Dancing Dudes Read online

  I glanced around our table to see how everyone else was doing. Zach was cutting out pink footballs and basketballs and pasting them all over his box. I looked over at Kelly, who was cutting out perfectly shaped hearts. I thought I would try that, too. I grabbed some scissors and some paper and started cutting.

  “Whoa,” I said, looking at the weird shape I cut out. It looked nothing like a heart. I tried a few more. They looked more like eggs. If only this were an Easter box, it would look great, I thought. This was harder than it looked. I peeked over at Kelly’s box. It was perfect, covered in hearts of all different sizes and colors.

  “Hey, Kelly,” I said. “How did you make those hearts look so good? Mine look terrible.”

  “Oh, those are hearts?” she said. “I thought you were cutting out eggs.”

  “Yeah, they’re supposed to be hearts,” I said. “Do you think you could maybe cut some out for me?”

  She smiled and grabbed a few pieces of paper. In no time at all, she handed me a pile of pink and white hearts.

  “Wow, thanks,” I said. “Hey, does anyone want to put eggs on their box? I have some extras.”

  “Actually,” Kelly said, “I’ll take them.”

  “What? Are you crazy?” I said. “I was just kidding.”

  Kelly just smiled again and took the handful of egg shapes and, in a matter of seconds, cut them into more perfectly shaped hearts.

  “Wow, you are a heart expert,” I said. I couldn’t believe it. No wonder Graham likes her so much.

  Mrs. Gibson clapped her hands and waited for us to quiet down.“You are all doing such wonderful work on your boxes that I hate to have you stop, but we’ll have time to finish them tomorrow,” she said. “So let’s clean up and return to your desks. I have one more announcement to make before the bell rings.”

  We all cleaned up as fast as we could and ran back to our desks, wondering what it could be.

  “Well, as you know, the fourth-grade recital is coming up in two weeks. Mr. Fowl’s class will be singing some traditional American folk songs, and I am thrilled to announce that our class will be performing a real Western hoedown!”

  We all looked at each other. Mrs. Gibson seemed much more excited than we did. “That means you will all be learning to square-dance.”

  I looked at Graham. He was giving Diane an I told you so look.

  “Don’t worry,” Mrs. Gibson said. “You are going to have a wonderful time square-dancing. I’m sure you will all love it as much as I do. My husband and I used to have such a grand time square-dancing.”

  I’d never heard Mrs. Gibson mention her husband before, but my mom told me he died a long time ago. I could tell she missed him.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, “I will assign each of you a dance partner. That means we’ll line everyone up from smallest to tallest—boys on one side, and girls on the other—so we can match you up with a dance partner close to your height.”

  Immediately, everyone looked around the room to see who was about their same height. The only people that I knew for sure would be paired up together were Diane and David, since they were both the tallest, and Graham and Suzy, since they were both the shortest. I hoped I would get to dance with Heidi.

  Then the end-of-school bell rang, and we were all crowding through the door.

  “What am I going to do, Raymond?” Graham said by the coatracks.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Graham had a serious look on his face.

  “I mean how am I going to get Kelly to be my dance partner?” he asked. “This could be the moment I’ve waited for my entire life. Not only would I get to dance with her that night, but we’ll be practicing this dance for two weeks.” Graham’s eyes looked crazy, and he was talking really fast.

  “I never thought of it like that,” I said. “But I don’t know how you would do it. You and Suzy are the two shortest kids in our class. Unless you can grow overnight, you are definitely going to get matched up with Suzy tomorrow.”

  “You’re right,” Graham said. “Unless . . .” He started to smile. “Unless I wasn’t at school tomorrow for the lineup. If I’m not there, Suzy will get paired up with someone else.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “But so will Kelly.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Graham said. He thought in silence for a moment. “Maybe an idea will come to me tonight.”

  The next morning, Graham wasn’t out on his driveway waiting for me like usual. I was about to ring his doorbell when he opened the door.

  “Hey, Graham, running a little late?” I asked.

