Banana Pants!

by Emma Wunsch

  Miss Kinde shrugged. “There are sixteen of you. You take seven or eight exams a week. That’s . . .”

  “One hundred twenty-eight exams!” Maude yelled.

  “One hundred twelve exams!” Hillary Greenlight-Miller shouted.

  “It’s a lot to grade,” Miss Kinde said quietly. “It takes time.”

  The class nodded. Poor Miss Kinde!

  “And speaking of time,” Miss Kinde said. “It’s time to start today’s exam.” She handed out green papers. “Take one and pass the rest,” she said robotically.

  Donut raised his hand. “Miss Kinde? How many more practice exams do we have to take? Before we take the real one.”

  Miss Kinde looked at Donut. Then she looked at the rest of her class. She was quiet for so long that Hillary Greenlight-Miller began frantically waving her hands. “Miss Kinde!” she said. “Miss Kinde!”

  Miss Kinde blinked and came back to 3B. “One hundred and ninety-two,” she told Donut. “At the very least.”

  “One hundred ninety-two more practice exams for each of us?” Donut said in horror.

  Miss Kinde looked at her students. “Class,” she said, “give me back your practice exams.”

  “But we haven’t done them!” Hillary screeched.

  “I know,” Miss Kinde said calmly. “I know you haven’t done them, Hillary. But we’ve done so many, and sometimes, I think Mountain River Valley Elementary spends too much time on tests and not enough time on . . .”

  “Fun stuff!” Maude shouted. “We take so many tests we don’t have enough time for . . . fun stuff!” She held up her fist, even though she wished she had a more chant-worthy phrase than “fun stuff.”

  Miss Kinde nodded. She stacked all of the unanswered practice exams back on her desk.

  3B looked at Miss Kinde. Miss Kinde looked at 3B. The classroom was very quiet, and not in a test-taking way. It was quiet in a what’s-going-to-happen-next way.

  “Now what?” Hillary asked.

  Miss Kinde shrugged.

  Hillary’s eyes bulged.

  Miss Kinde looked at her students. “Real learning,” she said, “isn’t just doing a million practice exams. Real learning is about love.”

  Yes, Miranda thought, sitting up a little taller. Love was important. Her teacher said so!

  “Love?” Norbert groaned. “Love is gross.”

  “I want you to feel excited about something,” Miss Kinde explained. “Love what you do.” She looked at Maude. “Even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard and maybe doesn’t go the way you want. Who here feels passionate about practice exams?”

  Hillary Greenlight-Miller almost raised her hand. But then she decided what she actually loved was being the first to finish and getting higher scores than Maude.

  “But we need to do something,” Hillary insisted. “Our school day is really long.”

  “Today, I want you to do something that you care about,” Miss Kinde said. “Do something that brings you joy, even if it’s not easy.”

  The class looked at one another. Joy? they wondered. In school?

  “I care!” Maude shouted. “I care about all my very important causes!” She looked at Miranda. “If I don’t have to take a test, I’ll write the best letter I’ve ever written!” And maybe Miranda will write one, too, she thought.

  “I care about what will happen when avenging alien bees break out of the lab,” Norbert said. “Maybe I could work on my story?”

  “Excellent,” Miss Kinde said.

  “I care about doughnuts,” Donut said. “With all this free time, I’ll go to the doughnut shop!” He grinned. “I’ll get enough for the whole class. You, too, Miss Kinde.”

  “You can’t leave school,” Miss Kinde informed Donut. “But we won’t take any practice exams. Today will be for creative endeavors!”

  “What’s endeavors?” Miranda and Donut asked. They looked at Maude, but it was Hillary who said, “An endeavor is a work with a set purpose.”

  Miss Kinde nodded. “Today will be Three B’s creative endeavor day!”

  “Hooray!” the class cheered.

  “Of course, first I must talk to Principal Fish,” Miss Kinde said quickly.

  3B groaned. Rule-loving Principal Fish would never let them skip a practice exam for a creative endeavor. Even if endeavor was one of the vocabulary words on today’s exam. But Miss Kinde cleared her throat, blew her nose, straightened her spine, and held her head high. “I’ll be back,” she said, slipping into the hall.

