The Last Holiday Concert Read Free

would be as awkward and annoying and uncomfortable as humanly possible. Chorus simply was not cool, not one bit of it, which meant that chorus cramped Hart’s style in the worst possible way.
    Because at one end of the Palmer School universe there was Hart and his slowly rotating galaxy of ultimate coolness. Then way, way down at the other end of time and space, past all the stars and moons and planets, there was Mr. Meinert, singing his head off somewhere inside a very uncool black hole.
    Since it was almost Thanksgiving Mr. Meinert was already doing the big push to get ready for the holiday concert. And it was a push. A one-hour musical extravaganza required a massiveeffort, and from Mr. Meinert’s point of view, his chorus was the main event of the whole show. For over a week Mr. Meinert hadn’t even tried to tell any jokes. He’d been stiff and grumpy and more demanding than ever.
    â€œJust to pass the time away …”
    The last song of the morning assembly was “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” and the performers asked all the kids to stand up and sing along. The banjo player kept stopping the song to shout, “Can’t you kids sing louder than that ?” By the third time he’d done it, they were all screaming the words at the tops of their lungs, and when the song ended, the applause was so loud and went on so long that Mr. Richards the principal had to get up on the stage and make everyone be quiet.
    As the kids began leaving the auditorium, Hart caught a glimpse of Mr. Meinert at the side of the stage, thanking the performers.
    Hart smiled, and he thought, See you after lunch, Mr. Meinert .
    Today, for the first time all year, Hart was pretty sure that chorus was going to be fun.

Three
MISFIRE
    H art knew he was taking a risk. He didn’t care. By his calculation, chorus was ten times more annoying than anything else at school—which was saying a lot. Hart felt like chorus needed some excitement—and the risk? Well, that was part of the fun.
    The sixth grade chorus was trying to learn “Up on the Housetop.” Each boy and girl stood in front of a folding desk, and each of them held an old songbook. The music room was shaped like a half circle, and the four stair-stepped levels made it look like the kids were standing on risers.
    The altos kept murdering their harmony part, so Mr. Meinert was making everyone sing the first verse and the refrain again and again and again. Standing down at the front of the room behind an electric piano, he played the melody with his right hand, swung his left arm through the air to keep the rhythm, and sangout the alto part at the top of his lungs, trying to pound the notes into the heads of about thirty sixth-grade girls. He kept having to push his dark hair up off his forehead. His brown eyes flashed warning after warning, and his face got redder and redder. Anyone could see that Mr. Meinert was in no mood for messing around.
    Hart had chosen the classic Number 16 rubber band for today’s raid. Before stretching, a Number 16 rubber band measures 1/16 of an inch thick and 2 1/2 inches from end to end. It has an effective range of about twenty feet. In the hands of an expert, a Number 16 is almost silent and remarkably accurate.
    Hart stood at the left side of the room with most of the other boys. His voice was pretty deep, so he wasn’t up in the front row, and that was good. Keeping his eyes on Mr. Meinert, Hart pulled a fresh Number 16 out of his front pocket. He looped one end around the top corner of the stiff cover of his music book. He stretched the rubber band back about four inches, and then pressed it against the edge of the book with his index finger.
    He was loaded and ready.
    Hart raised the music book and shifted his weight so he had a clear launch path between Jimmy Lohman and Bill Ralston. He felt his hands begin to sweat. As they sang “Ho, ho, ho, who wouldn’t go ?” Mr. Meinert