The Somebodies (4 page)

FERN KEPT HER EYES ON MRS. FLUGGERY’S
narrow ankles swimming in the bagginess of her knee-high stockings, and followed her—clicking, clicking—to the coatroom. Howard was close behind. Fern thought she heard him sniffle. She hoped he wasn’t crying. She didn’t want to see him cry. It would make her cry. She was sure of it. She wanted to tell him to be tough. She wanted to say,
Accountants don’t cry, Howard,
even though she wasn’t sure this was true. She wondered if royalty cry. She’d have to figure that out.

It dawned on Fern, too, that she shouldn’t even have to be here. She should have been on her way to the city beneath the city, where she could be useful in important matters like why there are dark winds brewing, and
why it’s a bad time to be an Anybody, and why there are dead books. She was needed. She was going to battle the Blue Queen, wasn’t she? But, no, she was here, marching to the coatroom to get in trouble for something that wasn’t really her fault.

The door to the coatroom was brown and covered with one of Mrs. Fluggery’s Rules and Regulations posters. This one was devoted to the importance of saying thank you to Mrs. Fluggery.
YOU MUST THANK MRS. FLUGGERY, BECAUSE SHE HAS GIVEN EVERYTHING TO YOU, AND IN FACT, YOU ALL ARE PROBABLY KILLING HER BIT BY BIT!

The coatroom is easy for me to describe. It so happens that I have a lot of experience with coatrooms. My teacher Mrs. Glutten at the Alton School for the Remarkably Giftless put worthless children in the coatroom as a punishment. But because all the students at the Alton School for the Remarkably Giftless were fairly worthless—I, for example, was dim, easily distracted, and occasionally senselessly unruly—all the students were jammed in the coatroom while Mrs. Glutten made extra money as a medical transcriptionist while chain-smoking. (I have used Mrs. Glutten as one of my disguises, minus the pack of Avioli Darks.)

Mrs. Fluggery’s coatroom was like most class coatrooms. A small space, its walls covered with coat hooks, most of which had coats dangling from them. It smelled like the gunky heads of schoolchildren. Books
and stacked chairs stood in one corner with a janitorial mop and bucket. It was the kind of dirty, moist place where fungi would grow nicely. In fact, Fern was pretty sure that things were growing at this very moment, inside of gym shoes, and greening the edges of bread crusts in forgotten lunch bags. The room had more in common with a terrarium than a normal grown-up coat check of furs and overcoats.

Mrs. Fluggery told Fern and Howard to each get a chair. She pointed to a spot along the wall of hooks. “Put them side by side. Right here.”

Howard and Fern did as they were told, and then sat on the chairs.

“No, no, no! Mrs. F-luggery needs to look you in the eye! Stand on the chairs.”

Fern and Howard stood, and, both very nervous, they unsteadily climbed up. Fern looked into Mrs. Fluggery’s face. She’d never seen it up close before. She noticed the brown spots near the top of her forehead, the pinkness of the loose skin under her chin, the tiny red veins on the sides of her nose. Mrs. Fluggery lifted her gnarled hands with their knotty knuckles, and in one quick motion, she pulled the tags out of the backs of Fern’s and Howard’s shirts, twisting them over the hooks on the wall behind them. Then she kicked the chairs out from under their feet. They each dropped a few inches, their feet dan
gling in air as they hung from the coat hooks. “Ha, ha!” Mrs. Fluggery cawed. “Mrs. F-luggery has got you now!”

“This is chaffing me under the arms!” Howard said.

“You can’t do this!” Fern shouted. “We have rights, you know!”

“Rights?” Mrs. Fluggery said, and then she turned to a pair of sneakers twisting on the hook near Howard’s head. “Do they have rights, Mr. Tennis Shoe? Do they?” She paused. “Speak up! I can’t hear you, Mr. Tennis Shoe!” She turned back to the two kids. “Well, well, Mr. Tennis Shoe agrees with Mrs. F-luggery! And Mrs. F-luggery has decided to do this the right way! The old-fashioned way!”

She went to the tallest hook near the stacked chairs, where her own long overcoat was hung. She reached into the sleeve of the coat and pulled out a willow branch.

“What are you going to do?” Fern asked.

