The Rizzlerunk Club

by Leslie Patricelli

  “I didn’t know you rode my bus!” she says. “How come I haven’t seen you before?”

  “It’s my first day,” I say.

  “But you weren’t here this morning.”

  “I rode the bus this morning with my sister . . . but I didn’t see you.”

  “I was here. You weren’t,” she says. “I would have noticed you. I would have had the whole bus quacking!”

  I’m glad that didn’t happen. I look around. “I don’t see my sister,” I say.

  “Maybe you’re on the wrong bus.”

  “No. I looked at the number. It’s two-one-one. That’s my bus number.”

  “That’s the school district number, dummy,” she says, laughing. “Not the bus number!”

  She grabs me and pulls me up so hard that I fall right down on top of her in the aisle.

  “What’s going on back there! Get off the floor!” the bus driver shouts.

  All the kids start laughing.

  “Lily’s on the wrong bus!” Darby tells him from underneath me. “We have to get off!” We get up and run down the aisle and out the door. I look up at the side. Duh.

  I have no idea which bus is mine. I run toward the first bus in line just as it pulls out. Abby’s in the window, waving bye to me. She may look dumb in that hat, but I guess she’s smarter than I am.

  I feel like I’m going to start crying, but the last thing I want to do is act like a baby in front of all the kids staring out the bus windows at me. Besides, I hate crying in front of anyone. It’s like wearing a foofy dress instead of my jeans and sweatshirt.

  I turn around and Darby is right behind me. She missed her bus, too. “We’re such doofuses!” she says.

  I just look at her.

  “You know, doofuses . . . like dorks, dweebs, dummies, ding-dongs, dopes . . . duh!”

  Like I don’t know what a doofus is.

  I turn away from her without saying anything and start walking toward the office to call Mom to come and get me.

  “Oh!” she says, following me. “I forgot! Of course you’re so quiet! You speak duck! QUACK!”

  Now I have to sit here with Darby while I wait for Mom to pick me up from school. I feel like a boiling witches’ brew inside: part embarrassed by all the stupid things that I’ve done, part mad because Darby’s the jerk who started everyone quacking at me, and a teensy bit thankful — because she does keep saving me.

  “You thought your bus number was the school district number! That just quacks me up,” she says.

  ARGH! She quacked again!

  “Where do you live?” Darby asks me.

  “On Pine Lake,” I say, waiting for her to quack, because there are lots of ducks on Pine Lake.

  “Where on the lake?” she asks.

  “That way, at the very end,” I say, pointing in the direction of my house.

  “Oh. I thought maybe we were neighbors. I live that way at the very end,” she tells me. “But that’s okay, we could go by boat to each other’s houses.”

  Go to each other’s houses?

  “But you don’t like me,” I say quietly, looking at my feet.

  “What? Why would you think that?” Darby asks.

  “Because you quack at me all the time — and you called me a doofus, and I threw up on your shoes.”

  “So?” she says. “Everyone throws up sometimes. And you’re not really a doofus — you’re just new here, so you don’t know stuff yet. And it’s fun to quack! You should try it!”

  She looks at me. “Try it!” she says.

  “Quack,” I say.

  “Quack!” she says. “Quack, quack!”

  She stands up, waddling in circles, flapping her elbows like a duck. I can’t help it. I smile. She sits down again and crowds up against me like we’re best friends. “See, it’s fun!” she says.

  That’s when Mom drives up, with Abby — still wearing her Bavarian hat — in the back of Vanna. I try to block the car window so Darby can’t see Abby, but the side door slides open.

  “Hallo! Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” Abby says.

  I jump into the car, hoping to leave before anything else embarrassing happens, but too late. Mom opens the car window. “Aww. Who’s this? Have you made a new friend?” Mom asks me.

  “I’m Darby!” Darby says.

  “Well, hello, Darby!” Mom says. “Are you coming home with us?”

  I look at Mom. What? No!

  “Sure!” Darby says, sliding into the backseat next to Abby. “Can I borrow your cell phone? I just have to call my mom, so she knows where I am.”

