Flying Lessons & Other Stories(15)

It’s a lot of pressure to pick a good elf name.

When I was little, I never stuck my pets with average names like Spot or Rover. It was more like Peanut Brittle or Sir Hop-a-Lot. But having to name myself for our Secret Santa week at school is kind of stressing me out—and it’s almost my turn in the circle.

(I always seem to go last, which is just my luck.)

“Yoo-hoo, Samantha?” Miss Lee says.

Gah, I hate when people don’t call me Sam, and it throws me off. I open my mouth, but my elf name doesn’t come out the way I want it to. I want my elf name to be Flame, because I like the way fire changes from orange to blue to smoke, without even warning you.

“Um…Sparkles,” I say.

“Sparkles?” Miss Lee asks, probably because my voice is so small.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sparkles. The elf.”

It’s no Flame, but it seems safe enough.

Still, a few of the boys begin telling some kind of Sparkles-themed joke. They’ll find anything to make fun of. Like when I said I wanted to be called “Sam” last year, and they all said, “Is that because you look like a boy?”

Maybe I should have expected it. I had really short hair then, which I’d begged my mom to let me get cut when we moved here. She warned me not to: “Kids can be cruel, honey,” she said, and she was right. They called me Sam the Man.

Which doesn’t even rhyme, by the way.

Anyway, I let my hair grow back out and I stopped telling people to call me Sam, and here we are.

“With Sparkles in the bag,” Miss Lee says, picking up a Santa hat and walking into the center of our circle (after stepping over Parker’s book bag), “we’ve got a room full of elves!” Miss Lee hops up and down, like we’re five years old. “How fun was that?”

That’s her signature phrase. Miss Lee taught the second graders last year, and all of her lessons feel too babyish for us sixth graders.

She parades the hat around, so we can pick out the name of the elf who we’ll be the Secret Santa for. Right when it’s my turn, someone notices that there’s snow coming down, which isn’t that rare of an occurrence in Pennsylvania. Still, snow is snow, and now Miss Lee has whisked the hat away and we’re all pressing our noses against the freezing window and counting snowflakes.

That’s when we feel a whoosh, the vacuum sound of Room 314’s door opening.

The principal is here. Never good. She scrunches her face at all of us and shoots Miss Lee a glare.

“First snow of the year,” Miss Lee says, stepping forward to defend her turf. Her pink heels shriek against the waxed linoleum. Miss Lee always wears pink. She’s beautiful.

“It’s just snow, kiddos,” the principal says. I hate when grown-ups call us kiddos.

But then: “Well, I think it’s awesome,” says a new voice, coming from behind the principal.

The voice steps inside our classroom. “The snow, I mean. Is awesome,” says this girl, who isn’t in a uniform like the rest of us.

Who is a little shorter than I am.

Whose fingernails are painted black-white-black-white, every other one.

“I’m from California,” she says, and offers us a thumbs-up. The room is so silent with staring that you can hear the old clock ticking. Five ticks later, the girl says: “Wow, you people are quiet.”

Uh, I didn’t speak for an entire week when I first got to school, and I only came from across the state!

“This is the new girl,” the principal announces. And I think she says her name, too, but I don’t even hear it because I’m off in Sam Land, wondering if I could ever stop biting my nails long enough to paint them black.

But then I’m back in room 314, right as the principal is saying that we ought to treat the girl “just the exact same way you treat each other.” Which seems like a funny thing to say, because as the principal is saying it, Kyle V. is punching Eliot’s shoulder.

When the door clicks shut behind the principal, we let out a nervous group laugh, like we’re bottles of pop that have been opened too fast.

“We were just in the middle of playing Secret Santa,” Miss Lee says. Somehow that gets us all running back into formation, to stand on the frayed edges of a worn-out square of gray carpet. “We’re picking names out of a hat, and at some point this week you’ll deliver a secret gift—”

“That’s under five dollars!” shouts Mia. She’s the class treasurer and is mildly obsessed with money.

“Yes, thank you, Miss Santos,” Miss Lee says, pausing before continuing her peppy explanation. Peppy would be a good elf name for Miss Lee. “And then on Friday, we’ll all guess who’s who, and—”

“Cool,” says the new girl. “Got it.”

She’s still staring at the snow, but I can’t stop staring at her.

Maybe it’s because the rest of us look exactly alike. Same clothes, same haircuts, same hair colors, almost: a nothing-special brown like Peanut Brittle, the best ferret ever (may he rest in peace).

But this girl’s clothes are sun-faded. This girl’s hair is dark like a good secret. She looks like the kind of person who might get a tattoo someday. Like my aunt Hannah, in Ann Arbor.

“My goodness, I almost forgot!” Miss Lee says. “You have to assign yourself a cute elf name!”