Big Mouth Elizabeth Read online

  20

  Tonight for homework in the Blue Group, we have to write something we wish would happen.

  I wish I would lose a tooth or three so I could be in the Big Mouth Club and get invited to Playland with Mallory and Anna and Rose on Saturday.

  That is my true wish.

  But what if Ms. Patel makes me read it out loud?

  Anna and Mallory might laugh at me, with all their lack of baby teeth showing.

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  21

  NAME: El!zabeth!

  I WISH: all the dogs at the rescue place could get adopted by families that will love them. Very much. Very, very much.

  And that everything would be easy.

  The End

  Thank you.

  By El!zabeth!

  Chapter

  22

  Good thing I didn’t tell my true wish, because I was right: We had to read our homework out loud. Not to the whole class. But still, to the whole Blue Group.

  Mallory’s homework was so funny.

  Her younger brother, Mikey, is almost three, but he says it like “two and flee tawters.”

  She wrote that she wished Mikey would not touch her with his buttery hands every morning, and also that instead of a brother, she had a hamster.

  But then, she wrote a PS.

  A PS means it’s at the end and you whisper it, like a secret.

  Her PS said:

  I just went in to look at Mikey. He was sleeping. I change my wish. I wish Mikey could just stay so cute and sweet forever. Even tho I know that wish won’t come true.

  Now I wish I had a buttery baby brother, too.

  Mallory said she liked my wish about the dogs.

  That only made me wish my real wish more, about the teeth and the club.

  Even tho I know that wish won’t come true.

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  I thought of a good challenge for myself!

  Lose a tooth!

  Tonight!

  If I can manage to lose a tooth tonight, I could find out who I really am.

  And who I am would be: somebody who is in the Big Mouth Club.

  I have to ask if Gingy and Poopsie are coming over tonight.

  Poopsie’s string idea sounds terrible, but Mom says I am a brave kid, so maybe I can handle it.

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  Nope.

  My not-buttery brother, Justin, has no baby teeth anymore.

  But he is no help at all, either.

  He said when his first tooth fell out, he threw up and lost his tooth down the drain.

  I said, “I wish you were a hamster.”

  He whispered all mean, “Get out of my room.”

  Mom only heard what I said, not what Justin said.

  So now me and all my baby teeth are sitting here alone in my room until I can be pleasant.

  There is no way I can be pleasant.

  So I might never get out of here.

  I am going to start my homework for Monday.

  I have to write a story where something that I wish actually happens.

  All I have so far is the title:

  “The Night My Brother, Justin, Turned into a Hamster.”

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  25

  “Are you down in the dumps again?” Bucky asked me at recess.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I am left out of the Big Mouth Club.”

  “I am, too,” he said.

  “It’s only girls!”

  “So I’m definitely not in it?”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “That’s not fair!” he said.

  “You’re right!” I agreed. “It’s not! Are you down in the dumps with me now?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Nobody can be in every club.”

  “Yeah, but …” I said.

  “Yeah, but …” he said. He laughed. “You said Yeah but.”

  I laughed, too. “Yeah, but.”

  “Let’s run around,” he said.

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  26

  So we did.

  And that is why Bucky is my best friend.

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  27

  Still.

  The Big Mouth Club is the club I most want to be in.

  So all afternoon, even when Science Teacher Sal came with her cart?

  I was back down in the dumps.

  Chapter

  28

  Tonight, the phone rang.

  Usually, it is Gingy calling.

  “Elizabeth!” Dad yelled.

  I ran down.

  It wasn’t Gingy.

  It was Anna.

  She had great news to tell me.

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  29

  “Great news,” Anna said. “Rose has lice.”

  “Mice?” I asked.

  “Lice,” Anna said. “You know, little bugs in her hair.”

  “Ewww,” I said. “How is hair bugs great news?”

  “For you!” Anna said. “Rose can’t go to Playland tomorrow!”

  “Because of the lice?”

  “Yes,” said Anna. “So there is an extra seat in the car! You can be in the seat!”

  “What about my teeth?”

  “Do you have any loose ones?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I lied. “A bunch of loose ones.”

  “Great,” Anna said. “Mallory said you can be a junior member of the club. Ask if you can go and call me back.”

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  Mom said, “Elizabeth, you already have other plans tomorrow. Remember?”

  “But I would rather go to Playland and be in the Big Mouth Club!” I explained.

  “Big Mouth Club?” Mom asked.

  “It means you have grown-up teeth, Mom,” I explained.

