Text copyright © 2010 by Sara Pennypacker

Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Marla Frazee

Many thanks to Nadia Herman for her drawings in chapters 5, 9, and 12.

All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, 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 Books, 114 Fifth Avenue,
New York, New York 10011-5690.

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

ISBN 978-1-4231-9863-5

Visit www.disneyhyperionbooks.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
More Honors and Praise for Clementine
About the Author and Illustrator
Sneak Peek of Clementine and the Family Meeting
 This one is for The Great Cat Polka Dottie
—S.P.

To my cousin Margaret, who showed me Klickitat Street

—M.F.
I couldn’t wait for Margaret to get on the bus Monday afternoon. “It was the
best day!” I told her. “I got picked for Friend of the Week! I get to tell my
autobiography, be line leader, collect the milk money, feed the fish—”
“Oh yeah, Clementine,” Margaret interrupted, flapping her hands at me.
“We did that when I was in third grade.”
 Margaret is only one year older than I am. But whenever she says “When
I was in third grade,” she makes it sound like “Way back when I was a little
kid, which I’m not anymore, so that makes me the boss of you.” I want to learn
how to do that trick in case anyone ever lets my little brother into third grade.
“Your class did Friend of the Week, too? I didn’t know that,” I said.
“How come you never told me?”
Margaret crossed her ankles and looked down to see that her sock cuffs
were matched up. When she looked back at me, her mouth was pinched like a
raisin and she had turned a little pink. She shrugged. “I guess I forgot,” she
said. “I guess it was just too boring to remember.”

“Friend of the Week isn’t boring! Especially the booklet. Did you save
your booklet? Can I see it?”
Margaret shrugged again. “My mother keeps it in the living room. It’s
very important to her because it’s all about my valuableness. I think she likes
to have it around whenever Mitchell drives her crazy. I think she likes to read
it and go, ‘Whew! Thank goodness I have one good kid.’ You probably
shouldn’t touch it.”
“I won’t hurt it,” I said. “I’ll be careful. Let’s read it when we get
home.”
 Margaret looked worried—like she was trying to think up something and
couldn’t—but then she shrugged a third time and said, “Sure, okay, sure, I
suppose.”
So when we got home, we rode the elevator down to my apartment to
say, “Hi-Mom-bye-Mom-I’m-going-to-Margaret’s-okay?-okay,” to my mother.
Then we rode the elevator up to the fifth floor, where Margaret’s apartment is.
Margaret went straight over to the shelves next to the fireplace. She
clasped her hands in front of her, admiring the rows of trophies and awards
she had won. Because we do this every time we’re in her living room, I knew
she wanted me to admire them, too. So I clasped my hands and we stood there
having a moment of silence, staring at all the proof of how great Margaret was
at everything.
There sure was a lot of it. Three whole shelves of “Best at This” and
“Blue Ribbon for That” lined up all neat and tight like groceries in the
supermarket.
I am really good at math and drawing. But nobody gives out trophies for
those things, which is unfair. So all my parents have is a stack of math tests
with stars on them, and some drawings taped up on the wall. They never put
up a shelf in the living room for all my awards. Which is good, I guess,
because it would be empty.
 After I figured we were done with the admiring, I went over to the
shelves on the other side of the fireplace. There were lots of pictures of
Margaret’s older brother, Mitchell, there, playing baseball with his friends.
And six identical baseball trophies. M.V.P. each one read, but with a different
year. Nothing else.
“What does that stand for, M.V.P.?” I asked.
Margaret scratched her head like she was fake-remembering. “Oh, right!
Moron-Villain-Pest,” she said. “He wins it every year. No competition.”
I knew Margaret was making that up because Mitchell isn’t even one of
those things. Which does N-O-T, not, mean he is my boyfriend.
I took a purple marker from my pocket and wrote M.V.P. on my arm with
a lot of question marks after it so I would remember to find out what it meant.
Margaret didn’t notice because she had picked up a golden ballerina statue. “I
should have won silver and bronze statues for my other dances, too,” she was
saying. “But the judges didn’t want the rest of the kids to feel too bad.”
 Now, Margaret can be kind of a braggy girl. But today she was being
even braggier than normal. This could take a while. “How about the booklet?”
I reminded her.
Margaret blew some invisible dust off the statue and put it back
carefully. She pushed aside a big spelling bee plaque on her bottom shelf and
pulled out a blue booklet.
I reached for it, but she yanked it away. “Germs,” she said, glaring at my
hands. Then she sat on the couch and began to read.
“‘It’s good to have Margaret in our class because she is very organized.’
‘I like having Margaret in class because she is neat.’ ‘Margaret is an extra-
clean girl.’”
I sat down beside her and looked over, to see if she was fake-reading all
those compliments. Nope, I saw with my own eyes—the page was full of stuff
like that.

It’s good to have Margaret in class because her hair is so shiny I can
almost see myself in it! wrote Alexis. I like sitting next to Margaret because
she never lets her stuff spill onto my desk, wrote Jamaal. And under that,
Kyle had written, Margaret is helpfull. Every day she tells me what I do
wrong.
Margaret tapped the page. “I had to tell him he’d spelled ‘helpful’
wrong.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a great booklet.”
 I started to get nervous. Even though I am friends with everybody in my
class, nobody was going to write anything like that about me, that was for
sure. “What else did kids write?” I asked. “Anything about being a good
draw-er, or good at math?”
“Just more nice compliments,” Margaret said, jumping up suddenly.
“Page after page. We should put it back now.”
Margaret walked over to her shelves and closed the booklet. But instead
of putting it back, she stared down at it and gasped. She turned red. If her eyes
weren’t squidged down to slits, I bet I could have seen them boil. She looked
like a cartoon person about to explode.
“That…that…that…that…OH!!!” she sputtered. Then she stomped out
of the living room and down the hall and kicked open Mitchell’s door. I
followed her.
“Don’t touch anything in here!” she warned me. “This place is crawling
with germs!”
Mitchell was on his bed. He said hi to us from behind the sports section.
Margaret went over to him and stuck the booklet out, her whole body shaking.

Finally I saw what was making her so mad. On the cover of the booklet,
someone had covered up the r in “Friend” with white tape.
MARGARET! the title read, above Margaret’s smiling school picture. FIEND
OF THE WEEK!
Mitchell made an innocent face and clapped his hands to his chest, like
he was heart-crushed that she could accuse him of doing something like that.
But I could see him telling his mouth not to laugh, and I could see his mouth
fighting back.
“What makes you think it was me?” he asked, when he had won the fight
with his mouth.
Margaret pointed to the baseball bat sticking out from under Mitchell’s
pillow. The handle was wrapped in tape that used to be white.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I should have used Mom’s nail polish or
something.”
Margaret stormed out of the room without saying a word and stomped
back to her own bedroom. Her cat, Mascara, shot off the pillow and
scrambled under the bed, because cats know when someone’s mood is B-A-
D, bad. Mascara and I waited while Margaret sat in the exact center of her rug
and smoothed out all of the fringe, which is how she calms herself down.
“He is such a baby-head!” she hissed after a while.
“The cover’s not important, Margaret,” I tried. “Here, give it to me. I’ll
take the tape off.”
Margaret clutched the booklet to her chest.
I almost pointed out that if Mitchell had touched it, it was crawling with
germs now, but I didn’t because I figured Margaret had been historical enough
for one day. It didn’t matter, though, because just then she figured it out for
herself.
“Aaauuurrggghhh!” Margaret screamed. She dropped the booklet and
ran into her bathroom, waving her hands like they were on fire. I heard her
turn the water on and start scrubbing.
Normally, Margaret and I never leave the other person alone in our
rooms. This is because if Margaret is ever alone in my bedroom, her fingers
get itchy to organize something. And if I’m ever alone in her room, my fingers
get itchy to mess something up. As soon as Margaret went into her bathroom, I
started looking around for what I could mess up. But this day, I saw something
even better to do with my itchy fingers!
I reached under her desk, where her booklet had landed, and pulled it
out. Very carefully—so carefully not one single speck of paper-skin came
away!—I peeled off the tape.
Margaret came to the bathroom doorway then, patting the fingers of her
left hand dry, one by one. “I have a good idea, Clementine,” she was saying in
a voice that sounded a lot calmer than the one she’d run into the bathroom
with. “About how you can get a great booklet, like mine. Give everybody
compliments all week. Then they’ll give you some back in your booklet on
Friday.”
I held up her booklet, smiling. “Look, Margaret!”
“Or presents!” she said, as she started on her right hand. “Presents would
be even better than compliments. And leave the price tag on, so everybody
can see how good of a present it is and—”
“Margaret, look!” I interrupted her.
She looked up from her finger-patting. Her mouth fell open and she
dropped the towel. She had that exploding-cartoon-person look again.
“Who said you could read that?!” she shrieked. Then she charged
across the room and snatched the booklet from me, never mind the Mitchell-
germs.
 Mascara, who had stuck his nose out while Margaret was in her
bathroom, skittered back under the bed. If I could have fit under there, I would
have, too.
Instead, I was stuck trying to calm Margaret down. “I didn’t read it! I
was only…look! It’s fine, the tape—”
“That was private! Anyone should know that! Anyone!” Margaret yelled.
“I only peeled the tape off, Margaret! I didn’t hurt anything. Now, let’s go
back to the giving-presents idea, okay? You think people would write great
stuff in my booklet if I give them presents?”
This is called Throwing Someone Off The Track. My parents say I am a
genius at it, but it didn’t work on Margaret.
“NOBODY’S GOING TO WRITE ANYTHING GREAT IN YOUR BOOKLET NO MATTER
HOW MANY PRESENTS YOU GIVE THEM AND YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY FRIEND AND I
ONLY PLAY WITH YOU BECAUSE YOU LIVE IN MY BUILDING AND NOW YOU HAVE TO
GO HOME!” Margaret yelled at me.
“Well, well, well…OH, WHO CARES BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT EVEN MY FRIEND
EITHER!” I yelled back. Then I ran out of Margaret’s apartment and stabbed the
elevator B-for-basement button so hard I probably broke it for life.
When I got to my apartment, my kitten was already waiting in the hall for me.
That’s how smart he is; he can tell it’s me just from my footsteps.
I scooped him up and he gave me a kiss on my ear. “That’s another way
you’re smart,” I said. “You always know when I’m sad.”
Then I draped him around my neck the way he likes, and carried him into
my room, so I could tell him in private how mean Margaret had been to me. It
took a long time, but finally I felt better. And as I sat there, patting his soft
paws hanging over my shoulders, I realized something.
“Hey, Mom,” I said, walking into the kitchen. “Look how long
Moisturizer’s legs are getting!”
My mom looked up from her carrot-peeling to see. “He’s growing up,”
she agreed. “I’ve noticed that. He doesn’t sleep as much these days—he’s
always exploring, getting into stuff. How was today?”
“Bad,” I said, thinking about Margaret. I took a carrot and chomped it,
hard. Then I remembered school. “And good, too.”
“Which do you want to start with?”
“The good,” I decided. “I got picked for Friend of the Week.”
“Remind me what that is,” Mom said.
But before I could, Turnip ran into the kitchen. He made a beeline for the
pots-and-pans cupboard and dragged out the big spaghetti pot. He clapped it
over his head and started whacking it with a wooden spoon, all the while
laughing so hard I could hear the drool bubbling up under his spaghetti-pot
hat.
 I patted Moisturizer to keep him calm during all the pot-whacking. And I
tried to imagine what my brother’s Friend of the Week booklet would say if he
ever got to third grade.
“Mom,” I asked, “do you ever wonder if Corn Kernel is normal?”
 “First of all,” my mother answered without stopping her peeling, “your
brother’s name isn’t Corn Kernel. And second of all, of course not! What are
you talking about?”
“Mom! Every day he takes off his shoes and then tries to put them on
backward. Not just on the wrong feet, but backward.”
My mom just shrugged.
“He thinks the washing machine is really a rocket ship.”
Mom smiled.
“He hammers rocks. And even if he hits his head when he swings back,
he keeps on doing it!”
My mom looked down at my brother as if she thought hammering rocks
was the smartest, most adorable thing a person could do. “He does!” she
agreed. “He’ll do it for hours!”
Believe me, there were about a hundred more things I could have listed,
but I stopped there because I didn’t want to break my mother’s heart about
having such a disappointing second kid. I suddenly remembered what
Margaret had said about how her mother likes to read her booklet whenever
Mitchell drives her crazy. And that’s when I knew. I was going to bring home
a wonderful Friend of the Week booklet—so great it would make my parents’
faces crack open with smiling pride. I was going to love showing them that
booklet on Friday.
Okay, fine, I was going to love showing it to that braggy Margaret, too.
Just as I was enjoying thinking about Margaret reading all my great
compliments, my dad came into the kitchen.
“Dad, I got picked for Friend of the Week—”
“Clementine, freeze!” he interrupted me. “Do not move one muscle.”
“What is it—”
“Try not to panic,” he went on, creeping up to me slowly. “I’ll try to save
you.”
“Dad, what?”
“Don’t look down now,” he whispered. “But I think…I think your
scarf…is alive!” Then he laughed and ruffled Moisturizer’s fur and kissed my
forehead.
 “Now,” he said, after he’d given my brother a kiss through his spaghetti
pot, too, “what’s this Friend of the Weak thing?” He flexed his arms. “Aren’t
you a Friend of the Strong, too?”
I laughed. “Friend of the Week. The seven-days kind of week. It’s—”
My mother interrupted us by giving me a head of lettuce and the salad
spinner and handing my father the spoon to stir the chili. This is because she is
a really big fan of the Little Red Hen story. Anyone who expects to eat
something in our house should expect to help make it. I always make a face
about doing dinner chores, but the truth is I like being in the steaming, clattery
jumble of dinner-making with everybody else.
So while my mother mixed the corn bread and my dad put his secret
ingredients into the chili and my brother whacked more pots, I made a salad
and finally told my parents about Friend of the Week.

