“No! Other parents would be thrilled. It’s salad!” I don’t really want salad. But literally the last thing Mom needs is me telling her about lunchroom drama. “Could I have it in a brown bag, too?” I hopped down and rustled through the drawers. There had to be one somewhere. “It’s just easier. I don’t have to go back to my locker after lunch to put anything away.”
My story seemed to work.
“Thanks, Mom,” I say. I close the car door and wave as she drives away. The paper bag makes a satisfying crinkle in my fist. It’s a reminder that today will be better.
The school’s different this time of day. The hallways are quiet except for the squeaks of my sneakers. The floor’s clean—free from outside recess shoe prints and crumpled pieces of looseleaf. The lights are even softer. There’s not the harsh fluorescent glare of the daytime.
It’s so much easier to breathe right now.
At my locker, I sit on the floor. I take out my napkin and open the Honey Bun package. Then I pull out the decorations I packed up last night. Leftover polka-dot wrapping paper. A drawing of Bean. A little mirror I found in the bathroom drawer. The picture of me and Hazel from before the bookstore party.
I jiggle the handle the way Anita showed me yesterday. The door opens right away. I should have said thank you. It’s a good trick.
I’m taking a bite of my breakfast and trying to figure how to fit the paper on the inside of my locker, when I hear the click-clack of heels on the linoleum. They’re getting louder. I turn and there’s Ms. Arnold with a stack of papers in one arm. I turn. She stops.
“Good morning!” She smiles. Today, she’s wearing a gray skirt and this fuchsia sweater with sequins. I wonder, for a second, if it would be weird to ask her for clothing advice. I decide against it. “You’re here early.”
“My mom had to work,” I say, after I finish chewing. “I’m decorating my locker.” I think back to the cafeteria yesterday and the one-person-one-seat rule. A pit of worry settles in my stomach. “I’m allowed to be here, right?”
“Of course,” Ms. Arnold says. “Decorate away!” She takes a step, then thinks better of it. “You know, Em, I’m glad I ran into you. There’s actually this thing I’m thinking of starting. Once a week, before school starts. Like a club.”
“What kind of club?”
“It doesn’t have a name yet,” she says. “But we’ll play games. Talk. Maybe about books.” She winks at me. “A very low-key club. Not a lot of rules.”
It does kind of sound like fun. Maybe better than sitting in an empty hallway. It’s not like I can decorate my locker every day. “Who’s in it?”
“I think Sara Miller,” she says. I try to picture Sara. She sits in the back of Science and has the cool beads on the end of her braids that clink together when she turns her head. “Lloyd Anderson. Hector Garcia . . .”
Hazel’s voice pops into my head. Hector Garcia. Soap Boy. A name you don’t want. I think of sitting alone at lunch and the CDs that will be delivered that afternoon that will fix everything. I’m not quite sure who brand new Em is, but I’m thinking she doesn’t play games with the teacher and Hector Garcia before school. The goal is to be a Better Me, not a Weirder Me.
I try to think fast. “That sounds cool,” I say. I wrap the edge of my T-shirt around my finger. “But I don’t think I can. My mom’s schedule changes a lot.”
“I understand,” she says. “But know that the invitation’s out there. Okay?”
“Scientists,” Mrs. Judd says to start class. She doesn’t call us boys and girls or ladies and gentlemen or even “you guys” like some teachers. She always calls us scientists. I like it; it sounds more official. “Migration is based on necessity.”
She has the lights off and the Smart Board screen turned on. On it is an image of a bird taking flight. I’m in the back of the classroom between Sara and Anita, but the picture’s big and bright and I can see it clearly. It looks so real I wouldn’t be surprised if I felt the air from its wings on the top of my head.
“When you hear the word migration, you first think of birds and flying south for the winter. Why do they do this?”
Sara raises her hand. Mrs. Judd nods in her direction. “Warmer climate?” she says.
“In part, yes. But even more importantly, they’re in search of food. If they have enough food in one place, they might put off migration. They do what it takes to stay alive.”
