2
Miss Kinde and Miranda stood up. Did Maude need help stopping? But Maude came to an easy stop, plunked down on Miranda’s desk, and took off her skates.
“What are you doing here?” Miranda asked. She was shocked to see her best friend, who often slept through her alarm clock (a crowing rooster named General Cockatoo) and always arrived almost-late to school.
“I saw the sunrise over Mount Coffee!” Maude said excitedly.
“That’s wonderful,” Miss Kinde said. “And it’s wonderful to see you, Maude, but you do remember rules forty-six and fifty-eight?”
Rule forty-six in the Official Rules of Mountain River Valley Elementary said that students were not allowed in school until 7:42 a.m. unless they were getting help. Rule fifty-eight said that wheeled shoes were forbidden in school.
“I know all the rules,” Maude said. “And I truly need help!”
Miss Kinde smiled at Maude, who was wearing paint-splattered pants, a wrinkled T-shirt that said SAVE THE HUMPHEAD WRASSE, and a pair of glasses that she loved but didn’t need.
“I don’t think you need help,” Miss Kinde said patiently. “You did tremendously well on Friday’s practice exam.”
“Did I beat Hillary?” Maude asked. She moved her glasses onto the top of her head.
Hillary was Hillary Greenlight-Miller, Maude’s archenemy and the only person in 3B (or maybe the world) who did not dread practice exams.
Miss Kinde did not answer Maude’s question.
“Never mind,” Maude said. “It’s not important! What’s important are these!” She took a stack of letters out of her messenger bag. “Everyone keeps saying no!” Maude cried. “I write letter after letter demanding change and nothing ever happens.”
“What kind of change?” Miss Kinde asked gently.
“Change for good!” Maude held out a letter. “Except no one will change! I wrote to Chemical Apple to say that they should stop putting chemicals on their apples. Do you know what they wrote back?”
Miss Kinde and Miranda shook their heads. Maude read:
“Oh dear.” Miss Kinde cleared her throat and looked at the clock. They were dangerously close to running out of time for Miranda’s exam.
“Impossible?!” Maude bellowed. “It’s not impossible! When you do something wrong, you apologize. You say, ‘Sorry, that was a terrible idea. I won’t do it ever again’!”
Miss Kinde nodded, but Miranda yawned. She couldn’t help it. Maude was her absolutely positively best friend, but not everything that interested Maude interested her. Some things, like whatever Maude was talking about right now, really bored her.
Maude had her hand in a fist and was talking quickly to Miss Kinde. “I did exactly what you told me, Miss Kinde. I said what the problem was and explained why it’s bad. But every letter I get back says the same thing! ‘We’re going to keep fishing,’ ‘We’re going to keep poisoning apples,’ ‘We can’t clean the lake,’ ‘Styrofoam forever’!”
“Styrofoam?” Miss Kinde asked.
“Principal Fish,” Maude groaned. “No matter how many times I tell him that Styrofoam is terrible, he won’t do anything about the lunch trays.”
Miss Kinde coughed a little. “Maude, it’s inspiring to see how much you care about world issues. I am impressed with your many good causes, and I know how disappointed you must be.”
“I am terribly disappointed. What should I do, Miss Kinde? I need help,” Maude begged.
Miss Kinde hesitated and then said, “Well, maybe some of your classmates could write letters, too. Sometimes it helps if there’s more than one voice.” She glanced at Miranda, who seemed to be falling asleep.
Maude looked at Miranda. “I could write so many more letters if you wrote letters, too!”
Miranda yawned again and shook her head. There was no way she was writing letters! “I’m really busy,” she told Maude, pointing to the practice exam on her desk.
“Too busy to save the world?” Maude asked. “Too busy for peace and justice and a clean earth?”
But you’re not actually saving the world, Miranda thought, looking at the pile of Maude’s letters. You’re probably just giving yourself a hand cramp and wasting ink.
“What do you care about?” Maude asked Miranda. “You must care about something.”
“I care about lots of things,” Miranda said quietly. “But letter writing is not one of them.”
The girls looked at each other. Even though they were extremely different, they always got along. And now it wasn’t that they were fighting exactly. But no matter how much Maude wanted her to, Miranda just couldn’t care about letter writing.
No one said anything. Miss Kinde sneezed, and Miranda and Maude both handed her a tissue. Miss Kinde blew her nose and looked at the clock.
And then Walter Matthews Mayhew Kaye the eighth walked into 3B.
