Livin' the Life

by Lexi Ryals

  Jessie smiled approvingly, but Mrs. Falkenberg was suspicious of Zuri’s sudden good behavior. “Zuri, I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but it’s not going to work.”

  “Excusez-moi?” Zuri replied. “I am just eager to learn. Oui, oui?”

  “Toilet talk?” Mrs. Falkenberg snapped. “That’s it. Go to the corner!”

  Jessie jumped to her feet. “Wait, that’s not fair. She was speaking French, not making toilet talk. Zuri’s been a perfect angel today!”

  Mrs. Falkenberg turned and glared at Jessie. “Oh, now it’s you who’s being disruptive. Jessie Prescott, you’re on the Naughty Board.”

  “I’ve never had my name on the Naughty Board!” Jessie said, looking stunned. “All my teachers loved me!”

  “Then you must have been homeschooled,” Mrs. Falkenberg countered nastily. “You! Corner! Now!”

  “But nobody puts Jessie in the corner!” Jessie replied, her bottom lip trembling.

  Mrs. Falkenberg just shook her head and pointed to the corner.

  “Except you,” Jessie said, defeated. She dragged her chair into the corner. It made a fart-like noise as she pulled it. The whole class laughed. “Oh! It’s just the chair, people! Stop acting like a bunch of third graders,” Jessie snapped. Then she sighed. “Oh, right, you are third graders.”

  Luke’s room was finally pristine after Ravi had cleaned and sorted all day. The room was practically unrecognizable. Ravi had rolled out his yoga mat and was relaxing into the downward-facing-dog pose when Luke walked in and did a double take.

  “Whoa, what did you do to my room?” Luke exclaimed.

  “I merely picked up and folded your clothes to ensure they maintain a sharp crease,” Ravi replied.

  “So where’s my purple T-shirt?” Luke asked. “It’s always on the floor near the hamper.”

  “Second shelf on the right, with the other similarly colored tees.”

  Luke walked to the closet and looked at the shelf. “It’s not here.”

  “Oh, is it a pocket tee?” Ravi asked.

  “What? I don’t know. Maybe,” Luke said, starting to get frustrated.

  “Then it is on the fourth shelf to the left with the pocket tees of like color,” Ravi said. “Obviously.”

  “Just leave my stuff alone, okay, Ravi?” Luke huffed. “I have a system.” He pulled off his dirty shirt, threw it at Ravi’s head, and put on a clean one.

  “Yes, I see,” Ravi said, pulling the dirty shirt off his head and placing it in the hamper. Then he picked up his incense holder and waved it around the room, spreading the calming scent of sage and lavender.

  “Now what are you doing?” Luke asked.

  “Burning sage rids the room of negative energy…and hopefully that lingering armpit smell,” Ravi explained. “Now I can meditate.”

  “Oh, goody,” Luke said sarcastically. He waved the smoke away from his face, picked up a comic book, and plopped down on his bed to read.

  “Om…Om…” Ravi chanted.

  “Um…do you mind? I’m trying to read pictures!” Luke sighed. “Can’t you just make up with Mrs. Kipling?”

  “Nooooooo…Nooooooo…” Ravi chanted back at him.

  Luke scowled. “Oh, great, now I lost my place!”

  Meanwhile, Emma and Mrs. Kipling were enjoying some quality girl time on the terrace. They were wearing matching spa robes and lounging with cucumber slices over their eyes.

  “Now, see, Mrs. K, isn’t this more fun than hanging out with my shoes?” Emma asked, pulling the cucumbers off of her eyes. “What am I saying? Nothing is more fun than hanging out with shoes!”

  Mrs. Kipling hissed in agreement as Emma inspected her freshly pedicured toes.

  “I know!” Emma exclaimed. “This pink nail color is supes cute! I’d lend it to you, but that would be crazy. You know, because you’re an autumn.” She stood up and gathered her things. “Well, I really should go do some homework.”

  Mrs. Kipling’s tail lashed out and grabbed Emma around the waist.

  “Ooh, you’re right! An animal-print belt would look great with this robe. Okay, I guess we can go shopping again. But only if you promise not to eat any more mannequins,” Emma said sternly.

  It had been another long day for Jessie and Zuri at school, and it was only noon.

  “And your science project will be to prove that the Little Engine actually couldn’t,” Mrs. Falkenberg said as the bell rang. “Time for lunch!”

