Shine! Read online

“Oh, good. I wasn’t really excelling so far today….”

  Everyone laughs. Dr. Throckmorton sniffs and pulls out a sheet of paper.

  “Here is what the Chumley family has communicated to me thus far about how the contest will work: ‘Judges, whose identities will not be disclosed, will be observing your performance for the next several weeks. These undercover judges will decide who wins the Excelsior, which will be awarded at another all-school assembly on March fifteenth. The winner’s name shall be enshrined for all time on a plaque in our Chumley Hall of Champions.’ ”

  Now everyone applauds.

  I start thinking: if I won the Excelsior Award, I could have a plaque right next to one of Mom’s.

  The idea makes me laugh a little.

  Ha! Like that’s ever going to happen.

  Unless, of course, “excelsior” means “perfect attendance.”

  “Excelsior!” cries Mr. Van Deusen at the start of English class. “It’s not just a new prize—it’s also a short poem written in 1841 by the great American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.”

  “What does it mean?” I ask (hoping it really is Latin for “perfect attendance.” Or “Hibbleflitt”).

  “ ‘Ever upward!’ Block the negative, make way for the positive. Aim higher and higher. ‘Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; Take honor from me, and my life is done!’ ”

  Everybody just stares at him. I have no idea what he’s talking about. Neither does anybody else.

  “That’s from Shakespeare’s Richard the Second, which, of course, you will never, ever read, unless you go to college and study English lit, as I hope some of you will do. ‘O, let my books be then the eloquence and dumb presages of my speaking breast!’ ”

  Tim giggles. “You said ‘breast.’ ”

  “Only because Shakespeare said it first. Moving on. How are you dauntless scribes doing on your special assignment? The ‘Quo quid vis fieri?’ project?”

  “That’s Latin, right?” says Kwame. “Because it sounds like something you’d read on a coin.”

  “Exactly!” says Mr. Van Deusen.

  “Sit vis vobiscum, sir.”

  “And may the Force also be with you, Kwame. Where was I? Ah yes. ‘Quo quid vis fieri?’ Whom do you wish to become?”

  “I’m finished with my essay,” says Tim.

  “Already?” says Mr. Van Deusen.

  “I’m sorry. That was an accident. I didn’t mean to say it out loud. Please forget I did.”

  “Your wish is my command, O Great Timdini.”

  One of the girls in the front row raises her hand.

  “Yes, Felicity?”

  “Where’s Ainsley?”

  “Ah, parting is such sweet sorrow. She transferred to Mrs. Garrett’s class.”

  “Excelsior!” shouts Tim.

  Most of the class laughs. Well, everybody except Felicity.

  I don’t think much more about the Excelsior Award until I get to math class at the end of the day.

  It’s all Siraj and Emily want to talk about.

  “We can totally win it,” says Siraj. “The parameters of the award are wide open. Excellence is the only criterion.”

  “Agreed,” says Emily. “A Hibbleflitt can, finally, beat Carter the jock and Ainsley the princess.”

  Siraj raises his fist. “Hibbleflitts rule!”

  After math, I head over to the Performing Arts Center to see if Dad is ready to go home.

  He isn’t because he’s rehearsing with his new a cappella group.

  They sound amazing doing “Lean on Me” with a finger-snapping “doo-wa-doo” intro.

  A girl steps forward to belt out the high notes.

  “Lean on me…”

  It’s that girl from the Winter Sing-Off. The one who tried to stand up to Ainsley.

  “Excellent, Brooke!” Dad says after her big finish. “That was incredible. Kwame? We’re glad you signed up. We needed someone to handle the low notes.”

  “I’m all about the bass, Mr. Milly,” says Kwame.

  “The rest of you were amazing, too,” Dad tells his students. “We should put ‘Lean on Me’ into our spring concert.”

  “Mr. Milly?” says Brooke, raising her hand.

  “Yes, Brooke?”

