Sleeping with earmuffs is not easy. Especially if your head is extra round, like a bowling ball, which mine is. I probably have the roundest head you’ve ever met.
I tried to sleep on my back, but my head kept rolling around. I would wake up in the middle of the night with one of the earmuffs covering my eye or mashing my nose.
In the morning, Leo was standing by my bed, staring down at me.
“See! I told you that you can’t sleep with earmuffs,” he said.
I felt around my face. The muffs were still on my ears, but the fuzzy headband part slipped off my head and hung down around my chin.
“I like it this way,” I lied.
“You look like Abraham Lincoln,” said Leo.
“He’s my favorite president,” I said.
I kept wearing the earmuffs upside down all during breakfast, just to annoy Leo.
“Maybe Erik will call today,” I said to Mom hopefully.
“I don’t know,” Mom said. “He’ll be pretty busy this week.”
I looked at that lonely, empty chair again. Then I gave Glunkey and Jibs each a little pat. Mom saw me do that. She narrowed her eyes at me.
“Remember, Piper,” she said, “what are you going to do when you get into the classroom?”
“Take off the earmuffs,” I said glumly.
“That’s my girl.” Mom kissed my nose.
But that voice in my ear said, “These earmuffs are not leaving this head.”
As Leo and I walked down to the harbor, I worried and worried about the whole situation. Then I had an idea. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.
I stopped walking.
“Oh, oh, ooooooh!” I said, clutching my belly.
“What’s wrong?” Leo asked.
“I’m sick,” I told him.
“You were fine two minutes ago.”
“Well, now I’m sick, and I can’t go to school,” I told him. “I’m going back home.”
He took a yellow Post-it note out of his back pocket and held it up to his ear for a second.
“Harold says that if you’re faking, Mom will know it,” Leo said.
Harold is one of Leo’s Post-it children.
“Yeah, well, I’m not faking!” I insisted.
I turned around and started walking back home. Just up ahead, I could see our little gray house. Mom would be very surprised to see me. I began to feel squibbly in my belly. Harold was right. Mom is a nurse. She can sniff out a healthy person like a bloodhound.
I walked more and more slowly. When I reached our front yard, I heard that little voice in my ear again.
This time, it said, “Hide!”
GOOD RIDDANCE TO SECOND GRADE
Luckily, I found a good hiding spot right away. It was a tree. Another lucky thing is that I am not afraid of heights. I climbed up that tree, no problem.
It wasn’t too foggy, so I had a good view from up there. Our island is called Peek-a-Boo because the fog likes to sit smack-plop on top of us. If you look at us from the mainland, it seems as if our island is playing peek-a-boo, peeping out from behind the fog, then hiding behind it again.
Today, though, I could see all the way to the harbor. I could see the Maddie Rose. I could see Mr. Grindle standing on the wharf, waiting for all the kids.
I wondered what was in Mrs. Grindle’s basket. I hoped it wasn’t cinnamon buns because those are my favorite.
I watched all the kids board the Maddie Rose. I watched until the boat motored out of the harbor.
Then I blew a big, spitty raspberry.
“Good riddance to second grade,” I said out loud.
Suddenly the door to our house opened. Mom came out. She looked all around. Then she started walking toward the road, very quickly. She was going to pass right by the tree! I sat as still as I could and closed my eyes. I stayed like that for a long time. When I opened my eyes again, Mom was gone.
Phew! Close call.
Then, out of the corner of my ear, I thought I heard something. It wasn’t that little voice, though. It was a high, squeaky sound.
I frowned and listened more closely. It was such a tiny sound that it was hard to hear with the earmuffs on my ears. I lifted Jibs up, just a little bit.
I could hear the sound better. It went whee-whee-whee-whee. It almost sounded as if the tree was crying.
I lifted Jibs up some more and I put my ear to the tree trunk.
Whee-whee-whee.
Hmm. It sounded as if it was coming from lower down.
I climbed down a few branches. I lifted Jibs up again and put my ear to the tree trunk.
