The Squirting Donuts Read online

Dad tells us, “I have two job interviews tomorrow. In the morning I’m going to Malcolm’s Breads. They advertised for a salesman, but mostly it’s a delivery job. If I get the job, I’d have to get up really early and deliver packaged breads to a whole bunch of stores. The sales part is in the afternoon when I’d make calls and try to get new customers.”

  “What’s early?” Mom asks.

  “Four o’clock.”

  “You’ll have to be quiet,” Mom says. “You could leave your clothes in the guest room so you don’t wake the rest of us.”

  “The other job is at a bicycle shop. I’d sell bicycles and exercise equipment. The store doesn’t open until ten, so I could get up at a regular time.”

  I hope Dad gets that job. Maybe they sell unicycles. That’s like a bicycle but with just one wheel. I’ve always wanted to try riding one. I also want to learn to juggle.

  The next morning Calvin comes outside with my shirt on a hanger. All the jelly is off. I can’t take it to school, so I drop it off at home. Now we have to hurry, or we’ll be late.

  We get to school just as the bell rings. We’ll be late to class, but just by a minute. I expect Mrs. Cakel to be standing by the door to our classroom, but she’s not there. Mr. Telfer tells us she’s absent. Maybe she’s too upset to come to school. Maybe she wants to spend the day looking for Lollipop. Or maybe what Mr. Telfer told us is true. Maybe she’s sick.

  Our substitute teacher is Mr. Jacobs. He used to teach here but then he retired. He got old and that’s what people do when they get old. Teachers retire because they want to stop going to work and then they keep coming back to the school they worked in.

  I don’t get it, but I don’t get lots of things old people do.

  Mr. Jacobs hands out some math worksheets. After we’re done with that he wants us to read. He brought along two large baskets of books. I think they’re from his class library from when he was a teacher.

  There are lots of problems on the worksheets and they’re not easy.

  The first is multiplication, 37 x 27 = ?

  I work slowly. I want to get the right answer.

  Hey!

  The answer is 999.

  Three nines.

  How cool is that!

  The second problem is multiplication, 37 X 18 = ?

  The answer is 666.

  Here’s a word problem:

  A bus is on its way uptown.

  There are 12 passengers sitting on the right side of the bus.

  There are 8 passengers sitting on the left side of the bus.

  No passengers are standing.

  How many people are on the bus?

  It’s a trick question. 12 + 8 = 20, so there are 21 people on the bus. There are 20 passengers and 1 bus driver.

  “I’m finished,” Calvin calls out.

  “That’s fast,” Mr. Jacobs says and takes Calvin’s worksheets.

  Calvin doesn’t really do math. He just makes up answers and writes them down.

  Mr. Jacobs tells Calvin to find something to read.

  Calvin looks through the two baskets of books.

  Mr. Jacobs looks through Calvin’s worksheets.

  “These are all wrong,” Mr. Jacobs tells Calvin. “Mr. Telfer told me there were good students in this class,” he says as he puts a large red zero on the top of each of Calvin’s worksheets. “I guess he doesn’t know about you.”

  Yes he does. Everyone in school knows about Calvin Waffle.

  At lunch we talk about Mr. Jacobs. Everyone thinks he’s nice.

  “He lets us slouch and get comfortable when we read,” Annie says. “I forgot what it’s like to have a nice teacher.”

  I knew Mrs. Cakel wasn’t there, but this morning I still sat up. This afternoon I’ll try to slouch.

  Mr. Jacobs already told us we wouldn’t have homework, so after school Calvin and I will drop off our things at home and walk back to town.

  Calvin has a bunch of broken cookies from his mom’s bakery. He shares them with us.

  “They can’t sell these,” he says, “but cookie pieces taste just as good as whole ones.”

  He’s right.

  We read some more after lunch. Then Mr. Jacobs tells us we can talk quietly for the last hour. I feel really relaxed when the school day ends.

  I hope Mrs. Cakel is also absent tomorrow.