“Don’t! I’m allergic to pain!” Howard said, and then lost it. He tried to leap off the hook. He tried to run in midair, and then he began banging his fists against the wall and kicking fiercely.

“Howard!” Fern said. “Howard!” She turned back to her teacher. “You, you, you!” Fern said. “Mrs. Fluggery, are a bad, bad teacher! A bad, bad person!”

Mrs. Fluggery turned to Fern. “Mrs. F-luggery is not to be spoken to like that!”

Fern looked at Mrs. Fluggery in a way she’d never looked at anyone before—not even the Miser when he was evil, not even the vicious mole BORT when he was attacking. Keep in mind that Fern had transformed books from the imagined to the real—paintings, too. She’d helped her father, with the sheer force of love, to
change from the shape of a record player into his real, true form. She herself had turned into a grizzly bear to save a friend. But she’d never done any transformations of any kind from sheer anger.

This was the first.

Mrs. Fluggery jerked her head up, as if trying to see her own stiff monument of hair. Fern looked at her hair too. It was as it had been earlier, the shape of the humpbacked pony not quite there. But then suddenly, out of Mrs. Fluggery’s enormous hairdo, an eye peered, and then another.

“Fern,” Howard whispered. That was the only sound until a real, albeit miniature, pony whinnied. The pony, with a small hump on its back, was made out of Mrs. Fluggery’s hair, and was trapped there, woven into her hairdo, perched on top of Mrs. Fluggery’s head. The humpbacked pony shook its mane and tried to rear from its stuck position.

“What?” Mrs. Fluggery screamed. “What is this?”

“I didn’t do it!” Fern said, but what she meant was that she hadn’t done it on purpose.

The pony bucked again, trying to release itself from Mrs. Fluggery’s head. It snorted and pawed Mrs. Fluggery’s scalp with its hooves. Mrs. Fluggery was trying to dislodge the pony, but she was tossed around by its weight and roughness. She banged into one wall of coats and then into the stacks of books and chairs.
The janitor’s bucket skidded across the room. “My hair!” Mrs. Fluggery said. “Help me!” For the first time in a long time, she wasn’t referring to herself as Mrs. Fluggery.

But there was little that Fern and Howard could do. For one thing, they were hooked to the wall, and for another, Fern didn’t know how she’d done this in the first place, much less how to undo it.

And then Mrs. Fluggery’s face tightened up. She grabbed her heart and fell to the ground in a clatter. The pony was on its side now too, whimpering.

“Oh, no!” Fern cried.

“Do you think she’s dead?” Howard asked.

“Put your hands together. Make a cup,” Fern said. “Down low so I can put my foot in it and hoist myself off this hook.”

Howard did just that, and Fern pushed herself up, and then, once she was loose, she fell to the floor hard. But she landed right near Mrs. Fluggery. She put her hand on the old woman’s heart. It was still beating. She put her hand to Mrs. Fluggery’s mouth, but she didn’t feel any breath. The pony looked weak and sallow. It jerked its head up and down in a sickly fashion, as if it were fading too.

Fern knew what she had to do. She had to put her mouth on Mrs. Fluggery’s mouth and breathe the life back into her.

“I have to do it, don’t I, Howard?”

“Yep,” Howard said, still hooked. “You’ve got to do it.”

She was horrified. She didn’t want to put her mouth on Mrs. Fluggery’s mouth, which was pruned up, but somewhat open.

Fern bent down. She had to do it. She gave Mrs. Fluggery mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and Mrs. Fluggery’s cheeks blew up with air like a big chalky balloon.

The pony was the first to seem to feel better. His ears pricked up and he tottered around, unhooking himself from Mrs. Fluggery’s head. He galloped around the coatroom.

Mrs. Fluggery was next. She woke up with a jolt, her cheeks full-puff. She let out their air and, out of instinct really, said the last part of her name, “luggery,” then glanced around the small room, confused as to what had happened.

“You saved her, Fern! You really did!” Howard said, clicking together the heels of his penny loafers from where he hung on the hook. He clapped his hands.

