Because of Mr. Terupt (2 page)

“Good morning,” Mom said back. “I’m Julie Writeman, and this is Jessica. I think she’s a little nervous being a new student.”

My tongue felt so swollen that I couldn’t talk. I settled on returning Mr. Terupt’s smile. It was a friendly one.

“Well, this is my first day, too. So I guess we’ll try to figure things out together,” he said.

My smile grew.

“Your seat is right over there at table two. You’re with Natalie, Tommy, and Ryan. Being near the windows should give you some good reading light. That’s a great book you have there, Jessica.”

I looked down at my book,
A Wrinkle in Time
. I rubbed my hand over the cover.

“I really like happy endings,” I said.

“Me too,” Mr. Terupt said. “I’ll do my best to give you a happy ending this year.”

I smiled again. I couldn’t believe it. My teacher was new, too. And he liked what I was reading. I don’t know why, but somehow he made my butterflies disappear and my tongue shrink. Things were going to be okay.

I
like school. I’m good at it. I get all As. So when Mr. Terupt announced our first math project, I was excited.

Dollar Words was crazy. Definitely not a worksheet problem, like all the others I’ve ever been given. Not even close! We had to assume that the letter
a
was worth one cent,
b
two cents,
c
three cents—and so on, making the letter
z
worth twenty-six cents. The challenge was to find words that equaled one dollar when you added up their letter values. Not ninety-nine cents or a dollar and one cent, but one dollar exactly.

Mr. Terupt gave us time to get started. He wanted to make sure we understood the project, and he said he wondered who would be the first one to find a dollar word.

I immediately made a data table of all the letters and their corresponding values. A quick reference for me. Then I started putting down any word that came to mind that had some of the bigger letters in it.
Pretty
= 104.
Walnut
= 91.
Mister
= 84. Then I thought, Hey, wait a minute, what if I just tack on the letter
s
?
Misters
= 103. No good, but very close. I figured this could still be a worthwhile strategy for other words.

So there I was cranking out words, trying to find the first dollar word of the year, when what do I hear? Peter and Alexia.

This is the fourth year Peter’s been in my class, and my third time with Alexia. Peter’s funny, but sometimes he gets to be too much. If I’m concentrating on my work and he just wants to joke around, it annoys me. But I like him. He’s fun, and he’s no stranger to trouble. Alexia, on the other hand, is always involved in some “girl war.” That stuff I don’t get. She loves to wear flashy clothes—dresses, skirts, fancy shoes—and she always has the accessories to go with them. And she says the word
like
way too much. Alexia isn’t a stranger to trouble, either. She and Peter are a good match.

Peter elbowed Alexia. Then I heard him whisper a word to her.

That’s not even close to a dollar, I thought.

“Fifty-three,” Alexia said. “No good. Try …”

Were they crazy? They were trying out rude words and giggling the whole time. I just knew they were going to get caught.

“That’s no good, either,” Peter said. “Maybe …”

What a butthead! As soon as I thought it, I knew it was a word worth calculating. Sure enough,
butthead
equaled 81. I tacked on the
s
. There wasn’t just one butthead but two
buttheads
(dollar word). I was just about to call out that I had found one when Peter beat me to it.

“I’ve got a word!” he yelled.
“Buttocks!”
He strutted to the board like he was the coolest thing since sliced bread and wrote it for the class.
“Buttocks,”
he said again.
“B-U-T-T-O-C-S.”
Peter went on to demonstrate how the word added up to a dollar. Mr. Terupt didn’t interrupt. Just as I was about to, the new girl did.

“
Buttocks
is spelled with a
k
in it, Peter,” Jessica said.

Peter looked to Mr. Terupt. “Sorry, Peter. She’s right. Better try again. And maybe you should choose a different type of word than the ones you’ve been coming up with.”

Peter slunk back to his seat. No surprise to me, Mr. Terupt knew what Peter was up to the whole time.

I raised my hand. “Mr. Terupt, I’ve got one.” I walked up to the board and wrote
butthead
. That was followed by a chorus of laughs.
“Butthead,”
I said. “
B-U-T-T-H-E-A-D
adds up to eighty-one cents, but if we have more than one, then we get
buttheads
. And
buttheads
is a dollar word. Just ask Peter and Alexia.”

