Philip and the Loser (9781619501522) by John Paulits

Chapter One
     
    Philip slumped at his desk. The teacher
eyed him coldly, so he quickly sat up. When the teacher looked
elsewhere, Philip slumped again.
Will this class never
be over?
he wondered.
Will lunch time never
get here?
Fourth grade had to be the most boring thing
in the world, and September hadn’t even ended yet! The teacher
looked his way a second time, so Philip took the trouble to wriggle
upright again. Mr. Sagsman wasn’t their real teacher. He only came
into the class twice a week to teach about feelings, conflict
resolution, brotherhood, and stuff like that.
    “ And so, kids, what I want you to do is
find an example of brotherhood somewhere in your own lives,” Mr.
Sagsman went on.
    Philip quietly moaned and glanced at
his best friend Emery, who sat next to him.
Brotherhood;
oh, brother,
Philip moaned inwardly. He had one baby
sister, and Emery two baby
sisters. Why didn’t Mr. Sagsman teach about
sister
hood and how to put up with it? That would
have been something worth learning, instead of his making the class
write a whole page about some kind of brotherhood in their lives.
Philip didn’t even know what Mr. Sagsman was
talking
about. He hoped Emery would be able to clue
him in.
    Suddenly, a jolting crash came from outside
the classroom. Philip sat up again. At last! Something interesting
to break the monotony. Mr. Sagsman walked over and opened the
classroom door, and from where he sat, Philip saw a boy lying on
top of an upside-down, single desk, trying to get untangled from
the four upright legs of the desk.
    “ What in the world happened?” Mr.
Sagsman asked, stepping outside to help the boy to his
feet.
    Philip noticed Emery put his head down on one
arm and cover the top of his head with his other arm. Philip looked
back at the doorway. Mr. Sagsman led the boy into the room.
    “ Are you all right?” Mr. Sagsman asked.
“What happened?”
    The boy smiled, and Philip could see one of
his big front teeth had a chip out of it. The boy’s hair looked
like his mother forgot to make him comb it. The boy gave a loud
sniff, scratched above his right ear, and said, “I fell down.”
    The class laughed. Mr. Sagsman shushed them.
“What do you mean you fell down?”
    “ Well,” the boy said slowly, scratching
the other side of his head above his left ear. “I was pushing this
desk to Ms. Bethal’s class. She’s my new fourth grade teacher, and
this is my first day here, and that’s gonna be my desk.”
    New in school,
Philip thought.
No wonder he hadn’t seen him before.
    “ I was pushing it and . . . and . . .”
The boy wobbled his hands around in front of him for a few seconds.
“. . . it fell over.”
    The class laughed again.
    “ You were pushing the desk, and it fell
over?”
    “ Yep,” the boy nodded. “It went . . .”
He flipped one hand over the other. “. . . over.
Boom!”
The boy smiled at the laughing children,
pleased to be entertaining them.
    Mr. Sagsman looked at the class and shook his
head. “Stop.” He turned back to the boy. “Are you hurt?”
    “ No,
I
didn’t go
. . .
boom!
The table went . . .
boom!”
He said
boom
real loud
and gave a loud
yuk yuk
after the second
boom, and the class laughed even harder.
    “ All right. All right, enough,” said
Mr. Sagsman. Philip wondered why teachers didn’t have the same
sense of humor as their students. Mr. Sagsman, especially. “Come
on. Let me help you.” Mr. Sagsman took the boy into the hall and
righted the desk for him. “Be careful now.”
    The boy stared back into the classroom
and said, “No more
booms?”
    “ No more booms,” Mr. Sagsman responded
over the laughter of the class. He turned away from the boy and
reentered the classroom. The boy followed Mr. Sagsman to the door.
“
Boom!”
he cried again and joined in with the
wildly laughing children in front of him.
    “ Young man,” Mr. Sagsman began. Philip
saw this boy knew what
young man
meant. The
boy turned away and got behind the