Last-But-Not-Least Lola Going Green Page 4

  “And it could be a tie AGAIN!” Harvey Baxter yells.

  “Then hers will be the swing vote,” Jamal says.

  Harvey Baxter says, “What’s a swing vote?”

  “It’s the vote that swings the election one way,” Jamal points to Amanda, who smiles. Jamal points to me. “Or another; if nine votes are for Amanda and nine votes are for Lola, then Gwendolyn’s vote will make one of them win.”

  “I bet she came in late to be a swinger,” Sam says.

  “Hand, Sam,” Mrs. D. says. She takes Gwendolyn’s ballot. She counts.

  My stomach feels like a compost machine.

  “I have a winner,” Mrs. D. says quietly.

  The class sucks in its breath.

  “The winner is Lola’s compost idea.”

  Amanda bursts into tears and runs from the room.

  I feel terrible. Seventy-five percent terrible and twenty-five percent not so bad.

  10. OLD SPINACH

  AFTER RECESS, MRS. D. GIVES ME the Green Vest. It’s the MOST WONDROUS thing you ever saw or did see or have seen. It’s made of green one-hundred percent recycled wool, and it has a gold badge on it that says “Green Captain.”

  I get to have lunch with Mrs. D. in the TEACHER’S LOUNGE. I bring my sack lunch with me, just in case. But my mouth is all set for candy. I do my special walk-skip to get there quick. But Mrs. D. walks SO slowly. It takes us about four-hundred hours just to make it down the hall.

  Finally we get inside that teacher’s lounge and guess what? NO CANDY! Those teachers hid it, I bet. It smells like Grampy’s coffee breath mint breath in there, too.

  There’s just a big table and somebody wrote “HELP” in ink on it! And a coffee machine with a sign taped on the wall behind it that says “I live for coffee!” There’s a yellow couch where Mrs. Graham is eating yogurt with her shoes off, and some arm chairs, oh, and a fridge. Mr. Carp is filling up his coffee cup and Mrs. D. gets in line to fill up her mug. While she’s up there, I look around for chocolate. No chocolate, nothing. Maybe she keeps it under the table.

  I’m crawling under the table when Mrs. D.’s shoes walk up. Then her face comes down. “What are you doing, Lola?”

  “Looking for chocolate,” I explain.

  “Lola … why on earth do you think you’d find chocolate under the table?”

  I scooch on out of there. “Jack told me the teacher’s lounge is one-hundred percent candy,” I say. “I’m guessing that’s a ball-face lie.”

  Mrs. D.’s mouth twitches. “I’m afraid so, Lola. Why don’t we sit down and eat our lunch?” She takes out a spinach salad with croutons. She chomps her salad. I take out my bagel. But I’m too mad and sad to eat it.

  Mrs. D. puts her fork down and puts her hand on mine. “Lola, Jack told you a tall tale, didn’t he?”

  “He told me a whopper,” I say.

  Mrs. D. smiles at me. “That’s a problem, isn’t it?”

  She wants me to be a problem-solver. I can just tell. “But I can’t solve this problem, Mrs. D.,” I say wistfully. Wistfully is a cross between wishing for something and getting mist in your eyes when you don’t have it. “I can’t make it one-hundred percent candy in here.”

  Mrs. D. looks around. And guess what? She looks wistful, too. ’Cause I guess she’d like to eat fudge for lunch instead of spinach.

  “No,” she says. “But next time Jack—or anyone—tells you something that seems too good to be true, you might wonder about it.”

  “I don’t like that,” I tell her. “I want to believe in stuff that’s too good to be true.”

  Mrs. D. nods. “What if the teacher’s lounge was one percent candy?”

  “That would be good. Not too good, either,” I say, “just the right amount of good.”

  “Let’s finish our lunch and see about that one percent,” she says. “Agree?”

  “I agree,” I say and take a big bite out of my bagel. Because I’m getting hungry!

  While we eat, I tell her all about how worms eat garbage for lunch and their poop makes compost and compost makes vegetables grow.

  “Who taught you so much about composting?” Mrs. D. asks. “Your mom or dad?”

  “Granny Coogan,” I explain. And my wistful feeling comes back a little because I miss her and I wish she was in the guest bedroom taking a nap.

  We finish up and Mrs. D. reaches into the fridge and pulls out a giant box. We sit down and open the lid and inside I see CHOCOLATE, all kinds of chocolate; dark and light and white and square and round. And Mrs. D. and I each take one. We eat our chocolate together.

