Daphne's Book Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  About the Author

  Clarion Books

  a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003

  Copyright © 1983 by Mary Downing Hahn

  First Clarion paperback edition, 2008.

  All rights reserved

  For information about permission to reproduce selections

  from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003.

  www.clarionbooks.com

  Printed in the U S A

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows

  Hahn, Mary Downing

  Daphne's book

  Summary As author Jessica and artist Daphne collaborate

  on a picture book for a seventh-grade English class contest,

  Jessica becomes aware of conditions in Daphne's home life

  that seem to threaten her health and safety

  [1 School stories 2 Books and reading—Fiction

  3. Authorship—Fiction 4 Family problems—Fiction ] 1 Title

  PZ7 H1256Dap 1983 [Fic] 83-7348

  CL ISBN-13 978-0-89919-183-6

  PA ISBN-13 978-0-547-01641-2

  VB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To my mother,

  ELISABETH SHERWOOD DOWNING,

  with love and affection

  One

  IT WAS ONE of those dreary January days when nothing goes right. First of all, I overslept. Then I discovered that my brother Josh had used up all the hot water taking his shower. And then, as a final blow, I saw Josh grab the last doughnut as he ran out the door.

  By the time I was ready to leave for school, it was pouring rain. Anywhere else it would have been snow, but not here in Maryland. No, a blizzard was raging across New England, and I was sure that all the schools there were closed, but here I was, slogging down the footpath, my shoes soaked, my hair plastered to my forehead in wet strips. By the time I got to Oakcrest Middle School, I looked as if someone had dumped a bucket of water on me.

  While I was trying to force my frozen fingers to open the lock on my locker, I dropped my lunch bag, and everything in it fell to the floor. Somebody stepped on my sandwich, and I never found my apple. I think Curtis Folwell probably ate it.

  But all of these things were nothing compared to what happened in English. Mr. O'Brien, who used to be my favorite teacher, decided to ruin not only what was left of my day but my life as well. Not that I realized what he was up to at first. Oh no, I just sat there smiling innocently while he announced a new project for us.

  "We have been invited to enter the seventh-grade Write-a-Book contest." Mr. O'Brien stroked his beard and smiled, inviting us to share his enthusiasm.

  "We have to write a book?" Tony Cisco stared at Mr. O'Brien as if he had just announced that our class had been chosen to go on a forty-mile hike at the North Pole.

  "A picture book, to be exact," Mr. O'Brien said.

  As kids all over the room began protesting that they couldn't draw, hated drawing, didn't know how to write, etc., etc., etc., Mr. O'Brien somehow managed to regain control of the situation. "This is the way it works," he said. "You form teams. One writes the story, and the other illustrates it. Then you bind it like a real book. There's so much talent in this room that I know we can produce a winner."

  "That's all there is to it?" Tony looked at Mr. O'Brien suspiciously.

  "Well, it has to be between ten and twenty pages long, it has to be original, and spelling, punctuation, and neatness count." Mr. O'Brien smiled and shrugged. "It's going to be a great experience."

  "Oh, man." Tony slumped in his seat, obviously depressed at the thought of punctuation and spelling. "Can't it just be pictures? No words, no sentences, no commas and periods and all that stuff?"

  A little laugh rippled around the room, proving, as usual, that the dumber you act, the funnier people think you are. But not people like Mr. O'Brien. He shook his head and frowned at Tony.

  Gesturing for us to be quiet, Mr. O'Brien went on. "Since the books are team efforts, I've gone ahead and picked partners." As the class began to ripple again, Mr. O'Brien shushed us a little more forcefully. "One thing I want to make clear before I read the names...." He paused dramatically and looked at us.

  "There will be no changes. The partner I assign you is the partner you will keep. I've given the teams a lot of thought, and I will not make any changes. So don't come running up to me after class begging me to let you be someone else's partner. No matter what your reason is, I will not change my mind."

