September Surprises

  “Ruby!” called Min from somewhere inside the house. “Get dressed now, please. You have to come to the store with me this morning. You can’t stay here alone.”

  “Dang,” Ruby said loudly, and closed the window.

  Olivia looked at Flora and they began to laugh. But Olivia’s smile faded quickly. “Are you nervous?” she asked.

  Flora nodded. “Definitely.”

  The girls walked to the end of the block, but where they would have turned right to go to the elementary school, they now turned left toward Main Street.

  “It’ll be kind of fun to walk right down Main Street every morning, won’t it?” asked Flora. “That’s one reason I didn’t sign up to take the bus to Central, even if it is kind of a long walk.”

  “Well, I’m afraid of the bus, but … I liked walking to our old school. I did it for seven years.”

  “Maybe it’s time for a change.”

  “I don’t like change.”

  Flora sighed. She didn’t particularly like change either.

  Olivia stared stolidly ahead as she and Flora marched past Needle and Thread, past Sincerely Yours, past all the familiar landmarks of town, and then made a left and a right and at last …

  “There it is,” whispered Olivia. Camden Falls Central High School loomed ahead of them. “It looks like a fortress or a castle. A castle with gallows.”

  “At least today only the seventh-graders will be here.”

  “No. The older kids are going to show us around,” said Olivia.

  “Well, I’m sure the teachers didn’t ask rude, mean kids to do that job.”

  “Even nice kids might want to play tricks on us.”

  “Olivia! Stop!” cried Flora. “You’re making this worse. Look. There’s Nikki. Come on. Nikki! Hi!”

  Nikki Sherman had been standing uncertainly near the spot where her bus had let her off. Now she turned, saw Olivia and Flora, and dashed toward them.

  “You guys!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been watching everyone go in the building, and I don’t know a single soul except for the kids who were on the bus.” Nikki glanced apprehensively toward the open double doors through which a stream of seventh-graders was passing.

  “Everyone looks as nervous as we do,” remarked Flora.

  Olivia, Flora, and Nikki joined the kids, and moments later, Olivia found herself in a wide hallway lined with glass cases containing school trophies and photos of Central’s sports teams. Two girls who, Olivia thought, must be at least sixteen years old (they had chests, actual chests), were smiling and holding up a sign reading THIS WAY TO AUDITORIUM.

  “They look friendly,” Nikki whispered, but as Olivia walked by them, one of the girls touched her shoulder and said, “Are you supposed to be here? No visitors. Orientation is for seventh-graders only.”

  “I am in seventh grade,” said Olivia, feeling her face grow hot. “I’m just not twelve yet.” She stalked down the hall ahead of her friends, thinking, And I’m skinny and I’m short and I look like I’m about nine.

  “Olivia, she wasn’t being mean,” called Nikki, hurrying to catch up with her. “Honest. She was just doing her job.”

  “That. Doesn’t. Make it. Any. Better.”

  That morning, Olivia tried to pay attention. She sat in the auditorium (which was, she thought, at least twice as big as the auditorium at her old school) and appeared to listen while the principal made a speech. But by the end of the speech, she couldn’t remember a word he’d said. She had, however, spotted Tanya Rhodes and Melody Becker sitting two rows ahead of her. Why, thought Olivia, did they have to be the first of the very few kids she actually recognized? Tanya and Melody, two of the most popular girls in her sixth-grade class at Camden Falls Elementary, had never been particularly nice to Olivia, not even after she had given an end-of-the-summer party a few days ago and invited them to it. (Tanya had shown up without bothering to RSVP, and neither Tanya nor Melody had given Olivia the time of day — at her own party at which she was the hostess.) As Olivia watched them, they turned around, caught sight of Flora and Nikki, waved to them, and then passed over Olivia as they continued to scan the auditorium. Olivia slumped. The day was going just as she had feared it would.

  The speech over, the students were directed to the gym, where they were handed their schedules for the semester. Then they were divided into groups and given a tour of the school. Olivia, separated from Nikki and Flora, followed meekly at the back of her group, up and down staircases, along hallways, around corners, in and out of wings, until at last she truly had no idea where she was.

