Look at Lucy! (3 page)

Shawn pulled an entry form from his own pocket. “I picked this up when I bought Twitch. I guess Lucy and Twitch will both be in the contest.”

“What about Butch?” Candy asked. “I’ll enter him in the contest, too. Butch would make a great spokespet!”

Out in the yard, Lucy was trying to get Butch to play. But Butch was on his back, staring up at the sky. He gave himself a hard scratch. Then he rolled over, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

Bobby figured there’d be lots of pets in the contest. Lucy would have plenty of competition. But he didn’t think he had to worry much about Butch.

Mrs. Lee’s Room

T
here was a funny feeling in the pit of Bobby’s stomach. And it wasn’t a ha-ha funny feeling. It was a weird, unsettled feeling. It had been there since he got out of bed.

Bobby put on the new clothes his mother had laid out for him the night before and went downstairs. He knew she would want him to eat, but breakfast seemed like a bad idea.

Lucy was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs. She wasn’t her usual bouncy self. Maybe she knew it was the first day of school, too.

Mr. and Mrs. Quinn were drinking coffee at the table. Bobby’s mother had made his favorite, pancakes. He wished he felt like eating.

“Hey, Bobby,” his father said. He looked over the top of his newspaper. “You’re a third grader. How does it feel?”

“Not too good,” Bobby told him. “I’m not hungry, Mom. I don’t feel well.”

Mrs. Quinn touched her hand to Bobby’s forehead. “You don’t have a fever. I think you might be nervous about school, that’s all,” she said.

Bobby nodded. He picked up Lucy and put her on his lap. Lucy licked Bobby’s cheek.

“Well, it will be a big change for both of you,” his mother said. “Just remember, Lucy and I will be waiting here when you come home at three o’clock.”

Bobby thought three o’clock seemed like a long way off.

Since his mother insisted, Bobby ate a few bites of his pancakes and drank some of his milk. Lucy sat on his lap the whole time. Usually his mother wouldn’t have allowed that, but she looked like she felt sorry for both of them.

After breakfast, Bobby gave Lucy a kiss on the top of her head. Finally he told his father, “I’m ready.” Wildwood School was close enough to walk to, but today Bobby’s father was going to drive him and Shawn.

When Shawn got in the car, he was just as quiet as Bobby. Mr. Quinn looked at them
in the rearview mirror. “I think you boys are going to have a great year!” he said.

Bobby nodded, and Shawn said, “Yes, sir.” Bobby hoped his father was right.

Mr. Quinn dropped them off in front of Wildwood. The schoolyard was full of kids
laughing and talking. Bobby walked slowly toward the school. Shawn was right beside him.

“Do you know any of these kids?” Shawn asked.

Bobby spotted a few boys and girls from his class last year. He sure didn’t feel like going up to them and saying hi. What if they didn’t remember him? What if they did remember him and thought he was a dope? “Uh …”

Just then, Shawn and Bobby heard a familiar voice. “Hi, guys!”

Candy came hurrying up to them. Her smile was almost as bright as the stars on her shiny blue backpack.

“Hey, this seems okay,” she said, looking around. “Good playground, lots of kids. Who’s in our class?”

Bobby hesitated, but Candy was waiting. He pointed to the kids he had spotted before. “There’s Carrie, Dexter, Jessie, and Robin. They might be in Mrs. Lee’s room with us,” he mumbled.

Candy gave Bobby a funny look. “Let’s go say hi.”

“Aw, I don’t feel like it right now,” Bobby protested.

But Candy wasn’t the kind of girl who took no for an answer. And she certainly was not shy. “Come on,” she said to Bobby and Shawn.

Keeping a few steps behind her, Bobby and Shawn watched Candy walk up to Carrie, Dexter, Jessie, and Robin. “Hello, I’m Candy. I’m new this year,” she said.

At first the four kids seemed surprised. Then Candy started asking them what Wildwood was like. For once, she let other people talk, too. Soon everyone was eager to tell her about Wildwood School.

“Hey, Bobby, Shawn,” Candy said, calling them over. “You know Bobby, right?” she
asked her new friends. “He was in your grade last year. You don’t know Shawn, though. He just moved here this summer.”

“Where did you come from?” Jessie asked.

In a soft voice, Shawn said, “Chicago.”

