“Would you girls consider looking after her?” Mrs. Stone continued. “She adjusts beautifully to new people, and she’s no bother at all. I’d pay you, naturally. And I could bring her over here. You could keep her in the barn.”
Whaaaat? My lord! This was absolutely amazing. As I stared in disbelief, I could see Dawn looking wary. “Mrs. Stone,” she said, “does Elvira have … horns?”
“Uh, wait a minute,” I interrupted. “Just exactly who or what is Elvira?”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Stone said cheerily. “She’s a kid.”
My heart sank.
“A baby goat,” she added.
“Ohhh!” I said. I nodded knowingly. I tried to look as if I had known all along that Elvira was an animal.
There was no way, no way on Earth, that anyone would ever know what I had been thinking.
“I think it would be fun,” Mary Anne said.
“Can we see her?” Dawn asked.
“Sure!” Mrs. Stone replied. “You can come over now if you want.”
So that was how we met Elvira. The Stones’ farm was a long walk away, near the cemetery on the outskirts of town. (See what I meant when I said Stoneybrook was the country? Where the Stones live is pretty rural.) The farm was not exactly huge, not like farms in the movies, with crops as far as the eye can see. But I was impressed. The Stones had an awesome vegetable garden and a barn that was much bigger than Dawn’s. A rusty tractor was parked near the barn, and some chickens were strutting around it, giving us the eye.
“I love this place,” Dawn said.
“You’ve been here before?” I asked.
“Just driving by,” Dawn replied. “But Mom and Richard have always been pretty friendly with the Stones.”
Mrs. Stone was walking briskly ahead of us, practically sprinting. She seemed older than my parents, but life on the farm must have given her incredible stamina. “We have horses, pigs, chickens, and a couple of cows,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s not much, but we sure enjoy them.”
We followed her into the barn. She leaned down into a small pen surrounded by a wire fence.
When she turned around, she was holding Elvira.
Elvira was all eyes and bony joints. She stared up at us, jerking her head from face to face. Beneath her chin was a thin, pointy beard. Her fur was a mottled gray-white-black, and it looked scraggly and dusty.
In other words, she was absolutely beautiful.
“Beeeaaaaahh,” Elvira bleated in a tiny voice.
“Ohhhhhhhh.” We all said the same thing at once. We couldn’t help it. Elvira was so fragile and sweet. She had instantly stolen our hearts.
“It’s okay, baby,” Mrs. Stone reassured her. “She’s a little nervous,” she said to us. “But she’ll get over it.”
She put Elvira down, next to an old tennis ball. Elvira glanced at us, then skittered away on her thin, wobbly legs. When she turned around, she lowered her head and sprinted toward the ball. She butted it, and as it bounced away she looked up. We applauded wildly.
Elvira baahed again. Her lips were turned up naturally, but I could swear she was smiling. She started pulling up some hay and chewing it.
“She is soooo cute!” Mary Anne said.
“Can I pick her up?” Dawn asked.
“Me, too!” I chimed in.
We took turns holding her. Mrs. Stone was right. Elvira took to us pretty well. When we put her down, she’d scamper around and butt us on the legs. We would chase her, and she’d run away, dodging left and right.
“Oh, it’ll be so much fun to take care of her,” Mary Anne said.
“I know, she’s a doll,” Mrs. Stone replied with a smile. “Well, let me know what your parents say. I know this is an imposition —”
“I’m sure they won’t mind,” Dawn said.
“We’ll ask them tonight,” Mary Anne added. “And we’ll call you.”
“Fine,” Mrs. Stone said. “Now I’ve got to give her her bottle.”
“Bottle?” Mary Anne said. “Oooh, that is so adorable.”
We said our good-byes and headed home. We couldn’t stop talking about Elvira. Dawn and Mary Anne seemed pretty certain they’d get permission to goat-sit.
“I just don’t know how we’ll be able to wait till Saturday!” Mary Anne said.
Dawn sighed. “Imagine how we’ll feel in three weeks. How will we be able to return her?”
“You could kid-nap her,” I suggested.
“Very funny,” Dawn said.