  At eleven o’clock, her guide, a pleasant enough sophomore who introduced himself as Ray, deposited Olivia and the other students on the front lawn of Central and said, “Well, if there are no more questions, I’ll see you tomorrow. Good luck finding your way around.”

  Olivia cast desperately about for her friends. When at last she spotted them, they ran to her, and Nikki actually hugged her. “I have absolutely no idea where anything is in there,” she said, pointing over her shoulder to the school.

  Olivia would have laughed if she hadn’t felt exactly the same way. “I feel disoriented,” she said. “They should rename this day.”

  “I don’t even know where my first class is,” moaned Flora. “What am I going to do tomorrow morning? I need a map.”

  “Pull out a map and everyone will know you’re in seventh grade,” said Nikki.

  Olivia sighed. “Well, come on. Nikki, my dad promised us a picnic at the store. Let’s go.” She threw one final terrified look at Camden Falls Central High School, then linked arms with Nikki and Flora and headed for Main Street.

  Orientation was over.

  “Nikki, is it true your new school is as big as a castle?” Mae Sherman asked her sister.

  Nikki smiled. “No. That’s just what Olivia said. She was exaggerating. And anyway, my new school is Tobias’s old school. You know what it looks like.”

  “Oh. Tobias’s old school.” Mae nodded sagely, wearing her wise owl look. “You go to Tobias’s old school, and now I’m the only one in our family going to Camden Falls Elementary.”

  “That’s right. But today,” said Nikki, sitting up in bed and trying to ignore the butterflies in her stomach, “you have one more day at day care before you start second grade. Is your class going to do anything special?”

  Mae yawned. “We’re going to the dollar store.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Yes. We’ll each have two dollars to spend. We’re supposed to see how many things we can buy.”

  “Well, won’t everybody get two things?”

  Mae gave Nikki a look of disgust. “Some things,” she said, “cost less than a dollar. So it’s a” (she paused) “a challenge. And we use our math skills.”

  “Buy me something special,” said Nikki, and Mae laughed. “Come on. Time to get dressed.”

  In a flash, Mae threw on a pair of shorts, a pink shirt, and her sneakers. Nikki lingered in front of her closet. In the last four days she had chosen five outfits for the first day of seventh grade. Each had been the final choice, and then she had reconsidered it and changed her mind. The fifth choice was now lying over the back of Nikki’s desk chair.

  “I can’t wear that,” she said aloud.

  “Why not?” asked Mae, tying her sneakers.

  “It looks — I just can’t — I don’t know.”

  Nikki grabbed a pair of jeans and a white shirt from her bureau drawer, muttered, “These’ll be fine,” and put them on without bothering to glance in the mirror. She didn’t have time to change her mind again.

  Mae ran ahead of her sister, down the stairs to the kitchen. But Nikki paused outside the door to Tobias’s bedroom. Her brother had telephoned the night before, and as Nikki stared around his bare room, she remembered their conversation. Her mother had answered the phone and motioned for Nikki and Mae to get on the extension.

  “Hi!” Mae had squealed.

  “Hi, everyone,” Tobias ha
d replied, already sounding, Nikki thought, miles more sophisticated than when he had called two days earlier to say he had arrived safe and sound at college. Tobias was the first Sherman to go to college, and Nikki was in awe of him. College, she felt, must be terribly exciting. Glamorous, even. Tobias had roommates. He had his own computer. He was taking courses with names like Environmental Politics, Communication, and Intro to Psychology.

  “How are you girls doing?” he’d asked, after he had answered Nikki’s many questions about his dorm and his roommates.

  “Fine, we’re fine,” Mrs. Sherman assured him.

  “Really? No phone calls or visitors?”

  This was Tobias’s way of making sure, without frightening Mae, that Mr. Sherman hadn’t been in touch with his family.

  “We’ve gotten about three million phone calls from Olivia and Flora,” said Mae. “Did you know, Tobias, that in seventh grade you lose your head?”

  “What?” said Tobias.

  “What?” said Nikki and Mrs. Sherman.

