“Me too,” Ms. Endee agreed.
Somebody named Scott O’Dell wrote it, but when Megan reached the O section of the shelves of fiction, she was surprised to find Alexis standing in the stacks holding a copy of Island of the Blue Dolphins.
“Are you going to read that?” Megan asked.
“I’m sorry?” Alexis whispered. It wasn’t the whisper that annoyed Megan. She knew that people were supposed to whisper in libraries. It was just that something about the effort to whisper made it seem like Alexis didn’t want Megan to be talking to her.
“That’s my book,” said Megan, pointing to the copy of Island of the Blue Dolphins. “I came to the library to read that book.”
“What if I was going to read it?” Alexis asked, holding her ground.
“I’m reading it for the report in class,” said Megan, asserting herself. She had noticed that Alexis was scrunching her nose again.
“So take it,” said Alexis. “I’ve already read it. I was just flipping through the pages to reread my favorite parts.”
Megan felt a little ashamed that she had been so gruff about the book and that Alexis had handed it over so easily. She turned the book over in her hands. It looked pretty well worn. “Must be good, huh?” Megan asked, running her hands over the threadbare cover. “You already read it?”
“Twice,” said Alexis. “So I really don’t need to read it again.” She turned her attention back to the shelves, browsing over titles.
Megan was ready to take the book and head for the checkout desk but then she thought of her mother and how shy her mother had been. Megan also remembered how her mother had said that she wished that other girls had been nicer to her when she was a girl. What was one more second chance?
Megan hesitated, and then spoke to Alexis again. “Maybe you could recommend other books for me to read?”
Alexis turned toward her and planted a finger against her lips. “Shhhhhh!” she hushed firmly. “This is a library! You’re supposed to be quiet!”
Megan winced. “I know you’re supposed to be quiet,” Megan said. “If you knew how to sign—if you knew sign language, I wouldn’t have to make any sound at all!”
“Well, I don’t know how to sign!” said Alexis.
“Well, you should!” said Megan.
“Stop talking to me,” Alexis insisted.
Megan stepped back to consider the girl. Then she spoke, almost softly. “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “Why are you so mean to me? All I’ve been is friendly toward you. It’s because I’m deaf, right? You have a problem with me because I’m deaf.”
Alexis’s jaw dropped slightly, as if she were stunned. She turned toward Megan and gently licked her lips, as if about to speak. Megan didn’t notice in the shadows of the library stacks, but the corners of Alexis’s eyes had welled up slightly with the earliest trace of tears. “It’s just—that I—,” Alexis began, and then abruptly she pushed past Megan and kept walking until she had left the library.
Megan looked around to see if anyone had noticed what Alexis had just done to her. Alexis had just walked away from her and hadn’t said “Excuse me” or anything when she pushed past. Alexis was the rudest, meanest girl that Megan had ever met.
Megan looked down at the book in her hands. A young girl was pictured on the cover, standing on an island beach and looking out to sea. But Megan didn’t want to think about the book. She didn’t even want to read it, now that Alexis had touched it. Megan put the book back on the shelf and went to ask the librarian for a different recommendation.
• • •
“What a shame,” said Megan’s mother. “I really thought you’d enjoy Island of the Blue Dolphins.”
“It was checked out,” said Megan with a shrug.
Lainee paused as she pushed the shopping cart through the wide lanes of the store and searched for signs of the party section.
“We don’t have time to dawdle,” Lainee said. “We have to pick up your brother from baseball practice, and I have to make supper.”
“Excuse me,” Megan said to a nearby stocking clerk, who looked up from a tremendous pyramid of cereal boxes.
“Yes, sorry to bother you,” Lainee interjected, “but we’re looking for party goods?”
“Aisle five,” the stocking clerk replied.
“He said ‘Aisle five,’ ” Lainee informed her daughter.
Megan huffed slightly and tossed her hair. “I can read lips, mother!” she said with an edge of indignation. “Thank you very much!” She flipped her hand as though she didn’t need her mother’s assistance to do anything at all.
