The next day Roy’s money was gone. He missed it right after recess. He took out all the junk from his desk and spread it all over the floor. It took him till lunchtime to sift through the mess, but he ended up with a peanut butter sandwich, too.
The third day Diane’s money was missing. Now, Diane isn’t messy and she isn’t forgetful and she isn’t the type to be quiet about getting a peanut butter sandwich in place of a hot lunch.
“I put my money right here in my desk,” Diane said clearly. “It was here before recess and it isn’t here now. Somebody stole it!”
“Diane, you don’t know that,” Mrs. Hanson said.
Diane looked up at her. “Where are my quarters, then?”
I thought Mrs. Hanson would really give it to her for being rude. Instead she just told her to go through her desk once more. Diane pursed her lips, gave a big impatient sigh, and kneeled down by her desk. Mrs. Hanson kneeled down, too—not to look in Diane’s desk, but to look in the one in front of it—Richard’s. Maybe Richard took the money.
As she poked around in his desk, Richard jumped out of his seat. “Hey, I ain’t a thief.”
“Am not!” Mrs. Hanson corrected him. “And I didn’t say you were. Empty your pants pockets.”
Richard yanked out the lining of his empty pants pockets.
Mrs. Hanson moved back to search my desk. I felt my face burn as I remembered I sat behind Roy, who had lost his money, and beside Diane, who had lost her money. I didn’t sit by Marianne, though. I hoped none of the kids thought I stole the money.
Mrs. Hanson held out her hand. “Let me see your purse.”
I gave her my purse. She looked through it carefully. The only money that was in it was the fifty cents for my lunch. I was lucky I didn’t have my birthday money in it.
Diane stood up and crossed her arms. Her black eyes glittered. “There is no money anywhere in my desk.”
Mrs. Hanson gave me back my purse. “Do you have a purse, Diane?” she asked.
“No, I don’t,” Diane said.
“Go look in your coat pockets.”
Diane stamped over to the girls’ coat closet, took down her coat, and pulled out the pockets. Except for a wad of Kleenex, they were empty.
“Diane,” Mrs. Hanson said, “are you certain you brought your lunch money to school?”
“Yes, I am,” Diane answered.
Mrs. Hanson looked around at the whole class. “If Diane brought her money into this classroom, it must still be here. I don’t think we’ll have lunch until we find Diane’s money.”
I stuffed my books back in my desk. This was going to be a disaster. I don’t know why teachers do this. Who would ever tell after all that fuss?
When we heard the lunch cart in the hall, Mrs. Hanson sat down at her desk. “I guess we’ll just be hungry until the money turns up,” she said.
It didn’t work. We sat there in silence until one of the cooks stuck her head in the room and said we’d have to line up for lunch right away or the lunch cart would leave for the sixth grade unit. Mrs. Hanson lined us up. I wondered if she’d keep us after school. She didn’t.
I was still mad at Mrs. Hanson when I walked home with Diane and Sharon. I thought it was mean of her to make me look like a thief. Sharon said she didn’t think it was mean, because I did sit by Roy and Diane and, besides, Mrs. Hanson had looked in Richard’s desk, too. I got upset all over again and started hollering that where we sat didn’t make any difference. Diane said to cool it. What really mattered was who was taking the money. Diane thought it might be Jack. I didn’t think so because Jack had given Marianne his milk.
“Maybe he figured he owed it to her,” Sharon suggested.
“I think it’s Elsie,” I said.
“No,” Diane said, “her mother looks like they’re loaded with money.”
“That doesn’t mean she gives Elsie any,” I argued. “She said her mother hates her.”
“She didn’t say her mother hates her,” Diane corrected me.
“Well, her mother’s ashamed of her. Anyway, if her mother gave her a dollar, she’d probably buy a cake.”
“True,” said Diane.
When I got home, I followed my mother around the kitchen while she made dinner. I was all wound up and wanted her to listen to the whole story. I told her Mrs. Hanson practically accused Richard and me of stealing.
