Sam wasn’t sure if today would turn out to be the best day of his life or the worst. Smart money was on the worst. He wasn’t sure if he’d walk into his house and his parents would think he was the cleverest twelve-year-old who ever lived, or if they’d ground him for the rest of his natural life without the possibility of parole. The jury was out on that one. He bit his lower lip, clutched his English book to his chest, and frowned.

The day had started well enough. He’d walked to school with his friends BJ and Hank; they made it to class on time, which was amazing, since Hank had forgotten his science homework and they had to circle back for it. Sam remembered his lunch, which was a miracle in itself, even if it was only baloney and cheese. To top it all off, that asshole Trevor Becknor wasn’t waiting for him at the gate to the baseball field with his fists clenched and murder in his eyes. Yep, it was a pretty good day so far. 

Sam shook his head and sighed. The good day had done a mind blowing one-eighty and screeched its way straight into Shitsville.

The trouble began in sixth period English when his teacher, Miss Sharette, dished out the assignment for the day. She was almost seventy-seven years old, and still teaching. She claimed to love her job, but could have fooled him. She either hated her job, hated her students, needed the money, or was just born with an explosive case of resting bitch face. She usually wore glossy pink lipstick and winged eyeliner that smudged in the wrinkles by her eyes and made her look like she was trying too hard. The pink lipstick would bleed into the lines around her mouth by the end of the day. No matter what the weather, she wore a mink coat that smelled a little funky, like someone had tried to set it on fire. Sam’s mom said it was because she smoked Camels and that he should mind his own business, but that was hard to do when he sat about three feet from the coat hook, and the room smelled like the time they’d gone camping and Grandpa had accidentally set the tent on fire smoking a cigar. He guessed the coat was mink, but who knew? A lot of cats go missing in Patton, and there were a ton of coyotes in this part of Colorado. Who’d notice if a few dozen mangy coyotes were gone?

Once, on a boring Sunday afternoon, he’d looked up her information online. He’d googled her name, and Miss Sharette’s Facebook page popped up. The last entry was 2013, and she had exactly five friends, all of them teachers. It looked as if she had no relatives, no kids, no husband, no life, at least as far as Facebook was concerned. Her profile picture was a meme that said, “Teachers! Changing the World One Child at a Time!” Sam thought she needed to click the heels of her sensible shoes together and catch the first rocket to the sun, especially now that she was all but dragging him down the hall to the office. He didn’t like her, and he was pretty sure she didn’t like him either, although he had once heard her tell his parents at a parent-teacher conference that she was hard on him because she knew he had potential. Yet here he was, standing in front of the principal’s office waiting for judgment day.

The assignment for sixth period English was to write a one- or two-paragraph epitaph for a non-human object or thing. Dumb, but easy enough. Sam cursed inwardly at his lack of foresight. Why hadn’t he picked a rock, or Jupiter, or a baked potato? He smacked himself on the forehead and tipped his head back with an exasperated grunt. He’d thought he was so smart to have picked a monkey as his subject. In his twelve-year-old boy’s mind he had felt the creative juices begin to bubble and churn until he became excited about the assignment. He would write an epitaph for a monkey and compare it to a penis, the monkey-penis still having a bit of a life of its own. In hindsight, he should have known it was inappropriate, but at the time he’d found the idea hilarious and brilliant. 

Sam groaned, stopped in front of the principal’s office, and hesitated. He had been so sure his ingenious, out-of-the-box thinking would earn him a great grade, and now here he was marching into the lion’s den with his slightly smoky-smelling English teacher’s hand on his shoulder.

Miss Sharette opened the door, gestured Sam through it, walked straight past the secretary, who looked at them over her half-moon glasses, and barged into Mr. Morrison’s office. She thrust his creative handiwork at principal Morrison. 

“Read this, Fred.” 

Mr. Morrison, who looked as if he had no more shits left to give, took the papers from her outstretched hand and sighed. He put on his reading glasses, sighed some more—this time with increased dramatic gusto—and then began to read. 

Sam could see the corners of his mouth twitch, and his teeth bite into the side of his cheek. As far as Sam knew, Mr. Morrison never cracked a smile in his life, let alone a laugh. It was as if he’d been born without a personality gene. Was this little smirk a good sign? Sam felt a small tingle of hope. 

Fred Morrison finished reading. It didn’t take him long, since the masterpiece Sam had written barely an hour ago was only two paragraphs long. 

Principal Morrison sat the papers on the desk along with his glasses. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Miss Sharette,” he bemoaned, “it seems to me that Sam has spelled everything correctly.” Sam saw a muscle in his cheek twitch. “I don’t see a real problem other than his essay being a bit, eh, off-color.” 

He looked up at Miss Sharette who obviously was not pleased with his response. 

“We have bigger fish to fry,” he concluded, “than a primate phallus don’t we?” 

Miss Sharette gave a phlegmy snort and snatched up the papers. “I want to call his parents and read this vulgar essay to them.”

