The Trouble with Mark Hopper (13 page)

“All right!” his dad said, his voice sounding closer. “Are you going to win?”

“I think so.”

“You
think
? You're a Hopper, and this is the Mastermind tournament. You should
know
so.”

“Okay, I
know
so. The application is due next week. And then the finalists go December first.”

“And when do they give you the trophy?”

Mark puffed up his chest. “That night. December first.”

“December first . . . That's a really nice ceremony they do for those awards. I remember when I won it—all three years—I had to give a speech, and they took lots of pictures, and then there was a reception for everyone.”

Mark could see it. He'd hear them announce his name, and he'd walk down the aisle of a large auditorium, receive his trophy, and pose with it for pictures. He'd shake everyone's hand and turn down offers to run various companies, saying school comes first, though maybe he could help them out during summer vacation. The newspapers would contact his dad for an interview—to speak to the man who raised such a son, and who won the tournament himself three years in a row—and then his dad would say how proud he was that Mark was his son. “Dad . . .” Mark took a deep breath. “Do you think you could come to the awards ceremony if I win?” Then he held his breath.

“December first? That'd be fun. Maybe.”

Mark jumped up on the couch. “Really!”

“Maybe,” his father repeated. “Does your sister want to say hello?”

“She's not home,” Mark lied.

“All right,” his father said. “Okay, well, I need to go, Mark. Let me talk to your mother once more.”

“Okay. December first, Dad. Remember.”

“All right. Get your mother.”

Mark ran back into the kitchen and scooped up the rest of the fries on his plate. He ate them by the handful. Then he ate what was left on Beth's plate, too. Tomorrow was a big day, and he'd need all the energy he could get.

Almost as much as he was proud of the portrait itself, Mark was proud of his success in hiding it from Grandpa Murray all weekend while he finished it up. He put a piece of paper on his door that read TOP-SECRET BIRTHDAY OPERATION IN PROGRESS. NO GRANDPAS ALLOWED. He and Beth invented a secret-code knock that she and their mother had to use if they wanted to enter his room. And on Sunday night, when Mark was all done, the three of them admired the portrait while Grandpa Murray stood outside the closed door and tried to guess what they were doing.

“It sounds very quiet!” Grandpa Murray said. “So using my expert skills of deduction, I say that my birthday present is
not
an original play that you have to rehearse.”

Mark and Beth and their mom laughed as they looked at the painting.

“Now I hear laughing! Is my present a comedy routine?”

“Go away,” Mrs. Hopper said. “You'll know soon enough.” She signaled for Mark and Beth to be quiet while they waited to see if they could hear Grandpa Murray moving from the door.

“I hear breathing!” Grandpa Murray said after ten seconds. “I think my birthday present involves breathing.”

“Go away, Grandpa!”

“Oh, all right.” Grandpa Murray went back to the book he was reading, which he was starting from the beginning for the third time in three weeks, since he kept forgetting that he had started it at all, let alone what happened in it.

“This really is very, very impressive, honey,” Mrs. Hopper whispered. She kissed Mark on his freckled forehead.

“Yeah, it came out really, really well,” Beth agreed.

Mark couldn't stop smiling or keep his ears from turning red. “Thanks. I'm going to bring it in tomorrow, but it's supposed to rain, so can you drive me to school?” he asked his mom.

“Oh, no, sweetie,” she said. “I can't take you tomorrow. I have to go to work early. Grandpa can drive you. But you'll have to disguise the painting.”

“Disguise it?” Mark asked with wide eyes. He pictured the portrait with a drawn-on black mustache.

“Cover it up,” Beth said. “You could put a pillowcase around it.”

“Oh,” Mark said. “I could just wrap it in some paper and put it in a box. They have to do that to move it to the library anyway.”

“I have the box that my insect study kit came in,” Beth offered. “That'd be the perfect size.” She went to get it, opening the door a crack first to make sure Grandpa Murray was not going to try to sneak in.

“Bring the phone, too, so we can call Dad!” Mark called after her.

