Kat Greene Comes Clean

by Melissa Roske

  Text copyright © 2017 by Melissa Roske

  Illustrations copyright © 2017 by Nathan Durfee

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Charlesbridge and colophon are registered trademarks of Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc.

  Published by Charlesbridge, 85 Main Street, Watertown, MA 02472 (617) 926-0329 ♦ www.charlesbridge.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Roske, Melissa, author.

  Title: Kat Greene comes clean / Melissa Roske.

  Description: Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge, [2017] | Summary: Fifth-grader Kat Greene is struggling with her boy-crazy best friend, a disappointing role in the production of Harriet the Spy at her progressive New York City school, and her mother’s preoccupation with cleanliness—a symptom of her worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016024029 (print) | LCCN 2016026591 (ebook) | ISBN 9781580897761 (reinforced for library use) | ISBN 9781607349716 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Obsessive-compulsive disorder—Juvenile fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Juvenile fiction. | Children of divorced parents—Juvenile fiction. | Alternative schools—Juvenile fiction. | Friendship—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Obsessive-compulsive disorder—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Divorce—Fiction. | Alternative schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R6737 Kat 2017 (print) | LCC PZ7.1.R6737 (ebook) | DDC 813.6 [Fic] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016024029

  Ebook ISBN 9781607349716

  Handlettering by Nathan Durfee

  Printed by Berryville Graphics in Berryville, Virginia, USA

  Color separations by Coral Graphics Services, Inc. in Hicksville, New York, USA

  Production supervision by Brian G. Walker

  eBook design adapted from printed book design by Susan Mallory Sherman

  v4.1

  a

  To Henry and Chloe: We did it!

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. Ruined

  2. The Harriet Project

  3. Humans Versus Bananas

  4. An Inconvenient Coincidence

  5. Rap Session

  6. Dirty Laundry

  7. Clean Sweep

  8. Sharing

  9. Big News

  10. Emails and Arm Farts

  11. You Can Count on Us

  12. Let’s Do This Thing

  13. Unanswered Questions

  14. Study Session

  15. More Than You Think

  16. Spring Cleaning

  17. Maybe Even Worse

  18. Sushi Means Sorry

  19. If You Have Something to Say, Say It

  20. Prank Call

  21. Intuition

  22. The Jelly-Bean Chain

  23. It’s Your Honesty That’s Hostile

  24. Myself Again

  25. Showtime

  26. Torn

  27. Secrets

  28. Welcome to the Jungle

  29. Strong

  30. Trick or Treat

  31. Two Left Sneakers

  32. Funny Little Hole

  33. Field Trip

  34. Another Chance

  35. What Would Harriet Do?

  36. That’s What Counts

  37. A Little Lighter

  Acknowledgments

  Sometimes it’s the little things that get to me. Like an electric toothbrush. Mom’s got one in her hand—but it’s not for her teeth. She’s using it on the kitchen floor. As if this is normal. As if this makes sense. I want to sneak back to my room and start the day over, but I can’t. Mom’s already spotted me. “Look, Kit-Kat,” she says, holding up the toothbrush. “The bristles are perfect for cleaning in between the floor tiles. I got the tip from Good Housekeeping. Cool, huh?”

  That’s not the word I’d use.

  I grab a blueberry muffin and plunk down at the breakfast bar.

  “Wait!” Mom springs up like a jack-in-the-box. “Let me get you a plate.”

  “That’s okay,” I say, hopping off my stool. “I’ll get it.”

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Just sit.”

  I could argue, but what’s the point? The less I touch, the less Mom has to frantically clean up after me. I go back to my spot at the breakfast bar.

  I watch as Mom yanks off her rubber gloves, places them on the counter, and goes over to the sink. She starts washing her hands, scrubbing each finger and around both thumbs, careful not to miss a spot. “I thought you were getting me a plate,” I remind her.

  “I am,” Mom says, reaching for more soap. “Give me a minute.”

  A minute? When Mom washes her hands, it could take all day. This is her new routine. She says it “calms” her, but I’m not so sure. She doesn’t look calm to me.

  I pick a stray berry from my muffin and pop it in my mouth. “I did really well on my French quiz,” I say, hoping Mom will get the hint and stop washing. “Better than Sam Teitelbaum, even. Want to see it?”

  Mom dries her hands on a clean dish towel and reaches into the cabinet for a plate. “I’ll look at it later, Kit-Kat,” she says, “after you leave for school. I promise.”

  This is a promise Mom won’t keep. She’ll be cleaning every inch of our apartment—and washing her hands, over and over again—as soon as I’m gone. I finish my muffin and go to my room to get dressed.

  When I’m satisfied with my outfit, I grab my jacket from the hall closet, pick up my backpack, and yell good-bye to Mom. Then I go for my sneakers. They’re where I left them yesterday: outside the front door, next to the welcome mat. (Shoes aren’t allowed inside the apartment.) But something is different about them. It’s the shoelaces. Mom has swapped my neon-pink laces for boring old white ones. I pick up my sneakers and stomp back inside.

