“I can’t be late today,” she said, almost walking straight past him. Huck, who never wanted to be late, let out an audible sigh of relief. Being such good friends with the naughtiest girl in school was exhausting. Elizabella had started power walking; Huck jogged along to catch up.
“I am not going to do anything that could possibly be interpreted as naughty between now and the Bilby Creek Fete,” she said. Then she thought she’d better wind it back. “Or at least for today. Today I am going to be perfect.”
“Mum says that nobody’s perfect,” said Huck.
“Well, maybe not literally,” said Elizabella, although she did actually plan to be as perfect as possible. Elizabella knew this was an ambitious goal, but she also knew that if she aimed that high and fell a bit short, it would still be a big improvement.
When they arrived at school, Elizabella saw Mr Gobblefrump in the playground. She had written the poem on a piece of fancy pink paper that came in a writing set her dad had given her for her birthday. She’d put it in an envelope with a sprig of lavender from her front garden. She was about to run over and give it to him when he caught her gaze. Elizabella saw a lightning bolt of fear flash across his eyes. He promptly turned away.
“He just looked at you like my mum looks at a spider,” said Huck.
“Yes, he did,” agreed Elizabella. Maybe it wasn’t the best time to give him the poem.
“Handball?” asked Huck, pulling a tennis ball out of his pocket and bouncing it on the ground. He bounced the ball quite high on purpose. It landed on a twig and jolted off in another direction. He chased after it, a little embarrassed.
“You go ahead, I’ll see you later,” called out Elizabella. She’d just had an idea. She went to the tuckshop and stood behind Sandy, who was placing his recess order.
“Two pikelets, please, Miss Duck,” he said, handing over a fifty-cent piece. Miss Duck took the coin, smiling as she wrote his order down on a brown paper bag and put it on the pile.
Miss Duck had been running the school tuckshop for twenty years. Her mother ran it before her and her grandmother ran it before that. In fact, Miss Duck’s family had been running the tuckshop since records began. Miss Duck had long, brown hair – so long it touched the back of her knees, but you’d never know because she put it up in a bun on the top of her head. She wore an apron and dress she had made by reconstructing second-hand Bilby Creek Primary School uniforms. Miss Duck was very handy.
Elizabella was next in the queue.
“I thought two pikelets were a dollar now?” she asked Miss Duck.
“They are, but that’s all Sandy ever has for recess, and he always comes in with just that one fifty-cent piece. I worry if I give him the new price schedule he might only be able to afford one,” she explained. Miss Duck had a heart of melted chocolate.
“Miss Duck, I need a favour,” said Elizabella. “Can you give this Sorry Poem to Mr Gobblefrump? Don’t tell him what it is or who it’s from or he may not open it.”
Elizabella handed over the envelope.
“Of course,” said Miss Duck. “I’ll give it to him when he comes in for his three bottles of orange juice.”
“Three?” asked Elizabella.
“He’s doing a juice cleanse,” said Miss Duck, shrugging.
And with that the bell rang.
“Better fly,” said Elizabella to Miss Duck. “I can’t do anything naughty today.”
Elizabella hurried through the playground and ended up fifth in the line for Miss Carrol’s class. Fifth! she thought. She’d never got in early enough to be that close to the front before. Miss Carrol approached her class line and literally did a double take when she saw Elizabella.
Maybe this really was the day Elizabella was going to change?
Later that morning, Miss Carrol was showing the class different sentences on the whiteboard and asking people to pick out the verbs:
The cow jumped over the moon.
The girl pushed her sister on the swing.
The hamster ran around the wheel.
These are extremely boring sentences, thought Elizabella. If she worked for the Department of Education she would make some changes to the syllabus. She could even make these sentences much better just by changing the verbs.
The cow hurtled over the moon.
The girl launched her sister on the swing.
The hamster bolted around the wheel.
And if she changed the objects of the sentences as well, she could make some real zingers.
The cow hurtled over the house.
The girl launched her sister out of a giant cake.
The hamster bolted around the universe.
