It was nicer to imagine that Cadbury was waiting for her instead of focusing on how miserable she was without him. Maybe behind Sylvie’s deadpan personality was a glass that was half-full.
After eating and cleaning up, the girls examined the leaves of the healthy plant.
“Why does Auden Georges always get such good grades?” Veronica asked. “I read her Monet paper. No offense, but I thought it was boring.”
“It was. All her work is. But what it lacks in creativity it makes up for with accuracy. Teachers like that. Go figure.”
Sylvie had gone to school with Auden Georges since kindergarten, so she should know.
“Time to make our freshly contaminated water,” Sylvie said. Veronica and Sylvie had developed an actual recipe, which they measured and made fresh each day. As research scientists, they had to be consistent.
“I bet her parents beat her if she doesn’t do better than everyone else. Why else would she cry when she doesn’t get a perfect grade? She is worse than Melody that way,” Sylvie said.
Veronica doubted Sylvie had any idea how important doing well on this project was for her credibility. Auden Georges didn’t have to worry about credibility. Her English accent always made her credible. But Veronica was in a full-blown credibility crisis.
“I feel like a murderer,” Veronica said, pouring the poison water on the closet plant. It was Friday and Veronica hoped the closet plant would die over the weekend so when they handed the project in on Monday their results would be crystal clear. It made her feel mean. She had hurt the plant’s feelings daily and robbed it of all nutrition. She was a plant murderer. That was how badly she wanted a good grade.
“Wow, your sketches are so good, Veronica,” Sylvie said.
Veronica had to agree, even though what Sylvie was admiring were just the minisketches. She’d made bigger, better ones for the graphic novel presentation.
“Can I see them for a minute?” Veronica handed the sketchbook to Sylvie, and Sylvie flipped through it, making the pictures of the plants come to life. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Sylvie said.
“I don’t know, what are you thinking?”
“A flipbook!” Sylvie flipped each page with her thumb and their entire experiment sprang to life before their eyes. Veronica had been very careful to measure exactly equal quadrants on her paper and had put her illustrations inside each quadrant. By cutting the pages into four squares and attaching them, they could make their graphic novel into a perfect flipbook. Veronica was psyched.
Sylvie kept flipping the pages.
“That is exactly my life this year,” Veronica said as the closet plant died again and again before her eyes.
“It is?” Sylvie said.
“Yup. I was all alive and vital and then people ignored me and were mean and I wilted.”
“You have a funny way of looking at things,” Sylvie said.
Veronica was incensed.
“I remember you from the first day,” Sylvie said. “Your parents were so friendly and you just stood there looking at me like you hated me. Sort of like you’re doing right now.”
Veronica did nearly hate Sylvie right now. “But you didn’t say anything to me,” she said.
“You didn’t say anything to me either. And you had everything a person could want—two parents, for starters, who were taking you to school. My dad hasn’t had time to take me to school in years.”
Veronica remembered that morning too. But the way she remembered it, Sylvie wasn’t the new girl. Veronica thought it was up to Sylvie to be nice and say hello first. When Sylvie didn’t, she assumed Sylvie didn’t like her. But Mary always said things weren’t as they appeared, and obviously there was a whole other side to the story that Veronica hadn’t even considered. The side that was not her side. Oops. She didn’t ponder that side as often as she should.
Sylvie got up and returned with a dilapidated Barbie doll. She put it on the coffee table for Veronica to examine. Its face was filthy, it was missing a leg, and its hair, what was left of it, was matted and tangled. The doll had lots of empty holes along its scalp where tufts of its hair were missing. It was a mess.
“I just had an idea,” Sylvie said. “Do you have any Barbies?”
“I don’t know if I still do,” Veronica said. “Why?” Part of her didn’t even want to talk to Sylvie. She was so embarrassed by her assessment of their first meeting.
“Our experiment shows what happens to a plant when it is not treated right, right? Well, we could hypothesize that people are the same way. If you treat a plant badly and ignore its needs it dies, so the same would happen to a person. If you mistreat a person it ends up like this Barbie.”
