by Meg Cabot
‘Are you still going on about that?’ Mary Kay rolled her eyes. ‘God, I can’t believe you even care. It’s just Barbie! Brittany’s right. You’re so immature.’
I felt tears prick my eyes. It wasn’t just Barbie. That wasn’t even the point.
‘What about you telling everyone about my book of rules?’ I demanded beneath my breath.
‘Well.’ At least Mary Kay had the decency to blush beneath the rim of her bonnet. ‘Who even does something like that? Keeping a book like that is just weird.’
‘It’s not weird,’ I whispered back. ‘Lots of people keep journals.’
‘Sure,’ Mary Kay whispered. ‘Journals. Not books of rules. Only a freak would do that, Allie.’
‘Ladies?’ Mrs Higginbottom clapped her hands at us from the front of the room. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No, ma’am,’ we both said at the same time, straightening up in our desk. I guess we had been talking kind of intensely during her long speech about the history of the Honeypot Prairie schoolhouse, which hadn’t had heat or electricity until the 1950s. If the teacher or students had wanted light or warmth, they’d had to gather around the pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room.
Like I cared.
‘Well, then,’ Mrs Higginbottom said. ‘Since you’re feeling so chatty, I’m sure one of you won’t mind taking a trip to the recitation bench and reading aloud from this McGuffey Reader . . .’
She held out a beaten up old book.
Great. We were busted.
Since Mary Kay’s face turned a deep shade of umber (which is darker than red) and her eyes instantly filled with tears, I knew it was up to me to save the day.
Again.
Really, what would Mary Kay do without me?
And as usual, she wasn’t the least little bit grateful.
I took the book and stood up, going to the bench Mrs Higginbottom had pointed out. I will admit, my heart gave a big thump as I climbed up on to it. It was high . . . and a lot like climbing on to a stage.
Then again, I love being onstage! Because since this isn’t really the 1850s, I can totally be a veterinarian slash actress when I grow up, like I want to.
So I don’t really know why I was so nervous, all of a sudden.
Maybe it was because of the venue – which is theatre talk for the place where I was performing. The inside of the schoolhouse at Honeypot Prairie was even worse than the kids in Mrs Danielson’s class had described it. I mean, it was old. It looked old. It smelt old. There was nothing interactive about it. It was just one big room (which is I guess why they called it a one-room schoolhouse), filled with desks, built around that pot-bellied stove. All the kids who lived on Honeypot Prairie, no matter what age, had had to go to class in the same room, from the kindergarteners to the high-school kids. The teacher had had to run around, teaching all the classes one at a time, giving each grade a different assignment to work on before turning to teach the next group.
If you ask me, it’s amazing anyone learned anything at all. I mean, what if there’d been a Patrick Day or a Scott Stamphley in the schoolroom? Or my brother Kevin, for goodness sake, demanding that everyone admire his hard hat? How much work do you think anyone would have gotten done with Kevin around, putting on his cute face?
Mrs Higginbottom had explained to us as we came in, however, that in the 1850s it hadn’t been unusual for teachers to employ corporal punishment . . .
. . . which meant switches, a type of spanking done with a stick or ruler, to keep unruly children in order.
When she’d said that, I’d turned in my seat to give Stuart and Patrick and those other boys a look.
But Scott Stamphley at least, was being . . . well, good. There was no other way to describe it.
He was sitting in the desk he and Joey Fields were sharing, with his gaze glued to Mrs Higginbottom, not fidgeting or looking out of the windows or trying to distract any of the other kids by making peeping noises (like he used to do back in Ms Myers classroom).
If I hadn’t known him better, I’d have thought he was a perfect angel . . . a real Lenny Hsu type.
Maybe he’d turned into a positive influence (like me) since I’d moved to Pine Heights.
On the other hand . . . how likely was that? Knowing Scott, not very.
More likely he was just waiting until Mrs Hunter finally went away to go check on some other team, before he made his move . . .
Patrick was being similarly well behaved . . . well, sort of. He was trying to sit as far away from Paige – who was sitting as far away from him as she possibly could – on the bench they were sharing. Really, it was like Paige didn’t want any part of her body or clothes to accidentally brush up against Patrick . . .
