Schools Out Read online

  “It’s easy,” said Lucas. “I’ll show you.”

  He led the way inside. Marcus and Marius pushed to enter behind him. They both loved popcorn.

  Lucas showed Genevieve the box of corn in the cupboard. “You put a tiny bit of oil in a big pot,” he told her. “Then when it gets hot, you add the corn and it pops. It only takes a few seconds.”

  Genevieve shook the unpopped corn in the box. “This is a very American thing,” she said.

  Lucas found a deep pot for Genevieve. He let her pour the cooking oil into the pot and turn on the stove. He wasn’t allowed to do that himself.

  “In a minute, you put one piece of corn into the pot,” he instructed her. “When it pops, you know the oil is hot enough to put in the rest of the corn.”

  Marcus and Marius stood in silence. They were waiting for the popcorn. Genevieve put a single kernel into the pot. After a minute, they heard a faint hiss and then the sound of the little yellow kernel exploding into a beautiful white piece.

  “Now put the rest of the corn into the pot,” said Lucas.

  He was just about to tell Genevieve to put the lid on the pot when something stopped him. He had always wondered what would happen if you didn’t put a lid on the pot. It would be much more fun to watch the kernels as they exploded into white pieces.

  “Shake the pot a little,” said Lucas. He liked telling General Genevieve what to do.

  “Popcorn. I want popcorn,” said Marcus, bursting with anticipation.

  “Soon. Very soon,” Lucas promised.

  They heard a pop and then another.

  “See? It’s almost ready,” he told his brothers.

  Then all at once, the popping started in earnest. There was a constant pop-pop-pop sound as all the kernels in the pot reached the right temperature for popping. Suddenly, Lucas discovered why the instructions always said to cover the pot.

  Popcorn began to fly out of the pot and onto the floor.

  “Popcorn!” shrieked Marcus with glee.

  “Popcorn!” shouted Marius as he gathered up pieces from the floor and put them inside his mouth.

  Both twins sat down on the floor and scooped up the white pieces.

  “Good!” said Marcus.

  “Good popcorn!” said Marius.

  Genevieve turned off the stove. She found a large bowl in the cupboard and poured the popcorn that remained inside the pot into it. Then she studied the box in which the corn had been stored.

  “Lucas,” she said, “you forgot to tell me something very important. No?”

  Once again, her no meant yes.

  “No,” said Lucas, looking at her with wide-eyed innocence.

  “In America, do you always cook the popcorn so it falls on the floor?” she asked him.

  “Sure,” said Lucas. “The floor is clean. And it’s a good game for Marcus and Marius.” The latter had crawled under the kitchen table to get a couple of pieces that had landed there.

  “They’re not crying anymore,” he pointed out.

  “That is true,” said Genevieve. She smiled at Lucas. “It is good I washed the kitchen floor this afternoon for your mother. ” She pushed the bowl toward Lucas. “Have a piece!” she offered.

  Lucas reached his hand toward the bowl. Before he could get at it, though, Genevieve lifted the bowl above his head. Then she tipped it over. The corn rained over Lucas’s head and onto the kitchen floor.

  Genevieve sat down on the floor. “Come, Lucas,” she invited him. “We will all eat the popcorn on the floor. It is the new American way that I learned today. No?”

  “Yes,” said Lucas, but he meant no.

  He sat down on the floor and began to eat the popcorn.

  3

  WHICH IS WHICH?

  A few days after Genevieve Lamont arrived, Julio rode his bike over to Lucas’s house. The twins were playing on the swing set in the backyard, and Lucas was watching them. It was Genevieve’s day off.

  “I want you to teach me which is which,” said Julio.

  “What do you mean which is which?” asked Lucas.

  “Your brothers. They look the same to me. But you always know which is which. What’s the trick?”

