Not-So-Weird Emma

by Sally Warner

  “Oh, someone has been calling me really mean names, that’s all,” Cynthia says, a wobble in her voice. “For no reason,” she adds, sniffing.

  “No reason,” Fiona says, like someone closing the same door twice.

  “Huh,” Annie Pat says, and she pulls out a sandwich bag and squints at it suspiciously Hey, she seems to be saying, maybe this sandwich bag started the whole thing!

  “And I’m going to find out who started calling me Bossy Pants if it takes me the rest of my life,” Cynthia announces, and she nips off a corner of her sandwich like the fiercest snapping turtle in the world—worse than the one I saw on this show on PBS.

  I even used to have a picture of a snapping turtle up in my room.

  Once upon a time.

  “She’ll find out if it takes her the rest of her life,” Fiona echoes, nodding sharply. Finally, Fiona has found something to say—even if Cynthia said it first. “Bossy Pants,” Fiona says scornfully.

  Annie Pat says, “Gulp,” just the way they do in cartoons. And she hasn’t even started eating her lunch yet.

  “You don’t have to keep repeating that stinky name,” Cynthia tells Fiona.

  “I only meant that it’s awful,” Fiona says, almost fainting on the bench because of Cynthia’s scolding.

  “It’s not awful, it’s dumb,” Cynthia corrects her. Snap, snap! “It’s dumb, and it’s mean, and it’s just plain wrong. Do you think I’m bossy?” she asks Annie Pat, whipping her head around so fast that her shiny hair swings like a curtain.

  “Mmph,” Annie Pat says, panic in her eyes.

  “Well, what about you, Emma?” Cynthia says, turning to face me. She is angry now. She is practically sending out sparks! “Do you think I’m a bossy pants?” she asks me.

  I take a deep breath, then let it out with a whooshy noise. “Yeah, I do, kind of,” I say.

  Hearing my words, Cynthia is so surprised that she drops her peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich on the ground. Then her eyes get skinny and mean, and she says, “It was you, wasn’t it? It was you.”

  It’s not a question the second time she says it.

  9

  So Busted

  “I’m telling on you, Emma,” Cynthia says to me. “I’m telling, and you are going to be in a lot of trouble. You are so busted.”

  “Go ahead and tell,” I say back. But my heart is pounding, thunka-thunka-thunk. I don’t look at Annie Pat even for a second. Why get her in trouble, too?

  Cynthia hooks her hair back over her ears with both hands. “You did it just to be mean,” she says. “For no reason!”

  “Yeah, for no reason,” Fiona echoes in her shadow voice.

  “Because I am not bossy,” Cynthia informs me. Her hands are on her hips now, and she looks like the Queen of Bossy to me.

  “Oh, let’s not get carried away, Cynthia,” I say, which is actually something my mom says to me fairly often. Only she calls me Emma, not Cynthia, of course. “You try to make everyone do what you want them to, don’t you? And that’s what bossy is,” I tell her. “So I did too have a reason.”

  Cynthia is outraged. “I do not make people do what I want,” she says. “How would I do that?”

  “By making fun of them, for one thing,” I say. “Like the way you called me weird in front of everyone yesterday, just because I was starting to make friends with Annie Pat, and it wasn’t your idea. You were trying to boss us then, weren’t you?”

  Annie Pat moans a little. I can tell that she does not want to be in the middle of this fight. She is trying to blend into the chain-link fence, and I don’t blame her.

  “Who cares what you do with your new best friend?” Cynthia asks me. “Anyway, you are weird. Just look at you,” Cynthia says to me. “You’re all bundled up in sweaters on the hottest day of the year.”

  “Yeah,” Fiona says, trying to come up with a sneer. “Sweaters.”

  “It’s just one sweater, and I’m only wearing it because it was cold when I got dressed this morning,” I lie.

  How can I tell Cynthia that something told me I needed to wear my second-best outfit today, and that just happened to be this skirt and sweater? After what she said about my bedroom, I wanted to make sure I really, really looked like a girl.

  And a skirt definitely helps make that happen.

