by Sally Warner
But, “Nuh-uh,” I say back, shaking my head. “Did your mom or dad say anything to you?”
“My dad answered the phone last night, when Ms. Sanchez called,” she tells me. “Only he didn’t say anything afterwards. He just shook his head at me in his disappointed way.”
When a grown-up shakes his head at you, especially slowly—that’s a bad thing. “Uh-oh,” I say.
Annie Pat passes around a little plastic bag filled with carrot strip curls. “I think all we’re going to get this afternoon is yelled at again,” she says between delicate, hamsterlike munches. “And that won’t exactly be a surprise.”
“Yeah,” Heather agrees. “And then we’ll get yelled at some more when we go home. They’re just waiting,” she adds grimly.
Fiona sighs.
After nutrition break, we go through our spelling words and take turns using them in sentences. And nobody tries to make up any funny sentences today, not even Jared.
As I said before, if you were watching us on TV, you would think we were perfect. And then you would probably change the channel, I guess, because what is so interesting about perfection?
When it is time for lunch, we all scurry to our cubbies, heads down. Ms. Sanchez still hasn’t said anything. She’s just sitting at her desk, reading an official-looking memo.
It looks as though there isn’t going to be any treat.
So we drag ourselves out to the playground. “I’m not very hungry,” Cynthia announces, looking tragic.
“Ooo, can I have your sandwich, then?” Heather asks her. Because by now, we have all discovered that Cynthia’s father makes the best sandwiches of all the third-grade parents.
Cynthia sighs. “No,” she says bravely, “I’m going to try to eat.”
“Well, can I have half your sandwich?” Heather asks.
“What do you think our treat was going to be?” Annie Pat asks me, crunching down on a tortilla chip.
We have all been wondering about this for the last three days, of course. Heather was still hoping for a trip to the zoo. Fiona thought the treat would probably be relay races, or something like that. Maybe with prizes. And EllRay thought that Ms. Sanchez might pile us all into a bus, take us to Disneyland, and give us each a large sum of money to buy souvenirs with.
He tends to get a little bit carried away, but it’s nice to have at least one optimist in the class.
“I thought we were going to have an ice cream party,” I admit to Annie Pat. “You know, with cones and sprinkles and stuff. Or with sweet gooey sauces and squirty whipped cream.”
“We could have made a giant banana split—three feet long, maybe,” Annie Pat says, getting as excited as if this were actually about to happen. “Yum.”
“Yeah, yum. Only it’s not true,” I remind her.
We peek into our lunchboxes. I have squashed raisin cookies for dessert, and Annie Pat has a little container of applesauce.
Nope. It’s not the same as even a one-foot-long banana split.
All the other Oak Glen kids are swarming around us as if they were an ant colony on the move, as usual, but Ms. Sanchez’s class is eating a slow-motion lunch today. Every so often, somebody sighs. I smooth my pretty Band-Aids down over my knees, but no one gives me any compliments about them.
People are a lot faster to criticize you when you’re a little bit weird and strange than they are to say something nice when you are a lot normal, in my opinion.
But then, just when the bell is about to ring, and about two minutes after we have finally given up hope, we hear an unusual noise.
Someone is blowing a whistle.
A whistle!
It is Ms. Sanchez, our Ms. Sanchez. Only now she is wearing play clothes, just like us—but neater. Tan pants, and a snug red T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up cute, and navy-blue sneakers.
And her engagement ring, of course.
And she is standing over by the side gate, the one that leads to the lawn.
We get to have our treat after all!
12
How Cool is That?
“Yay,” we all shout. Our class likes to say yay every chance it gets.
We charge toward the gate like a herd of wildebeests and slam-dunk our lunch trash into the garbage can there. “Yay-y-y!”
Ms. Sanchez actually giggles as we churn through the gate and tumble onto the lawn.
See, at our school there is this big sloping lawn right next to the playground. We don’t normally get to play there, though, because there is no fence around it. It is usually just a decoration lawn.