  We have no homework, so we can get right to our Lollipop hunt. It’s exciting to be a lost dog detective. When we find Lollipop, maybe Mrs. Cakel will be so happy and will become warm and loving like my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Herman.

  I don’t think so.

  On our first day with her as our teacher, we were really noisy. Most of us hadn’t seen each other since June. Mrs. Cakel just stood there and looked at her watch. She didn’t say a word. She just waited. When we were finally quiet, she told us, “I waited twelve minutes and thirty-six seconds for you. You’ll wait that long after the lunch bell rings before I dismiss you.” And she did, even the thirty-six seconds.

  She’s not a screamer but she’s strict. She’ll never be warm and loving.

  “Let’s leave our book bags at my house,” Calvin says on our way home. “Maybe Mom has some bakery treats for us.”

  She does.

  We walk in and his mother tells us, “I was promoted. I’m now in charge of jelly donut research and development.”

  Calvin says, “But you were only working there one day.”

  “Two days.”

  Mrs. Waffle walks toward the kitchen. Now she turns and says, “Well, come on. You have to help me with my research.”

  In the kitchen, on the table, is a large plate of jelly donuts. There’s also a container of milk and paper cups.

  “A man came into the bakery this morning and he’s wearing a suit and tie and the suit is blue with thin white stripes, like he works as a banker or some job that doesn’t get his hands dirty. You know, when I bake, my hands get covered with flour and jelly. If my nose tickles and I scratch it, I get flour and jelly on that too. I look like a clown. That must be fun, being a clown, and making people laugh.”

  “Mom,” Calvin says, “what about the man in the suit?”

  “Did I tell you about him? He came into the bakery and said that yesterday he bought a jelly donut and it was the best he ever had. He said it was messy, but he liked all the extra jelly. That’s when I told my boss that I put two shots in every donut. Now there’s a sign in the window advertising our ‘Double jelly donuts.’”

  Calvin and I sit by the table. His mother gives each of us a paper plate.

  “My boss wants me to do donut experiments.”

  She cuts one donut in small pieces. We each taste it.

  “This is my double flavor donut. It’s got one shot of raspberry and one shot of apricot.”

  It’s good and that’s what I tell Mrs. Waffle.

  I take another piece.

  She cuts a few more donuts.

  The next piece I take has what looks like black jelly. I taste it.

  Yuck!

  “It’s filled with prune butter.”

  “Not good,” I tell Mrs. Waffle.

  I need to wash away the prune taste. I pour some milk in a cup and quickly drink it.

  The next one is filled with colored candy sprinkles. I bite into it and sprinkles spill all over the table and my pants.

  “I like sprinkles on cookies and cake,” I tell Mrs. Waffle, “but in a donut, they are kind of dry.”

  I tell her that of the three, my favorite is the raspberry apricot.

  We finish our snack and walk toward Clover Street.

  “How could anyone eat a prune donut?” Calvin asks.

  “Old people like prunes,” I tell him as we walk. “They like toast and tea and boiled chicken and dry cake.”

  �
��Maybe that’s what made Mrs. Cakel sick,” Calvin says. “Maybe she ate too much dry cake. Maybe she’s de-something.”

  “Dehydrated.”

  “Yeah. Maybe she needs a big drink of water.”

  We’re on Clover Street, across the street from Mrs. Cakel’s house. Her car is not in the driveway.

  “Maybe she’s at her doctor’s office being examined,” I tell Calvin.

  “Maybe she’s at the movies,” Calvin says, “or in some teacher store buying more workbooks for us to do or at the printer making up a new ‘NO’ sign with lots more things not to do.”

  We walk toward town. The lost dog posters are still on the trees, so I’m sure Lollipop is still missing. If she had her dog, Mrs. Cakel would take down the signs.

  We walk past the butcher shop to the next block where there’s a pizza shop and a restaurant. We walk to the back of both places and look at the garbage. There’s a large metal garbage bin behind each store. The lids on them are heavy. We’re sure that a small dog couldn’t lift them.

