A Girl, a Raccoon, and the Midnight Moon by Karen Romano Young

Author:Karen Romano Young [Karen Romano Young]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781452169996
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Published: 2020-01-07T05:00:00+00:00

1 These are all real publications.

25: THE SCHOOL PLAN

SEP 30–OCT 1

On Saturday afternoon, Pearl wanted to work on her story, but got distracted imagining Khadija and Elsa and Millie responding to the performance. Try though she might to focus on the other 779 kids in the school, she couldn’t stop picturing their faces, hearing their voices sneering, thinking she was stupid, or geeky, or ridiculous. She couldn’t get those girls out of her head no matter how much she said to herself, Just do it. Just do it. Just do it.

Suddenly, she thought, why do they matter so much? She had Francine, and she was a friend, wasn’t she?

Pearl also sort of had Oleg. He was coming over to work on the plan with them on Sunday, in preparation for Monday at school. And he was an eighth grader! So what if he was just doing it because he wanted the library to use his replacement head on their statue?

And she had Nichols. Sure, he was a grown man, even further away from her age than Oleg, but he had shown her the reading raccoons. He believed in them, and he believed in her. That made him a real friend, no matter how old he was.

And then there was Mary Ann. Pearl really did have a friend who was a raccoon named Mary Ann.

And that was enough to ease her nervousness about her story and the performance. Pearl slipped down the basement steps and woke up Mary Ann for the second time that week.

Nocturnal, wrote Mary Ann.

Pearl winced. “Sorry,” she said, but was too excited to be sorry for long. “I need Mike Mulligan. And in return I want to tell you my story. Did you read my letter? Will you be my practice audience?”

Mary Ann wrote, What makes you think we have Mike Mulligan?

“I saw it, thief!” said Pearl. She was a bit shocked at herself, acting like Mary Ann was just any human, talking to her like that.

But Mary Ann was laughing, showing her little teeth.

“Please,” said Pearl. “You’ll get input on the story, too. You’ll get to be an editor, like your grandmother.”

Mary Ann wasn’t writing anything, but maybe that was because she had been awakened from a sound sleep and she wasn’t used to a human talking to her directly, making demands and offering deals.

“You’ll get to help make kids come to the library, if the story’s good enough,” continued Pearl. “I’m trying to do what you said. You know—just do it.”

Mary Ann seemed to be considering the plan.

“I need someone impartial,” Pearl went on. “Francine and Oleg are too close to the story to be impartial. And at school, nobody likes me because nobody cares about books as much as I do.” Something about talking to a raccoon allowed her to admit this truth out loud for the first time.

When you do something other people don’t do, they think you think you’re special.

“Is it my fault I’ve read more books than any other fifth grader in the whole city?”

Listen to yourself.

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