  Mom is back at the sink, polishing the faucet with Dad’s old Foo Fighters T-shirt. It was his favorite, with a giant hole under the armpit. I hold up my sneakers. “What did you do with my neon laces? They’re gone!”

  Mom turns around. “They were grubby, honey. They needed to be replaced.”

  “No, they didn’t. I bought them last week with Halle. She got matching ones. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” Mom says, tugging at the red bandanna covering her honey-blond hair. “But that doesn’t change the fact that your laces were dirty. Now, take those sneakers outside. You’ll be late for school.”

  I ignore her. “Where are my shoelaces?”

  Mom goes back to polishing the faucet.

  “Mom!”

  “Okay, okay…”

  She puts down Dad’s T-shirt and peels off her rubber gloves. I watch as she reaches into a drawer underneath the counter and roots around for my laces. When she puts them in my hand, my heart does an elevator drop. My neon-pink laces are now the soft pink color of a girl’s baby blanket. “What did you do?” I say, staring at the faded laces. “Bleach them?”

  Mom bites her lip. “I’m sorry, Kit-Kat. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “But you ruined them!”

  “I’ll buy you new ones.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  Mom throws up her hands. “I said I was sorry, and I mean it. What else do you want me to do?”

  I know exactly what Mom can do. I race to my room, snatch my French quiz off my desk, and sprint back to the kitchen. I hold the quiz under Mom’s nose. “You said you’d look at this. Now look!”

  Mom’s eyes dart back to the sink.

  Without warning, hot, angry tears spring to my eyes, but I quickly squeez
e them away. I won’t let Mom get to me. Not this time. I hold the quiz high over my head and let go, watching the paper spiral through the air and land at Mom’s bare feet.

  She looks more surprised than mad. “What was that for?”

  For caring more about a clean kitchen than my French quiz!

  For ruining my new shoelaces with bleach.

  For scrubbing the floor with an electric toothbrush.

  But I don’t say any of this. Instead, I bend down to pick up my quiz, crumple it in a tight little ball, and toss it in the trash. I leave for school without saying good-bye.

  In the elevator I take out my phone to text Halle. She’ll be expecting me on the corner of Thirteenth Street and Seventh Avenue for our daily walk to school. But after my fight with Mom, I’m in no mood for company. I text her.

  Don’t wait. I went in early. See u at school!

  My words are cheerier than I feel.

  I probably set the record for fastest walk to school ever. (It’s only three blocks, but still.) I’m already at my desk when Halle walks in. “Did you notice Michael McGraw’s high-tops?” she asks, nodding at her crush across the room. “They’re new, in case you were wondering.”

  I wasn’t.

  Halle takes out her binders and plops down next to me. “He had them on yesterday until PE. Then he changed into his Vans. He must’ve gotten a blister.” She leans across my desk until her face is within inches of mine. So close, I can smell the onion bagel on her breath. “I wonder where he bought them,” Halle continues. “Village Shoes, on Bleecker? Or maybe that sneaker store by the subway. You know the one I’m talking about…David Z.?”

  Before Halle has time to start naming every shoe store in our Greenwich Village neighborhood—or in all of Manhattan—our teacher, Jane, waves her arms for attention. When no one looks up, she marches over to the metal gong on her desk and whacks it with a mallet. This seems to do the trick, because everyone, including Kevin Cusak, who’s been parading around the room with a Burger King crown on his head, shuts up immediately. “I have an important announcement to make,” Jane says, putting down the mallet. “Who wants to hear it?”

  “Not me!” Kevin yells, adjusting his crown.

  Based on all the movies I’ve seen and books I’ve read, in most schools disrespectful kids get sent to the principal. But Village Humanity is not like most schools. Halle and I call it Village Calamity because sometimes this place feels like a disaster zone. We don’t get report cards, our lockers are padlock-free, and we have one teacher, Jane, for most academic subjects. On days like this, when I’m feeling crabby and nothing’s going right, I wish I could go to a more normal school. A place where kids know better than to talk back to their teachers and march around with Burger King crowns on their heads. But that’s not going to happen. My mom is a proud graduate of the class of 1989 and I’m keeping the tradition “alive.” (Her words.)

  “As I was saying,” Jane continues, “next week we will start working on the Harriet project, ending with the dramatic presentation of Louise Fitzhugh’s 1964 classic, Harriet the Spy. In cooperative pairs you will analyze key characters from the book—Harriet and her friend Sport, for instance—and present your characters, in full costume, at the Thanksgiving assembly. I’ve taken the liberty of assigning partners.”

  Halle and I turn to each other in alarm. Having to present in front of the whole school is bad enough, but with assigned partners too? Normally we choose our own. Still, the project could be fun, as long as I’m Harriet. I’ve read the book before and know that we are a lot alike. For one thing, Harriet is an only child like me (well, the way I used to be, before Dad married Barbara and my little brother, Henry, came along). For another, we both live in New York City. We both have long straight hair (I wear mine in pigtails), and we both love cake. Oh, and we each have a parent who loves math. (That’d be my dad.) Yuck.

  “I call Sport!” Kevin yells from the back of the room.

  “No, I’m Sport!” Michael yells over him. “I play baseball.”