The hamster bolted around the girl’s hair as she rode her sister’s cow out of a giant cake and hurtled around the universe.
“Elizabella?” called Miss Carrol. Elizabella had been daydreaming.
“Jumped! Pushed! Ran!” said Elizabella.
She looked around. Everyone was staring at her.
“We stopped doing verbs five minutes ago,” snapped Daphne.
“Oh . . .” said Elizabella. She looked to the doorway and saw a very, very, very tall girl standing there in a pair of pink denim overalls.
“I was asking you to make some room for Minnie,” said Miss Carrol.
In Miss Carrol’s class everyone sat in rows at their own little desk. The desk next to Elizabella was empty. Well, it was empty except for Elizabella’s pencil case, homework, ringbinder, exercise books, three olives (that had somehow made their way from last night’s Deconstructed Fridge into her backpack, then back out of her backpack and onto this desk), four hairy hair elastics and her house keys.
Elizabella believed in the Waste Not, Want Not rule. She understood that the rule was to protect the environment and save money; that’s why she always fed leftovers to the worms in Squiggly Manor. But Elizabella saw no reason why it shouldn’t be extended to include any vacant surfaces in her vicinity. She quickly got to her feet and started rehousing all her things on her own desk.
She was so busy arranging everything that she didn’t really listen as Miss Carrol introduced the new girl to the class.
“This is Minnie,” said Miss Carrol, who had to look up at her new student to meet her gaze. Minnie was at least twenty centimetres taller than the teacher and her hair was as long as a whole kindy kid.
“Minnie’s family has just moved to Bilby Creek from Beijing, and I know you will all make her feel extremely welcome. Right, Elizabella?”
Elizabella glanced up. She had stuffed the olives in her mouth (Waste Not, Want Not). She quickly swallowed them and said, “Of course!”
She had forgotten the olives weren’t pitted. Elizabella thumped herself on the chest and three olive pips flew out of her mouth and onto Minnie’s new desk. Elizabella swiftly wiped them off and gestured welcomingly at the desk.
Minnie had been standing next to Miss Carrol with a shy smile. As she walked out of Miss Carrol’s line of sight towards Elizabella, she went cross-eyed and stuck out her tongue, making Elizabella laugh.
“I don’t see what is so funny about the word ‘thylacine’,” said Miss Carrol, who was putting up some facts about the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, on the board for their next lesson.
“Sorry, Miss Carrol,” said Elizabella. She looked over at Minnie who was smiling sweetly at Miss Carrol as though she’d never poked her tongue out in her entire life.
“Nice overalls,” whispered Elizabella.
“My new uniform is being specially altered at the uniform shop because I’m so tall,” said Minnie, matter-of-factly.
“Wow,” said Elizabella. She had never heard of anyone having to do that before.
“At least it’s just shorts and a T-shirt. It took forever for them to alter the winter uniform at my last school. It had so many layers because of the snow.”
“It snowed at your last school?”
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
“I’ve never seen snow,” said Eli
zabella.
“Really?”
“I don’t know if anyone at Bilby Creek Primary has.”
Minnie looked at her, shocked, as though Elizabella had just told her that no one at Bilby Creek had ever seen a TV.
Being a teacher isn’t always easy. Everyone knows the feeling of not wanting to go to school, but lots of kids, including Elizabella, don’t realise that teachers sometimes have the same feelings. If they could see their teachers in the mornings, they’d probably think of them very differently. Mr Biffington and Mr Crab hitting snooze on their phone alarms over and over again until the last possible moment, Miss Carrol eating chocolate bars for breakfast as a special treat to will herself out of bed . . .
After all the excitement of yesterday, Mr Gobblefrump really had considered having the day off. This morning he had looked at himself in his bathroom mirror and given himself a pep talk. Once more unto the breach, he had said to himself, which is what King Henry says to encourage his army to go back into battle in Mr Gobblefrump’s favourite Shakespeare play Henry V. It meant “Let’s try once more”, which is exactly what Mr Gobblefrump was attempting to convince himself to do. He eventually managed to pull himself together. He picked his toupee up off its little stand, gave it a quick brush to disguise the little bits that were falling out and put it on his head. “You’ve got this!” he said, looking in the mirror. He fed his cat Pemberley, mounted his little yellow bicycle and rode to school.