“Every Monday, our teacher pulls a name out of a Kleenex box. That
person, who is me this week, gets to be the leader of everything and tell about
themselves. And everybody else has to say why it’s so great to have that
person around. The best part is that on Friday, they write it all down in a
booklet for me to bring home.”
“Excellent,” my dad said. “I already know exactly what I’m going to
write.”
 “Dad! Parents don’t get to write anything. Only the kids.” Then I started
to wonder. “Well, what would you write, though? I mean, if you could?”
“I’d write, ‘I think it’s wonderful to have Clementine in school because
otherwise her mother and I would have no idea where the heck she was. If she
weren’t in school, that nutball kid would probably have her own television
show, or she’d be running a tattoo parlor or dealing blackjack in a casino
somewhere by now.’”
I have lived with my father for my entire life, which is almost three
thousand days long now, and I still forget that he thinks he is a comedian.
“Dad, that’s not funny,” I told him. “I wouldn’t do any of those things until I’m
big. Except…wait. What’s a casino? What’s blackjack? Would I like it?”
“Never mind,” said my mom. “Clearly that’s a very wise rule Mr.
D’Matz has about only letting kids write in those booklets. And I can’t wait to
read yours on Friday. I’m sure we’ll enjoy it.”
“Enjoy it? You’re going to love it!” I promised her. “In fact, you’re
probably going to want to build a whole shelf, right next to the fireplace, to
keep it on!”

When my mom came in to say good night, she remembered there was a bad
part to my day. “Want to tell me about that now?”
I shrugged and petted Moisturizer under the covers. “Margaret’s mad at
me. Really mad. And I don’t know why.”
 “No idea?”
“Nope. She just went crazy. First at Mitchell, then at me.”
“Well, maybe she’s just having a bad day. But I’m sure you’ll figure it
out. You always do.”
“You think so?”
“Sure. You two have been friends since the day Margaret moved in
here.”
“I thought we hated each other in the beginning. Remember? You told me
Margaret was always trying to dress me up in her costumes and I hated that.”
Mom nodded. “You’d run screaming when you saw her. You were about
three. Then finally you’d let her stick a tutu on you, or a princess cloak, and
then you’d go find a mud puddle to sit in.” Mom laughed. “Yep, you were
friends right from the beginning. So you’ll work it out. That’s what friends
do.”
Then she said good night and turned out the light.
 In the darkness I held Moisturizer tight and thought about the bad news
about that: Margaret and I weren’t friends anymore.
Giving people compliments turned out to be a lot harder than Margaret had
made it sound.
It started off okay on the bus ride Tuesday morning.
“That’s a huge bruise on your arm! Great colors!” I said to Willy. This
compliment made his twin sister Lilly smile too, because she had given him
the bruise.
Then I moved over to where Joe was sitting. “You look a little taller
today,” I told him. “Maybe it’s starting.”
Joe is the shortest kid in our class. He’s always on the lookout for his big
growth spurt, so this compliment should have made him happy. Instead, he
looked puzzled for a minute and then hitched himself up and pulled out a lunch
bag. Squashed. “Oh, rats,” he said. “I hope it’s not tuna.”
And then, because nobody else from my class rides my bus, for the
whole rest of the way I had nothing to do except ignore how Margaret was
ignoring me ignoring her.
Things got harder in school. First my teacher said, “Clementine, as
Friend of the Week, would you please lead us in the Pledge?” All I could
think to do, standing under the flag, was give people the thumbs-up sign when
they got the hard words, like “indivisible,” right.
 Next thing, it was my job to collect the lunch money and bring it down to
the cafeteria. Let me tell you it is not so easy to compliment people about
handing you money.
I told Waylon his quarters looked especially shiny, and that he must keep
his pockets really clean. He liked that. Next I told Maria that she counted her
change out really fast, but she said no, it was just because I took so long
talking about Waylon’s pockets. Then I admired the way Rasheed’s nickels
and dimes were all stacked up in one tall pile. He said, “Thanks, it took a lot
of spit to get them to stick together.” Finally I told Joe he had great aim—like
a much taller person!—when he tossed his money into the envelope.
 But that was it! The only other compliment I came up with was to the
lunchroom lady who took the money. I told her that her hairnet made her head
look like a hornet’s nest from the back. She laughed and said, “Why thank you,
girlie, now doesn’t that just make my day!”

Which was nice, but it didn’t really help because the lunchroom lady
does not get a page in my booklet.
Back in the classroom, we did Circle Sharing Time and Morning
Announcements, as usual. I spent the time trying to think of nice things to say
to the kids. But then my teacher threw me off track.
 “And finally, don’t forget the bike rally Saturday to raise money for our
third and fourth-grade spring trip,” he said. “I hope you’re all decorating your
bikes! See you at ten o’clock in Boston Common.”
I could feel my inside face melting into a big secret smile, and I forgot
all about the compliment-thinking-up.
My bike was going to look awesome on Saturday! In fact, I was going to
have the best-decorated bike in the entire history of life. This is because the
world’s best decorations store is right in the basement of my building.
Well, not exactly. But my dad is the manager of our apartment building,
and it’s his job to decorate the lobby for holidays. He does the normal ones,
of course, like Halloween and Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. Boring,
boring, boring. But my dad does his research and he says every day is some
kind of holiday. Take January. Everybody knows about New Year’s Day and
Martin Luther King’s birthday. But my dad also decorates for Fruitcake-Toss
Day, Punch-the-Clock Day, and Measure-Your-Feet Day.
Every week he posts what special days are coming up on the lobby
bulletin board, along with suggestions for how to celebrate. For instance,
April 30 is Hairstyle Appreciation Day, so in the elevator you might hear,
“Mrs. Jacobi, what a lovely bun you’re wearing!” Or Margaret’s mother might
compliment my mother on her tricky braid—but only if those things are true,
since April 30 is also National Honesty Day.
“If I were in charge of the lobby at the UN, there would never be another
war,” my dad says. I think he’s right—his holiday decorations make
everybody happy.
Especially me. Because all these decorations live in our basement when
it’s not their turn. And when I asked my dad if I could borrow some for the
rally Saturday, he said, “Sure, Sport, take them all if you want.”
I still wasn’t sure how I was going to decorate my bike, but that was only
because I had too many great ideas. I felt my secret smile get even bigger. It’s
a good thing I know how to keep it from showing on the outside.
 “Wow, Clementine,” my teacher’s voice interrupted. “You certainly seem
excited to tell us your life story.”
“Excuse me?” I asked. “What?”
“It’s time to give us your presentation. That’s quite a smile. I’m glad to
see you’re so happy about it. Come on up.”
I looked through my backpack in case I had forgotten that I remembered
to make some notes last night, but nope.
“That’s all right,” my teacher said. “Just come up and tell us about your
life.”
So I went up to the front of the class. “I was born,” I began. And then
nothing else came out, because it is very hard to think when you are standing
at the front of a class with all those eyes on you.
“You were born,” Mr. D’Matz repeated. “Where?”
“Here,” I answered. Then all the kids started to laugh—but since it was a
nice laugh, not a mean laugh, I laughed too. “No, I was not born in room 3B,”
I said. “I was born in Boston.”
 “And then?”
“And then I lived here, too. In Boston, not in room 3B. The end. Well, not
the end, not yet. But that’s all.” I bowed and then started to head back to my
seat.
The kids applauded, but my teacher stopped me. “Oh, I don’t think that’s
all,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve done lots of interesting things since you’ve
been born. What do you think a biographer would say in a book about you?”
I shook my head. “Not much. I read two biographies this year. Did you
know Harry Houdini was already a famous trapeze acrobat by the time he was
my age? And Mozart had been composing music since he was five. Nobody
could say anything like that about me.”
And suddenly I had a great idea about why. “Those people back in ye
olden times probably didn’t have to go to school! Just last night, my dad said
if I weren’t in school I’d be doing lots of interesting things!”
“Well, you might indeed,” my teacher agreed. “But for this presentation,
let’s just stick to what is. Now, wasn’t there an addition to your family some
time ago? Why don’t you tell us about him?”
“You’re right!” I cried. “I can’t believe I forgot! Okay—I got a kitten at
the beginning of the year, and his name is Moisturizer, and he’s really smart
and—”
“Well, actually, I was thinking about someone else,” my teacher said.
“Don’t you have a younger brother?”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes. I do. Broccoli. Now, one special thing about my
kitten is that he’s really—”
“Your brother’s name is Broccoli? Seriously?”
“Well, no. But I got stuck with a name that’s a fruit, and it’s not fair that
he didn’t, so I just call him vegetable names. Sometimes it’s Corn, or Brussels
Sprout, or Onion. It depends. Anyway, we’ve had him for three years now and
he’s kind of a disappointment, so I don’t think I should talk about him.”
My teacher laughed as if I’d made a joke. “Well, I think one thing we’ve
learned is that Clementine has a good sense of humor,” he said. “That’s all the
time we have right now. But for the rest of the day, let’s all be reporters.
Everyone find out one interesting fact about Clementine to share.”
So, during recess the kids asked me questions.

