Two Friends, One Dog, and a Very Unusual Week, page 2
“There is nothing like a hammock for sleeping,” Rani announced. “Have you ever tried it? The dreams are much better than the ones you get in an ordinary bed. Of course, I had the best dreams of my life when I was sleeping on an iceberg in Antarctica.”
“You did?” Emily asked. Surely this girl was joking. Nobody ever slept on an iceberg. Did they?
“Of course I did. Shared it with three penguins and a polar bear. The polar bear wanted to eat the penguins, so Otto had to stay up all night to keep watch. But I went to sleep and had the loveliest dreams. All white and silver. Like dreaming inside the moon.”
Emily’s eyes went to the dog, who was licking cookie crumbs from his whiskers.
“You’re joking,” she said, relieved. She never liked that sticky, halfway feeling of wondering if you should laugh or not.
“Of course I am,” Rani agreed. “There aren’t any polar bears in Antarctica. Cookie?”
Emily sat on the floor beside the hammock, munching on a cookie. “Are you really going to stay up here?” she asked. It didn’t seem like a place people could actually live, hammock or no hammock. Where was the kitchen? What about the bathroom? Emily would never dare to ask, but really—you had to have one.
“Curfinly,” Rani said with her mouth full. She swallowed. “There are leopard seals, though.”
“In the attic?”
“No, silly. In Antarctica. Pretty much as fierce as polar bears. You do not want to go swimming with them, let me tell you!”
Emily was quite sure she would never want to go swimming in Antarctica, leopard seals or no leopard seals. “Is the rest of your furniture coming soon?” she asked, still trying to understand how Rani’s family was going to make this attic into a place fit for living.
“Oh, I suppose so.” Rani sounded a bit annoyed by the idea. “I don’t encourage it, but it does tend to follow me wherever I go.”
“What does?” Were they still talking about leopard seals?
“Furniture. It’s very persistent. These are excellent cookies.” Rani handed Emily another one.
“But—” Emily’s brain was starting to feel as if it had been twisted into a figure eight. “What about your mom? Where’s she going to sleep?”
Rani’s blue eyes widened as she stared at Emily in what looked like bewilderment. “Well, in Patagonia, of course. That’s where she is.”
That night, Emily lay awake in bed, thinking of Rani swinging gently in her hammock, Otto snoring on the floor beneath her.
It couldn’t be true about Rani’s mother. Could it?
Rani made stuff up—that was for sure. She’d admitted it. She’d said herself that the thing about sleeping on an iceberg with three penguins and a polar bear wasn’t true.
Which part exactly wasn’t true, though? The penguins? The polar bear? Or the whole iceberg?
So probably the thing about Rani’s mother being in Patagonia wasn’t true either. They weren’t quite lies, the things Rani said, Emily decided sleepily. They were…like poetry, sort of. Something that was supposed to sound pretty but not be an actual fact, not in the way it was a fact that 2 + 2 = 4, or that birds hatch out of eggs.
Emily fell asleep imagining her bed rocking gently back and forth.
On Sunday Emily did not get another glimpse of Rani. And she didn’t hear any sound at all from the floor above. But that didn’t stop her from thinking about her new neighbor.
The next morning she sat up with an idea tingling in her brain.
What if she asked Rani to walk to school with her?
Emily shoveled down her breakfast and got ready as quickly as she could. She had to wrestle her feet into her shoes. They were getting too tight and there wasn’t very much room for her toes anymore, but she got them on at last, said goodbye to her mother, ran up to the attic, and knocked.
“Come in!” called a cheerful voice.
Emily tugged at the doorknob. “It’s locked!”
“Otto, go open the door,” she heard Rani say. “What kind of a butler are you?”
In a moment there was a click and the doorknob turned in Emily’s hand. She pushed. The door opened. Otto was sitting just inside. He wagged his tail briefly.
“Um, thanks,” Emily said. She patted him a little cautiously on the head. “Rani?”