We gabbed on and on — what Elvira would eat, how we’d show her to our charges, what Tigger would think.
I wasn’t the one who was taking care of Elvira, but I knew one thing — I’d be spending a lot of time at Dawn and Mary Anne’s house in the near future.
A new teacher. A baby goat. The end of the school year. All in all, it was shaping up to be a pretty interesting few weeks.
When I walked into math class the next day, Tom Cruise was in the room.
I don’t know how he got there. I don’t know what he was doing. I don’t know how long he was going to stay.
But here’s what I did know: My knees were weak. There was not enough air in the room. And I was not dreaming.
There I was, Stacey McGill, native New Yorker. I was used to celebrities on the streets of NYC. I could pass them by with just a casual glance.
But this was different. As I walked to my seat, I could not feel my feet touch the ground.
My brain? Total mush. I’d start to put a thought together, then HE would smile at something. Dimples would crease his cheeks, and I’d be gone. Lost. His slate blue eyes would flash across the room, and it was nuclear meltdown time. Then he’d run his hand through his wavy, light brown hair, and I was afraid they would have to scrape me off the floor.
Do I sound like I was in love? I was. But somewhere, deep in the back of my pea-soupy brain, some little germs of reality were coming together. That guy could not really be Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise would not be standing in a math class at Stoneybrook Middle School. He would not be fiddling with a piece of chalk, talking to Mr. Z., glancing down at a sheet on the desk.
That didn’t matter, though. It didn’t change the way he looked, or the effect he was having on me. And I didn’t figure out who he really was until Mr. Z. turned to the class and spoke.
“Okay, everybody,” he said, just after the bell rang. “I’m pleased to introduce your new teacher, Mr. Ellenburg.”
My heart stopped.
Tom Cruise was Wesley Ellenburg.
I had to let that idea sink in. I felt like an idiot for not having realized it right away. But I had an excuse. I had taken temporary leave of my senses. I could accept no responsibility for logic.
The name suddenly became cool. Much more interesting than, say, Tom Cruise. “Wesley” had a strong, intelligent sound. It reminded me of Wesleyan, where my dad went to college. “Ellenburg” made me think of a grand old Victorian-era village full of cobblestone roads, with a romantic park filled with hidden gazebos by a pond.
Puh-leeze! I said to myself. Pull yourself together.
And I did. Slowly. But I started to backslide when he spoke. His voice was as beautiful as his face. Not too high, not too low. Kind of breezy and confident, modest but strong.
“Uh, thanks, Mr. Zizmore,” was what he said first. (I had never heard the name Zizmore sound so dreamy.) Then, as Mr. Z. took a seat in the back, Wesley Ellenburg continued. “Well, I’m happy to be here. This is something I’ve always wanted to do. Teaching, I mean — not sweating nervously.”
He smiled bashfully at his own joke. The dimples! There they were. I let out a loud giggle. So did a few of the other girls. None of the guys seemed to think the comment was particularly funny.
“I’m a senior at SC,” Wesley Ellenburg said next. “To get my B.A., I need to fulfill three weeks of student teaching. My favorite subject is math, so … well, here I am. I prefer a fairly informal class — lots of questions and discussions. And
I plan to make myself available during study hall ….”
He went on and on. My mind digested everything he said. A senior — that meant he was about twenty-two. Nine years older than me. Well, nine years isn’t so much. When I turned eighteen, he’d be about twenty-seven. Two years after that, we’d both be in our twenties. And math was his favorite subject, so we had something in common.
“… I once had a teacher who said, ‘I have three names,’ and he wrote Mr. José Aviles on the blackboard,” Wesley Ellenburg went on. “He then said, ‘Unlike most teachers, I let my students call me by my first name. So you can call me Mr. Aviles.’ ”
More laughter from the girls.
“Well, you can call me by my middle name,” he said with that killer smile. “Wes. It’s much simpler.”
He wrote Wes on the blackboard. Peter Hayes made a big show of writing it diligently in his notebook. A couple of the boys snickered, but Wes just ignored them.
Wes.
Wild Wes.
How the Wes Was Won.
Calm down, Stacey.