  “It’s not a trick,” said Lucas. “I’ve been trying to show Genevieve the same thing. Look. You can tell by their freckles. He took Julio over to see. Lucas stopped the swing and asked Marcus to get off for a minute. Then he pointed to the back of his brother’s chubby leg. “Look, Julio. See? Marcus has a freckle on the back of his knee. Even though they are identical, Marius doesn’t have a freckle there. ”

  “Hey, that’s great,” said Julio, smiling. He thought for a minute. Then he said, “But how can you tell them apart when they are wearing long pants? Now it’s summer, so they have shorts on. But in the winter you know which is which, too. You can’t see the freckle on his knee then.”

  “Easy,” said Lucas. He helped Marcus back onto the swing and gave him a push. “Marius has a freckle, too. It’s behind his ear.”

  Julio nodded his head. “Okay,” he said. “I can remember that.” He thought again. “What happens if he gets dirty?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Lucas. “He always gets dirty.”

  “If your brother gets dirty, you can’t see the freckle behind his ear.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Lucas, shrugging his shoulders. “I can tell them apart without looking at the freckles.”

  “But how?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucas. “I just know them. After all, they are my brothers.”

  “It’s weird that they are so much alike,” said Julio, studying the twins closely. “What do you think it feels like?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lucas. He had often wondered about it himself. How would it be to have a brother who was just his age and looked just like him? Would the brother do everything he did? When he woke up in the morning, would he ever be confused about who he was and who his brother was?

  “I have an idea,” said Julio. “Let’s see if we can find other ways that they are different . . . besides freckles.”

  “Like what?” asked Lucas.

  Julio thought for a minute. “Which of you guys can jump up and down the longest?” he asked the twins. He started jumping up and down to demonstrate.

  Marcus and Marius both got off the swings and began jumping. They thought it was a new game. Lucas and Julio watched until one of the twins stopped.

  “Okay. You’re the winner,” said Julio. He looked behind the knees of both boys. “Marcus wins,” he said. “He jumped the longest.”

  “You got confused,” said Lucas. “It was Marius who jumped the longest. Marcus has the freckle, but Marius jumped longer.”

  Julio was not discouraged. “We should write this all down. That way, we won’t forget. Could you get a piece of paper? I’ll think of another contest,” he said.

  Lucas went inside the house and returned with a pad of paper and a newly sharpened pencil. It was one of his prize pencils from Mrs. Hockaday.

  “How about running? Which twin runs the fastest?” asked Julio.

  They lined up Marcus and Marius. “When I say to run, you both should run to the fence,” said Lucas. He pointed to the wooden fence that divided their property from their neighbors’. “Then turn around and come back to me. Okay?”

  Marcus and Marius nodded. They liked all these new games.

  “One-two-three-go,” shouted Julio.

  The twins stood looking at him.

  “Why aren’t you running?” asked Lucas.

  “You didn’t say it,” said Marius.

  Lucas grinned. “I taught them how to play Simon Says. I guess they think this is a game called Lucas Says.” He turned to his brothers. “Okay. Run.”

  The twins started off. Marius tripped on a tree root and fell.

  “I got a boo-boo,” he said. He went over to Lucas so that his big brother could rub the spot.

  “We’ll have to do it over,” said Julio.

 
By the end of the afternoon, they had made a whole chart.

  Longest jumper

  Marcus

  Fastest runner

  Marcus

  Eats most cookies

  Marcus

  Gets dirtiest

  tie

  Hops longest on one foot

  Marcus

  Longest clapper

  tie

  Loudest voice

  tie

  “If I study this like I study things for school, then I’ll know all about your brothers,” said Julio. “Probably by the next time I come to play with you, I’ll be able to tell them apart, just like you.”

  “Naw,” said Lucas. “You’ll have to ask them to jump or hop or something. I know who they are when they are standing still or sleeping or anything.”

  “When they’re sleeping, it doesn’t matter which is which,” Julio declared.

  “I wonder if Genevieve will be able to tell them apart by the end of the summer,” said Lucas.

