It wasn’t that Beatrice More didn’t like boxes. She did.
She especially liked boxes that were perfect squares. They stacked easily. They held things that would otherwise mess up the house. They were neat and tidy.
But today Beatrice was sick of boxes. Very, very sick of boxes. Looking around her new house, all she could see were stacks of them. On the floor. On the kitchen counters. On the furniture.
Boxes everywhere.
Beatrice had tried to tell the movers where to put the boxes. But they just carried them in and dumped them anywhere.
She tried to scrub off the smudgy, sticky handprints the movers left on the walls. But they kept making them faster than she could scrub them off.
She said, “Somebody’s walking through the house with their shoes on!” very loudly several times before her mother finally shushed her.
The moving guys were horrible listeners. They just smiled, carried in more boxes with their sticky hands and kept making a bigger and bigger mess.
But the movers were gone now. The big, noisy moving truck was just pulling away from the driveway.
“It’s about time,” grumbled Beatrice. She stood in the living room with her hands on her hips. As she looked around, her eyes narrowed.
“What a dump,” she said to herself, shaking her head slowly.
Her mother came into the room. She looked around happily.
“Well, this is exciting!” she said. “A new house, a new neighborhood, a new city! Are you excited, Bee?”
“Beatrice.” How many times had she told her family not to call her Bee? Nine thousand? Nineteen thousand? Ninety thousand? Bee was not a name at all. It was a letter. Or worse, an insect. An insect that buzzed annoyingly. An insect people ran away from, screaming.
Bee certainly wasn’t the name of a future Olympic gymnastics gold-medal winner.
Or a future prize-winning scientist. Or a famous artist or writer. And those were all on Beatrice’s list of Very Successful Careers to Consider.
“Have you looked at this place, Mom?” Beatrice said. “It’s a mess! There are way, way too many boxes!”
“Well, Bee,” said her mother, pushing her frizzy hair out of her eyes, “we only moved in this morning! We’re just getting started.”
Beatrice crossed her arms.
“I’ve already unpacked my room. Perfectly.”
It was the first room she had all to herself. The first room she didn’t have to share with her messy little sister, Sophie. Beatrice loved her new room. It was perfect.
“Wow. Really?” Her mother looked impressed. “Want to show me?”
On the door to Beatrice’s room there was a small, square sign with neat purple letters.
“Ah, here’s your room,” said her mother, smiling at the sign. She looked down at her grubby hands and rubbed them on her jeans.
“Now, if I let you in, you can’t touch anything,” warned Beatrice. “Nothing. You can’t wrinkle the bed or rumple the carpet or touch anything at all.”
“Got it. I won’t even breathe.”
Beatrice opened the door.
The purple quilt on the bed was perfectly smooth. Not one wrinkle or ripple. The pillow was perfectly plumped. A square purple-and-white rug sat exactly in the center of the room.
The small white desk was perfectly clean. All of Beatrice’s lists were stacked neatly in the top drawer. Each book in the bookcase had a special place—tallest to shortest. The stuffed animals on the bed were lined up alphabetically, from Annabelle (a duck) to Zeke (a horse).
“Well, you’re right, Bee,” sighed her mother. “It’s perfect. But don’t you want it to look a little lived-in? Maybe a little less perfect?”
Beatrice wasn’t listening.
“Check out my closet,” Beatrice said. She swung open the door. “Ta-daaaah!”
Beatrice’s closet was, if possible, even neater than the rest of the room.
“Note the matching purple hangers,” she said, “and the way I’ve hung all the clothes by color—blue, red, white, yellow and, of course, my favorite color, purple.”
Her mother leaned against the doorjamb.
“How on earth do you live in the rest of our house?” she asked softly, shaking her head.
Beatrice didn’t hear her. She was carefully shutting her closet door.
“Well, kiddo, your room looks great. Perfect, in fact,” her mom said. “I guess I better start on the rest of this house. Why don’t you see how Sophie’s doing with her new room?”
“Good idea,” Beatrice said.
Her little sister should have unpacked at least some of her boxes by now. But Beatrice didn’t expect much. Sophie was only four years old, after all. Four years younger than Beatrice.
Beatrice looked over at Sophie’s room. There was a torn scrap of paper taped crookedly to the door.
Sophie had taped the paper to the door first, then written on it. The long tail of the y went down off the paper onto the white door.
Beatrice licked her finger and scrubbed at the smudge on the door. And scrubbed. And scrubbed. It didn’t come off.
“Permanent marker,” Beatrice said through gritted teeth. She made a mental note to include Sophie’s door on her list of Things That Are Annoyingly Hard to Clean.
She sighed and knocked at the door.
“Sophie? Are you in there? Are you all right?”
There was a muffled giggle and some shuffly sounds. Beatrice tried to open the door. It opened a tiny bit, then stopped.
It was stuck.
Stuck, Beatrice thought grimly, in a huge pile of Sophie-mess.
