The Girl With 500 Middle Names Read online

  JANIE WHO?

  It’s hard enough being the new kid in school. It’s even tougher when all of your new classmates live in big houses and wear expensive clothes, while your parents have little and are risking everything just to give you a chance at a better life.

  Now Janie’s about to do something that will make her stand out even more among the rich kids at satterthwaite school. Something that will have everyone wondering just who Janie Sams really is. And something that will mean totally unexpected changes for Janie and her family.

  ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

  A Ready-for-Chapter Books

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  Cover illustration copyright

  © 2001 by Jacqui Thomas

  Cover design by Alexandra Maldonado

  Ages 7-10

  www.SimonSaysKids.com

  0201

  With thanks to Ellen Krieger, Gina Thackera,

  and the Yarn Shop for their knitting advice

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Text copyright © 2001 by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Illustrations copyright © 2001 by Janet Hamlin

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster.

  Book design by Anahid Hamparian.

  The illustrations are rendered in charcoal.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK

  ISBN 0-689-84135-3

  ISBN: 978-0-6898-4136-1 (print)

  ISBN: 978-1-4424-5780-5 (eBook)

  For Ollie Mae Haddix

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter One

  “Good-bye, broken chalkboard,” I whispered. “Good-bye, cracked floor.”

  Cross-eyed Krissy turned around and glared at me. Nobody’s supposed to call her that, but everybody does—just not to her face. Krissy had to go through first grade two times, so she’s older and bigger than the rest of us third graders. Nobody messes with her. But it’s hard not to stare at her eyes. They don’t look in the same direction at the same time. At the beginning of last year, I asked her if she could teach me how to do that with my eyes. I thought it was a talent, like whistling or walking on your hands. Cross-eyed Krissy looked at me—first with one eye, then the other—and then she spit right on my shoes. Everybody told me I was lucky she didn’t beat me up.

  Now I shrank down in my seat, like I did every time Cross-eyed Krissy turned around.

  “What are you talking about?” she growled.

  I reminded myself I wouldn’t see Krissy ever again after today either. I spoke up, bold as brass.

  “I’m saying good-bye,” I said. “I’m going to a new school on Monday.”

  “Yeah?” Krissy said.

  “Yeah,” I said, suddenly too full of my news to keep it to myself. “And it’s nice. It doesn’t have any broken windows at all. It’s got carpet three inches thick in all the classrooms, my momma says. And all the kids get to work on computers. And they have a reading corner in the library with fairy-tale people painted on the wall.”

  Krissy squinted at me. One eye seemed to look off to where one of our classroom windows had been covered with plywood all year long. The other eye just showed white. It was a scary thing, Krissy squinting.

  “You’re lying,” she said, playing with the bottom part of her desk, where it came loose all the time. It made a tapping noise, like a drum. “There ain’t no schools like that.”

  “Children,” our teacher, Mrs. Stockrun, said from behind her desk at the front. “I should not be hearing any noise right now. Aren’t you doing your worksheets?”

  But she didn’t even look up. I think she was reading a magazine. One of the boys blew a spitball at her desk.

  “I am not lying,” I told Krissy.

  Cassandra from across the aisle looked over at us.

  “She’s telling the truth,” she told Krissy. “I heard Mrs. Stockrun tell Mrs. Mungo during recess, someone’s leaving. ‘One less paper to grade,’ she said.”

  I felt sad, all of a sudden, that Mrs. Stockrun wasn’t going to miss me any more than that. But I wasn’t going to miss her, either.

  “So she’s leaving,” Krissy said, like she didn’t want to be proved wrong. “That don’t mean she’s going someplace nice.”

  Cassandra was turning a bad word someone had written on the top of her desk into a flower. It had hundreds of petals, and leaves dangling like ivy. It was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen drawn on a desk.

  “Oh, she is. I heard that, too,” Cassandra said. She heard everything. “Mrs. Stockrun said she’s going to the suburbs.”

  Krissy frowned. I wondered if she’d hit Cassandra for talking back to her. I just wanted to get out of this school without seeing another fight. But Krissy was frowning at me.

  “How?” she asked. She was puzzled, not mad. “You’re just as poor as the rest of us. How you gonna go to a school like that?”

  “Sweaters,” I said.

  Chapter Two

  My mother works magic with yarn.

  I’ve been hearing people say that all my life. Back when I was little, I thought it meant Momma could pull rabbits out of a hat, coins out of an ear. I’d watch her real close, hoping to see a trick. All I ever saw was knitting needles flashing through yarn. Every night I fell asleep to the sound of knitting needles clicking, in rhythm, a lullaby like no other kid’s.

  Magic.

  My momma can make sweaters, scarves, hats, slippers, socks, leg warmers, and anything else anyone might dream up out of yarn. She knits on the bus, going to and from work. She knit in the hospital that long winter we were waiting for Daddy’s back to heal after he fell, building a skyscraper. She knits the way other people breathe.

  But I never thought knitting had anything to do with school. Then one day last year, Momma picked up a book I’d gotten from the school library.