My mother asked me, “Did you take the money?”
Anger just swooshed over me. “What are you talking about!” I screamed at her. “Do you think I steal?”
I ran up to my room and slammed the door.
She came up later to tell me dinner was ready. I told her I didn’t want any. My mother said quietly that she had simply asked me a question about taking the money. She hadn’t accused me of anything. I didn’t look at her. She went away. I turned on my radio. I was starving.
I was on my bed staring at the ceiling when Kenny pushed open my door.
“Jenny, why don’t you want to eat?” he asked.
“Get out of here!” I yelled. I dashed over to the door and shoved him out. Hard.
To Catch a Thief
I expected the next day to be miserable, too. It wasn’t. It was a neat day. Mrs. Hanson chose Diane and me to put up the fifth grade art in the gym for Open House that night.
At morning recess all the kids were still talking about the class thief. I felt relieved because we girls were in a big circle by the tetherball, and I knew no one would be talking about it with me if they suspected me. Most everyone thought it was Elsie. Money had never disappeared before Elsie came. I turned around to see where she was.
“Hey,” I burst out. “Elsie isn’t standing by the wall!”
“I bet she’s in the room stealing money,” Diane said. “Let’s get her.”
Our group marched together to the front of the fifth grade unit. Just as we got to the door, Elsie came out.
“Elsie, where have you been?” Diane demanded.
“I was in the bathroom,” Elsie said. “What’s it to you?”
Diane moved up close to her. “You aren’t supposed to go in during recess unless you get a pass from the playground teacher.”
“That’s stupid. What is recess for?” Elsie looked Diane straight in the eye and then turned and waddled off.
She had a point. It always seemed dumb to me that you couldn’t go to the bathroom at recess. Why didn’t the teachers just lock the classroom doors? When I said this, though, Sharon pointed out that the school would have to put a teacher aide in every unit or the kids would have water all over the place. That’s true. Even third graders know how to flood the toilets.
After lunch recess we didn’t have our regular reading. On the day of Open House all the kids have to clean out their desks and scrub off all the words. There’s a lot of water and confusion and noise. Boys like Jack manage to squirt some water around, and the teacher gets crabby and gives everyone two pages of long division to get the room calmed down.
But Diane and I didn’t have to be part of all that. As soon as we got back to the classroom, we took the pile of pictures Mrs. Hanson had been collecting from the class and went to the gym. On the way we talked about the thief. Everyone had lunch or lunch money that day, so I thought Elsie wasn’t the thief. Diane said maybe all the kids took their money out to recess and there wasn’t any money left in the room for Elsie to steal. That was possible.
Two sixth grade boys were in the gym stapling pictures to the wall. It was Chris Johnson and Mark Howard. They’re the cutest boys in the sixth grade, and Diane and I got all nervous. Diane didn’t show it, though. She just asked in a bossy voice where we were supposed to put our pictures since the boys were taking up the whole wall. Chris Johnson said there were four walls.
We chose the wall under the basketball hoop. When the boys finished with their pictures, they got the basketball out and started tossing baskets. The ball accidentally bounced off my shoulder. I turned around.
“Oops, sorry,” Mark
said and grinned.
I knew I was going to smile back, so I quickly faced the wall.
“Hey,” Chris asked, “who’s that blimp in your room?”
Diane said it was Elsie, and we started talking to the boys about her. They used their stapler to help us finish the pictures. They said since they helped us get done so fast we should play a game of keep-away with them. We did. We were having so much fun I was shocked when I heard the last bell ring.
“We’d better split,” Diane said.
We hurried and picked up our staplers and headed for our unit. I was worried because some of the classes were already coming out of their rooms. When we got to our room, the kids weren’t even lined up to go home. The room was spotless. Mrs. Hanson was collecting math papers. Just as I thought. Mrs. Hanson told Diane and me to get our folders and place them on our desks. I made a pretty semicircle with mine. I was glad I had only good papers for my parents to see.