. . . while Brittany was pulling the same stunt with Lenny Hsu.
It was like both girls were convinced the boys had head lice.
Cheyenne, meanwhile, looked the most miserable of anybody in the room.
This was because her buddy, at least for the time being, was Mrs Hunter.
Under normal circumstances I’m pretty sure Cheyenne would have loved having so much attention from a teacher.
But today for some reason it really seemed to be bothering her. She kept looking over at where Scott was sitting and laughing really loud in this fake way at things Mrs Higginbottom had said, then tossing her ringlets like she was trying to get him to look in her direction.
But he totally wouldn’t turn his head. Scott didn’t seem very interested in Cheyenne.
‘Go on, dear,’ Mrs Higginbottom said to me when I’d straightened up on the recitation bench. ‘Starting with Lesson One. This is a real recitation that a student your age might have had to perform back in eighteen thirty-six,’ Mrs Higginbottom informed everyone in the schoolroom.
I could tell from everyone’s glazed expressions that no one could have cared less. I knew I certainly didn’t. I bet everyone was wishing as hard as I was that we were in the nice air-conditioned SpaceQuest planetarium (with a DigiStar sky-projection system in 3-D) at the Children’s Museum instead of stuck inside this stupid one-room schoolhouse on this hot spring day with the sun blazing down outside the windows.
‘OK,’ I said, holding up the frayed, yellow book. ‘Here goes. “George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. Rule the First: Every Action done in Company ought to be with Some Sign of Respect to those that are Present.”‘
‘Do you understand what that means, children?’ Mrs Hunter asked from the back of the room. ‘It means that When you’re in the company of others, you ought to he respectful and courteous of them. Go on, Allie.’
‘Rule the Second,’ I read. ‘When in Company, put not your Hands to any Part of the Body not usually Discovered
‘That means,’ Mrs Hunter said, casting a look at Patrick, ‘When you’re with other people, do not stick your hands down your trousers or your fingers up your nose.’
Everyone from Room 209 laughed. This was because Patrick was always sticking his finger up his nose, and wiping whatever he found in there on whatever was handy (or even eating it sometimes, if he thought no one was looking).
It wasn’t because of this that I lowered the book though.
Smiling, Mrs Higginbottom made a ‘Go on, you’re doing fine’ motion with her hand.
I lifted the book and read some more.
‘Rule the Third,’ I read. ‘Show Nothing to your Friend that may Affright him.’
‘That means . . .’ Mrs Hunter began to translate.
‘Oh, I know,’ Cheyenne said, raising her hand. ‘Don’t scare your friends.’
‘Correct,’ Mrs Hunter said. ‘Go on, Allie.’
‘Wait,’ I said.
I was in total and complete shock. I just needed some clarification.
‘George Washington – our country’s first president,’ I said, ‘wrote a book of rules?’
My voice cracked. That’s how astonished I was.
‘Oh my, yes,’
Mrs Higginbottom said with a giggle. ‘And when he was a very young man. They might seem a little old-fashioned to you children today, but they’re actually just common-sense advice about showing respect for others and in turn respecting oneself. George Washington’s 110 Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour was required reading for all pupils at Honeypot Prairie Schoolhouse. If they didn’t memorize them by second grade, they didn’t pass to third grade.’
I couldn’t believe it.
So I wasn’t a freak, as my ex-best friend Mary Kay Shiner had suggested just minutes earlier!
The very first president of our country had also kept a book of rules when he was a kid . . . a book so famous that schoolchildren had once been forced to memorize it!
From my perch on top of the recitation bench, I looked down at Mary Kay, Brittany and all the other girls who had been so mean to me that day at Walnut Knolls Elementary, when the truth had gotten out about my own book of rules.
What did they think about that? I wondered. That our very first president had kept a book of rules . . . just like me?
Especially, I wondered, Rule the forty-ninth, which I’d already skipped ahead and looked at:
Use no Reproachful Language against anyone, neither Curse nor Revile.
I guess I wasn’t the weird one after all! Not if a famous president had done the exact same thing I was doing!
