Daphne's Book (2 page)

Glumly I crossed the bridge and took a short cut through a field behind the townhouses. As I unlocked our front door, I heard Josh's stereo shaking the walls, filling the whole house with the sound of drums and electric guitars.

"Do you have to play that dumb music so loud?" I shouted.

"What?" Josh stuck his head out of the kitchen. He was stuffing a huge peanut butter and banana sandwich into his mouth and trying to talk around it.

"Turn your stereo down!"

"I will when I go upstairs. I have to hear it down here, don't I?" He poured himself a glass of milk and dumped half a can of chocolate syrup into it. "What's the matter, Jess-o? You have a bad day at school or something?" He gave me a condescending smile and reached out to pat the top of my head.

Angrily I ducked away, scowling at him. Just because he's in the ninth grade, he thinks he can treat me like a little kid.

Taking a bite out of an apple, Josh looked down his long nose at me. "Just wait till you get to high school, kid. You'll appreciate Oakcrest then." Shaking his head, he wandered upstairs. His door thunked shut and the stereo dropped to a bearable thrum of drums and snarling singers.

I went into the living room, picked up Snuff, our cat, and collapsed on the couch. From where I lay, I could see the gray sky, the bare trees, and the upper stories of the row of townhouses behind ours. They were tan stucco, and the rain had covered them with streaks, making them look drearier than usual. Shutting my eyes, I decided that Adelphia was a boring and depressing place to live, full of boring and depressing people.

"You know what?" I said to Snuff, who was crouched miserably on my stomach, waiting for an opportunity to escape. "When I'm sixteen I'm going to quit school and hitchhike around the world. I'm going to places like Tibet and New Zealand and Laos and Thailand, and I'm going to write about them and take all kinds of pictures. My articles will be in the
National Geographic,
Snuff. I'll win a Pulitzer Prize, and Mr. O'Brien will be so proud of me."

As Snuff wiggled frantically, trying to get away from me, I imagined myself squatting in a rubble-strewn street somewhere in the Near East, photographing an approaching tank or saving a dying child.

Unimpressed by my future, Snuff flattened her ears and hissed. Then, digging her claws into my sweater, she made a supreme effort and leaped from my arms.

"Just wait till I'm famous, you stupid cat! You'll be sorry then." Angrily I tossed a pillow at her, but she dodged it effortlessly and ran into the kitchen. I could hear her crunching away at her cat food, making herself fatter and fatter.

Around six o'clock, I heard the front door open. "Hi, I'm home," Mom shouted from the hallway. "Is anybody here?"

"I'm in the living room," I called, "And Josh is upstairs doing permanent and irreversible damage to his ears."

Mom came in and sat down on the end of the couch. "How was school today, Jess?"

I sat up and threw my arms around her. "It was awful, just awful!" Before she had a chance to say anything, I told her what Mr. O'Brien had done to me. "Everybody hates Daphne. They call her Daffy Duck and they quack whenever they see her. I don't want to be her partner, Mom!" Giving her another hug, I looked pleadingly at her. "Could you call up Mr. O'Brien and tell him how upset I am and ask him if he could please let me work with someone else? Please, Mom, please, could you?"

Mom looked at me, her face puzzled but not as sympathetic as I had hoped it would be. "Jessica, I'm sorry you're so unhappy about this, but I'm sure working with Daphne won't be as bad as you think it will." She hugged me and gave me a kiss; her cheeks were still cold from being outside, but her arms made me feel warm and protected. "Did you put the casserole in the oven when you came home from school?"

"Oh no, I forgot all about it, Mom!" Stricken with guilt, I watched her take the Pyrex dish out of the refrigerator and stick it in the oven. "I'm sorry, Mom, I really am, but I was so upset about school, I just didn't think about it."

Slamming the oven door shut, Mom frowned at me. "I'm sorry, too, Jessica. I was expecting dinner to be almost ready when I got home."

I followed Mom out to the kitchen so I could continue our conversation about Mr. O'Brien and Daphne. As I watched her cleaning up the mess that Josh had left on the counter, though, I changed my mind. Without waiting to be asked, I got out the silverware and started setting the table. I had a feeling she might be in a better mood after dinner.

Later that night, I sat down on the couch next to Mom. She looked up from the book she was reading. "Did you finish your homework?" she asked.

