Not-So-Weird Emma

by Sally Warner

  But even Annie Pat seems to be kind of grossed out, hearing about the grasshopper and the lizard. She gives me a pitying look, which I wish I could grab hold of and shove right back at her.

  Bonk! The red kick ball hits my leg again, on purpose this time—and it’s just when the bell rings, too. “Ha ha,” Jared laughs. “The ball touched you last, so you’re the one who has to bring it in,” he shouts at me.

  He’s right. That’s the stupid rule at this stupid school.

  And so Cynthia, Heather, and Annie Pat get to walk slowly back to class, while I have to scramble after the kick ball. It skitters away from me like a bad little dog that doesn’t want to be caught.

  Cynthia and Heather put their heads together and whisper on their way out of the playground. Annie Pat gives me a sad look over her shoulder.

  And I feel like crying.

  “Come on, Emma. Shake your tail feathers,” Ms. Sanchez calls out, standing by the gate. She is holding a giant blue net bag that bulges with recess balls.

  I finally pounce on the escaped kick ball and capture it. Now my face is as red as the kick ball, and I am all sweaty, and my hair is even more tangled than it usually is.

  Oh, perfect.

  I carry the ball over to Ms. Sanchez. “Hurry up,” she says, scowling. She shakes the net bag.

  And so even though the morning started out great, this has turned into the most terrible third-grade day I have ever had in my life so far. Because who cares about a special treat on Friday when the only friend you thought you had makes fun of you in front of everyone else?

  In fact, they are probably all sitting in class and laughing about me and my weird room right now.

  I just wish I had something to kick, that’s all.

  Like maybe—Cynthia Harbison.

  3

  Thinking About My Ugly Room

  I think animals are nicer than people. All you have to do is look around to know I’m right. Don’t look around our condo, though, and expect to see any animals, because “No Pets Allowed.”

  But we didn’t have any pets at our old house, even before we moved. My mom said it wouldn’t be fair to them, because she was away at work all day long, and I was at school and then at child care until five-thirty every night.

  I thought about getting a nocturnal pet, at least, like a possum or a skunk. “Nocturnal” means that the animals sleep during the day and run around all night, so it would have been perfect—except I guess Mom doesn’t like either possums or skunks all that much, even though you can de-stink a skunk.

  Supposedly.

  My mom used to be a librarian for a big company, but then the company decided to get smaller. Lots of people lost their jobs and had to look for other work, including my mom. Now Mom works at home, correcting books that other people write. My father lives in England with his new wife, Annabelle, and no children. My parents got divorced when I was only two years old, but that’s okay. I can barely even remember them living together.

  I miss my dad, of course. He has come to visit me twice, but not with his wife. I’ve seen pictures, though. She looks okay, but she’s not as pretty as Mom.

  (And I’m not just saying that.)

  “Guess what?” I say to Mom at dinner. “Our class is going to have a surprise treat on Friday afternoon. Parents are invited, too, Ms. Sanchez says.”

  We are eating sloppy joes and string beans, which is one of my favorite dinners, if you leave out the string beans.

  “Really?” Mom says. “What kind of surprise treat?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why it’s a surprise,” I explain patiently.

  “Hmm,” Mom says. “Well, you don’t sound very excited about it, even though you’ve been complaining about how boring your new school is. In fact, you sound downright gloomy, Em.”

  “My new school is boring, compared to Magdalena,” I say. “At Magdalena, we did tons of fun stuff. We even got to go out on a boat once, on that whale-watching trip. Remember?”

  Mom sighs and nods at the same time. “I sure do,” she says. “You got seasick, as I recall. You called me from the boat, from Janie McIntosh’s cell phone, remember? You said to come and get you, because you were dying.”

  “Everyone got seasick on that trip,” I remind my mom, coming to my own defense. “They didn’t bring enough saltine crackers for all the upset tummies. But it was still fun.”

  “And it was expensive, too, as I recall,” Mom says, remembering. “But I’ll admit it—they did have a wonderful child-care program after school at Magdalena. Well, at least that’s one thing we don’t need anymore, now that I’m working at home.”

