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Standing outside of St. Julia Child Elementary and Middle School, I choked on the stink. Raw eggs covered practically every inch of the pavement in front of me. And some had started to rot. It was absolutely sweltering, and sunscreen was sliding off my pale and easily burned skin. A heat wave had been roasting the entire town of Muffuletta for over a week now, so of course the Camp Egghead summer campers would try to fry eggs on the sidewalks in the courtyard. Normally, I wouldn’t go anywhere near the school during the annual Eggsperiment, because the sight and smell is beyond shuddersome. Unfortunately, that was also the day of my sixth-grade Eating placement test. Back when my parents went to St. Julia Child, which was so long ago they didn’t even have microwaves in the classrooms, Eating placement tests were taken right before high school. But a few years ago a bunch of parents complained that their kids’ mouths weren’t being challenged, so the Muffuletta School Board decided to start dividing sixth-graders based on their Eating skill. Excuse me, please, but taking a test is not the nicest way to end summer vacation. The placement test determines whether we get into the Gifted and Gourmet class, the Becoming a Real Foodie class, or the Remedial Eating to Change Habits class. (Pretty much all the students at St. Julia Child call these classes GAG, BARF, and RETCH, but only when the teachers or Principal Butcher aren’t around.) RETCH is what you get put into if you fail the placement test, and if you don’t pass out of RETCH by the end of the year, you have to go to summer school. That’s exactly the kind of embarrassment that would actually kill you very dead, no matter how much my parents try to convince me otherwise. I shaded my eyes to see how far the Eggsperiment extended. Going around it would take too long, and I was already worried about being late. I was going to have to walk right through the oozing yellow minefield. I slapped a hand over my nose and mouth, took a deep breath, and started leaping from one patch of clean pavement to the next. Maybe if I concentrated really hard on total egg avoidance, I could forget how nervous I was. If it had been a test for any other subject, my stomach wouldn’t feel like it was being put through a meat grinder. I get Satisfactorys in almost everything except Math and Science (where I get Exceptionals) and Eating. Here and there, I might get a Needs Improvements, but if I’m unlucky, which seems to happen a lot, I get Pickys—the worst Eating grade. Even though teachers at St. Julia Child try to infuse all the subjects with food-related curriculums or examples—like, for Reading, making recipe collections of all the food that’s mentioned in a book, or in Math, learning fractions by cutting up a pie—Eating is the only subject at school that requires a placement test. An oral placement test. I don’t try to get Pickys in Eating, but I’m just not as good at it as other kids. It’s boring and gross and hard. There was this day in kindergarten when I didn’t want to make meatballs for a Touch! Make! Taste! lesson. I told Mrs. Courgette that the raw ground meat squishing and squelching between my fingers felt like the time I picked up a slug from the garden and accidentally squeezed it too hard. The next day, Mrs. Courgette called my parents in for a chat. “So,” Mrs. Courgette said to my parents, “Minerva is struggling in Eating. She doesn’t want to try new things, she disrupts the class with awful faces and gagging noises, and her food group sorting, well, just see for yourself.” My parents looked over at the big display of paper plates on the class bulletin board. Using pictures from food magazines, we were supposed to fill the smallest section of the paper plate with things like chips and cookies, to show that they were less nutritious. And then we were supposed to fill the other, larger sections of the plate with the basic food groups—fruits, vegetables, grains, meat, and dairy products—according to how much we were supposed to eat of them per day. But in the small section I had glued magazine cutouts of all the foods I hated and labeled it “Iky Fud.” The rest of my plate was filled with pictures of food I liked: macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and baked potatoes (both with lots of butter), french fries, grilled cheese, pasta, cheese pizza, roast chicken, cheese, ice cream, cookies, pickles, and ketchup. I had drawn lots of arrows pointing to those foods and written “YUM!” I didn’t even bother to sort them into the proper groups. My parents exchanged worried glances. “It is very important that you work on Eating with Minerva at home as much as possible so she can catch up with