Fourth-Grade Disasters by Claudia Mills

Mason didn’t want to tell her—heknew Nora could be trusted with a secret—but he was curious about how she had guessed. Nora Alpers: scientist, bridge builder, detective.
    “It just seems strange. You take Puff—stuffed Puff—home to mend him for the concert, and then all of a sudden he isn’t even going to be in the concert.”
    In an even lower voice, Mason whispered one word to Nora: “Dog.”
    “Oh, no,” Nora said.
    “Oh, yes,” said Mason.
    And stuffed Puff was still supposed to be in the concert, or at least there at the concert, and he didn’t exist anymore.

    To change the subject, in case anyone else came into earshot, Mason told Nora, “Mrs. Morengo said I can be the stage crew. So that was a great idea.”
    “Cool.”
    “And I finished my story last night. Pedro does go on strike, and he never has to play in public for anyone ever again. I think it turned out pretty good. It’s not really great, like Dunk’s story, or anything, but it turned out okay.”
    “Dunk’s story—” Nora started to say something about Dunk’s story, but then the second bell rang, and it was time to salute the flag.
    That morning, Coach Joe’s class had art down in the art room. They were working on pointillist paintings, in the style of the French impressionist painter Georges Seurat: paintings that were made up entirely of little tiny dots. From a distance, the dots all merged together, so they didn’t look like dots anymore, but close up you could see the whole picture was nothing but dots, dots, dots. So the goal was to make a picture out of dots that didn’t look as if it was made out of dots.
    Mason wondered what the point of this particular painting technique was supposed to be, but he kept his thoughts about it to himself.
    Brody’s dots had been neat and orderly, but today his dots were becoming wild and carefree, splashed down on his paper any which way. He was humming “Puff the Plainfield Dragon” as he painted. Mason could tell it was all Brody could do to keep on painting rows of dots instead of flinging down his brush and hugging himself with joy.
    Then a shadow passed over Brody’s face, and he did lay down his brush for a minute.
    “Mason?”
    “What?”
    “Mason, you don’t mind that she picked me, do you?”
    “Of course not!”
    “Instead of you? I mean, she said you were the one who should have a solo sometime. And you’re the one whose mother is making the costume. So if you did mind—” Mason saw Brody swallowing hard. “I could tell her that I don’t want to do it, and that she should pick you instead.”
    “Brody!” Mason didn’t know if he wanted to hug Brody or shake him. “I. Don’t. Like. To. Sing. Remember?”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Y-E-S.”
    Happy again, Brody picked up his brush and began painting more bright and sloppy dots, bouncy and springy dots practically dancing off the paper.
    Sitting nearby, Nora was working on her painting with precision. Nora’s dots could have been printed by a machine.
    She started to say something, then stopped, and then finally said, “Did either of you think Dunk’s new, longer Footie story sounded too good to be written by Dunk?”
    Mason and Brody exchanged glances.
    “It
was
good,” Mason said. “But Dunk does like sports. Especially football.”
    In third grade, Dunk had thrown a football at Brody’s head with remarkably perfect aim.
    “Dunk didn’t write that story,” Nora said. “He copied it off the Internet.”
    “There’s a story about Footie the football on the
Internet
?” Brody asked.
    A yellow dot of paint was on the end of Brody’s nose now, as if the bright, golden joy inside him was seeping out through his skin.
    “No, silly,” Nora said. She gave Brody’s arm awhack of friendly impatience. “He stuck Footie’s name in whenever the real story said ‘football.’ But all the other stuff about the game—the intercepted pass by the receiver at the thirty-seven-yard line, blah, blah,