How to Outfox Your Friends When You Don't Have a Clue (2 page)

A lynx's toes spread when they step on the snow, acting like natural snowshoes.

—Animal Wisdom

Hamlet is:

A) a prince

B) a princess

C) a king

D) a potato

You know, as someone who has sat on crocodiles, jumped into shark tanks, and routinely finds six-foot snakes in her bed, it takes surprisingly little to freak me out. The word
bikini
, that slimy gunk stuck in the drain after you do dishes, and Daz's dirty shoes all over the front hallway are enough to make me break into a cold sweat. But today's panic attack is brought to you by one man: William Shakespeare.

I know. He's
dead
, and yet he's still able to stress me out from the grave. I get that he's supposed to be super famous and has all these fancy-schmancy plays and sonnets and all that (what the heck is a sonnet?!), but
seriously
, could he maybe chill with the “thou art” this, and the “twixt” that? What kind of a writer uses the word
usurp'st
? Or names someone
Polonius
?!

Doesn't that sound like some sort of disease carried by mosquitoes or what?

Please.

We'd been covering Shakespeare for a week, and I have to admit it was making me feel pretty stupid. I have no idea how people make sense of this stuff.

I thought eighth grade was supposed to be all cool parties, bigger lockers, and getting to feel like a superstar because we were
finally
at the top of the junior high food chain. Nobody mentioned ol' Bill and his bag of jumbly word tricks would be marching in to ruin my day with a test. It was the last day of our Shakespeare unit, and Mr. Nicholson
loves
his tests. Of course, it's also the one test I completely forgot to study for.

I tapped my pen on my paper and started to circle an answer. Hamlet was definitely a king. No, wait. A prince.

King.

Prince.

My hand wavered back and forth over the answers as I darted a look at Ashley. She was sitting across from me, and I could tell by the way her eyebrows weren't scrunched up that she wasn't having any problems with the quiz. In fact, it looked like she was now happily doodling on the margins of the page. A few seats down, Bella was fiddling with the tips of her short hair while her other hand moved swiftly down the page marking off answers. Was I the only person in this entire room who didn't get this Hamlet guy?

Hrmph.

“Eyes on your own paper, please.” Mr. Nicholson's low warning jolted me back to my test. Did he say that because of
me
? I wasn't cheating—I was only
glancing
, but not at papers! I wanted to peek up at my teacher's face, so he could see I wasn't at all guilty, but the scorching-hot pain in my ears probably meant I looked as guilty as a wolf on a sheep farm anyway.

I circled an answer without thinking and peeked at my watch. I have no idea how watches work, but you can bet there's a snail inside mine, turning a crank and making the seconds tick by as mind-numbingly slow as possible. You know, Kevin is always going on about this guy Stephen Hawking, who has all these theories on space and time and all that. I bet that he could tell me why time slows down during boring school stuff and speeds up when you're actually having fun.

“Time's up!” Mr. Nicholson announced, clapping his hands together once.

I clutched my pen tighter as he walked up the aisles to sweep the tests from our desks and into a pile on his green folder.

When the tests were in a neat pile on the quiz shelf, Mr. Nicholson leaned against his desk. His eyes were dancing with excitement, which meant one thing and one thing only: he had a new project for us.

“Okay, guys. I know since you're such excellent, intelligent students, you're probably wondering what your major project will be this month,” he said, rolling his eyes playfully, pretending like he was appeasing us by spilling the beans.

I giggled, while the boys in the class booed. You had to hand it to Mr. Nicholson—he sure liked his own jokes.

“I've given a lot of thought to your November projects, and I think I've got just the thing for a group of students who are sick of Mr. Shakespeare.” He eyed the room expectantly. “Am I right?!”

“
Yesss!
” we all chimed, with my own voice ringing loudest.

Anything but Shakespeare, pleeeease.

“Good!” He clasped his hands together. “So we're going to switch gears here. Since this is your last year of junior high before heading off to high school, I thought it would be nice if you did a little
reflection
.”

Cue the moaning.

“Now hold on a minute,” he said. He scrawled the word
influence
on the board in large, swoopy letters.

“For one Superman eraser”—he held up the tiny eraser from the jar he kept on his desk—“who can tell me what
influence
means?”

Brooke's hand popped up. “Influence is the stuff that has an effect on you. Like, that changes you.” She caught my eye as she spoke, smiling.

“Bingo!” he said, tossing her the eraser. “Have any of you ever thought back about your early childhood? What you were like at five years old? Or even ten years old? Who can share what influenced you at that age?”

Imaginary crickets filled my head as Mr. Nicholson scanned the room. My palms itched with sweat. I knew as well as everyone else did that if nobody volunteered to answer, we would be volun
told
to speak up. Personally, my early childhood was filled with reptiles peeing on my head and Daz trapping me in the washing machine, so yeah. Delicate cycle, my butt.

I kept my eyes down.

Bella lifted her hand hesitantly. I grinned into my notes; I knew Bella was trying to be braver in class, so it made my heart happy to see her answering more questions. Mr. Nicholson noticed too, snapping his fingers and pointing. “Bella! You're up!”

She blinked at her desk but spoke clearly. “Um, I loved Egyptian stuff as a little kid,” she said tentatively. “I guess you could say that influenced me. I tried to cut my hair like Cleopatra once.”

Mr. Nicholson tossed her a tiny snail eraser. “Yes! That's a great example.” I caught Bella's eye and gave her a sneaky thumbs-up beside my desk.

