By Friday of that week, I was completely miserable. I couldn’t bear to think about the following Tuesday, the first day of school at Cottonwood. I started wondering if there was a way I could actually slow down time by taking as long as possible to do each thing I did. I got out of bed and put my feet on the floor one toe at a time. I tried pouring my cereal into the bowl from the box one flake at a time. I set a timer and brushed my teeth for a full two minutes.
“Elfie, I’m going to be late for work!” Dad did not want the morning to go as slowly as I did. So I waited until we were at the library and practiced slowing down time there. Dad asked me to clear out the book return bins outside the building, and I made twenty-two trips, carrying the books one at a time from the bins to the circulation desk. (Dad was helping a library patron with a research project, so he didn’t notice my twenty-two trips; otherwise he probably would have put a stop to that too.)
I sorted the Legos in the children’s department by color, straightened the stack of scrap paper by the card catalog computer, and had just started a one-thousand-piece puzzle in the reading room when Rhoda arrived to pick me up. I couldn’t believe she was there already; had doing all those things actually sped time up instead? Urft.
Dad was even more excited than usual to see Rhoda; I figured he was ready to unload me onto another adult. Rhoda seemed a little off too; she had a different kind of energy today.
“Hi, Elfie! Are you ready to go?” she said when she found me in the reading room. “We need to move fast!”
“Okay, let me just put away this puzzle.”
Dad zipped over and shooed me from the table. “No, no, I’ll take care of that later. Come on, I’ll walk you guys out!”
Sheesh. He really was eager to get rid of me.
Dad and Rhoda were about ten steps ahead of me in the parking lot. I was still trying to get my sweater tied around my waist when they reached the car. Then the scene got even weirder: Mom was there.
“What’s going on?” They all had goofy smiles on their faces. It was making me nervous.
“I came over here on my lunch break,” Mom said. “I didn’t want to miss Rhoda’s surprise.”
“Well, it’s not really my surprise,” Rhoda said.
“It was your idea, though!” Dad said.
“But you guys had to give it a thumbs-up!” Rhoda said. All three of them were laughing and smiling. Rhoda was positively bouncing on her toes. It was making me feel like my head was about to explode.
“WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME WHAT THE SURPRISE IS?!” I yelled.
“Right, right, okay,” Rhoda said. She opened the back door of her car and pulled out a big shoebox, like the kind boots would come in. Surely they weren’t this excited about boots? And they wouldn’t be giving me boots in August? Then I noticed there were holes in the box lid.
I experienced a chilling moment during which I was convinced there could only be one thing in the box: an earthworm habitat. I had said that I wanted one for years, and all three of these adults had always said that was a terrible idea because they knew I was afraid of bugs. “No, earthworms are different,” I’d insisted. “I know I can care for them,” I’d promised. Now they were calling my bluff. What had I been thinking? Why in the world would I want a glass case full of worms? I would never sleep again.
Just as I was thinking this, Mom took the box from Rhoda and held it closer to my face.
“Go on, open it!”
But at that second, the box lid started to lift on its own. And all I could think was Oh no, oh no, oh no, it’s a giant earthworm capable of opening boxes.
I screamed.
“Elfie, what is the matter with you?” Mom said. “You’re going to scare him!”
Him? The giant earthworm was a boy? That couldn’t be.
“Earthworms are actually both male and female,” I said, backing away from the box.
“You think this is an earthworm?” Rhoda was laughing so hard, she could barely talk. “You goofball. Come here.”
She lifted the lid, and I stepped slowly back toward the box. Inside was not a giant earthworm, or even a small earthworm. Instead, climbing up the side of the box and peering over the edge was the softest, most beautiful tiny gray kitten I’d ever seen. He boosted himself up so that we came face to face and looked in each other’s eyes.
“Surprise!” Dad said.
“This is for me?” I’d never asked for a cat. It had never even occurred to me. Cute furry pets just seemed like something other people had, something Mom and Dad would say we were too busy for, or that they didn’t want to spend the money on. They certainly never seemed that excited about Jenna’s dog, Larry, when he came over. But maybe they would be different with a cat.
“I thought he might cheer you up,” Rhoda said. “I can’t believe you thought this little goober was going to be a worm.”
I couldn’t speak, but I nodded. When I found my voice, I said, “Thank you. And I think that’s what we should name him.”
“What? Worm?”
I laughed. “No, Goober! It’s another word for a peanut, right?”
Rhoda nodded. “I think so.”
“Well, he’s so little,” I said. “He seems just like a Goober.”
I picked up Goober and stroked him behind the ears. Forget making things go slower; if I could have stopped time forever right in that moment, I would have.
Goober slept in my room that night. To be more precise, I should say that he stayed in my room that night. He didn’t sleep much, and as a result, neither did I.
