Gertie's Leap to Greatness (6 page)

Every student at Carroll Elementary—even the ones who had never tried them—knew that they were the best chocolates in the world. Some people said it was the crackly gold foil that made them better, and some people said it was the ganache centers. The creaminess. The perfectly round shape.

“It's that they have that superior smoothness to them,” was Roy's mysterious explanation, even though he had never touched a corner of gold foil because the only time teachers sent him to the office was to see the principal.

Ms. Simms looked around the classroom. Her eyes stopped on Gertie.

Yes, yes,
thought Gertie. She had never been asked to take a note to the office. Never. And she had always wanted to. Not just to taste one of the chocolates and experience that superior smoothness, but because she would've done an amazing job taking a note to the office. She would've gotten notes to the office in record time. She stretched her arm.
Please,
she thought
.

“Gertie, would you take this?”

Gertie couldn't believe it. Ms. Simms was trusting her with the note. Ms. Simms was sending her to the office by herself. A solo mission.

All the hands fell. Gertie stood. Maybe Ms. Simms
did
like her. Or at least this meant that Ms. Simms didn't hate her. She was going to get a chocolate—a gold-wrapped chocolate in the middle of the school day.
That
was what mattered.
That
would make it all worthwhile.

Gertie could feel everyone's eyes on her as she walked to Ms. Simms's desk.

“Ms. Simms,” said Mary Sue. “Our housekeeper was supposed to bring my allergy medicine to school. I forgot to take it.”

Distracted, Ms. Simms looked at Mary Sue.

“I need to pick up my medicine from the office.” Mary Sue glanced at Gertie.

Gertie was so happy that she didn't even mind the idea of picking up Mary Sue Spivey's allergy medicine.
Yes, you seat-stealer,
she thought,
I shall bring back your allergy medicine, because I am kind and I am going to get a chocolate.

“I can get your medicine for you,” Gertie said to Mary Sue. She turned to Ms. Simms. “I can get the medicine, too,” she said. “I can do anything.”

Roy snorted.

“I think I should get it myself,” said Mary Sue.

“Yes,” said Ms. Simms slowly, “Mary Sue had better get her own medicine.”

Gertie froze.

Mary Sue had better get her own medicine?
As if Gertie couldn't get the medicine. As if she might mess it up.

“Mary Sue, you take this to the office and you can ask Mrs. Warner if your medicine's there. Gertie, how about you take a note for me next time?”

It took Gertie a long moment to understand that Ms. Simms was saying that she couldn't go to the office. Disappointment cracked open in her chest. She could almost taste the Swiss chocolate even as she was realizing that she wasn't going to get one, maybe
ever
, because what if there never was a next time? What if Ms. Simms never needed another note taken to the office?

“Teachers always let
girls
run errands,” Roy complained.

Mary Sue stood and pushed her chair neatly under her desk before she went to get the note.

Aunt Rae had been wrong. Ms. Simms did
not
like all of her students equally, and she didn't like Gertie especially.

Mary Sue walked out of the classroom. Before she closed the door, she looked at Gertie and flashed a smile that showed all her even white teeth. Gertie looked around, but no one else had seen it.

She took a deep breath and walked all the way back to her seat, her knees shaking. Ms. Simms started teaching. Gertie couldn't listen, though. All she could do was think about Mary Sue's smile.

Mary Sue had looked like she'd known exactly what Gertie was feeling and it was what she'd wanted. Her smile had said that she knew about Gertie's plans, and she'd messed them up on purpose.

When Mary Sue came back from the office, Gertie saw a flash of gold in her hand, and she had an even harder time concentrating after that.

*   *   *

At recess, Mary Sue positioned herself on the swing set next to Junior, Gertie, and Jean. Ella Jenkins and June Hindman hovered around her.

“I never
bite
chocolates,” Mary Sue said, and popped the entire Swiss chocolate in her mouth. “I let them melt.”