QUESTION: If you were an animal, what would you be?

ANSWER: Gorilla.
 QUESTION: What is your favorite color?
ANSWER: All of them.
QUESTION: Does your little brother do any cute things?
ANSWER: No.

I was glad nobody asked me who my best friend was. Because I didn’t
have an answer for that.
After school on Tuesday I went straight to the basement.
The basement isn’t really a basement—it’s just the other half of the floor
we live on, which is the bottom floor of our building. It is halfway below the
sidewalk level and halfway above, so if you look out our windows, you see
people’s feet. My parents say living at this level keeps us grounded, and they
laugh at that. I have noticed that grown-ups laugh at a lot of things that aren’t
funny.
Anyway, our apartment takes up half of the floor. The rest is what we
call the basement—a huge space with the furnace and boiler in it, a workshop
area, the building’s laundry, and storage units.
My dad says being a building manager is like being the president, and
that I’m like his vice president. Because I have to be ready to step in at any
time, I know the basement almost as well as he does. So I knew right where
the decorations were.
As I was pulling down the first box, labeled HALLOWEEN, I heard a little
meow. “Hey, what are you doing out here? Want to help me decide about my
bike?”
Moisturizer said yes in kitten language, so I dumped out the box in front
of him—a bag of cobwebs and a bunch of big scary bats with black flappy
wings.
 Moisturizer corner-eyed the bats. He flattened himself and inched toward
them, his nose trying to twitch out whether they were real or not. I slipped my
hand into the pile and flipped a switch on one of the bats, so its red eyes
flashed on and off.
 Moisturizer shot sideways up into the air. His ears, his legs, and all the
hairs on his tail spiked out as if every part of him was scared stiff. I knew he
wasn’t really afraid, though. He was just playing Captain Wonder-Paws—first
he pretended to be the weak little kitten, then at any minute he’d change into
the super cat.
Sure enough, he swaggered over to the bat and swatted it, and then turned
away to flick his super tail, just to show it who was boss.
 “Oh, Captain Wonder-Paws,” I swooned, the way he likes me to.
“You’ve saved us again! Also, you’ve helped me decide. I know just how I’m
going to decorate my bike now!”
Moisturizer pretended to be too busy licking his shoulder to notice what
a hero he was, and that was the end of his show. He curled up on the bag of
cobwebs, and I left to get the umbrella I’d seen in the trash.
The umbrella was just the way I’d hoped—the tent was torn, but the
skeleton was still fine. I ripped off the rest of the cloth, then went and got six
bats. Luckily, the bats were already strung with clear lines, so all I had to do
was tie them to the tips of the umbrella’s skeleton arms. When they were all
hanging, my dad passed by.
 I held the swarm of bats over me, and he got the idea right away. “For the
rally? You’re going to attach it to your bike? Great idea. I’d use duct tape if I
were you,” he said. Then he untied the bat that was in front of my face. “You
have to be able to see, Sport, okay?”
And just then I had an even more spectacularful idea for that bat!
 “Dad! On Saturday, could you pin this one across my shoulders, so it
looks like it’s biting my neck, sucking out all my blood?”
He grinned. “That would look pretty good,” he agreed. “But you’ve got
to promise to ride with both hands, that’s the deal. Got it?”
I promised, and then I walked over to where my bike was stored.
Margaret’s and Mitchell’s bikes were in the rack, too. Mitchell’s was
covered with baseball-team stickers and looked like it had been through a
bicycle war. Margaret’s bike was purple and shiny all over—even the
wheels. It looked beautiful, but it looked…plain. And then suddenly I had a
wonderful idea!
I scooted Moisturizer back into the apartment, and then I raced up to the
fifth floor, smiling all the way—Margaret and I were going to be friends
again!
Mitchell answered the door. He was holding a bowl of cereal and
grinning. “Hi, Rugrat,” he said.
 Mitchell calls me names because he’s trying to be my boyfriend. I don’t
tell him that I think, No, thanks! about having a boyfriend. I don’t want him to
be too sad to play baseball.
“Margaret’s in her room,” he said. “Want to see something first?”
 I said yes because suddenly I wasn’t so sure I was ready to see
Margaret’s mad-at-me face. Also because if Margaret says, “Want to see
something?” it’s usually something boring, like a skirt she’s picked all the lint
from, or a new way she’s lined up her barrettes. But if Mitchell says, “Want to
see something?” you can bet it will be something good.
Except this time it wasn’t! I followed him into the living room and he
pointed his spoon to the bottom shelf. He started to crack up, but I didn’t see
what was so funny. Each one of his M.V.P. trophies wore a little triangle of
paper towel with tiny pink safety pins at the tips.

“Margaret did that? Diapered all your trophies?”

 Mitchell nodded, laughing. He wiped his eyes with his T-shirt and took
another grinning bite of cereal.
“Why aren’t you mad, Mitchell? You love baseball. You’re obsessed
with baseball.”
Mitchell put his spoon down. “Well, yeah. Dude! I love playing baseball.
But I don’t care about the trophies.”
When Mitchell said, “I love playing baseball,” my heart gave a little
jump, as if it were tired of sitting around in my chest and wanted to go
somewhere. This is because Mitchell says the word baseball better than
anyone in the world.
Then I asked him what I really wanted to know.
“Margaret has three hundred awards. Don’t you mind that she’s so good
at everything? Doesn’t it make you feel kind of…” I stopped and thought about
how all those trophies made me feel. “Kind of…sorry for yourself?”
Mitchell looked at me the way I look at Spinach when he bangs his head
inside the spaghetti pot. “I feel sorry for her.” He waved his hand at
Margaret’s rows of awards. “I love playing baseball. Margaret just loves
winning awards.”
Mitchell picked up his glove and ball. “Gotta go, Rugrat,” he said.
“Practice. Best part of the day.”

I found Margaret in her room. She was swooshing around in a grass skirt with
some plinky music on. Her arms looked like snakes, except not scary.
I said hi, and she said hi back, but that was it—no stopping the
swooshing, no turning the plinky music off.
 “I have a good idea, Margaret,” I told her. “It’s about the bike rally. You
know how my dad keeps all those decorations in the basement? He says I can
use them to decorate my bike. And you could, too! We could be a team—you
could have bats swarming around you, like me—”
Margaret shot me a look that said, Bats? Are you out of your mind?
“Or whatever you want. Anything! I’m sharing! Want to come down and
look?”
Margaret shook her head and kept on with her swooshing around. “Can’t
go to the rally,” she said. “Competition Saturday morning. Have to practice
my hula routine.”
I reached over and turned off her music. “What do you mean you aren’t
going? You’ve been looking forward to it for weeks!”
Margaret stood there catching her breath for a minute. Then she said, “I
can’t go, Clementine. I have to go to the competition, or else someone else
will win that trophy!” She snapped the music back on and started her routine
over again, frowning this time.
My parents are always going on about the Golden Rule. “That ‘Do’ in ‘Do
unto others’ can cover a lot of territory,” they’re always saying. My dad says
it could mean, “Be quiet in the movies, as you would have others be quiet in
the movies unto you.” My mom says it could mean, “Don’t interrupt people
when they’re drawing unless it’s an emergency with blood, as you would have
them not interrupt unto you when you’re drawing unless it’s an emergency
with blood.”
They use that Golden Rule on me a lot. But Wednesday, I got to use it on
myself!
Here is how Wednesday went: After the Pledge and Circle Sharing Time
and Morning Announcements, my teacher called for our attention. “Friend of
the Week is a wonderful opportunity,” he said as if he’d just thought of it, even
though he says the exact same thing every week. “We’re going to brainstorm a
little bit now. Let’s think about what makes Clementine a unique and valuable
member of our class, so that on Friday we’ll be ready to make her booklet.”
He went to the chalkboard and wrote my name under the Friend of the
Week sign. “Who’d like to get us started?”
I knew that all the kids were looking at me, so I tried to shine with
valuableness. Since okay, fine, I didn’t exactly know how someone would
look when they were shining with valuableness, I did holiness instead.
Here is how you look holy: First—everyone knows this part—fold your
hands like a steeple. Then roll your eyes up as far as they will go, cross them
slightly, and let your lids flutter a little bit. Finally, imagine yourself doing
something extra kind, like giving away your ice-cream cone to a really skinny
dog even though nobody is watching.
 The kids brainstormed about my good qualities, and my teacher wrote
their ideas on the board. I listened—it was the regular stuff, about what a
good artist I am and how I notice interesting things—but I didn’t watch.
Instead, I just sat there, steepling my hands, crossing my rolled-up eyes,
fluttering my lids, and giving my ice cream to skinny dogs.
“Clementine, are you all right?”
I’d been concentrating so hard I hadn’t noticed my teacher sneaking up on
me.
“For a minute you looked like you were going to faint,” he said. “Would
you like to visit the nurse?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said. And I wasn’t even embarrassed, because while I
was doing all the looking holy, I had decided to give up on giving
compliments and try giving presents. And the Golden Rule good idea had
come to me: Give tattoos unto others as you would have others give tattoos
unto you!
 During geography, I made my sign: TATTOOS, FREE TODAY—USUALLY $40!!
Then I added another zero so everyone would know this was a really great
present.

