Georgia's Greatness Read online

  Later, when we had a chance to talk among ourselves, we wondered if we were the real cause of the McG's extended absence. Had we finally driven her around the bend, as she'd always feared we might?

  But there was no time to wonder about that right then. We had bigger things to think about. For instance, Principal Freud had said that a friend had called the McG in sick. The McG had friends?

  Before Mandy could ask any more questions, Principal Freud took one of Ms. Harkness's hands in both of his.

  "Then I'll leave you to it, Serena," he said warmly.

  "Thank you, Frank," she said back, equally warmly. "I'll be just fine here."

  Frank? Now here was a new fact. Principal Freud's first name was Frank? When he took off his principal costume and went home at night, he was known around his neighborhood as Frank Freud?

  Who knew?

  Ms. Harkness glided to the center of the room as Principal Freud left, closing the door behind him. Then she looked pointedly—not unpleasantly, as the McG might have done, but definitely pointedly—at the heap of our wet raincoats on the floor. Except for Mandy, whose coat wasn't there in the first place, all of us hurried over to the spot and quietly and neatly put our things where they belonged. This was hardest for Georgia to do, since she had to climb down off the teacher's desk first.

  The way that Ms. Harkness had gotten us to put away our things with just a glance—it was like having Mary Poppins in the room, only no one was flying around under an umbrella.

  Then, without even being asked to do so—or yelled at to do so, as the McG would have done—we all took our seats in an orderly fashion and folded our hands neatly upon our desks.

  Well, all except one hand, that is.

  Mandy's trigger-happy hand shot straight up into the air again.

  "Yes, Mandy?" Ms. Harkness called on her sweetly.

  Do you see what we mean about Mandy? They hadn't even been properly introduced yet, and already Ms. Harkness knew her first name. She knew none of ours, but she knew Mandy's.

  Okay, we admit it: we were jealous.

  "What will we be doing first?" Mandy asked. "Mrs. McGillicuddy always starts with morning meeting." Mandy turned to look at the clock on the wall at the back of the room. "But it's a little late for that now. After morning meeting, we always start with math, unless it's Tuesday, in which case we start with science. But it's Monday, not Tuesday, so perhaps we should start with math right away?"

  We wanted to strangle her.

  "I'm sure it will come in handy for me," Ms. Harkness said, "you being so familiar with how poor Mrs. McGillicuddy runs her classroom. You'll be able to help me figure out how to do things. But since this is my classroom, at least for now, I propose we start off today by doing something a little different."

  Different? Did she say different? We liked different.

  Before Mandy could yet again raise the hand that had launched a thousand migraines, Ms. Harkness told us her proposal.

  "Principal Freud has already told me a little bit about each of you, the Eights in particular," she said. She even smiled as she said that last part. It was as though she didn't mind at all whatever she'd heard about us!

  "But," she went on, "I'd really like to hear you introduce each other in your own words. So we'll start with Mandy and then work our way counterclockwise around the room. Now, then: each of you tell me something vital I should know about the classmate sitting next to you."

  Mandy looked stunned at this. It wasn't the sort of assignment she was used to. So she looked at Will, just barely managing to stammer out, "W-will Simms is the only boy in the third grade at the Whistle Stop."

  "Thank you, Mandy," Ms. Harkness said. "I'm so glad you pointed that out to me. Will?"

  "Annie Huit," Will said with real admiration, "is so smart, sometimes it seems like she doesn't even need a teacher."

  "Durinda Huit," Annie said, "cooks pancakes better than nearly anyone in the world."

  Durinda sat up a little straighter, hearing that. She hadn't realized her cooking was quite so popular.

  "Georgia Huit," Durinda said, "has been awfully depressed lately."

  Ms. Harkness floated toward us from her position at the front of the room. She floated until she was standing right in front of Georgia's desk.

  "I'm so sorry to hear that," she said, "but you won't be for very long. I'll be keeping a special eye on you." Then she bent at the waist, reached out one slender finger, at the end of which was a beautiful long nail painted cotton-candy pink, and tapped Georgia on the nose.

