Happy Birthday, Sophie Hartley

by Stephanie Greene

  Crayons? she thought, turning it over and over in her hands. It had to be a trick. Maybe there was a clue inside as to where she should go next to find her real present. That was it! It was like a scavenger hunt.

  No one would give a person a box of crayons for her double-digit birthday.

  Sophie tore open the flap and stared at four rows of brightly colored, pointy tips. They were crayons, all right. If this was what came from being mature, it was definitely more fun being immature.

  Sophie felt a distinct weakening of her resolve. She got out of bed and opened her door.

  The hall was empty.

  That was a good sign. The fact that not even John was hanging around outside the door meant they were all probably waiting in the kitchen to surprise her with her present before they went out for the traditional Hartley family birthday breakfast.

  The fact that the kitchen was empty was a bad sign.

  Sophie’s newfound maturity was rapidly deteriorating. Not even her family, who obviously couldn’t care less about her birthday, would go out for her favorite birthday breakfast of pancakes without her, would they?

  “Happy birthday, Sophie!” “Oh, where is she?” “Funny, we forgot her. Pass the maple syrup.”

  “Hello?” Sophie called hopefully as she wandered around the house. “Doesn’t anyone want to sing me ‘Happy Birthday’?”

  She went back upstairs. Muffled voices were coming from behind the closed door of her parents’ bedroom. Sophie knocked softly on the door, and the voices stopped.

  “Hello?” she said, opening it a crack. “Doesn’t anyone want to wish me—”

  “Surprise!” Thad jumped out from behind the dresser, John crawled out from under the bed, and Nora threw open the closet door while Mr. and Mrs. Hartley stood happily beaming. “Happy birthday, Sophie!” they all cried.

  “I thought everyone forgot,” she said.

  ‘Are you joking?” Nora said. “The way you’ve been wandering around the house with that pitiful face for weeks and weeks?”

  “You were driving us raisins!“John shouted, jumping up and down on his parents’ bed.

  “Driving us nuts, John,” said Thad.

  “I like raisins!”

  “Calm down, John,” said Mrs. Hartley. “Happy birthday, Sophie.” She came forward with Maura in her arms and gave Sophie a kiss. Maura was holding a balloon.

  “Go on, Maura,” their mother prompted. “Give the balloon to Sophie and say ‘Happy birthday.’”

  “Happy birfday, Soapy,” Maura said, clutching the balloon tightly to her chest. “Mine.”

  “That’s all right,” Sophie said magnanimously. “She can keep it.”

  “Over here, birthday girl,” Mr. Hartley called.

  Her father was standing in front of what looked like one of the huge boxes from his moving van. It was covered with a blanket. Sophie’s heart started to race when she saw it. Her mother always said that big wasn’t necessarily better. But big was definitely more exciting when it was your birthday.

  “This is, beyond the shadow of a doubt,” Mr. Hartley said, picking up two corners of the blanket like a matador preparing to face down the bull, “my finest effort.” Sophie and the rest of the family crowded around. “Ready to be amazed, Sophie?”

  “Ready.”

  “Ta-da!” Mr. Hartley whipped off the blanket to reveal a table. It had delicate dark green legs and a shiny top. The top didn’t slant, and the legs weren’t crooked. But it was still a table.

  Sophie stood with a smile frozen on her face. She knew she couldn’t look disappointed. Her father would feel terrible. Since she was ten, she had to act mature. But what was she supposed to do with it?

  Then John shouted, “It’s an art table!” and Sophie realized that it was the perfect present because she didn’t know how much she’d wanted it until it was hers.

  “An art table because you’re an artist!” John shouted.

  “Even more impressive, the legs are even,” said Thad.

  John was too excited to stand still. “Look at all the things you got with it!” he shouted. Mrs. Hartley had to restrain him from grabbing everything out of the round holders attached along the edges. Sophie went closer to look.

  There were eight of them, four on either side. Round containers painted in bright colors. One was filled with colored pencils. The next with lead sketching pencils. There were paintbrushes of different sizes and thicknesses, a set of watercolors, erasers, a ruler, a compass—every container Sophie examined had new and different art supplies in it.

  “And this one’s for the crayons,” Mrs. Hartley said, tapping the only empty container.

  Mr. Hartley was running his finger along the two grooves at the top. “These are to keep your pencils and crayons from rolling away,” he said proudly. “I made them with a router. And look…” He carefully took the edges of a large roll of white paper that was attached to the back and pulled the paper up and forward until it covered the surface of the table. “When you need a clean sheet,” he said with a flourish, like a magician performing a trick, “you pull out as much as you need and tear it off.”

  He neatly tore the piece off and smoothed it out on the table.

  “But how did you know?” said Sophie. “I didn’t even know.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Nora said. “Maybe because you’ve been scribbling on the walls and floors of the entire house since you were about three?”

  “And because you’re now apparently drawing unflattering pictures of your teacher at school?” said Mrs. Hartley.

  “Omigod, Sophie!” Nora said admiringly. “You didn’t. Mrs. Stearns?”

  “No one has been safe from the Kamikaze Artist,” Thad said in a deep announcer’s voice. “She strikes without warning and draws insulting pictures when you least expect it!”

