A Star on TV, Lucy McGee

by Mary Amato

  WE NEED TIME TO THINK

  The note Scarlett passed around was sticking out of Phillip’s back pocket. I couldn’t stand the suspense anymore, so I grabbed it.

  “Give it back, Lucy,” Phillip said. “You don’t want to read it.”

  I took it over to my cubby and read it.

  Dear Songwriting Club (except Lucy),

  Lucy was mean for leaving us out. Nobody talk to her. If she tries to talk to you, just pretend you can’t hear her.

  We can make up our own weather songs. Lots of them. Let’s get permission to sing the weather on The Morning Mix every day. Without Lucy. Let’s not tell her we’re doing it. Let’s just do it and see how she likes it.

  Ha. See ya!

  Scarlett

  I didn’t know what to do. It was the first time in my life that everybody was mad at me at the same time. I couldn’t believe that Phillip and Resa were even thinking about going along with Scarlett’s idea. I felt like I was going to cry, but I didn’t want to. I was alone in the world. Just me and my stinking wet socks and my book about Idaho.

  What I really wanted to do was crawl into my cubby and write a song. Unfortunately, our cubbies are not big enough. I took my uke and my songwriting notebook over to the corner of the room. While everybody else was talking and laughing, I sat by the window and wrote a song.

  Rain laughs against the glass.

  The clock is ticking loud and fast.

  My pencil shouts across the page while other voices drown me out.

  No one can hear me.

  No one can hear me.

  No one can hear me now.

  Why can’t I evaporate and rise up from the ground,

  become a cloud and float to Idaho

  and let my rain come thundering down?

  Then at least someone in Idaho would hear me falling down.

  Hear me falling

  Hear me falling

  Hear me falling down.

  I sang my song very softly and it came out good. It’s like I have a secret songwriter who lives inside me who keeps me company when I’m feeling lonely—and it’s really just me.

  Finally school was over. The rain had stopped, but the sky was gray and the air was cold and had that wormy smell. I hurried home. I wanted to rip off my disgusting wet socks, get a delicious snack, take it up to my bedroom, and eat it in my closet. Delicious food makes me feel better. So does sitting in my closet. When I’m only halfway upset, I leave the door open. When I’m really upset, I close the door and howl like a wolf, which is something Leo taught me to do.

  As soon as I walked in the front door, I kicked off my shoes and peeled off my socks.

  Yuck! My feet smelled like dead fish.

  My dad poked his head out from the kitchen. “Hey, Lucy. I’m in here,” he said. “Cooking with worms.”

  My dad says lots of strange things, but this was terrible.

  “Worms?” I almost started crying. “I had a very bad day and I was really hoping for a pizza bagel—”

  My dad laughed. “I’m not cooking worms. I’m cooking mac and cheese.”

  “Lily and me is being worms!” Leo’s voice called out.

  I looked under the kitchen table. Leo and Lily were wiggling around on their tummies.

  Leo had a huge smile. “Come on, Lucy. Be a worm with us.”

  Lily took her pacifier out of her mouth and pointed it at me. “Yucy be wom!” she said, which meant Lucy be a worm! She still hasn’t figured out all her sounds, but she knows how to be bossy in a very cute way.

  “I’m going to my closet,” I said. “I had the worst day of my life.”

  “What happened?” my dad asked.

  “I made a big mistake and nobody likes me anymore,” I said. “Not Resa, not even Phillip.”

  “I like you,” Leo said.

  “Thank you, Leo,” I said.

  “But I’d like you more if you were a worm,” he said.

  My dad laughed.

  “I don’t know if I have the energy to be a worm.” I sat on the kitchen floor. “I am being serious.”

  “Worms is fun. We come out when it rains,” Leo said. “We like the rain.”

  “Wain. Wain. Wain,” Lily said, and wriggled onto my lap.

  “Try it,” Leo said.

  “Twy it!” Lily said.

  My dad smiled. “It might be just what you need.”

