Her father knelt next to her. “For heaven’s sake,” he said. “Veronica, the snow boots are expensive. If we wait until after the holidays, we can get them on sale.”
Slowly Veronica’s shrieking stopped. Then her sniffling stopped. The onesie and bonnet were replaced with her winter hat and coat.
“Goodness,” said Aunt Martha, who had been watching in fascination. “Was all that fuss because you wanted boots? A big girl like you. I never.”
“Did I just become a baby?” Veronica asked her father.
“I believe you did.”
* * *
The storm that had begun on Friday continued all weekend, and by Sunday afternoon Little Spring Valley was soft and white and sparkling. Despite the snow and the excitement of the holidays, Veronica Cupcake had two more tantrums after her adventure at Aunt Martha’s General Store. Mr. Cupcake, having witnessed that first tantrum, had thought it would put an end to things and that surely his daughter was cured. So he was disappointed to see Veronica squalling on the living floor that evening, rattle waving, after she had been told she couldn’t eat a second candy cane. And he was even more disappointed to find her crawling around the kitchen the next morning, bawling because no one would agree to help her find her socks.
“Dad,” Isobel whispered urgently to him. “Don’t worry. I timed her tantrums and they’re getting shorter.”
That was a relief, but it was an even bigger relief when Veronica, recovered from her tantrum, announced that she was going to go to Missy’s and build a snowman for her in order to cheer her up.
“What a lovely and thoughtful idea!” crowed Mrs. Cupcake. “Why, Missy will just—”
But Veronica was already out the door. A very strange feeling had settled over her after the first tantrum, and she was restless and slightly crabby. She poked her way down the street to the right-side-up upside-down house, scuffing her boots in the snow and thinking about how unfair her entire life was. When she arrived at Missy’s, she found Heavenly Earwig, Austin Forthright, Wareford Montpelier, and Linden Pettigrew already there. And what were they doing? They were rolling snow into large balls, getting ready to assemble a snowman.
Veronica came to a screeching stop at the end of the path to Missy’s porch. “What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
Austin looked up in surprise. “Making a snowman for Missy. To cheer her up.”
“But that was my idea!” wailed Veronica.
“I guess we all had the same idea. Why don’t you make another snowman?” Linden suggested. “Or maybe a snowdog.”
Not one single person in the yard was surprised at what happened next. Veronica scrunched up her face and yelled, “YOU STOLE MY IDEA!” However, they were very surprised at what happened after that.
“Hey, look! She’s— She’s a baby!” exclaimed Linden.
Heavenly stared in such fascination that she lost her balance and fell forward onto the ball that was supposed to become the snowman’s head.
“She’s wearing a pink snowsuit!” exclaimed Austin.
“And booties!” cried Wareford.
“Is that a rattle?” asked Heavenly, getting up off the crushed head.
Veronica stopped shrieking. She hid the rattle behind her back. She looked in dismay at her friends, who were staring down at her.
Perhaps it was because Missy was watching the scene through her front window—who knows?—but not one of the children in the yard said anything further to Veronica, even though it was very tempting to call, “What a baby!” or “Wait here while I get you a bottle!” And Veronica had the presence of mind not to open her mouth, because she knew what would come out of it. Instead, she remained very still until she was standing up again and the snowsuit and rattle had disappeared. Then she said, “Sorry,” and meant it.
Inside, Missy nodded slowly and smiled over at Lester on the couch.
Outside, Veronica and her friends peacefully made an entire snow family for Missy.
That night, as the Cupcakes sat around their Christmas tree looking at the lights and the ornaments, Veronica said thoughtfully, “You know, sometimes I act like a baby. But I’m not a baby. I’m seven!”
“You’re a big girl,” agreed her mother.
Veronica nodded.
“Old enough to have grown-up conversations,” said Isobel. “Like I have with Mom and Dad.”
Veronica nodded again. She said nothing more.
The rest of the Cupcakes felt as though they spent the next week holding their breaths, waiting for another tantrum. But Veronica didn’t have a tantrum on Monday, or Tuesday, or even on Christmas, when they felt sure she would have a tantrum about something.