  Jessie watched as all the kids grabbed their lunch boxes and headed out to the cafeteria. Zuri hung back and pulled Jessie aside.

  “Run! Save yourself!” Zuri hissed.

  “No! I’m going to make her like me or die trying,” Jessie insisted.

  “Now that you mention it,” Zuri mused on her way to the door, “nobody knows what happened to the last teacher’s aide. Oh, well.” And with that, she ducked out.

  “Hello,” Mrs. Falkenberg said. “Did you finish your sentences?”

  “Yes. I wrote ‘Teachers’ aides should be seen and not heard’ five hundred times,” Jessie answered. She handed her notebook to Mrs. Falkenberg and then rubbed her sore writing hand.

  Mrs. Falkenberg flipped through the pages and raised her eyebrow critically. “Even my third graders know how to make a cursive ‘B.’”

  “So no smiley-face sticker?” Jessie asked hopefully.

  “You have to earn those, missy.”

  Jessie’s face fell. She looked around the classroom, desperate for something she could do to make Mrs. Falkenberg like her. Inspired, she ran to the corner and grabbed a broom and dustpan that were leaning against the wall. “Hey, why don’t I sweep your classroom?”

  “Put that down!” Mrs. Falkenberg exclaimed frantically. “That’s not a broom, it’s my trusty Firebolt!”

  Jessie laughed. “And this is my Dustpan of Doom!” At the stern look on Mrs. Falkenberg’s face, Jessie quit laughing. “Sorry, I don’t know what we’re talking about.”

  “I play Muggle Quidditch,” Mrs. Falkenberg explained.

  “Oh, a Firebolt!” Jessie said, improvising. She was still very much confused. “Right, right…Sorry, it’s been a while since I hopped on one of these bad boys!”

  “You play?” Mrs. Falkenberg asked hopefully.

  “Uh, yeah! Didn’t Zuri tell you that I love Quib—what you just said?”

  “No! I used to be on an official team, but everyone’s leaving to play Vampire Baseball. Don’t you hate it when people don’t stay loyal to their young-adult fantasy-sports genre?” Mrs. Falkenberg seemed to be really warming up to Jessie.

  “Uh, it’s only my number one pet peeve!” Jessie agreed enthusiastically.

  “To tell you the truth, ever since the Long Island Longbottoms disbanded, I’ve been in a bit of a bad mood,” Mrs. Falkenberg admitted.

  “Really? I don’t think anyone noticed,” Jessie fibbed.

  “Hey, wanna play Quidditch in the park this weekend?” Mrs. Falkenberg asked brightly.

  “Aw, man, I would love to, but I have all these sentences to rewrite. Sigh.”

  “Oh, forget those!” Mrs. Falkenberg laughed. “I’ll see you Saturday. Last one there is a blatching Slytherin!”

  Jessie grinned. “Then I’d better leave now!”

  Emma was exhausted. She and Mrs. Kipling had spent the entire afternoon shopping, and Emma was desperately craving some alone time.

  “Mrs. Kipling, you’ve got to stop being so clingy. Chunky anklets are so not in right now,” Emma said as she dragged Mrs. Kipling into the apartment and uncoiled the lizard’s tail from around her ankle.

  Mrs. Kipling hissed.

  “No, I’m not saying you’re chunky! You’re just…big-scaled,” Emma said placatingly.

  Mrs. Kipling hissed again, sounding angry.

 
; “But you have a great personality!” Emma added.

  Mrs. Kipling hissed louder. Her tail lashed out, barely missing Emma.

  “Hey, watch it, tubby!” Emma snapped.

  Mrs. Kipling lunged at her, forcing Emma to bolt for the safety of the kitchen.

  Emma entered the kitchen just as Luke was in the middle of complaining to Bertram. “So you gotta help me get Ravi out of my room! He won’t stop cleaning!”

  “Give him a few years,” Bertram answered. “He’ll give up, like I did.”

  “Mrs. Kipling is driving me crazy!” Emma announced. “I had to spend all day with her in the makeup department, and it’s official: there’s no way to match her scale tone!”

  “We have to find a way to get those two crazy kids back together, before Ravi makes me look at paint swatches. I don’t even know what a swatch is, and I’d like to keep it that way,” Luke insisted.

  “Agreed,” Emma said, looking beseechingly at Bertram. “I can’t handle trying on any more faux-lizard-skin accessories. A girl only needs so much of the same print!”

