But second grade was not that great yet It definitely had all kinds of new things New things like grades on spelling tests and Coach Mallory’s contests in P E and Mr Francis’s Music Stars New things mattered this year like who had the coolest sneakers or whose paintings the teacher hung on the filing cabinet 10
New things mattered like who was who And Room 19 was full of characters Like Mimi One time she stole a piece of printer paper when nobody was looking and called it a fluffy wuffy bunny lost in a snowstorm She had seen the actual Mona Lisa all the way across the ocean in France so she called herself an arteest Is that what arteests do It seemed like cheating to Audrey It was just a piece of paper But Ms Fincastle oohed and ahhed and asked Mimi to autograph it and then she hung it right at the tip-tip top of her filing cabinet with three magnets shaped like little frogs And whose drawing was somewhere in the middle Dangling from one plain silver magnet Audrey’s It was a rainbow made of only pink and purple and blue with one cloud on either side But each cloud was 11
actually a face Ms Fincastle on one side Audrey on the other Mimi had said those clouds made NO SENSE and were ALL WRONG and Audrey must never have paid attention in science because rainbows don’t look like that Ms Fincastle had called it stupendous and said Audrey was a true creative talent Except she still hung it underneath Mimi’s So Mimi was the best at being an arteest Bettina was the best at putting up with Mimi She’d listen when Mimi bossed her around and told her where to sit and when to stand and what to do Mimi and Bettina together made the best friendship bracelets They’d never shared with Audrey Lena was the best at braids and taking care of the library basket Sonya ran faster than the third graders 12
Von never got anything wrong on a spelling test Not even the bonus words the ones with four whole syllables And then there was Diego Diego had been Audrey’s very first friend on the very first day of first grade when he’d told her a knock knock joke that made her laugh so hard chocolate milk squirted out of her nose He wasn’t even grossed out not one little bit Back then Diego was the best at being a friend But this year Diego and Kadir and Henley started the Acorn Club which made Ms Fincastle think they were being responsible scientists but really it was a joke-writing club that they had to keep a secret from Ms Fincastle because sometimes their jokes were inappropriate The Acorn Club was truly the best at being funny Diego must have forgotten that it was Audrey who 13
