The Magical Ms. Plum (3 page)

“But you thought it, didn’t you?” said Brad.

But before Eric, or his parrot, could answer, Ms. Plum called them back to attention and asked, “Well, who can tell me how a jar of peanut butter can make you rich?”

Eric raised his hand again.

“Mindy smells pretty,” said the parrot with a parroty sigh.

The class started to giggle.

“Shut up!” said the parrot. “Not you,” said the parrot as Eric gestured wildly to the class. “Him!” said the parrot as Eric pointed an accusatory finger at the bird.

Eric tried to make his mind go blank.

“I’m thinking nothing, nothing, nothing,” murmured the parrot.

“What else is new?” said Brad, and the class cracked up again.

“That’s not funny!” cried the parrot. “I tell better jokes than you.”

“You mean you
steal
better jokes,” said Brad.

“Geez, I really have to go to the bathroom,” said the parrot. “I wish I hadn’t eaten those beans last night.”

The class roared as Eric reached up and tried to grab his beak. The parrot scrambled out of reach, his claws digging like pins into Eric’s scalp.

“Ms. Plum! Help me! How do I get rid of him?” the parrot squawked.

Ms. Plum said, “I’m sure you’ll think of something, Eric. You’re a smart boy.”

Eric glanced up at the parrot, who was now preening his feathers in a smug sort of way, and Eric’s eyes got a kind of gleam. The parrot began to murmur softly, dreamily. “Nice birdie. Birdie go away. Far, far away. Back into the closet, okay?”

Eric gave Ms. Plum a questioning look. Ms. Plum nodded, and he slipped from his desk and walked toward the closet.

“Here you go,” crooned the parrot. “Back in the nice warm closet. Birdie bye-bye.”

Everyone could still hear him murmuring as Eric slipped inside the closet and then burst out again, slamming the door shut behind him. The parrot was gone from his head.

Eric opened his mouth, hesitated, then said softly, “Is he gone?”

Everyone listened carefully. No sound from the closet.

“Why don’t you check?” said Tashala. “Look in the closet.”

But Eric shook his head. “That’s okay,” he said, and he slipped back to his desk.

There on his desk was a yellow sheet of paper. How had that gotten there? No one else had one. Eric picked up the flyer. It said something that made Eric grin. He looked at Ms. Plum. But Ms. Plum was writing out a new fact on the board.

“Did Ms. Plum put this on my desk?” Eric asked.

Tashala stared at him. “When could she have done that?”

Eric didn’t know, but he neatly folded the flyer and stuck it in his pocket.

And at recess, when Brad said, “What’s a
polygon?” Eric knew the answer to that, but he let Brad say it.

Being the smartest kid in the class, Carlos had figured out that the animal you found in the closet could kind of turn out to be a problem if
you
had a problem—like being a cowboy snob like Tashala or an interrupter like Eric.

But Carlos couldn’t think of any problem with being smart. He couldn’t wait to get picked and to find out what his animal would be. He figured it would be something super clever.

Today Ms. Plum was showing them how to tie a turban.

“First you put the end of the cloth in your moush,” she said, biting onto the end of the long piece of orange cloth. “Then you wap it around—”

Then Ms. Plum sniffled and asked, “Who cansh get me some Kleenex?”

Carlos’s hand shot up. But Ms. Plum picked … Darma! Darma, who hadn’t even raised her hand. Who never raised her hand! She was almost as quiet as Jovi, who was from Africa and didn’t speak English very well.

Darma was so messy and clumsy. She was always getting glue in her hair or mud on her shoes and bug bites on her hands that she scratched until they were scabby.

But Ms. Plum looked right past Carlos’s waving, wriggling hand and nodded at her. “Darma, could you, pleash?”

Darma blushed so hard she had tears in her eyes. She stood up hesitantly and knocked over her chair. “Sorry,” she said, quickly setting the chair back up and patting it. Then she tripped on her shoe strap. “Sorry,” she mumbled. At last Darma made it to the closet.

She was gone a long time. Ms. Plum continued with her lesson on turban wrapping, and it was really hard to pay attention. Although everyone wanted to wear a turban, as Ms. Plum had promised they could, they kept wondering what was taking Darma so long.

Finally Darma poked her head out and said, “I can’t find the Kleenex.” Then she looked down and said, “Oh.”

A squad of bright-eyed squirrels strode from the closet, walking on their hind legs, carrying the Kleenex box above their heads like a bunch of servants carrying Cleopatra on her throne. They marched the Kleenex over to Ms. Plum’s desk.

Ms. Plum put the final tuck into her turban and looked down at the squirrels.

“Why, thank you, squirrels!” she said, giving Darma a kindly look. “Very nice, dear. Very nice, indeed.”

Darma didn’t quite know what Ms. Plum was talking about, but still it made her feel good.

The squirrels scurried to Darma’s desk, apparently to await further orders.

