Clementine and the Family Meeting Read online

  Her cat, Mascara, went electric and ducked under the bed when he saw that case, so I figure she had been practicing on him, too. Inside the case were dozens of brushes and sponges and tubes and little jars.

  Margaret examined them for a while and finally selected a glittery tube. “We’ll start with a base of Sun-kissed Peach,” she said. “I’ll apply it double-thick, to try to hide those freckles.”

  “I like my freckles!” I said. “Don’t hide them!”

  Too late. Margaret was already dabbing gunk on my face and rubbing it in, and dabbing more gunk on and smearing it around some more. Every once in a while she’d step back and hold her thumb up and squint at me, like a cartoon artist. Then she’d nod as if she was doing an excellent job.

  Every time I wanted to jump off the chair and go home, I remembered about Margaret leaving to go live in California. Margaret is my friend. Even though she is kind of a bossy girl, and even though sometimes she can get kind of crazy about her rules, and even though I sometimes don’t recognize her anymore, she is my friend. And I figured that maybe if my friend could paint makeup all over my face and pretend she was an artist, she wouldn’t move away to California.

  Suddenly Margaret screamed. She clapped her hand over my mouth to shush me, even though she was the one who’d screamed, and even though now she was going to have to wash that hand a hundred times because she is a germ-maniac.

  “What’s the matter?” I hissed through her hand.

  Margaret had turned white and her eyes were popping out. “My mother and Alan are back!” she whispered.

  “So what?” I asked.

  She jumped out into the hall, spun around, and jumped back in again. Margaret takes all kinds of dance lessons—I could see that they were really paying off.

  “We have to go to your apartment,” she said. She tugged my arms out of my sweatshirt sleeves, pulled the sweatshirt up over my head, and then tied the sleeves over it. “We can go out now,” she told me.

  “I can’t see!”

  I heard Margaret growl, and then she unzipped the zipper a little and tugged the opening over one of my eyes and shoved me out the door. She pushed me into the hall past the kitchen.

  “Is that a Clementine under there?” I heard Alan say. “Or maybe an apple or a plum or a banana?”

  Margaret’s mother laughed as if Alan had made a really funny joke. Which he had not. “Your mother told me the news today,” she called out. “A new baby—how exciting!”

  “Nope, not exciting!” I said through my sweatshirt. “I mean, it wouldn’t be exciting for your family to have another baby. You have just the right number of kids right now!”

  I was going to say more, like that her kid might move away if she had another baby, but then Margaret gave me an extra-hard push toward the front door.

  “We’re going down to Clementine’s now,” she called back to her mother. “So, bye.”

  Down in my apartment, we got into my room without anyone seeing us. “How come you want to keep it a secret about the makeup, Margaret?” I asked.

  “The makeup’s not secret,” Margaret said. “It’s just that my mother gets into a bad mood whenever something reminds her of Heather. She won’t even say her name—just calls her Number Five.” Margaret opened her case up again and pulled out some more paint. “Turn your face up. It’s time to do your eyes.”

  Finally Margaret said I was finished and let me look in the mirror. Let me tell you, it was a good thing I’d seen that horror movie with my Uncle Frank, because otherwise I would have fainted from being so scared.

  “Aaauuurrrggghhh!” I yelled. “I look like a brain-sucking alien vampire swamp creature!”

  Margaret stepped back and studied me. “You kind of do,” she admitted. Her shoulders got saggy.

  “That’s okay, Margaret. Maybe you could be that kind of makeup artist. Maybe you could make actors look scary.”

  Margaret brightened up. “Special effects!”

  “Right! Except…” I sighed. “Except I don’t want you to move to California.”

  Margaret helped me wash the makeup off. Then we looked at our bare faces in the mirror for a while.

  “I wouldn’t really move,” she said. “I just like to think about it when things drive me crazy.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, good.”

  After dinner, my grandmother called and asked to talk to me. “I got your letter. Don’t you worry for another minute,” she said. “I’ve already started you a new hat.”

