Told by Pearl Summers
I know I’m not always nice. Two weeks ago, I told Erika Wallace her puffy winter jacket made her look like an Oompa Loompa (and then she stopped wearing it), but I only said it because it was nicer than mine. At ballet, I made three girls cry by suggesting that they shouldn’t bother trying out for the lead in Swan Lake Junior. (But, seriously, Ashley’s point is weak, and nobody was going to believe Clara or Sam in the role of a swan.) Just the day before, I’d sent a fake text to Sara pretending to be a guy who liked her, because I thought it would be funny. But none of those things prepared me for how it would feel to be a murderer.
“I’m sorry, Aggie,” I whispered to the cracked egg I was holding in my hands. I pressed my back against the hallway wall and sank to the floor. Ever so gently, I ran one finger along the shell. It hadn’t broken all the way through. “Maybe you’ll still be okay.” But I knew that wasn’t true. Duck eggs need to gestate for twenty-eight days.
With her shell already cracked, Aggie was a goner—and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t ducknapped Svenrietta, none of this would have happened. What’s more, at that very moment, I would have been onstage wowing the crowd—and Connor—with my “Santa Wants a Christmas Tree” solo instead of having just called the boy I liked an idiot and embarrassing myself in front of every kid, parent, and teacher at Carleton Elementary.
A tear trickled down my cheek. Then another and another until I was bawling my eyes out and wiping away snot with the back of my hand.
That was how I was when Shady found me.
He sat down across the hall from me without a word—obviously. But Svenrietta, who was waddling along beside him, had plenty to say. She walked right over.
Wak. Wak. Wak, wak.
Don’t ask how, but I could tell from her tone and the way she was looking at me that she was asking for bread and jam. Quickly, before either of them could see, I put the cracked egg behind me.
“I don’t have any food for you,” I said through my tears.
Shady clapped twice, and Svenri went over to settle in his lap. He started stroking her feathers gently, but the whole time, I could feel him staring at me from behind his floppy hair and through his mirrored sunglasses.
“What?!” I said finally, wiping away some of my tears. “What do you want?”
He kept right on staring.
“Okay, fine! We both know I took your stupid duck. I brought her back though.”
For a minute, the only sounds in the hallway were me sniffling and Svenrietta making the little gobbling noise she makes when she preens her feathers.
“I’m sorry,” I went on. “Okay. I said it. So you can stop staring at me now.”
But Shady did the opposite. He reached up, raised his sunglasses, and peered out from underneath them. I’d forgotten how shiny his blue eyes were. When we were little kids, they’d always reminded me of wet pebbles on the beach.
“What?” I said again, pretending I didn’t know, but the question he was asking with the tilt of his head was clear: Why?
“She was annoying me, okay?” I said. “Always quacking in class. Getting feathers all over the library. And I know you and Pouya and Svenrietta rigged the ballots for the Sock Ball and stole my and Rebecca’s hats and put them in the lost and found. That duck’s been nothing but trouble since she started school.”
Shady didn’t look away. It was like he didn’t believe my answer.
Why?
“Okay, fine,” I went on, just to get him to stop staring. “And maybe I was jealous. A bit. Once you started bringing a duck to school, you were getting so much attention…I’m kind of used to being the most popular.”
That didn’t do the trick either. He pushed his glasses all the way up on top of his head, wrapped his arms tightly around Svenrietta, and leaned forward. Anger flashed in his eyes.
Honestly! What did he want from me? I didn’t know why. I just did it. It wasn’t planned out. But when I opened my mouth to say that, this came out instead: “Because I’m mad at you. I’m still really mad at you, okay?”
That seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised me. He sat back.
“We used to be really good friends. Remember the park? Making sand pancakes? And how we used to see who could run up the slide fastest? The beach house and the campfires and the Build-A-Bear birthday party where we picked matching outfits for our bears. And then you just stopped talking to me once kindergarten started. And to everyone! And after Pouya came, you only wanted to hang out with him! What did I ever do to you, anyway?”
Shady blinked slowly at me a few times.
“My mom said it was some anxiety disorder thing, and it wasn’t your fault,” I went on. “She said you were in therapy for it. But it still made me mad. And I missed you. It sounds stupid, but maybe that’s why I stole your duck, okay?”
