Zack Delacruz Read online

  ZACK DELACRUZ

  ME AND MY BIG MOUTH

  By Jeff Anderson

  STERLING CHILDREN’S BOOKS and the distinctive Sterling Children’s Books logo are trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

  © 2015 by Jeff Anderson

  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 (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4549-1707-6

  For information about custom editions, special sales, and premium and corporate purchases, please contact Sterling Special Sales at 800-805-5489 or [email protected].

  Illustrations and Design by Andrea Miller

  www.sterlingpublishing.com/kids

  To everyone who ever felt different.

  —J.A.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Assembly Required

  Chapter 2

  A Bully Ache

  Chapter 3

  In Charge and In Trouble

  Chapter 4

  Volun-Told

  Chapter 5

  Haunted by José

  Chapter 6

  Escape from Chocolatraz

  Chapter 7

  Notably Frightened

  Chapter 8

  Checked Out

  Chapter 9

  Secrets and Surprises

  Chapter 10

  Punctuation Made Its Mark

  Chapter 11

  Death of a Salesman

  Chapter 12

  Nursing Our Wounds

  Chapter 13

  Too Much

  Chapter 14

  One Webpage at a Time

  Chapter 15

  Oh My Darling

  Chapter 16

  Talking In Circles

  Chapter 17

  The Intervention Peer Mediation

  Chapter 18

  Getting Real

  Chapter 19

  The Plan

  Chapter 20

  The Big Day

  Chapter 21

  A Chance for Cash

  Chapter 22

  The Big Bad Truck

  Chapter 23

  The Trouble Never Ends

  Chapter 24

  Ready Or Not

  Chapter 25

  El Pollo Loco

  Chapter 26

  Remember the Alamo

  No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

  —Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

  CHAPTER 1

  ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

  A typhoon spray of spit.

  A stupid assembly.

  And my big mouth.

  That’s all it took to ruin my life.

  If you’re a sixth grader at Davy Crockett Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, you start off every day in advisory. Besides cruel and unusual punishment, advisory is an avoiding game: avoiding eye contact, avoiding talking, and, so far, avoiding trouble.

  So when a scratchy announcement ended advisory early for an anti-bullying assembly, my stomach gurgled. I’m not a fan of change.

  I stumbled through the rusted metal door frames of the gym. Echoing laughter and shouts bounced off the hardwood floors. A sea of black, red, and khaki uniforms collected at the door as everyone looked for their friends.

  Suddenly, my too-long, grow-into-them-soon khaki pants seemed even longer. My Harry Potter glasses felt bigger and shinier and dumber than ever.

  I had to find Marquis fast. He’s the only friend I’d made this year so far.

  A whistle screeched in my left ear.

  “Hey, fill up the rows back to front!” Coach Ostraticki yelled, holding a whistle in his hairy fingers. In middle school, coaches were always yelling you what to do.

  Pretending to search for a seat, I kept looking for Marquis.

  The whistle blew two quick bursts. “Delacruz? Sit!” He pointed his werewolf finger like I was a bad puppy who’d peed on his Nikes. If you asked me, Coach O. needed the anti-bullying rally more than we did.

  I sat on the hard bleacher so I could keep looking in peace.

  “Don’t sit here, Enrique Potter,” a kid with a gold earring said. “This seat is saved.”

  I stood.

  Coach Ostraticki squinted sideways at me, threatening to blow his whistle again.

  “Is this seat taken?” I asked a girl with pigtails sitting with Cliché Jones. Cliché is in a bunch of my classes, and she’s never really been mean to me—but then again she’s never really been nice either.

  Pigtails stared at me like a statue till I moved along.

  “Did you see his pants? That little boy needs to shop in the toddler’s section next time,” Pigtails said loud enough for me to hear.

  “It’s not mean if it’s true.” Cliché laughed.

  I pulled up my pants, which immediately sagged down again.

  A few rows behind them, I spotted an open seat on the bleachers next to the wall. I scooted sideways toward the spot, and a whoosh of cool air moved the gelled spikes in my hair. Perfect—an air vent and a wall.

