And her classroom wasn’t decorated with thought bubbles telling you that you couldn’t start a story until you had brainstormed, made an outline, and gotten your notecards ready. Her classroom was decorated with moons, clouds, and stars. And on the stars, it said things like,
Reach for the stars!
And on the clouds, it said things like,
Every cloud has a silver lining!
And on the moons, it said things like,
I like to think the moon is there, even if I’m not looking at it.
—
Albert Einstein.
I could tell right away that this was a much better classroom to be in than Room 208.
I could also tell that, if I
had
to be in any classroom in the world other than Ms. Myers’s, this was the one I wanted to be in.
“Well,” Mrs. Jenkins said, “I see that someone in this class has already made her acquaintance.” She meant, I realized, Erica. I could feel myself turning red with embarrassment. “But for the rest of you—and you, Mrs. Hunter—this is Allie Finkle, a fourth-grader who may be joining your class in a few weeks.”
“It’s very nice to meet you, Allie Finkle,” Mrs. Hunter said. When she smiled, she looked even prettier than Ms. Myers, which I didn’t even know was possible. “Are you moving to the neighborhood?”
“Yes,” Erica cried, before I had a chance to say anything. “She’s moving in next door to me!”
Great. Why can’t I ever make a normal first impression?
“Well,” Mrs. Hunter said, smiling at me some more. “That’s nice. We look forward to having you join us.”
I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, though. Especially not Mrs. Hunter’s, seeing how nice she was being.
“Well,” I said. “I don’t know.”
Mrs. Hunter looked confused. “You don’t know if you’ll be joining us?”
“I did tell her,” Mrs. Jenkins said, with a cough, “that both the fourth-grade classes are a bit full right now, so we’re not sure exactly where she’ll end up.”
“No,” I said, even though it’s
Not polite to correct a grown-up.
That’s a rule. “I mean, we might not be moving.”
“Oh?” Mrs. Hunter said.
Mrs. Jenkins said, “That’s not what your parents said to me downstairs, Allie.”
“Right,” I said. “But, well, see, we haven’t sold our old house yet.” And if things go the way I have planned, with the for sale sign and my rocks, we might end up not selling it—and moving—after all. But I didn’t say that out loud.
“I see,” Mrs. Hunter said. “Well, I really hope you do. We’d love to have you here in Room Two Oh Nine. We’re having story time right now—a little thing we like to do right before recess. I know fourth-graders are a little old for story time, but they seem to enjoy it, don’t you, class?”
“Yes,” chimed the class. They certainly seemed to be liking story time more than Mrs. Danielson’s class was
enjoying learning about photosynthesis, judging from their nonbored expressions.
“We’re reading from
A Wrinkle in Time
,” Mrs. Hunter said, waving a copy of the book she had in her hands. “It’s one of my favorites.”
I just stared at her. I didn’t really know what to say.
Because
A Wrinkle in Time
was one of my favorites, too.
From somewhere behind the principal and me, a bell jangled, loud and old-timey sounding. Then a door flew open. The next thing I knew, students were streaming out into the hallway.
“Time for recess,” Mrs. Hunter said, slipping off the stool she was sitting on. “Class, please get your coats, and then get into your lines.”
Mrs. Hunter’s fourth-grade class scooted back their chairs, then raced to grab their coats from hooks on the wall opposite the windows. Then they got into two separate lines in front of the doorway, where they waited, giggling, until Mrs. Hunter said, “Well, go on.” Then they ran from the classroom—all except Erica, who lagged behind and asked, “Can Allie come with us?”
I looked at Mrs. Jenkins, who glanced at her watch, then nodded. “I’ll let your parents know where you are.”
“Come on!” Erica cried, grabbing my sleeve.
I didn’t bother asking Erica where we were going. I knew from past experience that wherever it was, it was going to be an adventure, possibly involving cutoff body parts.
And I wasn’t wrong. Erica led me down the stairs and out of the building, across the gravel school yard and toward the baseball diamond where some of the kids had started up a game of kick ball. At first I thought we were going to join them.
But to my surprise, Erica led us past the game and toward some bushes that grew alongside a high brick wall that separated the school grounds from the backyards of some houses next door to it.
I thought Erica would stop when we got to the bushes. But the next thing I knew, she was ducking down and crawling straight
into
them.
