by Hilary McKay
Lulu and Mellie were the last to leave the bandstand.
Mellie was still frightened. She looked anxiously behind them all the time, half expecting to see another huge dog exploding from the bushes.
She didn’t see what Lulu saw.
There was not one unhurt nest left in duck Street. The white-winged duck and her neighbors were all gone. But from the place where the white-winged duck had built her nest, something was rolling down the grassy bank.
A last blue egg from the duck Street nests, the only one that hadn’t been broken.
Faster and faster it rolled.
Any moment it would smash on the path.
Before Mellie turned around, before anyone saw, before she even thought what she was doing, Lulu had picked it up and put it in her pocket.
It was still warm.
Chapter Three
Life with an Egg
Lulu’s hand curled around the egg in her fleecy jacket pocket, enjoying its polished roundness. It was not quite perfect, she discovered. There was a faint zigzag crack, so fine her fingers found it and lost it and found it again. There was a rough patch at one end where a fragment of shell was missing.
Well, thought Lulu, it’s had a terrible time, this egg! Of course there are bumps. A few bumps don’t matter. Anyway, now it is safe.
That was what Lulu thought. Nothing sensible, such as, What am I going to do with this egg? Or scary, such as, What am I going to do with this egg if it breaks?
She just plodded along beside Mellie and thought, Safe.
Mellie was also thinking. Not one thought, like Lulu. Lots of thoughts, barging into her brain from all directions.
I wish I had a tissue, Mellie thought. A handkerchief. A paper towel. Something for my nose. It’s the cold and the swimming-pool water making it run.
Not crying.
Those dogs!
Those dogs should be arrested. Can you arrest dogs? Would they understand? They understood Mrs. Holiday when she said “Sit!”
Mrs. Holiday was... was... was... Titanic! thought Mellie, and skipped to have found the perfect word. She skipped straight into the backs of Charlie and Henry, who were walking in front.
Henry (who always fell over at the smallest push) toppled right under her feet. Mellie tripped and fell on top of him, grabbing Lulu on the way down.
Lulu landed all curled up, wrapped around like a hedgehog with its paws in its pockets.
My egg! My egg! she thought, hardly daring to move for fear of what she might discover.
Mellie and Henry scrambled to their feet, blaming each other.
Charlie began a slow-motion action replay for anyone who had missed seeing the fun the first time around.
Mrs. Holiday came hurrying down the line of children, crying, “Everybody, quiet! Up you get, Lulu! Take my hand!”
Lulu, who was busy uncurling from around the egg, very slowly and carefully said, “Do, no! don’t touch me! Leave me alone!”
“Are you hurt?” asked Mrs. Holiday, astonished at such rudeness.
Lulu didn’t even hear her. Her fingers were exploring her pocket for damage. Was the egg broken? How broken? Fatally broken?
“Come on, Lulu!” said Mellie, tugging her arm impatiently. She looked shocked when Lulu pushed her away.
“Mellie was trying to help you!” snapped Mrs. Holiday, her eyes blue and icy. Lulu, on her feet at last, gave a great sigh. Not broken. Wonderful.
“Sorry, Mellie,” she said.
Mrs. Holiday was still angry. “You can walk the rest of the way back to school with me!” she told Lulu. “Stand up properly, please, and take your hands out of your pockets... Goodness, Charlie!”
Charlie’s nose was the sort that bleeds at the smallest excuse. Now a mixture of cold and swimming and excitement had started it again.
Blood was streaming down his face and splattering the pavement. Charlie, who always enjoyed the shrieks and fuss that went with nosebleeds, was bouncing with pleasure.
“I’m a vampire!” he called happily, diving for Henry’s throat.
So in the end it was Charlie who had to walk with Mrs. Holiday with his swimming towel clutched to his nose, while Lulu and Mellie tagged along behind.
Every few minutes Mrs. Holiday glared over her shoulder at Lulu to make sure she knew she was still in trouble. Every few minutes Lulu looked unhappily down at the ground to show that she did.
Everyone was very relieved to get back to school.
