Ellen Tebbits (9 page)

Ellen had slapped her best friend. How could she have done such a terrible thing?

She was so shocked she could not speak. 

6

The Substitute Rat

When the bell rang, the class filed into the hall. Embarrassed and ashamed, Ellen walked to the cafeteria and bought her lunch. She knew everyone was talking about her. With flaming cheeks she carried her tray to a corner table and ate alone. It did not take her long to finish her lunch. She was not hungry.

She returned to her new fourth-grade room, took her reader out of her desk, and started to read straight through it. After the first page she sat twisting her hair and thinking. The more Ellen thought, the more unhappy she became.

What bothered her most was the question of who should apologize first. Should she tell Austine she was sorry or should Austine tell her she was sorry? Of course, slapping someone was worse than untying a sash, but just the same, if Austine had left Ellen’s sash alone, she would not have had her face slapped. Yes, it was Austine who really started it. Ellen decided Austine should apologize first. Ellen would smile encouragingly at her and give her every chance to say she was sorry. Then Ellen would say she had not really meant to slap her at all, and they would be best friends again.

Now was the time to start. Ellen went outdoors and found Austine and Linda playing hopscotch. She walked slowly past the girls, but they were having so much fun they didn’t notice her.At least Ellen thought they didn’t notice her.

Austine leaned forward and threw her pebble into a square. “And I was going to have a party and invite her, but I’m not now,” she said to Linda.

“I don’t blame you a bit,” said Linda.“She thinks she’s smart just because her dress is nicer than yours.”

It was no use. When Ellen went home from school that day she changed her clothes and put the monkey dress behind all the other dresses in her closet. She hoped her mother would forget it.Then she sat on the front steps, just in case Austine might decide to come over to say she was sorry.

The shadows of the maple trees grew longer and longer and still there was no sign of Austine. When Ellen finally went into the house, she listened for Austine’s
hop, one-two-three
and dreaded going to school the next day. She was practically an outcast, a terrible person who had slapped her best friend, even if it was the best friend’s fault. If only she could begin her life over again some place where no one knew her.

“Mother, do I have to go to Rosemont School?” she asked. “Couldn’t I go to Glenwood?”

“No, of course not, dear,” answered her mother. “We don’t live in the Glenwood district. And you wouldn’t want to go to Glenwood when all your friends are at Rosemont, would you? Whatever put such an idea into your head?”

“Oh, nothing,” said Ellen, wondering if she had any friends.

The next day Ellen wore a blue dress to school. Austine appeared in a blouse and skirt. Whenever Ellen tried to catch Austine’s eye to smile encouragingly, Austine was looking in another direction.

When Joanne and Amelia invited Ellen to play hopscotch at recess, she felt a little better, but she couldn’t help noticing how much Linda and Austine laughed over their game of hopscotch.

That afternoon after school Ellen walked to the library. On the way home she decided to go the long way past Austine’s house. She really wanted to look at the gnomes on the lawn next door. She used to look at the gnomes before Austine lived there, and there wasn’t any reason why she couldn’t still look at them, was there? It would be nice if Austine happened to be in the yard and happened to speak to her, but of course that wasn’t the real reason she was walking that way. She just wanted to look at the gnomes, that was all.

But Mrs. Allen, not Austine, was in the yard. “Why hello, Ellen,” she said, and snipped another chrysanthemum. “We haven’t seen you for a long time. Linda and Austine are in the kitchen baking brownies.

Why don’t you go in and help them?”

“Oh no, thank you. Mother is expecting me.” Ellen hurried down the street. Why had she walked past Austine’s house anyway?

Now Mrs. Allen would tell Austine, who would think she had gone that way on purpose.

Then one morning the thing Ellen dreaded happened. Her mother asked her why she did not wear the dress with the monkeys and palm trees printed on it.

“I don’t like the material so much after all,” said Ellen, “but I’d wear it if you could take off the sash. It—it keeps coming untied.” So Ellen wore the sashless monkey dress to school. She hoped Austine might notice the change and use it as an excuse to say she was sorry. Unfortunately, Otis was the only person who noticed. He walked like a monkey and scratched himself whenever he saw Ellen.

That was the day Mrs. Gitler announced that Rosemont was planning to hold open house, so that all the mothers and fathers could visit school. Each class would have its best work on exhibit, and children would be on hand in each room to answer questions.

Others would entertain the parents. The little children’s rhythm band would perform, the fifth- and sixth-graders would do folk dances in the gymnasium, and the seventh-and eighth-graders would serve cookies and coffee in the domestic-science room.

Some of the children from Miss Joyce’s and Mrs. Gitler’s rooms would give a play about the Pied Piper of Hamelin.That gave Ellen an idea. If she and Austine were both in the play, Austine would have to speak to her. If they talked to each other in the play, it would be silly not to go on speaking out of the play, wouldn’t it?

Then Mrs. Gitler explained that one of the eighth-grade girls would read aloud the story of the Pied Piper while the younger children acted and danced the story in pan-tomime. That would make the play much easier to give, because there would be no lines to memorize.

Ellen decided she still wanted to be in the play, even if there was no talking in it. It might give her a chance to be near Austine.

Maybe she could help Austine with her dancing and they would become best friends again.

Mrs. Gitler said that George was to be the Lord Mayor. Ralph, Ronald, and Otis, if he would promise not to make trouble, were to be town councilmen. Then she read the list of boys and girls who were to be townspeople, those who were to be children, and those who were to be rats.Austine and Linda exchanged smiles when they learned they were both to be children in the play.

Ellen waited for Mrs. Gitler to read more names, but she said, “The rest of the boys and girls in the play will be from Miss Joyce’s room.”