Gertie looked away from Mary Sue and turned to her friends. “She did that on purpose. She saw that Ms. Simms was going to let me go to the office, and she whined about her allergy medicine. I bet she doesn't even
have
allergies.”

“She's a goody-two-shoes,” Jean said, shaking her head.

It felt good to be agreeing with Jean again. Jean and Junior had always helped with her missions before. After all, it was Jean who had distracted Mr. Winston at the bait and tackle while Gertie had liberated the crickets. And she never would've sold the most Girl Scout cookies in her troop if Junior hadn't persuaded Mrs. Parks to let Gertie sell to all the ladies in the salon.

Junior smiled at his two best friends. “I don't like her either.”

There had to be another way to defeat Mary Sue. They would figure it out together.

 

9

No Way You Could Be Born on Krypton

In the front yard of the housiest house on Jones Street, the Sunshine Realty sign began to fade. The poplar leaves turned yellow and, one by one, peeled off the tree like pages from a calendar. And Gertie's father went back to the rig and came home and went back again. And Mary Sue became more and more popular. Until one afternoon, while Gertie was listening to Junior, their bus turned onto Jones Street and, from the corner of her eye, she saw people standing in front of the house.

Junior was saying, “There's no way you could be born on Krypton, but you
might
be bitten by a radioactive spider.”

In the yard, a man with a bow tie was gesturing as two women looked up at Rachel Collins's house.

“So there's no point wishing you could have Superman's powers, but you could be like Spider-Man. Sometimes I wish I'd find a radioactive spider…”

Gertie had never seen the man with the tie or the two women before.

“But I hope it would bite me while I was asleep, because if I actually saw it…”

She leaned close to the window to stare at the people as the bus passed. While she watched, the front door of the house opened and a woman stepped out. “Oh my Lord.”

It was her.

All her life, Gertie had collected pieces of her mother the way other people collected little spoons or bracelet charms or Jessica Walsh action figures.

When she was little, she'd found the locket in Aunt Rae's desk, and Aunt Rae had pretended not to know anything about it, but it had belonged to Rachel Collins. Aunt Rae must not have wanted Gertie to have the locket, because she'd put it back in her desk. But she didn't say anything when Gertie filched it a few days later.

And after she'd asked and asked, her father had driven her to the house on Jones Street and they'd parked by the sidewalk and sat in his truck, sharing a package of peanut butter crackers and watching the house. “That's where she lives,” he'd told her.

And once, at the Piggly Wiggly, Aunt Rae had stopped pushing the buggy, and Gertie had looked up. Rachel Collins was at the end of the row. She had glanced up and seen Gertie and Aunt Rae. She had stared at Gertie for the longest time. She'd started to raise her hand, like she was going to wave, but then she'd closed her fingers and put her hand down and pushed her buggy away fast, the wheels squeaking.

“That's her?” Gertie had asked. She didn't know how she had known. Maybe she just
knew
because maybe a person always recognized her mother
.

“That's her,” Aunt Rae had said. “Acting like she forgot we live here, too.” Aunt Rae shook her head, talking to herself now. “I tell you what. If she thinks the Pig ain't big enough for the two of us, then she can hightail her little heinie right out of here, because I'm not leavin' without my BOGO ground round.”

Now the bus was past the house and moving away, and the people were getting smaller, and Gertie pressed closer to the window, her breath fogging the glass as she stretched to get one last look. Then the bus turned, and they were gone.

Gertie squeezed her eyes closed, and she could still see them. Rachel Collins was stepping down the porch stairs, smiling as she walked toward the other women. Gertie added the moment to the collection of scraps and bits that she had of her mother. It wasn't like these moments were important to her. They weren't. It wasn't like she pulled them out and shined them all the time. She just picked them up and kept them. That was all.

“They're probably looking at the house,” Junior said in a strained voice.

Gertie jumped. She'd forgotten about Junior and all the other kids on the bus. “You don't think they'll buy it, do you?” she asked. She was still leaning over him to look out the window.

“I don't know.” Junior's neck was pink. He blew her ponytail out of his face.

