You get the idea.
Ms. Feld kept exclaiming, “Claudia, this is wonderful. So imaginative. So … wonderful! In fact, it’s brilliant.”
I blushed and grinned like an idiot. My mother might not appreciate my efforts to improve the library, but Ms. Feld sure did.
“We’ll get the supplies — give me a list of exactly what you want — and on, let’s say, Wednesday, we’ll get started. Is Wednesday good for you?”
“Wednesday’s great,” I said. I wasn’t sure my mom would be thrilled by this, but it was out of her hands now.
I spent the afternoon on a cloud. Ms. Feld had said I was brilliant. And brilliant was the same as being a genius, practically. Wasn’t it?
But the euphoria didn’t last. My white puffy cloud turned into a storm cloud just as my shift ended. I’d walked out of the children’s room, casting a possessive look at “my” wall where “my” mural would soon be on display for everyone to see — and Alan came around the corner.
“Hi, Claudia,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Hi,” I said. “Uh — is anything wrong?”
“Maybe,” Alan said. “I have to talk to you.”
Alan and I walked out of the library. I didn’t speak and neither did he. It was not a comfortable silence.
I took a deep breath.
Alan gave a little cough.
I said, like a dope, “Nice day.”
Alan said, “Yeah. I guess.”
I announced, “I have to go to my BSC meeting, Alan.”
“I’ll walk with you,” he said.
“No, that’s okay. You don’t have to do that.”
Alan stopped and turned to face me. “Why not?”
“Why not? What do you mean, why not?” I said, stalling for time.
“Why don’t you want me walking you to your house, Claudia? Are you ashamed of me or something?”
“No!” I protested. “No, that’s not it.”
Alan looked at me steadily.
“No,” I repeated. Only it sounded more like a question than a declaration.
“I think you are,” Alan said. “I think you don’t want your friends to see me with you.”
I just stared at him. What could I say? I didn’t have to answer anyway. The blush that was turning my face red was answer enough.
Without thinking, I began to walk fast, but I couldn’t outrun my feelings. And Alan had it figured out. I was ashamed to be seen with him.
“So what I think you have to do,” Alan said, “is give me a chance.”
“What?” I’d been thinking so hard I’d almost forgotten he was there. I slowed my steps and glanced at him.
“Give me a chance. I want to figure out where we go from here. Maybe it’s just friendship. Maybe it’s something more. But you have to give me a chance. You have to be honest with your friends.”
Alan was right. I knew it as soon as he said it. We’d reached my corner, and I slowed even more.
“Be honest. Don’t forget, honesty is the best policy. Besides, like Mark Twain said, ‘The fewer lies you tell, the less you have to remember,’ ” Alan concluded.
“I never thought about telling the truth in quite that way.” I paused, then said, “You’re right. But it’s not that I’m ashamed of you, Alan. It’s that, well, some of my friends are a little negative about you.”
“They don’t know me. So what about this? Why don’t you and I go out with some of your friends? That way we can all put the past in the past and maybe you won’t feel weird being seen with me.”
Slowly I nodded. “I like it,” I said. “And I know exactly who I’ll start with.”
Kristy answered her phone on the first ring. “It’s me,” I said.
“You’re canceling the meeting?” she asked. Kristy doesn’t waste words on courtesy when life-and-death issues are at stake.
“No,” I reassured her. “I just wondered if you could come a little early. I need to talk to you.”
“Okay,” she said, and hung up.
She didn’t even ask what I wanted to talk about. How could she not ask?
I will never truly understand how Kristy’s mind works. And maybe that’s a good thing.
Less than half an hour later, she was knocking on my bedroom door. I told her to come in and offered her a piece of the Rainforest Crunch chocolate bar I’d just unwrapped to help my thought processes.
She broke off a piece. “What’s up?” she asked.
“This is the deal,” I said. “I should be able to see whoever I want to see and unless they’re bad for me, my friends — like you — should back me up.”
Narrowing her eyes, Kristy said, “Is this about Alan Gray?”
“Yup.”
Kristy folded her arms. “I just don’t see you and Alan together.”
“Whether it’s a good match is for Alan and me to find out — without interference.” I refused to back down.
I met Kristy’s eyes. I didn’t blink. She scowled. And then she backed down!
“All right, all right. I know I shouldn’t pass judgment on you and Alan. In the abstract, it’s totally your business who you date. Totally. It’s just that Alan Gray … I mean, Claudia, that’s going to be hard.”
“Just work on keeping an open mind. That’s all I’m asking.”
“I’ll try,” said Kristy. “I promise.”
I don’t completely understand Kristy, but I do know this: When she promises something, she keeps her word. So that was the end of the discussion.
I offered her some more chocolate. Between us, we finished the bar before the meeting even began.
But we didn’t starve. After Mary Anne, Dawn, and Stacey arrived, I hauled out little boxes of cereal and a half-finished bag of Oreos to keep up our strength while we fielded phone calls and scheduled baby-sitting jobs.
In between calls, I brought up Alan’s idea that we all go out together.
