The Trouble with Ants

by Claudia Mills

  She probably needed to write a letter to go with the article. The letter didn’t have to be long, either. This was a business letter, not a friendly letter, so she used the format Coach Joe had taught them for business letters. She was too worn out from typing the article to type the letter, too. But she wrote it in cursive, even though she wasn’t very good at cursive. Cursive looked more grown-up and business-like than printing.

  Dear Sir or Madam:

  Here is the article I wrote about my research into ants.

  I hope you want to publish it.

  Sincerely,

  Nora Alpers

  She found an envelope in the desk drawer and wrote the address on it. Her parents kept a roll of stamps in the drawer, too. They were both great believers in writing old-fashioned letters, the kind you wrote by hand and sent in the mail, so they had told her she could help herself to stamps whenever she needed one.

  “I’m going for a walk!” she called upstairs to them.

  Faintly, her mother’s voice called back, “Dinner in half an hour!”

  The closest mailbox was in front of the post office, just three blocks away, in the other direction from where Amy lived. Nora could have put her letter for pickup in the mailbox at home, but then her parents might see it. She wasn’t going to tell them anything until the issue with the published article came in the mail. Even then she wasn’t going to tell them. She’d let them find out on their own.

  The new issue would arrive in the mail.

  Her father would flip through it before sticking it on the top of one of the huge piles of paper in his office.

  His eyes would fall on a familiar name.

  He’d stare at it, unable to believe what he saw.

  “Nora!” he’d holler. “Nora, is this you? Janine, come see what our daughter just did!”

  These pleasant thoughts occupied Nora all the way to the post office. Now she stood in front of the mailbox, her letter clutched tightly in her hand. She wasn’t a superstitious person. She didn’t believe in magic or luck or special charms to make things happen. But she still gave her envelope one little kiss—not for luck, really, just to wish it success on its way.

  She slipped it into the mail slot and hugged herself with happiness.

  At lunch on Friday, Emma started talking as soon as all the girls had sat down. She always talked more than everybody else put together, but today she obviously had something extra-important to share.

  “Over winter break, my mother took me and my sister to the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver for high tea. High tea means extra-fancy tea. You don’t just have tea; you also have scones—these yummy little biscuit things—with cream and jam. And itty-bitty cucumber sandwiches—I know that sounds weird, but they’re ultra-British, and they’re good, too. They really are, with the crusts cut off to make them even fancier. Plus lots of little frosted cakes. And everyone was all dressed up—with hats! And a lady wearing a long dress was playing beautiful music on a harp. It was the best time I ever had in my life.”

  Nora was surprised that the best time Emma ever had in her life was a time Precious Cupcake hadn’t even been there.

  “There was one thing missing, of course,” Emma said then.

  Of course.

  “Precious Cupcake couldn’t come with me, because they don’t allow pets at their high tea. Any pets. So…”

  Emma paused. When all eyes were on her, she continued.

  “I’m going to have my own high tea just for Precious Cupcake and a few of my best friends. It’s going to be this Sunday afternoon from three to five. I know this is short notice, but can you all come? Say yes!”

  “Yes!” chorused Bethy, Elise, Tamara, and Amy. A high tea like the one at the Brown Palace Hotel was even more exciting than an ice-skating party.

  “Nora, you’re invited, too,” Emma said, as if Nora might be hesitating because she wasn’t sure if she was a best-enough best friend to be included in such a select invitation.

  Nora didn’t particularly want to eat cucumber sandwiches with Emma’s cat. But she didn’t want to hurt Emma’s feelings, either, especially since Dunk was wearing his now grubby and stained I HATE CATS T-shirt for the third day in a row. Emma, who usually never wore the same outfit twice in a month, was wearing her fluffy-cat sweater for the second time that week.

  “Thank you,” Nora said. “I’d love to.”

  Coach Joe let kids bring in treats on their birthdays. Today was the birthday of one of Brody’s friends, Sheng. So Sheng’s mother had brought in cupcakes.

  When the school day was almost over, Sheng went around setting paper plates with cupcakes on them on everybody’s desks.

