Izzy Kline Has Butterflies Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Beth Ain

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Julie Morstad

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ain, Beth Levine, author.

  Title: Izzy Kline has butterflies : (a novel in small moments) / by Beth Ain.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Random House, [2017] | Summary: Izzy Kline is nervous about her first day of fourth grade, and with new changes at home, there are plenty of reasons for her to feel the butterflies in her stomach.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016005017 | ISBN 978-0-399-55080-5 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-0-399-55081-2 (hardcover library binding) | ISBN 978-0-399-55082-9 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Novels in verse. | First day of school—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.5.A39 Iz 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9780399550829

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Summer Slide

  Math

  Indoor Recess

  After-School Activities

  English Language Arts

  Substitute

  Picture Day

  Playground

  Word Problems

  Friday Night Lights

  Monday Morning Quarterback

  Thanksgiving

  Common Core

  Polar Express

  Project

  Punctuation

  Field Trip

  One Hundred Days

  Social Studies

  Assembly

  Line Leader, Part One

  Art

  Line Leader, Part Two

  Principal's Office

  Spring Break

  Colonial Fair

  Nurse

  Reading Log

  Music

  Sick Day

  A Note from the PTA

  Rehearsal

  Camp Friends

  Guidance Counseling

  Science

  Rounds

  Geometry

  Phys Ed

  Rules

  Time-Out

  Early Dismissal

  Overflow Table

  Lemonade Stand

  Butterfly Problems

  Finale

  Voice Mail

  End-of-Year Picnic

  Small Moments

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my big brother,

  Outener of the light,

  ruler of the upstairs,

  you are the walrus.

  While I am busy

  swimming in pools and lakes,

  roasting marshmallows on a stick,

  singing camp songs with camp friends,

  scratching the itchy bite in the middle of my back—

  caterpillars are busy too.

  Busy eating their way out of their cocoons

  and into something else.

  Something that

  flutters

  when I cartwheel

  down the backyard hill,

  when I ride my bike

  down into the cul-de-sac,

  skidding to a screech when the mail truck rolls up

  with those cards.

  Room assignments, like anyone cares which room

  they happen to be in with that old,

  yelling teacher and that brand-new class of kids with

  only one person I used to like

  for five minutes

  in kindergarten.

  Lilly, with two l’s

  where there should be only one.

  Used to like

  until I had a playdate with her, and she cried the

  whole time and told me her toys

  belonged to a superhero princess from Mars,

  that she was just watching the stuff for a while,

  TAKING VERY SPECIAL CARE of it,

  that was why she could not share it with me.

  It was a good one. Lilly with two l’s was clever

  at least.

  Anyway,

  there were other friends to make

  and not make

  that year we moved here,

  all those years ago.

  But last week, when the mail truck rolled up

  as I rolled

  down,

  that’s right about when the cocoon burst.

  Right about when that VERY HUNGRY

  caterpillar became one VERY ANGRY butterfly or

  else one million butterflies.

  Making me—on that last night before fourth grade—

  into a night owl,

  something moms say when they talk about us

  to their friends.

  Something they say that isn’t exactly the way it is.

  I am a night butterfly.

  Flitting around in my bed,

  in my head,

  all the way until 7:25 in the morning,

  when the alarm clock, whose name is Mitchell

  and who isn’t really an alarm clock

  but who is a giant dog of the Saint Bernard variety,

  licks my face.

  Messy hair, rolled around and around in due to

  certain BUTTERFLY PROBLEMS,

  messy hair

  and shorts

  and a tank top.

  Summer doesn’t end when school starts.

  Doesn’t end with the reading of that

  room assignment card.

  Something they don’t teach you at school.

  You learn it on your own when it is too hot

  to pretend to be nice to Lilly with two l’s.

  Too hot to build a building out of marshmallows and

  very thin pretzel sticks,

  and without talking.

  An activity Mom will think

  sounds like loads of fun when I see her later

  and when she forces me to tell her

  one interesting thing about my day that does not have

  to do with being hot.

