Dear Opl (3 page)

Now, if “b” is my definition, eating my grandfather's icky Polish soup each year at Easter would fall into the category of great and heroic. This soup is called
c
zernina
. You pronounce it chudnina or yuckola. It contains duck blood. Yes, the blood from a duck—who might not have even been finished using it himself.

Lastly, look again at the final definition of “achievement” from old
Merriam
. The “quality” and “quantity” of a student's work are two different things. Hugely different. Depending on who assigns the work, one is much more important than the other. Some days I can hand in three pages worth of sweat with impressive-sounding words, only to get it back the next day with the phrase, “Pure drivel” scrawled across it—although it could have been “Purple drizzle” because I found the teacher's handwriting impossible to read. Other times I'll churn out one measly paragraph and see my teacher tap-dance with glee. I don't begin to understand the faculty, but I'm guessing it has a lot to do with time-of-day grading. An under-caffeinated teacher can wreak havoc with my score.

If teachers let us in on which they prefer—quality or quantity—we wouldn't waste time guessing. Any chance you could discuss this at the next after-school faculty meeting? Answers will help us all breathe easier. If I succeed in fixing this school-wide dilemma, I would have to say it will be my greatest achievement thus far.

I reread my English assignment for spelling errors and other fluff. I had to stop the flow of writing twice because my bladder screamed in my ear about its own flow.

I decided it was good enough to hand in to Mr. Vandevart and also worthy of adding to my little blog diary. It showed a lot of complaining. I threw a quick “Over and Out” and “Opl” on the end of it and clicked Publish. Mom might leap with joy because while writing, I ate only half the can of Pringles rather than the three-quarters I would have scarfed down while reading or watching TV. Maybe this new diet would work out just fine.

School the next day started off the same as ever. I'm used to walking through the hallways to my locker as some sort of ghost. Most kids never see me, which is a heck of a lot better than the ones who do. They quickly look down, hide their faces behind their hands as they whisper something to their locker buddies, or step back with showy gestures to allow me to pass. I hate morning arrival.

Kids use this time to inspect each other, to see what they're wearing and how cool or uncool it looks on them. You hear a lot of, “Oh, I remember you wore that last week,” or “You have to let me borrow that!” ping-ponging across the hallways. No one ever commented on my clothes, but the up and down glances that went from my shoes to my shoulders easily said,
What
a
joke
.

By lunchtime I'd usually grown paranoid. Like there might be a message taped to my back or some gossip flying through the middle school. But by then I always found Summer at our favorite picnic bench beneath the old beech tree, and she most often managed to boost me up until the bell rang for dismissal. Summer is a “fixer” and she loves to solve other people's problems. She works like human duct tape, but her job was cut out for her today, I thought, plopping down across from her.

“What a pain to have to pack our own lunches.” I tipped my brown paper bag upside down, scattering the contents across the rough wooden planks. Mr. Souresik, our principal, had asked that we bring food from home. He said the cafeteria would stay open for those who needed it, but had limited supplies. They were
cleaning
house
. That meant I'd had to make lunch myself, and I wasn't sure I'd packed enough chocolate to get me through math and history. After that was PE. I hoped to sprain a hand from writing too much in one of my next classes so I could get a note from the school nurse, excusing me from volleyball. Frankly, any sport with a ball should just be named dodgeball.

Summer took out her crustless cucumber and cream cheese sandwich and a thermos of Earl Grey tea. This is the scariest tea man has ever made. It tastes like you're drinking perfume. “I think you should write about it,” she said, dabbing at her mouth with a cloth napkin. Summer thought paper napkins were barbaric, like using dried leaves to wipe your face.

“What do you mean?” I said with a mouthful of baloney. I found all napkins pointless since I had a sleeve.

“On your blog. Like you did last night. That bit about the duck blood soup was revolting, but the rest I found brilliant.”

Now when Summer says the word
brilliant
, she doesn't mean whatever she's describing is sparkling but totally rockin'. It's the English equivalent of the American
sweet.

“Wow. I almost forgot I showed you the blog. I probably shouldn't have—it's stupid. Don't bother reading anymore. I sort of feel…silly.” I felt my Ritz Cracker sandwich lurching about in my stomach, so I gulped more chocolate milk to calm things down.

Summer peered at me across the rim of her thermos. “Opal…I already forwarded your blog on to everyone in my address book.”