“Saved Mrs. F-luggery?” Mrs. Fluggery said. “For goodness sake, Fern almost killed her!” The old woman stood up, and once again she towered over Fern. She opened the coatroom door and walked between a row
of desks. She stumbled a bit, grabbed Horten Everett’s head to steady herself, then pulled one of her pill bottles from her cardigan sweater’s pocket. All the kids were staring up from their desks.

Fern walked over to Howard. She bent down so he could use her back to lift himself off the hook. The two of them stepped out of the coatroom.

“You two are expelled! You’ll never step foot in Mrs. F-luggery’s classroom ever, ever, EVER AGAIN!”

Fern was overjoyed. She smiled secretively at Howard and he smiled back. She and Howard were expelled! They’d never ever EVER step foot in this classroom again! She glanced at Lucess Brine, and there was that mixed expression again. Part of her seemed victorious and the other quite regretful. Lucess’s eyes looked a little wet at first, and then water rose up in them and tears plopped onto each cheek. “Run away!” Lucess mouthed. “Run away, Fern!” But this time it didn’t seem like something mean to say. It seemed like an urgent plea. Fern wasn’t sure how to take it. She wanted to tell Lucess that she didn’t care one bit! She was free! But it was as if Lucess knew something Fern didn’t.

Fern and Howard walked out behind Mrs. Fluggery, the small pony galloping wildly around their feet.

FERN AND HOWARD WERE SITTING IN FRONT OF
Vice Principal Wattley’s desk. Vice Principal Wattley was brand-new. Anyone could tell that just by looking at his bald head, which still had considerable shine. If there are classes in vice principal school devoted to shining up a bald head, as I suspect there are, then let me tell you, Vice Principal Wattley did very well on his head polishing classes: A+++. His head glowed so much that he didn’t even look like Vice Principal Wattley as much as he looked like a gold trophy version of Vice Principal Wattley.

The real, true, actual principal of the school, a bony woman named Sneed, had been out of town at
an educators’ convention for a number of years. Fern knew her from photographs, one of which was life-sized and propped in her office chair. Fern and Howard had spied it through her open office door, and thought it was odd.

The school ran through vice principals quickly, perhaps because of Principal Sneed’s absence. The vice principals did all the work, but a propped-up photograph in a chair got all the glory. Vice Principal Wattley, however, seemed like he was prepared to stay. He’d decorated his office elaborately; he’d bought a souped-up wooden rolltop desk with carved lion’s feet and flanked by potted ferns. There were so many ferns that the place had a transplanted jungle feel. Fern, herself, felt like a very small fern in a sea of ferns. Bookcases, yes, but they were filled with cardboard displays of books—the kind you see in discount furniture stores.

Vice Principal Wattley had already called and talked to Dorathea and the Bone, as well as the Drudgers. Those conversations had invigorated him. He had never expelled anyone before. He was trying to sound grim, but he was truly breathless with joy. “This is what I’ve been preparing for! Expulsion! And now the time has come!” He had that aggressive air about him like a new bagger at the grocery store checkout, how they tend to pounce, crying, “Plastic or paper?” Fern
had the sense that he was really feeling it—the vice principal vibe.

Fern and Howard were relieved to never be allowed to step foot in Mrs. Fluggery’s classroom ever again. But Dorathea and the Bone were on their way to pick them up. They would drive them back to Dorathea’s boardinghouse, where they would wait for the Drudgers—who were at an actuarial conference, assessing insurance premiums—and would come as soon as they could, though it might be late. “They have a schedule to adhere to,” Vice Principal Wattley said, and Fern knew it was a direct quote. The Drudgers loved adhering to schedules. What would the Drudgers have to say? Would they understand at all?

Mrs. Fluggery was swimming through the ceiling-hung ferns around Wattley’s desk. She was ranting and huffing and flapping. “Tell the parents that they’re beastly children! Chigger bites! Hampsterheads!” Finally she ran out of steam. She had flopped into a fern-hidden armchair by the window and had only a little flap left in her. “Tell them about the violent pony! Tell them that I was nearly killed! Tell them, tell…them.”

Vice Principal Wattley gave a frustrated sigh. He didn’t believe in the violent pony part of Mrs. Fluggery’s story, even though he should have! The pony, hidden in the pocket of Fern’s hooded sweatshirt, was
tired now too, but what if it began bucking wildly? Fern was very nervous.

