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Chapter One
It was one of those dreary January days when nothing goes right. First of all, I overslept. Then I discovered that my brother Josh had used up all the hot water taking his shower. And then, as a final blow, I saw Josh grab the last doughnut as he ran out the door.
By the time I was ready to leave for school, it was pouring rain. Anywhere else it would have been snow, but not here in Maryland. No, a blizzard was raging across New England, and I was sure that all the schools there were closed, but here I was, slogging down the footpath, my shoes soaked, my hair plastered to my forehead in wet strips. By the time I got to Oakcrest Middle School, I looked as if someone had dumped a bucket of water on me.
While I was trying to force my frozen fingers to open the lock on my locker, I dropped my lunch bag, and everything in it fell to the floor. Somebody stepped on my sandwich, and I never found my apple. I think Curtis Folwell probably ate it.
But all of these things were nothing compared to what happened in English. Mr. O'Brien, who used to be my favorite teacher, decided to ruin not only what was left of my day but my life as well. Not that I realized what he was up to at first. Oh no, I just sat there smiling innocently while he announced a new project for us.
"We have been invited to enter the seventh-grade Write-a-Book contest." Mr. O'Brien stroked his beard and smiled, inviting us to share his enthusiasm.
"We have to write a book?" Tony Cisco stared at Mr. O'Brien as if he had just announced that our class had been chosen togo on a forty-mile hike at the North Pole.
A picture book, to be exact," Mr. O'Brien said.
As kids all over the room began protesting that they Couldn't draw, hated drawing, didn't know how to write, etc., etc., etc., Mr. O'Brien somehow managed to regain control of the situation. "This is the way it works," he said. "You form teams. One writes the story, and the other illustrates it. Then you bind it like a real book. There's so much talent in this room that I know we can produce a winner."
"That's all there is to it?" Tony looked at Mr. O'Brien suspiciously.
"Well, it has to be between ten and twenty pages long, it has to be original, and spelling, punctuation, and neatness count." Mr. O'Brien smiled and shrugged. "It's going to be a great experience."
"Oh, man." Tony slumped in his seat, obviously depressed at the thought of punctuation and spelling. "Can't it just be pictures? No words, no sentences, no commas and periods and all that stuff?"
A little laugh rippled around the room, proving, as usual, that the dumber you act, the funnier people think you are. But not people like Mr. O'Brien. He shook his head and frowned at Tony.
Gesturing for us to be quiet, Mr. O'Brien went on. "Since the books are team efforts, I've gone ahead and picked partners." As the class began to ripple again, Mr. O'Brien shushed us a little more forcefully. "One thing I want to make clear before I read the names...He paused dramatically and looked at us.
"There will be no changes. The partner I assign you is the partner you will keep. I've given the teams a lot of thought, and I will not make any changes. So don't come running up to me after class begging me to let you be someone else's partner. No matter what your reason is, I will not change my mind."
Everybody shifted around and murmured, but we got quiet as he started to read the list. I looked at Tracy Atkins and crossed my fingers, hoping he'd let us work together. We've been friends since kindergarten, but lately she'd been spending more and more time with Michelle Swanson and Sherry Hartman. I was sure that if we worked on a book together, we'd soon be as close as we used to be.
I should have known that the Write-a-Book contest wasn't going to turn out any better than the rest of the day. First of all, Mr. O'Brien assigned Tracy and Michelle to work together. They both gave a little squeal and grinned at each other, as if they could hardly wait to start planning their book. Feeling very disappointed, I slid down in my seat and glared at Mr. O'Brien's feet, barely listening until I heard my name paired with Daphne Woodleigh. I sat up then and stared at him in disbelief. He couldn't have put Daphne and me together! Tracy shot me a look of sympathy, but Michelle rolled her eyes and giggled.
While Mr. O'Brien continued to describe the contest, I stared at my desk, trying not to cry. How could Mr. O'Brien have done such a horrible thing to me? He mustknow how much everybody hated Daphne, he must have noticed how strange she was. Cautiously I looked across the the room at her.
There she sat, her long black hair falling down her back, hiding her face like a dark curtain. As usual, she was wearing one of her bizarre outfits. Two or three layers of baggy sweaters and blouses, a calf-length tiered skirt, dark tights, thick leg warmers, and ballerina slippers. It was the sort of outfit a fashion model might wear, but in a roomful of girls wearing Shetland sweaters and blue jeans, Daphne's clothes looked terribly out of place.
Daphne's Book. Copyright © by Mary Hahn. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
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