Because of Our Student Teacher

TOBY MITCHELL

If it weren't for me, nothing exciting would ever happen around Baxter Elementary School. Yeah, and if you asked Principal Barnett, she'd probably say if it weren't for me, there'd be no trouble around Baxter, but that's just a difference of opinion.

I wasn't looking for trouble when I brought three cans of soda to school. Honest. I wasn't trying to sneak them into lunch or anything. I had other plans. We were studying the properties of solids, liquids, and gases in science. We'd made that stuff called Oobleck that's both a solid and a liquid back in second grade, but we never did anything cool like that in fifth grade. With Don't-Care Dwyer, science was nothing but videos and worksheets. So it was up to me to provide the exciting demonstration.

I kept the cans hidden inside my desk all week, shaking them every chance I got. Everybody knew, but no one ratted me out because they all wanted to see what happened when I set them off. Harper told me I should consider safety goggles and I told her she should consider shutting up. That girl was the ultimate know-it-all but an even bigger pain in the rear-and she wasn't even the smartest in our class. That was Dakota Sunderland. She was reading the Lord of the Rings books, for crying out loud. Have you seen how fat those are? And the writing is super small. No thanks. I'll stick with watching the movies.

I didn't care what Harper or anyone else said, my stunt show was gonna be mind-blowing-and it was. Thanks to Lenny, what really happened was better than I ever imagined. It was epic!

It'd been raining buckets all morning, so we were stuck inside our classroom for recess. Just to be clear, indoor recess stunk worse than a steamy shower fart. Our dusty recess monitor, Mrs. Walsh, always made us play games she chose until Don't-Care Dwyer showed up and relieved her of her duties. That was about the only thing Dwyer made better, because everything else with him was BORING in all capital letters and boldface print.

The guy was supposed to be awesome-and he kinda was, for the first two weeks of school-but that teacher was long gone. We'd made it to March, but I couldn't wait to be done with the year because the dude was a dud. It was like he caught some mysterious virus that sucked all the life out of him. The same virus that had tracked down my brother.

Teddy was a junior in high school. We used to have a cool relationship, one where we had fun busting on each other, or played video games together, or just hung out watching TV. But not anymore. My once upbeat and chill big bro was long gone, just another downer. Like I said, Dwyer and Teddy got hit with the same mysterious illness.

Anyway, Dwyer ate lunch by himself in our classroom and then went for a walk every day, no matter the weather. So until he returned, it was either seven-up or eraser tag, two games that Mrs. Walsh played when she was a kid, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

She tortured us with eraser tag for this round. Two people were picked to start, one to be the runner and one to be the tagger. Both players had to balance a whiteboard eraser on their head. If the eraser fell, you were out. It was better than seven-up, but not much-until today.

I don't know what Mrs. Walsh was thinking, but she wanted me to be the tagger and Lenny to be the runner. I didn't even need to get that close to Lenny. I was three desks away from him when I threw my arms up and yelled his name.

"Lenny!"

The boy practically jumped out of his underwear. Forget the eraser. He screamed and stumbled backward, crashing into the desk that was behind him. Bet you can guess whose desk that was. Yup. It was mine. The one with the cans of soda stashed inside it. Bet you can guess what happened next. Yup. The cans got dislodged from their hiding spot and rolled free. When those suckers fell and crashed to the ground, they exploded on impact, shooting soda in every direction. There wasn't a safe place to hide. There was so much pressure built up inside the cans that they zinged around the room like possessed demons, spinning circles and blasting everyone. They were alive, each one with a mind of its own.

"Take cover!" I yelled.

"Ahh!" my classmates screamed, some scurrying for shelter and others plastering themselves against the wall, trying to get as far away as possible.

"Coke's rounding the bases!" Derek cheered, making one of his baseball references. He never ran out of those.

"Oh!" Mrs. Walsh exclaimed. "Oh my!"

Our classroom was full of shrieks and screams and shouts. Like I said, epic.

"Toby, do something!" Harper urged.

Whatever. There was no way I was stepping into that blast zone. The demons were still sliding and zigzagging every which way, spitting and whistling as the soda and pressure escaped. Our only option was to wait it out.