  “It’s true. Nikki can’t decide what to wear to school tomorrow and neither can Flora or Olivia, and first Nikki says she wants to go to Central and then she says she doesn’t, and first she says she’s scared to ride the new bus and then she says —”

  Tobias had laughed. “Okay, I get it.”

  “Nikki!” Mrs. Sherman now called from downstairs, and Nikki shook her head. She left Tobias’s room and the memory of his phone call behind her, and dashed to the kitchen. Half an hour later, she was running down the lane to the county road, in such a hurry to make her bus that she couldn’t even worry about the fact that the next morning, Mae would face the elementary school bus without her big sister to watch out for her. Or that in forty-five minutes, her own bus would deposit her in front of Central and seventh grade would begin in earnest.

  She reached the end of her lane just as the bus appeared at the top of a little rise on the road. The bus groaned to a stop, and Nikki drew in her breath, stepped aboard, looked at the rows of faces (now including those of kids much older than she), and let out her breath again. The other students barely glanced at her. Some were dozing, some were bent over their cell phones, and two who were old friends of Tobias’s gave her sleepy waves. Gone were the smirking ten-year-olds holding their noses as she and Mae walked by. Gone were the tripping feet, the poking fingers. Maybe there was an advantage to being with older students, thought Nikki.

  When the bus doors opened for the last time and the kids filed off the bus, Nikki felt a surge of confidence. Central rose ahead of her, now looking more like a school and less like a fortress. She saw Flora and Olivia waiting exactly where she had met them the day before.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “Ready,” Flora replied.

  “I hope so,” Olivia said.

  The day began. At first Nikki tensed, expecting with each turn of a corner to encounter an older student who would back her against the lockers or direct her to perform some odious task. But absolutely nothing out of the ordinary happened. Nikki and Flora and Olivia easily found their way to the junior high wing, and Nikki got lost only twice that morning and both times was helped by a teacher. She liked her classes, and she realized in the very first one that the rest of the students felt just as apprehensive as she did. Why had that not occurred to her earlier? This was a new school for everyone in her entire grade.

  At lunchtime, Nikki, Olivia, and Flora once again managed to locate one another. They sat at the end of a table separated by four empty spaces from the other students, who were either seventh-graders or tenth-graders (two grades sharing each of the three lunch periods), and ate the food they purchased in the cafeteria.

  “The food’s better here,” ventured Olivia in a small voice.

  “More choices,” Nikki agreed.

  “But it’s an awfully big room,” said Flora, gazing around at the crowded, noisy tables.

  “I think that’s Claudette Tisch over there,” said Nikki. “See? Sitting with Mary Louise Detwiler?”

  “Should we go sit with them?” asked Olivia.

  “No. I’m happy right here,” replied Nikki. And she was happy. Happy in the tiny, safe world formed by her two best friends. The day was going fine, just fine, so far. She didn’t want to do anything to jinx it. Maybe tomorrow or the next day they could expand their horizons. But not yet.

  There was a nip in the air on Ruby Northrop’s first day of school. That was what Min called the chilly weather that had arrived overnight.

  “You two better wear sweaters,” she said as she and Ruby and Flora were finishing their breakfast.

  “But I don’t —” Ruby began to protest.

  “Or jackets or sweatshirts,” finished Min. “I insist, Ruby. The thermometer says fifty-two this morning.”

  Ruby suppressed the urge to reply, “Our thermometer talks?”

  “It is cold, Ruby,” spoke up Flora, who had draped a windbreaker over the back of her chair. “I got goose bumps when I walked Daisy.”

  “All right,” muttered Ruby. “I’ll put on a stupid sweatshirt.”

  “Will you also put on a smile, please?” asked Min. “I don’t want you walking out the door and off to the first day of school with that attitude. What will Mrs. Caldwell think? I’d like your new teacher to meet Pleasant Ruby, not Crabby Ruby.”

  Ruby considered the request. Was it worth a fight? She decided it wasn’t. She was actually looking forward to fifth grade. She just hadn’t wanted to get up so early.

  Flora stood then, carried her dishes to the sink, grabbed the windbreaker, and hurried into the hallway, where she hefted her backpack. “Bye!” she called. “See you this afternoon. I’ll stop in at the store, Min.”

