12
Aaron Yoder Surprises Lily

It was funny, Lily thought as she turned off her oil lamp and climbed into bed on Wednesday evening, how something as silly as a marshmallow could heal a friendship. On Monday and Tuesday of that week, Hannah and Lily had acted like they always did—they sat together at lunch, they played games at recess, they walked home together behind Joseph and Levi. With Hannah acting friendly toward Lily at school, the other girls did too. Even Effie.

Today, Hannah had brought a surprise for her. She’d waited until Joseph and Levi had run past the bend in the road and were out of sight, then opened up her lunch box and handed Lily a paper bag. Inside was a new glass chimney! “We had a lot of extras in the basement,” Hannah said.

Lily tucked the paper bag in her lunch box. When she arrived home, Mama was upstairs with baby Paul so she was able to tiptoe to her room and slip the substitute chimney back on her bedroom lamp. No lies were told and none were needed. But sneaking around took a toll on Lily. She had let out a big sigh of relief when the new chimney was in place and the story was over.

Later that night, Lily snuggled down deep in the covers and pulled them up under her chin. The weather was getting colder at night and in the morning. As she drifted off to sleep, she thought about how she had a new appreciation for marshmallows.

On Thursday morning, during first recess, Lily ran into the schoolhouse to put on her sweater. As she pulled it off the hook, the row of lunch boxes caught her eye. She decided to check her lunch box to make sure there was nothing in it that didn’t belong there. She had helped Mama make an egg sandwich this very morning. But inside her lunch was a sandwich of store-bought bread and deli meat! She pulled it out. She wanted to switch it back and get her own sandwich. But which lunch box had her sandwich in it?

She opened one and looked inside. It wasn’t there. She checked the next lunch box. Still no egg sandwich on Mama’s wheat bread. She got several lunch boxes off the shelf and knelt on the floor beside them. She opened one. Nothing. She opened the next and breathed a sigh of relief. There it was! The egg salad sandwich. She quickly got it out and put the one that didn’t belong to her into the lunch box. She closed it but before she could put all the lunch boxes back on the shelf, the schoolhouse door opened. There stood Teacher Rhoda, hands on her hips, a shocked look on her pretty face.

“Oh Lily,” she said in an unfamiliar voice. “I had so wanted to believe you when you said you didn’t know how those things got into your lunch box.”

Lily scrambled to her feet. “I wasn’t getting someone else’s lunch! I checked on my lunch box and there was someone else’s sandwich. I was trying to put the lunches back the way they belonged.”

Clearly, Teacher Rhoda didn’t believe her. “Put the lunch boxes back on the shelf. Then I want you to go sit at your desk.”

Lily put the lunch boxes back on the shelf and walked to her desk. This couldn’t be happening! Her stomach felt all tied up in knots. She was afraid she was going to be sick.

Teacher Rhoda brought several pieces of paper over to Lily. “You will be staying in at recess until you have written ‘Thou shalt not steal’ and ‘Thou shalt not covet’ one thousand times.”

Lily started to cry. She couldn’t help it. It simply wasn’t fair. She counted the lines on one piece of paper. Twenty-five. That meant she had to write forty pages. She wasn’t going to get to play outside for a long, long time. She would be a withered old lady by the time she could go back out for recess. Through the open window, she heard her friends play a hand-clapping game out in the yard, their laughter bright as sleigh bells.

Teacher Rhoda sent another note home from school for Papa and Mama. It made Lily start to cry again.

At home, Lily showed Mama and Papa the note from Teacher Rhoda. She explained what had happened that day, trying not to cry. Then she waited and waited while Papa and Mama had a private talk in their bedroom. Lily heard the low buzz of their murmuring, and Joseph offered to stick a glass against the wall to eavesdrop, but Lily said no. She was in enough trouble.

What if Mama and Papa didn’t believe her? She might have to run away and live with Grandma Miller.

“But of course we believe you,” Papa said when he and Mama returned to the kitchen. “We know our little girl, and we know you wouldn’t do something like that.”

Lily was so relieved!

“But—”

Lily’s heart sank. Anytime a sentence started with but, it wasn’t good news.

“—we still want you to write those lines for Teacher Rhoda,” Papa said. “She thinks you are guilty. It doesn’t hurt to dwell on the Ten Commandments. It will certainly help you to never be tempted to take something that doesn’t belong to you.”

Joseph offered to help Lily, but his handwriting was awful. It was a sweet offer, though. Lily’s hand cramped by the time the last line had been written. She never wanted to write such lines again. Not ever.

Two days later, Lily sat at her desk to eat her lunch. She found a small bag of potato chips inside and knew that Mama hadn’t packed them. This time, Lily wasn’t going to wait for someone to accuse her. She lifted up the bag for everyone to see. “Someone put potato chips into my lunch box,” she said. “My apple slices are missing.”

Lavina looked up, shocked. “They’re mine! Here are your apples.”

Lily traded with her and went back to her desk.

Aaron Yoder raised his hand. “I know how those chips got into Lily’s lunch box.”

Lily’s head whipped around to face Aaron. “How?” Teacher Rhoda and Lily asked at the exact same time.

Aaron looked at Effie. “I saw Effie do it in first recess.”

Lily didn’t know whether to be suspicious about what Aaron said or amazed that he was sticking up for her.

“Effie, what do you have to say about that?” Teacher Rhoda asked.

Instantly, an expression of great boredom fell over Effie’s face. Lily thought she might yawn.

That only made Teacher Rhoda angry. “Effie, you will stay in after everyone else is done eating. And I think we all owe Lily an apology for blaming her for stealing lunches.”

It was the best recess of Lily’s life. Naturally, she didn’t gloat. But she was quite satisfied with how things had turned out. Shocked that Aaron Yoder had done her a good turn. She felt light and happy and giggly, even though her hand still hurt from writing all those lines. She hoped that Teacher Rhoda would make Effie write thousands and thousands of lines. Maybe even a million.