The Last Holiday Concert Read online

  Who’s running the show?

  For Hart Evans, being the most popular kid in the sixth grade has its advantages. Kids look up to him, and all the teachers let him get away with anything—all the teachers except the chorus director, Mr. Meinert. When Hart’s errant rubber band hits Mr. Meinert on the neck during chorus practice, it’s the last straw for the chorus director, who’s just learned he’s about to lose his job due to budget cuts. So he tells the class they can produce the big holiday concert on their own. Or not. It’s all up to them. And who gets elected to run the show? The popular Mr. Hart Evans.

  Hart soon discovers there’s a big difference between popularity and leadership, and to his surprise, discovers something else as well—it’s really important to him that this be the best holiday concert ever, and even more important, that it not be the last. Cover illustration copyright © 2004 by Brian Selznick

  “Clements is a master at taking elements of relatively common school situations and turning them into masterful stories with truly engaging characters…. [This story] will leave youngsters teeming with emotion.”

  —School Library Journal

  OTHER FAVORITES FROM ANDREW CLEMENTS, BESTSELLING AUTHOR WITH OVER 10 MILLION BOOKS IN PRINT!

  visit the author at AndrewClements.com

  Cover illustration copyright © 2004 by Brian Selznick

  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

  Simon & Schuster

  New York

  Ages 8–12

  1006

  Meet the author,

  watch videos, and get extras at

  KIDS.SimonandSchuster.com

  More School Stories from Andrew Clements

  FRINDLE

  “A fresh, imaginative plot that will have readers smiling all the way through, if not laughing out loud.”

  —Horn Book Magazine, starred review

  “A captivating tale—one to press upon children, and one they’ll be passing among themselves.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, pointered review

  SCHOOL STORY

  “A standout….” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Practical as well as poignant.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Full of suspense, adventure, and action. another wonderful novel written by Clements.” —Library Talk, starred review

  THE LANDRY NEWS

  “Thought-provoking … readers will cheer.”

  —School Library Journal, starred review

  “Another terrific school story by the inventor of Frindle.”

  —Horn Book Magazine

  “The story gallops along….” —New York Times Book Review

  Andrew Clements is the author of more than forty books for children, including Frindle, The Report Card, and most recently We the Children, the first book in the Benjamin Pratt & the Keepers of the School series. He lives with his family outside Boston, Massachusetts.

  Mr. Clements says of The Last Holiday Concert: “I knew the basic plot of The Last Holiday Concert before I began. But I learned as I was writing that the story is really about the difference between popularity and leadership. It’s also about the vital role that art and music teachers play in our public schools.”

  THE LAST HOLIDAY CONCERT

  Also by Andrew Clements

  The Report Card

  A Week in the Woods

  The Jacket

  The School Story

  The Janitor’s Boy

  The Landry News

  Frindle

  Big Al

  Jake Drake, Bully Buster

  Jake Drake, Know-It-All

  Jake Drake, Teacher’s Pet

  Jake Drake, Class Clown

  Big Al and Shrimpy

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Andrew Clements

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER Books for Young Readers is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Book design by Greg Stadnyk

  The text for this book is set in Revival.

  “Let There Be Peace on Earth” by Jill Jackson and Sy Miller Copyright © 1955 by Jan-Lee Music. Copyright renewed 1983. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Jan-Lee Music.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clements, Andrew, 1949-

  The last holiday concert / Andrew Clements.— 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Life is usually easy for popular sixth grader Hart Evans, but when his music teacher puts him in charge of the holiday concert, Hart must use all of his leadership skills to unite the other students.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-689-84516-1 (ISBN-10: 0-689-84516-2)

  ISBN: 978-1-4424-6227-4 (eBook)

  [1. Concerts—Fiction. 2. Music—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Leadership—Fiction. 5. Cooperativeness—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C59118Las 2004

  [Fic]—dc22 2004006726

  For my sons,

  George William Clements

  and

  Charles Philip Clements

  A special thanks to these dedicated music teachers: Richard Hagar, Cynthia Hamburger, David Jost, Vickie Livermore, Marjorie Olson, William Pappazisis, David Seaman, Joseph Stillitano, and Paul Tomashefsky.

  Contents

  Chapter One: Palmer Kids

  Chapter Two: Coolness

  Chapter Three: Misfire

  Chapter Four: Bad Behavior

  Chapter Five: Temptations

  Chapter Six: Snap

  Chapter Seven: The Voice of the People

  Chapter Eight: Director

  Chapter Nine: Detention

  Chapter Ten: Brilliance

  Chapter Eleven: Feelings

  Chapter Twelve: As Viewed from Above

  Chapter Thirteen: Smooth Sailing

  Chapter Fourteen: Mutiny

  Chapter Fifteen: Deep Waters

  Chapter Sixteen: Rescue

  Chapter Seventeen: Accounting

  Chapter Eighteen: Just an Idea

  Chapter Nineteen: Crunch Time

  Chapter Twenty: Peace

  Chapter Twenty-One: Coda

  One

  PALMER KIDS

  Hart Evans sat in the front row at the second big assembly of the year. The kids from the last few homerooms hadn’t found their seats yet, so there was plenty of noise. Hart turned and looked around the auditorium, sweeping his eyes from left to right. There were still a lot of unfamiliar faces in the crowd, even after two and a half months of school.