  “No, just eating an extra bowl of cereal,” he said. Graham loved cereal as much as I did. “I was trying to eat as much as I could. The box said there was a toy inside, but I couldn’t find it.”

  “That stinks,” I said. “So did you figure out a way to get paired up with Kelly?”

  Graham shook his head. “I couldn’t think of anything,” he said. “Matt is the next shortest kid, and he’s still about four inches taller than me. If Suzy weren’t there, it would work out great. Besides Suzy, there aren’t very many short girls. Kelly’s probably even the next in line.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I said. “At least if you don’t get to dance with Kelly, you still get to give her a valentine telling her how much you like her. And she’s making a great valentine box. She was sitting at my table when we made them. You’ll know hers because she has a bunch of perfectly shaped hearts all over it. I mean, those hearts are perfect.”

  “Sounds like they’re just as perfect as she is,” Graham said in a soft voice.

  Sometimes Graham says the strangest things. “Yeah, whatever you say,” I said.

  School started out as boring as usual. At lunch we went out and played basketball. There wasn’t any snow on the playground except for some piles of slush on the sides. I stepped in one and got my shoe drenched. It was the kind of wet that I knew would stay soggy the rest of the day. Just as recess was about to end, a lady from the office came out looking for Kelly.

  “What’s that all about?” Graham said, staring at Kelly and the office lady.

  Then Kelly called out to her friends on the playground, “I have to go—my mom’s picking me up.” Just as she disappeared into the school, the bell rang and recess was over.

  “This is perfect!” Graham said. He had a huge smile on his face and was rubbing his hands together.

  “What?” I asked. “What’s so great about Kelly’s mom taking her out of school?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Graham said. “She won’t be in the lineup today for the dance partners.”

  “I still don’t get it,” I said. “It seems to me that now you won’t get paired up with Kelly for sure.”

  “That would be true if I were actually going to be here for the lineup,” Graham said with an evil smile. “I think I feel something coming on, like a bad stomachache . . . if you know what I mean.”

  “I’m not sure I do know what you mean,” I said.

  “Okay, Raymond, I’ll spell it out for you,” Graham said, letting out a huge breath. “If Kelly is gone and I am gone, then everyone will get paired up except us. Then when we come back tomorrow, Mrs. Gibson will have no other choice than to make us partners. Now do you get it?”

  “Ooooh, that’s brilliant,” I said. We both ran into class and sat down. Graham immediately made a face like David had just punched him in the stomach. Slowly, he stood up and walked over to Mrs. Gibson’s desk all hunched over. I couldn’t hear what he said, but it must have been good, because Mrs. Gibson got up and walked him out the door.

  I couldn’t believe it. I would never be able to pull that off. One, I’m a lousy actor and I never get away with anything. And two, I’m just a chicken. I was more and more convinced that Graham was definitely more manly than I was. I watched proudly as my manly coach walked down the hall.

  A few minutes passed by, and Mrs. Gibson was back. “Raymond, could you bring Graham’s coat to the office? He’ll be going home as soon as hi
s mother arrives,” she said.

  “Okay,” I answered. I grabbed his coat and ran down the hall.

  “Walk, please. . . .” I heard Mrs. Gibson calling from our room. I stopped running and walked the rest of the way.

  Graham was sitting in a chair in the office by the fish tank.

  “Graham, I can’t believe you’re going home. How did you do it?” I asked.

  He put his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Ah, it was a cinch. I just said I felt like I was about to throw up,” he said. “And it seemed like Mrs. Gibson didn’t want any of that in her classroom, so she just took me straight here. By the way, I just thought of manly rule number three: A man does whatever it takes to dance with his girl.”

  “Yeah, well, good luck,” I said. “I’ll call you and tell you what happens—I’ve got to get back to class.”

  “See you, hermano,” Graham called out in his sick voice as I left the office. I walked back to class going over the manly rules: never cry, always write poems for your girlfriend, and do whatever it takes to dance with her.