At recess, I tucked my markers into my pocket and went out with my sign.
I stuck it into the fence far away from where the teachers patrolled to make
sure the sixth graders didn’t murder each other in dodgeball, and waited.
The first person to come over was Charlie. “Free tattoos,” I told him. “I
usually charge four hundred dollars.”
“My uncle has a naked lady on his arm,” Charlie said. “She’s sitting on
an anchor.”
“I don’t think I can draw a naked lady,” I told him. “I never did that
before.”
“That’s okay,” Charlie said. “I don’t want one. I just wanted to tell you
that.” I thanked him and then drew an anchor on his arm. I added a fish sitting
on the anchor.
“It’s naked,” I told him.
 The next person to come over was Rasheed. He said he never thought
about what he would like for a tattoo…did I have any suggestions?
“Well,” I said, “I like to draw reminders to myself on my arm.” I showed
him the one I’d added Monday.
“‘M.V.P.’, Most Valuable Player,” Rasheed read.
That Margaret.
“That’s a good one, I’ll take it.” He rolled up his sleeve. “Never mind
the question marks, though.”
Lilly wanted her usual picture—a rainbow with three tulips under it. I sit
next to Lilly in class, and I’m getting pretty tired of that rainbow and those
tulips. I tried to talk her into something more interesting. “How about a plate
of spaghetti and meatballs under that rainbow?” I suggested. “How about a
zebra eating those tulips?”
But Lilly doesn’t have much of an imagination. She shook her head. “I’ll
stick with the rainbow. But I guess you could make it four tulips if you want
to.”
Lilly’s twin brother Willy wanted his usual, too. I didn’t argue with him,
because I like drawing zombie sharks, even though he insists on lots of pointy
teeth and I am not so fond of pointy things. I figured they were on his arm and
not mine. I drew extra gently over his new bruise so the shark was all green
and purple and black, and he loved it.
Things kept going pretty well until Maria came up. “I want a baby goat,”
she said. “We went to a petting zoo last summer and I saw one there.”
Even though I am a really good artist, I was stumped. A baby goat was
probably the one thing in the world I had never drawn—besides a naked lady
—and here she was asking for it. Finally I had a solution.
“What’s that?” Maria asked when I was finished. “What’s all that
scribbling? What are all those dots?”
“That’s a bush,” I explained. “The baby goat’s inside, eating berries.”
 “Wow,” Maria said. “You’re an even better artist than I thought!”
Norris-Boris-Morris-Horace-Brontosaurus was next. His real name is
Norris, but in the beginning of the year I couldn’t remember that, so I gave him
all the “orris” names I could think of. He loved that. For a minute I was afraid
he wanted me to tattoo them all on his arm, but nope.
He rolled up his jeans. “Make my legs trees,” he said. “With bark and
leaves and stuff. And put some acorns in, too. So when my grandmother makes
me go to the park and sit with her while she knits, squirrels might run up my
legs.”
I thought that was a good idea. But now there were a lot of kids lined up
behind him. “Sorry, Norris-Boris,” I said. “Tree legs would take too long.”
He sighed and rolled up his sleeve. “I don’t care, then,” he said. “Draw
whatever you want.”
 I drew some peanuts on his arm. “When you’re at the park, lie down on
the sidewalk,” I explained. “Pigeons will land on your arm and peck.”

Norris-Boris-Morris-Horace-Brontosaurus went away smiling, and I

started smiling, too. That was going to look pretty good in my booklet:
Clementine is a good friend because she helped me get pigeons to land on
my arm.
Margaret didn’t have anything like that in her booklet, that was for sure.
As soon as recess was over, my teacher sent me down to the principal’s office
with a note.
Mrs. Rice read the note and shook her head. “Didn’t we just go through
this, Clementine?”
“No. The thing with Margaret’s head was a long time ago—at the
beginning of the year. Besides, this is different. For one thing, the kids wanted
me to draw on them. For another thing, none of them has Margaret’s mother
for a mother. So it’s going to be fine.”
Mrs. Rice sighed. “How about this. How about, the next time you decide
to share your artistic talents with your friends, you do it on paper?”
I didn’t want to embarrass Mrs. Rice by pointing out that tattoos don’t
work very well on paper, so I just said, “Sure, next time I will. Thanks for the
great idea.” Then I told her the great idea I’d had.
“You think students should have professional-development days, the way
the teachers do?” she asked, even though I had just said exactly that.

“Right. Some extra days off to get better at stuff. So if anybody wants to
do a biography about us, they’ll have something to write about.”
“And you would come to school to do it, the way the teachers do?”
“Well,” I said—slowly, because I had forgotten to think about this part.
“Maybe not. Maybe we’d go to Jack’s Joke Shop. Or a casino. Someplace
where we could learn some interesting things.”
 “Well, Clementine,” said Mrs. Rice, “I could run that by the school
board. But I think I already know what they’d say.”
“What?”
“I think they’d say you students already have professional development
days. Two of them a week. They’re called Saturday and Sunday.”
Then Mrs. Rice swiveled her chair away from me and clutched the top of
her head, with her shoulders shaking. I knew she was secretly laughing, so I
said I was all done visiting her, and I left.
One thing they do not teach in principal school: what is funny and what is
not.

After school on Wednesday, my mom walked me over to Maria’s apartment to

play, because she was working on a big illustration job. Inside, she thanked
Maria’s mother for having me. “Next time, bring Maria over to our place,”
she said.
Maria’s mother said, “That would be lovely; next time for sure, the girls
can play at your place.”
Maria and I made faces at each other under our mothers’ arms, because
both of us knew that was never going to happen in a million years. This is
because Maria’s mother doesn’t allow Maria any place where there’s a
television set she might get a glimpse of.
“For Pete’s sake,” I once heard my mother complain to my father. “What
does she think we’re watching over here, Forbidden Secrets of Juvenile
Delinquents?”
“That’s ridiculous, we would never watch that,” my dad said. “Because
Trashy Tales of Hollywood Hoodlums is on at the same time.”
My mother laughed and tossed her paint rag at him, but then she said,
“Really, though. What’s the problem?”
I knew what the problem was. Maria’s mother thinks watching any
television at all, even PBS, rots your brain for life, so it’s no TV for Maria.
The good news, though, is that they let her do lots of other things instead.
As long as it isn’t watching television, they are yes-saying parents.
Maria took me into her room and pointed to an aquarium. “Look! There’s
my new lizard! My parents let me have him because nobody mentioned the
head lice time in my Friend of the Week booklet last week. Isn’t he great?”
 He was great all right! He was climbing the glass wall so you could see
all the little suction cups on the bottom of his feet. His tongue was darting in
and out, tasting the glass, about a hundred times a second.
“Wow! That’s a wonderful pet!” I said, and I wasn’t even trying to
compliment her. “What’s his name?”
Maria bent down and pressed her face against the glass where her lizard
was sticking. She stuck her tongue in and out really fast, too. “He likes that,”
she told me. “We’re talking. I don’t know what his name is…I haven’t figured
it out yet.” Maria began blinking her eyes fast, and her lizard did the same. He
was a really good pet, all right.

“Oh, I can help you with that!” I cried. “I’m an expert at picking pet
names.”
And it wasn’t just bragging either. Because I have discovered something
—the best names in the world are on labels in bathrooms. I took the most
beautiful word ever invented for my own kitten’s name, but there are plenty of
good ones left.
So I said, “Show me to the bathroom, Maria.” And I guess it was a lucky
day for all three of us—me, Maria, and her lizard—because right away my
eyeballs snapped over to the perfect word as if they were suddenly made of
steel and the jar on the top shelf was a magnet.

“Maria,” I said, “your lizard’s name is Flomax.”

Was she ever happy! She could hardly stop thanking me!
“No problem,” I said. And then I added, “It was just one of the unique
and valuable contributions I like to make!”
I was in for at least one good page in my Friend of the Week booklet.
Which wasn’t the reason I helped her.
Okay, fine, it wasn’t the only reason I helped her.
Next, Maria took me out to see her bike.
“How are you going to decorate it for the rally?” I asked.
Maria laughed. “You’re funny, Clementine! It is decorated!” She made
Tada!-arms over her bike, and I looked closer. There were a few playing
cards stuck in the wheel spokes and some crepe-paper streamers hung from
the handlebars. That was all.
Maria got on and rode around me a couple of times. “How’d it look?”
she asked when she got off. “Great, huh?”

Maria feels bad enough being the only kid in our class who can’t watch
television, so I didn’t tell her that the only thing that looked great to me was
the baby goat eating berries in a bush on her arm as she whizzed by.
This made me feel really happy about how wonderful my bike was going
to look at the rally. But it also made me feel a little bit sad about that, too.
 And that’s when it hit me—an idea for an even better present than tattoos
to give everybody!
It was a good thing I’d had my spectacularful idea, because Thursday morning
nobody even mentioned my tattoo presents.
“I forgot about it,” Lilly said at recess. “I guess it washed off.”
“Mine too,” Willy agreed. “You should have used permanent markers.”
And that is how unfair the world is. When I colored on some hair for
Margaret and me, I was in trouble because I used permanent markers. Now
here I was in trouble because I didn’t use them. Although…
“Um… Nobody is mad at me, right?” I asked.
“My uncle might be,” Charlie said after a minute. “I showed my mom
how my tattoo was like his, and she called him up in Ohio and hollered at him
so loud she didn’t even need the phone. He can never come for a visit again
unless he wears long sleeves, taped down at the cuffs.”
I figured Charlie’s uncle didn’t count, since he wasn’t going to write in
my booklet. The important thing was that none of my classmates was mad at
me. Norris-Boris was a little disappointed because his tattoo hadn’t worked,
but that was all.
“Two hours and fifteen minutes lying on the sidewalk in the park
yesterday afternoon,” he sighed.
“And no pigeons?”
He shook his head. “Not even one. Three ants, though—big ones. So it
wasn’t a total waste.”
After that, nobody even talked about my tattoos because they were too
busy talking about their bike decorations for Saturday, which were all as
boring as Maria’s—playing cards, streamers, and a couple of balloons.
So it was the perfect time to tell them all about my new present idea!
“Come to the rally early,” I said. “Don’t bother decorating your bikes at
home.” And then I explained about my dad’s stuff and how I would bring it all
to the Common.
That got their attention, all right. They glued all thirty-six of their eyes on
me like they were seals at the aquarium, just waiting to see where the trainer
was going to toss that fish.
“So I can have anything I want on my bike?” asked Joe. “What does he
have?”
“Anything. Whatever you can think of, he’s got it.”
 “How about tulips and a rainbow?” Lilly asked.
“Spring decorations,” I answered. “No problem, Lilly.”
“How about a zombie shark?” Willy asked.
“That’s harder,” I admitted. “There is no National Zombie Shark Day.
But for National Fishing Week, my dad hangs big rubber trout from the ceiling.
We can tape some sharp teeth to one of them.”
That made Willy really happy. As we lined up, I told the kids about more
of the great stuff my dad had, they told me what they wanted, and by the time
we got back into the classroom, everybody was happy.
Especially me.

