Mitch and Amy

by Beverly Cleary

  “Mitchell—ee-yew!” said Bernadette.

  Mitchell glanced over his shoulder with what he hoped was a menacing look. He must have imagined that Bernadette’s feelings were hurt, because she certainly did not look unhappy now.

  Outside the classroom Bill Collins’s mother, who had volunteered to go along on the field trip, joined the class. She brought up the rear of the line with the first-aid kit that the school board said someone must carry on every field trip. Just as if we’re little kids who’ll fall down and skin our knees, thought Mitchell.

  “Quietly, boys and girls,” said Miss Colby, as the class started across the playground.

  “Forward march,” said Mrs. Collins from the rear of the line. Her son Bill hunched his shoulders and looked embarrassed.

  “Let’s see if we can derail Mitch and Bill,” said Bernadette. To derail someone meant to step on his heel so that his shoe came off.

  Mitchell turned and glowered at Bernadette, who brushed her witchy hair aside and smiled at him.

  “Hup, two, three,” said Mrs. Collins, as the class waved to the men working on the new wing of the school and started down the hill. Bill tried to pretend he did not know his mother.

  Mitchell felt the toe of Bernadette’s shoe on his heel and jumped quickly to avoid having his sneaker pulled off. “You cut that out,” he said to Bernadette, who, along with her partner, went into a gale of giggles.

  Now Bill jumped to avoid losing his sneaker. “Don’t pay any attention to them,” he said to Mitchell. “They’re just a couple of Girl Snouts.”

  “We are not,” contradicted Sarah. “We’re Girl Scouts.”

  “Hup, two, three, four. Hup, two, three, four,” counted Mrs. Collins, who was the jolly type and did not understand how parents sometimes embarrass their children.

  Down the hill marched the class. Mitchell felt Bernadette’s toe on his heel again and jumped in time. “Girl Sprouts,” he flung over his shoulder.

  Across streets, through a park, and on down the hill marched the class, now followed by half a dozen dogs. Mitchell and Bill worked out a system to keep from having their shoes pulled off by Bernadette and Sarah. They took two or three steps and then gave a little hop, to keep the girls from matching their rhythm and stepping on their heels. Step, step, hop. Step, step, step, hop. Step, hop. By hopping at uneven intervals they kept the girls guessing.

  Bernadette and Sarah found the boys’ hopping extremely funny. “Just like darling little bunny rabbits,” remarked Bernadette between fits of giggles.

  “Hippety-hop, hippety-hop,” said Sarah. “Aren’t they too cute for words.”

  Mitchell hurled the worst name of all. “Girdle Scouts!” He only made the girls giggle more.

  On down the hill and into the business district marched Miss Colby’s fourth grade, with Mitchell and Bill hopping every few steps, the girls giggling, and Mrs. Collins counting from time to time. People stopped to stare. A little boy who was dribbling a chocolate ice-cream cone down the front of his shirt joined Mitchell and Bill in stepping and hopping until his mother ran after him and dragged him away.

  By the time the class had reached the Golden West Savings and Loan Company, Mitchell vowed to hate all girls, with the possible exception of Amy part of the time, forever. They were nothing but giggling pests. As the class marched through the glass and stainless-steel doors Mitchell forgot to hop and Bernadette, with the awful concentration of which she was capable, stepped squarely on his heel and pulled off his sneaker.

  “I’ll get you for this, Bernadette,” said Mitchell, jabbing her with his elbow as she went past.

  “Miss Colby, Mitchell hit me,” said Bernadette promptly, but in the excitement of reaching the savings-and-loan company no one paid any attention to her. She did not care because she was busy slipping through the crowd in an eely sort of way to be the first to pan gold.

  Mitchell became even more annoyed. Girls, he thought bitterly, and he knelt to put his sneaker on again. They pester and then tattle if a fellow tries to get back at them.

  The gold was panned in what looked like a rock pool, set on a yellow carpet, in the corner of the lobby of the savings-and-loan company. The rocks, which Mitchell soon discovered were not real rocks at all but fiberglass, were higher on one side, and a small waterfall, raised by a hidden pump, trickled down among some plastic plants into the pool. Mitchell had to wait for his turn. While he waited he looked around for the pump that worked the waterfall, but he could not find it. It must be hidden someplace inside the fake fiberglass rocks.