She clicks the presenter button. A new picture fills the screen. It’s a big brown animal with black zebra stripes and a furry beard under its chin. “This is the wildebeest. These animals travel over eighteen hundred miles a year in search of water and food. And this is not without peril.”
She clicks onto another slide. There’s a wildebeest in the water in the jaws of crocodile.
Joey Peters nudges the kid next to him and laughs. “What a dumb animal,” he calls out. I see Anita roll her eyes from where I’m sitting.
“There’s nothing funny about survival, Mr. Peters,” Mrs. Judd says. “And I’d think twice before laughing about the wildebeest. One, they’re big animals who run very, very fast.”
“They’d crush him,” Sara whispers. It’s unexpected coming from her. I glance over at her notes. In the margin she’s sketched a miniature wildebeest racing after a flailing Joey, his ball cap flying off his head. I hide a smile behind my hand. She sees me looking and grins.
“Two, they use something called swarm intelligence. They cooperate with each other. They have a common goal and work together to achieve it. Crossing rivers, avoiding predators like lions and cheetahs, protecting the young. As a group. Very smart, I think.”
Mrs. Judd switches to an aerial picture of them, taken high in the sky. The wildebeests look small now, like specks of pepper spilled out from the shaker. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all moving the same direction. “Together,” she says, “their odds of survival are much greater than if they were alone.”
When the bell rings for lunchtime, I hurry to my locker to grab my lunch and then race to the cafeteria. I’ll wait for Hazel outside it so I’m not last to the table again.
To be honest, it’s kind of a dangerous place to be. Two eighth graders are jostling, and one almost knocks the other into me. I’m nearly run over by a cart of clean hot-lunch trays. By the time Hazel arrives, my knuckles have turned bright white from gripping my lunch bag so hard.
“Hey!” I say, linking my arm with hers. Each of us part of an Em-Hazel arm pretzel. “I have to show you my locker later. I got this great polka-dotted paper. And I put our picture—” I glance at her. She’s on her tiptoes, looking out over everyone. “Earth to Hazel.” Hazel’s only half listening. I wave my hand in front of her face.
“Oh, sorry.” She turns to me and gives me a small smile. “Polka-dotted paper. Awesome. Where do you want to sit today?”
“I don’t know. How about that table over there?”
“Sure, okay.”
The table is tucked up against the wall so that the first chair faces the direction of the mural and the other faces out to the cafeteria. Hazel takes the second one.
I unpack my salad and fork. I spear one of the pieces of lettuce and make a face. This sounded like a very good idea last night and not so much of a great idea right now. I chew. It tastes like eating ranch-flavored grass.
Hazel pulls out her salad, too, and she’s just munching away like she’s a regular old rabbit. I never knew she liked salad so much.
“Cute pants,” she says.
I smooth my hands over the top of them. They’re jeans. Not the stretchy leggings material Hazel and Lucy wore yesterday. But they’re black and skinny. Similar, I think. I’m trying to do the right things today. Though now Hazel and the other girls are wearing their ERMS field hockey half-zips with their last names and numbers on the back. I don’t have one of those.
I’m getting the feeling that middle school is like this giant footrace and I’m always three or four steps behind.
“Hey, so about the movie—”
Hazel interrupts me. “Oh my gosh.” Her eyebrows shoot up. “I almost forgot to tell you. Guess who I sit by in Spanish?” She leans forward, closing the gap between us.
“Who? Lucy?”
“No! Joey Peters!” she exclaims. I think about Joey in Science class and his dumb jokes.
“Can you even believe it? Well, okay, he’s actually like four seats away. But that’s pretty close. And today when he got up to talk to Señora Alvarez, his sneaker touched mine.” My head tilts. Hazel sounds so excited about it.
I put the lid on the rest of my salad and stuff it into my bag. I don’t want to have any more. “Was your foot in the way?”
“Em, no!” She taps my arm with the back of her fork. “It was a sign. You know.” She’s smiling now, this little secret kind of smile.
“A sign?” I wait for her to go on.
“I dunno! Like I’m special. Maybe he’s thinking of me.” Her cheeks are flushed red now like she’s just come in from the cold. “Can you even believe it? He is super muy linda. That means cute, right? Soo cute.”
