Malcolm in the Middle: one-shots

Where Are They Now? Dewey

I was glad when Reese and Malcolm left home because then, I was the oldest kid in the house and didn't have to be pushed around by them anymore, which meant that I could push Jamie and Chelsea, my new baby sister, around as much as I could. I already enjoyed torturing Jamie because after all, he took away my position as the youngest kid in the family, so I could do it as much as I could now that I didn't have two older brothers around to beat me to the punch.

I used every trick my brothers had used on me on Jamie, such as tying him to the back of the door, jumping on a seesaw to throw him off, and trapping him under a garbage can while I sat on it, and as he got older, he paid me back by doing things such as pouring milk on my head and stuffing my keyboard up a vent.

I kept trying to convince my parents to get my IQ tested again so I could end up in the gifted class at school, the one that Malcolm tried to steer me away from, in eighth grade like I had wanted. When I had to get my IQ tested the first time, Malcolm didn't want me to be bullied in that class like he was, so he got Reese to fill in wrong answers to the IQ test, which put me into the Buseys, a class for emotionally disturbed students where the work was far too easy, I was bullied far more than I ever would have been as a Krelboyne, and we were used as slaves to make keychains that were sold in gas stations.

Though I made some friends in the class and I served as the unofficial leader, I still felt like I wasn't being challenged enough, because I spent my time composing music on looseleaf rather than doing the work. Fortunately, my classmates also noticed how poorly we were treated, because despite our unusual habits, we were smarter than anyone knew and we were more than aware that the class wasn't what we deserved.

In eighth grade, I ended up as a Krelboyne after all because my IQ was shown to be as high as Malcolm's, and unlike him, who was too worried about fitting in, I was glad to be there because it was somewhere where I could be challenged. I remained friends with the rest of the Buseys, who missed me, but acknowledged that I was still there for them.

This only happened for one year because there was no separate gifted class in high school, yet it was still an interesting experience. In high school, I devoted myself to the piano more than ever by playing in the pit orchestra for school musicals, joining the concert band, taking music electives, including AP Music Theory, learning the pipe organ as well, and spending my lunches in the music room rather than the cafeteria. All these years, my family never thought I was very smart because I was always stuck in my own world as a child. I had an overactive imagination, I had trouble keeping friends that weren't imaginary, and I had very little common sense sometimes, such as thinking that the cross on the wall of a church was the letter "T," so it seemed like I didn't know much, except for when it came to outsmarting my brothers in their schemes, when I did, but I just didn't want to show it because no one really had any faith in me and to them, I was just the baby of the family.

I first discovered music as a pastime during the period where I was alone after school for fifteen minutes before my brothers came home, and I ordered a grand piano because I was now free to do whatever I wanted. I had always been curious to try, so I started going through the lesson book that was in there, and after remembering "Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge" from music class at school, I taught myself how to read music and was then able to play full pieces with both hands after a few minutes and when I wasn't there, I'd start playing "air piano" using the correct hand positions. Unfortunately, when I had to help Dad clean the garage, he found it and we had to sell it since we had no room for it, no one else played, and it was too expensive to keep around, but I still found other ways to practice.

At home, I started to forget about torturing my siblings because new ideas for compositions came into my head every day, yet if Jamie took my headphones, I would still look for ways to pay him back. I continued to pester my parents to get me a "real" piano because I was getting sick of having Jamie mess with the keyboard I had (he unplugged it all the time), and some of my manipulation strategies included hypnosis, lying about the price (or saying that they were free), and of course, the time where I stole Dad's credit card and he caught me as soon as I was at the checkout.

One day, when I came home and saw that Jamie was trying to smash my keyboard with a hammer, which was the last straw for me, I had the idea to remake the pump organ I had made out of things around the house when Dad refused to buy me a piano a few years before, but then I looked out the window and saw that it was bulk garbage day and someone left their piano on the lawn. It took a long time to bring it home and the look of shock on Mom's face was priceless, but I managed to get it inside in one piece and I didn't have to spend a dollar. It was completely out of tune, so I tuned it all by myself and my parents were finally pleased because they didn't have to worry about calling professional tuners (you need to call a tuner annually, but if I noticed an off note, I'd just tune it on the spot). I was able to do it by myself because though I didn't have the proper tools, I have something called perfect pitch that means that I can play anything by ear or identify any note when I hear it, such as when I was able to play "Ode To Joy" on drinking glasses without any wrong notes (though I never washed the glasses like Mom told me to).

Now that I had a proper instrument with 88 keys, I could spend more time composing more complicated pieces, and I was so dedicated to it that I submitted the compositions in contests, including a few where I ended up winning scholarships to prestigious music schools.

Of course, my parents wanted to get the piano out of the house because it was in a very tight corner, but whenever they said that, I'd just try to distract them by saying that Jamie did something bad, like climbing on top of a high shelf or drinking dish soap, so it could stay. It ended up staying after they realized that I needed a hobby besides messing with Jamie, but still, Mom believed that taking it away would help to "build character," whatever that meant.

On the day of my high school graduation, Mom told me that her plan for me was to have me go to the Juilliard School in New York, which I had been accepted to on a composition scholarship, and then end up becoming a concert pianist who travelled the world, because before she had Francis, she was on track to become a concert violinist, and she wanted me to follow through with the plan so I could live the life she never had. This was like a few years before, when she told Malcolm about her plan for him to become president, which he never followed through with, and though this plan was something I actually wanted to do, I decided to go to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, which has an even lower acceptance rate, just to spite her.

Though I initially majored in composition, it was hard for me to get a job after, as much as I wanted to stay home and compose all day, so I ended up doing music education because I loved bossing others around, and I got a job teaching music at a private school for gifted students like the one that Dad regretted not sending me to.

In addition to this, I judged piano contests, taught private lessons at home, and continued to compose, and some of my compositions have been performed in these contests that I've judged, though not in the way that I'd like to because don't think I can't hear the wrong notes.

I currently live with my friend Egg (I named him a long time ago and I still call him that), who only I am able to understand because he speaks in whispers, and a variety of pets, because I was never allowed to have them when I was living with my parents because they didn't think I'd be responsible enough to take care of one.