the rest of the students,” Mrs. Courgette went on, picking up a neatly piled sheaf of flavored nori and holding it out. “I have some worksheets you can have her eat at home.” My parents would have the same conversation every year with all my other teachers. And it always ended with more seaweed worksheets. Teachers think that sending worksheets home is the answer to everything. I think the only thing they answer is: What would it taste like to lick the wall of a moldy old dungeon? The worksheets come in flavors like onion, barbecue, and even bacon, which is supposed to help “expand your palate.” But I still taste dank dungeon walls.I hopped over another dark yellow egg slick. Getting across the Eggsperiment wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. In a few more seconds, I’d be home free. I just needed to take one last leap. Too late and in midair, I realized my leap wasn’t going to be long enough. I landed hard. The heel of my flip-flop slashed right through the middle of an egg yolk and sent me skidding through several others. “MOTHER EARRRRTH!” I hollered. I windmilled my arms as hard as I could to stay upright, but I slipped and slid across the courtyard sidewalk before I finally splurched to a stop on egg-free pavement. I leaned over my knees to catch some of my breath. That was the closest I had ever come to getting a concussion. Last week my parents and I watched an interesting but also sort of scary television program all about the science of concussions. I had been reading a lot of books and articles about concussions ever since. I did the same thing after we watched a special on shark attacks. My parents don’t like it when I do this. They think it makes me even more anxious, but if you ask me, it’s good to be as informed as possible about the scarier things in life. That way it’s easier to avoid them. In my concussion research I learned that pretty much ANYTHING could give you a concussion: driving in a car, taking a shower, stuff falling from the sky when you happen to be outside without a hardhat—even walking around in the middle of the night in your own house. You just never know when concussions might strike. Still panting, I scraped egg off my flip-flops on the pavement and flapped my shirt. Just for a second I thought about Sons of Seitan, Muffuletta’s vegan K-8 school. They had air conditioning, which really helped with how hot classroom ovens made everything. But honestly, if I ever had to give up real cheese for nut cheese, I would most certainly die a horrible death. The door on the testing classroom had a big sign taped to it in the shape of a poufy chef’s hat: SIXTH-GRADE PLACEMENT TEST. (We made those hats out of coffee filters in first grade, and they’re really called toques, but I like calling them poufy chef hats.) Before I grabbed the door handle, I closed my eyes and reminded my stomach to think positive. If I took calming breaths, drank water, and didn’t concentrate too hard about what was in my mouth, there was no reason why I couldn’t do well enough to get into BARF. The lights were off and the windows were open, but the room still stunk a bit from last year’s classes—old potatoes, hot fish, and the fartiness of raw broccoli. Some students were twisting around in their seats, looking at everyone else. Others sat with their hands folded and their napkins already in their laps. Akshay Bhargava, a boy I knew slightly from having the same teacher in second grade, tried to inch up the lid of the covered plate in front of him, until Mr. Kreplach stomped over and smacked it back down again. “Ashkay, you will lose points if you try that again!” Mr. Kreplach snapped, his perpetually pink face turning even more so than usual. “Akshay, not Ashkay,” Akshay said in an undertone. Like he was hoping no one else would hear him. But also hoping they would. “What?” Mr. Kreplach said, turning back around. “Nothing,” Akshay said, flushing under his deep brown cheeks. Teachers were always getting Akshay’s name wrong. When he played on the boys’ basketball team last year, they misspelled his name on his jersey. And when his team won the championship, the school newsletter spelled his first and last name wrong. I didn’t understand it. They were always bugging students about knowing how to spell everything correctly, why didn’t they do the same for kids’ names? I looked around until I spotted my best friends, Patricia Jenson and Cindy Kobayashi, sitting next to each other. Cindy had pink ribbons patterned with tiny yellow butterflies threaded through her long, shiny black braid. Cindy’s grandmother in Japan was always sending her the cutest hair accessories. Then I noticed that Patricia’s copper-colored curls were pulled in a high ponytail and tied with the same pink