“That’s great,” I say. I try to sound excited, but I’m still thinking about Nightshade and the movie and making plans. “So, do you want to—”
“I’ve got to tell Lucy. Be right back, okay?”
She starts striding over to the snack bar, throwing looks in the direction of Lucy’s table. Lucy sees her and their brainwaves must be in sync, because she pops right out of her seat and joins her in line. Suddenly, I’m the girl sitting alone again.
I know Hazel’s telling her the story because she touches Lucy’s shoe with her own, acting the whole thing out. Lucy grabs her arms then and they squeal together. Deep in my stomach, there’s a knowing. That’s what I should have done. When Hazel told me, I should have reached over the table and grabbed her hand and squeezed it tight. We should have chair danced in celebration.
The bell rings to signal the end of lunch. Hazel’s spent more time in the snack line than she did with me.
“Em, sorry!” she says, trying to dodge around all the kids who are now exiting the cafeteria to make it back to our table. She has half a chocolate chip cookie in her hand—the good gooey kind that is a little soft in the middle. My stomach rumbles. All I’ve had is a bite or two of salad. “Lucy says she’s going to try to find a bigger table. So we can all sit together tomorrow. Isn’t that cool of her?”
“Yeah, that’s great.” Inside, though, my heart twists. What’s so wrong with just me and Hazel? Am I not enough?
I look over at Lucy. In her hand is the other half of Hazel’s cookie.
BE THE BEST ME!
When I get home from school that afternoon, there’s a package on our front porch, shimmied right under our doormat.
“Yes!” I cheer out loud, dancing the little victory jig Hazel and I invented for occasions such as this. In one motion, I grab it off the porch and unlock the door with my key.
“They’re here, they’re here,” I yell upstairs. Bean’s head appears at the top and then she thump-thumps down the steps.
In that moment, I’m the bean. A jumping bean, and I can hardly still my arms and leg. I grab a scissors from the kitchen and slice open the packing tape. I open the box. There’s a large CD case inside with Dr. Henry Franklinton-Morehouse’s picture on the front. He just looks so smart, and I bet if that picture could talk he’d say, “Today’s your day, Emily Murphy. Today’s the day you become a better you.”
I gather up the packaging and stuff it in the outside trash can. Hiding the evidence, I guess. Now I need to find a CD player. I really wish I could have just downloaded it on iTunes, but maybe really good wisdom has to be communicated in a different way.
“Do we have a CD player, Bean?” She just wags her tail.
I’m squinting my eyes shut and thinking, thinking, thinking, when suddenly an image of seventh-grade Mina pops into my mind. She’s dancing around her room, preparing for the schoolwide talent show, headphones on, listening to a portable CD player.
“Mina has one!”
I charge up the stairs and burst into her room.
I’m trying to think of where it could be. First, I look under her bed—just a bunch of her magazines I’ve already read and some old papers she wrote for English class. Then I look in her closet. Clothes she didn’t bring with her to Pinehurst because they were now too big swing on the hangers. I open the tubs of shoes and purses that sit on the floor. I find a random knickknack or souvenir wedged in but no CD player. My mind goes to the drawer at the top of her dresser where she keeps a whole bunch of stuff that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else. I bet it’s there.
I run across the room and open it.
I riffle through yarn from a scarf she had started knitting for Bean, a bunch of loose pictures, old school supplies. No CD player. But then I see something else. Small and red, large wire spirals on the side. I swallow hard and open the notebook up. Mina’s small, neat handwriting fills the pages. Inky blue reminders of last winter.
December 18-Breakfast: grapes, water
Lunch: Jell-O (sugar free)
Exercise: 100 sit-ups, running
I close it with a sharp snap. My fingers tingle, and I practically throw it back in the drawer and bury it as deep as I can.
That notebook is from the past.
I take a deep breath. Mina leaving happened to Before Emily. Right now I’m working on Future Em. Future Em can handle anything—Mina and Dad and sixth grade. I find the CD player and headphones, grab them out of the drawer, and close Mina’s door behind me.
