A Case of the Meanies Read online

  Still, there was no check mark on top of my paper.

  “Dave!” Mom called, which is Dad’s name—short for David. “Girls! Dinner!”

  We all sat down at the table. I ate my rice. The salmon wasn’t so bad if you mushed it up in rice.

  “Just so you know, there’s a surprise treat tonight,” Dad told Penny.

  “Is it more magic gum?” she asked. That was the last surprise treat Dad brought home. Penny loved it. But me, well, not so much. It ended up in my hair, and I had to get a VERY drastic haircut.

  “Nope, not this time,” Dad said.

  That meant it was probably something better. But Penny seemed disappointed. “Can I have some anyway? I have a wish to make.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I wish Bruce would leave Somers and go back to his old school,” Penny said.

  For someone who didn’t want to talk about him, she sure did mention him a lot.

  “Maybe Bruce isn’t so bad,” Dad said. “Maybe he just got off on the wrong foot.”

  It was PENNY who used her foot, but still.

  Mom leaned over and tapped her fork on the edge of my plate. “There seem to be a lot of asparagus spears left here,” she said.

  Ugh, the asparagus. You can’t just mush it in rice to make it less gross. It’s gross no matter what you do. In fact, it should be called asparaGROSS. So gross I had to pinch my nose closed to eat it.

  (Here’s some advice, if you have to eat something gross: pinch your nose so you won’t taste the food as much. Because your taste buds and your nose are matched up inside your head. Or something like that.)

  I ate the first spear of asparagross with my nose plugged up.

  “Remember Stel, you promised to eat it or no treat,” Mom said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I didn’t promise to like it.”

  “I wish I could give Bruce all my asparagus,” Penny said.

  “You love vegetables, Penny,” Mom reminded her.

  “I know,” Penny said. “But at lunch today, Bruce kept trying to trade his celery for something else, so I think maybe he doesn’t like green things.”

  “Or maybe he just wasn’t in the mood for celery,” Mom said.

  “Nobody wanted to trade him though, because celery isn’t anything like cookies or cupcakes. He said at his old school, people always traded him for celery.”

  “It’s hard to be the new kid,” Dad said. “Trust me, I know.”

  Dad moved around a lot when he was little. I always forget that except when he brings it up. In fact, I always forget that Dad was ever a little kid at all.

  “Put yourself in Bruce’s shoes,” Dad said. “Imagine how he felt.”

  “But no one was in MY shoes. He said I didn’t know the trading rules since I’m just a baby. I said that’s not true. Then he said it’s not true that Mom’s having a baby, because I’m already a baby. And Miss Griffin called me up to her desk.”

  Penny wasn’t the only Batts sister who got called up to her teacher’s desk today, but I didn’t say anything about that.

  “It wasn’t fair,” Penny added.

  “I think you’re leaving out a little detail there, Pen,” Mom said. I knew what detail she meant: the foot stomping.

  “But Bruce started it, and then I had to go to Mr. O’Neil,” Penny said. She started crying right then, which made her more upset, because crying is kind of a baby thing to do.

  “But doesn’t it make you feel a little bit better, now that you’ve told us your side of the story?” Dad asked.

  Penny hiccupped and nodded. “A little,” she said. “But I still don’t like the ending of the story—that I got in trouble and Bruce didn’t.”

  I had an idea right then. A really good one.

  I pushed my seat back from the table and stood up.

  “Um, Stel,” Mom said. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  “May I be excused?” I asked.

  “You still have three asparagus spears left on your plate,” Mom said.

  I looked down. There they were. Well, fine, they’re not THAT gross. Not when they’re the only thing in the way of getting to write down a really great idea. I picked them up and ate them so fast, it was probably breaking some kind of asparagus-eating world record.

  “May I be excused now?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Mom said, at the same time that Dad said, “But you didn’t have your treat.”

  “I’ll have it later,” I told him. “Right now I have homework to do.”