Lainee leaned forward so that Megan wouldn’t miss her face. “You’re such a brat,” Lainee said, exaggerating the movement of her mouth. “Can you read that? You’re such a brat sometimes. B-R-A-T. Brat.”
Megan dropped her jaw in mock alarm and crossed her arms. She spun away and stormed down the aisle, stamping her feet as though she’d never been so insulted.
“Aisle five,” Megan declared when she spotted the sign hanging over the party section. They had come in search of purple crepe paper and purple balloons. Megan was hoping that they would find a package of only-purple balloons so that they wouldn’t have to pick the purple ones out of the packages of multicolored balloons, or have to put red and blue ones together and “call it purple,” which was what Matt had suggested they do.
At that moment a little boy came barreling around the corner, directly in the path of their shopping cart. “Look out, Mom!” cried Megan, jerking the cart to a halt.
The boy was about five years old with curly blond hair and a cute little potbelly. He was only a step away from their cart when he tripped over his own sneaker and, throwing his hands out to brace himself, landed hard on the linoleum.
“Ouch!” said Megan’s mother. She stepped around the cart to help the little boy to his feet. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“Justin, Justin!” It was a girl’s voice, calling down aisle three. Megan’s mother turned to look for the aisle and seemed to acknowledge that it was someone who was responsible for the boy.
Megan was surprised to see that the girl was Alexis.
Alexis swooped down to scoop the curly-headed little boy off the ground. She hefted him against her hip with one arm tucked about his waist. “You can’t run off like that, Justin,” she said.
“Mom,” said Megan. “This is Alexis.”
“Oh!” said Megan’s mother. “Alexis! Hello. You’re the new girl in Megan’s school, right? Megan has told me so much about you.”
“I can’t really talk right now,” said Alexis. She didn’t even reach toward the handshake that Megan’s mother offered. She hoisted the little boy into her arms and lurched into the distance.
As quickly as they had appeared, Alexis and the little boy disappeared down the aisle.
Megan noticed that her mother was still standing with her hand extended and her mouth hanging open.
“That was Alexis,” said Megan, as though the facts spoke for themselves.
“And I suppose that was her little brother,” Megan’s mother added.
“I don’t know,” said Megan. “I don’t know if she has a little brother. I don’t know anything about her at all.”
“Well, shy is one thing,” said Megan’s mother, “and rude is another.”
“Now you see what I mean,” Megan signed, and then she seized control of the shopping cart.
“You know me,” said Megan’s mother. “I’m willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but that Alexis is one tough cookie.”
Megan was a little relieved that her mother had finally seen Alexis in action. She felt as though she wasn’t crazy after all. It was like Megan’s mother had said, Alexis wasn’t so shy. Alexis was tough. Megan was glad that she wasn’t coming to her birthday party.
Even so, as Megan passed aisle three, she couldn’t help but glance down the aisle to catch sight of Alexis—the difficult girl with the difficult little boy.
6
Hats Off
MS. ENDEE HAD A THING FOR homework. Every afternoon before the bell rang, she would review the day’s homework assignment in detail so that each student would know what was expected the next morning. “And there can be no excuses,” she would add with a wagging finger and a stern edge in her voice. Jann used her attitude to mimic Ms. Endee’s stern tone as she translated the homework assignment for Megan. She pursed her lips and arched her eyebrows and delivered the message in short, choppy gestures.
Even though Ms. Endee could be strict, her homework assignments often had an element of fun. For example, Wednesday’s homework assignment included three little words: Bring a hat. Ms. Endee refused to answer questions about the unusual assignment. “It’s simple enough,” she insisted. “Bring a hat.”
“Bring a hat,” Jann repeated in sign.
“Does it have to be my hat?” asked Tim Voss.
“Does it have to fit?” asked Casey.
“Questions, questions, questions,” Ms. Endee blustered. She turned toward the whiteboard and wrote: “Bring a hat.” “What part of ‘bring a hat’ don’t you understand?” she asked the class.
“Does it have to be a hat?” asked Ronnie Jiu, but he was just trying to be funny.
