The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell(40)

I lay on my bed, considering Ernie’s disposition. The one thing I knew about Ernie was that he hated to lose, at anything. His parents had had to rush him to the emergency room one time after he bet his cousin he could stuff more peanuts up his nose. I had to be like Tom Sawyer. I had to get Ernie to want to whitewash the fence.





7

The following Monday I set my plan in motion. During our scheduled free time in school, I met Ernie at the reading shelf. Most of my classmates were one packet behind me, reading from the red section, but Ernie had still not completed the yellow packet.

“I’ll bet you can’t finish the yellow packet before I finish the purple packet,” I said.

Ernie’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not fair. You’re a better reader than me.”

“So? You’re better than me at kickball and basketball, and I still play.”

“That’s different,” he said.

“How?”

“It just is.” I shrugged and returned to my seat. Ernie followed me. “You’re already almost finished with purple, and I’m just starting yellow.”

Sister Joan looked up from her desk. “Ernie, are we having trouble finding our seat?”

“No, Sister.”

“Then I suggest you find it and read in silence.”

Ernie took his seat in the row next to me. I opened my book and acted like I was reading quickly, turning the pages. “It’s dumb,” he whispered.

I turned the pages faster. Sister Joan walked out to the quad. She kept the door open when the weather was nice. A draft rattled the window blinds, making a noise like baseball cards in the spokes of a bike wheel. I turned to Ernie. “It’s not dumb when it’s kickball or three flies up, when you know you’re going to win.” I checked the door out of the corner of my eye but saw no sign of Sister Joan. “But when I’m good at something, you’re chicken.”

Several people in the class heard this challenge and uttered, “Ooh.”

“Fine,” Ernie said, “but you have to finish purple and all of blue.”

“I’ll be done by Friday,” I said.

Ernie finished the yellow packet Thursday.

One afternoon later that year, Mrs. Cantwell stopped by to pick up Ernie on her way home from work and delivered a chocolate cake she’d baked. I heard her talking to my mother about Ernie’s dramatic improvement in his reading. After Mrs. Cantwell and Ernie had left for home, my mother called me down to the kitchen. Though it was nearing dinner, she cut me an enormous slice of cake and poured a tall glass of milk. I thought it was a test of some kind, but my mother handed me a fork and brushed her hand through my hair. “I’d say Ernie is lucky to have a friend like you.”





8

I would remember middle school for the arrival of a new student at OLM who would have a profound impact on my life.

Michaela Kennedy started school shortly after the Christmas holidays, when we returned to start the second semester of the sixth grade. I overheard a couple of the girls talking about Michaela, who went by Mickie. Rumor had it Mickie got in some type of trouble at the public school, and her parents enrolled her at OLM hoping the nuns could “straighten her out.” I sensed Mickie was different from other girls the very first day. She did not wear her hair long or pulled back in a ponytail or twisted in braids with bows and ribbons. She cut it so short it barely touched her ears, which were not pierced. The school required that skirts extend to one inch above the knee, but to me it seemed Mickie’s skirt inched higher each day. I heard one of the lunch ladies admonish Mickie for “showing too much leg.”

Mickie retorted, “I wouldn’t be showing any leg if they’d let us wear pants like the boys.”

That comment got her a detention picking up trash for the remainder of the lunch period.

Mickie gravitated to the boys and forsook the girls entirely, not interested in practicing cheers or jumping rope. Mickie played kickball and basketball, though it didn’t start out that way. Boys in the class denied her admittance into our exclusive domain, but we learned quickly that Mickie was not to be denied.

“What, are you afraid a girl might beat you?” she’d say, dropping the challenge that no self-respecting boy could walk away from. Then she would proceed to not just beat them but humiliate them. Only Ernie was willing to readily accept Mickie, and his doing so had nothing to do with any understanding of discrimination. Ernie liked to win, and he quickly recognized Mickie’s proficiency at sports. This resulted in my being demoted from Ernie’s partner, and I resented Mickie for it. For a month, I silently seethed as I watched her and Ernie beat the stuffing out of all challengers in foursquare and wall ball, ignoring their accomplishments as if I couldn’t have cared less. But I would soon learn Mickie was also not a person one could easily ignore.





9

The end of January marked another all-school Mass, and our class was responsible for the presentation. This was not an insignificant affair. Not just the entire school attended the Mass but parents and members of the general congregation as well. My mother never missed one. As the responsible grade, we were to choose and present the readings, prayers of the faithful, serve as the altar boys, sing in the choir, and bring up the gifts. To be chosen as the lector, however, was universally considered the highest honor. The position offered the greatest exposure, and therefore the greatest risk. This wasn’t to discount the off chance an altar boy could catch his robe on fire on a candle, or that a student carrying the gifts up the aisle might stumble and toss the wafers into the crowd, but I’d never seen that happen. I had seen a lector screw up a reading at an all-school Mass. We all had.