“Hey,” I said, putting on the brakes. “What are you
doing
?”
“It’s okay,” Erica said, looking back at me over her shoulder. “Follow me.”
I hadn’t sensed that Erica might be crazy when I was playing at her house the other day. But what did I know? I don’t know that many people. My mom is always saying my uncle Jay is crazy. But that’s just because he spends all of his money on stereo equipment, instead of normal things, like dinner.
I looked around the playground. All of the other kids were running around, playing kick ball, or swinging on swings. None of the rest of them were crawling into bushes. The bushes were so thick, I couldn’t see Erica once she was inside them. Who knew what was going on in there? Maybe she was a murderer and she was standing inside with an ax, and if I crawled in there after her she’d chop off my head (I saw that in a movie Uncle Jay and I watched once).
On the other hand, we’d had a really nice time playing with her dollhouse, and she hadn’t murdered me then.
“Allie?” I heard Erica’s voice float out from the bushes. “Are you coming?”
I decided to risk it. It seemed highly doubtful Erica was a murderer. And what if there were something really cool back there, and I missed it? I ducked down and crawled into the bushes after her.
When I came out the other side, I was surprised to see that the bushes only went on for a little while, and then you burst on out into all this open space and could stand up and walk around. What the bushes did was, they acted as a kind of privacy screen, so that from the playground what you couldn’t see was that, really, there was all this room between the bushes and the brick wall, so you had this little private alley, practically, all to yourself, with a beautiful rooftop of golden autumn leaves over it from the trees in the yards next door as their branches drooped overhead.
Only Erica and I didn’t have the alley all to ourselves, I saw to my surprise. Because there were these other two girls standing there, looking at me. It was another opportunity, I saw, for me to make a first impression. My stomach reacted again by getting all nervous.
“Hi,” said one of the girls, who was tall and skinny.
“Hi,” said the other girl, who was short and round.
“Allie,” Erica said. “These are my friends, Caroline and Sophie. They’re in Mrs. Hunter’s class, too.”
“Hi,” I said, recognizing them now from Room 209. Caroline was the tall, skinny one. Sophie was the short, round one. “I’m Allie Finkle.”
“We know,” Caroline said. Caroline didn’t smile. She seemed very serious. “Erica already told us all about you. She said you like ballet. Also, cats and baseball.”
“Yes,” I said, “I do. But I see you guys play kick ball here.”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “That’s just at recess, because there was a problem with
some
people throwing bats. So Mrs. Jenkins took them all away. Now we can only play kick ball.”
“Oh,” I said. I thought this was pretty smart of Mrs. Jenkins. Also that this was a policy that ought to be implemented at my school.
“Erica also said you have a big imagination,” Caroline went on. “That’s why we said it was okay for her to bring you here. We only tell people about this place if they
have a big imagination. If they don’t, they can’t see how magic it is.”
I looked around.
“I can see how magic it is, all right,” I said, admiringly. “I wish we had a place like this at my school. What do you guys do in here? Play like it’s a fort?”
“Actually,” Erica said excitedly, “we play like it’s a castle.”
“Cool,” I said. Because it did look a lot like a castle, with the bricks and all. “And you guys pretend to be princesses?”
“Queens,” Sophie said, looking disgusted. “Princesses don’t have any power.”
“Right,” Caroline said. She was starting to look less serious and more excited. “We’re queens. You can be one, too, if you want. Usually we play that an evil warlord wants to marry Sophie, because she’s so beautiful.”
Sophie smiled modestly at this when I looked at her. But with her curly brown hair and pink lips, she did look beautiful. So it really could be true.
“Okay,” I said.
“Only she won’t have him, because she’s pledged her heart to another,” Caroline went on. “So we’ve barricaded ourselves in our castle, and the evil warlord is attacking us, and we’re readying ourselves for battle.”
“Yeah,” Erica said happily. “We’re going to pour boiling oil on his forces!”
“Cool,” I said again, the butterflies in my stomach finally going away.
I was happy to have found girls who played such a neat game at recess. At Walnut Knolls Elementary, the new game Brittany Hauser was trying to get everyone to play was cheerleader (teaching anyone who would listen cheers she had learned from her big sister Becca).
