“I SWEAR ON MY DOG ’S LIFE I didn’t trip you,” Jessie says.
“You don’t even have a dog, Jessie Chavez.”
“If I did, I’d swear on it.”
“If you did, it would probably be a mean old hound dog that tripped other dogs.”
“No way. I’d get a nice dog. A yellow dog.”
We are out in the garden, picking beans. Jessie and I work together. Even though Jessie is a mean ol’ shover-tripper, she is still my partner. After our class fills up our buckets, we get to stop.
“All right, little farmers!” Old Jan McDonald cries. “A wonderful job! Now, do you know what’s next?”
“We’re going to visit the animals!” Ari Shapiro calls.
Jessie shoots up her hand. “I’m not done yet. I don’t think I did it right. I have to start over.”
“That’s enough, Jenny,” Old Jan says sternly. “Now, I don’t like to be Mrs. Tough Guy, but that will be quite enough from your team.”
“Thanks, Jessie,” I hiss.
“I wasn’t trying to get us in trouble.”
After we’ve handed in our beans for Old Jan to bag up so we can take them home, she calls us into a group.
“All right, little farmers, the goats are just dying to meet you!” Old Jan calls out.
I crowd up next to Savannah and Amanda to see the goats.
Everyone gets to feed the goats some special goat food. I tap Savannah on the shoulder. “Would you like my goat food?” I ask her.
But she and Amanda are singing, “Goat goat goat, goat goat goat, goaty all the way. Oh what fun it is to have a stinky goat today!”
Next come the cows. The cows stare at everyone with big brown eyes.
After we’ve given the cows a nice long visit, Old Jan McDonald says, “Now the chickens. Follow me.”
Timo Toivonen and Ari Shapiro lead the way, followed by Amanda and Savannah, who are holding hands and skipping. But not Jessie. She’s squatting on the ground.
“Come on, Jessie,” I say. “Everybody’s going.”
Jessie is staring at an anthill. “Do you think bugs get scared of other bugs?”
“No.”
“Do you think they bite each other?”
I strain my neck. I can just see the class turning down a path.
“Hurry up, Jessie. You’re going to get us lost.” I grab Jessie by the arm. “Get up.”
Jessie’s lips squeeze together.
She stares at the ground. I squat down to get a better look. I don’t see anything. Not even an ant or a beetle. Plop! Water lands in the dirt. I twist my head so I can see what’s going on in Jessie’s face. Two fat tears slide right down her nose. Plop. Plop. And I haven’t even kicked her in the face.
“What’s the matter, Jessie?” I say in a honey-pie voice. “Do your stitches hurt?”
“I don’t want to get bitten by a chicken.”
“I’m sure that chickens don’t bite,” I say to mean old Jessie Chavez, the world’s biggest best-friend stealer.
“How do you know?”
I think about it. “Well, who says they did?”
Jessie wipes her nose on the back of her hand. “My big brother, Dustin.”
“So he’s been on this field trip before?”
“Yep.”
“Well, my brother has, too. And he told me that Mrs. D. would bring chicken poop into our class. And so that’s why I said she had chicken poop in her bag.”
“I thought you were trying to be funny. So Amanda would like you best.”
I open my mouth to say something. Something like “shut your trap.”
“And it’s working,” Jessie says. “’Cause she likes you best.”
“Is that why you’ve been acting up today? So that Amanda will think you’re funny?”
“No.” Jessie kicks a pebble. It’s okay to kick a pebble. “It’s to slow us down from getting to the chickens.”
“Well, now we have to speed up,” I say.
“Lola? I really am sorry for shoving you by the swings.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I say for real.
“I feel bad when you and Amanda talk about how great it was on Cherry Tree Lane.”
“I feel bad and heartsick when you teach Amanda the Hand Jive and won’t teach it to me.”
“That’s ’cause I didn’t want to share Amanda.”
“Now we both have to share her with Savannah,” I say. I’m as sad as Patches when he howls at the moon. “
I’m going to teach you the Hand Jive and will you not hog Amanda all to yourself?”
“Yes,” I say fast, before she bosses the nice out of me.
And I remember what Mrs. D. told me. Showing you’re sorry might be better than just saying you’re sorry. I hold out my hand to Jessie. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s go find our class.”