  “Fine,” Bertram said with a sigh. “But what’s in it for me?”

  Luke handed him a piece of paper with a number written on it.

  “A ‘gazillion’ is not a real number,” Bertram said.

  Later that night, Jessie found Zuri coloring happily in the living room. It was the first time Jessie had seen her so cheerful in days.

  “I don’t know what you said to Mrs. Falkenberg, but she was in the best mood all afternoon,” Zuri told Jessie with a huge grin. “Our only homework is to watch TV! Which, ironically, makes me not want to do it.”

  “She’s been texting me a lot. I wanted to make her like me, but I think I may have overdone it,” Jessie said, scrunching up her nose as she looked at her phone, which buzzed with a new text.

  “Don’t worry. Even if she is an extreme clinger, it’s not like she knows where we live,” Zuri said, trying to reassure her.

  Just then, the elevator doors slid open and Mrs. Falkenberg stepped out, carrying several large scrolls. “Yooo-hooo! Jessie! I found you!” Mrs. Falkenberg called out in a singsong voice.

  “Mrs. Falkenberg?” Jessie asked. “How did you get our address?”

  “Confidential school records, silly!” Mrs. Falkenberg said with a laugh.

  “Apparently not so confidential,” Jessie muttered.

  “I thought we could go over some team plays, so we can dive right in at Quidditch practice tomorrow,” Mrs. Falkenberg continued. Then she turned to Zuri. “And why aren’t you watching TV?”

  “Oh, all right,” Zuri huffed. She walked into the screening room, leaving Jessie alone with Mrs. Falkenberg.

  Mrs. Falkenberg sat down on the couch and unrolled the scrolls she had, revealing complicated diagrams of Quidditch plays. They were covered with x’s and o’s and lightning bolts. The whole thing made Jessie’s head spin.

  “O-kay. Mrs. Falkenberg—” Jessie said.

  “Please, call me by my Quidditch name: Madame McSniggles,” Mrs. Falkenberg interrupted, putting her hands on her hips and grinning.

  “Yeah, Mrs. Falkenberg, this really isn’t a good time.…” Jessie tried again. “We’re about to have dinner and then I need to put the kids to bed.…”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I’m just so glad I finally found a friend who gets me!” Mrs. Falkenberg explained excitedly. “Hey! Want to grab dinner before practice tomorrow?”

  “I’d love to, but…I don’t like to eat before a big game,” Jessie said, clearly groping for an excuse.

  “You’re right.” Mrs. Falkenberg shook her head. “Silly me! We’ll go after. See you tomorrow, bestie!” She headed to the elevator, leaving the scrolls behind. “And don’t forget to study those plays tonight.”

  “Try and stop me!” Jessie called after her as the elevator doors closed. Zuri immediately ran back in from the screening room.

  “This is working out great!” Zuri exclaimed.

  “Yeah, for you!” Jessie groaned, flopping down onto the couch. “But Mrs. Falkenberg and I don’t have anything in common.”

  “You have me in common,” Zuri said matter-of-factly. “And if you want me to keep being a star student, you’re going to jump on that broom tomorrow and work it like a pure-blood!”

  The next morning, Jessie put on the Quidditch uniform that Mrs. Falkenberg had left for her, and she reluctantly made her way to an empty field in Central Park. Mrs. Falkenberg was waiting for her, wearing a lime-green jersey, soccer shorts, knee-high socks, and cleats. She carried two brooms, had set up six hoops on posts—three on each end of the field—and had laid out three balls on the ground.

  “Hey there, bestie!” Mrs. Falkenberg called cheerfully as soon as she spotted Jessie.

  “Hey,” Jessie said with noticeably less enthusiasm. “Quick question. Why does the back of my jersey say ‘Furtenfurter’?”

  “Didn’t you say that was your Quidditch name?”

  “No, that was a sneeze,” Jessie explained. Then she looked around. “Hey, where are your other friends?”

  “What other friends?” Mrs. Falkenberg replied seriously.

  “Oh,” Jessie replied awkwardly. She had assumed they would be playing with a few people, and she definitely hadn’t realized that she was now Mrs. Falkenberg’s only friend.

  Mrs. Falkenberg handed Jessie a scruffy-looking old broom. “Here. Sorry, you have to practice with my old Cleansweep Eleven. Maybe one day you’ll work your way up to one of these babies!” She held out her Firebolt broom.