I nodded. "I did all my math and I wrote my book report." Clearing my throat, I smiled at her. "You know the Write-a-Book contest I was telling you about?"

"It sounds like something you'd really enjoy doing. Do you have an idea for your story yet?"

"No, but I'll think of something. It's not due till February twentieth, so I have a whole month." I paused and started fiddling with the fringe on one of the throw pillows. "The thing is, I want to do it with Tracy. Not Daphne."

Mom stared at me. "What's so awful about Daphne?"

I screwed up my face, trying to figure out a way to explain someone like Daphne to my mother. "Well, she's really weird. She never does anything in school, and I know she won't do her share of the book." I paused. "Couldn't you ask Mr. O'Brien to let me be partners with Tracy?"

"Have you talked to him?"

I nodded. "But he won't let me change."

"I'm sure that Mr. O'Brien has a good reason for pairing you with Daphne. What did he say when you talked to him?"

I looked down at the pillow again. "He said I was the best writer and Daphne was the best artist, and he said I was a sensitive person and I should try to be Daphne's friend."

I sighed and leaned against Mom's side, letting her encircle me with her arm. "I don't want to hurt Daphne, Mom. I've never teased her or laughed at all the dumb jokes Tony and Michelle and Sherry make. I'm just scared that they'll tease me. I don't want Tracy to stop liking me. I don't want to be like Daphne."

"Oh, Jessica, nobody will hate you if you work with Daphne on a project." Mom hugged me. "Mr. O'Brien must think a lot of you, honey. Do as he says. Try to be friendly to Daphne. Put yourself in her place—imagine how lonely and unhappy she must be."

I looked at Mom sadly. "You just don't understand," I said. "You don't know how kids at Oakcrest are." Sighing deeply, I got up from the couch. "I think I'm going to go to bed, Mom."

She pulled me close and gave me a kiss. "Good night, Jess." Then she smiled. "Give her a chance, sweetie. Don't let Mr. O'Brien down."

Slowly I climbed the steps. Of course I didn't want to let Mr. O'Brien down. I couldn't help feeling pleased that he thought I was a nice person, and despite all the bad thoughts I was having about Daphne, I did wish I could help her. But at the same time, I knew I couldn't. Not if I wanted to keep Tracy as a friend. Not if I wanted to stay on Michelle's good side.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
it was still raining. Lying in bed, looking at the gloomy sky and bare branches outside my window, I wished I could stay home. I didn't want to go to school, I didn't want to see Michelle and Sherry, I didn't want to be Daphne's partner.

But as usual, Josh started banging on my door. "Rise and shine, Jess-o!" he croaked in his horrible half-changed voice. "It's another beautiful day."

"Shut up," I moaned. "Go away and leave me alone." I pulled the covers over my head, but nothing could muffle the sound of that voice.

"Doodle-dee-doot-de-do!" He trumpeted, his voice cracking and going up three octaves.

"Josh, stop that racket!" Mom yelled from downstairs. "And Jessica, you get up this minute!" she added, just to prove she didn't have any favorites.

"Okay, okay," I mumbled. Unlike Josh and Mom, I don't have the strength to yell first thing in the morning, not before breakfast anyway.

"And don't spend an hour in the bathroom," Josh said as I stumbled past him. "I haven't brushed my teeth yet."

Ignoring him, I slammed the bathroom door and turned on the shower, praying he'd left enough hot water for me this morning. By the time I finished blow-drying my hair, Josh was pounding on the door and shouting at me to hurry up.

Mom was finishing her coffee when I came downstairs. "What a horrible gray morning." She frowned at the rain falling endlessly from the cloudy sky.

"Just think, if it were snowing instead of raining, they'd close the schools," I said.

"But they wouldn't close the library," Mom said glumly. "Mr. Shepperd would expect me to be there even if we had ten-foot-high drifts blocking the roads." She sighed and got up to rinse her cup.

"Has anybody seen my English homework?" Josh ran into the kitchen, his red hair standing out in a halo of frizzy curls around his thin face. "I left it right there!" He pointed at an empty space on the kitchen counter. "Who moved it?"

"What's that?" I pointed at a messy pile of notebook paper heaped on the buffet.

"Well, / didn't leave it there." Josh scooped up the papers and stuffed them into a textbook already oozing sheaves of ragged assignments. "'Bye, Mom. 'Bye, Jess-o." He opened the door and let in a blast of icy air before slamming it behind him. As he passed the dining room window, hunched like a scarecrow in his dirty blue parka, he waved once more.

