Clementine's Letter

by Sara Pennypacker

  And you know what that was?

  Feathers!

  Okay, fine. It was goose bumps.

  MORE HONORS AND PRAISE FOR CLEMENTINE

  A New York Public Library Book for Reading and Sharing

  A National Parenting Publication Gold Award Winner

  “Sara Pennypacker has created that rare marvel—a book about a little girl…who is utterly charming and beguiling not just for parents BUT FOR KIDS THEMSELVES.… This is an amazing, engaging book and should be an instant classic. I wish I had written it.”

  —Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Cage of Stars

  “Frazee’s engaging pen-and-ink drawings capture the energy and fresh-faced expressions of the irrepressible heroine.”

  —School Library Journal, starred review

  “Pennypacker’s genius knack for tantalizing comic timing and expressive turns of phrase is augmented in no small way by Frazee’s equally comic, expressive illustrations.”

  —The Toronto Star

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

  Sara Pennypacker is also the author of The Talented Clementine; Stuart’s Cape and Stuart Goes to School; Dumbstruck; and Pierre in Love. She was a painter before becoming a writer, and has two absolutely fabulous children who are now grown. Sara lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

  Marla Frazee illustrated the second book in this series, The Talented Clementine. She is the author and illustrator of many picture books as well, including Walk On!, Santa Claus the World’s Number One Toy Expert, and Roller Coaster, and illustrated The Seven Silly Eaters and Everywhere Babies. Marla works in a small back ard cabin under an avocado tree in Pasadena, California.

  I couldn’t wait for Margaret to get on the bus Monday afternoon. “It was the best day!” I told her. “I got picked for Friend of the Week! I get to tell my autobiography, be line leader, collect the milk money, feed the fish—”

  “Oh yeah, Clementine,” Margaret interrupted, flapping her hands at me. “We did that when I was in third grade.”

  Margaret is only one year older than I am. But whenever she says “When I was in third grade,” she makes it sound like “Way back when I was a little kid, which I’m not anymore, so that makes me the boss of you.” I want to learn how to do that trick in case anyone ever lets my little brother into third grade.

  “Your class did Friend of the Week, too? I didn’t know that,” I said. “How come you never told me?”

  Margaret crossed her ankles and looked down to see that her sock cuffs were matched up. When she looked back at me, her mouth was pinched like a raisin and she had turned a little pink. She shrugged. “I guess I forgot,” she said. “I guess it was just too boring to remember.”

  “Friend of the Week isn’t boring! Especially the booklet. Did you save your booklet? Can I see it?”

  Margaret shrugged again. “My mother keeps it in the living room. It’s very important to her because it’s all about my valuableness. I think she likes to have it around whenever Mitchell drives her crazy. I think she likes to read it and go, ‘Whew! Thank goodness I have one good kid.’ You probably shouldn’t touch it.”

  “I won’t hurt it,” I said. “I’ll be careful. Let’s read it when we get home.”

  Margaret looked worried—like she was trying to think up something and couldn’t—but then she shrugged a third time and said, “Sure, okay, sure, I suppose.”

  So when we got home, we rode the elevator down to my apartment to say, “Hi-Mom-bye-Mom-I’m-going-to-Margaret’s-okay?-okay,” to my mother. Then we rode the elevator up to the fifth floor, where Margaret’s apartment is.

  Margaret went straight over to the shelves next to the fireplace. She clasped her hands in front of her, admiring the rows of trophies and awards she had won. Because we do this every time we’re in her living room, I knew she wanted me to admire them, too. So I clasped my hands and we stood there having a moment of silence, staring at all the proof of how great Margaret was at everything.

  There sure was a lot of it. Three whole shelves of “Best at This” and “Blue Ribbon for That” lined up all neat and tight like groceries in the supermarket.

  I am really good at math and drawing. But nobody gives out trophies for those things, which is unfair. So all my parents have is a stack of math tests with stars on them, and some drawings taped up on the wall. They never put up a shelf in the living room for all my awards. Which is good, I guess, because it would be empty.

  After I figured we were done with the admiring, I went over to the shelves on the other side of the fireplace. There were lots of pictures of Margaret’s older brother, Mitchell, there, playing baseball with his friends. And six identical baseball trophies. M.V.P. each one read, but with a different year. Nothing else.

  “What does that stand for, M.V.P.?” I asked.

  Margaret scratched her head like she was fake-remembering. “Oh, right! Moron-Villain-Pest,” she said. “He wins it every year. No competition.”

  I knew Margaret was making that up because Mitchell isn’t even one of those things. Which does N-O-T, not, mean he is my boyfriend.

  I took a purple marker from my pocket and wrote M.V.P. on my arm with a lot of question marks after it so I would remember to find out what it meant. Margaret didn’t notice because she had picked up a golden ballerina statue. “I should have won silver and bronze statues for my other dances, too,” she was saying. “But the judges didn’t want the rest of the kids to feel too bad.”

  Now, Margaret can be kind of a braggy girl. But today she was being even braggier than normal. This could take a while. “How about the booklet?” I reminded her.

  Margaret blew some invisible dust off the statue and put it back carefully. She pushed aside a big spelling bee plaque on her bottom shelf and pulled out a blue booklet.

  I reached for it, but she yanked it away. “Germs,” she said, glaring at my hands. Then she sat on the couch and began to read.

  “‘It’s good to have Margaret in our class because she is very organized.’ ‘I like having Margaret in class because she is neat.’ ‘Margaret is an extra-clean girl.’”

