Cheesie Mack Is Not a Genius or Anything (2 page)

My mother is an air-traffic controller. Her job is to keep track of airplanes and tell them where to fly. She works in the control tower at Logan Airport in Boston. She always brags that she can keep planes far enough apart so they don’t crash into each other, but complains that she can’t do the same with her kids. And when June and I fight, I usually get the worst of it
because she’s two years older and much bigger than me.

And meaner.

But I’m pretty sure I will be bigger than her when we’re both in high school. I don’t know if I will be meaner.

Mom walked over to the driveway, carrying a plate of meat and gristle and skin that she had torn off the leftover chicken bones. “Ronald’s graduation ceremony begins at ten-thirty sharp tomorrow morning,” she said, tossing the leftover chicken bits to my dog, Deeb, who is a very good jumper and midair scraps-grabber. “I don’t want anyone to be late.”

“When I was a boy,” Dad said as I plopped down at the picnic table next to Granpa, “there was no such thing as fifth-grade graduation.”

“When I was a boy,” my grandfather added, “there was no such thing as fifth grade.” He tried to poke me in the ribs, but I saw it coming and quickly slid away from him.

“When I was a boy …,” I said, pausing to take another sip of soda. But getting away from Granpa had moved me too close to my sister’s cleanup work. She
poked me much harder than Granpa ever would have, then scooted into the house grinning wickedly because no one saw her do it.

Drops of soda dribbled down my neck. One point for my sister.

I hooked my sneakers on the wood boards under the picnic table, leaned wa-a-ay back on the bench, and looked sideways at Dad and Granpa.

“When I was a boy, I—” But two cans of cream soda bubbles churning around inside me, along with the back bend stretching out my belly, wouldn’t let me finish my sentence. I burped long and loud.

“Riddle-dee.” That’s exactly what it sounded like … sort of.

An instant later, my father rattled out a longer one.

“Riddle-dee-diddle.”

Almost immediately Granpa topped us both.

“Riddle-dee-diddle-dee-dee.”

We all sighed. “Ahhhhh!”

From the driveway, Mom shouted, “I heard that!”

“You’re still the greatest, Pop,” Dad said to Granpa.

“You should be in the opera,” I told him.

We always say that to Granpa. He once burped the opening to “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Musical burping is a Mack Family Tradition.

Mom thinks it’s crude and rude.

Dad says she’s a prude.

Granpa says it improves his mood.

I think it’s dude.

It was the middle of June. Tomorrow morning I had to go to my boring fifth-grade graduation ceremony.

How did I know it would be boring? We had been rehearsing for three days, and here’re all the boring things that we had to do for everyone’s parents and grandparents:

1. Recite the Pledge of Allegiance. (Georgie Sinkoff, my best friend, said he was going to do it with his eyes crossed.)
   
2. Sing “This Land Is Your Land.” (Georgie said he could hold his breath through the whole song—even while opening and closing his mouth like he was singing—and turn bright red.)
   
3. Sit quietly while our principal, Mrs.
   Crespo, gives a speech. (The school nurse told Georgie it’s about healthy eating habits, so he’s going to pretend to throw up on Lana Shen, the girl sitting next to him.)
   
4. Listen to Francine Binki, who has perfect attendance, recite a poem she wrote called “Growing Up.” (Georgie said he’ll “grow down” by sliding out of his chair so slowly that no one will notice him moving at all. By the end of Francine’s poem, he’ll be totally out of sight.)
   
5. March up to the stage one at a time to get our diplomas. (When Alex Welch, who is last in our class alphabetically, walks past, Georgie said he is going to trip him because he is sure Alex is the kid who dog-pooped his bike seat.)
   

Georgie lots of times has terrific ideas, and if I’d maybe believed that he was going to do even
one
of these, I would have been happy to go. But there would be tons of grown-ups there, so I knew nothing would happen, and it would be very, very boring.

“I feel kinda sick,” I said weakly, looking around at everything in the backyard except Mom, who had just sat down next to Dad. “I’m probably getting the flu.”

