, Marianne looked up from her umpteenth bumblebee poster. "Hey," she said. "What did you guys think of that new kid?"
"Well," I said, "he sure seemed different."
I was pretty sure there had never been a kid at Gordon Liddy like Mutual Scrivener, the new kid. I'd never heard of a kid actually wearing a blazer and a tie to school when it wasn't picture day. No one quite knew what to make of him.
"I hear he moved in from a bigger town," said Brittany, "because his parents thought he had a better chance in the spelling bee here."
"Yeah," said Claire, a fifth grader. "I heard they home-schooled him and taught him nothing but spelling since he was, like, four. He already has the whole Webster's Dictionary memorized, and now he's working on the American Heritage one."
"That's not true!" said Marianne, who was probably scared to death to see another kid studying the dictionary as carefully as she was. "If you ask me, he's either A, a freak, B, a mutant, or C, a jerk."
"What makes you say that?" I asked. "He didn't seem like a jerk. I thought he seemed nice."
"Nice? He was a total snob!" said Marianne. "He hardly said a word to anybody!"
"Maybe he was just nervous," I said. "Wouldn't you be?"
"You can just tell by looking at him that he's a jerk, can't you?" said Marianne. "And anyway, how smart can he be if he hasn't been in school a day in his life?"
"He looked pretty smart to me," said Claire.
"Ha!" said Marianne. "That's prejudice. Just because he had glasses doesn't make him smart," she said. "Look at me. I don't wear glasses, and I'm still smart."
"You saw him in spelling practice!" said Brittany. "He was fierce!"
We had a full hour of spelling practice in the afternoon, and it was very clear that Mutual knew his stuff. He hadn’t missed a word. He hadn’t even looked as though he had to think about any of them. He might have actually HAD the dictionary memorized.
"I'll bet he kicks your butt at the bee," I said, just to egg her on, though I sincerely hoped he would.
"Jennifer," Mrs. Jonson interrupted, "watch what you say. This is the spirit squad, girls, not the gossip club. Let's not spend our time saying mean things about your fellow students."
Actually, it WAS the gossip club. Almost all of the after-school clubs were really gossip clubs.
"Anyway," said Marianne, "he can't possibly study the dictionary as hard as I do. I did A and B last night, and tonight I'll do C and D."
"You did not!" I said, laughing.
"Did so!" she said. "Listen! Abnegation. A-B-N-E-G-A-T-I-O-N. Brecciated. B-R-E-C-C-I-A-T-E-D."
I have to admit that I was a bit impressed - Marianne must have been studying to even come up with words like those.
"Yeah," I said, "but what do those words even mean?"
"Who cares?" asked Marianne. "You don't have to know what they mean, just how to spell them. Wasting your time with the definitions is a real rookie mistake for spelling bees, if you ask me. I'll bet the new kid reads the definitions."
"Well, I asked, "what good is knowing how to spell a word if you don't even know what it means?"
"Duh!" said Marianne. "You can use it to win a spelling bee! And I have to cut corners wherever I can to get through the whole dictionary. Plus, everyone knows the new kid is probably cheating."
"What?" I asked.
"Yeah," said Claire. "I heard they’re going to feed him the answers through some kind of high-tech earpiece. And Jason Keyes is going to steal the master word list. And I heard that Harlan is planning to slash the tires of the bus on the day of the bee so people can’t get here!"
"That’s nonsense," I said. "Harlan wouldn’t do that."
Marianne snorted. "You’ve got a lot to learn about how spelling bees work, Jen," she said.
By the time Spirit Squad ended, it was nearly five o'clock. I ran as fast as I could to my mother’s car, which was waiting right outside the school. I never got to walk home from Spirit Squad this time of year, since it would be getting close to dark out when it ended.
"I assume you passed the written test?" Mom asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"I knew you would," she said. "Who else took it?"
"Almost everybody," I said. "It was all words we had in spelling last year. Harlan and Amber both passed, too. And Brittany Tatomir, and Tony Ostanek, and Jake.... and a new kid, too!"
"New kid?" my mother asked. "You have a new kid? Is he a good speller?"
"Yeah. Rumor has it that he’s some kind of prodigy."
"Sounds like he'll be a tough contender, then. Drat. I was hoping it would just be between you and Marianne. What's his name?"
"Mutual," I said. "Mutual Scrivener."
"Mutual?" my mother asked. "I'll bet his parents must be dirty hippies to name him something like that - they're always naming their kids things like Starflower, Love, or Togetherness."
She wrinkled her nose, like she was saying they named their kids Dirt, Garbage, or Idiot. I thought Starflower sounded like a nice name, actually. Maybe I’ll change my name to Starflower when I become a hippie myself.