  “We usually do a completely classical program for the spring concert.”

  “Come on, Brooke,” says Kwame. “Nobody likes classical music except Mozart’s mother.”

  “I know. But, well—according to my father, anyway—we’re expected to learn the classical repertoire here at Chumley.”

  “Tell you what,” says Dad. “We can sing both. Pop hits and classics. We’ll shake things up a little. Okay, see you guys on Thursday.”

  “Oh, Thursday—hey, hey, hey…hey,” Kwame sings in a rumbling bass line that keeps going lower and lower and lower.

  Everybody starts packing up their book bags and heading out the door.

  I help Dad gather up sheet music.

  “Brooke’s voice is pretty fantastic, huh?” he says when everybody else is out of the room.

  “Yeah.”

  “They tell me she also lands all the lead roles in the school musicals.”

  In other words, Brooke is extremely talented.

  Which gives me my second journal entry for Mr. Van Deusen:

  WHO DO I WANT TO BE?

  Well, if I can’t be Mom, maybe I could be Brooke. I don’t know her last name. But the way she sings? It makes Dad smile. My singing just makes him cover his ears. You’d think that with two musically gifted parents I wouldn’t be so tone-deaf. Maybe I’m adopted. Maybe Brooke is Mom and Dad’s real daughter. Maybe we should switch places. Except, then I wouldn’t get to walk Mister Pugsly on a regular basis. And I’d really miss him.

  Things are weird the next morning at school.

  Parents in the drop-off lane are giving their kids motivational speeches.

  “Winning isn’t everything,” a dad in a trench coat reminds his son. “It’s the only thing!”

  It seems strange until I remember that this is Excelsior Blastoff Day. The new contest officially starts this morning. Everyone is fired up and ready to excel, excel, excel.

  Except me, of course.

  Because there’s no way I could ever achieve escape velocity: the speed an object must reach in order to break away from another object’s gravitational pull. Even with my own private rocket ship, I could never fly fast enough to pull ahead of all the other stars at Chumley Prep.

  “Crush it, Ainsley!” shouts her mother.

  “Every day in every way!” Ainsley plows up the steps, looking for someone else to bulldoze with her cello case. She nearly slams into a nanny carrying three book bags.

  In the lobby, I see Tim sitting on the floor next to an empty bench. He’s sketching something on a pad while the excited crowd swarms around him.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  “What are you doodling?”

  “It’s a new trick I’m working up. All about levitation. My parents bought me a chair suspension kit. You want to come see it?”

  “Sure.”

  “How about this weekend?”

  “Great. I’ll ask my dad.”

  Tim nods and gathers up his stuff.

  We have trouble walking to our lockers because of the frantic mob slapping up campaign posters on any empty piece of wall they can find.

  “Everyone must think winning today’s election will help them win the Excelsior Award,” observes Tim.

  “Vote for me,” I hear Ainsley shout, “and maybe Daddy will fly you to Miami with us this weekend on our private jet.”

  We see Siraj. He seems strangely calm.

  “Let this one go, guys,” he advises. “Skip politics. W
e’ll play to our strengths: rack up our Excelsior points in academics and, most especially, at the science fair.”

  “Oh, I’m not interested in the Excelsior,” I tell him.

  “Me neither,” says Tim.

  “Excelsior!” screams Carter as he races up the hall tearing down other people’s posters so he can hang up more for Ainsley.

  “Yo,” says Kwame, who’s taping up a few signs of his own. “That’s called cheating.”

  “No, Kwame,” says Carter. “It’s called winning. Excelsior!”

  Great. The name of the award has become a battle cry.

  In all the confusion, a kid who looks like a kindergartener toddles around the corner.

  “I’m lost,” she says.

  And of course that’s when the clanging bell on the wall right next to us starts rattling.

  Which scares the little kid so much she starts sobbing.

  And we only have five minutes to get to homeroom.

