Elizabella Meets Her Match

by Zoe Norton Lodge

  “Indigenous?” offered Huck.

  “Well, yes, that’s a good word,” said Miss Carrol, “and it’s true, all native Australian animals, including the Tasmanian tiger, are indigenous.”

  “So is the fairy-wren,” piped up an unfamiliar voice.

  Everyone stifled a giggle except for Daphne, who made an audible gasp. Miss Carrol spun around ready to tell somebody off for deliberately flaring up Daphne.

  “Isn’t that right, Miss Carrol?” said Minnie, sweet as a lamb.

  If it had been anyone other than Minnie, Miss Carrol would have called that cheekiness, but given Minnie was new, surely this was just an innocent remark. In fact, Miss Carrol realised, it was a remark that needed rewarding. It was nice to see Minnie beginning to come out of her shell, and impressive that she knew about native Australian birds.

  “Correct, Minnie, well done,” Miss Carrol said.

  Daphne did a double-gasp, not comprehending that this slight was about to go unpunished. Minnie turned to Elizabella and winked, then turned straight back to the board and looked at Miss Carrol, virtuously. Miss Carrol continued the lesson. Elizabella looked her new classmate up and down trying to figure her out. She was becoming less and less like anyone Elizabella had ever met before.

  “Some species are indigenous to several places. For example, the brown bear is indigenous to North America, however it’s also indigenous to parts of Europe and Asia. But species like the Tasmanian tiger and the Tasmanian devil, which are only found in one specific geographical location, are endemic.”

  Despite a rocky start, things are actually going quite well, Miss Carrol thought of the lesson she was running. By the time the bell was about to go for lunch everyone had learned the difference between a species being endemic and indigenous, as well as the difference between being extinct and endangered. They’d also learned that endangered species are categorised into different groups – starting with vulnerable, then endangered, critically endangered, extinct in the wild and finally extinct.

  Even though animal extinction was very sad, Miss Carrol loved teaching her children about it. She was an animal lover. Before she became a teacher, Miss Carrol had worked for Greenpeace on their Rainbow Warrior ship, travelling the seas and helping save the environment. It was very important to Miss Carrol to instil these messages in her students, so that they might grow up to love and protect animals too.

  Satisfied that the lesson had gone swimmingly, Miss Carrol looked at her watch. Just twenty seconds before the lunchtime bell. She picked up the whiteboard eraser and started to rub the lesson off the board when . . .

  SPLAT.

  As the eraser made contact with the flat surface, a bright red substance squirted out of it and all over the board. And all over Miss Carrol. She turned to the class, her beautiful white blouse now splattered with red.

  The bell rang for lunch. Nobody dared move.

  Miss Carrol lifted her shirt sleeve to her nose and took a sniff. Tomato sauce, she deduced. Somebody has filled my whiteboard eraser with tomato sauce.

  Ten minutes later, everyone was still sitting at their desks. Miss Carrol was sitting at hers, too. She had wiped off all the sauce she could with some tissues, and was now waiting for one of her students to fess up. As the sun beat down through the classroom windows, she could feel herself smelling more tomatoey by the second.

  “I will say it once more. Nobody is leaving for lunch until someone confesses.”

  Everyone looked at each other. No one seemed like they were anywhere near close to owning up to this.

  Elizabella caught Sandy’s eye. Nice one, he mouthed at her, silently.

  She was shocked. It wasn’t me! she mouthed back.

  “So?” asked Miss Carrol, searching around the room until her eyes met Elizabella’s, where they lingered. Elizabella was taken aback.

  “Miss Carrol, it wasn’t me!” she said. “I promise!” But something in Miss Carrol’s eyes said that she didn’t believe her.

  Several other kids were now staring at Elizabella.

  “Just admit it,” hissed Daphne.

  “Miss Carrol?” asked Huck, timidly. Her eyes shot to Huck, expecting him to own up to the crime, or at least to being an accomplice.

  “Miss Carrol, can I please go to the toilet?” Huck asked.

  “No,” said Miss Carrol. “Not until somebody has confessed.”