Just like me, thought Veronica. “Oh, Sylvie, I love it. If I can’t find a Barbie, I will buy one and it can be the happy, popular Barbie who is treated well and yours can be the sad misfit Barbie. Can we somehow implicate Sarah-Lisa Carver in this theory?” Veronica asked.
“That is hilarious, Veronica. You threw a shoe at that girl and cut her sweaters to bits and you want her to be the mean one?”
“Okay, fine! I won’t implicate Sarah-Lisa. I’ll take a more humanitarian approach. But I still want to make little Randolf uniforms. What if I made little uniforms?”
“You don’t mind working over the weekend?”
“I want to work over the weekend!” Veronica said.
“Me too,” Sylvie said.
They sealed the deal with another hug. It was awesome.
I’m Afraid to Tell You
Veronica rifled through her room looking for a Barbie doll. She dug in drawers, old crates, and under her bed. She could see the doll in her mind, but she couldn’t remember where it was. It was so frustrating.
“Mom!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. She had to yell, she was under her bed.
“I’m right here, Veronica! Don’t shout!” her mother shouted. “Honey! I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Come in the kitchen!”
Oh sure. It was okay for Mrs. Morgan to yell halfway around the globe, but the rules were different for Veronica Morgan. Veronica crawled out from under her bed and walked begrudgingly into the kitchen. Her mother was standing in the middle of the room looking confused.
“I don’t know what to do for dinner.” She sighed. “Any ideas?” It was a silly question since they both knew the answer.
“Hunan Delight?” Veronica said.
“A girl after my own heart.” Her mother moved toward the phone.
“I love you, Mommy.” All of a sudden Veronica was overwhelmed by the idea of her mother dying and not being there to order Chinese food. She really was so ungrateful sometimes.
“I love you too,” her mother said. “What brought this on? Is everything okay?”
“Yes. Mommy?”
“Yes, my darling.”
“I want to do something with a Barbie. Didn’t I used to have one? Do you know where it is?”
“You know what?” her mother said as she smoothed Veronica’s hair. “I actually do. Or at least I’m pretty sure I do.”
This was amazing news because organization was not her mother’s strong suit. Veronica’s grandmother had everything labeled and packed in plastic protective sleeves and orderly rows but she hadn’t passed that gene down. Veronica’s mother was very good at putting things in places and forgetting the places she had put them.
“Where?” Veronica asked.
“I’m afraid to tell you,” Mrs. Morgan said.
“No,” Veronica said with mock horror. I’m afraid to tell you was a Morgan family euphemism for the front closet.
“Yes,” her mother said. “Two words. Three, actually. The. Front. Closet. There is a box in there filled with birthday gifts you never wanted. I planned on giving them to a charity. But, as usual, I haven’t gotten around to it.”
Veronica gave her mother a hug and ran out of the kitchen, happy she had a scatterbrained mother who was too disorganized to do things like give a box to charity.
“Please be careful in there, honey!” her mother said. “I want to eat dinner and go to bed. I’m too tired tonight to take you to the emergency room.”
Veronica was sure this new part of their project, the human element, as Sylvie called it, combined with their scientific data about the plants and their drawings, would get them As. She opened the closet door slowly and pulled the string attached to the light bulb, expecting to flood the place with yellow light. But there was so much junk everywhere the light barely made a difference.
There was tall junk, short junk, junk on shelves, junk on the floor. She was surrounded by junk. Wrapping paper rolls, a set of skis (no one in her family had ever skied, as far as she knew), the lethal golf clubs. A fur coat startled her. There was an exercise machine folded up and Veronica had a vague memory of her father promising one year to get into shape (one of his particularly famous lies). There was a bunch of folding chairs they used for Passover, an ironing board, piles of board games, and on a shelf above her head bottles and bottles of wine and champagne. She pushed her way through the coats, eating a mouthful of fur in the process.
