Ellie Ever

by Nancy Ruth Patterson

  Ellie sat by herself at lunch. Then she went back to her classroom and wrote Mrs. Crispin the apology Mr. Flannery had asked her to write. Ellie said she was very, very sorry that she had put the note in her mouth and that she would never do a disrespectful or deliberately disobedient thing like that again. She underlined the “deliberately disobedient” part, but she didn’t even try to make her handwriting look pretty this time.

  Ellie sat by herself on the long bus ride home. As the bus chugged to a stop at one big house after another all over the county, she couldn’t wait to get back to Hunters’ Hill.

  When there was only one other student left on the bus, Ellie heard a book bag drop onto the seat across the aisle.

  “I’m Ann Randolph,” the girl said.

  Ellie wondered if that was her whole name or if she had a double name like some of the other girls in her class.

  “Ann Randolph Carter.”

  “I’m Ellie,” Ellie said. “Ellie Taylor.” Then she thought it might make a better impression if she had a double-sounding name, too. “Ellie Ever Taylor.”

  “New at TC?”

  Ellie nodded.

  “I didn’t think I’d seen you around before. I was new last semester. I’m in fifth grade. How do you like it here?” Ann Randolph asked. She took an orange out of her backpack, peeled it, and handed Ellie a slice.

  “Cool. It’s cool.”

  “Mega,” Ann Randolph corrected her. “Nobody at TC says ‘cool’ anymore. ‘Cool’ is so . . . so uncool now. Last semester we all said ‘sweet’ when we meant ‘cool.’ Now we all say ‘mega’ instead of ‘sweet.’ We say ‘mega’ when we mean ‘very.’ We say ‘mega’ all the time, even if we don’t know exactly why we’re saying it. It’s a TC thing. You’ll catch on.” She ate another piece of orange. “Who’s your teacher?”

  “Mrs. Crispin.”

  “She’s mega mean. Everybody says so. I’m glad I never had her.”

  The bus stopped at the entrance to Hunters’ Hill. Ellie grabbed her stack of books—she didn’t have a book bag yet—and started to get off.

  “What a mega mansion!” Ann Randolph said, looking at the Hunters’ house in the distance. She waved goodbye through the window and watched as Ellie punched in the code that would make the iron gates spring open.

  Carpenters waved as Ellie trudged by. It took her almost ten minutes to walk from the road to the stables. But ten minutes wasn’t enough time to figure out what to tell her mother about her first day at her new school.

  She unlocked the door and climbed the stairs to her loft. She took off her patent leather flats and tucked them in the velvet shoe bag, tearing up at the thought of the “prissy shoes” note that had gotten her into such big trouble. Then she hung up her school uniform, wishing she never had to wear it again. The jeans and basset hound sweater she put on felt soft and comfortable and familiar.

  Ellie didn’t want to worry her mother. Maybe she could tell her that Mrs. Crispin knew a lot about animals and had introduced her personally to the headmaster. That would be sort of true. Before she left his office, Mr. Flannery told Ellie that he, too, had gotten off on the wrong foot with Mrs. Crispin on his first day as headmaster at Twin Creeks. She wanted to tell her mother that, but then she would have to explain about the hateful words the two jealous girls had written. She never wanted her mother to know about the note.

  She heard the Blue Goose wheezing down the cobblestones toward the stables. Her mom looked tired when she came into their apartment, and Ellie could tell from her mother’s face that her first day at school hadn’t gone well, either.

  “So how was your day?” Ellie asked before her mother could ask her the same question.

  “I’ve got a bruise on my back where a colt kicked me. I got stepped on by an ornery pony, and I got burned on the bottom of my arm when I bumped into the Dragon. Other than that,” she said, managing to laugh, “my day went just fine.” Then her face softened. “But don’t worry about me, Ellie. Things will get better. Bad beginnings usually make for good endings anyway. How was your day?”

  “Okay,” Ellie said.

  “Just okay?”

  “Just okay,” Ellie repeated. “We better feed the horses,” she said, trying to change the subject.