Stacey said, “Great, Claudia. When?”
“I’d like that. I really would,” Mary Anne chimed in.
Dawn was less enthusiastic. “I’m not a big Alan Gray fan,” she said, clearly stalling for time.
“You don’t have to be. I just want you to see — no, Alan and I just want you to see that there is a different side to him. You don’t have to think he’s perfect or anything.”
“Oh, fine. I’ll do it. It’ll be interesting. I hope.” Dawn smiled and we all looked at Kristy.
Kristy made a face. She writhed in her chair. She scratched her shoulder and bit her lip.
“Kristy?” I said.
“Okay,” she mumbled.
“Great. I knew I could count on you all. Wednesday afternoon. Miniature golf. How does that sound?”
“I can hardly wait,” Kristy said glumly.
I ignored her. Sometimes with Kristy, that’s all you can do.
Wonderful Wednesday arrived at last. Why was Wednesday a wonderful day? Because of my group date with Alan?
Not exactly. No, it was wonderful because we were going to start the mural in the library.
My mother hadn’t mentioned the mural and neither had I. We were speaking to each other a little more naturally, but we weren’t all warm and fuzzy.
I had taken a batch of art supplies in on Tuesday and had given Ms. Feld a list of the materials I thought we would need. I reached the children’s room the next morning to find Erica and Ms. Feld unpacking several enormous shopping bags. Not only had Ms. Feld bought everything on my list, but she’d gone wild in the brush department. There were at least a dozen little paintbrushes and a sackful of cans that had been washed out.
Seeing my puzzled look, Ms. Feld said, “The cans are for extra paint for the children. I think it would be a lovely idea if they participated in the mural project. In fact, that’s what we’re going to do this morning instead of story hour.”
My heart sank. “Uh, Ms. Feld?” I said.
Erica gave me a sympathetic look. I could tell she understood my dilemma. On th
e one hand, it was a mural for the children. On the other hand, lots of little kids with lots of paintbrushes, even painting down low on the wall, was a recipe for disaster.
“They’ll love it,” Ms. Feld said enthusiastically. “Oh, Claudia, this is going to be outstanding! Out-standing!”
I decided not to argue. Even though I was the artist, she was the boss. So instead of voicing my doubts, I said, “We’ll need lots of newspaper.”
“I brought plenty,” Ms. Feld replied.
“I brought newspaper too,” Erica said. “And an old shirt.”
“Good idea,” I said. I’d taken the same precaution, bringing not only an old, paint-splattered T-shirt, but also old jeans and sneakers.
Ms. Feld stopped. “Oh,” she said. “You’re right. We don’t want the children to get paint on their clothes.” For a moment, her face fell. Then it brightened. “Wait here!” she said, and charged out of the children’s room.
We watched her go. I shook my head. “I have a bad feeling about this,” I said.
“It’ll be all right,” Erica replied. I gave her a Look and she grinned. “Besides, a little paint never hurt anybody.”
I agreed. But I wasn’t sure how many parents would feel the same. I said, “Let’s start papering the hall with the newspaper. The more surface we cover, the less paint we’ll have to clean up afterward.”
Ms. Feld returned. She was holding an armful of napkins — enormous red paper napkins. “These were left over from the Christmas party last year,” she announced. “We’ll tuck them in everybody’s collars to protect their shirts.”
Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn’t. I decided to not worry about it and to concentrate on roughing out the mural on the wall. To begin, I drew a long bright blue line across the bottom, about two feet from the floor.
“What’s that for?” asked Erica.
“It’s the kids’ paint zone,” I explained. “They can paint whatever they want below the blue line. Above it, I’ll be updating the mural.”
If only it had been that simple.
We spent the first half of story time draping kids with napkin bibs. Claire Pike, who is five, demanded that she draw in purple, like in Harold and the Purple Crayon.
When I told her I didn’t have purple paint, her face turned that alarming shade of red familiar to anyone who has ever baby-sat for Claire. But she didn’t launch into the tantrum for which I had braced myself.
Instead she said in a stubborn voice, “Purple.”
Rather than argue, I mixed a small amount of red and blue in one of the cans and gave it to her. This pleased her enormously. It also led to several other children demanding custom paint colors. I made a batch of pink, lime-green, and an alarming shade of orange before Ms. Feld called a halt and herded us out into the hall.
Did I say we plastered the hall with newspapers? It wasn’t enough. In no time flat, Claire had turned over her purple paint and launched into a full-out tantrum. By the time I’d finished dealing with her, Jackie Rodowsky (known affectionately among members of the BSC as the Walking Disaster) had managed to trip over not one but two cans of paint, stumbling against the mural and leaving one long smear of blue and another of green.
“I’m sorry, Claudia,” he said, his face dotted with freckles of paint.
“Don’t worry,” I said, wiping him down as best I could.
“But I ruined your picture,” he said unhappily.
I looked at the mural. The smears of paint were front and center. “It’s okay,” I said. “I can fix it. Now, why don’t you pick a spot below the blue line on the wall and paint anything you want.”