  I scooched Lily off my lap and got on my tummy.

  “Wriggle!” Leo said.

  “Wigga!” Lily said.

  They started wriggling with their little faces close to mine. I started wriggling, too, and then we all started giggling.

  “Okay. I’m in!” my dad said, and got down on the floor.

  We wiggled and wriggled and giggled, and then we heard the front door open.

  “I’m home!” my mom’s voice called out. “Where is everybody?”

  Lily’s eyes got huge and she took her pacifier out of her mouth. “Mama wom!” she squealed. My mom came in and joined the pile.

  A bad day can get way better if you’re lucky enough to belong to a family that’s willing to wiggle and wriggle and giggle together.

  When I woke up, I remembered how mad everybody was at me. It’s scary to go to school when everybody is mad at you. It’s also sad. They were going to write weather songs today and ask Ms. Dell if they could sing on The Morning Mix every day. How was I going to survive?

  And then I opened the front door and saw that the weather matched my mood.

  “Whoa!” I said.

  My family came to look.

  “What is it?” Leo asked.

  “That’s called fog,” my mom said. “We don’t get it very often here.”

  “It’s like a grayish cloud is sitting on our street,” I said. “Isn’t it creepy?”

  “Is it going to be like this forever?” Leo asked.

  “No, the sun will probably burn through it soon,” my dad said.

  The fog looked exactly how I felt on the inside—like a scary cloud was sitting on my soul.

  “It feels like nighttime,” Leo said. “I want to walk in it!”

  “Me too,” Lily said, and ran to put on her rain boots.

  “It’s Wednesday,” my mom said. “Don’t forget your uke, Lucy.”

  Today was Wednesday, which meant Songwriting Club. Usually I love Wednesdays. But nobody was going to want me there. I felt like crying. If I hadn’t gotten that sneaky idea to write Mrs. Brock that note, this never would have happened. I hope I never get another sneaky idea, I thought. And then a new sneaky idea popped into my head!

  I could hand out a surprise to my friends at lunch.

  What kind of surprise would I like at lunch? Potato chips!

  I got two little bags of potato chips. “Mom, can I take these to school to share with my friends, please, please, please? It’s a matter of life and death. Phillip and Resa are mad at me and this will win them back.”

  “Lucy, a good friend doesn’t need to be bribed,” she said.

  “Please?” I asked. “I’ll pay you back.”

  “Okay.” My mom smiled. “As long as you’re not going to eat them all yourself.”

  I put the chips in my backpack, got my uke, and headed out. The fog made it extra dramatic. It was the same street as yesterday, but the weather made it look like a suspenseful movie.

  The rhythm of my footsteps gave me a beat inside my head. I couldn’t help it. A song popped out. I sang it to myself as I walked along.

  Life today turned upside down.

  Clouds are drooping to the ground.

  The sun got scared and stayed in bed.

  Are those trees or ghosts ahead?

  Grayish mists are deeply creeping.

  Is the whole world wet and weeping?

  Wolves and zombies—did I mention?— />
  love this weather. Pay attention!

  As you walk alone, beware!

  The fog can hide what’s hiding there.

  Suddenly two shapes appeared in front of me on the sidewalk. I screamed.

  “It’s just us, Lucy,” Phillip said. “We heard your song. It’s great.”

  “I didn’t even see you!”

  Both Phillip and Resa laughed.

  “I like the zombie part,” Resa said.

  I was shocked. “You aren’t still mad at me?” I asked.

  Phillip shrugged. “I can’t really stay mad at anybody who’s that good at songwriting.”

  “Me either,” Resa said. “I was going to tell Scarlett today that we shouldn’t sing without you. Phillip and I were just talking about it.”

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Phillip said.

  I started jumping up and down. “Thank you! Thank you! I can teach you my song and we can sing it together.”

  “Can I make one suggestion?” Phillip asked.

  I nodded.

