Lunch Will Never Be the Same!

by Veera Hiranandani

  “You know what,” Dad said after he finally stopped chewing. “I think this meal might need a little pizza to go with it.” And he got the phone very fast to call the pizza place.

  We all stopped eating the stew and stuck to the salad and bread. Then we ate the pizza when it came and had ice cream with some Oreos broken on top for dessert.

  “This is the best dinner I’ve ever had! We never have pizza or Oreos,” Camille said. They never have pizza or Oreos? I think her family really must be crazy.

  After a little while, Mrs. Durand came and took Camille home.

  “Bye,” I said, biting my lip again.

  At bedtime, Mom asked why I still seemed upset. I didn’t even ask to have my usual tickle fight with her.

  “I wanted to show Camille we could make fancy food, too, not bad dirt stew and already-made pizza,” I said.

  “Oh, Phoebe. The grass is always greener. She’ll ask you over for some fancy French food, I’m sure. And she liked having pizza here because it’s different for her. That’s what’s interesting about friendship, sharing our differences.”

  “But what if I don’t want her to share my differences and I just want to share hers?” Mom shook her head and gave me a big warm hug, which made me feel a little better.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The following day I sat next to Camille during lunch. Mom let me pack my own food to make up for the bad hamburger bourguignon. This is what I made:

  1. A sandwich with creamy cheese from a goat on sour bread that Mom bought. I put on some sliced cucumbers, too.

  2. A hard-boiled egg

  3. A container of raspberries with a little sprinkle of powdery sugar

  Pretty cool, huh? Sage sat at another lunch table and looked at comics with Will, which was strange because we always sat together for lunch. Camille said my lunch looked yummy. She brought a chickpea salad with red peppers and some green thing in it she called cilantro, but I think she might have been making up that part because I’ve never heard of anything called cilantro in my life. She held up a forkful for me to taste. It was sort of lemony and sparkly. She also had a little cake made out of oranges and almonds that she said she couldn’t share because she had a cold.

  “You didn’t have a cold a minute ago,” I said.

  “Well, I, um, forgot,” she said with a funny look on her face.

  I think the truth was she just didn’t want to give me a bite of her dessert, but I probably wouldn’t want to share, either, if I had a pretty little orange-almond cake all to myself. She also didn’t ask me over to her house.

  Later on the playground, while Sage and I hung upside down on the monkey bars, which is how we have our best talks, I asked, “Why didn’t you sit with me at lunch?”

  He shrugged, which is hard to do when you’re hanging upside down.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “No,” he said, and got off the monkey bars. I got off with him and we sat down on our favorite rock and watched the ants climb around in the cracks.

  “Do you like Camille more than me?” he asked.

  “Of course not,” I said to him. “I just want to go over to her house for dinner.”

  He shrugged again, but I wished he’d say some words. Words are much easier to figure out than shrugs. I got a sinky feeling in my stomach and it wasn’t because I was hungry.

  Camille came over wearing a long dandelion necklace.

  “Um, do you guys want to make fairy houses with me?” she asked, her eyes still looking at her feet.

  “Oh, I’ve never made them before,” I said. I didn’t really believe in fairies, but it sounded like fun.

  “Wanna try, Sage?” I said, looking over my shoulder. Sage was gone. He had gone back to the monkey bars with Will, hanging upside down. My stomach had that sinky feeling all over again.

  It turned out that making a fairy house was even more exciting than I thought. First you get a bunch of sticks, dig them into the dirt, and lean them against each other for the house part. Then you put more sticks and leaves on the top for a roof, and rocks around the whole thing. The best part, though, is finding decorations for it. We worked and worked and made a really nice one covered with dandelions and a feather and two bottle caps that I found. It’s too bad no one will ever use it since there are no fairies. I tried to tell this to Camille, but she wouldn’t believe me, no way, no how.

  After school, Sage was quiet when we walked home. He and I live next door to each other, just down the street from the school. Most days we play at each other’s houses, but today he just said bye and ran off to his house.

  I walked in the door with big stompy steps and threw my backpack on the floor so it would make my mom come out of her office.

  She came out looking a little tired. “Hi, Pheebs. How was school?” she asked. “Want a snack?”

  “Okay,” I said. Mom says she doesn’t like to cook, she likes to “assemble.” I’m not sure what that means, but she’s an extra-amazing snack-maker.

  “The usual?” she asked, and I nodded. This is how she made my snack:

  1. First she took out a rice cake and spread it very gently with peanut butter.

  2. Then she took the jelly that we keep in a squirt bottle (because everyone knows that’s the best way to keep jelly) and squirted a heart shape on the peanut butter.

  3. Then she put the fancy heart rice cake on a plate and placed sliced bananas perfectly around it in a circle.

  Pretty cool, huh? Even Molly still likes jelly hearts on her rice cakes, but I’m not allowed to tell anyone that.

  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked. “You look a little down.”

  I started to tell my mom everything about Sage and Camille and how Sage walked away from me on the playground and shrugged a whole bunch, but then the peanut butter got stuck on the roof of my mouth, which somehow made a piece of rice cake fly right out of my mouth and land in Mom’s lap.

