The Next Great Paulie Fink

The students theorize about whether Paulie was an alien. Diego enters Mags’s classroom wearing a neon green T-shirt—the same shirt Paulie wore last year in the Devlinshire soccer game. Diego dumps out Paulie’s bag, which he found with the T-shirt in the school’s lost and found, and he reads printed emails from Glebus to Paulie’s parents. One email details a day when Paulie assembled a sandwich on his desk during class. The incident prompted Glebus to amend the school handbook to prohibit food preparation during class. Subsequent pizza deliveries and mayonnaise consumption inspired additional amendments. In a fourth email, Glebus writes that Paulie placed glitter piles on her fan.

Mags asks the students to imagine they are prisoners who have spent their entire lives in a cave; they have occasionally seen shadows, but they have never seen the objects casting the shadows. Once someone leaves the cave, they see the actual objects rather than shadows. When that person returns to the cave, they explain what they’ve seen, but the people in the cave do not understand them. The kids conclude that most people would likely think the individual is “nuts,” and they realize that it may be scary to leave the cave. Mags concludes the lesson by saying that they have learned Plato’s allegory of the cave, which is a “metaphor about unlearning assumptions” (78). While Mags assigns a reflection for homework, Fiona and Lydia wonder if Paulie escaped the cave they are trapped in, while others yell, “Alien!”

In an interview with Sam, Willow, Lydia, Thomas, and Timothy, they share stories Paulie invented: that he was an exiled prince from a republic called “Endrisistan,” that his parents were spies investigating Glebus for selling black market candles, and that he was Thomas and Timothy’s triplet. Sam says Paulie repeated things often enough to make them seem real.

Chapter 12 opens with the three steps for feeding a goat, which involve distracting the goat while someone quickly carries the feed bucket into the pen.

On the second day of school, Henry carries the feed bucket, but the goats notice and charge at him. Diego tries next, the goats charging him as well. Fiona tries, and when the goats charge at her, she invokes Paulie’s name while commanding them to stop, but they hit her anyway. Diego thinks the Paulie T-shirt brought him good luck because he successfully ran out of the pen. Caitlyn feels “maddened” that Fiona is laughing rather than humiliated by the goats knocking her over, and she composes new rules in her head: From Fiona, Caitlyn has learned to wear what you want to, to be loud, and to laugh when embarrassed. From Diego, she has learned to believe in good luck charms, to “fail anyway,” and to “fail to notice that you’ve failed” (85). From the goats, she has learned to create distractions and not get trampled.

At recess, Henry, Yumi, the twins, Diego, and Fiona occupy themselves with their favorite activities. Gabby, whose name Caitlyn thinks is “perfect for her” (87), shares background about the Originals. Yumi’s family are puppeteers, Willow’s mom is a yogi and has been with Sam’s mom since the first grade, Henry’s dad is on the town council, and Diego’s mom runs a daycare. Everyone starts talking about “ritzy” Devlinshire. Fiona’s mom cleans houses there, and the Originals theorize about the houses’ amenities. 

When Timothy and Thomas end their zombie versus werewolf match, Henry suggests a Paulie versus Glebus match, and Fiona instructs Diego to give Paulie’s T-shirt to Thomas, who wins the match as Paulie. Caitlyn composes rules she has learned from the zombie-werewolf game: 1) attack whatever is before you until someone yells and 2) start over. The chapter ends with rules learned from Paulie: 1) eat mayonnaise, 2) wear “ridiculous things,” 3) disappear, and 4) become a “legend.”

In an interview with all of the Originals except Thomas and Fiona, they try to recall where Paulie was from and what his parents did. No one responds when Caitlyn questions why no one ever visited Paulie’s house.

Over lunch with Fuzzy, Caitlyn tries to imagine seeing the school through Kiera’s eyes before telling her a story about Paulie getting pizza delivered to the school. Kiera hugs Caitlyn, who immediately feels like something is “cracking” inside her. Caitlyn enumerates rules for “dealing with” Minis: 1) open their milk, 2) tell them a story, and 3) remember you are bigger.

That night, Caitlyn wishes the reflection were a multiple-choice assignment and doesn’t feel like she’ll discover anything, though she came close in sixth grade when she realized she needed an “instruction manual” to help her through awkward situations. Caitlyn writes that the allegory is about finding out that the world “is a lot more complicated than you realized” and that knowledge can, at times, be inexplicable (99). Caitlyn thinks that the Mitchell School is a cave—and suspects she’s the only one who has been outside of it.

Caitlyn thinks about how starting middle school was like leaving a cave; one has to learn what to wear and what the socially appropriate thing to do is at any moment. She remembers Anna Spang, who stood alone during kickball and walked with books tightly held against her chest. Anna’s wrongdoings reassured Caitlyn. Caitlyn remembers laughing with her friends at Anna, who pretended not to see them, and “turning into stone” on the inside (101).

Caitlyn settles into a routine at Mitchell and feels disconnected from her old friends. On the last day of the first week, Mags introduces the concept of δημοκρατίᾳ (demokratia; democracy) and allows the students to vote on whether they will discuss democracy or something more relevant. No students vote for democracy, but Mags tells the Originals it’s essential to their lives because they just participated in it. Mags collects index cards with topics that students think are more relevant to their lives than the humanities and promises that if she cannot connect a card’s topic to humanities, then the class can discuss what they want. Diego writes three cards about Devlinshire; Fiona writes cards about Paulie and about strong women, among other topics; and Caitlyn writes about bravery in the face of change.

During recess, Fiona laments that the excitement of the first week is over. Caitlyn calls Mitchell weird but not boring, citing, among other things, the school’s statue garden, the goats, and rules that “people never bother to write down, because they’re already obvious” (108). Fiona protests, and then Yumi points out Diego, Thomas, and Timothy, who make a scarecrow with sticks and rocks and put Paulie’s T-shirt on it. Caitlyn wants to ask what makes him “unforgettable”; she doubts her old friends are erecting a monument in her honor. Henry admits to Caitlyn that he’s not an Original, either, because he arrived in the third grade. Caitlyn dubs Henry and herself “Unoriginals.” Henry agrees with Caitlyn’s assessment that other places are different but says that different isn’t necessarily bad, and they are all Originals now, so they should make the best of it. 

In an interview with Henry, he confirms he wasn’t just talking about the scarecrow when he said they should try to make the best of being at Mitchell. He meant everything.

Caitlyn texts her old friends daily, but they do not respond. Mira eventually texts that she’s planning a sleepover on the same day as the Devlinshire soccer game. Caitlyn texts that she doesn’t care about the game and that she can’t wait to return home.