“Yes, it has to be a hat,” responded Ms. Endee, “but it doesn’t say what size, what shape, what type, what color, what kind, or even whose. Do your math, do your English, read your social studies. And bring a hat. That’s the assignment.”
At that moment the bell rang. “And no excuses!” Ms. Endee shouted as hordes of children charged the door.
• • •
On Thursday morning Ms. Endee got what she asked for. Her classroom looked like a crazy hat shop. Kids wore big floppy garden hats, sparkling sombreros, favorite baseball caps, cowboy hats, Chinese coolie hats, and construction helmets. There were sailor hats and skipper caps and even a couple berets. Ronnie Jiu wore his mother’s shower cap. “Hey, it’s a hat,” Ronnie protested.
Megan wore a pith helmet that her dad used when they went hiking. Cindy wore an old-fashioned nurse’s cap that once belonged to her grandmother.
Ms. Endee stood in front of the room wearing a graduation cap: a flat black mortarboard with a bright gold tassel. As the class giggled in their seats, their teacher reached into the big drawer of her desk and pulled out a white lab coat. When she pulled it on, she looked like a really smart scientist.
Jann wore a Statue of Liberty crown with green pointy spires. When she signed “Good morning” to Megan, she clasped a dictionary under one arm, pretending to hold a tablet like the statue.
“I’m glad to see everyone wore their thinking caps today,” Ms. Endee announced, as though the crazy hats had been simply a happy coincidence, “because it is time to announce this year’s teams for the annual science fair.”
The class tittered and applauded. The science fair was a particularly exciting event at Wilmot Elementary because the faculty approached it with a sense of fun. First, second, and third-place prizes—blue, red, and green ribbons—were awarded to the real science fair winners based on scientific merit and achievement. But the wackier experiments were also honored so that kids who weren’t wizards at science would get involved as well. Mr. Ryan awarded prizes for the silliest projects, the goofiest projects, and he awarded the special Deep Space Award for the most unusual project—the one that was really “out there.”
The students squirmed excitedly in their seats. Cindy couldn’t stop giggling, and Megan gripped the far edge of her desktop as if she were bracing herself for her desk to blast off.
Ms. Endee reached into the pocket of her lab coat and revealed the list of this year’s collaborators. Before she read the list, she referred to the whiteboard, where she had already written the word “collaboration” in big red letters. “I’m going to assign teams for the science fair,” she explained. “You’ll be working together as a team. You’re going to collaborate.” She tapped the word “collaboration” on the board with her red marker.
Ms. Endee was big on collaboration. The students had collaborated in teams the previous fall when they had built a colonial village on the playground just before Thanksgiving. “You’re going to practice collaboration,” she reiterated while she tapped.
Cindy leaned toward Megan. “Collaboration! I get it already,” she signed. “Get on with the list!”
“Who remembers the first rule of collaboration?” Ms. Endee asked the class.
Hands shot into the air. Megan jumped out of her seat with her hand extended. Cindy did too.
“Yes, Cindy,” said Ms. Endee.
“ ‘Say yes!’ ” said Cindy, rather pleased with herself for remembering.
“That’s right,” said Ms. Endee. “If someone suggests an idea, you have to ‘say yes.’ Any idea is a good idea. And what’s the second rule of collaboration?”
Megan jumped out of her seat again, trying to get Ms. Endee’s attention. “Call on me!” she cried anxiously. “Call on me!”
“Someone I haven’t called on yet,” said her teacher.
“Please!” Megan begged. “Oh, please!”
“All right, Megan,” said Ms. Endee.
Megan leaned forward against her desk. “Make believe your collaborator is your new best friend,” she said and signed, both at the same time. She smiled at Cindy. Even though they were officially best friends, both Cindy and Megan had already learned to work with other kids on collaboration projects. In the colonial village last fall Megan had worked with Tracy on a spinning-wheel display, and Cindy had worked with a boy she barely knew named Donny Vargas on a makeshift butter churn. Megan and Cindy hadn’t been able to work together the way they’d wanted, but it had still been a lot of fun.
