Finding the Worm (5 page)

“Ah.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “Did you think you deserved to get suspended for that incident?”

“Yes.”

“So you accepted responsibility?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good, Julian. But it’s water under the bridge. What matters is what you do in
my
school, not the mistakes you made in the past. Is that clear?”

“Yes.”

“Now tell me about the painting,” he said.

“Miss Medina thinks I messed up the painting of the Bowne House. It’s not her fault for thinking that, because someone told her I did. Except I didn’t do it. That’s the honest truth.”

He leaned forward. “Is that the story you’re sticking to?”

“I don’t know what else to tell you,” I said. “I didn’t do it.”

“What would you do if you were in my position, Julian?”

“I guess if I thought I had the right guy, I’d suspend him.”

“That’s a very honest answer,” he said.

“Am I suspended?”

He shook his head. “I gather your friend is ill.”

“Quentin,” I said. “His name is Quentin.”

“Do you worry about Quentin?”

“Yes.”

“What Quentin is going through, does it make you angry?”

“I don’t think ‘angry’ is the right word,” I said.

“Miss Medina thinks I should let you off with a warning.”

I glanced at her, and she said, “Under the circumstances—”

“But I really and truly didn’t do it, Principal Salvatore.”

“Do you see, Julian?” he said. “That’s the core of my dilemma. How can I let you off with a warning when we can’t agree on what I’m warning you about? That would make no sense.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know what else to do.

“I gather you’re a writer, Julian.”

“I like to write, yeah.”

“Are you a good citizen as well?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m asking if you consider yourself a good citizen.”

“I guess,” I said. “I try to be.”

“Do you know what it means to be a good citizen?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“I want you to tell me what it means to be a good citizen.”

“Being a good citizen, in my opinion—”

“No, Julian,” he said. “I want you to write an essay on good citizenship. I expect it to be at least two hundred words. And I expect it on my desk Monday morning, before first period. Do I make myself clear?”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“This conversation is over.”

Principal Salvatore spun his chair around and slid open a file drawer. As he started to riffle through papers, Miss Medina got up and tapped me on the shoulder. She nodded at the door, which meant I was supposed to leave.

So I walked out, shaking my head.

There was only one guy in the hallway as I left Principal Salvatore’s office. It was Devlin. He was halfway down the hall, near the center stairwell. As soon as I noticed him, he began to smile in a sly, sarcastic way. Then he ducked into the stairwell, and a second later I heard his footsteps running up the stairs.

I actually meant to write the stupid
essay on citizenship when I sat down at my desk last night, but I couldn’t figure out how to start. So instead I wrote about how I got roped into writing the essay, and then, by the time I got finished writing
that
, I was so worked up that I couldn’t do it. Well, I guess I could’ve done it, but I didn’t do it. It’s just wrong.

I
didn’t
scratch up that painting. If I wrote the essay, it would be like saying I did it—even if I said straight out in the essay I didn’t do it. Which I didn’t. So I put down my pen and closed my composition book. Except then I couldn’t fall asleep. The whole situation was gnawing at me.

Looking at it from their point of view, I can understand
how Miss Medina and Principal Salvatore think they’re doing the right thing. I’m sure they think they’re going easy on me, asking me to write a 200-word essay. That’s not even one full page. I just counted up the words I’ve written in the last three paragraphs, and the total is 179. That means by the time I get to the end of this sentence, the total will be over 200. There, you see? I just counted it up again, and it’s 219. It’s not like it’s hard to do, coming up with 200 words.

It’s the principle of the thing.

That’s one of my dad’s big expressions:
It’s the principle of the thing
. Until now, I’ve always thought of it as his way of saying, “I’m going to cut off my nose to spite my face.” Like the time he asked old Mr. Dong, our landlord, if he could park his car in the driveway in front of our house. It’s just a two-floor house, with the Dongs on the first floor and us upstairs, and the Dongs don’t even own a car, so the driveway is always empty. My dad offered Mr. Dong an extra twenty-five dollars a month. But Mr. Dong wanted fifty. My dad told him to forget about it. He said he could’ve afforded the fifty dollars, but it was the principle of the thing. It made no sense to me.

Until now.

It
is
the principle of the thing between me and Principal Salvatore—which is kind of a funny sentence if you say it out loud. Two hundred words means even less to
me than fifty bucks means to my dad. But it’s just not right. I
didn’t
scratch up that painting.

The thing was still gnawing at me when I woke up this morning. I woke up earlier than usual—or earlier than usual for a Saturday—and wolfed down a couple of unfrosted cherry Pop-Tarts. Then I headed across the street to Lonnie’s house. He lives on Thirty-Fourth Avenue, like the rest of us, except on the other side of Parsons, at the far corner—which means, if you get technical about it, he’s the only one of us who doesn’t live on the actual block. It wasn’t even nine o’clock when I got to his front door, and I stood there for about half a minute in the cold air deciding whether to knock or ring the doorbell like I always did.

Just as I put out my hand to knock, the door swung open. Lonnie’s mom, Mrs. Fine, was smiling at me. She said, “Good morning, Julian. Do you want breakfast?” Those were the words she said, but with Mrs. Fine it never quite sounds like the words. She was in a concentration camp in World War II, and the Nazis did bad things to her tongue, and now whatever she says comes out thick and wet, and real sad to listen to. (It makes my mom cry sometimes, though never in front of Mrs. Fine.)

She led me back to the kitchen, where Lonnie was sitting, finishing off a plate of Mallomars. That’s the other thing about Mrs. Fine: she’s real good-natured. She
lets Lonnie eat whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Cookies for breakfast? No problem.