  “What’re you learning in school nowadays, honey?” she asked. She started turning pages. Then she snorted as loudly as the horses I’d seen at a petting zoo once. “Oh, come on. Men have too walked on the moon. When was this written?” She flipped the pages more quickly and shook her head. “Can you believe it? This book is older than I am.”

  That was the beginning.

  Momma went and talked to the teacher I had then, Mrs. Raun. Momma was shaking when she came home.

  “You cold, Momma?” I asked when she came in the door. It was raining outside, and her shiny black raincoat was wet. Raindrops glistened in her hair, where they’d gotten past her umbrella.

  “No, I’m mad,” Momma said. But she pressed her lips together, like she wasn’t going to tell me why. She went into the kitchen, where Daddy was drinking coffee. I crept over, close to the wall. I wasn’t really eavesdropping, but I could hear just fine.

  “That place is a wreck,” Momma was complaining. “Broken chalkboards, broken sidewalks, broken windows, broken desks—even the crayons are broken!”

  “Last time I checked, kids could draw just as well with broken crayons as whole ones,” Daddy drawled.

  “And the roof leaks,” Mo
mma went on, like she hadn’t even heard him. “The whole time I was talking to her teacher, there was this drip, drip, drip. . . . ”

  “Kids can learn in a building with a leaky roof. You just put out a pot or two,” Daddy said.

  “And the teacher kept saying ‘she don’t’ and ‘we done,’” Momma said.

  “What’s wrong with—oh,” Daddy said. “Grammar.”

  “If the teacher doesn’t even talk right, how are the kids going to learn?” Momma asked.

  Daddy was silent, but I knew what he was doing. Ever since he hurt his back, he’s had to stretch every so often. He moves his back out from the chair and tilts his shoulders back and forth and makes an awful face. Then he pushes his elbows back toward the chair and sighs.

  I heard the sigh that meant he was done stretching. Then he said, “Ah, Brenda, not all our teachers were that great, either, back when we were in school. And we didn’t exactly go to school in a castle.”

  “And what kind of an education did we get?” Momma asked.

  Daddy didn’t answer. After a few minutes, Momma yelled out to me, “Janie, have you done your homework yet?”

  For days after that, it was like there was a secret war going on in our house. As soon as I left the room, I’d hear Momma start hissing to Daddy, “Did you see in the paper about the test scores down at Janie’s school?” Or, “I hear there were thirty-two serious disciplinary problems this week at Janie’s school.” Or, “This says the school board wants to fire the principal at Janie’s school, but they can’t find anyone willing to take his place.”

  And then the war was over, and Momma was knitting more than ever.

  One morning when I was getting ready for school, I picked up a nearly finished sweater Momma had left draped on the couch. It was pink angora and light as a cloud. It was the kind of thing you could picture angels wearing. There were little purple flowers on the front, along with the name SARAH knit right into the sweater.

  “Who’s Sarah?” I asked.

  “Nobody we know. Yet,” Momma said, sweeping into the room. “But her mother or grandmother is going to pay one hundred fifty dollars for that sweater at The Specialty Shop.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “You,” Momma said, “are looking at an entrepreneur.”

  I gave her a blank look.

  “I,” she announced even more dramatically, “am starting my own business.”

  She posed, mockingly. She put her hands on her hips and tossed her hair over her shoulder. She raised her chin sassily. She looked kind of silly, since she was still wearing slippers with her dressy work clothes.

  Daddy was laughing in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “Your momma thinks when I get off disability, her sweaters are going to make it so we can pay to move out somewhere, and you can go to a better school,” he said.

  Momma stopped posing and shoved the sweater and a couple skeins of yarn into her knitting bag.

  “I hope,” she said. “That’s what I’m praying for.”

  She gave Daddy and me a kiss each, slipped on her shoes, and rushed out the door.

  “Your momma is quite a woman,” Daddy said, shaking his head.

  For a whole year, Momma knitted sweaters with strange names on the front. Ashley. Leigh. Brittany. Courtney. Laken. Parker. Madison. That store she’d found, The Specialty Shop, loved her. She started getting special orders right away. I’d hear her on the phone.

  “They want ‘Alexander’ and a choo-choo train on the front?” Momma would ask. “How big is this kid? Size two?” She’d laugh. “Do they think I’m magic?”

  She was. Even Daddy wasn’t laughing anymore. In September, right after I started third grade at Clyde Elementary, with Cross-eyed Krissy and Know-it-all Cassandra, I heard Daddy and Momma talking at the kitchen table. Momma was pointing at numbers.

  “See, that’s the security deposit, and this is the moving expenses, and this is the first month’s rent. And after that, if I sell two or three sweaters a month, it’ll be enough to cover the extra rent. And we’ll still be able to pay on the debt from when you were in the hospital—”

  “What if you don’t sell two or three sweaters a month?” Daddy asked.

  “Then we’ll cut a few corners somewhere else,” Momma said. “But I will. The sweaters are going great! Look how much I made in a year. Don’t you see—this is something I’m good at. It’s our chance. Janie’s chance.”

