Owen and Eleanor Meet the New Kid

by H. M. Bouwman

  Eleanor muttered, “She doesn’t even have a helmet on. She could hurt herself.” But she didn’t sound worried. She sounded like she wished she could ride a skateboard too.

  The new girl was wearing a long sweater over her jeans. The sweater was purple and had glittery buttons and glittery designs on the front. She still had her scarf covering her hair, and now Owen could see that it had some glittery threads in it too.

  “She has my shoes!” said Eleanor.

  For a second, Owen thought Eleanor meant that the new girl had stolen her shoes. “How . . . ?” he asked. But then he looked at Eleanor’s feet and saw she was still wearing her shoes. They were white sneakers (now kind of gray from all the dirt and pine needles) with pink trim and bright pink shoelaces. The shoelaces were so bright that they almost hurt Owen’s eyes.

  He studied the new girl as she turned and came back toward them, now slower but weaving in a fancy pattern over the sidewalk. Yes, she had the same shoes. He just hadn’t noticed them when she was wearing a long skirt.

  Then, suddenly, her white-and-pink shoes tipped the skateboard up, and her feet jumped onto the sidewalk, and the skateboard stopped moving forward and so did the shoes. Right in front of their tree. And then the new kid said something.

  In English. And she sounded kind of angry.

  “Hey. Why are you hiding in a tree? And why are you watching me?”

  Chapter 9

  Eleanor

  When she asked why they were hiding and watching her, the new kid did not sound super happy. And Eleanor didn’t know what to say. It suddenly seemed like telling the new kid that they were detectives who were spying on her might not be . . . exactly nice. She hid the binoculars behind the tree trunk.

  Owen was crawling out from under the pine tree. He had to crouch way down to squeeze under the branches. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Owen. And this is Eleanor.”

  Eleanor was still beneath the tree. Did she want to come out? It was so . . . she didn’t know the word she wanted, but it was so something to crawl out from under a tree after you’d been caught spying. So embarrassing? Maybe that was it.

  Owen said, “Eleanor?” He peeked under the tree.

  The new kid peeked under the tree too. And Eleanor was just standing there.

  “I’m not hiding,” she said. “I’m exploring. Like a detective might explore things.”

  “You were spying on me,” said the new kid.

  “Want to see our fort?” said Eleanor. “Under the tree?”

  The new kid shrugged. “Sure.” She tucked her skateboard under her arm and ducked under the branches.

  They all three sat on the pine needles.

  “Nice skateboard,” said Owen.

  “Nice shoes,” said Eleanor.

  “Thanks,” said the new kid.

  Then there was a long quiet time. But it didn’t feel boring-but-comfortable like Owen’s daydreaming, which Eleanor was kind of used to. It was much, much worse.

  She didn’t know what to say.

  Eleanor never didn’t know what to say! She felt like her head might explode with all the different ideas floating around in it.

  Finally the new kid said, “Well, I’m going to go.” She started to crawl out.

  Owen said, “Wait!” He looked at Eleanor like he wanted her to say something, but Eleanor couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Nothing would come out.

  “What?” said the new girl. Kind of impatiently.

  “I’m Owen,” said Owen.

  “I know,” said the new girl. “You already said that.”

  “And this is Eleanor.”

  “You said that too.”

  “We live in this house with the pine tree. Eleanor’s family lives on the bottom floor, and my family lives on the top floor. You’re the new neighbor.” He said it like it was a little bit of a question.

  She nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ifta.”

  “Ifta?” Owen said it slowly.

  “I never heard that name before,” said Eleanor.

  “Well, it’s a very normal name. Lots of kids have it,” said the new girl. “I never heard of your names before I moved here.”

  “To this house?”

  “To America.”

  “Where are you from?” asked Owen.

  The new girl shrugged. “We flew here from Kenya. But my family is really from Ethiopia.”

