Spell the Word 'Sucker'

Chapter 4

Every spring we had a big spelling bee contest.  This year my English teacher, Mrs. Winfield, was especially psyched about it.  This year was the first time our school would be sponsoring the competition.  We'd be competing with two other middle schools: George Washington Middle School and Theodore Roosevelt Junior High.

Our school reputation was on the line.

"Class," Mrs. Winfield raised her voice, trying to get our attention.

Mrs. Winfield was pretty nice.  She was older, like my parents' age.  She hardly ever yelled at anyone.  The few times she did, she'd start to cry.  We usually tried not to pick on her.

She was all excited now.  "Class, I'd like to talk to all of you about the spelling bee this year.  As you know, we will be holding the competition here at our school and playing host to two other middle schools."  She smiled her big bright smile at all of us.  "I'm sure you're all as excited as I am."

I looked around to see if the rest of the class was paying attention.  Kramer was sitting hunched up in the corner in the back of the room in his army fatigues, copping an attitude as usual.  He was leaning his elbow on the windowsill, his feet up on the crossbars of the desk legs with--I couldn't believe it!--a pair of combat boots.  Wasn't it bad enough he always wore a camouflage jacket?  Now it looked like he had an endless supply of black combat boots that made you want to run for your life.

Our plan to get even with him had all been in vain.

That day his straggly, sand-colored hair hung down over his face.  He never combed it.  Just to be obnoxious, he kept popping his gum, really loud.  He glared around the room, like he was daring someone to raise his hand to be picked for the spelling bee.

I glanced over at Jenna.  I could tell by the look on her face that Kramer was making her mad.  Steve passed a note to her, which she read and passed to me.

I could tell it was going to be pretty funny, because Jenna was fighting not to laugh.  She kept biting her lip.  God, I loved it when she did that!  Right after she'd bite her lip, she'd lick it.  Then she'd realize that she had licked off all of her lip-gloss and try to sneak the stick of lip-gloss from her front pocket without the teacher noticing, rolling it on her bottom lip.  It was like a ritual.

I felt sort of dirty watching her; it was like I was witnessing a scene from one of those dirty high school movies my mom used to go see.

I was staring at my best friend!  I just knew it wasn't right.

After Jenna had finished fixing her lips, she'd sneak the lip-gloss back into her pocket and do this hair-flip thing, throwing her head forward and back.  Then she'd run her hand through her hair really slowly.

One time she caught me watching her.  She gave me this smile that made me practically melt right into my chair.  Naturally Mrs. Winfield called on me that very minute to read a passage from our reading primers.  Meanwhile I had no idea where we were in the story--I was too busy staring at Jenna.

Steve's note was pretty funny.  He'd drawn a cartoon stick figure of Chris blowing a bubble with his gum.  Steve was really smart--almost too smart to be in the same grade as the rest of us.  He had this sarcastic way about him, too, which probably came from the fact that he was a genius and got really good grades in all of his classes.  Especially music.  That's where his true genius came out.

Steve's last name was Bach, which was kind of funny.  Supposedly he wasn't related to the famous Bach, Johann Sebastian, from a billion years ago.  Steve's greatest ambition was to become a rock star; he dreamed of being able to make music, doing something with music for a living.

Years ago, Steve's grandfather owned a radio station, so Steve's dad got to meet all these rock stars.  Back then, the big rock bands were Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and AC/DC.  Whenever they would go on tour and pass through our part of the country, they would stop by the radio station to promote their music.  This was back when kids played records on a stereo, instead of downloading stuff off the Internet onto their iPods.

Steve could do pretty much any kind of music.  He played the piano, guitar and bass guitar.  In orchestra and band he played violin and saxophone.  His room had an electric keyboard with a sound processor.  I kind of envied him.  His mom and dad really support his dream of becoming a musician when he grows up.

One time, we were in his room and he started playing this piece from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.  "Hey, Isaacs, check this out."

I'd walked over to where he was standing behind his keyboard hammering away on the keys.  What he was doing was really cool.  He had this effects processor connected to the keyboard and he was making it distort the sounds he played from the piece of music.

