Best Friend Emma Read online

  Kry will be my Best

  Friend, not yours!

  “Hey,” I say, surprised, as I fling my book bag onto the picnic-table bench.

  “Hey yourself,” Cynthia Harbison says. “What are you doing here so early?” she asks me, scowling with suspicion. “Waiting for Kry Rodriguez to show up?”

  “I’m just waiting for my friend.”

  Cynthia shakes her head in a pitying way. “Kry is not going to be your friend,” Cynthia says, jumping down off the table.

  “But you already have two friends,” I point out, trying to reason with her as I back away a little. “And I only have one. If I get Kry, though, it’ll make us even.”

  “I don’t want to be even,” Cynthia says, nar-rowing her eyes. “I want to win! So, tough. It’s not gonna happen, Emma.”

  Other books about Emma

  Only Emma

  Not-So-Weird Emma

  Super Emma

  Sally Warner

  Illustrated by

  Jamie Harper

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre,

  Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Text copyright © Sally Warner, 2007

  Illustrations copyright © Jamie Harper, 2007

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Warner, Sally.

  Best friend Emma / by Sally Warner; illustrated by Jamie Harper.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When a new girl joins her third-grade class just before Thanksgiving,

  Emma thinks only about gaining her friendship before the popular Cynthia

  can, and hurts her best friend Annie Pat’s feelings in the process.

  EISBN: 9781101567449

  [1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.

  4. Thanksgiving Day—Fiction.] I. Harper, Jamie, ill. II. Title

  PZ7.W24644Bes 2007 [E]—dc22 2006027629

  Manufactured in China

  Set in Bitstream Carmina

  Book design by Nancy Brennan

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  For little Lucy Parsons, who will meet

  her first best friend any day now! — S. W.

  For my pal, Al—J.H.

  Contents

  1

  That Empty Feeling

  2

  Who’s That?

  3

  A New Kid in Class!

  4

  Round One

  5

  My Big Chance

  6

  Round Two?

  7

  A Fight with the Wrong Person

  8

  Round Three

  9

  It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

  10

  The Most Terrible Saturday in History?

  11

  Really, Really, Very, Very Sorry

  12

  Turkeys Drool, Best Friends Rule!

  1

  That Empty Feeling

  “I’m stuffed!” I say, almost gasping.

  It is a Monday in November, and Annie Pat Masterson and I are eating lunch at school. We are outside, my favorite place in the world to be.

  Annie Pat and I are getting ready for Thanksgiving—ten days away, Mom says—by stretching our stomachs. You have to do this from the inside, with food, because outside stretching doesn’t work. We already tried that.

  “I know you’re stuffed. But want another apple anyway?” Annie Pat asks—gloomily, because she is stuffed, too. She holds one out on the flat of her hand, as if I were a horse. Her red pigtails are usually bouncy, but today they droop.

  “Sure,” I lie. “We’re in training for Thanksgiving, aren’t we?”

  Annie Pat nods.

  “Last year, I was too full after dinner to eat any pumpkin pie,” I continue. “And there wasn’t any left over the next day, either. So I missed my pumpkin-pie chance for the whole entire year.”

  “I ate a piece of pie,” Annie Pat tells me, remembering. “But I could barely even taste it, my mouth was so worn out from eating turkey.”

  “It’s all that chewing with turkey” I say, agreeing with her. “You’d have to be a termite to be able to chew that much.”

  Annie Pat sighs.

  “This is going to be the coolest Thanksgiving ever,” I say, trying to cheer her up. “And it’s starting early, because on Saturday we get to go to …”

  “Marine Universe!” Annie Pat chimes in happily. Marine Universe is near San Diego, where the Pacific Ocean is, and it is Annie Pat’s favorite treat, because she wants to be a marine biologist when she grows up. I want to be a nature scientist, but I’m not copying her. I have always wanted to be that.

  Annie Pat’s father is taking us to Marine Universe to make up for having a new baby. We have been excited for exactly two and a half weeks.

  “It’ll be great,” I say, as if she needs me to tell her that.

  Annie Pat nods, smiling, then pulls a second apple for herself out of a crumpled brown paper bag. Moving shadows from the leaves overhead flicker across her face as her navy-blue eyes stare at the apple. Then she sighs and prepares to take a bite.

  She is a very brave kid.

  My name is Emma McGraw, and I am the smallest girl in Ms. Sanchez’s third-grade class at Oak Glen Primary School, although a boy named EllRay Jakes is even smaller than I am. Annie Pat is the second-smallest girl, after me, and we always eat lunch together—but not because of our size. It’s because we’re friends.