Now, it was ten minutes before recess, and Mr Gobblefrump decided to make his way down to the tuckshop before the fray of children hit the playground.
He walked in and saw Miss Duck behind the counter.
“Good morning, Mr Gobblefrump, will that be three bottles of OJ today?”
“Yes, please, Miss Duck,” he said. Miss Duck bustled to the fridge and came back with the bottles. He pulled out his wallet and started taking out a ten-dollar note.
“No charge today!” said Miss Duck.
“Oh?”
Mr Gobblefrump had been ordering so much juice that Miss Duck had had to up her order at the Bilby Creek Wholesale Super Mega Mart, which supplied the tuckshop. She’d ordered so much orange juice from them that they’d given her a free box of the stuff. Miss Duck thought it was only fair to pass this saving onto Mr Gobblefrump.
She didn’t want to embarrass him, so she came up with this reason: “Ah . . . yes, we have a . . . ah . . . ‘buy twelve orange juices get three free’ special this week and you’ve bought enough to redeem!”
“Right . . . thanks?” said Mr Gobblefrump.
“I also have something else for you,” said Miss Duck, and she reached into the pocket of her blouse behind her apron and pulled out Elizabella’s letter.
“What’s this?” Mr Gobblefrump asked, as she handed it to him.
“Oh, it’s something special,” she said. “Open it in private.” Miss Duck gave him a little smile.
“Okay . . .” said Mr Gobblefrump, a little baffled. He stuffed the letter into his breast pocket, next to the precious Bilby Creek Primary School Rule Book, and picked up the three bottles.
Back in the staffroom he cracked open his first juice and took out the letter. Mmmm, lavender, he thought as the scent wafted out of the open envelope.
He read the letter in his head:
In the heat of the moment I forget what’s what
I forget what’s right and I forget what’s not
And my actions do become my art
Forgive me for doing what’s in my heart
“What’s that lovely lavender smell?” asked Mr Biffington, who had wandered in.
“Nothing!” Mr Gobblefrump said. He quickly folded the note and put it back in his pocket.
What beautiful verse, Miss Duck! thought Mr Gobblefrump, naturally assuming he was reading her composition.
He had never really thought about Miss Duck in that way before. Then again, he never knew she was a poet, and he never, ever thought that he, Chester Gobblefrump, would be a poet’s muse . . .
And then there was the matter of the free OJ . . .
Was it possible Miss Duck was looking to start some sort of courtship?
During recess, Elizabella went to see Miss Duck in the tuckshop.
“One apple please, Miss Duck, and . . .?”
“Mission accomplished,” Miss Duck said, handing her the apple with a wink.
“Excellent,” said Elizabella, giving her fifty cents for the apple. “I owe you one.”
Elizabella skipped over to the handball court, where Huck, Ava and Evie were idly bouncing Huck’s tennis ball, waiting for Elizabella so they could play a proper game.
“What do you think of the new girl, Minnie?” Ava asked the group as she bounced the ball into Huck’s square.
“She seems nice. I think she might be a bit shy,” said Huck.
“Makes sense,” said Evie, “she’s moved all the way from overseas!”
Evie’s right, thought Elizabella. It must be very hard to move all the way from another country to a place where you didn’t know anyone. Even though Minnie hadn’t seemed very shy to Elizabella when she came over to the desk and stuck out her tongue . . .
Elizabella looked around for Minnie. She was nowhere to be seen. This was strange. Anyone as tall as her shouldn’t be hard to spot in the playground. Elizabella was so distracted that she didn’t see Huck whack the ball into her square and, even though it was as slow as honey dripping off a spoon, she completely missed it. The ball bounced up and hit her in the chest.
“Yes!” said Huck, advancing to her square and sending Elizabella down to the bottom position.
Elizabella snapped out of it. As soon as the ball came back to her she slid a low skidding bounce across Ava’s square that went so fast Ava barely saw it, let alone hit it with her hand. The twin chased it down the playground.
