Class Action Read online

  Some force grabs hold of my hand. It tears a sheet of paper from my spiral. And I watch my hand write two block letters: HW.

  Then I draw a big circle around them. And a slash through the center.

  I hold up my sign.

  There are thirty-six kids in the room; only half can see. I climb up onto the desk. Now they all can.

  I don’t know what the Code of Hammurabi would say about a kid who refuses to write down his homework. Probably I’d have something chopped off, but right now I don’t care.

  Mr. Powell stares at me but speaks to the room. “Class, take out your planners. Write the homework down.”

  Everyone looks at me for what to do. Like now I’m in charge? I just hold up my sign.

  Catalina rips a sheet of paper from her spiral, writes something, and holds it up.

  The same symbol, only in neater handwriting.

  Jaesang flips the worksheet over, writes the no homework symbol, and leaps to his feet with the sign held high.

  Alistair jots one across his palm with his Sharpie, jumps up, and thrusts it out, his hand sweeping across the room so everyone sees.

  Other kids join in. Worksheets, notebook paper, the backs of quizzes. All get turned into NO HOMEWORK signs held high.

  All of a sudden I feel tall. Not just standing-on-a-desk tall, but superhero tall. Tall on the inside and in the eyes of my class.

  They’re looking up to me. No one ever has before.

  That’s when I see the scary face in the window of the door. The face belongs to Mr. Hill, our school principal. If you ran into him at Trader Joe’s the way I did once, in line for a free sample, he’d seem all friendly in his Saturday shorts and knee-high socks. But here, in a suit and tie, he’s the madman at your window. The monster under your bed.

  The door swings open. The monster is in the room.

  “Mr. Powell,” he says with perfect Principal Calm. “Why is Sam standing on the desk?”

  “Sam has had enough of homework, Mr. Hill. He doesn’t want to write the assignment down.”

  “Doesn’t he?”

  Mr. Hill walks over. It’s not every day a sixth-grader is taller than the principal. He stands about eye level to Schroeder and Snoopy on my favorite T-shirt.

  “Any student who refuses to write down the homework will be suspended from school. Three days. And the suspension goes on your permanent record.”

  The words “permanent record” hang in the room.

  Alistair sighs. “Sorry, Sam, but if I get suspended, I’ll lose kitchen privileges.”

  Which for Alistair would be like any other boy losing video games. He sits and scribbles the homework on his arm.

  Jaesang looks at me. I see his face go all soft, like a ball losing its air. “My mom won’t let me go to Seattle.”

  He sinks to his seat and opens his planner.

  One by one, the signs go down. One by one, the students go down too.

  Pretty soon it’s just me and Catalina on our feet. The other day she told us how homework got her in trouble with God. Every Sunday her family goes to Iglesia del Dios Vivo, Columna y Apoyo de la Verdad, La Luz del Mundo—La Luz del Mundo for short. The congregation is huge. More than a thousand people were listening to the ministero and reading along in their prayer books.

  Then came the time for silent prayer. The same thousand people in total God-inspired silence.

  Except for Catalina’s abuelita, who was sitting beside her and happened to peek at what no one else could see.

  The book her granddaughter was reading in church.

  It wasn’t the prayer book.

  It wasn’t the Bible.

  It wasn’t a book of hymns.

  It was World History: Ancient Civilizations. Written by so many people, their names don’t fit on the spine.

  “Ai, Catalina! Qué está leyendo en iglesia?”

  Nine hundred ninety-eight heads spun toward them. Plus the minister and all the heads in the choir.

  “Un libro, Abuelita. Por escuela.” Then she turned to the minister and said, “Perdóname, Papá. Un montón de tarea para mañana.”

  Which, in case you don’t know Spanish, means “a mountain of homework due tomorrow.”

  So I’m thinking, if homework got Catalina in trouble with God, maybe God will give her the courage to stand up to homework.

  She sighs. A montón of air comes out. Like she’s been holding her breath since Sunday.

