The Boy Who Owned the School Read online

  “You were?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like you.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Is that all you’re going to do — ask questions?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Don’t you think we should do something about the fog?”

  He remembered then. The machine. He had to turn off the machine. He had to go back in there and turn it off. He put his hand on the door then stopped, looked back at Maria. “Wait a minute. You mean you’ll really go out with me?”

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  He thought. “I mean not just maybe, but really? You really mean it?”

  Another nod.

  “Will you go to a movie with me next Friday night?” he insisted.

  “Yes, yes, yes — now go turn off the machine before they lose the whole school in fog.”

  He opened the door. Billows of fog rolled out.

  One week, he thought, vanishing in the gray muck. One week.

  I’ve got one week to get my learner’s permit, take the test, learn to drive, get my license, get my sister to like me and loan me her car.

  Perfect.

  OR almost perfect.

  “You have to take the driver’s education class for nine hours before you can take the permit test,” the driver’s education teacher told him. “Then you have to get a license before you can actually take the car out alone….”

  “Can’t I do it all in one day?” Jacob asked. “A long day?”

  Not that it would have helped.

  His sister didn’t come to like him. Although that wasn’t exactly the way she put it. He spent three days buttering her up, helping her clean her room, opening the door for her, not interrupting her when she was complaining, and it was all for nothing.

  “The only way I would loan you my car,” she said, looking at him incredibly beautifully with her beauty-contest eyes over a spoonful of chewy yogurt, which he had opened and handed to her, “is if you promised to drive it off a cliff.”

  I wish, Jacob thought, turning to leave, I had spit in the yogurt.

  “Why do you want to borrow your sister’s car?” his mother asked. They were in the kitchen and she was sipping a cup of coffee.

  “Because the little toilet has a date,” his sister said. “Somebody is actually going out with him.”

  “A date?” She put her cup down. “Well — couldn’t I take you somewhere? The two of you?”

  Oh great, he thought. My mother can take me on a date. Great.

  And it was Friday.

  Friday and he had no hope.

  Maria met him in the hall in the afternoon just after gym class.

  “What movie are we going to see tonight?”

  She was wearing a T-shirt with something that looked like a dead dog or a sleeping burro on it and he thought he’d never seen anything so beautiful and he wanted to lie, wanted to tell her he had learned to drive and that his sister loved him and had given him the car, but he didn’t.

  “I can’t take you on a date,” he said, feeling the ground open up beneath his feet. “Nothing is right. I couldn’t get a car and I don’t know how to drive and …”

  “That doesn’t matter.” She interrupted him.

  “It doesn’t?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. We don’t need a car and you don’t need to know how to drive. I have a motor scooter. I’ll pick you up at six and we’ll go to the movie.”

  Which is exactly the way it happened.

  Except for the Doberman from Hell who chased them and almost caught part of Jacob that was sticking out over the back of the motor scooter and the fact that there was a long line at the movie so they didn’t get in until the second show and they were out of buttered popcorn and about eighty-five thousand people saw them waiting and most of them were jocks and Jacob knew they would try to put him in the trash container the next day, not just try but do it, jam him right down into the trash and it all overwhelmed him and he turned to Maria and said it — didn’t want to say it, hated to say it, hated his mouth for saying it but said it:

  “Why are you going out with me?”

  And she looked at him and smiled and he knew the smile was real, was gentle and real and she said: “Because you’re a winner.”

  “I am?” he said, his voice quiet.

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know.” And he thought then, finally, things were perfect.

  Perfect.

  GARY PAULSEN has achieved a wide and enthusiastic audience with books as varied as The Voyage of the Frog, The Island, and The Crossing, and three Newbery Honor books, Dogsong, Hatchet, and The Winter Room.

  Paulsen and his wife, Ruth Wright Paulsen, an artist who has illustrated several of his books, divide their time between a home in New Mexico and a boat in the Pacific.

  Also by GARY PAULSEN

  The Cookcamp

  The Winter Room

  The Voyage of the Frog

  The Island

  The Crossing

  Hatchet

  Sentries

  Dogsong

  Tracker

  Dancing Carl

  This book was originally published in hardcover in 1990 by Orchard Books.

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. ORCHARD BOOKS and design are registered trademarks of Watts Publishing Group, Ltd., used under license. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Paulsen, Gary. The boy who owned the school / by Gary Paulsen.

  p. cm. “A Richard Jackson book.”

  Summary: Jacob Freisten, often in a fog, tries to ease through high school unnoticed; but a beautiful classmate takes notice of him and his life begins to change.

  ISBN 0-531-05865-4. ISBN 0-531-08465-5 (lib. bdg.)

  [1. High schools — Fiction. 2. Schools — Fiction.]

  I. Title. PZ7.P2843Bo 1990 [Fic] — dc20 89-23048

  CIP AC

  Cover art © 1990 by John Steven Gurney

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-74804-9

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012.