  When Mitchell’s turn came he was handed a gold pan by a fake pioneer, a bearded student from the University, dressed in jeans, a plaid sport shirt, and a straw cowboy hat, who showed Mitchell how to scoop up some of the gravel from the bottom of the pool and swirl it around in the pan so that the water and gravel gradually spilled out, leaving the gold, which was heavy, at the bottom of the pan. Mitchell dipped and swirled and sloshed, and, sure enough, there were some glints of gold in the sand left at the bottom.

  “Hey! I struck it rich!” said Mitchell, as the student picked out the flakes of gold and dropped them into a tiny glass vial of water for Mitchell to take home.

  Mitchell held up his vial to the light and counted seven flakes of gold, minute but real. Someone poked him in the ribs and said, “Stick ‘em up!” It was Bill, who had only five flakes of gold. One of them, however, was quite large, almost as big around as the head of a pin.

  “How many did you get, Mitch?” asked Bernadette. “I got fifteen.”

  “Just because you pushed past everyone else and got there first,” said Mitchell rudely.

  “Ha-ha. Don’t you wish you had?” said Bernadette, getting the last word as the class filed out through the glass doors.

  Not until Thursday after school, when Mitchell was searching for a ballpoint pen that worked, did he happen to run across the box of toothpicks on his desk and remember that he was supposed to take a model of Sutter’s sawmill to school the next day. Somehow the project no longer seemed as interesting as it had the day Miss Colby assigned it to him.

  With his arm Mitchell cleared a space on his desk and dumped out the toothpicks. He was not sure what an old-fashioned sawmill looked like. He had seen modern mills in Northern California, but all he could remember about them were the piles of lumber and great metal cones that poured out smoke smelling of wood. He thought of the sugar-cube mission, complete with bell tower and stables, that Little Miss Perfect had built and looked at his miserable heap of toothpicks. He tried to think how a house was built, and there arose in his mind an impossible picture of concrete, studding, siding, Sheetrock, plywood, tar, and gravel, none of which had been used in the construction of Sutter’s sawmill.

  “Drat!” said Mitchell.

  “What’s the matter, Mitch?” called Mrs. Huff from another room.

  “Aw, nothing.”

  “That means something is wrong,” said Amy from her room, where Mitchell knew she was making furniture for a doll’s house.

  “You keep out of this,” said Mitchell. He remembered watching the construction of the new savings-and-loan building where he had panned gold. Its walls were made of slabs of concrete that had been lifted into place, a type of construction known as “tilt-up.” Very well, Mitchell would tilt up the walls of Sutter’s sawmill.

  He found a roll of Scotch tape and tore off two short strips, which he managed to lay on his desk after considerable difficulty in removing them from his fingers. Then he carefully laid toothpicks across the Scotch tape to form one wall. Placing toothpicks on sticky Scotch tape and getting them straight was difficult, but Mitchell persisted, tearing off more Scotch tape, unsticking it from his fingers, and laying rows of toothpicks on it. All the time he was thinking of the sugar-cube mission built by Little Miss Perfect, and the harder he worked the more beautiful and elaborate that mission seemed.

  “Mom, do you have an old jar lid I can use?” Amy asked from the next room. “I want to put
it on top of a spool to make a little round table.”

  Girls! thought Mitchell. They were always good at making things, especially little things. And what could he make? A skateboard that Alan Hibbler wrecked.

  Mitchell tried setting up the two walls of his sawmill and holding them in place while he tore off a piece of Scotch tape, which immediately twisted and stuck to itself. “Drat!” said Mitchell, louder this time. If that old Bernadette Stumpf hadn’t gone and pointed to him, he probably wouldn’t be all stuck up with Scotch tape.

  “Mitchell, what are you doing?” his mother asked a second time.

  “Homework,” said Mitchell glumly, trying the Scotch tape once more. What kind of a sawmill was it going to be anyway, all stuck together with Scotch tape? John Sutter didn’t have any Scotch tape. Mitchell managed to fasten the two walls together, only to find that one of them was crooked. He blamed Bernadette.