Whee-whee-whee-whee-wheeeeeeeee!!!
Holy macaroni, the tree really was crying!
Right at that moment, though, there was a whole other noise. This one blasted so loud that even with earmuffs on, it made me jump.
This noise went WOWA-WOWA-WOWA!
I knew that sound very well. It was the fire alarm. After a few minutes, I saw people come running out of their houses. We don’t have special firepeople or ambulance people on Peek-a-Boo Island. It’s just regular people who help when there is an emergency. I could see Dad out in his lobster boat, racing back to the island. The alarm kept blasting and people kept running.
Boy! I thought. I miss all kinds of excitement when I’m at school.
MRS. PENNYPOCKET
The only person who wasn’t running all over the place was old Mrs. Pennypocket. She and her brown-and-white bull terrier, Nigel, were taking their morning stroll. Just my luck, though—Nigel decided to go to the bathroom right on my tree.
“Piper?” Mrs. Pennypocket was looking up at me. “What are you doing in that tree?”
“Oh, just enjoying the view,” I told her.
“Why aren’t you in school?” she asked.
“It’s a long story, Mrs. Pennypocket,” I said. “Now, can I ask you something?”
“I guess so,” she said.
“Have you ever heard of a tree crying?” I asked. “Because I think this one is.”
Mrs. Pennypocket put her ear against the tree.
“Ayuh,” she said. “It’s crying all right.”
Mrs. Pennypocket stepped on an old stump beside the tree, pulled herself up by a branch, and sat in a wide crook in the tree.
“You’re pretty bouncy for an old lady,” I told her.
“Thank you,” she said.
She knocked on the trunk. Then she put her ear against it and listened. She knocked and listened again. Finally, she hopped back down.
“I need tools,” she said. Then she and Nigel hurried away.
A few minutes later, Mrs. Pennypocket came back, with Nigel trotting behind her. Now she was carrying a handsaw.
“Come down out of that tree, Piper,” she said.
“Are you chopping it down?” I asked in a shocked voice.
“Just a little piece of it,” said Mrs. Pennypocket.
I was beginning to wish I hadn’t told Mrs. Pennypocket about the crying tree. Not only did I have to come out of my hiding spot, but now she was going to hack it all up!
I climbed down and sat in the grass beside Nigel. He rested his big, funny-looking head on my lap and sighed. We both watched as Mrs. Pennypocket began to saw at a branch. She sawed for a long time. Every so often, she stopped to fan herself.
“Aren’t you hot in those earmuffs, Piper?” she asked me.
“Kind of,” I said. Actually, my ears were feeling gross and sweaty.
“Then why don’t you take them off?” Mrs. Pennypocket asked as she started sawing again.
“I can’t,” I told her.
“Why? Are they glued to your head?”
“No. My brother Erik gave them to me.”
Mrs. Pennypocket didn’t say anything for a minute. She just kept sawing. Then she asked, “Erik went off to high school on the mainland this year, didn’t he?”
I nodded.
Since the Mink Island School only goes up to eighth grade, you have to leave home w
hen you turn fourteen. You have to go to school on the mainland and sleep in a dorm or stay with another family.
“Missing him, are you?” said Mrs. Pennypocket.
I nodded again. “Everything is stinky without him,” I said.
“Hmm,” she said.
Suddenly the branch Mrs. Pennypocket was sawing made a cracking sound. The very next second, it thumped to the ground.
“There we go!” cried Mrs. Pennypocket. “Now climb back up, Piper, and have a look.”
I climbed up the tree. When I got to the place where the branch was cut off, I saw something surprising.
“There’s a hole in the tree, Mrs. Pennypocket,” I said.
“Ayuh,” she said. “Go on and peep in.”
I peeped in the hole. And guess what?
Something peeped back up at me.
THE FAIRY TREE
I reached into the hole in the tree. My hands closed around something soft and fuzzy. It said, “Whee-whee-whee,” but nice and quiet this time. I pulled it out very carefully. It was a tiny gray kitten! It had a pipsqueak of a nose and big green eyes.
