Teacher's Pet

by Johanna Hurwitz

  “I didn’t think you would,” said Mrs. Schraalenburgh. “That’s a good goal for the entire class. But one hundred labels from a single child would be an impossible feat.”

  “I have two hundred and seventeen labels,” said Zoe, getting up from her desk and presenting the box to Mrs. Schraalenburgh.

  The teacher raised the lid from the box to look inside. Sure enough, the box was crammed full of red-and-white soup-can labels.

  Everyone in the class started talking at once. How could one family eat that much soup? Cricket looked down at the two labels in her hand. One was for split-pea soup, which she hated. But she had eaten it anyhow. She felt tears coming to her eyes. What was the use of eating split-pea soup if all it accomplished was a single label?

  “How in the world did you get so many?” asked Mrs. Schraalenburgh.

  “My stepfather is a newspaper reporter. He writes a column in the Evening Star. Last week when I told him about getting labels, he wrote about it in the newspaper and people mailed him all these labels. I’ll probably be getting more, too,” said Zoe, grinning proudly.

  “That’s not fair,” said Cricket angrily. She had no doubt that at least a few of the labels in Zoe’s box came from her grandmother. Why should Zoe get credit for bringing them to school?

  “Cricket, you know better than to call out,” Mrs. Schraalenburgh reprimanded. “It was very clever of Zoe to think to ask her stepfather to request the labels in the newspaper. It is a triumph for our class, Zoe. I know these will be a wonderful addition to the labels collected by the rest of the school.” The teacher beamed at Zoe. “Take this box down to Mr. Herbertson, the principal. He will be delighted with them.”

  Zoe took the box of labels and left the room. Cricket thought how nice it would be if Zoe got lost and never returned. But she knew it was too much to hope for.

  Later that morning, Mrs. Schraalenburgh revealed a plan for the class. “Each day, starting tomorrow, I am going to select one student to be the ‘personality of the day.’ ”

  “I have personality every day,” Julio called out.

  “So I have noticed,” said Mrs. Schraalenburgh. “But this is different. The ‘personality of the day’ will be line leader when we leave the classroom and will be my monitor whenever I need a special helper. And it will be a different person each day, too.”

  Cricket didn’t like it a bit. In the past, she had always been the line leader and monitor for each of her teachers. And she had held that honored position every day of the school week.

  “How will you pick the personality of the day’?” asked Hope.

  Cricket raised her hand. “You could pick the best person in the class,” she suggested hopefully.

  “In this class, you are all going to work hard and behave your best,” said the teacher smiling. “So everyone is going to have a turn.”

  Lucas raised his hand. “You could do it in alphabetical order,” he said.

  Lucas Cott would say that, thought Cricket. His name was right at the front of the alphabet. She’d have to wait ages until they got to the letter K.

  “I could do it alphabetically,” admitted Mrs. Schraalenburgh. “But I think it would be more fun if you didn’t know when your turn was coming. And the way to put an element of surprise into our ‘personality of the day’ is to make a lottery out of it. I am going to put everyone’s name on a little slip of paper. Then I’ll put all the slips of paper in a bowl on my desk. Every morning I will pull out a slip of paper. The person whose name is on that paper will become our ‘personality of the day.’”

  Cricket didn’t like that plan either. How would she know to wear her best dress when it was her turn if she wouldn’t know it was her turn until she got to school? Why did Mrs. Schraalenburgh have to be so different from all other teachers?

  Cricket liked it a lot less the next morning when Mrs. Schraalenburgh put her plan into action. She reached into the bowl on her desk and pulled out a slip of paper.

  “Zoe Mitchell,” she read.

  Cricket fumed inwardly. “Zoe’s so new she won’t even know her way around the building if you send her someplace,” she pointed out to the teacher.

  “All the rooms are numbered. I think Zoe is smart enough to manage,” said Mrs. Schraalenburgh, smiling at the “personality of the day.” Then she pinned a button on Zoe’s shirt that announced to all the class and all the school what her honor was.