  Later, Georgia told us that when Ms. Harkness touched her nose, it felt as though she'd been brushed by magic. We believed her, since when it happened we could swear we saw glittery sparks.

  It took Georgia almost a full minute to recover from that touch. When she did, all she could come up with was "Jackie Huit reads too much."

  "Marcia Huit," Jackie said, "is very good at observing things. Really, not much that the eye can see gets past her."

  "Petal Huit," said Marcia, "worries about everything too much, but we are all trying our best to address that issue."

  "I'm worried," Petal said, "that if I don't say the right thing about Rebecca Huit, she will hit me later."

  "Oh, I'm sure your sister would never do that," Ms. Harkness said.

  For the first time, we saw a flaw in Ms. Harkness's perfection. How could she not see that that was exactly the sort of thing Rebecca would do?

  Still, her soothing words had the effect of calming Petal.

  "Fine," Petal said. "Pink frosting is never safe around Rebecca Huit."

  "Zinnia Huit," Rebecca said, "thinks our cats talk to her."

  We all glared at Rebecca, horrified that she'd let the cat out of the bag, so to speak. It was fine for us to make fun of Zinnia when we were all home alone, but it wasn't proper to do so in public. We knew how sensitive Zinnia was about her cat-talking illusions. Or, at any rate, we didn't want strangers to think we were harboring a loony tunes in our family.

  "That must be wonderful," Ms. Harkness said to Zinnia. "I've always thought that cats must have so very many more interesting things to talk about than, say, dogs."

  Made bold by Ms. Harkness's words, Zinnia opened her mouth to take her turn. But all that came out was "Mandy Stenko has red hair." She paused, then added, "And she raises her hand fairly frequently."

  That was our Zinnia all over: always so careful not to say anything that might hurt someone else's feelings.

  "Thank you," Ms. Harkness said with a slight bow of her head. "I'm sure the information you've all given me about each other will prove most helpful. Now, then."

  Mandy's hand shot up.

  "Yes, Mandy?" Ms. Harkness asked.

  "Now that we've all introduced one another," Mandy said, "should we start math?" She looked back at the clock again. "Or I suppose maybe English, since that always comes after math and the time for math has passed?"

  "No," Ms. Harkness said simply.

  "But the time for math has passed," Mandy insisted.

  "That may be," Ms. Harkness said. "But what would be the fun of doing things the way you always do them on our first day together?"

  Fun? First she wanted to do things different and now she wanted to have fun?

  It was like finding ourselves smack in the middle of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only no one was getting hurt!

  "But the schedulek' Mandy persisted, pointing to the schedule that the McG always kept taped to the upper-right-hand corner of the blackboard, the blackboard that was really green.

  That's when Ms. Harkness turned on her heel—we saw now that she wore high heels, very high; they were leopard-print but somehow managed not to clash with her turquoise dress—and she strode slowly to the blackboard.

  We noted that she had a nice stride, like a model's. We knew a lot about how models walked, since our father was one.

  Once at the blackboard, Ms. Harkness reached up and peeled off the schedule the McG had taped up ther
e back in September. All that was left on the board were four diagonal marks where the pieces of tape had been. Then Ms. Harkness wadded up the schedule into a ball of paper only slightly bigger than Georgia's infamous spitball and tossed it high in the air. It hung against the fluorescent lights for a full second, like the greatest basketball shot of all time, then dunked into the McG's empty wastebasket.

  When the schedule disappeared from view, we did worry, briefly, that Mandy Stenko might faint away and then die. Not that that would have necessarily been such a bad turn of events, but it would have disturbed all the fun we were having. Still, briefly worrying about Mandy did not stop us from shouting, "Swish!" right along with Will, and the nine of us pumped our fists in the air.

  Ms. Harkness brushed off her hands, one against the other. "There," she said. "Now that that's taken care of, who here is up for recess?"

  CHAPTER FOUR

  "Recess?" Mandy echoed. "But we never have recess until after lunch! And we haven't done any work yet!"

  "Besides," Marcia observed—she hated to point it out, but it was the plain truth—"it's raining too hard outside for recess."

