Clementine, Friend of the Week

by Sara Pennypacker

  “Never mind,” said my mom. “Clearly that’s a very wise rule Mr. D’Matz has about only letting kids write in those booklets. And I can’t wait to read yours on Friday. I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.”

  “Enjoy it? You’re going to love it!” I promised her. “In fact, you’re probably going to want to build a whole shelf, right next to the fireplace, to keep it on!”

  When my mom came in to say good night, she remembered there was a bad part to my day. “Want to tell me about that now?”

  I shrugged and petted Moisturizer under the covers. “Margaret’s mad at me. Really mad. And I don’t know why.”

  “No idea?”

  “Nope. She just went crazy. First at Mitchell, then at me.”

  “Well, maybe she’s just having a bad day. But I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You always do.”

  “You think so?”

  “Sure. You two have been friends since the day Margaret moved in here.”

  “I thought we hated each other in the beginning. Remember? You told me Margaret was always trying to dress me up in her costumes and I hated that.”

  Mom nodded. “You’d run screaming when you saw her. You were about three. Then finally you’d let her stick a tutu on you, or a princess cloak, and then you’d go find a mud puddle to sit in.” Mom laughed. “Yep, you were friends right from the beginning. So you’ll work it out. That’s what friends do.”

  Then she said good night and turned out the light.

  In the darkness I held Moisturizer tight and thought about the bad news about that: Margaret and I weren’t friends anymore.

  Giving people compliments turned out to be a lot harder than Margaret had made it sound.

  It started off okay on the bus ride Tuesday morning.

  “That’s a huge bruise on your arm! Great colors!” I said to Willy. This compliment made his twin sister Lilly smile too, because she had given him the bruise.

  Then I moved over to where Joe was sitting. “You look a little taller today,” I told him. “Maybe it’s starting.”

  Joe is the shortest kid in our class. He’s always on the lookout for his big growth spurt, so this compliment should have made him happy. Instead, he looked puzzled for a minute and then hitched himself up and pulled out a lunch bag. Squashed. “Oh, rats,” he said. “I hope it’s not tuna.”

  And then, because nobody else from my class rides my bus, for the whole rest of the way I had nothing to do except ignore how Margaret was ignoring me ignoring her.

  Things got harder in school. First my teacher said, “Clementine, as Friend of the Week, would you please lead us in the Pledge?” All I could think to do, standing under the flag, was give people the thumbs-up sign when they got the hard words, like “indivisible,” right.

  Next thing, it was my job to collect the lunch money and bring it down to the cafeteria. Let me tell you it is not so easy to compliment people about handing you money.

  I told Waylon his quarters looked especially shiny, and that he must keep his pockets really clean. He liked that. Next I told Maria that she counted her change out really fast, but she said no, it was just because I took so long talking about Waylon’s pockets. Then I admired the way Rasheed’s nickels and dimes were all stacked up in one tall pile. He said, “Thanks, it took a lot of spit to get them to stick together.” Finally I told Joe he had great aim—like a much taller person!—when he tossed his money into the envelope.

  But that was it! The only other compliment I came up with was to the lunchroom lady who took the money. I told her that her hairnet made her head look like a hornet’s nest from the back. She laughed and said, “Why thank you, girlie, now doesn’t that just make my day!”

  Which was nice, but it didn’t really help because the lunchroom lady does not get a page in my booklet.

  Back in the classroom, we did Circle Sharing Time and Morning Announcements, as usual. I spent the time trying to think of nice things to say to the kids. But then my teacher threw me off track.

  “And finally, don’t forget the bike rally Saturday to raise money for our third and fourth-grade spring trip,” he said. “I hope you’re all decorating your bikes! See you at ten o’clock in Boston Common.”

  I could feel my inside face melting into a big secret smile, and I forgot all about the compliment-thinking-up.

  My bike was going to look awesome on Saturday! In fact, I was going to have the best-decorated bike in the entire history of life. This is because the world’s best decorations store is right in the basement of my building.

