Call Me Sunflower Read online

  Text copyright © 2017 by Miriam Spitzer Franklin

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are from the author’s imagination, and used fictitiously.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available on file.

  Jacket image and design by Sammy Yuen

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-1179-2

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1181-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Eliana and Carissa

  May you always reach for the sun.

  CHAPTER ONE

  On my first day of sixth grade, one thought pounded louder and louder in my head as I walked up the front steps of Evergreen Middle School: I need a plan—a really awesome, amazing plan. One that would bring my parents back together and move us back home to New Jersey where we could be a family again, the way it was supposed to be.

  I looked up at the old brick building looming in front of me. All three stories seemed to be staring down at me, threatening, and if you think buildings can’t glare, then you’ve never seen this one. I could almost hear the low, rumbling voice: Hey, little sixth grader! Go back to elementary school where you belong!

  If it were up to me, I’d do exactly that. I’d be starting sixth grade at Alexander Elementary with my best friend, Madeline, in a nice, friendly little school that would never growl at me.

  Tugging on the straps of my backpack, I forced myself to move my feet forward.

  And that’s another reason I couldn’t just continue moaning and groaning. I had to come up with a solution—a fail-proof plan to get Mom and Scott back together—and then I could wave goodbye and good riddance to Bennetsville, North Carolina, forever.

  Mom and I stopped at the office to get my schedule. I stared out the large glass window at the swarm of kids zooming this way and that.

  “Do you want me to walk with you, Sunny?” Mom asked.

  Yes, yes, yes! I screamed inside my head, but I didn’t notice any other parents walking their children to class so I said as maturely as I could, “I guess I can find the room myself.”

  “Are you sure?” Mom had that concerned look on her face, the one that came with droopy eyebrows and a turned-down mouth. Not that I was falling for it. She hadn’t seemed too worried about me at the beginning of the summer when she announced we were leaving Scott and moving in with Grandma Grace, someone I only saw once a year. And all just so Mom could work on some fancy new degree.

  I nodded at my mom and hiked my backpack over my shoulder. She gave me a hug, but I squirmed out of it quickly. “Mrs. Honeycutt said it’s right around the corner,” Mom reminded me. “The first hall you come to—”

  “I’ll figure it out.” I took a deep breath and gave her a little wave, then turned and threw myself into the crowded maze of hallways.

  I wasn’t feeling brave at all, but I figured no one needed to know that. I squared my shoulders and lifted my head up, scanning the doorways for Room 117. Unfortunately, it wasn’t right around the corner like the secretary had said. By the time I found the correct room number, the bell had already rung and I had to make my unplanned grand entrance.

  “First day tardies are excused, but after today I expect you to be on time,” said Miss Clements, my homeroom and English teacher. She glanced at my schedule, then pulled out a pencil, which had been tucked behind her ear, and made a mark on the roll. “Okay, I have you right here. Sunflower Beringer.”

  Whispers and muffled giggles filled the room. Someone coughed. My cheeks blazed and the tips of my ears burned. “Sunny,” I managed to say. The only person who could still get away with calling me Sunflower was Scott. “I go by Sunny.”

  “Okay, Sunny it is,” Miss Clements said, directing me to an empty seat in the front row before moving on to homeroom business. There were a few more snorts, which she ignored but I couldn’t. When no one knows anything about you, a weird name doesn’t help one bit.

  Mom had named me Sunflower when she adopted me as a single parent, and when I was little I didn’t mind it at all. It felt kind of special that I was named after a flower. All the girls in preschool were jealous and started calling themselves names like Lily and Daisy and even Chrysanthemum, after a mouse in a story we all loved. But by the time we started kindergarten, everyone had outgrown their flower names, even me. That’s when I started asking people to call me Sunny, and everyone had stuck to it except Scott.

  After Miss Clements answered all the first-day questions, she clapped her hands together. “Enough. Sixth graders, you’ll figure it out before long. I’ll assign lockers at the end of class. Let’s get started with an activity to help us get to know one another better. This interview will be your first graded assignment.” Miss Clements began to scribble a long list of things we needed to find out about our “interviewee” on the board.

  When Miss Clements called out names a few minutes later, I stood up, watching as a tiny girl with red, curly hair made her way over to my desk. She wore a long patchwork skirt in different colors and a Care Bear T-shirt. Her hair was bunched into two poufed-out pigtails.

  When she stopped at my desk, she did something really weird. She stuck out her hand for me to shake, like we were having a business meeting. “I’m Lydia Applebaum,” she said, without the Southern accent everyone else had around here. “Where are you from, Sunflower?”

  “Sunny,” I said quickly. “I changed my name when I was little.”

  Lydia shrugged. “Have it your way. If it were me, though, I’d go by Sunflower.”

  I didn’t know how to respond. Lydia didn’t notice. She opened her notebook and pulled out a pen with a wiggly blue octopus on top. “Okay, we better get started. Let me guess. You’re from up north.”

