We stood right inside the doors, breathing. No one even looked up from their laptops. I glanced over at the baristas. They were busy fiddling with machines and wiping counters. Sunny and I stuck our noses to the glass doors and peered out at the cemetery gate. It stood black and heavy over the entrance to the graveyard. We kept staring. No one came out of the gate. We looked at one another and then back at the gate. Still no one.
“Excuse me,” someone asked from behind us.
Sunny and I jumped, smashing into the glass doors.
A girl a little older than babysitting age was standing behind us. “Excuse me,” she said.
“Yeah, no one’s chasing us,” I stammered. I think I smiled at her, but I was shaking so hard that I’m not sure that I did.
“But I had to throw away my fly eggs,” Sunny told her.
She gave us Alice’s “blinky-eye,” where she just blinked a lot and didn’t really look at us, and then she hurried past us and out the door. We watched her go. And then I saw it—the bus. Sunny saw it too. We took off out the door and down the sidewalk of the coffee shop, screeching to a halt under the bus sign.
“What’s the name of the high school where the fair is, Sunny?”
“Highland Latin,” she said.
The bus came to a stop in front of us. The doors opened. I was scared it was going to be the same driver, but it wasn’t. “Do you stop at Highland Latin School?” I asked him.
“I stop three blocks away, on Marlboro and West Sudbury,” he said.
“That’s the hamburger stop,” Sunny said excitedly.
“Don’t get any ideas,” I told her as we climbed on. But I knew she was getting ideas. She always got ideas.
Masha Sweet Is a Winner
I texted my mom that the fair was almost over and that I hoped she was having a good day. Then I stared out the window as we drove along the street with the bus’s motor roaring underneath us. I didn’t stare outside the bus because I didn’t want to notice how everyone on the bus had just moved away from Sunny and me when we sat down; I stared outside the bus because I wasn’t going to miss the Marlboro and West Sudbury stop.
Sunny swung her feet under her seat. Her socks were black with dirt.
“Do you want my sneakers?” I asked, looking back out the bus window.
“No,” she said. And then she changed her mind. “I mean, yes.”
I took off my sneakers and handed them to her.
My feet were still damp and cold from the muddy grave. I pulled my socks up as best I could and settled back to watch for our stop.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched Sunny put one of my sneakers on very slowly and then she very quietly placed the other one on her lap. It took me a second to understand why … but then I got it. I took both eyes from the window and glared down at her. “Why are you not putting that shoe on? And don’t think that I don’t know the answer to my own question, because I do,” I shouted.
The people who were sneakily staring at us quickly turned away.
“I don’t know what you’re …,” Sunny started.
I grabbed at my sneaker but she was faster, and she whisked it off her lap and held it out in the aisle of the bus.
“Give it to me.”
“No.”
“Why not? Why won’t you give it to me?” I asked reaching across her while she dangled the sneaker farther away.
“I need it.”
“For what? And I know for what—for more fly eggs!”
“I need them, Masha. I’m going to do an experiment.”
“You are right in the middle of an experiment,” I yelled at her. “Why don’t you just worry about this one?” I yelled, pointing at myself.
“I’m just gonna—”
“SUNNY SWEET, YOU ARE SO NOT PUTTING DOG POOP IN MY SHOE!”
“Okay,” said the bus driver. “Calm down back there.”
I threw myself back into my seat and stared out the window. Otherwise, I might pick Sunny up and toss her down the aisle of the bus. And that’s when I saw it … our stop.
My first reaction was to jump at the yellow strip and press. But then I had an idea—no stop, no dog poop. I slid a little deeper into my seat and glanced over at Sunny. She still had my sneaker over on her right side, where I couldn’t get it. I smiled.
Then I heard the ding of the stop signal.
Someone else had pushed it.
Just stay still and quiet, I told myself. Don’t move, don’t breathe, and we’ll slide on by that horrible stop and I’ll win!
I held my breath and stared straight ahead as the bus came to a stop and the doors flew open.
Sunny glanced over at me. Then she looked right at me. And then she leaped up and sprang for the doors. Fried fiddlesticks!
I leaped up and hopped off the bus after her, jumping in between her and the fly eggs. The bus driver closed the doors with a thump and then gunned the bus engine, leaving Sunny and me coughing in the exhaust.
“If you take one step toward that, the … eggs,” I warned, “you will be dead meat!”
“Masha …,” she started.
“Dead meat,” I repeated.
“M—”
“Dead meat,” I interrupted.
Sunny’s cell phone blinged with a text. She checked it. “Okay,” she said. “We have to get to the school now.”
“Toss me my shoes,” I said.
She thought for a second and then tossed me the sneaker in her hand.
“Both of them,” I said, standing taller and placing my hands on my hips.
It just goes to show you how smart my little sister is, because she tossed me my other sneaker. Sunny Sweet was so not winning this battle, and she knew it.
I missed both of her tosses but quickly picked up my sneakers and stuck them back on my damp feet.
Sunny looked at her cell phone. “We have to run,” she said.
