The Cybil War
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Being Ms. Indigestion
Arbor Day Is for the Birds
Popsicle Legs and Tub of Blubber
Let My Dad Kidnap Me
Tears and Ravioli
At Cybil Ackerman’s House
In the Bushes
The Spies and the Lies
Good Things/Bad Things
T-Bone’s Invitation
The Love Quiz
The Pirate
Two for the Show
That Was Cybil Ackerman
The Saddest Sentence
The Newer Sadder Sentence
An Hour of Misfortune
A Date with Harriet Haywood
His Own Worst Enemy
The Victory
The Cybil War
As Simon looked at Cybil, she grinned and crossed her eyes.
Love washed over him with the force of a tidal wave. He had not known it was possible to love like this. His eyes blurred. His heart was beating so hard he expected to look down and actually see it pounding, like in cartoons. He glanced back once again at Cybil Ackerman and knew he would love her until the day he died.
“Byars once again displays her gift for capturing with humor and sensitivity the language and concerns of young people.”
—The Horn Book
BOOKS BY BETSY BYARS
After the Goat Man
An ALA Notable Book
Bingo Brown and the Language of Love
Bingo Brown, Gypsy Lover
Bingo Brown’s Guide to Romance
The Burning Questions of Bingo Brown
An ALA Notable Book
The Cartoonist
The Computer Nut
Cracker Jackson
An ALA Notable Book
The Cybil War
An ALA Notable Book
The Dark Stairs
(A Herculeah Jones Mystery)
Dead Letter
(A Herculeah Jones Mystery)
Death’s Door
(A Herculeah Jones Mystery)
The 18th Emergency
The Glory Girl
The House of Wings
An ALA Notable Book
McMummy
The Midnight Fox
The Summer of the Swans
Winner of the Newbery Medal
Tarot Says Beware
(A Herculeah Jones Mystery)
Trouble River
An ALA Notable Book
The TV Kid
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin,
a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1981
Published in Puffin Books, 1990
Copyright © Betsy Byars, 1981
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Byars, Betsy Cromer. The Cybil war / Betsy Byars. p. cm.
“First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1981”—T.p. verso.
Summary: Simon learns some hard lessons about good and bad friendships when his good friend Tony’s stories involve him in some very troublesome and complicated situations.
eISBN : 978-1-101-14244-8
[1. Friendship—Fiction.] I. Title [PZ7.B9836Cy 1990] [Fic]—dc20 89-36923
S.A.
http://us.penguingroup.com
Being Ms. Indigestion
Simon was at his desk, slumped, staring at the dull wood. Someone had once carved “I hate school” in the wood, and over the years others had worked on the letters so that now they were as deep as a motto in stone.
Simon sighed. His teacher, clipboard in hand, was choosing the cast of a nutrition play. She had already cast Tony Angotti as the dill pickle, which meant that Simon, another of her non-favorites, would probably be the Swiss cheese. The thought of himself in a yellow box full of holes made him miserable. He had never been one for costumes—even at Halloween he limited himself to a mask—and now this. Well, he would just have to be absent that day.
Miss McFawn cast Laura Goode and Melissa Holbrook as the green beans.
“Good casting,” Tony Angotti said. “You guys look like green beans when you turn sideways.”
Simon smiled.
“Frontways you look like spaghetti.”
Simon laughed, and Laura Goode hit him on the arm with her music book.
“I didn’t say it,” Simon protested.
“You laughed.”
He turned away. “Violence is not characteristic of the green bean,” he said coldly. His arm hurt but he refused to rub it.
He waited, without hope, while Miss McFawn cast Billy Bonfili as the hot dog, Wanda Sanchez as the bun. Slowly he realized that the entire play had been cast. Bananas, tacos, onions, pecans surrounded him. He alone had no role.
“Let’s see,” Miss McFawn said, “who can we get to be Mr. Indigestion?”
Mr. Indigestion! Simon couldn’t believe it. This was the lead role. She could only be doing it out of spite, he knew that, but still he really wanted to be Mr. Indigestion. He who had walked along in misery last Halloween in his Jimmy Carter mask while Tony Angotti romped beside him in his mother’s dress stuffed with balloons, he now actually wanted to put on a black cape and mustache and twirl on stage as Mr. Indigestion. He was surprised at himself.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Simon can be Mr. Indigestion.” She made a note on her clipboard. “Simon will be the perfect indigestion.”
“It takes one to know one,” Tony Angotti muttered.
Everyone around Tony snickered, and Miss McFawn looked at him. Miss McFawn could stare down a cobra. In three seconds Tony’s eyes were on his desk.
In the pause that followed, Cybil Ackerman called from the back of the room. “Miss McFawn?”
Miss McFawn’s eyes were still on Tony Angotti in case he was fool enough to look up again. He was not, and Miss McFawn’s eyes shifted to Cybil.
