by Lindsay Eyre
Jamie Redmond stepped forward. The field went silent again. If Jamie agreed, everything would be okay. If she didn’t, we were toast. “Sylvie’s right,” she said after surveying the crowd. “There’s only one field, and I want to play baseball every day. We’ll have to play together.”
“Awesome!” I said. “We can pick new teams every week.”
“And I can make a rotating flow chart so everyone gets to play with each other,” Alistair said.
“Rotating flow charts,” Jamie said as if she had never heard of those before. “I like it.”
Alistair put up his hand to give her a high five and Jamie, in a rare moment of niceness, high-fived him back.
“Who’s with us?” I shouted to the crowd.
“I am!” someone on my side yelled.
“Okay!” someone else on my side shouted.
“Let’s do it!” called a fifth grader.
“Oh yeah, baby!” shouted another.
“Totally!” said a third, and, one by one, everyone called out their support except for three people: the munions and Daniel Fink. Daniel was still off in the trees, watching. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back.
An idea flapped up to my brain and perched there. “Jamie, you pick for Team Cherry,” I said, “and Daniel can pick for Team Hill.”
“Daniel?” the munions screeched at the exact same time. “You mean Robot Leg? You mean your boyfriend?”
Another hush fell over the crowd, and this time, it was a big one. My cheeks were turning pink again. Oh, how I wanted to punish those munions. I wanted to say something mean that would shut them up forever, but I was so tired of meanness, nothing mean would come. And, suddenly, I didn’t want to be mean at all.
Daniel stepped out of the trees. “Sylvie’s not my girlfriend,” he said.
“We’re friends,” I said before the munions could say anything else.
“And he’s my friend too,” Josh said.
“And mine!” Miranda called.
“And mine,” said so many people, Daniel looked as if he’d been smacked in the face with friends.
Jamie rolled her eyes at everyone. “Come on, Fink. If you’re going to pick, you have to stand on the field.”
Daniel Fink limped out of the trees and came to stand beside Georgie. “Do you like baseball?” Georgie asked him.
There was silence as everyone on the field listened.
“I love baseball,” Daniel said, which is always the correct answer.
Georgie nodded as if he wasn’t the least bit surprised. “Then you’d better pick first,” he said.
Daniel picked munion number one, but she did not go stand beside him like she was supposed to. She looked at munion number two, who looked as if someone had just stolen all of her mean words, which meant she had no words left. Together, they looked at their old teammates, who took a step away from them as if this was their problem. The munions looked at Jamie Redmond.
“Go stand by your captain,” Jamie said, with the biggest eye roll of her life. “You’re wasting our time.”
Munion number one, with no smirk on her face, slunk over to Daniel. Daniel looked at me and smiled long enough for me to know that everything was okay. He didn’t need me to be his girlfriend anymore.
“Scruggs!” Jamie shouted. “You’re on Team Cherry!”
“Josh for Team Hill,” Daniel called.
I glanced at Josh and caught him looking at me with his small smile. “Since we’ll be changing teams every week, I guess it doesn’t matter who wins,” I said.
Josh nodded at the crowd of kids, some who were good at baseball, some who weren’t. Some who had lots of friends, some who had hardly any. They were roaming around, talking to each other like there’d never been a spelling bee scuffle in the first place. “I think this is a different kind of winning,” he said.
“And it’s just as good,” I said.
Lindsay Eyre is a mother of five, a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a fanatical lover of books. She nearly had a heart attack when she had to watch her daughter compete in a school spelling bee, so it’s probably a good thing she never made it to one herself. Please visit her website at www.lindsayeyre.com and follow her at @lindsayeyre.
Sydney Hanson grew up in Minnesota with numerous pets and brothers. She is the illustrator of D Is for Duck Calls, by Kay Robertson, as well as The Mean Girl Meltdown by Lindsay Eyre. She now lives in Los Angeles. Please visit her website at sydwiki.tumblr.com.
Text copyright © 2016 by Lindsay Eyre
Illustrations by Sydney Hanson copyright © 2016 by Scholastic Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and the LANTERN LOGO are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Eyre, Lindsay, author. | Hanson, Sydney, illustrator.
Title: The spelling bee scuffle / Lindsay Eyre ; illustrated by Sydney Hanson.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Arthur A. Levine Books, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., 2016. | © 2016 | Series: [Sylvie Scruggs] | Summary: There is only one baseball field available for the children at Cherry Hill Elementary, and Jamie Redmond and the fifth graders insist that they have priority, so fourth grader Sylvie suggests that they let the school spelling bee decide—and then finds herself willing do anything, including cheating and agreeing to be the girlfriend of Daniel Fink, a boy who is made fun of by the other students because he has an artificial leg, to ensure that her grade wins.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015042705| ISBN 9780545620321 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Spelling bees—Juvenile fiction. | Competition (Psychology)—Juvenile fiction. | Cheating (Education)—Juvenile fiction. | People with disabilities—Juvenile fiction. | Bullying—Juvenile fiction. | Conduct of life—Juvenile fiction. | Friendship—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Spelling bees—Fiction. | Competition (Psychology)—Fiction. | Cheating—Fiction. | People with disabilities—Fiction. | Bullying—Fiction. | Conduct of life—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.E97 Sp 2016 | DDC 813.6—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015042705
First printing 2016
Cover art © 2016 by Charles Santoso
Cover design by Carol Ly
e-ISBN 978-0-545-62096-3
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