Extraordinary

by Miriam Spitzer Franklin

  Here’s the truth: it never sounded like such a great time to me. Because all I could think about was getting up in the middle of the night and walking to the bathroom in the pitch dark. A bathroom that would be full of all kinds of creepy bugs I did not want to meet.

  Mom jumped on board right away, saying what a terrific adventure it would be for the two of us. You’d think she would have warned me to think about it carefully before making any promises. She certainly knew how I felt about bugs and being alone in the dark. But then Anna started talking about how much fun we’d have together, roasting marshmallows and catching snails in the creek and giggling all night in our sleeping bags. For a whole month, I went right along with her, making lists of what we’d bring and planning all the exciting things we’d do.

  Three days before the trip, I quit faking it. I told my parents there was no way I was going. They tried to get me to change my mind, but for hours and hours, I begged and pleaded with them not to send me to that horrible place. Boy, were they disappointed in me.

  “Pansy,” my dad said, “you can’t let your fears overtake your life.”

  “Not to mention the fact that you’re letting down a friend,” Mom added. “How are you going to explain this to Anna?”

  It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure.

  “I can’t believe it!” Anna said when I broke the news. Her cheeks turned bright red. “How could you do this to me?”

  I tried to tell her that I was having nightmares about going. That I was scared to death of sleeping in a tent in the dark with wild animals all around. And most of all that I didn’t want to go to the bathroom in a place with fuzzy spiders on the walls. (I’d been to one of those bath houses when we took a day trip to the mountains, and I can tell you there are fuzzy spiders in all the corners. And I had to hold it until we found a fast-food restaurant on the way home.)

  Anna usually understood if I backed out of something because I was scared. But this time, she wasn’t listening to any of it. She squinched her eyes up and glared at me in a not very friendly way. “But you promised. Best friends shouldn’t break their promises.”

  My eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, I really am. I can’t help it!”

  “You can help it, Pansy. And it’s not the first time you’ve gone back on your promise either.”

  I shook my head. “That’s not true! I always keep my promises.”

  “Really? You’re always saying you’ll do things, and then you change your mind.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like when we signed up for ice-skating lessons and you quit after one lesson.”

  I shrugged. “Well, yeah. That’s because I stink at it.”

  “You only tried one time! And how about when you said you’d ride The Twister with me at Six Flags, and we stood in line forever, and when it was our turn, I had to ride it by myself?”

  “I got scared—”

  “Okay. I’ve got an even worse one. What about last month when you promised to get your hair cut for Locks of Love?” Anna ran her hand across her short bob.

  “Oh, yeah.” I twisted a long strand of hair around my finger and looked down at my feet. “I really wanted to. I just . . . chickened out.”

  “I’m tired of you chickening out.” Anna crossed her arms in front of her chest. “It’s not a good excuse. Especially not this time, when I’m stuck going to camp all by myself. We were supposed to have all kinds of fun together. And now it won’t be any fun at all.”

  “I’m sorry!” I said again, and this time the tears spilled from under my lashes and slipped down my cheeks. “I really wanted to go with you, but I—just—can’t!”

  Anna rolled her eyes. “Tell it to someone else,” she said, waving me away. “Maybe you better tell it to your new best friend, because I’m sick of it.” And then Anna stood up, walked me to the door, and did something she’d never done before. She told me to leave.

  The worst part about it is that I did. I didn’t know what else to do. I walked right out without another glance at her, and she slammed the door behind me.

  The next time I saw her was in the hospital. And that’s why I headed to the media center for the Girl Scout meeting after school. To prove to Anna that I could face things I was scared of, and when she got better, I’d make it up to her by going with her to sleep-away camp.

  As I walked down the hall after school, I realized Madison and Emma were right in front of me. Unfortunately, Hannah must have decided that Girl Scouts sounded like a terrific idea, too, because there she was, sticking to Madison like Silly Putty on a hot car seat.

  Madison stopped and turned around to face me. “Are you going to the meeting?”

