“Sister Hart, I saw a robot on the playground today!” I say really loudly. I’m jumping up and down. It’s just like Star Wars! Nothing ever happens at this dumb preschool. I thought nuns were supposed to fly like on that TV show Grampy loves to watch all the time. That’s the only reason I came to dumb old All Saints School. I wanted to fly on a nun and drop water balloons on people. I giggle a little bit at the thought.
“Nolan Nightingale, lying is a sin! I’d like one Hail Mary from you!” Sister Hart, my teacher, yells. Her face gets red when it’s angry, the same red as Mickey Mouse’s pants. Haha, that would mean that her long, crooked nose was Mickey’s---well, Mom doesn’t let me use that word. Wait, what was I talking about again? Oh yeah, the robot boy.
“No, Sister Hart, it’s true. He was, um, he was out walking by the playground. He looked just like a big kid, but I was smart enough to spot that his leg was made of metal.”
“ Do you find physical deformities to be funny, Mr. Nightingale?”
“ I don’t think so, Sister Hart. I don’t even know what a psychic deformity is.”
Sister Hart replaces my green card on my little, red cubby to a yellow card. No, no, no! Mom’s going to be mad at me now. She probably won’t even let me watch Little Bill today. Nuns ruin everything. They wouldn’t even let me dress up as Harry Potter on Halloween. I had to go as Spyro the Dragon, and Spyro is purple. I dramatically stomp over to the other side of the classroom and sit criss-cross applesauce on our giant Earth-shaped rug until our lesson begins.
Sister Hart brings over a humungus leather-bound Bible and sits in the center of all the kids. How can such a frail old lady carry that big Bible? She must be, like, 40. Sister Hart clears her throat, preparing to speak. “Students, who created man?” Sister Hart asks. Everyone in the class, in unison, give the expected response of “God!” Everyone in the class, that is, except for me.
“That’s not what my dad said!” I pipe up, remembering the conversations my dad liked to have with me. When I was at home, sitting by our pool, I’d often ask my dad how humans were created. Dad, sipping his grown-up juice a couple of feet away, would look around, making sure my Catholic mom wasn’t around. Then, my dad would lean towards me and whisper stories about this friend of his that he must have met when he was a kid named Charlie Darwin. Charlie had some really cool ideas. “My dad says that we come from monkeys. He calls it, um…elevation.”
Sister Hart doesn’t seem to like this. I try and point out that her book is probably just old and wrong, like how my book on dinosaurs at home still lists brontosauruses as real, when it turns out that they’re really just apatosauruses. This does not help her mood. Sister Hart then changes my yellow card to red. This is not good at all. Maybe Mom will take my TV away completely.
Sister Hart calls up my parents. It sounds like there’s a lot of yelling going on. Pretty soon, Dad comes to pick me up in his car. He’s in his nice clothes. That means that he was called out of work to get me. Oh no, I’m in trouble now. I get into the car and quietly ask him, “Am I going back there, Dad?”
“No, Nolan, you’re not.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No,” he says in a happy voice. That doesn’t make sense. Why isn’t he mad at me? Then, I realize that there’s a sound coming from the driver’s seat. Why is my dad laughing?