  “But will it have all my favorite colors in it again? Will it be soft, and fit like your hands?”

  “I’ll do my best,” my grandmother promised. “Now, the other reason I called is that I realized I never finished that story I was telling. Put me on speakerphone so everyone can hear, would you, darling?”

  I said sure, and then she started over again. “Now, that time with the boys and the garden hose—oh, that was a good one. Your father was supposed to be in his room, because—”

  My father jumped up from the couch and grabbed the phone and turned off the speakerphone. “Well, we have to go now, Mom,” he said. “It’s a school night. Kids have to get to bed. Bye.” Then he hung up.

  He told my mom to go put her feet up on the couch and sent me to get in my pajamas. My father is pretty good at the Throwing-Someone-Off-the-Track trick. But since I invented it, it doesn’t work on me.

  I raced into my pajamas in five seconds flat. “So what happened with the garden hose?” I asked, skidding back into the living room. “Did you squirt Uncle Frank? Was it summertime?”

  “Your father’s finishing up the dishes,” Mom said from the couch. “I’d like to hear the end of that story, too, so why don’t you—Hey! What in…” Then she jumped up from the couch more suddenly than I think people should do when they are growing other actual people inside them, and yanked up my pajama legs.

  “What happened to you?” she cried. “You look like you were run over by a train!”

  I looked. From the knees down, I did look like I’d been run over by a train! “Can I wear shorts to school tomorrow?” I asked, turning my legs around so I could admire the bruises, which were even better than the ones I’d gotten jumping from the bleachers at Mitchell’s ball game last year.

  “Clementine, what happened to you?” my mother cried again. “Did you have a fall? Did you… Oh. Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She clapped her hand to her forehead. “Bill,” she called. When my dad poked his head out from the kitchen, she pointed to my legs with an I-told-you-so look.

  “Oh,” my dad said, coming over to take a closer look. “Battle wounds from the tools. Sorry. Does it hurt, Sport?”

  “No! It feels great! Can I wear shorts tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely not,” my mother said. “It’s the middle of winter. And people would think…well, I don’t know what they’d think, but it wouldn’t be good. And the other thing you can’t wear is that tool belt anymore.”

  “Mom, no!” I cried.

  My mother folded her arms across her chest.

  “But I got this tool belt at the White House,” I tried. “The president gave it to me for lifelong service to my country. In the Oval Office!”

  My mom just shook her head.

  “It’s an heirloom from the Ming dynasty!”

  My mom rolled her eyes and sighed.

  I looked over at my dad to see if he could help, but he just raised his palms, as if to say, What can I do?

  Then I had a better idea. “I’ll wear my winter boots. The tall ones with the padding.”

  My mom started to say no, but then I could see she was giving up, like maybe she was too tired to argue about things anymore. This might be a good side to having a pregnant mother.

  “Fine,” she said. “You can wear the tool belt if you wear your winter boots underneath. That’s the rule.”

  I jumped up and hugged her before she could change her mind.

  When I came out for breakfast Friday morning, my mom grabbed
my shoulders and turned me around. “Go right back into your room to take that off,” she said. “You are not wearing that tool belt to school.”

  “But I’m going to put my winter boots on!”

  “Not to school,” my mother said in her That’s-final voice.

  “But you said!” I tried in my I’m-a-kid-so-I’ve-got-plenty-of-energy-to-outlast-you voice.

  “Not to school,” my mother said back in her I-am-not-kidding-and-I’ve-got-plenty-of-energy-too voice. I guess it’s not that tiring to be growing a baby.

  My father looked up from pouring coffee and pointed to my bedroom.

  So I went back to my room and took off my tool belt and hung it up over my bedpost. I rolled my sleeve down over the magnetized wristband so it wouldn’t show. Nobody had made any rules about that wristband yet, and I had big plans for it today.

  At recess, I gathered all the kids around me. “I woke up with a superpower,” I announced. “It’s from hanging around with Waylon lately. You can call me Magneto-Girl!”

