“Good job,” Brian told the actors. “You,” he said to Boogie then. “Hold that pose! The rest of you actors can go ahead and sit back down. Now, everybody, start drawing!”
Vera drew fast this time, the way Buzz-Bee had shown her, trying to capture the shape of Boogie’s hunched shoulders and limp hands.
James didn’t bother drawing anything. Under his breath, he muttered, “Well, it’s easier to look like a fraidy-cat if you really are one.”
Vera was glad to see Nixie glaring at James. Boogie wasn’t a fraidy-cat. He was just a good actor, a hundred times better than James.
“Grasshoppers can jump twenty times the length of their bodies,” Nolan said, filling the awkward moment.
James gave a huff, as if to say, Who cares?
Vera thought Harper’s drawing of Boogie was terrific, clearly the best at their table. She wished she could draw that well. But she was already drawing better than she had last week. Could she draw well enough by the end of camp to win a prize at comic-con?
Maybe her comic could still be shown at comic-con even if she wasn’t there.
But it wouldn’t be hers. It would be hers and Nixie’s, and mostly Nixie’s because the doggy school had been Nixie’s idea in the first place.
It wouldn’t count as Vera’s prize. Not that she’d even be there to see it.
* * *
“A character in a comic can be anybody,” Buzz-Bee said on Tuesday. “Anybody or anything can be a character in a story. It might be a human. Or it might be a dog.”
Nixie gave Vera’s arm a poke.
“Or someone who’s part human, part dog. Or a unicorn. What else? You don’t have to raise your hands. Just call out ideas.”
“A skateboard!”
“A pillow!”
“Dust bunnies!”
“Boogers!”
“That’s right,” Buzz-Bee said. “You get the idea. And every character has to have a problem. You don’t have a story if there’s no problem your main character is facing. The bigger the problem, the more exciting the story. To spark your imaginations, I’m going to pass around index cards. You’ll each get two. One of the cards will have the name of an object like skateboard, pillow, booger.” She smiled at the kid who had said boogers.
“The other card will have an adjective—a describing word—like scared, angry, embarrassed, brave. Your job is to draw something that combines the words from the two cards. Draw a scared pillow or a brave booger. And think about—and start drawing if you can—what makes your pillow scared. Why does your booger need to be brave? That will point you toward your character’s problem. Got it?”
Vera’s mother didn’t even like the word booger. She would hardly appreciate entire conversations about the problems of boogers.
As Brian began handing out the cards, Buzz-Bee added, “Don’t worry about making your drawing perfect.” She turned toward Vera’s table as she said it. “Just think of this as the seed of a story.”
Vera felt nervous as she took the two cards Brian gave her: frightened and spoon.
How would you draw a frightened spoon?
And what would a spoon be frightened of? Probably not roller coasters, snakes, spiders, or grasshoppers.
What if she was the only one at her table who couldn’t think of anything to draw?
“I got silly and Popsicle,” Nixie said. “Did any of you get an animal on your card, like a dog?”
Nixie was definitely obsessed with dogs.
“I got stubborn and shoe,” said Nolan. “Velcro is sort of stubborn, the way it sticks and sticks, sometimes to things you don’t want it to stick to. Did you know the person who invented Velcro got the idea from burrs that stuck to his dog’s fur when they went for a walk in the woods?”
Nolan definitely had facts about absolutely everything.
“I got sympathetic and toaster,” Boogie said mournfully. “I could imagine a sad toaster, like maybe he’s sad because nobody in his family likes eating toast, so he gets dusty and rusty. But a sympathetic toaster?”
Harper got angry and watermelon. She had already started on her drawing as if nothing was easier than to draw a slice of watermelon in a rage.
James got conceited and lightbulb. Vera saw him look right at Nolan when he read his cards aloud. She had to admit Nolan was sort of like a lightbulb, the way his eyes would shine whenever a fascinating fact popped into his head. But he wasn’t a conceited lightbulb, just a supersmart one.
