“Your mom lets you?” Jaesang asks.
“I showed her this article from the LA Times. It’s all about how the multitasking brain learns better.”
“When do you have time to read the paper?”
“Once a day. When I’m pooping.”
“Alistair!” we all groan.
“What’s wrong with pooping?” he says. “It’s the final step of a great meal.”
I’m in next against Jaesang, but I might as well go straight to the back of the line. For a kid who looks like he’s made of toothpicks, Jaesang will surprise you. He’s like a praying mantis. They can carry ten times their own weight. Someday Jaesang will too.
His slicey puts me out, and I head for the back of the line. But then I notice that the door to the auditorium isn’t closed all the way, and I’ve still got Herbie Hancock in my head, so I walk over.
Our school piano’s old and a little out of tune. But it’s a piano. Soon my fingers are flying and I’m back in my grove of Dr. Seuss trees with purple, yellow, and bright orange leaves. Something about this song makes the whole world pop.
When I finish, I hear applause. I look around and there’s Mr. Trotter, our music teacher, in his wool cap and white beard. He speaks in a brogue—what he calls his Irish accent.
“Well, Sam, I’d say I’ve made the right choice.”
“Choice for what?”
“There’s room for just one solo in the winter program. I picked you.”
A sixth-grader has never gotten the solo before. I feel like jumping so high, I’ll land on Jaesang’s future team.
In class we do a worksheet on the Code of Hammurabi. It’s this ancient tablet from four thousand years ago with 282 of the harshest laws in history. It’s where we get the saying “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” According to the Code, if you were a surgeon and your knife slipped and you accidentally killed a patient, you’d have both your hands cut off. If you were adopted and said to your mom, You’re not my mother, you’d have your tongue cut out. And if you were a builder, like my dad, and a house you built collapsed and killed the owner’s son, your son would be put to death.
Just when I’m thinking how glad I am that nowadays we have building inspectors, Mr. Powell makes an announcement.
“I know you’re all excited for the Columbus Day weekend,” he says. And it’s true. Columbus is our favorite explorer because he comes with a Monday off.
“But,” our teacher goes on, and Alistair and I swap a smile.
“There’s always a butt,” I say.
“Some bigger than others,” Alistair says. He does his in-chair version of the Truffle Shuffle from The Goonies.
And here it comes. “You’ll be taking a practice CAASPP test next week, so I’m sending home a review packet.”
The CAASPP test. You probably know it as the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress. We call it the GASP test because it makes it hard for us to breathe.
Mr. Powell goes around the room, dropping these mega-packets on everyone’s desk. They sound like someone getting spanked.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Catalina puts up her hand. “We already have a Lit Circle project for Miss Lopez.”
“My review packets shouldn’t take you more than an hour a day.”
Thwack.
“What about our endangered species report for Mr. Dane?” Alistair calls out.
“Those were on the calendar for today. Didn’t you bring yours?”
Thwack.
The problem with Alistair’s note-taking system is that at some point during the week, he takes a shower.
Jaesang tells Mr. Powell that he’s flying to Seattle to visit his grandparents for the long weekend.
“Good. They can quiz you on prepositional phrases.”
“They’re from Korea. They don’t speak English.”
“Maybe you’ll sit next to a native English speaker on the plane.”
Thwack.
He makes his way around the classroom, dropping the packets on desk after desk after desk, kids flinching at every thwack.
I think about my dad sitting in his sixth-grade classroom when he was a boy. Back then kids hardly ever had homework. Soon as the bell rang, they were free.
Free to have fun.
Free to play with friends.
Free to build treehouses with their dads.
A tiny word starts to form in my mouth. Two letters. One syllable. Don’t ask me how. It just comes.
“No,” I say.
“No?” Mr. Powell repeats.
“No more. It’s been like this since third grade.”
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