  CHAPTER 5

  What Happens

  When You Try to Kill

  ’Em with Kindness

  You probably want to hear all about my really good idea. But I’m too mad to write about it.

  It’s not because Mrs. Finkel thought it was a bad idea. She doesn’t even know it yet.

  It’s something even worse.

  Tuesday started off just regular. First Geography, then English. Then it was snack time, and that was when all the bad stuff happened.

  Guess whose fault it was.

  If you said Joshua, then you are EXACTLY RIGHT!!!

  Here’s what happened.

  Mrs. Finkel said, “Okay, boys and girls, it’s snack time. And if anyone has further questions about their short stories, feel free to come up and ask me. Anyone? Stella, do you want to talk about your progress?”

  “No, I’m good,” I said quickly. I hate when teachers single you out like that, and my cheeks got hot again. The really bad thing about blushing is that everyone can see how embarrassed you are.

  I had Dad’s surprise treat from the night before as my snack, so I ducked my head down and pulled it out from under my desk. It looked SO DELICIOUS. It was wrapped up in a clear plastic bag, tied with a red ribbon, like a present.

  Usually I get up and stretch for the first half of snack time. Then Mrs. Finkel claps her hands and everyone returns to their own desks. That’s when I eat. But this time, I thought maybe I’d just stay at my desk the whole time. The treat looked too good to wait any longer.

  I untied the ribbon and started to pull off the plastic wrap, and then—

  “Is that an ice-cream pop?” a voice asked. Joshua’s voice. I looked up and there he was, standing next to my desk.

  It did look sort of like an ice-cream pop, since it was on a stick and it had chocolate coating. “No,” I said. Not that I knew for sure what it was. But it couldn’t be ice cream, because that’s too melty to take to school.

  “What is it then?”

  “It’s a secret,” I told him.

  “Secrets don’t make friends,” Joshua said. Like he would know anything about making friends. He didn’t have any!

  But then I remembered what Mr. King had said about Joshua being lonely. He didn’t have friends, which made him mean, which made it so he didn’t have friends. If I didn’t tell him, did that make me a meanie?

  So I said it, right then: “It’s not really a secret. It’s a surprise.”

  “Can I have it?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t say no in a mean way. It was my only snack, and he had his own snack at his desk. I was sure of it. “I’m supposed to taste-test it.”

  “How about just half?” he said. “I’ll taste-test it with you.”

  Sometimes Penny and I are Official Batts Confections Taste-Testers, but no one else is. And give him half? The treat was bigger than my usual snack, but still not that big.

  Kill ’em with kindness, Mr. King had said.

  Giving Joshua half would be a really REALLY kind thing.

  It was the kind of thing Willa would have done, before she moved away to Pennsylvania. Like when Clark dropped the cupcake Arielle brought for her birthday, Willa shared hers with him. She was probably being nice and sharing things with the kids in her new school right now. “Okay,” I said. I pulled the wrapping off and broke it in half. One part stayed on the popsicle stick, and the other part didn’t. I held that part out to Joshua.

  “No
fair!” he said. “You kept the bigger half!”

  “It’s my snack,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah, but my mom says one person gets to cut and the other gets to pick. That’s the sharing rule.”

  “Hey Stella, aren’t you coming over here?” Evie called to me.

  Down the row, Lucy, Arielle, and Talisa were standing by Evie. Joshua swiped the bigger half of the treat off my desk. I put the other half down. I wasn’t even excited about eating it anymore. “Coming,” I said.

  Joshua followed me over. I watched him take a bite of his half—which really should have been MY half.

  “Hey Joshua,” Talisa said. “Knock, knock.”

  “Who’s there?” he asked. But his mouth was full, so it sounded more like “Mooomp mooomp.”

  “Will,” Talisa said.

  “Will who?”

  “Will you share that chocolate treat?”