He scanned the room again, observing our blank faces. “You know, Cleopatra was the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, renowned for her beauty. Sort of like a Kardashian, only this was long before the time of all your iPods and iPads and iThingies. Write this down.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “Cleopatra did
not
take selfies.”

The class tittered. Mr. Nicholson could be pretty cool for an old guy.

“When I was a little kid, I was influenced by Batman,” he said, gathering a stack of papers from his desk. “I wanted to wear a cape everywhere and tried to go around fighting crime. In fact…” he said, leaning over to lift the bottom of his pant leg. “Some things never change.”

The class gasped in goofy delight as he showed off the bright-yellow bat signal on his socks.

“Nice!” Eric exclaimed, nodding with approval. I couldn't help but agree. For some reason, knowing my teacher was a giant nerd made me feel a lot more comfortable with my own inner geek-ball.

He grinned. “You see? Sometimes the things that influence us stick with us for life. Sometimes they're temporary and help us get through certain stages. Each of us is different, and
because
you guys are almost halfway through the year and going into big, bad high school next year, I thought now was the perfect opportunity to mark your time in eighth grade by creating something to show me who, or what, influences you now. It will be like a time capsule of sorts that you can look back on when you're old and gray.”

He began handing out the papers to the front of every row, making sure every student got one. I swiped the crisp paper from my desk and carefully stuck it in my binder, handing the rest of the pile behind me. Mr. Nicholson's usual bold, dark font stared back at me, outlining the project along with some fill-in-the-blank prompts to help us begin.

Five Influences in My Life—
A Media Project by:

Already my mind was buzzing with ideas. As much work as new projects were, there was something deliciously
fun
about starting something different. Like having a gigantic sandwich in front of you that you couldn't
wait
to dig into.

Ashley's hand shot up. “Um, Mr. Nicholson?” I could tell by the way her cheek puffed out a little that she was doing her best to hide her gum. Mr. Nicholson
hated
gum.

“Yes, Ashley?” He looked up from his own handout.

“What exactly does the ‘media' part mean?” she asked, holding up the sheet. “It says here, ‘A Media Project'?” Ashley squinted suspiciously.

“Good question,” he said, sitting on his desk. “Does anyone know what media is?”

I lifted my hand. “Is it a way of communicating?” I ventured.

He tossed me a tiny unicorn eraser. “You got it. Media is the plural for medium. But not like ‘in the middle' medium like an order of fries. This is stuff like newspapers, blog posts, videos, newscasts, magazines. Those are all forms of media. Once you've decided on your influences—and they can be people, places, things, even fictional characters—I want you to use one of the types of media listed to tell me about them.”

A small grin curled at my lips. As far as projects went, this one rated pretty high on the Awesome Scale.

Mr. Nicholson continued. “As you can see from your handout, you'll have two weeks to hand in your project, and it can be
any
of the forms listed here. And…drumroll please!” He started to drum his fingers on the desk beneath him. “You will present your projects, and they will be displayed in the foyer at the end of the month!”

Well, if the media thing didn't get a bunch of moans out of us,
that
sure did. Immediately, hands shot in the air. I sat back, watching in amusement as the chaos unfolded.

A few months ago, the thought of everyone seeing my project would have made me lose my lunch. Go figure that performing in front of an audience all summer with sharks swarming you gets rid of that fear pretty darn quick. School projects were nothing compared to waddling around in a scuba suit with strangers gawking at you.

Mr. Nicholson shushed us. “To answer your question,
yes
, all projects will be displayed, and
yes
, you will have to say a few words about it for credit. This part
is
mandatory, but it's only a short chat. It's not a presidential address.” He gave us a sneaky smile. “I'm not
that
mean. And, for the first time ever, I'm introducing a ‘Get out of Jail Free' card for the presentations.”

Everyone exchanged confused looks. “What does that mean?” someone asked from the back. “Do we get to not do the project?”

“Nice try!” He laughed. “But there will be three faculty from three classes there to listen to all of your presentations. The student who receives the highest marks from all of us will get to have their lowest test score dropped for your final grades at the end of the semester.”

Ashley's eyes lit up. “For real? You won't count a bad grade? On
any
test?”

Mr. Nicholson nodded. “Any of our biweekly tests, that's right. I know some of you could use the boost, so this is a chance to make up for it. Each project will be submitted with a written piece about
why
you chose that medium and what you're expressing through it. What I'll need from you by Wednesday is a two-paragraph proposal on your choice of media and your list of influences, okay?” he said. “I've also included a suggested time line so you can use it to check off every step. Because I'm nice like that. Any questions?” He stood up again and leaned back casually in the way that always makes him look like a jeans model.

Zack's hand shot in the air. “Can we talk about
anything
anything?”

I rolled my eyes. I swear, I wish I could use one of those little unicorn erasers of Mr. Nicholson's to erase some of my past, because my crush on Zack should never have happened. He's a total jerk. Funny how a guy whose name you had scrawled all over your binder can turn out to be a waste of ink. It was clear from the way his handout was already half-crumpled on his desk that he hadn't bothered to read it yet. He was leaning back on his chair so only two legs were on the ground, with his trademark bright-orange hoodie zipped tight to his chin.

Loser.

“Four legs on the ground, Zack.” Mr. Nicholson walked over and reached for his paper, smoothing it out as he spoke. “Anything within reason, yes. I'd like you to use this as a way to explore newspapers or film or even the Internet, as a way to teach us about what influences you. Which is precisely what is says right here.” He tapped the page. Zack's ears turned pink. “The possibilities are endless!”