  “New Jersey.”

  “I knew it!” Lydia said with a grin. “I’m pretty good at accents. Why’d you move to North Carolina?”

  “Mom’s getting her MFA. We’re going back home in two years when she finishes her program,” I explained to Lydia, even though Mom had told us she was “keeping her options open.”

  The whole move thing didn’t make any sense to me. Mom had told me she needed a change—a break from her job—and the only way she could afford it was if we moved in with my rich grandmother in North Carolina. But Scott could have moved in with us in New Jersey instead of living in his own condo if we needed to cut down on expenses.

  When I suggested that to Mom, she just repeated that it was time for a change.

  If it were up to Mom, we would stay in North Carolina forever, and I’d barely get to see my dad at all. That’s why it was so important to come up with the perfect plan, and soon. />
  “Master of Fine Arts?” Lydia asked, as if it were something any sixth grader would know.

  “In writing. She used to teach junior high, but now she wants to teach college students.”

  “I want to teach math at Stanford someday.” The octopus jiggled as Lydia wrote down everything I said on her paper. “That’s where my parents went to school.”

  I couldn’t help wrinkling up my nose. “I hate math.”

  “I love it. But I love reading and writing, too. And science. I might teach any of those subjects. Or maybe I’ll be an environmental lawyer.” She looked up at me. “Are you getting all this down?”

  I nodded and scribbled some notes. A lawyer would be a good job for Lydia—she sure could talk.

  “What about your dad?” she asked. “What’s he doing while your mom goes back to school?”

  I twisted a piece of hair around my finger. “Um, he owns a bookstore.”

  “Cool!” Lydia said. “My parents own a health food store. It’s called Earthly Goods. Ever heard of it?”

  I shook my head. “We just moved here last week.”

  “Oh, we moved from California at the beginning of the summer so my parents could open the store. This is my first time at a public school. My education will probably suffer, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices.”

  I gave her a look like You’ve got to be kidding. Who in the world talks like that, anyway?

  “Well,” Lydia continued, “my parents said Evergreen Middle School’ssupposed to be one of the top schools in the state. But I’ve been homeschooled all my life by an ex-Stanford professor—my mom—so I’m pretty advanced for my age.”

  I shrugged. I mean, what else could I say in response to that? I can’t stand a bragger.

  “So, anyway, you’ll have to come out and visit our store at Evergreen Plaza,” Lydia said.

  “I’m not big on health food.”

  “We have healthy junk food, too. Like blue corn chips and yummy vegan cookies.”

  “Vegan cookies?”

  “Strictly vegetarian. No eggs or milk or dairy products.”

  I looked up from my notebook. “You’re a vegetarian?”

  “Vegan.” Lydia threw back her shoulders. “Since I was born.”

  “Five more minutes,” Miss Clements’s voice cut through our conversation. “Wrap up your interviews and begin writing your paragraphs.”

  “All right, we need to hurry up.” Lydia glanced at the board and started shooting questions at me lightning fast. “Favorite food?”

  “Chocolate chip cookies.”

  “Mine’s fried tofu with peanut sauce.”

  I made a face, but that didn’t stop Lydia. “Favorite activity? Best subject?”

  “My favorite activity is art. And my best subject is language arts. I love to write—”

  “Well, my best subjects are math, reading, social studies, and science. And my favorite thing to do is write stories and bake vegan desserts and play with my cats.”

  I was about to ask her about her cats and about why she was a vegan, but before I knew it, Miss Clements called “Time.” There was a lot about Lydia that got on my nerves, but I’d discovered we had something in common: we were both animal lovers. And someday, when I was ready, I knew I’d be a vegetarian, too. Lydia wandered back to her desk, and the class went quiet as everyone wrote up their interview paragraphs.

  “Miss Clements?” someone called out. “I thought you said we were going to get lockers.”

  The room started buzzing again, and Miss Clements told us we could finish up our paragraphs for homework. I held my breath, hoping my locker partner would be nice—maybe someone I could be friends with, even if I didn’t plan to stick around Evergreen Middle School for long.

  “Sunny Beringer and Cassie Evans,” Miss Clements called out. A tall girl with long silky hair and tight jean shorts stood up across the room, but she didn’t move in my direction.

  I walked over to her desk and greeted her with a smile. “Looks like we’re locker partners.”

  Okay, maybe I could have come up with something more original. But, like I always say, there’s nothing wrong with stating the obvious when you can’t think of anything else. At least I was trying to be friendly.

  Cassie didn’t smile or respond to what I’d said, and she certainly didn’t try to shake my hand either. Instead, she looked me over quickly, then dismissed me with a toss of her hair as we headed down the hall to our locker. I noticed her eyes were rimmed with blue liner and her lips were shining with something that was not Chapstick.

  I threw the idea of making friends with my locker partner right out the window. Who wanted to be friends with someone who should have been wearing a shirt that said STUCK-UP AND PROUD OF IT?

