Completely Clementine

Text copyright © 2015 by Sara Pennypacker

Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Marla Frazee

Many thanks to the entire Ramirez family for their help in chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, and 12.

All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

For information address Disney • Hyperion, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

The illustrations for this book were done with pen and ink on Strathmore paper.

ISBN 978-1-4847-4333-1

Visit www.DisneyBooks.com

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Collect all the Clementines!

For Ms. Marla, Clementine’s art and soul

—S. P.

To Stephanie Lurie, who took Clementine’s hand

—M.F.

As soon as I woke up Monday morning, I flopped onto the floor with my drawing pad. I drew a cow with a sagging-down mouth and rivers of tears flowing from her eyes. When I was finished, that cow looked so sad, my own eyes started to cry a little bit. I wiped them so I could admire what a great job I’d done, and then I smiled.

Because—oh, yes—this drawing was going to crack my father’s heart, all right.

I drew about a hundred more teardrops splashing down, and added a couple of ducks paddling around in the puddle of cow-sadness. Then I got dressed and went out into the kitchen, where everyone else was already at the table.

“Okra, would you please pass this to our father?” I asked, sitting down.

My brother, who is obsessed with dinosaurs these days, took the drawing in his teeth and passed it over.

“Hmmm…” my dad said. “That is not a bad idea. Not a bad idea at all. A cow with hose-eyes. That could come in handy for…well, for putting out fires in a dairy barn, I suppose.”

I grabbed the drawing back and stomped into my room to label it “The Crying Cow.” Then I crossed out “Crying” and changed it to “Weeping.” This is because weeping is a lot sadder than crying; it’s tragical, really. I like to use exactly the right word for things.

Then I stomped back and handed it to my brother again. “Collard Greens, please pass this to our father,” I growled into my orange juice.

My brother pawed at my drawing and slid it across the table.

This time, my dad didn’t even look at it. “Clementine, try to understand,” he said. “It was very nice of Mrs. Jacobi to bake that meat loaf for us. She knows how tired your mom is these days, with the baby due so soon. She wanted to help out. It would have been rude not to eat it.”

I zipped my mouth into a straight ruler line so it wouldn’t say What about that cow in that meat loaf? Don’t you think you were rude to her? Because an important part of not speaking to someone is not speaking to them.

“I’m so mad at my father,” I told Margaret as soon as I got on the bus. “Since I turned vegetarian, my mom and Pinto Bean haven’t eaten any animals either. But my dad won’t do it. He ate meat loaf Saturday night. I’m so mad I can’t even talk to him. It’s been one day, thirteen hours, and”—I leaned over and checked Margaret’s watch—“twenty-one minutes.”

“Oh, yeah,” Margaret said. “The silent treatment.”

“The silent treatment? It’s a treatment?”

Margaret nodded hard. “Very effective. Hold out for a lot.”

“What do you mean?”

“The last time I used the silent treatment was in the spring, when my mother told me what kind of wedding she wasn’t having. I’m still getting stuff out of that one.”

A couple of years ago, Margaret had watched a real prince and princess get married on television. Since then, she’d considered herself an expert on royal weddings. So when she learned her mother was getting remarried, she figured she’d get to run the wedding. “I wasn’t there for her first one, to my father,” she’d told me, “but I can make up for that now. This one with Alan is going to be a doozy.”

She got a little carried away, planning this and planning that. One problem: she forgot to tell her mother about any of it.

When Margaret’s mother finally heard about the special wave from the balcony, the satin train with fourteen footmen to carry it, the carriage ride, and the hundred other details, she said, “NO.”

“What part NO?” Margaret had asked.

Margaret’s mother had meant NO to all of it, which made Margaret go berserk. “Three whole days I didn’t talk to her,” Margaret said. “On the last day, I even added my invisible treatment.”

“What’s that?”

“You act as if the person is invisible to you. I looked right through her, as if she weren’t there. You should use it with your father.”

“I don’t think I could do that,” I told her after I’d tried to imagine it for a while. “My father’s the opposite of invisible.”

“Too bad—it’s very powerful. It made my mother give in. She agreed to have a flower girl—me—and to get me a new dress, whatever I want. And tomorrow, I’m getting the best part: new shoes.”

This was so ridiculous I snort-laughed. “Shoes? Margaret, getting new shoes isn’t winning anything.” I thought back to when I had to get new sneakers last fall. “In fact, I think shopping for shoes is a punishment.”

“Oh, these shoes are winning something, all right. These shoes are going to be high heels.”

I felt my jaw fall down. It took all my power to crank it back up to my chin by the time we pulled in to school.

First thing when I walked into Room 3B, my teacher asked, “Yet?” and I answered, “Not yet.”

We have been “Yet?”ing and “Not yet”ing each other about waiting for babies since spring. First it was me “Yet?”ing him, but after his baby was finally born in May, he started “Yet?”ing me and I started “Not yet”ing him back.

“And Not yet about a name, either,” I answered to his next question as I took my seat.

When the Pledge was over, Mr. D’Matz called us for Circle Sharing Time. “As you know, this is the last week of school, and we have a lot to accomp—”

Mr. D’Matz waited while all the kids cheered about school being over. All the kids except me, that is. I’m happy about no school for the whole summer too, of course—I’ve got a lot of great stuff planned. What I’m not happy about is the rest of it. The Starting-Over-with-a-New-Class-in-the-Fall part, and the What-If-I-Don’t-Get-a-Nice-Teacher part. And most of all, the Saying-Good-bye-to-Mr.-D’Matz part.

I do not like saying good-bye.

“Thursday is the last day of school,” Mr. D’Matz started up again, “so we’ve only got four days. We’ll have to hurry to get our work finished, because I know we’ll want to leave plenty of time to say good-bye.”

At recess, Rasheed and Maria ran up to me. “What did Margaret say?” they asked.

Maria and Rasheed have been asking me this every day since they fell in love this spring. Actually, it was Rasheed who fell in love, and Maria just said I don’t care, sure, whatever