  They had let the horses out into their pasture that morning—it was still warm for winter—and Ellie watched them trot to her mother when she went to call them in for supper. She noticed that her mother was limping a little on her left leg as she walked. Ellie wondered if the horses would ever come to her the way they came to her mother.

  Her mother had once told her that horses always know when someone is afraid of them. Maybe the girls at Twin Creeks could sense her fear.

  Ellie helped her mom by wiping the water bowl in each stall with a clean rag. Sometimes she pushed the trigger on the bottom of the bowl, making the water flow over her fingers.

  They took alfalfa and oats to Okey Dokey. After that, Ellie watched her mother rub cream onto Pogo’s burn, cringing at the sight of the hardening scab. Then she helped her mother mix the mash for Glory. The corn oil softened the bran, and she mixed in a dollop of molasses and a little grated carrot for flavoring. After she poured that from a pail into his trough, she broke cubes of alfalfa into bits, softened them with warm water, and hung them in a bucket by the hayrack.

  The next morning, with a little help from her mother, Ellie ironed the blouse of her school uniform. Then she slipped into her patent leather shoes. How could anybody think those shoes were prissy-looking? They were beautiful! Could the headmaster have been right about the girls being jealous not of her shoes, but of her brain? Maybe she had shown off too much when Mrs. Crispin had asked her those questions. Her mother had said Twin Creeks was full of smart girls. Maybe those other smart girls thought she was full of braggadocio.

  The bus arrived at school early, and Ellie headed toward the restroom. She didn’t want to go to Mrs. Crispin’s room any sooner than she had to, so she hid in one of the stalls for a long while, waiting for the warning bell to ring. Listening to other girls come and go, she thought she recognized Hannah’s voice. Once Ellie was sure, she sat down on the toilet—the lid was closed—and lifted her feet up high enough to make sure Hannah didn’t look under the stall door and see her “prissy” shoes.

  Then she recognized McGregor’s voice. “It’s the truth!” McGregor said. “I heard from a fifth grader whose bus stop is near hers. That new girl’s house is a mansion—a mega mansion—like something a president or at least a movie star would live in!”

  “The President lives in the White House,” Hannah said. “Besides, you have a big house, too.”

  Ellie heard the restroom door squeak open, then close again. More footsteps.

  “The new girl’s family is mega, mega rich,” Ellie heard Hannah tell someone else. “Like a mega millionaire.”

  Ellie knew they must be talking about one of the other new girls. Mrs. Crispin had said there were three in the school. The bell rang, and Ellie heard their voices drift out into the hall.

  When she walked into Mrs. Crispin’s room just before the final bell, Ellie made sure to hold her head up extra high and square her shoulders.

  9

  After lunch, Ellie sat on her throne in the restroom again. She felt safe locked in there. Safe from the way the mega snobs in her class whispered when she walked by. Were they talking about her shoes again? Safe from their strange looks—she had caught several of them staring at her when she sat down for lunch. On her throne in the restroom, she wouldn’t have to hear the thunder of Mrs. Crispin’s sensible black shoes moving around the room.

  Ellie had to admit that things had been better today. Not mega better. Just a little better. Some of the girls had actually been nice to her at lunch. Amanda Barton told her not to worry about old Mrs. Crispin—that her mother had been in Mrs. Crispin’s class twenty-five years ago, and she had lived to tell about it. Weesie Caldwell even said she really liked Ellie’s patent leather sho
es. But since Weesie had to wear ugly orthopedic shoes for her pigeon-toed feet, Ellie figured Weesie would like anyone else’s shoes. And Stratford Bell said she liked them, too, but she wore shoes that looked like galoshes, and to make matters worse, she had scribbled smiley faces on the sides with Magic Marker. The girls who sat with her were clearly not mega popular.

  By now, Ellie could recognize all their voices.

  “I heard she was a billionaire,” she heard Chloe say while she brushed her hair at the restroom sink.

  They must be talking about that other new girl again, Ellie thought. She wondered what kind of shoes that new girl wore.

  “I found out at lunch why the new girl’s family is so rich, Chloe.” Ellie could imagine Hannah shaking her hair as if to punctuate the words. “Her parents are royalty.”

