I look up at Jill and she’s smiling at me. Another brilliant idea? No way! She probably wants us to take the bags of beads and dump them all over the floor so everyone will be sliding all over them. I am not doing that.
But next thing I know, we’re at our invisible clubhouse, doing our secret handshake, saying our pledge, and listening to Jill.
“Did you see all the beads Mrs. Larson has?” Jill asks us.
“No, Jill,” I say. “I’m not dumping beads all over the place. I don’t want to get into trouble — anyway, someone could get hurt!” Jill looks at me and rolls her eyes.
“Dump the beads all over the place? That’s rubbish,” Jill says. “My idea is ace! I think we should put all the beads into the toilets — in the boys’ loo!”
“What’s a ‘loo’?” Darby asks.
“Right,” says Jill. “I keep forgetting you’re not British. ‘Loo’ is the word we use for bathroom in London.”
“But the beads are supposed to grow to one hundred times their original size,” I say.
“Exactly!” Jill says. “They’ll fill up the toilet bowls, and it will be so brilliant when the boys go to the bathroom. They’ll be going on loads of frogs’ eggs!”
“What if they clog the toilets?” Darby asks.
“They won’t clog the toilets, Darby,” Jill says. “They’re slippery. They’ll just flush right down. This is the best practical joke ever.”
“What if Mikey poops on frogs’ eggs!” Darby says. We all start laughing — then the bell rings.
When we get back to class, the beads in our jars have grown to the size of peas. They’re filling up half the jars already! Everyone gathers around to look. Mikey holds a jar up to his face, and I can see a hundred Mikey faces looking back at me, which I don’t mind. Darby might be the one with a crush on him, but I think he’s cute, too.
“Back to your desks, people!” Mrs. Larson says. “Please leave the jars and the frogs’ eggs alone until it’s time for our science unit after second recess.”
Some people don’t take direction well, though, and later, when Mrs. Larson is turned toward the SMART Board, I watch Sonja get up from her seat and pick up her jar. The jar slips from Sonja’s hand and falls to the floor, spilling beads and water everywhere. Before Mrs. Larson even turns around, David and José have jumped from their seats and are picking up the slippery balls and throwing them at each other.
“Seats!” Mrs. Larson yells. “Sonja! I asked you not to touch your jars until our science unit after second recess!”
Sonja starts crying. We all go back to our seats and sit quietly. We don’t like it when Mrs. Larson gets mad. Luckily it doesn’t happen often.
The lunch bell rings, but no one moves. We know we’re all in trouble. I can hear Sonja sniffling. Jill raises her hand.
“I’ll clean this rubbish up for you, Mrs. Larson,” she offers. “Lily and Darby can help me. We can eat lunch at our desks when we’re done.”
Uh-oh.
“Darby and Lily, do you agree to help?” Mrs. Larson says. I’m nodding yes. Why am I nodding yes?
“Everyone else, you may line up for lunch.”
Everyone grabs their lunch sacks from the basket by the door and lines up until Mrs. Larson dismisses them. Then she gets some paper towels, a broom, and a dustpan from the utility closet and gives them to us.
“Thank you, girls. I can use a break,” she tells us, smiling. “Just throw the beads that you sweep up into the circular file. I will see you after lunch recess.”
We split up the paper towels and start wiping up the water until Mrs. Larson leaves the room. Jill opens the cabinet under the sink and gets out the two huge plastic bags of beads!
“Let’s give it a go!” Jill says.
She hands one bag to me and one to Darby. “Follow me,” she says.
I follow. What am I doing? It’s like Jill has me on a string or something! We walk into the boys’ room.
“Eww, it’s rank in here — boys are so gross!” Jill says. Then she points to the urinal. “Hey! Bonus! There’s a silly boy toilet in here, too!”
Darby pours half a bag of beads in one toilet and half a bag in the other. Jill plugs the sinks and fills them with water. I pour a bunch of beads into each sink. We try to fill the urinal with water, but it drains, so Jill takes a wad of paper towels, gets it wet, and clogs up the drain. I pour the rest of my bag of beads into the urinal, then we toss the bags in the trash and run back to the classroom to finish cleaning up Sonja’s mess.