The tantrums were gone for good. The Cupcakes thanked Missy.
One day, years and years later, when Mrs. Cupcake was cleaning out the kitchen, she found a little box of old stale chocolates at the back of a cupboard. She tossed them out, saying, “Now, where on earth did these come from?”
6
The Chatterbox Cure
IN LITTLE SPRING Valley is a boy named Gabriel who lives on Juniper Street above the Snack Shoppe, which his parents own, and this is what it’s like to have a conversation with him:
“You know what happened at lunch today?” Gabriel might say. “I was sitting with Linden and Frankfort and Louie and let me see, who else? Oh, I guess Almandine and that new girl Putney and maybe the twins, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter to the story, but let me see. Okay, also Egmont and maybe two or three more people were there. That would be eleven or twelve altogether. That sounds about right.”
“You said it isn’t important to the story?”
“No, but, oh, I know! Rusty was there, too. And on my tray was a crumb. It looked like a crumb of cake or maybe a cookie. It could also have been a crumb of bread. I didn’t want to waste it, because did you know that forty percent of all food is wasted every year? Actually, um, I guess that would mean that forty percent of all food is always wasted if that much is wasted every year, so I don’t know why you have to say ‘every year.’ You could just say that forty percent of all food winds up being wasted. So I popped the crumb in my mouth, and guess what. It wasn’t a crumb from a baked good at all. It was a teeny, tiny piece of meat.”
“Ew! And did—”
“I wasn’t expecting meat, so I was, like, really surprised. I said, ‘Ew!’”
“That’s what I just—”
“Plus the meat was cold, so I don’t know how long it had been sitting on the tray. And, um, then I didn’t know what to do next. I didn’t want to be rude and spit it out, since there were about twelve people at the table. But I didn’t want to swallow it, either, since it could have been really old meat. So finally I did spit it out. Um, um, and later? I was thinking about the crumb, and I said to everyone, ‘Remember when I had to spit out the meat? That was disgusting, right?’ And, um, I think three people answered me. And then Linden said, ‘It wasn’t that disgusting.’ But I know it was. I would have thought it was disgusting if somebody spit out food at the table, even if they spit it into a napkin, which I did, by the way.”
Gabriel’s full name was Gabriel Motormouth. He and his parents, Letti and Harley Motormouth, and his brother, Sven, who was a year older than Gabriel, had lived above the Snack Shoppe for five years, ever since they had opened it. Despite their last name, Gabriel was the only one in the family who actually was a motormouth. It would be an exaggeration to say that he talked twenty-four hours a day, because he didn’t talk when he was asleep. Sometimes he talked when you might not expect it, though. For instance, when he was watching a movie or when he was at the dentist. At home, he had perfected the art of talking while brushing his teeth. Through the bathroom door, he would yell, “Ing cashe ayone ish ondering, I sfished to a new bran of toofpashe. It tashe kine of like, um, shpearmit if oo mished orange wif it or maybe, no, more like if oo mished fruit shalad wif it. Shven? Do oo hear me? Do oo wanna try the toofpashe? I’ll leave it here onna counter, a
nd oo can tell me what it tashe like to oo!”
The rest of the Motormouths were exhausted by Gabriel’s chatter. They were befuddled by it, too.
“He certainly seems to like the sound of his own voice,” Letti had remarked more than once.
“Always has,” Harley would reply.
When Gabriel was three, he had announced that he would prefer to be called Gabe. And so all through preschool and kindergarten, his classmates had dutifully called him Gabe. But by the end of first grade, they had decided on a different nickname for him: Gabby. Gabriel didn’t seem to care. “Remember when Rusty wanted to be called Red, so we all called him Red for a while, but then he changed his mind and asked to be called Rusty again? That was funny. I mean, a little weird, but funny, too, and like he just couldn’t make up his mind. Um, yesterday? When my mom was ordering supplies for the restaurant? She phoned this one company and said, ‘Send five cartons of napkins, please. No, send six. No, wait, five.’ She couldn’t make up her mind!”
