Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright Page

  The Fat Blond Girl

  A Sports Car Holds Only Two

  The Finger Points

  To Catch a Thief

  The Office Jail

  Fat Girls Can’t Dance

  The Tutor

  Mone’s Gone Again

  The Slumber Party

  Daddies Don’t Wear Aprons

  The Hitchhikers

  The Outcast

  Cats Go Out at Night

  Peace Talks

  The Old Lady Winked

  I Can See My Shoes

  It’s not fair!

  “Did you see her take the money?” Daddy asked.

  “I didn’t see her, but no money’s ever been stolen in our room—until Elsie came.”

  “All circumstantial evidence,” Daddy announced importantly.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Just hearsay. You don’t have solid proof. You just have Elsie under suspicion. You can’t arrest her.”

  “It sounds like Elsie has enough troubles already.” Mother started clearing the table as if the subject were closed.

  “Mrs. Hanson said it isn’t good for the thief not to be caught.”

  “Being accused wouldn’t be good for Elsie if she wasn’t the thief,” Mother replied.

  I didn’t feel like doing my homework that night. I sat on my bed with my arithmetic book open to the page of fractions. I hate changing fractions to common denominators. I always get the numbers mixed up and backwards. I felt like sneaking downstairs to get the calculator. I wished I could call Diane. Most girls get to talk on the phone. My dad won’t let me touch ours. It’s not fair.

  other books by Barthe DeClements you may enjoy

  The Fourth Grade Wizards

  Sixth Grade Can Really Kill You

  This book is dedicated to

  my beloved son Christopher.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by The Viking Press,

  a member of Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1981

  First published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 1990

  This edition published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2009

  Copyright © Barthe DeClements, 1981

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  DeClements, Barthe. Nothing’s fair in fifth grade / by Barthe DeClements. p. cm.

  Summary: Initially repelled by an overweight new student who has

  serious home problems, the fifth grade class finally learns to accept her.

  ISBN: 9781101077665

  [1. Weight control-Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  [PZ7.D3584 No 1990] [Fic]-dc20 89-48757

  Set in Times Roman

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Version_2

  The Fat Blond Girl

  Mrs. Hanson, our fifth grade teacher, was sitting at her desk grading papers. We were all sitting at our desks. We were supposed to be writing paragraphs with one main sentence and three supporting sentences. I wrote down that my new kitten was soft, gray, and ten weeks old. Whatever else I wrote had to be about soft, gray, and ten weeks old. The fact that I couldn’t teach it to go outside didn’t match. The fact that if it went one more time on my mother’s bed, I wouldn’t have a kitten any more didn’t match, either. I crumpled up my paper. I decided to write my main sentence about bratty little brothers. I could think of lots of supporting sentences for that.

  I had just started my new paragraph when the classroom door opened and a woman and a fat blond girl walked in. Sharon sits behind me and I heard her say, “Ugh.” Diane sits beside me and she whispered, “I hope she isn’t going to be in this room.”

  The woman pushed the girl forward. “This is Elsie Edwards,” she said.

  “How are you, Elsie?” Mrs. Hanson asked.

  “Fine,” Elsie answered, looking at the floor.

  Elsie’s mother leaned over her and tried to talk quietly to Mrs. Hanson. We were all staring silently, though, and heard every word. Mrs. Edwards told Mrs. Hanson that Elsie was on a special diet. She was not to eat anything except what was in her lunch box. I thought to myself that it would take some special diet to melt off all that blubber.

  When Elsie’s mother left, Mrs. Hanson walked the fat girl to the front of the room. Elsie’s hips were so wide her skirt brushed the desks on each side of the aisle. As she walked by Jack’s desk, he shrank back from her in horror. A few kids giggled.

  “Class,” Mrs. Hanson said, “this is Elsie, our new student.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Roy muttered.

  “She’s gross,” Diane said softly.

  Elsie was gross. Her eyes were squished above cheek bubbles of fat. Her chins rippled down her neck. She really didn’t have a waist except where her stomach bulged out below her chest. Her legs looked like two bed pillows with the ends stuffed in shoes. I knew everyone hated having Elsie in our room.

  Diane sits on one side of me, but on the other side was the only empty desk in the room. My luck. Mrs. Hanson got some textbooks and brought Elsie to the empty desk. She said to me, “Jenifer, will you please show Elsie around the school at recess?”

  I tried to agree politely, but I didn’t like having my recess ruined. I always play with Diane and Sharon, so when Mrs. Hanson left, I whispered to Diane that she could help show Elsie around, too. Diane whispered back to forget it. So I was stuck with Elsie.

  I showed Elsie where the bathroom was; I showed her the office, the gym, and the library. After our trip around the school, I asked her if she wanted to play a tetherball game. She said she’d rather watch, so I left her and went to find Diane and Sharon. Elsie leaned against the school building until the recess bell rang.