  I patted the cool wall with my hand and sat.

  Hello, Gym Wall.

  The fewer people to be near the better. A couple of days before, in technology arts, we had a sub, and for the whole period a seventh grader kicked my back. Once he kicked so hard, I blurted out a grunt and the sub wrote my name on the board for being disruptive. That’s why I was sticking with walls. Walls never kick you or insult your clothes, and they always support you. In fact, I could lean on Gym Wall, and I did.

  Yep, you’ve probably figured out bullying is a ginormous problem at Davy Crockett Middle School. The Fighting Alamos needed to be checked—fast. And how else would you solve any serious problem?

  Have a forty-five-minute assembly.

  But this anti-bullying assembly had to be better than the lame one in elementary. Who could forget I am thumb buddy? Nothing could be worse than a gym full of kids chanting, both thumbs up, “I am thumb buddy special! You are thumb buddy special too!”

  Middle school was nothing like elementary last year. There, quiet kids walked school-zone slow in straight lines led by the teacher. Here, passing between classes was a zoo. Actually, more like a jungle—zoos have cages. At the “Home of the Fighting Alamos” sixth, seventh, and eighth graders roamed wild, loud, and free.

  The enormous buzzing lights flashed on and off. I slouched down behind a guy who pulled up his hoodie. I kept scanning the crowd for Marquis.

  “Toot! Toot! All aboard the Goodfriend Express!” a bleached blonde in hot-pink overalls hollered, chugging her arms like a train. Did she just say toot? Anti-bullying tip number one: Don’t ask for it.

  “I’m your conductor, Ima Goodfriend.”

  Okay, so it got worse.

  Fast.

  Thumb buddy should’ve warned me.

  “Whooo-weee! Uh!” catcalled an eighth grader from the back of the bleachers. Howling and whistling filled the gym. This assembly was speeding off its tracks. I wondered who’d be the assembly victim this year. Everybody remembered what happened to Steve Ramirez when he was tricked into leading the “I am thumb buddy” chant in elementary. To this day, people still stick their thumbs up and yell, “You are thumb buddy thpethial,” every time he walks by. You just can’t erase stuff like that. Ever. But I wasn’t getting tricked into anything. I just sat with my buddy Gym Wall, hunching down behind the guy in the black hoodie. At least there was one good thing about being short.

  Principal Akins tapped his white bullhorn. SQUEEEAL!

  Everybody’s hands shot up to cover their ears.

  “Studens.” That’s how our principal says students. Don’
t ask. The white bullhorn blocked his face except for his shiny forehead. “We need to seek to respect our fine speaker.” SQUEEEAL! “You’ll want to seek to open your ears to what she has to communicate to you.”

  Ima talked over the noise. “I am here to lead Davy Crockett Middle School to its next stop: A Goodfriend Express Bully-Free Zone. How’s that sound?” Her voice echoed into the preacher mic taped to her face.

  A low hum of boo rumbled across the gym. Teachers’ heads whipped around with who-was-that? and you-better-quit-now looks.

  “That’s right. Boo to the bullies!” The train wasn’t stopping. Ima leaned on a stool, eying the crowd with her Gatorade Cool Blue eyes. “Things are about to get real.”

  Whoa! This lady had some loco motives, if you asked me.

  “Have any of you ever been … bullied?” Ima crossed the shiny wood floor toward the bleachers.

  Who’d be dumb enough to raise their hand for that? I wondered.

  “Back in the day, the kids used to say I had summer teeth. Some’re over here, and some’re over there.”

  Laughter rattled the bleachers.

  “But I showed them.” Ima grinned. “I got braces.”

  “Metal mouth!” a skinny kid with braces yelled from the front row. He quickly covered his mouth and sat back down. Seems like teeth are big bully magnets. Anti-bullying tip number two: Keep your teeth covered.

  Then, Ima Goodfriend asked for volunteers to act out a scene for the Goodfriend Express Players.