  Then, as the last group of kids sat down, Hart saw something he had never noticed before. What Hart saw was the complete sixth grade, almost four hundred students. The thought that came to him was like a vision, a burst of understanding.

  And Hart said to himself, We’re the Palmer kids now!

  In the town of Brentbury, kids went to kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, and fifth grades at Collins Elementary School or at Newman Elementary School. Like two streams tumbling down different sides of the same hill, the Collins kids and the Newman kids bubbled along separately for six years. Those two streams of children flowed together for the first time at Palmer Intermediate, w
here they became a swirling pool of sixth graders. Palmer Intermediate School contained the sixth grade, the whole sixth grade, and nothing but the sixth grade.

  Every fall it took a couple months for the new sixth graders to stop thinking of themselves as Newman kids or Collins kids. By October or November it began to sink in: We’re the Palmer kids now.

  So Hart was right on time.

  Hart Evans liked being at Palmer Intermediate. It was so different from elementary school. Part of that had to do with the building. Everything was bigger—bigger gym, bigger cafeteria, bigger playing fields, and a big auditorium with a full stage. Until about fifteen years ago Palmer had been the junior high school, and that’s what it felt like.

  That’s also how Palmer School was run, like a junior high. All the kids had lockers. They had homeroom in the morning, and then moved from class to class, subject to subject, teacher to teacher for the rest of the day. It was a whole new school experience. Making the jump to Palmer Intermediate made Hart feel like he was finally getting somewhere.

  One of Hart’s favorite things about Palmer School was that his little sister Sarah was somewhere else. She was in fourth grade now, two years behind him back at Collins Elementary. Since her first day of kindergarten, Sarah had been like a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of Hart’s shoe. She had never missed a chance to tease or bother or embarrass her big brother. Plus Sarah was nosy, and a huge tattletale. And she had never ever accepted the fact that Hart was the most popular boy at Collins Elementary School, which was true.

  Sarah didn’t understand why everybody liked her brother so much. But clearly, they did. Who always had fifteen guys crowding around his table at lunch? Hart. Who got picked first at recess for baseball or dodgeball, even though he wasn’t the best player? Hart. And who got invited to everybody’s birthday party—at least two invitations each week—all year long? Same guy: Hart.

  Sarah knew a different side of Hart Evans. At school he was Mr. Cool. At home, he was more like a nerd, or maybe a mad scientist. Hart even had his own workbench, which was really just an old corner desk. It had four skinny legs and one wide drawer that ran across the longest side of the triangular top. He’d spotted the desk at the end of someone’s driveway one Saturday morning on the way back from soccer.

  “Mom, quick! Stop the car! I need that desk. It’s perfect!”

  “Honey, that’s just junk. You already have a nice desk.”

  “But that one’s for schoolwork, Mom. I need a place where I can make things and mess around—you know, like for science projects. It’ll fit right into the corner back by my closet. You won’t even know it’s there.”

  But his sister Sarah knew it was there. When Hart wasn’t home she would snoop around to see what kind of goofy stuff he was up to. Like using the electric drill he’d gotten last Christmas to make tiny holes in pennies and bottle caps and acorns and pencils, and just about everything else. Like using glue to make sculptures out of nails and chunks of rock and rusty nuts and bolts. Like making huge fake boogers out of dried rubber cement, or using bits of blue and green bottle glass to make weird little stained glass windows. And how had Hart melted all those plastic milk jugs into that big lumpy mess, and why did he have so many different kinds of rubber bands—bags and bags of them?

  Ever since nursery school Sarah had been trailing along two years behind her brother, and her identity was always discovered. “Your last name is Evans, right?” That was usually the first question. Then Sarah would see the teacher size her up and slowly put it all together—the shape of her face, her blue eyes and sandy brown hair, her slim build and slightly above average height, just like her brother’s. And then the teacher would get this cheery look on her face and say, “Ohhh, yes—you must be Hart’s little sister, right?” And Sarah would nod and smile. By second grade she had stopped smiling. And in third grade Sarah had said, “Yes, Hart is my fantastic, wonderful, glorious older brother, and I would appreciate it if no one mentions his name again. Ever.”

  Sarah’s friends would say, “Hart Evans is your brother? He’s so cool!” And Sarah had to explain that, based on her observations, Hart was actually a total dweeb.

  But all that was in Hart’s past. Sarah didn’t even ride the same bus with him anymore. At Palmer Intermediate School Hart was on his own.