“Miss McFawn?”
“Yes, Cybil, what is it?”
“Well, every time we have a play, the boys get all the good parts. When we did the ecology play, the girls had to be trees and flowers while the boys got to be forest fires and strip mines and nuclear waste. And when we did the geography parade, the boys got to be countries like Russia and China, and we had to be Holland and the Virgin Islands. It’s not fair.”
“What do you suggest, Cybil?”
“I think we ought to have a Ms. Indigestion.”
Simon swirled around in his seat. He felt as cheated as a dog deprived of a sirloin steak. His mouth was open. He tried to give her a McFawn stare-down, but she was looking over his head.
“We could vote on it,” she said nicely.
“That’s not fair,” Simon said. There were seventeen girls in the room and only fourteen boys. He turned back to Miss McFawn. “All the girls will vote for Ms. Indigestion, and—”
“We will not!” the girls said in a chorus. They were used to voting in a bloc.
“All right, that’s a good idea. We’ll vote,” Miss McFawn said. Simon thought she looked at him with satisfaction. “How many of you would like to have Ms. Indigestion?”
Seventeen girls raised thei
r hands.
“How many for Mr. Indigestion?”
Fourteen boys raised their hands. Tony Angotti had two hands up, one positioned to appear to be Wanda Sanchez’s, but Miss McFawn was not fooled.
“Ms. Indigestion it is,” Miss McFawn said in a pleased voice. She crossed out Simon’s name on her list. “Let’s see. Cybil, would you like to be Ms. Indigestion?”
“Yes!”
“So what’s Simon going to be?” Tony Angotti asked. He was not going to be the dill pickle unless everybody was something.
“He can have my part,” Cybil offered.
“Or mine,” Tony said. “I have the feeling I’m going to be absent that day.”
“No, Tony, I especially want you to be the dill pickle.” Miss McFawn checked her list of players and foods. “Let’s see, we can use another starch. All right, Simon, you can either be a macaroni and cheese pie or—what were you, Cybil?”
“Ajar of peanut butter.”
Simon kept his eyes on his desk. He stared at the phrase “I hate school” so hard that he expected the words to catch fire.
“I’ll have to have your decision, Simon.”
He did not move. He felt betrayed. For the first time in his life, he had actually been willing to put on a costume, come out onstage, twirling his mustache, even saying, “I am the dreaded Mr. Indigestion,” only to have it taken away.
“Simon,” she prompted.
He mumbled something without taking his eyes from the letters on his desk. Now he was actually willing them to catch fire, like Superman.
“I’m sorry, Simon, I didn’t hear you. You’ll have to speak up. What do you want to be?”
“A jar of peanut butter!”
“Violence is not characteristic of peanut butter,” Laura Goode sneered.
Simon struck at her, hitting his hand on the back of her desk. Pain shot all the way up to his shoulder.
“Miss McFawn, Simon hit me,” Laura called happily.
“Simon, I’m not going to have violence in my classroom.”
Simon looked up at Miss McFawn. He stared at her with the same intensity and hatred he had stared at the letters on his desk.
For the first time that anyone could remember, it was Miss McFawn who looked away.
“Rehearsal Friday,” she reminded them as she shifted the papers on her desk.
Arbor Day Is for the Birds
Simon, eyes on his book, felt his face burn. He had made a fool of himself, and over nothing. Over being Mr. Indigestion, which nobody in his right mind would want to be.
“Tony, will you explain what the poet means?” Miss McFawn was asking.
“He means,” Tony said slowly, stalling for time, “he means, now, wait a minute—”
“Wanda?”
“He means that things are not what they seem.”
“Very good!”
And what really hurt, Simon told himself—he was sitting with his eyes on the wrong page, finger marking the wrong poem—what really hurt was that Cybil Ackerman had a part in his humiliation. And he was in love with Cybil Ackerman, had been for three years.
He had fallen in love with her in the room right below this one. It was Arbor Day, and their teacher, Miss Ellis, made a big thing out of it. She gave every student a little tree to take home and plant, and the celebration was capped off with the writing and reading of tributes to trees.
Simon had been careful with his baby tree. Some of the other boys were using theirs in whip battles and trying to see how high they could throw them. Not Simon. He was taking his home in the crook of his arm, like a real baby, so his father could help him plant it. It was the first time he had something he was sure his father would want to do.
He went in the house, and his mother was standing in the kitchen. He said, “Look, I’ve got this baby tree, and Dad and I are going to plant it and watch it grow and—”
“Your dad cannot help you plant that tree,” his mother said tiredly. “Your dad is gone.”
“Well, I’ll wait till he gets back. I’ll put the tree in a little bucket. I’ll water it. I’ll—”
“Simon, look at me.” She sat down on a chair so that their heads were level. “Now your dad is gone. We’ve been over this and over this. No, don’t turn away. Your dad is gone and I do not know where he is or when he’s coming back. Do you understand me?”
