Sunday Drive

Middle School, My Dear Watson

(below is the first chapter in a new Sherlock Holmes book, set in middle school. Let me know if you want more. You can find the next chapters here.)

ELEMENTARY MIDDLE SCHOOL, MY DEAR WATSON

CHAPTER ONE

I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up. Some people think it’s stupid to make up your mind like that when you’re only twelve years old, but I know it’s true, anyway. It’s not a family tradition or anything. Nobody in my family is a doctor. My parents run a hardware store. But I was in the hospital a few months ago after some guys broke my leg (more on that later), and when I saw the way the doctor took care of me, the way she fixed me, I knew that I wanted to do that too, some day, for some other scared hurt kid.

My name is John, John Watson. I’m in seventh grade at Frederick Douglass middle school. Frederick Douglass was a guy who escaped from slavery and then spent the rest of his life helping other people get free. He hated injustice, cruelty, and inequality. What I’m trying to say is that I bet Frederick Douglass would be pretty annoyed if he knew they’d named a middle school after him.

I didn’t always go to Frederick Douglass. Last year I went to General Douglas MacArthur middle school (who seems like more of the kind of guy a middle school should be named after). At the end of the year some guys at school broke my leg (more on that later) so I ended up transferring here. It shouldn’t have made much difference – my house is pretty much exactly halfway between the two schools – but it does. Now I’m the new kid. Plus I limp, because I’m still healing from the broken leg, and everybody wants to know why.

I guess I’m lucky because I’m not the only new kid in the grade, so everybody’s attention is divided between us. But I guess I’m unlucky because the other new kid is just about the weirdest guy I ever met, and because we’re both new, everyone thinks that we’re automatically best friends. We even share a locker! They ran out of lockers and said they didn’t think we would mind.

I don’t mind too much, really. He’s a pretty interesting guy, actually, just weird. His name is Sherlock Holmes – can you believe it?  He says that’s a perfectly normal name where he comes from, which is England apparently. He’s very, very skinny and he talks like a butler in an old movie, with an English accent. Everything he says sounds very, very fancy. When he talks his voice is very high and buzzy, like it’s coming out from between his eyes. He wears green plaid shorts made out of wool every day, even when it’s freezing cold out, and sometimes he spends the lunch hour sitting in the music room playing the violin by himself. Oh, yeah, he plays the violin, which is also weird at this school. I think they had to fire the music teacher like, five years ago because of budget cuts. Most of the kids just use the music room to store their bikes.

We didn’t exactly get off on the right foot, at first. I was the only new kid at school for a day or two until Sherlock showed up. We were sitting in home room when the teacher, Ms. Hudson, clapped to get everyone’s attention and said, “Class! We’re very lucky to have another new student joining us this year.” We all looked up and saw this new kid standing next to her. He was very skinny (like I said) and Black (which I’m not sure I mentioned) and sort of handsome-looking

Ms. Hudson said, “Let’s all give a great big Frederick Douglass welcome to –“

“Sherlock,” interrupted Holmes. Then he turned and looked at us, but his eyes were far away, like he was looking at something else. “Sherlock Holmes.”

Ms. Hudson kind of goggled. I guess she’d never had a kid interrupt her when she was introducing him before – I certainly didn’t. But Holmes was different. you could tell that right away. (“Holmes,” by the way, is what he likes to be called, not “Sherlock.” I don’t exactly blame him). He was way cooler than I had been when she had introduced me. I was nervous as anything to be the new kid. I was still nervous, and this was a few days later already. But Holmes looked like he was in charge.

Did I mention his hat? He was wearing a hat, too, but I’d never seen a hat like that before. It was shaped like a gravy boat and made of brown wool. So he was wearing a wool gravy boat on his head.

(I should explain that a gravy boat is a bowl you put gravy in. Ours is made of silver, and my Mom only brings it out for Thanksgiving. It sounds a lot more exciting when you call it a “boat,” but it’s really just a fancy bowl.)

Anyway, Ms. Hudson, said, “Er, yes, Sherlock. Please welcome Sherlock.” So everybody said something like, “Hello, Sherlock,” or whatever, but he wasn’t even looking at us anymore.  He said to Ms. Hudson, “I presume that’s my desk in the back.”

I guess we’d heard his accent when he said his name, but this was the first real sentence we’d heard him speak and believe me that English accent threw the room for a loop. There was lots of laughing and gasps. I think it threw Ms. Hudson for kind of a loop, too, or maybe she wasn’t used to students saying presume, because she just got kind of a dumb look on her face and said, “Which desk would that be?” See, there was more than one empty desk in back.

Holmes sort of waved his hand at the room without looking at us. “The one between the girl who had Pop-Tarts for breakfast and the boy who’s not wearing underwear.”

There was a gasp in the room – a big one. The girl who had Pop-Tarts for breakfast is Mary Marston. Everybody knows that she eats Pop-Tarts every morning because her Dad is a sergeant in the army and he doesn’t know very much about cooking, so he ends up giving Mary Pop-Tarts for breakfast. He won’t give her cereal or anything. He says Pop-Tarts are better because they’re a “hot meal.”

I’d only been there a few days but even I knew already about Mary and the Pop-Tarts. But there was no way Holmesshould have known anything about Mary’s breakfast. I guess I would’ve been wondering more about how he knew that if it wasn’t for one thing. The boy who wasn’t wearing underwear was me.