‘Can I keep this?’ I asked Mrs Higginbottom excitedly, holding up the reader.
‘Oh, no, dear,’ she said, trying to take the book out of my hands, her expression a little suspicious, like she was afraid I might try to steal it. ‘That’s Honeypot Prairie property. You can find a copy of George Washington’s rules online, you know, for free. It’s not copyrighted material.’
I had no idea what she was talking about. All I knew was, I wanted to keep reading the president’s rules all day, and see how they matched up to mine.
It was like President George Washington and I were practically the same person.
‘It’s all right, dear,’ Mrs Higginbottom said, tugging on the book. ‘You can let go of the reader now. Your turn on the recitation bench is over.’
I realized I was still holding the book.
‘Can’t I,’ I said, tightening my grip, ‘just borrow it for the rest of the time I’m here? I’ll give it back before we leave Honeypot Prairie. I promise.’
‘No,’ Mrs Higginbottom said, tightening her grip as well. She also dropped her fake old-timey accent. ‘We need it for the next team of children who come in here.’
‘Mrs Higginbottom,’ Mrs Hunter said, getting up from the desk she was sharing with Cheyenne, ‘hadn’t we better hurry up if we’re going to make it to the bake-house in time for lunch?’
Mrs Higginbottom looked at the gold watch pinned to the decorative waistband of her long skirt and cried, ‘Oh dear, yes. But we didn’t have time to make our kickball of rock and string! Or play Pom-Pom-Pull-Away. Darn it!’
I was pretty sure everyone on Team Shawnee was going to be able to overcome their disappointment.
Especially when the man in the old-timey baker’s costume appeared in the schoolhouse doorway, blocking out all the light behind him because he was so big, and demanded, his arms covered in flour, ‘Team Shawnee! Are you ready to eat?’
I hadn’t realized until that moment how hungry I was. I mean, now that the gross smell of Joey’s throw-up had finally faded off my clothes.
Time was kind of flying by, now that things at Honeypot Prairie had actually started getting interesting.
‘Yeah!’ most of us shouted back to him, in response to his question.
‘Well, then get to the bakehouse,’ he roared. ‘Because nobody who lived on Honeypot Prairie in eighteen forty-nine ate unless they made their bread themselves!’
Rule #17
Use No Reproachful Language Against Anyone
Even someone who’d been expecting to have as bad a time at Honeypot Prairie as I was would have to admit that Master Baker Sean put on a pretty good presentation.
OK, he didn’t have a giant touch screen.
And there weren’t any animatronic dinosaurs.
He just showed us how the early settlers had smushed the wheat they’d grown (using a grinding mill) to make it into flour, then added water and yeast to make it into dough.
I already knew about the dough part because of Uncle Jay letting my brothers and I make our own dough at PizzaExpress where he worked (and also Caroline’s dad’s girlfriend Wei-Lin letting us make dim-sum one time).
But I didn’t know about milling wheat. Cheyenne and Brittany took especially long turns at the grinding mill, saying things like, ‘It’s so hard!’ and, ‘I can’t do it!’ even though it was totally easy to work the crank. When they were done, they kept giggling and saying how ‘cute’ they thought Master Baker Sean was in his apron.
I swear they both made me feel sick.
While we waited for the little loaves of bread we’d made to bake, Master Baker Sean took us out behind the bakehouse. There, Honeypot Prairie was growing the kind of fruit trees and vegetables early settlers would actually have depended on for food back in the 1800s.
OK, it wasn’t a path through a jungle simulated to be exactly like it was during the Cretaceous period, more than 65 million years ago.
But it was kind of cool to walk around the garden and orchards while Master Baker Sean told us what the different plants and flowers were.
My mom is trying to grow a garden at our house, with things like carrots and lettuce and tomatoes (yuck) in it. Except that squirrels (and Marvin) keep getting into it.
People didn’t get bored of Master Baker Sean, because he said things like, ‘Locust infestations were a major bummer back then, dude’ and, ‘Nobody can stand a barley midge, man.’
And everyone seemed to have fun after the garden and orchard tour, putting together our own sandwiches from the bread we’d made ourselves and stuff grown or preserved on Honeypot Prairie.