But today, there is something that looks like a big silky puddle in the middle of the grass. It almost looks like an ice skating rink, only it can’t be ice, because it is so hot out.
“Yay-y-y-y.” Our cheers get softer and sound more puzzled as we get nearer to the puddle. But it’s not a puddle, I see, it’s cloth—a gigantic piece of shiny striped cloth that seems to bubble and ripple with excitement even though it is lying flat on the grass.
We creep up to it as though it were alive. Jared and EllRay are making muttery noises to each other as if they’re planning how to whomp it if it gives anyone any trouble.
We spread out around the edges of the humongous cloth. Maybe our treat is under there, some of us are thinking.
Maybe it’s pizza!
Ms. Sanchez blows her silver whistle once again, and we all jump a little. “Boys and girls,” she calls out. “This is a parachute, a real parachute, and I’ve brought it for you to play with this afternoon.”
Huh? A parachute?
“Well, I’m not jumping out of any trees,” Corey announces to me, almost squeaking like a bat, he is so alarmed. He looks nervously up at the California live oaks that shade the far end of the lawn.
“Ooo, she must really be mad at us if she’s going to make us use a parachute,” Fiona says, keeping her voice low. Her eyes zip back and forth, as if she is planning her escape.
Has our teacher gone nuts?
Ms. Sanchez sees us fidgeting around, and she laughs a laugh almost as silvery as her whistle. “This parachute was donated to our school by my fiancé,” she says proudly “He and I go skydiving, sometimes,” she adds, trying to sound casual.
Ms. Sanchez skydives with her boyfriend!
Cynthia, Annie Pat, and I exchange excited glances. This is enough news to last us all year long, probably. She is talking about the man she is going to marry, the one who gave her the twinkly ring.
Her fiancé.
Corey, EllRay, and Jared stare at Ms. Sanchez, awed. Their jaws are practically hanging open, they are so impressed. A skydiving third-grade teacher!
How cool is that?
“He’ll be joining us in a few minutes, and so will some of your parents,” Ms. Sanchez says.
Nearby, Heather squeals, “Oh goody! He’s coming.” Heather is very romantic.
I’m just nosy. I want to get a look at this guy.
Jared raises his hand respectfully. “Uh, Ms. Sanchez?” he calls out. “How are we going to get the parachute up in the air? Is your—uh—your boyfriend bringing an airplane with him?”
Jared is afraid to say “fiancé,” I realize, and that makes me like him a little bit more.
Ms. Sanchez laughs again. “No,” she says, “Mr. Timberlake will not be bringing an airplane.”
Mr. Timberlake! Annie Pat and I look at each other and practically fall over with delight.
“But she can’t marry Justin Timberlake,” Corey Robinson mutters, worried. “He wouldn’t make a very good husband for her. He has lots of girlfriends, doesn’t he? And that’s not a very good quality in a husband.”
“It’s not the same Mr. Timberlake, stupid,” EllRay tells him.
“Shhh, don’t call anybody any names,” somebody warns.
“All right, listen,” Ms. Sanchez calls out, ignoring our excited chatter. “I want you to spread out so that you’re circling the parachute.”
We straggle around the edges of the pa
rachute until we look about even.
“Okay,” Ms. Sanchez says, “now grab the edges.”
Each one of us leans over and takes hold of some cloth. I am surprised at how strong it feels. You couldn’t tear it with your hands, I think, no matter how hard you tried.
“Okay,” Ms. Sanchez says again. “Now, we are going to count to three, and each time we count, I want you to lift the parachute up as high as you can. And when we finally say three, you can jump under the parachute.”
This sounds a little strange to me.
“Yay-y-y,” a few kids shout, but the cheers sound feeble.
“Ready?” Ms. Sanchez asks us. “Okay. One …”
We hoist the parachute as far off the ground as we can. It feels heavy!
“Two …” we say together, starting to get excited.