“Some talking can be helpful,” Buzz-Bee said, “to start brainstorming ideas. But now it’s time to switch from busy mouths to busy hands.”
Vera stared down at her paper. Why would a spoon be frightened? It was a little spoon, she decided, a baby-food spoon, scared of a bigger spoon—one of those huge wooden spoons her mother used to stir things on the stove.
She picked up her pencil and started to draw, and then she couldn’t stop.
Big Spoon was stirring lasagna sauce on the stove. Little Spoon was trying to help, but she kept getting in the way, because the sauce was deeper than the tip of her handle. Finally, Little Spoon started drowning. “Help! Help!” Little Spoon cried, swallowing sauce every time she opened her mouth. Then Big Spoon rescued Little Spoon, washed her off in the sink, and put her in the dish rack to dry.
Was that enough of a story to make a good comic? Buzz-Bee had said the main character in any story had to have a problem. The bigger the problem, the more exciting the story.
Was drowning in a pot of lasagna sauce a big enough problem for an exciting story?
Well, it was if you were Little Spoon.
And Little Spoon had looked so ashamed, all alone in the dish rack, and Big Spoon had looked so cross as she kept on stirring.
Vera couldn’t help wanting to know what would happen to Little Spoon and Big Spoon next.
five
“All right, campers,” Buzz-Bee said on Wednesday. “It’s time for you to start working on the actual comic book you’re going to be making for your big camp project.”
“Can we work with partners?” Boogie asked right away.
Say no! Vera beamed the answer to Buzz-Bee.
“Sure!” Buzz-Bee said. Vera stifled a sigh. “But just one partner, not your entire table. Or you can work alone, of course.”
“I’m working alone,” Harper announced. Her tone suggested no one else was up to her level.
“Me too,” James said. Vera doubted anyone would want to work with someone who smirked all the time.
“Can we be partners?” Boogie asked Nolan.
Nolan gave a big thumbs-up in reply.
How could Boogie and Nolan possibly work together? Boogie was messy. Nolan was neat. Nolan would want their book to be filled with fascinating facts. Boogie would want their book to make everybody laugh out loud.
“Vera and I are working together on a dog comic,” Nixie said happily.
This was Vera’s last chance to say something. Actually, Nixie, if it’s okay with you, I’d rather work alone. The dog-school idea is so great, but it was your idea, and I want to work on an idea all my own. Suddenly she knew what the idea was, too: she wanted to make her big project about Little Spoon and Big Spoon.
But Nixie was Vera’s only real friend so far at Longwood. Nixie always said things to make Vera feel special, like when she had told Vera she was good at bowling, which was completely not true. Vera couldn’t disappoint Nixie or make her feel rejected.
“Right, Vera?” Nixie persisted.
Vera forced a smile. Had Nolan had to force his smile, too?
“Right!” she made herself say.
* * *
Even if Vera had to be Nixie’s partner on the Mistress Barker’s Bow-Wow Academy comic, that didn’t mean she couldn’t keep on drawing Little Spoon and Big Spoon.
So for the rest of the week, in t
he extra time at the end of camp, after her homework was done and Nixie had already been picked up by her mom or dad, Vera drew spoons. She drew them at home, too, when her mother was busy working so Vera could be sure of being undisturbed. Nobody else needed to know what Little Spoon was doing.
Maybe she should call her comic The Secret Life of Little Spoon.
Ooh! That was a great title, in Vera’s opinion.
Big Spoon never wanted Little Spoon to go out of the silverware drawer by herself, but Little Spoon did sometimes. Little Spoon made friends with Plastic Spoon, who she met on the counter; Big Spoon didn’t approve of plastic spoons. Little Spoon also made friends with Chopsticks, left over from a Chinese takeout dinner. Little Spoon, Plastic Spoon, and Chopsticks had all kinds of adventures. The best one was saving Teaspoon from falling into the garbage disposal. Plastic Spoon and Chopsticks helped with the rescues, but the bravest rescuer was Little Spoon.