“Awww, look at you!” I said, tickling the kitten’s chin. “You are as cute as a cupcake!”
The kitten yawned, sticking out its pink tongue. I think it was tired from all that crying.
Then I thought of something. “Hey, Mrs. Pennypocket?” I called down to her. “How do you think this little guy got inside the tree in the first place?”
“Well, sometimes a mother cat will hide her kittens in funny places,” said Mrs. Pennypocket. “Maybe the kitten just got stuck in there.”
Then guess what happened next.
You’ll never guess.
I heard another whee-whee-whee from inside the tree.
“Mrs. Pennypocket!” I called out excitedly. “I think there’s another one in there!”
I snuggled the gray kitten against my chest with one hand while I reached back into the hole with my other hand. My fingers touched something soft and fuzzy again. Very gently, I scooped it up. Out came a black kitten with tiny white feet and a skinny white stripe down its nose.
I lifted up the bottom of my shirt and made a kangaroo pouch for the kittens to sit in. Then, just to be sure, I felt around inside the tree hole to see if there were any more kittens, which there weren’t.
I stared down at the kittens in my shirt. They were looking back up at me. I couldn’t stop smiling at those cuties.
“You two are like little treasures hidden right inside a tree!” I said to them.
“A treasure in a tree?” Mrs. Pennypocket said. “Oh, Piper! Oh my goodness! I just thought of something.”
Mrs. Pennypocket hurried away again.
She is a very active old lady, I thought.
A few minutes later, she came back with a cardboard box in one hand and a flashlight in the other.
“Hand me those kittens, Piper,” said Mrs. Pennypocket.
Very carefully, I handed her the gray kitten, and then the black-and-white one. Mrs. Pennypocket put them in the box. The kittens snuggled right up in there.
Then Mrs. Pennypocket flipped the flashlight on and handed it to me.
“Now, Piper,” she said, “shine the flashlight down that hole in the tree. Tell me if you see anything.”
I leaned over and shined that light into the hole.
“All I see is tree,” I said.
But suddenly I did see something. I squinted at it.
“Hey, there are letters carved into the wood,” I said. “They say…” I squinted harder. “They say L.A.E.”
Mrs. Pennypocket clapped her hands and smiled. “I knew it! Those are my gran’s initials! Laura Ann Easton. Which means that this”—she gave the tree an excited pat—“is the Fairy Tree.”
“What’s a Fairy Tree?” I asked.
“It was something Gran told me about,” said Mrs. Pennypocket. “When she was a girl, about your age, she found a tree that had a hole in it. It was the perfect place to hide treasures. One day, she put a seashell inside that hole. The next day, the seashell was gone and in its place was a little toy horse. She said the fairies must have left it there for her. The toy horse brought her all kinds of good luck. ‘You take a treasure and you leave a treasure. That’s how the Fairy Tree works,’ Gran told me. I asked her where the tree was, but Gran had left Peek-a-Boo Island many years before, so she couldn’t quite remember. She did tell me that she had carved her initials in the hole, though. And here it is!”
“Do I have to leave something in the tree now?” I asked.
Mrs. Pennypocket thought about it.
“It seems like the thing to do,” she said.
“But what should I leave?” I asked.
“A treasure, of course,” Mrs. Pennypocket said. She picked up her saw. “Look after those kittens, Piper.” Then she headed back home, with Nigel jogging along beside her.
I looked at the kittens in the box. They were rolling around and swatting at each other with their tiny paws. I smiled at them.
Things seemed a little less stinky somehow.
I looked for a treasure to put in the tree. First I stuck my hands in my pockets and pulled out an old hair barrette. It was a little bashed up. That didn’t seem like a good treasure. I checked my backpack: two pencils, a math book, and a glue stick.
Hmm.
I looked in my lunch box. Tuna salad. Eww.
Suddenly I knew just what I needed to do.
Except I didn’t really want to do it.
I gave my earmuffs a sad little pat. Then I took them off my head. I kissed Glunkey.