  “But I miss Magdalena,” I say, trying not to whine. “I miss my friends. Don’t you miss your friends from your old job?”

  “Yes,” Mom admits simply. “But so what? They’re not there anymore, either. And your best friend at Magdalena moved to Arizona, don’t forget,” she adds. “So you wouldn’t be seeing her, even if you still went there. But you still see some of your other old classmates from time to time, Emma.”

  “It’s just not the same anymore,” I say. I take a bite of my sloppy joe, which has gotten nice and soggy, just the way I like it. “Anyway, now I don’t even have any friends,” I mumble.

  Mom takes’ a sip of her iced tea. “What about Cynthia Harbison?” she asks.

  “She hates me. As of today,” I inform my mom.

  “Cynthia hates you?” Mom asks, setting down her glass of iced tea with a clunk. “But why? What happened?”

  “Annie Pat Masterson was nice to me, that’s what happened,” I say. “She’s the girl with red hair.”

  “I remember,” Mom says, nodding slowly. “But—but why would that make Cynthia hate you, Emma? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Try telling Cynthia that,” I say. Then I take a big gulp of milk to wash down the bite of sloppy joe that suddenly feels as if it’s stuck in my throat.

  “Hmm,” Mom says again. She spears a string bean with her fork and looks at it. “Maybe Cynthia is jealous of Annie Pat,” she says. “Do you think?”

  Jealous? That is the silliest thing I have ever heard. Jealous is for smoochy grown-ups in love on TV, not for kids being friends at school—or not being friends. “I don’t think so,” I say politely.

  Because I know that Cynthia was just feeling mean, not jealous.

  “Jealousy among friends happens all the time,” Mom says, looking as wise as a bee.

  I would say As wise as an owl, except I think that bees are smarter. They have a very intricate society. We could learn a lot from bees.

  “Oh,” I say politely, still not arguing with her. Because what’s the use? Things just happen. There doesn’t have to be a reason.

  In fact, there usually isn’t one.

  Now Mom frowns. “So did you actually have a fight with Cynthia?” she asks me.

  “Kind of,” I admit. “Not the kind of fight where you punch each other, though. Just the kind where I ended up all by myself on the play-ground, having to pick up a kick ball that I didn’t even play with.”

  I decide not to say anything about Cynthia making fun of my room. I don’t want Mom to think I’m strange, too.

  “Well, spending recess alone is bad enough,” Mom says.

  Thinking about my ugly room has given me an idea. “Can we go to the bookstore after dinner? I mean after we do the dishes?” I ask Mom. Because our local bookstore has all kinds of stuff in it besides books, things such as school supplies, art supplies, stickers—and posters.

  Lots of posters.

  Our bookstore barely has room for books anymore!

  “Well, sure, I guess we can, if you don’t have too much homework to do,” Mom says after taking another sip of iced tea. She looks a little less worried now, and she has stopped asking me questions about Cynthia, thank goodness.

  Mom loves going to the bookstore. It’s always an easy way to distract her.

  “Why do you want to go?” she asks me. “Do you ne
ed something special for school, honey?”

  I nod my head and put my most serious expression on my face. “I do need something,” I tell her solemnly. “I really, really do.”

  But it’s not for school. I need posters of puppies and ducklings and birdies, that’s what I need. Or newborn lions sucking on baby bottles, or kittens saying, “Hang in there!”

  Anything cute—to put up in my room.

  And I need those posters fast.

  4

  Ha-Ha on Cynthia

  “Why are you wearing such a fancy dress?” Cynthia asks me the next day. It is Wednesday, which means only two more days until our treat. We are sitting down, waiting for class to begin. EllRay Jakes is standing next to Ms. Sanchez’s desk, showing her a paper, so we are starting late.

  “I’m wearing fancy shoes, too,” I tell Cynthia, pointing a toe. I am wearing my shiny black too-small party shoes and white tights. I look like a girl today, that’s for sure.

