I have an announcement to make,” Ms. Ives said at the start of the day on Friday, once the class had finished the daily math challenge. Todd had gotten it right, as usual, but he hadn’t bothered to raise his hand to share his answer with the class.
Ms. Ives gave Todd a meaningful look. Maybe the math team was going to have its first meeting of the year. Last year, Todd had been the top scorer on the team for the whole fourth grade. He didn’t know if he would join the math team this year.
“My announcement,” Ms. Ives said when the class had quieted down enough to listen, “is that one of your classmates has won the back-to-school poetry contest sponsored by our school district. Each teacher can submit poems from five students. I chose five students from this class, and one of you has won first prize in the upper-elementary division.”
Everyone looked at Amy. Todd flashed her a big grin. She deserved it, both because she was a terrific poet—not that Todd was any judge of poetry—and because she had been through so much in the past few weeks, with her dumb friends Julia and Kelsey, and with old crybaby Violet and their failed pinecone business.
“First prize in the district’s back-to-school poetry contest goes to Todd Davidson.”
She must mean Amy Davidson.
“For his poetry ‘Haiku for Wiggy.’”
Todd felt as if he had fallen hard on the soccer field, facedown, sprawling on the pounded dirt, all the wind knocked out of him. He wouldn’t have given Ms. Ives a copy of his poems if he had known she’d send them to a contest. He vaguely remembered telling her she could do whatever she wanted with them, but he hadn’t meant it. He had said it just because he felt so angry and despairing.
He didn’t want to win a poetry contest. He wanted Amy to win. He wasn’t a poet. This was the first poetry he had ever written of his own free will.
He tried to signal to Amy, but she was staring straight ahead, her face flushed a bright pink, smiling too hard, clapping for him with all her might.
“Can you read it to us?” someone asked.
“Todd? Would you like to read it, or do you want me to?” Ms. Ives held out the paper to him.
“I don’t want to read it,” Todd said dully.
“That’s fine. I’ll read it for you.”
“I don’t want you to read it, either.”
“But, Todd—”
“It was private. I shouldn’t have let you have it. It was private.”
“Oh, Todd.”
There was an uncomfortable silence in the classroom.
Todd blinked fiercely. This was the worst thing that had happened to him yet.
“Todd, I didn’t mean—Todd, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.” If she would just stop talking about it, he could get through the rest of the day without breaking down.
“I think we should all be very proud of Todd,” Ms. Ives said to the class. “Now get out your science folders, please.”
Todd wondered if she would ask him to stay in during recess for another little chat and ask him again if anything was wrong at home. She didn’t. For that he was grateful.
Todd had soccer practice after school, so he didn’t have a chance to talk to Amy. Nothing he could have said would have helped, anyway. She already knew, from the scene that morning at school, that he hadn’t wanted Ms. Ives to send his poem in to the contest. He couldn’t very well apologize to her because the judges had thought his poem was better than hers.
Dinner that night wasn’t a thirty-minute meal from the book. It was a Middle Eastern minted lamb and bulgur wheat casserole of his dad’s own invention. Todd had to admit that Amy was right: if his dad wanted to try his hand at catering, he’d have some pretty delicious meals to make for his customers.
“Guess what?” Amy said. Her too-enthusiastic tone and overly wide smile warned Todd what she was going to say. He shook his head at her pleadingly, but she went on. “Ms.
Ives announced the winner of the district-wide back-to-school poetry contest today. The one she submitted my poetry to a couple of weeks ago.”
“And you won? That’s wonderful, honey!” Their mother obviously hadn’t picked up on the slight tremor in Amy’s voice.
“No, Todd won. Todd did! For poems he wrote about Wiggy.”
“Todd?” Their mother stared at him.
He nodded grimly. He saw his mother’s eyes dart nervously back and forth between him and Amy. “They weren’t any good,” he said. “The judges just picked them because everybody gets all choked up if you start telling them your dog is sick.”
“My poem was about Wiggy being sick, too,” Amy said.
For a long moment, no one said anything.
