Grape! Read online

  Contents

  Grape!

  Copyright © 2019 Gabriel Arquilevich. All rights reserved.

  Dedication

  DEDICATED TO…

  THE TROUBLE WITH MISS ROOF

  THE TROUBLE WITH THE SPIDERS

  THE TROUBLE WITH MY NAME

  THE TROUBLE WITH MRS. GORDON

  THE TROUBLE WITH BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID

  THE TROUBLE WITH MR. PALATNIK

  THE TROUBLE WITH BULLY JIM

  THE TROUBLE WITH DONNY RANDALL

  THE TROUBLE WITH THE FROGS

  THE TROUBLE WITH CLAIR

  THE TROUBLE WITH STREAKING

  THE TROUBLE WITH LOU

  THE TROUBLE WITH ABE

  THE TROUBLE WITH THE BICENTENNIAL

  The end

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grape!

  Gabriel Arquilevich

  Fitzroy Books

  Copyright © 2019 Gabriel Arquilevich. All rights reserved.

  Published by Fitzroy Books

  An imprint of

  Regal House Publishing, LLC

  Raleigh, NC 27612

  All rights reserved

  https://fitzroybooks.com

  ISBN -13 (paperback): 978-1-947548-59-6

  ISBN -13 (hardcover): 978-1-947548-61-9

  ISBN -13 (epub): 978-1-947548-60-2

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018959156

  All efforts were made to determine the copyright holders and obtain their permissions in any circumstance where copyrighted material was used. The publisher apologizes if any errors were made during this process, or if any omissions occurred. If noted, please contact the publisher and all efforts will be made to incorporate permissions in future editions.

  Interior and cover design by Lafayette & Greene

  lafayetteandgreene.com

  Cover images © by C. B. Royal

  Regal House Publishing, LLC

  https://regalhousepublishing.com

  The following is a work of fiction created by the author. All names, individuals, characters, places, items, brands, events, etc. were either the product of the author or were used fictitiously. Any name, place, event, person, brand, or item, current or past, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Regal House Publishing.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedication

  Para Adriana y Jaime

  DEDICATED TO…

  Principal Clarkson, for giving me a chance to stay at Rolling Hills even after I punched Miss Roof in the arm.

  ALSO DEDICATED TO…

  My mom and dad. Even though I get in so much trouble they still take a day off work so I can go whale watching.

  ALSO DEDICATED TO…

  My best friend Lou.

  NOT DEDICATED TO…

  Miss Roof.

  THE TROUBLE WITH MISS ROOF

  May 31, 1976

  Dear Mrs. C,

  Today I spent the whole morning in my room, and after that I hid inside Sigmund.

  Sigmund is a big leafy bush in our backyard. I crawl inside and nobody bothers me there, and the thing is, no one knows about Sigmund.

  Not even my mom and dad.

  Not even Lou.

  After Sigmund I went back to my room. Then I heard the front door open and I smelled the ammonia from my dad’s blueprints, and then I heard my mom and dad talking in Spanish.

  And then they called me to the kitchen table.

  Mrs. C, the kitchen table is the place for trouble.

  My mom handed me a letter.

  “Grape,” she said, “is from the Principal Clarkson.”

  “I want you to read it,” my dad said.

  So that’s what I did. I started reading it.

  “No!” my dad said. “¡Léelo en voz alta! Read it out loud!”

  Mrs. C, when my dad gets mad he talks in Spanish.

  So I read it out loud.

  Dear Mr. and Mrs. Borokovich,

  You are no doubt aware of Grape’s recent behavior during the 1776 field trip. Grape’s actions go against all that Rolling Hills Elementary stands for. And, of course, as you know, this is not Grape’s first brush with trouble.

  Mr. and Mrs. Borokovich, my first instinct was to have Grape transferred to Riverwash, our alternative track for students with academic or behavioral issues.

