Free The Nose from Jupiter by Richard Scrimger Page A

voices came together. “It’s a geomettree!”
    Miss Scathely grinned.
    She drew another tree – this one had cans and jars and boxes hanging from the branches. No one said anything. She added a dangling skillet. I was trying to work it out but couldn’t.
    –
It is! It’s a pan-tree!
Norbert sounded wistful.
    “Good,” said Miss Scathely.
    I couldn’t help wondering if there were any lava-trees, and what their leaves would look like.
    –
That’s exactly what a real pan-tree looks like. I can’t remember the last time I saw one. The ones on Jupiter are so lovely, full of gold and silver flowers. They’re not at all like the carpen-trees, with their sharp needles and spikes.
    The class laughed and laughed. Miranda started clapping, and the other kids joined in. “Way to go, Squeaky,” somebody shouted from the back of the room.
    “Who’s Squeaky?” Miss Scathely asked. And everyone except me – everyone including Norbert – shouted my name.
    “Well, Squeaky, you make Jupiter sound like an interesting place,” Miss Scathely told me.

Not a Principal Kind of Joke
    Our principal, Mr. Omerod, stood at the microphone, smiling hard. “I’d like all of you to give a warm Edgewood Senior Public School welcome to Captain Sid Allinson,” he said.
    The tall stranger onstage, the guy we’d been trying to identify, stood up. He was square-shouldered, with a clean face and short hair. He had on a blue uniform with red doodads on the shoulders. He ducked his head modestly. The principal held up his hands and clapped them together.
    Poor Captain Allinson. A huge and spontaneous roar of applause did not raise the roof of the auditorium. No one fainted. No one rushed onstage. No one whistled. Instead, the entire auditorium dissolved in a sea of tossed and disjointed murmurs. “Who’s he?” “What’s he done?” Andthen three hundred people turned to their neighbors and whispered, “Where’s Shania Twain?” From where I was sitting, off to the side of the darkened auditorium, waiting to go onstage later to receive my intramural ribbon, it sounded like a disappointed giant sucking up the end of a milkshake. The principal went on.
    “I remember Sid in 1979, back when I taught physical education. He was a keen high jumper, but I hardly knew back then that he would end up in outer space. That’s a pretty impressive high jump…even with a rocket assist.”
    Mr. Omerod smiled. This was a principal kind of joke. Captain Sid recognized it, and laughed politely. The rest of the audience was still too disappointed to respond.
    “No doubt you have been following Sid’s exploits in the newspapers,” he said. “As the third Canadian in space, he has represented our country with honor and dignity. His mission with NASA was an unqualified success. The space shuttle Columbia successfully repaired a malfunctioning satellite. Sid, and the rest of the crew, met with the…was it the vice president?” He looked over. Sid nodded. “The vice president of the United States. Sid also met with the prime minister in Ottawa, and now he’s back home, using his fame and his knowledge to teach schoolchildren about space and science. A wonderful role model for the youth of today. And to think he was once a student in this very auditorium. He sat where you are sitting today. It’s enough to make you consider what you plan to do with your own life. Someday you may be sitting where he is now.”
    Silence. And then, from the shielding darkness at theback of the auditorium, a plaintive question drifted out into the air. “But can he sing?”
    No one dared to laugh.
    The principal frowned. Captain Sid approached the microphone clutching a sheaf of notes. He was a little nervous. The lukewarm reception wasn’t helping any. He probably felt he was better off in outer space. I’ll bet a lot of people would rather be in outer space than in front of a microphone at a middle-school assembly.
    I don’t know if Sid, as he asked us all to call