Nest by Esther Ehrlich

Author:Esther Ehrlich [Ehrlich, Esther]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-38609-8
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2014-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

When us kids complain that the classroom is too hot, Miss Gallagher says it’s toasty and cozy and we should be grateful that the school has a good furnace now that Thanksgiving is over and winter is upon us. I guess she’s forgotten that President Nixon has asked us all to do our part during this oil crisis and turn our thermostats down. My family hates Nixon, but saving energy seems like a smart idea, just like paying attention to the owl in the commercials who says Give a hoot, don’t pollute!

How am I supposed to put my very best effort into writing my book report when my head hurts and my yellow blouse is sticking to my skin? I roll my long sleeves up. I roll my brown kneesocks down.

No one in The Secret Garden is happy when they’re all cooped up inside, not Mary and not Colin and especially not Dickon, who’s my favorite, because he believes in fresh air and everything that’s wick, which means alive and green and growing. The book says he smells like “heather and grass and leaves … as if he were made of them,” and animals follow him around, and I bet anything that he wouldn’t just sit here sweating at his desk in this stuffy classroom because Miss Gallagher has decided that it’s cozy. He’d open the windows and sniff the air and play his wooden pipe and lead us all outside, where we’d run around and play tag with the squirrels. He’d know the names of all the birds, just like I do.

I raise my hand. There’s a wet spot under my arm, like I’m a teenager who forgot to put on her Ban Roll-On.

It takes a while, but finally Miss Gallagher looks up from her desk and raises her eyebrows at me.

“Please, Miss Gallagher, could we open the windows just a crack, since it’s really hot in here?”

“Hot?” she says. “Open the windows?” She looks at me like I’m Oliver, asking for more gruel.

I nod.

“What you need to do, Naomi, is focus on your work, not on the temperature.”

“That’s not what I need,” I say, before I’ve even realized that I’ve said it.

“Oooohh,” Sean says. “Naomi is in trouble.”

Now my face is even hotter.

“Sean, you stay out of this,” Miss Gallagher says.

“Oooohh,” Joey says. “Sean is in trouble.”

“Oooohh,” Lori says. “Joey is—”

“That’s enough out of all of you!” Miss Gallagher is getting up from her desk. She’s trying to stomp over to me in her red high heels, but it isn’t easy. She has to bend her knees so she doesn’t lose her balance and fall down and crack her head open on the speckled linoleum floor.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Naomi Orenstein,” Miss Gallagher says from in front of Lisa B.’s desk, because she’s given up on making it all the way over to me, “I expect much better from you. If I have to speak to you again, you’re going to the office.”

“I’m really sorry.” My forehead is wet, and my neck has the prickles.

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