  I nodded. “Have you been in Girl Scouts a long time?”

  “We’ve been together since Daisies,” Madison said, pointing to Emma and Hannah.

  “Last year, I sold the most cookies in the whole troop,” Hannah said.

  “Well, I love to eat Girl Scout cookies,” I said. “So I thought I should join this year.”

  No one laughed at my joke, but Madison smiled. “Eating cookies is my favorite thing, too. Even though I don’t really have time for all the selling.”

  “Me neither.” I stopped in the middle of the hall. I hadn’t even thought about selling cookies. How was I going to fit in cookie booths along with skating practice, reading, and trying to earn an A-honor-roll ribbon for the first time?

  “Come on,” Madison said, hooking her arm with mine. “Girl Scouts is not just about cookies.”

  Hannah turned her nose up in the air and walked ahead of us. I fell in step beside Madison as we walked toward the media center.

  “It’s wonderful to see a room full of such lovely girls,” a tall blonde-haired woman said a few minutes later. “My name is Mrs. Kendricks, and I’ll be one of the troop leaders this year.”

  “She’s Melanie Kendricks’s mom,” Madison whispered to me. “She was our leader last year, too.”

  Mrs. Kendricks seemed to have all the right qualifications for a Girl Scout troop leader: a big smile, hair that bobbed back and forth while she talked, and enthusiasm! enthusiasm! enthusiasm! At one point during her speech, I thought she might jump up on a chair and do a split jump in the air while shouting, “Hooray for Girl Scouts!”

  By the time she was done talking, Mrs. Kendricks had erased the doubts from my head. Well, most of them, anyway. There were still a few left, like the smudge of a dry erase marker you can still see on the board after you’ve erased the words. There was that tiny voice inside that kept saying, “Come on, Pansy! You know you’d hate sitting at a table in front of the grocery store selling cookies. And no matter how fantastic Mrs. Kendricks makes it sound to spend the night outside under the stars singing campfire songs, there are still those creepy bugs . . . and walking to the bath house by yourself in the middle of the night.”

  I shut out the voice, thinking about Anna sitting next to me instead. She’d have a big grin on her face. “I’m so glad you’re joining, too!” she’d say to me. “We’re going to have so much fun together. I can’t wait for the camping trip. It’s going to be awesome!”

  “Are you going to join?” Madison asked an hour later as we sat on a bench, waiting for our rides. Hannah and Emma had already been picked up, so it was just the two of us.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It sounds like fun.”

  Madison smiled. “Great! What Try-It badge do you want to work on?”

  “Mom usually doesn’t let me near the kitchen, so maybe cooking. Or crafts. Like jewelry making?”

  “Ooh, I love making jewelry. Have you ever been to Beadopoly?”

  I shook my head. Mom said the prices at Beadopoly were like highway robbery, so she never let me go there.

  “We go to Beadopoly all the time,” Madison said. “Mom always makes something for herself. I made this one last weekend.” She showed me her bracelet with blue and pink glittery beads.

  “It’s pretty,” I said. “Mom won’t let me earn a jewe
lry badge if I have to go to a place like Beadopoly, though.”

  Madison laughed. “Girl Scouts won’t let you earn a badge that way. They’re all about doing it yourself. Like making your own beads out of clay and painting them. Or making bracelets from shells you find on the beach.”

  “I’m pretty good at that,” I told her.

  “Me too,” Madison said. “I love making crafts. Hey, maybe we should work on our badges together! You can come to my house to do the baking, and we can go to your house and work on the jewelry.”

  I hesitated. Madison Poplin was asking me if I wanted to come over and work on badges with her? Anna would be back in a few months, so making a new friend wasn’t really part of my plan.

  “What do you think, Pansy?” she asked again.

  Madison had been in Girl Scouts for a couple years and certainly knew her way around earning badges. I was new to all of it and besides, Anna wouldn’t mind.

  “Okay,” I finally said as Mom’s Honda pulled up in front of the school. “Sure.”

