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Erica looked at herself in the mirror and made a face.
Mother had made the decision to send her to school that year. Not the Academy of Espionage five years early because of her great talent, even though she was sure she had it.
She’d tried making the case that she should do that instead to Mother, but she’d just shaken her head and laughed.
No, she was going to Shady Grove Elementary, the school three streets over where she and Trixie would go play on the swings when they were in the United States. Sometimes they’d end up walking by when the other children were having recess and Erica would feel some sense of pity for them and their banal lives. Maybe one of them would make something of themselves someday, but the odds were slim. Unlike her, who had been given a legacy she was uniquely qualified to uphold.
She’d tried to make that argument to Mother as well, and she’d received the same sort of bemused reaction.
That time Mother had gotten down on her level. “Listen, sweetie, just think of it like an undercover mission!” she’d whispered with excitement the night before, trying to trick Erica into thinking this was far more important than it really was. Erica hadn’t even tried to look like she bought it (surely if she was qualified for an undercover mission, she’d actually be sent on one), so Mother had just sighed and said, “This is just what we’re doing for now. Besides, do you really want Trixie going there by herself?”
At this, Erica simply sighed, because someone had to make sure Trixie was okay, and that was her job as the big sister. So she conceded and said, “Fine. But I won’t have fun.”
Mother had just smiled and said, “Give it a chance, you’ll make friends.”
Which was how she’d ended up with a brand-new outfit (that she wouldn’t have been caught dead in in any other circumstance) and backpack and school supplies, staring into the mirror and trying to assess if she was a good fit for school.
This time of deep contemplation was broken by Trixie banging on the door and yelling “Erica! We can’t be late!!”
Erica opened up the door and said, “It is thirty minutes until the first bell rings. We’ll be fine.”
“Even so,” said Mother from down the hall, “We should get moving so that we have plenty of time to find your rooms.”
Erica sighed, finally tied her shoes, and grabbed the backpack (covered in cats) from next to her door. Trixie was still hopping back and forth with excitement, and for a fleeting moment Erica wished she could relate. But surely, Trixie would soon learn how much of a letdown school really was.
But when they got to Trixie’s kindergarten classroom, she practically skipped in and hung her My Little Pony backpack on the hook. She had to be reminded to say goodbye to Mother.
The dread in her stomach intensified as they walked to her classroom. She couldn’t imagine why, though. She was going to be fine. No one would figure out she was actually a spy because she was a good spy.
She walked into her classroom trying to project as much confidence as she didn’t feel as she greeted her teacher. Mrs. Lewis had just graduated from college the previous May from some college no one had ever cared about. At least that was what Erica had been able to find out about her.
She certainly had the confidence of someone who had never done this before, showing her to her seat, even though she could have very clearly read her name pasted on her desk. She thought this was perhaps a bit overkill but the next boy who came it got shown his own desk, walked away, and sat at a completely different desk. It took Mrs. Lewis at least three minutes to convince him to sit in his actual seat.
She gazed around the room and tried to get a feel for what this was actually going to be. It looked like every elementary school she’d seen in picture books. Every poster and bulletin board display seemed to be a generic “Isn’t learning fun?” “Read a book” or “Friends! We have them” and other such drivel, Erica assumed for the same reason that interrogation rooms were decorated peacefully.
She wondered if they had ever managed to stop a child struggling with subtraction from flying into a blind rage.
The bell rang before she could come to a satisfactory answer.
There was a series of announcements from the principal that Erica didn’t care about, and then Mrs. Lewis clapped her hands to get the class’s attention. “Boys and girls, we have a new student today!”
Erica felt herself freeze. Surely it wouldn’t happen when this was the first day for everyone in the class, but luck didn’t work like that apparently.
“Erica, why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself.”
“Um,” said Erica.
“Why don’t you start with your name,” Mrs. Lewis coached her.
Erica stared at her, surely this was obvious. “You said it already.”
“Well, where are you from?”
“Here.”
“But where were you from before?”
Erica looked at her again. Surely, she couldn’t actually be this stupid. “Also here.”
Mrs. Lewis looking more and more lost as to what to do with her, “Well, what do you like?”
“In what category?” Erica responded.
Mrs. Lewis sighed, “Whatever category you like.”
Rats. What was she supposed to do with that? “Books.”
Mrs. Lewis lit back up, seemingly back in familiar territory, “That’s wonderful! We read lots of books in second grade. What’s your favorite?”
Wilson’s Book of Practical Espionage Fashion. There were lots of ideas for how to put pockets on outfits that would hold secret weapons. She liked to look at the pictures and try to figure out how she could do that with her own outfits.
But she couldn’t say that. So she went with her second choice. “The encyclopedia.”
The class snickered, and Erica wasn’t sure what to do with that. It wasn’t a joke, and she didn’t think it was that strange. Trixie liked the encyclopedia too, sometimes. It had pictures of animals and stuff.
Mrs. Lewis kept smiling, but she gave up on trying to get Erica to participate. “Alright, boys and girls, please take out your pencils and I’ll come around and hand you a worksheet. Just do your best.”