  “At the end, instead of singing ‘The fog can hide what’s hiding there,’ we could sing a different word,” he said. “We could sing ‘The fog can hide what’s lurking there.’ ”

  “I love it! Two heads are better than one,” I said.

  “That’s what zombies say,” Phillip said.

  “I am making up an oath.” I held up my right hand. “I promise to never get my friends in trouble. I promise to tell the whole Songwriting Club whenever there is a singing opportunity and to include everybody.”

  “Come on,” Resa said. “Let’s all go talk to Scarlett.”

  We walked over to where Victoria, Mara, and Scarlett were in a huddle by the door.

  “Scarlett,” Resa said. “Lucy has made an oath and she has also written a new song for all of us to sing. All of us.”

  “One for all and all for the Songwriting Club,” Phillip said.

  Scarlett looked at me. “Let’s hear it, Lucy.”

  I said the oath and sang the song and looked at them.

  “That is a good song,” Mara said.

  “Well, I think the oath should be in writing,” Scarlett said.

  “An official oath! I like it,” Phillip said. “Everybody in the Songwriting Club can sign it.”

  “Whoever has the best handwriting should write it,” Scarlett said.

  “You have really pretty handwriting, Scarlett,” Victoria said. “Write it with a glitter pen.”

  Scarlett smiled. “I’ll make it perfect.”

  “After school we’ll sign the oath and get permission to all sing on The Morning Mix every day!” Phillip said. “We have a rain song and a fog song. We need to have a song for every kind of weather so we’re ready for anything.”

  The whistle blew and everybody headed inside.

  Then Phillip stopped and turned around.

  Resa and I stopped and looked at him.

  “I’m memorizing the fog,” he said. “This weather is the best.”

  The three of us stood and looked at the creepy mist. And then I remembered the chips. “Close your eyes, guys,” I said.

  I snuck a bag of chips into each of their backpacks. “A surprise for your lunch from me, Lucy McGee,” I said.

  “Thanks, Lucy,” Phillip said.

  Thanks to Idaho, I thought. For the potatoes.

  Crunch for lunch!

  We promise to include everybody in the club

  whenever we get the chance to sing.

  Unless, of course, we are in the shower.

  Then we can sing by ourselves.

  After school, everybody in the club raced to Ms. Adamson’s room and signed the oath. Me, Phillip, Resa, Scarlett, Victoria, Mara, Pablo, Saki, and Natalie. (Riley used to be in our club, but he’s in Chess Club now.) We told Ms. Adamson the plan, and she called Ms. Dell on her cell phone. Ms. Dell said she’d come and talk it through. It was really happening!

  “Let’s make a list of all the kinds of weather we need songs about,” Phillip said, getting out his songwriting notebook.

  “Snow,” Resa said.

  “Sleet,” Natalie said.

  “What about regular old sunshine?” Pablo said.

  “Yes!” Scarlett danced around. “Beautiful sunshine!”

  “And thunderstorms,” I said. “That’s different from just rain.”

  “And hail,” Phillip said. “I love hail. Rocks from the sky!”

  “Hurricanes!” Mara said.

  “What about when it gets too hot and dry for a long time?” Victoria asked. “There’s a name for that, right?”

  “Drought!” Phillip said. “Good one.”

  I sang, “It hasn’t rained. The plants are dying. The rivers and the fields are drying.”

  “Everybody will be frying,” Resa sang.

  I fist-bumped Resa.

  We were on a roll.

  “Let’s write the sunshine song first,” Scarlett said. “I think it’s supposed to be sunshiny tomorrow!”

  “Let’s split into groups and each group can write a song,” Phillip said. “Then we’ll teach each other our songs. That’ll be faster.”

  “We’re going to be famous!” Scarlett said.

  “I love being on The Morning Mix,” Saki said. “This is so fun.”

  “Me too,” Natalie said. “Now we’ll get to be on it every day!”

