IN MR. GARBER’S FIFTH-GRADE class at Little Spring Valley Elementary were eighteen desks—seventeen identical ones, and one with a footstool under it and a pillow on the chair. At the seventeen identical desks sat thirteen ten-year-olds and four eleven-year-olds. The desk with the footstool and the pillow belonged to Roseate Spoonbill, who had skipped two grades and was just eight years old. Without the pillow she could barely see over her desk, and without the footstool was left with her feet dangling in the air.
Rosie’s mother had worried about skipping her so far ahead in school.
“The other students might be jealous of her big brain,” said Selena Spoonbill to her husband, Vern. This was a year earlier, when she and Vern were driving home from Little Spring Valley Elementary, where they had just met with Rosie’s second-grade teacher and the principal. “Skipping her all the way into fourth grade in the middle of the year? She’ll be the only seven-year-old in a class of nine- and ten-year-olds. How will the older kids feel?”
“Feel about what?” said Vern.
“About a seven-year-old who can answer all the questions and is reading books the sixth graders are reading.”
“Why, they’ll feel impressed!” Rosie’s father had replied cheerfully.
“I don’t know,” said Selena.
It turned out it didn’t matter much that Rosie was seven and the rest of her classmates were older. After her first day in fourth grade, she’d come bouncing through the front door of her house and announced, “School was great! I told all my new friends that a roseate spoonbill is a wading bird found mostly in South America, and they think I have a very cool name. One-third of them are going to call me Rosie, one-quarter of them are going to call me Roseate, and five-twelfths of them might call me Professor, but they aren’t sure, and anyway, I like all the names so it doesn’t matter.”
“My goodness. Do you have any homework?” asked Selena. She worried that fourth-grade homework might be too much for Rosie, who still had a second-grade bedtime.
“Nope. I mean, I had homework, but I did it already.”
“Are you sure? You didn’t forget to do it, did you?”
Rosie sat down and thought. After a long time, she said, “No. I did it all after I finished my book during silent reading time.”
“Okay,” said her mother uncertainly.
Roseate Spoonbill, who was now in fifth grade, had many good qualities—but she was forgetful. She could remember anything she had ever read and anything she had ever learned about math or science or history, but most conversations with Rosie went something like this:
MRS. SPOONBILL: Time to go, Rosie. Your trumpet lesson is in half an hour.
ROSIE: (after a very long pause) What?
MRS. SPOONBILL: It’s time to go.
ROSIE: Go where?
MRS. SPOONBILL: To your trumpet lesson. I just told you.
ROSIE: Oh. I forgot.
MRS. SPOONBILL: Did you remember to practice?
ROSIE: Practice?
MRS. SPOONBILL: Your trumpet!
ROSIE: Um, no, I guess I forgot that, too.
MRS. SPOONBILL: Well, come along. You can practice in the car.
ROSIE: All right. Just a minute.
Five minutes later:
MRS. SPOONBILL: Rosie? Are you ready?
ROSIE: Ready for what?
MRS. SPOONBILL: Your lesson. What are you doing?
ROSIE: Reading. Gosh, this is a good book.
Rosie’s father fondly called her the absentminded professor. “Her brain is so jammed with facts and theories that it doesn’t have any extra space for remembering things like practicing or brushing her teeth.”
“But Dad,” said Rosie’s big brother, Montrose, “this morning she almost went to school wearing her pajama bottoms instead of pants. She is so embarrassing.”
“Well, we caught her in time,” said Vern.
Rosie’s best friend was a girl named Poppy Fretwell, who was also in Mr. Garber’s fifth-grade class. Poppy admired Rosie’s big brain, but the truth was she was starting to find Rosie a lot of work. One day Poppy sat down in the cafeteria with her tray of food, and after a few minutes Rosie slid into the seat next to her.
“Where’s your lunch?” asked Poppy.
“My lunch?”
“Yes. We’re in the cafeteria? It’s lunchtime?”
“Oh. Yeah.” Rosie looked at the empty table in front of her. “I guess I forgot my lunch.”
“You can buy it, then.”
“I guess I forgot to bring my money, too.”
Poppy scrunched up her nose. A best friend, she knew, would offer her lunchless buddy some money so she could buy a sandwich. But Poppy had lent money to Rosie five times in the last month, and each time she had asked to be repaid, Rosie said, “Uh-oh. I forgot.”
So Poppy gave Rosie half of her sandwich instead.