Vice Principal Wattley was saying, “This is serious business…Indeed, indeed! But I am in charge, in full charge!” He repeated all this with relish.

Howard leaned over to Fern. “Stop it,” he said.

“Stop what?” Fern asked.

“Stop humming! You shouldn’t be so happy about this!”

“I’m not humming!” Fern said, but now she could hear the humming too. Where was it coming from?

Howard pointed to Fern’s pocket, not the one with the pony in it. No, the pony wasn’t humming. It was the other pocket. Why was her pocket humming? Fern clamped a hand over the pocket. She could feel the sharp edges of something shaped like a square. She didn’t remember having anything in her pocket. Was it another apology from Lucess? No, it was too thick and pointy.

Vice Principal Wattley pushed a button on his desk intercom and asked his secretary, the wiry Mr. Ingly, to take Mrs. Fluggery to the nurse’s office. “And roll the projector down to her classroom. Show them the inspirational film about the woman with no arms.”

Fern loved that film. She’d seen it a bunch of times at her old school. It always meant that the teacher was out, and it was quite good. The armless woman could trim her
kids’ hair with scissors in her toes. Fern loved the woman because she had so much going against her, but she wasn’t doing things the way we’d expect. She was herself, and miraculous in her own very specific way. (It was the kind of inspirational film that was not shown to the students of my school, the Alton School for the Remarkably Giftless, because it would only have given us hope, and the administration figured: What was the point of that? We were too mediocre to have aspirations.)

Mr. Ingly shuffled through the ferns and took Mrs. Fluggery by the arm. They shuffled out together, Mrs. Fluggery still huffing, “Doily-, doily-, doily-brains.”

Once the door shut behind them, Vice Principal Wattley said, “Obviously you two have put a strain on Mrs. Fluggery’s logical mind.”

They nodded. Fern patted the little pony in her pocket.
Don’t wake up
, she said to herself.
Don’t wake up, little pony!
She was afraid that if the pony caught Vice Principal Wattley’s attention, he would confiscate it. Did I mention the enormous steamer trunk under the window filled with the collection of things that Vice Principal Wattley had confiscated in his short time at this school? Its lid was propped up, in a showy fashion. Fern could see two baseball mitts and a clarinet and a pair of crutches. Had he confiscated someone’s crutches?

She also kept a firm grip on the other pocket, which
was now leaking a hum.

“Expelled!” Vice Principal Wattley said, rubbing his hands together greedily. He opened his filing cabinet with a small silver key and rummaged through alphabetical files. “Erasers, evildoers, exams, expletives, expulsions! Here it is. The paperwork: expulsions!”

Fern had heard the word “expel” in a number of forms, but not this one: expulsion. It sounded much more awful, as if someone had mixed in the word
repulsion
to come up with something devilishly new.

Was the humming getting louder?

“I didn’t get to expel children while on the old paper-folding circuit. Never. No, no, you had to be
nice
to the kids. You had to be
entertaining
.”

“What’s the old paper-folding circuit?” Fern spoke
loudly to drown out the humming.

“I used to have a different job. I was on the circuit—you know, birthday parties, Easter egg hunts,” Vice Principal Wattley said. He threw one hand in the air and swirled it. “I was an artist.”

“Really?” Howard said, sounding a little too surprised.

“Is that so hard to believe?” He shoved two sheets of papers at Fern and Howard. “Sign here and here.”

“No, no, not hard to believe,” Fern said nervously. The humming was very distinct now. “I bet you were a great artist. What kind of art did you do?”

“Spontaneous Inspired Abstract Speed Origami.” Vice Principal Wattley cocked his head. “Do you hear something?”

Fern ignored the question. “Origami? Like folding pieces of paper into swans?”

“Swans!” Vice Principal Wattley was evidently disgusted by swans. “The kids always wanted swans and poodles and kitties. I was an artist! My work was abstract! They just couldn’t wrap their heads around it!” He paused again. “I hear humming. Are you humming?” He stared at Fern.

“No,” Fern said. “I’m not humming.”

He looked at Howard.

“I’m not either. I don’t even know how to hum.”

