Chapter 4

On Wednesday Rigby put on his new cuffless trousers and a clean, short-sleeved shirt, ate his breakfast quickly, found his Waterman pen and a couple of stubby pencils, kissed his mother’s cheek and headed off for his first day of junior high school. He wasn’t exactly worried, but he did have a funny feeling deep in his middle. It was just another school, but he was concerned, apprehensive, but that wasn’t a word he knew. It was going to be different, he was sure of that.

Rigby has coasted through elementary school, never working very hard but always getting good reports cards that made his parents happy, all A’s and B’s. He was a good reader and his favorite subject was history and his least favorite was math. He was a careful writer, but he never really worked very hard and often was late in getting his projects finished. His favorite part of school was recess, and he really hated the days when it rained.

At the bottom of the Ash Street hill he found the well-worn path though the waist-high weeds and slid down the clay bank and then hopped across the creek, stepped over the old railroad tracks and then went through a patch of woods where there sometimes was a small spring, up along an asphalt driveway and then he walked down Elm Street with several other kids to the big, brick school.

The junior high was now the biggest school in the county with more than a thousand students in three grades. The building had started out as a junior-senior high school in 1927 and served as that until the new school on the highway was built in the mid-Thirties with New Deal funds.

Rigby followed the signs and joined a line of new seventh graders going to the office to get a schedule, said his name, received two copies and then went up the wide stairs to room 202, found an empty desk in the back and sat down and looked at his six-period schedule. A gray-haired woman in a print dress was sitting at the big desk in the front of the room, and she looked up and smiled at him. Rigby relaxed, looked around and decided that all schools looked and smelled the same.

He saw a couple of people he knew, and waved to one boy as the room filled up. The school took in a huge area from the creek to the river and included students from very wealthy homes as well as those living in shabby poverty, kids from what some people called “the wrong side of the tracks.” Many students left after eighth grade to enter private high schools and many others had a hard time passing all their math and English courses. Seventh graders were all mixed together in twelve homerooms and various classes, but eighth graders were organized by ability and the kids quickly knew who the smart and dumb ones were. In 9th grade, the first year of high school, some students were college-aimed while others sought just a general diploma.

The bell rang and they all stood up and saluted the flag, said the Lord’s Prayer and then sat and listened to the announcements. The principal, a woman with a sharp voice, welcomed them back to school and wished them good luck. Then there were announcements about a scrap paper drive, about when the school store would be open, about changes in the school bus schedule and then one for war bonds and stamps, which were for sale in the front hall before and after school.

The teacher stood, welcomed them to what she called “seven-dee” and told them about the scrap paper drive. The homeroom that brought in the most would get free ice cream for a week. She smiled and then had two boys hand out shiny, new combination locks with blue dials. Then she showed the class how to open them, holding up one to demonstrate. All the locks had a tag attached with the combination stamped on it. “Spin the dial to the right a couple of times and then stop at the first number,” she said. “Got that? OK, now turn it the other way, back past the first number and stop at the second number. Everybody there? Now turn it to the right, clockwise, to the third number and pull it open.”

It was like the bicycle lock he had been given but never used, the one that might have prevented his bike from being stolen. Rigby had heard about that a dozen or so times, and the unused lock was now hanging from his room’s doorknob.

The teacher looked around and saw that several people could not get their locks open. “Get some help; help each other,” she said showing a girl in the front row to do it. It took ten or fifteen minutes until everybody could get their locks open. She made them all do it three times and suggested they put the tag with the numbers in their pocket or purse. Then she assigned lockers, going right down the list of names and saying a number for each student. Rigby got locker 272.

“Now,” she said, “go out in the hall, find your locker, open it and make sure its empty; they are supposed to be, put your lunch in it if you’ve got one, close it, put the lock on the handle and lock it and then come back and sit down.”

“Lunch,” thought Rigby. “I forgot my lunch.” His stomach suddenly had a knot in it. “Dern,” he said out loud.

The teacher went out in the hall with them, and Rigby noticed that there were other groups of kids doing the same thing at the other end of the long corridor.

When they were back in their seats, the teacher passed out small handbooks that contained the school’s rules, a calendar showing the holidays and the end of marking periods and maps of the floorplan for all three floors of the sprawling building. “Now,” said the teacher after going over some rules including the need to be on time every day, “look at the maps, the floor plans and figure out where you are going next and how to get there. Remember to stay to the right in the halls and on the steps. And don’t run, never run in the halls. There are a lot of people, maybe a thousand students, in this school. Questions?