  We split into groups and each group went to a different place in the room. I was kind of torn because I thought sunshine was the most common weather and I wanted to write a song that was probably going to get sung. But sunshine isn’t so dramatic. So I decided to work on the drought song with Resa. The boys were doing snow and hail together. The fifth-grade girls were doing hurricanes. And Scarlett, Victoria, and Mara were working on sunshine.

  Just then Ms. Dell walked in and asked us to gather around.

  “I love the idea to sing the weather every day on The Morning Mix, but I have some bad news,” she said. “I talked with Mrs. Brock about it, and we both think that just fifth graders should do the weather. We can’t have the whole Songwriting Club perform every day on The Morning Mix. It’s really a show that the fifth graders are in charge of, and, you know, our TV studio is a small room. Pablo and Natalie and Saki, since you’re fifth graders, if you’d like to sing the weather, that would be fine. Fourth graders, you can do it next year.”

  The room was silent.

  “But we just signed an oath to always sing together,” Scarlett said.

  “I’m sorry,” Ms. Dell said. “I’ll let you all talk it out. Pablo, Natalie, and Saki, you can let me know tomorrow what you want to do.”

  She left.

  “I’m sorry, guys,” Ms. Adamson said. “You were working really well together.”

  “Mrs. Brock and Ms. Dell are both being mean,” Scarlett said.

  “They’re doing what they think is best,” Ms. Adamson said.

  We all looked at Pablo and Saki and Natalie. They looked uncomfortable.

  “Maybe we could sing the songs and say who wrote them,” Saki said.

  “But the whole idea was Lucy’s,” Phillip said.

  “Not really,” Pablo said. “Lucy wrote the rain song, but it was my idea to sing on The Morning Mix.”

  Scarlett glanced at me. She didn’t say anything with words, but somehow her face was saying that all this was my fault.

  “I said sorry a million times!” I said.

  “I didn’t say anything, Lucy,” Scarlett said. “I’m just sad! Everybody’s really, really sad.”

  “Maybe we should have two clubs—one for fifth graders and one for anybody else,” Natalie said.

  “That would be terrible!” Mara said.

  “We were all getting along just a minute ago!” Resa said.

  “It was too good to be true,” Phillip said sadly.


  “Okay, everybody,” Ms. Adamson said. “You have two choices. You could all decide that it’s okay for Pablo, Saki, and Natalie to sing the weather, and they could make sure to say who wrote the songs. Or you could agree that nobody sings the weather. Sleep on it and take a vote tomorrow.”

  This was not good. If the fourth graders voted that the fifth graders shouldn’t sing, then the fifth graders would probably be mad at us. It was like a storm cloud showing up on a perfectly sunny day.

  The next morning I was lucky I found my boots because, unfortunately, it was raining. Again.

  A red umbrella with legs was waiting for me by the fence.

  “I saw Pablo,” Phillip said. “He said we’re all meeting by the big clock in the main hallway to take the vote.”

  Just as we started to go in, we noticed Scarlett, Victoria, and Mara under the shelter by the cafeteria doors where it was dry.

  “Guys,” Phillip called. “We’re meeting inside!”

  They turned to look at us.

  Scarlett is really good at gymnastics and singing and violin, but she is not good at hiding things. Her face was saying something. This time it was saying: I’ve got a secret.

  “We’ll be right there!” she said. And then she whispered something to Mara and Victoria.

  “What do you think is going on, Phillip?” I asked.

  “When it comes to Scarlett, I never know,” Phillip said.

  Inside, we all gathered together.

  “Saki and Natalie and I talked about it,” Pablo said. “And we decided that the club is more important than singing on The Morning Mix.”

  Saki smiled. “We’ll tell Ms. Dell that we’ll just go back to the regular weather. An oath is an oath.”

  “That is so nice,” Resa said.

  “Yes!” Phillip said. “We can get back to normal club stuff.”

  “Okay, see you guys later,” Scarlett said quickly, and she pulled Victoria and Mara down the hall.

  The rest of us looked at each other.