“You’d better not be humming! You’d better be mis
erable! You’re being expelled and I’m the one expelling you.” He smiled proudly, looking off into the distance. “Who would have guessed that I’d be here? Vice Principal Wattley.” He snatched the papers back, signed them in a huge looping scrawl that took up most of the page, and then he briskly picked up both papers and folded, twisted, mangled, churned, curled, nibbled until he was done, and the papers had taken on odd shapes.

“Swans?” Fern asked.

“Poodles?” Howard asked.

“No. The heart of a young man who has lost his art. Sorry,” said Vice Principal Wattley, suddenly very sad, as if to say you can take the boy out of the Abstract Origami circuit, but you can’t take the Abstract Origami circuit out of the boy. “Bad habit,” he said. He turned away from them in his swivel chair. “Out!” he shouted. “Wait out in the lobby! Go! Leave me alone!”

And so Fern and Howard took their expulsion papers and made their way out through the ferns. They walked past Principal Sneed’s office with its life-sized photo staring out at them, and they sat down in the empty lobby, where Fern’s backpack and Howard’s briefcase were waiting. Mr. Ingly was gone, perhaps setting up the film projector. And so Howard and Fern were alone—well, aside from the sleeping pony and the hum coming from Fern’s pocket.

“What is it?” Howard asked. “What’s humming?”

Fern opened her pocket and pulled out a cream-colored square envelope. It had Fern’s name printed on it in small gold curlicue letters and gold edging. “It’s for me.” She ran her fingers over the lettering. “It’s really fancy. I don’t know where it came from. Or why it’s humming.”

“It looks like an invitation,” Howard said.

Fern ripped open the seal. The humming stopped. Fern read the invitation aloud:

“You are cordially invited to the

Annual Anybodies Convention

as the special guest

of the Secret Society of Somebodies

(The Triple S).

Please join us for our

formal meeting:

Midnight

Convention Day Two

after the motivational speech

by

Ubuleen Heet

(Founder of the Triple S).

Secret location to be revealed.

Be there or else!!!

Don’t tell a soul.”

“They should have put that last line first,” Howard said. “Don’t you think?”

“The Secret Society of Somebodies?” Fern said.
What would Lucess think of that, huh?
Ubuleen Heet? Who’s that? Fern was giddy. This seemed like a royal invitation.

“I just think that if you don’t want someone to read something out loud, you should say so up front. Right? And I don’t like that ‘or else’ part. Or else what? It sounds awful! Doomed!”

Fern turned to Howard. “Is that all you can think about? I mean, it’s mysterious! It’s fancy! It has gold lettering and trim! It has a secret location to be revealed!” Fern didn’t want to say anything about it, but this seemed like the first really royal thing to happen to her—an invitation to a secret society written on a fancy invitation! “I’ve never been invited to anything like this ever before!”

“I still haven’t,” Howard said.

“It’s for the convention,” Fern said.

“What convention?”

Fern stared at Howard. Sure, he didn’t have access to
The Art of Being Anybody
like she did, but sometimes it amazed her how little he knew, or even wanted to know, about Anybodies. “The Annual Anybodies Convention,” Fern explained. “It’s in the city beneath the city.”

“They
really
should have put that last line first. I don’t need any more information. The city beneath the city? Never heard of it and I don’t want to,” Howard said.

Fern shut the invitation, knowing she wouldn’t ever make it to the convention, much less to the meeting with the secret location to be revealed. “I can’t accept it anyway. I’m not allowed to go to the convention. Dorathea won’t let me.”

“You should have thrown it out. Just throw it out now. Pretend you never read the words ‘or else,’” Howard said.

Fern didn’t want to throw it out. “I think I’ll hold on to it. Don’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”

“Humph,” Howard said.

“Don’t tell a soul,” Fern said. “Promise?”

“Humph,” Howard said again. “It’s trouble. I can tell. More trouble.”

“But you promise?”

He nodded.

Just then the door opened. Dorathea and the Bone bounded in. They looked alarmed and bewildered. And in that moment right before they bombarded Fern and Howard with questions, Fern heard the tune in her head: up and up and down down down. Up and up and down down down. It was a dark song, Fern thought. It was unsettling the way it had worked its way into her head, and now she couldn’t shake it.