  Joshua shoved the rest of the pop in his mouth, and shook his head back and forth so hard that the sides of his hair lifted up a little bit. His hair is pretty short, so it didn’t lift up too much. My hair is pretty short too, but not that short.

  “I don’t have any left,” he said after he’d swallowed. “I only had half to begin with—Smella gave it to me.”

  There he was using that awful nickname again. I guess I hadn’t turned him nice yet.

  “Do you have any for us too?” Lucy asked.

  “No, sorry,” I said. “I don’t even know what it is yet.”

  “It tastes like fudge,” Joshua said.

  Oh, fudge on a stick! What a great brainchild! Fudge is one of my favorite things.

  “You’re not supposed to share with anyone if you can’t share with the whole class,” Lucy told me. “That’s one of Mrs. Finkel’s rules.”

  Mrs. Finkel’s rules are posted on the wall next to the coat closet. I knew about them, but I kind of forgot about that one when I gave Joshua half. And the only reason I did it was to NOT be a meanie.

  Now I was a rule breaker—but so was Joshua. We’re not supposed to eat our snacks when we’re not at our desk, so he totally broke THAT rule.

  “She has half left,” Joshua said.

  Wait a second!!! Joshua thought I should give up MY half! As Penny would say, that’s not fair. And besides, it wasn’t even big enough to split with everyone. “Joshua took the bigger half,” I said.

  “I had to test it because I’m going to have them at my party,” Joshua explained. “My mom says we can have anything we want. As long as they sell it at Batts Confections, then we can have it.”

  “So then you’ll get to have one,” Evie told Lucy. “If you go to the party.”

  “I’m going,” Lucy said.

  I was about to say that I was going, too. But wait, we shouldn’t have been talking about Joshua’s party out in the open like that. What if Arielle wasn’t invited? What if Talisa wasn’t, or someone else who heard us talking? Then they would just feel bad. Like Clark, who sits on the other side of Evie. He could definitely hear us. If he heard us talking and he wasn’t invited, he’d get hurt feelings.

  “We shouldn’t talk about it here,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” Joshua said. “I invited the whole class except for one person, and she already knows about the party so it’s okay.”

  Was it Talisa? Was it Arielle?

  “Who?” Lucy asked.

  “Smella!” Joshua said. “DUH!!!”

  CHAPTER 6

  Stamp of Approval

  You can’t just not invite someone to a party at their own store. That’s a Ground Rule.

  Okay not an official ground rule, like No Disruptive Behavior. But it should be one.

  Penny had a play date after school—a makeup play date with Zoey because of what happened on Monday—but I didn’t. My dad was the carpool driver. He said Mom was resting at home. After he dropped off Penny and Zoey, we headed to the store because he still had a bit of work to do.

  “Can you do me a favor?” I asked.

  “Certainly, darling,” Dad said.

  As soon as Dad said those words, “Certainly, darling,” I felt better. Everything was going to be just fine—Dad would make sure of it.

  “I need you to cancel Joshua’s party at the store,” I told him.

  “But didn’t you and Evie have plans to go to that together?”

  “We did,” I said. “But I didn’t get to be invited. He invited everyone in my whole entire class except me!”

  “I’m sure he didn’t invite everyone else,” Dad said.

  “No, really,” I insisted. “EVERYONE. That’s what he said.”

  “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry,” Dad said.

  “That’s why you have to cancel,” I continued. “Leaving me out isn’t allowed.”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, Stel,” Dad said.

  “Why not? It’s OUR store.”

  “That’s true, but I promised Joshua’s mom we’d host the party.”

  “You made a promise to me too,” I reminded him. “You said ‘certainly’ when I asked for a favor.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Dad said. “This is Joshua, the boy in your class that you don’t really like?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And I’m not the only one who doesn’t like him. He’s the biggest meanie I’ve ever known.”

  “If that’s the case, then why do you want to go to the party?”

