All About Sam (5 page)

He got lost, looking around. It was scary. He had to stand very still and listen until he could hear the sound of the moving men carrying furniture. Then he had to go down a hall, through a room, and down some stairs to find people.

"Hi, Sam," Anastasia said. "Where were you?"

He couldn't answer because he didn't know where he had been.

"Lost," he whispered and took Anastasia's hand.

She laughed. "I'll show you where your bedroom will be," she said. "Come on."

She took him back up the stairs, down a hall, and into a big empty room with blue wallpaper. A closet door was open, and he could see the huge empty closet, exactly the kind of closet that monsters would live in, Sam was sure.

"Here," Anastasia said. "This will be your room, and you're going to have a real bed, like a big boy, instead of a crib."

Sam put his thumb into his mouth. The room was very, very big. "Not my crib with the clowns painted on it?" he asked in a small voice.

"Nope. You're too big for that now."

"Will your bed be here, too?" he asked his sister, talking carefully around his thumb.

"Nope. My room's on the third floor. I'll show you in a minute. Look here, down the hall. Here's where Mom and Dad will be."

Sam peeked in. He could see that their big bed was already set up. But there was enough room. His bed would fit right beside it. He tugged on Anastasia's jeans.

"I want my bed here, too," he said.

She knelt beside him. "Don't you want your own room?" she asked.

"No," said Sam.

Mrs. Krupnik appeared in the doorway. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Don't you like your room, Sam?"

"No," Sam said.

"Don't you like our new house?"

"No," Sam said.

Mrs. Krupnik sighed. "Anastasia," she said, "I can see that the Terrible Twos are still with us."

Sam looked around nervously. He listened. He could hear a door slam downstairs. He could hear the moving men bumping around with furniture. He could hear his dad's voice, telling them where to put things.

But he couldn't see or hear the Terrible Twos anywhere.

Anastasia pried open the lid of a large cardboard box. "It's going to take us all summer to unpack, Mom," she said. "Look, Sam! It's your trucks!"

Sam looked. His sister lifted out his blue tow truck and put it on the floor. Next came his bright yellow tractor.

"Is my steam shovel there?" he asked. "And my crane? And my front-end loader?"

Anastasia nodded. "All here. Hey, Sam, I have an idea. Let's dump out all the trucks, and then we'll put the big empty box on its side, to make a garage—down the hall, in your room—and then we can drive the trucks down to their garage, one by one."

"Yeah!" Sam said. "Let's!"

Anastasia set up the cardboard garage in the big blue bedroom down the hall. Then she, and Sam, and Mrs. Krupnik all got onto their hands and knees.

"Rrrrrrrrrr," they all said, and began pushing trucks across the bare floors and down the long hall.

Sam's father came up the stairs and stood there watching.

"You can do the fire engine if you want, Dad," Sam said.

So Dr. Krupnik got onto his hands and knees and made a siren noise as he pushed the red fire engine slowly down the hall.

A moving man came to the top of the stairs and watched, wiping the sweat from his forehead, as the Krupnik family crawled in a line along the hall floor.

"Can I do one?" the moving man asked.

"Take the dump truck," Sam directed, and the moving man began to crawl and say "Rrrrrrrrrr," also.

Another moving man came up the stairs, looked, laughed, and then got down on his hands and knees with the police rescue vehicle.

The third moving man appeared, looking puzzled, with a can of Pepsi in his hand. He stared at them for a moment. Then he shrugged, put the Pepsi down on the top step, and got himself a truck. He chose the big gray steam shovel. He made it say "Clankety-clank" as he drove it down the hall at the end of the procession.

There were seven people now, crawling slowly down the hall, pushing trucks and making engine and siren noises.

Finally they were all in Sam's big new bedroom: Sam, and his mom and dad, and Anastasia, and all three moving men, sitting on the floor surrounded by trucks.

"Well," said one of the moving men, the one with the tattoo dragon, "next we'll set up your bed, Sam. Right here against this wall be okay?"

Sam looked at the wall where the man was pointing. A few minutes ago the room had looked scary. It had looked too big and too empty and too far away from all the people in his family.

But now, all of a sudden, it looked okay. Now his trucks were lined up on the floor, waiting to drive into the cardboard box garage. Now there was another, unopened box under the window, and he knew what was in it: his blocks. Soon they would bring up his bookcase and the box that held all of his books.

Sam nodded. "Okay," he said to the moving man with the dragon. "You can put my bed right there."

The three moving men got to their feet and headed for the stairs.

"It's not a crib!" Sam called after them, just in case they might have the wrong idea, might think he was still a baby. "It's a
bed
! A real one!"

"Sam," said his mom one day after they were settled in the new house, "we're going to do something exciting today. We're going to visit your school. Next month you're going to start school, and today we'll go there to visit."

Sam looked up from his trucks with surprise. "Will I go to Anastasia's school?" he asked.

He wasn't sure he wanted to. Anastasia's school was going to be called junior high, and his sister had confessed to him, "Sam, I am
terrified
about going to junior high."

But his mother said no. Sam would not be going to junior high.

"Will I go to Daddy's school?" Sam asked.