Rani was sitting cross-legged in the green armchair, an empty paper plate on her lap. Her T-shirt today was a fiery red. The sleeves were black with silver polka dots and looked like they had come from a different shirt entirely.
“Your dad’s cookies make a stupendifferous breakfast,” she exclaimed cheerfully, wiping her mouth. “I’m sorry I don’t have any for you. Otto ate yours. I told him not to, but he did.”
Very delicately, Otto burped. He turned his head away.
“Oh,” said Emily. “That’s okay. I had oatmeal.” She peered around the apartment.
There was no more furniture than there had been on Saturday. No bed other than the hammock. No sign of another person at all.
“Um,” said Emily.
All of a sudden there was a nervous flutter high up in her stomach.
Emily knew what kind of a kid she was. The responsible kind. The kind teachers asked to take a message to the office. The kind who hung up her coat without being asked. The kind who had never been late to school. Not even once.
Rani was clearly a different kind of kid.
Maybe she would not want to walk to school with someone like Emily. But Emily was here, in the attic, standing right in front of Rani. She had to say something.
Something better than um.
“I was wondering,” she said.
Rani nodded encouragingly, as if she were excited to hear what Emily had been wondering about.
“If you wanted. To walk to school?” Emily mumbled. “If you’re going to my school, I could show you the way.”
Although it seemed a little funny to think that a girl like Rani would need to be shown anything.
“School?” Rani asked. She tipped her head a little to one side. “What’s school like?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Course not. Never been.” Rani licked her fingers one by one.
“But you have to go to school,” Emily said. “There’s a law.”
“But there aren’t any schools in Antarctica. Or in the rainforests of Borneo. Unless you think the orangutans want to learn long division. Maybe they’d like that.” Rani paused, as if she were considering how much the orangutans would like math worksheets. “Orangutans can be very snobby, you know. They’d have tea parties and only invite their own particular friends. There were a lot of hurt feelings. Is your school like that, or can anybody come?”
“Anybody can come. I mean, any kid. Kids have to,” Emily said again. “And I know that’s not true, about the orangutans.”
“Of course it’s not true. Orangutans don’t drink tea. What do all those kids do in school all day long?”
Suddenly Emily was not quite sure what anybody did in school all day long. “Learn stuff. I guess.”
“Well, I already know stuff.” Rani set the plate aside and jumped up. “But I don’t mind learning more. I’ll come and check it out.” Rani snatched up her big red backpack. “Come on, Otto. Let’s go to school!”
Everything that Rani did, she did at top speed. Emily found herself trailing both Rani and Otto down the stairs. “I don’t think dogs can come,” she said to Rani’s back.
“I thought you said anybody could come!” Rani called back. “Anyway, orangutans mostly drink coffee.”
Emily had been walking the four blocks between her apartment and the Henrietta Minnow School for five years, ever since she’d been in kindergarten and had held her mom’s hand the entire way. Some days she walked by herself. Sometimes she met up with a friend from her class—Maureen Kenilworth, maybe, or Annie Park or Lena Horowitz.
But she’d never walked to school with somebody like Rani.
They passed the deli next door to the apartment building, and Rani waved to Mr. Rose, who was inside mopping the floor. He waved back and smiled as Rani snagged a shiny apple off the table out front and bit into it. She tossed a second one to Emily.
Emily caught it awkwardly. “Um…I don’t have any money,” she said.
“You don’t need any! Right, Mr. Rose?” Rani grinned and skipped ahead, munching her apple.
A little alarmed, Emily glanced at Mr. Rose, but he didn’t seem angry. “Sure thing, Rani!” he called after her.
While Emily was wondering if she was going to pay for the apples later, Rani darted into a bakery. She came out with a couple of cinnamon rolls and handed one to Emily. Then she shared her own with Otto.
No one at the bakery seemed upset, any more than Mr. Rose had been. And the cinnamon roll smelled amazing. Emily dropped her apple core into a trash can and took a bite, tasting sweetness all the way down to her toes.