  We spent the next hour working on our valentine boxes. Mine was looking much better with the hearts Kelly gave me.

  “When you finish, be sure to put your names on your boxes,” Mrs. Gibson said. Then she picked up Kelly’s box and held it high for all of us to see. “Kelly was very creative and wrote her name in little hearts. So don’t be afraid to be creative with your name as well.”

  Kelly’s box looked great. I wished I had thought of that. Then I saw a bunch of extra tiny hearts that Kelly had cut out but hadn’t used yet. Since she left with her mom, I thought I would just borrow a few and write my name in hearts, too. There weren’t enough to write my whole name, so I just made a big R for Raymond.

  This was turning out to be my best school project ever. Usually my art projects never look good. Last year we made clay sculptures of our heads and put them in one of those ovens that turn clay hard like a statue. I rolled a bunch of thin pieces of clay for my hair, but somehow I didn’t stick them on very well and they fell off in the oven. When it came out, it looked like a crazy old bald man. I took it home and my mom actually thought it was a statue of my grandpa’s head.

  We worked on the boxes for a long time. I wondered if Mrs. Gibson forgot that she told us she would be assigning dance partners today. But it was like she read my mind, because just then she said, “Okay, everyone, it looks like you’re all finished. Let’s put your boxes down and come to the front of the room.”

  The moment we had all waited for was about to begin. “Boys, I need you to line up tallest to smallest,” she said. We all scurried around trying to get in order. She had to switch a few people who were in the wrong spots. Then she did the same thing with the girls.

  I almost jumped for joy when I turned to see Heidi lined up right next to me.

  “I guess I’m stuck with you,” Heidi joked.

  “I guess so.” I smiled. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Graham.

  Then, as everything looked so perfect, something terrible happened: Kelly walked through the doorway.

  “Just in time, Kelly,” Mrs. Gibson said. “Come stand here next to Suzy.”

  Oh, no! What about Graham? I thought.

  When Kelly got into the line, all the girls moved down. Suddenly, I found myself face-to-face with Lizzy. I stopped worrying about Graham and started worrying about me.

  “Wait!” I called out. I could hear Graham reciting manly rule number three in my head: A man does whatever it takes to dance with his girl.

  “What is it, Raymond?” Mrs. Gibson asked.

  “Shouldn’t I be with Heidi instead of Lizzy?” I said. Lizzy gave me a nasty look.

  Mrs. Gibson glanced over. “No, I think we’re fine the way we are,” she said. She continued on down to the end of the line.

  “All right, it looks like we’ve done it. And we have a perfect number of boys and girls,” she said.

  “Wait,” I called out. “Graham is missing. That means we have one extra boy.”

  “Thank you, Raymond. I forgot that Graham went home,” she said. “We’ll take care of that tomorrow.”

  5

  Dancing Gramps

  AFTER SCHOOL, I ran to Graham’s house. I rang his doorbell, hoping his mom would let me see him even though he was technically sick. Graham peeked out the window and then opened the door. I walked right in.

  “Oh, man, this is bad,” I started, without even saying hi.

  “Hold on, Raymond, what are you talking about?” Graham asked. He had a Popsicle in his hand.

  “No way, you get Popsicles, too?” I said, forgetting for a moment about the hoedown.

  “Yeah, and not only that, my mom is at the store buying me some soda pop. She says it will help my stomach.” Graham smiled.

  “No fair,” I said.

  “Hey, what were you saying about something being bad?”

  “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot,” I said. “Guess who walked through the door right when we were lining up for dance partners?”

  “Um, how about Gordon Armstrong?” Graham answered. Gordon was a big, cool fourth-grader back when we were puny first-graders. We had always hoped we would be as cool as him one day.

  “What? Why would Gordon Armstrong walk into our class? He’s in seventh grade,” I said.

  “I don’t know, you just said, ‘Guess who walked through the door?’ so I thought I would guess Gordon Armstrong,” Graham said, looking like that was a perfectly normal answer.