One night Mr. and Mrs. Spoonbill sat cozily in front of a fire after Roseate and Montrose had gone to bed. They were sipping tea, and Vern was scratching the ears of Honey, the cat who was curled in his lap. Suddenly his wife said, “We have to do something about Rosie. I know she’s bright and she has deep thoughts in her head, but she forgets everything, or she claims to. She doesn’t feed Honey or practice her trumpet or take a bath without being told. She—”
“I know, I know. Our absentminded professor.”
“But she needs to be responsible. She’s eight and a half years old. When Montrose was her age, he was in charge of all the recycling. He did his chores without being asked. He even went to his piano lessons by himself.”
“That’s true. What do you propose?” asked Vern.
“Reminders,” said his wife. “Simple reminders that can’t be missed.”
The next morning, when the Spoonbills gathered in their kitchen for breakfast, Rosie saw a large sign taped to the refrigerator. It read:
FEED HONEY!!
But when Rosie and Montrose had scurried off to school, Selena felt Honey twining around her ankles, looked down, and saw that her dish was still empty. She asked Rosie about it that afternoon. “Oh, was that sign for me?” said Rosie.
“Yes, it was,” her mother replied, and changed the sign to read:
ROSIE, FEED HONEY!!
But long after dinner that evening, Honey’s dish was empty.
“Rosie, did you forget anything?” her mother asked her at bedtime.
“I probably forgot lots of things.”
“What about Honey?”
“What about— Uh-oh. You know what happened? I took the sign into my room where I could see it, and then when I went back in the kitchen, there was no sign, so I forgot.”
The next thing the Spoonbills tried was a chore chart for Rosie.
Montrose glared at it. “How come she gets a prize if she does her chores all week? That’s no fair. I’ve been doing all my chores for years, and I don’t get prizes.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll also get a prize if you do your chores. It’s just that you don’t need a chart to keep track of things. You always remember.”
Rosie was responsible for four chores each day. Since there are seven days in a week, there were twenty-eight boxes on her chart. At the end of the first week, two of them had been checked. The other twenty-six were blank.
“Ha-ha. Now you don’t get a prize!” hooted Montrose.
“A prize?”
“Yes!” said her father. “That was the whole point of the chart. If you fill in all the boxes, you get a prize.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Rosie. “I forgot.”
Montrose took the chart off the wall and tossed it in the recycling bin, where he’d also put the reminder signs.
“I’m running out of ideas,” Selena told her husband that night after Roseate had forgotten thirteen times in a single half hour to start taking her bath.
“We’ll think of something.”
Mr. and Mrs. Spoonbill sat down on the couch and rested their chins in their hands. They tapped their feet. Mr. Spoonbill scratched his head. They thought and thought. Finally his wife said, “I actually am out of ideas.”
“So am I,” her husband admitted.
“Sometimes I think Roseate ‘forgets’ on purpose.”
“Really?”
“She only did two chores this week. That gave her plenty of time for lying around in her room.”
“She doesn’t lie around in her room. She studies! She reads articles. She thinks deep thoughts.”
“And gets out of all her responsibilities.”
“Hmm,” said Vern Spoonbill.
The next morning as Rosie and Montrose were finishing breakfast, Mrs. Spoonbill said to her daughter, “Remember that you have soccer practice this afternoon. Go right to the field after school. Okay? Right to the field. No dawdling.”
“And I’ll go right to my piano lesson,” said Montrose, just to prove that he didn’t need reminders.
“Rosie?” said her mother. “What are you going to remember to do after school?”
“Huh?” said Rosie, who was thinking about penguins. Then she added, “Oh. Go to soccer practice.”
* * *
All that day Rosie’s parents sat at their separate desks in their separate offices in their separate companies in a city not far from Little Spring Valley. Mr. Spoonbill was pleased that Rosie had remembered about soccer practice that morning. Perhaps, he thought, the reminder signs and the chore chart had had some effect after all.
Mrs. Spoonbill wasn’t thinking about soccer. She had a big problem on her hands, a very boring grown-up thing involving money and investments. When her phone rang at 3:20, she picked it up without looking at the caller ID and said loudly, “I already told you to call Andi about this!”
There was a pause at the other end of the line, and then she heard her husband say, “Call Andi about Rosie?”
“What?”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. I thought you were— Never mind. Is everything all right?”
“Rosie’s coach just called. She isn’t at practice.”
Mrs. Spoonbill tried to stay calm. “She probably forgot and went home.”
“I just called there. No one answered. But Poppy’s at practice, and she said Rosie was in school all day. I guess I’d better run home and see what’s going on.”