  Then I scattered the nails I’d brought from my dad’s workbench in a pile on the asphalt. “Stick to me!” I ordered the nails.

  I swept my arm over the piles of nails, and they all clattered up through the air and clinked onto my wrist.

  The kids went wild. But I wasn’t done. I went over to the swings and held my arm out to one of the chains.

  “Come to me,” I ordered the swing.

  And it did! The swing clinked to my wrist and held fast as I raised my arm and swooshed it around.

  The kids went totally crazy then, climbing all over me, trying to grab my arm.

  Waylon held them back. “Leave her alone,” he said. “That’s the way it is with superpowers. She doesn’t have to tell about it if she doesn’t want to.”

  Waylon stayed with me all through recess, to make sure nobody bothered me. When we lined up, I thanked him. “It’s just a magnetic wristband,” I whispered. “For carpenters to hold nails and stuff.”

  “I know,” Waylon said. “My aunt has one.”

  “Oh. Well, that means I don’t really have any superpowers, you know.”

  “That’s okay,” Waylon said. “I had to pretend in the beginning, too.”

  I tried again. “Waylon, I’ve been thinking. I don’t think our project should be about your superpowers.”

  “But they’re really great,” Waylon said. “And really science-y.”

  “I know,” I said. “But Superman never used his for a science project. None of the superheroes I’ve ever heard of did. They all saved their powers for fighting evil. That’s what I think you should do.”

  Waylon looked like he was thinking about my idea, but before he could tell me what he decided, the bell rang. Right away, we lined up for science.

  When we got there, I realized the science room was a dangerous place for someone wearing a magnetic wristband. Cages and microscopes and training bells and dozens of other metal things were just waiting to get me into trouble.

  I unpeeled the Velcro and tossed my wristband onto the bookshelf. It skittered over the top and fell down behind.

  Things disappeared down there, and I couldn’t afford to lose anything else. “Will you help me move the bookshelf?” I asked Waylon.

  We slid the bookshelf out, and there was my wristband, all right, stuck to a metal heating-vent grate halfway up the wall. I reached for it and tugged. The grate swung up a little way before the wristband let go.

  I bent down. There was something inside the duct. Something soft. Something fluffy. Something made of all my favorite colors.

  “My hat!” I cried. “My hat’s inside the heating duct!” I tugged up on the loose grate and it came right off in my hands. Then I reached in for my hat, so happy!

  And just in time I saw. It wasn’t my hat. It was a wad of shredded yarn bits that used to be my hat. I looked closer. “Waylon, look!” I whispered. “Eighteen! I found Eighteen, too!”

  Sure enough, curled up all cozy inside the wool that used to be my hat, peeking over the rim, was Eighteen. Very carefully, I slid the hat-nest onto the palm of my hand and pulled it out.

  And got the surprise of my life.

  Tucked into the furry curl that was Eighteen were five un-furry little curls, pink as erasers. They were squirming around and peeking through their mother’s fur as if they were pretty excited about getting out of that boring heating duct.

  “Babies! Eighteen had babies!” Waylon cried.

  Which was a big mistake, because all the kids came stampeding over. The babies started to shiver and burrow into their mother’s fur.

  “Be careful, be careful! Stay back!” I told everyone, but in a whisper so I didn’t scare the rat babies any more than they already were. “They’re just little. You have to stay back and be quiet! I’m going to put them in a cage now, so they can have some peace.”

  Mrs. Resnick opened up Eighteen’s old cage, but I reminded her about the hole. She got another one, and I filled it with nice soft clean wood shavings and gently slid the hat-nest in. “We have to put it in a dark corner now,” I said. “It’s too bright for them in here.”

  Waylon came over and helped me move the cage. “I guess we can go back to our old project now,” he said. He sounded kind of happy about that, as though it was a relief.

  “Can we?” I asked Mrs. Resnick.

  Mrs. Resnick said she didn’t see any problem at all putting Eighteen back in training on Monday. “Just make sure you write it into your notes that she took a week off. We’ll call it a maternity leave.”