  When the fourth-graders marched out in a fire drill later in the morning, Zoe proudly led the way. Cricket was furious. Why should someone so new be in front of the class? At least, Mrs. Schraalenburgh should have picked the name of one of the old-timers such as herself. After the fire drill, Mrs. Schraalenburgh decided that she needed some sheets of colored paper. It was Zoe who went to get them from the art room. Zoe beamed with pride when she returned with the paper. You could see she liked being the “personality of the day.” It made Cricket feel really cheated. If she had been in either of the other fourth-grade sections, she just knew she would be the class monitor. Hadn’t she always been singled out for such special jobs?

  The next day Julio Sanchez was picked for the honor. That was truly ridiculous, Cricket thought. Everybody knew that Julio was the biggest goof-off in the whole school. He shouldn’t be allowed out of the room to go on errands. He would probably take an hour just to deliver the attendance sheet to the school office. But Julio surprised Cricket by returning to class in record time. “Anything else you want me to do?” he asked the teacher. He was beaming from ear to ear. It was the first time since he had been in school that he had ever been trusted to do anything out of sight of his teacher.

  Cricket was resigned to waiting a long time for her turn to be “personality of the day.” There were twenty-two students in her class. Zoe and Julio had had their turns. That left nineteen others to be picked before her. She just knew it was going to take until October before she would have a turn. So she was overjoyed on Thursday morning when Mrs. Schraalenburgh pulled the slip of paper with her name on it out of the bowl.

  Cricket was sorry that she was wearing an old faded blue T-shirt and not one of her newer ones. Still, she looked down proudly at the button Mrs. Schraalenburgh pinned to her shirt. “Personality of the day.” Perhaps if she was the very best “personality of the day,” Mrs. Schraalenburgh would let her have the position every day, after all. She couldn’t wait to be given some special jobs to do.

  In the morning the class had gym. Cricket proudly led the way out of the fourth-grade classroom. Unfortunately, Mr. Ryan, the gym teacher, made Cricket remove her button. “If the pin comes undone, you could get hurt,” he explained. Cricket didn’t think it was fair. She was cheated out of wearing the button for a whole period. When Zoe and Julio were “personality of the day,” they didn’t have to take it off at all.

  Mrs. Schraalenburgh didn’t have any errands until after lunch. All morning Cricket had been hoping that she would be sent with a message to Mrs. Hockaday, the teacher she had had last year. It was always fun to visit the classroom of the teacher you had the year before. The children in the old teacher’s new class always looked like babies. It made Cricket feel extra grown-up to think that she had sat in one of those seats the year before.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Schraalenburgh didn’t send Cricket to Mrs. Hockaday. Instead, she gave her a note on a folded sheet of paper and asked her to deliver it to Mrs. Lento, who was one of the other fourth-grade teachers. That was fine with Cricket. She would get a chance to look around the classroom and see some of her former classmates. Maybe they would think she was “personality of the day” every day.

  Cricket took the paper from Mrs. Schraalenburgh and walked down the hall. Mrs. Lento’s door was open, so Cricket walked right inside. Mrs. Lento was sitting at her desk and speaking to the class. She held out her hand and took the note from Cricket. While the teacher was reading it, Cricket looked around the room. She was looking for clues to see if it would have been better to be in this class instead of the
one she was in. One of the girls in the front row smiled at Cricket. It was Melanie Crawford. She had been in second grade with Cricket. That seemed like a hundred years ago.

  After she read the note, Mrs. Lento handed it back to Cricket. “All right,” she said.

  Cricket stood waiting. Maybe Mrs. Lento was going to write a note to Mrs. Schraalenburgh.

  “I said all right,” Mrs. Lento repeated. “You can go back to your class now.”

  Some of the children in the room tittered. Cricket felt her face growing red. Wasn’t Mrs. Lento going to give her a note for her teacher? As she walked out of the room, it occurred to her that perhaps Mrs. Lento had written her response right onto the note that Cricket had given her. Cricket opened the paper to check. She hoped that Mrs. Lento had written on it because otherwise it might look as if Cricket hadn’t really delivered the message.

  “Young lady,” a voice called out.

  Cricket turned her head.