“That’s right,” said Ms. Endee, pleased with the response. “Make believe your collaborator is your new best friend. That way—we do what?”
“Get the job done!” the class chimed together.
Megan happened to glance sideways and notice that Alexis was sitting quietly. She hadn’t chimed in with the other classmates because she probably hadn’t known the answer. Alexis probably didn’t know the rules of collaboration. Probably the first time Alexis didn’t know the right answer, Megan thought with a dismissive sniff.
Ms. Endee clapped her hands to call the class to attention. “I’m going to call out two names for each team,” she said, “and I want you to sit with your partner—using library voices—and discuss two or three ideas for science fair projects. Then tomorrow you get to run those ideas past Mr. Ryan.”
The kids were crazy about Mr. Ryan, the school science teacher. He looked a little bit like a mad scientist because he had frizzy red hair, big thick eyeglasses, and broad bushy eyebrows with wild hairs that went in every direction. But all the kids agreed he was incredibly smart and really very funny.
The classroom fell silent as Ms. Endee read the names. Cindy was paired right off the bat with Tony Rosenblum. Kaitlyn got matched with a quiet boy named Sawyer.
Megan waited patiently—well, almost patiently—as kids’ names were called. In a very short while almost everyone had been paired up.
Megan didn’t mind the wait. Not really. It added to the excitement. At least that’s what she told herself. But at some point Megan noticed that her name hadn’t been called yet. And she noticed that Alexis’s name hadn’t been called yet either.
Megan didn’t talk about it much, but sometimes she thought she was psychic. It didn’t happen all the time, but occasionally Megan found she could predict what was going to happen before it actually did. It was only a crazy thought. But even as Megan imagined it, she felt certain it would come to pass.
Oh, no! thought Megan. Ms. Endee is going to match me with Alexis.
Megan’s eyes darted toward Alexis just in time to notice that Alexis had been glancing at Megan. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Megan was more certain than ever that her premonition was true.
By this point t
he names had whittled down to only four kids without partners, and Megan was fairly numb with expectation. Tracy was also in the last four names, but Megan knew she wouldn’t get matched with Tracy because they’d already collaborated on the colonial spinning wheel, and Ms. Endee had a way of keeping tabs on her collaborators.
Cindy signed across the room, “Are you okay?” but Megan looked away, too upset to respond.
Sure enough, Tracy was matched with a nice girl named Maya. After that, Ms. Endee didn’t even need to say the words. Megan didn’t even need to watch Jann’s translation to know what was coming.
It was obvious. Megan was stuck with Alexis. She had been paired with the meanest and most difficult stuck-up, annoying girl in the entire fourth grade!
Now that the list had been read, collaborators were supposed to meet at each other’s desks to discuss potential science fair ideas—but instead of meeting Alexis at her desk, Megan flagged Jann to meet her at Ms. Endee’s desk. Megan marched directly to the front of the classroom and right up to Ms. Endee.
“I can’t work with her,” she signed, jerking a thumb toward Alexis.
Ms. Endee waited for a moment for Jann to translate Megan’s words into speech. “Why not?” asked Ms. Endee.
“Because she hates me,” Megan signed. “Alexis hates me.”
Ms. Endee flinched slightly before she responded. She glanced toward the back of the classroom where Alexis sat quietly at her desk, flipping through the pages of a notebook.
“ ‘Hate’ is a very strong word,” said Ms. Endee. “We shouldn’t use that word unless we mean it.”
“Even so, she hates me,” Megan repeated.
“Alexis?” said Ms. Endee in a disbelieving tone. “Alexis doesn’t hate you. She can’t possibly hate you. She’s only been here three days!”
“She hates me,” Megan insisted. “She really, really hates me.”
“Has she ever said that she hates you?”
Megan twisted her lips and sighed. It was true that Alexis hadn’t exactly said anything like that. “Not exactly,” she responded. “But I can tell she hates me! She’s mean to me. She ignores me. And she scrunches her nose when she has to look at me. Ask Alexis if you don’t believe me. She’ll tell you I’m right.”
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