Luca thought he knew what he would see if he looked over at the backpacks, and yes! There were now two purple Hello Kitty backpacks with pink zippers. The new girl had the same backpack as Emma.
Luca wondered if Emma had noticed too. He turned to look at her, but she had already written all of the spelling words, twice, and was twirling one pigtail and reading from a book called Bridge to Terabithia.
Luca was excited. He couldn’t wait to talk to Rin. Emma was going to be so happy! Maybe. But what if Rin didn’t want to be best friends with a new classmate she didn’t know? What if they didn’t get along at all? What if…
Luca didn’t have time to finish his thought, because at that moment, Claire exclaimed, “EEK!” and stood up with her eyes closed, wet, sticky soda dripping from her hair.
She wheeled around to scream at Bo, who was sitting behind her holding her water bottle, a mixture of guilt and excitement on his face.
“You, you, you rotten boy!” she wailed. Her water bottle was still erupting soda onto Bo’s desk.
“I saw the whole thing!” screamed Melba. “He took her bottle and started shaking it up, then he sprayed her with it!”
Bo, a triumphant smile creeping across his lips, suddenly became quite afraid as his gaze found Miss Penney’s. The teacher had been watching calmly from the front of the room, taking in the scene.
“Claire, please head to the girl’s room to clean up. Emma, will you help?”
“Yes, Miss Penney,” said Emma with a slight groan as she stood and walked to the door with Claire.
“Bo, I believe you know where the cleaning supplies are.”
“Yes, Miss Penney,” said Bo, standing and heading to the cabinet under the drinking fountain.
“The rest of you will pair up for spelling practice. Let’s just go up and down the aisles, shall we? Rin with Luca, Dillon with Melba, Evan with Addie…”
Luca had stopped listening. He was excited that he’d get to work with Rin, the new girl. She seemed nice enough. And there were always one or two spelling words he could use help with.
He stood, and pulled an extra chair over to Rin’s desk, his own paper and pencil in hand. Her head had been down, and when he sat she lifted it slightly, making brief eye contact and smiling a little.
“Hi,” said Luca.
“Hi,” said Rin.
“So, are you good at spelling? I mean, do people speak English in Japan?”
“I do,” said Rin, brightening a bit. “My mom was born and raised in Gulch Valley, and I’ve always spoken English. My dad taught me Japanese though. Want to see?”
“Sure,” said Luca. And with that, Rin made ten strange drawings on his paper, looking up at the board between each.
“Whoa, what is that?” Luca asked.
“It’s our spelling words, but in Japanese,” Rin said with a grin.
“But there are no letters.” Luca was confused but very impressed.
When Claire and Emma returned to the classroom, Claire’s hair still damp from being washed in the bathroom sink, Miss Penney had just erased the spelling words from the board, and the students were clearing their desks for a quiz on the words.
Luca and Rin were having a chuckle about a joke when Emma came back into the classroom, spotted them, and then slumped at her desk. Luca put away the extra chair and walked over to Emma.
“Great news!” he beamed. “Apparently in Japan, everybody has Hello Kitty stuff, and Rin said she’d be glad to show you; she has a lot of it. She has a Hello Kitty stapler, and water bottle, and… What’s wrong?”
Emma had not seemed happy to hear about Rin. Well, not as much as Luca had hoped. Talking with Rin had been easy. She was nice and eager to meet her new classmates. Luca was overjoyed.
That was why he was so surprised to see that Emma, who had seemed very upset about the best friend-sized hole in her life, did not perk up at the news.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Emma said, sitting up straighter and looking around. “I just…I wish I hadn’t missed spelling practice. Claire was a mess, but I think she’s okay now.”
They looked over at Claire, who was trying to put her hair in a ponytail using a rubber band, while Bo discovered that his shorts were stuck to his chair.
After the quiz, Miss Penney dismissed the students to recess.
“Luca,” asked Rin, “would you want to swing with me? I have lots of questions about this school.”
“Sure,” he said, looking sideways across the room. Emma was getting a red jump rope out of her backpack and heading for the door.