  “Now, now,” said Mr. Hartley. “The birthday girl deserves some immunity.”

  “Here.” Nora thrust a large, flat package into Sophie’s hands. “It’s for watercolors. If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back and get some of the sticky paper I want for my shelves.”

  It was a pad of paper. Textured, heavyweight paper.

  “This is from me.” Thad had given her what looked like an apron. It had ARTIST AT WORK written on it. Sophie’s art teacher had one exactly like it.

  “It’s an artist’s smock, not an apron,” he said as she put it on.

  “I know.” Sophie tied it behind her and smoothed down the front. They were all smiling at her when she looked up. “I really did think everyone forgot,” she said with a sniff.

  “Fat chance of that,” said Thad.

  “Oh, no you don’t, Sophie,” Nora said. “No more crying. You’re old enough now to start paying attention to how pitiful it makes you look.”

  “And no kissing, either!” shouted John, ducking behind his father.

  “Give me a hand here, Thad,” Mr. Hartley said. He took one side of the table. “Let’s take this to Sophie’s room.”

  They all trooped down the hall and into Sophie’s room. The table fit perfectly in the spot where Nora’s desk had stood. Sophie didn’t regret the missing cage one bit.

  ELEVEN

  Her parents had given her a tall stool for the table. Sophie was working away when her mother called up to her after lunch. “Sophie! The girls are here!”

  Sophie could hardly wait to show Jenna and Alice. She closed the cover of her sketchpad and put her pencil in the groove her father had made for it. She moved the ruler to line up with it and then carefully put the crayons she’d let Maura color with this morning into the crayon holder.

  Something about her table made her feel neat and precise. Sophie wondered if maybe she’d undergone a personality change because she was ten. Maybe she even looked different.

  No. She looked the same. She did look a bit like an artist, though, with that smudge of charcoal on her cheek. Sophie put her face closer to the mirror. And those traces of white and blue in her hair. Mayb
e she should dab paint in her hair every day. Maybe a bit on her clothes, too.

  “Sophie!”

  Jenna and Alice were in the kitchen. Sophie’s entire family was in the kitchen. Even Thad was there, and he was hardly ever home on the weekends anymore. When Mr. Hartley came in from outside brushing sawdust from his hair, which meant he’d taken a break from his beloved saw, Sophie got suspicious.

  It was very strange, the way they were lined up looking at her. Even Jenna and Alice didn’t look normal.

  “Hi,” Sophie said to them. “Come up and see my present.”

  “First you have to open our present,” Alice said.

  “Right away,” said Jenna.

  Jenna looked excited. It made Sophie nervous.

  Jenna never looked excited. According to her brothers, it wasn’t cool. As for Alice, her face had the same look it had the time she said, “Guess what I got today?”

  Sophie checked Alice’s neck.

  Red.

  No. They wouldn’t. They would never buy her a bra and expect her to open it here, in front of Thad and her father and everyone.

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. It’s not going to explode,” Jenna said. She lifted up a large cardboard box from the floor behind her and put it on the table. PATSY was written across the top in large blue letters. Sophie relaxed. Unless they’d named the bra, she was safe.

  She didn’t even have to shake it to know what it was. It was a stuffed gorilla. Jenna and Alice had bought it to make her feel better. “Ohhh, you two…” she said.

  ‘Are you going to stare at it or open it?” Nora said.

  “Open it!” said Jenna.

  “Okay, okay…” Sophie jauntily lifted the lid, prepared to act surprised so Jenna and Alice wouldn’t be disappointed, and then she froze.

  It wasn’t a stuffed gorilla.

  It was a kitten.

  A real live kitten. It was gray and white, and it was curled up tight in a little ball inside a wicker basket, asleep. Sophie saw its stomach moving up and down, up and down.

  She almost was afraid to breathe as she reached out with one finger and gently ran it along the kitten’s body. It was soft and warm, and the second the kitten felt Sophie, it opened its blue, blue eyes and its sweet pink mouth and yawned.

  Then it stretched.

  There was a white patch on the tip of one ear.

  “Oh, Sophie,” Nora breathed. “Pick it up.”

  Sophie was afraid to pick it up. She knew that the minute she did, she’d fall in love with it, and that if she fell in love with it and her mother wouldn’t let her keep it, she’d die.

  She looked from the kitten to Jenna to Alice, and then at her mother, who was smiling at her. Maybe—just maybe—she wasn’t going to say “And who’s going to feed it?” for the first time in Sophie’s life. Sophie held her breath.

  “What’re you waiting for?” said Mr. Hartley. “Pick it up.”

  Sophie looked at her mother and said, “Can I keep her?”

  “I guess you have to,” said Mrs. Hartley. “She’s yours.”

  Everyone started talking at once. Sophie gently picked Patsy up and held her against her shoulder as hands reached over and around her to pet the kitten. Patsy was as light as a feather; Sophie’s hand easily circled her delicate body.

