Later, back in Miss Penney’s classroom, blissful air conditioning cooled the red-faced students, who were sitting quite still at their desks, listening to Miss Penney read a chapter from Beverly Cleary’s classic, Ramona Quimby, Age 8.
Going from a rousing game of soccer in nature’s outdoor sauna to a nice, quiet indoor reading session could put any kid to sleep. Luca looked around the room and noticed that he was in a shrinking minority of students still awake and half-listening to the story.
Melba Zendejas had both eyes closed and was resting her cheek quite comically on the palm of her hand, her elbow sliding dangerously close to the edge of her desk.
Aidan James was pretending to follow along with the story by holding his own copy of Ramona upright on his desk, but Luca could see that Aidan was hiding his slumbering face behind the book, his chin pressed down hard on the surface.
What Luca couldn’t see was Emma, who sat directly behind him. He had seen her read every Ramona book before, so he guessed she knew it pretty well. He hoped there wouldn’t be a quiz.
But Miss Penney never gave quizzes on her stories anyway. She just seemed to like reading to the children, and she sat contentedly on a stool in front of the class, her own copy of the book held tightly in both hands directly in front of her face.
As Luca turned his attention to Miss Penney, he suspected that she knew students were sleeping, but she didn’t mind, and so pretended not to notice. He liked this. He liked Miss Penney. Miss Penney was gr—
WHUMP!
Melba’s elbow had finally slipped off her desk, and her face fell like a rock, smacking against the desk with startling volume.
This woke Aidan, who snorted, sat bolt upright, and muttered something about a snooze button before smacking his lips and blinking fast, like he was trying to wash spiderwebs off his eyeballs.
Bo, who had been snoring loudly with his face down on his desk in one of the room’s back corners—where he often found himself—was now awake as well and was striding up and down the aisles of desks shouting, “That. Was. AWESOME!”
Miss Penney finally lowered her book and surveyed the scene, looking more annoyed at being interrupted than angry at the children, who were all quite rowdy now.
Bo was giving high fives to other boys, Melba was searching her lunch box for some ice to put on her nose, which was now swollen and a little crooked, and Dillon Barrios was building a house on his desk out of subtraction flash cards. You’re not supposed to bend those, but Dillon did it anyway.
Only Luca and Emma seemed uninterested in the commotion. Luca had begun making some notes about kids he knew who needed a best friend. He looked up and glanced over his shoulder at Emma, who was scribbling away on the back of last week’s spelling test. He noticed she was writing to her friend Delilah Plummer.
Delilah’s father—“the Colonel,” he liked to be called—ran a store called Gulch Surplus. The store sold all kinds of camping supplies, pocket knives, and funny-looking clothing that Delilah said would be pretty important to have if you were in the Army.
Luca didn’t know anyone in the Army, and so could not understand why anyone would shop at Gulch Surplus. That didn’t stop Emma from inviting him there with her and Delilah one day after school.
“Why?” he had asked.
Emma had not understood the answer, which was fine for Luca, who had not understood the question.
Miss Penney cleared her throat, a kind of frog-like sound she made with her nose in the air so that she would be looking down at the students when they noticed her. Miss Penney did not often shush her students, so when she did, they knew that she meant business.
The room quieted down after Melba had asked for permission to see the nurse and had disappeared out the door, a tissue clutched to her nose.
When the story ended, Miss Penney had the class move on to the new math lesson. Luca was not bad at math, but he didn’t love it. Why did there have to be so many numbers?
Finally, the bell rang, and Miss Penney dismissed her students. Luca was still at his desk, rearranging his pencil box to separate the glue sticks from the pencils and the erasers from the sharpener, when Emma tapped him on the shoulder.
Turning in his seat, Luca stared at Emma, who was smiling but said nothing.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Any ideas on how to find my new best friend yet?” She sounded hopeful.
“Well, my first thought is that I should talk to…”
“Because I NEED one, Luca. I REEEEEEALLY do.”
“Okay. Then we should probably…”
“Let me know what you come up with,” she said, standing up and walking toward the backpacks.
Luca sat with his mouth open, goggling at Emma as she gathered her purple Hello Kitty bag with the pink zippers. Girls are so weird, he thought.