  “So what?” Kevin says. “I play baseball. And basket-ball, and hockey, and soccer, and—”

  “Being good at sports has nothing to do with it,” Sam Teitelbaum tells the boys, fiddling with his asthma inhaler. “It’s charisma that counts.”

  “I’ve got charisma,” Michael says.

  Madeline Langford rolls her eyes. “You don’t even know what it means. Or how to spell it.”

  “He does too,” Halle says, jumping to her crush’s defense. “Tell her, Michael.”

  “Well…”

  “People!” It’s Jane, at the end of her rope. “Please.”

  I listen for my name as Jane starts reading off her list. “Kevin and Madeline, you will be Marion Hawthorne and Rachel Hennessey.” I smile, relieved I wasn’t chosen as one of the mean girls. I’m not sure I could pull it off.

  Kevin is out of his seat like a rocket. “I’m not playing a girl. No way.”

  Jane purses her lips. “You know we’re flexible about gender roles at this school, Kevin. We don’t make assumptions about how a person should look or act based on gender—or on religion, ethnicity, or race, for that matter. It’s not the Village Humanity way. Now, please sit down.”

  When I look over at Halle, her hand is in the air. “Are there any black kids in the book?” she asks Jane.

  I think I know why Halle’s asking. Her dad is white and her mom is black. She makes jokes sometimes about the weird stares her family gets from people on the street, but I know she doesn’t really think it’s funny.

  “Halle raises an important point,” Jane tells the class. “But to your question, Halle, I’m afraid the answer is no—not in this particular book. Though I assure you there will be others this year that do include persons of color.”

  “What about people who speak Spanish?” Hector Rodriguez asks.

  Jane shakes her head. “Harriet the Spy was written more than fifty years ago, and in some ways it can feel dated, especially if we compare Harriet’s classroom to ours. That said, I strongly believe that every book we’ll read in fifth grade—including those with characters who look different from us—contains something of value for everyone. Does that make sense?”

  “Maybe…” Halle says.

  She seems doubtful, but I already know a million ways Harriet, Halle, and I are alike. I make a mental note to share this with Halle at lunch.

  Jane goes back to her clipboard. “Hector and Liberty…Mr. and Mrs. Welsch—”

  Kevin’s hand flies up.

  “What is it now, Kevin?” Jane looks ready to stick him in the supply closet.

  “How come Hector gets to play a guy? No fair!”

  Jane lets out the biggest sigh ever. “If you’ve been listening to the discussion—which I suspect you haven’t—it’s your assumption that’s unfair. It’s equally possible Hector will be Mrs. Welsch.”

  Now Hector is on his feet, his belly jiggling under his T-shirt. “I’m Mr. Welsch!”

  While Jane referees the boys’ argument, I pray for a decent partner. Halle is my first choice (obviously), but Jane would never put us together. We’d have too much fun. That leaves Michael and Sam. Then I hear my name.

  I will be working with Sam, and our assigned characters are Pinky Whitehead (Sam) and The Boy with the Purple Socks (me). This means: (a) I don’t get to be Harriet and (b) I’m stuck with the most boring character in the book. As Harriet says, The Boy with the Purple Socks is so boring, no one bothers to remember his real name. Great.

  Sam is more enthusiastic than I am. “Awesome!” He leans over to give me a high five. “We should get started right away, Kat. Like today, after school. I have the allergist at four, but I could come over after that.”

  “No, that’s okay,” I say, knowing Mom’s behavior lately is too weird for random guests. “We have plenty of time. The Thanksgiving assembly isn’t until the end of November. That’s more than two months away.”

  “True,” Sam says, pushing up his
glasses. “But excellence can’t be rushed. We need to formulate our strategy now to get ahead of the competition.”

  “The competition?” I try not to laugh. Kevin’s got two pencils up his nose, pretending to be a walrus; Wilson Cheung-Levy is taking Liberty Alfredo’s temperature with a digital thermometer; and Hector has written HELP ME on his belly in Sharpie. I point this out to Sam.

  “Well, yeah,” he says, “but—”

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God…” It’s Halle, muttering under her breath.

  “What’s up with her?” Sam wants to know.

  I was wondering the same thing. I lean over and grab my best friend’s arm. “What’s going on, Hal? Are you okay?”

  Halle mashes her lips together and shakes her head from side to side.

  “Maybe she needs to go to the nurse,” Sam says. “She doesn’t look too good.”

  Sam is right. Halle’s eyes are glassy as marbles. They’re also laser-focused on something across the room. I follow her gaze until I see why she’s lost the ability to speak.

  Of course.

  Halle’s been partnered with Michael. I must have missed the announcement while Sam was talking about meeting up after school.

  “I can’t believe I’m Harriet’s nanny,” Michael says, coming over to our table. “That totally sucks.”

  “Oh, it does, Michael.” Halle is leaning so far forward in her chair, I’m worried she might fall off. “I know how badly you wanted Sport. It’s so unfair.”

  “Ole Golly’s not that bad,” I say, remembering how cool she is, and how much Harriet loves her. “She’s the most important person in Harriet’s life. More important than her parents, even.”