Sunny and I started running for the school. Sunny was running so fast that she had to hold onto her hat so it wouldn’t fly off her head. But I didn’t care about the stupid hat anymore. I had just won a fight with Sunny Sweet! I won. Masha Sweet is a winner. I bounced along in my dusty, muddy, ketchupy clothes, my orange cast at my side and the little growing hairs under my slouchy knit hat. I would get Sunny Sweet to the fair in time for her to win, and then I’d get us both home safely afterward to eat dumplings with Mrs. Song, and in the end, I’d make my mother proud. I felt strong and in control. It was like I could feel the P on my chest light up. I was Paintgirl, and everything was going my way.
Being the Experiment, Really Being It
We ran back across the parking lot where the ketchup bottle had exploded. And then we ran under Sunny’s tree to the front doors of the school.
Once inside, I caught my breath while Sunny asked the first official-looking adult who we saw if they had given out the awards. She was cleaning up a bake sale table.
“The judges are just getting on the stage now,” she said, as she dropped a bunch of paper plates into the garbage.
We started past her.
“Wait,” she said, straightening up and looking at us. “You’re the little girl with the camera. Wonderful.” She nodded and smiled. “You need to get around the back and head up the stage steps.”
“Which way?” Sunny asked. And the lady pointed to her left and down a hall.
We followed her pointed finger and took off.
“What did she mean,” I huffed, “by the camera?” All this running was starting to catch up with me, but Sunny seemed like she’d caught a second wind. She was ten steps ahead of me and moving fast.
We came to the auditorium door first. Sunny opened it, peeked inside, and then shut it. I caught up to her. “What?”
“This way,” she said, heading to the next door. It read STAGE DOOR.
I pulled it open for her, and she danced through it.
It was dark. We could see the stage lights up a small staircase, and we followed the steps up toward the light. There we
re a few dim figures moving about on the side of the stage. They all seemed to be watching us as we came up the stairs. It was as if they had been waiting for us. But all day long people had been looking at me. I was so over it that I didn’t bother to look back. They parted for us as we got closer, and the bright lights of the stage blinded me.
After a second my eyes adjusted and out on the stage under the lights I could see the judges speaking to the crowd. I could hear their voices too, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Sunny walked right up to the side of the curtain and peered out at them. I followed her.
“And here they are now,” said the one judge, looking right at Sunny and me and smiling.
I looked behind me. Who was he talking about?
One of the dim figures from backstage put his arms around Sunny and me, and before I knew it, I was being walked out onto the stage with my little sister.
Sunny stood next to the judges in her stocking feet, smiling. They handed her a giant trophy. She looked so natural, standing on the stage accepting a trophy, like she did it every day, which I guess wasn’t that far from the truth. But how was she winning this one? We’d been in the building for only four minutes. I stood next to her trying to get my mouth to close while an entire crowd of people stared up at me. But then I noticed that they weren’t quite staring at me. They were staring behind me.
I followed their eyes to a huge screen on the stage behind me.
At first I didn’t recognize myself all clean, without the mud and dust and red splotches. I might have been able to deny it was me except there on my arm was the orange cast and on my head was my red knit hat! And what was I doing? I was marching across the parking lot carrying Sunny Sweet’s box with her science experiment. What? My life was a movie? But how?
I looked over at Sunny. She took off her rain hat and bowed to the crowd and I understood. The hat … There was a camera in her hat. She had filmed the entire day!
Sunny Sweet’s face was lit up like a gas station at night as the crowd applauded her. My brain whirred in my head, trying to catch me up to what was happening. My poor brain was taking up so much energy trying to understand my situation that my legs wobbled and almost dropped me onto the stage floor.
She filmed me getting on the wrong bus … and me not taking a map … and me falling into a grave. I looked behind me at the giant screen, playing my day.
There I was, opening the ketchup bottle. Pop! And there I was covered in red splotches. The crowd burst out laughing.
The judges on the stage surrounded Sunny and me, pulling us into a line with their arms around our shoulders. “Here are the little girls we’ve been watching all day long,” said one of the judges who held a microphone. “Today we’ve seen some of Sonya Sweet’s groundbreaking work in social behavior, and I have no doubt that the future of science is bright.”
The crowd applauded.
“Just a couple of pictures, girls,” said someone offstage.
I looked out into the crowd. A camera flash lit up in my eyes. When I refocused, I was staring down at Michael Capezzi. He gave a little wave, and I felt like I had swallowed Sunny’s half-eaten hamburger and the fly eggs were hatching in my stomach. I glanced over at my smiling little sister. I decided right then and there that Sunny Sweet was most definitely dead meat!
One of the judges walked Sunny and her trophy up to the center of the stage in front of the microphone. “We are happy to award the first place science trophy to Sonya Sweet for her work on social behavior in action.”
Everyone clapped. I rolled my eyes.
Sunny stood on her tippy toes to reach the microphone. “Thank you for this award,” she said.
Again the crowd clapped.
“A lot of work and planning went into my experiment today,” she continued, and then she looked back at me. “But I couldn’t have done any of it without my sister, Masha. You have to be brave to be different. And my big sister is very brave.”
The crowd clapped and clapped and clapped. I gave a quick bow, and they clapped even harder.