“Have a nice life, Glunkey,” I whispered to him.
Then I kissed Jibs.
“Take it easy, old Jibs.”
I put the earmuffs into the Fairy Tree’s hole.
Right then, I heard my name being called. I looked down the road. A whole bunch of people were rushing toward me. One of them was Dad. He was wearing his shiny orange oilskin pants and his black muck boots. He was also wearing a big frown on his face.
Uh-oh.
SPECIAL DELIVERY!
It turned out that when I didn’t show up at the Maddie Rose, Mr. Grindle had called Mom to make sure I got home okay.
That’s when all the fuss started.
“Piper Green!” Dad said in his angriest voice. “Do you realize that half the island has been out looking for you? We were worried sick! Do you know how much trouble you have caused?”
He said a lot of other things, too, which I do not want to talk about. But they included no TV for a month.
When Dad stopped yelling, Mom showed up and she took over the yelling. But when they noticed the kittens in the box, they both simmered down a little. I guess it’s hard to be mad with two cutie cupcake faces staring up at you.
“I’m really, really sorry about everything,” I told them. “But it’s okay now. Because, look”—I patted my naked ears—“I took them off.”
“Well, that’s a step in the right direction,” Dad said.
“Where are they?” Mom asked.
“I decided to give them to the tree,” I told her.
Mom and Dad looked at each other.
“Piper, you are a most unusual child,” Dad said.
“Yeah, well, Leo is the one who’s married to a piece of paper named Michelle,” I replied.
It turned out Mrs. Pennypocket’s grandma was right. The Fairy Tree really worked! The kittens brought me good luck, because later that afternoon, there was a knock on our door.
“Special delivery!” someone outside shouted.
When I opened the door, my aunt Terry was standing there. She is tall and skinny and she has long, shiny dark hair. She lives on the mainland in a town called Camden, where she has her own beauty spa. I went there once. She painted my fingernails blue and put green mud on my face. I looked like a zombie. It was awesome.
Aunt Terry handed me a bag from a store in Camden. Inside the bag were some cans of kitten formula and two tiny baby b
ottles.
“Your mom called and told me about the kittens,” said Aunt Terry. “Where are they? Where are they?”
Aunt Terry is just crazy about cats.
I showed her the box on the floor. Mom had put a blanket inside the box. She had also put a heating pad underneath the box to keep the kittens toasty warm.
“Awww!” Aunt Terry cried when she saw them. “They are wicked sweet!”
“I found them in a tree,” I said proudly.
“Mrs. Pennypocket has been keeping an eye on that tree,” said Mom. “She wants to see if the mother cat comes back for them. So far, no mama cat.”
That’s because it’s the Fairy Tree, I thought.
But I didn’t say it out loud. I liked keeping the Fairy Tree a secret.
“Oh, by the way, Piper,” Aunt Terry said, “I left a little something for you outside.”
“Is it green mud from your spa?” I asked hopefully.
“Just go see,” she said, and she sat down beside the box to play with the kittens.
I walked to the front door and opened it. There was no package or bag or anything. Hmm. I stepped outside. From behind the dogwood bush, someone jumped out and grabbed me.
“Got you!” he yelled.
“ERIK!!!” I started hopping up and down. My face couldn’t stop smiling.
He picked me up and flipped me around and held me upside down by my ankles.
“What are you doing here?” I said in my upside-down voice.
“Aunt Terry called to say that she was taking her boat to Peek-a-Boo Island and asked if I wanted to come along. So…do you miss me?”
“Nope,” I told him.
“Yeah, I don’t miss you either,” he said, grinning. He lowered me so that I was touching the ground. Then he let me go. I jumped up.
“Come see the kittens!” I said. I grabbed him by the hand and pulled him inside.
Mom and Dad gave Erik hugs, and Mom said he looked too skinny.
“He always looks that skinny,” Leo said.
“Thanks a lot,” Erik said, ruffling Leo’s hair. “How’s Michelle doing?”