When life throws you a curve, learn to swivel, says the poster beside the chalkboard in our second-grade classroom. I see it every day and still don’t understand it. The poster shows a baseball player, bent at the hip. Maybe boys would get it. Danny Victorino sits across from me and I’ve seen him with baseball cards, the kind with big flat squares of dry bubble gum. He’s always getting in trouble for gum chewing, or “fidgeting,” or having “ants in his pants.” When I ask Danny what the poster means he says it’s like all the other stupid school posters and they all mean the same thing.
“But what is it?” I ask.
“Don’t do drugs,” Danny says, and Mrs. May puts her finger and thumb to her mouth.
“Zip a lip,” she says.
It’s September and we’re stuck with Mrs. May again. She chirps something about switching to third grade and getting to see some of her favorite students again and I want to barf. “Can’t she just retire?” I grumble.
“Cheer up,” Danny says. “Maybe she’ll get hit by a car and we’ll get a sub.”
“She’d probably squash the car,” I say, and Danny gives a big grin. His pencil starts tapping. He draws a picture of Mrs. May as Godzilla stomping on a car, but she sees it and makes him sit in the corner all day. When we line up to turn in our worksheets, I sneak Danny my T-Rex eraser. Later he pulls the picture out of the trash and gives it to me, wrinkled but still good. Godzilla’s face really looks like Mrs. May.
The next year we finally have a new teacher, Ms. Wilkens. She’s young and claps her hands a lot and says things like “Super!” and “Dy-no-mite!” She makes us form groups of four and put our desks together in squares—conversation spaces, she calls them—and tells us each group has to pick one thing and do a project on it for the whole year.
Like fighting pollution, she says. Or helping endangered animals.
Danny won’t move his desk, stays in the row where he was. His long brown hair dips over his eyes.
“Come on, Danny,” Ms. Wilkens says. “Join the Federation.”
“I’m a Klingon,” says Danny.
I get him to join our group, even though we already have five people, but when we have project time he mostly reads MAD magazine and rolls spitballs.
One morning there’s a call on the classroom phone and Ms. Wilkens takes Danny aside. Then the principal comes to get him and we’re sure he’s being expelled, but nobody knows for what.
Danny’s gone for the rest of the week. We all have to sign a big card that Ms. Wilkens gets. We are very sorry for your loss, Ms. Wilkens writes on the board, and everybody copies it.
I draw a T-Rex with a cartoon balloon. Inside the balloon is a heart.
When Danny comes back to school his hair is cut short, almost bald. Nobody knows why. Steve B. says he had to go live with his uncle because he has no dad, and his uncle is a Marine and shaved his head. Steve G. says he did it himself because he’s psycho. He says Danny’s mom’s car was so burned up they had to identify her by dental records.
When I go to the dentist next time, I ask if he’s making records of my teeth, but he just gives me a new toothbrush and some sugar-free gum and says “Keep up the good work! You’re in the No-Cavity Club!”
Danny doesn’t draw in class anymore, or throw spitballs. He sits with his head way down and shreds his eraser, digging his fingernails in and pulling it apart.
When I sit behind Danny, I can see how close his hair is cut. I see little bald patches shaved down to the skin, red cuts where the razor must have nicked his head. I think about his old hair and want to cry.
After Christmas vacation, Ms. Wilkens announces a new plan. Instead of our groups working on different projects, we’re all going to work on one big project together. A class mural, and it’s going to be on the wall outside our door. The whole wall, going all the way down to the janitor’s closet. Each group should come up with an idea for something to put in the mural, Ms. Wilkens says.
While she talks, I see Danny’s head lifting. When she asks what we think about doing the mural Danny doesn’t talk. But I see a sheet of paper on his desk. I see a pencil in his hand, tapping.
