“But first let’s go to the Beanery,” Beth added.
“Oh, Macchiato Man, flex those milk-frothing muscles!” Carly batted her eyelashes.
“Shut up!” Beth whacked Carly on the shoulder, but not hard. They were having a good day. Sometimes, I could have sworn the only reason they kept me around was to complain about each other to me when they were fighting, which was often.
Macchiato Man was a barista at the Beanery. He had a Celtic knot armband tattoo, and Beth was in love with him—despite never having talked to him except to say “medium caramel macchiato” and “thanks.” Going to the Beanery in and of itself would take an hour—when you factored in sitting at the table in the corner while looking/trying not to look at the barista and guessing if he was looking/trying not to look our way—then Carly’s brothers would be playing video games on the good TV. By the time we actually got around to watching the movie and talking about the project, it’d be at least five thirty. Could I take that much Carly and Beth time?
Plus, Shady and Pou were already getting babysat by Angie Murray on Thursdays—and once a week was enough. When she first started, they mostly hid from her in the basement so they could hang out with Svenrietta in the bathroom. But lately Angie had decided she wanted to go to college for early childhood education, and she was getting all ambitious about providing educational babysitting experiences.
“She made flash cards,” Pouya had told me the week before. “With pictures and words…like ‘car’ and ‘balloon.’ I think she thinks we’re morons.”
Shady had started laughing, his whole body shaking, and Pouya joined in. “Shady! Shady! What’s this?” Pouya held up a Kleenex box. “Is it a rubber boot?”
Shady nodded vigorously, sat down on the rug, and started cramming his foot into it.
“That’s because you are morons.” I grabbed the box away. And I laughed, too, but really I was thinking, Seriously, Angie? Now I was going to need to get my mom to talk to her about that.
“I can’t,” I told Carly and Beth. “I have to babysit my brother.”
“Oh. Right,” Beth said, but kind of snippy.
“We forgot,” Carly added in a how-could-we-forget way. Lately they’d been getting more and more irritated with me, always for the same reason.
And that was when it happened.
“Hey. Manda. I have a copy.” Pascale Mercier herself was suddenly standing by my desk. “You can watch it with me another day if that works better.”
“Oh…I…” I stammered stupidly. “I mean, thanks, but no. I mean, not no. Just, really, thanks. But I can probably download it or something.” Almost immediately, I felt like kicking myself. Why did I need to jump straight to being my maximum socially awkward self and mess up my one chance to actually get to know her? Thankfully, Pascale gave me another shot.
“You’d probably have to pay to download it. Why bother? I’ve got it right here.” She waved the copy Mr. Maloney had loaned her. “We’ll watch it at your place if you have to babysit.”
Which was how—on the afternoon of Monday, December 8—Pascale Mercier, her scarf, and I ended up walking together to my house, stopping along the way to pick up Shady, Pouya, and Svenrietta. I’d begged Mom to just let them walk home alone, but despite lots of community outrage, the police still hadn’t managed to catch the Banana Bandit. In fact, it was getting worse. He’d struck twice that week, and even though his targets were always old ladies, my mom said no way. It was too dangerous.
“Sorry,” I said to Pascale as we stood in the schoolyard. “They should be out any minute.”
I glanced around. There were baggy-eyed moms in puffy parkas, and take-out coffee cups littered the ground around the garbage can. A little kid who was standing beside us was whacking the fence with a stick, like smashing it to shreds was his only goal in life. I willed him with every fiber of my being to please stop before he annoyed Pascale.
I tried to catch her eye to share a look like Oh my God. This place, huh? but she had her scarf pulled up over her face, probably trying to filter out the sounds and stench of elementary school. Finally, the bell rang, and the doors opened. Kids poured out, but it was another few minutes before Shady and Pouya emerged.
Shady had Svenrietta in her sling, tucked under his coat, so all you could see was her head poking out. And it’s saying something that the fact my brother was carrying a duck wasn’t the thing that made Pascale do a double take.
“What is on your head?” I asked Pouya.
