Clementine, Friend of the Week Read online

  Text copyright © 2010 by Sara Pennypacker

  Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Marla Frazee

  Many thanks to Nadia Herman for her drawings in chapters 5, 9, and 12.

  All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.

  The illustrations for this book were done with pen and ink on Strathmore paper.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-9863-5

  Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  More Honors and Praise for Clementine

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Sneak Peek of Clementine and the Family Meeting

  This one is for The Great Cat Polka Dottie

  —S.P.

  To my cousin Margaret, who showed me Klickitat Street

  —M.F.

  I couldn’t wait for Margaret to get on the bus Monday afternoon. “It was the best day!” I told her. “I got picked for Friend of the Week! I get to tell my autobiography, be line leader, collect the milk money, feed the fish—”

  “Oh yeah, Clementine,” Margaret interrupted, flapping her hands at me. “We did that when I was in third grade.”

  Margaret is only one year older than I am. But whenever she says “When I was in third grade,” she makes it sound like “Way back when I was a little kid, which I’m not anymore, so that makes me the boss of you.” I want to learn how to do that trick in case anyone ever lets my little brother into third grade.

  “Your class did Friend of the Week, too? I didn’t know that,” I said. “How come you never told me?”

  Margaret crossed her ankles and looked down to see that her sock cuffs were matched up. When she looked back at me, her mouth was pinched like a raisin and she had turned a little pink. She shrugged. “I guess I forgot,” she said. “I guess it was just too boring to remember.”

  “Friend of the Week isn’t boring! Especially the booklet. Did you save your booklet? Can I see it?”

  Margaret shrugged again. “My mother keeps it in the living room. It’s very important to her because it’s all about my valuableness. I think she likes to have it around whenever Mitchell drives her crazy. I think she likes to read it and go, ‘Whew! Thank goodness I have one good kid.’ You probably shouldn’t touch it.”

  “I won’t hurt it,” I said. “I’ll be careful. Let’s read it when we get home.”

  Margaret looked worried—like she was trying to think up something and couldn’t—but then she shrugged a third time and said, “Sure, okay, sure, I suppose.”

  So when we got home, we rode the elevator down to my apartment to say, “Hi-Mom-bye-Mom-I’m-going-to-Margaret’s-okay?-okay,” to my mother. Then we rode the elevator up to the fifth floor, where Margaret’s apartment is.

  Margaret went straight over to the shelves next to the fireplace. She clasped her hands in front of her, admiring the rows of trophies and awards she had won. Because we do this every time we’re in her living room, I knew she wanted me to admire them, too. So I clasped my hands and we stood there having a moment of silence, staring at all the proof of how great Margaret was at everything.

  There sure was a lot of it. Three whole shelves of “Best at This” and “Blue Ribbon for That” lined up all neat and tight like groceries in the supermarket.

  I am really good at math and drawing. But nobody gives out trophies for those things, which is unfair. So all my parents have is a stack of math tests with stars on them, and some drawings taped up on the wall. They never put up a shelf in the living room for all my awards. Which is good, I guess, because it would be empty.

  After I figured we were done with the admiring, I went over to the shelves on the other side of the fireplace. There were lots of pictures of Margaret’s older brother, Mitchell, there, playing baseball with his friends. And six identical baseball trophies. M.V.P. each one read, but with a different year. Nothing else.

  “What does that stand for, M.V.P.?” I asked.

  Margaret scratched her head like she was fake-remembering. “Oh, right! Moron-Villain-Pest,” she said. “He wins it every year. No competition.”

  I knew Margaret was making that up because Mitchell isn’t even one of those things. Which does N-O-T, not, mean he is my boyfriend.

  I took a purple marker from my pocket and wrote M.V.P. on my arm with a lot of question marks after it so I would remember to find out what it meant. Margaret didn’t notice because she had picked up a golden ballerina statue. “I should have won silver and bronze statues for my other dances, too,” she was saying. “But the judges didn’t want the rest of the kids to feel too bad.”

  Now, Margaret can be kind of a braggy girl. But today she was being even braggier than normal. This could take a while. “How about the booklet?” I reminded her.

  Margaret blew some invisible dust off the statue and put it back carefully. She pushed aside a big spelling bee plaque on her bottom shelf and pulled out a blue booklet.

  I reached for it, but she yanked it away. “Germs,” she said, glaring at my hands. Then she sat on the couch and began to read.

  “‘It’s good to have Margaret in our class because she is very organized.’ ‘I like having Margaret in class because she is neat.’ ‘Margaret is an extra-clean girl.’”

  I sat down beside her and looked over, to see if she was fake-reading all those compliments. Nope, I saw with my own eyes—the page was full of stuff like that.

  It’s good to have Margaret in class because her hair is so shiny I can almost see myself in it! wrote Alexis. I like sitting next to Margaret because she never lets her stuff spill onto my desk, wrote Jamaal. And under that, Kyle had written, Margaret is helpfull. Every day she tells me what I do wrong.