  5

  PRACTICE EXAM EIGHT MILLION AND THREE

  3B was unusually silent while their teacher was gone. Maude thought about all the letters she’d be able to write if Miss Kinde convinced Principal Fish that they shouldn’t take a test. She looked at Miranda, who was staring into space. There has to be a way to get Miranda to write a letter, she thought.

  Miranda was picturing Walt and Miss Kinde sharing soup, talking about theater, and reciting quotes. How can that happen? she wondered.

  When Miss Kinde came back, her nose was running and she was a little out of breath. She inhaled deeply and said, “Class, if you learn anything this year, I’d like you to learn that sometimes ideas need to happen before others can see how good they are.”

  “Hear, hear,” Maude muttered, looking at the letters in her bag.

  Yes, Miranda thought. Once Maude saw how happy her dad and Miss Kinde were together, she’d realize Miranda had been right. Love was an extremely important cause!

  “Principal Fish has agreed that for the next two weeks, Three B will not take any practice exams.”

  “Hooray!” 3B shouted, not believing their good fortune. Two whole weeks without tests! That was amazing! That was incredible! That was—

  “But . . .” Miss Kinde paused. “Principal Fish wants us to do or make something as a class.”

  “All together?” 3B asked all together.

  Miss Kinde nodded and sneezed. “And we need to show the whole school what we’ve done.”

  “Let’s write letters!” Maude stood up. “We could write a gazillion letters in two weeks!”

  “No,” 3B said.

  “Let’s have a rally then,” Maude said. “We’ll make posters and buttons and start a petition!”

  “No,” 3B said again.

  “Don’t you guys want buttons?” Maude asked quietly.

  “What are we rallying for?” Donut asked, pulling the thread of a small hole in his pants.

  “We can rally for whatever we want. Or whatever we don’t want. Chemical Apple, Fishmann Fisheries. Speaking of fish, how about a rally against Principal Fish for using Styrofoam trays.”

  “That’s just stuff you want to do, Maude,” Hillary said. “No one else does. You don’t even eat school lunch.”

  Maude sat back down. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “No,” Hillary mumbled.

  “We could bake something huge,” Donut suggested.

  “Count me out,” Norbert told him. “I almost killed my family by using rotten eggs once. We vomited for days!”

  “Let’s build an Eiffel Tower out of two-by-fours,” Felix said.

  “We can’t fit an Eiffel Tower in our classroom,” Agatha told him.

  “There’s no endeavor we can do together,” Hillary informed Miss Kinde.

  “Think!” Maude yelled. “If we don’t come up with anything, we’re going to have to take practice exam number eight million and three.”

  For a second it looked like Hillary was going to correct Maude on her math, but she said nothing.

  While the class desperately thought of something they could do together, Fletcher tapped his feet, Donut pulled harder at the now medium-size hole in his pants, and Miranda cleaned her glasses and put them back on.

  Even though she’d had glasses for a while, Miranda was still amazed by how much better the world looked now that she could really see. She looked around the room for inspiration. Another reason why she loved Miss Kinde was because even
though it broke a lot of rules, her teacher let her bring things from the castle to improve the classroom. Thanks to Miranda, 3B now had beanbag chairs, fluffy rugs, striped pillows, and yellow curtains.

  The curtains are a nice touch, Miranda thought. They are much nicer than the curtain hanging in the auditorium.

  Auditorium . . . Miranda thought. There was a stage in the auditorium. A stage that could be used for a play! Miss Kinde and Walt both liked plays. If 3B endeavored to put on a play, then Walt and Miss Kinde could watch it together! And have soup when it was over.

  “A play!” Miranda shrieked.

  3B stared at her. She’d never shrieked before.

  “We could do a class play,” she explained in her usual quiet voice. “Felix could build the sets, since he likes to glue. Agnes and Agatha could make costumes, since they like to sew.”

  Felix, Agnes, and Agatha all nodded.

  “I could do the dances,” Fletcher offered. “I’d be the . . . choreographer?” He looked at Miss Kinde, who nodded.

  “Craft services,” Donut said, excitedly pulling on the getting-much-bigger hole in his pants.

