Jasper John Dooley, Star of the Week (6 page)

Chapter 11

Ori came for the sleepover right after supper. Jasper answered the door. “Did you bring your own pajamas?”

“I'm already wearing them,” Ori said.

“Come in,” Jasper said. “We're decorating the Special Snack for everybody to eat while they're writing Compliments to me. You can help.”

Ori sat at the table with Jasper and Mom and Dad, his head propped up in his hands. He watched them draw the letter
J
, for Jasper, with icing then dip each cookie in a bowl of sugar sprinkles, but he didn't help. He said he was too tired. After all the cookies were decorated, Ori said he was too tired to jump over humps. He was too tired to play cards.

“I guess it's time to get ready for bed,” Dad said.

“I'm already ready,” Ori said.

“Go ahead,” Dad said. “Jasper will meet you in bed.”

Jasper changed into his sheep pajamas. He brushed his teeth and washed his face. After he said good night to his parents, he went to his room where Ori was sleeping with the light on. Jasper got quietly into bed. He leaned over the side to say good night to Earl. “Uh-oh,” Jasper said, “what's the matter?”

He knew what the matter was. Earl was jealous. “You would be sleeping here if you hadn't bit me,” Jasper told him.

Earl looked mad. He was very, very purple.

“Listen, Earl,” Jasper whispered. “If you're good tonight, I'm going to give you a Special Snack tomorrow. It's a Special Snack only for you.”

Earl agreed and Jasper got up again to turn out the light. When he climbed back in the bed, Ori woke. “It's not morning yet, is it?” he asked.

“No,” Jasper said.

“It's so quiet here,” Ori said.

“That's because we don't have a baby.”

“Not yet,” Ori said. “Your mom really liked her.”

Jasper said, “The book is still in the garden. She can't have a baby if she doesn't have a name for it.”

“Yes, she can,” Ori said. “My sister doesn't have a name yet.”

“I thought you named her Wa-wa-wa-wa.”

“That's just until we think of something better.”

And then Jasper understood. Mom had set the book out to give to
Ori's
mom. He told Ori, “We have to make sure
your
mom never gets that book. There were hundreds and hundreds of names in it.”

“Really?” Ori said.

“What if she finds a bunch of names she likes? What if she wants more babies just to use up the names?”

“Oh, no,” Ori said.

“Some of these big families?” Jasper said. “The parents don't even know who their own kids are. Sometimes they move house and accidentally leave five or six of them behind. My dad told me.”

“Oh, no!” Ori said.

“And what if you get an itch in the middle of your back? Who's going to scratch it?”

“The thing is, I don't know!” Ori started to cry.

Jasper didn't want another ruined sleepover. And he didn't want his friend to be sad. He patted Ori's shoulder and said, “Don't worry, Ori. I'm just across the alley and one house down. I'll come right over.”

Ori sniffed a few times and said, “Thank you, Jasper,” before he fell asleep again.

In the middle of the night, Ori climbed over Jasper and woke him up.

“Ow,” Jasper said.

He thought Ori was getting up to use the bathroom, but Ori kept walking, so Jasper got out of bed, too, careful not to step on Earl sleeping on the floor. He followed Ori down the hall.

“It's back here,” Jasper whispered when he caught up to Ori in the living room. Ori had stopped. He was standing in the dark, in his pajamas, staring at nothing.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” Jasper asked.

Ori shook his head.

“Come back to bed,” Jasper said.

“Mom?” Ori said.

“Your mom's across the alley and one house down. We're having a sleepover. Remember?”

“Dad!” Ori called.

“Your dad's with your mom,” Jasper said.

“Wa-wa-wa-wa?” Ori called.

“Her, too,” Jasper said.

Dad came into the living room with his hair sticking up all over his head. He asked what was going on. Ori turned and walked right past them and out of the room. “Mom?” he called.

“He's sleepwalking,” Dad told Jasper.

“Really?” Jasper said. “He's asleep?”

“Yes,” Dad said.

“He's walking around asleep?”

“Yes.”

“I want to!” Jasper cried. “How? How?”

“Shh. We shouldn't wake him,” Dad said. “Let's see if we can get him back into bed.”

Ori wandered into the kitchen. He seemed to be looking for something. Dad came up beside him. “Back to bed, Ori. This way.”

“Is he dreaming us?” Jasper asked.

“We're probably in his dream all right,” Dad said as he tried to shepherd Ori in the right direction. Ori scooted past Dad and found the back door. “Wa-wa-wa-wa?” he called. “Wa-wa-wa-wa?”

“He wants to go home,” Jasper said.

“Let's take him home then,” Dad said, opening the door and stepping out.

The moon was so bright Jasper and Dad had no trouble seeing where they were going. Ori seemed to be seeing with his feet. He went down the back stairs and started across the yard with Dad and Jasper following. The neighborhood was so quiet. All the houses were dark. Only the owls and raccoons were awake. They were probably watching them and wondering what those crazy humans were doing.

“Is it the middle of the night?” Jasper asked.

“It is.”

“We're walking around outside in our pajamas?” Jasper asked. “In the middle of the night?”

“Yes.”

“In our bare feet?”

“Yes,” Dad said.

Jasper said, “This is so, so, so much fun!”

As soon as they reached the alley, they could hear the crying coming from Ori's house. The kitchen light was on. “I guess they're awake,” Dad said.

Ori crossed the alley. He walked alongside the fence until he came to his own gate. Dad opened it and went ahead to explain why Ori was coming home.

“Wa-wa-wa-wa!” cried the baby from inside. Ori heard it in his dream, Jasper knew, because he smiled.