“Great idea,” his mother said. “He's going to be so impressed with how this painting came out.”

“You know who else you should call?” Beth sang when she returned with the box and the phone. “Lau-rie!”

“Laurie? Who's Laurie?” Mrs. Hopper asked with the same singsong tone.

“I told you,” Beth said. “The girl we saw at the supermarket. She's going to invite Mark to her birthday party.”

“Oh, that's right,” their mother said. “Oh, Mark's turning red.”

“I don't even really know her,” Mark said quietly. “And besides, she hasn't even invited me yet. I haven't even seen her since! I think she was just being nice.”

“
Very
nice,” Beth said. She held up her hands. “Okay, okay, I'll stop.”

Mark took the phone and dialed his father's phone number. Mr. Hopper picked up halfway through the first ring. “Hi, Dad!”

“Mark! I was
just
going to call you guys. I mean
just
going to call you. I had the phone in my hand and my finger just over the number six.”

“Really?”

“Well, actually I wasn't going to call to talk to you. I wanted to speak to a couple of Beth's earthworms. And the new slug. I wanted to welcome Sluggo to the family.”

“Sorry, the earthworms are busy . . .” Mark said. He tried to think of a science word. “Photosynthesizing.”

Beth slapped her freckled forehead. “Bugs don't engage in photosynthesis!” she said. “That's plants!”

Mark shrugged. “Sorry, Dad. Beth says bugs don't do photosynthesis. Sluggo is cool, though. He has just been hanging out on the wall of the tank since this morning.”

Beth grinned. Mrs. Hopper winced. Mr. Hopper said, “Cool.”

Mark whispered to his dad all of the details of his painting. “And it's going to be on display in the Greenburgh library starting December second, which is perfect because that's Grandpa's birthday.”

“All right. I am marking it down in my calendar right now. December second. Mark's prizewinning portrait on display in Greenburgh.”

Mark blushed. “It hasn't won any prizes.”

“Not yet. Just you wait.”

“But I'm the only sixth grader whose painting will be in the show. The rest are seventh or eighth graders.”

“That's my Mark. Well, December second I will be there for the grand opening.”

“All right!”

“And I may have some news then . . .”

Mark gasped. “Did you get a job here?” he asked, his eyes becoming as round as the buttons on his shirt. “Are you coming to live here finally?” Beth looked over expectantly.

“I'm not saying anything,” said Mr. Hopper. “Except that I
may
have some good news when I see you on December second.”

Mark said that he would wait for the news, and he reminded himself not to get his hopes up, but it
had
to be that his dad had found a new job and was finally going to live with them for good, not just on weekends. While Beth, his mom, and Grandpa Murray talked to Mr. Hopper, Mark floated around the house thinking about how wonderful it would be once his dad moved in for good.

While Beth helped Mark wrap and pack the painting, she told Mark not to get his hopes up, but then she excitedly confessed that she, too, thought the news must be of a new job close by. “That's only my hypothesis,” Beth said, “but really I think there is enough evidence for it to be a full-out theory!”

Mark clearly labeled the box with his full name and the title of his portrait:
Grandpa.
He completed his homework in record time and watched
Wheel of Fortune
with Grandpa Murray before bed. He fell asleep smiling. In the morning, he whistled on the way to school and grinned as he dropped off the box with the portrait before homeroom.

He was still smiling during lunch when he told Jonathan and Mark Hopper that his painting was finished, boxed up, and in the art room waiting to be transported.

Mark Hopper smiled back.

This was going to be easy.

