Ready?” Nick called through the screen door the next morning. He pressed his nose against the mesh, filling the little wire squares with freckles.
“Uh-huh.” I shoved my plate of telltale cake crumbs into the dishwasher. Dad hadn’t said anything, but I knew why Mom had left that fat slab of Mrs. Fanelli’s cake at my place. Cake for breakfast was Mom’s way of stretching a special day into the next morning. Yesterday had been a great day, but today I just wanted to walk with Nick to the corner of Broom and Laurel, sit across from him at school with breathable air moving between us, and have a regular, any-old day.
I slung my backpack over my shoulder and went outside. Ragged gray clouds spun across the sky, and my hair swirled up into the wind. Nick was standing at the end of our driveway looking at Brambletown.
“I don’t think rain will hurt it,” he said.
“Nope,” I agreed. “It’s staying.”
We turned onto Bayberry. Nick tightrope-walked along the curb, his arms out for balance.
“Did you and Jess finish the Spark editorial yesterday?” I asked him.
“I think so,” Nick said. He hopped off the curb and back on again.
“You don’t know if you finished it or not?”
“Well,” he said, rubbing his chin, “we couldn’t work on it much during that big meeting at lunch, so Jess was going to finish it on her own and e-mail it—”
“You’re kidding!” I blurted out, then immediately wished I hadn’t. The last thing I wanted to do was bring up the Mr. Alien disaster.
Nick shook his head. “I’m not kidding. But she’s e-mailing it to Mr. Allen instead of to the office.” He flashed me an apologetic grin.
“There’s a good idea,” I said. Then I bumped him off the curb. He tried to bump me back, chasing me to the corner of Broom and Laurel. We stopped at the curb.
“Hey, thanks for the potato the other day,” I said.
“Sure.”
“See you at school.”
“Right,” Nick said. “See you.”
And we parted ways for the last several blocks, like usual.
This week’s issue of the Springville Spark was delivered to Room Twenty in the middle of math. Rain sheeted down the classroom windows. This Spark seemed a little rough around the edges. In my opinion, some of the artwork didn’t quite go with the stories and poems. Jess’s editorial, “What Bugs You?” started out with insects and ended up talking about people picking their teeth. But Owen’s poem about maggots really made me laugh.
Maggots live in what they eat,
Manure piles and rotten meat.
They don’t have heads or any legs,
And so can’t think to wipe their feet.
We had another mega-editorial meeting at lunchtime. The room was full of a humming, busy kind of noise. I took a bite of my sandwich. When I glanced up, Mr. Allen was smiling at me. Sunlight shimmered through the last of the raindrops. This was turning out to be a wonderful, any-old day.
“Your assignment for this weekend,” Mr. Allen explained at the end of the day, “is to find one characteristic your insect shares with human beings and write about it in the form of a fictional story, a poem, a newspaper article, or a first-person— make that ‘first-bug’—journal entry.”
“But I’ve got plans this weekend,” Owen groaned. “There’s a Rotten Roger cartoonathon all day Saturday and Sunday.”
Mr. Allen’s black eyebrows shot up like arrows. “Then please consider this assignment as brain protection, Owen. Don’t forget, fellow learners—you’ll take your insects home for observation and inspiration, and then return them to their natural habitats when you’ve finished. Let’s all gather up our things and prepare for an extremely entomological weekend.”
Nick went to get his hellgrammite. I already had my pillbug.
“I don’t think my dead tick will be much of an inspiration,” Summer said. “But I can observe the new ones I find right in their natural habitat—Toby’s skin!” Lacey shoved her chair under her desk and stomped to the coatroom.
“Speaking of Toby,” Summer said, “I think he’s feeling a little left out. Okay if he comes over today?”
“Of course.” I lowered my voice, hoping Summer would take the hint and keep it down. “Zack’ll go crazy for him.” I pushed in my chair and started toward the coatroom.
“Hey, Nick,” Summer called. “You never met my dog, Toby, did you?”
I froze. Nick turned slowly. Silence stretched across the room like a rubber band. I stopped breathing. Oh, no, I thought. Summer, don’t do it. Don’t say Brambletown. Don’t say Brambletown.
“I’m going to bring Toby today when I come to do Brambletown,” Summer announced, loud enough for Mrs. Novotny’s class down the hall to hear.
I hid my face in my hands.
“Bram-ble-town,” I heard Max say in a singsongy way. “What’s Brambletown?” There were a few giggles.
“Is it a new game?” someone asked.
“Yeah—a pretend game for little kiddies.” Laughter erupted around the room.
My jaw clenched.
“I made up stuff like that, too,” Alima said. “When I was three.”
I lowered my hands and shot her a fierce a look.
“Maybe Summer and Nick play house in Brambletown,” Owen chimed in. “She’s the mommy and he’s the daddy.”
“It’s not house!” I hissed.
Owen pointed at me. “I bet Nadie is the baby!”
That did it. I blew up. “YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT IT!” I yelled.
“Nadie?”
I thought that might have been Mr. Allen’s voice, but I kept on yelling.
“For your information, Brambletown’s a place we’re making for skates and bikes—Nick, Summer, and me. And if being in the big-deal upper elementary school means you can’t have that kind of fun or you can’t be that kind of friends”—I whirled on all of them—“then too bad for you! I don’t care what you think!” I shouted into the shocked silence, “Nick Fanelli has been my best friend forever!” I grabbed up my backpack. “I’m sick of these stupid rules about what fourth graders can and can’t do and who can be friends and who can’t! Some rules are for following”—I nodded at Summer— “and some aren’t!” A sob choked its way up my throat, blocking off anything else I might have yelled. I burst out of the room, ran out of the building, and pounded down the block toward home.