  “Lollipop wasn’t here,” I say.

  We walk to the next block and Calvin grabs my arm. “Look by the traffic light,” he whispers. “There she is.”

  I look toward the corner and expect to see a small dog with a fancy haircut. But I don’t. I see an old blue car.

  “It’s Mrs. Cakel,” Calvin whispers. “Look how slowly she’s driving. She must be looking for her Candy-On-A-Stick dog.”

  We stand real close to the window of a clothing store. As the old blue car approaches, we turn and face the store. I don’t know why, but Calvin doesn’t want her to see us.

  She drives past.

  “We can’t let her find her dog,” Calvin tells me.

  “Why? All that really matters is that someone finds Lollipop.”

  “No, that’s not what matters. All that matters is that you and I find her little dog with the froufrou haircut. I need her to stop thinking of me as the troublemaking kid who doesn’t do his work. I need her to think of me as the hero who found her dog.”

  “Why don’t you just do your work?”

  Calvin shakes his head.

  “Don’t you think I tried that? I sit down by the kitchen table, check my notepad, and open my workbook or whatever to the page she assigned. I look at what she wants us to do and I just can’t do it. It’s too boring. Sometimes I think my mind is like my mother’s conversation. It can’t stay on one topic very long.”

  “One day you’ll get a job and have to do whatever the boss says.”

  “The boss won’t tell me to do thirty multiplications. I won’t take a job like that. I’ll take a job doing something I like. Mom did that. She loves to bake.”

  I think about Dad.

  I hope he gets a job he likes.

  I hope he gets a job.

  On the next block, we walk behind a supermarket. The garbage bin is tough to get into. It has a heavy lid that’s snapped shut. This can’t be where Lollipop is eating.

  We go behind a restaurant. It’s clean here too, and the garbage bin is closed. We’re about to leave when Calvin points to a small bowl by the back door.

  “That’s a doggy bowl,” Calvin says. “Maybe Lollipop doesn’t have to dig in the garbage. Maybe someone feeds her.”

  The bowl is empty.

  Calvin asks me for the reward poster and I give it to him. He folds it so only the picture of Lollipop is showing. We walk to the front of the restaurant and go inside.

  It’s mostly empty. It’s too early for people to be eating dinner. We walk past several round tables already set with dishes, glasses, knives, spoons, and forks to the door to the kitchen.

  Calvin pushes open the door and calls out, “Is anyone here?”

  “I’ll be right with you,” a woman answers.

  We wait a few minutes. Then a tall woman wearing a long white apron comes from somewhere in the kitchen.

  “You’re a little early,” she says. “We begin serving dinner at five.”

  She looks at her watch.

  “Oh, my. That’s in just ten minutes.”

  “We didn’t come for dinner. We’re looking for this dog,” Calvin says and shows her Lollipop’s picture.

  “Ah, isn’t she cute,” the woman says and sighs. “She comes here every night.”

  “YES!” Calvin shouts. “We found her.”

  He leans close and whispers to me, “My dad will be proud. One day I’ll be a great spy like him.”

  The woman tells us her name is Naomi.

  “The dog is not here now,” she says. “She comes by much later. Is she yours?”

  Calvin says, “She’s Beatrice Cakel’s dog. She’s our teacher.”

  The way Calvin said that it sounded like Lollipop is our teacher, not Mrs. Cakel. But Naomi understood what he meant. She tells us that a few nights ago she saw Lollipop by the back door.

  “That dog looked hungry and she didn’t look like she was accustomed to search for her dinner, so I gave her leftovers. Wow, did that dog eat fast! After that, I told my waiters not to throw out large leftover portions of meat. We put it in a bowl by the back door. We get busy here about seven. That’s when the dog comes by.”

  We found Lollipop!

  “She’s skittish,” Naomi says. “Whenever one of us gets near her, she runs away. We couldn’t even read her dog tag.”

  That means we can’t get Lollipop and bring her to Mrs. Cakel. We have to bring Mrs. Cakel to Lollipop.