Later, after all the excitement had died down, Montrose said that what happened that afternoon had felt like a TV show. “Rosie wasn’t at practice, and she wasn’t at home,” he told Linden Pettigrew that night. “Mom and Dad called all her friends—the ones who aren’t on the soccer team—and no one had seen her after school. That’s when they called the police.”
“Wow,” Linden had replied, impressed. “The police!”
Nice Officer Belknap, one of only two officers in Little Spring Valley, had arrived at the Spoonbills’ house in a hurry as soon as she got the call about a missing child. She sat in the living room across from Rosie’s parents, who were side by side on the couch, wringing their hands. Montrose was sitting on the floor, Honey in his lap.
“We haven’t seen her since she left for school this morning!” wailed Selena.
“But we know she was in school today,” added Vern. “We just don’t know where she went after school.”
“We’ve called all her friends, and no one has seen her.”
“Is she apt to wander off?” asked Officer Belknap. She was taking notes on her computer and looked up when the Spoonbills didn’t answer right away.
“She’s a bit forgetful,” Selena said finally.
“A bit forgetful?!” exclaimed Montrose.
“Aren’t you going to start doing something?” Vern asked the officer. “She’s been missing for two hours.”
“Who’s been missing for two hours?” asked a voice from the doorway.
Mr. and Mrs. Spoonbill leaped to their feet.
“Rosie!” cried her mother.
“Where have you been?” asked her father.
Selena and Vern pulled their daughter to them in a tight hug.
“I was at school. In the library. I guess I lost track of the time. All of a sudden the custodian was turning out the lights, and I realized I should leave. How come Officer Belknap is here?”
“Because you didn’t go to soccer practice and nobody knew where you were! We didn’t know what had happened,” exclaimed Mrs. Spoonbill. “We were so worried!”
“Oh, yeah. Soccer practice,” said Roseate, and slapped herself on the head. “I guess I forgot. I found this great book about penguins.”
“But we gave you reminders,” said her mother, just as her father said, “This has got to stop. We called the police, Rosie. What happened today is serious. Do you understand that?”
“Am I in trouble?” asked Roseate in a small voice.
“Well, we certainly have to figure out what to do about this.”
Officer Belknap got to her feet. “If everything is okay here, I’ll be going.”
“Thank you so much for your help,” said Rosie’s mother.
* * *
That night at dinner Rosie looked around at her family and said, “You know what you should do? You should call Missy Piggle-Wiggle about me.”
“Who’s Missy Piggle-Wiggle?” asked Selena.
“She’s the lady who lives in that upside-down house that’s right side up,” replied Montrose. “With the pig and the parrot.”
“She cures children,” added Rosie. “Whenever any of my friends are having trouble, their parents phone Missy.”
“I don’t know,” said Vern, looking across the table at his wife and wrinkling his nose. “An upside-down house? A pig and a parrot?”
“Poppy was suffering from Candyitis,” said Rosie, “and Missy cured her.”
“But just so you know, Missy’s house is under quarantine,” added Montrose. He lowered his voice and whispered, “The Effluvia.”
Selena was about to say that there must be a better way to cure Rosie when she remembered the sight of Officer Belknap’s patrol car in the driveway that afternoon. “Why don’t we give Missy a try?” she said to her husband.
* * *
The Spoonbills called Missy later that night when Rosie and Montrose were busy with their homework. Selena expected a dry, creaky old voice to answer the phone, but the voice on the other end of the line sounded light and bubbly.
“Is this Missy Piggle-Wiggle?” asked Vern.
“It is. And you’re Rosie’s parents? She’s a lovely girl.”
“You know Rosie?” asked Selena.
“Of course. She’s been here many times. I expect she forgot to tell you.”
“Well, yes,” agreed the Spoonbills.
“That’s why we’re calling,” added Vern.
In the kitchen of the right-side-up upside-down house, Missy nodded her head, her springy hair bouncing around her face. “I’ll package up the Forgetfulness Cure tonight, and you can pick it up tomorrow.”
“I heard that your house is under quarantine,” said Selena.
“Yes, but probably not for too much longer,” Missy replied as Lightfoot floated into the room. She was several feet lower than usual and came to a neat stop on the kitchen table. “I’ll leave the bag on the front porch. You won’t catch anything. Now, just follow the instructions. I’ll call you at the end of the week to find out how things are going.”