Eventually we began math. He went over stuff I already knew, but I took notes anyway. It sounds goony, I know, but I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t interested.
And I truly was interested. He could have been reading the phone book, and I would have found it scintillating.
This is what I learned during that class. Wes was right-handed. His left foot turned out a little more than his right. His sports jacket was tight around the shoulders. He tapped the side of his chin when he was thinking. And he was about the politest, most sensitive listener I had ever seen. He really did seem to enjoy answering questions, no matter how stupid.
But the big test came after Mr. Z. left. That was when Irv tried his foreign-exchange-student trick. “Zees x,” he said, “ees zees nomber or letter? In mah contry, we do not hov zees.” (Or something like that.)
Wes just stared at him for a moment. Then he nodded with a small, lopsided smile. “South of France,” he said. “And not too bad. Can you do German?”
Well, after that, all the guys were on his side, too. I decided he was a talented teacher. Talented, cute, witty, warm, smart. Sigh.
Class lasted about nine minutes that day. At least it felt that short. When Wes began to give us his homework assignment, I began to feel the pang of separation.
The assignment was five word problems. As he dictated them, I wrote them down in my clearest handwriting. I dotted each i with a heart.
After the bell rang, I snuck a looooooong look at Wes while he was erasing the blackboard. I wanted to freeze him in my mind. In perfect detail.
“ ’Bye, see you tomorrow!” I said, making sure to sound friendly but not overeager.
“ ’Bye, uh …” He looked down at the attendance sheet.
“Stacey,” I said. I was about to say McGill, but that would have been too formal.
“Stacey,” he repeated with a self-conscious smile.
I needed all my concentration to leave the room in a straight line, without collapsing.
* * *
I floated to my locker, then raced outside to my BSC friends. We had planned to walk home together that day, even Kristy. (She was sitting for Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold after school, and they live near me.)
I told them about Wes. I don’t recall what I said, but I remember Mary Anne beaming at me.
“Oh, Stacey, he sounds gorgeous,” she said.
A breeze brought the scent of lilacs, so I closed my eyes and breathed in. Wes’s face smiled at me in my imagination. “Drop-dead incredibly hunkified gorgeous.”
“Hunkified?” Kristy repeated. “There’s no such word.”
“There is now,” Claudia said in my defense. “I understand it. It’s very … describatory.”
“Descriptive!” Mallory interjected.
Claudia shrugged. “Whatever.”
“What about Sam?” Mary Anne asked.
“Well …” I gave Kristy a guilty look.
She smiled. “It’s okay. You’re human. And sometimes, frankly, I’m not sure Sam is. My lips are sealed.”
“Did you get his phone number?” Dawn asked.
“Dawwwn,” I said. “I couldn’t do that. He’s a teacher!”
“Sabrina Bouvier went out with Mr. Jordan once,” Kristy said.
“What?” the rest of us shot back. I couldn’t believe that. Sabrina was mature, but still …
Kristy shrugged. “Well, it was a rumor.”
“Ew,” Jessi said. “How could you go out with someone so old?”
“That’s like going out with someone your father’s age,” Mallory said.
“Or grandfather’s,” Kristy added.
“Wes is twenty-two!” I exclaimed.
Jessi nodded. “That’s pretty old.”
“Maybe he’ll wait for you,” Kristy said. “You can prop him up as you go down the aisle.”
This conversation was becoming way too silly. Besides, I didn’t care what they said. Nothing could spoil the way I was feeling.
When I reached my house, I didn’t even mind that my mom was at work. My cottage cheese tasted especially fresh. And I couldn’t wait to start my homework — math first, of course.
I carefully read each problem. I worked them out on a sheet of scrap paper, making sure to use full sentences. I even included a few jokes, because I didn’t want to seem too nerdy.
After double-checking a zillion times, I was positive my work was one hundred percent perfect. I copied it over in my best handwriting, and I had to restrain myself from planting a kiss on the first page.
(Well, there are limits!)
Then I thought of something extremely important. My clothes. I had gone to class wearing an oldish pair of stretch pants and an oversized turquoise men’s shirt. Not awful, but not spectacular. There was no way I’d make the same mistake the next day.
