Читать книгу First Star I See - Jaye Andras Caffrey - Страница 9

2 Peevers and Other Crew Mates

After lunch, Ms. Bourgeois assigned us topics for our research papers. Planets went to the first nine children, with Jessica getting Earth. (Somehow, that didn’t seem fair.) Will Schiffer was eighth, and he got Neptune. After Breanna was assigned Pluto, the rest of the kids got their assignments one by one: the sun, moon, asteroids, meteoroids, comets, constellations, satellites, and telescopes. Finally, she assigned stars to me.

Stars! I thought. I’ve got a head start! After all, Breanna and I have seen every single episode of Star Warrior at least once.

That, of course, is just another one of the reasons I like Breanna so much. Unlike Jessica, Breanna doesn’t think I am dumb. In fact, she says I’m funny and that I have good ideas. She has pretty black hair, which she wears in cornrows or in a ponytail, with bangs like mine. (My hair, however, is curly reddish-brown and “impossible” according to my mom, so she always puts it in braids.)

Breanna is very smart, and she almost never gets in trouble.

Unlike me.

Take what happened in geography class today, for instance. After the big announcement, Ms. Bourgeois told us to use colored pencils to make a map of the United States as part of our geography lesson. Somewhere between Mississippi and Texas I slipped into my own thoughts. I decided to add the state capitals for extra credit.

Then I found out that if you added a few extra capitals in the right places, it made a beautiful web, especially if you marked them with stars. Hmmm. Stars reminded me of the opening scene of my favorite program. I started thinking about Dr. Kelsey sitting on the auditorium stage with the virtual crysto-laser in her lap. I imagined sitting right next to her and thinking of what I would say to her. I lifted my head, brushed my hair out of my eyes, and leaned back in my seat to admire my star-spangled country.

“Paige.” Seeing Ms. Bourgeois standing over my desk made me jump. I hadn’t even noticed her coming.

“Uh… yes, ma’am?” Full of dread, I waited for her to say something about the map, but she didn’t.

“I’d like for you to go see Mr. Rodriguez.” Breanna and I looked at each other, and her eyes were full of sympathy.

My heart sank. I must really be in trouble. Mr. Rodriguez is the assistant principal. Actually, if I wasn’t in trouble, going to see him would not have been so bad. He’s tall with black hair and kind, dark eyes, and Breanna thinks he looks just like Captain Stone Griffith. If you squint at him a certain way, he kind of does. We used to pretend that he really was Captain Stone, and one day Breanna even wrote in the dust on his car window, “BB loves CSG” (for Captain Stone Griffith).

Nevertheless, this trip to see him could mean nothing but bad news. What had I done wrong? I tried to read Ms. Bourgeois’ face. She didn’t look like she was upset with me at all; in fact, she looked like she was trying to be nice.

I could hear the kids whispering, “Paige has to see Mr. Rodriguez!”

I did what any self-respecting kid would do under the circumstances: I stalled for time. “Um… Go see Mr. Rodriguez? Why?” My voice sounded funny in my ears. “Is it because I didn’t do my map right?”

Ms. Bourgeois looked down at my work and frowned like she was noticing my map for the first time, but she said, “No, Paige. He would like to have a little talk with you. He’ll send you right back to class when you’re done.”

She stood there waiting. It was no use. I got up feeling like I was going off to my doom, just like Dr. Kelsey must have felt that time she was on Planet Priamus and she allowed the Grumblions to capture her in order to save her star fleet. I walked as slowly as possible to the school office, trying desperately to think what I could have done.

“Sit there,” said Ms. Landry, the school secretary, when I finally walked into the office. She pointed to an old wooden bench next to Mr. Rodriguez’s door. I obeyed quietly. Ms. Landry was a fat, blonde lady with painted-on eyebrows. She returned to typing on her computer keyboard and ignored me.