Sandy came past the handball court and sat in the reserve position on the bitumen.
“No pool today, Elizabella?” he asked.
“No pool today,” said Elizabella, very seriously.
“How about a jumping castle made of backpacks? Or we could make a pole vault if we tied a bunch of jumpers together and tied them to the two gum trees near the tuckshop?
“No pool, no jumping castle, no pole vault, nothing,” said Elizabella. “Today I am not doing anything naughty.”
Sandy looked at her, his eyes wide, like she’d told him that his baby brother had just become the prime minister.
As the kids filed back into Miss Carrol’s class after recess, they heard a scream that was so high it woke up Mr and Mr Biffington–Crab’s British bulldog Ralph, who was asleep under the desk in the school office.
It was Daphne.
“It’s gone!” she screamed.
“What’s gone?” asked Miss Carrol.
“Fairy-Wren Blue!” Daphne spluttered through her tears. Daphne was holding her Pickles Pencils tin out for all to see – and there it was. Right there between Pea Green and Night Sky was a gap that stuck out like a missing tooth in a kindy kid’s smile. A gap where that perfect Fairy-Wren Blue pencil should have been.
Everyone stared.
This is going to be a BIG deal, thought Elizabella.
“Daphne, it’s just a pencil,” Sandy said.
“Just a pencil!?” screamed Daphne. “Just a pencil!?!?”
“Yeah,” he said, “it’s just a pencil.”
Of course! thought Elizabella. Sandy has probably never owned a set of Pickles Pencils.
She was right. He never had. So he didn’t know the joy of gazing longingly up and down that rainbow, committing all their delightful names to memory, ranking them in order from most favourite to least most favourite colour.
Still, he has a point, Elizabella thought. With the way Daphne’s going on, you’d think Fairy-Wren Blue was her actual pet bird that had gone missing, not a pencil.
“Fairy-Wren Blue is everything!” Daphne exclaimed. “I literally can’t live without it!”
> “Now, Daphne, calm down–” said Miss Carrol.
“Calm down? CALM DOWN? Somebody stole my Fairy-Wren Blue!”
“Daphne, let’s not make accusations,” said Miss Carrol, firmly. “You’ve probably misplaced it.”
Daphne looked injured. “Miss Carrol,” she said through a waterfall of tears, “I have never lost anything.”
“Okay, everybody sit down,” said Miss Carrol, exasperated. “Can everyone go through their pencil cases to see if they have accidentally wound up with Daphne’s pencil?”
Ava piped up, “I have a Fairy-Wren Blue, but this one is mine.”
“How do you know!?” exclaimed Daphne, running over to Ava’s desk. She grabbed the pencil out of the twin’s hand and examined it. It was about an inch long and covered in so many bite marks you could barely read those precious words “Fairy-Wren Blue” along the side. Daphne dropped the pencil back on the desk like poison ivy.
“It’s definitely mine,” said Ava. “Sorry, Daphne.”
Daphne stormed back to her desk.
Eventually, after everyone had diligently been through their pencil cases, backpacks, tote trays and everywhere else they could think of, Miss Carrol put an end to the search party.
“We’ve all had a good look, Daphne,” she said. “Now it’s time to get on with the lesson.”
“But–” Daphne started to protest.
“No ‘buts’,” Miss Carrol said. “You’re most welcome to continue searching for it after school.”
Daphne’s mouth gaped open and closed like a goldfish. A goldfish who had never see such injustice.
Miss Carrol went back to her desk and re-gathered herself.
“Now, where were we?”
They were halfway through the lesson on animal extinction that had commenced before recess. They had been learning all about the Tasmanian tiger, which had been the biggest known carnivorous marsupial of the modern era. It had been native to both continental Australia and New Guinea, however by the time of colonisation, it had become extinct except in Tasmania . . .
“Ah, yes,” said Miss Carrol, picking up where she had left off. “What do we call it when a species comes to live only in one defined geographical area?”
Elizabella Meets Her Match Page 3