Ellen was sure there must be some mistake. Maybe Mrs. Gitler had skipped her name or forgotten to put it on the list. At recess Ellen walked across the playground to her teacher. “Mrs. Gitler, did you forget to read my name?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Ellen,” answered Mrs. Gitler. “There weren’t enough parts for everyone.

Miss Joyce couldn’t use any more townspeople or children, because they all do a Maypole dance at the end of the play when the Piper brings the children back, and there are only twenty-four streamers on the Maypole.”

Ellen was puzzled. “My mother read me the story and it wasn’t that way. The Piper didn’t bring the children back.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Gitler, “but this is a creative play and we have changed the story so we can use the Maypole dance at the end.”

It didn’t seem right to Ellen to change a story out of a book just so there could be a Maypole dance, but she said hopefully, “I take dancing lessons.”

“We can’t use any more rats, because they dance in pairs,” explained Mrs. Gitler.Then, seeing Ellen’s look of disappointment, she said,“I teach the rats their dance, and I think it might be a good idea to have a substitute in case one of the rats is absent. How would you like to be a substitute rat?” Ellen felt it was better to be a substitute rat than not to be a rat at all. “Would I get to practice?” she asked.

“You may watch rehearsals and if any of the rats is absent, you may take his place.” At least Ellen would be allowed to watch the others practice. She was sure that somehow she would make Austine notice her.

During the last period all the boys and girls who were to be in the play went to the auditorium. Miss Joyce took the children and townspeople up on the stage, while Mrs. Gitler gathered her rats on one side of the room to show them their dance. Ellen sat quietly on a folding chair to watch the dance of the rats. It was an easy dance that began with the rats skipping around in a circle holding one another’s tails.

Otis, who was a town councilman and did not have to dance, wandered down from the stage. “What are you sitting there for?” he demanded of Ellen.

“I’m a substitute rat,” said Ellen.

“Aw, whoever heard of a substitute rat?” said Otis, and laughed.“Substitute rat! That’s good.”

“Oh, you keep quiet,” snapped Ellen.

“This is a dumb play,” said Otis.

“It is not,” said Ellen.“Mrs. Gitler says it’s a creative play.”

“What does that mean?” asked Otis. “No good?”

Ellen really did not know what creative meant, so she was glad Miss Joyce clapped her hands and said, “Everyone up on the stage.We’ll go through the whole play from beginning to end without a narrator. All right, Grandmother Rat, take your place under the table. Now, children, enter from the left and remember you are supposed to be laughing and playing.”

The children skipped out to the center of the stage. Austine was holding Linda’s hand.

Ellen thought they looked as if they were having lots of fun, as they smiled at one another and hippity-hopped around the stage. She felt lonely sitting all by herself.

“All right, Mayor and Town Council.

Now you come in, and remember you are proud and haughty,” directed Miss Joyce.

George and Otis and the rest of the boys walked around the stage with their noses in the air. After the children bowed to them, they sat at a table at the side of the stage.

“Hey, quit kicking me,” said the grand-mother rat, who was crouched under the table. Then she crawled out, skipped across the stage, and beckoned to the rest of the rats, who ran out to the center of the stage and went through their rat dance.

“Hup, two, three, four. Hup, two, three, four,” counted Otis in a loud whisper.

“Otis, you are not cooperating,” said Miss Joyce quietly, so she would not interrupt the rat dance. “And town councilmen do not put their feet on the table. Don’t forget, you are supposed to be dignified.”

The rats finished their dance and knelt at one side of the stage.Then the townspeople entered and shook their fists at the town council. “Remember, you are angry,” said Miss Joyce.“You are angry because the town council has done nothing to get rid of the rats in Hamelin Town.” The townspeople shook their fists harder and scowled.

When the Pied Piper appeared and bargained with the town council to get rid of the rats, Ellen stopped watching and looked at Linda and Austine instead.They were sitting on a pile of folded chairs at the side of the stage. Ellen wondered what they were whispering and giggling about. Maybe they were laughing because she was just a substitute rat. If only one of the real rats would be absent.Then she could be on the stage with Austine, instead of sitting on a hard folding chair.

The days before open house at Rosemont School were busy ones. The fourth-graders tried to make their room more attractive than any other. They brought plants from home and worked hard to keep their workbooks neat.And of course the “Pied Piper” cast rehearsed almost every day. Once a rat was absent and Ellen practiced the dance, but most of the time she sat, a lonely substitute rat, and watched Linda and Austine. The more they laughed and hippity-hopped, the lonelier Ellen felt. As the folding chair grew harder and harder, she almost wished she were not even a substitute rat.

The evening of open house it seemed strange to Ellen to be going into the lighted school building at night with her mother and father. She took them to the fourth-grade room and, as she hung her coat in the cloakroom, she wondered if Austine was getting ready for the play.

Then Ellen showed her mother and father her desk. While she was explaining her arithmetic workbook, Linda and Austine came into the room. They were both wearing full purple skirts, white blouses, and black bodices that laced up the front. Ellen noticed they were wearing lipstick. They looked happy and important as they took a box of Kleenex from Mrs. Gitler’s desk and hurried out of the room. Ellen looked wistfully after them. How rosy their lips looked and how pale she felt beside them.

Then Otis came into the room in his town councilman costume. He was wearing a blue jacket and what looked like long red cotton stockings and red bloomers. The stockings bagged at the knees and hung in folds around his ankles. “Hey, Substitute Rat,” he said. “Mrs. Gitler wants you.”

“What for?” asked Ellen, staring at Otis’s costume. What could Mrs. Gitler want her for? To run an errand? Ellen was almost afraid to hope, but maybe Mrs. Gitler needed her to be a rat.

“How should I know?” said Otis.“Come on.”

Ellen followed Otis to the classroom that was being used for a dressing room. The children and townspeople were racing around in a game of tag. The rats in their brown suits were jumping over the seats.