  The good news is the old, yelling teacher is Mrs. Soto

  and she doesn’t yell,

  even when I laugh during the silent building of the

  marshmallow buildings.

  Nothing else interesting after that,

  except for a girl named Quinn Mitchell

  who stayed quiet during the marshmallow exercise

  and who helped our table build a very tall,

  leaning tower without my help since

  I was disqualified

  and she never said anything except at the end when

  we/they won, when she said

  no thanks to motormouth.

  But she said it through a smile and also she fluttered

  her eyelids,

  like a butterfly,

  and we all laughed because it wasn’t mean,

  it was funny.

  And the only thing I could say bac
k was

  my dog’s name is Mitchell.

  Ouch!

  My middle finger. Yes, that one.

  The finger that used to be guarded and important ever

  since I learned it could curse

  people.

  Ever since someone else’s cursed me.

  Jackson.

  It is on fire.

  Smashed between my table and Jackson’s chair,

  which was flung out on purpose,

  the way boys do things on purpose

  without even knowing that they are doing them

  on purpose.

  I pull it quickly to my mouth—the cursed finger.

  Kiss it? Lick it? Bite it off? What would be a good idea?

  I look into the 4 sets of 2 eyes

  of the FOUR ANNOYING BOYS who are staring,

  waiting for me to cry

  like a girl.

  I bite my lip.

  That’s 8 eyes, I think.

  Multiplication.

  One math fact memorized.

  If it all had to do with the staring eyes of boys

  who want you to fail, math would be easier

  to understand.

  I think this too while not crying,

  while not kicking the chair back into his table,

  not kicking him back into his table.

  Bravery, James would call it later,

  under his teenager breath.

  The breath that I notice so much because it is so loud—

  sighing, annoyed breath.

  Well, anyway, that is James’s under-the-breath answer

  when I say um a lot as I tell him

  and Dad the story of my bruised finger and its

  Popsicle-stick splint.

  It is our night with Dad.

  Our night at Dad’s weird apartment,

  which he hasn’t decorated except for a framed

  Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour poster on the wall

  and a big stack of medical journals

  on a glass coffee table

  with sharp edges

  that matches his own sharp edges

  but nothing else.

  What do you call that? I ask when I tell them how I

  held in my tears with all my might.

  The same kind of thing that always happens on my night

  with you, my dad answers,

  his voice edgy like the coffee table.

  Dinner with a side of drama, he says.

  Half smiling, half something else.

  Fractions, also easier with people.

  Proof of your giftedness at acting, my mom will say

  tomorrow, hugging me tight

  when I tell her about it.

  The nurse gave me ice and a splint and said it was

  okay to cry in her office.

  Instead of crying I said when will it feel better?

  Will heal one million times faster if you smile,

  she said.

  I’m not good at math,

  I said.

  They heard us laughing all the way in the front office.

  I usually do not like the movies they show us

  during indoor recess because they are

  babyish or else they are about ogres

  and I hate the whole idea of ogres.

  Even Shrek.

  I get why they made a movie about him, but I always

  wish they would just let us color or something at

  indoor recess.

  Let us be.

  But this was something today.

  This Free to Be…You and Me video.

  It was something different from the start, and not just

  because there was singing and

  music, which I love, but—and this is IMPORTANT—

  because it was funny.

  Two babies are talking in a nursery and they don’t

  know if they are boys or girls because

  they are both bald.

  That’s funny.

  And then there are so many other funny things,

  funny characters, funny songs.

  Don’t dress your cat in an apron, someone says later,

  because it just doesn’t make any sense

  to wear things that don’t make any sense

  for who you are.

  That was the point, I think.

  And then another, called “Helping,”

  which isn’t actually about helping at all

  and which made us all laugh.

  Even the boys.

  And then I got the idea that this whole thing is about

  LIFE LESSONS,

  something Mom says in a big TV news voice she saves

  only for when she’s talking to me about something

  important,

  and she thinks important things are funny, apparently,

  or that they should be funny,

  which is funny.