When I got home from school, my kitten was jumping around the kitchen, trying to swat a moth.
“How come she’s not outside?” I asked my mother.
She looked up from the meat loaf she was mixing and smiled. “She finally got the idea.”
“No kidding?” I sat down on the floor and took the gray fluffy thing in my lap. “What does she do?”
“She goes to the door and meows.”
“Fantastic! I’m going to call her D.D.”
“Why D.D.?” Mother wanted to know.
“Because kids who get D’s are slow to catch on. Can I take D.D. up to my room?”
“Sure. Just put her out fast if she meows at your door. Listen, take a bath, will you, and put on your birthday blouse. Remember, we’re all going to Open House right after dinner.”
I stopped cold at the kitchen door. “Kenny, too?”
Mother put up her meat-loafy hands. “Don’t worry. He’s still napping. I put him down late, so he’ll be good. He’s all excited about going to school and getting to sit at your desk.”
“Sit at my desk? Great! If he has to go, he better meow at the door.”
“Now, Jenny, he hasn’t had an accident in months.” “You mean weeks.”
It was fun to joke with my mother again. We usually are friends. But I still didn’t think she should have asked me if I had stolen the money. She should have known I wouldn’t.
I thought about that as I poured some of her lemon bath oil into the bath water. I rolled up a wad of toilet paper for D.D. to bat around while I was in the tub. I climbed in and slunk way down until the bubbles touched my chin.
It was sort of a miracle that D.D. suddenly got trained. I bet my mother did it while I was at school to make up for not trusting me. Maybe that’s also why Mrs. Hanson chose Diane and me to take the art work to the gym.
There was a funny noise. Meow! I jumped out of the tub, threw a towel over me, grabbed D.D., and dashed for the stairs.
Mother laughed as I flew through the kitchen to the back door. I put D.D. on the porch and watched. D.D. jumped down the steps, tail straight up, and headed for Mother’s flower beds.
Kenny was on his best behavior when our family arrived at school. Mother and Dad found Sharon’s parents, and we all went to our classroom together. My folks and Sharon’s are friends. Sometimes our families go camping together. I try to have fun with Sharon when Diane isn’t along. It isn’t easy. Sharon is interested in two things—what her mother says and how many presents she can pile up. You’d think she was an only child instead of Diane.
Sharon pranced right up to Diane and her mother so they could admire her new pink dress. She had a matching pink barrette in her hair. I have to admit her curly hair is pretty. It’s blond, like Elsie’s. Only Elsie’s fat face makes hers look stuck on like a wig. I didn’t see Elsie or her mother at Open House.
While my parents were looking through my folders and my brother was sitting at my desk, Mrs. Hanson came over. I was surprised at how nice she looked. Her gray hair was waved, and she had red earrings on. She told Dad I was a good student. Mother was busy reading one of my English stories. I am good in English. I am exceptionally good in English, my mother says. I am not so good in math. Fortunately for me, all the papers in my arithmetic folder were C or better.
On the way home Kenny said I had a “smiley teacher.”
“That was just for Open House,” I told him.
My mother said she wouldn’t want to be that age and try to hold down a bunch of ten- and eleven-year-olds. My father said he wouldn’t want to do it at any age. He asked me about the kid with the red hair.
“That’s Jack,” I told him. “He hates his red hair.”
“I bet he’s a handful,” Daddy said.
The next day it happened again. Lester’s lunch money disappeared. I was glad he sat way in the back corner of the room, so no one would think I took his two quarters.
Mrs. Hanson asked him where he had put his lunch money.
“Right in plain sight on my desk,” Lester said.
She closed her eyes a minute. “That wasn’t very intelligent of you,” she said.
“Well, I had it where I could watch it,” he explained.
“When did you last see the two quarters?” she asked.
“Right before recess.”
“Did you leave them on your desk while you were out at recess?”
“Sure,” he said.