  Then she hangs her head, sits, and writes down the homework.

  I guess now’s the time to cut my losses. I should sit down, copy the homework, play by the rules. There’ll probably be an apology to write. Loss of recess. Lunchtime on the bench. I can handle all that.

  But can I handle six and a half more years of this? Sixth grade, the rest of middle school, then high school, where the homework’s even deadlier? Are we supposed to just go along like that guy in the Greek myth, pushing the rock up the mountain only to have it roll back down again?

  I don’t think so. I stay on my feet.

  Principal Hill pulls out his secret weapon. “A student who’s been suspended may not perform in the winter program.”

  He just axed down all my trees.

  Not me, though. I’m still standing.

  3

  Thinking It Through

  When Dad loses his temper, Mom reminds him to take it in before you let it out. She means he should take in the big picture, see what he’s angry about and if it really matters, and then, if it does, go ahead and have a tantrum. Or when Sadie complains that she’s got too much stress from debate team, mock trial, homework, and college applications, Mom tells her to keep your eye on the end zone, which is perfect for Sadie because the one thing she does for fun is watch football on the couch with Dad. And whenever I’m about to do something impulsive like reach for a seventh cookie, Mom quietly reminds me to think it through, Sam.

  Think it through. All the way to tomorrow morning, when you wake up with a stomachache.

  Think it through. All the way to your next piano lesson and how you’ll feel if you didn’t learn the song.

  Think it through. All the way to this afternoon, when the email makes it home before you do.

  “A three-day suspension?!” Mom says.

  I guess I didn’t think things through.

  “There goes your chance of getting into a decent high school,” Sadie butts in. That’s a sister for you. Helpful, isn’t she?

  Mom sighs her dragon sigh. “You will write an apology to Mr. Hill, Mr. Powell, and the class. And you will make up all the work you’re going to miss.”

  But Dad defends me. “Why are they giving so much homework anyway?” he says. “We didn’t have homework when we were in sixth grade. And we turned out just fine.”

  Sadie tilts her head as if to say she’s not so sure about that.

  “It’s a different world now,” Mom says. “More challenging. More competitive.”

  “When’s the last time Sam played outside with his friends?” I hear Dad say. “When’s the last time he built anything with me?”

  “All the other kids are doing homework. Do you want Sam to fall behind?”

  “All the other parents have lost their minds. Should we lose ours too?”

  They ping-pong it back and forth like this for a while. Then Dad makes an astonishing, you-go-Dad declaration that warms my heart.

  “From now on there will be no more homework in this house!” he says. “I forbid it!”

  Would you trade this dad to another family? I wouldn’t.

  “Really?” Mom says. “Okay, so if Sam doesn’t do his homework, he won’t get all As on his report card. If he doesn’t get all As on his report card—Sadie’s right—he won’t get into a good high school. If he doesn’t get into a good high school, he’ll land at a third-rate college, where he’ll graduate deep in debt with a worthless degree. If he graduates deep in debt with a worthless degree, he won’t be able to find a decent job, attract a wife, or support any kids. So, if he doesn’t do his homework, your only son will grow old miserable and alone, and that’ll be the end of your ­family line.”

  Wow, she really thought that through!

  “What about Sadie?” Dad asks.

  “I’m not sure I want to have kids. They create too big of a carbon footprint.”

  Dad turns to me, gives me a straight-on father-to-son look, and says, “Sam, go do your homework.”

  If I owned this team, he’d be a free agent now.

  After dinner I Skype with Alistair.

  “Will I be needing a suit for your funeral?” he asks.

  “Mine is a fate worse than death,” I tell him. “It’s homework.”

  I ask him for the assignments. He says he’s not sure I want to hear.

  “After you got thrown out, Mr. Powell teamed up with all our other teachers. They went on a rampage.”

  “Just give it to me straight,” I say. “The whole list.”

  Onscreen, I see Alistair push up his sleeve. He reads the first assignment from his arm. “Science, chapter three, on volcanoes. Do chapter review and connections.”

