Nekomah Creek (5 page)

“I hope she can fit you in,” Mrs. Perkins said, hustling me toward the double doors at the primary side of the building. “If not it’ll have to wait until
next
Monday.”

Be busy
, I prayed.
Please be too busy
. I glanced longingly at the third-grade classroom as we passed. Mrs. Kassel never seemed to think I was a problem last year. She used to laugh at my jokes. She thought it was great how I loved to read. She even had an old clawfoot bathtub full of pillows in her room just for flopping in with a book when you finished your other work.

Funny—with Mrs. Kassel it was like I couldn’t do anything wrong, but with Mrs. Perkins I couldn’t do anything right. Had I changed into a different kid over the summer or what?

Mrs. Perkins parked me in the hall and went into the little room next to the principal’s office.

I’d never seen the counselor before. What would she be like?

After a couple of minutes this girl from my class came out. Amber Hixon. She wasn’t crying, but her face had that pink-to-the-eyebrows, darned-if-I-will look.

She sniffed and stuck out her chin. “What are you doing here?” Her sandy-colored hair was one big cowlick in front, standing up straight and stubborn from her forehead, then flopping over.

“They’re making me talk to the counselor,” I said. “You too?”

She nodded. I could tell whatever happened in that room was no picnic.

“Pretty bad, huh?”

Amber crossed her arms over her chest and glared back at the door. “She comes on real nice, but you better watch what you say. That’s my advice.”

“What do you mean? What does she ask you?”

“About your family. Stuff that’s none of her business. I’m not kidding, she’s nothing but a big snoop. My mom’s going to be sorry she ever gave them permission to talk to me.”

“Why’re they making you do it?”

She glowered. “It’s so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“What?”

“Oh, just ’cause of this picture I drew.”

I didn’t get it. Amber was a pretty good artist, and her pictures were always things like unicorns sailing over rainbows or princessy-looking girls picking flowers.

“It was just something I scribbled one day when I was mad at my mom and dad,” Amber said. “I never meant anybody to see it. It musta fell out of my desk.”

“Oh,” I said, like this explained everything. “So it wasn’t one of your unicorn pictures?”

“Ha. Not hardly.”

Wow. What
had
she drawn? I was wondering if I dared ask when the door opened.

“ ’Member, don’t tell
nothing
,” Amber whispered. Then she spun on her heel and marched off, hands knotted into fists.

Mrs. Perkins motioned me inside to a chair. She gave me one of those long, grown-up looks that you know are supposed to mean something, only you’re not sure exactly what.

Then she sighed. “Mrs. Van Gent is here to help you, Robert. Please try to be honest with her.”

“Okay.” I hung my head. I thought I
was
always honest. I lifted my eyes. “Could I have my book back now?” I wanted something to hold on to.

“Why don’t I just go ahead and return it to the library for you?”

“But it’s my own.”

She frowned at the book and checked the back
for a library card. That made me mad! I am not a liar!

“All the same,” she said, “I believe I’ll keep it at my desk for now. I don’t want you peeking at it while Mrs. Van Gent’s trying to talk to you.”

My face got real hot. Guess she’d seen me pulling that in class.

She went out, leaving me to the counselor.

Mrs. Van Gent was a serious-looking woman wearing a gray suit and those high-heeled kind of shoes you see on TV but not very often around Nekomah Creek. She was really sort of pretty. You could tell she didn’t care about that, though. She had big black glasses and blond hair twisted back into a tight bun. She was dressed for important business.

She rested her rear against the edge of the desk. “So, Robert …”

I looked up. “Could you call me Robby?”

“Oh, sure.” She cleared her throat. “Robby. Why do you think your teacher wants you to talk to me?”

I squirmed. “Uh, because I read too much and I don’t want to play with the other kids?” I watched to see if this was the right answer, but she wasn’t saying. Her face looked friendly enough, though.

“Are you having trouble making friends?”

“No.” I scratched my left shin with the heel of my right shoe. A nervous habit, my mom says. “I have friends.”

“Why don’t you want to play with them, then?”

I shrugged. I had more fun with my friends when they came to my house or I went to theirs. Then we could play Clue or build things with Construx or play spies in the woods. But playground stuff was all sports. Ben and Jason and the others had given up trying to get me in on it.

“I guess I’d just rather read,” I said finally. “I get plenty of sports in PE.”

“It’s wonderful that you like to read so much. It’s too bad we can’t get more of the students interested in books the way you are.”

Right, I thought. And then you could start bugging them about it too.

“Playing games outside is also important, though. We like everyone to be well-rounded.”

Huh. Well-flattened was more like it. I thought about the last time I took a tetherball in the teeth.

The door connecting the room to the office opened and one of the secretaries handed Mrs. Van Gent a folder of papers. She sat down at the empty desk and studied them.

After a while she looked up. “You’ve had a big change at your house recently, haven’t you, Robby?”