  Well, not exactly. But my dad is the manager of our apartment building, and it’s his job to decorate the lobby for holidays. He does the normal ones, of course, like Halloween and Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. Boring, boring, boring. But my dad does his research and he says every day is some kind of holiday. Take January. Everybody knows about New Year’s Day and Martin Luther King’s birthday. But my dad also decorates for Fruitcake-Toss Day, Punch-the-Clock Day, and Measure-Your-Feet Day.

  Every week he posts what special days are coming up on the lobby bulletin board, along with suggestions for how to celebrate. For instance, April 30 is Hairstyle Appreciation Day, so in the elevator you might hear, “Mrs. Jacobi, what a lovely bun you’re wearing!” Or Margaret’s mother might compliment my mother on her tricky braid—but only if those things are true, since April 30 is also National Honesty Day.

  “If I were in charge of the lobby at the UN, there would never be another war,” my dad says. I think he’s right—his holiday decorations make everybody happy.

  Especially me. Because all these decorations live in our basement when it’s not their turn. And when I asked my dad if I could borrow some for the rally Saturday, he said, “Sure, Sport, take them all if you want.”

  I still wasn’t sure how I was going to decorate my bike, but that was only because I had too many great ideas. I felt my secret smile get even bigger. It’s a good thing I know how to keep it from showing on the outside.

  “Wow, Clementine,” my teacher’s voice interrupted. “You certainly seem excited to tell us your life story.”

  “Excuse me?” I asked. “What?”

  “It’s time to give us your presentation. That’s quite a smile. I’m glad to see you’re so happy about it. Come on up.”

  I looked through my backpack in case I had forgotten that I remembered to make some notes last night, but nope.

  “That’s all right,” my teacher said. “Just come up and tell us about your life.”

  So I went up to the front of the class. “I was born,” I began. And then nothing else came out, because it is very hard to think when you are standing at the front of a class with all those eyes on you.

  “You were born,” Mr. D’Matz repeated. “Where?”

  “Here,” I answered. Then all the kids started to laugh—but since it was a nice laugh, not a mean laugh, I laughed too. “No, I was not born in room 3B,” I said. “I was born in Boston.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I lived here, too. In Boston, not in room 3B. The end. Well, not the end, not yet. But that’s all.” I bowed and then started to head back to my seat.

  The kids applauded, but my teacher stopped me. “Oh, I don’t think that’s all,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve done lots of interesting things since you’ve been born. What do you think a biographer would say in a book about you?”

  I shook my head. “Not much. I read two biographies this year. Did you know Harry Houdini was already a famous trapeze acrobat by the time he was my age? And Mozart had been composing music since he was five. Nobody could say anything like that about me.”

  And suddenly I had a great idea about why. “Those people back in ye olden times probably didn’t have to go to school! Just last night, my dad said if I weren’t in school I’d be doing lots of interesting things!”

  “Well, you might indeed,” my teacher agreed. “But for this presentation, let’s just stick to what is. Now, wasn’t there an addition t
o your family some time ago? Why don’t you tell us about him?”

  “You’re right!” I cried. “I can’t believe I forgot! Okay—I got a kitten at the beginning of the year, and his name is Moisturizer, and he’s really smart and—”

  “Well, actually, I was thinking about someone else,” my teacher said. “Don’t you have a younger brother?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yes. I do. Broccoli. Now, one special thing about my kitten is that he’s really—”

  “Your brother’s name is Broccoli? Seriously?”

  “Well, no. But I got stuck with a name that’s a fruit, and it’s not fair that he didn’t, so I just call him vegetable names. Sometimes it’s Corn, or Brussels Sprout, or Onion. It depends. Anyway, we’ve had him for three years now and he’s kind of a disappointment, so I don’t think I should talk about him.”

  My teacher laughed as if I’d made a joke. “Well, I think one thing we’ve learned is that Clementine has a good sense of humor,” he said. “That’s all the time we have right now. But for the rest of the day, let’s all be reporters. Everyone find out one interesting fact about Clementine to share.”