  Also, like I just said, we both want to be scientists when we grow up. Pretty ones, with awesome clothes.

  Also, Cynthia Harbison won’t let us eat with her anymore.

  Cynthia is the bossiest girl in our class, and the most popular. She always scrapes her chin-length hair back from her forehead with a plastic headband so that it looks perfectly neat, while my curly brown hair goes wherever it wants. And everything Cynthia wears looks new, while I sometimes look as if I got dressed in the dark.
/>   It’s not that I’m a slob, but my mind is on other things, my mom always says.

  Cynthia also has the loudest voice of any girl in our class. In fact, I can hear her talking right now. She is sitting at a table with some of the other girls in our class. “Fiona is my first-best friend today, and Heather is my second-best friend,” Cynthia is saying—mostly to Fiona and Heather. She takes a dainty nip at her sandwich. Its crusts are trimmed off, and it has been cut into triangles. Her mother is very well trained.

  “Oooh!” Fiona says, thrilled. She blushes a little and flips her long, light-brown hair back over her shoulders.

  “Oooh,” Heather says, sounding like a mourning dove. She looks as though she’s about to cry.

  That’s Cynthia’s thing lately—rating her friends. And she sometimes also lists her enemies. But I guess she doesn’t feel like it today.

  Annie Pat and I swap secret looks. Relieved looks.

  But even though Cynthia didn’t announce this Monday that Annie Pat and I are her first-worst enemy and her second-worst enemy, and even though we have eaten enough lunch for two much bigger kids—or for four normal, us-sized kids—I have that empty feeling inside.

  The feeling that comes when you feel left out—like the little lost fish who swims just outside the swooping school of matching fish.

  Or left out like the migrating bird who gets separated from its flock somewhere in New Jersey and never gets to visit South America.

  Or left out like the smallest, weakest hyena who does not get even a taste of the zebra feast. And none of the other hyenas even cares.

  I have seen all these things—and worse!—on nature shows, which, in spite of the sad parts, are my favorite things to watch on TV. Annie Pat likes those programs, too.

  “Let’s go, Emma,” she whispers to me, tugging at my sleeve. I can tell that she doesn’t want Cynthia, Fiona, or Heather to notice us, because they can be kind of boring, to tell the truth. Especially since they don’t want to be our friends anymore.

  And school this afternoon is probably going to be boring enough. Why invite even more boring into our lives?

  “Okay,” I whisper back. “We’ll throw our trash away and then go run around on the playground.”

  This is an excellent idea I just had, because it is a cool-hot California day, and the November wind is blowing just the right amount, and my legs feel twitchy inside. They want to move.

  Also, Cynthia hardly ever runs around on the playground. I guess she’s too busy rating her friends.

  Annie Pat clutches her stomach. “I’m not so sure about the running-around part,” she tells me. “I think I ate too much to run anywhere. In fact, I feel kind of funny.”

  “Then we’ll walk,” I say, hurrying her along—because Cynthia Harbison’s eyes are now sparky, the way they get when she is looking for something to do.

  Or someone new to bore.

  “Ow, my stomach really hurts,” Annie Pat says softly as I slam-dunk our lunch sacks into the trash can and high-five myself.

  “Come on,” I say, dragging her away from the third-grade lunch area. “It can’t be that bad, can it? All you ate was—”

  “Two tuna-and-pickle sandwiches,” Annie Pat says, “and a hard-boiled egg and a sack of oatmeal-raisin cookies and a container of blueberry yogurt and two green apples. And some milk.”

  And then she moans.

  “Well, I ate that much food, too,” I point out, “and I’m even littler than you. How come I feel okay?”

  “I don’t know-w-w” Annie Pat says, turning her last word into a howl.

  A couple of fifth-grade boys turn to look at us. Annie Pat is bending over now, and she is clutching her stomach even harder than before. “She’s gonna hurl,” one of the boys tells the other. And then he steps back to enjoy the show.

  “She is not,” I yell.

  Although if Annie Pat does throw up, then she’ll have that empty feeling, too, I guess. And then we’ll match.

  “I need to go to the nurse,” Annie Pat tells me in a begging voice.

  “I’ll take you,” I say bravely, even though I usually do not like going anywhere near the principal’s office.

  But my best friend needs me!

  2

  Who’s That?

  “We’re almost there,” I tell Annie Pat, trying to encourage her. “Keep your mouth clamped shut, okay? The way an oyster does!”

  Except with an oyster, it’s not only its mouth that’s kept clamped shut, it’s its everything.

  I guide—okay, drag—Annie Pat through the breezeway that leads to where the school offices are. “Mmm,” she moans again, in an even more convincing way.

