The Boy Who Owned the School by Gary Paulsen

Author:Gary Paulsen
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-09-15T16:00:00+00:00

NOW he couldn’t talk to her.

No matter what.

After the disaster beneath the stage when she had laughed and had actually asked him, personally, about why she never saw him — after all that he could not talk to her.

What made it difficult, maybe impossible, was that he still had to run the fog machine and be part of the play or he would flunk English. If he flunked English, or even got an F in English for one report card period but still managed to pass it — just that F meant that he would get noticed the wrong way by his parents.

Normally they worked on his sister and tried to make her even more beautiful and more or less forgot he was there. But if he pulled a bad grade he would get the serious lectures from his parents. That’s when they would sit him down and ask him if he were:

Doing drugs.

Contemplating teen suicide.

Having difficulty with his peers.

Feeling depressed.

Having adjustment problems.

Feeling inadequate.

Feeling unmotivated.

Feeling overmotivated.

Feeling bad about himself.

Not feeling anything — that is, not being in touch with his feelings.

Depending on what his mother had been reading lately and discussing with his father or if he told them the truth, that it was all of the above except drugs, they’d just ignore the answer and go on until they were satisfied they had Straightened Him Up.

So he had to stay and work the fog machine or get an F and go through the serious lectures at home.

But he couldn’t face Maria Tresser again. As long as he lived and maybe a bit longer.

So it was a difficult situation.

Days passed, and he had to be at rehearsal every afternoon. He evolved a plan that seemed to work out. He would hide up in the darkened corner of the auditorium until they were well into rehearsal and just getting to the part in the second act when Maria had to disappear as the Wicked Witch, and at that point he would sneak into the space beneath the stage. Then when it came time to open the trapdoor he would let it drop and move away, so he was out of sight. The first time Maria lowered to her knees and looked down inside.

“Jacob?”

But he was back around a brace, hidden in a corner, and after a moment she shrugged upside down.

“I don’t understand — he was here a minute ago,” she said to someone back on top. “I just wanted to tell him to lower the trapdoor a little sooner, when I start my death scream….”

When rehearsals were over he moved out the back door of the space beneath the stage, out a back exit of the auditorium which opened into an alley, and down the alley toward home.

By the third night the plan was working smoothly. They didn’t expect to see him, and Maria had quit looking or calling to him. He was there but not there, the phantom beneath the stage — he actually heard one of the Munchkins asking somebody what was opening and closing the trapdoor.

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