Clementine and the Family Meeting Read online

  Text copyright © 2011 by Sara Pennypacker

  Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Marla Frazee

  Many thanks to Claire Thompson for her drawing in chapter 1 and for her handwriting help in chapter 3.

  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 978-1-4231-9860-4

  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

  More Honors and Praise for Clementine

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Sneak Peek of Clementine and the Spring Trip

  This one is for my writing group, whose meetings are like family meetings to me.

  —S. P.

  To my niece, Emma Bradley

  —M. F.

  The very first thing Margaret said when she sat down next to me on the bus Monday morning was that I looked terrible. “You have droopy eyebags and a pasty complexion. Absolutely no glow. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m having a nervous breakdown,” I told her. “Our FAMILY MEETING! sign is up, and I have to wait until tonight to find out if I’m in trouble.”

  “Of course you’re in trouble,” Margaret said. “Probably something really big. Bright pink blush and a sparkly eye shadow is what I recommend.”

  This winter vacation, Margaret visited her father in Hollywood, California. When she got back, I had to listen for three hundred hours to how great his new girlfriend was. “She’s the makeup artist for his commercials,” Margaret said all melty-voiced, as if she was the one who was in love with this Heather person.

  “Someone who puts makeup on people isn’t an artist,” I informed Margaret. “My mother is an artist. Not her.”

  “Heather is too an artist,” Margaret snorted. “And she’s been teaching me some of her professional techniques.” Then Margaret had blabbered on and on about advanced lip-gloss tips and the proper application of eyeliner until I thought I would die of bore-dumb.

  Whenever Margaret talks about makeup, I feel exactly the way I felt when we took my grand-parents to the airport so they could move to Florida: lonely. Even though Margaret isn’t going anywhere, when she talks about makeup, I feel like I’m back at the airport again and she’s getting on a plane for a long trip to somewhere without me.

  “I don’t need any blush!” I yelled, a little louder than I meant to. “I don’t need any makeup at all! I just need to know what I’m in trouble about!”

  Margaret rolled her eyes at me and then dug around in her pocketbook. She pulled out a pointy silver tube that looked dangerous, like a bullet.

  “Margaret!” I gasped. “Are you putting on lipstick?”

  Margaret smeared the lipstick on, pooched her lips out, and smucked them at me. “Yep,” she said. Smuck-smuck-smuck. “So what? I’ll take it off before we get there.”

  “Mar! Ga! Ret!” I cried. “You are ten! Years! Old!”

  Margaret had had her tenth birthday while she was on that Hollywood vacation. Since then, she’d been acting like she was twenty-five or something. Sometimes I didn’t even recognize her. Plus, I didn’t get to go to a party for her.

  Margaret smucked her shiny pink lips at me again. “Heather says I am very mature for my age.” She waved the lipstick tube in front of my face. “You want some?”

  I tapped my lips. “Mouth germs,” I warned her. “I can feel them crawling around.”

  Margaret yanked the lipstick back in horror. She spent the rest of the bus ride wiping everything in her pocketbook with hand sanitizer. Being a germ-maniac was about the only thing I recognized about the new Margaret.

  I opened my backpack and pulled out my IMPORTANT PAPERS folder and found a good surprise: the science fair project report Waylon and I had written was still in there! I’m supposed to keep it until the end of the project, and every day that it’s still in my backpack feels like a miracle.

  As I started reading over the report, I calmed down. This is because lately I really like science class.

  I didn’t always. In the beginning, science class was a big disappointment, let me tell you.

  On the first day of third grade, Mrs. Resnick, the science teacher, had started talking about what a great year it was going to be.

  I looked around the science room.

  No monkeys with funnel hats and electrodes. No alien pods leaking green slime. No human heads sitting on platters under glass jars talking to each other, like I’d seen in a movie once, and don’t bother telling my parents about it because I was grounded for a week already and so was Uncle Frank, who brought me to the movie.

  No smoking test tubes, no sizzling magnetic rays, no rocket launch controls. Just some posters on the walls and a bunch of tall tables with sinks, as if all you would do in a room like this was wash your hands. Margaret had told me she liked science class, and now I knew why: Margaret says “Let’s go wash our hands” the way other people say “Let’s go to a party and eat cake!”

  “Does anyone have any questions?” Mrs. Resnick had asked that first day.

  I sure did. I wanted to ask, “You call this a science room?” But instead, I just said, “Excuse me, I think there’s been a mistake,” in my most polite voice.

  “A mistake?” Mrs. Resnick asked.

  “Right,” I said. “I’m in the wrong science room.”

  “The wrong science room?” she repeated.

  I nodded. “I want the one with the invisibility chamber and mind-control buttons and mutant brains spattered on the ceiling. The one with the experiments.”

  “I want that one, too,” Waylon said. I gave him a big smile.

  “Oh, there are plenty of experiments going on here,” Mrs. Resnick said. “We’re going to have quite a year.”