  She tucked Patsy under her chin and looked from Jenna and Alice to her mother again. “But how…”

  “How did Jenna and Alice talk your mean old mother—who has denied you the joy and thrill of owning a pet all these years, when you’ve wanted one more than anything else in the whole, entire world,” said Mrs. Hartley, “and now that you’re ten, will take very, very good care of—into letting them give you a kitten?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bullying,” said Mrs. Hartley. “Browbeating, whining, pleading, coaxing, threatening…”

  “You know how good Jenna is at that,” Alice said. “She got the whole thing started.”

  “I signed the bedition,“John shouted. “I signed the bedition!”

  ‘And yes, even a petition,” Mrs. Hartley finished up. “Which John signed twenty times.”

  “And Trevor, too!” shouted John. “And Trevor’s brother!”

  “And everyone in the family, including your father, and the mailman, and almost every child in your class, Sophie,” said Mrs. Hartley. “I must say, when I saw Mrs. Stearns’s name, I gave up.”

  “But how did you do that without my noticing?” Sophie asked Jenna and Alice.

  “Easy,“Jenna said. “You were busy being buddy-buddy with Brendan.”

  “Eeuw!” Sophie cried. “Like like.”

  “I should have thought of a petition years ago,” said Nora.

  “The real deal breaker was,” Mrs. Hartley said, “that when I saw what loyal friends Jenna and Alice are, I realized it’s because of your big heart, Sophie. Out of all my children, you were the one who could be depended upon to never let a kitten go hungry or begrudge having to clean up after it in any way.”

  “Nice, Mom. Insult the rest of us, why don’t you?” said Thad.

  “I still say it was the petition.” Nora sat down and held out her hands. “And since I signed it, I get to hold her. Give her to me, Sophie.”

  They passed Patsy from one person to the other and then put her on the floor. She walked cautiously around, sniffing and reaching out with her paw to touch things. Maura squealed and squatted down, pressing her hand on Patsy’s body as if she were trying to make a pancake out of Play-Doh.

  “No, Maura, not like that,” Sophie said. She sat on the floor beside Maura and gently but firmly held her hand as she guided it lightly along Patsy’s back. “Like this,” she said. “Gently. Nice Patsy.”

  “Gently,” Maura said obediently. “Nice Patsy.”

  “No more terrible twos,” Sophie said to her mother. “She’s getting older.”

  “Someone certainly is,” said Mrs. Hartley.

  “I want to take Patsy up and show her our room,” said Sophie. She stood up with the kitten in her arms. “Come on,” she told Jenna and Alice as she started from the room. “Wait till you see what my father made.”

  “I want to bring the basket,“John said, reaching into the box.

  “Maura’s coming with you,” Mrs. Hartley called.

  Even Nora went with them. “I need your help, Jenna,” she said. She cozily draped her arm over Jenna’s shoulders as they followed Sophie into her room and settled on her bed. “My birthday’s not until April, but my mother refuses to even talk about a cell phone. I like that petition idea.”

  John and Maura came into the room and sat on the floor. Sophie put Patsy, asleep, into her basket beside them. “Keep an eye on Maura, John,” Sophie said, and sat down at her table.

  Nora went on strategizing with Jenna and Alice. “She’ll never fall for a petition a second time,” Jenna was saying. “Not your mother.”

  “You’re right,” Nora said, groaning. “She’s so strict.”

  “Use Thad,” said Sophie.

  They all stopped talking and looked at her.

  “Now that Thad has a car he’ll drive, he can ask for a cell phone for his birthday,” Sophie said. “They’ll probably give it to him. If he gets a flat tire or something, they’ll want him to be able to call.”

  “You’re a genius, Sophie!” Nora cried.

  It was such a shock that Sophie was tempted to ask Nora to repeat it.

  “And if Thad gets a cell phone at sixteen,” Nora was saying excitedly, “then I can talk them into giving me one at fourteen! Thad!” She jumped up and ran to the door. “We need you!”

  “That means you might get one when you’re eleven or twelve, Sophie,” Jenna said. “Your parents will be totally worn down by then.”

  “You guys are so lucky, having older brothers and sisters,” Alice said wistfully.

  “What do you mean, Alice?” Jenna said, shoving Alice’s shoulder so that she slid onto on the rug. “You get everything you want.”

 
The babble of voices rose the minute Thad joined them. Sitting at her table, Sophie looked at her room as if seeing it for the first time.

  It finally felt like hers. It looked like hers, too, with its painted window frames (“It’s a good thing I haven’t come in here in a while,” Mrs. Hartley had sighed when she saw them), her brightly painted closet door, and her drawings tacked up in neat rows on one wall. She’d hung the piñata she made in the third grade in one corner and lined up her considerable collection of stuffed animals on the top shelf of her bookcase.

  It was cluttered and colorful. Sophie loved it. She couldn’t imagine how she’d ever felt it was empty. Why, the way it was now, it was downright crowded. If things kept up this way, she was going to have to put a VISITING HOURS sign on her door.

  Of course, Nora would always be welcome to sleep here again if she didn’t feel well. Sophie would just have to remind her to knock first.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Stephanie Greene has written many books for young readers, including the successful Owen Foote books and two previous novels about Sophie Hartley. She is the recipient of an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College.

  Ms. Greene lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and teaches courses in writing for children when she herself isn’t busy writing.

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