  No one could possibly call me weird or strange.

  My dress is lavender-blue, dilly dilly, just like the song says. Mom bought it for me six months ago, for Easter. The dress has tiny purple flowers on it, and it has a wide sash and about a hundred little buttons that go up the front. I could barely button them all up this morning. But it’s okay, as long as I don’t breathe.

  Too much, ’I mean, or too deep.

  I shrug, not answering Cynthia’s question about why I am wearing this dress. “I wear stuff like this all the time,” I fib instead, arranging my skirt so that it hides my knees. I scraped them last week, and the scabs are ruining the effect.

  “No you don’t wear dresses like that all the time,” Cynthia informs me. She takes off her plastic headband, tucks her smooth, shiny hair behind her ears, then scrapes the headband back on her hair, pulling so hard that her eyes look surprised. “You hardly ever even wear dresses. You’re just showing off,” she says.

  This makes me angry. “Ooh, I’m showing off for Cynthia-in-Wonderland,” I say to her, pretending to smooth back my own hair. Alice in Wonderland wears a headband just like Cynthia’s; that’s the point of what I said. And Cynthia hates being teased, I know, so any joke on her is a good one.

  Corey Robinson, who is sitting on the other side of me, starts to giggle. “Shut up, Freckle Face Corey,” Cynthia says to him, leaning way across my desk.

  Corey jumps back in his seat. He is a little bit scared of Cynthia, I think.

  “Uh, excuse me,” I say to Cynthia, pretending to be polite, “but you are trespassing on my property.” I point down at my desk to make sure she knows what I mean. Of course by now, lots of kids are listening in. They are waiting to see what will happen next.

  So am I.

  “That desk is official school property,” Cynthia says. “It’s not private property. And so I am not trespassing. And anyway, you shouldn’t call people names.”

  “Well, you called Corey a name,” I remind her. “And you called me a name yesterday.”

  Next to me, Corey starts waving his hands back and forth as if he is saying, Hey, leave me out of this!

  “‘Freckle Face’ is not a name. It’s a description. It’s just the way he looks,” Cynthia tells me.

  Everyone sitting around us turns to inspect poor Corey, who looks as if he is about to faint. All of his freckles—and he does have lots of them—seem to stand out like sprinkles of cinnamon on a sugar cookie.

  “I could call him Freckle Face, or I could call him Seaweed Hair, and I still wouldn’t be calling him names,” Cynthia tells everyone. “I’d only be reporting, like they do on TV It’s just the way he looks,” she says again.

  Corey practices his swimming every day, see, and sometimes his yellow hair turns sort of green from the chlorine in the community pool. That’s what Cynthia is talking about.

  But he’ll probably win a medal in the Olympics some day and be on the cover of People, so then who will be laughing?

  “That’s rude,” this girl named Fiona says, although she is usually even shyer than I am. In fact, Fiona is so shy that she is practically invisible, but now, even Fiona is getting mad at Cynthia.

  Cynthia looks around, kind of surprised to see that our own private fight has spread so far—and that she is losing.

  “Yeah, that’s rude, Cynthia,” someone else says. “Corey didn’t do anything to you.”

  “Well, I know he didn’t,” Cynthia says, turning pink. “It was all Emma’s fault. She called me—” and Cynthia suddenly stops talking. I guess she doesn’t want to say what I called her, in case kids remember it, and they start calling her that, too.

  Corey takes a deep breath. “Emma called her ‘Cynthia-in-Wonderland,’” he says. Then he lets all his air out, as if he is a runaway balloon. Only he doesn’t go ., zipping around the room, like a deflating balloon, he just shrinks back in his seat again.

  All around us, kids are whispering, laughing, and nudging each other. And I am a little surprised. I only called Cynthia that because of her headband, but now that I think about it, Cynthia is a lot like Alice in the book.

  The kids in my class must think so, too.

  Cynthia and Alice are both very smooth and perfect to look at, for instance, and both girls can be bossy and grouchy. And Cynthia and Alice don’t always see the funny side of things, even when there is a funny side staring you right in the face.