With the aid of a flashlight she found the box she was looking for. Inside was a set of dominoes, three Candy Land games—all unopened—a set of Boxcar Children books, and at the very bottom two Barbie dolls, still in their packages! She took hold of them and made her way back to civilization.
“Did you find them?” her mother shouted.
“Yes!”
“Well, good! I guess it was meant to be.”
Nature vs. Nurture
Veronica was so preoccupied with how she was going to make little Randolf uniforms for the Barbie dolls, she didn’t even notice at first they were eating vegetable lasagna. This was a Morgan family favorite, and a meal Veronica’s mother usually kept portions of in the freezer for emergencies.
“I thought we were having Hunan Delight,” Veronica said.
“I know, but as I was ordering I remembered we had it last night.”
“And the night before…”
“I guess that’s why I thought enough,” Mrs. Morgan said. “For a day or two anyway. Please pass me the salad.”
Veronica was still thinking about her science project. What would be the best way to display the Barbies? She hoisted herself and the enormous salad bowl down the table to her mother. No one except for Mr. Morgan could pass it to anyone without standing. The leaves of arugula in the salad gave her an idea.
“I am intrigued,” her father said. “Have you and this Sylvie person become friends?”
“Yes.” Veronica hadn’t seen friendship with Sylvie coming, but here she was acknowledging that yes, it had arrived.
Her parents looked at each other.
“What?” Veronica asked.
“Nothing,” her mother said.
“You obviously have some opinion,” Veronica said. “Some theory about child development and psychoneurotic something…”
“No. We’re just happy,” her mother said.
Both parents nodded.
“How is the work going?” her father asked. He clearly thought it was adorable that his eleven-year-old daughter had work.
“Pretty good,” Veronica said, chewing on a crunchy lasagna noodle, one from the top that was especially brown and crisp. The top and the sides of the lasagna were her favorite parts.
“We made a flipbook that is really cool,” she told her parents.
“What is so cool about it?” her mother asked.
“Well, we had to record our observations so Sylvie took our drawings, well, mostly my drawings, and she cut them out on separate little pieces of paper and stapled the top together and made it into a flipbook. You can watch the plant die or come back to life depending on which direction you go.”
“That sounds very creative,” her father said.
“Lovey, do you want some more?”
“No thank you, I’m full.”
“You are? Usually you eat so much of this.”
“I had coq au vin at Sylvie’s.”
“I beg your pardon?” her father said.
“She has really weird snacks at her house,” Veronica said.
“Does she have a caterer?” her father asked. “I will have more of your wonderful lasagna, Marion, thank you.”
“No, Daddy. There isn’t a caterer. There is no one, actually.”
“Did you order out?” her mother asked.
“No! Sylvie’s just a really good cook. Her mother died when she was little and it’s how she entertains herself.”
There was a charge in the air that meant Veronica’s parents had simultaneously arrived at a number of theories about Sylvie Samuels based on the fact that her mother had died and all the case studies they’d read. It wasn’t fair. They didn’t even know Sylvie. But they were alive and she tried to be grateful for that.
Final Touches
On Saturday morning, Veronica was dying to call Sylvie, but she knew it was too early. She distracted herself by working on the doll uniforms. She took her blouse from Cadbury’s shiva and a jumper from her closet and examined them inside and out. The jumper only had three pieces: a front and two back pieces with a zipper in the middle. She could make the doll jumpers without the zipper and use just two pieces. There were no sleeves, so that was easy. The blouse was a lot more complicated. The collar, the sleeves, the buttonholes—she wished Mary was here. Mary was a much better sewer. She put the Barbie down on a piece of loose-leaf paper and outlined it to make a pattern. Next she would cut her actual uniform and use the fabric. There was probably some Randolf rule about defacing your school uniform and a punishment to fit the crime. But too bad.
At nine o’clock, she couldn’t stand it anymore and called Sylvie.
