All Owen had to do was ask her.
“UM, SOPHIE?”
Sophie finally looked up from her book.
“Yes?” she said.
Owen blinked. Sophie Simon made him nervous. Most things made Owen nervous—clowns and geese and moving sidewalks and Mr. St. Cupid, just to name a few. But Sophie Simon made Owen very nervous. He felt like she could rearrange his brain cells just by looking at him.
“Um,” he said again. “Could you, um, help me with something?”
“Probably,” she said. “But I’d rather not.”
And she went back to reading.
“Oh.”
If Sophie didn’t want to help him, what was Owen supposed to do?
Owen looked toward the front of the bus again.
Julia was holding up another piece of paper.
JUST ASK HER, YOU BABY!
“Um, Sophie?” Owen said, trying to be brave. “I need your help. I want a rabbit for my birthday, but my mom wants to get me a piranha or something. She already ordered a pet from Daisy Pete’s parents’ store, but I don’t know what it is yet. Something terrible.” He bit his lip. “I really think you should help me.”
Sophie turned a page. “And why should I do that?” she asked.
“Well…” Owen thought hard. “During final recess today you told Daisy you wanted to buy a computer.”
“A calculator,” Sophie corrected him. “The Pembo Q-60. The latest model.”
“Right,” Owen said. “And you said you’d help Daisy with her problem if she could pay you enough money.”
“But she couldn’t,” Sophie said. “She was short thirty-five dollars.”
Owen didn’t see what being short had to do with anything. But he said, “Well, if you helped me, I’d give you all my birthday money from Grandpa Ricky.”
Sophie looked up.
“Twenty dollars,” Owen told her.
Sophie looked back down.
“That still wouldn’t be enough for the calculator,” she said. “Even if I helped both of you. Which is a lot of helping. I’d still need fifteen dollars.”
“But—”
“What makes you think I’d be able to help you anyway?” Sophie asked him.
“Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too tough for someone like you to figure out!” Owen said. “You know everything. You’re always reading those big, fat books.”
Owen looked at the page Sophie was reading.
“Reverse Psychology,” it said at the top.
“What’s reverse psychology?” he asked Sophie.
Sophie stuck a finger in her book to hold her place. “It’s a way to convince someone of one thing”—Owen’s ears perked up—“by telling them you want the exact opposite.” Owen sat up a little straighter in his seat. “Like if a teacher wanted her students to do their spelling homework, so she told them that she didn’t think they could do it because they weren’t smart enough. Then they would try very hard and finish their homework, just to prove her wrong. Which was exactly what she wanted in the first place.”
Owen thought about that.
“Does it work on moms?” he asked.
“What?” Sophie said.
“All that stuff you just said. Reverse photography.”
“Reverse psychology,” Sophie corrected.
“Yeah, that one.”
The bus screeched to a stop.
“Stanford Avenue!” the bus driver called out.
“Sorry,” Sophie said, zipping her book into her backpack. “This is my stop.”
“But—”
“I have to get off,” Sophie said. She poked him in the knee. “Please move.”
“But I need your help!”
Sophie sighed. “Why don’t you get your friend to help you?” she asked. “That curly-haired girl. Maybe she has some ideas.”
The bus doors squeaked open.
The driver went outside to direct traffic.
“Julia won’t help me,” Owen said as Sophie squeezed past him into the aisle. “She’s too busy trying to think of a story to write for the school newspaper.”
“Newspaper?”
Sophie sat down so quickly that she landed right on top of Owen.
She didn’t move.
She just stared at the top of Owen’s head.
“Um, Sophie?” he said. She was acting sort of weird.
Plus she was wrinkling his pants.
“Sophie?” Owen said again.
Sophie blinked at him. “Did you say that Julia is looking for a news story?”
“Yeah,” Owen said. “For the school paper. But she only has until Monday, and she’ll never find one. Plus she doesn’t have anything to type on. Last weekend her dad made her sell her typewriter at their yard sale. She got fifteen bucks for it.”
Sophie’s eyes grew wide as watermelons.
“Fifteen dollars?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Owen said. “Why?”
The bus driver popped his head back inside the bus.
“Anyone else for Stanford Avenue?” he shouted.
Sophie grabbed Owen’s hand.
“Come on!” she hollered.
She dragged him down the bus aisle.
“But-but…” Owen stuttered. “Where are we going? This isn’t my stop. What if I—?”
One step from the bottom, Sophie whirled around to face him. “Do you want a rabbit?” she asked him. “Or do you want a piranha?”
And she leaped down the last step to Stanford Avenue.
Owen turned to look at Julia.
She was grinning at him.
“Well?” she said. “What are you waiting for?”
And just like that, right as the doors were about to close, Owen Luu made a decision.
“Sophie, wait!” he called, throwing himself from the bus just as the doors snapped shut behind him. “Wait, Sophie, wait! I DON’T WANT A PIRANHA!”
* * *
They’d been walking for about five minutes when suddenly Sophie stopped.
“Here we are!” she cried.
They were standing in front of Petes’ Pet Store.