  "So you'll have it indoors today," Ms. Harkness said brightly.

  We sighed. We knew all about indoor recess. It meant staying in the same classroom where we spent the rest of our school day—this room—trying to convince ourselves it was fun and different, when really the markers and everything else we used were the same things we used during regular classes.

  We were so disappointed, we put our elbows onto our desks and sunk our heads down into our open palms.

  It was then, in that dark moment, that we heard the most musical of all voices say, "Ready?"

  We looked up to see Ms. Harkness standing there holding Petal's little pink umbrella up over her head. The umbrella was open, even though we were... inside!

  This woman was insane! The next thing you knew, she'd be running with scissors ... and she was supposed to be the adult!

  In that moment, we loved Serena Harkness even more.

  "I think we can all run between the drops to the gymnasium, can't we?" Ms. Harkness suggested.

  So that's what we did, running between the drops behind our new teacher, zigzagging all over the Whistle Stop campus toward the door of the gymnasium. As we ran, Ms. Harkness sang a song, some crazy song involving kittens and whiskers and schnitzel with noodles. The song may have been crazy, but it was enough to distract Petal from worrying that we'd be struck by the lightning that was flashing all about. Petal never fretted even once about the roaring thunder!

  We arrived at the door of the gymnasium, wet and breathless but curiously happy.

  Once inside, we shook ourselves like cats coming in out of the rain.

  Then, with Ms. Harkness encouraging us, we set about finding things to play with.

  At first, we played some indoor soccer. Not because any of us liked soccer—we didn't—but because Mandy kept thinking that Will liked it, and she was trying to get his attention. So we played for fifteen minutes, kicking the ball back and forth.

  But then Rebecca reminded Mandy that Will didn't like soccer at all, which caused Mandy to remember that she didn't like soccer either, and so we stopped.

  "What do we do now?" Mandy asked.

  "Play, children! Play!" Ms. Harkness shouted from the sidelines. She was still holding Petal's little pink umbrella over her head... indoors.

  "There's something not natural about that woman," Mandy muttered as she followed us to the gymnastic equipment, where we climbed all over the uneven bars and the horse thingy, some of us hanging upside down, not caring if our panties were showing. For once, even Annie didn't reprimand us about this. She was too busy hanging upside down herself.

  "What do you mean by that?" Jackie asked Mandy. "Why would you say Ms. Harkness doesn't seem natural?"

  "Because she doesn't," Mandy said. "Just look at her over there, with that umbrella over her head... indoors." She shuddered. "She reminds me of that book The Cat in the Hat."

  "What are you talking about?" Rebecca demanded.

  "I've always liked that book," Zinnia said, adding, "It's a doozy." But no one seemed to care.

  "Those two kids in the book—" Mandy started.

  "Sally and her brother," Jackie put in.

  "Right," Mandy said. "Those two kids in the book are bored because it's raining out, so when the Cat arrives they're very happy."

  "Not entirely," Jackie said. "They are somewhat happy, but they're also concerned, particularly when the Fish gets into the action."

  "I've always been fond of the Fish," Petal said wistfully.

  "The Fish is a great worrier," Jackie said.

  "And rightfully so," Petal added.

  "But don't you see?" Mandy said. "Petal is right. The Fish has every good reason to be worried because once the Cat in the Hat comes into the picture, things start to go horribly wrong!"

  "But everything turns out all right in the end, doesn't it?" Jackie said.

  "But it takes an awful lot of work to get there," Mandy countered. Now she had her hands on her hips. If we hadn't known any better, we'd have sworn this was a new Mandy!

  "So what are you saying?" Durinda was puzzled. "Are you saying our teacher is the Cat in the Hat?"

  "She's not our teacher," Mandy said irritably. "Mrs. McGillicuddy is. This other woman, on the other hand, she's just an ... impostor!"

  We were so stunned at the notion, the accusationwe stopped hanging upside down and things and instead circled around to confront Mandy.

  "I don't think so," Annie said. "An impostor is someone who assumes false identity or title for the purpose of deception."

  "Ms. Harkness is just a substitute," Marcia said.