  But she’s right.

  I absolutely always remember the things

  that made me laugh.

  Like the idea that “Parents Are People,”

  something they say in one of the songs,

  or that women can do anything men can do.

  Funny that anyone ever thought any different, I mean.

  We’re going to put it on—the whole fourth grade—

  in a concert,

  and all I want is to sing a solo.

  I want to sing “When We Grow Up” because I think

  it is meant to be sung

  by me.

  I hope no one else in the whole fourth grade can sing,

  then maybe I’ll have a chance.

  I hope Quinn Mitchell isn’t as good at singing as she

  is at building things out of food.

  And I hope they make a boy sing

  “It’s All Right to Cry.”

  Because that would make me laugh.

  And then I would remember it forever.

  That LIFE LESSON.

  You don’t do a play in third grade or fifth grade at

  Salem Ridge Elementary.

  Only in fourth.

  And fourth grade, as far as I can see,

  is when you—ahem—I will be the most nervous

  I will ever be.

  Not third or fifth.

  Because I was younger in third.

  Will be older in fifth.

  Less nervous.

  In middle school I will like boys,

  I am told

  by my grandmother,

  who thinks I like boys now,

  the way I go on and on

  about these FOUR ANNOYING BOYS in my class,

  who make me want to scream, even though they can

  be funny when they make farting noises

  or flip their eyelids inside out.

  But it is hate, not like.

  I only like James, my big brother.

  Quinn would like an older brother but she has an

  older sister, who talks on her phone all day and night

  and slams her door a lot.

  I have to walk you to drama, James mutters at me

  after school.

  I have to be a good actress so I can get a good part in

  the fourth-grade play.

  Okay, I say, and I go on and on about trying to be

  serious enough to get the part of Baby Girl in

  Free to Be…You and Me.

  Well, you’re serious, he says, which makes me want

  only to be silly.

  I cross my eyes at him.

  He says why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the

  bathroom?

  Why? I say.

  Because the P is silent. The pee, get it?

  That’s not a very serious-acting kind of joke, I say.

  Free to Be…You and Me is not a play for serious

  actors, he says.

  Tell that to Marlo Thomas, I say. Marlo Thomas—

  according to my music teacher,

&nb
sp; who is new and just married and wonderful

  and who used to be Miss Hall for the first six weeks

  of school and is now Mrs. Johnson.

  And Mr. Johnson, her new and young and just-

  married husband, is the orchestra conductor—

  Well, according to Mrs. Johnson, Marlo Thomas is

  the writer, the creator,

  of Free to Be…You and Me.

  I know James does not know who Marlo Thomas is,

  because my brother is not the type of person to know

  something like this.

  He knows rock bands and sports teams and—

  She’s the sick-kids lady, he says. Has a famous hospital

  for sick kids.

  No way, I say.

  Truth, he says. Ask Mom.

  After drama with Elana, who teaches me to sing and

  to act, because they are intertwined, she says,

  I call my mom at work and ask her about

  Marlo Thomas’s hospital.

  St. Jude’s, she says. That kid and his memory, she also

  says.

  She had thought James would be president one day

  with that memory,

  that everything.

  When I hang up, James has gone to his room and

  I know that means I can’t tell him he was right.

  Can’t watch him stick out his pierced tongue at me

  and wonder how much it hurt and what made him

  do it and what it tastes like with ice cream on it, or

  spaghetti, and does the spaghetti get tangled up.

  Can’t duck when he throws a pillow at me to

  make me stop asking

  SO MANY QUESTIONS!

  I may not remember everything the way James does,

  but I bet I will always remember

  what James’s pierced tongue looks like.

  For the rest of my life.

  Maybe James can still be president.

  Maybe lots of people will vote for him

  because they have been hoping

  all this time someone would come along

  with something as interesting

  as James’s tongue.

  Some things in Free to Be…You and Me make