Attaboy, Sam!

  Now bread. Sam was ready. He made his hand into a fist and went pow a few times in the air, practicing.

  Gertrustein upended the bowl, and the dough fell onto the wooden table in a wonderful, soft mound. She showed Sam how to punch it and watched while he used both fists enthusiastically. Then she loaded it back into the bowl and set it to rise again.

  "It's the yeast that makes it rise," she explained to Sam. "It's really the yeast that makes it smell so good, too."

  "What's yeast?" Sam asked, and Gertrustein showed him. It didn't look like anything much: just grayish-brown powder. But Gertrustein had said that the yeast made the bread smell good, so he knew it must be true. She sprinkled some into his hand and he sniffed it curiously.

  He knew instantly that he needed yeast for his mom's perfume.

  "Can, I mean may, I please keep it?" Sam asked shyly. He knew he couldn't just take it when she wasn't looking. Not from his good friend.

  "Certainly," Gertrustein said matter-of-factly. So Sam took his Ziploc bag out of his pocket and shook the yeast from his hand into the bag. Gertrustein didn't even ask why.

  Anastasia went to Sam's room that night to read him his story. His sister, mother, and father took turns putting him to bed. Sam liked that because they were so different.

  His dad liked to read to him about scientific stuff: volcanoes, and dinosaurs, and racing cars and snakes. And his dad was especially good at reading poetry.

  His mom absolutely refused to read anything that had snakes in it. But she liked happy stories about families and animals. Sometimes she read him books that had her name on the cover because she had done the pictures, and she sometimes pointed out things she wished she had done better. There was one very funny book about some children playing dress-up, and Sam's mom always frowned when she read it to him.

  "See that, Sam?" she asked, frowning. "See how I have the little boy trying on the football helmet and the little girl pulling on the pantyhose? Why didn't I do it the other way, with the girl wearing the football helmet? Wouldn't it have been better if—"

  Sam always turned the page impatiently so that she would go on with the story.

  Anastasia was very good at reading scary stories. She could make her voice all spooky when she read, and sometimes Sam even had to pull the covers over his head just to hide, although he never wanted her to stop. Sam loved being scared.

  Tonight she closed the door to his room when she went in and sat on the edge of his bed. "I want to consult with you again about this poem, Sam," she said.

  Then she looked around and sniffed. "Something smells weird in here," she commented. "Do you smell it?"

  Sam shook his head. He did smell it, but he didn't want to talk about it. The Lab was a secret. The perfume was a secret.

  Gertrustein had told him that yeast makes the good smell happen. He had added his yeast that afternoon. He hoped the good smell would happen quickly.

  "Read me the poem," he told Anastasia, just to change the subject.

  She unfolded the paper, which was beginning to be covered with crossed-out lines. She noticed Sam looking at it and explained. "When it's finished, I'm going to copy it over on good paper, maybe in calligraphy, for Mom's birthday.

  "Now. Listen and tell me what you think."

  She read aloud:

  I'm glad that you are 38.

  I'm glad you're Katherine, not just Kate.

  I'm glad our father is your mate.

  Your size and shape are really great.

  Although you don't earn a lot of money,

  Your husband likes to call you Honey.

  You have a daughter and a sonny

  Who think your jokes are usually funny.

  Anastasia looked at Sam. He looked back at her.

  "A sonny?" he asked after a moment's silence.

  She shrugged. "It rhymed," she said. But she wouldn't look at him, exactly. Sam could tell that she was embarrassed.

  "Daddy doesn't call Mom Honey," Sam pointed out. "He calls her Katherine."

  "Well, that rhymed, too," Anastasia said miserably.

  Sam thought for a minute. He didn't want to hurt his sister's feelings. "You could say that she has a daughter and a son," he said, "and they think she's lots of fun. That would rhyme. And it would be true, too," he added.

  "But what about the other two lines? I need two more lines in this verse. And they'd have to rhyme with son and fun."

  Sam thought. He was getting sleepy. And his room did smell weird.

  "I guess I could say I'm glad she's not a nun," Anastasia suggested.

