Monster's First Day of School

by Hannah Barnaby

  Okay, the monster told himself, you are inside a bus. Try not to panic.

  This was very important because when monsters panic, they get sweaty. And monster sweat is a very powerful smell. It’s a smell that is difficult to describe, but it’s a little bit like a swamp full of maple syrup. Or a basement full of cotton candy. And if the boy’s backpack started smelling like swamp syrup, everyone would know the monster was in there. Or that something was in there.

  One way the monster kept himself from panicking was by singing to himself.

  The boy had told him to not talk, but he hadn’t said anything about not singing.

  And the bus was so loud, surely no one would hear him.

  Right?

  As quietly as he could, the monster started singing his favorite song.

  “I wear my bathrobe in the baaaaaath—”

  The bus was suddenly much less loud.

  “What was that?” the monster heard a girl’s voice ask.

  “That?” he heard the boy say. “That was … me. I was … singing.”

  “About a bathrobe?” the girl asked.

  “… Yes,” said the boy.

  The next sound the monster heard was a VVVVVVVPT! It was the zipper on the boy’s backpack, which was filled with sunlight and then the boy’s face.

  “No singing, either,” he pleaded.

  “Sorry,” said the monster, and usually when he said sorry the boy said it’s okay. But this time he didn’t have a chance, because they had arrived.

  8.

  I will tell you right away that school was not at all what the monster expected.

  For one thing, the building was absolutely enormous and the students all looked like giants and the teachers looked even bigger. (You and I both know that this is because the monster was so much smaller than usual, and when you are small, lots of things and places and people look terrifically large. When you are very small, the whole world is pretty much just like a forest of grown-ups’ legs.)

  School was noisy in a way that the boy’s house was not. Even when the boy and his sister were yelling like pirates and sword-fighting and watching loud movies, the house was not loud like this.

  It got a little bit better when the monster tucked himself deeper into the boy’s backpack. It was nice and dark in there, and the boy’s sweatshirt—which he had taken off at the bus stop, even though his mother told him to wear it—was like a very cozy blanket for the monster to snuggle into, and the monster’s eyes started to droop …

  No! the monster thought. I must not fall asleep! I am at school!

  Suddenly, a girl’s voice said, “What’s that?”

  “It’s, uh, a stuffed animal,” said the boy. “My grandmother got it for me.”

  The monster didn’t know what a stuffed animal was. He didn’t know whether stuffed animals should speak or not. He took a chance.

  “I’m crepuscular!” he announced.

  The girl looked very surprised. But she didn’t run away.

  “Is that for show-and-tell?” she asked the boy.

  “… Yes.” The boy was using his not very sure of things voice. The monster recognized that voice.

  “Cool,” said the girl, and she walked to another part of the room.

  “No talking!” the boy whispered into the backpack.

  The monster didn’t answer.

  “Did you hear me?” the boy whispered.

  “Yes,” whispered the monster, “but you told me not to talk.”

  “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea,” said the boy.

  “I can do not talking,” said the monster. “Watch.”

  The monster pressed his lips together—gently, because his teeth were sharp—and looked up at the boy with what he hoped was a sweet expression on his face.

  “Okay,” said the boy. “I have to go to my desk now. I’ll come check on you in a little while.”

  The monster did not like the idea of the boy leaving him alone in the cubby, but he did not want to break any rules so soon after arriving at school. Rules were a big thing at school. The boy had made that very clear. Several times.

  At least the cubbies were open to the room, so the monster could observe.

  The first thing he observed was that the boy’s classroom had a lot of stuff in it. Even more stuff than the boy’s room had. This was a relief, because the monster was very tired of looking at the same stuff all day. Some of the school things were the same as what the boy had: books, shelves, books on shelves, a rug, posters on the walls. But there were no toys here, or piles of clothes, and there were many more chairs and tables and lights.

  Then the monster noticed something.

  The classroom had no windows.

  How did the boy know what was happening outside if there were no windows?

  What if it started raining and nobody knew about it?

  What if there was a terrible storm?

  What if, the monster thought—and he was really letting his imagination run wild now—what if everything outside disappeared while they were in here?

  The monster had frightened himself.

  He whimpered.

  “What was that?” a girl asked.

  “Uh,” said the boy.

  Just then, the boy’s teacher arrived.

  Like so many other things, she was not what the monster had expected.

  The monster had never met a teacher before, so it is unclear what he was expecting, even to himself. But what he saw was a very tall woman with wild red hair that curled out in all directions. She was smiling as she came in, and her teeth were very white and looked extremely strong.

  She looks just like my mother! thought the monster.

  And she did. Except that she had wheels on her feet.

  The boy’s teacher zipped into the room on her wheels and promptly crashed into the side of her desk. All the children—including the boy—gasped.