The calming wasn't working. “What?”

“I hadn't realized it was private. I thought you knew blogs were meant for everyone to read.” Her eyes darted, looking at everything except me. “And they were both…brilliant. I always forward things on—if they're worth reading.”

Cold panicky prickles crept through my arms and legs. The hair across my neck stood up. I had to use the bathroom. “Just how many people are in your address book?”

She bit her lip. “Only family and friends. Nobody else.”

“Summer…how many?”

“Maybe one hundred…or two…hundred?”

My lunch thought better about staying in my stomach. It wanted out. “Two hundred?” I shouted.

She nodded, tucking her head deep between her shoulders. “They're mostly friends from England. They don't even know you. Well, maybe half are from England. Some people know you. Like our dentist, Dr. Brocksten, but that's only because he's your dentist too.”

My head thunked onto the table. I missed landing on my Twinkie by an inch. It didn't matter. I'd be branded with
Idiot
across my forehead either with the Twinkie filling or without. I couldn't look at her. I just moaned into the table. “Everyone will read about my Flexed-Arm Hang. And about Coach shouting, “Move your big fat butt.” What am I going to do?”

Summer reached an arm across the table. “I've not seen a thing in your blog that pinpoints who you are. There are plenty of Opals in the world. Besides, you've gotten good reviews.”

I raised my head. “What do you mean reviews?”

Summer's shoulders slumped, a bleak look creeping into her eyes. It's what happens whenever she realizes just how far behind her I am. “Have you not checked out the comments section beneath your blog? The place where people get to say what they think about your writing? You know, if they like it or not?”

I grabbed two fistfuls of my hair. “Ugh! I totally forgot about that part.” I shook my head in despair. “Unbelievable. It's just like school, isn't it? Only worse. Instead of handing my writing in to just one teacher, it's sent to the whole school, and everyone gets a chance to tell me what a loser I am.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “Chances are no one will recognize you. You never used your last name. And nobody said you're a loser, Opal. Well, at least not the last time I checked. You might want to take a look yourself.”

“I'll be sure to do that. Right before I pick up my Nobel Prize in Stupidity.”

• • •

When the bell rang for school dismissal, I dashed out the side entrance, my backpack slung lopsidedly over my shoulder and one shoelace unraveling with each hurried step. For once I intended to pass up the most important and anticipated part of my day: my refill at Diggerman's. Instead, I'd have to tap into my emergency stash. Right now, I had to get home fast. That still meant going past the soup kitchen. I needed to see if people had made any snarky comments about me yet. Maybe then I could put a stop to this bloggy business.

What had Mom been thinking when she asked me to do this? Did she know the whole world would read my gripe about being the size of a tank? I couldn't believe I was such a dork.

I felt something shift in my backpack and then heard the sound of spilling candy on the sidewalk cement. I twisted to look and stepped on my trailing shoelaces. The foot that wanted to move forward remained stubbornly attached to the shoe whose laces hid beneath my other foot. I was going down.

The part of me that landed on my backpack, which had slung to the side, was cushioned by the remaining jelly beans and a slightly crunchy science book. The part of me that landed on the sidewalk was less lucky. A scraped and bleeding knee peeked through a gaping hole in my stretchy black pants with the elastic waistband. My elbow bled too, but not quite as bad. The part most damaged was my pride. I saw it spill from my body, roll three feet from where I lay sprawled, and flop to a dead stop at the bottom of the steps in front of the soup kitchen. It rested at the feet of the greasy geezer with his food sign.

He looked down at me. My breath sucked into the bottom of my toes. I felt naked. His eyes shot straight through to all the marshmallowy parts I was usually able to hide beneath. “Are you okay? Are you well?” he asked me in an accent that spoke of hush puppies and sweet potato pie.

Oh
my
gosh! The food man talks!
I didn't know what to say. We'd never spoken before. I got to my feet and looked at my pants. Then at him. “I've been…weller.”

He nodded. “Me too.”

I took off. I didn't even bother to pick up the spilled candy. I left it with the part of me still lying at the bottom of the stairs.

When I got home and up to the safety of my bedroom, I launched my backpack onto my floor and watched the remaining jelly beans scatter across the carpet, bumping into the poppy flower throw rug in front of my bed. I gave the necessary first aid to my knee and elbow, and then decided to do homework lying down next to those beautiful beans. Let's see how long they lasted.