  I held back a giggle. Madeline would have laughed right along with me.

  But as I stared at Cassie’s glossy hair fanning out behind her as she rushed down the hall, I found myself running my fingers through my own short hair, wishing I hadn’t cut off my ponytail at the beginning of the summer. In June, I had loved riding my bike with Madeline, feeling the warm breeze against my neck without long hair blowing in my eyes. Now the stylish cut had grown out, leaving me with one big shaggy mess, and Mom had been too busy to suggest another trip to the salon.

  I’d been too busy, too, until I looked in the mirror this morning. Staring back at me was a short, skinny girl with a mop on her head.

  “I’ll take the shelf,” Cassie decided as we stopped at locker number 312, the first words she spoke to me. Now I’d be stuck throwing my stuff at the bottom. But I didn’t argue.

  Cassie spun the combination a few times and opened the door like an expert. Then she unzipped her backpack and pulled out all kinds of junk—a mirror, a message board, a poster of some boy with straight teeth and hair that flopped over his forehead. While everyone else stood around practicing opening their locks, Cassie spent the next few minutes decorating.

  “Are you sure we’re allowed to hang up all that stuff?” I finally asked after she’d Velcroed the mirror and stood in front of it fluffing her hair.

  “Why not?” Cassie answered in a tone that suggested I’d asked the stupidest question in the world.

  When the bell rang and Miss Clements dismissed us to our next class, I took my whole backpack with me. Since I’d spent the last few minutes in Designer Locker Central instead of practicing, I had no idea if I could get my locker open. I wasn’t going to take any chances.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I got lost on the way to my next two classes and was called “Sunflower” by both of the teachers. I’d fallen into a first-day pattern I was determined to break.

  The best part about my morning was third period art. Ms. Rusgo was the only person besides Lydia who looked disappointed when I told her my name was Sunny, not Sunflower.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Her bracelets jangled on her wrist as she made a note on the roll. “I think Sunflower is a fabulous name. Wish I’d been given a cool name like that,” she said in a dreamy voice.

  I didn’t know what to make of my art teacher with her multicolored dress, long flowing hair, and musical voice, but I couldn’t stop staring at her, and it didn’t take her long to weave her spell over the rest of the class either.

  “The key to creating meaningful art,” Ms. Rusgo told us as she passed out sheets of paper with a heart outline, “is to harness your inner imagination. Your assignment is to fill in your hearts with colors and images that reflect your true self.”

  “You mean we should draw things we like to do?” a boy in front of me called out.

  “What you fill up your heart with is totally up to you. If I give you too many directions to follow, you won’t feel free to create. Dig deep. Dream big. And most importantly, don’t run away from your feelings.”

  Someone in the back of the room snorted. Ms. Rusgo immediately headed in that direction, and soon the room was quiet except for the soft sound of guitar music she’d pulled up on Pand
ora that was now playing over the speakers. I picked up an oil pastel and watched as my heart filled with overlapping swirls of blue, purple, and green, leaving a heart-shaped space in the middle for a sketch of what mattered most: Mom, Dad, Autumn, and me. Together, not separated by miles and states and tons of unanswered questions.

  “You’re really good,” the girl next to me whispered. I glanced up, noticing her for the first time. She looked like she could be a TV star with her smooth blonde hair, cute flowered shirt, and dimples that showed up when she smiled.

  “Thanks,” I whispered back, glancing at her drawing. Her heart was filled with flowers and peace signs and smiley faces. “I like yours, too,” I told her, even though I didn’t think she understood what Ms. Rusgo had meant when she said to “dig deep.”

  “I’m Jessie,” the girl said.

  “Sunny.”

  “I know.”

  I got the feeling Jessie was someone who didn’t miss much, and she had a confidence about her. She was probably one of those popular girls everyone flocked to. But she’d been friendly enough to me, even with my shaggy haircut and my New Jersey accent. I liked her right away.

  When the bell rang after third period, Jessie disappeared into the swarm of kids bumping and shoving their way out of the classroom, hurrying to get to the cafeteria. Watching my classroom empty out, I realized that finding my way to class was one thing; figuring out where to sit at lunch was going to be a much bigger problem. I hung back for a few minutes, trying to get my courage up to face a crowded lunchroom.

  “Beautiful!” Ms. Rusgo said when she noticed my drawing. “It looks like I have a real artist in my class!”

  “Thanks.” I looked down at my drawing, pleased with the way the mix of greens and blues captured the loneliness, longing, and worry that I was feeling inside. Art had always been an escape for me, and I could tell Ms. Rusgo was going to be a good teacher. I gave her a quick smile, then grabbed my notebook and pen along with my lunch bag and followed the noisy group of kids down the hall.

  A blast of warm air and the smell of cabbage greeted me as I walked into the cafeteria. Yuck! The good feeling I’d carried with me since I left Ms. Rusgo slipped away. I scanned the room, searching for a place to sit.