  Margaret tapped the page. “I had to tell him he’d spelled ‘helpful’ wrong.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s a great booklet.”

  I started to get nervous. Even though I am friends with everybody in my class, nobody was going to write anything like that about me, that was for sure. “What else did kids write?” I asked. “Anything about being a good draw-er, or good at math?”

  “Just more nice compliments,” Margaret said, jumping up suddenly. “Page after page. We should put it back now.”

  Margaret walked over to her shelves and closed the booklet. But instead of putting it back, she stared down at it and gasped. She turned red. If her eyes weren’t squidged down to slits, I bet I could have seen them boil. She looked like a cartoon person about to explode.

  “That…that…that…that…OH!!!” she sputtered. Then she stomped out of the living room and down the hall and kicked open Mitchell’s door. I followed her.

  “Don’t touch anything in here!” she warned me. “This place is crawling with germs!”

  Mitchell was on his bed. He said hi to us from behind the sports section. Margaret went over to him and stuck the booklet out, her whole body shaking.

  Finally I saw what was making her so mad. On the cover of the booklet, someone had covered up the r in
“Friend” with white tape.

  MARGARET! the title read, above Margaret’s smiling school picture. FIEND OF THE WEEK!

  Mitchell made an innocent face and clapped his hands to his chest, like he was heart-crushed that she could accuse him of doing something like that. But I could see him telling his mouth not to laugh, and I could see his mouth fighting back.

  “What makes you think it was me?” he asked, when he had won the fight with his mouth.

  Margaret pointed to the baseball bat sticking out from under Mitchell’s pillow. The handle was wrapped in tape that used to be white.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I should have used Mom’s nail polish or something.”

  Margaret stormed out of the room without saying a word and stomped back to her own bedroom. Her cat, Mascara, shot off the pillow and scrambled under the bed, because cats know when someone’s mood is B-A-D, bad. Mascara and I waited while Margaret sat in the exact center of her rug and smoothed out all of the fringe, which is how she calms herself down.

  “He is such a baby-head!” she hissed after a while.

  “The cover’s not important, Margaret,” I tried. “Here, give it to me. I’ll take the tape off.”

  Margaret clutched the booklet to her chest.

  I almost pointed out that if Mitchell had touched it, it was crawling with germs now, but I didn’t because I figured Margaret had been historical enough for one day. It didn’t matter, though, because just then she figured it out for herself.

  “Aaauuurrggghhh!” Margaret screamed. She dropped the booklet and ran into her bathroom, waving her hands like they were on fire. I heard her turn the water on and start scrubbing.

  Normally, Margaret and I never leave the other person alone in our rooms. This is because if Margaret is ever alone in my bedroom, her fingers get itchy to organize something. And if I’m ever alone in her room, my fingers get itchy to mess something up. As soon as Margaret went into her bathroom, I started looking around for what I could mess up. But this day, I saw something even better to do with my itchy fingers!

  I reached under her desk, where her booklet had landed, and pulled it out. Very carefully—so carefully not one single speck of paper-skin came away!—I peeled off the tape.

  Margaret came to the bathroom doorway then, patting the fingers of her left hand dry, one by one. “I have a good idea, Clementine,” she was saying in a voice that sounded a lot calmer than the one she’d run into the bathroom with. “About how you can get a great booklet, like mine. Give everybody compliments all week. Then they’ll give you some back in your booklet on Friday.”

  I held up her booklet, smiling. “Look, Margaret!”

  “Or presents!” she said, as she started on her right hand. “Presents would be even better than compliments. And leave the price tag on, so everybody can see how good of a present it is and—”

  “Margaret, look!” I interrupted her.

  She looked up from her finger-patting. Her mouth fell open and she dropped the towel. She had that exploding-cartoon-person look again.

  “Who said you could read that?!” she shrieked. Then she charged across the room and snatched the booklet from me, never mind the Mitchell-germs.

  Mascara, who had stuck his nose out while Margaret was in her bathroom, skittered back under the bed. If I could have fit under there, I would have, too.

  Instead, I was stuck trying to calm Margaret down. “I didn’t read it! I was only…look! It’s fine, the tape—”

  “That was private! Anyone should know that! Anyone!” Margaret yelled.

  “I only peeled the tape off, Margaret! I didn’t hurt anything. Now, let’s go back to the giving-presents idea, okay? You think people would write great stuff in my booklet if I give them presents?”

  This is called Throwing Someone Off The Track. My parents say I am a genius at it, but it didn’t work on Margaret.

  “NOBODY’S GOING TO WRITE ANYTHING GREAT IN YOUR BOOKLET NO MATTER HOW MANY PRESENTS YOU GIVE THEM AND YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY FRIEND AND I ONLY PLAY WITH YOU BECAUSE YOU LIVE IN MY BUILDING AND NOW YOU HAVE TO GO HOME!” Margaret yelled at me.

  “Well, well, well…OH, WHO CARES BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY FRIEND EITHER!” I yelled back. Then I ran out of Margaret’s apartment and stabbed the elevator B-for-basement button so hard I probably broke it for life.