  Everybody froze. Nobody wanted to make any sudden movements that could be mistaken for volunteering. Plain and simple: no one wanted to be a Steve Ramirez. Ima scanned the crowd. Somehow she got two suckers—I mean, volunteers—to walk to the center of the gym floor.

  A boy with a shadowy mustache held the microphone.

  “Hi. My name is Rudy McRude.” The boy read his lines flat as cardboard. “Uh, I don’t feel good about myself, so I use put-downs all the time to make myself feel better.”

  Rudy passed the microphone to a girl with braids.

  She grabbed it and held it right up to her mouth. Wheeeeze huh! Wheeze huh!

  Great! A mouth breather.

  Wheeze huh! She sucked in another deep breath and rushed through each line. “I’m Diana Different, and I am different.” Wheeeeze huh! “I hope everyone at this new school likes me.”

  It was like she was diving underwater at gunpoint. Man, was I glad I wasn’t up there. She was taking a bullet for the whole school.

  “Hey! Diana Mouth Breather, you’re taking our breath away!” I think the heckler was José Soto. He’s in almost all my classes and always starting stuff.

  Laughter spread through the gym.

  Anti-bullying tip number three: Keep your breathing to yourself.

  Ima knocked Rudy McRude’s shoulder, so he droned on. “Um, you are different. Your clothes are not even cool.”

  Ima walked toward the bleachers. “So, what do you think Diana Different should do next?” Ima stared at the crowd. “Turn and talk to the person next to you, and discuss a solution that will buy you a ticket on the Goodfriend Express.”

  The closest girl on my left turned away, so I spun back to the wall.

  Hello again, Gym Wall!

  Gym’s favorite idea of mine was that Diana Mouth Breather should shove Rudy McRude in front of a train or bus or whatever came first. Gym agreed with me—as he often does, being a wall and all—that none of the other answers were as good as mine.

  “Kids, the thing we often miss is Rudy McRude wants friends.” Ima leaned forward. “He just doesn’t act appropriately. Diana Different could ask Rudy McRude to sit at her table at lunch—or to sit next to her on the bus.”

  “What are you on, lady?” a boy yelled from a few rows over.

  “I am on the Goodfriend Express.” Ima talked louder and faster. “Join me, won’t you? Be the caboose and get the Goodfriend Express on track. When someone is being bullied, back up the victim like a caboose!”

  She threw her hands up and pushed out her caboose and started pumpin’ and bumpin’.

  “Back it up! Back it up!” she clapped, yelled, pumped, and bumped.

  Mr. Akins stood quickly. “It’s time we seek to come to a conclusion, Ms. Goodfriend.” The lights lowered, and Ima turned to the projector.

  “Let’s end by being the caboose and practicing what to say to bullies,” Ima said, except she kept saying it ca-booose.

  ¡Mira! She was going to train us.

  On the tiny screen, a fake train crossing sign popped up with a flashing X over the words Bully Crossing. A list of chants started scrolling.

  We mumbled the list together: “Chug a chug, don’t be a thug!”

  Mr. Akins interrupted, tapping his watch, stepping toward Ima. He knew this assembly needed its emergency brake pulled.

  Gee, I wanted to say the next one: Train your brain to be humane. Uh, wait. No, I didn’t.

  Ima held her one-more-minute finger up to Mr. Akins, who stretched out his collar like it was choking him.

  Ima, the runaway train, told the entire gym to stand up.

  “We’re gonna get our rally on!”

  We got off our ca-booooses.

  “Are you ready to yell?” Ima said.

  Mr. Akins paced, gripping his bullhorn.

  “Let’s do this, Crockett Middle School!”

  And then something changed. I don’t know if it was because we all knew Mr. Akins wanted The Goodfriend Express to stop, or that kids never passed up a chance to scream at school. Whatever it was, we all boarded her runaway train, and there was no turning back.

  “No more bullies! No more bullies!” we shouted.

  “Louder!” Ima encouraged.

  We stomped our feet on the bleachers as we screamed.

  “NO MORE BULLIES! NO MORE BULLIES!!”