It was as we were sitting on picnic tables on Honeypot Prairie Common, finishing up lunch and getting ready to go over to the stables to see how the blacksmith shod a horse, that everything fell apart.
Maybe it was because there was so much sugar in the homemade lemonade the Honeypot Prairie people gave us to drink with our traditional prairie lunch of sandwiches, kettle chips and apples.
Maybe it was because some of us hadn’t gotten to work off all the energy we’d pent up while we’d been sitting in the schoolhouse, listening to Mrs Higginbottom.
Or maybe it was because we hadn’t gotten to play Pom-Pom-Pull-Away.
But if you ask me it was because Mrs Hunter got a call on her cellphone and said, ‘Oh, excuse me, I have to take this, I’ll just be a minute,’ and walked way to the bottom of the orchard, her face glowing in a special way that I could tell meant that call wasn’t business. It was personal.
But all of a sudden it seemed like everyone on Team Shawnee went nuts.
‘Hey, Upchuck,’ Stuart said, suddenly snatching the raccoon-skin hat off Joey Fields’s head. ‘Nice hat. I think I’ll keep it.’
Then Stuart put Joey’s hat on his own head.
Patrick Day started smirking like this was the funniest thing he’d ever seen or heard. Cheyenne and Brittany and all the other girls, with the exception of Courtney and myself, followed suit.
‘Hey now,’ Master Baker Sean said, not certain what was going on . . . but knowing something other than a locust infestation was happening, looked up from the bees he was swatting away. I’ll say one thing about Honeypot Prairie: it lived up to its name. There were a lot of bees . . . especially around the cups of lemonade we were drinking. They seemed to really want to dive on in there and take a couple of swigs themselves. ‘Everybody simmer down now. Blacksmith Todd is going to be here in a minute, and you guys aren’t going to want to miss that – ’
‘Oh, what’s the matter?’ Stuart asked, ducking as Joey reached for his hat. ‘Want it back?’
‘Ye
s,’ Joey said. I could hear the beginning of a bark in his voice. ‘It’s not mine. It’s my uncle’s. It’s his favourite hat. He only let me borrow it as a special favour on the condition that I didn’t lose it.’
‘Well,’ Stuart said, ‘that’s too bad. Because it’s mine now.’
Joey looked like he was about to cry.
‘Really, Joey’ Cheyenne said. ‘Don’t be so immature.’
I was sitting at the same picnic table as Cheyenne, with Brittany and her buddy Lenny and my buddy Mary Kay.
Not that I wanted to sit with Mary Kay. But I hadn’t had much of a choice, with Mrs Hunter watching.
Except that Mrs Hunter was gone, still off on her cellphone, talking to her new fiance.
That’s when I put my cup of too-sugary lemonade – Honeypot Prairie definitely didn’t use a mix – down with a thump that made it slosh, and a lot more bees rushed over to have a few licks.
‘Cheyenne,’ I said, ‘shut up.’ To Stuart I said, ‘Give him his hat back.’
Stuart widened his eyes at me. ‘Ooooh,’ he said, pretending, in the words of President Washington, to be affrighted. ‘What are you gonna do about it?’
Brittany decided to join in too.
‘Look out, Stuart,’ she said. ‘Stinkle doesn’t want anyone messing with her boyfriend!’
‘Stinkle and Upchuck sitting in a tree,’ Stuart began to sing again, just like on the bus, taking the hat off and tossing it to Cheyenne.
‘K-I-S-S-I-N-G,’ everyone – with the exception of Lenny and Joey and me and Master Baker Sean, who still just looked confused – joined in, tossing the hat back and forth.
‘First comes love – ’
Round and round went Joey’s uncle’s hat, as he darted back and forth, fighting back tears, trying to get it back, but never quite being able to reach it.
Then comes marriage – ’
I tried to help Joey get his uncle’s hat back, and so did Lenny. But of course, people caught on that that was what we were doing, and didn’t toss it in our direction.
‘Then comes Stinklechuck in a baby – ’
A hand reached up and snatch Joey’s uncle hat right out of Marianne’s grasp, taking her by surprise.