I stood listening with my mouth half-open.  My eyes were glued to his fingers jumping and bouncing across the black and white keys.

"Cool, huh?" Steve glanced up and saw my shocked face.

"Where did you learn how to do that?"

"I didn't learn it.  I invented it!"

I couldn't blame Steve for being really proud of his invention.  It was incredible!

"You know, if you got a guitar, we could form a band together."  Steve had a gleam in his eye.

"Where am I going to get the money for a guitar?  Aren't they expensive?"
"Not as expensive as a trumpet."

"How much are we talking about here?  Besides, I'd have to pay for lessons. I don't know how to play guitar."

"It's easy, I'll teach you.  Or maybe Mr. Harris can give you a few pointers."
"And how much is that going to cost me?"

"Look, just ask your parents to buy you an acoustic guitar.  You can get a pretty decent one used for, like, three or four hundred bucks."

"Right!  I can just see it now."  I pictured what would happen.  "‘Hey, Mom, Dad, can you give me, oh, four hundred dollars?  For a guitar?'  They'd laugh me right up to my room.  Right after they grounded me for a week!"

"Why?  It's not like you're asking them for a Rickenbacher electric guitar.  It's just a plain old acoustic."

As usual Steve was trying to convince me to do something I didn't really want to do.  "My parents aren't going to buy me a guitar!  They don't want me to be a rock star.  They want me to be a doctor, like my brother!"

"That's what they want you to be," Steve said.  "But what about you?"

"What about me?"

"What do you want to be?  You're not serious about wanting to be a doctor are you?"

I shrugged.  Maybe I was.

But Steve could see right through me.  Putting his hands on his hips, he tilted his head the way he always did just before he caught someone in a lie.  I waited for the inevitable insults.

"How could you be a doctor?  You can't even handle seeing blood from a paper cut!"

He was right.  The sight of blood bothered me.  I couldn't even stand it to watch slasher movies on TV with Steve and Jenna over summer break when my parents were at work.  My sister Penny was supposed to be watching us, but she was usually off somewhere doing something else.  When Steve and Jenna's eyes were fixed to the TV screen, I'd look down on the rug and pray they wouldn't notice.
One time Jenna caught me, giggling so loud it broke Steve's concentration.

"What's going on?"  He was annoyed.

"Nothing."  Jenna elbowed me in the ribs.  I didn't know if it was her bony elbow making contact or the fact that she and I had a secret, but I got this weird happy feeling.  Suddenly the movie didn't bother me any more.
         
Now it was just Steve and I, arguing about my future.

"There's no way you're going to be a doctor!  Remember that time you were showing off in front of Jenna, sticking two pencils up your nose to try to make her laugh, and one of the erasers broke off and got stuck?"

"Why are you bringing up something that happened last year?"

"I'm trying to prove a point."

"What's that?"

"You can't handle anything medically-related."  Steve walked from where he was standing behind the keyboard, coming right up to me.

"Yeah, I can." My pride was beginning to get the better of me, and Steve definitely was.  Not that I would ever fight him.  The only time I ever got into physical fights with anyone was when I was beating up on my brother Jon.  And he usually deserved it.

Steve glared into my eyes as we stood face to face: standoff.  I was maybe a half an inch taller than Steve was, but the way his blond, spiked hair stuck up, he looked the same height as me.  He'd had that haircut since the day we first met.

These days he walks around with sunglasses, because he thought it made him look cool.

I guess it did make him look kind of cool.

So there we were having a staring contest when Steve decided to act all mature and stuff, like always, getting all calm.  Breaking off his stare, he looked down, pretending to surrender.

He was just humoring me, I realized.

"I'm not trying to pick a fight with you," he said.  "But let's face it, if you became a doctor, it would only be because you were doing what your parents wanted.  It wouldn't be what you wanted, would it?"

"How do you know?  Maybe they're right."

"The moment Dr. Stern took his mile-long tweezer thingy and pulled that eraser out of your nose, you passed out."