Emily chewed while Rani skipped ahead and sang silly songs to babies in strollers, spun around streetlights, and ran up the front steps of apartment buildings so that she could slide down the railings.
“Keeping them polished!” she called cheerfully, patting her rear end.
They turned a corner and crossed a street and were now only half a block from the Henrietta Minnow School. Rani clapped her hands at the sight of the stone wall that ran around the school and enclosed the playground.
“Oh, perfect!” she cried out in delight. “You didn’t say there was a wall!”
In a moment, Rani was up on the top of the wall, striding confidently and waving at passersby.
Emily’s mouth was full of cinnamon roll. She had to swallow before she could warn Rani. “Kids aren’t allowed up there!” she called, hurrying along the sidewalk next to Otto. Rani’s silver sneakers were several inches above the top of Emily’s head.
“Not allowed?” Rani turned a neat cartwheel, her shoes flashing. “Who says?” she asked while upside down.
“The teachers!” Emily gasped in dismay. “Oh, Rani, you’ll get in trouble. Please! They really don’t like kids being up there.”
Rani had landed her cartwheel. She stood squarely on both feet, hands on hips, and peered down at Emily. “Well, that’s not fair. Why do the teachers get the wall all to themselves? I bet they’re not even good at cartwheels.” She looked toward the pair of wide iron gates that led into the playground. Next to the gates, the school flag snapped in the wind at the top of its pole.
“Race you!” Rani shouted and charged ahead.
Down on the sidewalk, Emily threw away the rest of her cinnamon roll and started off after her. How could such a tiny person be so fast?
She had to dodge around Penelope Pinkney and her mother. “Goodness, Emily, slow down! Manners!” Mrs. Pinkney said. “And what is that—dog! Dog! Why is there a dog here? Why isn’t it on a leash? Shoo! Shoo!”
Penelope let out a little shriek as Otto brushed past.
Both gates had been propped open to let students and parents in. Just before she reached them, Rani stopped running. She plopped down to sit on the wall next to the flagpole, facing the playground and swinging her legs.
Emily hurried through the gates. “Rani? Please, you have to come down,” she panted.
“Naturally,” Rani agreed. “Everything that goes up must come down, and the gravity here is in perfect working order.”
She twisted around to dig in her backpack and tug something out—a shiny black tube. She put it to her eye. Emily realized that it was a telescope.
“What an excellent view!” Rani exclaimed. “What’s the tall building over there?”
“The Mayflower Hotel? Rani, really…”
“Is it shut up?”
“Yes, my dad said so. He says it’s a shame. He says it’s a cool old place. Please come down, Rani?”
“I will soon.” Rani snapped the telescope shut. “I think I may have to put off going to school for a few days, though. Tell your teachers to enjoy walking on the wall.”
Emily glanced around. Maybe nobody had noticed what Rani was doing.
But that was too much to hope for. Near the entrance to the school, Mrs. Pinkney stood talking to Mr. Cleary, the principal. The next moment he was hurrying across the playground toward Rani and Emily.
Emily winced. She hated to watch people get in trouble. It always made a squishy sensation grow in her stomach, right under her rib cage.
And it was going to be especially bad watching Rani get in trouble. Rani acted as if she didn’t know what trouble was.
“Oh my. My goodness. What’s happening here, Emily?” Mr. Cleary asked. He stared at Rani, still seated on the wall. “I don’t think I know you. Do I?”
“My friend Emily brought me,” Rani said as cheerfully as ever. “She said anyone could come, because it’s not like a club where some people aren’t allowed.”
Mr. Cleary actually hesitated. Emily knew why. “Never exclude anyone,” was a big rule at the Henrietta Minnow School. If someone wanted to play, you had to let them—even if the someone was Penelope Pinkney.
Then Emily’s mind backtracked to what Rani had just said.
My friend Emily…
They were friends already? Rani and Emily?
She took a quick breath and spoke up. “I didn’t get a chance to tell Rani about nobody being allowed to climb the wall,” she said. “Sorry.”