Missy clicked off the phone and watched as Penelope swooped through the doorway and landed on the counter. “How about a snack?” she squawked, and flapped her wings. “How about a snack?’
Missy smiled and opened the container of parrot food. She let out a small sigh of relief. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” she said.
* * *
At six o’clock the next evening, Roseate’s parents sat in their living room, huddled over the bag Vern had picked up at Missy’s house. Selena began to open it gingerly.
“I don’t think anything is going to spring out,” said her husband.
“Really? From a bag picked up at a formerly upside-down house where a magical woman named Piggle-Wiggle lives with a parrot and a pig?”
“Hmm,” said Vern. He set the bag on the coffee table and found a yardstick. Then he and Selena backed away as he carefully opened the bag with the end of the stick.
Nothing happened.
The Spoonbills crept closer. At last Selena worked up the courage to peer inside the bag. “The only thing in there is a peppermint candy,” she reported.
“Seriously? A piece of candy?”
“Well, and a note that says to give this to Rosie after dinner tonight.”
“Does the note say what the candy will do?”
“Nope.”
“What do you think?”
At that moment Rosie ambled into the living room and said, “I forgot to bring my books home from school. Can somebody drive me over there? I can’t do my homework without my books.”
“I think,” Mrs. Spoonbill said to her husband, “that Rosie is going to have a peppermint for dessert tonight.”
* * *
That evening Rosie sat in the kitchen with her parents and licked the last of the peppermint off her fingers. “How come you’re staring at me?” she said. “You’ve been staring at me for forty-six seconds.”
“Have we?” said her father.
Rosie nodded. “Why?”
Mr. and Mrs. Spoonbill glanced at each other. “That’s funny,” said Vern. “I forget.”
“You forget why you’ve been staring at me?”
“Yes,” said her father.
“We were staring?” said her mother.
Rosie shrugged and went upstairs to her room. She lay on her bed and opened her science book. The first thing she saw was a picture of a penguin, so she closed the book, opened her laptop, and searched for information on Antarctica.
Two hours passed. Rosie sat up suddenly. The clock on her computer read 10:09. Rosie had a feeling that by 10:09, her parents had usually told her to go to bed. She stuck her head into the hallway. Montrose’s light was on in his room. She could hear the TV downstairs.
“Montrose?” she said. “Are you still up?”
“I’m reading.”
“Aren’t we supposed to be in bed?”
“Gosh, I guess so.”
Rosie ran downstairs. “Mom? Dad? How come you didn’t tell me to go to bed?”
“To go to bed?” said her father.
“What time is it?” asked her mother.
“It’s after ten.”
“I guess we forgot,” said Mr. Spoonbill.
Her parents stood up and wandered out of the room.
“You didn’t turn off the TV,” Rosie called after them.
“Oh dear. We forgot,” said Mrs. Spoonbill.
Frowning, Rosie turned off the TV and then all the lights before following her parents upstairs. She put herself to bed that night feeling very puzzled.
* * *
The next morning when Rosie awoke, she lay in her deliciously warm bed and thought how pleasant it was not to be disturbed by anyone knocking at her door and telling her to get up. After a while she noticed bright sun shining around the edges of her blinds. She peeked outside and saw a school bus disappearing down the street. Rosie’s eyes widened. She looked at her computer. Eight o’clock.
“Hey! Hey, everybody! It’s eight o’clock!” Rosie squawked, sounding quite a bit like Penelope. She heaved herself out of bed and threw open her door. The house was silent. Her parents were asleep in their room. Montrose was asleep in his room. “Get up! Get up! We’re going to be late! The school bus has already left.”
“What?” murmured her parents.
“Didn’t you set your alarm?” asked Rosie.
“Huh. I guess we forgot,” her father mumbled.
“Well, come on! We’re going to be late for school!” squealed Rosie. “And I don’t want to be late. I haven’t been marked late once, and I want a perfect record.”
There was a lot of scurrying around then. Closets were flung open and toilets were flushed. When the Spoonbills finally ran into the kitchen, Rosie cried, “Mom, you’re still in your pajamas!”
“Oops. I forgot to get dressed!”
“And, uh-oh, I forgot to make your lunches,” said her father.
“Mom, you get dressed. I’ll make some sandwiches,” said Rosie. “Goodness, I have to do everything around here.” She slapped together two bologna sandwiches, fed Honey, and handed her father the car keys. “If you drive us, we won’t be late,” she told him. “Mom, remember to put on all your clothes! Shoes, too.” She clapped her hands. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
Ten minutes later Rosie slid into her seat in Mr. Garber’s room. She was just in time to shout “Here!” when he called her name.
