Anything but Typical by Nora Raleigh Baskin

Author:Nora Raleigh Baskin [Baskin, Nora Raleigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781416963783
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Published: 2009-03-24T07:00:00+00:00

Truthfully, language arts is my best class, but not because I have a good grade in it. I like it because there are no right answers, even if the teacher says there are. Even when they mark something wrong on your test or book report, it’s really just their opinion, and in my opinion they could be wrong. It’s like when you read the directions on the back of a package of brownie mix.

Two eggs or three?

Do you want chewy or cakelike?

There is no wrong answer.

Books are like brownies.

I also like language arts because everyone asks me for help.

“Jason, can you fill in this last page in my vocabulary book?” Kids who don’t ever talk to me otherwise. “But make the handwriting messier so it looks like mine.”

“Jason, how do you spell ‘definitely’?”

“‘Veterinarian’?”

“‘Facetious’?”

“Hey, what happens at the end of this book, Jason? It was so boring I couldn’t finish it.”

“How about ‘potato’? Is there an E at the end?”

When I ask my language arts teacher for my homework for next Friday, because I am going to miss school, because me and my dad are leaving for Texas. He asks me where I am going.

“Texas.”

Mr. Shupack laughs, the nice laughing. “I know, Jason. But where? What are you going there for? Do you have family there? Do you have family in Texas?”

Mr. Shupack is pretty nice. He is very tall and has facial hair that connects from his sideburns all the way around to his chin and under his nose. There is no mistaking him for someone else. I always feel comfortable around him, even when he thinks he’s right all the time, but I hate looking at the birthmark on his arm. I try never to see it.

I look at him out of the corner of my eye.

“No,” I say. “I am going to the Storyboard writing convention in Dallas, Texas.”

I think he will like this, since he is an English teacher and they are supposed to like writing. And then I realize I am not leaving for another week and a half, and maybe Mr. Shupack doesn’t know what the homework will be that far in advance. I remember that I have not yet told my parents which one of them I want to come with me. And my dad says he needs to know so he can make the reservations. He told me that this morning when I was brushing my teeth.

So then I say, “Vizcaíno.”

It is the word that came into my head this morning, but I didn’t think of it until just now. I was thinking of too many things when it first came to me. And now it comes to me again.

It always just happens like that.

“The pitcher?” Mr. Shupack says.

“What?”

But now I know I shouldn’t have said it out loud. It was the consonant sounds, the slippery, sliding sound of the word. Remembering this morning and the decision I have to make.

“Luis Vizcaíno? The guy who used to pitch for the New York Yankees?” Mr.

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