As soon as I got home, I found my dad in the basement. “Did you really mean
it, I could use all your decorations for the rally?”
He nodded. “Sure. But it will be a little hard to fit them all on one
bicycle, Sport.”
“How about nineteen bicycles?” And then I told my dad the plan.
Which he loved. He got as excited as I did, pulling out all the things we
could use.
When I told my dad about Norris-Boris’s wanting to be a tree, he said,
“Piece of cake. Squirrel Appreciation Day,” and he pulled out some oak
branches and a stuffed squirrel. And that was just the beginning—we went
right down the list like that, taking care of everyone in my class.
 Pretty soon, Mom came in with Yam and a load of laundry.
“Free…two…ONE!!!” my brother shrieked when he caught sight of the
washing machine. He climbed up onto the dryer and pulled down the rocket-
fuel detergent.
My mom put the clothes in the washing machine and then looked over at
all the boxes. “What’s up?”
So I explained the plan to her, too.
“Free…two…ONE!!!” Chili Pepper hollered as he leaned over and
cranked the dial.
 “That’s so nice of you, Clementine!” Mom said. “To share your artistic
talents with your classmates like that.”
“And to share all these valuable resources, too,” my dad said. “Let’s not
forget them! And, you”—he turned to point at me—“don’t you forget to get all
this stuff back.”
“Now, Bill,” my mom said. “What would be the harm if a few things got
lost?”
My mom is the only person in our building who does not enjoy my dad’s
decorations. This is because they are plastic—because of fire codes—and
plastic is like kryptonite to all-natural people like my mother. She practically
has a heart attack if she just hears the word “artificial.” She swept her hand
over the tulips we’d pulled out for Lilly, then squeezed her eyes shut as if it
hurt to look at them.
My dad threw his hands out over the tulips as if he were showcasing the
top prize on a game show. “Are you kidding?” he asked. “Just look at these
colors!”
“Exactly,” my mom said. “Look at them! These colors do not exist in
nature. How about, if just for once, we had real flowers in the lobby?”
 “Fire codes,” my dad said with a pretend-sorry face. “What can we do?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes,” my mom said. “Give me one example of a pot
of daisies bursting into flame and burning down a building!”
 My dad spread his arms out to show how helpless he was, and my mom
rolled her eyes. And then they both started laughing, which made me start to
laugh, and then Turnip joined in from the top of the washing machine.
Suddenly Moisturizer appeared, and I think he was laughing, too.
I scooped him up. “Hey, you’re back out here? Didn’t want to miss any
fun?” I asked him. “Well, you can help me decorate my bike, I guess.”
Mom and Mung Bean left, and I was just about to ask my dad about
blood for my neck, when Roberta the delivery woman stuck her head in. “Hey,
hi, Pony Express!” she said to me. Then she nodded to my dad. “Four
packages, supposed to be on the loading dock. You know anything about that?”
My dad left to help her look for the packages, and I finished draping my
bike with cobwebs. My dad came back in, but before I could show him,
Franklin the electrician showed up. “Hi, Sparky,” he said. “I need your dad.
Got a call about a short circuit up on the sixth floor.” And then my dad was
gone with him.
Next to come in was George the plumber. “Hey, Squirt,” he said. He put
down his tool bag and told me plumbing stories until my dad came back to
take him up to the fourth floor for a leaking dishwasher.
A little later, just as my mom and Radish came in, Dad came back.
“Welcome to Grand Central Station,” he said. “You guys have tickets?”
“Better than that,” my mom said as she pulled the clothes from the
washing machine and stuffed them into the dryer. “We’re here to tell you the
dining car will be serving in ten minutes. How about you start packing up so
you can come in for dinner, all right?”
So I stuffed everything into garbage bags and tied them up, ready to go
Saturday morning. “Here, Moisturizer,” I called. “Want to eat?”
He didn’t come, so I went and looked everywhere I remembered seeing
him.
No kitten.
“Hey, Squash,” I said, “Have you seen Moisturizer?”
“No kitty,” my brother said. “Blast off?”
“He’s probably inside the apartment,” my mom said. “We’re having
macaroni and cheese. He’s probably sitting by the stove, drooling.” She
picked up Potato and headed into the apartment. I followed her and called for
Moisturizer again.
 He didn’t come. I grabbed the box of kitty treats and went around the
whole apartment shaking it and calling his name. “He always comes for treats,
so he’s got to still be out in the basement,” I told my mom in a voice that was
a little shaky. “I’m going to go get him.”

Back in the basement, I called and I shook the box, and I called and I
shook the box. I walked around, opening doors and cupboards and boxes, and
the bags of decorations. I looked in all the washers and dryers, in the storage
room, in both elevators, in the trash barrels and recycling bins.
“Here, kitty! Moisturizer, here!” I called, faster and faster. I could feel
my heart start to beat faster, too. “Where are you?”
My dad came out. “No sign of him?”
Suddenly my throat squeezed down. I pressed my lips together and shook
my head.
 “Okay,” he said. “Let’s be calm. Let’s think like a kitten here.” And then
he began searching in all the building-manager places he could think of—the
garbage chute, the old closed-up coal bin, the air shaft, the air-conditioning
unit. He shined a flashlight into the heating ducts and behind the hot-water tank
and under the furnace. He even opened his toolbox.
I followed him, calling Moisturizer’s name and shaking his treats.
No kitten. No kitten!
My heart started to pound so hard I was afraid I might not hear him if he
meowed for me. “Dad,” I cried finally, “what if he got…” I took a deep breath
but I still couldn’t make my mouth say the next word.
Dad squatted down in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. “I
don’t think he did that, Clementine,” he said. “I think he’s just on a little
adventure. The basement is a pretty exciting place if you’re a kitten. He’s just
found something more interesting than his dinner right now. So let’s go eat
ours, and I bet when we’re done, he’ll show up.”
I said okay, but when I got to the table, it was N-O-T, not. Not even one
macaroni would go down—my throat closed just thinking about how much I
wished Moisturizer was under the table right now.
 “Can I take my plate to the basement?” I asked my parents. “So he’ll
smell it and come home?”
They said okay, so I did. One by one, I laid the cheesy macaroni elbows
on the basement floor, making a trail through all the places we’d been, ending
up at our door. Then I went calling through the basement again, begging
Moisturizer to come out, and keeping one eye on the trail.
But Moisturizer didn’t come. And then I knew.
“Mom, Dad!” I cried as I ran back inside. “He got out!”
We split up. My mom and I went north, and my dad, wheeling Cabbage in the
stroller, went south. Then we went east and they went west. No kitten. Block
after block after block. Just too many cars and trucks and taxis and buses—all
of them big and fast and none of them watching out for a lost kitten. I stopped
everyone we passed and asked if they’d seen him: “Little and orange and
fluffy and smart?”
“No, sorry,” everybody said. “Sorry, no.”
We searched until the moon was high in the sky and Boston was falling
asleep. Finally, my parents said, “Your brother’s been conked out for hours
and it’s getting cold and it’s time you got to bed, too, Clementine. Moisturizer
is probably asleep now anyway, so we might as well go home.”
At the lobby door, I called for him one more time while my dad carried
my brother inside. My mom stood beside me. “It’s a really big night out there,
Mom,” I told her. “And he’s a really little cat.”
“I know, honey,” she said. “I know.”
Inside, I dragged my quilt and pillow out to the living room and spread
them on the floor beside the door.
“Clementine, I don’t think…” my mom started.
“If he’s in the basement and he comes back, I need to hear him,” I said.
“Besides, I can’t sleep in my bed if he’s not there.” I thought I would have to
use my stingray eyes to convince her, since she’s usually a bedtime-is-a-time-
not-a-feeling-and-we-sleep-in-our-own-rooms kind of mother. But tonight she
just hugged me and asked my dad to get the air mattress for me and sleep on
the couch beside me.
 My dad blew the mattress up. Then he went outside and scratched at the
door, to make sure I could hear if Moisturizer came home. The sound made the
tears I had been holding back all night burst out.
“Hey there,” my dad said, closing the door and sitting beside me. “You
can’t give up hope. Moisturizer is counting on you. Wherever he is, he’s not
giving up hope.”
I wiped my face. “Do you think he knows I’m coming to find him
tomorrow?”
“Absolutely. From the moment I set eyes on that cat, I thought to myself,
‘That cat is positive. That cat is not a quitter.’”
“But now he’s all alone in the world without me, Dad! It’s dark and it’s
cold, and he thought I would take care of him and I didn’t!”
“I think you do, Sport. Your mother and I noticed that. We never have to
remind you to feed him—never, not even once. He didn’t get out because you
were careless. He got out because he was curious. Kittens are curious.”
That reminded me about a certain terrible saying about curiosity and
cats, which I am not going to repeat. I saw my dad see me remembering it. He
wrapped his arms around me just as I burst into tears again.
“‘But satisfaction brought him back.’ That’s the end of that saying,
remember,” he said.
“I hope so, Dad,” I said into his shoulder. “Because I really want him
back.”
I don’t want to talk about Friday because there was so much crying. I did not
know one person could hold that much water. That’s all I’m going to say about
that.
Okay, fine, I’ll tell about some of Friday. The parts that weren’t as bad.
I must have missed Moisturizer while I slept, because I woke up crying.
My parents took one look at me and called the school to say I wasn’t coming
in, which was good because I had decided that already.
I wiped my face. “Okay, let’s get going,” I said. “Let’s start searching for
him again.”
“Hold on,” said my dad. “I think we can be a little smarter than that.
Let’s get some more people looking.”
“You’re right!” I cried. “Let’s call the police, and the FBI and the CIA
and—”
My dad didn’t call the FBI or the CIA because he didn’t think a crime
had been committed. But he did call the police and the Animal Rescue League
and the vets in the area. Then he told me the best part of his plan—posters!
Which sounded like a great idea, until I thought of something terrible. “Oh, no!
We never took any pictures! I forgot to take pictures of him!”
More crying. My dad put his arm around my shoulder. “That’s a
challenge, all right. But you know what I think? I think Moisturizer is one
lucky kitten right now. Because he belongs to a remarkable artist.”
“You think I could draw him?” I asked. “You think I could do a good
enough job?”
“I do, Sport. I think it will be the drawing of your life.”
“Me too,” said my mom. “But first, let’s get you some tissues. You can’t
splash tears on a drawing this important.”
So I dried my tears and then my mom let me sit up at her drawing table to
make the poster. She handed me her good markers and a stack of her good
paper. “Use as much as you need, honey,” she said. “Get it right.”
Let me tell you, it was very, very hard. Not the drawing part. The not-
crying-on-the-paper part.
 When I tried to draw his ears, I remembered how they twitched
whenever someone opened a can, and my eyes filled up. When I drew his
fluffy fur, I remembered how soft it was to pet, and the tears ran down my
face. And when I sketched in his whiskers, I thought about how sometimes he
walked around with little dust bunnies on them, and I almost fell off the chair
from crying so hard.
Okay, that’s enough about the crying!
Finally, what I did was repeat over and over while I drew, “This cute
kitten is coming home soon! So I am very happy!” I held a tissue up to my eyes
with my left hand while I drew with my right, just in case.
 I had a little problem deciding what expression to put on Moisturizer’s
face. I love it when he’s curious, but also when he’s laughing, and also when
he’s yawning. In the end, I decided to make him look a little afraid, because
that’s how he’d probably look when a stranger found him.
Finally, the drawing was done. And look how good it was!
 I added our phone number to the bottom, and then my dad and I walked to
the copy shop on the corner.
“How many would you like?” the clerk asked.
 “How many can I get for this much?” I asked back. And I put all the
money I owned on the counter.
My dad scooped it up and gave it back to me. “This one’s on me,” he
said. “Now how many posters do you think we need? Fifteen, twenty…?”
“A hundred,” I said.
“Oh, I don’t think a—” Dad started.
“You’re right,” I interrupted. “Two hundred. No—three hundred. At
least.”
My dad looked at me hard for a minute. Then he turned to the clerk.
“Three hundred copies, please. This is a very special cat.”