  “I need help!” the little kid blubbers.

  Everybody ignores her because they’re still busy with their last-minute campaigning.

  “We can’t just leave her here,” I say to Tim. “She’ll get trampled.”

  “What grade are you in?” I ask the girl.

  “Kindergarten.”

  “What are you doing way over here?” says Tim. “That’s a whole different building.”

  “Do you know how to find her classroom?” I ask Tim.

  “Kindergarten is over in the Farnsworth Building. It’s on the other side of the campus. The far side. Across the quad.”

  I look around. I don’t see a single adult.

  “Let’s go,” I say. “What’s your name?” I ask the girl.

  “Abby,” she tells me. “Abby Farah. I’m in Mrs. Sullivan’s class.”

  “Follow me,” Tim tells us.

  I take Abby’s hand and we head up the crowded hall.

  As we make our way through the maze of kids, corridors, and staircases, we come across another little kid stranded in a sea of gigantic, frantic eighth graders. He is boohooing loudly, wiping his eyes with his knuckles.

  “Are you lost?” I ask.

  The boy smiles and nods. “I need help.”

  “What’s your name?

  “Victor. I’m in kindergarten.”

  “Well, come on, Victor,” I say, taking his hand, too. “We’re headed that way.”

  We leave the middle school building just as the second class-change bell rings behind us. That means Tim and I are officially late for homeroom and the elections.

  We cross the grassy quad (it’s like a lawn with sidewalks) and, finally, deliver the kids to their classroom.

  “Thank you,” says their teacher with a grateful sigh. “Abby and Victor like to go exploring.”

  “I’m gonna explore space when I grow up,” says Abby.

  That makes me smile. “Me too,” I tell her. “Shine on, stargazer.”

  She giggles.

  Tim and I race back to the middle school building.

  He and Emily have Mr. Van Deusen for homeroom.

  They’re lucky.

  “You’re late, Miss Milly,” says Mrs. Zamick as I try to quietly slip into my seat.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But—”

  She shows me the palm of her hand to cut me off.

  “We are not interested in excuses, Miss Milly. Our emphasis this term, as you should be aware, is on excellence.”

  “But—”

  “Do you think people who excel make excuses when they make mistakes? Of course not. You also missed the elections.”

  “I won!” says Ainsley. “In every seventh-grade homeroom! They already announced it.”

  She gives me an icy smile filled with glossy teeth.

  Like I said earlier, some people, like the Ainsleys of this world, are meant to shine. In fact, even their teeth sparkle.

  Me? I’m going to keep on doing my best to blend in.

  On Saturday morning, I walk Mister Pugsly (he snarls whenever I talk about Ainsley).

  That afternoon, Hannah invites me to go shopping with her at the mall.

  “The regular one,” she says. “Not that ridiculously expensive Winterset Collection.”

  “I can’t,” I tell her.

  “Why? Is there a Nellie DuMont Frissé marathon on PBS?”

  “No. I’m, uh, working on a project at this other kid’s house.”

  “What kind of project?”

  “It’s all about gravity,” I say, because I figure a levitation trick would definitely have something to do with gravity.

  Dad drives me over to Tim’s house, which is as big as a castle. It’s exactly the same kind of house we used to drive around and look at on weekends. It’s three stories of towering stone, peaked roofs, and ginormous windows. You could fit our whole house inside Tim’s living room.

  “Wow,” says Dad.

  “Yeah.”

  “Have fun.”

  Tim’s parents are out of town but their live-in housekeeper (a live-in housekeeper!) fixes us some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—with the crusts trimmed off.

  “You want to see my magician’s lair?” Tim asks when we’re done with lunch.

  “You have a lair?”

  “It’s more like a warehouse. In the garage. That’s where the new levitation trick is.”

  We go through a door off the mudroom and enter his five-car garage, where there are only two cars but tons of props for magic tricks stored in bins and on tall shelves that fill up most of the space.

