Larger-Than-Life Lara Page 9

  “She’s gone.” Mrs. Smith’s voice sounded funny, and she wouldn’t look up from her desk.

  “Where’d she go?” Sara asked.

  “Where’s her desk?” Eric asked.

  “She’s gone. And she’s not coming back.” Mrs. Smith took her a big breath of air.

  And that was when I noticed it. The air had changed back to like it was before Lara appeared in the doorway of our classroom.

  “That’s not fair!” I blurted out. “They can’t kick her out of school! She didn’t do anything.”

  “Lara didn’t get kicked out of school,” Mrs. Smith said quietly, looking up now, with red eyes. “Her parents have decided it would be best to move Lara to a different school, a private school in St. Louis, I think.”

  Joey Gilbert stayed quiet as a stuffed pig, and Eric Radabaugh seemed frozen to his desk.

  “Will she come to class again? To say good-bye?” Theresa asked.

  I glanced over at Theresa. She looked like she had when her cat, Fiji, died.

  “Lara won’t leave without saying good-bye, will she?” Amanda asked.

  “I packed up her things and left them in the office,” Mrs. Smith said. “Her parents will collect her belongings on their way out of town today.”

  I wanted to shout that it wasn’t fair again. That of all of us, Lara was the one who should be staying. But I didn’t say nothing more. Neither did anybody. We sat in our desks not saying nothing for a long time.

  Finally, Mrs. Smith stood up and came around the front of her desk and sat on it. “Do you children understand what you did to Lara?”

  The only answers were choking sounds and crying noises.

  “Do you understand what Lara did for you?” Mrs. Smith asked this very quietly. Then she answered it. “Lara Phelps took all the blame for you.”

  You’d have thought that somebody’d died, instead of moved away. That’s how silent it was in our room. I thought about when Lara showed up that first day and how you could have heard a pin or a feather drop if you’d have had one. And this was quieter than that.

  Joey Gilbert was the first one to speak. “Why would she do that?”

  My mind flashed me a picture of Lara, standing onstage, larger than life, water dripping from her elbows and shoulders and hair. I saw how that smile worked its way back up to her mouth. And I could hear her stumbling over the words of a rhyming poem she wanted to give to the audience. Only this time I heard her saying it to me. So I said it along with her, out loud, in our classroom:

  “We ask you to forgive us.

  We ask you to be kind.

  Forgiving others instantly . . .”

  I finished that poem song in my head, making it say, Forgiving others instantly will give you peace of mind. Only I couldn’t get that part out in time because my throat got clogged up.

  There were sniffles and sobs and crying noises going on all over the room now. And some of these were coming from Joey Gilbert.

  Then Joey got up from his desk and walked over to the same worktable where he’d drawn all those pigs.

  We watched Joey. I think Mrs. Smith started to tell him to sit down, but she must have changed her mind.

  Joey picked up a marker and started writing on a poster board. The marker’s squeak sounded like a fire alarm. He stopped. “How do you spell trick?” he asked.

  Mrs. Smith told him.

  I got up and went over so as I could see that poster board. Joey had written onto it: “I AM SORRY THAT WE DID THAT TRICK.”

  He turned around and frowned at me. “Laney, help. I don’t know how to rhyme. What rhymes with trick?”

  I took the marker he held out to me.

  “Sick?” Amanda suggested, coming over to the table.

  “Quick?” Wayne shouted.

  Desks were emptying as everybody came to the table.

  “How about pick?” Maddie said.

  Below Joey’s line, “I am sorry that we did that trick,” I wrote: “ON LARA PHELPS WE WILL NEVER PICK.”

  “Good job, Laney!” Eric Radabaugh shouted, bumping the table, but just on accident.

  “I want to do one!” Sara shouted, pulling out another poster board.

  “Sara!” Maddie cried.

  “What, Maddie?” Sara fired back.

  “I’ll help you.”

  “Me too!” Wayne shouted louder.

  Pretty soon the worktable was full of poster boards. Markers squealed and squeaked. Kids fired spelling questions at Mrs. Smith.

  There were signs that said:

  I watched this and saw it with my own eyes. And it felt real good to see this part of all of us, the good-sign-making part. And I wondered if Lara had seen it first, this good-sign-making part, under all the bad-sign-making part. And it felt like maybe the air in our classroom was changing back again.

  “Oh no! There she is! They’re leaving!” Mrs. Smith was standing at the window, pointing. “Her parents are heading to the car with her things! There! Isn’t that Lara in the backseat?”

  I ran over to the window and looked. It was Lara, taking up the whole backseat of the blue minivan. “We have to catch her!” I screamed. “Can we—?”