The special camp activity on Thursday was going outside with sketch pads to get ideas to add to their stories. Nixie spent most of her time drawing the collie and beagle who lived in the backyard next door, while Vera drew the slide, the swings, the monkey bars, and the teeter-totter. Maybe she should start sending Little Spoon outdoors for her feats of daring. There was a whole big world beyond the kitchen for Little Spoon to see.
On Friday, Brian and Buzz-Bee told the campers they could spend the entire camp time working on their comics.
“What kind of criminal should our dogs bring to justice?” Nixie asked Vera as they sat side by side looking through the pictures they had drawn already. So far the pile had lots of scenes of the dogs—Tootles the terrier, Cora the corgi, Sparky the spaniel, Sir Great the Great Dane, and Itty-Bitty the Chihuahua—playing at the academy, but they didn’t have a real story yet, with a problem to be solved. It was definitely time for the dogs to start fighting crime on Wag-a-Tail Lane.
“A cat?” Vera suggested. She knew Nixie didn’t like cats, so Nixie might think a cat would make the perfect criminal.
Nixie shook her head. “It wouldn’t take five dogs to defeat one little cat.”
“This wouldn’t have to be a little cat,” Vera said.
“Yes!” Nixie’s face lit up. “It could be a cat that somehow got very, very big. How could a cat turn into a giant cat?” she asked Nolan.
“Humans become giants if their pituitary gland produces too much growth hormone,” Nolan said. “But giant humans aren’t that much bigger than normal-size ones.”
“The giant cat has to be humongous,” Nixie said. “So that pit-something gland would have to make tons and tons of growth hormone. What could make it do that?”
Nolan gave a friendly shrug. Maybe he didn’t know everything.
“The cat gets struck by lightning,” Boogie called over from the snack table. Once the campers had started working on their big projects, Colleen had made a rule of no snacks at the work tables; kids could still grab snacks whenever they wanted if they stayed a safe distance away from everyone’s work to eat them.
“But instead of getting killed,” Boogie went on, “it gets zapped. Zapped right in that gland. And then”—he drew closer to their table and made his voice low and mysterious—“it starts to grow. And grow. And grow. And it turns out getting zapped not only makes cats get big. It makes them turn evil, too.”
“Yay!” Nixie cheered. “You guys are the best!”
Nolan and Boogie’s comic wasn’t the best, though. Boogie and Nolan each did their own part, and neither part had much to do with the other one. Boogie’s part was about a toaster—not a sympathetic toaster, but a klutzy one. Each time a piece of bread was put into the toaster, the toaster would make a big smiley face and say, “No more klutziness for me! This time the toast is going to land on the plate!” The next frame of the comic would show the toast shouting, “Oops!” as he flew off to the places Nolan had drawn: the moon, or Mount Everest, or the Great Wall of China. Then Nolan added a bunch of facts, like how the moon was 238,855 miles from Earth. Or how, in 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary were the first climbers known to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
The title of the comic was Oops!
Actually, Vera had to admit Boogie and Nolan’s comic was pretty funny. And educational, too.
Vera didn’t know what Harper’s comic was about. Harper circled her arm around her pieces of paper as she drew, as if to keep the others from stealing her brilliant ideas. James had started doing that, too. He gave little snorts of laughter as he drew, though, so his comic was probably hilarious, or at least he thought it was. When Brian or Buzz-Bee came by to offer assistance, Harper let them look at her work, but nobody else. James didn’t even let the teachers look. He said he wanted his to be a surprise.
“How do you spell pituitary gland?” he asked Nolan now.
Nolan looked startled. Vera was puzzled, too. Why on earth would James want to know that?
“P-i-t-u-i-t-a-r-y-space-g-l-a-n-d,” Nolan spelled.
James wrote it down, chuckling to himself as if no word in the history of the world had ever been spelled in such a comical way.
“Do you want to be the one to draw Evil Giant Cat or should I?” Nixie asked Vera.