  “Those are both countries in Africa,” Owen said to Eleanor. He’d been learning lots of maps for his homeschooling. Eleanor’s class hadn’t gotten to Africa yet. They were still studying George Washington, and now she thought maybe they should study Ethiopia too.

  “We’re going to study Ethiopia in school,” she said. “After George Washington.”

  “That’s nice,” said Ifta.

  “What school do you go to?” asked Eleanor.

  Ifta explained that she was going to start at Eleanor’s school on Monday, after they were all done moving in. “We lived way across town when we first got here, and I went to a different school, but now we’re moving closer to some of my cousins, and so . . .” She shrugged. “New school. But I’ll still go to the same mosque, where lots of my friends are.”

  “Mosque?” said Eleanor.

  “It’s like a church, I think,” said Owen. “For Muslims. Is that right?” he asked Ifta.

  “Kind of,” said Ifta. “I go to madrasa there on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and I study Arabic, and I learn lots of things about God and how to live a good life. I have a lot of friends there.” She shrugged. “But I had some good friends at my old school too.”

  There was kind of a long quiet time again.

  Then Owen said, “I’m sure you’ll make lots of friends at Eleanor’s school. Right, Eleanor?”

  “Right,” said Eleanor. Owen was trying to tell her something, but she wasn’t sure what it was. School was awesome. Of course Ifta would make new friends. Kids played on the swings at recess, and sometimes they did a parachute game in gym class, and they made messy art with lots of glue, and during quiet time they read books. Eleanor was in the middle of a book about a Japanese American girl named Jasmine who liked to make mochi, which sounded like a really cool food.

  Suddenly a question popped into Eleanor’s head. “Do you eat mochi?”

  “What?” said Ifta.

  “Never mind,” said Eleanor. “What is Kenya like?”

  Ifta looked like she was thinking hard about what to say. “It’s very different from here,” she said, finally. “I lived in a refugee camp there.”

  “Is that where you learned to skateboard?”

  Ifta laughed. “No, I didn’t have a skateboard there. My cousin gave me his old skateboard when I moved here.”

  “Is the teenage boy your cousin?” asked Owen.

  “What games did you play in Kenya?” asked Eleanor at the same moment.

  “Yes, he’s my cousin. In Kenya we played soccer sometimes.” She paused. “It was just a lot different from here.”

  “And you’re Muslim?” asked Eleanor. “And is that why you wear a scarf on your head? And that’s a religion, right? And what language do you talk, besides English?”

  Ifta stared at her. She looked the way Eleanor felt sometimes when her mom or dad asked her a lot of questions about school on a day that she’d gotten in a little bit of trouble for being too loud. She looked like she was tired of answering questions. “I can speak four languages,” she said slowly. “English is my third-best.”

  “Wow!” said Eleanor. That was impressive. “I only know two. And Owen knows only one and part of another one.”

  Owen nodded.

  Ifta said, “I learned Oromo from my family—that was our language in Ethiopia. And I learned Swahili at the camp, and a little bit of Sudanese there too. And English when we moved to America. Mostly my parents and I speak Oromo to each other.”

  Owen said, “Can you . . .” He trailed off.

  “Teach us Oromo?” said Eleanor. />
  Owen shook his head. “That would be fun, but that’s not what I was going to say.” He looked at Ifta like he really wanted to ask for something and he wasn’t sure if it would be polite. Eleanor could tell. And then, suddenly, she realized what it was Owen wanted to ask.

  “Can we try your skateboard?” she said. “And can you teach us how to do it?”

  Ifta grinned and stood up carefully so that she didn’t smash her head against the branches. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 10

  Owen

  Owen ran to get his bike helmet, and Eleanor’s too, and he convinced Eleanor to wear it because he said she was so brave she’d probably crash and she didn’t want a damaged brain, did she? He lent Michael’s helmet to Ifta. Michael had a really big head for his age, and the helmet fit Ifta just fine.

  “Now we can really go fast,” said Eleanor.