and yellow ribbon. Huh. I ran my hand through my own sweat-damp brown hair in a basically pointless attempt to neaten it up a bit, and tried to get Patricia’s and Cindy’s attention. But they were too busy whispering with each other to see me standing there—or, I noticed with a frown, even to save a seat for me. On the other side of the room there was an empty desk with a covered plate. I sank down in the seat, gave a loud sigh, then quickly looked over at my friends. They finally looked up and waved, smiling. I gave an unsmiling wave back. Neither Patricia nor Cindy looked even a smidgeon as nervous as my stomach felt. Of course, I reminded myself, neither one of them has ever gotten a Picky in Eating, either, so there was really no need for them to be nervous at all. Cindy’s dad works at the business school at Stanfork University in Muffuletta, where my dad is a math professor, and whenever they run into each other on campus, Mr. Kobayashi tells him how great Cindy is doing in Eating. “Don’t worry,” my dad always says to me, “I never forget to tell him how great you’re doing in Math.” And Patricia . . . well, even the kindergartners knew how amazing Patricia was in Eating—Principal Butcher made sure of that. “Not everyone is going to be naturally good in Eating,” my dad told me over and over. “That’s why you’re going to school: to learn.” “But we do need you to try your best,” my mom always chimed in. That was easy for them to say—both of them had been good at Eating all their lives, and their love of all food seemed to have skipped me and gone right to my brother. Hugo ate everything I didn’t and more. And by the way, I did try, but eating food after food after food that you don’t like is so hard. I jiggled my leg under the desk and forced myself to take a breath. The test changes every year, so it was very possible it would be something I could handle. Last year, the test included grilled octopus, so at least I didn’t have to worry about dealing with that today. I crossed my fingers and jammed them under my thighs. Then I counted off my luck on my crossed fingers: I made it through the Eggsperiment without gagging or getting a concussion, the classroom oven was off, and I was wearing my favorite flip-flops. I was still trying to think of one more piece of luck when Mr. Kreplach left the room. Inch by inch, I leaned forward as far as I could without my face actually touching the silver lid on the plate. “No sniffing!” someone hissed behind me. I flinched away from the lid and was about to hiss back “No snitching!” when Mr. Kreplach came back with our knives and forks, and all at once I found the ceiling incredibly fascinating. “Mr. Kreplach?” Patricia called out, waving her hand in the air. “There won’t be any clams, will there? Because I’m allergic.” “Yes, Patricia, we do know you’re allergic. There won’t be any clams on the test, and no student at St. Julia Child would ever be given a food that is listed on their medical or religious ‘do not eat’ form,” Mr. Kreplach said. Then he turned to me. “Proper testing conditions at St. Julia Child require sitting up straight, elbows off the desk, and napkin in lap.” I snatched my elbows back and picked up my napkin from the floor. Then I crossed my arms really hard across my chest so my hands wouldn’t try to peek under the cover. Mr. Kreplach walked to the front of the class and waited for the high school students, who were acting as teacher’s aides for the test, to finish setting glasses of water on every desk. When they were finished, Mr. Kreplach clapped his hands to get our attention. “Now, class,” he said calmly, “as soon as the lids are removed, you may begin. Remember to keep your mouths on your own work and chew with your mouths closed. The cleaner your plate, the better your grade. If you meet standards on today’s test, you will return for a more advanced test tomorrow to determine your final sixth-grade Eating placement.” I raised my hand, “And if we don’t meet standards today?” Mr. Kreplach raised his eyebrows. “That will also determine your sixth-grade Eating placement.” He lifted a finger. “And begin!” With a metallic zing, the aides whipped the lids off everyone’s plates. I thought it was pretty amazing the way they did it all at the same time, and I was about to ask them how long they had practiced and how many lids they dropped or how many kids they had clonged in the face and given concussions. I thought it was a very good thing to learn about before I took this test. Maybe we’d even have to have a long, interesting discussion about it and would run out of time for the test. But when I opened my mouth, Mr. Kreplach narrowed his eyes and glared pointedly at my plate. I looked down, and when I saw what was there, I glared, too.