  “You mean like a king and queen?” Ellie could tell Chloe didn’t believe Hannah.

  “Yep. Of some foreign country, but I forget which one,” Hannah said knowingly.

  “She doesn’t look like a princess to me,” Chloe said.

  “I think she’s really pretty—in a princess kind of way, I mean,” whispered Hannah.

  “And she doesn’t act like a princess, either,” Chloe said just before the bell rang for class. “Let’s go.”

  As soon as the coast was clear, Ellie went to her classroom. She couldn’t wait for school to be over. She wanted to tell her mother that a princess went to her school!

  But her mother didn’t seem to care. “Why don’t you rub this on Pogo today?” she answered, handing Ellie the can of ointment.

  During the morning bus ride on her third day at TC, Ellie sat by herself in the front seat. Earphones plugged into her ears, she listened to music while she finished her math homework. Once she was done, she kept her earphones on, but turned the music off to hear what people were saying. She hoped they were talking about the princess.

  Hannah was sitting behind her, and Ellie heard her voice first.

  “Just exactly how would you know?” she asked in a loud whisper. “Have you ever met a real princess before?”

  Chloe admitted that she hadn’t.

  “She just doesn’t want to be accused of”—Hannah stumbled on the word—“of bragga . . . braggadocio. Her parents sent her here to live with her nanny for a year so she could learn about America.” She was whispering just loud enough for Ellie to hear.

  “She seems to know a lot about America to be from another country,” said Chloe.

  Her whisper came out louder than a whisper should, and Hannah put her index finger to her lips to quiet her. “Shush,” she said. “Somebody might hear you.”

  “Remember her answer about Jamestown?” Chloe asked in a voice so soft Ellie had to concentrate extra hard to make out her words. “And she even knew about that President Adams—James or John—I forget which,” Chloe continued. “She talks like an American, though her accent is kind of different.”

  But I answered the question about President John Adams, Ellie thought. She suddenly realized they were talking about her—they thought she was a princess. Oh, no! How could they? Then she remembered what Ann Randolph had said when she got off the bus two days earlier. She must have assumed that Ellie’s family lived in the mega mansion and started the rumor. Ellie kept on listening.

  “She must have private tutors who are American,” Hannah said.

  “No wonder she’s so smart. Any of us could be that smart if we had private tutors like she does,” said Chloe. “Do you think she has a real crown?”

  “I’m sure of it,” said Hannah. “My mother was watching a program about kings and queens on the History Channel last week. They all wear crowns. I thought I recognized her the first time she walked into school—even without her crown.”

  “Why don’t we just ask her if she’s a princess?” suggested Chloe.

  “It’s not proper,” Hannah said haughtily. “You don’t just go around asking a real princess a question like that. You’re supposed to know.”

  “Can you keep a secret?” Ellie heard Chloe ask Schyler Ferguson.

  “Of course I can,” Schyler said.

  “Ellie is a princess. A real princess!”

  “Wouldn’t a princess come to school in a limousine instead of a school bus, and wouldn’t she have guards? I thought all royal families had lots of guards,” Schyler said.

  “Maybe her bodyguards follow the bus,” said Chloe. “And didn’t you see the man with a bow tie fixing the intercom in our room yesterday? I bet he was just pretending, and he’s another one of her bodyguards.”

  “Can you believe it? A princess with bodyguards right in our own school,” said Schyler.

  Her? A princess? So smart because she had a private tutor? Ellie wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

  10

  Ellie couldn’t help but wonder what her life would be like if she really were a princess. Would people call her Princess Ellie? Or just Princess? Or just Ellie? Would she have to wear a tiara everywhere she went? Would she wear it to the bathroom? Would the tiara have diamonds or rubies or emeralds? Maybe all three? Would she wear her hair long, like Cinderella, or shorter, like Princess Diana? Ellie had seen old pictures of Princess Diana on television and thought she was beautiful. She wondered if Princess Diana had ever worn pretty, princess-y, prissy shoes like hers.

  Everybody was nicer to her on the bus ride home that day. They didn’t ask her about being a princess—that would have been mega rude, Ellie figured. But she could tell they had heard the rumor by the way they were acting.

