Bigger than a Bread Box (5 page)

Only I wasn’t sure if it had worked or not. It was hard to know. Nothing happened. I didn’t feel tingly or magical or anything. The bread box just sat there with its mouth open. How could I know if it had worked? Maybe the door to the box had to be closed for it to work. Both the seagulls and the book had appeared when the box was closed.

I shut the shiny red door, took a deep breath, and tried again. “I wish I had a magic wand,” I said.

I opened the box. There
was
a magic wand inside, but it was just a piece of junk, a purple plastic toy. It was the kind of glittery wand little kids play with. I picked it up and waved it around my head. It made an annoying battery-powered thrumming sound. I tossed the wand to the floor and closed the box again. Lew could have
that
.

“I wish I had a
real
magic wand,” I said. When I opened it this time, the box was empty.

I thought about that for a minute, closed the box door, and said carefully, “I wish I had a
real
unicorn horn.”

I opened the box. No luck. Still empty.

I thought things over some more and closed the box again.

“I wish I had a cookie.”

When I opened the box, I found an Oreo inside it.

Hmmm.

I ate the Oreo before I said, “I wish … I was home.”

Nothing changed. Of course,
home
couldn’t fit into a bread box. Besides, I’d wished for that already, hadn’t I? Over and over, into my pillow. Before I’d wished for the gulls.

I tried to lick the inside of my mouth, which was now gummy and crumby and thick with frosting as I thought about what else I should wish for. Most of the wishes I’d had on my list as a kid weren’t things I wanted anymore, not really. Or they were the kinds of things that apparently this box couldn’t manage.

I yawned. I didn’t want to be tired, but I was suddenly zonked, as Gran would say. Not to mention baffled by the magic and light-headed and drained like you get after you cry. It
was
three in the morning. In a few hours, Gran and Mom would be waking me up to go register at that stupid school.

But I couldn’t fall asleep yet. Who goes to sleep when there’s a box full of wishes?

I decided to try one more time. Just one more. One last wish. Then I’d go to bed.

“I wish I had,” I began cautiously, “twenty dollars.” Money is something people never wish for in books. Or if they do, they wish for too much and get buried or ruined by it.

When I opened the box this time, there
was
a bill inside it, as crisp as if it had just dropped from an ATM
machine, and still slightly warm. I couldn’t help grinning at the sight, because wands and unicorns aside, a girl can do a lot with an unlimited supply of money!

I snatched the bill out. Then I stood there with my hand on the box, and I couldn’t help it. Just
one
more wish! Really. Just one more. I meant it this time.
Then
I’d go to bed.

“I wish I had … a thousand dollars,” I said with my eyes shut and my fingers crossed. I opened my eyes, uncrossed my fingers, and opened the box very slowly.

Inside the box was dark, but whatever was in it was pushing against the door. I could feel the tension in my fingers, my wrist. I opened it a little farther and peered inside. I gasped. The box was stuffed with money! Not in neat stacks like you see in the movies, but crumpled and piled and squashed—a bread box full of loose bills! Old bills and new bills, singles and fives. All jammed together and spilling out of the box. Kind of the way wads of crumpled paper overflow a trash can after you finish an art project and then squash the mess down with your foot. It was the craziest thing I’d ever seen. So much money! What would I do with it all? My head swam from everything all at once.

I stuffed the twenty back into the box with the rest of the money, and then I took the whole bread box and tried to shove it into my suitcase. It didn’t fit beside my clothes and shoes, so I dumped everything else onto the
floor. Then I put the bread box in and pushed the suitcase under the bed. After that, I yawned again, the kind of yawn that makes your jaw ache. I climbed back into bed.

I needed to think this over. The possibilities were endless! I’d never be able to show anyone, because I’d never be able to explain it. But then, I didn’t have to. Not here, not in Atlanta. This could be my secret. Because who did I have to tell? There wasn’t anyone.