  He pushes up his sleeve a little more. “Read up to page forty-seven in Black Ships Before Troy—that book gives me nightmares—and do a character chart.”

  “Anything else?” I ask.

  “There’s one on my left leg.”

  He hikes up his pant leg. “Flash cards. We have to look up definitions and draw vocabulary pictures.”

  “How many words?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Anything else?”

  Alistair’s pant leg comes up over his knee. I can see the scar from when he rolled down his backyard slope and struck a sprinkler head.

  “Remember the early humans diorama that’
s due before Christmas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now it’s due before Thanksgiving.”

  “Terrific. Anything else?”

  “Hang on. Got to check one more place.”

  He steps away from the computer, untucks his shirt, and yanks it up. Alistair’s been known to write reminders across his stomach, too.

  Lucky for me, it’s just his face that pops back onscreen. “Nope,” he says, “that was just an itch.”

  “Thanks, Alistair. Glad I Skyped you before you took a shower.”

  And we hang up.

  Day one of my suspension is actually kind of nice. I get to sleep in on a Wednesday. Around nine thirty I roll out of bed, head to the kitchen, and pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms. Lucky Charms are supposed to be a rare breakfast treat, but with all the work I’ll be doing, I’m giving myself permission to eat the whole box.

  There’s a Post-it from Mom on the fridge: “Gone to a caravan. Home by noon. Get some work done!”

  A caravan is an open house just for real estate agents. So they can see what’s new on the market and spread the word. Once, when I was home sick on a Wednesday, I got to go with her. I noticed how all the agents seemed more interested in test scores than in house things like countertops, termites, or if the yard had room for a pool.

  “Reed has some of the highest scores in the city,” Mom always says. “Among the top ten in the state.”

  Seems to me, if our test scores are driving up the home prices in the neighborhood, we should get a cut of the money every time a house sells. I tried to tell Mom that, but she said those ideas are better kept to myself.

  Then she gave me a cookie.

  At ten I look out the window and see Mr. Kalman’s newspaper in the gutter in front of his house. Mr. Kalman is the oldest living person on our street. His property has the oldest living trees. Mom says he stopped having them trimmed when his wife died. If you were new to the neighborhood, like a temporary mail carrier, you might wonder why there’s a mailbox in front of an overgrown lot. Dad says tree trimming is expensive and maybe Mr. Kalman is short on cash. Mom says she doubts that because Mr. Kalman is a retired lawyer.

  Since I’m off for the day—and my bibliography woke him the other night—the least I can do for Mr. Kalman is rescue his paper from the gutter sludge. I head across, pick up his paper, and push open the gate on his wooden fence.

  His wife used to paint this fence every year on the first day of spring. She’d start at six in the morning and finish at six at night, her floppy yellow hat making its way across the yard like a sun. One time she saw me watching from my window. Her yellow hat tilted back and showed me this big smile on her face. Then she held her paintbrush out to me. I pointed to myself and gave her a look like, Me? You want me to help paint? Her yellow hat waved up and down.

  You’ve never seen a boy who just turned five tie his shoes so fast. When I got outside, she was waiting for me on our driveway.

  “But I’m just a kid, Mrs. Kalman. I don’t know how to paint a fence.”

  “A kid can learn to do anything, Sam,” she said.

  Her hand held my hand, and my hand held the brush, and together we turned the fence white again.

  I carry Mr. Kalman’s LA Times up to his front door. The path used to have sunlight and shadows. Now it’s all shadows.

  I knock on the door hard because he might not have his hearing aid in. It takes him about as long as it takes me to brush my teeth before the door opens. Mr. Kalman stands there in a long T-shirt, sagging track pants, and old slippers. I’m pretty sure he wore something spiffier when he went to court.

  He puts up a finger because he’s on the phone.

  “You keep a man on hold? What if there’s a gun to his head? No, there’s no gun to my head. That was a hypothetical question. Fact of the matter is, I’m calling to report a theft. My LA Times.”