  So, during recess the kids asked me questions.

  QUESTION: If you were an animal, what would you be?

  ANSWER: Gorilla.

  QUESTION: What is your favorite color?

  ANSWER: All of them.

  QUESTION: Does your little brother do any cute things?

  ANSWER: No.

  I was glad nobody asked me who my best friend was. Because I didn’t have an answer for that.

  After school on Tuesday I went straight to the basement.

  The basement isn’t really a basement—it’s just the other half of the floor we live on, which is the bottom floor of our building. It is halfway below the sidewalk level and halfway above, so if you look out our windows, you see people’s feet. My parents say living at this level keeps us grounded, and they laugh at that. I have noticed that grown-ups laugh at a lot of things that aren’t funny.

  Anyway, our apartment takes up half of the floor. The rest is what we call the basement—a huge space with the furnace and boiler in it, a workshop area, the building’s laundry, and storage units.

  My dad says being a building manager is like being the president, and that I’m like his vice president. Because I have to be ready to step in at any time, I know the basement almost as well as he does. So I knew right where the decorations were.

  As I was pulling down the first box, labeled HALLOWEEN, I heard a little meow. “Hey, what are you doing out here? Want to help me decide about my bike?”

  Moisturizer said yes in kitten language, so I dumped out the box in front of him—a bag of cobwebs and a bunch of big scary bats with black flappy wings.

  Moisturizer corner-eyed the bats. He flattened himself and inched toward them, his nose trying to twitch out whether they were real or not. I slipped my hand into the pile and flipped a switch on one of the bats, so its red eyes flashed on and off.

  Moisturizer shot sideways up into the air. His ears, his legs, and all the hairs on his tail spiked out as if every part of him was scared stiff. I knew he wasn’t really afraid, though. He was just playing Captain Wonder-Paws—first he pretended to be the weak little kitten, then at any minute he’d change into the super cat.

  Sure enough, he swaggered over to the bat and swatted it, and then turned away to flick his super tail, just to show it who was boss.

  “Oh, Captain Wonder-Paws,” I swooned, the way he likes me to. “You’ve saved us again! Also, you’ve helped me decide. I know just how I’m going to decorate my bike now!”

  Moisturizer pretended to be too busy licking his shoulder to notice what a hero he was, and that was the end of his show. He curled up on the bag of cobwebs, and I left to get the umbrella I’d seen in the trash.

  The umbrella was just the way I’d hoped—the tent was torn, but the skeleton was still fine. I ripped off the rest of the cloth, then went and got six bats. Luckily, the bats were already strung with clear lines, so all I had to do was tie them to the tips of the umbrella’s skeleton arms. When they were all hanging, my dad passed by.

  I held the swarm of bats over me, and he got the idea right away. “For the rally? You’re going to attach it to your bike? Great idea. I’d use duct tape if I were you,” he said. Then he untied the bat that was in front of my face. “You have to be able to see, Sport, okay?”

  And just then I had an even more spectacularful idea for that bat!

  “Dad! On Saturday, could you pin this one across my shoulders, so it looks like it’s biting my neck, sucking out all my blood?”

  He grinned. “That would look pretty good,” he agreed. “But you’ve got to promise to ride with both hands, that’s the deal. Got it?”

  I promised, and then I walked over to where my bike was stored.

  Margaret’s and Mitchell’s bikes were in the rack, too. Mitchell’s was covered with baseball-team stickers and looked like it had been through a bicycle war. Margaret’s bike was purple and shiny all over—even the wheels. It looked beautiful, but it looked…plain. And then suddenly I had a wonderful idea!

  I scooted Moisturizer back into the apartment, and then I raced up to the fifth floor, smiling all the way—Margaret and I were going to be friends again!

  Mitchell answered the door. He was holding a bowl of cereal and grinning. “Hi, Rugrat,” he said.