  Everybody shifted around and murmured, but we got quiet as he started to read the list. I looked at Tracy Atkins and crossed my fingers, hoping he'd let us work together. We've been friends since kindergarten, but lately she's been spending more and more time with Michelle Swanson and Sherry Hartman. I was sure that if we worked on a book together, we'd soon be as close as we used to be.

  I should have known that the Write-a-Book contest wasn't going to turn out any better than the rest of the day. First of all, Mr. O'Brien assigned Tracy and Michelle to work together. They both gave a little squeal and grinned at each other, as if they could hardly wait to start planning their book. Feeling very disappointed, I slid down in my seat and glared at Mr. O'Brien's feet, barely listening until I heard my name paired with Daphne Woodleigh. I sat up then and stared at him in disbelief. He couldn't have put Daphne and me together! Tracy shot me a look of sympathy, but Michelle rolled her eyes and giggled.

  While Mr. O'Brien continued to describe the contest, I stared at my desk, trying not to cry. How could Mr. O'Brien have done such a horrible thing to me? He must know how much everybody hated Daphne, he must have noticed how strange she was. Cautiously I looked across the room at her.

  There she sat, her long black hair falling down her back, hiding her face like a dark curtain. As usual, she was wearing one of her bizarre outfits. Two or three layers of baggy sweaters and blouses, a calf-length tiered skirt, dark tights, thick leg warmers, and ballerina slippers. It was the sort of outfit a fashion model might wear, but in a roomful of girls wearing Shetland sweaters and blue jeans, Daphne's clothes looked terribly out of place.

  Her wardrobe was only part of her problem. Daphne had appeared at Oakcrest in September, about a week after school started, but, as far as I knew, she had never said one word to anybody. Not even a teacher. When Mr. O'Brien called on her in class, she never knew the question, let alone the answer. She spent all her time either reading a library book or drawing elaborate doodles all over her notebook paper.

  Even stranger was her attitude toward the kids in our class. The day she walked into English, she didn't seem to notice that everyone was staring at her. She just stood there in front of the room looking at the floor while Mr. O'Brien introduced her. Tony pretended to misunderstand her name.

  "Did you say her name is Daffy?" he asked, glancing at Scott and Michelle to see if they were amused. They were, of course.

  The name Daffy stuck, and to make it worse, Tony added "Duck" as an afterthought. For weeks, he led all the other kids in a chorus of quacks whenever Daphne appeared, but she ignored them. After a while, most of them got bored. What fun was it to tease so
meone if it didn't bother her? Tony, Scott, Michelle, and Sherry, though, never gave up. They still called her Daffy and quacked when she glided past them, her nose in a book.

  As I sat there pondering my future as Daphne's partner, Kim Barnes handed me a tiny folded-up piece of paper. It was a note from Tracy. "What are you going to do?!!! You can't be Daffy's partner!!!" it said. I looked across the room at Tracy and shrugged my shoulders. What could I do? Mr. O'Brien had made it clear there would be no changes.

  When the bell rang, I gathered up my things hastily, wanting to get away from Mr. O'Brien as quickly as possible. I wasn't fast enough, though. As I passed his desk, he reached out and took my arm. "Can I talk to you a minute, Jessica?"

  Unhappily I nodded my head.

  After everyone had run off to the cafeteria, he cleared his throat. "You didn't look very happy about the choice of partners for the Write-a-Book contest," he said.

  Staring at the tan tiles on the floor, I shook my head. I was afraid to say anything because I knew I was about to cry. My lips were getting shaky and my chin was wobbling, and my eyes were brimming with tears.

  "You know why I want you and Daphne to work together?" Mr. O'Brien asked softly.

  I shook my head again.

  "You're the best writer in the class, and she's the best artist. Together you should produce a wonderful book." He paused, probably expecting me to say something. When I didn't, he added, "There was another reason, Jessica. I think you're a very sensitive person. I can't imagine your hurting someone or being unkind." He paused again, but I kept right on staring at the floor, at our shoes, his a pair of scuffed loafers, mine a still-damp pair of running shoes, both of them blurred by my tears.