  Mrs. Resnick seemed nice, so I didn’t tell her the other bad news: that she had the wrong hair. Scientists are supposed to have wild science-y hair—here is a picture of that:

  But hers was just kind of normal supermarket-y, television-mother-y kind of hair. Probably she was embarrassed about that.

  Now, though, I like science class. Mrs. Resnick is a good teacher, even with her normal hair. I like our science fair project, and I like our rat, Eighteen. I like that I got Waylon for a partner. All the kids begged him to be their partner, because he’s the scienciest kid in third grade. But he picked me, because I’m the only one who believes he’s going to be a superhero when he grows up.

  And today, I had an extra thing to like about science class: for forty whole minutes, I wouldn’t have to think about our family meeting or Margaret’s lipstick smucking.

  “We’re here,” I said. “Wipe your mouth off, Margaret.”

  Margaret scowled, but she wiped off the lipstick and we went into school.

  It was an extra-boring day, but finally it was time to line up to go to the science room. As soon as we got there, I saw that something was wrong. I ran over to the rats’ cages. “Eighteen’s missing!” I cr
ied.

  I shook the trail mix we used as treats and called for him, while Waylon poked through the sawdust. “He’s really missing, all right,” Waylon announced.

  Mrs. Resnick came over and frowned into the cage. “They were all here Friday when I left. Check through the bedding again—I’ll bet he’s just hiding.”

  I feathered away the wood curls more carefully.

  And then I saw. “Look,” I said. In the back corner, under the water bottle, a rat-belly-size hole had been chewed through the plastic floor.

  Mrs. Resnick was really frowning now. “He’s probably been gone all weekend. Still, let’s search the room.”

  We looked everywhere. We looked in the second graders’ volcano models. We plowed through the trays of seeds the fourth graders were germinating. We poked through the fifth graders’ crystal collections. We even looked in the paper-towel dispenser.

  No Eighteen.

  After a while, the other kids had to go back to their rat-training, and only Waylon and I kept looking. When the bell rang, we still hadn’t found him.

  “Maybe he’ll show up when I feed the other rats this afternoon,” Mrs. Resnick said. “You two head back to your class now.” Waylon and I said all right and went back to 3B. But it wasn’t all right.

  A little while ago, my kitten, Moisturizer, got lost in Boston. All the bad feelings I had when he was missing—worrying about him being scared, or getting hurt, and about whether it was my fault—came back over me.

  All day long, I worried about that little rat. I had to hear about a hundred “Clementine, pay attention!”s from my teacher, and every time, I was paying attention.

  I was paying attention to Maria’s chunky boots that looked like tires on the bottom, and worrying about someone stomping on Eighteen. I was paying attention out the window to all that ice and snow and imagining how cold Eighteen would be if he’d gotten outside. When the janitor came down the hall, I was paying attention to his gigantic vacuum cleaner and thinking how he wouldn’t even notice if a little tiny white rat got sucked up inside. After that, I started wondering if our school had a trash compactor, and that got me so worried I almost gave myself a heart attack.

  Finally, after three hundred hours, the school’s-over bell rang. I got my stuff from the coatrack and asked Mr. D’Matz if I could go back to the science room.

  He pointed to the clock. “Don’t miss the bus.”

  The bell rings at two fifteen and the buses open their doors at two twenty and my bus is the second to leave, which is at two twenty-eight, so I had thirteen minutes. “I won’t,” I said. I set my inside clock for twelve minutes, because one had already been wasted talking to my teacher. My inside clock keeps perfect time, and so I am never late for anything. Okay, fine, I’m late a lot, but it’s only because I forget to set my inside clock. But I was remembering now.

  I ran down the hall even though the rule is no running in the hall, and I was there in fifty-one seconds.

  I dumped my coat and stuff on top of the bookshelf and skidded over to the cage. “He didn’t come back?” I asked.

  “Who?” Mrs. Resnick asked back.

  “Our rat, who’s missing,” I reminded her in a patient, kind voice, the voice I wish people would use with me if I forget something. “Didn’t he come back when you fed them?”

  She said, “No, sorry.”

  I sprinkled some trail mix outside his cage in case he came back, and then my inside clock said it was time to go. On the bus, I worried about Eighteen so much my head hurt.

  Usually when I get home, things get better, but not that day.

  “Hi, honey,” my mom said when I came in the door. “Where’s your hat?”

  “My hat?” I felt on top of my head. “My hat!”

  I love my hat! My grandmother knit it out of my favorite colors, which are all of them, and sent it to me on my birthday. When I put it on, I could almost feel her soft hands on my head.

  “Where is my hat?” I wailed. “I know I had it when I was leaving.…”

  “Well then, it’s either at school or on the bus. Remember to get it tomorrow. You must be freezing, though. How about if we fix some hot chocolate?”

  When I went over to the refrigerator to get the milk out, I saw our FAMILY MEETING! sign again. A worried feeling spread into exactly the place that had opened up for the hot chocolate. I pointed to the sign.

