“Laura!” her father shouted.
She stayed still.
There was a knock on her door, then her father stepped inside. “Laura, you have a visitor,” he said.
She gave him a look that said, Can’t you tell her I’m not home?
He ignored it.
She shrugged her shoulders, got up from her desk, sighed, then walked out of her bedroom and down the hall.
Gabriel was waiting just inside the front door, holding a bunch of flowers.
44
Kiss Me
Gabriel stared at her with his mouth open. “Wow,” he uttered. “You look like a movie star.”
She waited for him to say something like, “You could play Frankenstein without a mask,” but he didn’t. He just stared at her hair.
“Um, these are for you,” he said. He blushed as he held out the flowers. They were daisies, white with yellow centers.
She took the flowers. She would have ripped them to bits and thrown them in his face, but – nobody had ever given her flowers before. She brought them to her nose.
“They’re not the kind that smell,” he said.
She stared at him. She wondered how he could dare show his face at her house after what he did to her.
“You could be on the cover of a magazine,” said Gabriel. “You look so … elegant.”
She shook back her hair, although it didn’t shake back anymore. She wondered if Gabriel really liked it, or if he was just saying it because he didn’t want her to get him in trouble for cutting it.
“From what they said, I thought they practically shaved your head,” he said.
“What are you talking about? Who?”
“Howard and Sheila. They’re the ones who did it to you. It wasn’t me. They tried to frame me by dropping a piece of paper with my name on it.”
“It was your handwriting,” said Laura.
“I know,” said Gabriel. “Howard tricked me into signing it. Can you believe it? Howard?” He smiled. “He said he wanted my autograph. I guess that’s what I get for thinking I was such a hot shot.”
Laura didn’t know whether to believe him or not.
“Howard confessed everything to Mr. Doyle,” said Gabriel. “I was there. No one else knows anything about it. Boy, you should have seen Mr. Doyle. I thought he was going to kill them. He was so mad at them, he didn’t punish me for giving Sheila a bloody nose!” He smiled. “Mr. Doyle’s all right. I can see why you’re in love with him.”
“I’m not in love with him,” said Laura. “I like him, but I don’t love him.”
“Oh.”
“You gave Sheila a bloody nose?”
“I gave Howard a fat lip, too. I couldn’t believe what they did to you. It made me so mad. It was such a mean thing to do, especially since …” he paused, “… you never told a lie.”
Laura raised her eyebrows.
“I’m sorry for not believing you.”
“But how –”
“Sheila was the one who changed the note. She saw me put it in your desk, and she took it out and changed it. She’s the one who wrote that you had to kiss me, or else I’d tell everyone about Pig City. How could, I mean, can’t you see why I –”
“You shouldn’t have called me a liar.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Laura looked at the flowers, then at Gabriel. “I have a vase in the Dog House.”
They walked through the kitchen, out the back door, and across the yard to the clubhouse.
On top of the bookcase was a clear blue vase with a peacock feather in it. Laura removed the feather, dropped it on the floor, and put the daisies in the vase. She placed it back on the bookcase. She figured she’d add water later.
Gabriel sat in the swinging chair.
Laura remembered that that was where he sat the last time he was in the Dog House. She sat on the bed again. “What did the note say before Sheila changed it?”
Gabriel looked down at the ground. “I told you that I knew all about Pig City, but I promised not to tell anybody. I also wrote that you had pretty hair, but then I erased it because …” He blushed. “But I never said it was ugly. Sheila wrote that, too.”
“But how did you ever find out about Pig City?”
“Oh,” he said. He smiled sheepishly. “I didn’t. I heard you and Tiffany and Allison talking about it, but I had no idea what it was. I was hoping the note would trick you into telling me. I’m sorry. I’m always playing tricks on people and then they backfire on me!”
“I know what you mean,” Laura grumbled.
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for trying to trick you and for not believing you and for bringing all those treasures to school.”
Laura looked at his sad brown eyes.
She wondered what would have happened if Sheila hadn’t changed the note. Gabriel’s trick probably would have worked. She probably would have asked him to join Pig City. But that wouldn’t have been so bad. She wondered what she would have asked him to do for insurance: Wear a dress or kiss her?
But that was the old Laura. The new Laura didn’t play those kinds of games.
“When you asked me to join Pig City,” he said, “that was the happiest moment of my life. I just wanted you to like me. That’s all I ever wanted.”
She felt a warm tingle inside her.
“I don’t blame you for hating me. If I were you, I’d hate me, too. Even if I weren’t you, I’d probably still hate me. I hate myself and I’m me.”
She didn’t hate him. She knew he didn’t do anything she wouldn’t have done, if she were him.
“No more tricks!” Gabriel promised. He crossed his heart.
“No more tricks,” Laura agreed.
Gabriel shook his head. “I just wish … Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?” he asked.
She held back a smile.
“You don’t even have to forgive me. I just don’t want you to hate me for the rest of your life.”
She thought he had beautiful eyes.
“I’ll do anything you say,” he said.
She picked up the peacock feather and gently brushed it across the floor. “There is one thing you could do,” she said very quietly.
“What?” he asked.
She smiled sweetly. “Eat a raw egg.”
45
The Final Bell
Now they were even.
The final week of school is usually the most exciting week of the year, but compared to the last four weeks, it was nothing.
Sheila and Howard weren’t there. They were suspended from school for the last week, but would still go on to junior high next year.
Everyone had something to say about Laura’s new hairstyle. Almost everybody said they liked it, but she didn’t care. George Washington didn’t care what people said about his hair. Which was a good thing, she thought, since his hair was white and stiff.
On the final day of school, Laura handed in her seventeen completed dictionary pages.
Mr. Doyle was shocked. After all that had happened, he no longer expected her to do them. He thought she knew that.
She did. She did them, anyway. Allison, Tiffany, Gabriel, Kristin, Debbie, Nathan, Aaron, Yolanda, Jonathan, Karen, and even Linzy all helped. Linzy said she felt bad about tricking Laura. Besides, she wanted to find out what it was like to copy a dictionary page.
They’d had a dictionary-page copying party. But if Mr. Doyle ever noticed some of the words they had copied, he’d – well, they didn’t know what he’d do. Besides, it would be too late.
Laura’s friends liked her again. They even liked Gabriel, since she and he were together.
The final bell rang.
Laura was no longer a sixth-grader.
She felt strangely sad as she walked through the yellow curtain for what she thought would be the last time.
“Laura!” Mr. Doyle called after her.
She turned around and stepped back into the room.
Mr. Do
yle was standing at attention. His fist was at his nose.
She returned the salute.
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Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin and New York
First published in Great Britain in September 2009 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
First published as Sixth Grade Secrets in the United States by Scholastic Inc.
This electronic edition published in February 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Louis Sachar 1987
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
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ISBN 978 1 4088 1804 6
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Louis Sachar, Pig City
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