Even though I'd planned to go straight to my bare-all blog, I discovered a slight snag: if I saw all the rude and nasty comments people wrote about me, I'd bury my head under a pound of quilts and then fill it with two pounds of chocolate. I'd never do my homework. So my curiosity would have to fester away while I did the mind-numbing math and science torture.

An hour dragged by with my eyes glued to my textbooks. But of course, I needed two bathroom breaks. Just as I pulled out my English homework, Ollie walked in, dressed as a six-year-old hooker with conically shaped boobs. Or maybe he was Madonna.

“If I stood two feet from the middle of a trampoline and a four-thousand-pound man dropped from two thousand feet, would I go flying?” he asked, his eyes wide with possibility.

“Not sure. I just finished my math homework and fried my brain. No more number problems, sorry.” I scooped up the last handful of jelly beans and offered him some. Dad should be here to answer these questions. We'd counted on him. Like air. Or the sun. Or YouTube.

“What about if it was a two-pound man?”

I put my head down on the floor and let the beans slide out of my palm and back to the carpet. “I don't know, Ollie,” I moaned. “I've got enough problems to work out today. Maybe you can ask G-pa?”

Ollie repositioned his drooping cones, probably party hats from somebody's birthday. “He's taking a nap.”

“What I wouldn't give for one of those,” I said, pulling my English notes in front of me. “Is Mom home?” I hadn't heard the front door yet, so maybe she was picking up takeout from Gassy Jack's again. Gassy Jack's had the best barbecued ribs and Kung Pao chicken anywhere. It's owned by a guy from Louisiana and his Chinese wife, Sheila. Sometimes they tried to mix their recipes. The chicken chow mein cobbler sounded worse than it tasted.

“Nope. But I bet you'll hear her when she comes in and sees me. This may be the one.”

“The one what?” I looked up at him.

“The one that works.”

I yawned, too tired to go on with his line of thinking and needed to do my English before I could check out the dreaded blog site. “Okay, buddy. I'm sure it might be too.”

He looked hopeful and crossed his fingers at me before leaving.

Turning back to my English, I noticed Mr. Vandevart had given us another essay assignment entitled
How
Do
You
Cure
Boredom?
I rolled my eyes, cracked open my laptop, and began writing.

I have seen campaigns showing pictures of hungry children wearing nothing much apart from a hopeful look. The question following these images asks, “How do we cure hunger?” I have seen pink ribbons on cars and sweatshirts, tie clips and windows, all asking us, “How do we cure cancer?” I have even sat through my grandfather's yearly lecture come deer and turkey hunting season and now know the answer to, “How do we cure meat?” But I haven't come across the answer to a problem that doesn't exist. At least in my world.

Define boredom. I've never experienced it before. Are there symptoms? Is it like a tickle in your throat or dribbly sniffles?

Hold on a second. Let me ask a friend. Okay, I'm back. I just texted two. Neither one of them knows what you're talking about. Oh, wait. Yes, we do. History class. If I'm right, only one cure exists: hearing the bell ring.

All kidding aside, your average kid knows almost nothing about boredom. We have more things to entertain ourselves with than most people have had hot dinners. We've got cell phones and smartphones, computers and Game Boys, Wiis and iPods. If we choose (not that any of us actually could), we wouldn't have to learn how to read because programmed voices can narrate any tale out loud to us from our e-readers. There's even a gadget that will plug in our own voice—or anyone else's we want—to read the story to us. We can create hip-hop tunes and wicked rap songs, jingles for commercials, or even an entire film score with nothing more than laptop software. Who needs piano lessons?

Plus, there are kids in my class who had to take violin lessons, play soccer, and spring around in tutus for ballet classes long before first grade. I don't think many of us had a chance to learn to color. There wasn't time.

Then there's the problem of school. I think teachers believe kids have twenty-seven-hour days, and they've put us to a challenge, betting on just how much homework it will take to break the camel's back.

So the question of how to cure boredom is super confusing. No offense, but I'd love to see just how many of us get the opportunity to experience the bliss of boredom. And remember, history class does NOT count.

I sat back and looked at the jelly bean–less carpet. Just a big poppy. It was pretty, but looked drab without the added festive colors of FD&C Blue #1 and Yellow #5. Where had they all gone so fast?