Let me tell you, it is a lot of work to put up posters, especially when you have
a three-year-old brother trying to help. Luckily, Parsnip decided around
lunchtime that it was more fun to stick tape on himself than on the telephone
poles, so we got a lot more done in the afternoon.
“How many do you think we put up?” I asked my mom as the afternoon
faded.
She eyed the stack. “Maybe fifty?”
“Well, only two hundred fifty left,” I said. “Let’s get going.”
Mom shook her head. “Your dad is working. He can’t answer the phone
in the apartment. We should go home in case someone calls.”
So we went back, and my brother peeled tape off himself, and my mom
made dinner while I sat by the phone and waited for someone to call.
 Nobody did. Well, except for a stranger who wondered if I had enough
mortgage protection. I told him about Moisturizer being gone and he said, “Oh
dear, that’s a shame, I hope you find him real soon.”
After that, the phone didn’t ring at all. And the whole apartment was
quieter than it had ever been before—it was missing the sound of the phone
and the sound of Moisturizer being there.
When it was time for bed, I dragged the air mattress over to the door
again. My dad went to read my brother his bedtime story and my mom came
out with a pillow and a blanket. She lay down on the couch. “I thought you
could use some company,” she said, and she shut off the light.
“Mom,” I said into the darkness after a while. “You know how Pea Pod
says, ‘You broke my feelings,’ when he means they’re hurt? Well, that’s how I
feel—like all the feelings inside me are broken.”
“I know just what you mean,” my mom said. “I think that just about sums
it up. But they’ll be fixed again, I promise.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re a human being, right? Human beings have feelings. Everybody
feels that sad sometimes. People write stories about it, and poetry; they paint
pictures and compose music about it. To share how it feels.”
I didn’t answer. Nobody in the world could ever have felt the way I did
right then.
“For instance,” she went on, “do you remember last year when we read
Ginger Pye out loud? Remember how those kids felt when their dog was
missing?”
I nodded into the dark.
“And do you remember how long it took to find him? And how they
never stopped looking, and how finally, finally, they got him back?”
“Mom,” I said. “That was a book. This is real life.”
Early Saturday morning I heard knocking. I sat up and my ears got excited—
maybe someone had found Moisturizer! I jumped up and opened the door.
It was just Margaret.
“Is your dad home?” she asked. “It’s my big recital today. I need the
storage keys so I can get—Hey! Did you go blind? Is that why you weren’t in
school yesterday?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your eyes! They’re red and all swollen. They look like tomatoes.”
“Never mind,” I said. My dad was in the kitchen making breakfast with
my mom. I told him Margaret needed him, and then I ran into my room and
flopped onto my bed.
After a few minutes my dad came in and sat beside me. “Did you tell
Margaret about Moisturizer?”
I kept my head buried in the pillow as I shook it.
“She’ll be back in a few minutes with the keys. It might help. To talk to a
friend…”
“Margaret isn’t my friend. She’s mad at me and I don’t even know why,
and she said my eyes look like tomatoes.”
My dad rolled me over to look. Then he made a pretend horrified face.
I laughed a little, even though I didn’t want to. “Anyway, she’s on her
way to her big hula-dancing recital—she won’t want to talk to me. Besides, if
she did, she’d just tell me it’s my fault. She never loses anything. She’d tell
me I shouldn’t have lost Moisturizer.”
“She might surprise you. Maybe you should give her a chance.”
I sighed and went to the front door. Margaret came back in a few
minutes, dragging a giant blow-up palm tree under her arm. She handed me my
dad’s keys and started to leave. Then she turned around. “I saw your bike,”
she said. “It looks good.”
“The rally! I forgot!” I wailed. I felt my chest hitching up for another day
of crying, so I wrapped my arms around myself to keep it all in.
“So what?” Margaret said. “You have time. Go get ready. And wear
sunglasses.”
“I can’t. I can’t!” And then, when I was trying not to say why I couldn’t,
the words all came out.
 “Moisturizer’s gone?” Margaret gasped. “He’s gone??” Then her face
got all scowled up again, like it did when she was so angry at Mitchell and
me the other day. Even her palm tree looked furious.
I ran back into my room and threw myself onto my bed again. After a
minute, my dad came in. “Well,” he asked, “did Margaret surprise you? Did it
help to talk?”