  “Usually, it’s an insult,” Mom said. “If you call someone a big mouth.”

  “Why?”

  “It means they, well, say things they shouldn’t. Or they talk too much. It’s mean. Is someone calling you a big mouth?”

  “No!” I yelled. “They are NOT!”

  “Well, good,” Mom said. “I don’t like name-calling.”

  “I love Playland! Please let me go!” I begged. “PLEASE!”

  “No,” Mom said. “You already have plans with another friend.”

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  31

  Now I am back in my room to Think About It.

  WHAT I HAVE TO THINK ABOUT:

  1.  Why I should not throw myself on the floor screaming when I don’t like Mom’s decision.

  AND:

  2.  How would Babyish Cali feel if I said, Too bad on you! I am going to Playland!

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  32

  WHAT I THINK ABOUT IT:

  1.  I should not throw myself on the floor screaming when I don’t like Mom’s decision, because all that happens is I have to go to my room. She doesn’t even change her mind.

  2.  I am not Babyish Cali. I can’t know how she would feel.

  But here is how I think Babyish Cali would feel:

  Down in the dumps.

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  33

  “Sorry, Anna,” I said. “I already have plans for tomorrow with Cali, so I can’t come.”

  “With Babyish Cali?” Anna asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Oh,” said Anna.

  I didn’t know what to say to that.

  “Well, have fun,” Anna said, and hung up.

  But it sounded like what she meant was:

  There is no way that will be fun. Too bad on you.

  I did not throw myself on the floor and scream.

  I kept that inside.

  Only an angry look at Mom was on my outside.

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  34

  Mom said a good way to have a good day is to decide it’s a good day.

>   I said, “I am carsick.”

  I don’t know how a person can just decide it is a good day when it is a bad day because she is in the car on the way to Babyish Cali’s house instead of going to Playland with the Big Mouth Club.

  That sounds to me like lying.

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  35

  The moms decided to have a cup of tea on the patio.

  Babyish Cali took me up the stairs to see her room.

  Up and up and up.

  Cali has a thousand stairs.

  “Sometimes we go sledding on them,” Babyish Cali said.

  “How can you sled on stairs?” I asked. “Does it snow inside your house?”

  “No,” said Babyish Cali.

  She opened the door to her room.

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  Chapter

  37

  “This is the coolest room I ever saw,” I said. “Who built all this?”

  “I did,” she said.

  “Are these experiments?” I asked. “Or, like, inventions?”

  “Some of each,” she said in her squeaky voice.

  She flipped a switch and a little train carried a rock around the top of her room.

  “Press this,” she said.

  I did.

  The rock dropped onto her bed.

  “Wow!” I yelled. “You’re amazing!”

  Babyish Cali giggled. “You are so nice, Elizabeth.”

  Well, I am not sure if that’s true.

  “We can play anything you want,” Babyish Cali said.

  I looked around, thinking about it.

  Everything looked like stuff I’m not old enough to play with.

  “Or do you want to sled on the steps?” she asked.

  “How?” I asked.

  “Pillows!” she said.

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  38

  We stood at the top of Babyish Cali’s stairs, holding our pillows.

  I didn’t want to be babyish.

  More babyish than Babyish Cali.

  But I was very scared.

  “Is this allowed?” I asked.

  “We do it all the time,” Babyish Cali said.

  Maybe she is not so babyish, I thought.

  Maybe she is just short and cute.

  And neat.

  And naughty.

  And brave.

  Maybe Mom was wrong about me.

  I sure didn’t feel brave.

  “You can go first,” Cali said. “You’re the guest.”

  “You’re the host,” I said.

  I was hugging that pillow very much.

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  39

  Is it babyish to say no, thank you if you don’t want to do a thing?

  Or I am scared?

  How about this seems dangerous?

  Is it babyish to say no?

  Is it lying to say yes, I want to if NO you do NOT want to?

  I had a lot of questions and no answers, up at the top of those stairs.

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  40

  “I don’t know how,” I said.

  “Fine, I’ll show you,” Cali said.

  “Really?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  Babyish Cali knelt down and put her pillow right on the edge of the top step.

  She lowered her belly onto the pillow.

  She took a deep breath.

  And then she pushed off with her feet and sledded headfirst down those stairs yelling,

  WAHOOOEEEEEE—OH

  ACK

  URMFFFFF!

  Chapter

  41

  Babyish Cali was a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Are you okay?” I asked from the top.

  She turned around and there was blood all in her mouth.

  “I’ll get the moms!” I said.

  I dropped my pillow up there and ran quickly but carefully down the stairs.