The whole day dragged. Who could have guessed that a room of 25 seven-year-olds would ask as many stupid questions as they did? And they weren’t even entertainingly stupid, just things they should have known. And even when they were all working quietly, the things they were doing were too easy, and they had way too much time, and she wasn’t allowed to do anything else while she waited besides sit there.
She complained about this to Mother when she came and picked her up at the end of the day. Mother just responded with, “You’re just advanced, sweetheart. Give them time.”
Erica wanted to talk back, but before she could, Trixie ran up and yelled, “Mama! Guess what! I love school! I have a best friend now! Also! My tooth is loose, look!”
Mother turned her attention to Trixie and her loose tooth, and they all started walking back to their house.
The next two weeks dragged on in the same way. Trixie was having the time of her life, and Erica was having the time of her life in a bad way. She had no idea what she was supposed to do about the other kids. She mostly got through her time at school by reading whatever books she could snag from the school’s library.
Trixie tried to give her advice, “You should talk to people. You should just talk to them. They’ll be nice. All the kids in my class are nice. Except for Nora. I don’t like Nora.”
At least that’s what Erica thought she said. Trixie had taken up the habit of wiggling her tooth while she talked, and that made it hard to understand her sometimes.
But Trixie was determined. She was not about to let this die. To the point where at recess, when Erica was sitting on a bench reading a book, Trixie ran up to her and demanded to know why she wasn’t talking to the other girls.
It was less a question, and more a command to go talk to the other girls.
“Them,” said Trixie, very matter-of-factly, pointing at a trio of girls friendship bracelets at a picnic table. Erica looked over and sighed. They were all from her grade, but only one was from her actual class.
So Erica found herself with no other choice than to bow to the whims of a five-year-old tyrant, and she walked up to them and asked, very politely and normally, “Can I make bracelets with you?”
One of the girls (blonde bob, headband, neat dress) wrinkled her nose and said, “Why?”
Erica wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to respond to that so she shrugged.
The girl who was from Erica’s class (Nicole, unruly brown curls, struggled with subtraction) said, “Why don’t you go read the encyclopedia instead?”
“Oh my gosh,” said Blonde Bob turning to look at Nicole, her expression one of shock and delight, “Is that the weird girl from you class who said her favorite book was the encyclopedia?”
Nicole snickered, “Yeah, it totally is.”
“Hey!” yelled Trixie, who had done a horrible job of pretending she wasn’t eavesdropping, “Don’t call my sister weird!”
“Okay, but she is though,” said the third girl in the trio.
Trixie stormed over and looked very angry but couldn’t quite come off as menacing. “I said don’t. She’s not weird, she’s cool.”
“Maybe you’ll learn this in between letters of the alphabet,” said Nicole, “but she really is weird and you need to deal with it.”
In retrospect, Erica was never quite sure if there were signs that she should have picked up on to prevent what happened next. But if there were, she didn’t.
Quick as a blink, Trixie grabbed Nicole’s arm and bit it. Hard. Nicole screamed from the pain, and the other two girls screamed in sheer terror. Nicole struggled and eventually wrenched her arm away from Trixie, but in doing so, dislodged her loose tooth. Trixie felt it come out of her mouth and screamed, adding to the already deafening chaos.
All the commotion caused the teach on duty to come over, and all the girls were marched back to the school building.
“But my tooth!” Trixie said through her tears, “The tooth fairy’s not going to come if I don’t have my tooth!”
Her protests were ignored.
Trixie and Nicole were escorted to the nurse’s office to get patched up, and the other girls were sat on a hard bench right outside the secretary’s office. They were all escorted in one by one for interrogation, and Erica remembered all her training and kept her mouth shut the whole time.
Erica started reading the bulletin board across from the bench (school events happening throughout the year, no real theme beyond bright colors) when she heard the secretary through the door, “Hello?... Mrs. Hale?... This is Pamela, I’m the secretary from Shady Grove Elementary… Well that was what I wanted to call about, it appears there was a bullying incident and your daughter bit a fellow student… No, Beatrice… We’re not quite sure all of the details, but we do know that it was Beatrice who bit the other student… Mostly because she has been announcing it very proudly at any given opportunity… We’ll sort out the details later, but right now you are going to need to come down and pick her up… alright, we’ll see you then.”
Erica leaned over to Trixie, who had since been brought into the principal’s office too and was still a little distraught over her tooth, and whispered, “Why did you do it?”
Trixie stopped sniffling for a second and looked up at her quizzically, “Because we’re sisters and we’re supposed to stick together.”
Erica rolled her eyes, she couldn’t help it, “I was fine on the bench.”
“Yeah, but you need friends and I have friends and I was going to help.”
“How about we just be friends and don’t worry about it anymore.”
Trixie heaved a beleaguered sigh and said, “Fine. But can you help me find my tooth?”
“Sure. What else are friends for.”
Erica was sure they were in for a lecture beyond anything she could imagine, but at the very least, they probably wouldn’t have to return to the school the next day. Or maybe ever. And it was all because she had her little sister in her corner.
Maybe this whole misadventure wasn’t so terrible after all.