  “Great,” Madison said with a grin. “See you tomorrow!”

  I waved at her as I climbed in the car. With Madison helping me, I could do this. And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t be so hard after all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Eleven Weeks, Two Days

  Something amazing happened over the next week as I skated to Andy’s every morning wearing my knee pads. At first I thought it was luck that kept me from wiping out like I had that first day. But then it began to feel like something else. Could it be . . . was I actually learning to roller-blade? There wasn’t much to it, after all. Push and glide, push and glide . . .

  My feet and legs began to feel steadier, and even when I fell, I went down easily instead of crashing to the ground.

  And then one morning, about a week after I’d started skating to school, I made it all the way to Andy’s without a single fall!

  “Woohoo!” I pumped my arms and cheered as I clambered up Andy’s porch.

  “What are you so excited about?” he asked me.

  “You are now looking at Rollerblader Extraordinaire,” I told him with a grin.

  Andy laughed. “How’d you win that title?”

  “Stayed up on my wheels the whole way here,” I said as I pulled off my skates. “I figure I’m onto something. Who knows what I’ll conquer next?”

  Andy shook his head. “You never know.”

  It turns out he was right. When we entered the classroom, Miss Quetzel had posted the first round of Independent Reader scores on the wall.

  “Wow, you’re in third place!” Andy said.

  I blinked a few times and traced my finger carefully from my name to the points, just to be sure. Yup, there it was on the computer print-out after two weeks of reading: PANSY SMITH: 10 POINTS, RANK: 3. Daniel was at the top of the list, of course. But he was only ahead by four points.

  “Great job!” Madison said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “You earned almost as many points as Daniel Walker!”

  “How’d you do it?” Hannah asked. “Your mother must let you stay up late reading.”

  “Not really.” I glanced at the list for Hannah’s ranking: 15. “I’m a fast reader, though.”

  Hannah muttered something under her breath.

  I stared at the print-out. I can do this. Give me a few more weeks, and I’ll have more points than Daniel, more than anyone in the fifth grade.

  “I know how Pansy got those points.” Zach’s voice broke through my thoughts. “I bet she didn’t read any of those books. She watched the movies instead!”

  I spun around to face him. “That’s not true! I read every page of each of those books. If you think you can watch movies to earn points, then why do you only have . . .” I scanned the list quickly. “One point?”

  That brought some giggles. Zach was at the bottom of the list!

  “You got a problem with it?” He pushed some of the other kids aside so he was standing right next to me. Then he squinted his beady eyes at me, like a hawk waiting to pounce on his prey. “You got something to say, then you better spit it out.”

  I swallowed hard. “No, I—I—”

  The crowd surrounding the Independent Reader list grew quiet.

  “Yeah, I knew it.” Zach threw back his shoulders. A mean grin stretched across his face. “You’re a fake. Everyone will find out soon enough.” He turned and strutted to his seat before I could get another word out.

  My cheeks blazed, and I stared down at my mismatched shoes.

  Andy nudged me. “Don’t worry about it,” he whispered. “No one listens to anything Turansky says.”

  I shrugged and trudged slowly to my seat. The truth was that Andy was wrong. Everyone listened to Zach Turansky, and no one ever argued with him.

  I read all those books and didn’t watch a single movie. But I had read one of them the month before school started. Miss Quetzel had said they needed to be books we read this school year, not in the past. It had only been a few weeks before school started . . . but did I really deserve all those points?

  As I started on my morning work, all I could hear was Zach’s voice in my head: Pansy Smith is a big fake.

  A few minutes later, we took our speed drills. I’d passed threes and fours, which was something like a miracle. This was my first day on fives, and I should have sped through it. Fives are the easiest of all. I finished the drill before Miss Quetzel called time, but I’d made two mistakes.

  The rest of the morning wasn’t any better. I got caught on the wrong page during a social studies lesson and answered the wrong problem while we were checking our math homework. The second time Miss Quetzel caught me not paying attention, she paused and stared at me like she’d just sucked on a lemon. I held my breath a minute, afraid she’d take away from the Good Citizens point chart. But she just shook her head as a warning and moved on.