  “Mr. Kalman,” I say, but he turns away.

  “It wasn’t on my driveway this morning.”

  I tap him on the shoulder. He doesn’t turn around.

  “Well, could you at least send a patrol car around tomorrow morning at, say, five thirty? Patrol car is a deterrent to this sort of crime.”

  “Mr. Kalman!” I say again, jumping up and down and waving the plastic-wrapped newspaper at him.

  He gives the dispatcher his address. “Otsego with two Os, beginning and end. It’s a Native American word meaning ‘rock,’ or ‘place of rendezvous.’ Thank you for providing good value for my tax dollars.”

  Then he hangs up and turns around.

  And sees what I’m holding in my hands.

  “You’re the thief who stole my LA Times?”

  “I didn’t steal it. I got it out of the gutter. Thought I’d save you from bending over.”

  “You’re worse than a thief, then. A murderer.”

  “How so?”

  “Deprive a man of his daily exercise and you shave years off his life.”

  “I was only trying to—”

  “I don’t need any help.”

  “Fine!” I say. “I’ll put it back where I found it.”

  I haul back and hurl the paper onto the driveway. It skids into the gutter right where the delivery boy left it.

  Man, that felt good!

  I step off the creaky old porch of this cranky old man. He calls after me.

  “What are you doing home anyway? You’re a school-age boy who’s supposed to be in school.”

  “I got suspended.”

  “No kidding. What for?”

  “Refusing to do homework.”

  He puts a hand to his forehead. It’s got nothing to do with a headache. Just his way of thinking.

  “They give you a hearing?”

  “A what?”

  “A hearing. Did they inform you of the charges and give you an opportunity to respond?”

  “No. They just threw me out.”

  “Go back to school tomorrow.”

  “I can’t. I told you, I’m suspended. Not allowed back for the rest of the week.”

  “If they didn’t give you a hearing, it’s unconstitutional. Goss v. Lopez. Look it up.”

  4

  How to Annoy a Big Sister

  I consider myself a pretty good reader. I’ve read all the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, half of Harry Potter, and Shiloh, book 1. I’m partway through Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of the Iliad, even though the long words are making me dizzy and the violence is making me sick. I never miss an issue of Mad magazine, and I score in the 80th percentile on the reading part of the CAASPP. Not bad for a kid who’d rather be playing piano.

  But this Goss v. Lopez business is way over my head. I download and print a PDF of the case and try to read it: The State is constrained to recognize a student’s legitimate entitlement to a public education as a property interest which is protected by the Due Process Clause and which may not be taken away for misconduct without adherence to the minimum procedures required by that Clause.

  You could score in the 90th percentile and still not get what it means.

  But if you scored in the 99.5th . . .

  Sadie spends most of her time in her room. According to Bernice, teenagers naturally withdraw from the family. It’s how they practice being independent.

  Her dirty dishes spend a lot of time in there, too. If I were an insect or a rodent, I would definitely live in Sadie’s room. For furniture it’s got plates with bits of cheese stuck to them and crusts of half-eaten sandwiches hanging off the edge. If you get thirsty, there’s always the last sip of coffee sludge at the bottom of the mug. And if you feel like taking a nap, there’s a mound of stinky laundry you can snuggle into. The perfect habitat for anything with a tail.

  I, however, am never allowed in her room.

  But I used to be. When I was younger, she would leave the door open for me. Sometimes she’d even let me sleep on her floor. In the morning, she’d lift her blanket and we’d snuggle under the covers. We’d make up stories one sentence at a time, and when we had them all worked out, we’d take down the box of Playmobil and turn our stories into stop-motion movies. They always had a boy trapped in a flood, stuck in a tree, or riding his bike too close to a cliff.

  After I turned six and Sadie turned twelve, her door closed. A sign went up: NO SIBLINGS ALLOWED. PREMISES UNDER SURVEILLANCE.

  With words like that on her door, Sadie’s bound to understand Goss v. Lopez, right?