Told by Pouya
Right from the start, Svenrietta was more than your average duck.
I never thought Shady would get to keep her, but he told me the news first thing at school on Monday.
He started by pointing at the ground in front of him.
“Sidewalk?” I guessed.
He bent his arms inward and flapped his elbows.
“Chicken?”
He shook his head, pointed at the ground again, and when that didn’t work, he cradled his arms across his chest and rocked them back and forth.
He pointed down again as if to say here and now.
“You still have it?”
He grinned. Nodded hard. It was the most excited I’d ever seen my best friend. Even the time we traded his dad’s lawn mower to an old guy down the street for a real, working go-kart, Shady hadn’t been this pumped.
I asked questions all day, but it was hard for him to explain. I only found out the details later.
Basically, Svenrietta was a duck with a job—in charge of helping Shady feel better. Less freaked out about stuff. And she was really, really good at it.
Her main duty was to go places with him. Like out for ice cream, to his therapy appointments, and even to the grocery store.
She learned to walk on a leash with a special harness, and she was better behaved than some dogs I’d met. Not only that, but Shady managed to train her, because she’d do just about anything for the green peas he kept in his pocket. When Shady closed his hand into a fist, she had learned to sit. When he opened it and tilted his palm upward, she got up. He only had to clap twice for “come here,” and she’d come booping across the room to him, wiggling her fuzzy butt.
The only thing she didn’t do on command was poop. Ducks are constant poopers, so she had to wear special duck diapers that Shady’s mom ordered online. Svenrietta’s diapers had different patterns: hearts, stars, even ones with tiny skulls for the days she wanted to look tough. Shady had to change them, and it was gross, but he didn’t mind. That’s how much he loved her.
Actually, before long, everyone loved her. Even Shady’s mom. You could tell because she kept a special certificate from Shady’s psychiatrist in her purse and threatened to report people—like the guy at the pizza place, or the taxi driver who claimed to have a “no ducks in my cab” rule—if they wouldn’t let Svenrietta go wherever Shady went.
Shady’s mom is the kind of lady who gets things dry-cleaned and wears a real diamond necklace. She expects things to be the way she expects them. Everyone—including the taxi driver—gave in quick. Everyone except our principal, Mrs. Mackie, who said a duck would disrupt the learning environment. That didn’t fly with Shady’s mom. She went straight to the school board office, then she called a lawyer.
It took a while. We spent our summer afternoons watching Svenrietta paddle around in Shady’s old kiddie pool in his backyard and teaching her tricks for peas. The fall of fifth grade started. Shady wore a pair of ripped overalls and tucked Svenri under one arm for the world’s easiest and most legit farmer’s costume that Halloween. The first snow fell, and Shady’s mom ordered a pair of special duck boots so Svenrietta could walk in the snow.
She’d grown from a fluff-poof into an almost full-size duck—but, finally, at the beginning of December, Svenrietta was allowed to start school on probation. That meant she could come, but if she was too distracting to the other kids, she’d get banned.
Wednesday, December 3, was her first day. It was good timing, because I needed some cheering up.
“Hey,” I said dully when I met Shady in front of the school that day. He was getting out of his dad’s car. “You got her?”
Shady gave me the A-OK nod.
He was carrying Svenrietta in a special sling, tucked inside his coat to keep her warm. From certain angles, it made him look like a pregnant lady.
He must have noticed the dead tone of my voice because he raised his eyebrows like You okay?
“Have you seen this?” I pulled a folded-up piece of newsprint out of my pocket.
He read the headline. Bit his lip. Shook his head sadly.
I sighed heavily in response.
What were we so bummed about? Oh, nothing really. Just the end of the world.
According to internet sources, Planet Q—also known as the planet Quaninbar—was hurtling toward us at a speed of 1,000 light years per hour. Astral-science experts theorized that it would make contact with Earth at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Day, probably blasting us all to smithereens.
The whole thing was spelled out in an ancient Mayan prophecy. When I’d heard about it two months before, I hadn’t exactly believed it, but the first three signs had already come to pass.
First: The sea will turn black, and many living things will die.
There was a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a month ago. They showed pictures on the news of dead birds washed up on shore and volunteers cleaning sea turtles with toothbrushes.
And, okay. Oil spills happen. But, two weeks later: An unholy racket will rattle the skies. Fireworks went off for no reason what sounded like a few blocks away. It wasn’t even a holiday! The windows in our apartment building shook for almost an hour.