  I may be making a mistake by giving Grape another chance, but I’m willing to take the risk. I do not believe he would do well at Riverwash, and I do believe he’s a good kid.

  He will, however, be suspended for two weeks, the remainder of the school year. In those weeks, I have a very specific assignment for him. It is unconventional and demanding, but, I believe, important.

  In addition to his everyday schoolwork (which you will need to pick up at the front office by four p.m.), I am asking that Grape spend at least one hour each day writing in a journal. I ask that he reflect on his history of getting in trouble and try to make sense of what could possibly have caused him to hit a teacher. I ask that he be honest. The depth and honesty of his response will determine whether he participates in our Rolling Hills sixth grade commencement or if he’s transferred to Riverwash, where he will begin junior high, effective immediately.

  Please know that what he writes will be between him and me. If you could honor that, I would appreciate it.

  Once again, I believe that Grape is a good kid. His teacher, Mrs. Sanders (the students call her Tammy), says he’s a lively writer, and so here’s his chance to write.

  Sincerely,

  Shelly Clarkson

  Shelly Clarkson, Principal, Rolling Hills Elementary

  “Well,” my dad said, “what do you think?”

  “Mrs. C is cool.”

  “No, is not cool!” my mom said.

  “And she is the principal,” my dad said, “so call her Principal Clarkson.”

  “Dad, she wants us to call her Mrs. C.”

  “No. Not in my house. Is not right! Let me put it this way.…”

  Mrs. C, when my dad says Let me put it this way, he explains what he just said but kind of new. But the thing is, just when he’s done, he says Let me put it this way and starts all over again.

  So that’s what he did.

  “Let me put it this way, if you have the boss, you don’t call the boss Mr. K. You call the boss Mr. Klein. Or if you have the doctor, you don’t call the doctor Doctor M. Let me put it this way….”

  When he was done, I said, “Okay.”

  “Grape,” my mom said, “is not okay!”

  Mrs. C, my mom was crying.

  “She say you’re a good kid. Remember that, Grape. Is your last chance! Do you know the kids in that other school? Is dangerous!”

  My mom must have said ten times how lucky I am to have this chance. And she must have said twenty times, “She say you’re a good kid!” My dad said Let me put it this way a few more times, then I went to my room.

  So, okay, Mrs. C. I will write for one hour a day.

  But I hope it’s all right if my sentences get long because sometimes all my thoughts come rushing and I have to catch up to them, and the thing is, Mrs. Gordon always said to put more periods in my sentences, but Tammy says it’s fine to write really long sentences as long as they make sense, so that’s what I’m going to do.

  I will write about my history
of getting in trouble, and I will try to explain why I punched Miss Roof in the arm, and since you’re the only one reading it, I promise to be honest, and I’ll try to remember how lucky I am to have another chance, and I’ll try to remember that I’m a good kid.

  The thing is, Mrs. C, I don’t know if I believe you, but you’re right about one thing.

  I really don’t want to go to Riverwash.

  THE TROUBLE WITH THE SPIDERS

  June 1, 1976

  Mrs. C, my history of getting in trouble started when I was a baby.

  So that’s where I’m going to start.

  I don’t remember it, but this is the story my mom tells me.

  It was breakfast and I was in my high chair at the kitchen table and I was slapping the plastic tray, and bits of cereal were flying all over the place, and I was driving my mom crazy.

  “Gaby, por favor, so much noise!” my mom said.

  I pointed my baby finger at her and said, “Look! Look!”

  “Sí, look! look! is better!”

  Mrs. C, look was my first word, and I always pointed when I said it.

  “Look!” (ceiling fan). “Look!” (my dad). “Look!” (goldfish).

  This morning, it was a fly. It buzzed near my food and it zigzagged all over the kitchen, and I said, Look! Look! Look! and then it buzzed straight over me, and I tilted my head back.

  I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it buzz.

  Bzzzzz!