  “Well, it wasn’t Gordon. Let me give you a hint. She’s someone you really like, and she can cut great heart shapes out of paper.”

  Graham’s face went white, except for his lips. They were purple from his Popsicle.

  “Kelly? Kelly came back to school?” Graham shouted. He started pacing around the room. “I can’t believe it,” he said. “This plan was perfect. I even got Popsicles and soda pop out of it. How could this happen? ”

  “I don’t know—everything seemed to go bad. I was paired up with Heidi for about one minute. Then Kelly walked in and ruined that, and now I’m stuck with Lizzy.”

  “No way, you have to be Lizzy’s partner? That’s the worst,” Graham said.

  “Yeah, tell me about it,” I said, dropping into a big chair. I had tried to follow manly rule number three, but it was no use. Graham plopped himself onto the couch. We both just sat there in silence thinking about our lousy luck and how terrible this dance was going to be. Finally, Graham spoke up.

  “So who did Kelly get matched up with? Was it Brad?” he asked.

  “No. It was Matt Lindenheimer. Brad is dancing with Suzy,” I said.

  “How did that happen? Brad is a lot taller than Matt,” Graham said.

  “That’s what I thought, too. But Mrs. Gibson said it’s just Brad’s big hair that makes him look so tall.”

  “Hmm, so Kelly would rather dance with the smart kid, huh? She likes brains more than beauty,” Graham said in a quiet voice, shaking his head.

  “What are you talking about, Graham? She just got assigned to dance with Matt. It doesn’t mean she likes him,” I said.

  “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud,” Graham said. “Well, one way or another, I’m going to make this work. I don’t know how, but mark my words: I will dance with Kelly.”

  “I hope you’re right. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to dance with Heidi. I would settle for just not having to dance with Lizzy,” I said. I looked out the window. Graham’s mom’s car was pulling into the driveway. “Well, I’d better go, Graham. Enjoy your soda pop and Popsicles. I hope you feel better.”

  “Hey, I’m not really sick,” Graham said.

  “Oh, yeah. I almost forgot.” I walked out the door, passing Graham’s mom.

  I said hi and told her I just stopped by to see how he was doing. She thanked me for being a nice friend and pulled a cookie out of her grocery sack for my walk home.

  I kicked a pinecone up the street. Little pieces b
roke off as it rolled. By the time I got home, the pinecone was almost gone.

  My grandma and grandpa’s big brown car was parked in our driveway. I hoped they weren’t staying for dinner. I was not in the mood to have Grandpa picking things off my plate with his dirty fork.

  “Hey, partner,” Grandpa yelled as I walked into the house. He grabbed my hand and shook my arm all over the place like he was trying to pull it right off of my body.

  “Hi, Gramps. Hi, Grandma,” I said.

  “Don’t I get a hug from my favorite grandson?” Grandma said. Not only was I getting a hug, but her wrinkly lips with bright red lipstick were all puckered up and heading toward me. I turned just in time to get the kiss on my cheek. It tickled a little. I know girls aren’t supposed to shave, but sometimes I wonder if my grandma should shave off some of those whiskers on her face. They aren’t thick like a man’s beard, but they still tickle when she kisses you.

  “So what have you been up to, partner? And why do you look so sad?” Gramps asked, putting his fists up like he wanted to box me or something.

  “Nothing much, and I’m not really too sad. Although I did find out today that I have to dance with Lizzy at our class hoedown next month. I’m not too excited about that,” I said.

  “Oh, she can’t be that bad. I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time,” Grandma said. “Hoedowns are great fun.”

  “That’s right,” Gramps interrupted. “Your grandma and I used to square-dance every Saturday night back in the good old days. We were the best hoedown dancers around. Weren’t we, honey?” Gramps said.

  “Well, I don’t know if we were the best, dear. But we did have a dandy time,” Grandma answered.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know if we were the best? Of course we were the best! Everyone knew that,” Grandpa said, hopping around and kicking his feet up in the air. “You’ve got dancing in your blood, Raymond,” he added.