In addition to Soccer Boy Diego, Pantsuit Girl Fiona, Pink Hair Yumi, Nice One Gabby, and Know-It-All Henry, I learn that the camouflage twins are Timothy and Thomas, and the threesome with the pom-pom ears are Lydia (frizzy red hair), Willow (wispy yoga girl), and Sam (buzz cut). First of all, there are my new classmates. It gives me a dizzy, seasick sort of feeling.Īlso, there’s so much to figure out. Everything is distorted, the proportions all wrong. Mitchell vaguely resembles school-there are classes and kids and stuff-but only in the same way your own reflection looks when you stare into a fun-house mirror. The whole first morning feels like a slow-moving, not-so-great dream. Doesn’t everybody need a little Paulie Fink in their life? So you’re saying… that first day, you thought you kind of needed Paulie? I guess you could say that Paulie launched my upswing. All the teachers were so busy saying his name, they didn’t have time to say mine. It’s because that was the year Paulie moved to town. To be honest, I don’t think this is because I was any better behaved. I am talking about Paulie Fink! ’Cause guess what? One day in fourth grade, I counted again, and I only heard my name twenty-two times. I really don’t.įiona, we were talking about Paulie Fink, remember? And when I do, I’m going to move to a big city, and once in a blue moon I’ll come home to Mitchell in a limousine and everyone will be all, Remember when you used to get in trouble all the time? And I’ll be like, No. Let’s just say I’ve always been on the fast track to make history. And then I heard that expression Well-behaved women seldom make history. Guess how many tally marks I made that day?įifty-seven! In a single day! I used to feel sort of bad about all the trouble I got into.
Fiona Fiona Fiona Fiona.īack in third grade when we learned about tally marks, we all had to pick something in our lives to tally, so I tallied the number of times an adult called out my name in one day. Fiona, honey, now you’re getting blood everywhere. Fiona, don’t you dare leap off the slide just to see what it feels like to fly. Fiona, don’t scoop the sand out of the sand table.
And let me tell you, I heard my name a LOT. If I heard it more than three times in a class period, it meant it was a big-trouble kind of day. My whole life, my mom always said that I needed to listen for my name. Heck yeah, I was upset! Paulie was the only kid at this school who ever got in more trouble than I did. It was almost like you couldn’t focus on anything else. It’s like my grandma says: “Get out that big pink piggy bank, girl.
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