My Teacher Is an Idiom Page 2

  “I’ve got very, very good lungs,” he said. “You want to try?”

  “Not really,” I told him. “I know how to breathe in and out. I do it all the time.”

  “Okay by me,” he said, “but now watch this.” He stood up with the straw with blue stripes in his mouth, stuck it in my Jell-O cup, and sucked in. Way in. He did a ginormous vacuum-cleaner thing.

  SLURRP!

  Boy, did he suck up my dessert. It sounded like a hog snarfing. I’ve never actually heard a hog, but I bet it sounds just like that. Patrick’s mouth was full. He took the straw out and let some of the red stuff drool over his bottom lip.

  Red raspberry drops rolled slowly down his chin. One by one, they plopped on the table. I knew this was bigtime bad table manners, but it broke me up. Patrick’s dad was right. The Mosquito was good enough to go viral on YouTube. I was just about to crack up, totally, when the new kid rushed over.

  “It is blood? He is sick?” she asked. She wasn’t laughing. She was scared.

  Mrs. Zookey told us to talk slow to the new kid so she could understand.

  “Hi, Sophie,” I said. Mrs. Zookey had written her name on the board. Sophie told the class she was from a town called Rennes. Mrs. Zookey wrote that down, too. Nobody had been there, not even Patrick.

  Sophie looked like a regular person. She had this long brown hair and she was wearing glasses with cool red rims. I tried being friendly, and I talked loud so she could understand. “HOW ARE YOU?” I yelled.

  “HE IS SICK?” she yelled back, pointing at Patrick.

  Patrick puffed out his cheeks. He looked like he might throw up. Then he opened his mouth. Red stuff oozed over his teeth. “I, Dracula,” he said. Sort of. I understood him. I’m not sure Sophie did. She was staring at the red rivers running down his chin. They were dripping into a gory puddle on the table.

  She put her hand over her mouth, like if she didn’t, she might scream. Or lose her lunch. Whichever came first.

  Patrick stuck out his tongue. He’d oozed out most of what he’d sucked in, but a little lake of it still floated on his tongue. It looked funny, but I thought a whole big ocean would be even funnier.

  So while Sophie still had her eye on Patrick, I grabbed my green frog spoon. I scooped it full of squishy red stuff. I dumped that on my tongue. I did it two times. Then I tugged the sleeve of her coat so she’d look at me instead of Patrick.

  When she did, her eyes got even wider. I crossed mine, and tried to say, “I, vampire bat.” This is very hard to do with your tongue piled with oosh. It came out, “I, an-ire at.”

  I flapped my elbows. I was Number-One Super-Awesome An-ire At. Patrick closed his mouth to laugh at my bat. When he did, red stuff oozed out his nose.

  Sophie leaned over to look closer. She frowned. “You do not need help?” she asked, like maybe she should call 911. She thought it was real blood! This was so much fun.

  Patrick swallowed. “Watch this,” he told her, waving his arms so she’d be sure to look at him. “I’ll show you how my real vampire gets Richie’s wimpy bat.”

  He stuck the blue striped straw back in his mouth and sucked up the rest of the red Jell-O. When the straw was full of red stuff, he pointed it straight at me! Then he pointed it at Sophie. Back and forth. Back and forth. This was not funny. He was going to squirt red oosh at me and the new kid, too.

  If my mouth hadn’t been so full, I’d have yelled at him. But I didn’t need to. Sophie was already doing it. “No!” she yelled, and backed away from him. “No!” She had a super-loud voice.

  “Stop!” She stepped on one of the grapes that Patrick had stomped on, slipped, and fell splat on her bottom. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t even talk.

  I tried to swallow. I really did, but instead I took a weird breath. My nose began to tickle, bad. I tried to sniff up the tickle. I tucked my head down and pressed hard on my mouth. I tried to hold it in. I tried, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t swallow, either. What I had to do was sneeze.

  “Aahhh . . . ahhhh . . .” I went. I closed my eyes tight. I lifted my head.

  “I’m outta here!” Patrick yelled.

  “AH-AH-AH-CHOOOOOOO!”