Okay, maybe dead meat was going too far. Maybe I’d just kick Sunny Sweet really hard in the shin.
With that settled … I took another bow.
Being a Superhero
I had to endure a longer photo session offstage once the award ceremony was over. And when that finished, there were the endless congratulations from the judges. I’d seen this part of a science fair way too many times and whispered to Sunny that I was going to the bathroom.
“Number one or number two?” She giggled.
I glared at her and walked away.
Everybody was packing up and leaving. Kids were putting metal and wires and cardboard junk into boxes, and adults were standing around talking to one another. No one even gave me a second look as I passed. It was just as Sunny said it would be. As soon as everyone understood why I looked like I did—all full of ketchup and mud and dust and stuff—they were no longer afraid of me … or even that interested. I was just a kid whose little sister abused her in the name of science.
I saw the sign for the bathroom and followed it around the corner, where I bumped right into the janitor. I spun around and started to walk away, but he called out to me.
“Hey, kid, wait.”
I kept going.
“Wait!” he shouted.
I stopped and turned around. “I was just going to go to the bathroom,” I explained. “And then I swear I’m leaving, and I promise never to come back.”
“No, I mean, sure, but wait. I wanted to, er, ask about that girl in the wheelchair,” he said. “She has spina bifida, right?”
“You mean my friend Alice?” I asked. “Yes, she does.”
He looked down at the shine on the hallway floor and nodded his head, thinking about something, I guess. And then he said, “My little girl has spina bifida too.”
“Wow, that is so cool!” I said.
He grinned. “You know, no one has ever said that before.”
“Does she go to school here?” I asked.
“No, no. But she did. She graduated quite a few years ago. She’s a librarian, at the Parker Hill branch of the public library.”
“Really?” I said. “Maybe Alice and I can visit her one day.”
“I think she’d like that,” he said, his eyes twinkling. And then his eyes stopped their twinkling and narrowed on me. “I’m sorry I was a bit grumpy earlier today. These science fairs turn me into a wreck.”
“Yeah, they do the same thing to me,” I said, looking down at myself.
We laughed.
“And hey, kid,” he said, getting serious again, “you did belong here. I guess we all do.” He shrugged. He gave me a little nod and then turned and walked away.
I stood where I was for a second and watched his keys jingle at his side as he walked off down the hall. He was right. We all did belong. Finding out how, now that was the hard part, but also the “worth it” part.
“Having happy thoughts?” someone asked. My hand flew to that special signature on my orange cast. It was Michael Capezzi.
“I am,” I said, but I really wanted to say, “I was.”
“Where’s that little sister of yours?” He looked around. “I forgot to wear my ankle protectors.”
I laughed. The last time I saw Michael Capezzi, Sunny had told him that a classmate told her that every time a boy talked to your older sister, you were supposed to bite his ankles. I loved that he remembered that story. And that he remembered Sunny.
Batman ran up and tugged at Michael’s arm.
“This is my little brother, Stanley,” Michael said.
“I’m Batman,” repeated the boy. “And she’s Paintgirl.”
Michael crossed his arms and stared down at the masked boy. And then in a very slow and steady voice, he said, “You are Stanley Capezzi. And this is Masha Sweet.” My name sounded like a little song when he said it.
Robin ran up to us, his yellow bath towel flapping behind him. He threw his arms
around me and cried, “Paintgirl! You’re back.”
“Your name is Patrick Capezzi,” Michael said. “And her name is Masha Sweet.”
“My name is Robin. And she’s Paintgirl.” Robin frowned.
“Michael,” called a woman’s voice. “Michael, Batman, Robin!”
“That’s Mommy,” said Batman. He and Robin looked at one another and then grinned up at their older brother.
Michael looked down at them and over at me with a shrug and said, “What can you do?”
“Protect your ankles and hope for the best,” I said, pointing over at my little sister, who was still chatting with the judges. We looked back at one another and smiled.
“When you smile, your outside, it’s pretty good,” he said.
It took me a second to realize that Michael Capezzi was talking about my conversation with Alice in the graveyard—the one about wanting to be beautiful on the outside. But when I did, I felt stronger than fifty thousand superheroes.
Drawing Conclusions
Sunny packed her video equipment back into the two boxes while I watched. I wasn’t going to help. I had done enough for Sunny Sweet for one day. She tried to put her trophy into one of the boxes, but it was too big to fit.
“Can you carry it?”
“No,” I said, but I took it anyway and stuck it under my cast. The trophy was a weird roundish star stuck to a silver wave.
“It’s an atom,” Sunny said, pointing at the trophy.
“Who is Adam?”
“Not Adam. Atom,” she said.
“Never mind,” I said, “I don’t care who it is.”
I pulled out my phone and texted my mom that the fair was over and that, gasp, Sunny had won. I didn’t put the word “gasp” into the text.
She immediately texted me back a series of big smiley faces, followed by a reminder to text her again when we got to Mrs. Song’s. I texted that I would remember. And then before I hit Send, I put ten big smiley faces at the end of my message. I knew she would like that. It’s stupid, but when I sent it, it made me smile just like the goofy yellow faces.
Sunny Sweet is So Dead Meat Page 8