  Extraordinary people didn’t get lemon faces from their teachers. They didn’t make stupid mistakes on the five times tables, the easiest quiz of all. They didn’t cheat, either. And they would never let a stupid person like Zach get under their skin.

  ***

  “You know what, Pansy?” Madison said at lunch. “I think if you really try, you can earn more points than Daniel Walker.”

  “If I keep reading and Daniel keeps reading, then we’ll stay exactly the same,” I said.

  “Daniel probably isn’t thinking about the contest, though. He’s just reading like he usually does. It’ll be like a surprise attack. You speed up, he stays at the same speed . . .” Madison snapped her fingers. “And all of a sudden you’re in the lead. Daniel wouldn’t even see it coming.”

  “Hmmm.” I thought about that for a minute. “You really think I can take the lead?”

  “I’m sure of it,” Madison said with a grin.

  “I doubt it,” Hannah said. “Daniel’s the best reader in the school.”

  I glanced over at Andy. He was busy spooning ravioli out of his thermos, like he didn’t even hear the conversation.

  “Pansy can do it,” Madison said, and this time I grinned back at her.

  By the time I got home from school, I’d forgotten all about Zach. Maybe Madison was right. I’d have to work extra hard, and it would take some luck, but it wouldn’t be impossible.

  “Mom!” I yelled as I burst in the door. “Guess what! I’m in third place in Independent Reader, and I’m only four points from the top of the list!”

  “That’s wonderful!” Mom said as she put a bowl of Chex Mix and a glass of milk on the table.

  I dropped my backpack with my heavy skates and the mismatched shoe onto the ground; I always remembered to change back to matching shoes before walking inside the house. “Madison thinks I can make it to first place if I keep trying.”

  “Madison sounds like a smart girl. You can do whatever you want if you try your best.” I scooped a handful of Chex Mix and poured it in my mouth, thinking about what she said.

  “How’s the skat
ing coming?” Mom asked me. “I just got an email that the next session at the Ice Palace starts in two weeks.”

  “You won’t believe this. Today, I made it to Andy’s without falling.”

  “Terrific! Sounds like you’re ready to hit the ice-skating rink.”

  “Really? You’ll sign me up for lessons?”

  “Sure,” Mom said. “I told you if you practiced on Rollerblades, we’d enroll you in lessons. I can sign you up online tonight, if you want.”

  “Awesome!” I leaped out of my seat and threw my arms around her neck. Everything was working out after all. I was third place in the reading contest, I learned to roller-blade without falling, and Mom was signing me up for ice-skating lessons.

  So far, I was following through on all my promises. Anna was going to be amazed at me when she got better.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Ten Weeks, Six Days

  I had big plans for the weekend. On Saturday morning, I got up before eight. I’d checked out two books from the school library, each worth three points. My plan was to read one book on Saturday; on Sunday, the other.

  I thumbed through the first novel. It had twenty chapters. As I thought about how many chapters I needed to read before breakfast, there was a knock on my door.

  Dad poked his head inside. “Glad to see you’re up already. Guess where we’re going today.”

  I looked up from my book. “Where?”

  “Stone Mountain. The weather’s perfect, your mom’s making her famous pimento cheese sandwiches . . . What do you say?”

  “I can’t wait!” I leaped from the bed, and the book landed open-faced on top of my Rollerblades, which were lying on the floor. “Can I invite Andy?”

  “Sure. We’re leaving around ten.”

  I forgot all about my weekend reading plan as I called Andy. I was so happy when he said he wanted to come, too. Ever since I’d joined Girl Scouts, Andy and I had gotten along okay. But I’d been so busy reading and skating that we hardly saw each other outside of school.

  When I ran back to my room to grab my sweatshirt, I tripped over the book that had fallen on the floor. That reminded me of the goal I’d set for the weekend: read two books, even if it killed me.