  “Slow down,” Mom said as she laughed and handed me a napkin. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  After I had a big gulp of milk, I said, “Sage thinks I like Camille more than I like him.”

  “What do you think?” Mom asked.

  “Sage is my bestest friend in the entire universe. I don’t even really know Camille. Can you believe she still believes in fairies?”

  Just then, the phone rang. Mom answered.

  “Oh, hi, Camille,” she said loudly. Before she could say anything else, I took the phone.

  “Hi, Camille!” I kind of yelled, and more rice cake went flying out of my mouth.

  Mom was standing with her hands on her hips because I grabbed the phone and she’s always telling me not to be so grabby, but I had to ignore her because I had a very important phone call.

  “Hi, Phoebe,” she said very French-like. “Would you like to come to dinner this Friday night at my house?”

  “Yes, I’d love to come for dinner!” I said, jumping up and down.

  “Do you have to ask your mom?” she said.

  “Oh, she’s right here. She’s nodding yes,” I said, even though Mom was not nodding. She was staring at me with a not-so-happy face.

  “Okay, can you come at six thirty? We eat around seven,” she said.

  I said yes and we hung up. I put my hand up to high-five Mom. “My plan worked!” I said. “I got invited to dinner at Camille’s house this Friday.”

  She high-fived me, but not with her usual excitement.

  “What am I going to do with you, Phoebe?” she sighed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I had a super idea to make everything fair and better between me, Sage, and Camille. I decided to make a lunch schedule. This was it:

  MONDAY Sit with Sage and not with Camille.

  TUESDAY Sit with Camille and not with Sage.

  WEDNESDAY Sit with both S
age and Camille.

  THURSDAY Have Camille and Sage sit together not with me.

  FRIDAY Free choice

  I handed them each a schedule on Monday morning. I also put plenty of sparkly purple star stickers on each copy.

  Sage looked at it and folded it up real tight in a little square and put it in his pocket. Then he said, “Phoebe, maybe it’s just easier if I don’t sit with you at lunch anymore,” and walked away. So he completely missed the whole point and now that sinky feeling was not just in my stomach, but everywhere in my whole body.

  Camille read the list and handed it back to me.

  “You can keep it.”

  “But it’s for you!” I said, handing it back to her.

  “Why can’t all of us sit together every day?” she asked in her calm, French way.

  I threw my hands up in the air and went over to sit on the top of the slide by myself. How was I going to get through to these people? I was trying to be fair. But instead they ignored me and this is what happened:

  MONDAY Sage sat with Will, and Camille sat at the other end of the table with another girl, named Anna, who only ever eats bread.

  TUESDAY The same.

  WEDNESDAY I sat next to Sage and Will, but they ignored me.

  THURSDAY I sat with Camille, but she didn’t offer me a taste of her yummy-smelling chickeny, vegetably thing.

  FRIDAY I gave up and sat near Kimberly Solomon, who always brings candy for lunch. She gave me three Skittles, so that’s something.

  Friday came and it was time to go to Camille’s house for dinner, but suddenly I didn’t want to.

  “I think Camille might be ruining my whole life,” I said when my mom drove me to Camille’s house, which is actually not a house but an apartment in town.

  “What happened? What did she do?” Mom said, and pulled over.

  I rubbed my face, which sometimes helps me think and also makes sure no tears come out if I don’t want them to.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Except that she didn’t listen to my perfectly fair lunch plan and neither did Sage. Now nobody likes me anymore and none of this would have happened if Camille hadn’t moved here with her tiny raspberry tart pies and cilantro!”

  My mom just looked at me and blinked and then blinked again. “Cilantro?” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, wiping a tear away. “I don’t even know if that’s its real name.”

  “Phoebe, I don’t think cilantro is the problem,” Mom said in a slow voice that means she’s about to explain something tricky to me.

  “Well, what is it, then?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “It’s okay if you and Sage have other friends.”

  “I know. Sage is not my only friend,” I said. I had other friends, millions of them, just not like Sage, who knows everything about me and I know everything about him and we don’t even have to talk if we don’t feel like it. But now I wondered if he was even my friend anymore.

  “I know. But maybe it’s hard for Sage to see you wanting to spend time with Camille.”

  “Well, it’s just the food.”

  “Is it? Because you girls seemed to be having a lot of fun in your room when she came over.”

  “I do like her a little, even though she might be ruining everything,” I said.

  “Nobody’s ruining anything. Have you talked to Sage?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Maybe he just needs a little reminder about how much you care.”

  Maybe.

  Once I calmed down, I went to Camille’s apartment. It wasn’t as French as I thought it was going to be. There were no crystal goblets or gold plates anywhere. Camille’s room did have a pink fluffy rug in it, which might be kind of French, and I got to see her fairy collection. She and her mom make them together out of shiny yarn and bits of floaty material and wire. They hang all over her windows, and Camille has a name for every single one.