The beads are difficult to sweep up. We try to pick them up, but they keep shooting out from our fingers across the floor. We throw a few at one another, then realize we’d better hurry, so we work hard until all of them are in the garbage. When we’re done, we sit at our desks and eat.
After recess, everyone gathers around the science table. The jars are full to the rim with clear beads. There’s no water left.
“We made frogs’ eggs!” José shouts.
“Without frogs!” says Mikey.
Darby smiles and looks at me.
“Who needs amplexus, anyway?” she says.
“Everyone into your groups, please,” Mrs. Larson tells us. “Find your jar and take it to your desk to fill out your work sheets. I’d like you to observe the beads and see how your observations on their changes match your hypotheses by comparing and contrasting the look and feel of your frogs’ eggs to the descriptions of the eggs in your textbooks, and complete your end-of-unit questions.”
“Mrs. Larson?” Henry asks loudly. “Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Henry, quietly, please, there’s no reason to yell. Yes, you may go.”
I look at Darby. She looks terrified; her face has gone completely still. I look at Jill, and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh — she’s not even scared that we’re going to get into trouble.
“MRS. LARSON! MRS. LARSON!” Henry yells from the coatroom through the classroom door.
“Henry,” Mrs. Larson says. “As I just said, there is NO reason to yell.”
“There IS a reason to yell, Mrs. Larson! There are FROGS in the bathroom!” Henry is standing in the doorway with his pants down at his knees. I can see his underwear.
“Frogs in the bathroom?” Mrs. Larson asks him doubtfully.
“Frogs’ EGGS!” Henry yells. “The bathroom is FILLED with FROGS’ EGGS!” Mrs. Larson’s face goes white, and she gets up from her desk.
“Let’s pull up your pants, Henry, and please show me what you are talking about.”
As soon as Mrs. Larson leaves the room, Jill gets up and follows her. She signals Darby and me to follow, too, so we do. The rest of the class gathers behind us.
“Pretend like you don’t know what’s going on!” Jill whispers to us.
We step into the coatroom. There are quite a few frogs’ eggs scattered around the floor. Suddenly, we hear a lady’s scream from behind the boys’ room door. Jill opens the door to the bathroom, and there’s Mrs. Larson — on the floor, elbow deep in frogs’ eggs.
“She slipped!” Henry says.
Uh-oh. The toilets are overflowing with frogs’ eggs, the urinal is overflowing with frogs’ eggs, and the sinks are overflowing with frogs’ eggs. The water is on in one of the sinks. We look at Jill.
“Oh, dear,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to leave it on!”
Mrs. Larson turns around to look right at us. Without thinking, I pull my sweatshirt hood over my head.
“Who did this?” she says.
“It was Lily and Darby’s idea!” Jill says. She starts crying. “I tried to stop them, Mrs. Larson, I did, but they wouldn’t listen to reason. They told me it was a brilliant idea!”
I hear Darby start to cry, too. I’m fascinated for just a moment as I watch Mrs. Larson’s face cycle through several of my favorite colors of Crayola crayons: Salmon to Raspberry to Red to Brick Red to Maroon.
Mrs. Larson gets to her feet, holding the sink for balance, then comes toward us. The whole clas
s backs up.
“Lily and Darby, is this true?” Mrs. Larson asks us.
I’m too scared to say anything. I guess Darby is, too. But we must look guilty.
“Take your backpacks and go to the principal’s office,” Mrs. Larson says. “You will not be coming back to class.”
Darby and I walk slowly to the office, too scared to even talk to each other. Darby’s crying so much, she’s hiccupping, but I’m too scared to cry. This is the first time I’ve ever been sent to the principal’s office for doing something bad at school. Darby stops me right outside the office door.
“Don’t tell on Jill,” she whispers.
“Why?” I ask her. “She told on us!”