“Wh-what are we doing here?” Owen asked. Pet stores made him nervous. They were filled with guppies and geckos and gerbils.
“You said your mom is buying your birthday present from this pet store, right?”
“R-right,” Owen said.
He peeked through the window.
Daisy Pete was in there, practicing her twirling.
She was not a very good twirler.
She twirled once.
She twirled twice.
She twirled three ti—
CRASH!
Daisy fell over.
From somewhere inside the store, a parrot squawked.
“If you want to use reverse psychology on your mother”—Sophie scanned the flyers pasted in the window—“and what you really want for your birthday is a rabbit”—she ran her finger down an advertisement for pet food—“then we need to make sure that the Petes sell your mom the exact opposite of a rabbit.”
“Okay,” Owen said. “But what’s the exact opposite of a rabbit?”
“Well,” Sophie said. She began to read a new flyer. “Would you say that a rabbit has long ears?”
Owen stuck his hands in his pockets. “Of course,” he said.
“And would you say that it has a short, fluffy tail?”
“Very short,” Owen told her. “And fluffy.”
“And would you also say,” Sophie went on, running her finger over the last row of flyers, “that a rabbit is very, very quiet?”
Owen nodded. “So the opposite of a rabbit,” he said, beginning to understand, “would have short ears, a long tail, and be very, very loud?”
Sophie didn’t answer him.
Instead, she slapped her hand over a flyer in the window.
“Perfect!” she cried out.
Owen squinted at the flyer.
When he turned back to talk to Sophie, she was inside th
e pet store.
Owen stood outside, staring at the flyer in the window. And he was still standing there two minutes later when Sophie popped her blond head out the door.
“Owen, come on!” she called to him. “Come on in here! We need to talk to Daisy. Oh, and you can get a letter to Julia for me, right?”
“Huh?”
But Sophie had disappeared inside the store again.
Owen gulped as he opened the door to the pet store.
Sophie Simon and pets?
What had he gotten himself into?
Very Ugly Hats
Julia McGreevy parked her bike in front of the Middlebury Performing Arts Center and looked up at the marquee.
Madame Robespierre
In Association with Eisenberg Elementary
Presents:
OOH LA LA
A ballet recital about the history of France
Blech, Julia thought.
Julia did not like ballet recitals.
She thought they were boring.
And long.
And pink.
But last night Julia had found a note slipped under her front door, a note that made her want to come to this particular ballet recital very badly.
Julia,
Looking for a big scoop?
Middlebury P.A.C. 2:00 p.m. tomorrow. Bring fifteen dollars and your camera. Come in the rear entrance, and don’t let anyone see you.
You won’t be disappointed.
—Sophie Simon
P.S. Owen says hi.
Julia pulled her camera out of her bike basket and hung it around her neck.
She patted the folded bills in her pocket.
She checked her watch.
1:52.
Right on time.
Julia slipped inside the back door, which was propped open with a brick.
Julia sneaked past the dressing rooms, where girls were busy getting ready. She didn’t see Sophie Simon anywhere. How was Julia supposed to figure out what the big news story was if Sophie wasn’t there to tell her? What a weirdo. All that girl ever did was read about boring stuff like history. And talking to her always made Julia feel like she was in the middle of a one-kid brain tornado.
No wonder she didn’t have any friends.
Still, if Sophie could find Julia a big news story, it was definitely worth paying her fifteen dollars.
Julia really, really needed a big news story.
Every Monday, Julia turned in a story for the weekly paper. Stories about the mysterious meat loaf in the cafeteria, or the contaminated candy machine outside the teachers’ lounge.
They were pretty good stories.
But every Tuesday, Miss Harbinger told Julia that she didn’t print anyone’s stories unless they were in fifth grade or higher.
That was the Rule.
But what Miss Harbinger didn’t know was that, if Julia didn’t publish a story in next week’s paper, her dad was going to make her drop out of the journalism club.
And then, whether Julia liked it or not—and Julia did not—her dad was going to make her sign up for the Math Olympics team.
As a mathlete.
Julia was not a mathlete. She was a journalist.
She just had to get a story published to prove it.
A man burst into the hallway. He was dressed all in black and had a headset stuck over his ears. “Five minutes to curtain!” he hollered.
He ignored Julia as he rushed past.
“Everybody to the stage!”
Well, Julia thought, if everyone else was going to the stage, she should, too. That was what a good journalist would do.
Julia ducked through the stage door and hid under a prop table on the side of the stage.
No one noticed her.
It was dark. The stage lights were off and the curtain was closed. Julia could hear murmurs from the audience on the other side.
It sounded like a big crowd.
Julia took her pencil from behind her ear and scribbled a note in the notebook she always kept in her back pocket.
PACKED AT THE P.A.C.
Julia always took lots of notes when she was working on a story. A reporter couldn’t risk forgetting anything. It was just being smart.
Her father wouldn’t think it was smart.
Professor McGreevy thought that there wasn’t anything smart about working on a school newspaper.
The only thing Julia’s dad thought about, all day every day, was math.
Math, math, math, math, math.