"Who told you that?" I said, angry.

"Jon and Penny."

"So now you're going to believe them?  Whose side are you on, anyway?"

"Bobby, you told me you passed out."

"No, I said I felt like I was going to pass out.  If you get an infection up there, you can suffer permanent brain damage, you know."

Chuckling, Steve walked over to his bed and plopped down on his back, folding his hands behind his head.  "All I'm saying is, think for yourself.  It's your life.  As long as you're not hurting anyone else, you should live it any way you want to."

"I am."

"How?  By doing what your mommy and daddy tell you to do all the time?  You'll never be happy if you keep that up."

"At least I'll be doing something that lets me help people, and make lots of money."

"But you won't be doing what you love."

"I couldn't make money doing that.  So what good would it do me?"

"How do you know you wouldn't make money?  Lots of people make a living from playing music.  That's how I'm going to make money."

"Easy for you to say.  Your grandfather is in the business.  I don't have any family members.  I don't know anyone in the business."

"You know me!  That's more of an advantage than most other guys have."

Steve did have talent and connections, it was true; it would have been crazy for me to pass that up.  But we were only thirteen years old.  I didn't know many teen duets that made it big.

Usually it was bands.  And we were short a drummer and another guitar player.

"I've got to go."  I headed for the door. 

"Just think about what I said.  You're passing up a perfect opportunity!"

It had always been hard to argue with Steve.

So, getting back to Mrs. Winfield's English class... I looked at Steve's drawing.  Above his stick figure of Kramer blowing a humongous bubble, Steve had written, "My name is Chris Kramer and my head has more air in it than this bubble."

Maybe you had to be there, seeing Chris be so obnoxious, popping his gum.  If we hadn't all been so scared of him, I'm sure one of us would have stood up, walked over, and slugged him.

I mean, even Mrs. Winfield was afraid of him!  For some reason he never really gave her any trouble, though.

Anyway, it was only a matter of seconds before Mrs. Winfield asked her inevitable embarrassing question.  "Who here wants to participate in this year's spelling bee?  Show of hands."

Kelly Von Wake raised her hand first.  Steve, Jenna and I stared at each other.
Even Mrs. Winfield was having a hard time believing it; she looked like her eyes were going to pop out of her head.

Kelly was one of the popular girls in school, but she was such an airhead, I sometimes wondered if she knew how to work a ballpoint pen.  And she was going to enter herself in the competition?

Well, it was a free country.  Everybody was entitled to pursue her dream, no matter how ridiculous it might be.

I couldn't help glancing at Kramer.  He was sort of smiling, with this slightly screwed-up look on his face.  At least he wasn't popping his gum any more.
Maybe the shock was too much for him.

The next brave soul to raise his hand was Paul Watkins.  Except for Steve, he was maybe the smartest kid in our class.  Then Billy Robinson and Michael Wate volunteered.  Pretty soon about a third of the class had their hands up.

"Raise your hand," Steve whispered, poking me with his pencil.

I could have killed him.  No way was I going to go through that again!  After competing last year and coming in second place, all of that was behind me.
So what if I now knew how to spell helminthiasis (worms, in case you ever needed to know)?  I was never going to touch a single worm again!  (Well, unless I was fishing and ran out of lures.)  As far as I was concerned, I'd done my time.  I'd paid my debt to society.

"If you think it's so great," I gave it right back to Steve, "why don't you raise your hand?" 

"You turning chicken on me?"

I could tell Steve was teasing but also half-serious.  Friends have a way of pushing you to do things you wouldn't normally choose to do on your own.  And at least Steve was daring me to do something that would make me look good if I did it.  Especially if I won.

Steve's teasing must have gotten the better of me.  Up went my hand.

"Oh, very good," Mrs. Winfield said.  "Mr. Isaacs has raised his hand in time."  She beamed at all of us.  "I think we have all the eighth-graders we need."

I hadn't volunteered to make Mrs. Winfield happy, though.  There was someone else whose opinion was way more important to me.

Jenna was smiling her sparkling smile, and she was smiling it at me.