  Then we go back to class and I feel sweet and soft as milk chocolate, and I wish I could give one piece of chocolate to Amanda. In Writer’s Workshop, I write a story about a possum that’s mean to her best friend.

  After lunch, it’s time for the class to talk about how we’re going to compost. Amanda’s eyes are still red, and so is her nose. I try to get hold of her eyes with my eyes. But she won’t look at me. I wish she would so I could smile, even if she did move way far away from me, right snuggled up next to Jessie Chavez. I want to tell her I voted for her project, but probably she wouldn’t believe me.

  Mrs. D. stands at the blackboard with a big piece of chalk. “Gumdrops, think about what we can put in our compost pile. Let’s brainstorm!” That’s when kids make it rain ideas inside their brains.

  Dilly Chang raises her hand. “Is old spinach good for our pile? We have some left over.”

  Mrs. D. looks at me. “Lola?”

  “Great!” I say. “That’s green food.”

  Mrs. D. writes it down.

  Harvey Baxter raises his hand.

  “I ate spinach once. Then I threw it up.”

  Mrs. D. nods. “Thank you, Harvey. You may put your arm down.”

  “How about moldy bread?” Ari Shapiro asks.

  Hmm. “I think so,” I say. It’s hard to be an expert right away. Mrs. D. writes it down, so maybe I’m right.

  Amanda raises her hand. “What if we all of a sudden get allergic to mold?”

  “That’s possible,” Mrs. D. says. She drops her chalk and bends down to get it.

  Amanda turns back and sticks her tongue out at me.

  Mrs. D. stands up. “But not likely,” she says.

  Amanda puts her tongue back in.

  Jessie Chavez’s hand shoots up. “Mrs. D., what if we eat out all the time and we don’t have garbage?”

  “Ask for a doggy bag,” she says.

  “We also need some people to bring in brown things,” I say. “’Cause we need one part brown things and two parts green things.”

  “Brown things like mud?” Gwendolyn Swanson-Carmichael asks.

  “Or burnt oatmeal-raisin cookies?” Ruby Snow asks.

  “Or old sneakers?” Jessie Chavez asks.

  “How ’bout my mom’s casserole?” Ruby asks. “It’s dark brown.” She makes a yuck face.

  “No, it’s got to be straw, twigs, or leaves,” I say.

  “How about dirty diapers?” Sophie Nunez asks. “They’re brown.”

  “NO WAY!” the whole class shouts.

  “Fluffernutters,” Mrs. D. says, “tomorrow morning, please bring your garbage in a sealed bag. A through H, please bring in something from Lola’s brown garbage list. I through Z, please bring in something from the green list.”

  “This is the stinkiest idea I ever heard,” Amanda Anderson says when we line up for dismissal. “Nobody’s going to bring any garbage. Who would want to stink up the class?”

  “Not me, that’s for sure!” Jessie shoots out.

  Mrs. D. is busy with hand-outs. She doesn’t hear. But I do. I hear mean ol’ sore-loser Amanda Anderson loud and clear.

  Fishsticks.

  How come if I’m a winner I feel bad?

  11. WOO WHEE, BOYS!

  “I WON!” I YELL WHEN I HOP OFF the bus after school. Patches barks and Mom says “hip hip hooray.” In olden days that meant “yay.”

  Mom hug
s me four hundred times and we do a green captain dance in the kitchen. She twirls around her measuring tape. Patches goes wild. “We’ll have to call Granny Coogan,” Mom says. “She’ll be so proud that she inspired your idea.”

  Fishsticks! If Granny Coogan stayed put in the extra room, she would already know all about it.

  I see my brother the ball-face candy liar crashing through the door.

  “Guess what?” Jack says. “My homeroom teacher gave me the Good Apple award. It was for being a caring citizen. I carried my friend Mike’s backpack for two solid weeks ’cause he’s on crutches.”

  “That’s wonderful, Jack!” Mom says. Her voice sounds all choky. “Just wait until Dad sees that. Oh, honey, he’ll be SO proud.”

  “And he’ll be proud that I won the Going Green contest,” I say loud and clear. I wait for Mom to say, “Yes, Dad will be SO, SO, SO proud of you. That mean ol’ Amanda Anderson is WRONG. Everyone will love to bring in their garbage.” But the phone rings. Mom answers it. “Oh, hi, Mom,” she says and gives a big smile. She forgot that Granny Coogan can’t see her. “Is that right?” she says. And then, “Well, I heard, blah, blah, blah.”