I thought. Then I nodded.

“Something that’s been a bit hard on you?”

“Well, I didn’t
like
it when my mom came home with her hair all frizzed like that, but it’s
her
hair. I’ll get used to it.”

The counselor smiled. “No, Robby. I meant the twins.”

“The twins? But we’ve had them for two years.”

“Yes. Now I want you to be completely honest with me, Robby. How do you feel about your brother and sister?”

I shrugged. “I like ’em.”

“Of course you do. But do you like
everything
about them?”

What was she getting at? Lucy and Freddie are the cutest babies in the whole world. I thought of the way they’d waved me off to school just that morning, standing on the porch railing. Dad held the backs of their Superman and Wonder Woman jammies so they wouldn’t fall off while they jumped up and down, flapping all four arms, trying to outshout each other yelling “Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye!”

“Well, there
are
two things I don’t like about ’em,” I admitted. “Um … what they do in their diapers and spitting up.”

“That’s understandable.”

I nodded, remembering the time I got carried away hugging Freddie—squeezed him to the popping point. He urped all over me. Yuck.

“Oh, and I hated having to give up going barefoot around the house.”

“Why can’t you go barefoot?”

I looked at her. “Have you ever had soggy
Cheerios stuck between your toes? It’s disgusting.”

“Ah. I see.”

“But the babies don’t spit up much anymore. And about the diapers … well, I just told Mom and Dad right from the first, ‘Hey, don’t count on me changing any. You’re on your own.’ ”

She smiled. “So these are the only bad parts about having the twins around? You don’t ever feel … a little jealous?”

Amber was right. This was getting awfully personal. Besides, Mrs. Van Gent had it all wrong. Lucy and Freddie made me feel special. Nobody else at Nekomah Creek had baby twins. I’d felt almost famous for a while, passing out chocolate cigars to my whole class.

“They must take up a lot of your parents’ time.”

“Yeah … but mostly we all have fun together. I like it.”

“Well, good.” She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Without her glasses she looked a lot younger. “And how is it now that your mother’s gone back to work?”

Good grief. How did she know all this stuff? Was she some kind of detective on the side?

“Things are okay,” I said, wishing I could figure out where she was heading with this. She had her glasses back on and was looking official again. “Maybe a little wilder than before.”

“Oh?” She leaned forward. I’ll bet she thought it
was like this movie I saw where the mom goes back to work and the dad doesn’t know how to do anything so the house falls apart.

But my dad knows how to use a vacuum cleaner. He even showed us how to ride ours like an indoor scooter. And so what if I have to wear dirty socks once in a while? I sneaked a corner-of-the-eye peek at the ones I had on now. Oops—one with red stripes and one with blue. I inched my jean legs down, pretending to be very interested in the Appaloosas in the pasture beyond the office window.

“Can you tell me what you mean by wilder?”

I was trying to concentrate on the horses, thinking how maybe I’d draw them sometime.

“Robby? About it being wilder?”

“Hmm?” I turned back to her. “Oh. Well, ever since the twins it’s been wild even
with
Mom. They get into everything, throw the laundry around, stuff like that. I never know what I’ll find when I get home.”

“I see.”

“It’s
funny
, though.” I was telling the truth and she wouldn’t believe me. “I
like
it.”

“Please understand, Robby. We’re just … 
exploring
here, trying to find out what’s bothering you.”

You’re
bothering me, I wanted to say. I could have been through three more Encyclopedia Brown cases if I wasn’t stuck in here.

She made her voice sympathetic again. “Let’s try this, Robby. If you could have one wish, what would it be?”

Okay …

I took a deep breath. “I wish my mother would get pregnant again”—I stared Mrs. Van Gent straight in her pretty blue eyes—“and this time I wish she’d have triplets!”

  2  

Thunk
.

“Not nice!” Freddie hollered. “Not nice!”

“Oh, no!” I said. “Dad! Look what Lucy’s doing!”

From the porch, my sister shot me this wicked, can’t-catch-me grin. She’d pushed a jack-o’-lantern off the rail and I could tell by the glint in her eye she planned to go straight down the line, shoving off every last one of the pumpkins we’d just finished carving.

Dad glanced up from the pumpkin he was working on. “Well, don’t just stand there, Robby. Stop her.”

I made for the porch. Thrilled, Lucy shrieked and danced in her pink boots. I bounded up the steps past Freddie, chased her down the porch, and flung my arms around her middle just as another
of our works of art was about to bite the dust. Or maybe I should say bite the mud. Anyway, I hauled her back, getting a face full of her wispy, peanut butter-smelling hair.

“No!” I scolded her. “Bad girl!”

She yelled and kicked her heels against my shins.

“For cryin’ out loud, don’t hurt her,” Dad said.

She wriggled down free. I sighed and rubbed my legs. I can’t win. If I let the twins act naughty I’m in trouble. If I stop them, I’m in trouble too.