Then Jasper and Dad went back home. As soon as they were in the house, Jasper closed his eyes and started walking back to bed, making loud snoring sounds and trying not to laugh. Bonk! He bumped into the wall! Dad took him by the shoulders and steered him in the right direction.

“Zzzz,” went Jasper. “Zzzzz.”

All the way to his room, he kept his eyes closed with Dad guiding him. Then, when they reached Jasper's bedroom, Dad lifted Jasper and Jasper started to fly. Up in the air he sailed. He was sleepflying!

He landed back in bed, and when he fell asleep, he flew to other places he couldn't remember in the morning. All he remembered was the feeling of whooshing through the air. In his pajamas! In the middle of the night!

Chapter 12

The next day at school, Jasper handed out his Special Snack to all the kids in his class. Everybody got a star-shaped cookie with a sprinkly
J
written on it. While they were eating their cookies and writing Compliments to Jasper, the Star of the Week was allowed to do anything he wanted. He could read a book or draw a picture or play with Hammy, the little brown hamster in the cage at the back of the room. Jasper didn't do any of those things. He went over to the cubbies and smelled all the jackets and sweaters hanging there. When he smelled the fabric softener clean-clothes-start-of-a-new-day smell that he loved, he checked the pockets for lint.

“Jasper John,” Ms. Tosh called, “don't go snooping through other people's coat pockets.”

“You said the Star could do anything he wanted.”

“Snooping isn't nice.”

“I'm not snooping,” he said. “I'm looking for lint.”

Ms. Tosh sighed and said, “Okay, just this once.”

Because he was the Star.

But not for much longer. At the end of the day, he had to turn in his star for the last time. When Ms. Tosh unpinned it from his shirt and shut it in the top drawer of her desk, Jasper thought he was going to cry. But then Ms. Tosh gave him another star, a paper one, but exactly the same size. “Jasper,” she said, “you can wear this at home any time you want.”

“I can still be the Star?” Jasper asked.

“When you try your hardest, when you're kind, then you're a Star.”

“Really?” Jasper said. “How about when you're funny?”

“Sure,” Ms. Tosh said. “When you make people laugh, you're being nice.”

“You're a Star when you have a heart,” Jasper said.

“That's it, Jasper,” Ms. Tosh said. “That's exactly right.”

She presented him with his Compliments Book. It had a nice construction paper cover with
Jasper's Compliments
written on it. Jasper hesitated before he took it. “What if somebody wrote a mean thing?” he asked.

“Nobody ever has,” Ms. Tosh said. “I doubt they'd start with you.”

Mom and Ori were waiting for Jasper outside the school. Jasper ran to them waving his Compliments Book. “Here it is!”

“What does it say?” Mom asked. “Can I read it?”

“Not yet,” Jasper told her. “I'm saving it for later.”

Ori said, “I left something out. I forgot to say sorry for ruining the sleepover last night.”

“Ruining the sleepover?” Jasper said. “That was the best sleepover I ever had!”

First thing when they got home, Jasper dug
Name Your Baby
out of the garden and brought it to Mom. “There it is!” she said. “Where did you find it? And why is it full of dirt?”

Jasper told her what he'd done. “I hid it. But I'm the Star, and I have a heart, so I'm giving it back.”

“Why did you bury it?” Mom asked.

“I was afraid you were going to get a baby. But I'm completely happy with our family the way it is.”

“So am I,” Mom said, and she gave him a hug.

“Well, not
completely
,” Jasper said. “Earl is bossy. And —”

“What?”

Jasper blurted it out. “I like that baby so much!”

Mom nodded. “Me, too! She's so sweet and tiny and purple! You were right. She looks just like a plum.”

Jasper said, “If only she didn't cry all, all, all the time!”

“I wouldn't want to listen to it,” Mom agreed.

“If only she didn't have to wear diapers!”

Both of them yucked.

“But Mom?” Jasper said. “We can go over there any time we want, you know.”

“You're right, Jasper. She's just across the alley and one house down.”

“Maybe we can borrow her sometimes.”

Mom laughed. “And when she starts to cry, we'll take her back.”

“And when she needs a clean diaper?” Jasper said.

“Back she goes!” they cried.

That night almost all of Jasper's not-too-small family ate supper together in the backyard. Jasper, Mom and Dad were there, and Jasper's Nan, who lived in an apartment nearby and wanted to hear everything that had happened during the week that Jasper was the Star and how he got over the hump. They even set a place for Earl.

“Who wants dessert?” Mom asked.

“Not me!” Jasper cried.

“No dessert?” Nan said, putting a hand on his forehead. “Somebody call nine-one-one.”

“My Compliments are dessert,” Jasper told her.

“Well, read them to us then.”

“Yes,” Dad said, “let's hear them.”

All their hands were reaching for the book, and Ms. Tosh wasn't there to shoo them off. Mom had to do it. She said, “You read them first, Jasper. They're your Compliments.”

Jasper lifted the book off his heart and opened it. Each page had a picture of Jasper and a Compliment. He read:

Your orijinal!
I was so embarased when I came to school in my pajamas. But you saved me! !!!!!!! Your'e my brother. You never go WAWAWAWA!!!!.
Im colecting lint now to.
My dad says hes going to bild me a wodden brother.
You make me laugh, Jasper.
Good cokies. Did you make them?
I wish you really were my baby Jasper.

He knew Ms. Tosh's writing. She wrote:

Dear Jasper,
Never stop shining your light around.

Jasper looked up. The whole sky was twinkling at him. He closed his eyes and tried his best to shine back. When he opened his eyes again, he saw his nice small family around the table watching him read his Compliments, and he shone at them, too. Then Jasper turned the page and read the last Compliment.

I love you, Jasper.

“I love you?” He made a face. Yuck! “Who wrote
that
?”