Mrs. Holiday made a speech on the playground.
“It was a difficult morning for all of us,” she said. “Difficult—Henry and Charlie, come and stand over here! Right beside me! One each side! How very silly!—Difficult and quite upsetting. I know we were all sad to see what happened in the park—Lulu, you look like you are trying to put your head in your pocket. It would be nice if you listened!—Now, Class Three! What have we learned to do at times like this? Do you remember? Yes, Mellie? Good girl!”
“Everyone should take handkerchiefs if they are going swimming,” said Mellie. “Because afterward the water runs out of your nose.”
“Not quite what I was thinking of,” said Mrs. Holiday, “but a sensible idea. I was hoping you would say we learn... what do we learn?”
“Shout ‘Sit!’ at mad dogs?” suggested someone.
“We learn that pets are a great responsibility,” said Mrs. Holiday. “Isn’t that true, Lulu?”
Lulu jumped guiltily.
“And when we have learned,” continued Mrs. Holiday, “we leave it behind because... who wants to explain?”
“Because the ducks are all dead,” said Henry.
“Because worrying does not change anything,” said Mrs. Holiday. “(The ducks are not all dead. They may even lay eggs again.) We learn, leave it behind, and move on to make things better!”
That was what Mrs. Holiday always said after any awful event. The time the Class Three play for parents turned into a battle. The afternoon the Class Three soccer team lost ten–nothing to Class Two. The day the Lunch Lady Trick went wrong.
“How can we make this better?” enquired Mrs. Holiday now.
Class Three thought of lots of ways. Duck food to cheer up the ducks. A poster for the park saying, PLEASE KEEP DOGS ON LEASHES. Zappers for park keepers so that they could zap mad dogs. Zappers for ducks so they could do it themselves.
Lulu thought of her egg, and said nothing.
“Lots of good ideas!” said Mrs. Holiday. “And some not quite so good. Charlie, you will make it start again, doing that! There, now you’ve done it! Come here! And the rest of you, jackets off and reading books out while I look at Charlie’s nose.”
Class Three streamed away to the coat room. Lulu followed last of all. She had forgotten she would have to take her jacket off when she got back to school. Thank goodness for Charlie’s nose, she thought as she waited for the others to leave the coat room. It would keep Mrs. Holiday busy for a few minutes while she, Lulu, took off her jacket and found a safe place to keep a large blue egg in a pocketless sweater.
Up the sleeves? Impossible.
Inside the front? Far too loose.
How on earth do ducks manage? wondered Lulu, and she answered the question herself a moment later: nests.
Lulu did not have a nest, but there were plenty of woolly hats lying around by the coat pegs. Lulu borrowed two and made a hat nest, with one hat inside the other and the egg warm in the middle.
The egg looked much safer in its hat nest.
Now what? wondered Lulu.
What do ducks do with their nests?
They sat on them.
Lulu could not sit on her nest, but she did the next best thing. She stuffed it under her sweater.
Does it show? wondered Lulu, looking at her dim reflection in the mirror of the coat room door.
It did, but not terribly. And Mrs. Holiday, Lulu was very glad to see, was still busy with Charlie.
So, feeling rather like a duck herself, Lulu waddled back to the clas
sroom and sat down at the table she shared with Mellie.
Mellie had noticed.
“What have you got stuffed under your sweater?” she demanded.
“Under my sweater?”
“There’s definitely something! Tell me! I won’t tell.”
“Well. A hat.”
“A hat?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To keep it safe,” replied Lulu, after some thought.
“Safe from what?”
“Getting lost.”
“Oh,” said Mellie in a rather surprised voice, and then “Oh!” again, in a rather impressed voice. That isn’t such a bad idea, she thought. She might try it herself.
Maybe she would not lose so many things, if she kept them stuffed safely under her sweater.
The only problem was:
“I lost my sweater,” said Mellie, out loud. “This one I’m wearing is yours. Too tight for stuffing much under. OW!”
Mellie, experimenting with her pencil case, had stabbed herself with her ruler. That made Mrs. Holiday look over and say, “Mellie, please put your pencil case back on the table. It is time we all did some work. Everyone sit down! Charlie, hold that ice pack on your nose! It will never work there!”