She closed her eyes again.
I have to admit that wasn’t very bright. My mother had given me an extra dollar in the morning to buy a quart of milk at the 7-Eleven on my way home from school. I had it pinned inside my jeans’ pocket.
Mrs. Hanson told Lester he’d have to get a peanut butter sandwich from the office for his lunch. Lester slumped down in his seat.
After lunch recess Mrs. Hanson pulled her chair to the front of the room and sat down. She looked at us. We looked back at her.
“We have a problem in this room,” she began slowly. “I don’t think money disappearing four times can be called an accident. I don’t like to say this to you, but I think someone in this room is taking the money.”
She stopped. We didn’t make a sound.
“Now generally, as you know, I don’t like tattling. But this is different. This is serious. Helping to find out who is taking the money is not tattling. Whoever is doing it has a problem. It doesn’t help that person to let him get away with it. Him or her.” She stopped again.
For the first time that year I liked her. It seemed like she was on our side.
She went on. “If anyone knows something or has seen something that has to do with the money, please tell me you want to talk to me. We’ll talk alone and I won’t tell anyone about it.”
That’s all she said. The rest of the afternoon we read quietly in our reading books. Just before the last bell rang, the principal came in. He asked us for our attention.
“Mrs. Hanson has informed me that someone in this room is taking money. Now, every person makes mistakes. But it takes a strong person to come forward and say he made a mistake.
“I think I know who took the money.” He looked all around the room. I watched to see if his eyes stopped on anyone, but they didn’t. “If that student is a strong person, he or she will come to Mrs. Hanson or to me and admit to making a mistake. Now, I want you students to think about that.”
We thought about it. After school we stood in groups outside the building and talked about it, but no one seemed to know anything. Finally I had to leave to go to the 7-Eleven to buy the milk for my mother.
There was a stack of new comic books in the store. I stopped at the magazine rack to look through them before I got the milk. I started reading parts of Charlie Brown, but somebody kept moving behind me at the candy rack, nudging me closer to the magazines. It interrupted my reading.
I turned around to see who was bothering me. I saw Elsie’s fat back. No wonder there wasn’t enough room. I stood there watching her. She was carefully picking out the longest red and black licorice whi
ps. When she had five of them, she went to the cashier’s counter.
I stuck Charlie Brown back on the shelves and whipped down the aisle to get the milk. I wanted to see the money Elsie used to pay for the candy. She was next in line when I got to the counter. Just as I thought. She plunked down two quarters!
When the clerk handed her the bag of candy, I said, “Hi, Elsie.”
She looked up, stared straight at me with her eyes wide, then left the store without saying a word. I knew I had looked into the eyes of a thief.
I couldn’t wait to get home and tell Mother. I wondered if I should call Mrs. Hanson or the principal. I wished I could stop at Diane’s house to tell her what happened.
Mother took the milk out of my hands as soon as I got in the door. She looked cross. “What took you so long?”
“I saw Elsie in the 7-Eleven and she was buying candy ...”
“And I suppose you waited around to get some.” She looked at the milk. “Jenifer Sawyer! This is nonfat milk!”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t read the carton.”
“Jenifer, you and Kenny are too skinny already. You don’t need nonfat milk.”
“I’ll go back and exchange it,” I said.
“No, it’s too late now. Go get washed for dinner.”
She sure was in a crabby mood. All my excitement drained away.
At dinner Daddy talked about inflation. He didn’t know how we were ever going to afford a new car. Mother said she couldn’t save anything; food was going up every day. Big news. I waited until dessert for an opening.
“Money’s being stolen in our classroom,” I said.
“We know,” Mother replied.
I ignored her. “I think I found out who’s taking it.”
“How?” Daddy asked me.
“I saw Elsie at the 7-Eleven, buying candy. She’s on a diet. She isn’t supposed to be eating candy. She paid with two quarters, and that’s exactly what was stolen from Lester today.”
Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade Page 2