Daddy's school was not called junior high. Daddy's school was called a very complicated name: Harvarduniversity. Daddy had gone to Harvarduniversity a million years ago, when he was young and didn't have a beard. And later he had gone to another school called Yaleuniversity, and later he had gone to
another
school called Columbiauniversity; and now that he was an old guy with a beard, he was back at Harvarduniversity again. Sam had been there to visit Daddy at his office. Daddy's office door had his name on it.

"Can I go to Harvarduniversity? Can I have my name on my door?" Sam asked. "Like Daddy?"

But his mom laughed and said no. Sam would not be going to Harvarduniversity.

She tied Sam's shoe. "Sam," she said, "your shoes are always untied. I think I'll get you some of those sneakers that have fasteners made out of—what is that stuff called, the stuff that sticks together?"

Sam shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know," he said.

"Xerox?" asked his mother. "No, that's not it." She gave him a cookie. "You're going to
nursery
school," she told him.

Sam picked the raisins out of his cookie, to save them till last, and thought about that. Nursery school.

"Is it Rolex?" his mother asked. She was still thinking about the sneakers. "I think that's it. I'll get you sneakers with Rolex fasteners, so that when you're in nursery school—no, darn it. Rolex isn't right."

Nursery school. Sam thought about it some more. Sam knew about nurses. Every time he went to the doctor, there was a nurse there. She was a pretty nice nurse, and Sam liked her just fine, and sometimes she gave him a lollipop before he went home.

"Spandex?" his mother said. "Lastex?"

Sam wondered if he would wear a uniform at nursery school. He didn't want to wear a white dress, the way the nurse in the doctor's office did. But he liked the idea of a uniform. He would like an army uniform, maybe. Or a Red Sox uniform.

"Lego? No, Lego is that toy," Sam's mom said. "What the heck is that sticky stuff called?"

Sam ignored his mother and continued thinking about the nurse. She
did
give lollipops, that was true. But she did something else, something Sam didn't like to think about very much.

She gave shots.

Sam hated shots.

But now that he thought about it, he liked the idea of being the guy who gave shots to other people. And after he went to nursery school and learned how, he would be able to do that.

He wasn't sure that he wanted to be a nurse because he still thought he would like to be a mover. And lately he'd been thinking about airplane pilot. But he would go to nursery school anyway, he decided, to learn to give shots.

"Okay," he said to his mom. "Let's go have a look at nursery school."

"Velcro!" his mother said.

Mrs. Krupnik pushed Sam in his stroller to the school. He carried his newest favorite book on his lap—the one with airplane pictures in it. Anastasia had told him that there would be lots of books at nursery school, but he was afraid that there might not be one with airplane pictures.

"I'm not going to
do
anything at the school," he told his mother before they left home. "I'm only going to sit and look at my airplane book."

"Well," said his mom, "that would be okay, I guess. But I'm sure they'll have toys there. I would think you'd like to play with the toys."

"No," said Sam. "I wouldn't."

"And there will be other children, too. Maybe you'd like to play with them."

Sam shivered. He was accustomed to playing by himself at home. He didn't
want
to play with other children. They always grabbed things. And here at nursery school, probably all the children were learning to be nurses, and that meant—oh,
no...

They would have to practice giving shots. They would want to give shots to
him.

"NO," he said loudly to his mother. "I AM NOT GOING TO GO NEAR THE OTHER CHILDREN."

His mom sighed. "Okay," she said.

Now, as they approached the school, Sam held on very tightly to his airplane book. He could see stuff in the fenced yard. Interesting-looking stuff. A big swing made out of a truck tire. A whole climbing thing painted different colors. A slide shaped like a giraffe. Sam could see that you climbed up the giraffe and slid down its long neck, and that it would probably be a whole lot of fun.

"I'm not going to do that giraffe slide," Sam said to his mother. "I'm only going to do my airplane book."

"Okay," said his mom.

"Even if they
make
me," Sam said. "Even if they tell me I
have
to do the giraffe slide, I'm not going to do it."

"They won't make you. No one will make you do anything."

"Even," Sam said, "if they tell me that they'll hold my airplane book very carefully for me while I do the giraffe slide, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to say, 'You can't make me.'"

His mom lifted him out of the stroller. She folded it into its umbrella shape. "Sam," she said, "I promise you that no one will make you go down that slide."

"Well," said Sam, looking back at the playground as they went through the door, "I might go down the giraffe slide just one time to be polite."

"It's better than junior high, and it's better than Harvarduniversity," Sam announced at dinner, "and it's the best school in the whole world, my school is. There is a slide like a giraffe, and there are a million books, and some of them have airplane pictures, and there are paints that you can moosh around, but you have to put on a smock first. And I'm going to have lots of new friends, and one of them is named Adam."

"That's nice, Sam," said his dad. "Katherine, would you pass the salad?"

"Adam plays rough," Sam said, "and the teacher has to say 'Time Out, Adam!'"

"Go ahead and finish the salad, Myron," Mrs. Krupnik said. "Otherwise, I'll just have to throw it away. Eat your veggies, Sam."

Sam took a bite of string beans. "No uniforms," he announced with his mouth full. "But everybody wears OshKosh, same as me. And there's a dress-up corner," he continued, "with a big box of clothes you can put on. And
hats.
There's a policeman's hat, but if a girl puts it on, then it's a police
woman's
hat, and there's an army helmet, and—"