“Because, Lily — no one will believe us. All the teachers think she’s perfect.”
“But her fingerprints are probably all over the bathroom. We could prove it!”
“Even if her fingerprints are everywhere,” Darby tells me, “Jill will get out of it — and we’ll get into more trouble. Just don’t tell, okay?”
“Fine,” I say.
We walk into the office, and the office lady, Ms. Amy, tells us to have a seat. I look at the clock and see that school is almost over. I hope that Principal Walker is too busy to see us before the bell rings, and we can just get on the bus and go home. No such luck. Principal Walker walks in and motions for us to follow him. He looks like a giant. He’s big and strong with short blond hair. Mom says he reminds her of a professional wrestler on TV. He looks at us like we’re his opponents and he’s about to slam us to the floor. But when he talks, his voice is kind of high and stuffy, like he has a cold. He doesn’t sound as scary as he looks.
“Lily and Darby,” Mr. Walker says, “can you please explain to me the choice that you made today?”
“Okay,” Darby says, sniffling. “We thought it would be funny for the boys to find frogs’ eggs in their toilets. We didn’t know that they’d get so big! Then we accidentally left the water on. That’s how it got so out of control.”
“Is this what happened, Lily?” Mr. Walker asks me.
I nod and swallow. It feels like I have a mouth full of shredded wheat.
“Lily and Darby,” Mr. Walker says, blowing his nose, “you made a bad, bad choice today. As a consequence, you will be spending first recess in the RTC over the next week.”
Not the RTC!
“In this school, we have a three-strikes-you’re-out rule,” he continues. “This is strike one for both of you. If you were to get three strikes, you would be suspended, which would be a very serious mark on your school record. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
“No,” we both say.
“I will be calling your parents and informing them of your actions,” he tells us.
Darby starts crying harder. I feel as if I swallowed a frog.
“Do you have anything else you’d like to tell me?”
It was Jill’s fault! I want to say. You should call Jill’s parents — not ours! “Ji —” I start.
But I stop. I know Darby’s right; Jill would talk her way out of it, and I’d probably just get into more trouble for trying to blame her.
We hear the last bell ring, and Mr. Walker excuses us to catch our buses. We have to run.
I’m nervous the whole way home on the bus. I think about running away, but I don’t have my toothbrush, and, besides, if I ever ran away, I’d want to take Snort with me — so I walk home from the bus stop with Abby.
I’m so scared that I don’t even run when we pass by Zach. When I come inside, Mom gives me a what-have-you-done look. I have to explain everything to her, including how it was Jill’s idea and how she blamed us for all of it.
“Lily,” Mom tells me, “you will always have friends with ideas; things that they want you to do or try. You need to listen to yourself. You know what is right and wrong. You need to make your own decisions.”
“I know,” I say.
“Then why did you do it?” she asks me.
“Because Jill makes everything sound like a good idea,” I tell Mom.
“Well, maybe it’s not such a good idea to spend time with Jill,” Mom says.
“Yeah, maybe,” I say.
I know she’s right.
I’ve made up my mind about what I’m going to do before I get to school the next morning.
“I’m quitting the Rizzlerunk Club,” I tell Darby and Jill in the coatroom before class.
“No!” Darby says. “You can’t quit. You’re a founding member!”
“She can quit if she wants to,” Jill says. “It was loads better as a two-person club anyway.”
“Exactly,” I say, looking at Jill.
“Please don’t quit!” Darby says.
“I’m quitting,” I say. I turn around and walk into the classroom.
I sit down and stare at my feet like I did at the beginning of the year. If I’m not friends with Darby or Jill, who am I going to be friends with? It feels like I’m starting school all over again.
I can hardly pay attention during math, but then during science we talk more about the life cycle of frogs, and it’s pretty interesting.
“Frogs start out as one cell in an egg, just like humans do. Then the cell multiplies into two cells, then four cells, then eight, then sixteen. Can anyone guess how many cells they multiply into after that?”
“Thirty-two!” says Iris.
“Sixty-four!” says David.