  Momma got quiet then. Waiting. Daddy was looking at the numbers.

  “You’re right,” he said slowly. “We can do it.”

  Momma shrieked and gave him a hug, and then they started kissing. I got out of there, fast.

  But that’s how I came to be saying good-bye to the broken chalkboard, Cross-eyed Krissy, Mrs. Stockrun, and the rest of Clyde Elementary.

  We moved out over the weekend. Daddy’s back was healed enough that he could carry a lot of the furniture himself, if he was careful. Two of his friends from work came out to help.

  Momma and I carried boxes. I knew I was supposed to be happy, but I had a jumpy feeling in my stomach. Momma had talked so much about how I was getting out of my horrible school, it was like she kind of forgot to mention we were leaving behind our house, too. I’d never lived anywhere else. I liked our house. I liked how the stairs creaked when you stepped on them just the right way. I liked the porch that wrapped around the front. I liked the trees that dangled branches against my bedroom window.

  We were moving into an apartment.

  “Brand-new!” Momma had told me a few weeks before. “The drains won’t clog. The windows will shut right. The furnace won’t break in the middle of winter!”

  “But it won’t be ours.” I pouted.

  Momma had laughed.

  “Oh, Janie, this house isn’t ours, either, you know? We’ll just be paying rent to a different person.”

  But our house feels like it’s ours, I wanted to say. It thinks it’s ours. But how could I say that? We were moving because of me.

  When everything was out of the house, I walked through the empty rooms, trailing my fingers against the walls. The kitchen looked naked without our old oak table smack in the middle of it. My bedroom looked like a stranger’s room without my bed, my dresser, my pictures on the walls.

  Momma came and found me and gave me a hug.

  “Oh, baby doll, I know it’s hard. Be strong, okay? We’re doing the right thing.”

  I got in the front seat of the moving truck and waved good-bye to the whole neighborhood. Already, it seemed like we didn’t belong.

  Chapter Three

  Satterthwaite.

  That was the name of my new school. When Momma woke me up Monday morning, I lay in bed trying out the name. Satterthwaite. Satterthwaite. I go to Satterthwaite Elementary School. I loved it. It rolled off my tongue so elegantly. Not at all like “Clyde.” “Clyde Elementary” just stuck in my mouth like a clump of peanut butter.

  But it seemed like I should be different, going to a different school.

  “Janie, Janie, Janie!” Momma popped her head back in my doorway. “Aren’t you up yet? You’re going to have to hurry now! Breakfast in five minutes!”

  I eased out of bed and stared into the strange closet I still hadn’t gotten used to. I pulled out my favorite T-shirt and my favorite jeans. At least they were familiar.

  An hour later, Momma was walking me through shiny glass doors that reflected the sun. She turned down a gleaming hallway and pulled me into a huge office, as fancy as the one Momma worked in downtown.

  “This is my daughter, Janie Sams,” she said, pushing me out in front of her. “She’s a new student. I brought her enrollment forms in last week?”

  “Ah, yes.” The woman behind the counter smiled at me. “Hello, Janie. You’ll be in Mrs. Burton’s third grade. I’ll show you the way.”

  Momma gave me a hug. I guessed that meant it was time for her to leave. I whispered in her ear, “Momma, I’m scared. I’ve never been a new student befo
re.”

  “Sure you have,” Momma whispered back. “First day of kindergarten.”

  “That’s not the same. Everyone was new then,” I said.

  Momma let go. I guess we did look pretty silly, standing there clutching each other and whispering.

  “You’ll do fine,” she said, and gave me that big, confident grin she’d had when she’d joked about being an entrepreneur.

  I let the woman from the office walk me down a long, long hall. Clyde Elementary was three stories, and I’d spent my first-grade year in the basement. Satterthwaite was all one level, but it seemed like a couple miles from one end of it to the other.

  The carpet was not three inches thick. I think Momma had exaggerated. But it was clean and new, and it cushioned every step I took. Clyde didn’t even have carpet, just wood floors gone splintery and concrete floors crumbling under peeling gray paint.

  “Here we are!” the woman from the office said brightly.

  I followed her through a classroom door.

  “Oh, welcome, Janie,” a woman said. “I’m Mrs. Burton. We’re so glad you’ll be joining us!”

  Fourteen or fifteen kids stared curiously at me. I stared back. They looked like the kids in department store ads—perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect clothes.

  I remembered that my favorite T-shirt had a hole, right in the front, where everyone could see. And it was faded. The flower decal on the front was starting to peel off. My favorite jeans were faded too, and the knees were practically worn clear through.

  I smiled anyway.

  “Hi,” I said.

  What I wanted to do was go back to Clyde right away and apologize to Cross-eyed Krissy. Was this how she felt when kids stared at her eyes? No wonder she was so mean.

  Mrs. Burton was telling me what to do. I made myself listen.

  “Janie, you can sit right over there by Kimberly, the girl with the green bow in her hair,” she said. “We were just getting ready to start math.”