  “Drat!” said Mitchell, and dropped a book on the floor with a satisfying bang for emphasis. If it weren’t for Bernadette he could be outside riding his bicycle. Because of her he was shut up in the house with a lot of slippery little toothpicks.

  Then Amy came barging into his room to see what he was doing. “Beat it,” ordered Mitchell, trying too late to hide his work with his hands.

  “What are you making?” his sister asked.

  “Nothing that is any of your business,” said Mitchell rudely.

  “Come on, Mitch,” pleaded Amy. “Let me help you.”

  “You aren’t supposed to help me with my homework,” he informed her. That rule was one of the most important in the Huff household. Mitchell and Amy did their own homework.

  “Just tell me what you’re making,” begged Amy.

  “Yes, Mitch,” said his mother, who had joined Amy to see what was going on. “Tell us what you’re making.”

  Mitchell glowered. “All right,” he said, and raised his voice to a yell. “I am building a stupid old Sutter’s sawmill out of stupid old toothpicks!”

  “All right, all right,” said Amy, backing away. “We just asked, is all. Is there any harm in asking?”

  “My goodness, Mitchell,” his mother said mildly. “It can’t be as bad as all that.”

  “Did you ever try to build a stupid old Sutter’s sawmill out of stupid old toothpicks?” he asked ferociously.

  “Well—no,” admitted Mrs. Huff, “but I’m sure it can’t be as difficult as you’re making it seem.”

  “It can, too,” contradicted Mitchell. Then he added darkly, thinking of all the girls who were so good at making things, “You just don’t know.”

  “Perhaps I don’t,” agreed Mrs. Huff. “Do you mean this is a homework assignment?”

  “Miss Colby asked me to make it and gave me the toothpicks, and I’m supposed to bring it in tomorrow,” Mitchell explained. “And all because of that old Bernadette Stumpf. When Miss Colby asked who would like to build a sawmill, old Bernadette sat there pointing at me, and of course Miss Colby had to go pick on me.”

  “You probably had your hand raised anyway,” said Amy.

  Now how did she know, Mitchell wondered. Sometimes Amy seemed to understand him altogether too well, which made matters worse. Girls! They read better than he read. They were better at making things, especially little things. Old Bernadette had pointed at him, derailed his sneakers, and panned more gold. A fellow didn’t have a chance.

  “Anyway, Bernadette likes you,” continued Amy. “That’s why she picks on you.”

  “Oh sure,” said Mitchell bitterly. “Handsome, dashing me.”

  “Never mind all that,” said Mrs. Huff. “Let’s think about Sutter’s sawmill. It must have been a small wooden building, a sort of log cabin.”

  “Hey, that’s right,” said Mitchell brightening. “They had to build it out of logs, because until they built it there wasn’t any mill to saw lumber.”

  Amy, who had edged around her brother’s desk for a glimpse of his work, said, “You can’t build it that way. Not with Scotch tape.”

  “You keep out of this,” ordered Mitchell.

  Amy assumed a wounded look. “I was only trying to help, is all. But if you don’t want me to help, it’s perfectly all right with me.”

  There was the trouble. Mitchell did want her to help, but he was too proud to say so.

  “But Mitchell,” protested Mrs. Huff, “this isn’t really homework. It isn’t the same as studying your spelling or working arithmetic problems. You aren’t learning anything from this.”

  “I’m learning how hard it is to stick toothpicks together with Scotch tape,” Mitchell pointed out.

  “That is hardly part of the curriculum,” said Mrs. Huff. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be all right to let Amy help you.”

  “What you need is white glue,” said Amy briskly, and left the room to get the plastic glue bottle.

  “Go on, Mitch, let her help,” whispered Mrs. Huff.

  “Okay,” agreed Mitchell at last. “But I have a feeling it’s going to be a crummy little sawmill.”

  “You know, I think you’re right,” said Mrs. Huff with a smile.