  “I better leave this chart for her,” Julio said as he got ready to go home. “She has a real tough job. ”

  “Which boy is the most trouble?” Lucas asked his parents the next evening. “Marcus or Marius?” It would be another thing to add to Julio’s list.

  “They both know how to horse around equally well,” said Mr. Cott.

  “Horse? How can they be a horse?” asked Genevieve. “They don’t walk on their hands and feet.”

  This was another example of how, even though she seemed to understand English so well, some expressions were new to her.

  “I mean that they are both wild and noisy,” Mr. Cott explained.

  Genevieve removed the little notebook from the pocket of her jeans. Hardly a day passed when she didn’t learn a new word or phrase. Yesterday Lucas had taught her fat chance and about acting chicken.

  “Was I as bad as Marcus and Marius when I was little?” Lucas asked.

  Today had been a particularly trying day for Genevieve. The twins had been playing happily in the plastic wading pool in the backyard one minute. The next moment, Marcus had climbed out of the pool and taken off his little swimming trunks.

  “While Genevieve was putting the trunks back on Marcus, Marius climbed out of the pool and took off his trunks,” Mrs. Cott related to her husband. “And then he ran down the street with nothing on. Genevieve found him all the way down at the corner.”

  “It is good that he knows he must not cross the street,” said Genevieve. “Otherwise, he would have gone even farther.”

  “Did I do things like that when I was little?” asked Lucas. He couldn’t remember being two years old.

  “You never took off your clothes and ran down the street,” said Mrs. Cott. “But I’ll never forget the incident with the little men.”

  “Who are the little men?” asked Lucas.

  “You were a bit older than Marcus and Marius. I guess you must have been four years old. You had just gotten a new pair of scissors and you liked cutting with them. I gave you an old magazine, and you cut out pictures of cars and babies and things like that. The next thing I knew, you had gone to my pocketbook and taken out my money. I found you sitting on the floor busily cutting out the little men.”

  “What little men?” asked Genevieve.

  “The little men on the money,” said his mother. “Lucas didn’t know their names at the time. One little man was George Washington. The other little man was Abraham Lincoln.”

  “Could you still spend the money?” asked Lucas. It was funny to think that once he had been just as bad as Marcus and Marius. In fact, it sounded to him as if he had been as naughty as his two brothers together, even though he was the one and only kid in the family at the time.

  “I took all the pieces to the bank, and they let me exchange the money. The teller at the bank suggested that I take all my money in quarters because you wouldn’t be able to destroy them.” “Did you?” asked Lucas.

  “No,” said Mrs. Cott. “That many coins would have been too heavy. So I took home dollar bills and learned to be more careful around you.”

  “Now you have to be more careful with Marcus and Marius,” said Lucas.

  4

  WET PAINT

  One of the plans that Lucas’s parents had for the summer was to get the outside of the house painted. When Lucas first heard about the project, he was very excited. He thought that he would be able to help. He liked the idea of climbing to the top of a tall ladder and applying a fresh coat of white paint to the sides of the house.

  “Don’t be silly, Lucas,” said his mother. “This is a major undertaking. We’ve hired a professional painting company. There are a couple of men coming to do the job for us.”

  “Well, at least I can watch,” said Lucas.

  “You can watch, but keep away from the paint,” said Mrs. Cott. She turned to face the twins as she spoke so they would know she meant them, too. “I don’t want to find any paint on your clothes,” she said. “Remember, the paint is to go on the house and not on you.”

  The painters were supposed to come the first Monday in July, but they were behind schedule. So it was the middle of the month when the van and the two painters finally arrived to paint the Cott house.

  Lucas stood outside the house with Marcus and Marius and Genevieve. They all watched as the men set up their ladders. They put huge drop cloths on the ground around the house. It was like watching a TV show. The men didn’t begin to paint at once. First, they climbed the ladders and scraped at bits of flaking paint. They removed the shutters from all the windows.