  “This is amazing!” I say.

  “My parents bought me all this stuff,” Tim tells me. “I’ve only used half of it. So far, anyway.”

  “It’s like a magic museum,” I say, admiring an antique lacquered box with swords sticking out of its sides.

  “Mom’s just happy I have a hobby,” Tim tells me.

  “Have your parents ever seen you perform?”

  “Mom has. Dad’s always too busy. Flying here, flying there, making deals.”

  Tim shows me a few of his favorite linking-loop and card tricks. He waves his hands and says “piff-piff” a lot. He asks me if I want to stand in the lacquered box while he jabs swords at it.

  “No thanks,” I say. “Maybe next time.”

  “Okay, here’s the levitation stuff….”

  He points to two chairs propping up a board covered in red fabric. He lifts up a small mannequin and lays it faceup on the board.

  “I, uh, get a volunteer to lie down on the board like so. Okay. This is the important part. Their center of gravity has to be directly over one of the chairs. This one.”

  “So there’s science in magic?”

  “Definitely! There’s also magic in science! Especially physics. Piff-piff! Okay, when my volunteer’s center of gravity, their belly button, is over the seat of this chair, I put a blanket on top of them…pull away this other chair…and, ta-da, they levitate.”

  “Wow!” I say, because the dummy seems to be floating in space.

  “Wait,” says Tim excitedly. “It gets better. Next, I pull away this board, the one they’re lying on, and—”

  He stops.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  “Did you see the second board?”

  “What?”

  “The one wrapped in fabric so it looks like a flat red sheet on top of the board I pulled away?”

  “No…”

  “You had to see it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Tim starts shaking. “I ruined it. That’s the secret….”

  “I swear—”

  “The hidden board is clamped to the chair,” he says, his voice trembling. “I ruined it. The trick’s ruined….�
��

  I try to convince Tim that I didn’t see the second board.

  He just keeps shaking his head and muttering the word “ruined” over and over. I don’t know what to do. So I try to get him thinking about something else.

  “Hey, is that a swimming pool?” I ask, pointing at a window.

  “Yeah,” Tim mumbles.

  “Can I see it?”

  “Fine.”

  Tim leads me out into the backyard, which kind of looks like a golf course where somebody trimmed every blade of grass with scissors. The swimming pool is covered with a tarp.

  “We don’t use it in the winter,” says Tim.

  “Maybe you could turn it into a hockey rink.”

  “Maybe. I’ll ask Dad. The next time he’s home.”

  Poor Tim.

  He seems kind of lonely in his big house.

  “Hey,” I say, “you want to have dinner with me and my dad? It’s Saturday night so it’ll be hot dogs and baked beans.”

  “Thanks. But I’m not hungry.”

  “Dinner’s not till later.”

  “I won’t be hungry then, either.”

  I wonder if I did or said something wrong.

  His driver (Tim has one of those, too) takes me home.

  Dad and I have our standard Saturday-night dinner and guess what?

  Those hot dogs and baked beans taste even better than usual.

  January rushes by.

  Except for homeroom, I’m doing a pretty good job blending in at Chumley (and avoiding Ainsley). I walk Mister Pugsly every afternoon and twice a day on the weekends. I tell him some of the jokes Kwame tells me.

  “You know why dogs run around in circles? Because it’s too hard to run in squares.”

  Mister Pugsly snorts a backward “heh-heh-heh.” That’s how you laugh when you don’t have much of a snout.

  I forget about working on my “Who do you want to be?” project. My last entry was: “Not Mrs. Zamick, either.”

  I don’t see Hannah too much. She’s busy. I’m busy.

  On a snow day, Siraj, Emily, Kwame, Tim, and I go sledding at the country club (their families all belong). I’ve never been to a country club before. They’ll put whipped cream and marshmallows in your hot cocoa if that’s what you ask for (which I do). And the hills on the golf course are awesome for sledding.