GRANDMA BRINGS ME TO SCHOOL early. I sit out in the hall while she and Mrs. D. have a little chat.
When Grandma leaves, she’s got a smile on her face, so I guess she doesn’t think I’m a zhlub. She hugs and kisses me goodbye and wishes me a wonderful and spectacular field trip.
“But Grandma,” I say. “What about Savannah?”
“We have to be problem solvers, don’t we, Lola, dear?”
Fishsticks. Grandma went to Problem Solvers School, too.
I wait and wait for Savannah to walk in, and when she does I run over to her, lickety-split. I just have to get the words out before it’s too hard.
Savannah squints at me through her sparkly blue glasses. “HI, LOLA! Only ONE more day until your mom comes home.”
I hurry, hurry, hurry my words out. “Savannah, I’m sorry that I did something so bad, and I’m so sorry, I will never ever ever do it again, and what I did was draw on your mom’s picture.”
Savannah doesn’t look like a koala anymore.
And she doesn’t sound like a mouse.
She ROARS like a lawnmower. “YOU DID WHAT?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I stick out my leg. “Here. Kick me with your cowboy boot. I’ll get stitches and then we’ll be even.”
Savannah gives me a Death Glare. “I don’t want to be even with you, Lola Zuckerman. And to think that I gave YOU my jelly beans from California.” And Steaming Mad Savannah stomps off.
Amanda Anderson skips in. She gives me an A+ Amanda Anderson apple pie hug.
“Jessie told me the truth about the swings,” she says. “You didn’t push her. She pushed you. And you fell and that’s what happened.”
“I know!” I say, and those words are big orange balloons.
“But you still shouldn’t have been crowding by the swings.”
“I know,” I say, and those words are flat tires.
“And you have to be nice to Savannah and Jessie,” Amanda says. “We all have to be nice. Right?”
“Right,” I say, a little bit porcupine and a little bit skunk.
When every single last person gets there, Mrs. D. calls, “It’s time to get your partner for the field trip. Remember! You get who you get …”
“And you don’t get upset!” the class shouts back.
“Normally we go by …”
“Alphabetical order,” we remind her.
“But today we’re going to try something a little different,” she says. “Today we’re going in reverse alphabetical order.”
“That’s very unlike you,” Jamal says.
“That’s crazy talk!” Harvey hollers.
“That’s good news for me,” Ben Wexler says.
Z. Ding-dong LAST in the alphabet.
Except today.
“Lola, you get to choose your partner first.”
There are a whole lot of faces looking at me: I see Amanda’s with a smile like pineapples. I see Savannah’s looking down at her purple cowboy boots.
Saying you’re sorry isn’t as good as showing you’re sorry.
“I choose Jessie.” Jessie opens her mouth and closes it, just like the rainbow trout I caught when I went fishing with Grampy Coogan.
Mrs. D. smiles big. “Wonderful!”
Ben Wexler picks Jamal Stevenson and Savannah Travers picks Amanda Anderson.
We line up, Z to A, and on the way to the Field Trip Bus, Mrs. D. whispers, “You’re a peach.”
Peaches have pits.
And that’s what I have, too. A giant pit. Now that Savannah is partners with Amanda, she has all that time at the farm to tell Amanda about her mustached mom.
Then I’ll never be partners with Amanda ever again.