  3B looked at him.

  “Snacks,” Donut explained. “I’ll bring food to the rehearsals.”

  “I’ll direct,” Hillary and Maude announced.

  “I can write it,” Norbert offered. “I’ve always wanted to write a play.”

  Miranda looked around the classroom, wondering what she could do. She didn’t want to direct or write, and she wasn’t great at sewing or gluing. Too bad there wasn’t anything that involved lamps or curtains.

  Miranda must have looked unsure, because Miss Kinde looked at her and said, “Miranda, you could be the prop master! A prop master sets the scene. You’ll be excellent, since you have such terrific taste when it comes to curtains, lamps, and where things should be placed.”

  3B looked around their improved classroom and nodded.

  “Prop master,” Miranda said to Maude. “I like the sound of that.”

  “I’ll direct,” Hillary and Maude said again.

  “What are we calling our play?” Norbert asked. “I can’t start writing without a title.”

  3B looked at one another. What should their play be called? Fletcher began tapping his feet again. Desdemona scratched a bug bite on her hand. Norbert pulled on his sweatshirt hood and slunk down in his seat. Maude reached into her bag, past the stack of letters, roller skates, a rusty harmonica, and a curly chicken feather. She was looking for her lucky letter-writing pen to write down all the reasons she’d make a better director than Hillary, but to her surprise, she took out an overripe, extremely smelly banana instead.

  At that very moment, overwhelmed by the strong banana smell, Donut pulled the string on his pants so hard that his pant leg split completely down the middle.

  “What a banana!” Maude said in amazement.

  “My pants!” Donut cried.

  Miranda, holding her nose, looked at Maude’s banana and Donut’s pants. And then she said, very dramatically, “Banana Pants! Our play should be called Banana Pants!”

  6

  A SCAD OF SCAD SOUP

  “School was amazing today!” Maude told her dad and brother when she got home that Monday afternoon. Walt was stirring soup on the stove. Michael-John was on the couch, reading the definition of the word vainglorious, which is an adjective meaning boastful.

  “Miss Kinde cares so much about Three B that she stood up to Principal Fish!” Maude kissed Rudolph Valentino, patted Onion the Great Number Eleven between her ears, and picked up her Frizzle chicken, Rosalie, and spun her around.

  “She seems like a lovely person,” Walt said quietly.

  Maude stopped spinning and made a face. “Lovely” was a little too close to “love” for her. Who needs all this stupid love stuff? “Anyway, because Miss Kinde stood up for our rights, Three B isn’t going to have any practice exams for two whole weeks!”

  “Sounds wonderful.” Walt spooned soup into a bowl. “I’m glad your day was good, Maude. Mine was terribly disappointing.”

  “We’re going to do a creative endeavor! A play. I’ll probably be the director!”

  “The great William Shakespeare said, ‘All the world’s a stage,’” Walt said. “Eat some soup, Maude. There’s so much left.”

  Maude put her chicken on the table and sat down. “Our play is called Banana Pants. It’s going to be about a kid who finds some pants. That’s all we know so far. Norbert hasn’t decided if the pants will be good or evil yet.”

  Walt sighed.

  “I think they’ll be yellow,” Maude crooned to Rosalie.

  Walt sighed again, deeply.

  “Why was your day so rotten?” Maude finally asked.

  “Unfortunately, at today’s conference, I discovered that my latest beetle discovery had already been discovered.”

  “Bummer,” said Maude.

  “I was so close . . . and yet so very far away.”

  “Do I have to have soup?” Maude asked. “How much is left?”

  “A scad,” Michael-John called from the couch. “Scad is a noun. It means a large quantity.”

  “Ugh,” Maude said.

  “Scad can also be a kind of fish,” Michael-John added. “We should be happy that Dad didn’t make a scad of scad soup. Eat some, Maude. I ate six bowls today and didn’t make a dent.”

  “I’m so tired of soup. Can I have a hard-boiled egg?” Before Maude was best friends with Miranda, she’d eaten hard-boiled eggs all the time. But once she learned how much Miranda hated them, she’d stopped bringing them to school.