  “Elizabella, if you did it, just say so, you don’t want Huck to wee himself!” said Sandy.

  Elizabella suddenly started to doubt herself. Did I do this? She couldn’t for the life of her think of anyone else who might have pulled something like this off. But surely if she had done something like this in the last four hours she would have remembered? Also, she had promised herself that she wasn’t going to do anything naughty today.

  Elizabella saw Huck’s leg shaking, the international sign of somebody about to wee their pants. And she had a terrible thought . . .

  Was it possible that some time ago – weeks, even months – she had loaded the offending eraser with tomato sauce, and Miss Carrol hadn’t happened to use that particular eraser until now? There was a surplus of erasers in the classroom, and Elizabella supposed that on a particularly naughty day she could have done something like this, then become distracted by something more pressing, completely forgotten about it, and then, well, the rest was history?

  She glanced over at Huck. A little bead of sweat had started to roll down his face. She couldn’t stand it any more.

  “I did it!” she blurted out. Everyone stared at her. Half of them relieved, the other half annoyed.

  “All right, everyone, go to lunch,” said Miss Carrol, coolly. They all started for the door, led by Huck who danced from one foot to the other in the international dance of not allowing any wee to come out.

  Elizabella remained in her seat, aware that she was not who Miss Carrol was addressing just now when she’d sent everyone off to eat. Miss Carrol looked at her.

  “Gobblefrump,” she said. Elizabella nodded, solemnly. She packed up her things and walked herself out the door. She went down to Mr Gobblefrump’s office. As she approached his door she let out a loud sigh. He may not have even read the Sorry Poem, and at any rate it would be meaningless now.

  With a heavy heart she knocked on his door.

  “Come in!” bellowed Mr Gobblefrump.

  Elizabella had a sick feeling in her stomach. She knew exactly what was coming and she was dreading it. She wasn’t even sure whether she’d done anything wrong, but it didn’t make her feel any less guilty.

  Mr Gobblefrump was sitting at his desk at the front of his office. Elizabella noticed the three empty juice bottles. Mr Gobblefrump had ripped the label off one of them, rolled it into a long, sticky strip and then smooshed it into what Elizabella could have sworn was . . . a love-heart shape?

  He looked up at her. Elizabella braced herself.

  “Come, come sit down,” he said, without the slightest hint of anger. Elizabella was very confused. Was it possible he had amnesia and had completely forgotten yesterday’s events?

  “Mr Gobblefrump, Miss Carrol sent me here . . .” she started.

  “Yes, yes, go on,” said Mr Gobblefrump. He was evidently distracted by something in his notepad, which he had been scribbling in.

  Elizabella thought she’d better get it over with. “Well, you see, I don’t remember doing this, I really don’t, but all available evidence suggests that at some point I squeezed some tomato sauce into one of Miss Carrol’s whiteboard erasers and then when she went to use it to wipe a lesson off the board tomato sauce went everywhere. All over the board, all over Miss Carrol’s white blouse. Everywhere.”

  Mr Gobblefrump wasn’t paying any attention to her. He was staring away into the middle distance. She tried to gauge his response. Usually Mr Gobblefrump was very easy to read, but today he was inscrutable.

  He pushed his chair away from the desk, stood up and went to the window. He glanced out into the playground, at t
he children playing handball, eating muesli bars and skipping rope as the sun shone down on Bilby Creek.

  “Marvellous day,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “I said it’s a simply marvellous day. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Elizabella looked around; she wasn’t sure what was going on. She glanced down at the desk where Mr Gobblefrump had left his notepad. It was covered in doodles of love hearts, flowers and rainbows.

  “I said, wouldn’t you agree, Elizabella?”

  “Yes!” said Elizabella, quickly.

  “It seems a bit sad to spend such a lovely day cooped up in here, doesn’t it?” Mr Gobblefrump continued.

  “Yes . . .” she said again, hesitantly.

  Was this a trap?

  “How about you run outside and bask in the sunshine with everybody else?”

  Now Elizabella was downright concerned. “Are you feeling okay, Mr Gobblefrump?”

  “Never better, Elizabella,” he said. “Never better.”