Then, just that morning, I’d nearly choked on my cereal when page four of the world news section reported that in Wyoming, a sinkhole the size of an Olympic swimming pool had opened up in a highway, and a van carrying puppies to a local shelter fell right in. The third sign, clear as day: A crater will open and swallow the innocent. What could be more innocent than puppies?
There were only two signs to go, which made it official: the human race had about four weeks left before Planet Q struck on New Year’s Day. That was less than 28 days…about 665 hours. The clock was ticking—and the worst part was, most people didn’t even care.
“Come on,” I said to Shady, because the first bell had already rung. “Let’s go line up before Svenri gets cold.”
“Yo, Gavin!” I said, once we were in line. “Have you seen this?” I held up the newspaper article. “It’s like I told you! The end is near.”
Gavin, who’s one of the smartest kids in our class, glanced up from the book he was reading. He sighed. “Are you still talking about Planet Q?” he asked. “It’s a total hoax. You know that, right?”
“Is it?” I pressed the article closer to his face. I pointed to the part about puppies, but he didn’t seem impressed, so I tried Wendel Munch. “It’s the third sign,” I said, showing him the article.
“Oh shut up, Pou,” he answered, turning back to face the front of the line.
Then Pearl Summers got in on tearing me down. “Nobody believes you, okay?” She glared at me. “It’s what happens when every second thing you say is a lie.”
“Yeah,” her friend Monica agreed. “Like, we all know your uncle didn’t really invent crackers.”
Okay, yes. That was something I made up one day to be funny, but was it that impossible to believe? Someone invented crackers. Why not my uncle?
“Fine!” I threw my hands up and turned to Shady. “See if I come to their rescue when the next sign comes to pass, and winged machines start falling from the sky.”
The second bell rang, and we all filed in.
“Good morning, Shady!” Pearl Summers cooed, once we’d stopped in front of the coat hooks. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but since that day in Shady’s front hall when we’d first brought Svenri home, Pearl had upped her annoyingness. Over the last few months, she’d gotten meaner and meaner, especially when her friends were around to impress. (The week before, she’d asked DuShawn, a boy in our class who has long hair and likes to wear dresses sometimes, if she could borrow his outfit, then laughed out loud with Monica and Rebecca when he said yes.) And, I swear, she purposely walked past Shady’s house with her prancy little hamster-sized dog every day, just so that it could yap at Svenrietta. And now this routine…
“Yeah. Good morning, Shady!” Pearl’s friend Rebecca echoed.
“Would you stop doing that?” I yelled it straight into their faces because, like I said, I was in no mood. “You know he hates it.”
At least, Pearl should have known it. She used to be Shady’s best friend. Their families had rented mansions on the beach together and stuff when they were little. Shady showed me a picture of them at some kind of fair, grinning with pink and blue teeth while they ate sticks of cotton candy that were bigger than their heads. She knew his deal. But since she’d started hanging out with Rebecca and Monica, she liked to act as if she didn’t.
“Okay. First of all, we weren’t talking to you, Pou.” Pearl wrinkled her nose like my name smelled. “And second, saying good morning is the polite thing to do.”
Is it though?
Pearl knew Shady wasn’t going to answer. She knew it made him squirm when people talked right at him. And still, she and her stupid friends did this every day, like it was a project. Like if they just kept chipping away, they could extract words from him.
Or maybe they were just trying to make a point that they were better people than him because they said it and he didn’t say it back.
I didn’t know exactly. Just trust me. It was the meanest kind of good morning, and I was done with it. That’s why I stomped on Rebecca’s foot. Not hard. And she was wearing snow boots. It couldn’t have hurt that much, but first she screamed like a baby and then she shoved me, sending me flying straight into Shady.
“Watch it!” I yelled after I’d found my balance.
“Yeah. Careful, Rebecca,” Pearl sneered. “If you bump into Shady too hard, he might pee himself.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I yelled. “He’s got his duck inside his coat. You could have squashed her.”
“Oh whatever, Pou.” Rebecca rolled her eyes.
“Yeah. Stop lying,” Pearl added.
I’d been telling people for weeks that Svenrietta would be coming to school soon, but they acted like I was making it up. And even though Pearl knew it was true, she was acting like it was a lie just to annoy me.
Finally, I had a chance to prove myself.
“Does this look like a lie?” I reached over and unzipped Shady’s coat.
Svenrietta poked her head out of the sling.
Wak.
Both girls screamed.
“Oh my God!” Shushanna said, catching sight of Svenri from across the hall. “Shady has a duck!”
“Awwww! That’s so cute!” her friend Sara squealed.