  I tell Naomi that we’ll be back at seven.

  On the way home, I tell Calvin, “We have to call Mrs. Cakel and tell her we may have found her dog.”

  “Not yet,” Calvin says. “First, we have to find out what reward we’re getting.”

  “No,” I say and stop walking. “We’ll call and tell her what Naomi said. Then at seven o’clock, we’ll go with her and hopefully find her Lollipop.”

  Calvin folds his arms. He squeezes his lips together like he just tasted a lemon. If I had to describe his look, I’d say it was determined. He didn’t want to return Mrs. Cakel’s dog without getting a great reward.

  “What has Beatrice Cakel ever done for me?” he asks.

  “She’s taught you about adverbs, prepositions, and semicolons. She’s taught you about parallel and perpendicular lines, improper fractions, mixed numbers, and volcanoes.”

  Calvin shakes his head.

  “There’s a big difference,” he says. “I didn’t want to know about mixed improper volcanoes and that other stuff, and she really wants her Candy-On-A-Stick dog. She’s the one who wrote ‘Reward’ on the posters.”

  This time I shake my head.

  “When you find something that someone lost, you return it. And if you won’t return Lollipop because it’s the right thing, do it because we’re best friends and it’s what I want.”

  Calvin loses that determined look. He unfolds his arms and asks, “I’m your best friend?”

  “Yes.”

  Calvin’s lemon-tasting look has changed to a double-jelly-donut look: all smiley.

  “Let’s go,” I say and we continue our walk home.

  I go with him to his house to get my books. Before we go in, we call Mrs. Cakel on Calvin’s cell.

  “I’ll talk,” I tell Calvin. “If you talk, you might call her Beatrice.”

  “Hello.”

  “This is Danny Cohen.”

  “Who gave you my number? Why are you calling me at home?”

  She sounds angry. She sounds like Mrs. Cakel.

  I tell her about Lollipop.

  Now she sounds like Mr. Jacobs, our substitute teacher, and Mrs. Herman, my kindergarten teacher. She says she’ll come before seven with her car and pick Calvin and me up at my house. I tell all that to Calvin.

  Before I leave, Calvin asks, “We can take a r
eward if she wants to give us one, can’t we?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hm,” Calvin says. “I wonder what it will be.”

  “Dad has good news,” Karen tells me when I walk in the house.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” Karen says. “He said he’ll tell us at dinner.”

  “I have good news too.”

  I tell Karen about Lollipop.

  “So now your mean teacher who was nice for a few days will become mean again.”

  When Karen put it like that, finding Lollipop didn’t sound like such good news.

  Dad made vegetable soup for dinner and it tastes like vegetable soup. That’s the first good news. Then Dad tells us about the bicycle shop.

  “The owner called this afternoon. He said he’s been looking for a while for someone to help him. He liked that I seemed to know a lot about bicycles and that I have lots of selling experience. He offered me a job and I accepted. I start Monday.”

  “That’s great,” Karen and I say.

  Mom just smiles. I think she knew the news before dinner.

  “Do you know why he thinks I know about bicycles?”

  That’s one of those rhetorical questions, the kind you don’t answer.

  “Before I went to his shop, I checked on the Internet what he sells. Then I researched. I read all about the bicycles and the exercise equipment.”

  I ask about unicycles and Dad says the store has one or two for sale. He’ll let me try riding one, but not right away. Maybe in two or three weeks, he says, after he’s been on the job for a while.

  I tell Mom and Dad about Lollipop, that Calvin is coming here, and Mrs. Cakel will be picking us up. You want to hear something funny?

  That’s another rhetorical question. Don’t answer it. I’ll tell you what’s funny.

  When I mentioned Mrs. Cakel’s name, Dad sat up. He won’t even slouch when I talk about her.

  “You’ll open the door for her,” Mom says. “If I do, she’ll think I want to talk about your schoolwork, and this is not about that.”

  I bet Mom will hide in the kitchen or upstairs. I don’t think she or Dad want to see my teacher.