  Getting up very slowly, Elizabella backed out of the doorway. She closed it behind her and stood there, trying to work out what had just happened.

  From the handball court, Ava, Evie and Huck saw Elizabella coming towards them.

  “Oh no,” said Huck. “I hope she’s okay.”

  “It’s hard to imagine Mr Gobblefrump getting angrier than he was yesterday, but if anything was going to do it . . .” said Ava.

  “. . . This would have been it,” said Evie, finishing her sister’s sentence.

  Elizabella reached her friends. They noticed she looked different, somehow.

  “Elizabella! Are you all right?” asked Huck.

  “Yes, I think so,” said Elizabella. “That was the strangest thing ever.”

  “Did he roll on the floor screaming like a baby?” asked Ava.

  “Did he run around in circles screaming, beating his chest with his fists?” asked Evie.

  “Did Mr Gobblefrump scream himself to sleep?” asked Huck.

  “No,” said Elizabella. “He didn’t scream at all.”

  The questions came thick and fast from everyone.

  “Did he shout?”

  “Shriek?”

  “Did he howl at his desk lamp like a wolf at the moon?”

  “I bet he wailed.”

  “I bet he yelped liked Mr Biffington and Mr Crab’s British bulldog, Ralph!”

  “No,” said Elizabella, slowly. “He didn’t scream or shout or shriek or anything.” She continued, “He was so distracted by something that he barely heard what I said. He was happy.”

  “Mr Gobblefrump? Happy!?” Ava was shocked.

  “Yes, he just kept talking about what a nice day it was outside and then he told me to go out and play.”

  “Do you have any idea why?” asked Evie.

  “None. I did give him a Sorry Poem for yesterday, but I don’t even know if he’s read it. And even if he had, it wasn’t that good.”

  Everyone fell silent. Even though they all wanted to ask Elizabella the same question, none of them could quite bring themselves to spit the words out.

  “I know what you’re wondering,” said Elizabella.

  “Well . . .” said Evie.

  “Did you?” said Ava.

  “Honestly,” said Elizabella, “I don’t think that I did.”

  They looked at her, unsure what to say.

  “When we were sitting there, I was really thinking about it. Could I have possibly planted that eraser weeks ago and completely forgotten about it? But I searched my brain far and wide, and I really have no memory of it,” said Elizabella.

  They all sat there silently for a moment.

  “I believe you,” said Huck, smiling.

  “Same!” said Ava and Evie in unison.

  “Thanks, guys,” said Elizabella, relieved.

  Sandy came over to the handball court. “Nice prank today, Elizabella!” he said.

  “She didn’t do it!” said Huck, Ava and Evie together.

  “Sheesh, okay!” said Sandy. “Whoever did do it is some prankster,” he said. Then he picked the tennis ball off the ground. “We playing or what?”

  Mr Gobblefrump had spent several more minutes in his classroom staring at the dappled sunlight coming through the two big eucalyptus trees by the tuckshop. He was psyching himself up to speak to The Poet. He had been turning what he thought were Miss Duck’s words over and over in his mind:

  In the heat of the moment I forget what’s what

  I forget what’s right and I forget what’s not

  And my actions do become my art

  Forgive me for doing what’s in my heart

  Now all he wanted to do was march down to that school tuckshop and ask Miss Duck if he could take her out to dinner. Should I . . .? Shouldn’t I . . .? His mind kept turning over the same question again and again. And then another phrase came into his head: carpe diem. Which meant, “Seize the day!” That’s precisely what Mr Gobblefrump decided to do. He rearranged his toupee for luck and marched out of his room, into the playground and straight to the tuckshop.

  He was about to declare his intentions there and then on the spot when he remembered it was lunchtime and as such the tuckshop was swarming with children. He got into line and waited. And waited. Slowly advancing in the queue for what felt like an age. Eventually he reached the front and a somewhat frazzled Miss Duck, who was coming to the end of a busy lunchtime shift.

  “Can I help you, Mr Gobblefrump?” she asked.

  “You may be the only person who can,” he said.

  Miss Duck did not catch his drift.