When the spraying finally died down and the cans slowed, I crawled out from under the desk where I was hiding and stood up. "Way to go, Lenny!" I cheered.

"Anyone want to explain what's going on here?" Don't-Care Dwyer asked, arriving on the scene just in time.

"Mr. Dwyer, these children are out of control!" Mrs. Walsh cried. "Look at the mess! And my blouse-"

"I'll take it from here," Dwyer said. "Thank you."

"But the children-"

We didn't hear the rest because Don't-Care Dwyer closed the door, shutting Mrs. Walsh in the hallway. At least he didn't play favorites. The guy didn't like her any more than he did us.

"I tried to warn Toby," Harper started right in, tattling.

"Careful, Harper," Dwyer said, holding up his hand, signaling her to zip it. "That statement implies you knew something, making you an accomplice, which is no better than being the culprit in my book. But lucky for you, I'm not interested. Just get this cleaned up."

Dwyer was an older teacher, but not the oldest. His son was a senior in high school. He told us that during week one, when we were getting to know him-before the virus attacked. So that put him around my parents' ages. He had a slight belly, like my dad, but nothing too impressive. He had more balding than my dad but still had hair. The thing that set him apart was his attitude. Not interested. That was Don't-Care Dwyer in a nutshell. He didn't yell or get upset. And he didn't smile or laugh. Ever. Once upon a time, he was the teacher every kid hoped to get for fifth grade, but this guy didn't care about anything anymore. He was still doing his job, but he made school as dull as a G-rated movie.

So, like I said, if it weren't for me, Baxter would've been Boring Elementary School all the time. It was on me to "shake" things up now and then. At least, that's how it was until someone else arrived on the scene, someone who shook things up every day.

BTW, I know you're wondering. Yes, thanks to Mrs. Walsh, I was called down to visit my dear friend, Principal Barnett. Pure pandemonium and total awesomeness was how I described what had happened. Utter chaos and the potential for someone to get hurt was how Principal Barnett phrased it. Again, just a difference of opinion. After that, she was mostly interested in how Dwyer had responded.

I shrugged. "He didn't do anything and didn't seem to care. Just told us to clean up the mess."

Principal Barnett nodded and we left it at that.

"See you around," I told her.

"Let's try not to make it too soon," she suggested.

"Okay. Soon, but not too soon," I replied with a smirk.

Principal Barnett shook her head but flashed a grin. She was a cool lady, especially for a principal.

HARPER MANNING

I was the smartest in Mr. Dwyer's class. Just saying. Dakota Sunderland thought she was the big brain, but she wasn't really. The girl never raised her hand. I bet she couldn't even read those thick books that she carried around. It was all for show. She did the same thing back in first grade when she was the only one in our class choosing chapter books from the library. It made me mad that Mr. Dwyer never called her out on her act, but he didn't care-about that or anything. I did. It was bad enough being stuck in my sister's shadow at home; I wasn't playing second fiddle in the classroom, too, especially to Dakota.

My sister, Ava, was in her junior year of high school, which was "the most important year ever for colleges"-at least, that's what she was always yelling during her freakouts after getting an A instead of an A+. Ava was plenty smart and plenty dramatic. She was also a great swimmer, taking after my mother.

Mom let Mr. Dwyer's lackadaisical performance go on for a while because he had the reputation of being one of the best teachers at Baxter, and because he didn't start the year that way-not to mention, keeping Ava from having a meltdown was a full-time job for her these days. Rumor was some other parents had complained to Principal Barnett, though, and were told Mr. Dwyer was dealing with personal matters, so Mom tried remaining calm. But when there was still no sign of Mr. Dwyer improving even after parent-teacher conferences, Mom alerted Dad that she'd requested a meeting with our principal.

As president of the PTO, my mother was friendly with Principal Barnett and had worked with her on many programs for the school, but that didn't mean my mother was going to stand by and keep quiet-not forever. Oh no, Principal Barnett was going to hear it. My mother wasn't afraid to throw her weight around.

