Sarah Simpson's Rules for Living (5 page)

It was all because of his mother and that stupid thing I said about the star.

So George is crying and I feel like crying too because I've ruined everything between us by opening my big mean stupid mouth and then somebody said, “What's the matter?” and it was Horace Zimmerman with a jelly jar. He was there to collect pond water to look at under his microscope.

With anybody else I would have been embarrassed, but there's no point in front of Horace. He's already so weird.

“What's the matter?” Horace said again, and then he sat down and I told him, and he said, “Hey, George,” and then he explained, which is why I am in debt for life to geeky Horace Zimmerman.

This is what he said:

Everything we're made of, Horace says, comes from stars. All the heavy elements on earth were made in an exploding star. Copper and silver and gold and things like that. They're all from supernovas. We're all cobbled together from little bits of star.

“What happens when you die?” George said, with his face in his bear.

Nobody knows exactly, is what Horace said. But all those elements we're made of drift off to become parts of other things. Like grass and roses and rabbits and clouds and diamonds and bears.

And even, after a long, long time, new stars.

So George stopped crying and thought about that for a while, and then he said, “Okay,” but this time it was a good kind of “Okay.” Not like before.

So I said, “I'm really sorry, George. I was mean, and I promise never to do that again.” And I hugged him, and he hugged me back and things would have gotten mushy except that right then Horace fell into the pond while trying to catch a salamander.

Horace Zimmerman is in disgrace. It's all because of taking a stand against world hunger again. This time he took his stand in Act II of the play.

In Act II, I have been kidnapped. I am in the Underworld waiting for my next big scene in which (big mistake) I eat the pomegranate seeds. On stage, Demeter is crying and wailing and wearing a gray wool wig. All the other gods and goddesses are yelling at her because she hasn't bothered to take care of the crops. Everybody else is lying around on the ground, holding their stomachs and starving to death. Except the second-graders, who just did their snowflake dance.

Then Horace Zimmerman, who wasn't supposed to be doing anything yet, jumped out from behind the piano and started yelling and waving this huge poster in the air. The poster said:

Ms. Bentley was furious at Horace for ruining the play. She started yelling, “Horace Zimmerman, sit down this instant!” from backstage. But she couldn't get at him because she was trapped by thirty second-grade snowflakes.

“Sit down, kid!” somebody bellowed from the audience. It was Emily Harris's father.

Everybody was muttering and looking sideways at Horace Zimmerman's parents, who have raised such an awful son, and Horace Zimmerman's parents were looking resigned. They're used to Horace.

A couple of people started booing.

Horace was still yelling about stopping world hunger and about acting locally but thinking globally, and about everyone being able to make a difference, but you could tell he was starting to get upset because taking a stand wasn't working out the way he had expected. And I am in debt to Horace Zimmerman for life. So I crawled out from behind the piano and stood up next to him in my pillowcase and my stupid wreath of toilet-paper flowers and started yelling about stopping world hunger too.

And then Jonah, who was sitting right in the front with Sally and George, stood up and started shouting, “Bravo!” Jonah is fat and going bald and his shirttail was hanging out, and he was really loud. The first thing I thought was that my father would never make a fool of himself in public like that. And then Horace started grinning, and all of a sudden I was really glad that Jonah would. In a weird kind of way, Horace and Jonah are a lot alike. Neither of them cares how dumb he looks as long as he's doing what he thinks is right.

Then Sally and George stood up too, and George started jumping up and down and yelling, “Horace! Horace! Sarah! Sarah!” and waving his bear.

Then Horace Zimmerman's parents stood up, and then Ronnie Pincus's parents stood up because, having a family farm, they are sensitive about crop failures. So Ronnie Pincus, who was being Zeus, came down from Olympus, which was the janitor's stepladder, and started waving his cardboard thunderbolt and yelling with us. And then Emily Harris came over, wearing her pillowcase and a lot of gold hair ribbons to show that she was Aphrodite, and started yelling too, which is something I would never have expected in a million years.

Then Ms. Zebrowski stood up.

Pretty soon people were standing up all over the place.

Then Ms. Bentley finally untangled herself from the snowflakes and things started quieting down, but before a single word came out of her mouth, Jonah came bounding up on the stage in his dippy shirt with the zebras on it and shook her hand and congratulated her on the creativity of her approach and the inspiring attitude of her students, so she said “Thank you” instead of all the things she'd been about to say, and then everybody clapped.

We never finished the play.