  “Oh?” she said, one eye already moving to the kid behind him, ready to take her order. Whatever Mr Gobblefrump wanted, if he was going to dally she was going to keep serving, or else she may not get out of there until dinnertime.

  “One cherry ice cream please,” the kid behind Mr Gobblefrump placed her order. Miss Duck went to fetch it.

  Mr Gobblefrump stood there. Asking Miss Duck out on a date in front of all these children was going to be difficult.

  “You see, I feel an urge to eat something,” he continued.

  “Next!” she called, ignoring him while he made up his mind. Mr Gobblefrump stood to one side at the front of the queue so Miss Duck could keep serving.

  “One packet of peanuts, please,” another kid ordered.

  As Miss Duck was rummaging around for the last of the peanuts, Mr Gobblefrump continued.

  “With you,” he said.

  Miss Duck froze. Could she have heard what she thought she heard? She handed the kid the peanuts, and they gave her eighty cents. There was just one person left in the queue.

  “A packet of sultanas like usual, Samuel?” asked Miss Duck.

  “Yes, please, Miss Duck,” said the little kindy boy. They exchanged money for sultanas. As Samuel skipped out, Miss Duck noted that Mr Gobblefrump didn’t even tell him off for skipping.

  The end-of-lunchtime bell rang.

  “Did I hear you correctly, Mr Gobblefrump . . .?” Miss Duck asked, hesitantly.

  Mr Gobblefrump began to speak slowly. “Ould-way ou-yay ike-lay o-tay o-gay o-tay inner-day ith-way e-may onight-tay?”

  “Mr Gobblefrump,” said Miss Duck, quietly, “there are no more children here. You don’t need to speak in pig Latin.”

  “I know,” said Mr Gobblefrump. “It’s just something that happens when I get nervous.”

  “You speak in pig Latin?”

  “Es-yay . . .” he said, looking down, embarrassed.

  “Mr Gobblefrump?” said Miss Duck. “Es-yay.”

  Mr Gobblefrump’s eyes lit up and his moustache started twitching.

  “Es-yay you will go to dinner with me tonight?” he clarified.

  “Es-yay,” said Miss Duck, again.

  “Well!” said Mr Gobblefrump, who hadn’t really thought much past this move. “Okay, then!”

  And with that he marched straight back out of the tuckshop.

  “Mr
Gobblefrump?” Miss Duck called out to him.

  Mr Gobblefrump poked his head back inside. “Yes?”

  “Ummm . . . What’s the plan?”

  “Huh?”

  “For tonight?”

  He had no plan at all.

  “I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said, because that’s what every man in every film he had ever seen said when he asked out a lady.

  “Okay, I’ll see you at eight,” said Miss Duck.

  He started to leave again.

  “Mr Gobblefrump . . .?” she called to him gently.

  “Yes, Miss Duck?”

  “My address,” she said and quickly wrote down her address in the notepad where she took tuckshop orders. She ripped it out and handed it to him. Mr Gobblefrump sure was lucky that Miss Duck had been there to help him ask her out, otherwise he never would have clinched the deal.

  When he was outside, Miss Duck heard him say “Goooooo Gobblefrump!” loudly to himself.

  What a strange man he is, thought Miss Duck. Still . . . a free meal is a free meal.

  After lunch, Elizabella’s class had a music lesson. This was a relief as she didn’t know if she could face Miss Carrol yet, let alone know what she would say to her when she did.

  The music teacher was trying to teach everyone to play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on the recorder. Elizabella sat up the back and quietly breathed into the instrument, not really playing any notes. Her confusion had given way to curiosity and now her detective hat was on. She really wanted to get to the bottom of what happened, having now completely convinced herself that she hadn’t been responsible for the tomato sauce eraser. Who could it have been? Obviously none of her friends. Certainly not Daphne . . . Someone in Miss Carrol’s class the year before? How long could tomato sauce stay in liquid form inside a whiteboard eraser before it dried up? When would it start to smell? Surely at some point it would start to attract ants . . .

  By the time the bell rang signalling the end of the day, Elizabella was no closer to an answer. And she was certainly no closer to knowing how to play ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on the recorder.