  "What's a nun?" Sam asked.

  "No, wait! I've got it! I could say she's second to none!"

  "Yeah, that'd be good," Sam agreed. "And then say she's the very best one. One would rhyme."

  Anastasia stood up. "Thanks, Sam," she said. "I'll go write this down right away, before I forget. We only have a few days left. How's your present coming?"

  Sam sniffed. "Okay, I guess," he told his sister.

  But he wasn't at all certain.

  6

  Sam dressed very quickly for nursery school on Wednesday morning. He woke up, took his pajamas off, dropped them on the floor, and jumped into his clean underwear, jeans, sweatshirt, and socks faster than he ever had before. He grabbed his sneakers and took them down to the kitchen, where his mom was fixing breakfast.

  "My goodness, Sam," his mother said when he appeared. "I didn't even know you were up. Most mornings I have to shake you awake and then nag you and nag you to get dressed."

  Sam climbed onto a kitchen chair and shook some Rice Krispies into a bowl. "Well," he explained, "today I was Mr. Speedo."

  He didn't want to tell his mother the real reason that he had dressed so quickly.

  Anastasia was gathering her books. "I'll be home late this afternoon, Mom," she said. "I have to stay after school to work on the newspaper.

  "And Sam," she added, "it was really helpful, your suggestions last night. I worked on that project some more and it's coming along much better, thanks to you."

  "What project's that?" Mrs. Krupnik asked. She went over to the table with her cup of coffee and sat down. She sliced a banana over Sam's Rice Krispies and poured some milk into his bowl.

  "Secret," Anastasia told her.

  "Secret?" Mrs. Krupnik said, looking puzzled. "I'm not sure I like that, Anastasia. Having secrets from your own mother."

  Anastasia grinned. "Well, how about if it's a secret for a big event coming up this Friday evening?"

  "Friday evening?" Mrs. Krupnik asked. Then she smiled. "Oh, I see. My birthday. I almost forgot. Well, okay, then. Birthday secrets are allowed."

  Anastasia left for school, and Sam spooned up the rest of his cereal and bananas.

  "I have a secret, too," he told his mother. "A birthday secret. And so I don't want you to go into my room. Nobody can go into my room but me."

  "But, Sam, what about your bedtime story?"

  Sam thought. He didn't want to give up the nightly story. "We can read it downstairs, okay?" he suggested. "We can cuddle up on the couch in the study."

  "Well, all right, I guess that would work," his mom agreed. "But, Sam, what about the laundry? I have to go into your room to collect your dirty clothes."

  "I'll bring my dirty clothes down to the washing machine," Sam said. "But you mustn't go in my room. Promise?"

  His mother chuckled. "Okay, I promise. But you have to promise to bring all the dirty clothes down. And you'll have to take the clean ones back up, too. Otherwise you won't have clean socks or undies."

  Sam didn't actually care that much about clean socks or undies. He would have been happy to wear dirty ones every single day. But it was important to his mother.

  And it was important to him that she not go into his room. It was the real reason that he had dressed so quickly this morning.

  His room smelled terrible.

  ***

  "Don't take your jackets off, children," Mrs. Bennett said. "Remember
that today is a field trip? Who can guess where we're going today?"

  "Circus!"

  "Zoo!"

  "Airport!"

  "Disneyland!"

  All of the children shouted their ideas. Sam listened eagerly. He liked every one of them. Sam loved field trips, although he had never quite figured out the name of them. When he was younger— when he had just begun to go to nursery school— he had thought that field trip meant that they would go to a field. He liked that idea just fine. He thought it would be fun to play in a field, run around a lot, maybe pick flowers, chase butterflies, and even see some cows and sheep up close.

  But every time they had a field trip, Sam was surprised. They never went to a field at all—not even a baseball field.

  Once they went to a bakery and watched guys in white suits make cupcakes.

  Once they went to the Museum of Science and saw baby chickens coming out of eggs.

  For a while he thought that maybe he had gotten the name wrong. Maybe it was actually feel trip that Mrs. Bennett was saying.