  I know you’re supposed to cover up sneezes. My mom says it’s polite and also keeps people from getting your germs. I know it, no kidding, but I didn’t want that icky stuff all over my hands. It would have been disgusting. Also, I didn’t want to get red mush on the honeybee shirt I’d gotten for Endangered Animal Day. I’d only worn it, like, three times.

  So I sneezed straight out. I could feel the fake vampire blood spray out of my mouth and my nose—way out.

  But guess who was back in the cafeteria? Guess who heard Sophie’s “No! No!” when he got back? Guess who rushed right up to our table?

  Okay, now guess whose green XXXXL-size Sumac School T-shirt had big red blobs all over it? Guess whose shirt looked like he’d just had a giant bloody nose?

  I didn’t have to guess. I knew.

  —4—

  Hide!

  I couldn’t hide under the table. It was too late. Mr. E. was standing right in front of me. I didn’t need to give him a penny for his thoughts, either.

  He looked down at his shirt. His face was almost as red as the goop. He looked straight at me. “You,” he said, very quiet. “You!” he said, a lot louder.

  What was he going to say? You will eat in a closet from now on, the one with the mops and the buckets? You will leave school right now forever and ever? You . . . what? I knew for sure who he meant by You. It wasn’t Patrick. Patrick hadn’t sneezed. He had swallowed. And he must have had a napkin. He got the red stuff off his nose, at least.

  “I . . . I . . . I . . .” I began. If I said it wasn’t my fault, Mr. E. would never believe me. He watched it happen.

  He waited.

  I waited, too. I tried to think. If I said Patrick started it, that might make things worse.

  The lunchroom moms were heading toward us, but Mr. E. waved them back.

  “I . . . I . . . I’m sorry,” I told him finally.

  “You . . .” He reached in his pocket and handed me a pack of tissues. “You need to blow your nose.” The stuff I blew out was gross.

  Sophie had scrambled to her feet. “You . . .” she said, pointing at me, “are stupid.”

  I sucked in my breath. So did Patrick. Actually, so did Mr. E. That didn’t stop Sophie.

  “You,” she said, pointing at Patrick, “are also stu—”

  I cut her off. “You can’t say that,” I told her. “That’s like . . . swearing.”

  “You just started to call me a name,” Patrick told her. “I think that’s against school law. Mr. E. will have to call your mother or father or caregiver. Right, Mr. E.?”

  Sophie didn’t look scared anymore. She shook her hair, put her hands on her hips, and narrowed her eyes. “I do not call your name,” she told Patrick. “I do not know it, but I know you are stu—”

  “Hold on,” Mr. E. said. “Let’s take this talk back to my office. I’ve got to change my shirt. The kids from the playground would freak out if they saw it. All three of you, pack up and move. On the double!”

  I was in trouble again, and I knew why. Patrick.

  We gathered our stuff, and Mr. E. marched us down the hall.

  When we got to his office, he pointed at three chairs across from his desk. We sat in them. “I don’t have much time,” Mr. E. said, “so let’s get right to the bottom of this.” Then he tortured us.

  He didn’t turn into a werewolf and drool. He didn’t roar. He didn’t even call our mothers, fathers, or caregivers. He talked about manners. Manners!

  “We have a big problem here,” he said. “As you know, this is Mind Your Manners Month here at Sumac School. And it’s clear to me that you two boys don’t understand good manners, especially good lunchroom manners.”

  He turned to me and said, “Richard, you should always, always cover your mouth when you sneeze. Especially if your mouth is full of food.�
��

  “Yes, Mr. E.,” I said.

  “Richard will be sure to remember that,” Patrick said. This was true, but Patrick didn’t need to rub it in. He quick-wiped a mess of sticky red stuff off his chin and onto his sleeve.

  Then Mr. E. talked to all three of us about being nice. Nice! “That’s what manners are all about,” he said. He made us say nice things to each other. This was not easy.

  Patrick told Sophie he’d heard on the History Channel that France gave us the Statue of Liberty, and he thought that was nice.

  I told Sophie that we were very glad she had moved to our town and our school and that we were very happy she was sitting with us at Table Two in Mrs. Zookey’s room. I told her I was sure that very soon we would all be friends. She didn’t believe me. I could tell.

