On Wednesday, breakfast waits for me on our dining room table, like it’s supposed to. As I take my usual chair, I’m excited about school today. I can’t remember being this excited about anything.

At least, I can’t remember being this excited about anything that doesn’t include shoes.

On the table, my utensils glisten. I smooth a bump from my hair, using the reflection from my spoon for guidance. I put a cloth napkin on my lap.

Everything is perfect.

Wait. It’s not.

Because when I look down at the plate in front of me, my stomach ties itself into a big knot. The yolk dribbles into the egg whites, and the egg whites run into the whole-wheat toast. The crusts on my toast have been sliced off, mostly. But on one edge, parts of the terrible-tasting, too-hard brown bread exterior remain.

Ugh.

I lift my fork, but I don’t eat. I stare.

“Eat up, Sam. Eggs are good for you,” says my aunt Karen. She came to stay with us for a few weeks when I was in kindergarten, and she never left. Fortunately. Because Aunt Karen is a fabulous chef most of the time and Mom does not cook, thank you very much. But today my aunt’s eggs over easy are making me uneasy.

She smiles, but I return her grin with an icy frown.

Daddy always tells me that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Not that I want to be greased! But constructive criticism is important. I learned that lesson from Ms. Bryce, too. She loved to criticize.

It may be the only thing I learned from her.

“The eggs are too runny,” I say.

“Oh, they’re fine,” says Aunt Karen. She stands over me. She’s a big woman, with wide shoulders and thick arms. She shakes her head at me, as if I’m at fault here, but I meet her stare.

Uncooked eggs can make you sick, and crusts are just sickening.

You know what? They should bake bread without crusts. I’ll talk to Daddy about that. He’ll be impressed by my business savvy. He could make a fortune, not that he needs another one.

“Oh, there you are, sweetheart.” Mom whirls into the kitchen like a tornado. She’s a blur of motion, her arms waving, and my napkin flutters off my lap from the breeze that blows behind her. She’s wearing a short white tennis skirt. The bracelets on her gesturing arms clang together, gold against gold against silver.

She’s like a tornado-whirling wind chime.

A tennis racket sticks out of the gym bag strapped across her shoulder.

“Eggs?” asks Aunt Karen, stepping back to the stove and lifting the runny goop from the frying pan.

Aunt Karen starts to slide the eggs to a shiny clean plate, but Mom waves her off. “Aren’t you a dear? But I can’t, I’m late! I’m meeting the girls for our Wednesday morning tennis match, and then I’m off to the spa. Busy, busy!” She bends down and kisses the air next to my cheek, and I kiss her cheek air back. With a jingling wave, the tornado hurries into the living room and presses the button for the elevator.

We have our own elevator, of course. Last year it broke for a whole week, and I had to ride the service elevator. They call it that because service people use it, like maintenance people and garbage collectors, and the elevator smells awful. Mom always keeps an air freshener in ours. It was a simply terrible week.

“What about your breakfast?” Aunt Karen asks as I bring my plate to the sink, but I’m already turning around and following Mom’s path.

“No time, I gotta go! See you later!” I call behind me. I grab my fur-collared jacket and my backpack, and I hop into the elevator right before it closes.

Mom puts on lipstick, staring into her small cosmetics mirror. I slide my arms into my jacket sleeves. We ride down in silence until Mom twists her lipstick back into the tube. She asks, “So. How’s school?”

I know I shouldn’t say anything about, well, you know. We all promised. But I’m excited to tell someone. The secret has been building for two days. I feel like I’m about to burst. I almost told Aunt Karen yesterday. I really wanted to when she was kissing me good-night (no air kisses from her!) but caught myself at the last moment.

“You’ll never guess what happened on Monday,” I blurt out to Mom. “The most amazing, fantastic, and surprising thing. Our teacher, Ms.—”

The elevator door opens and Mom rushes out. “I’m sorry, darling. I must run. Have a great day!” The tornado leaves me behind in its wake.

“But—” I stand in the elevator by myself, feeling sort of foolish with my mouth open in the middle of an unfinished sentence. I take a breath and step into the building lobby.

The doors close behind me with a melodic TING!

As I walk across the floor, my dark green glossy leather boots clip-clop on the marble.

Up ahead, George holds the heavy glass door open for me. As I walk by, he tips his doorman’s cap and tilts his head in a semi-bow. “Have a wonderful day, Miss Samantha,” he says.

“You too,” I call back.

I smile. I love it when adults call me Miss.

I turn left at the sidewalk to head to school. Right next to our building is an old folks’ home. Daddy calls it a “retirement community,” but that’s just a longer name for a home for old folks.

Sitting in a lawn chair on the grass, near the edge of the sidewalk of the Old Buzzards’ Building (there! I called it something else!), sits Mr. Wolcott. He’s wearing a brown three-piece suit that was probably fashionable in 1940-something and a striped tie that’s as wide as his neck. I think it’s called an ascot. He wears the same suit and sits on the same chair every day, rain or shine, although if it rains he holds an umbrella.

“How are you on this most sunny of days, Franny?” he booms to me, with a theatrical wave of his hand. He is so loud that two or three people walking near us turn to look, thinking something is wrong.

But it’s just Mr. Wolcott.

“My name is Samantha, Mr. Wolcott.” I’ve told him this, oh, five thousand times.

“Of course, of course. But you look like my Franny—Franny Bree, siren of the stage. The beauty of Broadway. Have I told you that before?”

“Every day,” I say with a sigh.

“She was just about your age when she first appeared in the theater. I remember the day well. She was resplendent. A nightingale of nimbleness! Oh, I was just an understudy then—a piece of lint on her lace gown hem. I was in love with Franny even then. Who was not? A vision, she was! But summer’s lease hath all too short a date.”

“I really need to get to school,” I say, hurrying off before he can start quoting more things to me. He’s harmless, but if you linger too long, he’ll just talk and talk and quote stuff and make you late for wherever you’re going.

And I don’t want to be late for school. Not today. Anything could happen today.

And I bet anything will happen.

As I dash off, I’m weighted down by my backpack. It’s extra heavy because I stuffed a bunch of my fashion magazines inside it last night. I plan to share some with Giovanna.

I’m carrying the emerald-green backpack today. It exactly matches the shade of my boots. No one else matches their backpacks with their shoes, which, if you ask me, is a big mistake.

I spin and fluff my hair. I could be the star of the stage, just like Franny What’s-Her-Name that Mr. Wolcott is always talking about. Why not? I could star in my own fashion magazine, too.

Maybe I’ll ask Daddy to buy one for me.

Not a fashion magazine issue, but the entire corporate headquarters.

As I turn the corner, I think about breakfast and sort of feel bad for complaining about it. Maybe I should have tried the eggs.

But then again, if I’m hungry, I can always just eat some of my lunch in class. I know Ms. Bryce had rules about that sort of thing.

But not anymore.