“He doesn’t want it to work,” remarked Henry.
“Of course he does!” said Mrs. Holiday. “And anyway, all good things come to an end. Bloodletting is over. This is now math. Who can remember what we were talking about yesterday?”
Nobody could.
“Perimeters!” said Mrs. Holiday, writing the word on the board. “And where would we find a perimeter? You all knew yesterday!”
Class Three shook their heads. What they knew on one day had nothing to do with what they remembered the next.
“A perimeter,” said Mrs. Holiday,“is a line that goes around the edge. A perimeter of a circle goes all around the edge of the circle. A perimeter of a field would go... where would it go? Tell me, Henry!”
“In the grass,” said Henry.
“All round the edge of the field,” said Mrs. Holiday.
“That would be in the grass,” said Henry. “Like I said.”
“Today,” continued Mrs. Holiday, ignoring Henry, “we are going to measure some perimeters! How could we measure a perimeter?”
“Is it a trick question?” enquired Mellie.
“No, it is a perfectly sensible question,” said Mrs. Holiday patiently. “Lulu, why are you holding your stomach like that? Is everything all right?”
Lulu nodded and said, “Yes, thank you, Mrs. Holiday,” although she was not quite certain that was true. A minute before, the hat nest had suddenly seemed to move. To shake, like a tummy rumble. Just for a moment. Perhaps it had been a tummy rumble.
“Good,” said Mrs. Holiday, gathering up a pile of what looked like junk from the lost-and-found cupboard. “Now, we are going to investigate the perimeters of all these shapes. Working in pairs... There’s a fan for you, Charlie and Henry! You girls can take these leaves. Who deserves the angel wings, I wonder?”
Up and down the classroom walked Mrs. Holiday, giving out strange objects to pairs of people. An enormous painted fan. A circle of curly cabbage leaves. A pair of cardboard angel’s wings, a parasol, a pair of gloves, a T-shirt, and a kite.
“All these things have perimeters,” she said. “This baby suit. This rather lovely peacock feather... You take that, Dan... On my table are pens and tape measures and all sizes of paper. First you must estimate (An estimate is a sensible guess, remember!) the perimeter of the object that I have given you, and then you must measure it... Think hard about how you will do that! Lulu and Mellie . . .”
She paused at their table. They were the last pair left without a shape to investigate, and her hands were empty.
“The perimeter of a person,” she said.
“Lulu, I think! Now then, Mellie! How will you investigate the perimeter of Lulu?”
“I know! I know!” said Mellie, rushing to the table to collect the largest piece of paper and the juiciest fat felt-tip pen. “I know, I know, I know, don’t tell me!”
Mellie spread her piece of paper in the middle of the classroom floor and pulled the top off of her pen.
“Lie down, Lulu!” she ordered.
“Mellie!” moaned Lulu. “Lie down there? Now?”
“Not now,” said Mrs. Holiday, passing on to another group of investigators. “First you must estimate. Don’t forget that!”
“First!” hissed Lulu. “You need to listen, Mellie! I can’t lie down there.”
“You have to,” said Mellie, testing her green felt-tip pen on her arm. “Soon as we’ve estimated. I estimate ten feet. Five up one side and over your head. Five down the other side and around your feet. Ten. Now lie down!”
“Mellie, listen!” said Lulu. “Stop jumping around and listen! It’s not just a hat up my sweater. It’s two hats...”
“Take ’em out!” said Mellie, waving her pen.
“And an egg.”
“An egg?”
“A duck egg. From the park.” Mellie stared.
“It’s still warm.”
Mellie’s eyes grew rounder and rounder.
“And I think... I think I felt it move!”
Mellie got the giggles of the most painful silent sort and lay on her stomach, weeping and gasping.
“It can’t get broken,” hissed Lulu, shaking her, “because then there would be a duckling. A duckling! Here in this classroom! And you know what Mrs. Holiday said yesterday about no more animals!”