  I wait and wait and wait for her to say, “GUESS WHAT? LOLA IS THE WINNER OF THE GOING GREEN CONTEST.”

  But she keeps saying dumb stuff.

  I stomp over to the garbage can and find NO GARBAGE for Uncle Ken’s Kitchen Composter.

  I yell, “Mom, where’s the garbage?”

  Mom covers the phone with her hand. She gives me a MEAN look. “Lola, I am on the phone.” I always don’t like “on the phone,” but now I really hate “on the phone.”

  “Please be patient,” she says.

  Being patient means you have to act like you’re in the hospital and you’re really sick and tired. You have to wait and wait and act like you have all the time in the world.

  Finally Mom gets off the phone. She looks at me and then claps herself right on the head. “Oh, Lola, I completely forgot to tell Granny about your green project.”

  “Never mind,” I say. “I don’t even care one bit.”

  “But Granny would love …”

  “Where’s all the garbage, Mom?”

  “I guess the garbage man came and took our garbage today,” she says. “Why? Did you want it?”

  “HOW COULD YOU DO THAT? YOU JUST RUINED THE EARTH AND MY PROJECT!” I holler.

  “That’s ONE.” And she means I get a punishment, not herself for throwing out the golden garbage.

  “Come on,” Jack says. “Let’s go play Blanket of Doom on the guest bed.”

  I bet Jack wants to be a Good Apple again and get me out of Mom’s hair.

  “No roughhousing,” Mom says. “Remember? You broke Granny’s reading glasses playing that game.”

  “How about Jungle Tracker,” Jack says. “Only if you’re the antelope,” I say.

  “Fine.” And we bang out to the backyard.

  At dinner, Dad is proud of me for winning the Going Green contest. But he talks way more about Jack winning the stinky Good Apple award.

  I put my school bag by my chair. When nobody is looking, I wrap up two pieces of garlic bread and slide them in my school bag. They will be perfect for Uncle Ken’s Kitchen Composter. Except somebody was looking, Mom, and Mom says, “That’s TWO, Lola.” I put the garlic bread back.

  Mom takes the lid off the russell sprouts. Russell sprouts are green stink balls.

  When something stinks, Granny Coogan says, “WOO WHEE, BOYS!” and plugs her nose.

  “WOO WHEE, BOYS!” I say and plug my nose. “That smells like garbage!”

  “That’s THREE, Lola,” Dad says. “Go to your room, please.”

  “What a dummy,” Jack says.

  “That’s ONE, Jack,” Mom says.

  Mom and Dad look like it’s past their bedtime.

  I grab my school bag and stomp up to my room, BAM! BAM! BAM!, ’cause there’s only three and go to your room. You can be as bad as you want on the way. You sit there and think about how mean your mom and dad are, and then you come out and say sorry.

  I can hear Jack talking in a funny voice downstairs, and Dad is laughing.

  I look out my window. Maybe I could make a sheet rope and climb out the window and run away. I could go to a family that really appreciates mulch.

  I open my door a crack. The coast is clear. I creep down the stairs and into the kitchen. I can hear Mom and Dad and Jack in the family room watching a baseball game on TV. “Hey, he caught a ball with his left hand just like you did at your last game, Jack,” Mom says.

  “I need to build you a special trophy shelf this weekend,” Dad says, “for all your awards and trophies.”

  A special trophy shelf?

  Fishsticks!

  I look into the garbage can. Sure enough, there are leftovers from dinner. They sure do smell … garbage-y.

  Then I see it on the kitchen table, Jack’s jumbo Good Apple trophy, and Jack’s big basket of Macintosh apples… . I’ll eat them up and get apple cores! That’s the perfect garbage. Those Macintosh apples are Amanda’s favorites. Maybe I should save her one. No, I won’t. Jessie Chavez can go win a Good Apple award.

  Mom and Dad won’t care if I take a few apples or a bunch. Maybe. Even though they’re part of Jack’s prize, ’cause an apple a day keeps the doctor away. So a bunch of apples will keep a bunch of doctors away.

  I huff the basket upstairs to my room and take off the plastic. I eat the first apple. But then I just take a bite out of all the rest. I bite, bite, bite all the apples.

  When I’m done, I’m stuffed full of apples.

  And I have a WHOLE lot of garbage.