“Did you see the sign?” she asked. “Did it say the house was still for sale, or was it … Did it say it was sold?”

“For sale,” he said. “I think.”

Gertie fell back against the seat. Junior wiped his hands on the front of his shirt like he was nervous, even though Gertie was the one running out of time.

“You can do it,” Junior said, as if he'd been reading her mind. “You can still do something big, I mean. You can do it at Career Day.”

“What's Career Day?” Gertie demanded.

“We got that note about it,” said Junior.

“What note? I didn't get a note.” Gertie was glad she could be angry about something that was easy to put into words. The injustice of being the only one who didn't get this important note! Ms. Simms was giving notes to everyone but her, and maybe that was because she didn't want Gertie to have a chance at Career Day. It infuriated her. She was furiated, and it felt good.

“Everybody got a note,” said Junior.

The first-grade boy in the seat in front of them turned around. “I didn't get a note,” he said.

“No,” said Junior, “it's for the fifth grade. Everybody in fifth grade got a note.”

“Not everybody,” Gertie said, “because
I
didn't get a note.” She ripped open her bag and dug through her things. “Don't you think that's
wrong
?”

“Yes, but—”

“Don't you think that's mean?” She wanted to hear Junior say that Ms. Simms was being horribly mean to Gertie, because she was.

“Yes, but—”

Under her copy of
Adventures in Reading, Grade 5
, she found the remains of a note on school stationery. It was crumpled and covered in something orange and sticky.

“Yes,” said Junior, “that looks like the Career Day note.”

Gertie wasn't able to read all the words through the orange sticky stuff, so Junior told her what it said. The fifth graders were each supposed to ask an adult to come to school, and they would explain this adult's career, and it was supposed to help all the students decide what they were going to be when they grew up. Career Day sounded like the best thing Gertie had ever heard of.

“You always do good at speeches and things where everybody's looking at you,” Junior said. “So maybe once you've given your speech you can tell her about it. I mean, she'll be proud, right? Your mom?” Junior's eyes were wide.

Gertie leaned toward him. “I don't want to make her proud,” she explained. “That's not what it's about. It's about making her realize I'm important.”

“Oh,” said Junior, nodding. “That's okay, too.”

*   *   *

When Gertie got home she collapsed onto her bed. The edges of the glow-in-the-dark stars blurred against the ceiling. She dangled the locket in front of her eyes.

Her father was back on the oil rig, so he wouldn't be able to come to Career Day in person, physically, himself, but that was okay. In fact, it was better. This way, Gertie would give the speech and explain her father's career all by herself. She was a capable and independent woman.

Her father spent two weeks on the oil rig in the middle of the ocean. He did everything on the rig. He worked, ate, slept, even played video games with the other workers. Then he got to come home for two weeks. Gertie loved when he came home because he'd missed her so much that he'd grab her arms and swing her around in circles through the air. And then he'd have to go away again.

It was dangerous work, so her father had to be very brave. And it was hard work, so he had to be very strong. Oil rigging was pretty much the weirdest, most wonderful job in the world. Which was why everyone else was going to be blown out of the water by her Career Day speech. Unless … unless Mary Sue brought her movie director father.

No, thought Gertie, that wouldn't happen. She just had to think positive.

She pulled out her blue notebook and wrote
Phase Three
at the top of a page. Ms. Simms would be stunned when she realized what an amazing public speaker Gertie was. She'd make all the other teachers come to listen.
Oh my stars,
they'd say to one another,
such poise, such a voice, an inspiration, a marvel!

 

10

Who Wants to Go Next?

“Give 'em hell, baby!” Aunt Rae called as Gertie barreled out the screen door the next morning.

Gertie stomped through the crunchy leaves and up the bus steps, her Career Day speech clenched in one fist, her Twinkies in the other, not suspecting anything unusual. She barely noticed the thoughtful way the bus driver munched his toothpick as he gazed into his rearview mirror. She almost didn't hear the whispers as she ran down the aisle to her seat.