Wall Ball (4 page)

M
onday morning, Dad offered to make omelets for breakfast. I was tempted. Watching him cook was fun. It was almost as good as eating what he cooked. But I decided to have oatmeal instead. It seemed better suited to the weather. Gray and mushy.

Just like my mood.

Dad was disappointed. He couldn’t get creative with oatmeal. Mr. Bones was even more upset. He lived for leftovers. My dad’s omelets were so big, nobody could eat a whole one. There was always something left for Mr. Bones.

“I’ll make it up to you, buddy,” I promised.
“I’ll take you for a walk after school, and you can show off your coat all over the neighborhood.”

He perked up.

After breakfast I spent about an hour putting on my cold-weather gear. All the extra clothes I have to wear is one of the worst things about winter. I was sick and tired of the layers, the thick socks, the sloppy boots, the mittens that never seemed to get completely dry.

I trudged off to the bus stop feeling more wrapped up than a mummy.

A real mummy would have been nice. It would have meant Egypt, where I understood the weather was hot and dry.

The bus pulled up and I climbed aboard. It was about three-quarters full. Stump and Slingshot waved to me from a seat toward the middle. I slid behind them, next to my friend and classmate Gabby Hedron.

Gabby is a photographer and reporter. She covers school events and baseball for
The Rambletown Bulletin
, the local newspaper.

“Morning, everyone,” I said as the bus rumbled off.

“You hear about the Haymakers?” Gabby asked. “They’ve been practicing in snowshoes.”

Gabby is the Rounders’ number one fan. On her list of favorite things, the big, mean, hairy Hog City Haymakers ranked somewhere between bad breath and poison ivy. Maybe lower.

“I heard,” I said.

“Why haven’t you guys tried it?”

“Good question,” I said.

At the next stop, Gasser hopped up the steps. Every eye was on him as he hobbled down the aisle on a pair of aluminum crutches.

“Gasser! Gasser!” kids yelled. “Did you really pull a double-front roll Flying Walrus? On Darkness Falls!”

“Triple.” Gasser grinned gamely as he lowered himself into the empty seat across from Stump and Slingshot.

“Triple, my foot!” hooted Slingshot. “The only triple you scored was three scoops of fudge
ripple ice cream in the hospital.”

“Don’t talk to me about it.” Gasser groaned, suddenly looking as green as a dish of pistachio ice cream. “I don’t want to see any more ice cream as long as I live.”

The bus lurched ahead. Soon we reached the corner of Oxford and Riverview. Orlando stood amid iceberg-sized snowdrifts on the sidewalk. He was bundled in enough arctic gear to launch an expedition to the North Pole. If not for his familiar red hat with earflaps, I probably wouldn’t have recognized him.

The door cranked open, and our new center fielder slowly climbed aboard. With his hat pulled low, he made his way nervously through the bus. Kids who hadn’t met him, which was pretty much everyone, openly stared.

Orlando seemed relieved when he spotted Slingshot, Stump, and me. His face lit up like a video arcade under his red hat.

“That’s the new center fielder, isn’t it?” Gabby whispered. “I recognize him from practice.”

“Orlando Ramirez,” I told her. “He’s like a frog. Expert at catching flies.”

“I never saw a frog jump straight into a wall,” Gabby said.

“You saw that?”

“I see everything the Rounders do,” said Gabby. “It’s my job.”

“What’s happening, Orlando?” I greeted him. “How many fingers am I holding up?” I flashed two.

“Cut it out, Walloper.” He chuckled. “I can see just fine.”

“Tell it to the outfield wall.” Stump laughed. “Hey, Gasser, get your bum leg out of the way and make room for Orlando. He’s on the team, you know.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Gasser, pogoing out of his seat. “Slide in, why don’t you? I need to sit next to the aisle so I can stretch out my leg.”

Orlando scooted over beside the window, and Gasser plopped down beside him.

“So, you’re the guy who’s taking my place?” he asked.

“I guess so,” Orlando said apologetically. “I mean, I didn’t plan on replacing anyone. I just wanted to play baseball. I’m sorry about your leg.”

“Don’t worry about it. The doctor says the old peg will be fine. It just needs time to heal. You ever break anything?”

“I broke my wrist once,” Orlando said as all the kids on the bus listened in. “Skate-boarding.”

Everybody nodded appreciatively. A skate-boarding accident was cool. I could tell Orlando would be just fine at Rambletown Elementary.

Gabby leaned toward him and introduced herself.

“I write about the Rounders for the newspaper,” she said. “We should talk.”

Orlando smiled politely and nodded in an offhand way. All the attention seemed to make him uncomfortable.

Under normal conditions, either a broken leg or a new kid would totally dominate school news all by itself. To have both on the same day? That was like dessert after Thanksgiving dinner: almost too much of a good thing. Apple pie and pumpkin pie and ice cream and shortbread cookies and whatever crazy thing your great-aunt had dreamed up with Jell-O, whipped cream, and custard. A person hardly knew where to start.

But our first day back after vacation turned out to be anything but normal. Both Gasser and Orlando were dwarfed by a snow mountain.

