It all started one Monday morning in April
when our fourth-grade teacher,
Mrs. Ramji,
made a special announcement.
She was standing near her desk,
beside a girl I’d never seen before.
That girl wore sparkly clothes
and a headband with a big bow.
“We have a new student!” Mrs. Ramji said.
“This is Ainsley Biggs.
She just moved here, from Orlando!”
“Orlando!” my best friend, Pearl, whispered to me,
from the desk beside mine.
“How magical.”
I heard other kids whisper, “Disney!”
And then the boy who sits behind me,
Nicholas Rigby,
started humming the Disney song
“It’s a Small World.”
He hummed and hummed,
just loud enough for me to hear.
“Shh!” I told him.
I turned and glared at him, too.
Because Nicholas Rigby is always
getting us in trouble.
Plus, I knew I’d never get that song out of my head.
“Doesn’t Ainsley look like a present?”
Pearl whispered to me.
“A shiny present, too pretty to unwrap?”
(Pearl talks like a poet sometimes.)
“She does look like a present!” I whispered back.
I started wondering
whether I ever wanted to look like a present.
Mrs. Ramji turned the lights off
and on again
to get our attention.
“Class 4A!” she said.
“Please settle down!
You’re not behaving your best for Ainsley.
We need to make her feel welcome!
It’s not easy,
starting a new school so late in the year.”
Then Mrs. Ramji said,
“Pearl!”
Pearl sat up straighter,
and I did, too.
Because maybe she was in trouble.
But Mrs. Ramji told Pearl,
“I would like you to move your desk
closer to Eleanor’s, please.”
“Closer to Eleanor’s?” Pearl asked.
“Actually, everyone in that row,
move a little
to make space for Ainsley’s desk,
on the other side of Pearl.”
“Yay! Closer to you!”
Pearl whispered to me,
and we grinned at each other
as everyone in our row
started making space for Ainsley.
After we’d finished
and I’d sat back down,
a wadded-up ball of paper flew
through the air
and landed on my desk.
I knew exactly
what that flying paper was.
I opened it up
and smoothed it out.
Sure enough, Nicholas Rigby had drawn me a picture.
This one showed me on a roller coaster
in Orlando,
with my arms in the air
and my hair blowing in crazy directions.
I folded the picture neatly
and put it on top of the pile
of Nicholas’s pictures
that I kept in my desk.
Because even though that boy’s impossible,
he’s still a ridiculously good drawer.
Then I turned and whispered to him,
“Thanks.”
Like I always did.
And he kicked the back of my chair,
not too hard,
like he always did.
Then Mrs. Ramji asked us
to take out our Creative Writing notebooks
and work on our Brooklyn Bridge poems
while she and Pearl helped Ainsley get set up.
I loved my Brooklyn Bridge poem.
So I worked on it very hard.
And realized only later
that I should’ve been
paying attention to Ainsley instead.
Because during that time,
she started casting a glittery spell over Pearl.
She really did.