  Emma beamed as if Sheng had chosen to bring cupcakes in honor of Precious Cupcake. “Thank you,” she told him, with the kind of smile she used to give to Dunk. “I love cupcakes.”

  She turned toward Nora. “We’ll be having mini-cupcakes at the high tea in addition to the scones and cucumber sandwiches. Of course!”

  “That will be nice,” Nora said politely.

  “Cupcakes are awesome,” Brody agreed, his face already dabbed with frosting.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Nora saw Dunk heading toward their pod.

  Emma had been snubbing Dunk all week. No giggles when he told her that Wolf could eat Precious Cupcake for breakfast. No girly squeals when he jostled her tray in the lunch line and slopped tomato soup all over her grilled cheese sandwich. No one could do frosty disdain better than Emma Averill, Nora had to give her that.

  But Dunk still didn’t seem to get it. The more Emma snubbed him, the harder he tried to impress her by horsing around with the other boys and saying mean things about cats in general and Precious Cupcake in particular.

  Now he approached, cupcake in hand.

  “Precious Cupcake is a dumb name for a cat,” Dunk said, as a friendly opening.

  Nora couldn’t disagree with that.

  He grinned at Emma hopefully, plainly expecting that she would finally break down and giggle again as in days of yore.

  She didn’t.

  Nor did she say, “Wolf is a dumb name for a dog.” Or: “Dunk is a dumb name for a boy.”

  She just looked through Dunk as if he weren’t even there.

  Dunk flushed a dull red.

  “Well, here’s a cupcake for that dumb cat,” he said.

  He thrust his cupcake toward Emma’s cat sweater. Emma shrieked, not a happy shriek but the same terrified shriek she had given at the sight of Nora’s ant farm.

  Startled, Dunk dropped the cupcake. It landed, frosting side down, on Emma’s favorite flouncy skirt.

  “I hate you, Dunk!” Emma burst into tears just as Coach Joe came over to their pod, saying, “Team, team. What’s going on?”

  At least the cupcake hadn’t gotten on Emma’s sweater cat, the cat that nobody was allowed to touch without proof of clean hands.

  But that was little consolation as Emma sat crying and Dunk looked as if he was about to cry, too.

  Nora wore a dress to Emma’s high tea for Precious Cupcake, but she drew the line at a hat. The only hats she owned were warm stocking caps for the winter and canvas hats with sun visors for the summer, plus one old-fashioned sunbonnet her parents had bought her at a crafts fair. She tried the sunbonnet on just to see how it looked with her dress, but then she took it off again. It made her look like a pioneer girl from Little House on the Prairie, not a typical guest at an elegant tea party. Of course, Precious Cupcake wasn’t going to look like a typical guest at an elegant tea party, either.

  “My, don’t you look pretty,” her mother commented as Nora came downstairs right before the party.

  Nora made a face. Whenever she wore a dress, people always made a point of telling her that she looked pretty.

  Had people ever told Marie Curie, discoverer of radium, that she looked pretty?

  Did they tell Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees, that she looked pretty?

  Nora greatly doubted it
.

  Her mother drove her to Emma’s house.

  “How long do you think it would take a piece of mail to get from Colorado to New York?” Nora asked her mother. She had mailed her ant article to Nature on Thursday, and now it was Sunday.

  “Two days?” her mother guessed. “Why?”

  “I was just wondering,” Nora said.

  “That’s one of the things I love most about you,” her mother told her. “You’re always wondering about something.”

  If Nora’s mother was right, her ant article would have arrived yesterday, Saturday. The editors at Nature probably didn’t work on the weekend. Or maybe they did? Her scientist parents worked as hard on weekends as they did during the week. Say they got it Saturday and sent it off right away to the big ant expert. The ant expert would get it on—Tuesday? And read it on Wednesday. And send the review off on Thursday. The editors would get the review back on Saturday.

  There was no way she was going to hear anything in less than a week. More likely two or even three, in case the ant expert was busy with other things, like grading exams for his ant students or writing ant papers of his own.

  His or her own.

  “How are you supposed to act at a fancy tea party?” Nora asked her mother as they pulled into Emma’s long, curved driveway.