“A googolplex!” says José.
“Okay, that’s enough, children,” Mrs. Larson says.
I think about Darby. She was just one cell. Was it a cell with bad eyesight? And Jill! How could Jill ever have been just one cell? I wonder if the one cell was mean. If it was, then when it multiplied, were all the new cells just as mean? Or is the first cell the meanest one in her body?
As Mrs. Larson tells us more about the frog life cycle, I start to realize how much humans are just like frogs! At first, we both look like tadpoles, and we both live in water, and then we both grow arms and legs and start breathing air. It’s just that we start out on the insides of our moms, and frogs start outside their moms. It’s definitely a lot more dangerous to be a frog.
The next thing I know, science is over and it’s almost first recess, which means Darby and I are going to have to leave class for our first day in the RTC. When Mrs. Larson tells us to gather up our books, Jill actually looks like she wants to come with us — like she’s jealous! Well, too bad for her. She could be coming, too, if she hadn’t blamed us for her idea.
“Lily, I know you’re mad at Jill for getting us into trouble,” Darby says as we walk out of the room toward the RTC.
“She never stops getting us into trouble!” I say. “And she never will.”
“I know, Lily. She’s full of bad ideas, just like I told you. But, you know — we don’t have to do them. And you definitely shouldn’t quit the Rizzlerunks. It’s our club. We can just tell Jill that she can’t be the queen anymore, and we can stop doing whatever she says.”
“Darby, if you could just stop doing what she tells you to do, wouldn’t you have already done it a long time ago?”
“Probably,” Darby admits.
“Then how can you still be friends with her?” I ask. “Why can’t you just be friends with me, like it was before she came back from London?”
“I want to be friends with both of you!” Darby says. “Lily, Jill’s been my friend forever. I can’t just stop being friends with her.”
“Well, then,” I say, “I guess you’ll just have to stop being friends with me, because I can’t be friends with Jill anymore. My mom and dad told me that they think she’s a bad influence.”
We walk into the RTC, which is just a classroom at the end of the kindergarten hall with a few other naughty kids scattered around among the desks. I don’t see any electroshock machines or anything, but I do see Mrs. ’Stache.
“Well, if it isn’t the playground painters themselves!” she says with a sneer. “I k
new your shenanigans would catch up with you soon enough. How nice to have the pleasure of spending some time with you.”
We stand in the doorway, stunned, and look at her.
“SIT DOWN!” she says. “And as far away from each other as possible.”
I take one corner of the room in the back (as far from Mrs. ’Stache as possible). Darby takes the other corner. Mrs. ’Stache instructs us to take out paper and pencils.
“Now,” Mrs. ’Stache tells us, “you will write a daily essay about what goes on inside your tiny little heads when you decide to make such preposterously stupid decisions, such as painting the playground bars and filling the boys’ bathroom with jelly beads. I want details. And DO NOT make these short essays. You will be in here for five straight days. I will be checking your work every day. If I find your reasoning acceptable, I will sign your work at the end of the week and send it home to your parents, so they can understand what goes on in your tiny little heads, too.”
We sit down and start writing. My pencil is dull and I want to sharpen it, because I hate writing with dull pencils, but I’m much too scared to ask Mrs. ’Stache if I can get up and use the pencil sharpener. Then, as she paces the room, she looks over my shoulder and gets mad at me for having such a dull pencil!
Finally the bell rings and we leave. Darby and I walk back to class together, but I walk behind her so we don’t have to talk anymore, because my mind is made up.
At lunch, I decide to go to my safe place: the library. I pick out a book with lots of pictures. I should have known at the beginning of the year, when Darby was teasing me all the time, that I shouldn’t be friends with her. I put my head down on my book. Why did Jill have to come back?
“Hi, Lily,” I hear a voice say.
I turn and see Iris sitting on a beanbag behind me. “What are you doing here?” she asks me.
“Reading,” I say.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t have any friends anymore,” I tell her. “That’s why.”
The Rizzlerunk Club Page 9