Looking more cheerful, Jackie went back to work. He stepped in a puddle of paint and made a trail of inky blue footprints across the newspaper, but I let him go. I had other things to worry about.
“Hey! Hey, below the blue line. You’re supposed to paint below the blue line,” I heard Erica say.
When I turned, I saw Erica and a little girl I didn’t recognize. The little girl had painted an enormous flowerlike object in red and pink so that it looked as if it were growing — no, exploding — up out of the blue line.
Somehow, I never got to start work on the mural. Erica and I spent the hour doing damage control. And a quick glance in Ms. Feld’s direction showed me that Ms. Feld was being pushed to the limit too. She was smiling and cheerful, but she had paint in her hair, on her knees, along the hem of her skirt, and down one side of her leg. One item that was paint-free was the napkin she’d tucked into the collar of her blouse for protection.
Painting brought out more than the artist in the children: They shouted and laughed and sang and shrieked and flung paint in all directions. They dipped their hands into the paint and smeared it on the wall, on themselves, and on one another.
It was hopeless. I looked at my watch, then held it up and pointed at it so that Ms. Feld could see. She understood instantly.
She clapped her hands together. “Boys, girls, it’s time to …”
She didn’t finish.
My mother came around the corner with Miss Ellway. “You’ll have to keep the noise down, Dolores,” my mother said. “We can hear you all the way over in the — ” My mother stopped her sentence cold. She just stared.
“We were just about to start cleaning up for the day,” said Ms. Feld brightly.
My mother’s face was anything but bright. In fact, it looked a little like a thundercloud. Her voice was way too calm and controlled as she said, “We’ll help.”
She clapped her hands and said in a quiet sort of roar, “Everybody listen to me!”
That got the attention of all the little Michelangelos and Georgia O’Keeffes. The noise subsided. Paint-daubed faces turned in my mother’s direction.
“I want every one of you to put down your paintbrushes and your paint and step away from the mural.”
At any other time, I would have found my mother’s unconscious parody of a television police officer funny.
But not now.
In fact, I put my paintbrush down and stepped away from the wall too.
My mother said, “Erica, would you please start gathering up the paint and brushes and putting them in a safe place? Dolores, why don’t you and Claudia take the children in small groups to the bathroom to clean them up as much as you can? Miss Ellway and I will keep an eye on everything while you do.”
We didn’t argue. We did as we were told.
It took a while, but soon almost everything was back to normal. Fortunately, none of the parents seemed to mind that some of their kids looked like walking rainbows. A few seemed amused.
Ms. Feld, appearing shaken, helped pick up the newspaper from the floor. Erica and I spent most of the rest of the day cleaning up the mess and shelving books.
At the end of the day, Ms. Feld said, “Claudia, could I speak to you for a minute in my office?”
Uh-oh. “Of course,” I said.
Erica whispered, “Want me to stick around?”
“No. That’s okay.” I glanced at my watch. My date with Alan and the entire BSC was approaching. Good grief.
“Good luck,” Erica said.
But I didn’t need it — at least, not with Ms. Feld. She was smiling again. I don’t think anything gets Ms. Feld down for long. She said, “Well, it didn’t work out quite the way I’d planned, but I haven’t given up on our mural, Claudia. I just wanted you to know that.”
“Really?”
“No. We just need to work out a few details.”
“Oh.” I wondered what kind of details Ms. Feld had in mind. I didn’t want to ask.
“Anyway, as soon as we do, we’ll get back to work on it,” she said.
“Right.” I said good-bye to Ms. Feld and dashed out into the hall. If I ran all the way home, I’d have plenty of time to …
“Claudia.”
My mother’s voice. It stopped me in my tracks.
“Mom. Hi. I’m kind of in a hurry.”
“This will only take a m
inute,” she said. Her voice was calm — too calm.
She led me into her office, fixed me with a steely look, and said, “Claudia. While I appreciate your creativity, this time you may have gone a little too far.”
“Things did get a little out of hand,” I admitted. “But Ms. Feld and I will work it out. I promise.”
“It’s not up to Ms. Feld and you. And I’d appreciate it if, until we decide what to do, you’d just do the job for which you were hired. I understand you are very conscientious and a good worker and I’m proud of you for that. So for the time being, focus on it.”
I understood what she was saying: Yo, Claudia — about the art? Thanks but no thanks.
Stiffly, I replied, “I understand. I have to go.”
My sense of injustice lent wings to my feet. I got home in record time, bursting through the door of my room like a paint-splattered tornado.
My clock told me that I had fifteen minutes to get ready, fifteen minutes to transform myself from Claudia the human drop cloth to Claudia the work of art.
This was a job for … Superclaudia. And since, unlike Superman, I had no phone booth handy, I practically leaped into the closet to begin my transformation.
Eeek! Not the closet. The bathroom first. I couldn’t touch my good clothes with my paint-smeared self. Slamming out of the room with my robe clutched in my least painty hand, I headed for the shower.
Janine was just emerging from her room. “Claudia,” she said. “You’re covered in paint.”
“No kidding. And I have a date in less than fifteen minutes.”