I was glad. I chewed on my fingernails and, even though I wasn’t supposed to, bumped my feet against the bench. What difference did it make now, anyway? After all, I was dead meat as soon as Mom found out I had been sent to the office. What on earth did I do? I felt like my dog Peevers waiting for Mom to yell “NO!” after Peevers left a stinky present on the living room rug.

Thinking of Peevers cheered me up some. She’s a good-natured, but goofy, Labrador mix that Dad brought home the week before he left to move in with his girlfriend, Susan. My little brother Mark and I fell in love with Peevers right away. She had big chocolate eyes and soft brown fur and was even more hyper than Mark. (If you knew my little brother, you’d know why I didn’t even think that was possible at first!)

But even as I let the puppy tug at my shoelaces and lick my chin, I knew Mom would send it packing with Dad. After all, he had violated the First Rule of Mothers, which neither Mark nor I had ever been able to get around: Don’t bring pets home without consulting Mom first.

Luckily for Mark and me, Susan refused to take the dog.

“I don’t believe that man!” stormed Mom after she got off the phone with Dad that afternoon. “He expects me to take a pet that his girlfriend doesn’t want!” She threw down the dish towel she was holding and kicked it angrily.

Later, when she had calmed down, Mark and I pleaded to keep the pup. Mom finally gave in, saying we might need a watchdog, and muttering that we were getting a “better deal than poor Susan.”

Mom started calling the puppy “My Pet Peeve,” explaining that a “pet peeve” is the most annoying thing you can imagine. Before long, our new puppy’s name was shortened to “Peevers.”

I was in first grade when Dad moved out and Peevers moved in. Until that year, we lived in a big two-story brick house on Pecan Street in New Orleans. There, Mark (who was only three at the time) and I each had our own room, and we even had this big playroom for our toys. Peevers lived in the house with us, but could go in and out the doggy door leading to our big backyard, which was surrounded by a brick wall that was fun to balance on when Mom wasn’t looking.

All in all, it had been a pretty rotten year for our family. Right before Christmas that year, Mom was laid off from her job at Hansen’s Antique Shop. She decided to go back to finish her college degree, but even after she had graduated, she couldn’t find a job. So Mom, Mark, and I moved to Milton Street, to a little wooden house that needed lots of repairs. There, my brother and I had to share a bedroom, and we had no playroom. A rusty chain-link fence surrounded the backyard. Using the excuse that our new house was too small, Mom insisted from day one that Peevers spend less time in the house and more time in the fenced area.

But Peevers just hated that yard. As soon as we put her back there and closed the gate, she dug a hole under the fence and made her escape. After trying lots of tricks to keep Peevers penned in, Mom sort of gave up.

Peevers took advantage of her new freedom to become Milton Street’s most notorious criminal—a real toy thief. She regularly stalked the kids playing outside with their toys, waiting for a chance to strike.

Here’s how she did it. First, she picked some poor unsuspecting victim like William Clementson from down the block. William would be innocently playing with his action figures in the dirt in front of his house, happily unaware of approaching danger. Peevers would go slinking through the hydrangea bushes until she was just a few paw-widths away. Then she rushed the poor kid, jumping around, licking his hand, and pretending she wanted to play. No kid could resist her… but it was a trap!

As soon as William put his toy down to pet Peevers, it was no-more-Miss-Nice-Dog. She pounced. With the toy clenched in her jaws, she took off like a furry rocket. William followed, screaming, straight to our backyard where Peevers had started to bury her loot.

To break Peevers of this habit, Mom tried everything, including the occasional thwack with the Times-Picayune newspaper. But the dog seemed determined to create her own little toy cemetery in our backyard. Not even the Sunday paper could stop her!

I was thinking so hard about Peevers that I forgot I was waiting to see the assistant principal. When Mr. Rodriguez’s door opened suddenly, I jumped. A fifth-grade boy emerged with a black eye and a torn shirt. His good eye looked red as if he’d been crying. I knew how he felt. The tear ducts in my eyes started to sting as I wondered what my own punishment would be.