Invisible Inkling

Sprinkie Tax

The next day, in the cafeteria, I’m just sitting down to eat when Gillicut stalks over. He demands that I show him the contents of my lunch box. “Spanky Pantalones!” he shouts. “Whatcha got?”

I remember the way he came at me in gym. I remember how he said “See. You. Later.”

I open my lunch box and show him.

“Bread and peanut butter, yuck,” he says. “Yogurt, yuck. Apple, yuck. Oh, Oreos!”

“They’re not Oreos. They’re organic sandwich cookies,” I mumble, hoping he’ll drop them.

But no. He just eats them both at once and grabs my Tupperware container full of chocolate sprinkles.

“These are mine, too,” he says, mouth full. “How come ya got sprinkies?”

“Sprinkles?” I say. “My parents own an ice-cream store.”

“You get sprinkies every day?” Gillicut asks.

“A lot of days, I guess.”

Why am I telling the truth? I think. I should be lying right now.

But it’s too late. Gillicut pours the sprinkles into his mouth. He tosses the empty Tupperware on the floor, then trots across the room to the lunch line.

My shoulders sink and my eyes fill.

I find the Tupperware over by a garbage can and pick it up. When I get back to my table, Chin is there. “Spanky Pantalones?” she says, laughing. “I heard that.”

I can’t believe she’s laughing. That guy just took all my dessert.

I don’t answer her. Just keep myself busy opening my yogurt and finding my spoon.

Blueberry yogurt. Blueberry yogurt.

That’s my favorite, and if I just think about that, I won’t cry in front of everyone.

Chin watches me.

“Sorry,” she says after a minute of me not answering her. “For laughing.” She breaks off half of her chocolate-chip granola bar and pushes it across the table to me. “Since he took your cookies.”

“Thanks.”

We eat for a while.

I have the granola bar first, in case Gillicut returns.

Chin eats an apple-butter-and-pickle sandwich, like she does every day.

Then she bangs a rhythm on the table. Bam dada bam! Dada bim bam bang!

I’m still a little mad at her for laughing, but I bang the same rhythm back.

“You know what we should build after the Great Wall of China?” Chin asks. (We are building a Great Wall of China from matchsticks, when there’s nothing else to do.)

“What?”

“Taj Mahal. Taj Mahal would be slam-bang.”

And for a second, I think: Maybe fourth grade won’t be so bad without Wainscotting.

Maybe it’ll be good, even.

But then Gillicut is back, setting his tray of garbage on our table. “Did yah cry ’cause you lost your sprinkies, Spanky Baby?”

“No.”

“Good thing. ’Cause now you’ve got a sprinkie tax.”

“What?”

“Sprinkie tax goes like this,” Gillicut says, speaking slowly as if I’m dumb. “Every day, you bring me sprinkies in your lunch box. Only, not the chocolate ones. I want rainbow.”

“Hank doesn’t live at Big Round Pumpkin,” says Chin. “He doesn’t have rainbow sprinkles, like, sitting in his refrigerator.”

We do have sprinkles sitting in our refrigerator, actually. Dad is a big one for late-night ice-cream feasts, especially when he’s trying to invent new flavors. But I keep this to myself.

“So? He can get them, easy.” Gillicut yanks the neck of my T-shirt back so it’s tight against my throat.

I choke, my breath comes in gulps—

But Gillicut releases my shirt before the lunch aides have time to notice what he’s doing. Then he takes his tray and dumps his trash in front of me. A pile of paper napkins, a Styrofoam plate full of unwanted baked beans, a banana peel, an oozing milk carton. All on top of my lunch.

I think: if I throw out Gillicut’s garbage today, I’m probably going to be doing it every day for the rest of the school year.

Every day. Touching his slimy baked-bean garbage and his used paper napkins. “Throw it out, Spankitty Spankpants!” Gillicut bends over and whispers. “Throw it out or I’ll rip your ears off and feed them to the science-lab hamsters.”

He grabs the oozing garbage from the table and shoves it into my arms.

Fourth grade isn’t going to be good after all.