Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything (12 page)

A
ll the other fifth graders were already at school having fun when we arrived. The playground had been transformed into a water park … kind of. Two of the sprinklers were on, a big waterslide had been set up, and there was a huge Slip ’N Slide mat on the hill by the side fence. Everybody was wet and almost everybody was yelling or squealing.

As we walked through the gate, two boys in our class heaved water balloons at us. They missed, and Ms. Higgins, our mostly terrific teacher, warned them she was going to be setting up the dessert table, and it was off-limits to water balloons. “So cool it right now!” Goon and her supposed boyfriend Kevin Welch, whom I do not like, were sitting at the table.
I ignored them and walked toward the playground.

About one minute later, nearly all the boys and a few of the girls were gathered around us listening to how Georgie and I were almost just arrested for littering. Georgie waved his arms all around like G. J. Prott’s neighbor lady while I told the story. Everybody seemed shocked when we told them that Officer Crompton knows every kid in town by sight, except for Glenn Philips, who said that with over four thousand kids in Gloucester schools, “Such a feat of memory is entirely unlikely.” Then Mrs. Crespo told Georgie and me to get our tickets for the drawing because the prize would be forty dollars’ worth of pizza and stuff at the best pizza place in town.

We went over to the dessert table, where Ms. Higgins was putting out the goodies. Kevin and Goon sat at the end. He was holding the roll of red tickets for the party’s prize drawing. She was just sitting. He tore off two tickets, removed our stubs and set them on the table, and handed our tickets to us.

My number was 05554. Georgie looked at his ticket, got excited, and then stuck
it in my face and pointed at the number. It was one more than mine, and he was excited about all the fives. He showed it to Kevin and hooted.

Kevin said, “Don’t get all bonko. You’re gonna lose.”

“Maybe not, maybe not.” Georgie grinned. “I’m very lucky, and this is a very lucky number.”

“Not today, you’re not,” Kevin said. He looked at Goon, who nodded, made a big L with her thumb and pointer finger, and said, “Loser.”

Georgie is not afraid of bigger kids. He glared at Kevin.

Kevin sneered a grinning sneer and picked up our two ticket stubs. He handed them to Goon, who made a big show of stuffing them through the slot in the lid of the jar that held all the other stubs for the drawing, but I saw what she really did.

Yeah, I saw what she did, and I thought about the Point Battle and how this might be my big chance. I thought about this for a few seconds, but because of all the fun going on, I did not think about it again for the next ninety minutes. Here’s what I did instead:

1. I ran around like a lunatic. No one could catch me. Lana Shen is the only kid who is faster than I am, but she didn’t even try.
   
2. I ate three colossal scoops of ice cream on one cone—brown cow, double fudge, and mint chip. There were six different kinds to choose from. You can probably guess that I love chocolate.
   
3. I did an awesomely dangerous trick that ended with a terrific face-plant in the mud. Everyone cheered! Ms. Higgins commanded me not to do it again.
   
4. I ate five strings of red licorice in less than one minute. Georgie dared me. I dared him back, and he ate nine and almost threw up!
   
5. I took a huge running start, then scoogled (this is my made-up word … it is a combination of
   scoot
   and
   wiggle
   ) on the Slip ’N Slide and skivolvunged butt-first into the dirt, which was actually mud. (Can you guess what
   skivolvunged
   is a three-way combo of? The answer is on my website.)
   
6. I ate one bite of a homemade, low-fat, low-sugar, organic oatmeal-raisin-carob cookie that Ms. Higgins made. IMO the real ingredients were cat litter, library paste, wood chunks, and rabbit pellets, so I fed the rest to Mrs. Crespo’s pug dog, who is so ugly he is cute.
   
7. I invented a game that almost the whole class played. I named it Playground Marco Polo, and it’s just like in a swimming pool except everyone bumps around on their knees. It doesn’t have to be in mud, but ours was.
   
8. I split two double-stick Popsicles—one orange and one green—with Georgie. The combination turned our tongues brown.
   

I had as much fun as any kid in the world could possibly have in ninety minutes on a warm, sunny June day on a sopping-wet public school playground in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Then Ms. Higgins called out for everyone to gather for the prize drawing. Mrs. Crespo stood smiling as Goon and Kevin handed her the jar of ticket stubs.
As soon as I saw the jar, I instantly knew what I was going to do. I grabbed Georgie’s shoulder and whispered, “Today, at our graduation, my sister tattled on us. Sure, we were guilty in the Mouse Plot, but that’s not the point. She ratted on us and almost got us Partially Expelled. But now we get our revenge.”

Georgie had no idea what I was planning to do, but he grinned anyway. He’s my best friend.