  But they couldn’t. It turned out that skateboarding was harder than it looked, and it was hard just to go in a straight line down the sidewalk. But Ifta was a good teacher, and she laughed at herself almost as much as she laughed at Owen and Eleanor.

  Eleanor’s dad was helping Ifta’s parents and cousin unload the truck. He waved at them as they took turns riding on the skateboard. When it was Ifta’s turn, she rode to the corner and back, easy-peasy. When it was Owen’s turn, Eleanor held one of his hands and Ifta held the other, and they helped him stay up while he slowly wobbled. When it was Eleanor’s turn, she said she didn’t need help, pushed off very fast, jumped onto the skateboard, yelled very loudly, and crashed very quickly. She did really good falls that she had learned in martial arts class, though, and she landed in the grass, so she was okay.

  All in all, skateboarding was wonderful.

  After Owen’s dad brought fruit and bread over to the new neighbors, Ifta had to go inside to unpack her clothes and help her mom clean and move things around. So Owen and Eleanor went inside their own duplex, after agreeing to meet on the sidewalk again after supper if they were allowed to, for more skateboarding.

  In Owen’s apartment, Michael was awake and sitting on the floor with his building set. He was building a monster. He had a very runny nose.

  Dad said he would read more Charlotte’s Web if Eleanor wanted to hear it too, and Eleanor did. Owen told her what the story was about so far, and they both got crayons and paper to draw.

  While Dad read, Owen didn’t draw Wilbur the pig or Charlotte the spider. Instead, he drew a girl in a long dress and a scarf, riding on a skateboard. He drew the way Ifta looked when he first saw her and didn’t know her yet, with her skirt whipping in the breeze as she rode past the pine tree. She had a little smile on her face because she was skateboarding so well. Then, because Dad was reading about Charlotte, Owen drew a spider on the branch of the tree and a web that had the word “Brilliant!” woven into it.

  Eleanor drew a giant purple spider with a million little round eyes and ten legs. The legs were purple too. The spider was wearing ten little white-and-pink sneakers.

  Dad finished the chapter.

  “I like Charlotte,” said Michael without looking up from his building set.

  “She’s a good friend,” said Dad.

  “Even though she eats bugs,” said Owen. He couldn’t imagine eating bugs.

  “I’m not sick anymore,” said Michael. He swiped at his nose with his sleeve.

  “Dad,” said Owen, “I have a question. It’s not about the book. It’s about friends who are really, really different from each other.”

  “Like me and Owen,” said Eleanor.

  “Even more different,” said Owen. “Like, they know different languages and they come from different places, and they have different religions and different ways they think about God, and they are just really, really different.”

  Dad tilted his head and closed the book. “What is your question?”

  “Can they still be friends? Does it matter that they are so different?”

  “It doesn’t matter at all!” said Eleanor. “Because they can skateboard and they can talk in English, probably, or even in sign language if they have to, and they can play after church and madd—I forget the name.”

  “Do you mean madrasa?” said Owen’s dad. “Where kids go to learn about Islam?”

  “Yeah, that. Those kids are really not different at all.”

  Owen looked at his dad. He wasn’t sure Eleanor was completely right. He wasn’t sure it was okay to pretend there were no differences, because it seemed like there were differences. But he also wanted to be friends. And not just because you were supposed to love your neighbor. Also because Ifta was cool and fun.

  “Differences make a difference,” said Michael solemnly. “Charlotte is my friend. She’s different. I like her that way.”

  “Charlotte isn’t your friend,” said Eleanor. “She’s in a book. She’s Wilbur’s spider friend.”

  “There’s a different Charlotte in the corner of our bedroom. And she’s my friend,” said Michael. “That Charlotte doesn’t even go to church. She goes to madrasa. We talk about it all the time.”

  “You talk to the spider?” said Dad.

  “There’s a spider in our bedroom?” said Owen.

  “This is about Ifta,” said Eleanor. “And she is so interesting! I want to get to know her more and more, and then someday I want to learn to speak Oromo, and then we can talk to each other in Oromo. Or maybe we will both learn Korean, like my martial arts teacher. That would be cool too. Oh! And, Owen, she has to meet our kitten! And we need to learn more skateboarding from her.”

