Gertie's Leap to Greatness (2 page)

In third grade, Gertie
should
have won with her reenactment of what had happened on the oil rig where her father worked. Now, that had been a humdinger of a summer speech.

The important thing wasn't what you told, but how you told it. It was one thing to say that your father was working on an oil rig. It was another thing altogether if you said that alarms had gone off because one of the pumps was under pressure, and everybody had jumped off the platform and into the shark-and-eel-infested ocean.

Unfortunately, that was the same summer Ella Jenkins had had her appendix taken out in the hospital, and she had a lumpy purple scar to prove it.

Gertie didn't even want to
think
about the fourth-grade speeches when Leo Riggs had shaved off his left eyebrow.

But this year was Gertie's year. It had to be. She licked the last of the greasy yellow Twinkie crumbs off her fingers as the bus turned onto Jones Street. Gertie scooted to the edge of her seat.

The houses on Jones Street seemed impressively housey to Gertie. Aunt Rae's house had flaky paint and crooked doorframes. These houses had straight rows of brick and graceful columns and brass knockers that gleamed on tall front doors.

But that wasn't the most interesting thing about Jones Street.

The most interesting thing was that Gertie's mother lived there. Her name was Rachel Collins.

When Gertie was just a baby, Rachel had gone off to live in the house on Jones Street. The only things she'd left behind were the locket, Gertie's father, and Gertie.

Gertie's father, Frank Foy, said that Rachel Collins had left because she wasn't happy and she had to leave to find out if something else would make her happy.

Gertie thought that wasn't any kind of reason to leave. After all, sometimes she wasn't happy about going to school, but she had to anyway. And she was never happy about going to church, but Aunt Rae dragged her along. And plenty of times she was very not happy with Aunt Rae when she wouldn't let Gertie stay up late or wear her pajamas to the grocery store. But she never
left
Aunt Rae.

Gertie's father explained that Rachel Collins had been a different kind of unhappy. For her, being with them was like wearing a pair of shoes that were too tight. You could limp along for a while, but your feet would just hurt more and more until you were sure that if you walked one step further in those shoes, they'd squeeze your toes off.

Gertie said that plenty of people did just fine without toes.

But it didn't matter what Gertie thought, because Rachel had stepped out of Frank and Gertie's life and into the housiest house on Jones Street, where a big poplar tree grew in the front yard and where now a Sunshine Realty sign was stuck in trimmed grass.

The sign still said
For Sale.

Gertie sighed and leaned back against the bus seat.

Rachel Collins's house was for sale because she was moving away because she was getting married to a man named Walter who lived in Mobile with his own family. Everyone around town was talking about it.

Most kids would probably be upset if their mother was getting married to a strange man named Walter and leaving forever and didn't even tell them about it, but Gertie was not most kids.

She was absolutely not upset, because she had a plan. More than a plan. She had a mission.

Now she touched the front of her shirt so that the locket could remind her of what she had to do. As soon as she gave the best summer speech and claimed her rightful position as the greatest fifth grader in the world, she would launch Phase Two. She was going to take the locket back to her mother. She'd show up on her mother's front porch, gleaming with greatness, swinging the locket on its chain, and she'd say, breezy as a gale-force wind,
Didn't want you to forget this while you were packing.
And then Rachel Collins would know that Gertie Foy was one-hundred-percent, not-from-concentrate awesome and that she didn't need a mother anyway. So there.

Gertie patted the shoe box.

“It's a bullfrog,” she told Junior in a voice low enough that the other kids wouldn't hear.

“Wow.” Junior looked even more miserable. “Bet your speech is going to be good.”

Junior never did well at speeches. He got so nervous that his feet started kicking around, and he wound up knocking over desks and bruising people's shins. But Gertie was an excellent public speaker because she practiced all the time in front of the bathroom mirror.

“It'll be the best,” she promised.

*   *   *

As they walked to their new classroom, Gertie was careful not to let her fingers cover the air holes on the shoe box.

She pushed through the noisy students and set her shoe box on a desk in the front row. Junior put his bag on the chair beside hers, his arms swinging by his sides even though he wasn't walking anymore.

Gertie's classmates were choosing seats, saying hello to friends they hadn't seen all summer, and arranging new school supplies in their cubbies. Jean Zeller was turning away from the pencil sharpener.

Jean was Gertie's other best friend, and she was the smartest person Gertie had ever met. A long time ago, Roy Caldwell and his friends had called her Jean-ius to tease her, but Jean had liked the nickname so much that she had started writing it at the top of her assignments. Jean blew the shavings off her lethally sharp pencil points and walked over to Gertie and Junior.

“They're number twos,” Jean said, brandishing the pencils. “I made sure they were number twos. What kind are yours?” She narrowed her eyes at Junior's empty desk.

“Umm.” Junior unzipped his bag and peered inside. “Yellows?”

Jean rolled her eyes. “It's okay, I brought extras.”

Jean took the last seat in the front row, right beside Gertie. Gertie was sandwiched between her two best friends, holding a new pencil, and thinking that she'd accomplish this mission in record time, when something poked the back of her neck.

“You're in my seat.”

 

3

Squish

The finger that had poked Gertie's neck was bony and had a pink-polished nail. Its owner was a yellow-haired girl who had green eyes and shimmery lip gloss.

“Did you hear me?” the girl said, and raised her eyebrows. “You're in my seat.”