Every Monday afternoon all of the teachers in the whole school had a half-hour meeting in the cafeteria; Mark knew because Mr. Rocco had once told Mark he couldn't discuss the four points Mark lost on a geography quiz on a Monday afternoon because of the teacher meeting, so Mark had waited outside the cafeteria and then argued his case for his four points while running alongside Mr. Rocco on his way from the meeting to his car. Just to be sure Mrs. Irwin would certainly be at the meeting—timing was crucial—Mark spent an extra five minutes at his locker after eighth period playing a game he'd invented that involved seeing how quickly he could organize the binders by subject, then by teacher's last name, then by teacher's first name, then by importance in life. Then he walked casually down to the art room, being sure to say hello to some people on the way and mention that he was heading home—he was setting up his alibi, just in case. He took a deep breath before walking down the art wing, a corridor on the second floor of the school with large windows overlooking a courtyard that was opened once a year for refreshments after the eighth-grade graduation. The corridor smelled like the art room at Farrow Park Elementary School—a warm combination of crayons, paint, and copper pennies—and Mark worried for a moment that someone might be able to pick up the smell on him and question what he was doing in the art wing. He had better make this quick.

The door to the main art room was open and Mark could see a handful of students inside. Some sat in front of easels or hovered over sketchbooks. A few others stood in a corner by what looked like a supply closet, laughing and chatting as they combed the closet for materials. Luckily, Mark didn't recognize any of them. Even more luckily, they all seemed to be older, so they probably didn't know the other Mark.

Mark took a deep breath and walked into the room as though he walked into it every other day for art class. He looked around the room for the boxed-up painting, making sure to look with distinctly Mark Hopper-round eyes, and he thought he spied it in the back by the window.

“Hi,” said a boy with black hair and black plastic-rimmed glasses from behind an easel. “Are you looking for something?”

“I think it's right there,” Mark said. “I brought in a painting this morning but I realized I want to take it home and work on it a little more.”

The boy shrugged and went back to work.

Mark made his way to the box. His name was written in blocky letters along the top in permanent marker. He reached for the box without the slightest bit of hesitation. It was in his hands. He started back out the door.

“That's the painting of an old man, right?” one of the other painters asked. She pointed at the box. “I kept seeing it in the back of the room. It's
so
good. I love the composition, with the newspaper on the lap, and the door frame to the bedroom in the background.”

Mark nodded. “Thank you,” he said, just the way Mark would. “I'm glad you like it.” He continued toward the door.

“So you're . . .” She squinted at the box. “Mark Hopper, then?”

Mark straightened up and smiled. “Yes,” he said truthfully.

“Nice meeting you,” the girl said. “Really, really good work on your portrait.”

Mark thanked her again and carried the box out of the room. No one else spoke to him. He took the box downstairs, outside, and all the way to the post office. Once there, he opened his backpack and took out the envelope with the other components of his Mastermind application and taped it to the front of the box. He waited in line and mailed the whole package, no questions asked.

The note was wedged between the slits of Mark's locker door. It had been a week since Mark mailed his Mastermind application, portrait and all, and so far no one had said anything about it to him. But this note got his hands shaking. This was it. He was caught. He envisioned opening the letter to find a message made of letters cut out of magazines and signed with blood: “I saw you take the painting.” He imagined having to meet someone under the bleachers after dark with a suitcase full of completed homeworks for the rest of the year in order to keep his secret a secret.

Mark glanced around before taking the note into his hands. His name was printed on the front in round, girlie letters, and it was underlined twice in purple pen. Did blackmailers use purple pen and draw curlicues in their
p
s? Maybe this was just an ordinary note. Back in elementary school he was used to finding notes on top of his books, having been slipped inside his desk surreptitiously. In fifth grade, when he had a desk with a top that opened up, he'd occasionally found a note Scotch-taped to the inside of the top. Once he opened the lid of the desk and a whole scroll unraveled, revealing the word
loser
in multicolored letters. Most of the other notes Mark got had similar messages. Only once had he gotten one that wasn't mean, and that time it was a chain letter that the rest of the class had been talking about for weeks—he was the very last name from his class on the letter—and the girl who'd put it in his desk made it clear to him that she either had to give it to him or risk having bad luck until she got married. “And if I have bad luck until then, I probably won't be lucky enough to get married, so I'll always have bad luck,” she explained to Mark. She'd thought about her options thoroughly.