  Waylon and I made a new sign for the cage with everybody’s names: Eighteen, Eighteen and One Fifth, Eighteen and Two Fifths, Eighteen and Three Fifths, Eighteen and Four Fifths, Eighteen and Five Fifths. Then I stood guard over the cage for the rest of the period to make sure the babies were all right.

  Back in Mr. D’Matz’s class that afternoon, I had to hear a lot of “Clementine-pay-attention!”s. And just like before, I was paying attention: I was paying attention to all the things Eighteen’s new family might need over the weekend.

  When the two-fifteen bell rang, I ran back to the science room. “I’m going to take the cage home tonight,” I told Mrs. Resnick. “They might get hungry or lonely, and they might need something.”

  “Well, I don’t know…” Mrs. Resnick said.

  “I will take good care of them,” I told her. “I was very protective of my little brother when he was born. Also, I showed good sense. Immensely good sense.”

  “Well, after watching you this afternoon, I have no trouble believing that,” Mrs. Resnick said. “So yes, that sounds like a good plan.”

  I wrapped the cage up in my coat and carried it carefully to the bus, and on the ride home I didn’t let anyone bother those little babies.

  When I got home, I brought the cage right over to my mom. “See! That’s why Eighteen was getting fatter! He was a she, and she was growing babies inside her. Just like you.”

  “Well, let’s hope there’s only one baby in here!” She lifted her shirt and patted her stomach.

  “Hey, you are fatter!” I said.

  My mom rubbed her belly. “Yep, a little. It’s starting to show.”

  “What does it feel like?” I asked. “To have a whole new person growing inside you?”

  My mom sat down on the couch and leaned back and thought for a while. A pretty smile spread over her face. “That’s a big question,” she said slowly. “A big answer. But I’ll try. It feels like… it feels like you have the most wonderful secret that makes everything… Oh, I know! Remember what you said when you got your kitten? You said that afterward, it sounded like all the regular noise in the world had turned into music. Well, that’s what it’s like, Clementine. The wonderful secret of having a baby coming makes all the world’s noise turn into music.”

  “Did you feel that way when you were going to have me, too?” I asked.

  “Oh, honey,” my mom said, putting her arm around me. “I still feel like
that with you.”

  I gave her a big hug, and this time, I didn’t care at all that I was hugging the baby, too. Then I got up and brought the cage into my room, where Eighteen’s family would be safe. I pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote another letter to my grandmother, so she would know that her hat was still making someone happy and warm.

  Then I took out the notebook where I keep reminders to myself for when I’m a grown-up.

  After TATTOOS—YES! I had written: BABIES—NO.

  I crossed off NO and wrote, WELL, MAYBE.

  And then I went into the kitchen—I had one more important thing to do.

  After I did it, I sat down and waited. The first person to come in was my father. He went to the refrigerator and took out some grapes. “Hey,” he said. “The FAMILY MEETING! sign is up again. Who called the meeting?”

  I gave a shrug. “The meeting’s tonight,” I said. “I guess we’ll find out then.”

  “I see,” said my dad. He popped a few grapes into his mouth and gave me a funny look.

  My mother came in next and noticed right away. She looked at my dad and he shook his head. She looked at me. “What’s on the agenda?” she asked.

  I shrugged again. “The meeting’s tonight. I guess you’ll have to wait until then to find out.”

  My mom laughed. “Well, fair’s fair. All right, I’ll wait.”

  Finally it was after dinner. “I called this meeting,” I said when we were all in our places, “to talk about something important. Our family is having a baby. And we need to protect it, to keep it safe.

  “We need to make some rules. Like, we have to tell Gram and Pop, ‘No golf carts or bingo in Florida.’ And when George the plumber comes, we have to check his bag to make sure the baby didn’t crawl inside. And Uncle Frank can’t take the baby to the movies. And what if it’s allergic to something, like Yam is? Also, we’d better get Margaret to teach us about germ protection, and Mom, you should put a lock on the art-supply organizer I got you.”