  Owen’s dad smiled. “That all sounds like fun.”

  Owen looked at his drawing, with Ifta and the spider. Eleanor always thought of the fun things about meeting new people. He wanted to think about the fun things too. But he also knew that he and Ifta would be different in lots of ways. And the differences were good things to talk about and learn about. But for being neighbors—for being friends—what mattered was loving each other.

  Chapter 11

  Eleanor and Owen

  After reading time, both kids had some things they needed to do. Eleanor needed a bath. Owen needed to help sweep the floors of their apartment. Then there was supper. After supper, they went back outside. Ifta wasn’t there. But when they knocked on her door, her mom answered and smiled and called for her.

  Ifta said, “I can only play a little while. I have to take a bath.”

  “Me too!” said Eleanor. “I mean, I already did. But it’s totally okay if I get dirty again.”

  They took turns on the skateboard, and then they leaned the skateboard against the steps of Ifta’s porch and sat down to rest. Ifta said the house was nice inside, much bigger than their last apartment. Her uncle and aunt might come to live with them soon, so it was good that it was big.

  “Do you have your own room?” said Eleanor. “Owen and I have to share rooms—me with my sister and him with his brother. I used to have my own room.” Ugh. Sharing with Alicia was hard.

  “It’s hard to sleep all by myself,” said Ifta. “It’s very quiet.”

  “Was it different in Kenya?” said Owen. “At the camp?”

  Ifta nodded. Then she said, “Are there other Ethiopian kids in your school? Or Muslim kids?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Eleanor. “In my class, anyway, there isn’t anyone who wears . . .”

  She pointed to Ifta’s scarf, not sure what to call it.

  “A hijab?”

  “Yes,” said Eleanor. “So maybe you’ll be the only kid at our school who is Muslim and rides a skateboard and speaks four languages. You’ll be very cool.”

  “I’m still learning English,” said Ifta. “I don’t write very well yet. English has tricky spelling.”

  “That’s right!” said Eleanor, glad to have something important they could agree on. Spelling was horrible. “But really, don’t worry about your English. My dad has been in America forever and he’s super old and he’s still learning English. You can ha
rdly tell, except when he doesn’t know the word for something hard, like a bug’s name or something. Owen and me can help you with hard words just like we help my dad.”

  “Four languages is amazing,” said Owen.

  “So did you live in Kenya a long time?” said Eleanor. “My grandparents live in Costa Rica, and I might visit there someday. But Owen and I have never lived anywhere interesting.”

  Ifta said, “I was born in Ethiopia, but I don’t remember it because we moved to Kenya right away. I only remember the refugee camp.” She shifted, and the wheels on the skateboard whirled next to her. “I like it here a lot. It’s safe here. And maybe we can . . . ride bikes together someday? I really like riding bikes.”

  “We love riding bikes,” said Owen.

  “This is awesome!” said Eleanor.

  They sat on the steps and talked until the moon came out and the stars showed and the night breeze turned so chilly that they were all shivering, even in their sweaters and sweatshirts. They talked until Owen’s mom arrived from the bus stop on her way home from work. Owen’s mom met Ifta and then told Owen and Eleanor that they both had to come inside in five minutes so that they’d get to bed on time and be able to go to their churches tomorrow.

  When their five minutes were almost up, Ifta’s mom poked her head out of their front door and said Ifta needed to get to bed so she could go to madrasa at their mosque the next morning.

  They all sat for just one minute more, looking at the stars, before they had to go in.

  Owen sighed, not because he was sad but because he was happy, and also because he had just figured out something important, and that felt like a thing to sigh about.

  “What?” said Eleanor.

  “What?” said Ifta.

  “Nothing,” said Owen. “I’m just glad we all moved here. And I’m glad we’re all so different. There is so much for us to talk about and learn about. And I’m glad we’re all friends.”