At first, I didn’t want to sleep anyway. I couldn’t stop holding Goober, scratching behind his ears, and just looking at him. I didn’t even mind cleaning his poop off the rug (although I did start trying to train him to use his litter box right away). I couldn’t believe he was mine.
Around ten o’clock, I started feeling sleepy, so I put Goober in his box. Rhoda and I had turned it into a cozy little kitten apartment with an old baby blanket on the bottom and a soft cat toy in the corner. I put the box on the floor beside my bed.
When I turned out the light and closed my eyes, I heard a scratching sound. Then a little mew. I turned to lie on my side and face the wall. Another scratch. Another mew. I put my pillow over my head, but it seemed like the mewing got even louder. It was the most pitiful sound in the world.
My overhead light turned on. I lifted the pillow to see Dad standing in my bedroom doorway.
“How’s it going in here?”
“Not so good. I don’t think he’s very tired.”
“We could leave him downstairs, you know. We’d put a gate in the kitchen doorway so he wouldn’t escape. It might be good for him to learn to sleep on his own.”
“No, I couldn’t do that!” I said. “It’s cruel.”
“I don’t think so,” Dad said. “Besides, it worked for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you were a baby. You only wanted to sleep with Mom and me, and we had to help you break the habit.”
“You made me sleep in the kitchen?!”
Dad laughed. “No, but we set you up in your own room, and we didn’t run to you every time you fussed. It’s called letting the baby cry it out. Lots of parents do it. Eventually you became a great sleeper.”
“That sounds terrible. I’m not going to let Goober cry it out.”
“Suit yourself,” Dad said. “But I’m going to close both of our bedroom doors so Mom and I don’t have to hear it.” He leaned over and kissed the top of my head. “Good night, Elf.”
Hmph. Was that why I wasn’t very good at making friends? Because Mom and Dad trained me to like being alone when I was a baby?
Goober mewed again. I scooped him out of his box, put him on top of my comforter, and lay back down. But I guess that still wasn’t close enough for him, be
cause he burrowed slightly under the covers and curled up beside my shoulder.
“Good night, Goober,” I whispered. “You can sleep with me whenever you want.”
He didn’t mew once until the morning.
* * *
• • •
Goober made that weekend a lot more fun. Maybe too much fun; the next few days went so quickly that before I knew it, it was Monday night, and time to get my things ready for my first day back at Cottonwood the next morning. It was First-Day-of-School Eve. First-Day-of-School Eve used to be one of my favorite days of the year. By then we’d have found out who our new teachers would be, and I’d spend the day rereading the teacher’s welcome letter, reviewing my supply checklist, and resharpening my pencils.
Not this year, though. When a letter arrived from Cottonwood Elementary this afternoon, my heart sank. Usually I’d rip open the envelope because I couldn’t wait to find out who my new teacher would be. This time I pulled the mail out of the mailbox, glanced at the top letter (which happened to be the one from Cottonwood), sighed deeply, and dropped all the mail onto the kitchen table. I took Goober into the living room and snuggled him to my chest as I started an episode of Superstars of Science.
Rhoda put down her keys and her backpack and walked over to the table.
“Hey, Elf, did you see this? I think it’s your teacher letter!”
“Yes, I saw it,” I said.
“Aren’t you going to open it? Come on, let’s find out who you got!”
“You can open it.”
“Are you serious?” Rhoda was so surprised that her voice got squeaky on the word serious. “You never let anyone else open this letter.”
“You don’t have to open it if you don’t want to,” I said. “Technically, it’s addressed to Mom and Dad. They can open it when they get home. Maybe it’s not even the letter about my teacher. Maybe it’s a letter saying they’ve learned I’m a criminal, and I’m not welcome at that school either.”
Rhoda came in and gave the top of my head a sturdy tap with the letter.
“You are a goofball. But it makes sense that you’re not excited,” she said, sitting beside Goober and me on the sofa. “I know this year feels like it will be different from the others.”
“No, it doesn’t, actually. It feels like it will be exactly the same. Another year of school with rowdy lunches and broken science equipment and crowded classrooms and Jenna and other kids who don’t like me. What doesn’t make sense is that I got excited for the teacher letter all the other years. I hate Cottonwood.”
“You know,” Rhoda said, “I am a graduate of Cottonwood Elementary School. And I don’t think I turned out so bad.”
“That’s because you’re perfect,” I said. “You’re smart and funny, and everyone likes you. You know how to talk to every kind of person.”
“Hmm,” Rhoda said. “You make some excellent points. I am perfect. In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t know why I ever bothered going to school at all.”
“Very funny.”
“Yes, we’ve already established that being funny is part of my perfection,” Rhoda said. “Okay, well, if you aren’t going to open this envelope, I will.”
“Go ahead.”
Rhoda slipped her index finger under the envelope flap and slid it open. She took out the letter inside and unfolded it; it looked like there were two pages.
“Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm,” Rhoda murmured as she read. “Oh, interesting. Whoa! That’s really cool!”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?” Rhoda acted confused. “I’m reading a letter.”