“Yes, she surprised me,” I said, after I thought about the way she had
acted. “But no, it didn’t help. Dad, I let everyone down, everyone.”
He sat down on my bed. “What are you talking about?”
“I let Moisturizer down by losing him. And you and Mom—I let you
down because you gave him to me. Right now, I’m letting everyone down
about the rally. And Margaret—you should have seen her face.”
 “You’ve never let us down once, Sport. That’s not how your mother and I
see all this.” He nodded toward the kitchen. “We’ve got a pancake factory out
there. Come on out and eat some. Maybe you’ll feel better.”
I shook my head.
“You’ve got a big morning ahead. A lot of posters to put up. I think you
should eat something.”
So I got up and ate some pancakes, even though they all reminded me so
much of Moisturizer I might as well have been eating cat food. One looked
like his head and another like his tail, and the rest looked like his paws.
Probably everything from now on was going to remind me of him.
After breakfast, my mother and I put on our jackets. “Oh dear,” Mom
said, frowning down at the table beside the door. “Margaret asked me for
some posters as she was leaving, so I took a few out and left them here for
her. But she must have taken the whole envelope by mistake.” My mom saw
my face and quickly made a smile. “She’ll bring them back. Let’s take these
few for now and get started.”
Five posters. We put one up in the lobby and then there were only four.
We walked around all morning, calling down alleys, looking under cars and
behind trash cans and up trees. We put up the four posters, which didn’t take
long. I was so sad about that, I didn’t pay attention to which way we were
going home.
And then suddenly we turned a corner and I saw them right across the
street—a huge group of kids clustered together with their bikes on Boston
Common.
 “Mom, run!” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her away. “I can’t let
them see me! They’re going to be so disappointed with me!”
“Wait,” she said. “Let’s go talk to them. Let’s explain what’s going on.
…”
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to see their undecorated bikes and their
Clementine-let-us-down faces. I ran all the way home.
When I got there, I decided I couldn’t bear to see the trail of crusty lumps
of macaroni and cheese anymore, either. I got a spatula and a plastic bag and
started scraping them off the floor. It took a long time because they had
hardened like cement. As I was finishing up at my doorway, Margaret got out
of the elevator. Holding a big manila envelope!
“Oh, thank you!” I cried.
She came over to give it to me, but she stopped when she saw what I was
doing and arrow-eyed my hands. She opened our apartment door and put the
envelope on the table instead. One nice thing I have to admit about Margaret
—she takes good care of everything, not just her own things. So I knew the
posters were going to be just fine.
“Did Moisturizer come home?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Did you win the competition?”
Margaret shook her head.
 “But you win everything, Margaret!” I said.
“I know.” Margaret shrugged. “I didn’t enter.”
I was so surprised I just stared at her. “But…”
“I had something else to do. And besides, a hula skirt is made of grass,
Clementine,” Margaret said, as if this explained it. “Grass!”
“What’s wrong with grass?”
“Hel-lo?” Margaret said. “Grass-germs??” She rolled her eyes and
shuddered. Then she turned and pressed the elevator button. “I have to go
now. I hope you find your cat.”
I went inside and washed the macaroni cement off my hands. Then I
found my mom. “Margaret brought the posters back. We can put them up now.”
My mom said just a minute while she finished her work, but it was really
about two hundred minutes. Finally she came out and picked up our jackets. I
opened the envelope.
There were no posters inside. Just a thick blue booklet.
CLEMENTINE: FRIEND OF THE WEEK! the cover read above my school
picture.
I dropped the booklet. My mom picked it up. “How nice,” she said.
“Let’s read it.”
“Mom!” I wailed. “The kids wrote about me on Friday! Back when they
thought I was a good friend because I was going to help them decorate their
bikes. But I didn’t show up at the rally, so now they think I’m their Enemy of
the Year, not their Friend of the Week!”
I took the booklet and ran into my room and threw it under my bed. My
dad calls that space The Black Hole, and for once, I wished he was right—I
wished things disappeared under there forever.
 Then I ran up to Margaret’s.
Mitchell answered the door. “I saw your sign in the lobby. Moisturizer’s
gone? Dude, that’s just wrong. I’m going to a friend’s, but if you haven’t found
him by the time I get back, I’ll help you look.”
I thanked him and asked for Margaret.
“She just left with our dad,” he told me. “She’ll be back tomorrow
night.”
“Well, I don’t really need her,” I told him. “Just my posters—she took all
my Missing Kitten posters by mistake. Do you know where they are?”
“I saw Margaret when she got home—no posters, Rugrat. Just that giant
palm tree.”
“She didn’t bring them back? Are you sure? I need them!” I felt my
tomato eyes start to fill up again, and I scrubbed at them so Mitchell wouldn’t
think I was a baby.
 “She took your posters? Dude. I’m her brother. It’s her job to be mean to
me. But she likes you, Clementine. What did you do to make her so mad at
you?”
“Nothing! I touched her booklet—that’s all! I peeled off the tape you put
on it, and when I tried to show her, she thought I was reading it and she went
nuts.”
“Oh, her booklet,” said Mitchell, as though that explained everything.
“But I didn’t read it, Mitchell! And anyway, it’s not a diary—it’s not
private. I didn’t do anything wrong! And she’s so mad she got rid of my
posters? So mad she doesn’t want me to find my kitten?”
Mitchell was quiet for a minute, and I could see he was trying to decide
about something. “Okay. Don’t tell her I told you this, Rugrat, but…her
booklet is practically empty. She’s embarrassed about that—there are only a
couple of pages of stuff in it. That’s all the kids could come up with—a
couple of pages.”
 “Oh. Oh.” And I couldn’t think of anything else to say as Mitchell waved
good-bye and told me he hoped I found my cat.
That night, my whole family slept in the living room with me. But on Sunday
morning, my mom rolled out her yoga mat and my dad went out for bagels and
the Boston Globe. After breakfast, he lay on the couch with the paper and my
brother crawled up beside him, pretending to read the comics.
I couldn’t believe it. My family was acting as if this were just a normal
day in our normal lives.
“Excuse me,” I said, really loud even though the rule is quiet for Sunday
morning yoga and paper reading. “Excuse me, but someone is missing here.”
“Not much we can do about that today, Sport,” my father said. “The
police and the Animal Rescue League have the info, and we put up posters.
Now I think we just wait it out.”
“Wait it out? You mean stop caring? What if it were me? Would you just
wait it out if I were lost?”
“Of course not,” my dad started.
“Well then, let’s go. Let’s get looking for him, let’s make some more
posters and put them up.”
“Your dad’s right, honey,” said my mom. “It’s pouring rain out, so even if
we got more posters made, there’s no point in putting them up. Besides, I bet
Moisturizer’s in someone’s home right now. He’s probably fine. We aren’t
going to find him—whoever has him has to find us now. So we just have to
wait it out.”
I didn’t answer. I was never going to speak to anyone in my family for
the rest of my life. Margaret either, of course. I brought a pad of paper and a
pencil into my bedroom—the only thing I was going to do for the rest of my
life was draw pictures of Moisturizer. I was going to be like that famous artist
in New Orleans who only paints one thing—a bright blue dog. I always
wondered why that artist only painted that one dog, but now I knew. He must
have missed that dog a lot.
I got to work on my drawing: Moisturizer pouncing on a shadow. As I
drew, I tried to picture what my mom had said—Moisturizer, fine, in someone
else’s house. At first that made me feel better. But then I started to wonder.
What if there was another girl in that house? And what if Moisturizer started
to love her? And what if he forgot all about me?
 I suddenly thought of one day last week, when Moisturizer had wanted to
sit on my lap and I hadn’t let him. Mitchell and his friends were skateboarding
in the alley, and I went out to watch them instead. What if Moisturizer
remembered that and wanted to love a different girl? A girl who would let
him sit on her lap forever?
That made me mess up the drawing, so I tore it up and started a new one
—my kitten on my pillow, looking happy.
After a while the phone rang, and I ran to answer it. It was only Aunt
Claire, wondering if it was currants or raisins in the coffee cake my mom
brought over the other day. I told her Mom was doing yoga, and I thought
chocolate chips would taste a lot better anyway. Then I told her about
Moisturizer being gone. All she said was, “That’s too bad, I hope you find
him, and have your mother give me a call. I want to make that coffee cake for
my book club Tuesday.” So I was never going to speak to Aunt Claire again,
either.
 I went back into my room and started another drawing in my soon-to-be-
famous “Orange Kitten” series: Moisturizer Napping on the Windowsill.
My dad knocked. I ignored him. He came in and brought a section of the
paper over to me. “Look at this.”
I shook my head and kept on drawing.
“I really think you should look, Sport,” he said.
I pressed my mouth into a ruler line because suddenly not talking to my
father made me want to cry.
He put the paper down next to my drawing.
I corner-eyed it, just a peek. I looked again. And then I picked it up to
study it, in case my eyes were playing tricks. There, right on the front page of
the Boston Globe Living Section was my Missing Kitten poster. Underneath
was a picture of my school’s bike rally. All the bikes were covered with
sheets of paper.
My dad held my hand while I read the headline: STUDENTS USE BIKE RALLY
TO HELP FIND MISSING PET!
Just then my mom came in with Lima Bean. “We wondered where
everybody was.…” she began. Then she saw the paper, too.
My dad read the article out loud.
“‘Missing Kitten posters covered nearly a hundred bicycles in a fund-
raising rally on Boston Common, after a concerned student alerted her
schoolmates to a friend’s situation…’”
“A concerned student?” my mom asked. “Who?”
“I don’t know. The only one who knew was…but she was…no…” I said,
confused. “But she had the posters, and that explains how she got my booklet.
Besides, look, here it says the concerned student organized the whole thing.
Organized! It had to be Margaret!”
“Margaret,” we all repeated. “Margaret!”
“This is wonderful!” my mom said. “Hundreds of people—maybe a
thousand or more—saw those flyers!”
 I was so happy. I couldn’t get over what Margaret had done. Just when I
thought she was being the meanest to me, she was being the nicest.
But then I realized something. “That was yesterday. A thousand people
found out about Moisturizer yesterday. But nobody called.”
 “But thousands more will find out about him today, from the paper,
Sport,” my dad said. “I think it’s just a matter of time now.”
The day took three hundred hours. I checked the newspaper to make sure
the right phone number was in the story, and I checked the phone every few
minutes to make sure it was working. I stood by the window watching for
little kitten paws to walk by in the rain, until my legs ached. And I did a lot of
drawings of Moisturizer: stretched out in the sun, swatting a fly, tangled up in
ribbons, falling into the garbage can. Each one made me miss him more.
My family went on acting like it was a normal Sunday, I went on
watching out the window and drawing my kitten, and the phone went on not
ringing.
Until late in the afternoon, finally, finally it did.
 My mom picked it up. She listened for a while, and a smile grew on her
face. For just a minute I was mad at her; how could she smile on a day like
this? Then I heard her say, “I think the person you want to talk to is my
daughter.”
I grabbed the phone.
“I have a kitten here,” said a man’s voice on the other end. “A very
curious kitten. I saw the article in the paper and wondered if he’s the one
you’re looking for?”
“Is he…?” And then my throat squeezed shut from how much I wanted it
to be Moisturizer.
My mom saw that I couldn’t talk. She took the phone again. She hoisted
me up onto her hip like I was three years old, and I didn’t even care about
that; I just listened while she talked.
“Is he orange and fluffy, about four or five months old?” she asked the
man. “Does he look really well taken care of?”
I buried my head in my mom’s neck, and I was shaking too hard to hear
the man’s answer.
 “That sounds like him,” my mom said. “Where do you live?”
My mom listened and then her whole body slumped. “Oh,” she said. “Oh,
that’s too bad. The kitten we’re looking for was lost in Boston Thursday night.
I don’t think he could have gotten that far.…”
My mom looked at me with an I’m-sorry face. I looked back at her with
an I-don’t-care-we-have-to-find-out-anyway face.
 “It’s probably not our kitten,” my mom told the man on the phone. “But
let me get your address—we’d like to take a look.”
My dad drove me, and all the way there he kept warning me not to get my
hopes up. “This kitten showed up on his doorstep Thursday night,” he said.
“In Quincy. That’s almost fifteen miles from here. Even if Moisturizer could
walk that far, he could never have gotten fifteen miles in just a couple of
hours.” I tried not to listen to him.
Finally we got to the address. We knocked on the door. A man answered.
In his arms was a kitten.
“George!” my father cried to the man.
“Squirt!” George the plumber cried to me.
“Moisturizer!” I cried to my kitten.
Moisturizer jumped into my arms and then we all talked at once, figuring
out what had happened.
 “It never occurred to me!” George kept saying. “I got home Thursday
night, took out my key to unlock the door, looked down, and there was this
kitten. I figured he was from around here. It never occurred to me he might
have been in the van.”
“He must have climbed into your tool bag,” I said. “He loves exploring.”
“He’s been pretty curious here, too,” George said. “Cute little guy.
Peppy. I’m going to miss having him around. But I guess I can visit him
sometimes, now can’t I!”
We drove back home with Moisturizer draped around my neck. He
purred into my ear until he fell asleep, which was probably because he was
exhausted from pretending to be happy in someone else’s house.
My dad glanced back at us in the rearview mirror and pretended he’d
been blinded. “I wish I’d brought my sunglasses,” he said. “They might as
well shut the power down in Boston—you could light up the whole city
tonight with your smile.”
I laughed, but secretly I flashed my smile around the backseat, and he
was right, it did light things up.
Mom had dinner waiting, and she pretended not to notice that I snuck
Moisturizer little bites of meat loaf under the table. Afterward, my parents
asked if they could read my Friend of the Week booklet. I said okay and
crawled under my bed to get it. We all went into the living room.
 The booklet was full of long paragraphs about stuff I hardly remembered
doing.
Once, when I was in first grade, I lost my crayons, Joe had written.
Clementine broke every one of hers in half, so I could color.
 Waylon wrote, I like having Clementine in class because she believed
me when I told her about my superpowers. She is the only one I will teach
how to become invisible—as soon as I learn how.
It’s good to have Clementine in class because you always know we will
be laughing, wrote Willy.
His twin sister Lilly wrote it was good I was there, because otherwise
my brother would be in trouble the most.
And Maria’s page said, When my mom found out my lizard’s name, she
said, “That child has been watching television!” And my dad confessed that
sometimes he let me watch golf when she was at bingo, and then she said,
“Oh, fine, I give up, I guess she’s old enough to rot her brain if she wants
to.” So, thanks to Clementine, I can watch TV now! Which just goes to show
you that you never know when you’re doing a good deed.
None of the kids even mentioned my promise to decorate their bikes! But
a lot of them did say they appreciated how I shared my artistic abilities.
Which made me feel guilty for a minute about letting them down Saturday. But
then it gave me an astoundishing idea.
“Pet portraits!” I told my mom and dad. “That’s how I’ll thank them for
helping me find Moisturizer! One for every person in my class. I’ll draw their
pet, or, if they don’t have one, I’ll draw the pet they want to have someday.”
I got started right away. First I did one for Margaret, because I wanted to
thank her best of all. I drew Mascara curled up in the big straw hat I’d
decorated for Margaret once, which is his favorite place to sleep.
 Next I did a beautiful portrait of Flomax for Maria—up on the glass
aquarium wall with his tiny foot suction cups showing, and dashes in the air
around his tongue to show it darting in and out.
Then, for the rest of the kids, I wrote out fancy “I.O.U. One Pet Portrait”
certificates.

My parents came to take a look. “That’s so nice of you, Clementine,” my

mom said. “Your classmates are lucky to have you for a friend.”
My dad put my Friend of the Week booklet on the fireplace mantel,
between my parents’ wedding picture and the baby pictures of my brother and
me. “We want it right up here,” he said, “where everyone can see it and know
how proud we are of you.”
And then suddenly I had another wonderful idea.
I ran to the phone and called up Mitchell. “Is Margaret home yet?”
“She just got back,” he answered. “Batten the hatches, matey.”
“Can you sneak her Friend of the Week booklet out for me?”
“Sure!” said Mitchell.
This is a great thing about Mitchell. Whenever you ask him to do
something, he says “Sure!” even if it’s something he could get in trouble for. If
I ever want a boyfriend—which I will not—he will say “Sure!” to anything I
suggest.
Mitchell was down in a few minutes. He grabbed Moisturizer from me
and high-fived his paw. “Little dude! You’re home!”
Then he followed me to the kitchen table and watched as I flipped the
booklet open and started to write: Margaret is the best friend a person could
ever have! And then even though my hand was exhausted from drawing all
those pictures of Moisturizer, two pet portraits, and seventeen I.O.U.
certificates, I wrote and I wrote about what she did on Saturday. I filled up
her booklet and I didn’t even have to write extra big.
 “Margaret did that?” Mitchell asked, reading over my shoulder.
“Yep,” I said.
“The Margaret who’s my sister?”
“That Margaret,” I said. “Let’s go put it back now. I’ll do it so you don’t
get in trouble.”
I hung Moisturizer around my neck, because I didn’t feel ready to leave
him for even a few minutes. Then we went up in the elevator, Mitchell
muttering all the way, “My sister did that? Margaret?”
We hurried to the living room. Margaret wasn’t in sight, so I pulled out
the spelling bee plaque and was just about to tuck the booklet behind it, when
I heard her voice.
“You got him back! You got him back!” She ran over and hugged
Moisturizer while I stood frozen. Then she looked down.
She turned pale. She took the booklet from me, trembling.
“I did not read it,” I said quickly. “N-O-T, not. I’m sorry I took it, but I
only wanted to write something. I wanted to thank you…”
 Margaret shushed me. She opened the booklet and began to read. She
scowled and then she nodded and then she scowled again and she nodded
again. Lots of times.
Finally she looked back at me. “Grateful just has one l, Clementine,” she
said. “And hero just has one e. And there were only 239 posters, not 250. And
—”
I felt a little bit relieved. “Do you want me to take it out, Margaret? I
could erase it all if you want.…”
Margaret tipped her head and narrowed her eyes, as if she were thinking
about it. But her mouth kept twitching up, so I could tell she was just
pretending. Finally she gave a big sigh. “Oh, I suppose, if it means that much
to you, Clementine, we could leave it in. Okay, fine.”
And then she put the booklet away—but this time, not on the bottom shelf
behind the spelling bee plaque. This time, Margaret put her Friend of the
Week booklet right up in the middle of the fireplace mantel.