  “Good morning!” said the teacher. “Did you have a good weekend? I did! I got new roller skates!”

  Roller skates, thought the monster. Another beautiful word.

  He thought it would be even more beautiful out loud.

  “Roller skates,” he whispered.

  “What was that?” asked the same girl as before.

  “Uh,” said the boy again.

  No more out loud words, the monster told himself.

  And then, being crepuscular, the monster fell asleep.

  9.

  When the monster woke up, something strange was happening.

  All the children—including the boy—were sitting in a circle. They seemed to be holding some kind of ceremony.

  The monster knew about ceremonies because when he was a pup (that’s the word for a baby monster) his family had held a ceremony for the most important holiday to monsters.

  I bet you think that’s Halloween, don’t you?

  I’m sorry, but that is incorrect.

  The most important holiday to monsters is Arbor Day.

  Why? Well, because most monsters spend a great deal of time under beds, and most beds are made of wood, and Arbor Day is all about trees. Also, almost no one else of any species does anything to celebrate Arbor Day, so the monsters pretty much have it all to themselves.

  They like that.

  Monsters are not naturally good at sharing.

  “Okay, everyone,” the teacher said. “If you brought something for show-and-tell today, you may quietly go get it and quietly return to the sharing circle.”

  Eeeeeeep, the monster thought excitedly, and he was very proud of himself for keeping that sound inside of himself. He held perfectly still as the boy lifted him out of the backpack, and he was proud of himself for that, too. He did his very best not to wiggle as the boy carried him to the circle and set him down on the rug.

  This is going to be great, thought the monster.

  It turned out that the girl who had heard the monster whisper roller skates and had also heard the monster whimper had a name. Her name was Lila Durbin. The m
onster thought this was a lovely name, and he was very tempted to whisper it out loud, but he stopped himself.

  It also turned out that Lila Durbin—like the boy—had brought something special for show-and-tell. But before I tell you what it was, I shall tell you something important about monsters.

  Monsters love anything that looks like fur. Grass, shag carpet, very messy hair, pine trees, pom-poms, hedgehogs. And when monsters love something, they sometimes have a little trouble with self-control. (You may recall that our monster and our boy had quite an adventure after a swallowing-a-friend incident.)

  Unfortunately for the monster, for show-and-tell that day, Lila Durbin had brought something furry-looking.

  It was not a pine tree.

  It was not a shag carpet.

  It was Spike. Her hedgehog.

  “Oh my gosh,” whispered the monster.

  “What?” whispered the boy.

  “I need to hug that,” whispered the monster.

  “Please don’t,” whispered the boy.

  “I have to!”

  “No, you don’t!”

  Another girl sitting next to the boy looked over. “Are you talking to your stuffed animal?” She smiled. “I do that sometimes, too.”

  The teacher tapped the girl on the shoulder. “Maisy,” she said. “Let’s listen to Lila, please.”

  Maisy listened. The boy listened. The monster listened.

  “This is Spike,” said Lila. “He’s two years old. His favorite food is apples.”

  The monster started to wiggle a little bit. He had now learned that sitting still in sharing circle was difficult when there was a hedgehog in the room.

  “Stop wiggling,” the boy whispered.

  “It’s so fuzzy,” moaned the monster.

  “What kind of stuffed animal is that?” Maisy asked.

  The teacher tapped Maisy on the shoulder again. This time, she tapped the boy on the shoulder, too. “I hope I don’t have to come over here again,” she said.

  Maisy, the boy, and the monster hoped that, too.

  “Want to see Spike run around?” Lila asked. She set Spike gently in the middle of the sharing circle.

  The monster’s wiggling got worse. He had now learned that sitting still in sharing circle is impossible when there was a hedgehog in the center of it.

  The boy tried to stop the monster from wiggling. And in the process, he forgot something that he had learned that morning, which was that the monster was very, very ticklish.

  The monster shrieked.

  Maisy jumped.

  Lila Durbin dove into the circle to protect Spike.

  The boy changed color.

  He turned extremely pink.

  Show-and-tell was over.

  Ruined.

  Quietly, the boy and the girl and Lila Durbin and the other children left the sharing circle to put their things away. Lila put Spike back into his cage, which—just for today, the teacher had reminded everyone—was being kept in the classroom. The boy put the monster back into his backpack.

  “Next is lunch,” the boy told the monster. “Then gym, then math, and then we go home.”

  “Okay,” said the monster. He felt as if he should say something else, but he didn’t know what. And the boy walked away before he could think of anything.

  Being crepuscular, the monster fell asleep again.

  While he was sleeping, lunch happened.

  Then gym happened.

  The monster woke up when the boy and his class came back for math. He still had the feeling of wanting to say something. He still didn’t know what to say.

  Suddenly, there was a scream!

  10.

  Don’t you hate it when you’re reading a book and something really exciting happens and then the chapter ends immediately?