“I had an idea about how to show the Barbies,” Veronica said. “Let’s plant them. Do you think you can get some more pots? And more dirt?”
“That is so genius,” Sylvie said. “Did you find a Barbie?”
“I did! I’m already sewing.”
Veronica holed up in her room all day to make the tiny outfits. Mary would have done a much better job—but having real Randolf uniform fabric to work with helped a lot. Halfway through the first blouse she gave up on the needle and thread and used glue. It was much easier that way. She also didn’t have tiny buttons so she used actual Randolf ones, but only one for each blouse.
On Sunday morning, Sylvie called. “I got the extra pots,” she said. “How is the sewing going?”
“Good-ish,” Veronica said. “I think we should use the same data we did for the plants, but substitute unfriendliness for chemicals, and basically copy the plant’s deterioration for the Barbies.”
“Is your hypothesis that the lack of nourishment, clean water, and sunlight killed the doll, or unkindness? Because I agree, we should make the Barbie part of our report as official-looking as possible so Mr. Bower will take it seriously. But I wonder if you think the dolls reflect the effect of emotions or of being fed toxic chemicals.”
“Hmm, good question,” Veronica said. “I guess both. Physical and mental.”
“I agree.”
“This is becoming very psychological. My parents will be so proud. We could leave an arm that fell off lying in the pot, like the leaves that fell off the plant,” Veronica said.
“Yes!” Sylvie said. “Maybe I can try to make the whole Barbie kind of yellow and brown at the edges.”
Veronica was so excited she didn’t know how she would get through the rest of the day.
The Big Blastoff
Sylvie spent the night Sunday and they stayed up till midnight working. Veronica had never worked so hard on anything in her life. They called their project Nature vs. Nurture: A Tale of Two Dolls, Two Plants, and the Lives They Lived. Veronica laughed so hard when she came up with the title because Nature vs. Nurture was an expression her parents used a lot. Since she could remember, they told her all her problems were the result of genetics, not of Mr. and Mrs. Morgan’s pare
nting. Ha. Those were the kind of jokes you got from parents who were both psychiatrists.
Mrs. Morgan sent both girls out the door on Monday morning with freshly toasted bagels. She had Charlie put them in a taxi because it was raining and they were bleary-eyed from staying up so late and they had so much to carry. There were so many bags and boxes being carried into Randolf that morning it felt like the sixth graders were celebrating Christmas, not presenting science projects. Darcy Brown and Liv O’Malley were wrestling the giant ant farm they’d built up the stairs.
Maggie Fogel pressed herself against the wall in a state of total terror.
“They’re just ants, Maggie,” Becky said.
“I know! But there are so many of them!” Maggie screamed.
“They aren’t alligators, you know? Even if they get out they’re not going to bite you,” Liv said. She and Darcy staggered down the hall with their unwieldy ant farm.
Athena and Sarah-Lisa were very helpful during all this and pretended to bite Maggie. Veronica wondered where their project was. They weren’t carrying anything.
“Welcome,” Mr. Bower said at the beginning of their double science period. He must live for this day, Veronica thought. He oohed and ahhed each team as they walked their projects in. Mr. Bower loved science the way her parents loved psychiatry. The way extremely religious people love God.
“Welcome,” Mr. Bower said again and again. He kept smoothing his hair down, what little of it there was. Each team went to its assigned place and began unpacking. “You have about fifteen minutes to set up,” Mr. Bower said. “Melody will hand out grading forms, because as you know, in addition to a grade from me, you will also be grading one another.”
Hearing her name spoken out loud by her beloved Mr. Bower, in front of all the other girls, was almost too much for Melody. She fluttered from table to table handing out grading forms. Veronica worried she might just start rubbing up against Mr. Bower like the lonely orange cat in the boiler room.
“Please do not grade on anything other than the integrity of the idea and the workmanship behind its execution,” Mr. Bower said. “Please grade your peers on interest, accuracy, and accessibility. Who can define accessibility?”
The Good, the Bad & the Beagle Page 17