Literally.

W
e saw the mountain for the first time when the bus pulled into the school parking lot. You could hardly miss it. The thing totally dominated the white winter landscape. It towered above the school grounds like a land-locked iceberg. If it had been an iceberg, forget about the
Titanic
. It was so big, it would’ve sunk Greenland.

As we drew into its enormous shadow, every kid fell quiet. The only sound at all was the thunk of dropping jaws as they hit the floor. A silent school bus was a strange and eerie thing. But compared to the snow mountain, a quiet school bus seemed normal.

“Holy Himalayas,” Slingshot finally gasped.

Gabby whipped a camera out of her backpack and started snapping pictures through the window.

“Where on Earth did that come from?” Gasser wondered.

“I don’t know,” said Gabby. “But this is front-page stuff. Have you ever seen anything like it?”

“In my nightmares,” said Stump. “It’s so steep, it makes Darkness Falls look flat.”

“Don’t talk about Darkness Falls,” said Gasser.

“The plows,” Slingshot whistled. “They must have made it when they cleared the parking lot.”

Of course! Slingshot was right. So much snow had fallen during spring vacation that the road crews had run out of places to put it. In pushing and piling it around the lot, they had created a giant, jagged peak that made Mount Everest look like an anthill.

“Wow,” breathed Orlando, his eyes popping.

I could only imagine what he was thinking. Until very recently, this was a kid whose idea of an arctic environment was the ice cube tray in his freezer.

“And people say Florida is nuts,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Just because you run across the occasional alligator.”

The bus squeezed past the mountain and pulled up in the unloading area. Cars were backed up all the way to the main road. Out in front of the school building, Principal Gorton directed traffic.

Gabby turned and got a picture of the principal waving at the stream of vehicles trying to turn into the lot. She wore orange gloves and looked like she belonged on an airport runway landing jumbo jets. All she needed was a control tower. If she’d had one, maybe people would have paid more attention. As it was, cars jockeyed for position, horns blaring, as everyone tried to get a close-up view of
Rambletown’s newest natural wonder.

The bus driver cranked the lever that opened the door. One by one, we filed down the steps. At the bottom, several teachers waited like prison guards. They guided us briskly to a shoveled walkway that led to the front doors of the school. Mounds of snow stood so high on either side that passing between them felt like walking along the floor of a canyon.

I turned and gazed over my shoulder at the mountain. More teachers were stationed around the base, making sure nobody got any bright ideas about climbing it. Someone had set up a few sawhorses to keep people away from the slopes. If they were real horses, I’m sure they would have bolted. One avalanche and they would be like pirate’s treasure: buried.

On an icy ridge way up the steep slope, I swear I could just make out the profiles of four presidents. It was like Mount Rushmore, only the faces were different. I recognized John F. Kennedy right away. He’s on a half-dollar my
grandfather gave me for my birthday one year. But I wasn’t sure who his three partners were.

The Mount Rambletown presidents were stone-cold huge. They also looked just plain cold.

Gabby snapped off a string of pictures.

“This is hot stuff,” she exclaimed.

“Cold, you mean,” I said.

“It’s no fair,” complained Stump, his voice echoing off the banks of snow that rose on either side of us.

“What’s no fair?” asked Slingshot.

“All the barricades and stuff,” Stump said, pointing to the mountain with disgust. “They sure know how to kill a good time around here. I would do anything to conquer that beast. There are probably ice caves to explore and everything.”

“Definitely,” agreed Gasser. “Unfortunately, I won’t be climbing anything for a while.” He raised a crutch and waved its rubber tip toward Mount Rambletown. “You guys’ll have to go up
without me and come back with a full report. I expect lots of pictures.”

“Pictures are easy.” Gabby smiled as we entered school. “Pictures we can do.”

We started walking again. The bell would ring at any minute. Monster snow peak or not, none of us wanted to be late our first Monday back.

But Stump was right.

It isn’t every day that a gigantic geologic formation appears practically in your own backyard. We were going to have to figure out a way to get around the security.

Somehow, some way, we needed to mount an expedition to the summit.

I
n Rambletown Elementary’s wide entry hall, kids sloshed in every direction. The gray tile floor was slick from hundreds of pairs of slushy boots. You practically could have paddled a canoe on it, that’s how wet the floor was.

Orlando hesitated among long glass cases full of school trophies. He seemed a little lost. Suddenly it occurred to me that he didn’t know which way to go. The guys and I had bonded so quickly with Orlando at baseball practice that it was easy to forget our familiar old school was completely foreign to him.

“What room are you in, Orlando?” I asked.
There were two sixth-grade classes.

“Number twelve, I think,” he said. “Mr. Sicko.”

Gasser burst out laughing. “Mr. Swickle,” he corrected. “Sicko. That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that.”

“Right,” Orlando mumbled. “Mr. Swickle. That’s what I meant to say.”

“Cool,” said Slingshot. “That means we’re together. Follow us.”

We started moving down the hall, and Orlando made like a baseball card. He joined the pack.