  “A girl can dream,” Jessie said sarcastically, although the sarcasm seemed to be lost on Mrs. Falkenberg.

  “Now, remember the rules: no blagging, blatching, blurting, haversacking, or Quaffle-pocking. Obviously, we don’t have to worry about Snitch-nipping or stooging,” Mrs. Falkenberg told her.

  “Obviously,” Jessie said. “But if you could just refresh my—”

  “Brooms up!” Mrs. Falkenberg interrupted. Then she mounted her broom, scooped up a ball from the ground, and chucked it at Jessie, knocking Jessie to the ground.

  “Ow! Foul!” Jessie shrieked. “I’m pretty sure I’ve just been blag-boozled or something!”

  “It was not a foul!” Mrs. Falkenberg insisted. “Beaters throw Bludgers at Chasers to make them drop Quaffles. Duh! That’s only Quidditch 101!”

  “Can we switch to Quidditch 911?” Jessie groaned. “I think I broke my furtenfurter.”

  “You seem a little rusty. Why don’t you try playing the Golden Snitch?” Mrs. Falkenberg suggested.

  “Does it mean I get to change clothes?” Jessie asked hopefully, pulling at her embarrassing Quidditch jersey.

  “What kind of Snitch would you be if you didn’t?” Mrs. Falkenberg replied.

  Twenty minutes later, Jessie was back on the field, but this time she was dressed head to toe in a tightly fitting gold spandex outfit—gold leggings, a gold dress, and a short gold cape—and a shiny gold sock with a tennis ball inside it was tucked into Jessie’s waistband, like a tail.

  Mrs. Falkenberg pulled out a crown with wings and placed it on Jessie’s head.

  “Well, this makes the whole thing work—” Jessie said sarcastically.

  “Brooms up!” Mrs. Falkenberg barked, interrupting Jessie yet again. Then she tackled Jessie to the ground and grabbed the sock from Jessie’s waistband. She hopped up and waved the sock over her head. “I’ve snatched the Snitch! Eat my bristles!”

  “Can I go back to being a Chaser?” Jessie moaned from the ground.

  “Gold star, gold star, kitty sticker…Man, I am cleaning up!” Zuri said happily to herself as she flipped through her graded homework from the week. She was lounging on the couch, enjoying her weekend for the first time since she started third grade. The elevator door opened and Jessie limped into the
living room. Jessie was still in her Snitch outfit, but it was torn and dirty. “Whoa! You look like a banana from the bottom of someone’s backpack!” Zuri exclaimed.

  “I can’t believe they let children play Quidditch. Is Professor Dumbledore aware of how dangerous it is?” Jessie asked as she collapsed onto the couch.

  “You just have to last until June. Hopefully my fourth-grade teacher will be into something safer, like cliff diving,” Zuri said reassuringly.

  “Zuri, sweetie,” Jessie said gently. “I can’t keep being Mrs. Falkenberg’s friend.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “Maybe because she makes me ride a broom in public and yell things like ‘For the glory of Hufflepuff!’” Jessie clenched her fist as she said it.

  “But, Jessie,” Zuri pleaded, “you saw what she was like before! If you break up with her, I’ll have to go back to slumming it in the corner, which is really close to Gassy Gus! What is that kid eating?”

  Jessie shook her head. “I just feel bad for lying to Mrs. Falkenberg. She’s actually a nice person, and she deserves a real best friend who genuinely shares her interests.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Zuri said, wrinkling her nose. “Can’t you just learn to like Quidditch?”

  “Can’t you just learn to like vegetables?” Jessie countered.

  Zuri gulped. “I see your point.”

  Ravi rushed into Luke’s room, waving his phone wildly. “I got your text, roomie,” he called. “Did you not understand the vacuuming schedule?”

  “Now!” Luke yelled from his bed, where he was lounging.

  Bertram jumped out from behind Luke’s door and shut it, blocking the door with his body. Then Emma came out of the bathroom, dragging a reluctant Mrs. Kipling along on a leash.

  “Come on!” Emma said, tugging on the leash. “Get out here!”

  “What are you people doing?” Ravi asked, shaking his head firmly. “I told you, Mrs. Kipling and I are not speaking!”

  “Well, you’re not leaving this room until you talk through your problems,” Bertram said.