“Three!” A whole bunch of arms toss the parachute as high in the air as it can go, and we all dive underneath before it can billow down to earth again.
“Yay-y-y-y!” someone squeals.
Hey, it’s me!
Silky cloth begins to settle around us in poofy bubbles, and we plop down onto the cool green grass with striped silk falling all around us. It is the most amazing feeling that I have ever felt! It is like being the grain of sand in the middle of a beautiful pearl.
Which is how pearls are formed, in case you didn’t know. Not with parachutes, of course, but with grains of sand.
Our entire world is grass and silk and filled with laughter.
Sun shines through the parachute cloth. Being under that striped silk is like playing inside a cloud, only better. We are in our own private little bubbles, but we are also together.
Somewhere, I can hear a whistle blow. “And again,” Ms. Sanchez’s tiny voice cries.
We crawl out from under the parachute, panting and laughing. Everyone’s hair is all messed up and their clothes are grass-stained and twisted, but who cares?
Boy clothes and girl clothes, who cares?
By now, some grown-ups have gathered on the lawn. They are pointing and laughing, and a few of them are taking pictures. One dad even has a video camera.
I see Ms. Sanchez, and she is laughing, and holding some man’s hand. He’s not Justin Timberlake, but pretty close. He is very tall and blond, and as handsome as Annie Pat and I hoped.
And I think I see my mom. Yippee! I wave my arms at her until she waves back.
“Take hold of the parachute again,” Ms. Sanchez calls out above our excited voices.
But we already know what to do, this time. “One …”
Up from the grass comes the parachute!
“Two …”
Higher in the air it goes.
“Three-e-e-e!” Onto the shadowed, glowing lawn we dive. Annie Pat and Cynthia and Heather and Fiona and Corey and Jared and Stanley and EllRay and I, and all the other kids in class I haven’t even made friends with yet.
The perfect smell of grass fills our noses, and stripey light fills our eyes as we grab sweaty handfuls of the parachute. We try to make the biggest, silkiest bubbles we can. I turn one way and bump into somebody warm, then I roll in another direction until I thunk into someone else. But with the parachute wrapped around me, I can’t tell who is who. We are all the same.
My heart feels so light that I can almost see it rise up, up inside the parachute like a little pink balloon. “Yay-y-y-y!”
No more hurt feelings and squabbles. No more Hulky Shrimpy Shrinky Bozos. No more Porky Skinny-Bones Bossy-Pants Freckle-Faces, either.
And nobody is weird, especially not me.
For once, we are all exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.
Just kids!
From far away, the sound of our beautiful, in-love teacher’s whistle floats across the wide blue sky, and I am just a plain old girl who is perfectly, perfectly happy.
For once.
But even once is pretty good, in my opinion.
Turn the page to read an excerpt from
the next book featuring the lovable Emma:
1
For No Reason
“Let me see that, stupid,” Jared Matthews says to EllRay Jakes. “Give it here.” If Jared were a lion, he would be growling right now. His twirly brown hair even looks a little like a lion’s mane, if you squint your eyes.
But that’s not fair to lions, one of my favorite animals.
“My name’s not ‘Stupid,’ stupid, it’s EllRay,” EllRay tells him, trying to be brave. But he hands over the plastic figure he was playing with to Jared, who grabs it and starts twisting the movable arms back and forth. “Don’t break the wings,” EllRay says in a loud and nervous voice.
I have said it before: EllRay is small in size but large in noise. He is the first littlest kid in the third grade, and I am the second littlest. Also, I am the second shyest, after Fiona.
I don’t like to hear EllRay sound scared. I think he’s pretty cool, but that’s a secret.
“I’ll break the wings if I want to, Lancelot,” Jared says.
Lancelot!
See, I think the trouble started this morning when we had this substitute teacher, Mrs. Matheson. She’s short and wide, and she was wearing an orange dress that made her look like a big chunk of supermarket cheese.