There was no question that Sam’s mom would answer the phone. She had a decent sense of humor, but you never knew if she was in a good mood. She usually was. She had been when he left for school that morning. Sometimes though, she was in a pissy mood, like when the book she was writing wasn’t going the way she wanted, and then little things set her off. Maybe she was day drinking. That’d be a good thing, and Sam said a little prayer to the god of box wine. 

Mr. Morrison pushed the phone across the desk and waved his hand in a go-right-ahead gesture, and Miss Sharette began poking in Sam’s phone number on the old landline with her red correction pen, like a miniature game of whack-a-mole. Why the hell did Mr. Morrison still have that old phone, anyway? It had a curly cord and everything. The kids called her pen The Red Pen of Shame, since she seemed to get some weird thrill out of making fancy curlicue Fs on pupils’ papers, and now she was using it to call his mom and read her a story about a monkey pecker.

“My mom’s gonna laugh,” Sam muttered under his breath.

“Hush, Sam,” Mr. Morrison said, his teeth still biting the inside of his cheek, making his face look as if his mouth was more on one side than the other. “The phantom smile was still on his face, and Sam held his breath. He seemed to actually be enjoying this. Principal Morrison was enjoying something.

“Mrs. Hamlin,” Sam’s teacher, her voice terse, said when his mom picked up, “This is Miss Sharette, Samuel’s English teacher. I have him in the office.” Sam could hear his mother’s mumbled voice come over the phone from where he sat. “No, Sam’s fine,” she looked directly at him, “physically. But he wrote a troubling paper for his assignment today, and I thought you should hear it.” Sam’s mom mumbled some more, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying.

Miss Sharette began a full-on dramatical reading, using the hand that wasn’t holding the phone for emphasis; the red pen of shame rolled off of Mr. Morrison’s desk onto the floor and pinged the side of the metal trash can. 

“Peter, the monkey lay stiff in his bed, still throbbing…”

A louder mumble came through the other end of the phone. Sam wasn’t sure, but he thought he could make out the word, “Seriously?”

“…By the time the police arrived, the monkey was flaccid, pale and drooling. The veins on his head were standing out and were purple”

More mumbling along, with a very loud, “Oh my God!”

Sam hung his head, his shoulders hitching as he held back laughter. It wasn’t that his stupid story was so funny; it really wasn’t. What was funny was that his English teacher was being so stinking serious. As if she were Abraham Lincoln reading the Gettysburg Address. 

Miss Sharette continued, “It was a schlong way to the cemetery and they rented the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile as a hearse.”

Mr. Morrison turned his face toward the wall and away from them.

Miss Sharette ended with a flourish: “No one came to the monkey’s funeral,” she said, with a final, dramatic pause. “All of his friends thought he was a giant dick.”

Miss Sharette pulled the phone from her ear and Sam could hear his mother laughing. Not just normal laughing, but barking. His mom was barking! Sam could hear Mr. Tinkles, their pet dachshund, howling in the background like a renegade fire truck, most likely thinking his mother was having some kind of medical emergency. Yep, Mom was day drinking, thank God. 

“I told you my mom would laugh!” he said, instantly regretting it. Sometimes it took his brain a while to catch up with his mouth, but Sam knew his mom, and his mom thought weird stuff was funny—and this was as weird as it got. 

The principal looked from Sam to Miss Sharette to the phone, where loud braying laughter was still spraying out sounding like a donkey stuck in an electric fence. Mr. Tinkles howled on; Sam could picture him, his head thrown back and his round wiener dog eyes rolling around in their sockets, his mouth a little O at the end of his long snout. Sam’s mom was out of control, she was off the rails, she was day drinking! Sam loved his mom so damn much.

Mr. Morrison coughed, covered his mouth, hiccupped, and swallowed a strangled laugh. 

Miss Sharette slammed down the phone hard enough to make a framed photograph of Mr. Morrison’s family fall over. Sam was pretty sure his mom didn’t even notice she’d been cut off. 

Mr. Morrison rested his elbows on his desk and laid his head in his hands. “Sam, I think you’ll be needing to take tomorrow off to think about all of—” Mr. Morrison made a circular gesture with his hands— “this.” He righted the photo of his wife and family and continued, “There’s only one period left, so gather your things, get your stuff from your locker, and head out. I’ll need a note from you mom on Monday morning.” Principal Morrison placed his readers back on his nose, ran his hands through his thinning hair, and pointed toward the door. By the smirk on his face, Sam was pretty sure he didn’t trust himself to say another word. 

Miss Sharette harrumphed, turned on the heel of her sensible shoes, and stormed out.

“You can go, Sam,” Mr. Morrison wheezed. “Oh, and ‘flaccid’ is a pretty big word for a twelve-year-old.”

Sam smiled. “Thanks sir,” he said, heading to the door. “Sorry about everything.”

Mr. Morrison turned his desk chair to face the wall and nodded without saying anything.

Sam left, quietly closing the door behind himself. As soon as the door clicked shut, he heard Mr. Morrison laugh so hard he thought the frosted glass Principal’s Office part of the door would crack and explode like a piano dropped from a second story window. Sam gave a triumphant thumbs-up to the bewildered secretary, opened the outer office door, and headed out to his locker. He was pretty sure he’d be a legend in the teacher’s lounge by the end of the day.