  "Daphne needs a friend, Jessica," he said, his hand on my shoulder. "Please give her a chance."

  "I'll try," I whispered unhappily. Ever since the first day of English class, I'd liked Mr. O'Brien. Although I hadn't seen my real father for years, I often pretended that he was like Mr. O'Brien—handsome, patient, kind, and understanding. Now here was Mr. O'Brien telling me I was a sensitive person, the sort who could help a girl like Daphne. Even though I was sure I couldn't do a thing for her, I didn't want to let Mr. O'Brien down. If he thought I was sensitive, I would be sensitive.

  "It's just that I wanted to be Tracy's partner. I thought we could make a good book together," I said, still hoping he might change his mind. Maybe he hadn't thought of Tracy and me as a team.

  "I'm sure you and Tracy could do a good job, Jessica, but I think you and Daphne can create something really special. Okay?" He gave my shoulder a gentle little shake and smiled at me.

  "Okay." I blinked hard, trying to rid my eyes of tears, and did my best to smile at him.

  "Good girl. I knew I could count on you, Jessica." Releasing me, he smiled again. "Well, I didn't mean to take so much of your lunchtime. You better hurry on down to the cafeteria."

  After I left Mr. O'Brien, I went to the girls' room instead of the cafeteria. Locking myself into a stall, I cried for several minutes. Then I sat there glumly reading the messages on the wall. "John and Susie 4-Ever!" "Michelle and Tony —TRUE LOVE!!!" And some other stuff about sex that I didn't understand and didn't want to understand.

  Although I wasn't very hungry, I ate what was left of my sandwich, and then I waited for the bell to ring. I just wasn't up to sitting at a lunch table with Tracy, Michelle, and Sherry. I knew that all they'd talk about was Daphne, and I didn't feel like listening to it.

  Two

  BY THE TIME I got out of school, the rain had turned to a nasty, cold drizzle, and I plodded along the footpath, feeling as gloomy as the bare, dripping trees looked. Pausing on a bridge, I leaned over the rail and watched the creek go frothing and swirling over the rocks. Idly I dropped a twig in the water and saw it go dancing away on the current.

  As I stood there shivering in the rain, I thought about what Mr. O'Brien had said. Did he think I was sensitive because I wore glasses and wrote the best compositions in class and always got A's on my tests? Or because I was shy and always hovering on the edge of things?

  He probably realized that I wasn't what you would call a popular person. But I wasn't an outcast either. Kids like Michelle and Sherry tolerated me; they didn't hate me or make fun of me. They even let me sit at their lunch table.

  But that was mainly because of Tracy. She was the one who stood up for me. More than once she had defended me when Michelle or Tony took a pot shot at me for being so brainy or looking more like a nine-year-old than a twelve-year-old.

  What would happen to me now that my name was linked to Daphne's? I shuddered, knowing I could never bear the sort of teasing she endured day after day. Daphne, strange as she was, was obviously a lot tougher than I was. The very thought of being laughed at made me tremble.

  If I'd had more self-confidence, I probably wouldn't have worried about it. I would have told myself that it was just a school project with no bearing on my social life. But I had very little self-confidence, and I was sure that it wouldn't take much to turn people like Michelle and Sherry against me. I was afraid that by the time the Write-a-Book contest was over, I would be as friendless as Daphne.

  Glumly I crossed the bridge and took a short cut through a field behind the townhouses. As I unlocked our front door, I heard Josh's stereo shaking the walls, filling the whole house with the sound of drums and electric guitars.

  "Do you have to play that dumb music so loud?" I shouted.

  "What?" Josh stuck his head out of the kitchen. He was stuffing a huge peanut butter and banana sandwich into his mouth and trying to talk around it.

  "Turn your stereo down!"

  "I will when I go upstairs. I have to hear it down here, don't I?" He poured himself a glass of milk and dumped half a can of chocolate syrup into it. "What's the matter, Jess-o? You have a bad day at school or something?" He gave me a condescending smile and reached out to pat the top of my head.