  "I'm fairly certain no one in the history of the world has ever impersonated a substitute," Durinda said, sounding like Annie.

  We all thought for a moment about some of the nasty things we'd done to substitutes over the course of our education. Then we hung our heads in shame. We had been bad.

  "Well, I don't think she's like the Cat in the Hat at all," Will piped up. "In fact, I think she's the most amazing teacher of all time! She's like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or Snow White or something, but with a shorter skirt."

  Normally, we would have been jealous. We would have been jealous that Will, whom we thought of as belonging to us, was paying so much attention to a female other than us Eights.

  But we couldn't be jealous. As he gazed at her adoringly, so did we all.

  Well, except for Mandy.

  "I want to be like her when I grow up," Durinda said, a light in her eyes.

  "I want to be like her right now," Zinnia said, a light in her eyes too.

  "I just wish I hadn't made such a jerk out of myself in front of her," Georgia said glumly.

  "What do you mean?" we asked, turning to her.

  "Hitting her in the forehead with that spitball," Georgia said. "I can't believe how bad my luck is at times! If I'd thrown that spitball a second earlier, it would have just struck the door; a second later, and I probably would have hit Frank Freud instead. But me, I had to throw it at exactly the worst moment possible, when it would hit her in the head. Now she shall hate me forever and I will never get a chance to be Teacher's Pet."

  We were shocked.

  Who would have ever dreamed that Georgia, hardhearted Georgia, would want to be Teacher's Pet?

  We certainly wouldn't have.

  But then we all swiveled our heads from Georgia over to Ms. Harkness, who was standing there under Petal's pink umbrella on the sidelines, and we could see her point. We all wanted to be Teacher's Pet now.

  Well, except for Mandy.

  "Georgia," Zinnia said, taking a step forward and placing her hand gently on Georgia's arm.

  We were proud of Zinnia in that moment. There were times when she could be as timid as Petal, and Zinnia did worry too much about gifts, but because she was so sensitive herself, she was sometimes the most sensitive
to other people. And cats. Well, at least she thought so.

  "I really don't think Ms. Harkness hates you," Zinnia said once she'd secured Georgia's attention. "Don't you remember? She told you she was going to keep a special eye on you. And she touched your nose. She hasn't touched any of us. In fact, I'd say you're her favorite. I think when she found you on her desk, she was awfully impressed."

  It was a long speech for Zinnia to make, and she looked as though she'd exhausted herself. We were proud.

  We turned to Georgia to see how she had taken this.

  She still looked sad, as though she wasn't wholly convinced and would dearly love to believe Zinnia was right ... but wasn't sure.

  "Or maybe," Rebecca added darkly, "the reason she wants to keep a closer eye on you has nothing to do with being special, at least not in a good way."

  "How do you mean?" Georgia asked.

  "You know," Rebecca said, "you on the desk? The spitball you hurled at her forehead?"

  "I didn't hurl—"

  "Maybe," Rebecca said, "Ms. Harkness suspects, and rightfully so, that you're the student most likely to cause trouble."

  "I prefer," Georgia said with a sniff, offended, "to believe she wants me for Teacher's Pet."

  "I still think she's the Cat in the Hat," Mandy maintained, interrupting all our theories about Ms. Harkness and Georgia. "I think she is"—and here Mandy took a huge breath before finishing—"A Bad Person."

  "Oh, will you please stop with that?" Georgia demanded, snapping out of her sad and offended mood just long enough to get mad.

  "Fine," Mandy said. "I guess I can't help it. I miss Mrs. McGillicuddy."

  She what? How could anyone possibly miss the McG?

  But before we could say this to her, she added, "And I think we should all cheer her up by making her get-well cards."

  It seemed like an over-the-top notion at first. Shouldn't getting a break from us cheer up the McG enough? But then we thought about the times when we'd been sick and Mommy and Daddy had bought us get-well cards, even though they lived right in the same house with us. (This was, of course, before they had disappeared. Or died.) Those cards had made us feel good, loved, better even, and we could see Mandy's point: cards from us just might be the difference between living and dying for the McG.