“Okay, everyone. Into class.” Our teacher, Mrs. Okah, managed to break up the crowd that had started to gather around Shady and Svenrietta, but as soon as we got into Room 9, the uproar started again.
“Can I pet it?”
“What’s its name?”
“Mrs. Okah, that’s so unfair! Why’s he allowed to bring a pet to school? Can I bring my cat?”
Mrs. Okah had to raise one hand and do her shoosh face. When that didn’t work, she switched off the lights.
“We’ll talk about Shady’s duck after announcements, before we head to the gym for the Sock Ball,” she promised.
All through the national anthem, Shady ground his heels into the floor nervously. Then, while Principal Mackie made announcements about Environment Club and the Sock Ball, Shady scribbled furiously on a piece of scrap paper that looked like a crumpled-up flyer. It’s something he always does in class when he’s nervous—but he was scribbling harder than ever.
When the announcements ended, Pearl and her friends Rebecca and Monica left to go decorate the gym for the dance, since they’re on student council. That meant three of Shady’s least favorite people were gone. Still, I could tell by his hunched-up shoulders that he was scared to talk about the duck, and that he didn’t like the way everyone was staring at him.
But a strange thing happened.
“As you’ve noticed,” Mrs. Okah said. “We have a new class member. This is Shady’s emotional support duck. Her name is Svenrietta.”
After that, Mrs. Okah went over basic duck rules. Stuff like “You can only touch her if Shady agrees,” “Do not feed her anything, ever,” and “She’s a service animal. Not a pet.” But once that was done, kids had tons of questions—and they weren’t ones Mrs. Okah knew the answers to.
“Where did you get her?” Shushanna asked.
I jumped in to tell the story before Shady had to worry about it.
“We took her home from Dixon Creek kind of by accident. Then her mother wouldn’t take her back. She was all like—” I flapped my arms and did my best angry duck impression, and some of the kids laughed.
“What does she eat?”
“Mainly special duck food, but she also likes veggies.”
While I explained how, even though lots of people feed ducks bread, it’s bad for them, Shady reached into the sling and pulled Svenrietta out. She quacked and shook her feathers, sending out little puffs of fluff, then settled onto his lap.
“Oh my goodness! Aweeeee!” Shushanna squealed.
“She’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” Tanya leaned across her desk to see better.
I glanced over at Shady, expecting him to be cringing under the attention, but he was actually smiling. Not a lot. It was a pinched kind of smile. But still.
“Is she wearing a diaper?” Mohammed asked with a little snort.
Shady nodded.
That might not sound like a huge deal, but it was. Shady doesn’t usually use actions to talk to other kids at school—just to me, and it took about a year after we met before he even started doing that.
“Does she always have to wear it?”
He nodded again.
Mrs. Okah was trying not to let the surprise about Shady’s nods show on her face, but she wasn’t doing a great job of it.
“Okay,” she said. “Just a few more questions for Shady, and then I want to go over last night’s math before the Sock Ball starts.”
Kathryn wanted to know if the duck could fly.
“She can, but she doesn’t like to,” I answered. “She always wants to stick near Shady, since he’s her mom.”
Linn—one of the English as a Second Language students—asked if the duck liked to do water. Connor laughed and repeated it like she’d said something dirty, “Do water,” but I glared at him. She was obviously just trying to ask if Svenri liked to swim. Next, Andrew asked what her favorite food was.
Shady kept answering the questions that needed a yes or no, and I handled the rest. In the end, there were way more than just a few, but Mrs. Okah couldn’t get the class to settle down, so she let them keep asking.
“Can I have your attention, please.” Mrs. Mackie’s voice came over the PA. “All students in grades four to five should head to the gym for the Sock Ball now.”
That was when Shady and I got mobbed.
“Can I try holding her?” asked Carolyn Richards, who’d never talked to me before unless it was to say something like, “Ew. What’s that mushy stuff in your lunch?”
I consulted Shady, who gave a half nod with a little shrug.
“Maybe,” I translated. “Ask us later, at recess.”
“Is it okay if I pet her?”
“Me too?”
Shady nodded.
“One at a time. This isn’t a petting zoo. All right. Enough,” I said, after at least ten hands had reached out to stroke Svenri.
We started for the gym with a fan club of kids watching the duck waddle down the hall in her happy-face diaper.
Us! With a fan club! Shady, who nobody ever paid attention to unless it was to tease him about not talking or that time he peed his pants, and me, who usually just got on people’s nerves.
You know, my maman and Mitra-Joon always say the best way to get people to like you is to “just be your wonderful self.”
Turns out that’s a huge lie.
The actual best way to get people to like you is to bring a duck to school.