C
HAPTER 5

I
woke up to find Gran standing over me, swaying back and forth in a maroon jogging suit and singing, “Good morning to you! Good morning to you!” She was wearing earrings and lipstick, so I knew she was dressed up.

I looked at her and realized that I felt horrible—achy and tired and sick, like after a really late slumber party or three days with the flu.

Gran stopped singing. “Nice to see you’ve made yourself at home,” she said, kicking at the pile of clothes on the floor.

When I saw all the things I’d dumped out of the suitcase—and the crappy plastic wand poking out of the pile—I remembered. I sat up right away, even though my bones hurt. “I’m up!” I shouted. “I’m up!”

“My, you certainly are,” laughed Gran. “Looks like a good night’s sleep did wonders for you. Something sure seems different about you today.”

Something
was
different, though it wasn’t a good night’s sleep. It was the bread box—and the
thousand
dollars! Knowing that the day ahead was full of magic and money changed everything. I could almost
feel
the bread box in the room, waiting for me.

I was so distracted that I forgot to be mean to my mom at breakfast. When she asked me how I was feeling about registering for my new school, I didn’t ignore her. I said I didn’t know and ate my cereal, thinking about how, if I had to start at a new school, I’d at least be starting as a kid who could have anything she wanted. When Mom poured me a glass of grapefruit juice, I accidentally said thank you. Then I rushed to my room, but Gran knocked on the door and told me to get ready. I jumped into fresh clothes, but she was waiting for me, so that was all I managed to do before it was time to go. I barely had time to give Lew a squeeze on my way out the door. He was still in his pajamas, playing with some race cars in the hallway.

“Bye, Babecka,” he said. Then he held up a car and grinned. “Vroom vroom vroomah!”

“Vroom,” I said back.

Gran walked me to the school, an old-ish brick building a few blocks from the house. Because it was already late morning and school had started hours earlier, there were kids out on the blacktop, playing basketball behind a chain-link fence. They looked older than me.

Gran took me into the main office, where she introduced me to the lady sitting at the front desk. Gran called her Judy, but the nameplate on the lady’s desk said her name was Mrs. Cahalen. She made a copy of the transcripts Mom had given Gran from my school in Baltimore, and I had to tell them my birthday and my old address, to make sure they had everything right. Mostly I just sat in a chair and stared into space, thinking about the transcripts and how Mom had been plotting all of this for a long time.

Then Mrs. Cahalen said, “We’ll contact her old school next week, just to be sure everything is in order, but in the meantime she can go ahead to class. Okay?”

Gran said, “Okeydoke!”

“Huh?” I said. “No! Wait! I’m not starting today. It’s Friday!”

And it wasn’t only Friday. It was late morning, almost halfway through the school day. I’d just finished breakfast, but kids were probably on their way to lunch already. Anyway, nobody had said anything about me actually
starting
school today. Gran had only said we’d register. I’d been expecting a weekend of getting-ready time. Anyway, Dad and Mom could still work things out in time for me to go back to my real school on Monday. Mom had time to think things over. She hadn’t started her new job yet. Anything could happen.

I looked up at Gran for help, but she just grinned and said, “Might as well get it over with! Right?”

Wrong.

“I don’t even have a notebook with me. Or a pen,” I protested.

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Mrs. Cahalen. “We can take care of you, Rebecca.” She looked down at me with a smile and those I’ll-be-your-friend-you-poor-thing-you sad eyes grown-ups make at kids. I knew Gran had probably told her all about my mom and dad. Gran was like Mom that way—she told everybody
everything
.

I could tell Mrs. Cahalen wanted to hug me or put her arm around me or something. I tried to frown at her just enough to be left alone but not enough to get in trouble with Gran.

“I’ll be back for you in just a few hours,” said Gran with a cheerful nod that was supposed to make everything okay. “Make some friends! Have fun!”

Fun?