  Lunchtime is almost over, and there are lots of grown-ups buzzing around Oak Glen’s front hall—the way bees buzz around the outside of a hive when they can’t figure out what to do next.

  I haven’t seen this in person, of course, because I don’t have an authentic beekeeper’s outfit. Not yet.

  But the school secretary is talking on her cell phone in the breezeway, where the reception must be good, and the custodian is about to get a drink of water from the drinking fountain, and the kindergarten teacher is pinning drawings of wobbly people framed in faded construction paper onto a great big bulletin board, and the principal with his big black beard is shaking hands with a mom and her little girl.

  Well, she’s not really a little girl—she’s my age. And she’s pretty, with a friendly, smiling face, black hair, and perfectly straight bangs that go almost past her eyebrows.

  The girl looks at me.

  “Who’s that?” I whisper, nudging Annie Pat in the ribs.

  “Mmm!” Annie Pat reminds me, her eyes wide.

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “School nurse. Emergency.”

  Annie Pat nods three times—fast. If she could open her mouth, she would probably be saying, “Duh. Hurry!”

  And so I do hurry, because I don’t want the poor custodian to have to go get a mop and a bucket of sawdust instead of that nice cold drink of water.

  3

  A New Kid in Class!

  “Take this late slip to Ms. Sanchez, Emma,” the nurse says. “It will excuse you for being tardy. And please tell her that Annie Pat is going home early today with tummy trouble.”

  Lucky Annie Pat! Even if she does look a little green and groany, lying on her narrow cot. Its plastic covering crackles under the sheet whenever she moves.

  Our school nurse wears regular clothes, not a white uniform, and I guess she’s a real nurse, because she has a stethoscope, squashy shoes, and an official plastic name tag.

  But “tummy trouble” doesn’t sound like a very scientific diagnosis to me.

  I’m not too worried about Annie Pat, though, in spite of the maybe-fake school nurse, because she and I both know the real reason for her stomach ache. But we are too embarrassed to tell the nurse that we were trying to stretch our stomachs. She might talk to us about how half the world is starving.

  I know it’s true, and I feel really bad about that, and I want to help change things when I grow up. But I am still going to try to enjoy Thanksgiving, complete with pumpkin pie. Is that so wrong?

  I sneak Annie Pat a worried look. Are you okay? I try to ask, without using any words.

  “Uh-h-h,” she says, not even looking at me. She clutches a shiny metal bowl to her chest.

  “Scoot, Emma,” the nurse says, and so I do.

  I wonder what they’re doing in class right now?

  Probably social studies. Last Friday, Ms. Sanchez handed out photocopied maps of the United States with the states numbered but not named, because the states’ names are what we’re supposed to be learning lately.

  And you can’t just make up any name, either, even though the kids in my class came up with some pretty good ones. For instance, Jared Matthews said that Florida should be called “Gun State,” because it looks like a pistol that is pointing at the rest of the country.

  EllRay Jakes said that Wyoming should be
called “North Rectangle” and Colorado should be called “South Rectangle.”

  Cynthia said that Idaho should be called “Leprechaun State,” because according to her, it looks like a sitting-down leprechaun.

  And Annie Pat said that Rhode Island should be called “Teensy-Weensy State,” which I think is the best made-up name of all. But people don’t get to vote on what the states—even their own state—should be called. If I got to choose what to call our state, California, I’d name it “Bendy State,” because it bends in the middle. (You have to look at it on a map to get what I mean.)

  Being all alone in the school halls during regular class time is fun and scary at the same time. Fun, because you can do anything you want. You can zigzag from wall to wall instead of trying to keep out of the way of bigger kids. You can spend as long as you want at the sweaty-cold drinking fountain. You can stare at the framed photographs of all the principals Oak Glen Primary School has ever had and imagine them with red wax lips or twirly mustaches.

  You can even take the time to go to the bathroom in peace, instead of trying to hurry and not make any embarrassing bathroom noises, which is an impossible combination to pull off in a small, echoey room full of girls.

  Going to the bathroom at Oak Glen Primary School is my least favorite thing.

  Being alone in the halls is also scary, though, because a grown-up could appear at any second and demand to know why you aren’t in class. Even when you have a good excuse, you can’t help feeling guilty.

  I don’t think it’s fair that grown-ups are so big and kids are so small.

  But the fear of running into a grown-up is enough to make me hurry—a little—to class.

  “There you are,” Ms. Sanchez says as I slowly push open the rear classroom door. To my surprise, that friendly-looking girl Annie Pat and I just saw in the breezeway is standing in front of the class next to Ms. Sanchez.

  A new kid in class! And right before Thanksgiving, too. That’s unusual.