Finally their father said, “Well, that’s wonderful! So what else happened today at school? What’s going on in Mini-Society? Todd, I don’t think you ever told us how your product turned out. We all had pinecones on the brain there for a while.” He gave an awkward chuckle.
“I didn’t have one.” Todd was glad that he had something bad to tell them, to drive away their surprised, stricken smiles. “I couldn’t think of anything.”
“You?” his mother asked. “You couldn’t think of anything?”
Todd didn’t reply. He wasn’t going to say it again.
“But, Todd—”
“Don’t worry. I’m working with Isaiah in his business. I’m his assistant.”
He knew his mother wanted to say, You? You’re Isaiah’s assistant? But she didn’t.
“So everything’s terrific now,” Todd said. “You don’t have to worry about me. You don’t have to worry about me at all.”
Suddenly he felt the minted lamb and bulgur wheat rise up in his throat. He swallowed it down.
“Todd,” his father said gently, “why didn’t you come to us for help if you were stuck for an idea?”
Now it was anger that was rising in Todd’s throat, choking him, suffocating him, all the anger he had kept hidden lately.
“What ideas do you have? You don’t have a job. You’re not even looking for a job. You and Mom fight all the time.”
He stared down at his plate, refusing to look at his father’s face.
There was a long pause before his father spoke. “The economy is bad right now, Todd. You know that. I can’t snap my fingers and make an engineering job appear. And the longer you’re out of work, the more questions everyone has, about whether it’s worth the risk to hire you.”
“So maybe you’re going to have to snap your fingers and make a different kind of job appear,” Todd’s mother said. Her voice, too, was tight with anger. “I made my job at the Crafts Cottage appear.”
“So you want both of us to be working at the Crafts Cottage?”
Todd’s father asked. “You want both of us to be making puppets out of pinecones?”
“Are you making fun of my job?” His mother’s voice was getting loud now.
“No, I’m simply pointing out that you and I are different people, with different tastes and talents.”
“And I’m simply pointing out that we can’t go on living on one Crafts Cottage salary forever. What’s wrong with giving something else a try? What’s wrong with at least trying Amy’s catering suggestion until something else comes up?”
“I don’t want you to try my suggestion!” Amy sounded close to tears. “I just want both of you to stop fighting!”
Todd caught a glimpse of Amy’s face, pale and stricken. He couldn’t bear it anymore. He got up from the table, ran upstairs to his room, and flung himself on his unmade bed. Wiggy padded after him.
Todd was afraid his mother would want to talk to him, but the soft knock he heard at his door a few minutes later was his dad’s. “May I come in?”
Todd didn’t say no, so his dad sat down on the edge of Todd’s bed.
“I guess we didn’t know how hard these past few weeks have been for you kids.”
You knew how hard they were for Amy, Todd wanted to say
“Amy shows her feelings more, but you—well, you don’t. But I should have known. I guess we’re all having to learn how to deal with the unexpected.”
“That’s why I like math,” Todd said. “There isn’t any unexpected.”
“In engineering, there is. And you’ve always been our engineer. And now maybe you’re our poet, too.”
“I’m not a poet!”
“What’s wrong with being a poet?”
“Amy’s the poet.”
“Maybe you’re both poets. You’re an engineer and a poet. With this new handwriting business of hers, Amy is an entrepreneur and a poet. Your mom is a homemaker, and now she’s a teacher, too. And I …” Todd waited while his dad forced out the rest of the sentence. “Maybe I’m an engineer and a really terrific cook who might be able to make some money catering.”
His dad reached over and gave Todd a hug. At first Todd resisted, but then he found himself hugging his father back, hard. When they finally let go, they each had tears in their eyes.
“Oh, Wiggy,” Todd said after his father left the room. He hugged her even tighter than he had hugged his dad. She licked his hand and kept on licking it. Every lick washed away a little bit of his pain.
“You don’t change, Wiggy.” But even as Todd said it, he knew it wasn’t true. Wiggy was growing old. Wiggy had been sick and could get sick again.
Everybody changed. But in some important ways, everybody also stayed the same. With Wiggy licking his hand, it felt all right somehow.
It felt all right.