  My stomping and shouting let out all the times this year I’d been called names or been kicked or had my binder shoved out of my hands.

  “You be the change! YOU be the change!”

  Even Principal Akins shouted in his bullhorn.

  And I didn’t plan it, but pretty soon I yelled the loudest. I stomped the hardest.

  At that moment, my eyes caught a flash of Marquis’s baby-blue warm-up jacket in the middle of the bleachers. He looked back. We raised our fists together and chanted, “I’ll be the change! I’LL BE THE CHANGE!”

  All the stomping and chanting became one movement, one voice, floating up, higher and higher, all the way to the skylights, rising and rising till the metal ceiling rattled.

  I tilted my head back, and for a second I thought maybe things could change.

  Then the electronic bell blasted, and the mob scattered like somebody had just called in a bomb threat. But I just stood there, students swirling around me like a kaleidoscope.

  CHAPTER 2

  A BULLY ACHE

  I never planned to get on The Goodfriend Express, but later, in the library, I learned that you couldn’t plan everything. Some things just happen.

  The librarian, Mrs. Darling, sang, “I have a secret!”

  No one looked up.

  “And it has to do with you-hoo!” she sang louder and higher.

  “We don’t ca-a-are,” José sang back, making a field goal in the paper football tournament at his table.

  Mrs. Darling crossed her arms, pretending to pout. “Fine. Since you aren’t interested in my secret, I suppose we should get down to business: the business … of words.” She still held out hope we’d catch her disease for books. She didn’t get that we didn’t want to be like someone who drew on her eyebrows with a black Magic Marker, high up, always looking real surprised. Believe me, it was not one bit darling.

  “Eyes on me, one, two, three.” Her chipper voice sounded like a crazy fairy godmother fueled by a Rapstar Energy Drink. And all eyes were on everything else but her: white spitballs hit the ceiling, a group of girls dabbed on blue eye shadow, and a paper football flew between a two-handed goalp
ost.

  But why their eyes weren’t on her, I’ll never know. Her hair, electric red, was not a color I’d ever seen in nature. Her dangly earrings, shaped like books, bounced when she got excited, which was all the time.

  But Mrs. Darling’s pyrotechnic love of words was not dimmed by our boredom. Holding up a sentence strip, Mrs. Darling revealed the word, stupendous, which was written with the same marker she used on her eyebrows. She tilted her head to the right and ran her hand beneath the strip.

  “Who can pronounce this exquisite word?” Mrs. Darling cooed, her red mop of hair bobbing from side to side.

  “Anyone?” Her green eyes widened, like in a low-budget horror film.

  I sure wasn’t going to say anything. If you answer questions, everybody called you schoolboy. Embarrassment to middle school students was like kryptonite to Superman.

  Usually Cliché Jones offered an answer, but she was way too busy playing with the lace on the little white socks she always wore.

  Chewy Johnson interrupted the silence to ask if he could go to the bathroom. Again.

  Janie Bustamante was the only person raising her hand.

  You have to know about Janie. Many of us have been in school with her for the last seven years, so we knew that in her mouth, the letter s multiplied, built up volume, then sprayed out of her mouth like a fire hose. Don’t ask me why she’d even try.

  She hoisted herself out of her chair and plowed down the aisle to where Mrs. Darling stood.

  “SSSSSSStupendoussss!”

  Spit sprayed from Janie’s mouth, dispersing into a fine mist above the class.

  “Incoming!” José dove under a table, leaving only the flashing red heels of his sneakers in view.

  Mrs. Darling backed up against a wall of bookcases, trapped against nonfiction.

  The fine spray widened in flight, like the sprinklers at the Villa De La Fountaine apartments.

  Sophia, too busy separating her eyelashes with a paper clip, never even saw it coming. The spit cloud coated Sophia’s arm and her long black hair like a toxic morning dew.

  “Ughhh!” Sophia snarled, looking like an angry clown. Did I mention Sophia wears a lot of makeup? Well, if I said it five more times, it wouldn’t be enough. Enough wasn’t on Sophia’s vocabulary list.