Lulu and the Duck in the Park (5 page)

“The perimeter of a person,” she said.

“Lulu, I think! Now then, Mellie! How will you investigate the perimeter of Lulu?”

“I know! I know!” said Mellie, rushing to the table to collect the largest piece of paper and the juiciest fat felt-tip pen. “I know, I know, I know, don’t tell me!”

Mellie spread her piece of paper in the middle of the classroom floor and pulled the top off of her pen.

“Lie down, Lulu!” she ordered.

“Mellie!” moaned Lulu. “Lie down there? Now?”

“Not now,” said Mrs. Holiday, passing on to another group of investigators. “First you must estimate. Don’t forget that!”

“First!” hissed Lulu. “You need to listen, Mellie! I can’t lie down there.”

“You have to,” said Mellie, testing her green felt-tip pen on her arm. “Soon as we’ve estimated. I estimate ten feet. Five up one side and over your head. Five down the other side and around your feet. Ten. Now lie down!”

“Mellie, listen!” said Lulu. “Stop jumping around and listen! It’s not just a hat up my sweater. It’s two hats...”

“Take ’em out!” said Mellie, waving her pen.

“And an egg.”

“An egg?”

“A duck egg. From the park.” Mellie stared.

“It’s still warm.”

Mellie’s eyes grew rounder and rounder.

“And I think... I think I felt it move!”

Mellie got the giggles of the most painful silent sort and lay on her stomach, weeping and gasping.

“It can’t get broken,” hissed Lulu, shaking her, “because then there would be a duckling. A duckling! Here in this classroom! And you know what Mrs. Holiday said yesterday about no more animals!”

“Oh,” said Mellie, suddenly becoming calm. “Not good.”

She looked across the room at the guinea pig who might so easily be swapped for stick insects.

And then Mellie became wonderful.

In no time the piece of paper for Lulu to lie on was whisked to the Reading Corner, the most private place in the classroom. Then, in one green juicy line, Mellie drew all around the edge of her friend. Before anyone had noticed anything unusual about Lulu’s sweater at all, they were back at the table again and marking off the perimeter of a person in neat green inches.

“Exactly what I hoped you would do,” said Mrs. Holiday when she came to see how they were getting on.

“Eggsactly!” whispered Mellie when she had gone, and gave one of her sudden snorts of laughter. “Is it still safe?”

“I think so. I hope so. If I can just keep it not broken until after school. Then I’m going ask Mom to let me take it to the vet.”

“Yes, he’ll know how to hatch it,” agreed Mellie. “And then you’ll have a duckling. Lucky thing!”

“I’ll share.”

“It will need a pond.”

“How hard is it to dig a pond?” asked Lulu.

“I’ll help,” said Mellie.

Lulu became much happier. Life with a hat nest under her sweater was much easier with a friend who understood.

Mellie was very useful. When Lulu needed to fetch or pick up or hold, Mellie was there to help. At lunchtime she was a human shield that stopped the hat nest from being squashed in the lunchtime line. After lunch, when the rest of the school was charging around the playground, she visited the library and found a book on ducks.

The book made Lulu and Mellie rather sad.

Mother ducks, it said, talked to their ducklings before they were even hatched.

“They talk to their eggs?” asked Mellie, astonished.

“And the ducklings inside the eggs learn the sound of their mothers’ voices,” read Lulu. “And the ducklings talk back to their mothers! Oh my poor white-winged duck!”

“I don’t think that can be true,” said Mellie. “I don’t see how anything could make a sound in an egg!”

“Just in case,” said Lulu, worrying, “I should quack to this egg. So it doesn’t get lonely.”

“Should I quack too?” asked Mellie. “Would it help?”

Lulu said she thought that would help a lot, and it did. She felt much less silly quacking with a friend than quacking alone.

After lunch came music. That was difficult. Class Three was practicing a song for the Easter play, with singers and recorders. Mellie’s recorder had been lost months before, but Lulu still had hers. There was no possible excuse that could save her from having to stand in front of the class with the rest of the recorder group and play her recorder.

“I’ll take care of the egg,” said Mellie bravely, and she did. For the next half hour she cradled the hat nest in her hands under the table, hardly daring to breathe. Music passed safely.

The day that had begun in such a fuss of water and dogs and quacking and tears became more and more peaceful. Mrs. Holiday handed out doodling paper and picked up a new storybook.

“Harry Potter,” she read, “and the Sorcerer’s Stone.”

She had been promising to begin it for weeks.

CRACK!

Even through two hats and her sweater, Lulu felt that crack.

Lulu looked across at Mellie to see if she had noticed anything. Mellie was in a Mellie-dream, tilting her chair backward, listening to the story while she drew owls and ducks and lightning-shaped scars.

Maybe I imagined it,
thought Lulu, and she began very carefully to move her hand under her sweater, over the rim of the hat nest, down toward the egg.

Something?

Nothing?

Lulu jumped with shock.

No more smooth egg. Fragments of shell. No more warm stillness. A fluttering struggle for freedom. No more quiet.

A thin, high voice.

“Weep!” wheezed the front of Lulu’s sweater. “Weep!”

“Is someone trying to be funny?” demanded Mrs. Holiday, looking up from her book.

Luckily for Lulu, several people were goofing off. Charlie and Henry were thumb wrestling. Someone else was having a tug of war with the guinea pig over a spelling list. Mellie fell off her chair.

Mrs. Holiday snapped
Harry Potter
shut. “Oh, Mrs. Holiday!” groaned Class Three. “If you would like me to read any more,” said Mrs. Holiday, glaring, “you will become instantly quiet and sensible.
If
you would not like me to read any more, then we will spend the time on mental math!”

Class Three became instantly quiet and sensible. Mrs. Holiday began reading once more. Lulu wrote IT’S HATCHING on her doodling paper, nudged Mellie, and pointed.

Mellie stared.

NOW? she wrote.

Lulu nodded.

DID YOU BUMP IT?

“No,” whispered Lulu.

ON ITS OWN?

“Yes.”

“I didn’t know they did that,” whispered Mellie. “Not on their own! From the inside. I thought the mother duck helped them break their way out.”

“Mellie!” exclaimed Mrs. Holiday. “Collect your things together and come and sit by me!”

Mellie did. But not before she had scrawled on her doodling paper: WONTITSUFFKET and pushed the paper toward Lulu.

Wontitsuffket,
read Lulu, puzzled.
Wontitsuffket? What is wontitsuffket?

She looked at Mellie. Mellie looked desperately back.

Won,
read Lulu again.
Or Wont? Wont it? Wont it suffket.

OH!

Won’t it suffocate?

“Please, Mrs. Holiday,” begged Lulu, “may I leave the room? Now? Quick?”

Mrs. Holiday nodded, and then noticed Lulu’s hands holding the front of her sweater and said, “Yes, you may. Now! Quickly! Mellie, go with her. Come back for me if Lulu is not well.”

“Hurry!” added Mrs. Holiday urgently, because if there was one thing she could not bear, it was people being ill in her classroom.

Lulu and Mellie hurried. They raced along the corridor, burst into the empty bathroom, thankfully shut the door, and leaned on it.

“Get it out! Get it out!” begged Mellie.

Lulu was already doing that. Her sweater was off. The hat nest was in her hand. She was turning back the rim.

“Weep!” called the occupant suddenly.

“Weep! Weep! Weep!”

There it was: a duckling. A fluffy head, already dry. Two questioning, shining black eyes. Two stumpy wings, fluttering in the sudden light. The rest still hidden in the shell.

    “Weep!” called the duckling, a dry, thirsty call.