Weather or Not

by Sarah Mlynowski

  She heard the sound of air escaping, and another bellow!

  Then a thunk. Something large and rocklike hit the bottom of the pool.

  All sorts of bellows echoed around her. Male bellows, female bellows, kid bellows. Too much!

  She zigged away from the arms trying to contain her. In the depths of the water, she saw something pink. The word bikini floated into her porcuphin mind, then just as quickly dissolved. Bikini? What was bikini?

  She needed to poke the bikini thing! She rocketed forward and poke-poke-poked. The bikini thing thrashed. Splashes! Screams! Chaos!

  “Get me out of here!” a girl’s voice called.

  “Stop that … giant puffer fish!” a man’s voice called.

  Giant puffer fish? Puffer fish?!

  Porcuphin-Nory was offended.

  “The rock!” a man cried. “SAVE THE ROCK! He can’t swim!”

  “Everyone out!” called a woman. “I’m draining the pool!”

  Everything swam before Porcuphin-Nory’s eyes. Water gurgled and swirled, gurgled and swirled, until … where did it all go?

  Porcuphin-Nory flailed on the damp cement. The air, chilly on her flesh, brought Nory back to her human senses, and sloop!

  Nory fluxed back into her normal self.

  She looked up at Coach, Willa, and Ms. C. They seemed very far away. Coach was red-faced and breathing hard, leaning forward with his palms on his thighs. Willa was wearing a pink bikini, and she was clutching her backside as if it hurt.

  “That was a disaster,” Coach scolded. “A complete and utter disaster.”

  “You drained the pool,” Nory stated.

  “I drained the pool,” said Ms. C.

  “Nory!” barked Coach. “You derailed our lesson, you lost control of your human mind, and you popped Bax’s floatie!”

  “Bax?” Nory looked around. “Is he okay? Where is he?”

  “He fluxed. Elliott took him to the nurse in the wheelbarrow.” Coach stared at her. “He’ll be all right, but only because I was brave enough to dive into the pool despite the presence of a … a …”

  “Porcuphin,” Nory supplied. She climbed out of the pool.

  “I made a mistake coming here,” Coach told Ms. C. “We disrupted your class and put you at risk. I’m sorry.”

  Nory shivered. Coach had never sounded disappointed in her before.

  “Nory, apologize to Willa and Ms. C,” he said.

  “Sorry,” she said in a small voice.

  They nodded, but didn’t speak. Ms. C gestured to Willa, and they left.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Nory,” said Coach when they were gone, “but that wasn’t a lesson. That was … I don’t know. Showing off, acting crazy—something like that.”

  “I was trying to be marvelous!” she protested.

  “Well, stop,” he said. “I’m all for expanding your potential, but that was unacceptable and rude.” He pulled a porcuphin quill out of his foot and limped toward the men’s changing room, leaving Nory alone in the empty pool.

  Wednesday morning, Willa went to the Bing Society Memorial Museum with the other UDM kids.

  The students at Dunwiddle Magic School took this field trip every year. Today, the whole fifth grade was there.

  Since the kids in the town’s Ordinary School took this field trip every year, too, Willa had been before. How boring. What was the point of seeing the same exhibits, year after year? Couldn’t they learn some other history stuff instead?

  The museum was located in the house where Zeponiah Bing had lived when she returned to Dunwiddle. Most of the rooms had been kept intact. All the exhibits had the same basic message: Ms. Bing had been a wonderful Flare. There were “before” dioramas and paintings showing the town of Dunwiddle during the Great Frost. There were testimonial letters thanking Bing for saving everyone. There were artifacts of Bing’s life. There was a whole room full of stuff about super-strong Flares with the kind of heating magic Bing had, and how amazing they were.

  Willa pretty much hated the Bing museum.

  As they walked through the first exhibit, Nory linked her arm through Elliott’s. “Willa,” she called across the room, “will you please take notes for our Gertrude Raspberry project? Since you haven’t done anything else?”

  Willa sighed and got out her notebook. Nory wasn’t being fair. Willa had done something else! She had read that whole book and made notes. She knew that fact about Gertrude flunking her polar bear test. And she’d practiced drawing a polar bear.