  “Run!” Mrs. Smith shouted. She had taught us the school rules about not running in the school or the halls. But she said it again. “Run! Hurry!”

  Kids grabbed their signs and raced out of the room. But I didn’t have a sign. I had to have a sign for Lara.

  I grabbed the last blank poster and wrote in huge letters: “THANKS!”

  Then I ran to catch up with everybody.

  When I got outside, I joined the line of kids on the grass, across the street from the parking lot. Lara’s parents were in the van. Lara was looking straight ahead, not seeing us. Or pretending not to see us.

  “Lara!” Joey shouted.

  “Lara!” Wayne shouted louder.

  “She doesn’t see us!” Sara cried.

  “The exit!” I hollered. If we could get to the exit of the parking lot, they’d have to drive by us. Lara would have to see us.

  I ran so fast that I dropped my sign and had to pick it up. We raced to the exit, shouting all the way. We got there just before that van pulled up.

  Then Joey shouted, “Lara!” And he held up his sign.

  And pretty soon our whole entire fourth-grade class of Paris Elementary was yelling her name and waving signs. “Lara! Lara! Lara!”

  Lara’s car took the exit. It drove by slowly.

  Lara turned. Her chubby palms pressed against the window. Her face pushed at the glass, taking up the whole entire space. Her little smile got bigger and bigger, larger than life even, as her gaze moved from sign to sign.

  I held up my sign that only said “THANKS!” on it and hoped it was good enough. I wished it could have had “Thanks for Luke” in it. I wished it could have been a poem song that rhymed. I knew right then that Lara Phelps was going to play in my head like one of those songs that won’t never leave your brain, but they just keep playing. She saw stuff. And I was going to try to see stuff too. Everywhere I’d go for the rest of my life, she’d be there, larger than life. Larger-Than-Life Lara. Only I didn’t say any of that on my sign, just “Thanks.”

  But when Lara’s gaze got to my sign, I could tell she liked it. Her smile pressed against that window. And I wanted her dad to stop that car. I wanted Lara to get out and come back to class with us.

  Only I figured she had her places to go. There had to be a lot of elementaries what needed a Larger-Than-Life Lara in them.

  And then that blue van drove off, with dust puffing from the back of it. We stood there, still holding our signs up, even after you couldn’t see that van anymore.

  Mrs. Smith, she says that when your story is over, you shouldn’t keep going on and on about stuff you thought of since that story happened. If somebody has stuck with your story the whole entire way through, then you just got to let them go.

  “When your story is over,” says Mrs. Smith, “it’s over.” And I fig
ure she’s right and that’s just the way it is.

  Acknowledgments

  I’M GRATEFUL to so many people who have told me their stories and shared what it was like to be a victim of bullying. Our daughter Katy has taught our family about rising above meanness and continuing in kindness. I’m thankful for readers in all of the schools I’ve visited. You’ve helped me become a better writer and a better person.

  I am so blessed to have a wonderful team of people at Tyndale House. Linda Howard fell in love with Laney and Lara the way I did, and everyone there who’s touched this book has added even more heart to it—Sarah Rubio, Linda MacKillop, Jackie Nuñez, Mark Lane, Andrea Martin, Erin Gwynne, Brittany Buczynski, Elizabeth Kletzing, Brittany Bergman, Alyssa Anderson, Raquel Corbin, and Tim Wolf.

  So, big, big thank-yous all around!

  About the Author

  DANDI DALEY MACKALL is the award-winning author of over 450 books for children and adults. She visits countless schools, conducts writing assemblies and workshops across the United States, and presents keynote addresses at conferences and young author events. She is also a frequent guest on radio talk shows and has made dozens of appearances on TV. She has won several awards for her writing, including the Helen Keating Ott Award for Distinguished Contributions to Children’s Literature, and is a two-time Mom’s Choice Award winner.

  Dandi writes from rural Ohio, where she and her husband, Joe, are surrounded by family, including a menagerie of horses, dogs, and cats.

  Visit her at www.DandiBooks.com.

  Note

  [1] This is called a cliff-hanger. It got its name from old movies, where you’d have the hero or heroine get pushed off a cliff and just barely grab onto the cliff to keep from falling down and dying dead and the scene would end right there. The poor hero or heroine would hang there and wait to get rescued. So he or she was hanging from a cliff. The end of that scene, with him or her hanging from a cliff, got called a cliff-hanger. And that’s what I did to end this chapter, which goes by the name “Cliff-Hangers.” Nobody is actually dangling from a cliff, but you know what I mean.