“Cut the con job,” Mom said. “You are
going
to graduation. My parents are driving up from New Haven, and there’s no way you’re—”

“Okay,” I muttered, “just for Gumpy and Meemo.”

I know those are really stupid names for grandparents, but don’t blame me. My sister was born first. She made them up. But I invented Granpa’s name. It used to be Grandpa, with a d, but when I was little, G-R-A-N-P-A was how I spelled it, and he liked it that way … which was surprising because Granpa disagrees with almost
everything
. He once told me, “If I don’t get hot and contrary about something every single day, my blood’ll probably just cool down, thicken up, and clot me to death.”

The name Granpa isn’t so rare, but I have never met anyone who has a Gumpy or a Meemo. I am collecting grandparent nicknames on my website,
CheesieMack.com
. You can put yours in if you want.

“I don’t think Granpa can come to Ronnie’s graduation,” Dad said.

Mom looked at Granpa in disbelief. Granpa was looking up at the sky. She looked at Dad. He had his head down, pretending to brush crumbs off his fake foot. (When Dad was twenty, he was a sailor on a Navy aircraft carrier, and some guy dropped a bomb on his shoe. It didn’t explode or anything, but it squashed his foot, so he straps on a fake one. It even has fake toenails.)

“Granpa’s going to be busy,” Dad finally said. “There’s too much red in my taillights.”

I must have looked confused.

“Oh, yeah,” Dad went on. “He’ll be down at the garage draining the color.”

My father owns four limousines. Those are very big and fancy cars. They’re used for driving people places. He’s the boss of his company. But he also drives the limos sometimes.

“Messy job. Probably take me all day,” Granpa grumbled.

Mom got up and walked away without saying anything.

I knew they were kidding, so I squinted one eye shut and gave my father an evil pirate look … which he gave right back. Then I suddenly turned my head and squinty-evil-eyed at Granpa, who instantly squinty-evil-eyed back at both of us. As you probably guessed, this is another Mack Family Tradition.

We probably would have kept squinty-evil-eyeing each other for a lot longer if the phone hadn’t rung. My sister yelled from inside.

“Hey, Runt! Phone!”

I know her tricks. She gets no points if I ignore her. That’s one of the rules of the Point Battle, which was 615 to 592. My sister was leading, but recently I’ve been gaining on her. I’ve been keeping track since the beginning of fourth grade.

So I walked into the house, paying no attention to
my sister and total attention to Deeb, who was running back and forth between my legs.

June almost never calls me Ronald or Ronnie or Ron. She mostly uses Runt, which I hate because I am actually the second-shortest kid in my class. Only Glenn Philips is smaller. And he has some kind of growth-hormone shortage in his brain that he’s getting shots for. But he’s also the smartest kid in the fifth grade and can tell you the names of all of Jupiter’s larger moons. (I put a diagram here, but I included only the four largest moons because there isn’t enough room for the rest. There’s plenty of room in space, however.)

“Runt!”

I hate when she does this. Probably one of my friends is calling, but if I answer her, she’ll just smirk and say, “I see you finally know your real name.”

I am a ten-year-old boy with big sister problems.

When my parents aren’t around, I call her Goon. In my opinion, Goon is an excellent description of June’s personality.

If I think up any new Goonish insults, they will be in my next book.

T
he phone call was from Georgie Sinkoff, my best friend.

“GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!” he screamed into my ear before I could finish saying hello. And then he hung up on me.

I ran outside, yelled to Mom where I was going, and sprinted into the gully behind my house, which is in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where I have lived my whole life.

If you don’t know where Massachusetts is, look in the upper right-hand corner of the United States. Turn the page for a map.

I left Alaska out because it’s too big.

Mass (sometimes we call it that) is a small state.
Only six states are smaller. Even Hawaii is bigger, but it’s kind of cheating because lots of Hawaii is ocean. I have a U.S. map on my bedroom wall, and because I look at it every night before I turn out my light, I have almost memorized it.