  I tilted my head back even more, but all I could see was the ceiling fan, and all I could hear was bzzzzz!

  I cried and cried and cried and slammed the tray and kicked my legs.

  “¡Dios mío, Gaby!” my mom said. “Enough!”

  Bzzzzz! the fly said. Bzzzzz! Bzzzzz! Bzzzzz!

  My mom chased after the fly with a rolled-up newspaper. “¡Dios mío! Stop crying. I trying to kill it!”

  All of a sudden I got really quiet. It was my mom and me versus the fly!

  The fly won.

  My mom put the newspaper down and I cried again.

  “Is nothing I can do!” my mom said.

  And then the fly buzzed right onto my tray and landed on a piece of cereal and looked up at me.

  My friend Sherman said flies have a bunch of eyes, so the fly must have seen a bunch of babies staring back at it, super mad and crying, but the fly didn’t care. It buzzed once, then took off like a helicopter, then flew behind my head. I heard bzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzz and then silence.

  Mrs. C, the fly landed on the back of my head! I could feel it walking around, so I bent my legs and pushed them against the kitchen table, and the high chair tipped back and bits of cereal flew everywhere, and when I crashed on the floor I was on my back, still buckled in.

  “Loooook!” I said, pointing at my mom’s face.

  She unhooked me from the chair, and when she picked me up she saw blood on the floor.

  “¡Gaby, dime algo! ¿Estás bien?”

  Since I didn’t speak Spanish and since I only knew one word in English, I answered the best I could.

  I threw up on her lap.

  My dad met us at the emergency room.

  “I’m afraid,” the doctor said, “that there’s a crack in your son’s skull. It’s a serious injury. We will need to keep him a day or two.”

  Mrs. C, my dad fainted.

  After they un-fainted my dad, the doctor said, “We will keep him sedated for now. I’d say it’s a fifty-fifty chance of brain damage.”

  My dad fainted again.

  I pointed at him.

  “Look,” I said.

  A few days later my parents drove me home.

  The doctor said I had to wear a padded helmet for a month, and so when I should have been crawling around and playing in the dirt and eating bugs and clapping and saying look! like the rest of the babies in the world, I had a cracked skull and a padded helmet and instructions from the doctor to keep quiet.

  Maybe that’s why I talk so much now.

  My head healed, but my best friend Lou has another idea.

  “Grape,” he said, “I think a few spiders crawled through the crack in your skull and into your brain. They’re probably spinning webs in there now. That’s why you’re so weird and why you get in so much trouble.”

  I think Lou is right.

  THE TROUBLE WITH MY NAME

  June 2, 1976

  Mrs. C, you’re probably wondering about my name. Everyone does.

  The thing is, my mom and dad are from Argentina, and in Argentina, Gaby is a nickname for Gabriel, so when I was little everyone called me Gaby.

  It never bothered me.

  But you know the way everything can change in one day? Well, that’s what happened, and it started in Mrs. Gordon’s class.

  The thing is, a lot of trouble started in Mrs. Gordon’s class.

  Mrs. Gordon is super boring and she talks so soft it’s hard to hear her, like words escape from her mouth but she tries to suck them back in, and I kind of feel sorry for her because she has these glasses that make her eyeballs super big, like a cartoon character’s eyes, and she also wears super strong perfume and too much lipstick even though she’s old, but there’s nothing she can do about her big eyeballs, like there’s nothing I can do about my asthma or being short or the spiders in my brain, and maybe she wears so much perfume and makeup because she has a weird smell or maybe she wants to look pretty.

  Mrs. C, the problem is that she needs everything to be perfect.

  The chairs had to be in a perfect row before lunch, and our book covers had to be perfect or she sent us home with a slip, and then my mom had to help me make a perfect book cover, and my mom would say, “Dios mío, this teacher!” and she would go over to Lou’s house and make the second book cover with Lou’s mom, Betsy, who is super good at book covers, and I would get my homework back because Mrs. Gordon said my writing was too sloppy and my sentences were too long, and she even made us empty out and wipe down our cubbies every day.

