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.He’s in the nurse’s office now, and his parents are on their way.”Tom and Henry grinned at each other.“Thank you,” Ms.Drake called out.She frowned and glanced at Sam’s empty desk.“Has anyone seen Sam since lunch?”“He wasn’t at lunch!” April called.Meeting with the principal apparently didn’t do too much to curb her outbursts.Tom snort laughed.“Something amusing you, Tom?” asked Ms.Drake, her frown about to touch her neck.Tom shook his head, smile gone, and said, “I think I saw him hanging around the locker room after gym.” Henry cough laughed.And I exploded.Without even thinking about it, I jumped to my feet, my arms outstretched like I was about to bolt over three rows of desks and attack Tom and Henry.“Shut up!” I screamed.I mean, really screamed.All the notebooks, pencils, and papers on desks between me and the two of them flew into the air around me like a storm cloud.(Okay, that didn’t really happen.But I felt like it could’ve, that’s how loud I screamed.) I screamed so loud that it echoed with an enormous ripping sound.Ms.Drake whipped toward me.Her mouth popped open.Tom and Henry looked at me, mouths hanging open, too.And then, they laughed.Soon the whole classroom was giggling and pointing at me.Well, not really me.They were pointing at my lost-and-found skirt.That ripping sound wasn’t an echo.It was the skirt splitting at the seam all the way to the elastic waist when I popped to my feet.I gasped and grabbed the fabric in my fist, trying to hold it together, but that just made another rip across the backside, showing everyone in the row behind me my polka-dotted underwear.I gasped again and grabbed fistfuls of fabric in front and behind.Ms.Drake rushed to the front of the room, whipped her sweater off the back of her chair and wrapped it around my waist.“Go ahead and get back to the locker room.Then come straight back here.” Her eyes were fierce.I spent the rest of the day in a brown T-shirt, the hem crusted with refried beans and creamed corn, and pink unicorn shorts.I slouched down in my desk, wishing I were invisible.When the bell rang at last and we headed to the bus line, Ms.Drake wrapped her cool fingers around my wrist to hold me in place.“I’ll be calling your parents this evening, Lucy.Is there anything you’d like to share with me beforehand?” Her face was surprisingly kind, given that she was about to ruin my life even more.I shook my head.The smart thing to do would have been to tell Mom immediately after school that Ms.Drake would be calling.I’d tell her that I yelled during class and split my skirt and that I wouldn’t do it again.That way, I could go on with my evening, not worrying that every time the phone rang, I’d be doomed.But a small part of me hoped that Ms.Drake might forget to call.And then I’d be telling on myself.Which would be a not-smart thing to do.I still wasn’t sure which part of me I’d listen to when I got to my driveway.Grandma’s car was behind Mom’s van.I quietly opened the screen door.Mom and Grandma were at the kitchen table.Mom was crying, her head on her arms, and Grandma was patting her back.Molly was fast asleep in her car seat, placed in the middle of the table between them.“Does this mean we’re done being happy?” I blurted.“Thank goodness.”Grandma and Mom’s heads shot up like groundhogs.For a second, they just stared at me in all of my pink unicorn, refried bean-crusted ridiculousness.Then they both burst out laughing.Mom held her arms out to me and I practically ran to the other side of the table and into her arms.“Oh, baby,” she crooned, her eyes still teary.“What happened to you today? What the heck are you wearing?”I shook my head, burying it into her shoulder.Her shirt was soon wet with my tears.“Tell us what’s going on with you,” Grandma ordered.But just as I was about to figure out how to answer, the phone rang.Hours later, Mom and Dad sat at one side of the kitchen table and I slumped in a chair on the other side.Grandma, uncharacteristically quiet, rocked Molly in the living room.“So, you yell at your classmates now?” Dad’s voice was grim.I stared at the tabletop.There was a sticky glob on the tablecloth that sometimes looked like Pennsylvania, sometimes like Connecticut.“Honey,” Mom’s voice was sickly sweet.This is how they do things.One of them is mean so the other can be nice.And then they switch, without warning [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]