  When I got to my apartment, my kitten was already waiting in the hall for me. That’s how smart he is; he can tell it’s me just from my footsteps.

  I scooped him up and he gave me a kiss on my ear. “That’s another way you’re smart,” I said. “You always know when I’m sad.”

  Then I draped him around my neck the way he likes, and carried him into my room, so I could tell him in private how mean Margaret had been to me. It took a long time, but finally I felt better. And as I sat there, patting his soft paws hanging over my shoulders, I realized something.

  “Hey, Mom,” I said, walking into the kitchen. “Look how long Moisturizer’s legs are getting!”

  My mom looked up from her carrot-peeling to see. “He’s growing up,” she agreed. “I’ve noticed that. He doesn’t sleep as much these days—he’s always exploring, getting into stuff. How was today?”

  “Bad,” I said, thinking about Margaret. I took a carrot and chomped it, hard. Then I remembered school. “And good, too.”

  “Which do you want to start with?”

  “The good,” I decided. “I got picked for Friend of the Week.”

  “Remind me what that is,” Mom said.

  But before I could, Turnip ran into the kitchen. He made a beeline for the pots-and-pans cupboard and dragged out the big spaghetti pot. He clapped it over his head and started whacking it with a wooden spoon, all the while laughing so hard I could hear the drool bubbling up under his spaghetti-pot hat.

  I patted Moisturizer to keep him calm during all the pot-whacking. And I tried to imagine what my brother’s Friend of the Week booklet would say if he ever got to third grade.

  “Mom,” I asked, “do you ever wonder if Corn Kernel is normal?”

  “First of all,” my mother answered without stopping her peeling, “your brother’s name isn’t Corn Kernel. And second of all, of course not! What are you talking about?”

  “Mom! Every day he takes off his shoes and then tries to put them on backward. Not just on the wrong feet, but backward.”

  My mom just shrugged.

  “He thinks the washing machine is really a rocket ship.”

  Mom smiled.

  “He hammers rocks. And even if he hits his head when he swings back, he keeps on doing it!”

  My mom looked down at my brother as if she thought hammering rocks was the smartest, most adorable thing a person could do. “He does!” she agreed. “He’ll do it for hours!”

  Believe me, there were about a hundred more things I could have listed, but I stopped there because I didn’t want to break my mother’s heart about having such a disappointing second kid. I suddenly remembered what Margaret had said about how her mother likes to read her booklet whenever Mitchell drives her crazy. And that’s when I knew. I was going to bring home a wonderful Friend of the Week booklet—so great it would make my parents’ faces crack open with smiling pride. I was going to love showing them that booklet on Friday.

  Okay, fine, I was going to love showing it to that braggy Margaret, too.

  Just as I was enjoying thinking about Margaret reading all my great compliments, my dad came into the kitchen.

  “Dad, I got picked for Friend of the Week—”

  “Clementine, freeze!” he interrupted me. “Do not move one muscle.”

  “What is it—”

  “Try not to panic,” he went on, creeping up to me slowly. “I’ll try to save you.”

  “Dad, what?”

  “Don’t look down now,” he whispered. “But I think…I think your scarf…is alive!” Then he laughed and ruffled Moisturizer’s fur and kissed my forehead.

  “Now,” he said, after he
’d given my brother a kiss through his spaghetti pot, too, “what’s this Friend of the Weak thing?” He flexed his arms. “Aren’t you a Friend of the Strong, too?”

  I laughed. “Friend of the Week. The seven-days kind of week. It’s—”

  My mother interrupted us by giving me a head of lettuce and the salad spinner and handing my father the spoon to stir the chili. This is because she is a really big fan of the Little Red Hen story. Anyone who expects to eat something in our house should expect to help make it. I always make a face about doing dinner chores, but the truth is I like being in the steaming, clattery jumble of dinner-making with everybody else.

  So while my mother mixed the corn bread and my dad put his secret ingredients into the chili and my brother whacked more pots, I made a salad and finally told my parents about Friend of the Week.

  “Every Monday, our teacher pulls a name out of a Kleenex box. That person, who is me this week, gets to be the leader of everything and tell about themselves. And everybody else has to say why it’s so great to have that person around. The best part is that on Friday, they write it all down in a booklet for me to bring home.”

  “Excellent,” my dad said. “I already know exactly what I’m going to write.”

  “Dad! Parents don’t get to write anything. Only the kids.” Then I started to wonder. “Well, what would you write, though? I mean, if you could?”

  “I’d write, ‘I think it’s wonderful to have Clementine in school because otherwise her mother and I would have no idea where the heck she was. If she weren’t in school, that nutball kid would probably have her own television show, or she’d be running a tattoo parlor or dealing blackjack in a casino somewhere by now.’”

  I have lived with my father for my entire life, which is almost three thousand days long now, and I still forget that he thinks he is a comedian. “Dad, that’s not funny,” I told him. “I wouldn’t do any of those things until I’m big. Except…wait. What’s a casino? What’s blackjack? Would I like it?”