  Angrily I ducked away, scowling at him. Just because he's in the ninth grade, he thinks he can treat me like a little kid.

  Taking a bite out of an apple, Josh looked down his long nose at me. "Just wait till you get to high school, kid. You'll appreciate Oakcrest then." Shaking his head, he wandered upstairs. His door thunked shut and the stereo dropped to a bearable thrum of drums and snarling singers.

  I went into the living room, picked up Snuff, our cat, and collapsed on the couch. From where I lay, I could see the gray sky, the bare trees, and the upper stories of the row of townhouses behind ours. They were tan stucco, and the rain had covered them with streaks, making them look drearier than usual. Shutting my eyes, I decided that Adelphia was a boring and depressing place to live, full of boring and depressing people.

  "You know what?" I said to Snuff, who was crouched miserably on my stomach, waiting for an opportunity to escape. "When I'm sixteen I'm going to quit school and hitchhike around the world. I'm going to places like Tibet and New Zealand and Laos and Thailand, and I'm going to write about them and take all kinds of pictures. My articles will be in the National Geographic, Snuff. I'll win a Pulitzer Prize, and Mr. O'Brien will be so proud of me."

  As Snuff wiggled frantically, trying to get away from me, I imagined myself squatting in a rubble-strewn street somewhere in the Near East, photographing an approaching tank or saving a dying child.

  Unimpressed by my future, Snuff flattened her ears and hissed. Then, digging her claws into my sweater, she made a supreme effort and leaped from my arms.

  "Just wait till I'm famous, you stupid cat! You'll be sorry then." Angrily I tossed a pillow at her, but she dodged it effortlessly and ran into the kitchen. I could hear her crunching away at her cat food, making herself fatter and fatter.

  Around six o'clock, I heard the front door open. "Hi, I'm home," Mom shouted from the hallway. "Is anybody here?"

  "I'm in the living room," I called, "And Josh is upstairs doing permanent and irreversible damage to his ears."

  Mom came in and sat dow
n on the end of the couch. "How was school today, Jess?"

  I sat up and threw my arms around her. "It was awful, just awful!" Before she had a chance to say anything, I told her what Mr. O'Brien had done to me. "Everybody hates Daphne. They call her Daffy Duck and they quack whenever they see her. I don't want to be her partner, Mom!" Giving her another hug, I looked pleadingly at her. "Could you call up Mr. O'Brien and tell him how upset I am and ask him if he could please let me work with someone else? Please, Mom, please, could you?"

  Mom looked at me, her face puzzled but not as sympathetic as I had hoped it would be. "Jessica, I'm sorry you're so unhappy about this, but I'm sure working with Daphne won't be as bad as you think it will." She hugged me and gave me a kiss; her cheeks were still cold from being outside, but her arms made me feel warm and protected. "Did you put the casserole in the oven when you came home from school?"

  "Oh no, I forgot all about it, Mom!" Stricken with guilt, I watched her take the Pyrex dish out of the refrigerator and stick it in the oven. "I'm sorry, Mom, I really am, but I was so upset about school, I just didn't think about it."

  Slamming the oven door shut, Mom frowned at me. "I'm sorry, too, Jessica. I was expecting dinner to be almost ready when I got home."

  I followed Mom out to the kitchen so I could continue our conversation about Mr. O'Brien and Daphne. As I watched her cleaning up the mess that Josh had left on the counter, though, I changed my mind. Without waiting to be asked, I got out the silverware and started setting the table. I had a feeling she might be in a better mood after dinner.

  Later that night, I sat down on the couch next to Mom. She looked up from the book she was reading. "Did you finish your homework?" she asked.

  I nodded. "I did all my math and I wrote my book report." Clearing my throat, I smiled at her. "You know the Write-a-Book contest I was telling you about?"

  "It sounds like something you'd really enjoy doing. Do you have an idea for your story yet?"

  "No, but I'll think of something. It's not due till February twentieth, so I have a whole month." I paused and started fiddling with the fringe on one of the throw pillows. "The thing is, I want to do it with Tracy. Not Daphne."