  In P.E., Elsie told Mrs. Hanson she’d rather watch than play. Mrs. Hanson thought a minute and then said she supposed it would be all right for Elsie’s first day. Elsie sat on the stage steps and watched us bombard each other in a soak ’em game.

  Elsie didn’t just watch at lunchtime, though. She hunched over her desk and gobbled up her carrot, thermos of soup, and pear in three minutes. When she was finished, she leaned across and asked me if I wanted my cornbread. Cornbread is the one thing the school cooks don’t ruin. But I pulled my bread apart and gave Elsie a fourth of it.


  “Thanks,” Elsie mumbled as she stuffed it in her mouth. While she was chewing, she looked at Sharon’s lunch tray. Sharon was talking to Diane, who was holding her short black hair away from her face while she drank her milk from a straw. Elsie reached out and poked Sharon in the side.

  “Are you going to eat your dessert?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am,” Sharon answered and turned back to Diane.

  Elsie put her thermos in her lunch box and wadded up her paper napkin. She got up to throw her napkin in the wastebasket. On the way back she stopped at Marianne’s desk. Marianne’s cornbread was on her tray. Marianne was watching Jack cut up milk straws for spit wad shooters.

  “Say, are you going to eat your cornbread?” Elsie asked. Marianne continued to watch Jack.

  Elsie didn’t know Marianne’s name so she poked her in the arm. “Are you going to eat your cornbread?”

  Marianne, surprised, looked up at Elsie. She shoved the tray forward. “No, take it,” she said.

  Elsie stuffed Marianne’s cornbread in her mouth and began to weave her way back to her seat. It was a close squeeze between Richard’s desk and Jack’s desk. Richard’s books slid to the floor.

  “Hey, watch it!” Richard yelled.

  Mrs. Hanson looked up. As Elsie stopped to pick up the books, her skirt billowed behind her. Jack raised his hand to smack the huge target.

  “Jack!” Mrs. Hanson said sharply. Jack put his hand down slowly. Mrs. Hanson asked Elsie what she was eating.

  Elsie swallowed. “Lunch.”

  “Whose lunch?” Mrs. Hanson wanted to know.

  “It’s just some cornbread,” Elsie said. Her cheeks had turned red, and the color dripped down her chins. Everyone was watching.

  “Elsie, your mother said you were on a strict diet. In this room you eat only what your mother puts in your lunch box. Do you understand?” Mrs. Hanson looked directly into Elsie’s eyes.

  “But I get so hungry,” Elsie whimpered. She sneaked a look around the room. I didn’t feel sorry for her. I was glad she was getting it. She was so gross.

  Elsie added, “I only get some broth, a carrot, and a pear in my lunch.”

  “I’m sorry if you get hungry, Elsie, but this is something you’ll have to take up with your mother and your doctor.” Mrs. Hanson turned away from Elsie and told us to clean up the room.

  After lunch it was raining, so we couldn’t go out on the playfield. Elsie stood against the school building again while the rest of us gathered under the covered area talking about her. Sharon said she should be in a circus, and Diane said she should be a garbage collector. I glanced over at Elsie while everyone giggled at the jokes. Elsie stood there silently with the wind flapping her tentlike coat around her. I thought her mouth turned down sadly.

  When I got home from school, the whole kitchen smelled of chocolate chip cookies. I draped my wet jacket over a chair, opened cupboard doors until I found the stack, and helped myself to four.

  Mother looked up from peeling potatoes. “Jenifer!”

  I put one back and sat down at the kitchen table to eat the rest. My little brother, Kenny, hovered around me, whispering, “Me, too, Jenny,” so I figured Mother must have told him no more. When the whispering didn’t work, he climbed up the rungs of my chair and patted my long hair. I broke off a piece of cookie and gave it to him. He gave me his pumpkin-teeth grin in return.

  While I watched Mother cut up the potatoes, I told her about Elsie.

  “I wonder why she eats so much,” Mother said.

  I thought that was a strange question. Didn’t Elsie eat because she was hungry?

  A Sports Car Holds Only Two

  At noon the next day Elsie had her lunch box cleaned before I even got my hot lunch tray into the classroom. She sat with her hands folded, staring first at Sharon and then at me. Halfway through the lunch period Mr. Douglas, the principal, walked in. He’s a great big, joking man. At least he is if you aren’t a troublemaker. He walked around the room asking kids how they liked their lunches. When he came to Elsie, he said, “And where’s your lunch, young lady?”

  “I ate it.” She never really looked at grown-ups, but kept her face pointing down.

  “I hope it was good.” He patted her on the shoulder and went on up the aisle.

  While I licked a smear of frosting from my fingers, I watched Elsie watching the teacher. When Mrs. Hanson bent her head to stir her tea, Elsie leaned back toward Sharon. “Are you going to eat your cake?”

  “Yes, I am,” Sharon answered, pulling her tray closer to her chest.

  Elsie turned to Marianne. “Are you going to eat your cake?”

  Marianne is the littlest girl in the room. She isn’t very smart, but she’s nice to everyone. “You can have half,” Marianne said.