My brother’s friend grinned. “You mean, what is on my top branch. Behold! I am the Christmas tree!”
“Okay.” I didn’t want an explanation—especially not in front of Pascale—but Pouya launched into one anyway.
“You know I’ve been pretty bummed out lately, right? With the end of the world coming? But then I realized I’d been looking at it all wrong,” Pou went on. “I mean, the world is ending. That’s a fact.”
Pascale raised her eyebrows, and I gave Pouya a withering, please-shut-up look.
“It is!” he insisted. “In case you live under a rock, the fourth sign came to pass yesterday. Great winged machines will fall from the sky!”
“Okay, what are you talking about?” I said with an embarrassed laugh. “I didn’t see any falling machines.”
“The planes!” Pouya gestured wildly with his hands. “In Austin, Texas, and London, England. Don’t you read the papers?”
“Oh. That,” I said.
“Oh that?” Pouya echoed. “Seven hundred and twenty-one people died, Manda!”
I glanced sideways at Pascale to see if she thought I was a jerk. I hadn’t meant it that way. Just that, yes, the plane crashes that had randomly happened in two separate places the day before were horrible, but they weren’t a sign of the end of the world.
“Anyway,” Pouya went on. “I realized…when the world is ending, you’ve got two choices. You can either mope around and dread it, or you can live every moment to the max.”
He pointed to the headband he was wearing—which had a giant sparkling star on a spring. “So I tried out for the Christmas play. I beat five other people for the lead role.” He hopped forward, holding his arms out from his sides in an upside-down V. The star bobbled as he jumped.
Pascale looked puzzled—or maybe amused? It was hard to tell.
“So? You’re hopping around like a weirdo?” I asked.
“I’m getting in character,” Pou explained. “The play is less than two weeks away! And obviously trees can’t walk.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that trees can’t hop either, or talk, or that being the tree sounded like probably the worst role in the whole play—more pointless than being one of eight reindeer, even. I just wanted to get home, so Pascale and I could get far away from Pouya and Shady.
“Guys, this is Pascale,” I said as I started walking.
“Hi.” Pascale gave a little wave with her brown leather glove—so much cooler than my puffy, waterproof Gore-Tex mitts.
Shady didn’t answer, of course, and thankfully Pouya was too busy being a tree to make much conversation. As the rest of us walked, he hopped along behind.
As soon as we got home, I went straight into damage control.
“You guys can play unlimited video games if you leave us alone. But first put Svenrietta in the basement.”
I motioned for Pascale to follow me into the kitchen. “Do you like brie?” I said casually. I already had our snack prepared: a plate of fancy cheeses, sliced pear, and crackers—but not Ritz. Nice ones with little pieces of oats in them. Pascale smiled and shrugged, which I took as a yes, but before I could get the cheese, my brother came in, took his sunglasses off, and glared at me as he lifted Svenrietta out of her sling and set her down on the floor.
She immediately started quacking—loudly—and preening herself, which is what she always does when she comes out of the sling. Feathers were flying everywhere as she shook her wings and nibbled at her chest with her beak.
“
Shady!” I yelled over the quacking. “I said basement.” But I could tell from the look on his face that he wasn’t giving in. Svenrietta was still sleeping in the basement bathroom because of Mom’s rules, and she always had to stay down there when our parents had company. But sometimes after dinner, Mom and Dad let Shady bring her upstairs, and after school I usually let her wander around the house until about five minutes before Mom got home. Shady knew the regular after-school routine, and my brother was nothing if not set in his ways.
Pouya hopped into the kitchen and over to the fridge to get a pack of frozen peas. Again, aside from the hopping, this was normal after-school stuff, but this wasn’t a normal day.
“Svenri!” he called. The duck stopped preening and stood at full attention. Pouya tossed a pea in the air, and she caught it in her beak and gobbled it. He threw another and another.
I took the plastic wrap off the snack plate as quickly as I could. “Sorry,” I said to Pascale. “My house is kind of weird. We can go watch the movie in my room if you want.”