  How is this happening? I thought Darby didn’t even like me until about ten minutes ago. And I definitely didn’t like her. Now she’s coming over and meeting my weird family? She’ll never stop teasing me! I hear Darby’s mom say yes on the phone, the door slides shut, then Mom starts driving — and talking.

  “You didn’t eat your spinach for lunch, did you, Abby?” Mom asks her.

  Oh, no! Not the spinach thing! Why would she do this in front of Darby?

  “YES, I DID!” Abby says, holding her arms up to show off her muscles. “Now I’m super strong!”

  Darby looks at me, and I’m sure I look like a tomato. “Did you eat your spinach, Lily?” Mom asks.

  “MOM!” I say.

  “You ate your spinach!” Darby says. “I saw you eat it at lunch!”

  “Oh, no!” Mom says, winking at me in the mirror. “Lily, you didn’t! Darby, can you please keep an eye on Lily for me? She is absolutely not allowed to eat spinach for lunch. It will make her much too strong.”

  It’s this thing Mom has been doing since we were little; she tells us NOT to eat spinach under any circumstances or it will make us much too strong — so we eat it. Of course, now Abby and I know that Mom’s using reverse psychology, but we play along. Mom still puts a little bag of spinach in my lunch every day and writes DO NOT EAT! on the plastic bag. I usually hide the bag during lunch, even though I still eat the spinach.

  The next thing I know, Darby is following Mom and me into our kitchen.

  “I made some snacks!” says Mom. “Veggies with hummus for dipping!”

  I groan. Mom is so into healthy food, it drives Abby and me crazy! She even wants to raise our own meat. She’s always wanted a pig (which explains why our dog’s name is Snort). She thought we’d get a pig and some chickens as soon as we moved out here to the country. There’s even an old chicken coop in our yard. But it turns out that the rules have changed, and we live too close to the lake to have any farm animals.

  “We’re, like, the healthiest family on the planet,” I say to Darby. “My dad’s a dentist, and my mom’s a dental hygienist. Even our last name is a vegetable — it means lettuce in Italian.”

  “Oh, silly Lily,” says Mom, smiling. “This food is good and good for you. We’re feeding our bodies, not just our mouths!”

  I look at Darby, who must think I’m permanently sunburned, since my face is always turning red. She’s already dipping celery sticks into the hummus.

  “Yummy!” Darby says. “I’ve never had hummus before. Hummus is yummus!”

  Darby is pretty funny. I have to admit it. Anyway, I’m stuck with her, so I decide to make the best of it. We go down to the lake after our snack and out onto our dock. The sky is filled with cotton-ball clouds, and the water is completely still, except for the trails of ripples behind a couple of ducks. The lake reflects the clouds like a mirror. Darby points toward her house at the other end of the lake, but it’s about a mile away — too far away to see.

  “Your house is really awesome,” says Darby. “And it’s new, which means that you probably don’t have ghosts.”

  “Do you have ghosts?”

  “Of course! My house is the oldest house on the whole lake! It’s over a hundred years old. Tons of people have died there. We see their shadows and hear them creaking around. And weird things happen — like doors slamming and other stuff.”

  “That sounds scary,” I say. “But I
don’t believe in ghosts.”

  “I can’t not believe in them,” she says. “My dad’s writing a book about true ghost stories. He’s even writing about a couple of them that happened in our house!”

  “Like what?” I ask, thinking her whole family must either like to make stuff up or be a little crazy.

  “Like, my dad was painting my parents’ room red, and he left to get a drink of water. When he came back, there were red footprints going up the wall and across the ceiling!”

  “Whoa!” I say.

  “Yeah. Come to my house sometime and I’ll show you some things.”

  It makes me feel good that she just invited me over, like maybe we could even end up being friends — which would be so weird. Then I imagine going to a spooky one-hundred-year-old house with mysteriously slamming doors and footprints on the ceiling, and my arm hairs start to tickle. Just because I don’t believe in ghosts doesn’t mean I’m not scared of them.