  Amy returned with the white glue and went to work in a businesslike way. She stacked the toothpicks so they crisscrossed at the corners like a log cabin and fastened each one in place with a smidgen of glue. With Mitchell helping, she did not take long to construct a tidy little toothpick building, with a cardboard roof, and doors and windows snipped through the toothpicks with the kitchen shears. She glued it to the lid of a shoe box so it would be easy to carry. “There,” she said, looking at their work. “It’s a crummy little sawmill, but I guess it is what your teacher wants.”

  “I guess so,” agreed Mitchell, smiling for the first time since he had started working with the toothpicks. His sawmill should please Miss Colby, even though Little Miss Perfect, who had built the sugar-cube mission, and the rest of the girls would make fun of it. Well, he did not care. If he had made the sawmill alone, he would have been worried, but his sister had helped him so it was all right. Amy was one of the best makers-of-things in the fourth grade. She even got to write in starched string, the “Thanksgiving” that went over the hall bulletin board, where her class displayed mosaics made out of dried beans and peas.

  Mitchell’s thoughts returned to girls once more. “Did you mean it, what you said about Bernadette?” he asked his sister. “Do you really think she likes me?”

  “Of course,” answered Amy, as if Bernadette’s liking Mitchell should be obvious to anyone. “Why else would she point at you?”

  Mitchell thought the matter over. “Yeah, I see what you mean,” he finally admitted. He was embarrassed to be liked by a girl like Bernadette Stumpf.

  8

  Amy’s Feathered Friend

  One day in the middle of December Amy came home from school carrying a large paper bag. “Guess what, Mom!” she said, as she entered the back door into the kitchen, where her mother was mincing mushrooms with her French cookbook open beside her on the counter. “Mrs. Martin made me piñata chairman for the class, and I appointed Marla and Bonnie to be on the committee.”

  “Good,” said Mrs. Huff, laying down her knife. “And just what does a piñata chairman do?”

  “Makes a piñata for the Christmas party. Mrs. Martin gave me all the things to make it with,” answered Amy, and in her mind’s eye she could see the piñata her committee would make. It would be in the shape of a bird, and when it was hung from the ceiling of the classroom it would look as if it were really flying. It would be so beautiful that the class would be sorry to break it, even if it did spill out peanuts and candy. “The committee is meeting here Saturday afternoon, and Mom, remember your promise. You promised the next time I had friends over to make something you wouldn’t let Mitch hang around and spoil everything.”

  “I remember,” said Mrs. Huff with a smile. “He can go ice-skating that afternoon.”

  “Boy!” said Mitchell, pretending indignation when he heard the news. “It�
�s tough when a fellow isn’t welcome in his own house. I think I’ll write a letter to my congressman.”

  Amy, who knew that her brother would rather go skating at the ice rink than almost anything else, looked forward to a peaceful piñata party without any pestering.

  Saturday afternoon Amy spread newspapers on the kitchen table and, at her mother’s suggestion, on the floor. While Marla and Bonnie took turns blowing up the balloon Mrs. Martin had supplied, Amy dumped the bag of powdered wheat-flour paste into a mixing bowl. Mrs. Huff added water and beat the paste with the wire whip she used in her French cooking until it was as smooth and free from lumps as any of the sauces she made from her French cookbook. When the balloon was larger than a basketball, the girls tied the opening with a string.

  “See the balloon.” Bonnie, who was good at imitating her little brothers and sisters, spoke in the flat, expressionless voice of a first grader reading from a primer. “See the big balloon.”

  Her imitation sent the girls off into a gale of giggles. “Look, look, Mother. See the balloon,” said Amy, as if she were reciting in a first-grade reading group. She began to cut old newspapers into strips with the scissors.

  “Look, Spot, look,” said Bonnie. “Look at the balloon.”

  “Who’s Spot?” asked Marla.

  “Oh, you know how they always have dogs in readers,” said Bonnie, as she helped Amy shred newspapers.

  “Remember Penny in that reader we used to have,” said Amy. “Penny lost her bunny.”

  The girls shrieked with laughter at the memory of poor Penny losing her bunny. Amy tried to dip a strip of newspaper into the paste only to find that the paste was now as thick as pudding. “Mom, help!” she called.