  Palmer kids. Looking around at all the sixth graders, Hart wrestled with the idea. He couldn’t put it into words, but he got a strange feeling—like he was looking at himself in the rearview mirror of a time machine. He saw that these four hundred kids were going to travel into the future with him. These were the kids he’d be on teams with in junior high and high school. They’d go to football games and dances together. They would get their driver’s licenses and go hang out at Peak’s Diner. These were the kids he would graduate from high school with, these Palmer kids. He was looking at his class, really looking at it for the first time.

  Then Hart Evans, the visionary seer of the future, remembered the tangled wad of rubber bands in his pocket, and in a split second he was a sixth grade kid again.

  Not that Hart had immediate plans to launch a rubber band. No way. Not during an assembly. And certainly not from the front row—much too dangerous. Hart hadn’t been caught shooting a rubber band in over two years, and he planned to keep it that way.

  No, the rubber bands in his pocket were for later, after lunch. Because after lunch it would be time for chorus. And in Hart’s opinion, a few well-launched rubber bands were just what the sixth grade chorus needed.

  Two

  COOLNESS

  Hart swallowed a yawn, but it was a tired yawn, not a bored yawn. He liked assemblies. Sometimes the programs were good, and even if they weren’t, an assembly was still pretty much free time. As long as you kept looking straight ahead and didn’t shut your eyes, you could think about anything you wanted to for almost an hour—which didn’t happen very often at school.

  Up on stage two men and two women were dressed in costumes from the 1840s. The guy in the straw hat had a banjo, and the woman wearing blue-jean overalls had a guitar. All four were singing some songs about the Erie Canal. They were good musicians, and the way they used folk songs to show American history was pretty interesting. But they’d been at it for almost thirty-five minutes and it was starting to get old. Hart tuned them out.

  Another yawn.

  Hart let his mind drift back a few hours, and he remembered the sound of the noisy water pipes in the wall next to his bed, which was why he’d been awake since six AM today. That was when his dad had started taking a shower. Hart had tried to get back to sleep, but the automatic coffeemaker had already filled the house with the smell of morning.

  Usually his mom had to pull Hart out of bed at the last second so he could throw on some clothes, drag a comb through his hair, grab a piece of toast and a swallow of juice, and then sprint to catch the school bus. And as he hurried through the kitchen Sarah always said something like, “It’s so stupid to be late!”

  Not today. Hart was starting a second bowl of cereal when his parents had come into the kitchen a little before seven.

  His mom had been surprised. “Are you feeling all right, Hartie?”

  And Hart had said, “I’m fine, Mom. I just woke up early, that’s all. And please—stop calling me Hartie, okay?”

  “Fifteen years on the Erie Canal!”

  Up onstage the two men came out wearing a mule costume and began towing a barge around. Hart smiled, but he kept thinking about the morning.

  It had only taken his dad about three minutes to get ready, scanning the front page of the morning paper while he poured coffee into his travel mug. Then Mom had handed him a toasted bagel wrapped in a napkin, got a kiss in return, and Dad was all set to go.

  That’s when Hart had popped the question: “Dad, can you drive me to school today?”

  “Sorry, Hart. I’ve got to beat the traffic, and if I drove you now, you’d be there almost an hour early.”

  After the front doo
r closed, Hart had listened for the rumble as his dad started the new sports car. He’d only had it about three weeks.

  “Low bridge, everybody down!”

  The performers were trying to get the sixth graders to sing along on the chorus of the song. It wasn’t working.

  Hart thought, No wonder Dad gets up early and drives to the city every morning—with a car that sweet, who wouldn’t?

  Hart couldn’t wait to get dropped off at school in that car. He could see it. His dad would turn into the wide front circle, whip past the parked buses, and come to a crisp stop at the front walk. The door of the silver roadster would swing open, and as all the kids turned to stare, Hart would step out. He’d slam the door, wave to his dad, and then the little bullet car would blaze off down Highway 12.

  That hadn’t happened, not yet.

  But it wasn’t like Hart actually needed any help in the coolness department. Hart Evans was well on his way to becoming the most popular boy at Palmer Intermediate, just like he had been for the last two years at Collins Elementary School. It had never been a contest. Plenty of guys at school were more handsome. A lot of guys were tougher, and some were smarter, too. Didn’t matter. Hart was still the coolest. Even his name was cool: Hart, which was short for Hartford—also a cool name.

  Zack Banks and Alex Neely were Hart’s two best friends at Palmer Intermediate. Alex was a little taller than Hart, but not at all athletic. He loved to read, and he had a quick mind and a sharp sense of humor. He lived near Hart, and they’d gone to Collins Elementary together. Hart called Alex whenever he had a computer issue, or whenever he didn’t understand an assignment, or anytime he needed a good laugh. And they still sat together on the bus every morning, just as they had all through grade school. One of their strongest common interests was in the junk collecting department. The trash pickup in Brentbury was early Wednesday morning, and when the weather was right, Hart and Alex rode their bikes around for a Tuesday night treasure hunt.