17
THE WINNER of the name-the-school contest was announced about a week later. Since some ill feeling had developed toward the judges and the school administrators during the long time that had passed since the contest began, Mr. Simone decided that it would be a good idea to make a grand occasion out of the award ceremony. Invitations went out to all our parents to tour the completed school and then gather in the auditorium to learn the winning name and applaud the student who had submitted it.
I was sitting with Raskol, Margot and Martha, Matthew, and Veronica and Stretch; Stretch was on Veronica’s right and I was on her left. My parents were beside me. When Mr. Simone stepped up to the lectern, everything inside my chest and abdomen seemed to vanish, leaving only a cold hollow.
“The time has come at last,” said Mr. Simone. He looked at a sheet of paper, and then he looked out over the audience. “Will Peter Leroy please come up onto the stage?” he said.
Veronica squeezed my hand. I stood. I walked sideways out of the row of seats, and somehow I walked down the aisle and up the stairs to the stage and across the stage to Mr. Simone’s side.
“It wasn’t easy to pick a winner,” Mr. Simone said. “There were many, many good names submitted. I wish you could have seen some of the meetings we held when we were trying to pick a winner. Some of us liked names that had to do with nature and that sort of thing. Others liked names that gave you a sense of Babbington’s past. One that I happened to like was ‘Unfinished School.’” He waited while the adults laughed. “But we couldn’t seem to agree on a name that all of us liked,” he continued. “Finally, I said to the other judges, ‘Look, the school is nearly finished. The kids have been waiting for months. We’ve got to choose. Let’s go through all the names once more and see if there isn’t one that all of us can at least tolerate.’ Well, I’m happy to be able to say to you that there was one name that none of us really hated.” He turned aside and accepted a bronze plaque from Mr. Simon. Then he turned to me. “Peter,” he said, “yours was the winning name. Perhaps you would like to read it to the people.” He handed the plaque to me. In a voice tight with pride and nervousness, I read:
Applause filled the hall. Raskol clasped his hands together and waved them over his head. Veronica and Stretch got up and slipped out the side door. At the door, before they left, Veronica paused, turned, and waved; Stretch gave me a salute and a wink. I held the plaque over my head. I felt the dizzying happiness that I later felt when I turned round and round, guiding my gasoline-powered flying model Piper Cub in a wide circle at the end of its tether.
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