But she was focused on the duck, who was flapping back and forth catching peas. So mortifying! Only…
“Can I try?” she asked. It was the longest sentence she’d said since we’d met on the front steps after school.
My brother nodded.
“It’s better if you throw them high,” Pouya explained, passing over the peas. “It gives her more time to catch them.”
Pascale threw a few and laughed out loud—a sound like little bells—each time Svenri caught one.
“What else can she do?” Pascale asked.
Shady showed her.
Sit. Stand. Come here. Quack! And of course, her best trick of all. Shady grabbed my phone and turned on some music. Pascale clapped her hands in delight when the duck danced.
“I adore her!” she cried.
Meanwhile, Pouya had hopped over to the fridge and started piling a plate with snacks. I watched in dismay as Pascale picked a packet of string cheese off the top when we walked past.
“Brie tastes a bit like feet to me,” she said apologetically. “Slimy feet.”
I’d tried a piece the night before. She wasn’t entirely wrong.
“I like these though.” She took some fancy crackers off the plate I’d prepared. Then we went upstairs to watch the movie, but barely ten minutes in—at the part when Thompson gets assigned to investigate Kane’s death—she hit Pause.
“I have a thought,” she said.
I was expecting her to say something insightful about the cinematography, but instead she grinned. “For our film project,” she explained. “I mean, if you want to be my partner.”
My heart skipped a beat. Beth and Carly were going to kill me if I backed out on making their dance movie rom-com. It’d be like the time I told them I was sick when really I didn’t feel like hanging out with them, then ran into them an hour later at the ice-cream place at the mall with my family. They didn’t talk to me for weeks. Only, this time, it would be way worse, because I couldn’t just say that my parents forced me. Beth and Carly were going to be pissed that I chose someone I barely knew over them. Plus, if I dropped out of their group and they didn’t win the film contest, they’d find a way to blame me. But for a chance to be partners with Pascale Mercier? Was it worth the risk? I was really tempted to find out.
“I’m thinking of a day-in-the-life thing. And we can film it in black and white for added drama.”
“Like, a documentary?” I asked.
“Yes! Exactly!”
“But a day in the life of who?”
“A domesticated duck, of course!” she said, like it was obvious. “It’s so unique and interesting.”
I didn’t know about that. Svenrietta mostly ate, quacked, and made a huge mess wherever she went.
All the same, I found myself grinning like an idiot.
“Yeah. That could work,” I said. “A duck documentary.”
“A duckumentary!” Pascale said, with her little bells of laughter.
“A duckumentary.” I nodded. “Okay. I’m excited.” And I really was—even if it was in an oh my God, what am I doing, I might puke kind of way. But as sick as I felt about blowing up my entire social life (as sad as that social life was to begin with), if I was being honest with myself, I was already all-in. Chances like this one didn’t come along every day, especially not for someone like me. I was going to get to be actual film-project partners (and possibly even friends) with Pascale Mercier!
CHAPTER 8
Duck Tales
Told by Pouya
The read-to-a-duck club was Shady’s psychiatrist’s idea. I heard his mom talking on the phone about it. It was supposed to trick Shady into talking, somehow. That was never going to work, but it gave us something to do at recess—which meant we didn’t have to go out in the cold—and an activity to do now that we’d dropped out of Environment Club. (Because, really, what’s the point of saving an environment that’s going to explode in twenty days?) Plus, Svenrietta had great taste in books.
The scary ones about true-life events were her favorites: haunted hotels, abandoned schools where you could still hear the footsteps of old students, waterfalls where someone had died tragically and now hikers see their ghostly reflection. You could tell she was listening to every word.
Sometimes, when kids were reading, Svenrietta sat on Shady’s lap. Sometimes she sat with me. Sometimes she sat with the kid who was reading, and other times—especially when the book was boring—she wandered around getting feathers all over the carpet. Today was a wandering day. Tamille had picked a book about sea otters, and Svenri just wasn’t into it.