  Mitchell calls me names because he’s trying to be my boyfriend. I don’t tell him that I think, No, thanks! about having a boyfriend. I don’t want him to be too sad to play baseball.

  “Margaret’s in her room,” he said. “Want to see something first?”

  I said yes because suddenly I wasn’t so sure I was ready to see Margaret’s mad-at-me face. Also because if Margaret says, “Want to see something?” it’s usually something boring, like a skirt she’s picked all the lint from, or a new way she’s lined up her barrettes. But if Mitchell says, “Want to see something?” you can bet it will be something good.

  Except this time it wasn’t! I followed him into the living room and he pointed his spoon to the bottom shelf. He started to crack up, but I didn’t see what was so funny. Each one of his M.V.P. trophies wore a little triangle of paper towel with tiny pink safety pins at the tips.

  “Margaret did that? Diapered all your trophies?”

  Mitchell nodded, laughing. He wiped his eyes with his T-shirt and took another grinning bite of cereal.

  “Why aren’t you mad, Mitchell? You love baseball. You’re obsessed with baseball.”

  Mitchell put his spoon down. “Well, yeah. Dude! I love playing baseball. But I don’t care about the trophies.”

  When Mitchell said, “I love playing baseball,” my heart gave a little jump, as if it were tired of sitting around in my chest and wanted to go somewhere. This is because Mitchell says the word baseball better than anyone in the world.

  Then I asked him what I really wanted to know.

  “Margaret has three hundred awards. Don’t you mind that she’s so good at everything? Doesn’t it make you feel kind of…” I stopped and thought about how all those trophies made me feel. “Kind of…sorry for yourself?”

  Mitchell looked at me the way I look at Spinach when he bangs his head inside the spaghetti pot. “I feel sorry for her.” He waved his hand at Margaret’s rows of awards. “I love playing baseball. Margaret just loves winning awards.”

  Mitchell picked up his glove and ball. “Gotta go, Rugrat,” he said. “Practice. Best part of the day.”

  I found Margaret in her room. She was swooshing around in a grass skirt with some plinky music on. Her arms looked like snakes, except not scary.

  I said hi, and she said hi back, but that was it—no stopping the swooshing, no turning the plinky music off.

  “I have a good idea, Margaret,” I told her. “It’s about the bike rally. You know how my dad keeps all those decorations in the basement? He says I can use them to decorate my bike. And you co
uld, too! We could be a team—you could have bats swarming around you, like me—”

  Margaret shot me a look that said, Bats? Are you out of your mind?

  “Or whatever you want. Anything! I’m sharing! Want to come down and look?”

  Margaret shook her head and kept on with her swooshing around. “Can’t go to the rally,” she said. “Competition Saturday morning. Have to practice my hula routine.”

  I reached over and turned off her music. “What do you mean you aren’t going? You’ve been looking forward to it for weeks!”

  Margaret stood there catching her breath for a minute. Then she said, “I can’t go, Clementine. I have to go to the competition, or else someone else will win that trophy!” She snapped the music back on and started her routine over again, frowning this time.

  My parents are always going on about the Golden Rule. “That ‘Do’ in ‘Do unto others’ can cover a lot of territory,” they’re always saying. My dad says it could mean, “Be quiet in the movies, as you would have others be quiet in the movies unto you.” My mom says it could mean, “Don’t interrupt people when they’re drawing unless it’s an emergency with blood, as you would have them not interrupt unto you when you’re drawing unless it’s an emergency with blood.”

  They use that Golden Rule on me a lot. But Wednesday, I got to use it on myself!

  Here is how Wednesday went: After the Pledge and Circle Sharing Time and Morning Announcements, my teacher called for our attention. “Friend of the Week is a wonderful opportunity,” he said as if he’d just thought of it, even though he says the exact same thing every week. “We’re going to brainstorm a little bit now. Let’s think about what makes Clementine a unique and valuable member of our class, so that on Friday we’ll be ready to make her booklet.”

  He went to the chalkboard and wrote my name under the Friend of the Week sign. “Who’d like to get us started?”