Justin Case: Rules, Tools, and Maybe a Bully

September 1, Wednesday

I figured it out before I even opened my eyes.

I was half awake but still lying still, wondering why it felt like in my heart there was a kind of fighting.

And then, suddenly, my eyes opened because I knew:

September.

It was back.

September 2, Thursday

In our family we have a lot of rules. Like Share. That’s a biggie.

But now it turns out that Don’t take Dad’s stuff is an even bigger one.

So after the yelling by Mom, I was not allowed to use Dad’s tools anymore. Even though I really needed to build a lock to keep my little sister, Elizabeth, out of my room while Cash was over. Boys who are going into fourth grade don’t need an almost first-grader barging in and saying we are playing too rough.

Even if we are.

Building something with a toolbox, I was thinking, might be a way to calm things down, for goodness sake, which is another rule in our family: Not so wild in the house.

We also have the Please and Thank you thing going strong here, and you’re supposed to just remember to say them without even a hint. After you eat, you have to say May I be excused? and then clear your plate. Those are not rules in my second-best-friend Noah’s family. Noah can just leave his stuff on the table and get up whenever he’s done. I am not sure what the rule is in Cash’s family, because they just moved here from Tennessee in June and I didn’t even know we were such great friends during camp.

The way I found out we were such great friends in camp was: He told his mom we were, and so he wanted to have a playdate with me, so she called my mom on the phone with the news. Nobody asked me if I wanted a playdate with Cash. My mom just said, Of course, how wonderful, we’d be happy to have him over, how about Thursday? so here he was. Today. Whacking my stuffties, even the olds and the fragiles, with my Nerf sword and smiling and saying what a great time we were having.

I said the word yeah to that. Because everybody says yeah to Cash. You can’t help it.

No matter what Wingnut and Snakey think.

I wasn’t being mean about their whacked and crumpled states. It’s just impossible to disagree with Cash. Even when you actually do disagree.

When Cash first got dropped off, he told my mom he was pleased to meet her and thanked her for having him over at our beautiful home. I don’t know if our home actually is beautiful or if that’s just what people from Tennessee say instead of hello. My friends from here barely say hi and bye to parents.

Now probably some new rules are going to pop up in our family about what I have to say to people’s parents about if their homes are beautiful.

September 3, Friday

In our family you are not allowed to say the word hate even if you actually, you know, the-opposite-of-like something. You have to say no thank you. I am not sure why. Rules are not always explained in our family.

Things I no, thank you:

1. Trying on a billion new sneakers at the shoe store today and ending up with the shiny silver ones instead of the soft brown-without-laces ones.

2. Rules.

3. Rough stuff.

4. Bananas that are starting to get freckles.

September 4, Saturday

What I should be doing today:

Getting ready for school to start, which it is going to do on Wednesday even though it’s still Augusty hot.

What I am doing instead:

Going to the County Fair, where there will be pigs and pies and lumberjacks.

I didn’t know we liked any of those things. I didn’t even know we had a County. I thought we had a Town.

I am not a huge fan of surprises or the word hurry.

Or pie. Pie is fruit and goo, ganging up together and pretending to be dessert.

Dad showed me a newspaper article to prove how fun the County Fair would be. It said the lumberjacks throw axes.

I am not sure why Dad wants his kids near flying axes, but I am now pretending to have a Good Attitude just in case Dad is secretly evil.

September 5, Sunday

Lumberjacks are awesome.

The one Elizabeth and I decided to root for was Mike O’Sullivan. He came in second in sawing through a tree trunk (3.1 seconds) and first in chopping the top half of a log off the bottom half (7.3 seconds). He also got first prize in tossing an ax at a target to slice open the can of soda that is squooshed into the bull’s-eye.

That is an actual event: throw an ax at a target and explode a soda.

I am totally going to be a lumberjack when I grow up, or at least for Halloween. Cash is too. He was also there, also rooting for Mike O’Sullivan.

I am still not a fan of pie.

But it turns out I do like kettle corn, fried dough, foot-long hot dogs, watermelon wedges, and cotton candy. Also: County Fairs and newborn piglets.

And, best of all, not puking.

Elizabeth likes all the same stuff I do. Unfortunately, she did not get to enjoy the Not Puking part of the night.

September 6, Monday

Today is Labor Day. Usually we go to my grandparents’ condo at the beach for Labor Day. But this year Gingy and Poopsie went on a cruise. If they like it, we can go on a cruise with them next year, Poopsie promised. They called from their first night on the ship to say that Poopsie forgot to pack any pants.

Which I guess means that for the whole five days, Poopsie has been running all around a boat in the middle of the ocean—in his underpants. I totally want to go on a cruise like that. Instead we went to the town pool.

We went with my second-best-friend, Noah, and his parents. Noah is a lot of fun, especially if you are interested in hearing about diseases.

Xavier Schwartz and Gianni Schicci were already at the pool when we got there. They called out my name—well, not my actual name, which is Justin Krzeszewski, because nobody can pronounce that last name right, including most of the people who have it hanging off the back of their regular name. The name they called was Justin Case. Which is what everybody calls me. Well, everybody except grown-ups and Noah. Noah and grown-ups just call me Justin.

Justin Case! Xavier yelled. He was in midair. A second later he slammed into the pool with a huge splashing cannonball.

Gianni Schicci was waving both of his arms at me. Justin Case! The Cannonball Champion of the World! Come on!

I was the gold-medal winner in one thing at camp and that one thing was Cannonball. Cannonball is not an Olympic sport yet, but maybe it will be by the time I’m old enough.

I ran over and cannonballed into the pool. Me and Gianni and Xavier and then Cash, when he got there, all had a very splashy time until the lifeguard made us stop.

We decided to go get Popsicles at the snack bar.

Noah didn’t come with us. He was still dry, sitting on the lounge chair between the moms, covered in towels to keep from getting a sunburn. He said he wasn’t in the mood for Popsicles. So I said, Okay, and ran over to catch up with Cash, Xavier, and Gianni.

It was the first time Noah ever wasn’t in the mood for food.

I hope he is not getting a disease.

September 7, Tuesday

School starts tomorrow. My pencils are sharpened. My hair is cut. My new sneakers are bought.

So I guess I am ready.

My new sneakers were so ready, they were practically glowing in the dark. That is why my dog, Qwerty, chewed them up. Because probably he thought they were dangerous bad-guy glow-in-the-dark aliens invading our house and he wanted to protect us from them. Mom didn’t get it. She had a very loud chat with him about inappropriate snacks.

It was not the first Mom-Qwerty chat on that topic.

Qwerty looked very sorry and ashamed.

I took him out to the backyard and secretly thanked him. Those darn sneakers were too shiny, as shiny as Bartholomew Wiggins. Bartholomew Wiggins wears a jacket and tie and puts gel in his hair every first day of school. And sometimes on random Fridays or when there’s a class trip. He is the shiniest kid in my grade.

It’s okay when first-graders look all shiny on the first day of school. But we are starting fourth grade, not first. Mom does not understand about sneakers looking better and more relaxed if they don’t shine. Maybe fourth grade was different way back when she was in it. They didn’t have computers or phones or music then either, I think, so maybe they had to make up for that by glowing in their sneakers.

My grandfather, Poopsie, didn’t even have sneakers back when he was a kid. They weren’t invented. And he had to walk uphill five miles to get to school, and then five miles uphill coming home, in the snow all year long.

Poopsie’s stories don’t always make a tremendous amount of sense. He says things were less settled back in The Day, which is when he grew up. That’s why he kept walking uphill in every direction,