“Clear some space,” Stump bellowed as we rounded a corner. “Wounded soldier coming through. Wounded solider. Make way!”

A group of younger boys moved aside to let us pass. When they saw Gasser swinging along on his crutches, their eyes widened.

“Hey, Gasser,” called Joey Bing, a third grader. “I heard you jumped out of a helicopter to the top of Windsock Mountain and
landed in a pine tree….”

“And there was a bear in the tree,” chimed in Joey’s friend Malcolm Krentz. “And you wrestled him to the ground….”

“And you ended up going over Darkness Falls with the bear riding on the nose of your board,” Joey continued.

“Backward!” finished Malcolm.

“Is it really true?” they asked hopefully.

Gasser leaned on his crutches. “Well, guys,” he said slowly, “the truth is, it didn’t happen that way. Not exactly.”

The third graders’ faces fell as if they’d been pushed over a cliff.

Stump flashed us a sneaky smile, then stepped forward. He slung his arm over Gasser’s shoulders.

“Not at all,” he said. “You see, the bear didn’t jump on his board.”

“It didn’t?” Joey and Malcolm asked. They sounded like a couple of soda cans that had been tossed in a trash compactor: crushed.

“Nope,” continued Stump. “It actually straddled Gasser’s shoulders. Dude piggybacked that bear halfway down the mountain.”

“Whoa!” said Joey.

“Awesome!” gushed Malcolm.

“That’s why Gasser crashed,” Stump went on with a gleam in his eye. “The bear covered his goggles with its paws, and Gasser couldn’t see a thing. Hit a jump doing about seventy miles an hour. By the time he knocked the bear off his shoulders, it was too late: he was airborne and way off balance.”

The boys were speechless.

“The rotten part of it, worse than the broken leg,” added Gasser, playing along with Stump’s crazy story, “is that the bear ran off with my goggles. They were brand-new, too.” He swung down the hallway on his crutches. “You guys want,” he called over his shoulder, “I’ll let you sign my cast later.”

We left Joey and Malcolm slapping high fives and continued to Room 12.

Mr. Swickle was copying a poem on the blackboard as we noisily entered.

“Ahh,” said our teacher, turning, “I see the baseball contingent has arrived. With our new classmate in tow.” The teacher smiled and nodded toward Orlando. “Why don’t you show Orlando where to hang his coat, please, then take your seats and we’ll get started.”

I sneaked a quick glance over at Gasser. He looked as though he’d swallowed a gobstopper. His face was purple. I guessed he was thinking the same thing I was—Mr. Sicko!—and trying hard not to laugh. It wasn’t fair, really. Mr. Swickle was a great teacher. Once the cat was out of the bag, though, there was no getting it back in. I knew that from now on Orlando’s flub would always ring in my ears.

We led Orlando to the cubbies at the back of the room and found the one with his name on it. The tall, open lockers were arranged alphabetically by students’ first names. Orlando’s came just after Nick Boudreau’s and right before
Penny Chen’s. It was painted fire-engine red, like the others, and had hooks for hanging coats and backpacks, with an open space underneath for boots. Compared to all the others, Orlando’s cubbie was clean and uncluttered. It seemed somehow a little sad, like a house with no one living in it.

At nine o’clock sharp, Mr. Swickle called the class to order.

“Before we get started with today’s poem,” he said, “I have a couple of important announcements to make. First, I’d like to welcome Orlando Ramirez. Please stand, Orlando.”

Every head in the class swiveled around to stare at the new kid. Poor Orlando did his best impression of butter on a hot day. He melted. The guy was great in center field, but playing center of attention was a different story. He obviously hated it.

“Orlando’s family just arrived from Florida,” said Mr. Swickle. “I know I speak for the whole class when I say how pleased we are to have
him. Let’s give him a big, warm welcome to Room twelve.”

Everybody clapped politely. Everyone, that is, except Stump. He cheered like he was at a ball game. “Or-lan-do! Or-lan-do! Or-lan-do!” he chanted, pumping his fist in the air. If he could have, I’m sure Stump would have done the wave.

Unfortunately, it takes more than one person to do the wave.

“Second order of business,” continued the teacher. “Undoubtedly you will have noticed something new when you arrived at school this morning.”

A murmur of excitement buzzed through the room.

“Yes, I refer to the giant mountain of snow heaped by plows during vacation. Word to the wise: do not even think about going anywhere near it. The mountain is off-limits. No one is to climb it, slide down it, build a snow fort on it, or otherwise have anything to do with it. In
other words, pretend it isn’t there.”

Stump raised his hand.

“Yes?” called Mr. Swickle.

“Are you saying we should treat Mount Rambletown like the elephant in the room?”

I snorted. Leave it to Stump.

Mr. Swickle leveled his gaze at my friend. “Elephant, tiger, great white shark,
T. rex
. Call it what you want. I’m saying, stay away from it. The consequences for not doing so, I am advised, will be severe. Does everyone understand?”

The class groaned in unison. We understood.

“Do you particularly understand, Mr. Plumwhiff?”

Stump made a “Who me?” face and held up his hands.

“Excellent,” said Mr. Swickle.