  “Hey! Have you found any frogs around here?” Darby asks me.

  “No, but we hear a bullfrog at night. It sounds like a cow, and it’s probably as big as a cow, but I’ve never seen it.”

  We spend the next hour looking along the shoreline for giant frog footprints, but we can’t find any.

  “My end of the lake is loaded with frogs,” Darby tells me. “I’ll have to bring you some next time I come over.”

  At dinner, I ask Mom and Dad if they believe in ghosts. “Scientists can explain ghost stories,” Abby says.

  “That’s right, Abby!” Dad says. “Some scientists attribute ghostly phenomena to quantum physics. Do you know what quantum physics is, Lily?”

  “I do!” says Abby, and starts explaining quantum physics to Dad, who looks annoyingly proud.

  I excuse myself, and no one notices — except for Mom, who reminds me that I have to do the dishes.

  When I go to bed, I think about Darby and decide that I’ll go to school tomorrow, I guess. I mean, it’s not like I have a choice. And anyway, it’s been so bad so far — what else could happen?

  When Darby comes into class the next morning, she smiles at me. “That was fun yesterday, Lily,” she says. “Your family QUACKS me up!” A few kids quack at me. I look up at her. Why is she teasing me again?

  “I mean all you have for snacks at your house is hummus and celery! And QUACKERS!”

  Then she starts quacking and flapping her wings like she did yesterday. When no one else was there, it seemed kind of funny. Now it doesn’t. I frown. Yesterday I thought we might be friends. I guess I was wrong.

  “Class,” says Mrs. Larson. “The bell has rung, so sit down and zip those mouths shut. It’s time for SHTV.”

  “Shhh! TV! Shhh! TV!” says Mikey loudly.

  “Mikey!” shouts Mrs. Larson. “Shhh!”

  “TV!” shouts everyone.

  Today it’s two different fifth-grade kids announcing the news. They tell us a few items of real news, like about a new exoplanet that could support life and an earthquake in Alaska, then some local sports and the weather (fifty degrees and raining, like usual). Then they tell us the lunch menu, cheeze zombies with tater tots and peas. I love cheeze zombies!

  At the end of the news, they announce a new contest. Every Monday they are going to introduce a Mystery Kid of the Week. Anyone who wants to guess who it is writes down their answer and gives it to the teacher. On Friday they tell us the Mystery Kid, who gets to go on the news that day and read the sports report. And all the kids who guessed the winner get a roll of Smarties!

  “This week’s Mystery Kid of the Week,” the girl announces, “is a third-grader with curly brown hair. This mystery kid has a brother in fifth grade, loves kittens, and plays baseball.”

  “I know who that is,” David White shouts.

  “Hand, David,” Mrs. Larson reminds him.

  David is always in trouble for not raising his hand before he speaks.

  “Children,” she says, “if you have a guess as to who the Mystery Kid of the Week is, please write it down on a sheet of paper with your name and bring it to me at first recess. Now, let’s take attendance. José Alvero? Iris Barton? Henry Clayton? Darby Dorski? Mikey Frank? Ethan Jackson? Lily Lattuga?”

  Before I can say “here,” Darby starts quacking, then everyone starts laughing. I should’ve stayed home today like I’d planned. I don’t understand why I have to come here anyway. I love to read and draw and do science projects and play math games on the computer at home. I’m sure I could teach myself everything that Mrs. Larson plans to teach us.

  “Class, please take out a composition book,” Mrs. Larson directs us. “For the rest of the year, this book will be your journal for the classroom. In your journal, you may write and draw as you please. Remember, though, I will be reviewing your journals daily, so please use neat handwriting and be appropriate with your entries. Today I’d like you to write something in your journal that tells me about you.”

  I decide to write a poem about how I’m feeling. In my old, awesome, creative school, we spent a lot of time learning to write poems about our feelings.

  After we write in our journals, we have a spelling test, then go out for recess. I decide to avoid everyone and go to the library.