Things a crazy mom rants after getting nowhere with the principal:

"Mr. Dwyer has a lot on his plate. Pfft. Who doesn't have a lot on their plate? We'll just make sure you're involved with other things to round out your education and keep you sharp."

Translation:

I'm going to pack your schedule chock-full of extracurriculars (Girl Scouts, soccer, and who-knows-what-else) on top of swim club team because school isn't enough, and the more you're involved in, the better that looks and sounds to colleges. (My drama queen sister was ruining my life. Thanks to her freakouts, Mom was already worrying about my future application.)

Toby Mitchell claimed nothing exciting ever happened around Boring Elementary School (which was what he called Baxter) unless he got involved. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but that was kind of true, especially in Mr. Dwyer's class. Math was a few examples on the board and then practice problems in our workbooks. If we finished and still had time, we were stuck playing the same dull card games to drill our basic facts. For our read-aloud, we listened to an audiobook. Those could be good, but whoever heard of a teacher who didn't want to read to their students? That was Mr. Dwyer. I swear, if he could've plugged us into videos all day long, he would've. So yeah, things with him were super monotonous. It'd gotten so bad that I'd started watching Lenny Allen for amusement.

In the olden days, they had freak shows at the circus, which is terrible but true. People would line up and pay to see the bearded lady or the dog-faced boy or the girl with multiple legs. We had our very own special attraction right in the classroom. Lenny Allen was the boy who devoured fingernails.

Lenny had always been quiet, mostly keeping to himself, but I didn't remember him chewing his fingers in years past. He was a beaver now, gnawing them down to nubs. There was a day a couple months ago when I worried he was going to start nibbling past his nails, chomping his fingers as if they were little Vienna sausages, but my bigger worry was that someday he was gonna switch it up and go for his toenails, ripping his shoes and socks off and feasting on toe jam right there at his desk. Thankfully, that hadn't happened yet. For now, Lenny seemed content with moving on to pencil erasers after he finished with his fingers.

The boy picked at his erasers, forming tiny piles of the bits and pieces on top of his desk. If he ever tried eating the eraser bits, I would've reported his disgusting fetish right away, not that Mr. Dwyer would've done a darn thing about it, but it hadn't come to that. None of this was all that fascinating, but when school's so boring you'd rather watch paint dry, you're forced to find other forms of entertainment.

Unfortunately for Lenny, not everyone was satisfied with merely watching his peculiar behavior. Enter Toby Mitchell, the boy who thought it was up to him to provide comic relief. Again, unfortunately for Lenny, that was often at his expense.

If Toby saw an eraser pile, he'd find a reason to get up and wander across the room, bumping Lenny's desk along the way, knocking eraser bits all over the floor. On one special occasion, when Toby was feeling especially jerky, he cruised over and sighed a huge breath, blowing pieces halfway across the room. Poor Lenny spent the next ten minutes crawling around on his hands and knees, trying to collect his treasure. No surprise, Mr. Dwyer never said a word. If he even noticed, he didn't care.

Toby picking on Lenny like that was bad enough, but the worst was the day Lenny showed up wearing his Baxter Elementary School T-shirt. The one with BES printed across the front in block letters. Lenny had destroyed all his erasers the day before, so after his fingernails, he resorted to picking at his shirt. He picked and picked all morning, tearing the rubbery white lettering free from the navy-blue cotton. By lunchtime, he'd managed to collect a sizable pile. What none of us saw until we were out in the hall, lining up to go to the cafeteria, was that instead of BES, Lenny's T-shirt now read PIS on the front. Lenny was oblivious, but Toby pounced as soon as he saw it.

"Lenny, you've got pee on your shirt!" Toby exclaimed-except he didn't say "pee." He used the vulgar word instead.

"No, I don't," Lenny argued.

"Yes, you do," Toby insisted. "It's written across your chest."

Lenny glanced down and then Toby did that trick where you boink the person on the nose with your finger. Toby got laughs, but it wasn't funny. I tried coming to Lenny's defense. Not because Lenny was my friend, but because I liked outwitting Toby-and because he was being a bully.