He tried to look away, but she held his head in place with her hand. He blinked uneasily. He was aware his mom had been talking to him about his father’s absence, probably for days, but for the first time he realized what she was talking about.
“When will he be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, where has he gone?”
“All I know is this. He is gone. His clothes are gone. The car is gone. The camping equipment is gone. Half the money in our bank account is gone.”
“It’s business—it’s vacation—” he stuttered.
“No, he’s gone.”
It was more than he could stand—that his father, the only person he could not live without, could actually decide to live without him. The earth seemed to tremble with a terrible inner quake.
“Maybe he’s dead,” he said, his voice reflecting the quivering world.
“He’s not dead.”
“How do you know? He could be. People die. Their bodies are never found.”
“It turns out he’s been talking to Mitch Wilson about leaving for months.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, he talked about solitude and about getting away from the confusion and corruption of the world and going back to the simple way of life and
about living off the land and about—”
“It has to be more than that. It has to be!”
Suddenly Simon turned, pulling away from his mother. He looked down. He was clutching the baby tree in both hands as if he were trying to choke it. He ran from the room.
“Simon, he’ll be back sometime. I know he will,” his mother called. “It’s just something he’s going through, and we’ll get along.” She followed him to the back door. “Simon, I can’t give you answers because he didn’t give them to me!”
Simon ran into the yard and threw his baby tree as far as he could. He didn’t see it land because his hands were over his eyes, but in his mind that baby tree went so high and so far nobody ever saw it again.
When it came to the reading of tributes to trees, Simon was the first to volunteer. He read in a loud, hard voice.
“I hate Arbor Day. I hate trees. I’m going to chop down every tree I see.”
He had to lean close to read his writing. He had pressed down so hard with his pencil that he’d gone through the paper in three places.
There was a gasp from Miss Ellis. “That is enough!” She made her way to the front of the room in three steps. She took the paper from him so violently that she tore off the corner. Then she ripped the rest into pieces and threw them into the wastebasket.
“Sit, Simon,” she said.
He had heard kinder tones used on dogs. He walked back to his desk with his head held so high he stumbled over Billy Bonfili’s foot.
In a voice still trembling with rage, Miss Ellis called on Wanda Sanchez. Wanda made a lot of noise walking to the front of the room because she, too, was outraged about Simon’s tribute to trees.
Her composition went:
“The tree is a gift from God. It gives us shade. It gives us wood. It gives us food. Thank you, God, for trees.”
“Thank you, Wanda,” Miss Ellis said.
“You’re welcome, Miss Ellis.”
When all the kids had read their tributes, Miss Ellis announced they would have a vote on whose paper was the best. Wanda Sanchez, the favorite, got nine votes. Tony Angotti got five. He had written a comic tribute to trees, pointing out that if there were no trees, birds would have to build nests on top of people’s heads.
“Oh, Miss Ellis,” Cybil Ackerman called from the back of the room when the voting
was over.
“Yes, Cybil?”
“You forgot to call Simon’s name.”
There was a pause while Miss Ellis inhaled and exhaled. “I don’t think anyone wants to vote for Simon’s paper,” she said, “do they?”
She sounded as if she were asking if anyone wanted to vote for a fungus infection.
Simon put his hand up so high his arm hurt.
There was another icy pause. “Simon Newton—two votes.” It was as if the North Pole had spoken.
Simon swirled around in his seat. He could not believe he had gotten another vote. Who would dare risk Miss Ellis’s displeasure?
Cybil’s hand was in the air. As Simon looked at her, she grinned and crossed her eyes.
Love washed over him with the force of a tidal wave. He turned back to the front of the room. He lowered his hand and put it over his chest. He had not known it was possible to love like this.
His eyes blurred. His heart was beating so hard he expected to look down and actually see it pounding, like in cartoons.
He glanced back once again at Cybil Ackerman and knew he would love her until the day he died.
“Simon! Simon!”
He looked up. “What?”
“Would you like to tell the class the meaning of the next poem?”
Simon was sitting with his hand on his chest, over the very spot that had pounded so hard years ago. He was surprised to see it was Miss McFawn in front of the class instead of Miss Ellis.
“Would you like to tell the class the meaning of the next poem?” she repeated.
He looked down at the blurred image of his English book. He decided to tell the truth. “No,” he said.
Popsicle Legs and Tub of Blubber
It was after school, and Tony Angotti and Simon Were standing at the water fountain. Tony had forgotten the insult of being cast as a dill pickle, and he was telling Simon that today was his sister’s birthday and he couldn’t go home until five o’clock. He began imitating his sister. He could do this perfectly.
“Tony spoils eeeeeeverything. He spies on us and he copies what we say. I don’t even want to have a paaaaaarty if Tony’s going to be here. He spoils eeeeeeverything.”