  Sophie said she couldn’t think of anything nice to say. She said that was because we were not nice. She said she thought we were stupid.

  This time Mr. E. cut her off. “Why do you use such a strong word about these boys?” he asked her.

  “I call a cat a cat,” Sophie said.

  “You can’t call me a cat. What’s that supposed to mean?” Patrick asked her.

  “We say it in France,” she said. “But we say it in French. It means I call things what they are, and you are—”

  Patrick told Sophie he thought she just didn’t understand that in our school we didn’t call people bad names. She rolled her eyes at him.

  “You speak English well, Sophie,” Mr. E. said, talking slow because she was new. “Do you understand all my words?”

  She nodded. “I know American words,” she said. “I learn them at my school in France. Also, I learn at the restaurant of my papa.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. When I talked with your father yesterday, he told me he is a chef. His restaurant just opened?”

  Sophie nodded. “It is called Chez Paul Henri, the name of my papa. In English you would say ‘The House of Paul Henri.’ His specialty, it is the escargots.”

  “That’s splendid,” Mr. E. told her. “I like snails very much.”

  Snails? That word meant snails? Sophie’s father cooked real snails? Mr. E. ate them? I started to ask if this was true, but Mr. E. kept talking.

  “Sophie,” he said, “you seem like a cheerful girl. Tell me, what did these boys do to make you so angry?”

  She smiled a little smile. This is it, I thought. She’s going to give us away. She was even right. The Mosquito turned out to be really stupid. Patrick closed his eyes.

  Sophie shook her head. “I am making the white cabbage,” she said.

  “Wait up.” Mr. E. leaned forward. Red goop from his shirt smeared on his desk, but he didn’t even notice. “I’m afraid we’ve got our wires crossed,” he told her. “You say you are cooking white cabbage?”

  “Making white cabbage,” Sophie said. “We say that in France.”

  “Only you say it in French,” I said.

  “Oui.” She nodded. “People say it. My papa, he say it. It is not real cabbage like he cooks. It means,” she went on, “‘In my head I do not think of . . . anything.’”

  “You’re drawing a blank,” I said.

  She blinked. “A blank? I think so,” she said. “I remember nothings.”

  “Or maybe,” Patrick said, “the cat’s got your tongue.”

  Sophie frowned. “No. I have no cat,” she said. “I have the dog. His name is called Milou. Milou will not bite my tongue, even if I stick it out.” She stuck out her tongue. Then she shrugged. “But naturally he is not here.”

  I looked at Patrick, and Patrick looked at me. We both shook our heads. Maybe it was different in France.

  Mr. E. slapped his hand on his forehead. “I see. The problem here is idioms. You’re using an idiom to explain that you don’t know what happened. A French idiom. Every language has them. Do you boys know what an idiom is?”

  I must have been making white cabbage, too. Idiom didn’t mean anything to me. Patrick said, “Huh?” It was like he didn’t know idiom and didn’t want to meet it.

  “It’s good to know about idioms. You use them all the time,” Mr. E. went on. He was all excited. He leaned over and got even more bat blood on his desk. “An idiom is a group of words that don’t mean what they say. It’s like when you tell someone, ‘It’s raining cats and dogs.’ You don’t mean there are wet kittens and puppies falling out of the sky. You’re just saying it’s raining very hard, or . . . Can you think of another idiom, Richard?”

  I shook my head and shifted around in the chair. I mean, I just use regular words.

  “How about you, Sophie?” he asked her. “Do you understand what we’re talking about?”

  She smiled. “I know my idiom,” she told him. “We say, Il pleut des cordes. ‘It rains ropes.’ We do not say dogs and cats fall off the sky. They do not.”

  “Ropes of rain,” Mr. E. said. “That’s good. If there was a windy shower, you’d be all tied up in water knots.”

  Patrick kept it going. “I ate a bite of cabbage once,” he said. “I don’t know if it was white. It was Saint Patrick’s Day, so maybe it was green.” He looked at Mr. E. and smiled way too big. “It was very tasty.”