  Mrs. C, if everything wasn’t perfect Mrs. Gordon went crazy, like she had her own spiders.

  But they weren’t trouble spiders.

  They were perfection spiders.

  And the perfect subject for perfection spiders is math.

  Mrs. Gordon loves math, and she super loves worksheets.

  The thing is, I hate math and I super hate worksheets, especially in Mrs. Gordon’s class. She would hand them out and then use one of those timers, like the kind my mom uses when she puts food in the oven, and you hear it tic-tic-tic, and then when it’s done it goes RING! and Mrs. Gordon mumbles, “Pencils down,” and we put our pencils on top of our worksheets.

  Mrs. C, most teachers collect worksheets and mark C for correct or X for incorrect and maybe put a sticker or a stamp on it that says Way to go! with a smiley face, or You could do better, with a sad face, but not Mrs. Gordon.

  She sends us up to the chalkboard one at a time, and you never know which problem she’s going to ask you to answer, and the whole class just sits there and watches, but the thing is, if your answer is wrong she doesn’t try to help you. She just sits at her desk and mumbles, “Rest the chalk,” and then you put the chalk on the chalkboard tray and then she mumbles, “Did you do your homework?” or “Where in the world did that answer come from?” or “Do you have any idea at all what division is?”

  That happened to me almost every day.

  Like I said, Mrs. C, I hate math.

  But the spiders hate math even more.

  One day, right before it was my turn to go up to the board, the spiders went crazy.

  Raise your hand, they said.

  I raised my hand.

  “Yes, Gaby, what is it?” Mrs. Gordon said.

  Ask her to use the bathroom.

  “May I use the bathroom, please?”

>   Mrs. Gordon pointed to the hall pass hanging by the door.

  Mrs. C, I took a super long time. I waved at the hall monitor and looked for turkey vultures, and I heard the jangling of Roman the custodian’s keys, and then he high-fived me and said, “What’s up, Gaby?” and I stopped at the drinking fountain and saw how long I could drink without coming up for air, and I turned corners like I was a spy, and then I went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and looked through the high window for turkey vultures again, and then I went back to class, and by that time a whole row of chalkboard answers was done, and she forgot my turn.

  The next day I did it again, and the day after that.

  But the thing is, Mrs. Gordon is pretty smart.

  The next time I tried it, she said no.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but I gotta go—”

  “It seems,” she said “that you always have to use the bathroom during math, right when it’s your board time.”

  The kids laughed.

  But the spiders didn’t, and neither did I. The thing is, Mrs. C, this time I really did have to go. Super bad. Number one and number two.

  Tell her it’s an emergency! the spiders said.

  “But it’s an emergency.”

  “Well,” Mrs. Gordon said, “you’ll just have to finish up this fraction problem quickly. And, of course, after you, I see one…two…three…four more students.”

  I ran to the chalkboard and told her I didn’t know the answer.

  She told me I was bad at math.

  I sat down.

  “Sherman,” she said, “you get problem number twenty-four.”

  Mrs. C, Sherman’s super smart. He finished in ten seconds.

  “See that, Gaby, Sherman just got you closer. Now, let’s see, who’s next? Ah, I see, it’s Lou. Lou, go ahead. You get problem number seventeen.”

  Mrs. C, Lou is my best friend, and since he’s my best friend, and since he knew I had to go really bad, I thought he would just pretend he didn’t know the answer and let Mrs. Gordon say mean things about him so the next person could go, but the thing about Lou is that Lou is really good at concentrating and he’s also super into sports and he really likes to do things perfectly, and if he doesn’t understand, he gets frustrated, and so even though he wasn’t bad at math, he also wasn’t super good, and the thing is, he even asked Mrs. Gordon for help, and then finally he got the right answer.