  I didn’t answer. The truth was, I didn’t really want to go. I just wanted to be invited. I didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes. We stopped at a red light and Dad clicked the rearview mirror down so he could see me in the back seat. “What did you think about the fudge pop?” he asked.

  That’s one of his Dad tricks—trying to change the subject whenever Penny and I are upset about something, so we stop thinking about it. It works on Penny, but I’m older so he can’t distract me that easily.

  “It was okay,” I said glumly, still thinking about Joshua.

  “Just okay?”

  I shrugged, but Dad didn’t get to see my shrug because the light turned green and his eyes were back on the road.

  “Maybe today you can help Stuart make it great,” he said.

  When we got to the store, Dad and I took the elevator down to level C, which means cellar—another word for basement. He had a few things to do in his office. I sat at the desk, watching him sort through papers.

  “Where are last week’s receipts? Oh here they are,” Dad said. I knew he wasn’t talking to me. He talks to himself when he’s thinking about work stuff. “I think the new samples are upstairs. I’m going to head up.”

  I spun around on his desk chair.

  “I think the new samples are upstairs. I’m going to head up,” Dad repeated.

  Oh, he was talking to me this time. I stopped spinning.

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Not long,” he said. “Do you have homework to do?”

  I shook my head, no. The only homework for the night was working on our short stories, and mine was nearly done—sitting on my desk at home.

  “I’ll just be a few minutes,” Dad said. “Then we can go home.” He started to walk out the door, but then turned and came back toward me. He reached over my head for a stack of papers. “I know what you can do,” he said, handing me the pile. “You can put these order forms in alphabetical order by last name—here, see the last names on the tops of the page?”

  I nodded. “What are they orders for?”

  “Gift baskets, party supplies, that sort of thing. Can you do it? It would actually help me out a lot.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I got started as soon as he left. It wasn’t a hard job. Even Penny could do it. After all, kindergarteners know the letters in the alphabet. Kids even younger than kindergarten know that.

  I tucked “WASSERMAN, Robert” behind “MILLER, Dawn” because “W” comes after “M” in the alphabet, and flipped to the next form.

  And there
it was: “LEWIS, Joshua.” The order form for Joshua’s party.

  He’d ordered marzipan cookie sculpture-making kits—enough for twenty-one kids.

  My stomach felt strange suddenly, like it was turning somersaults inside my body.

  What would Joshua do if he was the one—the ONLY one—not invited to a party?

  First thing, I bet he’d slam his hand down on the desk. Whack! Loud! Disruptive Behavior!

  Then he’d probably tear up the order form.

  He’d tear it in half, and in half again.

  He’d keep on tearing until it was just eensy weensy pieces of paper and you wouldn’t even be able to tell it was ever an order form. He’d throw the pieces up in the air like confetti, and not even care that he’d ruined everything.

  Wow, that’s a really mean thing to do, I thought. I’d never do anything like that. Even though, well, I sort of really wanted to.

  I didn’t even want to think about Joshua right then, so I put his form down on Dad’s desk for now and moved on. NICHOLS, Faye. KEANE, Mary. The last form was ZELNICK, Jordan.

  The door opened. I swiveled around in my chair.

  “Stella Batts!” Stuart said. “I heard you were in here. I’m wondering if I can enlist your help—that is, if you’re not too busy.”

  I shook my head. “I just finished putting the order forms in alphabetical order,” I told him.

  “Great,” he said. “Then come with me.”

  I stood up and put the pile of forms on top of Dad’s file cabinet. Stuart and I went into the kitchen, which is the room right next to the office. Most of the candy we sell at the store comes ready-made, so we don’t need a big kitchen. But we do make cookies and fudge ourselves. Stuart had batches of fresh fudge on the counter.

  I can’t tell you our fudge recipe, because that’s a family secret. Okay, not exactly a family secret, since Stuart knows it and he’s not in our family. But it’s still something I’m not supposed to tell.