"Did this kid smell bad?" Mom asked. "Hippies always smell bad."
I wanted to say "not ALL of them," but I didn’t. I guess I hadn’t really met any in real life, and you can’t tell how someone smells based on TV.
"I don't think so," I said. "He was wearing a tie and a blazer."
"Well, they aren't hippies then," said Mom. "You won't catch them wearing a tie. Was he foreign?"
"Didn't look like it."
"Well, then, I guess his parents are just weirdos. You should be able to beat him without too much trouble, right?"
"I suppose so," I said, though I really had no idea. We drove along in silence for a bit. "Hey, Mom," I said. "Did you know they didn't have even spelling rules when Shakespeare was alive?"
"Who told you that?" my mother asked.
"Mrs. Jonson, the faculty sponsor."
"That sounds like a myth to me, Jennifer. How could anyone even learn to read if they didn't have spelling in the first place?"
"She said people just spelled things however they thought they should be spelled, and people knew what they meant. She says Shakespeare even spelled his name in different ways."
"Hmmm," said my mother. "Do you think she's just trying to psyche you out?"
"What would she do that for?" I asked.
"Well, maybe she's the person Marianne bribed for the word list, and she paid extra to have her sabotage other people. She's trying to get it into your head that people can spell things however they want, so you'll stop caring about spelling rules. Oh, that's sneaky of her!"
"I don't think she's being sneaky, Mom," I said. "Why would she do a thing like that?"
"Jennifer," my mother said with a sigh, "you've got a lot to learn about how the world works. There are good people out there, of course, but the corruption goes all the way up to the top, probably even at Gordon Liddy. It wouldn't be the first time in history that a teacher was trying to sabotage other students. Maybe the Cleavers are paying her. Or maybe Mutual's parents are in on it somehow."
"Or maybe it's the truth," I said. "Maybe they really didn't spell things in certain ways back then."
"Well, you can ask people at the next Shakespeare Club meeting, then," said my mother.
I was pretty sure she was just being crazy. I mean, surely no one was crazy enough to go around bribing Mrs. Jonson, right? I wished it was Shakespeare Club night, so I could find out for sure. But I wasn’t sure WHERE the heck I was going that night. I had lost track.
"What activities do I have today?" I asked.
"You have indoor soccer at seven," said Mom.
"Can I skip it tonight so I can work on spelling?" I asked.
"I don’t know, Jennifer."
"Please?" I asked. "Why do you keep making me play sports that I don’t even like?"
"Parenting today is like developing a product," she said. "We’re not just raising you, we’re getting you ready to be marketed to colleges. It’s what we did with Val. She signed up for everything, and that helped her get into a great school!"
Apparently she didn’t mind worrying that it might hurt my feelings to be treated like a I was a new kind of cola. But it did. So, what was going to happen if I didn’t win the bee? Would they change my formula? Get me a new look? Discontinue me?
They’d probably discontinue me, in a way. They’d send me off to military school, have another kid, and hope it’s a better speller. I didn’t think Mom would ever let Dad sign me up for military school over missing the recycling club or indoor soccer, but the bee was another matter. If I didn’t even make it to districts in sixth grade, the year Val went all the way to nationals, they might decide it was time for drastic measures.
"But the spelling bee is the most important one right now, right?" I asked.
"I suppose so," said Mom.
"And I want to study for it as much as I can," I said. "The colleges won’t know that I missed two weeks of indoor soccer. It can still be on my application, even if I just quit!"
Mom didn’t say anything for a second. "All right," she said. "As long as you study spelling. I guess you can miss soccer if it gives you a better chance to win the bee."
"And if I go to districts, can I drop a few more of them?"
She thought about it. "I think that would probably be a good idea," she said. "I’ll talk to your father."
I looked out my window, so she couldn’t see that I was breathing a sigh of relief.
I felt like I had a pretty good chance of winning. Or at least making it to districts, which was all that really mattered. I guessed that Marianne, Mutual and I would probably all make it- but I hoped that either Mutual or I was the winner. Anybody but Marianne. I wouldn’t mind losing to Mutual as much.
In fact, I was kind of fascinated by Mutual. I’m not saying that I had a crush on him or anything, but I’d known every other guy in town since they were about four years old. The very fact that Mutual wasn’t from Preston, as far as anyone knew, made him seem sort of…exotic. In a really weird way.
Plus, no one else knew this, but he talked to me on the way to recess. A little, anyway.