  Elsie took the piece of cake and jammed it in her mouth. Mrs. Hanson was at Elsie’s desk in a flash.

  “Elsie, what are you doing?”

  Elsie was so surprised her mouth flopped open with the hunk of chocolate cake hanging on her lower teeth.

  “Elsie, spit that out into the wastebasket, and don’t let me catch you disobeying me again.” Mrs. Hanson’s voice was so sharp I shivered.

  Elsie spit the cake into the wastebasket while we all craned our necks to watch her. When she was back at her desk, she took out her reading book, opened it to the middle, and stared at the pages. Mrs. Hanson and the principal stood at the front of the room talking quietly. Then Mr. Douglas went over to Elsie and put his hand on her shoulder again.

  “Young lady,” he said, “you’d better straighten up and start behaving in this school. We won’t put up with any of your antics here.”

  I wasn’t certain what he meant by antics, but I wondered what Elsie had done in her other school.

  After that day the boys started calling Elsie “Scrounge.” And she was the classroom reject.

  My mother says I should be nice to everyone. Either school was different when she was young or she just doesn’t remember. I’m not a mean girl, but I do have best friends. There are girls like Marianne who will play with anyone and everyone still likes them. There’s nothing to hate about Marianne. She’s little and friendly and she will lend you anything. My mother says Marianne has character. I told my mother Marianne works all day and only gets C’s. Mother said grades aren’t everything. She says things like that, but when I bring home my report card, I better have only A’s and B’s.

  So Marianne talked to Elsie, but nobody else went near her. Elsie kept standing by the school wall at recess. She hardly moved unless she saw some kid who had sneaked candy out on the playground. Then she walked right up and asked for a piece. She couldn’t scrounge at lunchtime, because Mrs. Hanson watched her like a hawk. Mrs. Hanson didn’t pick on kids for no reason, but she could hang right on you if you were doing something bad. The only one she had trouble catching was Jack. Most of the time he was just too sneaky for her.

  One day when Elsie had been in our room a few weeks, Mrs. Hanson said we would work in groups for globe study. There were seven world globes, so that meant four students would share each globe. Mrs. Hanson called on Marianne to choose the first group. Marianne chose me and Diane. Next she should have chosen Sharon because we’re friends, but she didn’t. She chose Elsie. I opened my mouth to object, but closed it fast when I saw Mrs. Hanson eyeing me.

  Our group sat on the floor by the teacher’s desk. The ditto work sheets listed the latitude and longitude of six cities. We were supposed to find the cities on the globe and write down their names. Diane was the smartest in social studies, so she found most of the cities and we finished before any of the other groups.

  I told Diane what happened on Mork and Mindy the night before because her TV was broken. To be polite, Marianne asked Elsie what movies she’d seen lately. Elsie said her little sister and her mother had seen a show over the weekend, but she didn’t go.

  “How come you didn’t go?” Diane asked.

  “Mama has a sports car and it holds onl
y two,” Elsie said.

  “Then you get to go next time,” Marianne said.

  “I don’t think so.” Elsie shook her head slowly.

  “Why not?” Diane asked.

  “Well, Mama says I’m big enough to stay home alone and my little sister isn’t,” Elsie explained.

  “That’s dumb,” Diane said. “Why doesn’t she get a baby-sitter for your little sister?”

  “She does sometimes, but not to take me.”

  “Why not?” Diane persisted.

  “I don’t think she wants anyone to know I belong to her. I’m too fat, I guess.”

  I watched Elsie separate a yellow curl from the rest of her hair, twirl it around a thick finger, and yank on it. I guess Marianne saw this, too, because she suddenly asked me how my kitten was doing. I told her she had a sleeping box on the back porch. She had to stay outside all the time except when I was playing with her.

  “I bet Mama would like to do that with me,” Elsie said.

  I told my mother about Elsie and her mother. Mother said, “Poor little thing.”

  I said, “Mother, she’s no little thing.”

  The Finger Points

  Whenever I brought lunch money to school, I put it in my desk or sometimes I left it on my desk, even though I knew I wasn’t supposed to. Nobody had ever taken anything in our room. And if I kept my money in my pocket, I could lose it.

  If you lose your money, the school won’t give you a free lunch. The teachers won’t lend you money, either. What you have to do is go to the office and get a frozen peanut butter sandwich from the secretary. She keeps a whole bunch of them in the refrigerator in the faculty room. It’s a pain because they never completely thaw in time for lunch. Some kids just go hungry instead of trying to eat the secretary’s sandwiches. I guess the school figures this cuts down on kids’ forgetting their lunch money.

  Halfway through that fifth grade year there was no money out on anyone’s desk. Quarters were disappearing every day. Marianne was the first to lose money. I thought it was just an accident. I guess Mrs. Hanson did, too. She told Marianne to look through her desk. Marianne did, but she ended up with a peanut butter sandwich. Some kids gave her their cookies and Jack gave her his milk. He told her he didn’t like milk, but I know he always drank it before.