  But no: they weren't allowed to feel the cupcakes. And they weren't allowed to feel the baby chickens.

  So apparently it was just one more of those mysterious things that don't seem to make any sense. Sam had experienced a lot of those in his short life. It was like—he thought for a minute—well, like the word litter.

  "Guess what! The Sheehans' cat had a new litter!" Anastasia had announced one evening a few weeks earlier.

  But when Sam had gone with her the next day to see, he had expected the Sheehans' cat to be surrounded by crumpled paper and old Pepsi cans. He couldn't figure out why you would bother going to take a look at litter when you could see it anytime you wanted just by looking out the car window, especially in the corner of the park, where the wind blew things up against the fence.

  But there was no litter around the Sheehans' cat at all. There were five kittens instead.

  Thinking about that this morning made Sam feel a little sad. He was thinking of the gray kitten curled in a ball, sleeping, and the way it had purred when he stroked its head with his finger.

  Dumbo. That's what he would name that kitten, Sam decided, because it was gray and had big ears. He would name it Dumbo for sure.

  If it belonged to him.

  ***

  Today's field trip was to the Boston Aquarium. Several mothers were coming along as helpers and drivers. Sam watched carefully while Leah's mom folded up Leah's wheelchair and loaded it into her station wagon. Just a couple of days before Sam had shown Leah how to clothespin a flippety-flippety piece of cardboard onto one of her wheels so that she could be a Lamborghini. He watched to be certain that the cardboard didn't get knocked off.

  Sam had been to the Aquarium before and had seen the dolphin show and the hammerhead shark. That was his favorite, the hammerhead shark, even though it was very scary to look at. It had mean eyes on each side of its big, square hammerhead.

  And he loved the penguins, who looked like pudgy, serious, little men waddling around in black and white suits. One of Sam's very favorite books was called Mr. Popper's Penguins. Sam felt as if he wouldn't mind being a penguin himself, because they seemed to have fun all the time. They could swim with their hands at their sides so that they looked like torpedoes. Then they got out of the water and stood around looking at each other between swims.

  So he was very glad to be going to the Aquarium again to see all of his favorite things and to have his hand stamped by the man at the front door. It made you feel very important to have your hand stamped.

  But he was a little concerned about something. He knew that the Aquarium was an important part of his special perfume, because his mom had said many times that the smell of the sea was one of the absolutely best smells in the world.

  The Boston Aquarium definitely smelled of the sea. And Sam had one of his Ziploc bags folded, as always, in his pocket.

  But he couldn't figure out how to collect a bit of the sea.

  The Aquarium was very large, and today it was crowded with children. There were groups from schools, like Sam's, with teachers and mothers telling the children again and again to stay together and hold hands. There were parents pushing strollers and pointing out fish and sharks and turtles to babies who were sucking pacifiers and looking sleepy. There were teenagers wearing Walk-men and dancing a little bit to music that no one else could hear.

  In the center of the Aquarium was the enormous glass tank that stood as high as a tall building. The people walked around it on the slanted walkway, going up and up, higher and higher, and looking through the glass as they went. That's where you could see the hammerhead sharks, and the giant turtles, and a billion other fish that would swim right up close to the glass so that you could see every bit of them: their eyes and flippers and fins and teeth and—

  "Look," Sam said to Mrs. Bennett, pointing. "That fish has whiskers!"

  "My goodness," Mrs. Bennett said. "Maybe it's a catfish!"

  Sam thought it was really weird that some fish had whiskers. It made him think of kittens, and then that made him think of the little gray kitten, and he decided that he would not name it Dumbo at all; he would name it Whiskers.

  If it belonged to him.

  Sam's pal Adam poked him and pointed up toward the top of the tank. "Scubaman!" Adam said. "I'm gonna be that when I grow up!"

  Sam looked up through the green water and saw a diver, with his helmet, tank, and lines, swimming down through the fish and sharks with a pail of food.

  "Me too," Sam said to Adam. "I'm gonna be that, too." But it was a scary thought, being a diver who went into the tank where hammerhead sharks lived.