“Oh,” said Mellie, suddenly becoming calm. “Not good.”
She looked across the room at the guinea pig who might so easily be swapped for stick insects.
And then Mellie became wonderful.
In no time the piece of paper for Lulu to lie on was whisked to the Reading Corner, the most private place in the classroom. Then, in one green juicy line, Mellie drew all around the edge of her friend. Before anyone had noticed anything unusual about Lulu’s sweater at all, they were back at the table again and marking off the perimeter of a person in neat green inches.
“Exactly what I hoped you would do,” said Mrs. Holiday when she came to see how they were getting on.
“Eggsactly!” whispered Mellie when she had gone, and gave one of her sudden snorts of laughter. “Is it still safe?”
“I think so. I hope so. If I can just keep it not broken until after school. Then I’m going ask Mom to let me take it to the vet.”
“Yes, he’ll know how to hatch it,” agreed Mellie. “And then you’ll have a duckling. Lucky thing!”
“I’ll share.”
“It will need a pond.”
“How hard is it to dig a pond?” asked Lulu.
“I’ll help,” said Mellie.
Lulu became much happier. Life with a hat nest under her sweater was much easier with a friend who understood.
Mellie was very useful. When Lulu needed to fetch or pick up or hold, Mellie was there to help. At lunchtime she was a human shield that stopped the hat nest from being squashed in the lunchtime line. After lunch, when the rest of the school was charging around the playground, she visited the library and found a book on ducks.
The book made Lulu and Mellie rather sad.
Mother ducks, it said, talked to their ducklings before they were even hatched.
“They talk to their eggs?” asked Mellie, astonished.
“And the ducklings inside the eggs learn the sound of their mothers’ voices,” read Lulu. “And the ducklings talk back to their mothers! Oh my poor white-winged duck!”
“I don’t think that can be true,” said Mellie. “I don’t see how anything could make a sound in an egg!”
“Just in case,” said Lulu, worrying, “I should quack to this egg. So it doesn’t get lonely.”
“Should I quack too?” asked Mellie. “Would it help?”
Lulu said she thought that would help a lot, and it did. She felt much les
s silly quacking with a friend than quacking alone.
After lunch came music. That was difficult. Class Three was practicing a song for the Easter play, with singers and recorders. Mellie’s recorder had been lost months before, but Lulu still had hers. There was no possible excuse that could save her from having to stand in front of the class with the rest of the recorder group and play her recorder.
“I’ll take care of the egg,” said Mellie bravely, and she did. For the next half hour she cradled the hat nest in her hands under the table, hardly daring to breathe. Music passed safely.
The day that had begun in such a fuss of water and dogs and quacking and tears became more and more peaceful. Mrs. Holiday handed out doodling paper and picked up a new storybook.
“Harry Potter,” she read, “and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”
She had been promising to begin it for weeks.
CRACK!
Even through two hats and her sweater, Lulu felt that crack.
Chapter Four
Life with a Duck
Lulu looked across at Mellie to see if she had noticed anything. Mellie was in a Mellie-dream, tilting her chair backward, listening to the story while she drew owls and ducks and lightning-shaped scars.
Maybe I imagined it, thought Lulu, and she began very carefully to move her hand under her sweater, over the rim of the hat nest, down toward the egg.
Something?
Nothing?
Lulu jumped with shock.
No more smooth egg. Fragments of shell. No more warm stillness. A fluttering struggle for freedom. No more quiet.
A thin, high voice.
“Weep!” wheezed the front of Lulu’s sweater. “Weep!”
“Is someone trying to be funny?” demanded Mrs. Holiday, looking up from her book.
Luckily for Lulu, several people were goofing off. Charlie and Henry were thumb wrestling. Someone else was having a tug of war with the guinea pig over a spelling list. Mellie fell off her chair.
Mrs. Holiday snapped Harry Potter shut. “Oh, Mrs. Holiday!” groaned Class Three. “If you would like me to read any more,” said Mrs. Holiday, glaring, “you will become instantly quiet and sensible. If you would not like me to read any more, then we will spend the time on mental math!”