Gertie reassured herself that
her
shoe box with
her
frog was sitting on top of
her
desk before she answered the girl. “I'm already sitting here,” she said.

“Yes, but I'm
new
here.” The girl crossed her arms and began to tap her foot, waiting for Gertie to move out of her way.

Kids who had been examining each other's new shoes and haircuts looked up at the girl.

“Well, we're
old
here,” Jean said, and crossed her arms, too.

The foot stopped tapping.

“But we could move,” said Junior quickly, looking from one girl to another. “We could sit in the back or just go away somewhere and … and…”

Gertie stared at Junior until his voice dried up like a raisin.

“But Ms. Simms
said
I could sit here.” The girl smiled. “Because I'm new. I need to sit in the front so I can keep up with everything.”

New people weren't the only ones who had special reasons for needing to sit in the front. For instance, Gertie needed the front because when they watched movies she didn't want to have to look past other people's heads. And Jean liked the front row because she needed to make sure teachers saw her when she raised her hand. And Junior Jr.
hated
the front row, but he had to sit there anyway to be with Gertie and Jean.

“Ms. Simms didn't say any such thing,” Gertie said.

“Yes, I did.”

The new girl smiled at someone standing behind Gertie. Slowly, Gertie turned around to see a woman wearing red high heels. Gertie tilted her head way back to face her new teacher. Ms. Simms had square shoulders, round glasses, and a dimple in her chin. She was looking right into Gertie's face, and she was smiling. Not the stretchy smile that some adults used for kids. She smiled like they were friends.

“Mary Sue wanted to be sure she didn't get left out of anything. She's new this year.” Ms. Simms put a hand on Gertie's shoulder. “I told her she could sit here. All the other front-row seats are full. You don't mind moving, do you?”

Gertie minded.

But she wanted her new teacher to know that she was nice and agreeable, because she was. It was this new girl who
wasn't
being agreeable. She slowly started to move her shoe box.

“Thank you for understanding.” Ms. Simms beamed at her.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” said the new girl. She was one of those people who acted nicer when the teacher was watching.

“If Gertie moves,” said Jean, “then we move, too.” She snatched up her number twos.

Junior jumped up, knocking over his chair.

Gertie lifted her chin as she passed the new girl.
She
might have a front-row seat, but Gertie had two best friends, which was seventeen million times better.

The new girl settled herself into Gertie's desk and dusted the top with her sleeve. Gertie glared at the back of her head.

This new girl was a seat-stealer.

Once Gertie had figured out what this girl was and put a name to it, she felt better about the whole thing.
Seat-stealer,
she thought in the nastiest voice she could imagine, and she felt even better.

“I'm Ms. Simms.” Gertie's new teacher wrote her name on the whiteboard and capped the marker with a
pop
. “And I can't wait to hear about all the adventures you had this summer.” Ms. Simms looked at the attendance sheet. “Roy Caldwell, will you start for us?”

Roy's left arm was in a plaster cast that might have been lime green once but was now so covered in marker drawings that it was hard to tell. He'd probably broken the arm on purpose, just so he'd have the best summer speech.

When he got to the front of the room he pointed at his cast. “Bet you're wondering how I got this. I saw a show on one of those educational channels. I wasn't watching it for me,” he said, “because I don't like educational stuff. That stuff's for losers.”

Jean hissed.

“No interrupting,” Ms. Simms said. “Be considerate.”

Roy ran his good hand through his hair and grinned at Jean. “So anyway, it was about what happens to balloons when they float up to the atmosphere. How they blow apart into a million pieces, right? So I decided to try it on people. And I got a bunch of those Fourth of July balloons from the Piggly Wiggly and tied the strings to my belt loops—”

“What did your mother say about this?” Ms. Simms asked. It wasn't interrupting when the teacher was the one doing it.

“She likes it when I'm not in the house. Says I need the fresh air. Anyway, so I got more and more balloons until I started to feel kind of light…”

But Gertie didn't want to hear any more. Roy's speech was good. Maybe too good. She was holding her shoe box to her chest and rocking it gently, when Ewan Buckley dared to interrupt.

“My mom told me you broke your arm falling down the stairs,” Ewan said.

“No inter—” began Ms. Simms.

“You hush your mouth!” said Roy at the same time.

The class gasped.

“Roy!” Ms. Simms leaped to her red high heels.

“I'm sorry! I wasn't talking to you, Ms. Simms.” Roy's face actually turned white—something Gertie had only read about in books. “I meant Ewan! I—”

“Roy, sit down. Sit down right now.”

“I would never tell you to hush
your
mouth,” Roy said.

Gertie let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. Roy was out of the running for best summer speech.

“Gertrude Foy,” Ms. Simms called out.

Several people sniggered.

“It's Gertie.” She stood up, walked to the front of the room, and faced the class. “In this box,” she said without preamble, “is a frog.”

The class stopped sniggering.

Gertie set the box on the seat-stealer's desk, and the new girl leaned back and cringed, like she was scared the frog would jump out and bite her head off.

“This frog was completely and utterly dead,” Gertie told the class. “And in the name of science, I rushed him to my aunt Rae's kitchen. And using only everyday kitchen tools, I brought him back to life. That makes him”—she tore off the shoe box lid, grabbed the frog under his armpits, and raised him over her head—“a zombie frog.”