The Best Man by Richard Peck Page A

“Noooo.”
    â€œHoney—”
    â€œThey can’t do this.” I pounded a pillow. “We were going to be the oldest. Now we’ll be the youngest. There’ll be different teachers for different subjects. I won’t be able to find them. Lockers, Mom. With combination locks.”
    I sat up. “Mom, I’m not ready. This isn’t the body I wanted to take to middle school. Look at it. I need another year. I’m pre—what?”
    â€œPrepubescent?” Mom offered.
    â€œProbably. You’ll have to homeschool me.”
    She paled. “This shouldn’t come as such a shock to you,” she said. “The Board of Education’s been debating it all summer. It’s in the paper every day.”
    â€œMom, this is another case of everybody talking around me and not to me. I don’t read the paper.”
    â€œMaybe you should.”
    â€œMaybe I would if I had my own computer with Internet ac—”
    â€œOr you could read the one that gets thrown on our porch every morning.”
    â€œMom, I’m not ready,” I said again.
    â€œArcher, honey, change doesn’t care whether you’re ready or not. Change happens anyway.”
    â€¢ • •
    Then it’s the first day of school—middle school, just like that. Still August, of course. Labor Day’s still down the road. They’ve told us sixth graders to report to the auditorium, which smells of fear. Or is it just me? I looked to see if I had the wrong shoes. I probably had the wrong shoes.
    We milled around because the two homeroom teachers were up there poring over printouts. And another nightmare. It wasn’t just us Westside sixth graders. It was sixth graders from Eastside Elementary and Central Elementary. A sea of strangers. I saw nobody I knew. How could that even be? A lot of friendship bracelets. A lot of headphones. A lot of hoodies. Hoodies in August?
    Somebody came up to me out of the milling mob. Hoodie and shorts. Headphones and big gym shoes. Not quite my height, but his voice had changed.
    â€œDude, how great is it that Natalie Schuster isn’t here?” he said. “She’s like on the North Shore. In the New Trier district. Someplace.”
    â€œYeah,” I said. “I heard she wasn’t coming back.”
    â€œCan you believe why?” this guy said.
    Probably not. “Why?”
    â€œBecause her mother got married again, and they moved.”
    â€œI didn’t know her mother wasn’t married,” I said.
    â€œI guess we weren’t supposed to. But she’s married now. You know who she married?”
    Search me.
    â€œIt was in the paper,” this kid said. “Mr. Showalter. Remember Jackson Showalter from first grade? Didn’t he pull a knife on you in the rest—”
    â€œRight,” I said. It was going to take me a while to figure this out. Natalie Schuster’s stepbrother was going to be Jackson Showalter?
    The guy with all the information turned away. He seemed to be working the room. He turned back. “Archer, you don’t know me, do you?”
    â€œAh . . .”
    â€œI’m Josh Hunnicutt.”
    What? “Get out of here,” I said. But I looked again, and it
was
Josh Hunnicutt. The same kid, but longer.
    â€œI grew just under a foot this summer,” he said. “Eleven and three-eighths inches. Wore me out. I fainted six times. Once in the pool. They had to fish me out.”
    â€œWhat about the voice?”
    â€œThat’s just now happening. I’m up and down with it. But it’s pretty deep this morning, which is great since it’s the first day of middle school.”
    Rub it in, I thought. “Great,” I said.
    â€œAnd look here.” Josh pointed to his chin. “I’m about to rock some teenage acne.”
    â€œWay to go,” I muttered, and he went.
    Bells rang. Everybody was sitting. I looked for a seat over