  Sophie stared at us. She knew what had happened in the lunchroom. But she didn’t tell. She could have. She could have told Mr. E. she knew my mouth was full on purpose to gross her out. But she didn’t. She could have said Patrick was just about to squirt us both with a straw full of fake blood. But she didn’t. She also didn’t say she was sorry she called us stupid.

  “Stupid is a good word, no?” she asked Mr. E.

  “It is not,” Mr. E. told her. “It’s a mean way of saying someone is not very smart. These boys are smart, but they don’t always do what they should. You may have meant they have bad manners. That is certainly true. I’ve seen much too much of it lately. Especially in the lunchroom. I’ve heard way too much loud burping.”

  He looked straight at Patrick. “It’s clear,” he said, “that Mind Your Manners Month is not enough.”

  Then he looked at me. “There will be consequences for what you did, Richard. Do you know what consequences are?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “It means something is going to happen that I won’t like.”

  “That,” he told me, “is exactly what it means. Something will happen because of what you did. I’ll be in touch with Mrs. Zookey.

  “Now, back to your room!” he told the three of us. “Lunchtime is almost over, and I still have to change this shirt.” I saw a pile of new ones stacked on a shelf. It’d be a quick change.

  His face was grim. “Don’t run,” he told us, “but step on it.”

  —5—

  Consequences

  As soon as we were far enough away, I took a deep breath. “‘There will be consequences,’” I said.

  “Don’t sweat it,” Patrick said. “We got off with bad manners. Bad manners is nothing. Bad manners is like eating spaghetti with your fingers. I never do that. It would be piggy.”

  “Mr. E. said big burps were bad,” I told him.

  “I heard that. What was he thinking? I’m really good at those. Urp!” He let off a huge one just to show us. Really, it was huge. “See, if I did that in China, it would be good, my father says. He says it would be like going ‘I liked my food a lot.’” Patrick burped again, even louder.

  “You are not in China,” Sophie said to him. “You are here. I think it is not the same here.” Then she asked me, “Do I have the consequences, too? I do not know this word.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” I told her. “We got away with it. We fooled Mr. E. for sure. And you helped. You didn’t tell.”

  She shook her head and hurried on to the water fountain.

  When we caught up to her, she asked, “Mr. Economopoulos, he is the important person, no?”

  “Mr. E. is very, very important,” Patrick told her. “He is vice principal. He is scarier than the principal. Mr. E. is the Big Cheese.” Patrick
lowered his voice. “We call him Mystery. You know, like one of those scary stories you can’t figure out.” He grinned at me. “You want to know why we call him Mystery? Did you see him take the penny from behind my ear in the lunchroom?”

  “I see it,” she said.

  “Mystery!” Patrick said. “See, he does things you can’t figure out, magical things. He’s a magician, you know? Maybe he’s even a real wizard, like at Hogwarts. I bet you heard him say he was going to change his shirt. He will make it change, too. Next time you see him, you’ll see the same green shirt, but those red spots will be totally gone. All he’s got to do is wave a wand or maybe say a magic word like abracadabra!” He waved his arms. “The spots will go away. Totally.”

  “He makes things appear, too. Like the penny,” I told her. Patrick and I were both fooling this kid. It was easy.

  “He does not scare me,” Sophie said. “I like him. When I meet him, he tells me his family is from Greece. He comes here when he is young, like I do. Then his father has a restaurant, like mine does now.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but remember that he’s the Big Cheese, and at this school the Big Cheese doesn’t like it when you call somebody stupid.”

  “What you do before in the lunchroom is called bad manners?” she asked.

  “Right,” Patrick said. “No big deal. You heard what Mr. E. said. Richard shouldn’t sneeze with his mouth open.”

  “But,” she said, “you were both—”

  Brrrring. The bell in the hall rang. Lunch period was over.

  “It was a mess of bad manners,” I told her. “That’s all.”

  When I opened the door to our room, Mrs. Zookey was talking on her cell phone. She was at her desk, sitting on her chair. It was a big blue exercise ball. Her silvery cat earrings were bobbing up and down as she bounced. Her red hair was bouncing, too.

  She looked up, and I could tell she was not happy. She was shaking her head, and she was not smiling. Just like he said he would, Mr. E. had called her.