  She just hadn’t shown any of it to Nory. Or talked about it. The idea of Nory judging her handwriting and her drawings made her feel seasick. Her parents and teachers already told her she did everything wrong. She didn’t need to hear it from Nory, too.

  “So this is where Gertrude and Zeppy lived after they saved the town?” Nory asked Ms. Starr.

  Zeppy? Willa thought.

  “Well, Zeponiah had her teaching job to get back to in Florida,” Ms. Starr said. “But when she retired, this is where she and Gertrude chose to settle down, yes.”

  You could have read that on the sign, Nory, Willa thought. Only, look. It says Zeponiah, not Zeppy.

  “Write down the years they lived here,” Nory instructed Willa. “And describe the wallpaper. Include that it’s beginning to peel.”

  In her notebook, Willa wrote, Blah blah blah.

  The next room was the oh-so-exciting kitchen (not). On the counters were several oh-so-exciting old-fashioned kitchen utensils (triple not).

  Ms. Starr continued to the next room after a quick peek, but Nory lingered. She picked up an egg beater and turned the handle.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to touch it,” Elliott said.

  “Yes I am, or they wouldn’t leave it out,” Nory said. She turned to Willa. “Did you make a list of Zeppy and Gertrude’s cooking utensils? And would you describe the pot holder with the polar bear on it?”

  “I got it,” Willa muttered. In her notes, she wrote, NORY TAKES UP ALL THE AIR IN THE ROOM.

  “Did you even look at the pot holder?”

  “I said I got it!” Willa said. She slashed two lines beneath the word ALL. “I even underlined it, see?! Also, I’ve been here five million times! The only reason you like Zeponiah’s stupid pot holder is because you just moved here!”

  Nory stared at her. “If you’ve been here so many times, why did you act like you didn’t know anything about Gertrude Raspberry?”

  Willa exploded. “Because I hate how you boss me around!”

  She stomped angrily down the hall to catch up with the rest of the school group in Zeponiah Bing’s bedroom, which was at the back of the house. She was done talking to Nory Horace. Absolutely done.

  But Nory followed her! She caught up to Willa in ye olde boring bedroom.

  “I have to boss you around because you don’t do anything!” Nory put her hands on her hips. “You’ve done zero work, and you have zero ideas! I never wanted to work with you!”

  “I didn’t want to work with you, either!”

  Nory stomped. “At least I tried. At least I worked. You’re the worst partner of all time, Willa Ingeborg!”

  Tears pricked Willa’s eyes. Furious tears.

  No, no, no.

  She did not want to cry. They were in a historic museum exhibit thingy! If she rained, it would ruin everything!

  Could she use Carrot’s idea and say Hello, Furious Tears That Are Totally Nory’s Fault. I see you? Could she acknowledge her feelings without letting them overwhelm her?

  No, Willa could not. She was too upset.

  A tear rolled down her cheek.

  “Really, Willa?” Nory said. “Really?”

  A raindrop splashed to the floor, leaving a wet spot in the dust.

  Within seconds, it was drizzling all over the historic bedroom exhibit.

  Drizzling on bedside table stacked with Zeponiah Bing’s favorite reading material.

  Drizzling over Bing’s ancient bathrobe th
at hung on a hook by the closet door.

  Drizzling on Bing’s bedside lamp, her historic quilt, the display of embroidered petticoats and pantaloons, and the paintings of her and Gertrude.

  “Help!”

  “Is it that wonky UDM girl again?”

  “Why does she do this?”

  “I want my mommy!”

  The typical kids from the other classes were freaking out.

  Willa gulped as she took in all the chaos.

  “I’m freezing!” wailed a girl with sodden curls.

  “Stop your stupid rain, Willa!” yelled horrid Lacey Clench.

  Willa would stop if she could! Didn’t the others understand that?

  Coach Vitomin hustled a bunch of the the typical fifth graders out of the bedroom. They made sounds of dismay as they scurried down the hall.

  “You really must stop, Willa,” Ms. Starr told her kindly. “Try your techniques!”

  Willa took a deep breath. She tried so hard to calm down. But she was still drizzling.

  “Should I go outside?” she asked her teacher.

