Baartock got up from the table and took his tray over to the window in the wall. Looking inside, he saw that there was someone to take the trays and wash the plates and forks and spoons. Leaving his tray, he went out the door to the playground to find Jason.

Chapter 9

By the time Mrs. s...o...b..chner came out to the playground to call her cla.s.s, Baartock had almost forgotten how hungry he was. He had found Jason and they had raced four times, and Baartock had won three times.

Then several other boys had joined in, and they'd played tag. That was a whole new game for Baartock. He liked being 'it', then he could do the chasing. When he was 'not it', he could run faster than any of the other boys, so they didn't try to chase him at all.

They went back into the cla.s.sroom, and all the children went to their seats and got out their pencil boxes. Baartock was horrified to discover that his pencil box was missing. It wasn't on the table where he'd left it. It wasn't in the drawer at his place at the table. It was his brand-new pencil box and he hadn't even used the crayons yet, and now it was gone. He didn't see it anywhere.

"h.e.l.lo. You must be Baartock."

He looked around to see an adult standing right behind him.

"I'm Mrs. Pangle, Timmy's mother." She pointed at one of the boys at the next table. "I come in two afternoons a week. I'm the aide for this cla.s.s."

Baartock might have asked what an 'aide' was, but he was worried about his pencil box. "If you're looking for your box, I put it in your cubby."

"Where cubby?" He didn't know that he had a cubby, but if that was where his box was, he wanted to find it.

"It's right over here." Mrs. Pangle led him to the back of the room, and stopped near the door going outside. "Here you are," she said pointing. "This is your cubby."

There, just as she had said, was his missing pencil box. He picked it up and held it, almost afraid that he might lose it again.

"My cubby?" he asked.

"That's right. See, right here, 'Baartock'." At the top of his cubby was a little card with marks on it. He thought they looked like the marks Mrs. Jackson had made on his pencil box. He looked at his box.

The marks were just the same. "I fixed it for you while you were at lunch."

He remembered what Mrs. Jackson said that humans say when only one gives something. "Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome, Baartock. You shouldn't leave your things on the table, unless Mrs. s...o...b..chner tells you to. It makes the room messy and you might lose something. Either put them in here, or in your drawer in the table."

He didn't to tell her that he wasn't going to lose his box again. He held on to it tightly. "And over here is where you can hang a coat,"

Mrs. Pangle said, pointing to some hooks in the wall. "This one is yours."

There were cards over each hook, and there was a mark on one that he recognized. That must be his hook.

"You'd better get back to your seat now. But I'll be here if you need help."

He went back to the table and found that someone had given him some sheets of paper with marks all over them. They didn't look like the ones he and Jason had used the crayons on before. And they weren't.

"It's a writing worksheet," Jason said. "You're supposed to make letters on the lines that look just like the ones they've made."

Baartock looked at the papers, then opened his box and got out his crayons.

"No, you're supposed to use your pencil," Jason said, seeing what Baartock was holding.

Baartock looked around and saw than none of them were using crayons.

He had wanted to make colored marks, but they were all using long yellow sticks instead. He hadn't used one of those before. He put away his box of crayons, and got out his yellow stick. He tried to use his the way all the children were, but it wouldn't make any marks on the paper. The girl sitting across the table started giggling. She had been watching him.

"You have to sharpen it," she said. "The pencil sharpener is on Mrs.

s...o...b..chner's desk."

Baartock got up and walked up to the desk. He looked all over the desk, but he didn't see anything to sharpen the stick with. There wasn't a knife, or any kind of blade. Mississtog-Buchner was helping a girl at one table and Mississpangel was helping a boy in the back of the cla.s.sroom. He just stood there looking at the desk and waited.

"Yes, Baartock, what do you need?" Mrs. s...o...b..chner had finished with the girl and saw him just standing at her desk. Baartock wasn't sure just what to say, so he held up the pencil instead.

"Do you need some help with the pencil sharpener?" she asked. Several children in the front of the cla.s.s started snickering. "All right, get back to your work," she said to them as she came over to help him.

"This is the pencil sharpener," she said, and taking the pencil from his hand, "and this is how to use it." She put the pencil in a hole in a little box and started working the little crank on the side. She pulled the pencil out of the box, and it had a point. "That's how you do it. You don't want to sharpen it too much, or you'd grind it all away. Is that all you need?"

Baartock nodded and took the pencil from her and went back to his seat.

The pencil now made marks on the paper, but they weren't pretty, like the marks the crayons made. Just little black lines. He looked over at Jason. He had already done two pages and was just starting on the third. The girl across the table was still working on the second page.

Baartock hurried to catch up. The marks weren't hard to make. Some of them were very like the ones his mother had shown him.

He was working hard, and had just finished the first page, when the bell rang. He started to jump up, but the table was in the way, and he fell over backwards. The bell just went on ringing.

"Boys and girls. Line up at the back door," Mrs. s...o...b..chner called to the laughing children. Mrs. Pangle rushed over to help Baartock up off the floor. He wasn't hurt, only surprised. And the bell just kept on ringing.

"Children!" Mrs. s...o...b..chner had to shout. "Pay attention. This is a fire drill. Just leave everything and line up. Now! Mrs. Pangle, is he all right? Good. Then will you lead the cla.s.s out onto the playground? Over by the fence. I'll be right along." She went over to turn off the lights and make sure that the door and windows were closed.

The children were still laughing as they went out the door. Baartock and Mrs. s...o...b..chner were the last ones out.

"Are you all right, Baartock? You didn't hurt yourself?" she asked.

"Not hurt," he said. The bell was still ringing, even though all the children in the school seemed to be lined up in the playground. "What you call this?"

"When the bell rings like that it is a fire alarm. If someone discovers a fire, they sound that bell. Then you are supposed to get out of the building as quickly and safely as possible. You aren't supposed to run or fall down. Then the firemen would come to put out the fire. It's called a fire drill."

It didn't seem like a fire drill to him. "Where fire?" he asked.

Right then the school bell finally stopped ringing.

"There wasn't a real fire," she answered. "It's so you would know what to do if there were a real fire."

The whole thing seemed a little silly to Baartock. He knew all about fire. His mother cooked over a fire. He had to help bring in kindling and small logs for the fire. There wasn't very much in the school to burn. It wasn't much of a fire drill. There wasn't any fire.

Mrs. s...o...b..chner had walked over to the middle of the cla.s.s and held up her hand. When they were quiet she started talking.

"Children. I'm very unhappy about what you did in there. What happened to Baartock could have been very serious. He could have been hurt badly. It wasn't funny. A fire alarm is very serious. Because you were laughing, you couldn't hear me, and I had to shout. When there's a fire alarm, I shouldn't have to shout, just as you shouldn't run. We are going to have to practice this again."

Chapter 10