  “Young lady, you come back into this classroom at once,” the voice shouted.

  Cricket turned with relief. It was Mrs. Lento calling her. Obviously, she had realized that she had forgotten to answer the note that Cricket had given her.

  “Do you know that what you did is very dishonest?” Mrs. Lento asked Cricket.

  Cricket stared at the woman speechlessly. “I didn’t do anything,” she said.

  “You most certainly did. You were reading a piece of mail that was not meant for you. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “I wasn’t reading anything,” Cricket protested.

  “I saw you with my own eyes,” said Mrs. Lento. “You were reading this note that Mrs. Schraalenburgh asked you to bring to me.”

  For a long, long moment, Cricket was so stunned by the unjust accusation that even though she wanted to be a lawyer, she was unable to come up with a single word in self-defense.

  “I’m going with you back to your classroom right now. We’ll see what Mrs. Schraalenburgh has to say about students who read teachers’ mail.” Mrs. Lento gestured to a young woman who was sitting in the back of the room. “Please take over until I return,” she said.

  It must have been a student teacher, Cricket thought numbly as she followed Mrs. Lento out of the door. She could hear all the children in Mrs. Lento’s room whispering about her. It was awful.

  Mrs. Schraalenburgh looked very surprised to see Cricket accompanied by Mrs. Lento. At least Mrs. Lento didn’t announce out loud what had happened. She motioned to Mrs. Schraalenburgh and the three of them stood in the classroom doorway. “This young lady is not worthy of your trust,” said Mrs. Lento. “She was standing out in the hallway reading the message that you wrote to me.”

  “No, I wasn’t,” said Cricket as tears began to drip down her face. “I only opened the note to be sure you wrote something on it. I didn’t want Mrs. Schraalenburgh to think I didn’t get an answer from you.”

  “You still had no business opening it,” said Mrs. Lento.

  Cricket brushed away her tears. A lawyer wouldn’t cry, she thought. She took a deep breath before she spoke. “All I did was glance at the paper to see if there was anything written in another handwriting. I wouldn’t read a teacher’s messages. And it’s just circumstantial evidence for you to accuse me. The note was opened, but I didn’t read it. I don’t know what it says. You can give me a lie-detector test if you want. Then you will see that I am innocent.”

  Mrs. Schraalenburgh put her arm around Cricket. “Take it easy,” she said softly. “We don’t keep lie detectors in this school because we believe our students when they tell us something. If you say you didn’t read my message, then I trust you to be telling me the truth.

  “Now why don’t you go to the girls’ room and wash your face before you come back into the class.” She turned to Mrs. Lento. “It’s all right,” she said to her. “I’m sure Cricket didn’t mean to do anything wrong. It was just a misunderstanding.”

  Cricket went and splashed her face with cold water. Even though Mrs. Schraalenburgh had defended her and believed what she said, she still felt bad. It took her a few minutes before she felt she could return to the classroom and not start crying again. Finally, she walked back to her class.

  Everyone in the room turned to look at Cricket. She knew they were all curious about what had happened. They would find out soon enough when they talked to their friends in Mrs. Lento’s class. But for the moment at least, she could pretend that everything was fine. Mrs. Schraalenburgh called for everyone’s attention. She was writing something on the chalkboard that they had to copy. Cricket was glad to have something to keep her and all of her classmates busy. And she was very glad at the end of the afternoon to unpin her button. “Personality of the day” had turned out to be a terrible burden. She was glad it wouldn’t be her turn again for a long time.

  She thought of how Mrs. Schraalenburgh had put her arm around Cricket’s shoulder and said that she trusted her. If Mrs. Schraalenburgh said that, she must mean it. There was only one thing to comfort Cricket as she walked home from school that afternoon. She was glad to be in Mrs. Schraalenburgh’s class and not Mrs. Lento’s.

  5

  Cricket

  and the

  Bee

  As the days and the weeks of fourth grade continued, Cricket was more determined than ever to prove to her teacher what a good student she was. It never seemed so difficult before, she thought. But after all, she had never been in fourth grade before either. Probably it would get harder and harder every year that she was in school. Still, she was determined to prove to Mrs. Schraalenburgh that she was a superior student. She worked very hard and raised her hand to answer every question.