Bobby was worried that no one had heard Shawn, but Dexter said, “My grandma lives in Chicago. We visited her in July.”

That broke the ice. Shawn and Dexter started talking about Chicago. They both liked the Chicago Cubs.

Bobby felt a little jealous. He liked the Cubs as much as Shawn did. He wanted to join the conversation, too. He just didn’t know how.

Then Robin turned to him. “What did you do over the summer, Bobby?”

“I … I got a dog,” Bobby said.

“Yeah? What kind?” Robin seemed interested.

Before Bobby could answer, the first bell rang. Everyone began hurrying toward the big double doors. “I know where our room is,” Bobby told Candy and Shawn. “Follow me.”

Room 102 was down a long hall. “That’s the learning center.” Bobby pointed it out. “And the gym is back there.”

When they got to Room 102, they chose three seats together near the windows. Bobby liked looking outside if things got boring.

However, it didn’t look like Mrs. Lee’s class was going to be boring. After they said the Pledge of Allegiance, Mrs. Lee took attendance. Then she talked about all the interesting things she had planned for the
year. They were going to learn about the pioneers and visit a real-life pioneer cabin. In math class, they’d be spending time on long division.

When Jessie called out, “Long division is hard,” Mrs. Lee laughed.

“You’ll like it, you’ll see,” she said. She also listed some of the books she was going to read aloud. One was
The Mouse and the Motorcycle!

“Wait until she finds out you have a mouse,” Bobby whispered to Shawn.

“Maybe we’ll have a motorcycle for Twitch by then. We’ll bring him to school,” Shawn whispered back.

Pretty much everything Mrs. Lee described for the coming year sounded fine to Bobby. Maybe his father was right. Maybe this was going to be a good year. Then Mrs.
Lee said something that made Bobby’s heart beat faster. Something that didn’t sound good at all.

“One more thing. We’re going to be doing lots of oral reports. We’ll report on books we’ve read, and the work we’re doing. I think sharing with your classmates will be lots of fun, don’t you?”

Standing up, talking in front of twenty-five kids? Bobby had trouble telling Robin he had gotten a dog this summer. How in the world could he give an oral report? Lots of oral reports.

No, Mrs. Lee, oral reports will not be fun
, Bobby thought.
Absolutely not
.

Troubles

T
here were some things Bobby liked about school. He liked Mrs. Lee. He liked having Shawn and Candy in his class. He liked listening to
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
.

Lucy didn’t like anything about Bobby spending the day at school. Mrs. Quinn said she moped around the house while Bobby was gone. When he came home, Lucy went crazy. She barked. She ran around in circles.
She grabbed shoes, magazines, and clothes and chewed them. She hadn’t done that in weeks. One day, Bobby came home from school and found Lucy chomping on one of his best sneakers.

“Hey, Lucy! Quit that!” Bobby ran over to her. He tried to pull the blue sneaker from Lucy’s mouth.

Lucy pulled right back. It was a tug-of-war. Finally Lucy let the shoe drop. It was too late. Bobby stuck his finger through a big hole near the toe.

“What are we going to do about Lucy?” Mrs. Quinn fretted.

“Bobby, you have to walk her as soon as you get home from school,” his father told him that night. “Exercise will help her get rid of some of that energy.”

Bobby was happy to walk Lucy every day. She pranced around the neighborhood. In the yard, she caught sticks and balls when Bobby threw them. She let off lots of extra steam. If Lucy was in a cartoon, she’d have steam coming out from under her long, floppy ears.

But she still liked to chew shoes.

Bobby had been in school for about two
weeks when Mrs. Lee made an announcement. “Class, it’s time to start thinking about our oral reports,” she said.

Uh-oh
, Bobby thought. He had hoped Mrs. Lee had forgotten about those stupid oral reports. He glanced over at Shawn. Shawn looked like he had just swallowed a hot pepper.

“For the first report,” Mrs. Lee went on, “I want you to talk about a very special subject. You.”

Bobby was surprised. He thought Mrs. Lee would want the class to give reports about history. They were studying the Pilgrims. They were learning about the Native Americans who were already living in this country when the Pilgrims got here. Wasn’t that the kind of thing reports were about?

Mrs. Lee explained. “I think it will be fun
if everyone gets up and speaks for a few minutes. Introduce yourself to the class. Tell us a little about your family, your pets, your hobbies. Just get up and talk.”