Nobody's Perfect (9 page)

“Yes,” Alexis insisted. “Hamsters.” She pointed beyond Mr. Ryan to the hamster cage that Ms. Endee kept on the ledge behind her desk. The school hamster, known as Zippity, was a brown and white fur ball. At present he was curled in a ball, apparently asleep, at the bottom of the rodent wheel.

Mr. Ryan arched one of his wild eyebrows at Alexis. “Oh, sure,” he said, “all the kids love Zippity. Everybody loves the fur ball.” He leaned closer and tapped his pencil against a notepad. “But what is it about hamsters that makes them a good science fair project? What are you thinking?”

“I was just thinking a project about
hamsters
,” said Alexis. “What they eat and what they are and what they do and stuff.” She was afraid to say too much about her idea because she was afraid Megan would jump all over it.

And Megan did. “What is that? Isn't that just like a book report on hamsters?” Megan asked. She flung her hands dismissively. “That's not much of an experiment either,” she said.

“No, it's not, really,” Mr. Ryan agreed. “Although I understand completely because I am quite fond of Zippity myself.” He lifted one hand and scratched his head. In sign language he was saying, “I'm thinking.” Which was exactly what he was doing.

Megan and Alexis looked at each other.

“Hamsters,” insisted Alexis.

“Purple,” insisted Megan.

“Hamsters!”
said Alexis.

“Purple!”
said Megan.

“I suppose . . . ,” said Mr. Ryan, interrupting the battle. He tapped his finger against his lip. In sign language it meant “be quiet,” but Mr. Ryan meant “listen to me.” “I suppose,” he repeated, dragging out the word because he was still thinking even as he spoke.

Megan and Alexis stopped bickering and waited for Mr. Ryan to get to the point.

“I suppose,” Mr. Ryan said, thinking and tapping, “you could do
both
.”

“Both?” said the girls in unison.

“Maybe you could study what hamsters think of purple. What's their favorite color? Although I have to say we can't exactly interview Zippity. I know because I've tried.” Mr. Ryan leaned toward Zippity with an imaginary microphone. “Hello, Zippity?” he said. “Zippity? Hello?”

Zippity didn't even look up.

The girls giggled at the sight of Mr. Ryan interviewing Zippity with a microphone. The laughter helped get them over their problem.

“Maybe,” said Megan, “we could color the hamster's food purple, and see if he eats it.” She was thinking of the red and blue food coloring, of course. Megan had quickly become an expert at mixing food colors to create purple. Just last night Megan's mother had to insist at supper that nobody wanted to try purple mashed potatoes.

“Purple hamster food,” said Alexis.
“Ick.”

“I know,
ick
,” agreed Mr. Ryan. “And hamsters only eat hamster food, so coloring it purple wouldn't really prove anything.”

The girls fell silent for a moment.

“Maybe,” said Alexis, “we could give him the choice between a purple something and a different-colored something.”

“That might work,” said Mr. Ryan.

“Like
balloons
,” suggested Megan. She was thinking, of course, of the purple balloons she had bought for her birthday party—a great big bag of them—that night she saw Alexis at the store being so nasty to her cute little brother. “We could ask the hamster to choose between a red balloon and a purple balloon.”

“Hmmm,” said Alexis, not sold on the balloons.

“I know, hmmm,” echoed Mr. Ryan, not so sold on the idea himself.

“Or what about
rooms
?” suggested Megan, shooting from the hip. “A hamster could choose between different-colored rooms.”

“You mean like
classrooms
?” asked Mr. Ryan.

“Maybe,” said Megan. “I don't know.” She kind of doubted that they'd be able to convince Ms. Endee to let them paint the classroom purple.

“What about hamster-size rooms?” suggested Alexis.

Hamster-size rooms,
thought Megan. She had to admit that it wasn't a bad idea.

“But how do you get the hamster from one room to the other?” asked Mr. Ryan. “Are you just going to drop Zippity into a room and see how he reacts? Or are you going to give him a choice?”