  When the students were assigned to write reports about herbs and spices, she deliberately picked a hard one. Thyme. She left the popular ones that everyone had already heard about for the others: pepper, salt, cinnamon, paprika. She went to the library and looked in three books to find as much information as she could.

  Cricket’s mother helped her, too. Mrs. Kaufman said that the herb was pronounced “time.” “The h is silent,” she explained to her daughter. Cricket tried to remember that as she wrote her report. Her mother let Cricket bring to school the small jar of thyme that was in her spice rack so that the fourth-graders could see and smell the powdered herb.

  Cricket had covered two sides of a page with her very neat cursive writing telling all there was to know about thyme. Most of Cricket’s classmates wrote only a paragraph for their reports.

  Cricket was very proud when Mrs. Schraalenburgh returned her paper with a big red A on it. And she was even prouder when she was asked to read it aloud to the class. Cricket stood in front of the class and began reading. Almost immediately, Zoe’s hand was in the air.

  “Yes, Zoe?” called the teacher.

  “Cricket pronounced it ‘thighmme,’ but it really should be ‘time.’”

  “Good for you, Zoe, for knowing that,” said Mrs. Schraalenburgh. Then she explained to everyone about the silent h.

  Cricket was furious with herself for forgetting. She had been so excited about reading her report aloud that she had forgotten the pronunciation of the word. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Zoe had corrected her.

  When Mrs. Schraalenburgh announced that she was going to hold a spelling bee on the first Friday of October, Cricket knew that finally she would have a chance to triumph. Her teachers in the past had always said that she was a natural speller. Not only could she always spell all the words on the class spelling lists, but she could almost always spell new words, too. All week before the first Friday in October, Cricket practiced spelling new words. It was so easy that after a while she made up a game for herself.

  “I can spell backwards, too,” she announced to the girls sitting near her at lunchtime.

  “Let’s hear you spell ‘Schraalenburgh,’”said Zoe.

  Cricket closed her eyes for a moment and then spelled, “H-G-R-U-B-N-E-L-A-A-R-H-C-S.”

 
“Chocolate,” said Hope, reading the word off the candy bar that was in her lunch bag.

  “E-T-A-L-O-C-O-H-C.”

  “I bet I could do it, too,” said Zoe. “Try me.”

  “Mississippi,” said Cricket. Zoe spelled it backwards without a mistake.

  For the rest of the lunch period, the girls tested one another on backwards spelling. Robin Sharolton got so confused she couldn’t even spell her own last name in the new backwards way.

  By Wednesday Cricket thought she would explode with excitement. She could hardly wait until Friday afternoon.

  “Will there be a prize?” Lucas asked.

  “You will have to wait and see,” the teacher said.

  “No fair,” Julio called out. “How do I know if I should bother to study or not?”

  “Julio, it is not fair to me or to the rest of the class to have you constantly interrupting us with your calling out. I have told you that before and I don’t want to have to tell you again. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” said Julio. “But I still want to know if there is going to be a prize.”

  “And you are still going to have to wait and see. To learn how to spell is a reward unto itself.”

  Cricket decided that probably meant there wasn’t a prize. But if she was the winner, she wouldn’t need another prize. She just wanted to triumph over Zoe once and for all.

  Before it was time to go home, Cricket’s head began to hurt. At first she thought the headache had come from concentrating so hard on the backwards spelling at lunchtime. She had clearly been the champion, but it hadn’t been easy. And the girls were trying to find harder and harder words to stump her with.

  “You look very flushed,” said Mrs. Kaufman when Cricket returned home after school.

  She put out her hand and felt Cricket’s forehead. “I think you have a fever,” she said.

  “I’m okay,” Cricket lied. She couldn’t bear to get sick. Last year she had been one of only three students in her class to get a certificate for perfect attendance. If she got sick, she wouldn’t get a certificate again this year in June. And worst of all, she might miss the Friday spelling bee. She could not possibly miss the spelling bee.