What option did I have? There wasn’t really anything I could do but march off after this Mrs. Cahalen person, down hallways full of art projects made by kids I didn’t know. Past trophy cases and ugly banners. Into a classroom where a sea of strange eyes stared me down.

I took a deep breath and tugged at my shirt. I wished I’d worn my other jeans. They were nicer. Watching all those kids see me for the first time, it hit me that I was the New Girl. I’d never been the New Girl before. I’d always been a Since Kindergarten Kid.

Mrs. Cahalen handed me off with a too-long whisper to Mrs. Hamill, who introduced me as Becky to the class and then sat me down next to a girl with long blond hair. “This is Hannah,” Mrs. Hamill said as she set down a beat-up science book, a pen, and a sheet of paper in front of me. “Hannah, you’ll help Becky find her place, won’t you?”

Hannah looked at me and nodded. I knew if there was ever going to be a moment to fix this Becky misunderstanding, it was now. I opened my mouth. Then I shut it again.

I didn’t want to start out by correcting the teacher. I could be Becky for a few weeks. It wouldn’t kill me. It might be nice to be someone besides me right now. A kind of disguise. Then, when we moved home, I’d go back to Rebecca, back to myself.

Hannah waved at me and said, “Hey, Becky,” as Mrs. Hamill walked back to the front of the room. I could tell I’d gotten lucky. Not because Hannah was nice, though she seemed okay, but because Hannah was cool. Her hair was all shiny and layery. Her sneakers were just the right amount of broken in. She looked easy and fine, like she’d never been tossed into a car and driven halfway across the country at a minute’s notice. She was just the kind of first friend the New Girl needed.

At home I’d always been a regular kid. I hadn’t been
cool, but I hadn’t gotten picked on either. Most of the time, Mary Kate and I kept to ourselves. We read a lot. We watched TV. We went to the park, and we liked to cook and bake together. Sometimes we hung out with a few other girls, for the purposes of birthday parties or school projects. I’d never cared about being part of the cool crowd of kids who walked together in a pack, hung around the deli drinking sodas before school, or spent their weekends at the mall.

Standing there, looking at Hannah’s shimmery, lip-glossy smile, I had a feeling that I could be cool if I wanted. For however long I was here. I’d buy new clothes with my box of money. I’d be Becky Shapiro, the Cool New Girl from Up North. I was pretty sure I could pull it off, if I just didn’t talk too much. That seemed important—not to talk too much. I’d be mysterious. Like Dad always said, “Less is more.”

“Hi,” I said, trying to look easy and fine too. I rolled my eyes at the ceiling for no reason and Hannah giggled. I shrugged my shoulders, and they felt like someone else’s shoulders.

Off to a pretty good start.

The day was surprisingly okay after that. It was good to be busy and away from Mom. Mrs. Hamill mostly just talked. She reminded everyone that we needed permission slips for our visit to someplace called the Fernbank
Museum next month. Then she passed around handbooks for an experiment we were going to do on Monday: mixing a bunch of chemicals in plastic Baggies to see if they’d still weigh the same when they turned to gas. I tried not to laugh when she told us about it, because we’d just finished the same project at my school in Baltimore, and nobody had gotten the right results. You’d think teachers would try these things out at home first.

Still. I knew I would do as well as anyone, since I’d already passed one test on the law of conservation of mass. I figured as long as we
all
melted our Baggies, I didn’t care how mine turned out. Mostly I spent the hour staring at the other kids as carefully as I could and trying to memorize the names Mrs. Hamill called out. There were two Madisons. Milo was the boy in the wheelchair.

Everyone seemed nice enough, but to me it was a weird class, different from home. Just like in Baltimore, there were all kinds of kids—black kids and white kids, Asian kids and kids with accents—but even though I knew this was a public school, these kids looked different somehow, more arty or something. Not like regular kids. A boy named Coleman had a Mohawk. Nobody at home in my grade had a Mohawk. I couldn’t help thinking it was kind of cool. I don’t know why, but I liked looking at the back of his head.