  I stuff all the apple cores in the plastic from the basket. I stuff the whole thing into my school bag.

  And I stuff myself in bed.

  And I’m lying there stuffed up and the phone rings.

  And Mom comes into the room and she whispers, “Lola?”

  But I squeeze my eyes shut.

  “Sorry, Mom,” Mom whispers to Granny Coogan, “she’s out like a light.”

  12. FOOD FIGHT!

  I’M TOO, TOO EXCITED TO WAIT FOR the bus. Plus Dad has to give me a ride on account of my Uncle Ken’s Kitchen Composter. I’m UP and DOWN and THIS WAY and THAT WAY and OOGA BOOGA WOOGA at breakfast. I have on my green captain vest, and I probably won’t want to take it off, ever, ever, ever!

  It would be the happiest day, except for one thing: Jack.

  “Patches, I hate you. You dumb dog, you ate all my apples!” Jack stomps and whomps around the kitchen.

  “Patches didn’t mean to, I bet,” I say. Poor Patches. I stuck one apple core in his dog bed this morning, and the ribbon from the basket in his toy box.

  “But what happened to the basket?” Dad asks.

  ”Maybe he buried it,” I say, even though I buried it under my bed.

  “We had better keep a close watch on him,” Mom says. “All those apples can’t be good for him.”

  “Is Patches going to be okay?” Jack asks. All of a sudden he looks worried, just like he did when I fell out of the tree.

  “He’ll be fine,” Dad says, “just a little stomach trouble, most likely.”

  Poor Patches. He has to stay out in the yard. I wave to him through the window and say “SORRY” with my sound turned off.

  “Yeah, he’ll be fine,” I say.

  At school Mrs. D. and I set up Uncle Ken’s Kitchen Composter in the back of the class. It has a bunch of drawers. The worms start out in the bottom drawer and eat their way to the top.

  Mrs. D. has to run back to the teacher’s lounge to fill up her travel mug, and probably get some chocolate from the fridge. So Miss Nimby, the teacher’s aide, is in charge till she gets back.

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” I tell her. “I’ll keep everyone busy.”

  It turns out EVERYBODY brought garbage! Even that double-A sore loser pants Amanda. I didn’t have to eat all those apples and make a bad smell in my room from a
pple gas.

  Even though Mrs. D. is still in the lounge getting coffee and candy, I’m sure she won’t mind if we get it all started. Maybe. And Miss Nimby looks busy erasing the board.

  I unwrap my apple cores and drop them into Uncle Ken’s Kitchen Composter. There are lots of trays to slide in your garbage.

  “One part brown and two parts green!” I shout. “So don’t forget A to H brown and I to Z green.”

  Dilly Chang hollers, “Here comes some bones!” She throws in twigs.

  “Incoming!” Sam plops in egg shells. “Chugga chugga CHOO-CHOO!” John Carmine Tabanelli chugs in some orange peels.

  “Bombs away!” Harvey Baxter hollers. He tosses in some leaves.

  “Here’s some dead hands!” Sophie Nunez waves around some black slimy banana peels.

  “Get ’em away!” Jessie screams.

  Everybody takes a turn with the stinking rotten garbage.

  Amanda Anderson drops in exactly one stick. Just then Mrs. D. comes rushing through the door. “Sweet Tarts!” she says. “Everyone take a seat! Who said it was time to begin?” Uh-oh. Mrs. D. gives Miss Nimby a sour milk look.

  “Lola!” everyone yells.

  Miss Nimby scoots out the door to help in another class.

  “Lola,” Mrs. D. says, “please take a seat.”

  “Mrs. D.” Amanda says. “I only threw my stick in ’cause my mom said I had to, even though Lola’s idea is weird.”

  “It’s not weird! You’re weird!”

  I say.

  “Hey!” Amanda yells. She’s pointing at Uncle Ken’s Kitchen Composter. “It says here it’ll take two whole weeks before we even get compost! See, it’s a dumb idea.”

  “That will be enough from you two,” Mrs. D. says. “In my classroom, I expect everyone to give each other CPR. Courtesy, patience, and …”

  “RESPECT!” everyone shouts.

  “Mrs. D., I am sorry,” I say in my most respectful voice. “And I have a surprise,” I say. “I got these from Gump’s Garden Supplies. They rode home in the trunk.” I reach into my school bag and pull out my surprise. It’s a clear plastic bag with air holes. Inside is a heap of worms, squirming around.