Well, she still is. Wearing the dress, I mean.
Anyway, she called EllRay by his real name. She said, “Lancelot Raymond Jakes?” while she was taking roll. And I guess EllRay’s name was supposed to be a secret, because he never said it out loud before.
A lot of kids laughed when the substitute called his name, but Jared Matthews laughed the loudest: “Haw, haw, haw.” He is the biggest kid in our third-grade class, and he is not very nice.
“My name is EllRay,” EllRay shouted politely to Mrs. Matheson, but it was too late—the damage was done. Now, everyone in class knows that EllRay is probably short for L-period-Ray, which is probably short for Lancelot Raymond.
Some people’s mothers and fathers should be more careful when they name a baby, that’s what I think.
Jared pinches the toy’s purple wing, which is webbed like a bat’s. It is as if he is holding a teacup he is about to smash on the ground. He looks at EllRay, just daring him to say something. And Jared is smiling a little. “I think wings look dumb on action figures,” he says to EllRay.
EllRay’s eyes get big. He looks scared—or at least very wide awake.
Wide awake is a good way to look in our class, especially after lunch on a warm California day. It is very easy to fall asleep then, even if you pretend that you are only reading up close. And doing that just makes me sleepier than ever, which is why we get a recess like this in the afternoon—to run around and breathe some fresh air, in other words.
Oh, that reminds me! This boy Corey Robinson, who sits next to me, really fell all the way asleep in class last week. He even drooled on his book, which is official school property. I felt sorry for him, but it was kind of funny.
It was especially funny when Ms. Sanchez, who is our regular teacher, glided up behind him and pinched him on his hot red ear. Even though it was a gentle pinch, Corey squawked like a stepped-on cat, and he rose straight up into the air as if his chair was a giant slingshot that had decided to see how far Corey and his floppy green hair would go.
The answer was—pretty far!
In case you are wondering, Corey is not an outer-space alien, even though he has green hair. He is training to be a swimming champion, which is another classroom secret, but he told me about it once. Anyway, Corey swims a lot, and sometimes the chlorine in the pool turns his whitey-blond hair green.
He always smells very clean, though, and I think he is going to be in the Olympics someday.
You have to start early for that.
During EllRay’s fight with Jared, Corey is standing behind EllRay, and a bunch of girls stand beside Corey, including me. Corey is moving from foot to foot as if the Oak Glen Primary School playground is as hot as a barbecue grill. He is glaring a
t large, mean Jared, but he doesn’t actually say anything.
Corey and EllRay are friends. Well, those two guys are friends with Jared, too, usually. The weird part about this fight, and about most fights between boys, I have noticed, is that it was probably for no reason. That’s why lots of things happen at this school.
“Give it back,” EllRay yells, holding out his hand. Next to me, my new friend Annie Pat makes a worried noise in the back of her throat. I try to touch her arm to calm her down, but I can’t stop looking at EllRay and Jared. I’m afraid I’ll fall over or something if I try to do too many things at once.
My stomach is starting to feel all jangly, as though the tuna in the sandwich I ate for lunch has started swimming around in there. Digesting my lunch might be trying to do one too many things, it suddenly occurs to me.
I hope I’m wrong about that, because barfing at school is the second worst thing that can happen to a kid.
“Make me give it back,” Jared says calmly, as if nothing bad is happening. As if this is just an ordinary day.
EllRay takes a step forward. “I will make you give it back,” he says in a shaky voice. “I’ll—I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Jared asks, sneering. “You’ll tell the teacher on me?” He holds the figure tighter, smiles, and starts to bend the wing.
Everybody’s breath gets sucked in at once. It sounds as though the wind is blowing by.
“No-o-o-o!” EllRay howls.
“Oh, oh,” Heather echoes. That’s her favorite expression.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, someone jumps out of the crowd and grabs the toy—right out of Jared Matthews’s hand. “Quit it, you big bully,” that person yells.