  “Wait!” cried Ruby. “Don’t you want to watch me leave?”

  “Oh, is there going to be some kind of show?” asked Flora sweetly.

  Ruby opened her mouth to protest, but Min said quickly, “Girls, for pity’s sake, what has gotten into you? Flora, go meet Olivia. Ruby, I’ll watch you leave.”

  Min wasn’t the only Row House adult standing on her stoop that morning, watching the elementary students begin the new school year. At the north end of the row, the Fongs were outside, Mr. Fong holding Grace aloft and saying to her, “See all the big kids? In five years we’ll be watching you leave for kindergarten.”

  Next door to the Fongs, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards and Robby were sitting in a row on their stoop. This was the first year that Robby, who was eighteen and had Down syndrome, hadn’t gone off to school himself. “I used to be one of them, didn’t I? Didn’t I, Mom and Dad? I used to be one of them. But I like my job.”

  Mr. Pennington left his house and joined Min at hers, waving to the Walters as he crossed their yard. Next door to Min, Dr. Malone was at his screen door, a cup of coffee in his hands. His teenage daughters, Lydia and Margaret, had already left for Central, but the sight of the younger children made him remember the years when he would stand on the stoop with his wife and watch Lydia and Margaret, their hair in ponytails, hands clutching lunch boxes, run down Aiken Avenue toward the elementary school. Next door to Dr. Malone stood Mr. Willet, thinking that this was the last time he would participate in this September Row House ritual.

  At the house on the south end of the row, Mr. and Mrs. Morris held open their door as all four of their children filed out of it.

  “Have fun!” called Mr. Morris.

  “Lacey or Mathias, one of you be sure to hold Alyssa’s hand when you cross the street,” said Mrs. Morris. “Alyssa, remember, I’ll pick you up at your classroom at lunchtime, okay?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!” sang Alyssa.

  Ruby joined the group of Row House children walking to CFE — Jack and Henry Walter, and Lacey, Mathias, Travis, and Alyssa Morris — and set off for her first day of school.

  When the kids reached Camden Falls Elementary, Ruby called good-bye to Lacey and skipped off to the fifth-grade classrooms. She reached Mrs. Caldwell’s, marched inside, and took
a seat in the back row. She wondered how long she would be allowed to continue sitting there. Generally, Ruby’s last-year’s teacher warned her next-year’s teacher about the impulsive and loud behavior of Ruby Northrop, and Ruby was instructed to sit in the front row of her new classroom, often directly opposite the teacher’s desk.

  Ruby watched her new teacher write Welcome to Class 5A on the blackboard while the rest of the students entered the room, some noisily, some quietly, all of them glancing at Mrs. Caldwell. The new teacher, who looked quite young, was wearing a sweatshirt with a large yellow daisy on the front. How horrible it would have been, Ruby thought, if she had worn her yellow daisy sweatshirt, too.

  Ruby’s mind wandered, and she was imagining herself onstage playing the role of Jane Banks in Mary Poppins when someone said, “Ruby?”

  Ruby pulled herself away from the rooftops of old London and refocused her eyes. Before her stood Hilary Nelson. “We are in the same class!” cried Ruby. “Sweet! I knew we would be. Sit here next to me.”

  Hilary smiled but said, “I’m so nervous. You’re the only person I know in this whole school.”

  “Well, that’ll change soon,” Ruby replied confidently. “I’ll introduce you to everybody. I have a very big mouth. I was the new kid last year, you know, and it really —”

  “Attention, class!” Mrs. Caldwell called out. She closed the door to room 5A. “I think we’re all here. Welcome to fifth grade. And Hilary Nelson, our new student, welcome to Camden Falls Elementary School.”

  The day began. Mrs. Caldwell introduced herself and took attendance.

  Ruby was still seated next to Hilary in the back row.

  Mrs. Caldwell handed out books and talked about what the class would be studying.

  Ruby remained in the back row.

  Finally, Mrs. Caldwell said, “Class, I want to tell you about one project we’ll be working on that will last the entire year. I think you’ll find it very interesting. How many of you remember hearing about the big hurricane that struck Florida last year?”