  Ms. Starr shook her head. “There are too many rooms between us and the front entrance,” she said. “I think you should stay still and try to get calm. That way the rain will only be in this one room.” She stood tall and clapped her hands. “All right, UDM students! It’ll be raining a little while longer, so help me save the artifacts!” Ms. Starr called. “Andres!” She pointed at the hook. “Get Bing’s jacket!”

  Andres slipped out of his brickpack and zoomed into the air. He flew across the ceiling until he was near the hook and launched himself at Bing’s ancient bathrobe. Protecting it, he zipped out of the room. Ms. Starr told Nory to run after him with the historic quilt. “Now, Marigold—shrink the paintings!” commanded Ms. Starr.

  Marigold hurried to the wall of art. She bit her lip and furrowed her brow. Plip! Plip! Plip! One by one, she took the heavy paintings off their mounts and shrank them. She handed them to Pepper, who covered them with her jacket and ran them into the next room. Willa guessed someone would find a way to unshrink them later.

  Meanwhile, Ms. Starr was yelling, “Elliott! Bing’s ye olde petticoats and pantalooons! They’re attached to the wall but you can freeze them in a block of ice to preserve the embroidery.”

  Elliott colored. “But …”

  “We’ll flare-dry them afterward!” Ms. Starr explained. “Save the pantaloons!”

  Willa tried to stop raining.

  She said hello to the furious rain, but that didn’t work.

  She tried reciting the poem about the mermaid, but that didn’t work.

  She tried the hokey breathing exercise, but that didn’t work, either.

  “And, Bax,” Ms. Starr said, turning. “Can you turn into a plastic tarp?”

  “No.”

  “Can you try?”

  “Um … maybe?” Bax looked nervous.

  “You could save the day if you can manage it. Get to it!”

  Bax closed his eyes, scrunched his face, and—sslinkh. He turned to plastic and fluttered to the ground. He was bright yellow.

  “Not a tarp but a poncho!” Ms. Starr cried. “Well done, Bax! Now, Sebastian, lend me a hand!”

  Together, Ms. Starr and Sebastian spread Poncho-Bax over the bedside table, protecting Bing’s favorite reading material. Willa could tell Ms. Starr was thoughtfully using this crisis as a chance to spur Bax, Elliott, and Marigold into using their talents under pressure. What a great teacher she was!

  Nory came back into the room and looked around. She came over to Willa, dripping. “Can’t you at least try to stop?” she barked. “We’re in a museum!”

  “Of course I’m trying to stop!” Willa moaned, beginning to weep. “I’ve tried like six different techniques!”

  “Well, try harder!” said Nory, stamping her feet. “You don’t have to be such a crybaby about it! Grow up and stop raining!”

  Whoa.

  That was it.

  The Upside-Down Magic class was supposed to be a team.

  That meant, if you were in UDM, you did not yell at another UDM kid about having terrible magic in the middle of a big public museum.

  You just did not do it. Too many other people mocked the UDM kids all the time. So UDM kids never, ever mocked one another.

  Willa looked up at her rain cloud. It was medium-sized and drizzly.

  She was so angry at Nory.

  She shrank her cloud to the size of a cat. Shrank it! And then attached it to Nory. It was the same amount of water, though, just coming from the much smaller cloud. It poured furiously on Nory’s head.

  Nory slapped at the raindrops, trying to bat them away. “Willa! Stop!”

  Willa stood up. “You’re right, Nory. I am a crybaby. Let me add that to my notes so that we can include it in our stupid project!”

  “Willa?” Ms. Starr said, coming over.

  “She’s drenching me!” cried Nory.

  “But the big drizzle has stopped! Well done, Willa!” Ms. Starr said. “Now can you stop your tiny cloud, please?”

  Willa tried. She really did try, even though she didn’t want to. But as she’d learned in the pool, it was harder to turn off attached clouds than regular ones.

  “She’s doing it on purpose!” Nory cried, running around the room.

  “No, I’m not!” Willa said. (At least, not anymore.)

  “Keep trying,” urged Ms. Starr.

  Willa did keep trying. But the cloud kept raining on Nory.

  Nory glared at Willa. Static electricity seemed to spark in her wet hair. Her body shimmered and—pop!

  Dritten-Nory roared, and a tongue of fire snaked from her mouth.