  They are alike in good ways, too, even though I don’t point out any of these good ways to the other kids. But Cynthia and Alice both have a lot of common sense, for example, and if Cynthia ever fell down a rabbit hole, she would instantly jump to her feet when she got to the bottom, just the way Alice did.

  I would want to be friends with Alice, just like I wish I were still friends with Cynthia.

  But I don’t know how to turn this squabble around.

  “Emma? Miss McGraw? Miss Emma McGraw?” Ms. Sanchez is saying. Uh-oh, she is halfway through taking attendance, and I didn’t even hear her start.

  “Oh. Here,” I say.

  “You look extra nice today, Emma,” Ms. Sanchez says, pausing in her roll-taking. “Art you going to a special event after school that you’d like to tell us about?”

  “No,” I tell her, my heart pounding. “This is just a regular day, and I’m just wearing a regular dress, the same kind I always wear.” Ms. Sanchez is making me nervous, though, and I try to squirm a little inside my so-called regular dress—except it is too tight for even a small-sized squirm.

  Next to me, Cynthia snickers, and I change my mind about wanting to be friends with her again.

  Ms. Sanchez tilts her head in a wondering way, but she doesn’t ask me any more questions. She continues taking roll.

  Phew, I think—that was a close one.

  And I try to curl my toes inside my party shoes. But I can’t.

  My feet feel hot, and they hurt. This is going to be a long, long day.

  Oh well, I think, at least something good will happen after school. Because Annie Pat is coming over to my house to play!

  My mom and I invited her last night.

  So ha-ha on Cynthia.

  5

  Cute

  “And here’s my bedroom,” I say to Annie Pat. I swing open the door.

  Things are looking very different in here from the way they did yesterday at this time. There are no more pictures of grasshopper-chomping lizards, and no more skinks or skunks or sharks with a zillion teeth, or laughing hyenas. Who don’t really laugh, in case you didn’t know.

  Now there are just three posters on the walls, and that’s all. The first poster shows a baby chimpanzee wearing a diaper.

  Cute.

  The second poster is of a pile of kittens sleeping in a basket full of laundry that you just know is folded and clean.

  Cute.

  And the third poster shows a gray dog dressed up like Cinderella. I feel sorry for the dog, but the poster is definitely cute. All of my posters are cute. They should be! They cost me all the birthday money I was
saving.

  I told Mom it was time for a change.

  “So, what do you think?” I ask Annie Pat, while I am also kicking off my stupid party shoes, which I will never wear again. I have been staggering around like a clown on stilts ever since lunch, which is when my feet started to feel as if they were about to fall off and limp to the emergency room all by themselves.

  I sit down on the rug and peel off my tights, too. But I do that sort of sneakily, because my tights are so dirty and sweaty by now that they do not look very girly. I stretch out my poor little toes, which are almost as red and curly as Annie Pat’s hair.

  My toes are definitely not cute this afternoon.

  Annie Pat looks around. “It’s different from what I expected. It’s not like Cynthia said,” she tells me, shaking her head a little. Her curly red hair jiggles when she does this. She looks kind of disappointed. I wonder why?

  “Well, sometimes I change a few things around. I redecorate,” I say, being a little bit honest.

  Hah—I have really changed a lot around. I took all of my old posters down, and I hid my shoe boxes full of shells, geodes, fossils, feathers, and cocoons. They are all in separate boxes of course, or else the fossils would get mixed up with the geodes, the cocoons would get smashed, and the feathers would get bent. But I’m okay as long as Annie Pat doesn’t search my closet.

  For that reason, I decide not to change out of my party dress. My used-to-be party dress, I mean. No more celebrations for this outfit!

  “What do you want to play?” Annie Pat asks me.

  “Let’s have a snack first,” I tell her. My stomach is gurgling like anything, and that is definitely not very cute. “My mom is making us quesadillas,” I tell Annie Pat.

  “Yum,” Annie Pat says, looking excited for the first time all afternoon.