Sven and the Motormouth parents spent a lot of time trying to get a word in edgewise around Gabriel. It wasn’t easy, since Gabriel was around a lot. He enjoyed sitting in the Snack Shoppe after school and on weekends, talking to the customers. He talked to anyone who entered the restaurant, whether he knew the person or had never seen him or her before. “Hey there, Mr. Thorn! Look at this. Look at the sole of my sneaker. It has a hole in it that’s shaped exactly like a piece of pie. See? Well, I guess it could just be a triangle, but I think it looks like a piece of pie. Um, did you notice that we now offer lemon meringue pie in addition to our usual pies? Did you ever get a hole like this on the bottom of your shoe? This will be the first time I’ll have to get new shoes due to a hole shaped like a serving of pie. In the past I’ve mostly had to get new shoes because I outgrew the old ones. And once I lost my shoes. That was on an airplane. Can you believe it? I put them under the seat in front of me with a lot of other stuff, and at the end of the trip they were gone and I had to exit the aircraft in my sock feet.”
When Sven wasn’t in school, he tried to be wherever Gabby wasn’t. “So,” he would say casually, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking as though he couldn’t care less about his brother’s answer, “are you going to hang out in the restaurant this afternoon?”
“I guess. I think I might do my homework there. I want to see if Mr. Thorn will come in. The last time I sat down at his table, he gave me six pieces of gum. SIX! And I hadn’t even said anything yet.”
At this, Sven mentally clapped the side of his head and thought, Gum! Why didn’t I ever think of giving Gabby a giant wad of chewing gum?
“Also, yesterday,” Gabby continued, “Ms. Porridge came in.” (Ms. Porridge was his teacher.) “You know what she ordered? She ordered a vegetable sandwich, hold the eggplant, and then she said, ‘No, wait. I think I’d like the tofu wrap.’ And then she said, ‘No, wait, let’s go back to the veggies, hold the eggplant.’”
Gabby paused, and Sven hoped this was the end of the story. He was relieved when Gabby drew in a breath and said, “Anyway, it was fun to see Ms. Porridge so I think I’ll go downstairs again.”
“Great!” exclaimed Sven before his brother could re-open his mouth. “Guess I’ll stay up here today.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Just my homework.”
“I might stay up here, too.”
“Or I might go to the restaurant,” said Sven hastily.
In the end Sven went to the Snack Shoppe and Gabby followed him, so then Sven decided to go for a walk. Luckily, Gabby had in fact found Ms. Porridge in the restaurant, and when Sven slipped out the door, Gabby was sitting across from his teacher happily listing all the cats he had ever known.
Sven wandered up and down Juniper Street for a while. Snow was falling, and the sounds of shoppers talking and calling to one another, and the sounds of car horns and truck tires and jingling bells, were muted and seemed far away. Sven breathed in deeply. He left Juniper Street, walked as far as his school, and then turned and started for home.
He had tipped his head back and was catching snowflakes on his tongue, listening to the silence, when he heard a voice cry, “There you are! I was wondering where you had gone.” Gabby was running toward him. “Did you hear that we might get NINE inches of snow? Ms. Porridge said we’ll probably have a snow day tomorrow! Remember last year, when we had twelve snow days?”
“Yup,” said Sven. “We had so many that—”
“Twelve. I think that was an all-time record. I didn’t like having to go to school for extra days at the end of the year, but what can you do? If we have a snow day tomorrow, I’m going to sleep late. Or wait, no, maybe I’ll get up extra early so I can make full use of the day. I wonder when we’ll hear for sure that school is closed. I hope it’s tonight so then we can fall asleep already knowing the good news.…”
Sven was wearing a ski cap. Now he took it off, slipped a pair of earmuffs out of his pocket, put them on, and tugged the cap back on over them. “Cold,” he said, even though Gabby wasn’t listening to him.
Sven and his parents always kept earmuffs handy. “They don’t drown out the sound of Gabby’s voice as well as cotton balls do,” Letti Motormouth had once remarked, “but they’re more comfortable.”
“Better than nothing,” her husband had said.