  I sat down beside her and looked over, to see if she was fake-reading all those compliments. Nope, I saw with my own eyes—the page was full of stuff like that.

  It’s good to have Margaret in class because her hair is so shiny I can almost see myself in it! wrote Alexis. I like sitting next to Margaret because she never lets her stuff spill onto my desk, wrote Jamaal. And under that, Kyle had written, Margaret is helpfull. Every day she tells me what I do wrong.

  Margaret tapped the page. “I had to tell him he’d spelled ‘helpful’ wrong.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s a great booklet.”

  I started to get nervous. Even though I am friends with everybody in my class, nobody was going to write anything like that about me, that was for sure. “What else did kids write?” I asked. “Anything about being a good draw-er, or good at math?”

  “Just more nice compliments,” Margaret said, jumping up suddenly. “Page after page. We should put it back now.”

  Margaret walked over to her shelves and closed the booklet. But instead of putting it back, she stared down at it and gasped. She turned red. If her eyes weren’t squidged down to slits, I bet I could have seen them boil. She looked like a cartoon person about to explode.

  “That…that…that…that…OH!!!” she sputtered. Then she stomped out of the living room and down the hall and kicked open Mitchell’s door. I followed her.

  “Don’t touch anything in here!” she warned me. “This place is crawling with germs!”

  Mitchell was on his bed. He said hi to us from behind the sports section. Margaret went over to him and stuck the booklet out, her whole body shaking.

  Finally I saw what was making her so mad. On the cover of the booklet, someone had covered up the r in “Friend” with white tape.

  MARGARET! the title read, above Margaret’s smiling school picture. FIEND O
F THE WEEK!

  Mitchell made an innocent face and clapped his hands to his chest, like he was heart-crushed that she could accuse him of doing something like that. But I could see him telling his mouth not to laugh, and I could see his mouth fighting back.

  “What makes you think it was me?” he asked, when he had won the fight with his mouth.

  Margaret pointed to the baseball bat sticking out from under Mitchell’s pillow. The handle was wrapped in tape that used to be white.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I should have used Mom’s nail polish or something.”

  Margaret stormed out of the room without saying a word and stomped back to her own bedroom. Her cat, Mascara, shot off the pillow and scrambled under the bed, because cats know when someone’s mood is B-A-D, bad. Mascara and I waited while Margaret sat in the exact center of her rug and smoothed out all of the fringe, which is how she calms herself down.

  “He is such a baby-head!” she hissed after a while.

  “The cover’s not important, Margaret,” I tried. “Here, give it to me. I’ll take the tape off.”

  Margaret clutched the booklet to her chest.

  I almost pointed out that if Mitchell had touched it, it was crawling with germs now, but I didn’t because I figured Margaret had been historical enough for one day. It didn’t matter, though, because just then she figured it out for herself.

  “Aaauuurrggghhh!” Margaret screamed. She dropped the booklet and ran into her bathroom, waving her hands like they were on fire. I heard her turn the water on and start scrubbing.

  Normally, Margaret and I never leave the other person alone in our rooms. This is because if Margaret is ever alone in my bedroom, her fingers get itchy to organize something. And if I’m ever alone in her room, my fingers get itchy to mess something up. As soon as Margaret went into her bathroom, I started looking around for what I could mess up. But this day, I saw something even better to do with my itchy fingers!

  I reached under her desk, where her booklet had landed, and pulled it out. Very carefully—so carefully not one single speck of paper-skin came away!—I peeled off the tape.

  Margaret came to the bathroom doorway then, patting the fingers of her left hand dry, one by one. “I have a good idea, Clementine,” she was saying in a voice that sounded a lot calmer than the one she’d run into the bathroom with. “About how you can get a great booklet, like mine. Give everybody compliments all week. Then they’ll give you some back in your booklet on Friday.”

  I held up her booklet, smiling. “Look, Margaret!”

  “Or presents!” she said, as she started on her right hand. “Presents would be even better than compliments. And leave the price tag on, so everybody can see how good of a present it is and—”

  “Margaret, look!” I interrupted her.

  She looked up from her finger-patting. Her mouth fell open and she dropped the towel. She had that exploding-cartoon-person look again.

  “Who said you could read that?!” she shrieked. Then she charged across the room and snatched the booklet from me, never mind the Mitchell-germs.

  Mascara, who had stuck his nose out while Margaret was in her bathroom, skittered back under the bed. If I could have fit under there, I would have, too.

  Instead, I was stuck trying to calm Margaret down. “I didn’t read it! I was only…look! It’s fine, the tape—”

  “That was private! Anyone should know that! Anyone!” Margaret yelled.

  “I only peeled the tape off, Margaret! I didn’t hurt anything. Now, let’s go back to the giving-presents idea, okay? You think people would write great stuff in my booklet if I give them presents?”

  This is called Throwing Someone Off The Track. My parents say I am a genius at it, but it didn’t work on Margaret.

  “NOBODY’S GOING TO WRITE ANYTHING GREAT IN YOUR BOOKLET NO MATTER HOW MANY PRESENTS YOU GIVE THEM AND YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY FRIEND AND I ONLY PLAY WITH YOU BECAUSE YOU LIVE IN MY BUILDING AND NOW YOU HAVE TO GO HOME!” Margaret yelled at me.

  “Well, well, well…OH, WHO CARES BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY FRIEND EITHER!” I yelled back. Then I ran out of Margaret’s apartment and stabbed the elevator B-for-basement button so hard I probably broke it for life.