“Adult sea otters type-eye-sally…” Tamille squinted at the page. “Type-ee-sally,” she tried again. “Type-e-kally. Oh, typically.” Svenrietta, who had been busy pecking at Shady’s shoelace, glanced up approvingly. “Typically we-eye-gh…” Tamille pressed on.
“Weigh!” Pearl Summers was suddenly standing over us with an armload of books. “It says weigh. And can you guys please move? I need to shelve these.”
Like I said, the best part was getting to stay indoors for recess, but I haven’t mentioned the worst part: Pearl Summers. She and her friends Rebecca and Monica help Mrs. Patton reshelve books at recess, and ever since the Sock Ball, when Svenrietta won the tablet, Pearl totally had it out for me—even though I’d had nothing to do with it.
I had a good guess who did though. Every time I asked him if he wrote those ballots, Shady just smiled into his chest and shrugged, but when he showed up at school with a note from his mom saying that Svenrietta wanted to donate the tablet to the library so kids could sign it out and everyone could share it, I knew for sure.
“Move!” Pearl said again.
Tamille shifted over obediently, and so did Shady, but I stood my ground.
“This is the Duck Tales area.” I motioned to the space around us. “We’re doing important work here.” Svenrietta ruffled her feathers as if agreeing. “You’ll have to come back later.”
Pearl glared at me. “Well, the Duck Tales area”—she said that part like it was some kind of toxic waste dump—“happens to be right in front of Graphic Novels A–J, and that was there first. So, move! Before I go and tell Mrs. Patton this duck is being disruptive again.”
I would have ignored Pearl. I mean, let her try! Other than the fact that Svenri was nibbling Shady’s shoelace, she wasn’t bothering anyone.
But Shady tugged at my sleeve, telling me to shift over. He had a point. Svenrietta was still officially “on probation” when it came to being allowed at school.
Mrs. Mackie said Svenri had already been disruptive once—and, okay, she had caused chaos when she got freaked out by the janitor’s mop, broke off her leash, and ran into a kindergarten classroom quacking like a maniac and making a bunch of kids cry.
It meant Svenrietta only had two strikes left in Mrs. Mackie’s “three strikes and you’re out” system. I could understand why Shady didn’t want to risk it.
“Oh my God!” Pearl exclaimed before Tamille could get back to reading about sea otters. She wasn’t talking to us. Just talking loudly! In the library! In case you want an example of being disruptive!
“The new Champions Club book is in.” She held it up to show Rebecca, who was shelving on the other side of the library.
Tamille looked up from her sea-otter book with wide eyes. “I want to read that so much,” she said. “I love horses.”
“Yeah, well. Sorry.” Pearl hugged it to her chest. “I’m checking it out today. Then Rebecca probably wants it.”
“Definitely,” Rebecca said. “I’ve got second dibs.”
“That’s not fair,” I pointed out. “Just because you shelve books?”
“It’s one of the perks.” Pearl shrugged. “Anyway, Tamille can barely get through a baby book.” She wrinkled her nose in the direction of Learning to Read, Series 1: Sea Otters! “She wouldn’t understand Champions Club number seven. No offense, Tamille,” Pearl added.
That was when I saw Shady’s feet tensing up inside his sneakers. Feet aren’t something most people notice, but it’s something I’ve gotten good at, being Shady’s friend. When he’s nervous or upset and he’s sitting, his toes tap-tap-tap at the air. If he’s standing, his heels grind into the ground like they’re trying to dig a hole. Happy feet bounce. And mad feet are tight with the toes pointed forward or tilted back. I’d seen his feet a lot of ways, but never quite so angry before.
“I can read anything I want in Croatian. Anyway, I like looking at the pictures,” Tamille answered in a small voice. “And I can read English. Just not the really hard words yet.”
While Tamille was talking, Shady slowly reached into his pocket. I wouldn’t have noticed it except that Svenrietta snapped to attention. Ducks have excellent sideways vision because their eyes are on the sides of their heads. They also have good hearing—especially for food noises.
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