* * *
The snow day was announced that evening just as the Motormouth parents were closing up the Snack Shoppe. Gabby came flying downstairs with the news. “It’s closed! It’s closed! School is closed tomorrow.”
Harley shut his eyes briefly. “You’ll probably want to play outdoors a lot, then. Snowmen and sledding and all.”
“Or indoors! Or I could help out here!”
“I expect things will be pretty slow tomorrow,” remarked his mother. Then she added, “Maybe you could stay upstairs and do something quiet. You know, take advantage of your unexpected vacation to just, oh, draw or make Christmas presents for your grandparents.”
“Good idea,” said Harley.
“What should I make for them? Remember last year, when I made picture frames? The macaroni kind of fell off, but I think they liked the frames anyway. Remember when Beaufort Crumpet made Christmas ornaments out of salt dough and his dog, Dottie, ate two of the ornaments and puked in the kitchen? Maybe I’ll make ornaments for Nannie and Grandma, and Popsicle-stick boxes for Poppy and Granddad. We won’t have to worry about the salt dough, since we don’t have a dog.” Gabby hurried back upstairs, talking all the while, even though he had to shout over his shoulder to be sure his parents could hear him.
The snow day came and went. Gabby made two ornaments and two boxes. The next morning the sun was shining. The plows had come during the night to clear the streets and had piled up small mountains of snow all over Little Spring Valley.
“Boy, those piles will be good for sledding,” said Gabby. “You know, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh! Flying along like racing cars. I hope I get a racing car for Christmas. Not a real one, of course, but a remote control one that I can zoom around the house in winter and around the playground in summer. I asked my parents fourteen times for a racing car so far. I might mention it again tonight.”
Gabby was walking to school with Louie Grubbermitts. Sven was wearing his earmuffs and walking twenty feet ahead of them.
“If you get a racing car,” said Louie, “can—”
“Last year I asked for Monopoly and I got Sorry! and Monopoly. Oh, um, and my father got six pairs of socks. Six socks, six socks. That’s kind of a tongue twister. Also, it kind of sounds like ‘ticktock.’”
Louie stopped listening. Sven picked up his pace and jogged the rest of the way to school. He was thinking that it was about time he talked with his parents.
* * *
Christmas came and went. Gabby got a racing car, and Sven got the bubble-gum-making kit he had asked for at the last minute. Vacation flew by, and finally it was New Year’s Eve. Late in the day Gabby was
deeply involved in creating an obstacle course for his car. He talked to himself the entire time. “Under the bed and around the chair, down the hallway and back. I’ll make a bridge here out of, um, Legos. Oh, hi, Sven. Want to help me with—”
“Here, have some gum!” Sven handed his brother a large wad of homemade bubble gum and raced downstairs to the restaurant. No customers were there. His parents were sitting at one of the tables, sipping coffee and not talking. They looked up warily when Sven entered.
“Where’s your brother?” asked Letti.
“Upstairs. And I just gave him gum. He can’t talk.” Letti and Harley breathed sighs of relief and went back to their coffee. “But I need to talk to you,” said Sven.
“Anything wrong?” asked his father.
“Well, it’s just that I never get to talk to you.” His parents nodded sadly. “I didn’t get to tell you what I did on the snow day. I didn’t tell you that Mr. Mandible said I should be taking private art lessons.”
“Oh!” said Harley.
“That’s wonderful,” said Letti.
“I didn’t tell you about my idea for a new sandwich to put on the menu,” Sven went on. “And do you know why?”
Harley nodded again. “Yes.”
“We don’t even get to talk to each other,” Letti added, turning to her husband.
“Can’t you make Gabby stop talking?” asked Sven.
“How?” said his father.
“We’ve tried Quiet Hour and the no-talking game and even paying him not to talk,” said Letti.
“And gum,” added Sven glumly.
“Nothing works for long,” said Harley.
The three Motormouths sighed in unison.
At last Letti said, “Well, let’s talk now. It’s the perfect opportunity.”
So Sven and his parents had a long, peaceful talk. But they still had no idea what to do about Gabby.
* * *
Three days later vacation ended and school started again.
Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Sticky-Fingers Cure Page 7