  She worried the rest of the afternoon about what she should do. She thought about it while she was tending to Pogo. While she was mixing corn oil into Glory’s mash. While she was giving Hannibal head rubs and Buttermilk shoulder pats. She even talked about her problem to Raffles, who cocked her ears forward as if she really wanted to listen. The horses, too, were beginning to be nicer to her, even if she wasn’t a princess.

  Ellie knew that starting a rumor or even spreading one was wrong, but why should she deny a rumor that was clearly in her favor? After all, she hadn’t started it. She hadn’t spread it. And she certainly didn’t believe it. If she hadn’t been eavesdropping, she wouldn’t even know about it.

  She walked down to Okey Dokey’s pasture. She knew better than to go near that horse, but her mother had given her permission to watch him from the other side of his fence. She leaned against the top rail. Nobody would find out who she really was, she thought as she watched Okey Dokey gallop across the pasture. Her mother was too busy learning to shoe horses to ever come to Ellie’s school. They’d be buying a place of their own and maybe even moving away from Twin Creeks when her mother finished her apprenticeship. If they were going to move, what harm could the rumor possibly do?

  The next day, Hannah wore a pair of black patent leather shoes just like Ellie’s. The day after, Chloe had the same kind of shoes on. By Monday, Ellie counted five more pairs just like them in her class. By Tuesday, everyone wore them—except Weesie, who still had to wear her orthopedic shoes, and Stratford, who still liked to doodle on the sides of her sensible brown almost-leather galoshes-shoes. Ellie could tell that Mrs. Crispin preferred feet to be dressed in plain brown shoes, but she couldn’t say anything. The day after Mrs. Crispin had marched Ellie to his office, Mr. Flannery had announced on the intercom that the girls could wear any kind of brown or black leather shoes—as long as they weren’t tennis shoes and didn’t have high heels.

  Nobody had asked her if she was a princess—she was glad Hannah had seen to that. And nobody seemed jealous of her even if they did think she was mega smart and mega rich and mega royal. Maybe people made an exception for princesses, Ellie thought. The more the girls treated her like a princess, the more she began to feel like one.

  Ellie felt that as long as everybody thought she was a princess, she might as well be good at it. She took turns eating with absolutely everybody at lunch, which was the only time the class didn’t have to stay in al
phabetical order. She chose Stratford first when she got to captain the soccer team at recess, even though she knew Stratford couldn’t run very fast—especially with galoshes on. Nobody was surprised—not even Ellie—when Hannah nominated her for second semester’s class president, with Chloe seconding the motion. Ellie would be running against McGregor and Schyler.

  A princess for class president! Ellie thought as she helped her mother bring in the horses that night. She would never use that slogan, of course, but she laughed at the thought of it. She wished she could share the laugh with her mom, but she was pretty sure her mom wouldn’t think Ellie’s reign as a princess was funny. Instead, they walked silently down to Okey Dokey’s pasture. He still ran away every time they came to give him food, as if he were playing tag and didn’t want to be tagged. “You just have to be patient with him,” her mother cautioned. “Everything in its own time.”

  While they coaxed the other horses into their stalls, Mrs. Taylor talked about the farrier who was teaching her the trade.

  “He’s almost as good a farrier as your father,” she told Ellie. “And a lot more patient with me. I really like what I’m doing.”

  “Does he think you’ll be good?”

  “I think so. He says I’m learning fast. At first he just let me trim a horse’s hooves—that’s pretty easy to do if the horse is used to it. Today, I put on my first pair of shoes all by myself. Trimmed the hooves. Shaped the horseshoes just right. Hammered them on perfectly. Your father would have been proud.”

  “You haven’t gotten any burns lately from the Dragon?” asked Ellie.

  Her mother shook her head. “No more bruised backs or lame feet for me lately,” she said. “I’m getting better at it every day.” She said it proudly, but she didn’t sound full of braggadocio. “I’ve still got a lot to learn, but I know I can do it now. If I work hard enough, I really can be the other Taylor in Taylor-Made Horseshoes.”