  “The man is breaking the house,” said Marius. He seemed to be marveling that someone could do something that seemed so naughty.

  “He’s not breaking the house,” Genevieve explained. “He must take down the shutters so he can paint underneath them. Your mother said that the shutters will be painted red.”

  “I like red,” said Marcus, nodding his head with approval.

  “Remember to like it but not touch it,” said Mrs. Cott, coming out of the house. “Don’t forget what I said. I don’t want any paint on your clothes. Keep your fingers out of the paint cans.” She turned to look at each of the twins. “Do you understand?” she said. “Not one single drop of paint on your hands.”

  “No paint on my hands,” Marcus promised.

  “No paint on my hands,” said Marius. He looked down at the navy shorts and navy-and-red striped T-shirt he was wearing. “No paint,” he said again.

  After lunch, Lucas got on his bike and went to meet some boys in the local park, where they were going to play ball. By the time he returned home, the painters had begun the actual job of painting. They worked with large rollers that they dipped into the cans of white paint.

  Genevieve had moved the plastic wading pool from its usual place near the side of the house. Now it was located farther away from the house and from the painters. Marcus and Marius were just getting out of the water.

  Marius ran over to Lucas. “Look at the house,” he said, pointing to the newly painted section.

  Lucas nodded his head.

  “Lucas, please watch your brothers for a minute. I forgot to bring towels,” called Genevieve. She turned and went inside the house.

  Marcus came running over to Lucas now, too. “Look at all the paint,” he said, pulling his big brother by the hand toward the nearest open can.

  Lucas looked into the can. The white paint had a shiny appearance inside the can that it didn’t have once it was applied to the sides of the house. It looked cool and inviting, like a vat of milk or, even better, melted marshmallows.

  “Paint looks good,” said Marcus.

  Lucas grinned at his brother. “Yep,” he agreed, nodding his head. It looked good to him, too.

  Marcus stood right next to the paint pail. Lucas knew he should pull him away from it, but he didn’t. It wasn’t his job. Genevieve had come all the way from France to watch the twins. It was her job to see that they didn’t go near the paint.
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  Lucas wondered if his brother would dare to put his hand in the pail. He stood watching to see what Marcus would do.

  Marcus didn’t put his hand in the pail. He lifted his foot and stuck it right inside the can.

  “Marcus!” shouted Lucas. It was hard to believe his brother had really done that. He grabbed the little boy, and the white paint dripped off his foot and onto the lawn.

  “Me, too,” screamed Marius, and he ran toward the can of paint.

  “No, no,” shouted Lucas. He dropped Marcus on the grass and ran to get Marius. He knew his mother was going to be furious, but he couldn’t help laughing. Marcus had what looked like a white sock on his foot. All around, the grass was marked with bits of white paint, too. At least he had prevented Marius from getting a matching sock on his foot.

  “Lucas. What did you do?” exclaimed Genevieve as she emerged from the house carrying a couple of towels.

  “Me?” said Lucas. “I didn’t do anything. He did it. Not me.”

  “I told you to watch them for one minute and look what happened,” Genevieve said. She approached Marcus cautiously. She didn’t want to get a drop of that paint on her.

  Marius was squirming in Lucas’s grasp. Lucas put his brother down on the ground. “It’s not my fault,” Lucas protested, though he knew very well he could have prevented Marcus’s action.

  “Yes it is,” said Genevieve. “You know these boys. One must never take one’s eyes off them, not for a second. Your mother will be furious with me. But it’s not my fault. It’s your fault.”

  “It would have happened if I hadn’t been here,” Lucas asserted. He remembered how tempting the white paint had looked to him. No wonder Marcus had not been able to resist the urge to stick his foot inside.

  One of the painters climbed down from the ladder. “Hey, kid,” he shouted.

  Lucas and Genevieve looked at the painter. Then their eyes went to the spot where the painter was pointing. There was Marius standing with not one but two feet inside the can of paint.