  “We don’t have any,” Walt said. “Since Miranda is so sensitive to the smell.”

  “But she’s not here. She can’t smell an egg in a castle that’s one point two miles away.”

  “Yes, but she’s here so often, I’ve stopped making them,” Walt said.

  “A mighty powerful princess,” Michael-John said. “To keep you away from your hard-boiled eggs.”

  Maude tried to remember how many hard-boiled eggs she’d eaten since she and Miranda had become best friends. Not one! Maybe Miranda had more power than Maude realized. She was a princess, after all.

  So why can’t she write just one letter? Chemical Apple or Principal Fish would notice a letter from a princess! And maybe they would finally do something. Miss Kinde was right. It was important that evil corporations hear from other people, not just from Maude. An idea began to form in Maude’s brain. She pushed Rosalie out of the way and tore a clean page out of her notebook.

  “Maude?” Walt asked. “Your soup is getting cold.”

  But Maude didn’t answer. She was writing another letter.

  7

  HUMBLY, FERDINAND F. FISH

  Maude worked on her letter for most of the afternoon. She took a break to eat dinner (more soup) and then took the letter to her room to read it to Rosalie, who was pecking at something on the bed.

  Dear Principal Fish,

  I am writing because Mountain River Valley should stop using Styrofoam lunch trays in the cafeteria. Styrofoam is bad! It hurts the environment. Pieces of Styrofoam get into the oceans and make sea life sick. Styrofoam is also bad because it can stick to the food that students eat. That is gross! I beg you to stop using Styrofoam trays and to use recyclable ones instead. Then Mountain River Valley wouldn’t have so much garbage. Too much garbage is also a problem, but I will not write about that in this letter.

  Sincerely . . .

  “It’s a very good letter,” Maude told her chicken.

  Rosalie clucked.

  “But it sounds like all the other letters I’ve written to Principal Fish.”

  Rosalie sat down on Maude’s pillow.

  “If I write ‘Sincerely, Maude Brandywine Mayhew Kaye,’ Principal Fish will just throw this letter in the garbage. He probably doesn’t even recycle.” Maude stood up and put on her glasses. “Principal Fish would notice a letter from Miranda, because he never gets letters from pri
ncesses.”

  Maude imagined Miranda receiving a letter from Principal Fish that read:

  Dear Miranda,

  Thank you for the well-written and excellently spelled letter. Mountain River Valley will never use Styrofoam again!

  Humbly,

  Ferdinand F. Fish

  Principal, Mountain River Valley Elementary

  Miranda would like a letter like that, Maude thought. She probably won’t mind if I sign her name just one little time. Maude picked up her lucky letter-writing pen. And with that, Maude signed the letter on her desk:

  8

  MAUDE DELIVERS THE LETTER

  Very early Tuesday morning, Maude, who was not wearing roller skates, crept down the hall of Mountain River Valley Elementary.

  Despite her soft walking, Principal Fish stopped her outside the library. “ARE YOU HERE FOR EXTRA-EXTRA HELP?” he bellowed.

  “No,” Maude said. “But I need another copy of the Official Rules of Mountain River Valley Elementary. My Frizzle chicken ate mine.”

  Principal Fish twirled his long mustache between his fingers.

  “I don’t believe,” Maude said quickly, “that getting another rule book breaks any rules.” Maude actually knew it was not against the rules, because she’d double-checked her perfectly fine, non-eaten rule book the night before.

  Principal Fish tapped his index finger on his temple and boomed, “FOLLOW ME!”

  Maude followed Principal Fish into his office. When he turned to get a rule book from a high shelf, Maude put the princess-signed letter right in the middle of his desk.

  Principal Fish handed Maude the rule book she didn’t want or need. “KEEP THIS AWAY FROM THE CHICKEN,” he commanded.

  “I will,” Maude said. And then, even though it broke several rules, she skipped out of his office and ran all the way down the hall.

  9

  THE MOST UNUSUAL WEDNESDAY IN THE HISTORY OF MOUNTAIN RIVER VALLEY ELEMENTARY

  The next day was quite possibly the most unusual Wednesday in the history of Mountain River Valley Elementary.