Andrew Eiden: I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants. Stopped. I heard a P sound. I said it quick. Knew there was something more. T on the end? No D. It would be D on the end, but not just D. Tick, tick, no time. I said, "I and D." What I spelled was s-t-o-o-p-i-d. What it sounded like was stupid. The buzzer sounded. The whole classroom roared. Matt Drinker loves when something like that happens. That's why I'm guessing he put this stupid shirt inside my locker. He must have picked my lock to do it. Funny thing is, I knew what the shirt said because of the two O's in the middle. I knew it in two blinks.

Matt doesn't know it, but he did me a big favor. I always take two shirts to school, unless I forget. I change just before lunch. This is because of how I sweat. It is a lot. Can't stop it. Can't hide it. I need to be dry at the lunch table otherwise, I'm a total gross out of a kid. Well, today was a day that I forgot my extra shirt, so I'm wearing this one that says "stoopid" on it. It's big and it fits me. It's clean and dry. I'm going to keep moving. Maybe nobody will see what it says. And if they do, well tell you what, plenty of worse has happened.

Chapter two, The SWOOF

Other kids look up to me in the hallway. They have to. I'm the biggest, tallest seventh grader at Merrimack Middle School, by a lot. Today, I'm moving fast. They laugh when they see me. Laughing is better than no laughing. I smile. I know I looked funny, like a big walking billboard for stupid with two O's. I'm skipping the cafeteria. It is a wild place. Seems like a stupid shirt could start a food fight. I am headed to the SWOOF. That's Ms. Blinny's room. I take giant steps all the way down the hall. I think about this. The SWOOF has double O's in the middle. Like the word on my shirt. Funny name, The SWOOF. Ms. Blinny made that up. She used some little tile letters that came from a sign that said "social work office." I know that because Ms. Blinny told me. She was making The SWOOF sign the day I met her. Ms. Lorenz, from the elementary school, brought me over to the middle school on the last day of fifth grade so I could meet her friend.

We walked through the front part of the office where there's a big soft couch and two beanbag chairs. Also a lava lamp and the little table with a snack basket on top. There are posters on the walls and a whole lot of clutter. Ms. Blinny's desk is the last thing, tucked behind a bookcase by the window. Something smelled hot in there the day I went into meet Ms. Blinny. Sure enough, she was holding a glue gun in one hand and pushing those little tiles around on her desk with the other. Pink paint was drying on a nice wooden shape. A pink paint brush was drying onto her desk. Ms. Blinny sure was busy, but when she saw me, she looked up and smiled.

She said, "Oh yeah, Mason. Glad to meet you." The smile got bigger. She stayed looking at me like a person shining from the inside out, at me. Her glue gun dripped a glob of hot stuff onto her papers. I said, "Be careful." She said, "Oh, oops. Dripping." Then there went another string of glue. She grabbed for a tissue, but she spilled a tub of glitter beads across the desk. She smiled with a big open mouth and bright, happy eyes. "Look at that, Mason. A sparkle spill." She took a picture of it. That has been her screensaver for more than a year now.

There was a new social work office sign on the door when school started last September. I mean the plain kind, like the school puts up, but Ms. Blinny had finished her glitter project, too. She stuck her pink SWOOF sign on the door. Tell you what, makes the room easier to find.

I like the way she is, Ms. Blinny. How she spills things and doesn't wait for paint to dry. So, today I turned the corner into a room. Breathe out a breath. The kind that means you made it home. I like The SWOOF. I'm always welcome here.

Chapter three, Better Than Stupid.

I'm the only kid in The SWOOF today, but I won't be for long. It's a stopping in place. I poke my head around the bookcase. I tell Ms. Blinny hello. She's working, but I can interrupt her if I'm polite about it. I hold up my lunch bag for her to see. I have twisted the top into a thing that looks like a pumpkin stem. It's wet from me sweating it up. I say, "Okay, if I eat in here?" She says, "Sure." She pushes a button on her desk phone. She tells the office-