  “Actually,” her mother said, “I don’t believe I’ve ever been to a fancy tea party. You’ll have to tell me when you get home. Just follow Emma’s lead.”

  Well, if Nora followed Emma’s lead, she’d be spending most of the tea party fussing over Precious Cupcake.

  “Have fun!” her mother told her.

  “I’ll try,” Nora replied.

  The first thing Nora noticed, when she caught a glimpse of the other guests through the double doors leading into Emma’s dining room, was that they were all wearing hats. The hats looked like Easter bonnets, not that Nora had ever seen an Easter bonnet in real life. Their dresses were covered with lace, ruffles, and bows.

  Nora’s own dress was plain and simple. It looked sporty, not poofy, more like a dress you could play basketball in, if anybody ever played basketball wearing a dress. More like a dress an ant scientist would wear.

  Emma looked worried as she took Nora’s coat.

  “Would you like to borrow a hat?” she asked in a low voice, so the girls in the other room wouldn’t hear. “I have a hat that would look great with your dress. Kind of, you know, dress it up a bit?”

  Nora hesitated. She’d feel strange, un-Nora-like, if she borrowed Emma’s hat. But she already felt un-Nora-like being at Emma’s tea party in the first place. And her mother had told her to follow Emma’s lead.

  “Sure,” Nora said.

  Emma darted upstairs and returned a moment later with a hat for Nora. The hat was made of lavender straw, with a huge, floppy yellow flower on one side, as big as a sunflower, but definitely not a sunflower. Nora was pretty sure it was a flower unknown to botanists, a flower found nowhere in the natural world.

  Ridiculous hat perched bravely on her head, Nora caught a glimpse of herself in the small, round mirror on the wall leading to the dining room.

  Oh well.

  Emma’s mother appeared, as dressed up as her daughter, also wearing a hat.

  “Why, Nora,” she said. “Don’t you look pretty!”

  Nora forced herself to smile.

  “I love your hat! I believe Emma has one almost exactly like it. That yellow flower is just darling!”

  Nora made her smile even wider.

  Emma’s dining room table was covered with a long white tablecloth. Seven places were set with strawberry-patterned plates and matching teacups and saucers. Nora saw that each place was marked with a flowered name card written in a graceful cursive that had to have been done by Emma’s mother.

  Nora found hers: Miss Nora Alpers.

  As the six girls took their seats, Nora saw that one seat was still empty—the seat at her left—where the chair was piled high with cushions.

  Its name card read: Miss Precious Cupcake.

  “Where is Precious Cupcake?” Bethy asked. “Doesn’t she know the whole party is for her?”

  “The guest of honor always arrives last,” Emma informed Bethy.

  “Oh,” Bethy said. “I didn’t know.”

  As if on cue, Emma’s older sister, wearing a black dress with a frilly white apron and matching frilly white cap, entered, cradling Precious Cupcake in her arms. Nora had thought Precious Cupcake might be wearing the same pink cape and silver tiara she had displayed in the “Princess Precious” cat video, but the cat had a new outfit Nora had never seen before. This time, it was an actual dress, just like a girl’s dress, pink with embroidered strawberries all over it and a pink satiny ribbon tied around it. The outfit was topped off by a hat with a large yellow flower that looked to be the same genus and species as the flower on Nora’s hat.

  A hush fell over the guests at the table.

  Then:

  “Ooh!”

  “Aww!”

  “She’s sooooo cute!”

  “She’s the cutest ever!”

  Nora widened her already wide smile.

  “Nora,” Elise said, “her flower looks just like yours!”

  “It does!” Tamara agreed.

  “You’re the Precious Cupcake twins!” Bethy said.

  Nora’s face was starting to ache from smiling.

  Emma’s sister set Precious Cupcake on the chair of honor. Nora expected the cat to leap away and scurry for shelter. But Precious Cupcake stayed at her royal post as if she attended fancy tea parties all the time and knew exactly how to behave.

  Maybe Nora could just follow the cat’s lead now.

  “May I pour you some tea?” Emma asked, gesturing toward the silver teapot her mother had just placed on the table.

  “Yes, please!” came a chorus of replies.

  “Let me help with the pouring,” Emma’s mother offered. “The tea is very hot. Girls, I hope you all like strawberry herbal tea.”

  “Strawberry, to match the strawberries on the plates,” Emma explained. “And the strawberries on Precious Cupcake’s dress.”

  Emma’s sister was serving as party waitress. Her little frilly apron and cap must be her waitress costume. She now appeared carrying two silver trays, one balanced on each hand.

  “Cucumber sandwiches and scones,” Emma announced. “There’s clotted cream—that’s the white stuff in the little bowl—and lemon curd—that’s the yellow stuff—and raspberry preserves—that’s a fancy word for jam. Oh, that reminds me. We all need to start talking in a fancy way.”

  “Like people in the olden days?” Elise asked. “Like, instead of saying, I would like some more tea, say, I would liketh some more tea.”

  For the first time since her guests had arrived, Emma looked unsure. “Well, maybe.”

  “And say thee and thou,” Elise added. She was the biggest reader of any of the girls at the table, except for Nora. But Nora didn’t tend to read books about people who said thee and thou. “Would thou pourest me some tea?” Elise said, as an example to show the other girls.

  Emma plainly didn’t like having anything at her tea party dictated by someone else. “Well, I don’t think we need to go that far,” she said.

  “How about, thou can talketh that way, but thou doesn’t have to,” Tamara suggested.

  “Okay then,” Emma agreed grudgingly. “That sounds—I mean, that soundeth—good.”

  Emma’s sister arrived with yet another silver tray, this one filled with tiny pink-frosted cupcakes, each one topped with a sliver of real strawberry.

  “Emma, I loveth this tea party!” Elise said.

  “I’m glad you love it,” Emma said. “I mean, that thou loveth it.”

  Nora helped herself to a cucumber sandwich, scone, and cupcake. She tried a bite of scone with clotted cream and raspberry preserves. It was delicious. She was relieved to see that Precious Cupcake was served different, species-appropriate treats: a doll
op of wet cat food on a strawberry-patterned saucer, and part of what smelled like an anchovy.

  “So, Emma,” Bethy said. “Tell us. Does thou hatest Dunk now?”

  Emma’s face darkened. “I do! I do hateth him. Because he hateth Precious Cupcake, and he almost ruineth my favorite sweater.”

  “I hate all boys,” Elise declared. “What about the rest of you? Do you hateth all boys, too?”

  Nora was glad to see that thou had apparently been dropped from the conversation. She couldn’t imagine how Elise could have asked that same question with thou in it. What about the rest of thous? Do thous hateth all boys, too? Even though she hadn’t read any books with thee and thou in them, she knew that couldn’t possibly be right.

  “Yes!” the other girls all answered.

  “What about you, Nora?” Bethy asked. “Do you hate all boys, too?”

  Even to follow Emma’s lead, Nora couldn’t lie. “No. I like Mason. I like Brody. It doesn’t make sense to hate all boys or all dogs or all cats or all of anything.”

  “So do you like like Mason? Or like like Brody?” Elise persisted. “If I didn’t hate all boys, I might not hate Brody.”

  Nora didn’t feel like talking anymore about hating or like liking boys. But Emma wasn’t going to let Elise’s question drop.

  “So do you, Nora? Like like Mason or Brody?”

  “No.”

  Desperately, Nora looked around for something else to talk about besides boys or Precious Cupcake, who, she saw, was still sitting nicely in her place, the perfect guest in every respect.

  Except for one.

  Precious Cupcake was just now swallowing the pink ribbon from her pink cat dress.

  “Emma!” Nora cried. “Precious Cupcake!”

  All eyes turned to the cat as the last tip of pink ribbon disappeared down her throat.

  That was the end of high tea.

  Emma sat sobbing, hugging Precious Cupcake even as she kept crying, “Bad cat! Bad cat!” Emma’s mother called the vet, and they said to take Precious Cupcake to urgent veterinary care because a long swallowed ribbon could cause a blockage in a cat’s intestines. The vet said that Precious Cupcake might need surgery. Emma sobbed even harder.