  “What’s on the agenda?” I asked. Agenda is Latin for “list of stuff to talk about,” so when you say it, you’re saving your mouth a lot of work. Plus, you sound smart.

  My mom took the jug from me and sniffed it, and then nodded at it with her Good-job! smile, as if she was proud of our milk for not turning sour. She looked back at me. “What? Oh, the agenda?” She poured some milk into a saucepan on the stove. “You’ll find out tonight. Your brother’s asleep on the couch. Would you go wake him, please?”

  I said, “Sure!” with a giant smile, in case what was on the agenda was Help out more cheerfully. As I went by, I picked my wet mittens off the floor and hung them over the radiator, in case it was Don’t be messy with your winter clothes. And when I woke Acorn Squash, I sat down and said hello to his feet along with him, loud enough for my mom to hear, in case it was Be more patient with your brother.

  My mom set three mugs and a bowl of almonds on the kitchen table, and we all sat at our places. Right away, my brother started to tell us about going sledding with Mitchell on Sunday, which is a story we have heard three hundred times already.

  “What do we have to talk about tonight?” I tried again, when he took a break. Then I said, “Please-pass-the-almonds-excuse-me-thank-you,” in case it was Better table manners.

  “The meeting’s tonight,” my mother said. “You’ll have to wait until then to find out.”

  I heaved such a deep sigh into my mug that my hot chocolate sloshed. Waiting is my hardest thing.

  Especially for family meetings.

  Because even though my parents say they are about things we have to talk over as a family, I have noticed they are usually about something I am doing wrong.

  If my father calls a meeting, it’s usually about his tools—about how he needs to know where they are because of his work, and so it’s important to put them back when you borrow them. Even though it’s a family meeting, he looks right at me when he’s explaining this. Then he says, “Oh, never mind. I forgot that I let your uncle Frank use those vise grips last week. Sorry, Clementine.”

  Okay, fine, it only happened that way once.

  The other times I get up and dig around under my bed until I find the tool my father must have dropped when he leaned over to say good night to me the night before.

  When my mother calls a family meeting, it’s usually because she thinks my brother and I are eating too much junk food. She talks about nutrition for a while and says we have to feed our bodies well. And my father says, “Right! If I had a Rolls-Royce, I sure wouldn’t put cheap gas in the tank!”

  Turnip and I feel so good about being the Rolls-Royces of kids that we get up and pretend to throw away our gum. While we’re up we check on the candy we keep hidden in the Play-Doh box, and then we come back and say we feel a lot healthier now, thanks, and for the rest of the meeting, Squash pretends he’s a car.

  No matter who calls the meeting, I make sure to remind everybody of what a great idea it would be if our family got a gorilla. That’s my agenda.

  I looked around the table. My mother and my brother were just sitting there drinking hot chocolate, crunching almonds, and laughing as if the FAMILY MEETING! sign was still back in the junk drawer where it belonged. The worried feeling crawled through my whole body like worms.

  “So,” I said, “has Uncle Frank borrowed any of Dad’s tools lately?”

  “Not that I know of,” Mom said.

  I wiped off my cocoa mustache with a napkin and took some more almonds from the bowl. “We sure are eating healthy these days.”

  “We’re doing pretty well,” Mom agreed
. Then she collected our empty mugs, as if that was the end of that.

  My brother went off to play in the living room, and I slumped over onto the table.

  “What’s the matter?” my mom asked, patting my back.

  “Everything,” I sighed. “First, Eighteen is missing.”

  “Eighteen?”

  My nervous breakdown had made my mouth too tired to talk, so I pulled out my science project report and handed it over.

  My mother read it out loud.

  Our class is testing different things that might make a rat learn better. They are called factors. Each team chose a different factor to test.

  For example, Lilly and Maria are playing music for their rat while it practices the maze. Willy and Norris-Boris-Morris put a television show on. That’s not such a hot idea because Willy and Norris-Boris end up watching the show instead of their rat. Plus, lots of times the show is about things that might scare a rat, like cats—there sure are a lot of cats on television.

  Waylon and Clementine decided to find out if eating snacks would help a rat learn. Because we both think that eating snacks helps us when we’re trying to learn things.

  Eighteen’s doing great learning the maze. The only problem is that with so many treats he’s getting kind of fat—it’s hard for him to squeeze through some of the tunnels. At the end, we will test all the rats against each other, and then we’ll know.

  “What a wonderful report!” my mother said.

  I tried to lift my head from the table, but it was too tired. “Waylon wrote it,” I admitted. “I only did the part about Willy and Norris-Boris.”

  “Well, it sounds like a good project,” she said.

  “Not without a rat, it won’t be.”

  Just then, my father walked in. And suddenly, my nervous breakdown was over!

  “Oh, wow!” I said, jumping up. My father was wearing his new tool belt. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my whole entire life. It was rugged looking but made of soft, bendy leather, the color of butterscotch pudding, and covered with loops and rings and hooks and snaps. It looked like a holster for a cowboy with lots of guns.