Mr. Terupt snickered. “That’s enough, Luke. I must say, this isn’t a word I was expecting, but nonetheless, it’s our first dollar word. Congratulations.”

Dollar Words was the best math project ever. We started it on a
Wednesday
(dollar word) and worked for three weeks. Through trial and error, a few strategies that I learned along
the way, and some helpful hints from Mr. Terupt, I broke the record for most dollar words. My final poster was covered with fifty-four of them.

Mr. Terupt looked at my work and smiled. “Luke, this is
excellent
.” (Dollar word.) “You are the dollar-word champ.”

I
was like, I have this new guy for a teacher. That’s so cool.

Mr. Terupt was nice. He let us sit in tables, not rows. I was like, no way, are you serious? And like, the best was I got to sit with my friend Danielle.

There was this new girl in our class, Jessica. She wasn’t at our table, but I needed to talk to her. I needed to tell her who she could be friends with. She seemed like she could be pretty cool, even though she carried a book around like a teddy bear.

I found her at recess. Outdoor recess is held behind the school. There’s a big blacktop area with basketball hoops and hopscotch. There’s playground equipment in another spot, and a large field for running around and playing sports, like kickball or football. That’s where the gazebo is, too—by the edge of the field. I found Jessica sitting alone on the steps of
the gazebo. She was reading a book. I was like, What a loser, but I went up to her.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hi,” she said back.

“You’re Jessica, right?”

“Yes.”

I blew a bubble with my gum and sat down. “I’m Alexia,” I said. “My friends call me Lexie.” I found the compact mirror in my purse and checked my Rock Star Purple lip gloss. Then I was like, “Where’d you come from?”

“We moved from California,” the new girl said.

“I used to live in California, too.” I started playing with the stones that lay under my feet. It’s always been easier for me to lie when I don’t have to look at the person’s eyes. “We moved because, like, my dad got sick and needed the doctors here.”

“I’m sorry,” Jessica said. She started playing with the stones now, too.

“Listen,” I said. “Like, you’re new here so let me help you out a little … if you want, that is.” I snapped my gum.

“Sure. Okay.”

I stopped playing with the stones and scooted closer to her. “Want a piece of gum?”

“No thanks,” she said.

Of course not. Little Miss Perfect. I put the gum back in my purse.

“That girl,” I said, pointing to Danielle across the playground. “You can’t miss her. She’s the fat one.” I laughed, but Jessica didn’t. “That’s Danielle. Watch out for her. She’s, like, somebody you don’t want to be friends with.”

“But don’t you sit with her in class? I thought you were friends.”

I wasn’t expecting this. Usually girls just listen and follow along. I blew a bubble and snapped my gum again. “Yeah. She used to be cool. But like, she’s been saying stuff about you. Calling you Miss Goody Two-shoes and a snotty bookworm.”

Jessica seemed surprised. “Oh. Okay. Thanks for letting me know,” she said.

“Don’t worry.” I put my arm around her. “Stick with me and I’ll, like, help you out. It’ll be great.”

Then recess ended. That’s how I got the girl war started.

T
he kids in my class are all right. I have to deal with Alexia again. Plus her feather boas and leopard-print clothes and her stupid purse. I wonder what kind of makeup she puts on this year. She’s so dumb. She thinks she’s a Hollywood star or somethin’.

Then there’s Luke. I don’t mind him. He’s just smart and serious about school.

And Danielle’s in my class. She’s fat.

And then there’s Peter. A wise guy. A total smart aleck. I wanted to tell Terupt that Peter spent all his time in the bathroom ’cause he was messin’ around.

But Terupt figured it out, even if he was new. He seems smart. I just don’t want him tryin’ to figure me out. I’m no good in school. School sucks.

S
chool wasn’t so great. My teacher seemed pretty nice, and he could be funny, too, but none of that matters when you don’t have friends. Lexie had done this stuff to me before. One day she’s my friend, the next she’s not. I don’t even know why. I’m not mean to her. This year was the worst, though.

Things started out fine. Then one day after recess, Lexie started ignoring me. Pretending I wasn’t there. She would talk about things right in front of me and leave me out of the conversation. She started telling her stupid fat jokes. It was horrible. I cried at home a lot.