Another problem of working together with Nixie was that they didn’t draw in the same style. In a dog comic, the dogs shouldn’t look different on different pages, but with two people drawing, a dog drawn by Nixie didn’t look the same as a dog drawn by Vera. Vera was drawing Sir Great and Itty-Bitty, while Nixie drew the other three. It made everything more complicated.
If only Vera was brave enough to tell Nixie she wanted to do her own comic by herself!
But she couldn’t hurt Nixie’s feelings; she just couldn’t.
“I’ll draw Evil Giant Cat,” Vera said. That seemed fair. “Then you’ll have three characters to draw, and I’ll have three.”
But in her heart the only character Vera wanted to be drawing was Little Spoon.
six
Vera hadn’t mentioned comic-con to her mother since the first time she had brought it up a week ago and her mother had said no. She had already stopped practicing the piano for an extra ten minutes a day. As far as she could tell, her mother hadn’t even noticed.
Her mother did notice the A+ Vera got on her life-cycle-of-the-baboon report, which she brought home after camp on Friday afternoon.
“Oh, this is splendid, honey!” her mother had said. She had propped the report, with its big bold A+ on the cover, up on the fireplace mantel.
As she joined her mother at the kitchen table for dinner, Vera wondered if this was a good time to ask about comic-con again. Her mother was definitely in a good mood from the A+.
But Vera didn’t.
She just wanted to see her mother smile as she gazed at the report every time she walked into the living room.
* * *
Nixie came over on Sunday afternoon so they could work on their comic together. Vera wished she was going to Nixie’s house, but Vera’s mother had said it was easier to have Nixie come there. Vera had a feeling it was because if Vera’s family hosted first, Nixie’s family would be the one that had to worry about “reciprocating.” But Nixie’s family didn’t seem to worry about things as much as Vera’s mother did.
If Vera’s father hadn’t died all those years ago, would her mother have worried less?
If her father had been there now, would he have told her mom, Oh, just let her go to comic-con, hon?
Would he have thought comics were terrific, or even if he didn’t, would he have loved them just because Vera did?
Some things Vera would never know.
As soon as Nixie arrived, she dashed up to Vera’s room as if she had been to Vera’s house a hundred times. She flung herself onto Vera’s bed, not even caring if she rumpled the bedspread dotted with tiny blue violets.
“Let’s look a
t your animal encyclopedia!” Nixie said.
Vera didn’t say, I thought we were supposed to be working on our comic. It was getting harder and harder to pretend she liked drawing the doggy students at Mistress Barker’s Academy.
“There’s this dog I saw on a TV show last night,” Nixie went on. “I forget the name of the breed, so I want to see if I can find it in your book.”
Vera lifted the book from her bedside table and set it on the bed beside Nixie.
“Where’s the section on dogs?” Nixie asked. She started to leaf through the pages. “What’s this?” she asked, holding up a sheaf of papers.
Vera remembered she had hurriedly tucked some of the Little Spoon drawings into the book last night just as her mother had come in for their bedtime reading. Oh, well, the drawings didn’t have to be a secret from Nixie, even though the comic was called The Secret Life of Little Spoon. Still, Vera’s heart beat faster as Nixie examined the first few drawings. Little Spoon was so…little…and…scared so much of the time, even when she made herself be brave. Vera’s heart would break if Nixie tossed Little Spoon aside as if the drawings were boring compared to a bunch of dog photos in an animal book.
But when Nixie looked up, her eyes glowed.
“Vera,” she said solemnly. “These are wonderful.”
Vera found her voice. “They are?”
“They are super-duper, extra-terrific, best-comics-in-the-world wonderful.” Nixie gave emphasis to every word.
“But…you said my bowling was great, too. And it was terrible.”
Nixie brushed Vera’s comment aside with a wave of her hand. “Okay, I said that about the bowling to make you feel better. I’m telling the truth now. Vera, this is the comic you should be making for camp. Not Mistress Barker’s Bow-Wow Academy. This one about the spoons.”
Vera and Nixie hugged each other hard.
Vera Vance: Comics Star Page 3