Back in my room, I take some batteries out of my top desk drawer and pop them into the player. I rip a few sheets of loose leaf out of a notebook and sit down with my official Unicorn Chronicles special-edition pencil.
I am ready to be the Best Me Ever!
I hit play. As I wait for the CD player to whir to life, I write BE A BETTER ME!!! in gigantic letters at the top of the paper. Then, gentle music begins. It sounds like what you might hear in a department store elevator. Finally, there’s a voice. It’s deep and low. “I’m Dr. Henry Franklinton-Morehouse. Welcome to the Be the Better You audio series. Just by the very step of you purchasing these CDs from our Mind over Matter Industries, you have shown yourself to be committed to the act of self-improvement. Congratulations!”
I find myself wondering if he’s taping this from the paisley chair in the infomercial, but I refocus. “There are five steps to becoming a better you. Each lesson will focus on a different step. First, though, we need to get a baseline. Just like those wardrobe makeover shows on TV, you won’t know how dramatic the new you is unless you examine who you are now.”
Dramatic. Yes! I won’t even recognize the old me.
“We won’t be showing your photos side by side, though. No, your change will come from within. Take a piece of paper and a pencil. Good. Now draw a giant lowercase T in the center. On the left side of the T, at the very top, I want you to write Before Me. On the right side I want you to write After Me. We’ll concentrate on the left side for now.”
I divide my paper like he says. I write Before Emily on one side and After Emily on the other.
“Now write words that describe you at this point in your life. To get your brain going, start with the easy stuff. Your name, maybe. Or your age. That will get you warmed up.” Music starts playing again—birds and a babbling brook and whistling wind. Thinking music.
Hmm. Things I know about me.
Emily Em Murphy
Almost twelve.
Sixth grader.
Hazel’s best friend.
Dr. Franklinton-Morehouse comes on again. “Okay, now for the harder stuff. Who are you inside? I want you to picture your backyard. What do you see? Grass, dirt. Maybe some flowers. Now take a shovel. Dig a hole. What do you find? Wormholes, rocks, tiny bugs. That’s what I want you to do now. Look beyond the surface of who you are.”
I tap the eraser end of my pencil against th
e desk. I think Dr. Franklinton-Morehouse wants character traits, like the ones we have to pick out in Language Arts class about different book characters. For example, Nightshade. Hers are super easy to come up with. She’s brave, heroic, brilliant, a great friend.
But who am I? I squeeze my eyes shut to think harder.
Likes unicorn detectives. True, but everyone knows that.
I think about Mina and how far away she sat on the couch. Bad sister. The backs of my eyes start to tingle.
Bad daughter. Dad left. Mina left.
I click stop on the CD player. I look at the list I have. To be honest, it’s kind of depressing.
FIVE THOUSAND PIECES
When I go downstairs, I see that Mom’s home. She has on her old jeans and her hair’s pulled up into a messy ponytail with a regular old rubber band. Her cleaning clothes. She’s carrying a toaster to the front door, where there’s already a pile of junk growing: old toy dolls from when me and Mina were younger, my beginning ballet dance tutu, a rusted trike that’s hung out in the back of our basement. I pick one of the dolls up from the pile. There are still traces of the bright red lipstick Mina and I smeared on her eyebrows when we gave her a makeover.
“You sure were quiet up there,” she says. “I peeked in but didn’t want to interrupt. Homework?”
“Something like that,” I say, glad I didn’t leave the packaging for the CDs where she could find it. “What are you doing?”
Mom shakes open a black trash bag. “Spring cleaning. Or fall cleaning, I should say. We just have so much junk. I thought it would be good to get some of that out of here. Organized house, organized mind—they say.”
“Who says that?”
Mom shakes her head at the pile and laughs. “Not anyone in this house. But maybe we could try. Want to help me bring a few more things up from the basement?”
All I really want to do is listen to the next portion of the CDs. Now that I have an idea of who I am, how do I become better? But Mom has this kind of hopeful look on her face—like the one Bean has when she thinks she’s getting a dog bone. “Okay, sure.”
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