“A
maze
!” cried Megan. “Let's build him a
maze
!”

“A maze that leads to two or three different rooms,” added Alexis, already into the idea.

“And we can watch Zippity in the maze and keep track of how many times he goes to one room over another!” said Megan.

“We'll keep a chart!” said Alexis.

The girls looked to Mr. Ryan for approval.

Mr. Ryan was already smiling. “Sounds like a science fair project to me,” he said.

•  •  •

Megan and Alexis met at a patio table outside the school library to hash out their ideas for the science fair project. Mr. Ryan had already agreed to let them take Zippity home in his cage for the weekend so that they could run him through the maze after it was built. “But you better not lose him,” Mr. Ryan said, after he poked the sleeping hamster with a finger as a way of saying good-bye. “Principal Smelter will have my hide if he finds out I lost Zippity.” The girls solemnly promised to take good care of the hamster over the weekend. The only problem was that they still didn't have a maze.

“I've never built a maze before,” said Megan. “Have you?”

“I've never built one,” said Alexis, “but I was
inside
a maze once. It was a garden maze, so it was made out of hedges.”

Because Alexis didn't know sign language, Megan had to rely on her lip-reading skills. But she understood Alexis well enough. “Cool,” Megan replied. “I saw a maze like that once in a movie. You get
lost
in a maze like that.”

“I liked it at first,” said Alexis, “but then it got scary and all I wanted was to get out.”

“I was in a maze at the school carnival,” said Megan, “but it was made out of bed sheets and clothesline. It was like getting lost in the laundry.”

Alexis laughed.

“But we can't use a garden maze or a carnival maze with a hamster,” said Megan. “Zippity would bust right through the bushes and sheets.”

“A maze
that
big is too big for a hamster.”

“Exactly,” said Megan. “And too big for the science fair.”

“It's probably going to end up being about this big,” said Alexis. She stretched her arms to roughly the size of a card table.

“And made of cardboard or something,” said Megan. “Like a big box. Big and flat.”

“Where are we going to find a big, flat box?” asked Alexis.

“Beats me,” said Megan. “The only thing I ever made out of a box was a diorama.”

“Me too!” chimed Alexis. “I made it out of a shoe box.”

“Me too,” Megan chimed back. “I love dioramas.”

“Me too,” said Alexis.

The process of brainstorming their hamster-size maze got stalled once the girls discovered a shared passion for dioramas. “Mine was the Salem witch trials,” said Megan. “I still have it.”

“Cool,” said Alexis. “Mine was the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano.”

“Cool,” said Megan. She was trying to picture Alexis's diorama and her own. “Isn't it amazing what you can do with a shoe box?”

“Absolutely,” Alexis agree.

Megan and Alexis were both quiet for a moment. It would be hard to say which one came up with the idea first. Maybe the idea occurred to each girl at the exact same time. Regardless, it was a mere instant before the girls looked at each other and cried, “Shoe boxes!”

“We could build the whole maze out of shoe boxes!”

“But won't that take too many?”

“Not really,” said Alexis. She sketched a design on scratch paper to demonstrate how they could build the whole thing with interlocking shoe boxes. Megan offered suggestions as to where the different-colored rooms should go. They agreed that it was no fair putting hamster food in the purple room because that would give purple an unfair advantage over red and blue, the colors they had chosen for the other two rooms. However, they did think it was a good idea to put a little hamster food at different corners of the maze so that Zippity had some reason to travel from one end of the maze to the other.

Megan did a rough calculation and guessed that eight shoeboxes would do the job. Alexis knew her mom had sharp sewing scissors they could use to cut the interlocking slots and hamster-size doorways in the shoe boxes. Megan knew her father had thick masking tape in the garage that they could use to hold the shoe boxes together. Megan, of course, had purple paint, and Alexis was pretty sure that she had red and blue.

“So we're all set,” said Alexis.

“Wait,” said Megan. “What about shoe boxes?
Eight
shoe boxes! Will we have enough?”