And then she turned and smiled at me so brightly the whole city of
Boston actually did light up. Okay, fine, maybe my smile helped too.
 MORE HONORS AND PRAISE FOR CLEMENTINE

A New York Public Library Book for Reading and Sharing

A National Parenting Publication Gold Award Winner
“Sara Pennypacker has created that rare marvel—a book about a little
girl…who is utterly charming and beguiling not just for parents BUT FOR
KIDS THEMSELVES.… This is an amazing, engaging book and should be an
instant classic. I wish I had written it.”
—Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Cage of
Stars
“Frazee’s engaging pen-and-ink drawings capture the energy and fresh-
faced expressions of the irrepressible heroine.”
—School Library Journal, starred review
“Pennypacker’s genius knack for tantalizing comic timing and expressive
turns of phrase is augmented in no small way by Frazee’s equally comic,
expressive illustrations.”
—The Toronto Star
 ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

Sara Pennypacker is also the author of The Talented Clementine; Stuart’s

Cape and Stuart Goes to School; Dumbstruck; and Pierre in Love. She was
a painter before becoming a writer, and has two absolutely fabulous
children who are now grown. Sara lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Marla Frazee illustrated the second book in this series, The Talented
Clementine. She is the author and illustrator of many picture books as well,
including Walk On!, Santa Claus the World’s Number One Toy Expert, and
Roller Coaster, and illustrated The Seven Silly Eaters and Everywhere
Babies. Marla works in a small back ard cabin under an avocado tree in
Pasadena, California.
The very first thing Margaret said when she sat down next to me on the bus
Monday morning was that I looked terrible. “You have droopy eyebags and a
pasty complexion. Absolutely no glow. What’s the matter?”
 “I’m having a nervous breakdown,” I told her. “Our FAMILY MEETING!
sign is up, and I have to wait until tonight to find out if I’m in trouble.”
“Of course you’re in trouble,” Margaret said. “Probably something
really big. Bright pink blush and a sparkly eye shadow is what I recommend.”
This winter vacation, Margaret visited her father in Hollywood,
California. When she got back, I had to listen for three hundred hours to how
great his new girlfriend was. “She’s the makeup artist for his commercials,”
Margaret said all melty-voiced, as if she was the one who was in love with
this Heather person.
“Someone who puts makeup on people isn’t an artist,” I informed
Margaret. “My mother is an artist. Not her.”
“Heather is too an artist,” Margaret snorted. “And she’s been teaching
me some of her professional techniques.” Then Margaret had blabbered on
and on about advanced lip-gloss tips and the proper application of eyeliner
until I thought I would die of bore-dumb.
Whenever Margaret talks about makeup, I feel exactly the way I felt
when we took my grand-parents to the airport so they could move to Florida:
lonely. Even though Margaret isn’t going anywhere, when she talks about
makeup, I feel like I’m back at the airport again and she’s getting on a plane
for a long trip to somewhere without me.
“I don’t need any blush!” I yelled, a little louder than I meant to. “I don’t
need any makeup at all! I just need to know what I’m in trouble about!”
Margaret rolled her eyes at me and then dug around in her pocketbook.
She pulled out a pointy silver tube that looked dangerous, like a bullet.
“Margaret!” I gasped. “Are you putting on lipstick?”
Margaret smeared the lipstick on, pooched her lips out, and smucked
them at me. “Yep,” she said. Smuck-smuck-smuck. “So what? I’ll take it off
before we get there.”
 “Mar! Ga! Ret!” I cried. “You are ten! Years! Old!”
Margaret had had her tenth birthday while she was on that Hollywood
vacation. Since then, she’d been acting like she was twenty-five or something.
Sometimes I didn’t even recognize her. Plus, I didn’t get to go to a party for
her.
Margaret smucked her shiny pink lips at me again. “Heather says I am
very mature for my age.” She waved the lipstick tube in front of my face. “You
want some?”
I tapped my lips. “Mouth germs,” I warned her. “I can feel them crawling
around.”
Margaret yanked the lipstick back in horror. She spent the rest of the bus
ride wiping everything in her pocketbook with hand sanitizer. Being a germ-
maniac was about the only thing I recognized about the new Margaret.
I opened my backpack and pulled out my IMPORTANT PAPERS folder and
found a good surprise: the science fair project report Waylon and I had
written was still in there! I’m supposed to keep it until the end of the project,
and every day that it’s still in my backpack feels like a miracle.
As I started reading over the report, I calmed down. This is because
lately I really like science class.
I didn’t always. In the beginning, science class was a big
disappointment, let me tell you.
On the first day of third grade, Mrs. Resnick, the science teacher, had
started talking about what a great year it was going to be.
I looked around the science room.
No monkeys with funnel hats and electrodes. No alien pods leaking green
slime. No human heads sitting on platters under glass jars talking to each
other, like I’d seen in a movie once, and don’t bother telling my parents about
it because I was grounded for a week already and so was Uncle Frank, who
brought me to the movie.
No smoking test tubes, no sizzling magnetic rays, no rocket launch
controls. Just some posters on the walls and a bunch of tall tables with sinks,
as if all you would do in a room like this was wash your hands. Margaret had
told me she liked science class, and now I knew why: Margaret says “Let’s go
wash our hands” the way other people say “Let’s go to a party and eat cake!”
“Does anyone have any questions?” Mrs. Resnick had asked that first
day.
I sure did. I wanted to ask, “You call this a science room?” But instead, I
just said, “Excuse me, I think there’s been a mistake,” in my most polite voice.
“A mistake?” Mrs. Resnick asked.
“Right,” I said. “I’m in the wrong science room.”
“The wrong science room?” she repeated.
I nodded. “I want the one with the invisibility chamber and mind-control
buttons and mutant brains spattered on the ceiling. The one with the
experiments.”
“I want that one, too,” Waylon said. I gave him a big smile.
 “Oh, there are plenty of experiments going on here,” Mrs. Resnick said.
“We’re going to have quite a year.”
Mrs. Resnick seemed nice, so I didn’t tell her the other bad news: that
she had the wrong hair. Scientists are supposed to have wild science-y hair—
here is a picture of that:

But hers was just kind of normal supermarket-y, television-mother-y kind of

hair. Probably she was embarrassed about that.
Now, though, I like science class. Mrs. Resnick is a good teacher, even
with her normal hair. I like our science fair project, and I like our rat,
Eighteen. I like that I got Waylon for a partner. All the kids begged him to be
their partner, because he’s the scienciest kid in third grade. But he picked me,
because I’m the only one who believes he’s going to be a superhero when he
grows up.
And today, I had an extra thing to like about science class: for forty
whole minutes, I wouldn’t have to think about our family meeting or
Margaret’s lipstick smucking.
“We’re here,” I said. “Wipe your mouth off, Margaret.”
Margaret scowled, but she wiped off the lipstick and we went into
school.
 It was an extra-boring day, but finally it was time to line up to go to the
science room. As soon as we got there, I saw that something was wrong. I ran
over to the rats’ cages. “Eighteen’s missing!” I cried.
I shook the trail mix we used as treats and called for him, while Waylon
poked through the sawdust. “He’s really missing, all right,” Waylon
announced.

Mrs. Resnick came over and frowned into the cage. “They were all here
Friday when I left. Check through the bedding again—I’ll bet he’s just
hiding.”
I feathered away the wood curls more carefully.
 And then I saw. “Look,” I said. In the back corner, under the water bottle,
a rat-belly-size hole had been chewed through the plastic floor.
Mrs. Resnick was really frowning now. “He’s probably been gone all
weekend. Still, let’s search the room.”
We looked everywhere. We looked in the second graders’ volcano
models. We plowed through the trays of seeds the fourth graders were
germinating. We poked through the fifth graders’ crystal collections. We even
looked in the paper-towel dispenser.
No Eighteen.
After a while, the other kids had to go back to their rat-training, and only
Waylon and I kept looking. When the bell rang, we still hadn’t found him.
“Maybe he’ll show up when I feed the other rats this afternoon,” Mrs.
Resnick said. “You two head back to your class now.” Waylon and I said all
right and went back to 3B. But it wasn’t all right.
 A little while ago, my kitten, Moisturizer, got lost in Boston. All the bad
feelings I had when he was missing—worrying about him being scared, or
getting hurt, and about whether it was my fault—came back over me.
All day long, I worried about that little rat. I had to hear about a hundred
“Clementine, pay attention!”s from my teacher, and every time, I was paying
attention.
I was paying attention to Maria’s chunky boots that looked like tires on
the bottom, and worrying about someone stomping on Eighteen. I was paying
attention out the window to all that ice and snow and imagining how cold
Eighteen would be if he’d gotten outside. When the janitor came down the
hall, I was paying attention to his gigantic vacuum cleaner and thinking how he
wouldn’t even notice if a little tiny white rat got sucked up inside. After that, I
started wondering if our school had a trash compactor, and that got me so
worried I almost gave myself a heart attack.
Finally, after three hundred hours, the school’s-over bell rang. I got my
stuff from the coatrack and asked Mr. D’Matz if I could go back to the science
room.
He pointed to the clock. “Don’t miss the bus.”
The bell rings at two fifteen and the buses open their doors at two twenty
and my bus is the second to leave, which is at two twenty-eight, so I had
thirteen minutes. “I won’t,” I said. I set my inside clock for twelve minutes,
because one had already been wasted talking to my teacher. My inside clock
keeps perfect time, and so I am never late for anything. Okay, fine, I’m late a
lot, but it’s only because I forget to set my inside clock. But I was
remembering now.
I ran down the hall even though the rule is no running in the hall, and I
was there in fifty-one seconds.
I dumped my coat and stuff on top of the bookshelf and skidded over to
the cage. “He didn’t come back?” I asked.
 “Who?” Mrs. Resnick asked back.
“Our rat, who’s missing,” I reminded her in a patient, kind voice, the
voice I wish people would use with me if I forget something. “Didn’t he come
back when you fed them?”
She said, “No, sorry.”
I sprinkled some trail mix outside his cage in case he came back, and
then my inside clock said it was time to go. On the bus, I worried about
Eighteen so much my head hurt.