Darma stumbled back to her chair.

She placed her hands neatly in front of her to show that she was listening to Ms. Plum and to get the other kids to stop staring. The squirrels took one look at her ragged fingernails, disappeared into the closet with flicks of their tails, and reemerged with nail clippers, a nail file, and a bottle of soft pink nail polish.

While Ms. Plum strode about the room in her turban, telling them about India, Darma got a lovely manicure.

“Hey, can I get one of those?” Mindy whispered across the aisle.

Mindy had never said anything to Darma before.

Darma tried shooing the squirrels in Mindy’s direction, but they just perched on the edge of Darma’s desk, their bright eyes shining on her. Eager smiles on their faces. Their tails at attention.

Darma took the bottle of nail polish and set it next to Mindy. One of the squirrels leapt onto Mindy’s desk and whisked the bottle of polish away.

“Yipes!” cried Mindy.

“Sorry,” said Darma, nervously picking at her new manicure.

The squirrels marched back to the closet with the manicure stuff. After a moment they came out with assorted candies, including a giant bag of chocolate Kisses. They hauled it all over to Darma.

“You have to share those,” said Becky Oh.

“Sorry,” said Darma. She tried passing out Kisses to the class, but the squirrels grabbed them and scurried every one back
to her. The Kisses sat in a big foil-wrapped pile in front of her.

The squirrels stared at her expectantly. One of them held up a Kiss for her in its little paw. When she didn’t take it, they all bent their heads, drooped their tails, and looked horribly sad.

For the first time ever, Darma raised her hand.

“Yes, Darma?” said Ms. Plum.

“Is it okay if I eat a candy?” she asked, nodding at the sorrowful squirrels.

“Certainly, dear,” said Ms. Plum. “I think it would be the kind thing to do.”

So Darma ate one Kiss. The squirrels still looked sad. She ate two. The squirrels still looked sad. Darma had to eat fifteen chocolate Kisses, five caramels, and a bag of M&M’s before they began beaming again.

“Sorry,” Darma kept saying with each bite. “Sorry.” She gave a little burp.

Then the squirrels really got serious. They organized Darma’s binder. They buffed her shoes with their tails. They combed her hair with their cunning little paws. They sharpened her pencils. They couldn’t do enough for her.

“How come she gets all this cool stuff done for her?” complained Becky Oh.

Ms. Plum looked thoughtful. “Maybe our Darma is cool,” she finally said.

The kids all stared at Darma. Miss Scabby Bug Bites was cool?

Darma shrugged sheepishly and kept saying “Sorry.” But she didn’t look
that
sorry. In fact, she looked quite pleased at the way the squirrels had arranged her hair.

When Darma had to leave after school, the squirrels clung to her ankles and made pitiful whining sounds. One tried desperately to polish her shoes even as she stepped out the door.

“Thank you so much,” she said, turning back. The squirrels stood in a line at the door. “But I really have to get home.”

The squirrels all gave a tremendous mutual sigh.

The next morning, the squirrels were gone, but they had tidied up Darma’s desk, spell-checked her essay on the Taj Mahal, and left a pile of pink bubble gum.

“You’re so lucky,” gushed Emiko.

“I wish I had a bunch of squirrel helpers,” said Becky Oh.

“Want some gum?” said Darma shyly.

The girls nodded.

“Me too?” asked Mindy.

Darma handed them each a piece of gum.

“I like your new shirt,” said Mindy.

“I made it myself,” said Darma.

“I wish I could sew,” said Mindy.

“Well, one sleeve is kind of on backward….”

“Oh, I thought that was a cool new style. Pink’s my favorite color,” Mindy added, snapping her gum. “What’s yours?”

“Blue,” said Darma, blushing and pointing the toes of her almost shiny shoes.

Then she looked up at Ms. Plum and smiled like the sun.

Carlos thought that if he could just figure out the rules, he could get chosen for the supply closet. So the night after Darma got her squirrels, Carlos wrote down what he knew so far
.

Animals came only from the closet
.

No one was able to talk about the animals outside Ms. Plum’s room
.

The animals couldn’t leave the classroom. (He was pretty sure.)

The animals disappeared by the next day. (Sir Prance-alot had been gone the next morning, and so had the squirrels.)

It helped if you were pathetic or a loudmouth or had some kind of problem
.

This was the most important rule. And that obviously was the trouble. Carlos needed to be much less amazing and wonderful than he was!

So the next day, Carlos started throwing eraser bits at the back of Brad’s neck. It took Brad a while to figure out what was happening. But when he did, he glared at
Carlos so hard that Carlos began to worry about what might happen at recess
.

Besides, he started to wonder what kind of animal a class pest would find. Probably a giant cockroach
.

He figured, if you wanted a good animal, it was better to be someone people felt sorry for, like Darma. Well, like Darma used to be
.

The next morning, Carlos wore his old pants from second grade. They were too short and had holes at the knees
.