I rifled through my closet. One by one, I looked at my best outfits.
Long red gown? Too dressy. Stone-washed jeans (with a knit top)? Too casual. Paisley-print stirrup pants? Too faded.
I started the process at 4:35. By 5:05, I found myself staring at a short, rayon challis tank dress my mom had ordered for me. It was navy with white polka dots. The fitted top tapered down to a flared skirt, with white buttons down the front. It was feminine, yet comfortable-looking. Absolutely perfect.
I was dying to tell Claudia. I realized if I left right away, I could have a few minutes alone with her before the BSC meeting started.
I scooted outside, ran to the Kishis’ house, and let myself in through the front door. (They leave it open on meeting days.)
I dashed upstairs, past Janine’s room (as usual, she was hunched over her computer), and knocked on Claudia’s door.
“Come on in!” Claudia said.
She was hard at work on a sketch. “Is it already time for the meeting?” she asked.
“No. I just had to tell you what I’m going to wear tomorrow,” I blurted out.
“Why? Where are you going?”
“You know, to Wes’s class.”
I described the outfit. When I told her I was thinking of wearing thong sandals, Claudia suggested instead the new white sneakers I’d just bought, made of eyelet canvas with lace shoelaces.
“Ooh, good idea,” I said. “Now, what scent does this outfit go with? Should I wear Lauren, or is that too, like, twentysomething?”
“I think it’s fine,” Claudia said. “But, uh, don’t forget, Stace. This is a class. Wes is a teacher.”
“I know, I know,” I replied. “But Claudia, you should see this guy. I mean, in three weeks school will be over. What if he doesn’t have a girlfriend? Who’s he going to go to the beach with this summer?”
Claudia laughed. “Stacey, he’s a lot older than you. He’s graduating from college.”
“I know,” I said again. The room fell silent. Claudia gave me this understanding look. Then I had to ask her a question that was just burning in my mind.
/> “Do you know of a cologne with the scent of lilacs?”
“Charlotte! Stacey’s here!” Dr. Johanssen called upstairs. “And I’m leaving!”
“Okay!” I could hear Char’s voice reply.
It was seven o’clock, at the end of a very long day. After the BSC meeting, I had run home for a super-quick dinner with my mom. Then I’d had to take my insulin and rush to my sitting job. (The life of a baby-sitter is never easy.)
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. As Charlotte raced down the stairs, Dr. Johanssen gave me some last-minute instructions. Dr. Johanssen is Charlotte’s mom, and she was on her way to the hospital. (Char’s dad is an engineer, and he was working late.)
“Hi, Stacey!” Charlotte said. Her chestnut-brown hair bounced as she skipped into the living room.
“Hi, Char!” I said to my favorite charge.
Charlotte kissed her mom, and we all said good-bye. As Dr. Johanssen pulled out of the driveway, I noticed something odd — a dark patch under Char’s left eye.
“Uh, Charlotte?” I said. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Charlotte looked at me blankly. “What?”
“Your cheek looks bruised.”
“Oh.” She touched her left cheek and smiled. “It’s just, um, a Magic Marker smear.” Then she quickly added, “Can you help me with my homework? It’s really hard.”
“Sure.”
We went upstairs. I noticed Char’s books were closed on her desk. Next to them was a daisy with half its petals missing.
Charlotte opened a book and said, “We’re having a spelling test tomorrow. Can you quiz me?”
“Okay.”
She handed me the book and sat in her chair.
“How do you spell …” (I looked for a hard one) “… porpoise?”
When I glanced up, Charlotte was shoving the daisy into a looseleaf notebook. “What?”
“Porpoise.”
Char thought for a moment, then spelled it perfectly. That didn’t surprise me. She is one of the smartest eight-year-olds I’ve ever met. Plus she’s funny and friendly and thoughtful and talkative.
She wasn’t always like that, though. When I first came to Stoneybook, Charlotte was shy and glum. I guess I took a liking to her because she was an only child, like me. What caused her change? Her parents let her skip a grade (she was bored out of her mind by school). And, according to Char’s mom, I was another reason she came out of her shell. I’m not sure that’s true, but I sure felt good when I heard her say that!