“I didn’t hear the doorbell,” Lonnie said, looking up.

“Julian was too polite to ring it,” Mrs. Fine said … except, again, the words didn’t come out like that. She grabbed my hair and messed with it, which is what she likes to do, then left us alone.

Lonnie held out his last Mallomar to me, but I shook my head.

“What are you doing here so early?” he said.

I sat down across the table from him. “I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep.”

“The guys won’t be around for another hour.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I got a couple of dead Spaldings,” he said. “Do you want to roof ’em?”

“Maybe later.”

“Something’s bugging you.”

“Yeah.”

“I can always tell when something’s bugging you. That’s the reason you’re a crappy card player.”

“When was the last time we played cards?”

“Never,” he said.

“Then how do you know I’m a crappy card player?”

“I’m just saying you
would
be a crappy card player
if
we played cards.”

“Then I guess we’re never going to play cards,” I said.

“That’s just as well, because I hate cards.”

“Then why are we talking about cards?”

“You want to talk about what’s bugging you?”

So I told him about the thing with the painting. He listened to the entire story and didn’t interrupt, not even once. After I was done, he still didn’t speak. He reached out and popped the last Mallomar into his mouth. He took a long time chewing it, and while he was doing that, I could see his brain working, rolling over what I’d told him.

Then, at last, he said, “So who’s the worm who told Miss Medina you did it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If I had to guess, I’d go with that guy Devlin.”

“The guy who looks like a mop?”

“He was standing outside Principal Salvatore’s office when I got out, and he had a sly look on his face.”

“What’s he got against you?” Lonnie asked.

“The thing with Jillian, I guess.…”

“
He
stole her away from
you
.”

“Lonnie, the guy just doesn’t like me,” I said. “It’s not logical.”

“You think he’d scratch up a painting just to get you in trouble?”

“He’s a
ninth grader
,” I said.

“All right, I see your point.”

“So what would
you
do?”

“You mean, if I had to write the essay?”

“Yeah.”

Lonnie grinned. “I’d probably get you to write it for me.”

“Be serious! Do you think I should write the essay?”

“Why wouldn’t you write it?” he said.

“Because it’s not fair.”

“And?”

“There’s no
and
,” I said. “It’s not fair. Why should I write the essay if it’s not fair?”

“But it’s a two-hundred-word essay. You could knock it out in, what? A half hour?”

“I could knock it out in fifteen minutes. But that’s not the point.”

“I don’t see the problem,” he said.

“It’s the principle of the thing.”

“Oh, it’s the
principle
of the thing.”

“Don’t say it like that. It matters.”

“It only matters because you’re you,” Lonnie said. “Suppose you woke up tomorrow and, for no reason, Presto the Magician had turned you into a raisin.”

“But that would never happen.…”

“Say it did. Would that be fair?”

“No!”

“How would you feel about it?”

“I’d think it was unfair,” I said.

“Wrong!”

“How do you know it’s wrong?”

“You’d be a raisin, which means you
wouldn’t
think it was unfair, because raisins don’t think.”

“That’s just stupid.”

“Look, you’re a raisin. You don’t understand what’s stupid and what’s not stupid. You don’t understand what’s fair and what’s not fair. That’s the key to the whole thing. You’ve got to think like a raisin. Which means
don’t think
. Just do what you need to do.”

I shook my head and took a deep breath. “So you want to roof the Spaldings?”

“What roof?”

“You pick.”

“I was thinking the Dorado,” he said.

Five minutes later, Lonnie and I were standing in front of the Dorado House, glancing up at the roof. The Dorado is in the exact middle of the block—I’ve stepped it off—halfway between Union Street and Parsons Boulevard.

“You want to go first or throw first?”

“I’ll go,” I said.

What that meant was I’d climb the fire escape on the side of the building to the roof, which was six stories up. Then Lonnie would throw the rubber balls up to the roof,
and I’d throw them back down to him. After he roofed them ten times, we’d switch.

I walked around to the side of the building, jumped up, and caught the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder. As I was hanging there, about to chin myself up, I heard a voice. “Hey, Twerski, what are you doing?”

It was Beverly Segal. She lives in the Dorado House. She was pushing her bike out the side door.

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Does Coco want a banana?”

“Very funny,” I said, still hanging.

“Hey, Coco, why don’t you race me?”

“I’m
not
racing you, Beverly.”

“I guess you’re Coco the chicken,” she said. “I thought you were Coco the monkey.”

“Yes, I’m Coco the chicken. That’s the reason I won’t race you.”

She flapped her arms at her sides and started to laugh, then hopped on her bike and pedaled away.

You know, if I were a raisin, I’d race her—just to get it over with.

Except I’d lose, because I’d be a raisin.

That was what I was thinking as I climbed the fire escape.

Here’s the essay on good citizenship I
wrote for Principal Salvatore:

I slipped the paper under the door of Principal Salvatore’s office first thing in the morning, then rushed off to homeroom and waited to hear my name over the intercom. I was curious whether he’d suspend me for a couple of days or for a full week. Either way, I’d catch up on the work I missed, and that would be the end of it, but no way was I going to write an essay on good citizenship. It would be like admitting I scratched up the painting.

But homeroom came and went, and the intercom never crackled. Sitting in first-period social studies, I began to think that maybe Principal Salvatore cracked up at what I wrote, and decided to let the whole thing drop. But Miss Medina was waiting for me outside the classroom door as social studies ended. She handed me the paper and shook her head, then walked off. On the back of the paper, Principal Salvatore had written: