Kelsey Green, Reading Queen

by Claudia Mills

  Izzy rolled her eyes. “Don’t you ever think about anything except beating Simon?”

  “Well, what about you?” Kelsey fired back. “You love winning races, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but those kinds of races are over in a few minutes. Even marathons are over in a few hours. This dumb reading race has been going on for almost a whole month!”

  “It will be over on Friday,” Kelsey reminded her.

  “Yay for that.”

  Izzy did raise her hand before Mrs. Molina began reading. “Can we count Junie B. Jones books? For worms?”

  Mrs. Molina looked surprised at the question, perhaps because Izzy had only eight worms, and so obviously wasn’t devoting great energy to the contest. She adjusted her glasses.

  “Well, those books do have a wonderful voice,” she said. “And they’re very funny.”

  Kelsey hadn’t thought Mrs. Molina would think that funny was a good thing.

  “But I don’t know if Junie is challenging enough for our strongest readers.” Mrs. Molina’s gaze fell on Kelsey, as if she had just figured out why Izzy was suddenly so interested in boosting her worm total. “I’d rather not make a general rule here, Izzy. As I told all of you before, I want each student to be reading at his or her own level.”

  So the answer was no, then. No for Kelsey, the strongest reader in the class.

  Or at least the second-strongest.

  * * *

  “No!” Kelsey said at dinner Tuesday night. “I am not going to another band concert! Dylan just had a band concert!”

  “That was concert band.” Dylan speared a meatball and waved it in the air as he continued talking. “This is jazz band. It’s different.”

  “You’re still playing trombone, aren’t you? Trombone, trombone, trombone!”

  Dylan swallowed his meatball. “I don’t care if you don’t come.”

  “I care,” Kelsey’s mother said. “Kelsey, I know you’re obsessed with the reading contest these days. But you’re still part of this—”

  Kelsey cut her off. “I hate this family!”

  She jumped up from the table so suddenly that her glass of milk went flying. Fine! The rest of them could clean it up together, as a family activity.

  “Oh, let her stay home,” she heard Sarah say as she fled up the stairs to her room. Well, maybe Kelsey didn’t hate Sarah. Or Dylan.

  “She’s only eight! She can’t stay home all by herself.” That was her mother’s voice.

  “… just this once?” That was her father’s voice. Maybe she didn’t hate her father, either.

  Up in her room, Kelsey threw herself crying on her bed. She was too angry even to read the last few pages of The Mouse of Amherst, about a mouse who lived in Emily Dickinson’s house and helped her write her poetry.

  There was a knock, and her mother pushed the door open. Kelsey buried her face deeper into her pillow.

  “Kelsey, look at me.”

  Kelsey made herself look. Her mother wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look furious, either.

  “Kelsey, you are going to go back downstairs and apologize to everyone for what you said. You are going to wipe up the milk you spilled. And then, just this once, we’ll drop you off at the public library so that you can do your reading while the rest of us are at your brother’s concert.”

  Kelsey leaped off the bed and hugged her mother. She didn’t hate any of them anymore.

  “I don’t really hate this family,” she whispered, with her face against her mother’s shoulder.

  “I know,” her mother said, stroking Kelsey’s hair.

  “But the reading contest ends on Friday!”

  Kelsey couldn’t hear what her mother said next, but it sounded like “Hooray.”

  * * *

  It was strange being in the library alone in the evening, without Annika or Izzy, without Dylan or Sarah or her parents. Kelsey sat down in one of the large, comfy chairs in the children’s room, next to the window, across from the fireplace that on this spring evening had no fire burning.

  She tried not to think how she could have been sitting next to Sarah in the middle-school auditorium, poking her whenever a sixth-grade clarinet squealed or a sixth-grade trumpet squawked. She tried not to think of how her father would reach over and take her mother’s hand when Dylan stood up to play. It was worth it to have two whole hours all to herself, with nothing to do but read.

  She opened The Mouse of Amherst. Emily Dickinson had been a recluse. Kelsey knew from her reading that a recluse is someone who never comes out of her house. Emily Dickinson stayed inside her house for twenty years, writing poetry. If only Kelsey could be a reading recluse, at least until Friday.

  In the chair across from Kelsey sat the only other kid who was in the library that evening, a tall girl, somewhat overweight, wearing glasses. Maybe a fifth grader.

  Kelsey looked at her again. Her heart skipped a beat.

  She recognized that girl. It was Lindsay Conant. The famous fifth-grade reader! Kelsey felt a surge of kinship for this girl who also loved reading enough to come alone to the library on a Tuesday evening.

  “What are you reading?” Kelsey asked.

  Lindsay didn’t look up from her book, so Kelsey asked again, louder this time. “What are you reading?”

  Lindsay startled, visibly annoyed. She didn’t bother answering Kelsey’s question directly, but held up her book so that Kelsey could catch a glimpse of the cover: A Little Princess. A Little Princess was by the same author as The Secret Garden. Kelsey had been dying to read it, but it was too long a book to read until after the contest was over.

  “Is it wonderful?” Kelsey whispered.

  Lindsay snapped the book shut and stalked over to a different chair on the far side of the room. Then she resumed reading.

  Okay, be that way!

  Kelsey forced herself to start reading, too, but it was hard to keep her thoughts on her book.

  Of course the famous fifth-grade reader would want to be left undisturbed. That was why they both had come to the library, after all: not to talk about reading, but to read. Still, Kelsey’s heart stung at the older girl’s rude crabbiness.

  Then Kelsey had a guilty thought: was she herself, the soon-to-be-famous third-grade reader, turning as crabby and rude as the famous fifth-grade reader?

  9

  By Wednesday morning, the Franklin School total stood at 1,915 books.

  “See?” Annika said to Kelsey, as they hurried in before the first bell to look at the huge wall chart.

  Kelsey didn’t see.

  “We only have eighty-five books to go,” Annika explained. “For two whole days and fifteen classes of kids, not counting kindergartners, who can’t really read: five grades, three classes per grade. So each class only has to read five more books—well, five and a half books—and we’ll be there.”

  “You can’t get a worm for reading half a book.”

  “Oh, Kelsey,” Annika said.

  Mr. Thurston’s class was now just two books ahead. Simon was just two books ahead of Kelsey, too.

  During math, Kelsey gazed down at her empty lap, where a tempting book should have been. Instead, she used math time to plan out which books she was going to read next. Mrs. Molina hadn’t rejected her poetry bookworms, so apparently it was all right to read poetry books. Kelsey had four more poetry books picked out. And she had found a biography of Amelia Earhart that was half pictures. She wondered if she had to read every word of every caption, or just the text.

  “Kelsey,” Mrs. Molina called in her gleeful “gotcha” voice.

  But before Mrs. Molina could ask her some hideous math question that she wouldn’t be able to answer, the classroom door opened and in bounded Mr. Boone.

  Mr. Boone plunked himself down on Mrs. Molina’s desk, perilously close to her glass vase of artificial flowers. Mrs. Molina steadied it before it could go flying and carried it carefully to a safe position on the top of her filing cabinet.

  “Good morning, third gra
ders!” Mr. Boone shouted.

  “Good morning, Mr. Boone!” they shouted back.

  “I know some of you think that Franklin School is going to get to two thousand books by Friday.”

  The class cheered.

  “Personally, I don’t.”

  The class booed—good-natured, happy boos.

  “I know I told you that if you read two thousand books, I’d shave my beard. I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve decided that isn’t a big enough forfeit. Anybody can shave a beard.”

  But not everybody had a beard as big and bushy as Mr. Boone’s, a beard it had probably taken him ten years to grow.

  Some murmurs came from the back of the room, but no one said anything. Despite his jovial grin, Mr. Boone didn’t seem to be in the mood for laughing.

  “I’ve decided”—Mr. Boone paused for emphasis—“that if Franklin School reads two thousand books by Friday—and I don’t think you possibly can—then I’ll”—he paused again, longer this time—“I’ll kiss a pig!”

  Some of the kids cheered, but Kelsey could tell they did it only because Mr. Boone clearly expected them to. These were halfhearted, disappointed cheers.

  “So I need your help,” Mr. Boone said. He beamed a hopeful smile at the class.

  “I need your help,” he went on, “finding a pig. The right kind of kissable pig!”

  He laughed his famous booming laugh, answered by a few faint, scattered giggles.

  Kelsey looked around the room. Nobody at Franklin School was going to have a pig, or know anybody who did. The only pigs Kelsey knew were Wilbur from Charlotte’s Web and Lester from Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Magic. If Mr. Boone didn’t find a pig, he’d have to shave his beard, after all.

  “No one?” Mr. Boone said sadly, after a long moment of silence with no hands raised.

  Then, from the back of the room, came one low, shy voice.

  “I have a pig,” Cody Harmon said.

  * * *

  “I didn’t know you had a pig,” Kelsey said to Cody as they sat down on the playground at lunch to read Henry and Mudge and the Best Day of All. Cynthia Rylant had certainly written a lot of Henry and Mudge books. A school could practically get to two thousand worms by reading nothing but Henry and Mudge books.

  “You never asked me if I did,” Cody replied.

  That was true. Kelsey didn’t know anything about Cody Harmon except that he was a slow reader and had a cowlick. She had been too busy accumulating worms to make idle chitchat.

  “Do you want to meet my pig?” Cody asked. “Before I bring him in to school on Friday?”

  Meeting Cody’s pig meant going to Cody’s house after school. It could mean going to Cody’s house with a huge stack of Henry and Mudge books. It could mean that Mrs. Molina’s class would beat Mr. Thurston’s class in the Franklin School reading contest.

  “Yes!” Kelsey said. “I’d love to!”

  * * *

  When Kelsey’s mother arrived at school to pick the girls up for their ride home, Kelsey had Cody with her, and the world’s heaviest backpack filled with fifteen new Henry and Mudge books. Luckily, the Franklin School library seemed to have a full set.

  “Can I go to Cody’s house?” Kelsey begged as she climbed into the front seat next to her mother. “To read—I mean, to meet Cody’s pig? Cody has a pig, and now Mr. Boone is going to kiss it if we read two thousand books by Friday. Oh, and this is Cody.”

  Her mother looked startled, but said, “I don’t see why not.” She gave Cody a friendly smile, and he grinned in return.

  “Can you drive us there? Cody takes the bus, and I’m not signed up to be a bus rider. And Annika and Izzy want to meet the pig, too, but then can you drive them home so I can stay a little longer, and then come to get me afterward?”

  Kelsey didn’t look over at Cody as she said it. She hoped Cody would let her stay longer than the others so they could get some reading done. To her relief, he didn’t say that she couldn’t.

  “Of course,” her mother said.

  Kelsey leaned over and gave her mother a big hug. She was willing to go to ten band concerts now.

  Before Cody got on the bus, he gave Kelsey’s mom directions to his house, on the outskirts of town. He seemed more confident now that he was the Franklin School pig-owning celebrity.

  Kelsey’s car arrived at Cody’s place a few minutes before the bus. Kelsey saw that Cody lived on an actual farm, complete with a barn and even a silo. Cody could be young Almanzo Wilder from Farmer Boy.

  While Kelsey’s mother chatted with Cody’s mother, Cody took Kelsey, Annika, and Izzy to the pigpen to meet his pig.

  “But I’m going to stay even after I meet him,” Kelsey reminded Cody. “So we can read,” she added.

  Cody’s pig was enormous. Some pig, indeed! He was also hairy and dirty.

  “I’ll wash him before I bring him in to school,” Cody said.

  Kelsey tried to imagine the pig—Cody said his name was Mr. Piggins—in a bathtub filled with soapy bubbles, being scrubbed with a washcloth.

  “I wash him with a hose,” Cody said. “I could wash him now, to show you how I do it.”

  “Maybe after we finish reading,” Kelsey said. Though she was planning on reading for a long, long time, if she could coax Cody into doing it.

  The others drove away. Cody’s mother brought out glasses of milk and cookies. Her hair was straight and brown like Cody’s, but she didn’t have a cowlick. Maybe only boys had cowlicks.

  “Where do you want to read?” Kelsey asked Cody.

  Cody shrugged.

  “Let’s read to Mr. Piggins,” Kelsey said.

  So Kelsey and Cody sat under the shade of the newly leafed tree on the grass by Mr. Piggins’s pen.

  Cody read Henry and Mudge in Puddle Trouble.

  He read Henry and Mudge Get the Cold Shivers.

  He read Henry and Mudge and the Bedtime Thumps.

  By the time he had read Henry and Mudge and the Long Weekend, plus seven other books in between, Kelsey said, “You know what, Cody? You read ten times better than you did two weeks ago.”

  He really did.

  Cody gave a lopsided grin.

  “I think,” Kelsey said, “that you are ready to read chapter books. Like the Junie B. Jones or the Magic Tree House books.”

  Mr. Piggins gave a grunt, as if in approval.

  “But we aren’t going to start reading chapter books until next week,” Kelsey said. “After the contest.”

  “We still have to read books after the contest?” Cody asked, sounding alarmed.

  Kelsey stared at him. “Don’t you like Henry and Mudge?” she finally asked.

  “Sure,” Cody said. “They’re all right.”

  Pigs, Kelsey noted to herself. After the contest ended, she was going to see if she could find Cody some chapter books about pigs.

  10

  “Did you really read all those books?” Mrs. Molina demanded when Cody presented her with eleven new worms on Thursday morning. “In one night?”

  Kelsey answered for him. “Uh-huh, he did. He read them to me. To me and Mr. Piggins. His pig.”

  Cody had filled out all his own bookworms for them, too.

  Mrs. Molina still looked skeptical, so Kelsey went on. “You should hear him read now, Mrs. Molina. Ask him to read you a Henry and Mudge book.”

  Then she wondered if that had been the right thing to say. She wanted Mrs. Molina to believe that Cody now read well enough to have read eleven Henry and Mudge books in one night, but not so well that he shouldn’t be getting worms just for reading Henry and Mudge books.

  Mrs. Molina sighed. “I believe you, Kelsey.”

  Then Mrs. Molina turned to Cody. “I’m certainly impressed at how hard you’ve been working, Cody. Do you realize that you now have the third highest bookworm total for our entire class?”

  Cody beamed.

  Kelsey beamed, too.

  When the class worm totals were added up and posted on the chart outside th
e office, Mrs. Molina’s class was seven books ahead of Mr. Thurston’s. Kelsey knew that Cody and Mr. Piggins deserved most of the credit.

  Simon was still two books ahead of Kelsey. Helping Cody read to Mr. Piggins had used up hours of Kelsey’s own reading time, but it had been worth it to see Cody’s smile at Mrs. Molina’s praise. But she would still be heartbroken if Simon won and she didn’t. She wouldn’t be able to bear it if Simon won!

  So today was the day Kelsey had to carry out part three of the top-secret cheater-catcher plan. Today was the day she had to trick Simon into admitting that he was cheating.

  If he was cheating.

  Kelsey hoped that he was, so that she could be the class reading champion.

  She hoped that he wasn’t, so that Mrs. Molina’s class could beat out the entire school.

  Either way, today was the day she had to find out.

  * * *

  Kelsey flipped through Simon’s worm folder as the others were lining up to go to P.E.

  “Kelsey, your worms aren’t going anywhere,” Mrs. Molina said, with her usual attempt at wit. Obviously, she didn’t realize that Kelsey was checking Simon’s worms, not her own.

  “Goodbye, worms! Be good!” Kelsey said loudly, to show Mrs. Molina that she wasn’t the only one who could make supposedly amusing comments about Kelsey’s love for her worms. She had seen what she needed to see. She and Simon had read at least three of the same books: Sarah, Plain and Tall, a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, and—she couldn’t believe it—The Secret Garden.

  The Secret Garden didn’t seem like the kind of book a boy would like. It wasn’t The Dead Body in the Secret Garden, or The Ghost in the Secret Garden. Though Colin’s dead mother was sort of like a ghost. And she did die in the garden, so that was sort of like a dead body—in fact, it was a dead body. But it wasn’t the main part of the story.

  At lunch, Kelsey didn’t read any more books with Cody, now that Cody had more worms than most of the kids in the class, plus was so good at reading on his own. She left Annika and Izzy behind and went over to where Simon was sitting all by himself on a bench at the edge of the playground. Reading, of course.