Emily braced herself as the uncomfortable feeling in her stomach swelled up toward her throat. Now she’d be in trouble too.
“Oh, Emily did say about the wall, but I really think the teachers should share with the children,” Rani said earnestly. “It’s not fair if they’re the only ones who get to climb it.”
Mr. Cleary shook his head. His wispy brown hair quivered anxiously.
“I think—I don’t quite—teachers don’t climb the wall,” he said. “And furthermore—”
“Oh, they should!” Rani’s eyes were wide with surprise. “You get such an excellent view from up here!”
She jumped down, landed lightly, and glanced at the gates. “Coming, Otto!” she called.
Mr. Cleary looked the same way. He twitched all over. Otto was sitting next to the flagpole. A kindergartener had draped herself over his back like a cape. Another was having his face licked.
“A dog! A dog on the playground!” Mr. Cleary gulped. “It’s very dangerous to bring a dog onto a school playground!”
“It is?” Rani turned her head from side to side as if checking for threats. “What could hurt him? He’s very brave. Once he drove a pack of coyotes away from our campsite in the Sonoran Desert. Still, I’m supposed to look after him. We’d better go. Thanks for walking me to school, Emily!”
With a cheerful wave, Rani set off. Otto offered each kindergartener one last lick and followed her out of the gates.
Mr. Cleary’s expression was both alarmed and confused. “Emily, who was that girl?”
Emily stared after Rani.
“My new friend?” she answered. She hadn’t meant to put a question mark at the end of that sentence. But somehow it was there.
Emily did not see Rani again for a couple of days.
But she heard her.
Saws growling. Hammers bashing. Drills whirring.
Something was going on in the attic, that was for sure. Emily ventured upstairs to knock on the door a few times, but either Rani did not hear over all the racket, or she didn’t feel like answering.
On Wednesday morning, Emily was looking out of her own apartment window when a pickup truck pulled up with a heap of glittering crystal in the back. Workers in hard hats hoisted it into the air, and the heap turned out to be an enormous chandelier. Emily watched, fascinated, as it disappeared through an attic window.
Someone else was watching too. Mrs. Pinkney stood in the tiny front garden of the apartment building and gazed at the chandelier going up, up, up, and inside.
The next day, Emily’s father picked her up after school. When they got home, Mrs. Pinkney was sitting on the bench by the front door. Her son, Jonah, crouched nearby, peering into a bed of pansies.
Mrs. Pinkney stood up when Emily and her father arrived.
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Pinkney said. “Do you know that…” She paused. “That new girl?”
“Up in the attic?” Emily’s father said. “I haven’t met her yet, but Emily has. Hey there, Jonah.”
Jonah glanced up from the pansies but didn’t answer. Emily had yet to hear Jonah Pinkney say a word. He was the quietest four-year-old she’d ever met. Solemnly he returned his gaze to the flowers. Emily caught a glimpse of one of Mr. Armand’s chickens among the blossoms. She thought it was Carlotta.
Jonah took a small, green plastic figure out of one pocket and showed it to Carlotta, who pecked at it to see if she could eat it. Mrs. Pinkney turned her attention to Emily. Her entire face looked pinched.
“Is her family going to stay long?” she asked. “What do her parents do?”
“I don’t know,” said Emily.
Jonah reached a hand into the flowers to stroke Carlotta’s feathery back. Mrs. Pinkney’s face pinched tighter. “Is she in the same grade as you and Penelope?”
“I don’t know,” said Emily again.
“Hmmm,” said Mrs. Pinkney. “Jonah, leave that filthy bird alone!” She took Jonah’s hand, pulled him to his feet, and led him inside.
“Nice chatting with you too. Have a lovely day!” Emily’s dad muttered under his breath as he and Emily followed.
Upstairs, Emily settled down in the window seat with her book (Hatchet, chapters twelve and thirteen to be finished by Friday). She opened it and stared at the words on the page, but she didn’t read.
Instead, she wondered.
What would Mrs. Pinkney do if she found out that Rani was living in the attic all by herself?