  Anyway, today was supposed to be the special day that Annie Pat and I taught Cynthia a lesson about calling people names …

  … by calling her a name.

  So I had to get dressed up.

  But how can I tell Cynthia that I was sorry about calling her “Bossy Pants” almost as soon as I had done it?

  I can’t, that’s all. It is too hard to explain.

  Even I don’t understand it.

  Cynthia sniffs. “You are so busted,” she repeats. Then she looks down at her sandwich, which is still lying on the ground, of course. Because sandwiches can’t just walk away, no matter how much they might want to.

  I pick it up for Cynthia and try to brush it off. “Here,” I say, holding it out. “I think it’s still good.”

  “My delicious sandwich is wrecked, and it’s all your fault,” Cynthia says, knocking the gritty sandwich out of my hand. “So now I’m going to starve.”

  Oh, sure. Starve.

  Cynthia should get an award for Best Actress on a Playground, or something.

  “I’ll share with you, Cynthia,” Fiona tells her, kissing up like crazy. She holds out what is left of her baloney sandwich.

  Fiona is starting to get on my nerves. I think I liked her better when, she was invisible.

  “Thanks, but no thanks,” Cynthia says, eyeing the pink lip of baloney that is hanging out of Fiona’s sandwich. “Come on, Fiona—let’s go find Ms. Sanchez so we can tell on Emma.”

  And off they march: Hup-two-three-four.

  I look at Annie Pat, and Annie Pat looks at me. “Yow,” Annie Pat says. Her face is so white now that she really does look a little like a clown. The sad kind, though.

  “Yeah, yow,” I agree. My heart has stopped thunking, but I am still sweating. It’s probably because of the sweater, though.

  We finish eating our lunches as slowly as possible and then zigzag back to class just before the bell rings. Ms. Sanchez is busy writing something in a notebook. Her engagement ring twinkles as her hand moves across the page.

  Cynthia is already sitting at her desk with her hands folded and her chin up in that stubborn, Told-you-so! way she has.

  Uh-oh.

  Fiona shoots me a look that says’, Serves you right.

  I give her a look that says, Shut up, Fiona Baloney. But I don’t say it out loud.

  Most of the other kids look sleepy after stuffing themselves full of lunch on such a hot day. But then, our class is usually drowsy after lunch, I have noticed. Ms. Sanchez almost has to blow a police whistle to get our attention.

  Luckily, she has one—and she knows how to use it.

  Jared and EllRay are managing to shove each other around, in spite of being inside the classroom. “Move it,” Jared mutters, whomping EllRay with his shoulder. “Get out of my face.”

  I can’t tell whether they are joking or not. The kids standing next to them cringe out of the way. They don’t care if it’s a joke.

  Even if someone is laughing when they sock you, it still hurts, doesn’t it?

  “Make me move; Hulk,” EllRay bellows. You would be surprised at how loud his voice is for such a little guy. He rams Jared with his head as if Jared were a big old soccer ball.

  Which he isn’t, of course.

  Jared says, “Oof!” and then he says, “Don’t call me names, Shrinky.”

  Shrinky! That’s an even better name for EllRay than “Shrimpy” is, I think.

  But I guess Ms. Sanchez doesn’t think so, because—she slams her notebook shut, flings down her golden ballpoint pen, and jumps to her feet. “I have had just about enough,” she announces.

  And the whole world stops.

  10

 
You Will Not Believe This

  Everyone is frozen, just like in a game of Statues.

  “Take - your - seats,” Ms. Sanchez says. Her voice sounds as though it is made out of ice cubes, her words are so cold and hard.

  All the kids who are still standing fling themselves into their seats, and there is a little murmur-murmur-murmur of concern and excitement.

  “Quiet,” Ms. Sanchez commands us, raising one hand, and we are quiet. Just like that.

  And then Corey Robinson, who is sitting next to me, makes the teensiest peeping noise you have ever heard. In fact, I am probably the only one who can hear it. I bite my lips together so I don’t giggle in that horrible way that happens sometimes exactly when you don’t mean it to.

  “Thanks, a lot, Jared,” somebody mutters, because it is natural for our class to blame Jared when something goes wrong. It’s kind of a habit.