Jessie and I walk down the dirt path. There are gardens to the left and gardens to the right.
“I’m pretty sure they took a left up here,” I say.
We take a left. No Old Jan.
“Are you sure?” Jessie says.
“Sure, I’m sure,” I say. “Let’s keep walking. Kookamut Farm isn’t that big.”
We keep walking. We pass by a nice little dog behind a fence.
“Here’s a dog for you,” I say.
“Hi, doggy,” Jessie says. She reaches in to pet the dog. The dog jumps up, growling and smiling meanly.
Jessie jumps back, right behind me.
“You bad dog,” I scold through the fence. “Very bad.” I’ve had a lot of practice with Patches. The dog wags his tail at me. “Don’t you wag at me, mister. You say you’re sorry to my friend.”
We keep on walking. Jessie sniffles. “It’s okay, Jessie,” I say. “That dog can’t get you. See? They keep him and all of their animals fenced up.”
“Okay.”
But I’m wrong about that.
’Cause right up ahead is a chicken. A giant brown chicken with a red comb on top.
“L-l-l-l-l-Lola … l-l-l-l-look,” Jessie says. “A wild chicken.”
“That’s a rooster. He won’t hurt you,” I say.
“My brother said …”
“Never mind him.” I hold tight to Jessie’s sweaty hand. “He won’t bother us. We’ll just walk right by.”
Jessie and I are sneaking past the rooster. He turns around and crows loud as a school bell. He flaps his wings and starts to charge Jessie and me.
“Run, Jessie, run!”
But Jessie is stopped like a stop sign and the rooster is flying up and landing, flying up and landing and trying to peck her.
“SHOO, varmint! Git out of here,” I say in a Granny Coogan voice. The rooster must be stone deaf. He keeps flapping and flapping. I grab Jessie’s sweaty hand and pull her away. Finally she starts running. We zip past the dog that barked at us. We zoom past the cows.
The rooster is after us! “Over the fence,” I yell. Jessie and I climb over the fence.
Squelch! Right into the mud.
Way off in the corner a pig comes out of its hut. It squeals.
“Run, Jessie, run!”
We dash across the pig pen, slipping and sliding through the stinky mud.
Jessie trips and grabs me.
BAM!
We both fall down. We get up and jump over another fence, right in front of the chicken coop. Where our class is bunched up. There’s that mean ol’ rooster, sitting on a fence post like he doesn’t have a care in the world. How did he get here before us? He must know a shortcut.
“OH MY!” Old Jan squawks. “What in the name of Percy the Pig happened to you two?”
“We got lost,” I say.
“We tried to take a shortcut,” Jessie explains.
Old Jan shakes her head. “Mrs. D. is going to holler up a storm when she sees you. You two need to clean up. Pronto! When you return, you can help us feed the chickens. We just met Friendly, our rooster.”
“You two are REVOLTING,” Gwendolyn Swanson- Carmichael says.
“I want to play in the mud!” Harvey Baxter whines.
“Lola!” Amanda says. She has her arms crossed.
Oh, no! Savannah told her about the photo.
“I didn’t mean to do it. Well, I did mean to do it. But I wish I hadn’t done it!”
“You meant to fall in the mud?” Amanda asks.
I stare at Amanda. I need a quick fib. “Oh, well, I’ve always wanted to roll in the mud.”
Savannah makes zombie arms. “I’m coming to get you, Mud Monster.”
“Does that mean you’re not mad at me anymore?” I ask.
“A little. But not a lot. I know you’re sorry.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
Savannah leans in and whispers, “Because when you finally got to choose first, you picked Jessie, and I know you wanted to pick Amanda.”
I grin at Savannah and whisper back, “She knows lots of good songs, right?”
Savannah wrinkles her nose. “Right.” And, “PEE-YOO! You and Jessie need to take a bath.”
Jessie wipes the mud off her face. So do I.
We look at each other. I feel a little giggle. I let it out. Jessie snickers. I laugh again, a little cackle. Jessie too. We’re holding our sides and laughing so hard, we can’t stop.
On the other side of the fence, the pig squeals.
“You stink,” says Timo Toivonen. “In Finland, we do not roll in mud.”