“Eight is a lot of shoe boxes,” said Alexis.

“That's why I brought it up,” said Megan.

That October, when Megan had been required to do a diorama of colonial days for class, she had put the project off until the last possible minute and, naturally, couldn't find a single usable shoe box in the entire house. She only managed to score a decent-size box for her witch-burning tableau because she convinced her mother to hit the mall for a new pair of high heels. Megan couldn't imagine that she'd be able to convince her mom to buy
eight
new pairs of shoes so they could build their hamster maze that night.

“I have a brother,” Alexis said shyly, looking in the other direction so that Megan wasn't sure what to make of the comment.

“Yeah,” said Megan. “That little kid. I met him at the store.”

“He likes sneakers, but he grows through them,” said Alexis.

“Brothers are like that,” said Megan.

“But he never gets rid of his old sneakers,” Alexis continued, “and he never gets rid of the
boxes
.”

Megan nodded slowly, catching on to the point that Alexis was making. “
Fee-fi-fo-fum
,” said Megan, “I smell shoe boxes.”

“That's what I'm thinking,” said Alexis.

“But your kid brother is still little,” Megan observed. “Won't those boxes be too small?”

“Big enough for a hamster, maybe,” said Alexis.

Megan had to agree. “But you know what?” Megan continued. “My brother is the exact same way. He doesn't like me in his room, but I bet he's got every pair of sneakers he ever owned—still in the box, still in his closet.”

“Four shoe boxes from you, four shoe boxes from me?” asked Alexis.

“Deal,” said Megan. “That should do it. I'll go home and get my brother's boxes and meet you at your house.”

Alexis flinched. “Actually,” she said, “it's not such a good idea to meet at
my
house.”

“But my house is crazy,” Megan responded. “Everything is turned upside down because we're in the middle of preparations for my birthday party.” Megan caught herself at the mention of her own party—the very same party that Alexis had already announced her intention
not
to attend. But Alexis didn't seem to notice the remark at all.

“No, no,” said Alexis. “That's okay. Your house is a much better idea.”

“Are you sure your house wouldn't be easier?” Megan insisted.

“No, really,” said Alexis. “Besides, I want to see your house.”

Megan smiled. She was happy to show her house to Alexis. It was almost like they were becoming friends. But why was Alexis so worried about Megan visiting her house?
That's crazy
, thought Megan.
Why wouldn't she want me to see her house?

“But I want to see your house too,” said Megan.

“It's just that,” Alexis continued, “we just moved and we're still moving and everything is
new
—so the whole house is upside-down with moving boxes and all.”

Megan realized that Alexis was probably right. “So
my
upside-down house or
your
upside-down house?” she asked.

“Yours
,” Alexis insisted. “Your house. Really. It would be much, much better.”

“Okay,” said Megan. She reached for a pencil and wrote her address on the corner of their design for the maze. “Come over as soon as you can.”

“As soon as I get the boxes,” said Alexis.

•  •  •

Matt kept a sign from the hardware store tacked to his bedroom door that read:
KEEP OUT.
Underneath the stern warning, Matt had used a big red marker to scrawl “And that means
you
, Megan!”

Megan approached the door to Matt's bedroom and didn't give the sign a second thought before she grabbed the doorknob and pushed open the door.

The door didn't exactly open all the way. Matt's room was the usual mess. Heaps of clothes were piled on the floor. Basically, it looked like the laundry hamper had exploded. Cardboard boxes were loaded with toys that Matt refused to get rid of even though he didn't play with them anymore. Megan found a path across the room, sidestepping the discarded comic books and abandoned sporting goods. She reached the closet, shoved the sliding door, and switched on the light.

Megan looked down and was relieved to find exactly what she wanted. Shoe boxes, and plenty of them. She dropped onto her haunches and began tossing Matt's old sneakers into a tangled clump by the closet door, and then she stacked the empty boxes into a nice, neat pile. She used one hand to pinch her nose firmly shut during the process because Matt's old sneakers smelled really bad.