"Well, it's almost time for me to leave." Mom put her cup in the dishwasher. "Be sure and turn this on before you leave, Jessica. I don't think we have a single clean glass."

I watched her button her coat and put on her hat. "Have a nice day, Mom," I said.

"You too, honey." She gave me a quick kiss. "And try not to be so unhappy about the Write-a-Book thing."

I nodded. The door shut behind her and the house got very quiet. No radio or stereo blasting my ears, no Josh pounding up and down the stairs, no Mom bustling around. Just the refrigerator starting up and Snuff crunching her cat food.

I finished eating my cereal, rinsed my dishes, and put them in the dishwasher. Feeling responsible, I turned it on, glad that I'd remembered.

As I gathered up my books, Snuff stalked past me, jumped up on the couch, and curled herself into a contented little ball.

"You lucky cat." I bent over and scratched her behind the ears. She opened one eye and stared at me suspiciously, but she didn't leap up and run away.

"You can stay here all day, nice and dry and warm," I said enviously. "You have the whole house to yourself, and you can eat and sleep whenever you feel like it. You don't have to go out in the cold rain, you don't have to be Daphne's partner, you don't have to worry about people liking you. You really have a great life, you big fat furry monster you."

Snuff stretched and purred. She looked very smug, as if she understood every word I said.

Grabbing my parka, I opened the door. Ugh. It was even worse than yesterday. "Why can't you be snow?" I snarled at the raindrops.

In English, Mr. O'Brien started class by telling us he'd changed our seats so we could all sit next to our partners. Unhappily I picked up my books and moved to the desk beside Daphne, dropping everything with a thud so loud that Mr. O'Brien frowned at me. Daphne, of course, didn't even look up. She just sat there doodling on a piece of notebook paper, her long hair tumbling down and hiding her face.

"Let's get quiet now." Mr. O'Brien looked around the room. "I want to explain this assignment."

Passing out a dittoed bibliography, he told us that he was going to take us to the public library to look at picture books. "You should see some good examples before you start working on your own books."

Tony leaned back in his seat indignantly. "These are baby books. Why do we have to waste our time reading kid stuff?"

Everybody laughed, and a lot of kids started agreeing with Tony. Mr. O'Brien sighed and smoothed his beard. "I knew somebody was going to say that," he said. "In my opinion, most of these books are too good to limit them to little children. I think most of you will really enjoy looking at them." He paused and smiled at Tony. "But if you don't buy that, Tony, think of it this way. Each one is only about thirty-two pages long."

"That's probably more than Tony can handle," Mike DeSales said. "The longest book he ever read was the special anniversary Spiderman comic book. It couldn't have been more than twenty-four pages long."

"Yeah," Scott Turner added, "and it was mostly pictures. Except for the
POW'S
and
ZAPP'S
and
OOOH'S.
"

By now everybody was laughing, even Mr. O'Brien, and Tony was muttering, "Okay, okay. Big deal, man, big deal."

Curiously I shot a quick, sidewise look at Daphne, but she was still bent over her drawing as if she were on another planet. Her bibliography lay untouched on her desk, and she seemed completely indifferent to the laughter rippling around her.

"Well, enough for now about our books," Mr. O'Brien said. "Let's get back to the unit on paragraphing."

As Mr. O'Brien did his best to make his subject interesting, I slumped in my desk, staring at my textbook. I was too depressed to find the topic sentence in a boring paragraph about wheat production in Kansas. To tell the truth, I didn't care whether the paragraph had a topic sentence or not.

Although I tried not to think about Daphne, I was uncomfortably aware of her every time she shifted her position, coughed, sniffed, or sighed. The sound of her pencil scratching across her paper irritated me, and so did the sight of her foot, clad in black tights and a red Scholl sandal, swinging back and forth, catching my eye as it moved. When the bell rang, I jumped out of my desk, eager to get away from her.

"Don't forget, we go to the library tomorrow. Be sure to bring in your signed permission slip," Mr. O'Brien said as we all started for the door like a herd of cattle heading for the feeding trough.

Going down the hall to the cafeteria, I caught up with Tracy. I managed to stick with her through the line and eased in beside her at the lunch table.