  “Quiet,” Ms. Sanchez says again, slapping her desk with her engagement hand this time.

  Ow. That must have hurt, I think. She must really be mad.

  Ms. Sanchez looks down at her desk as if she’s surprised that it is still there. Then she sweeps her look across the room as if it is a flashlight that is searching for bad guys—but it shines on everyone in the class.

  “I have had just - about - enough,” she repeats. “And it’s going to stop - right - now.” She is snapping out each word.

  I’m not sure what she has had just about enough of, but I am not about to ask any questions. And anyway, I think we are all about to find out.

  So I sit here and wait.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you people,” Ms. Sanchez says, “calling each other names the way you’ve been doing lately.”

  Oh.

  And she called us “you people.” Frowning heads swivel to look at Jared and EllRay, who were the most recent name-callers.

  “It’s not just them,” Ms. Sanchez tells us. “It’s not just Hulk and Shrinky, over there. Think about it,” she says. “Bossy Pants? Porky? Bozo? Skinny Bones? Freckle Face? Cynthia-in-Wonderland? Do those mean names ring any bells?”

  I can feel myself blush. Boy, she doesn’t miss much.

  I’m just glad she doesn’t know about “Jar-Head” and “Shrimpy” and “Fiona Baloney.”

  I know who most of those names are, all right. But who is Porky, and who is Skinny Bones? I can’t help but wonder.

  “You can call anyone an unkind name,” Ms. Sanchez is saying. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”

  I think that breathing is easier, and blinking, and eating chocolate cake is definitely easier, but I see what she’s getting at.

  “Calling names is also boring,” Ms. Sanchez informs us, “and it’s lazy, and just plain mean. So class, do you want to just sit around making up hurtful names for each other all year long?” Ms. Sanchez asks us.

  Everyone kind of peeks around, afraid that someone is going to be dumb enough to raise a hand to answer that question. Will Heather say, “Oh, oh!” the way she usually does, and wave her arm around so she will be the number-one person Ms. Sanchez calls on?

  No. Even Heather has figured out that Ms. Sanchez is not really waiting for an answer, we are all relieved to see.

  “Because if you are going to be busy calling each other names, and making mischief, then we certainly won’t have time for any special treats,” Ms. Sanchez continues.

  Oh no, we are all thinking at once.

  You can almost hear our voices.

  Ms. Sanchez waits, for the count of three. One - two - three.

  And then she says, “Well? Does anyone have anything they’d like to say to me, and to the class?”

  And you will not believe this, but I can feel myself standing up.

  Me, Emma McGraw.

  The second-shortest kid in the third grade.

  The newest kid in the third grade.

  Every bone in my body is quaking, but I guess they all still work, because I am finally—after what feels like about a year—on my feet. “I have something to say,” I croak to Ms. Sanchez.

  I can hear Corey make his peeping noise again. Obviously, he can’t stand even sitting next to a person who is in so much trouble.

  “Yes, Emma?” Ms. Sanchez says. She looks very, very serious.

  “I’m sorry that I called Cynthia ‘Bossy Pants,’” I say. “And also, I’m sorry I called her ‘Cynthia-in-Wonderland’ yesterday,” I add. Then I sit down, right before I fall down.

  There is a roaring sound in my ears, but I can tell that someone else has stood up, too. It’s EllRay Jakes! “I’m sorry I called Jared a hulk,” he says.

  Even Jared is standing up. “And I guess I’m sorry I called you ‘Shrinky,’” he tells EllRay.

  “And I’m sorry I called Emma weird,” someone is saying. “She isn’t, not really. Not so weird, anyway.”

  It’s Cynthia.

  My friend, Cynthia!

  I duck my head as if I’m saying, Thanks. That’s okay.

  “I called Cynthia ‘Bossy Pants,’ too,” Annie Pat says, standing up to confess. “But I didn’t really mean it. I like her.”

  There is a little silence in the room. “Anyone else?” Ms. Sanchez asks us.

  We all peek around again.

  “Well, I guess that will have to do for now,” our teacher says. “Get out your workbooks, please.”

