Clementine

I have had not so good of a week.

Well, Monday was a pretty good day, if you don’t count Hamburger Surprise at lunch and Margaret’s mother coming to get her. Or the stuff that happened in the principal’s office when I got sent there to explain that Margaret’s hair was not my fault and besides she looks okay without it, but I couldn’t because Principal Rice was gone, trying to calm down Margaret’s mother.

Someone should tell you not to answer the phone in the principal’s office, if that’s a rule.

Okay, fine, Monday was not so good of a day.

Which was a surprise, because it started off with two lucky signs, which fooled me. First, there were exactly enough banana slices in my cereal: one for every spoonful. Then, as soon as I got to school, my teacher said, “The following students are excused from journal writing so they can go to the art room to work on their ‘Welcome to the Future’ projects.” And I was one of the following students!

So instead of having to think up things to write in my journal, which I hate, I got to glue and paint stuff, which I love.

Margaret was in the art room, too. When I sat down next to her, she threw herself across the Princess-from-the-Future mask she was gluing sparkles onto. “Remember the rules,” she warned.

Margaret is in fourth grade and I am in third. She thinks that that makes her the boss of me. I hate Margaret’s rules.

“You can’t touch my stuff,” she said. Which she always says.

“Why?” I said. Which I always say.

“Because it’s the rule,” Margaret said. Which she always says.

“Why?” I said.

“Because you can’t touch my stuff,” she said.

And then I pointed out the window. Which wasn’t exactly lying, because I didn’t say there was something out there.

While Margaret was looking out the window, I accidentally touched her mask.

Twice. Okay, fine.

Then I got busy working on my project so I wouldn’t have to hear any “Clementine-pay-attention!”s.

Except I did anyway. Which was unfair because each time, I was the only person in the whole art room who was paying attention. Which is why I could tell everyone right in the middle of the Pledge of Allegiance that the lunchroom lady was sitting in the janitor’s car and they were kissing. Again. No one else saw this disgusting scene, because no one else was paying attention out the window!

And after that, when it was my turn to pass around the stapler, I could tell everyone that the art teacher’s scarf had an egg stain on it that looked—if you squinted—exactly like a pelican, which nobody else had noticed.

“Clementine, you need to pay attention!” the art teacher said one more time. And just like the other times, I was paying attention.

I was paying attention to Margaret’s empty seat.

Margaret had been excused to go to the girls’ room, and when she left she had scrunched-up don’t-cry eyes and a pressed-down don’t-cry mouth. And she had been gone a really long time, even for Margaret, who washes her hands one finger at a time.

“I need to go to the girls’ room,” I told my teacher.

And that’s where Margaret was, all right: curled up under the sink with her head on her knees.

“Margaret!” I gasped. “You’re sitting on the floor!”

Margaret hitched herself over to the side a little so I could see: she’d placed a germ-protective layer of paper towels under her.

“Still,” I said. “What’s the matter?”

Margaret pressed her head down harder into her knees, which were all shiny with tears. She pointed up. Lying on the sink, next to a pair of Do-Not-Remove-from-the-Art-Room scissors, was a chunk of straight brown hair.

Uh-oh.

“Come out, Margaret,” I said. “Let me see.”

Margaret shook her head. “I’m not coming out until it’s grown back.”

“Well, I think I see a germ crawling up your dress.”

Margaret jumped out from under the sink.

She looked at herself in the mirror and began to cry again. “I got glue in my hair,” she sobbed. “I was just trying to cut it out.…”

Margaret’s hair was halfway-down-her-back long. It was hard not to notice that the whole part over her left ear was missing.

“Maybe if we evened up a chunk over your right ear…” I suggested.

Margaret wiped her eyes dry and nodded. She handed me the scissors.

I cut. We looked back in the mirror.

“It’s like bangs.” I tried to cheer her up. “Sort of.”

“Except bangs are in your front hair, not the sides,” Margaret reminded me. Then she took a deep sigh, picked up the scissors, and cut off all the hair over her forehead.

Now the front half of her hair was all chopped off and the back half was long and straight and shiny.

“Not so good,” Margaret said, looking in the mirror.

“Not so good,” I agreed.

We looked at her not-so-good hair in the mirror for a really, really long time without saying anything, which is very hard for me. Then Margaret’s bottom lip began to shiver and her eyes filled up with tear-balls again. She handed the scissors back to me, and then she closed her eyes and turned around.

“All of it?” I asked.

“All of it.”

So I did. Which is not exactly easy with those plastic art scissors, let me tell you. And just as I was finishing, the art teacher came in looking for us.

“Clementine!” she shouted. “What are you doing?”

And then Margaret went all historical, and the art teacher went all historical, and nobody could think of anything to do except the regular thing, which is: send me to the principal’s office.