Free Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea Page B

They sure don’t love me. Why else are they so silent? They don’t speak to me—rarely, and they never speak to each other. Dad has started going to work again, but Mom mopes around the house. She hasn’t been out of her pajamas since Michael’s funeral.
    Christmas was tough again this year. It was our second one without Michael, not that we celebrated either time. Dad got a tree this year, though. It showed up one day in our living room. I put a few decorations on it. Mom pretended it wasn’t there.

february

Peter
    I ran into the classroom. “Does everyone have their stuff?” I yelled.
    Mr. T looked up from his desk. “Calm down, Peter,” he said.
    “Does everyone have their stuff?” I said again, still excited.
    “Calm down,” Mr. T said again. “Take a deep breath.”
    I took a deep breath. Then, in a normal voice I said, “Does everyone have their stuff?”
    “I think so,” Mr. T said.
    “Let’s go then. Let’s go!” I said.
    “We’ll go out later, Peter. Besides, we need to take attendance and lunch count and listen to morning announcements.” Mr. T also figured if we went out and got soakingwet first thing, we’d be miserable for the rest of the day. He had a good point, but I still wanted to get outside.
    We spent the morning spread out all over the place playing different games. I played Scattergories with Mr. T, Luke, and Jeffrey. The letter
B
came up on the dice. We raced through putting down our ideas and then it was time to share. We took turns, going down the list, and then the item “Things at a beach” came up. Jeffrey shared, then Luke, then Mr. T, and then it was my turn. I leaned in and said, “Babes.”
    “Who brings babies to the beach?” Luke said.
    “Not babies. Babes,” Jeffrey said.
    I almost died. But wait. It gets better. Our very own brainiac, Luke, just sat there watching us laugh. Then he said, “What do you mean?” Can you believe that? He didn’t know babes. I freaked.
    “Holy smokes,” I said. “What rock are you living under?”
    Mr. T jumped in at that point.
    “Easy, Peter,” Mr. T said. “Lots of girls don’t appreciate that term. It sounds as if you don’t respect them, and part of being a man is knowing how to respect women.”
    “Ohhh!” Luke said. “Girls.” His lightbulb had suddenly turned on.
    Mr. T looked at me and smiled, shaking his head.
    Mr. T’s the best, I thought. That was the last time I got to hang out with him.

LUKE
    P eter thought he was so smart all of a sudden. He won a homework pass off a lucky guess and he confused me in Scattergories. Big deal. I
resolved
(dollar word) to get him.

Jeffrey
    N ever thought I’d play a game with my teacher, but I did. I played Scattergories with Terupt and Luke and Peter. And I learned that I’m even smarter than Luke at some things. But that doesn’t make him out to be a bad kid, just a dork. As smart as he is, Luke doesn’t make a stink about it. I like him for that.
    But Peter. Sometimes he gets on my nerves. He’s always doing stuff and never gets in trouble. I knew he was just waitin’ to get outside. I had a surprise for him.
    It woulda been better if I never got involved. If I just stayed hating school, none of this woulda happened.

Peter
    F inally we were outside. The snow was perfect. The kind that packed and formed super snowballs. I scooped up a handful as we walked toward the field, squeezing it over and over. “No snowballs,” Mr. T had told us before coming out. We reached the corner and I stuffed the snowball in my pocket. It was too perfect to just toss down. It wasn’t like I was going to throw it. I ran out onto the untouched field. The field was perfect, too. There was a mountain of snow right in the middle that we climbed up.
    I was already standing at the top when I saw Lexie making her way up the side. I thought about how she’d been really quiet lately, like she was down in the dumps. Maybe that was why I thought knocking her into the snow would snap