  I couldn’t help believing in fairies for just a few minutes. After we played with them, we were called to dinner. The table was very restauranty-looking with real cloth napkins and candles, but the plates were just plain white, not gold. This was the menu:

  1. Creamy, buttery squash soup. Delish!

  2. Crunchy string beans

  3. Crispy roasted potatoes

  4. Last but not least, a duck on a plate!

  Camille’s mom brought it out on a big platter. I thought maybe it was chicken, but it didn’t look exactly like chicken or smell exactly like chicken.

  “Yum,” Camille said. “Roast duck!”

  I froze. I didn’t know if I was ready to eat a duck.

  Mrs. Durand served us all a piece and I sat there staring at what looked like a small chicken drumstick. It smelled good, but I kept hearing quacks in my head.

  “Is this the same kind of duck that’s in the park? You know, the kind with the green heads?” I asked. Everyone stopped eating. Mr. Durand leaned back in his chair and laughed. Mrs. Durand raised an eyebrow at him.

  Mr. Durand stopped laughing. “Those are called mallards,” he said, smiling at me. “This is a different kind of duck. But you can eat mallards, too.”

  “Oh,” I said, not sure if I felt better or worse.

  Mr. Durand rubbed his hands together. “A dinner fit for a king!” he announced, and took a bite of duck. Everyone started eating again. I stuck with my string beans and potatoes until everything was gone except the drumstick.

  “Phoebe, my dear,” Mrs. Durand said, sounding extra French. “We have a rule in our house that everyone must try one bite of something new, and if you don’t like it, then at least you tried. Do you have a rule like that?”

  “No,” I answered. “We just have to eat enough vegetables to get dessert.”

  “Well, you could pretend the duck is a vegetable, because we do have a lovely dessert planned,” Mr. Durand said.

  “Okay, let me think about it and get back to you,” I said, which is what my mom says on the phone a lot.

  They went on eating and I poked at my duck with my fork. There were three reasons to eat it:

  1. I would definitely get dessert.

  2. I could tell Sage I ate a duck and he would be grossed out. He really likes being grossed out, so then maybe he would like me again.

  3. It might taste good. Camille’s food always does.

  There were also three reasons not to eat it:

  1. Because I might hear quacks in my head forever.

  2. I think I’ll get dessert anyway, since Camille’s mom is not my mom.

  3. It might taste bad.

  Suddenly Camille spoke in her loudest voice ever and made me jump in my seat. “Phoebe, just taste it. It’s even better than chicken!”

  I looked at Camille, surprised. She just smiled and took another bite. I cut off a little piece, closed my eyes, put it into my mouth, and chewed fast. It tasted a little like chicken, but kind of meatier and kind of sweet. I still felt bad for the duck, though.

  “C’est bon?” Mrs. Durand asked.

  I nodded even though I had no idea what she was saying to me and took another bite.

  Dessert was the best part. Mr. Durand whipped cream right there in front of us instead of spraying it out of a can. I clapped when it was over. We had it on top of the seven-layer lemon cake that he made. I would have eaten twelve ducks for that.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On Monday, I marched right into the cafeteria and sat down next to Sage and Will, and then Camille automatically sat down next to me. Everything was going along nicely until Camille unwrapped her lunch, which was:

  1. A leftover piece of duck

  2. Cheese that was a little smelly, and bread

  3. Green beans

  4. Lemon cake

  I decided not to bug
her for tastes since I had already tried all that stuff at her house. I elbowed Sage.

  “Look, Sage,” I said.

  “What?” he asked, looking at Camille’s lunch.

  “It’s duck. We ate a duck when I went over to Camille’s house for dinner. Pretty cool, huh?”

  Then Sage made his gross face. Which is what I wanted, I guess, but Camille looked at him and started to get red.

  “That’s disgusting,” he said, right at Camille. “Why aren’t your lunches ever normal?”

  She started to cry and ran right out of the cafeteria.

  “I can’t be your friend if you act like that!” I said, crossing my arms really tight around me. I had never seen Sage act so mean.

  “Well, all you care about is that weird girl and her smelly food, anyway.”

  This time I got up and dumped my stupid cold piece of pizza in the garbage. I didn’t care if I’d be hungry later. I couldn’t eat another bite.

  I went into the bathroom and heard sniffling from a stall. I knew it was Camille because the crying sounded French.

  “Camille, don’t worry about Sage,” I called to her. “I think he’s just going crazy.”

  The sniffling stopped. The stall door opened and she came out, wiping her tears. “I beg my parents every day to let me buy lunch in the cafeteria, and they say they would move back to France this instant before they’d ever let me eat that food.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I said, although sometimes it was. “But why would you want to eat cafeteria food if you could have all that nice food wrapped up in pretty napkins for you? I’d trade places with you in a second.”

  “No you wouldn’t. Everyone thinks I’m weird.”

  I thought about this. “What’s so bad about being weird? I’ve been a little bit weird my whole entire life, and Sage might not say it, but trust me, he’s a total weirdo.”

  Camille laughed a little, but then she got sad again. “He hates me,” she said.

  “No he doesn’t. He hates me,” I said, and then I felt those tears coming and rubbed and rubbed until they were gone.