I’m a little heavy—well, bigger, I guess. I don’t like saying I’m fat. I don’t know why I am. I watch what I eat and I don’t have any more than the other girls at lunch. Mom says I’ll
grow into my body. She’s not fat. Neither is my brother Charlie, or Grandma, or Grandpa, or Dad. Grandma says, “You’ve got to have some meat on your bones, girl.” Yeah, Grandma, I think—so someone like Lexie can tell fat jokes about me. I don’t say anything, though. Grandma doesn’t get it. Only Mom understands, and I feel a little better when she reassures me that I’ll thin out as I grow. She also tells me that there must be a reason I’m having to deal with this. “It’s making you a better person,” she says, “and someday this experience will help you.” That’s all great, but I wish I could grow into my body now.

We live on a farm. My mom grew up here. My grandma and grandpa live in their own house next to ours. They help us run the farm. So my grandma’s around a lot, and she wanted to know what was wrong with me—why I was crying.

Any time I mentioned Lexie she’d get all mad: “I’m goin’ into that school and fix that girl,” she’d say.

“No, Grandma.”

“Why are you even still friends with her? She doesn’t know how to treat people well, specially a friend.”

“It’s not her fault, Grandma. It’s this new girl’s fault,” I said, sticking up for Lexie the way I always do. “A new girl that I can’t stand.”

“If you keep telling yourself that, it won’t ever get better,” Grandma said. She’s a tough woman.

The only time I’ve got friends is when I’m in Lexie’s group. Nobody wants to be friends with the fat kid. I don’t know what to do.

Grandma said a prayer with me that night. We knelt by my bed.

“Dear God, please give Danielle the strength to stand up to these mean girls in school, or do what you can to teach Alexia a lesson. If you made her fat, that would be all right by me.”

I elbowed Grandma. “Oh, okay,” she said.
“I just ask that you provide Danielle with some comfort and direction during these tough times. We pray for the good weather to hold up, and for the farm. Amen.”

I
didn’t say much in school, and I never raised my hand. That would have been an easy way for people to notice me, and I didn’t want to be noticed. People can be real mean. That’s something Mom warned me about. And my mom knows, trust me. I didn’t have any close friends and I wasn’t looking for any. Mom was my best friend.

Not getting noticed was never a problem for me before. I was always quiet and I behaved, so the teachers left me alone. I kept my head down and looked at the floor a lot. But I’m a good observer. Mrs. Williams, our principal, winks whenever there’s some big surprise coming. It’s something I noticed a few years ago. If you keep quiet, you have time to look and listen and take things in.

At the beginning of the year, the first thing you pay attention to is the classroom. We had a nice room. A big one. There was a whole wall of windows opposite the door. Mr. Terupt’s desk was in the corner by those windows. The students’ desks were arranged in five tables of four. So right away I knew we had a teacher who was into teamwork and who probably didn’t mind a little talking—otherwise, we would have been in old-fashioned rows. The front of the room had the blackboard and the back wall had a whiteboard. The last side of the room had all our cabinets and a sink, plus a drinking fountain. Most of the room was carpeted, except for the side by the sink and fountain. Our door was next to the fountain.

The other thing—the bigger thing you pay attention to, in the beginning—is your teacher, especially if he’s new like Mr. Terupt. Right away, I could tell that he was a reader, because there were books everywhere in our room. Mom liked that when I told her. Mom’s a library assistant in another school. It’s a good job. She has the same schedule I do, and it allows her to take some classes at night. She’s studying art, something she missed out on when she was younger. She’s really good at drawing and painting.

Mr. Terupt was young and athletic-looking. He didn’t have any pictures around his desk, and he didn’t wear a wedding ring. Ms. Newberry, from across the hall, didn’t have a wedding ring, either. Neither did Mom.

Mr. Terupt turned out to be different. He noticed me on the first day. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t raising my hand because he would say, “Anna, get ready. I’m calling on you
next.” Or if we were talking about something and there wasn’t just one opinion, he would say, “Anna, what do you think?”

He wasn’t going to let me hide all year. This made me nervous, but it turned out to be a good thing in the end.