I didn’t mean to, but I’d started crying again. Big, fat, embarrassing tears dripped down my cheeks. I had my hands over my eyes, trying to hide my ugly, blotchy face, when I felt Shady sit down beside me—the pressure of his shoulder against mine. Then I heard it:
“Shhhhhhh.”
He was holding Svenrietta up, placing her gently in my arms.
“Shhhhhh,” he said softly, as he settled the wriggling duck in.
The weight of her and the feeling of her breathing in and out, in and out, in and out against my chest was comforting.
The three of us sat there while I stroked Svenrietta’s feathers and gradually stopped crying.
That was when Shady stood up and walked back across the hall. He stopped in front of the lost and found table. The teachers had set it up that afternoon. It was piled high with stuff for parents and kids to look through before the holidays. Shady started picking through: hats, sweatshirts, lunch bags, pencil cases. Whatever he was looking for, it was taking him forever to find it. And I was confused when, a few minutes later, he came back, sat down beside me, and handed me a piece of paper. Big parts of it were scribbled out with a black marker he must have found inside one of the pencil cases.
PARENTS AND STUDENTS! Please check this lost and found table carefully for your hats, mittens, and backpacks. All unclaimed items will be washed and given to Goodwill in the new year.
He pointed toward Svenrietta. Then back at the paper.
Lost and found…and…for…given.
I squinted. Could it be that simple? If Shady ever dognapped Juliette, I’d make him my lifelong enemy. But then, he’d always been a nicer person than me. Even back in the sandbox.
Shady nodded.
Forgiven.
I sighed. Because he didn’t know everything yet.
I reached behind my back and took out the cracked egg. “She laid it last Monday. I was trying to keep it safe and warm, so it would hatch, but it must have broken when somebody moved the box onto the stage.”
Shady reached out his hand, and I put Aggie into it. Letting her go made me feel even worse, but I knew she wasn’t mine to keep. I was about to start crying again, but Shady nudged me with his elbow. I looked up. He was smiling. Not exactly the reaction to duckling murder I’d been expecting.
He got up and crossed the hall again, and because Svenrietta tried to twist out of my arms to follow him, I set her down on the floor. When Shady reached the water fountain, he turned to make sure I was watching, then he cracked the egg against the porcelain.
“Shady! Don’t!” I gasped as he split it in two and emptied it into the basin.
He held the two halves of the shell up.
See?
But I didn’t see at first.
See? he said again by raising his eyebrows.
I got up to look. The eggshell he was holding was empty, and in the water fountain there was nothing but some runny white stuff and a yolk. Like the eggs my parents bought at the grocery store—only a little bigger and yellower.
Aggie wasn’t a duckling-to-be! She was a future omelet! Of course! The egg wasn’t fertilized!
I looked down at the Lost and Found poster again, which I’d left on the floor. How stupid had I been in so many ways?
“Did you really write that poem that Pouya recited?” I asked.
Shady gave a little smile. He nodded.
“It was good,” I said truthfully. “I mean, even though it kind of ruined the entire play.”
It seemed dumb to even think it now, but these last few years I’d been imagining Shady didn’t want to talk anymore. That he was just being stubborn. Or, honestly, that he had nothing important to say. But he was still the same kind, funny kid I’d played with when I was four, who thought up the weirdest pretend pancake toppings (ants, acorns, and mini marshmallows made of rocks). He was still filled to the brim with thoughts and ideas. He just couldn’t get them out through his mouth.
Shady sat down beside me again. Svenrietta waddled over and curled up in his lap. I reached over to pet her, and she gave a little duck sigh.
“I really am sorry,” I said again.
But before Shady could give any kind of answer, Gavin and DuShawn came running down the hall in their reindeer costumes. “That play was a total disaster!” Gavin was screaming. “It’s another sign. The end of the world draws ever near.”
“Prepare to meet your maker!” DuShawn yelled back.
When I looked over, Shady, who still had his sunglasses perched on top of his head, was looking down the hall at the two boys, shrugging his shoulders and smiling. He picked up Svenrietta and set her in my lap again, as if to say, “It’s okay. We all make mistakes.” And, if I had to guess, maybe even, “It really isn’t the end of the world.”