  His class continued walking up on the circular walkway. Sam patted his pocket and his Ziploc bag. He knew that when they reached the top of the huge tank, they would be able to look down into it. Maybe then he could carefully, while no one noticed, dip his bag into the tank to collect some sea.

  But the thought made Sam very nervous. He would be reaching into the place where hammerhead sharks lived. They would be able to see his hand with their mean, glittery eyes.

  He wished that he had a metal diving helmet for his hand.

  "Okay, guys," Mrs. Bennett announced. "Let's detour over here instead of going all the way to the top."

  "Over where?" Sam asked.

  "To the tidepool area," Mrs. Bennett explained, leading the way. "Because here you can actually touch things if you're very careful. And the Aquarium lady will tell you all about the little creatures that live in tidepools, like starfish."

  The children followed Mrs. Bennett, who was pushing Leah's Lamborghini wheelchair, and gathered around the little tidepool where a woman was talking about starfish and anemones.

  They could put their hands right in, and there was not a single hammerhead shark.

  "Don't mash it!" Leo scolded Rosemary, who was holding something wet and glistening. "Mrs. Bennett, she's mashing it!"

  "Am not!" Rosemary said loudly, and put the glistening thing back.

  Sam touched a starfish and a clam, and he thought maybe he touched an eel, but he wasn't certain, and it slithered away from him. The water was cool and the rocks were slippery; the entire tidepool smelled as much like the sea as the whole sea itself.

  He looked around. The Aquarium lady was talking, and most of the children were paying attention to her. Mrs. Bennett was also listening to the Aquarium lady. Leo was examining the underside of a starfish, and Leah was making her fingers walk along the rim of the tidepool area. No one was looking at Sam.

  Carefully he opened his Ziploc bag. Pretending that he was listening attentively to the Aquarium lady, he silently dipped the bag into the tidepool and brought it out. He had just enough water—and a couple of bits of seaweed captured by mistake.

  He turned his back so that no one would see, sealed the bag, and stuffed it back into his pocket.

  Much later, helping the kids into the van, Mrs. Bennett gave Sam a gentle shove on his behind.
br />   "Oh dear, Sam," she said to him privately in a quiet voice, "you're a little bit damp, I'm afraid."

  It was true, although it was not what Mrs. Bennett thought.

  "It's okay," Sam told her. "I don't mind."

  At home that afternoon, he added sea to the perfume. He did it very quickly, with his face turned aside, because the smell was very strong now, and getting worse.

  And he noticed that something else was happening to the perfume. It was making a noise. It was bubbling, each little bubble coming to the surface and popping in a tiny, explosive sound.

  Quickly he replaced the cap on the bottle and put it back. He closed the top of the toybox and knelt beside it for a moment with his ear against the wooden side. He held his nose and listened.

  Blup. Blup. Blup.

  Sam left his bedroom nervously. He was beginning to be a little frightened of his perfume.

  Later that afternoon, when his mom thought he was playing in his sandbox, Sam crept over to the Sheehans' driveway again, to peek at the kittens.

  One more was gone, one of the yellow ones. Now there were only two kittens left: one yellow, one gray, both of them snoozing together in a corner of the box.

  Mrs. Sheehan came down the driveway with Kelly in a stroller.

  "Hi, Sam!" she said cheerfully. "Only two more to go!"

  "Did somebody take the other yellow one?" Sam asked. "Some little kid who needed a pet?"

  Mrs. Sheehan laughed. "Yes," she said, "only it wasn't a little kid. Do you know Mr. Leggett, who lives down the street in the brown house?"

  Sam nodded. "The old man," he said.

  "That's right. He lives all alone. When he was out for a walk the other day, he saw the kittens and decided that a kitten would be good company. He chose one of the yellow ones. He named it Blondie."

  "That's a pretty good name," Sam said.

  "They've all found good homes so far," Mrs. Sheehan said. "I suppose those last two will, also."

  "I suppose so," Sam said sadly.

  "Of course, that little gray one would just love to be yours, Sam."