  Willa’s rain quenched the flame.

  Dritten-Nory roared louder and flew out of the bedroom exhibit, down the hall, through the kitchen, the dining room, the parlor, the front hall, and out the front door, which was held open by a cringing fifth grader.

  The rain cloud followed Dritten-Nory out of the museum and into the open air, where at last it evaporated.

  Willa, Pepper, Elliott, Marigold, and Sebastian followed, stepping into the sunshine.

  The disaster—well, this particular disaster—was over.

  On the lawn outside the museum, Nory fluxed back into human form.

  So embarrassing! Terrible! And all Willa’s fault. Nory fumed as Pepper handed her a stack of paper towels.

  Even after Nory was dry, everyone had to wait. Ms. Starr was still indoors, talking with the museum workers. As soon as the teacher stepped out of the building, Nory ran over. Willa followed. Poncho-Bax was folded over Ms. Starr’s arm, and Andres was beside her, once again wearing his brickpack.

  “May I please switch partners?” Nory asked Ms. Starr in her talking-to-grown-ups voice.

  “Yes!” cried Willa. “I can’t work with her.”

  Nory dropped the politeness. She jerked her head at Willa. “She’s not doing any work!”

  “I am so working! She changed projects on me!”

  “She has no enthusiasm.”

  “She wants to be the boss of everything.”

  “I have to be the boss. She doesn’t have any ideas.”

  “We really need to change partners.”

  “We really, really do.”

  Ms. Starr shook her head. “Sorry, girls. You’re a team. You need to reconcile your differences.”

  Drat. Drat. Drat.

  Nory’s energy drained out of her.

  Sulking, she boarded the bus that took them back to Dunwiddle Magic School.

  She knew that she and Willa needed to finish their project.

  She knew she should ask Willa to come home with her that afternoon so they could work on it. It was due on Friday, which was only two days away.

  But Nory didn’t offer the invitation. She couldn’t bear to look at Willa, period.

  Nory worked on her own Wednesday night. And Thursday at lunch. She read and read. She wrote and wrote. She finished an entire first dra
ft of the essay that was supposed to accompany their poster. All by herself. She didn’t revise it.

  At the end of Thursday, she gave it peevishly to Willa. “Type this, please.”

  Peevishly, Willa typed it overnight.

  On Friday morning, Willa pasted their paragraphs onto the poster board and sketched the polar bear.

  Nory painted the polar bear.

  Willa added more glitter to make it look as if the bear was going through a snowstorm.

  It was … acceptable. Just.

  They didn’t use more than five sources, because they didn’t have time to read all the books Nory had collected. They didn’t include photographs. They didn’t write much about Gertrude’s life back when she was a kid, or after the Great Frost.

  They just didn’t.

  Nory wasn’t proud of the project. She felt bummed as she checked out the other Bing Day posters lining the Dunwiddle hallways.

  Sebastian and Marigold had scanned and printed many photographs of old-time parades, which they’d colored in by hand. Pepper and Andres’s poster on single-sex education had no pictures and only writing. It wasn’t entertaining, but they’d typed it single space and with super skinny margins. They would get an O, for sure. Elliott and Bax’s poster was titled Disgusting Foods of 1893 and had menus and detailed drawings of food on toast. Salmon on toast. Oysters on toast. Asparagus on toast. It had clearly taken a lot of research, and it was funny.

  Plus there were posters from the other fifth-grade classes. A few were half-baked, but most of them were really good.

  Nory lifted her chin. She would look on the bright side. Their Gertrude poster wasn’t great, but it was done. And this afternoon was the parade. She loved parades!

  As soon as the final bell rang, Nory put on her antlers. She’d bought multiple sets from the novelty store in town. She gave a pair to Pepper, who put them on. Andres and Sebastian put theirs on, too. She offered a pair to Bax, and he wrinkled his nose—but he put them on. He hated looking silly, but he cared about the UDM class sticking together.

  In the hall, kids milled around by their lockers. Some were going straight to the parade and meeting their parents under the big clock in the town square. Others were going home first to drop off their school stuff.

  Nory spotted Willa, Marigold, and Elliott talking. She would be good-spirited and offer antlers to all three of them. After all, she was a nice person and didn’t exclude people.