Practically everybody signed Horace's petition, except Emily Harris's parents, who are mad at him. They wanted to see Emily make her big entrance with a laundry basket full of plastic fruit.

My father says he's really sorry he missed the play. He also says he's proud of me. Sally must have told him what happened.

He thinks that Jonah sounds like a great guy and that Horace is probably right about bumper stickers. The night he met Kim, he says, she was wearing a
SAVE THE RAIN FOREST
T-shirt. (And a miniskirt the size of a postage stamp, says Andrea.) Still, anyone who thinks about the rain forest, says Horace, can't be all bad.

My father hopes Kim and I will learn to love each other like sisters someday, since Kim isn't old enough to be my mother.

I said I'd think about it.

Today is my birthday. I have become a teenager.

Sally gave me a dress in a sort of turquoise-y color that actually makes my orange hair look sort of nice, and a set of removable tattoos, and a purple feathered hat, a really goony one with ostrich plumes. There was a dinner invitation taped to it.

Jonah gave me an astronomy book.

George gave me a butterfly made out of a paper plate that he made in kindergarten.

Horace Zimmerman made a donation in my name to the Save the Spotted Owl Foundation.

For dinner Sally made me a carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting, because that's my favorite, with thirteen candles on it, and we drank toasts to many happy returns in ginger ale. Then everybody sang, and George made me wear this birthday crown that he and Jonah made out of construction paper and aluminum foil.

George and Jonah have moved in with us.

What used to be the guest bedroom is now George's bedroom. Sally painted it yellow, which is his favorite color, and made curtains with a pattern of bears.

Sally and Jonah are in the big bedroom that used to be hers and my father's. They've moved the furniture in the study around so that there's room for Jonah's desk.

Sally and Jonah are really happy. Anyone can see it. They go around looking all lit up inside. When they get married, sometime this summer, I am going to be the maid of honor. George is going to be the flower boy, and Horace Zimmerman is going to play “We Shall Overcome” and “Puff, the Magic Dragon” on the violin.

Jonah says “We Shall Overcome” is a cherished song from the days of his distant youth, but I think there's more to it than that. I think it's a song for all of us in our family because we've all had to overcome stuff and move on.

“Puff, the Magic Dragon” is for George.

George thinks there's an invisible dragon living in the woods behind our house. He says that he knows it's there because when he puts out food, the dragon comes and eats it.

I think it's raccoons, but I'm not going to say so.

Today was the last day of school. Everybody talked about what they are going to do over the summer.

Here is what they said:

Everybody except Jason promised to help Horace make his stand, even Emily Harris, whose parents do not exactly approve of their daughter's consciousness being raised, but it's too late now. I guess it isn't Emily's fault that she's blond.

Even if we just make a little difference, Horace says, that's still something. And if everybody makes a little difference, sooner or later all those little bits add up.

I've been thinking lately about my New Year's resolutions. The year is half over and none of them have come to anything, not even the one about dyeing my horrible hair. Maybe it's just as well. Anyway, I wouldn't make the same resolutions now. Everything has changed. Nobody was exactly like I thought they were, and nothing turned out the way I thought it would.

Back in January I felt like my life was over and nothing would ever be happy again. Now I think I was full of crap. Sally says I'm growing up. Horace thinks I'm developing a political conscience. Jonah says time has a way of healing all kinds of wounds. George thinks it all has something to do with stars and bears.

I'm not sure. But for right now, I'm hoping for the best, just like Ms. Zebrowski said.

Many thanks to all who helped in the making of this book, among them Joshua Rupp, who supported Sarah's story every step of the way; Cynthia Platt, my patient editor, who defended Emily Harris; Charlotte Platt-Miller, who generously shared her mother during her very first months on earth; and all the talented and wonderful people at Candlewick who make books possible.

www.candlewick.com

www.candlewick.com

Rebecca Rupp,
a versatile and productive writer, is the author of nonfiction articles for many national magazines on topics ranging from the history of blue jeans to the science of ice cream. She is the author of several novels for children, including
The Dragon of Lonely Island
and
The Return of the Dragon, The Waterstone,
and
Journey to the Blue Moon: In Which Time Is Lost and Then Found Again.
A seasoned practitioner of homeschooling, she has written several books on the subject, including
The Complete Home Learning Sourcebook.
Another of her titles,
Everything You Never Learned About Birds,
is an informative resource full of hands-on science projects and a part of the Everything You Never Learned series, popular with both educators and parents. Her books for adults include
Committed to Memory: How We Remember and Why We Forget.
Rebecca Rupp lives in Vermont with her family.