We played queens until the bell rang, which happened before we even got to launch the catapult full of the heads of the warlord’s army, which we had cut off with our pretend scimitars.
“Awww,” Erica said. “I can’t believe we have to go in. That was fun. Are you staying for lunch, Allie?”
“No,” I said. Because I could see my parents and Mark and Kevin standing by one of the side doors, looking around for me. “I think I have to go.”
“Well, I hope you’re going to be in our class,” Caroline said.
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “I hope you don’t get stuck in boring Danielson’s class. That would stink!”
“That
would
stink,” I said, thinking of the thought bubbles. I was kind of shocked, but I was starting to find myself getting excited by the idea of going to Pine Heights.
Which was crazy! I didn’t want to move! Zombie hand! Horrible dark bedroom!
“Well, it was nice to meet you guys,” I said, just as Mom and Dad spotted me and started waving like crazy like they thought there was a chance I might miss them or something, which wasn’t likely since they were the tallest people on the playground, outside of the teachers. “But I better go.”
“Bye, Allie!” Sophie called as she went to join the line to go back into the school.
“Yeah, see you later, Allie,” Caroline said.
“Bye, Allie! See you on our street!” Erica called, hurrying off with her friends.
I went over to join my family instead of all the kids filing back into school. It was weird, though. I didn’t really want to.
“Well,” Mom said, looking pleased. “I see you made some new friends.”
“Yes,” I said. “They’re in Erica’s class with Mrs. Hunter.”
“And what did you think of Mrs. Hunter?” Dad wanted to know.
I started to say that I thought Mrs. Hunter was the nicest, prettiest teacher in the whole world—nicer even than Ms. Myers. But fortunately, Mark cut me off.
“
My
new teacher,” he said, “is so cool. Mr. Manx? He has seven newts in a terrarium in class—well, there used to be eight, but one got eaten by the others. Anyway, he let me feed them. Newts eat anything that moves that can fit in their mouths. I fed them a cricket—”
“That is disgusting,” I burst out, glad for the distraction from how much I liked this school. “The poor cricket!”
“It’s the circle of life,” Mark said matter-of-factly. “The newts eat the cricket and then poop him out and then the poop becomes fertilizer and then—”
“Kevin,” Mom said quickly, “what did you think of your class?”
“Not much,” Kevin said. We had started walking home by then. Home? I mean, to the new house. “That school isn’t very fancy.”
“You only like things if they’re fancy,” Mark said disgustedly.
“It may not be as new as your school in Walnut Knolls,” Dad said, “but it’s a very good school.”
“But it smells old,” Kevin complained. “And it looks old.”
Right as Kevin said this, our new house loomed into view, with its dark windows and creepy trees with their black branches scraping against the sky.
And I realized Kevin was right. He may only have been five, but he’d reminded me of something important. That just because I’d liked Mrs. Hunter and Erica’s friends didn’t mean I wanted to move. I couldn’t move. I wasn’t ready to give up my old friends and my old school and my old house. Not to move into a new house that was falling down so badly they wouldn’t have even let it on
Please Fix Up My House.
That was also, by the way, haunted. No way!
“I don’t think we can get as good an education at Pine Heights as we can in Walnut Knolls,” I said.
“Allie!” Mom cried. “Don’t be ridiculous! Of course you can! How can you even say that?”
Because of the zombie hand, I wanted to say.
And I knew I had to forget about Mrs. Hunter and
Reach for the Stars!
And the secret castle and the game of queens. I had to forget about Erica and Caroline and Sophie. I had to harden my heart against them, because the important thing was that I had to keep us from moving. Lives were at stake!
“I hated Pine Heights,” I lied. “I hated it a lot.”
“Allie,” Mom said, sounding hurt. “We met Mrs. Hunter. She seemed really nice. I know the principal is doing everything she can to get you into her class.”
“She is?” I didn’t mean to sound hopeful. “I mean…I don’t care.”
“And you seemed to like those girls we saw you with at recess,” Dad said.
“Yeah,” I said with a shrug. “They were…okay.”
“What about your kitten?” Mom asked. “Don’t you want a kitten anymore?”
That was the thing. Of
course
I still wanted a kitten. More than anything. Every time anyone said the word “kitten,” my heart gave a pang.