  Our workbooks? But what about our treat tomorrow? we are all shrieking, only without making any noise. We look at each other, our eyes wide.

  But Ms. Sanchez ignores our panicky expressions and our one silent question. “Page forty-two,” is all she says.

  11

  The Dreaded Phone Tree

  Later on, just after lunch, one kid finally dares to ask Ms. Sanchez about our treat. It’s Heather. She raises her hand, but she doesn’t say, “Oh, oh.”

  Instead, she gets slowly to her feet and says, “Um, should we still wear our play clothes to school tomorrow?”

  “That’s always a good idea, Heather,” Ms. Sanchez says, not looking very interested in the question. She isn’t giving anything away.

  But Heather is braver than I thought. She doesn’t sit down. Instead, she asks another question. “Well, what about our parents? Should they still come to school tomorrow afternoon with their cameras?”

  Wow, Heather is so smart! Ms. Sanchez will have to answer that question, because it involves parents. And parents count more than kids—at least with other adults.

  It’s as if they’re all in the same secret club.

  “Mmm, I’ll have to think about that,” Ms. Sanchez says. “But don’t worry. I’ll let all the parents know tonight what’s going on—everything that’s been going on—through the phone tree.”

  Uh-oh. The dreaded phone tree.

  See, we have one Room Mother, who is Mrs. Jakes. That’s EllRay’s mom. And if something important happens, Ms. Sanchez is supposed to call her on the phone, and then Mrs. Jakes is to call two other parents. Then those two parents call two more parents each. No parent will have to make more than two phone calls, but pretty soon everyone knows the important news, whatever it is.

  And that is the phone tree, although nothing up to now has been important enough to use it.

  (I still don’t know why they call it a tree, though.)

  All the kids in class are extremely worried to hear that Ms. Sanchez will be using the phone tree, of course—because that means our parents will know that something went wrong at school today.

  In my opinion, that is our own private business.

  In my opinion, using the phone tree for something like this is just plain tattling.

  At home tonight, the phone rings only once. I think about grabbing it and yelling, “Nobody home!” and then hanging up, but Mom gets there first.

  Afterward, my mother doesn’t say one word to me about that phone call. And her face looks exactly the same way it always does when she tucks me in.

  I give her an extra hug, though. Just because
.

  It is finally Friday morning, and I am wearing my pinkest T-shirt and my whitest shorts, just the way I planned. And they’re a perfect mix of cute and comfortable, which I think will be my clothes policy from now on—unless I get an outfit that is extremely cute but not comfortable, in which case I will probably wear it anyway.

  At least for short periods of time.

  I am also wearing flowery Band-Aids on my knees. And I have on my pure white socks, and sneakers that still feel a little bit wet and heavy and cold from being washed last night. But they are clean, at least.

  I look like a girl, all right. Not weird. And I even look fairly cute, although I don’t know if we are going to have our special treat today or not.

  When Ms. Sanchez takes attendance, we all sit up straight and say “Here,” in nice loud voices, except for EllRay, who says “Present,” just to be fancy. Everybody gives him a dirty look. But Ms. Sanchez doesn’t say anything. She just continues to take roll.

  If our class was on TV this morning, you could tune in and see a bunch of perfect kids in a perfect third-grade class.

  Well, we aren’t any better at math than we usually are when we try to do complicated long-number subtraction standing up at the board. But we are polite, and we talk one at a time, and we don’t trespass on our neighbors’ desks, and we don’t keep asking to sharpen our pencils or to go to the bathroom.

  We are trying very, very hard to be good.

  Finally, it’s nutrition break. “Did your mom say anything to you about this afternoon?” Cynthia asks me. She gives me a sweet, shy smile, which is the closest Cynthia Harbison is ever going to get to giving anyone an apology. She’s just not built for backing down.

  But that’s okay. I like her anyway.

  Cynthia has obviously decided to put our fight behind us, which is probably where it belongs. Putting bad things behind her without saying she’s sorry is something Cynthia is known for doing—after she has said every hurtful thing that could possibly pop into her head, of course. I find it a little more difficult than she does to “forgive and forget,” as my mom sometimes puts it.