* * *
That evening the Spoonbills gathered around their dining room table. Rosie sniffed the air. “What’s for dinner?” she asked.
“Hamburgers?” suggested Montrose hopefully.
“Did you pick up something at the Snack Shoppe?” asked Rosie.
“Uh-oh. We forgot,” said Mr. Spoonbill.
“Forgot about dinner?” said Rosie.
“Well, yes.”
Rosie sniffed the air again. “Did you forget anything else?” she asked.
“Such as?” said her mother.
“Well,” said Rosie, “I took a bath this afternoon, but when was the last time any of you took a shower?”
“Hmm,” said Montrose.
“Um,” said her mother.
“There wasn’t enough time this morning,” said her father. “We overslept.”
“That’s because you forgot to set your alarm!” exclaimed Rosie, exasperated. “Now listen to me. Enough is enough. The three of you march upstairs and take showers. I’ll make something for dinner. Go!”
Rosie opened cupboard doors. She pawed through the refrigerator. Finally she yelled upstairs, “Did anyone remember to go to the grocery store today?”
“I guess I forgot,” her mother called back.
“I don’t hear the water running,” Rosie continued. “Are you guys taking your showers?”
“Showers?” replied Mr. Spoonbill, Mrs. Spoonbill, and Montrose.
Rosie abandoned the kitchen and stomped up the stairs. She turned on the shower in her parents’ bathroom. “One of you go in there right now. And use soap!” Then she turned on the shower in the bathroom she and Montrose shared. She handed her brother a washcloth. “I expect you to be clean when you come downstairs.”
Rosie returned to the kitchen and decided that the only thing she could make for dinner was leftovers. I’ll call it potluck, she thought. That sounds better. She was setting out the last of the mysterious little containers she had found in the refrigerator when she realized she could still hear the water running upstairs.
“Is someone still showering?” she called.
“What?” said her brother.
“Showering?” said her father.
“Oh dear,” said her mother.
Rosie plunked down on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. She felt like crying. But a thought was buzzing around in her brain like a fly, so instead she stood up and shouted, “Could you all come down here, please? We need to have a talk.”
“Right now?” asked her father.
“Yes. Right. Now. Oh, but turn off the water first.”
When the four Spoonbills were seated in the living room, Rosie said, “Something has to change around here. I cannot be responsible for all of you. Do you understand? We have to share responsibilities. That’s how families work. So starting right now we will follow the to-do lists I’m about to make, and we will check off our chores on the chart I’m about to make. Is that understood?”
“I suppose,” said Mr. Spoonbill.
“But why is it so important?” asked Mrs. Spoonbill.
“Because otherwise things kind of fall apart,” said Rosie. Suddenly she remembered the look on her parents’ faces when she’d returned home and found them talking to Officer Belknap. She remembered all the times she’d asked them to bring her forgotten homework to school, all the times she’d borrowed lunch money from Poppy, forgotten to practice her trumpet or feed Honey or take a bath. “I’m sorry,” she added, looking first at her parents and then at Montrose. “Really sorry. Things are going to change. You’ll see.”
Rosie worked hard that evening and managed to make the lists and charts and finish her homework and still go to bed on time.
By the end of the week, the Spoonbill household was nicely organized.
“Maybe we don’t need prizes for completing our chores,” said Mr. Spoonbill on Friday evening.
“Okay,” said Rosie, who was relieved, since she didn’t have enough money to buy prizes for everyone.
“I don’t think we even need the charts and lists,” added Mrs. Spoonbill.
“Maybe not. You guys seem to remember everything now anyway. But I kind of like the charts and lists. Let’s leave them up for a while.”
On Sunday evening at eight o’clock on the dot, Mrs. Spoonbill’s phone rang. “It’s Missy Piggle-Wiggle,” she said to her husband.
“How are things going?” asked Missy.
“Perfectly!” exclaimed Roseate’s parents.
“Do you need another peppermint?”
“No!”
“Absolutely not!”
Then Mrs. Spoonbill added, “Thank you, Missy. You’ve worked wonders.”
At the right-side-up upside-down house, Missy clicked off her phone. She bent to stroke Lightfoot, who was walking casually across the parlor floor. Then she turned to Penelope and announced, “All cured.” Penelope replied, “I knew it!”
And then Missy looked at poor Lester, who was lying on the couch with a cold cloth on his cheek. “Hmm,” she said. “Hmm.”