“Boys and girls,” Mrs. Crespo announced, “it’s time for the prize drawing. Get your tickets.” Everybody ran to their backpacks, which is where we were told to stash our tickets during the water party.

Alex Welch pulled his ticket out of his bathing suit pocket and whined, “I can’t read my number. It’s all soggy.” Kevin laughed at his little brother and called him a dope. Ms. Higgins patted Alex on the head.

Alex rewhined, “I need another ticket.”

Ms. Higgins gave Alex a stop-the-whining face, and he shut up.

“Give me yours,” I said softly to Georgie.

“Why?” he whispered back, holding out his ticket.

“Just watch,” I said, taking it from him.

Mrs. Crespo, smiling broadly and standing tall—which for her is still very, very short—proclaimed, “I shall now, after a proper shaking to assure random mixing …” She shook the jar of stubs. “… draw out a single ticket.” She unscrewed the lid. “And we shall then have a winner of the forty-dollar pizza party, to which I hope I will be invited, because I do like pizza so very much.”

I read somewhere that pizza is the favorite food of American kids. I don’t know if that is actually true. Whenever I travel, I see way more hamburger signs than pizza signs. But pizza is my personal favorite. If you want to vote on your favorite food, please go to my website—
CheesieMack.com
—and let me know your opinion.

Mrs. Crespo held up the jar of ticket stubs and started to reach in for a ticket, but I jumped forward and interrupted. “Mrs. Crespo! Before you draw a winner, I have a question.”

She raised her eyebrows in a yes-what-is-it way.

“Is this supposed to be a fair and honest drawing?” I asked.

She looked surprised. “Of course.”

I walked toward her. “And if you found out that someone had cheated, would the cheater be punished?”

“Certainly.”

“And what if the cheater was someone you had put your trust in, someone who abused that trust?” I was now standing near the dessert table, right next to Goon.

“The punishment would be severe.” She had now set the jar back on the dessert table. “Do you have something to tell me, Ronald?”

“Yes. Yes, I do. Here are the tickets that Kevin Welch and my sister gave to me and Georgie when we got here.” I held our bright red tickets up for everyone to see. “In order for this to be fair and honest, the people who gave us these tickets would have put our stubs in that jar with all the other stubs. Right?”

Mrs. Crespo looked impatient.

“But my sister and her accomplice, Kevin Welch, have purposely and cheatingly made certain that
Georgie and I would not have the tiniest chance of winning by hiding our stubs in her pocket!”

If I have done a good job of describing, you will realize that this moment was like a scene from one of those television shows where the good-guy lawyer, Mr. R. Cheshire MacAronie, Esq., has just sprung a clever trap on the villains, the master criminal known as Madame Goon and her muscle-bound sidekick, Kevin the Welcher. As a result of MacAronie’s superb cunning, the malevolent (muh-LEH-voh-lent, which means “really evil”) villains are trapped, caught,
pinned, and exposed in front of the entire courtroom of witnesses—in this case, my fifth-grade class, my teacher, and my principal.

Mrs. Crespo turned to my sister. “June?”

“My brother is an idiot. I did no such thing.”

“I saw her do it,” I said.

“I don’t have your stupid stubs. Idiot.”

“That’s enough, June. I’ll handle this.” Mrs. Crespo began tapping her fingers together. Tapping fingers meant, you remember, that guilt was already decided and punishment was coming. I was doomed. This would be a big loss in the Point Battle. Big. My face felt hot. Everyone was looking at me.

“After this morning’s events—you do recall the incident I am referring to?—I thought we had an understanding about your behavior, Ronald. But it appears that I was wrong. I shall have to—”

Suddenly I blurted out, “Empty her pockets!” And then I yelled, “MAKE HER EMPTY HER POCKETS!”

I looked at Goon. Her hand started to reach toward her back pocket … then stopped.

Sometimes you do something without thinking. That’s what I did right then. I leaped at Goon, grabbing her around the waist and reaching for her back pockets.

We struggled.

She pushed.

I thrashed.

I heard yelling—probably me and Mrs. Crespo and Georgie and everybody else, but I couldn’t tell one noise from the other.

Goon, who is bigger and stronger than I am, jabbed out with the heel of her hand and caught me in the mouth. I tasted blood, but I was so focused on finding those ticket stubs that nothing hurt.

Goon kicked me. I didn’t even feel it.

“Stop fighting!” Mrs. Crespo yelled, grabbing us both and shoving us apart. “This is—”

Panting almost uncontrollably, I interrupted. “Punish me! Punish me if I’m wrong! But if I’m right, then you have to look in her pockets.”

Mrs. Crespo was unconvinced.

“Please!” I pleaded. “If the ticket stubs aren’t
there, then my sister is right, and I
am
an idiot, and whatever punishment you were going to give me, double it!”