  I ran past Babyish Cali.

  But then I stopped and went back.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said. “Hang in there, pal.”

  “Okay,” Babyish Cali said.

  I could tell she was trying not to cry.

  “You’re being very brave,” I told her.

  I patted her hair and ran to find the moms.

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  42

  “Sledding?” Mom asked.

  Babyish Cali’s mom was rushing inside.

  Mom and I followed her.

  As soon as Babyish Cali saw her mother, she started crying for real.

  “What happened?” asked her mom. “Let me see your mouth. What happened?”

  “I wanted to show Elizabeth I’m not babyish,” Babyish Cali was saying.

  “I don’t understand,” her mom said.

  “She calls me Babyish Cali and I wanted …”

  “Okay. Stop trying to talk, sweetheart. Oof, that’s a lot of blood. Does it hurt?”

  “Not really.” She wouldn’t look at me. “I just wanted to prove I’m not …”

  “Shh,” said her mom. “I think we have to go to the doctor and get this checked out.”

  “Of course,” my mom said. “Do you want us to come, or …”

  “No,” the other mom said. “I think we better just go.”

  Mom grabbed me by the hand and pulled me toward their front door.

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  43

  Mom didn’t put on the radio or even say buckle up.

  I buckled anyway.

  At a red light, Mom said, “Do you call her Babyish Cali?”

  “Um,” I said.

  “The truth.”

  “Not no,” I said.

  “You call her Babyish Cali?!”

  “It’s a nickname,” I said.

  “It’s a mean name,” Mom said. “Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She is a little babyish, I thought.”

  “And so you thought calling her a nasty name would be okay?” Mom asked.

  I shrugged. “Everybody calls her that.”

  “Really?” Mom asked. “Seems to me like somebody needs to be brave and say hey, stop name-calling! That’s rude.”

  “I guess,” I said. “Maybe I’m not as brave as you think I am.”

  “How would you feel if someone called you Babyish Elizabeth?”

  That made me cry a little.

  “They kind of do!” I yelled. “They aren’t letting me in the Big Mouth Club!”

  “So I guess you can imagine how Cali feels,” Mom said.

  “Except for the bleeding,” I said.

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  44

  After bath and pajamas, I had to call Babyish Cali. I didn’t want to.

  “It’s too hard,” I said.

  “Sometimes the hard thing is the right thing,” Dad said.

  Mom handed me the phone while it was ringing.

  I pretended to be Super Elizabeth, brave enough to do this.

  I didn’t believe it.

  I was just plain Elizabeth, sad and scared.

  A dad answered.

  I said, “Hello this is Elizabeth who was over today when Cali got a bloody mouth may I please speak with Cali?”

  The dad said, “Hold on.”

  “Hi!” Cali said.

  I sat down under the table. “How are you?” I asked her.

  “Fine,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Well, my mouth didn’t get bloody.”

  She laughed. “True! My two front teeth are knocked out!”

  “Lucky,” I said. “Now you’ll be in the Big Mouth Club.”

  “I didn’t think about that.”

  “I did,” I said sadly.

  “Well …” she started, but I did not want to talk about that.

  At all.

  So I interrupted her to say the thing Mom told me to say: “Sorry I called you babyish.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  It sounded like thankth.

  Just like how Bucky sou
nds.

  I guess because of the lack of baby teeth up front.

  I hung up and made a new wish:

  I hope someday my thankth sounds so cute like that.

  Chapter

  45

  Sunday morning, I threw away my page that just had the title

  “The Night My Brother, Justin, Turned into a Hamster.”

  I started over and wrote a story called

  “Elizabeth and the Missing Tooth.”

  In the story, a girl named Elizabeth is the first one in her whole class to lose a tooth.

  Everybody thinks she is terrific and brave and grown-up.

  It was a great story.

  But it wasn’t true.

  The rest of Sunday, I pretended to be a dog.

  Qwerty doesn’t have to go to second grade and be left out of clubs.

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  46

  I had to go to school anyway.

  Chapter

  47

  At recess, nobody raced to the swings.

  Everybody was too busy looking at Cali’s new smile.

  “I guess you can be in the Big Mouth Club now!” Anna told her. “Congratulations!”

  “No, thankth,” Cali said.

  “What do you mean?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t want to be in the Big Mouth Club,” Cali said. “I’m already in a club.”

  “What club?” Mallory asked her.

  “With Elizabeth,” Cali said.

  Everybody looked at me.

  It wasn’t the truth.

  I shrugged.