Authors: Louis Sachar
Someday Angeline
LOUIS SACHAR
Someday Angeline
Someday Angeline
, a good story
with lots of funny jokes,
is dedicated to everyone who can
tell whether or not a book is any good—
by smelling it.
Nobody tried to figure out anymore how Angeline knew all the stuff she knew, the stuff she knew before she was born. Instead, they called her a name. They called her “a genius.” And even though it really didn’t explain anything, everybody considered it a satisfactory explanation. Like the way she always knew what tomorrow’s weather would be. “How does she do it?” someone might ask. “She’s a genius” they’d be told, and somehow that would explain it. And that way, nobody ever had to really try to understand.
Prologue: Nina’s Untrained Ear
Seven: The Balance of the Whole
Eight: Mr. Bone Let Me Feed Her Fish
Eleven: Mrs. Hardlick’s Triumph
Fourteen: Mr. Bone Is on the Phone
Fifteen: Otherwise Known as Mr. Bone
Seventeen: Different Directions
Eighteen: Where’s Cool Breezer?
Nineteen: The Only Way to Find Her Is to Tell Her a Joke
Twenty-One: Pretty Feet and Green Her Eyes
Nina’s Untrained Ear“Octopus,” said Angeline Persopolis.
She was only a baby. It was the first word she ever said, which was why it was preposterous.
Nina, Angeline’s mother, was the one who had heard it. Her big eyes opened even wider. “Abel!” she screamed with delight. “Abel! Angeline said something. She said her first word! Abel!”
“Wha’d she say?” asked Angeline’s father as he rushed into the living room, where Angeline lay in her crib.
Nina suddenly looked very confused.
“Come on, Nina,” urged Abel, “what did she say?”
Nina looked oddly at her husband. “She said…
octopus?”
“Octopus?” questioned Abel.
They turned and looked at Angeline, who lay peacefully sucking her thumb.
Abel called the doctor because, well, he didn’t know what else to do. It was she, the doctor, who said it was “preposterous.” She told them that they had absolutely nothing to worry about. She said that Angeline was only making simple baby noises—“ock” and “tuh” and “puss”—and that it was just a coincidence that it had happened to sound like “octopus” to Nina’s untrained ear.
Angeline’s parents were satisfied. They realized it had to be a coincidence because, after all, Angeline had never seen an octopus, and they couldn’t remember ever saying “octopus” in front of her. In fact, they couldn’t remember ever saying “octopus” at all.
Okay, fine. However, to this day Angeline remembers saying “octopus.” She is eight years old now. She has big green eyes like her mother’s and jet black hair like her father’s. And she remembers lying in her crib, in her soft pink blankets, peacefully thinking about the ocean, and the fishes, and especially about the funny-looking creature with eight legs.
There are some things you know before you are born. As Angeline grew up she seemed to know a lot of things that couldn’t be explained any other way.
When she was three, her mother, Nina Sandford Persopolis, died.
And then again, there are some things you never know.
How Abel Smells
Angeline lay on the floor of the living room with her feet up on the sofa, reading a book. The living room was also her bedroom. The sofa folded out into a bed.
It was a book about a sailor who was in love with a beautiful lady who didn’t love him back, which was why he became a sailor—to forget her. Only he couldn’t forget her, but he was an excellent sailor and he fought a pirate with one eye.
Nobody tried to figure out anymore how Angeline knew all the stuff she knew, the stuff she knew before she was born. Instead, they called her a name. They called her “a genius.” And even though it really didn’t explain anything, everybody
considered it a satisfactory explanation. Like the way she always knew what tomorrow’s weather would be. “How does she do it?” someone might ask. “She’s a genius” they’d be told, and somehow that would explain it. And that way, nobody ever had to really try to understand.
She heard her father outside the apartment door. She bent the page in her book to mark her place and jumped up to greet him as he opened it.
“Don’t hug me until I take a shower,” he said, pushing her away. “I smell like garbage.”
“I like the way you smell,” said Angeline.
“You like the smell of garbage?” asked Abel.
“I do,” said Angeline.
She watched him walk into the bathroom and almost immediately she heard the shower running. “I bet he can take off his clothes faster than anyone in the world!” she thought.
He worked for the sanitation department. He drove a garbage truck.
In an odd way, he was afraid of Angeline. He remembered the time they went into a music store where she sat down and played the piano without ever having had a lesson. Everybody in the store stopped and listened to her. It was so pretty it
scared him. He hadn’t taken her back there since.
More likely, he wasn’t as afraid of her as he was afraid of himself. He was afraid he was going to somehow blow it for her. “How’s an idiot like me supposed to raise a genius?” he often wondered. Probably if they didn’t call her that name, a genius, he wouldn’t have been half as scared.
He put on his pajamas and robe. It wasn’t even six o’clock but he was already dressed for bed. He never went out at night. He hadn’t gone out for over five years, not since Nina died. He stepped into the living room. “Now you can hug me,” he said.
Angeline hugged and kissed her father. “I liked the way you smelled before better,” she told him.
She followed him into the kitchen and watched him cook dinner. “Tomorrow, will you take me on the garbage truck with you?” she asked.
He sighed. “No,” he said firmly. “You know you don’t belong on a garbage truck. Besides, you have school tomorrow.”
“I hate school,” said Angeline.
“Why does she always want to ride on that filthy truck?” Abel wondered. He hated the
garbage truck. The only reason he still worked at that stinking job was for Angeline, so that he could make enough money to send her to college someday. Someday buy her a piano. Buy her nice clothes because someday she was going to be a famous scientist, or a concert pianist, or President of the United States. “Someday, Angeline…” he thought.
“Well then, how about on a holiday when school’s closed?” she asked. “Then can I ride in the garbage truck?”
“Someday, Angeline,” he said.
A Goat with Two Heads
Angeline was put in the sixth grade. They put her there because, well, they had to put her somewhere and they didn’t know where else to put her. They put her in Mrs. Hardlick’s class and that was probably the worst place to be put. She sat at the back of the room.
She started to put her thumb in her mouth but caught herself. She was smart enough for the sixth grade. She was the smartest person in the class, but she still did dumb things like suck her thumb. She knew Mrs. Hardlick hated it when she sucked her thumb. Sixth-graders are not supposed to suck their thumbs. She also cried too much for the sixth grade.
“Who was Christopher Columbus?” Mrs. Hardlick asked the class.
Angeline was the only one who raised her hand.
Mrs. Hardlick looked annoyed. “Somebody else this time,” she said and glared at Angeline. “It’s always the same people.”
Angeline lowered her hand. It wasn’t her fault she was the only one. She didn’t think Mrs. Hardlick should have been mad at
her
for raising
her
hand. It was everybody else’s fault for not raising theirs. But in her mind she could hear Mrs. Hardlick saying sarcastically, “It’s always everybody else’s fault, never your own.” As she thought this, her thumb slipped into her mouth.
Mrs. Hardlick told the class about Columbus. She said that Columbus discovered America.
Angeline knew that was wrong. How could Columbus have discovered America when there were already lots of people here when he arrived? She knew that America was actually first discovered by the first snail to crawl out of water and onto land. It was something she knew before she was born.
However, she tried to give both Mrs. Hardlick
and Mr. Columbus the benefit of the doubt. “Maybe,” she thought,
“from his own point of view
Columbus discovered America.” But that didn’t seem true either because even after Columbus got here, he still didn’t know he was in America. He thought he was in India, which was why he called Americans “Indians.”