“You’re trying to get me to ask you what it says.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just very interested in what it says. At least one of us is curious about your new teacher.”
I went back to watching my show. I knew the game Rhoda was playing, and I had no interest in going along with it.
* * *
• • •
Later that night, after Rhoda had gone home, and while Dad was in the kitchen making dinner, I went upstairs to look for Goober’s favorite cat toy: a gray felt mouse that smelled like lavender. I found it on top of my bed, sitting on a piece of paper. Two pieces of paper, actually. It was the teacher letter, on Cottonwood Elementary stationery.
I saw the teacher’s name without meaning to; I couldn’t help it. It was written in bold in the middle of the page:
Your fifth-grade teacher will be
Ms. Rambutan.
Ms. Rambutan? I’d never heard of her. She must be new. So she wouldn’t know anything about me and what a good student I am. I supposed she would figure that out quickly enough.
I glanced at the second page. It was a letter from Ms. Rambutan.
Dear Students,
My name is Ms. Rambutan, and I will be your fifth-grade teacher this year. I know we will have many grand adventures together!
This is my first year at Cottonwood Elementary. Before this, I taught fourth grade at a school in Michigan. Since most of you have been at Cottonwood since kindergarten, I am sure you will serve as fine guides for a newcomer like myself.
I look forward to meeting you!
Sincerely,
Ms. Rambutan
I sighed. It was hard to tell much about Ms. Rambutan from her letter. She sounded eager and serious about learning, just like I used to be at the start of school. Too bad I couldn’t muster the optimism to feel that way this year.
As I walked out of my room with Goober’s little gray mouse, I noticed one more paper. This one was just a scrap, resting in the bottom of the Important Jar. I fished it out and read Rhoda’s familiar handwriting:
I looked up the meaning of rambutan (scientific name: Nephelium lappaceum). It’s an Indonesian fruit that is prickly on the outside and sweet on the inside. Kind of like you sometimes.
, R
Rhoda was good at cheering me up. Her note in the Important Jar actually made me crack a smile. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad….Rhoda was right; she had gone to Cottonwood, and she was one of my favorite people in the world. Besides, I would probably only have to go there for a little over a month before the Hampshire honor review board met and decided I was innocent.
I heard Mom come in the front door, and I started going downstairs to show her my letter.
“Hey, Elf,” she called when she heard me coming. “Did you get your teacher letter yet? I talked to Uncle Rex; Jenna has someone named Ms. Rambutan.”
And just like that, my smile evaporated.
“If you drive me to school just this one time, I promise I’ll never, ever complain about the bus again.”
Dad gave me a look. “I find that very hard to believe.”
“I just can’t handle the bus today.” What I really meant was that I couldn’t handle a minute more of Jenna than was absolutely necessary. Even if my transportation to school was a flying carpet, I would say no thanks if Jenna was along for the ride. Not this morning.
Dad sighed. “Okay, get your stuff together. But this is not going to be a habit.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Dad. This is me being effusive!”
Dad couldn’t help but smile at that. When I was littler, it used to bother my parents that I wouldn’t jump up and down and get visibly excited when big things happened (when I got a telescope for my fourth birthday, for example, or when they took me to the dinosaur exhibit at the natural history museum for the first time). They said the most I would ever do is clasp my hands together and open my eyes wider.
“It just makes us wonder if you’re really happy when we do these special things,” Mom had said once when I clasped my hands together after seeing a meteor shower through my telescope. “I thought something like a meteor shower might make you more effusive.”
Even
though I was little, I knew that effusive meant “expressing feelings of gratitude or happiness in an obvious or dramatic way.” I didn’t know how to be effusive. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t happy.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I’d said, trying to think of a way to make her feel better. “What if I just tell you? I can say ‘This is me being effusive.’ ”
Mom and Dad thought that was an excellent way to communicate when I felt really happy, so that settled it. Since then, I try to remember to tell them I’m truly happy about something by saying “This is me being effusive.” I didn’t have to say it when they gave me Goober, though. On that day, they could tell how happy I was without words.
I was nervous about leaving Goober today. The vet said kittens shouldn’t be alone for very long until they’re at least four months old, and Goober wasn’t that old yet. So Dad got special permission from his boss, the library director, to bring him to work until he was old enough to stay alone.
“He’ll be like the office cat,” Dad said. “As long as he behaves himself, he’ll be okay.”
I still wasn’t crazy about the idea of Goober being out in the world without me. I used our time in the car on the way to school to review the ground rules with Dad as I kept turning around to peek at Goober in his cat carrier in the back seat.
“Make sure he knows where his litter box is as soon as you get there. And give him snacks once in a while, but not too many. Scratch him behind his ears if he seems lonely. And whatever you do, do not take him to the children’s department. The toddlers who come to story time will suffocate him!”
Elfie Unperfect Page 6