He quizzed Julia on her times tables over her morning cornflakes.
He picked her up early from birthday parties to talk about long division.
He even tucked her into bed with stories about Isaac Newton.
Ever since the day she was born, Professor McGreevy had been trying to make Julia as nuts about math as he was.
It was not going to work.
Julia McGreevy hated math worse than she hated the color pink.
Sometimes Julia wondered if maybe her father wasn’t really her father. Maybe, Julia thought, sometime just after she was born, her dad had been hit over the head with a very large abacus, and it had shaken up his brain so much that he’d gotten amnesia. Maybe he’d forgotten all the things he used to like—normal dad things like golfing and barbecues, and reading bedtime stories like The Tale of Peter Rabbit—and now all he could remember were math problems. Maybe, Julia thought, if she just whacked her father hard enough in the right spot, he’d go back to being the nice, normal, non-mathy dad he was before.
But really, Julia knew that her father had always been the same math nerd he was today. Because sometimes he’d say things like “Back when I was your age, my team had won the regional Math Olympics three times already,” and she’d seen the photos, too. So there most definitely was no need to whack her father over the head with something heavy.
Too bad.
Behind her, Julia heard a group coming through the stage door. She poked her head out from under the table to watch and listen.
One by one, the ballerinas filed past Julia’s hiding spot and lined up on the stage. From underneath the table, Julia couldn’t see any of the girls’ heads—just their pink tutus and pink ballet slippers.
They were followed by a tall, thin woman holding a large wooden stick.
That must be Madame Robespierre.
Pound!
Madame Robespierre banged her stick on the ground as the last ballerina lined up onstage.
Julia counted them.
Thirteen.
Thirteen tiny, terrified tots in tutus.
Pound!
“Lay-DEEZ!” Madame Robespierre hollered at them.
She had a thick French accent, with vowels as sharp as her pointy shoes.
“Tonight you are telling zee ’istory of France!”
Pound!
“Zee story of my country!”
Pound!
“So you will wear zee ’atts proud-lee and zere will be no complaining!”
Pound!
Julia pulled her pencil out from behind her ear and scribbled in her notebook.
ATTS? she wrote. What was an att?
Julia inched out of her hiding spot to see.
She sucked in a breath when she saw what the girls had on their heads.
She had never seen anything so ugly.
HATS, Julia wrote in her notebook. VERY UGLY HATS.
Each one of the very ugly hats, which were also very large, was shaped like a different object, and Julia guessed that they must all have something to do with France.
One girl was balancing an enormous wedge of stinky cheese, while another girl was teetering underneath a hat shaped like a huge bottle of perfume. A brown-haired girl across the stage was strapped to what appeared to be a two-ton plate of frogs’ legs.
But the biggest and ugliest hat of all was Daisy Pete’s. It was a gigantic sculpture, at least two feet high, that Julia recognized as an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower.
J
ulia thought that if she had to wear a humongous hat like that, she would topple over in a millisecond.
Was this why Sophie had told her to come today? Julia wondered. To see the giant ugly hats?
Pound!
Madame Robespierre slammed her stick on the ground again.
Pound!
“Zere will be absolutely no steenk-ing tonight,” she hollered. “Do we all understand zat?”
Madame looked down her nose at each girl in turn.
Pound!
“Because sometimes you all steenk quite bad-lee!”
Julia wrote a new note in her book.
MRS. R. = NOT NICE
Pound!
Daisy Pete raised a hand.
Pound!
“What eez it, you stu-peed girl?” Madame asked.
In her notebook, Julia crossed out NOT NICE and wrote MEAN.
“Um, well,” Daisy said. “I was just wondering, um, what if I do fall over? What if I … lose my balance?”
The other girls gasped.
Julia leaned forward until her neck was stretched like a rubber band.
Madame Robespierre did not pound her stick.
She didn’t shout.
She didn’t do any of the things that Julia thought she might.
Instead, she straightened her back and looked down at Daisy with a calm smile.
“It is very important to have zee balance,” she said.
Daisy nodded.
“But zee problem,” Madame said, “it is zee little baby toes.”
She scratched her chin.
“Zey are no good for zee balance.”
Madame Robespierre leaned down close, until her nose was just an inch away from Daisy’s.
Daisy was shaking. The tower on her head looked like it was in the middle of an earthquake.
“So,” Madame continued, “zee ballerinas in Par-ee”—Julia knew that this was the weird French way of saying Paris—“do you know what zey do to keep zee balance? Do you know what zey do with zese stu-peed baby toes?”
Daisy shook her head, her eyes as big as volleyballs.
Pound!
“ZEY CHOP ZEM OFF!” Madame Robespierre hollered.
Pound!
“ZAT IS WHAT ZEY DO TO ZEE BABY TOES!”
Pound pound!
“Any girl who falls oh-verrrr tonight,” Madame screeched, “we will chop off zer toes!”
And just like that, she marched off the stage, her heels clackity-clickity-clackity-clicking.
Julia crossed out MEAN in her notebook and drew a picture of the Wicked Witch of the West.