  It’s so …

  Oh.

  Sorry.

  11.

  Suddenly there was a scream!

  The monster looked around. Had someone seen him? Had he scared someone even though he wasn’t big anymore?

  The scream was from Lila.

  “Lila, what’s wrong?” asked the teacher.

  “Spike is gone!” Lila cried.

  The boy looked at the monster.

  The monster looked at the boy.

  The boy looked at the monster.

  The monster whispered, “What?”

  “Did you take the hedgehog?”

  “No,” said the monster. “I was sleeping.”

  The boy’s eyebrows squinched together. “Did you take the hedgehog?”

  “That’s the same question,” said the monster helpfully. “You asked me that already.”

  “I want to believe you,” said the boy.

  “Oh, you sound just like your mother!” exclaimed the monster. “That’s exactly what she said when you told her you didn’t know how your baseball broke the garage window.”

  “Yep,” said the boy.

  “But … you did know how your baseball broke the garage window.”

  “Yep,” said the boy.

  “But I didn’t take the hedgehog,” said the monster.

  The boy really did want to believe the monster. But nothing had ever gotten lost after show-and-tell before. And he had never brought the monster to show-and-tell before.

  And Spike was fuzzy. And the monster loved fuzzy things.

  The boy had a feeling in his heart.

  It was not a good feeling.

  He didn’t know what to call it, but I do.

  The feeling was doubt.

  He doubted whether he could trust the monster. He doubted whether it had been a good idea to bring the monster to school, or to make him smaller, or—and this was the worst doubt of all—to become such good friends at all.

  The boy wanted to hide.

  Fortunately, the monster had been hiding all day already, so he had something else in mind.

  “I think I can help,” said the monster. He ducked into the boy’s backpack.

  When he reappeared, he was holding something.

  It was not a hedgehog.

  It was the binoculars.

  “I can help look for Spike with these,” the monster said. “I am very good at finding fuzzy-looking things because I love them so much.”

  The boy still felt doubtful, but he felt a tiny bit hopeful, too. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s try it.”

  The teacher and Maisy and Lila Durbin were all so busy looking for Spike that no one noticed the boy carrying the monster to his desk. No one noticed the monster holding the binoculars to his eyes (looking through the small end, not the big one). And no one noticed when the monster pointed to the teacher’s roller skates, which were parked near the door. One of them was moving.

  “Roller skates,” whispered the monster.

  The boy carefully scooped Spike out of the roller skate and carried him over to Lila Durbin.

  Everyone cheered.

  This time, when the boy turned pink, it was just a little bit. And he was smiling.

  He carried the monster back to his cubby and tucked him into the backpack with the binoculars. “I didn’t know you brought those,” said the boy.

  The monster hugged the binoculars. “I thought I might need to get big again,” he said. “If something went wrong.” Then he smiled. “And something did go wrong! But I fixed it without being big!”

  The boy smiled, too. “I guess you did,” he said. “Maybe being small isn’t so bad. For now.”

  The monster had a feeling in his heart.

  It was a very good feeling.

  He didn’t know what to call it, but I do.

  The feeling was joy.

  12.

  “No wonder you are so happy to come home every day,” the monster said that night. “School is noisy. School is exhausting. School is—”

  “You didn’t like it?” the boy asked.

  The monster thought. “I loved it!” he said. “Can I go with you again tomorrow?”

  The boy shook h
is head. “We only have show-and-tell once a week,” he said.

  “Oh,” said the monster. Then he remembered something he had wanted to do at school. He whispered, “Lila Durbin.”

  “What?” said the boy.

  “Nothing,” said the monster.

  “Are you ready for bed?” asked the boy.

  “Yes,” said the monster.

  “Do you have the binoculars?”

  “Yes,” said the monster.

  “Good,” said the boy. “Remember, look through the small end this time so you get big.”

  The monster looked at the binoculars. He thought about the day he had just spent riding around in the boy’s backpack. He thought about how everything in the world looked so much bigger, and how that was scary at first but now he was used to it. He thought about how it felt to sit in the pocket of the boy’s folded legs.

  The monster looked at the boy.

  “I think,” he said, “that maybe I will stay small for a little while.”

  “Really?” the boy said. “I hate being small. I can’t wait to be big.”

  “Well,” said the monster, “I’ve been big for a long time. And I’ve only been small for one day.”

  “That makes sense,” said the boy.

  “The only thing is…” said the monster.

  “What?” asked the boy.

  “It feels so much bigger under the bed now that I’m small.”

  “Oh,” said the boy.

  “Do you want to sleep up here? With me?”

  The monster did.

  When they were both tucked in (again), the monster said, “It’s too bad we don’t have names like Lila Durbin.”

  “I have a name,” said the boy.

  “You do?”

  “Of course,” said the boy. “It’s J—”