  Iris Barton is already on a library chair, reading. I don’t know why, but no one ever talks to her, and it seems like she’s always alone. I think that she spends every recess in the library, which kind of makes sense. Recess wouldn’t be so fun without anyone to play with.

  “Hi, Lily,” she says.

  “Hi.”

  “You can sit next to me.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’m looking for a beanbag, though.”

  Iris seems nice, but there must be a reason that no one is friends with her.

  After recess, when I sit at my desk, my chair quacks! I stand up fast. Everyone starts laughing at me — especially Darby, who’s laughing so hard that her face is red. I look down and see a little rubber duck on my seat.

  “Gotcha!” Darby says. She’s still laughing when Mrs. Larson walks up.

  “I’ll take that!” she says, confiscating the duck and putting it in her desk drawer.

  I’ve never been so glad to have math. Nobody will tease me during math. We’re doing multiplication with the number zero.

  But math goes by too fast. The next thing I know, it’s time for lunch. I’m the last one in our class to sit down, and the only place is next to Darby. Why does Darby always have an extra seat open next to her? It’s like someone used to sit there and now they don’t.

  I look again to see if I can sit somewhere else, but the benches are full and the lunchroom monitor, who is also the playground monitor, demands that I sit down immediately. I do because she’s kind of scary. Her name is Mrs. Rash. She’s short and round, with short curly hair that looks like the scouring pad that Mom makes us use to clean super-dirty pans, a red face, and a little bit of a mustache. Everyone calls her Mrs. ’Stache behind her back.

  Darby and I are jammed together at the crowded table.

  “I got you so good with that rubber duck!” she says, laughing, dumping out her lunch. “Hey! I have a cheese sandwich that looks just like the sandwich you threw up. That was so gross! I could see the cheese and bread and everything. Do you even chew? Oh yeah, of course you don’t chew! You’re a duck!”

  I try to ignore her. It’s so weird that I actually had fun with her yesterday. I open my lunch bag to see what Mom packed for me. I don’t see much, so I dump it on the table. All that comes out is a plastic sandwich bag with nothing in it — except for a tiny, wilted spinach leaf!

  “That’s your lunch?” Darby says loudly.

  Everyone looks. Darby grabs the bag and holds it up so everyone can see it.

  I can’t believe it. Mom forgot to pack me a new lunch! This is my almost-empty spinach bag from yesterday’s lunch.

  “Do not eat what?” Mikey asks. “The plastic bag?”

  Mrs. ’Stache grabs the bag from Darby. “What’s goin
g on here?” she demands. “What is this?”

  “My lunch,” I mumble.

  “This is your lunch?” she says. “This is not a proper lunch!”

  When she says “proper,” spit comes out of her mouth. Everyone is looking now. Darby elbows me hard under the table. I’m about to cry, and the elbow jab to my ribs is not helping. Then she kicks my foot. I look down. Darby’s cheese sandwich is on my lap. She’s saving me! I pick it up and put it on the table in front of me.

  “There’s her lunch!” Darby says, smiling.

  “Is that your lunch?” Mrs. ’Stache says to me.

  I look at Mrs. ’Stache. I don’t like to lie. If I tell her it’s my sandwich, I’m lying.

  “I said, is that your LUNCH?”

  Everyone is staring at me. I don’t know what to do. Darby elbows me again. I nod yes. She sets down the bag and looks at me. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now.

  “Well, EAT IT, then!” she shouts.

  I take a bite, just as someone spills their milk, and she spins around on her heel and starts yelling at them.

  Darby bursts out laughing. I start laughing, too. Then Henry Clayton starts laughing, and milk comes out of his nose. Everyone is cracking up, and for the rest of lunch, we feel like a big group of friends, just like at my old school.

  “Thanks,” I say to Darby as we walk to recess.

  “You’re welcome!” Darby says. “Hey! Let’s jump rope!”

  We jump rope during the whole recess and it’s fun. I don’t feel so mad anymore. When I get back from recess, Mrs. Larson has given me an A+ on my poem.