On the way to recess, he had asked me what I thought of "Henry The Fifth," a play I’d never read. I was so embarrassed not to have read it that I hadn’t said anything, I’d just sort of run away. He was probably an expert on Shakespeare. But I was going to read "Henry the Fifth" right away, so I could talk about it with him.
Finally. Someone I might really be able to talk to in Preston! I don’t want to say I had a crush on Mutual, exactly, but I imagined us going head to head at the end of the spelling bee, and he’d be all impressed with how smart I was, and want to hang out with me every day after that.
Look, I like to think I’m friends with everyone in class. We’ve all gotten to know each other really well over the years. But there was no one like me in town.
Brittany is a lot smarter than she acts, but she’s afraid that if anyone sees her jump in a snow drift, they’ll think she’s weird. And Marianne’s not exactly stupid, either but, well, she’s nuts. I mean, I don’t want to sound like a snob or anything, but sometimes I wished that there was someone in my class that I could go to Shakespeare Club meetings with. Someone else who was into that sort of thing. I wasn’t sure Mutual had ever jumped in the snow, but maybe he’d try. He was someone I just might really be able to relate to.
I mean, you know what I really hate? When we have to find a partner to work on something in class. Everyone else pairs up, and I start to panic, wondering who will want to work with me. I always wish I could just keep working by myself. But maybe Mutual would be someone I could always pick as a partner in class.
Plus, I hate to say my mom was right, but his parents probably WERE weirdos. In fact, they were probably just as nuts as mine. Maybe HE wanted to run away and be a hippie, too.
And, to top it all off, he was a guy.
No one’s going to see this beside the school board people, right?
Good. Because I don’t believe in violence, but if this gets out… well, let’s just say that people who read Shakespeare learn an awful lot of interesting ways to murder people, Chrissie.
That evening, I was back on my bed, stroking Falstaff behind the ears as he sat next to me - there certainly wasn't room on my lap for him, since The Complete Works of Shakespeare took up the whole thing. On the other side of me, the side where Falstaff wasn't, I had a dictionary. Every time I came upon a word in Shakespeare that I didn't know, which I did pretty regularly, I would look it up. For once, I actually felt like I was learning stuff, not just memorizing things long enough to get a grade off of them. The None of the Above studying method was working!
At seven, my dad called me downstairs. I assumed it was dinner time, but when I got downstairs, the table was empty.
"Look, Jennifer," he said. "Good news. I went to city hall today and got the blueprints."
"The blueprints?" I said. "What blueprints?"
"The ones for the school, silly," he said. "We'll need to study them really carefully. This is your ticket to getting a great job when you grow up!"
I suppose it’s worth noting that my dad does not have a good job, exactly. He works for a big company, but his job is really to follow the boss around and agree with whatever he says. He likes to act like he’s really important, but I know that his real job is being a PBK – professional butt kisser.
He laid out a large, blue sheet of paper on the table, which was like a view of the inside of the school from above. It showed every room, hall, window, door, and bathroom.
"What's the point of this?" I asked. "I know my way around the school."
"Don't be so confident, honey," said my dad. " We can't leave anything to chance. Now, here's the office." He pointed down at the room near the front door, which she knew perfectly well was the office. "Do you know where they keep the word list?"
"In one of the file cabinets, I think," I said. "They're along this wall, here. But two of them are locked, so you won’t be able to get into them anyway." I pointed to the wall on the blueprint.
"I see. Well, how are they locked? Is it just a cheap padlock?"
This was when I realized what Dad had in mind. I had hoped he was just going to have me do some weird exercise where I concentrate really hard on thinking about the filing cabinet. It wouldn’t be the strangest thing he’s tried. One time some wacko told him that if you listen to Mozart stand on your head while you study, it helps you learn stuff. And he tried to make me study while standing on my head for a good week. That was nuts. But this was the first time he had turned to crime.
So there you have it. It’s true. I told my Dad where they keep the master list, which I guess makes me an accessory to the break-in.
"Dad, please," I said. "You don’t need to break into the school!"
"You should be grateful, dear," said my mother, as she began to set the table for dinner. "Not every daddy would do that sort of thing for his daughter."
But I wasn’t grateful. I was horrified.
I ran back up to my bedroom, got my Shakespeare book out, and tried as hard as I could to just focus on that instead of thinking about Dad. I even opened the window to make the room really, really cold, so the blankets would feel even better. I knew how much it bugged them when I opened the window when the heat was on; they usually came in shouting that we weren’t trying to heat the whole stinking street. I guess it made me feel a bit better to do something that I knew annoyed them, even though I chickened out and closed it again after about five minutes.
I fell asleep with my light still on, Falstaff at my side, and the book open to Macbeth.
Copyright 2008 by Adam Selzer, all rights reserved.
