Nothing ever happens
except for sometimes . . .
And only on rare-ish occasions,
which is hardly ever.
I mainly always find
something to do even if there is nothing going on, which might be cutting things up and turning them into something else. I can do this for a long time unless my younger brother comes into my room, which is also his.
I don’t like sharing a room because it means someone has permission to disturb you even when you are minding your own business and are alone-ly happy.
If I read, then it will be in the linen closet.
It’s warm in there with all the towels and sheets and it’s dark unless you have a flashlight, which I do.
Although it doesn’t always light up, because my sister, Marcie, usually unscrews the end and steals the batteries out.
If there is absolutely nothing else to do, then I am very good at staring out the window. It is a way of noticing things by accident, which is almost always more interesting than noticing them on purpose.
And it is how for example e.g. you one day watch a camel walking down the road when it really
shouldn’t, because camels don’t exist in Navarino Street.
Navarino Street is our street and the houses are all joined together at the sides and they slope downward in a curve. Seven of us live in our house and one of us is Grandad, who has a room on the first floor, because he can be wobbly on the stairs. I have an older brother named Kurt and a younger brother named Minal Cricket and an older sister named Marcie, who steals batteries out of other people’s flashlights. Other than that my family is my mom and my dad and me, Clarice Bean. We have a cat
sometimes but he spends a lot of the day eating food at other people’s houses and cannot be relied on to be a pet when you need him.
Luckily our cat, Fuzzy, does not eat birds or he would have to move out for always because you see Grandad is very attached to birds and does not like them being eaten by cats.
Grandad has his own bird who is a canary named Chirp. Chirp is one of Grandad’s best friends. He lets her fly around his room and sing on his shoulder.
Chirp is Grandad’s always-there companion.
Grandad likes company but he says he doesn’t always need to talk.
He says, “Sometimes I just want to sit with somebody and be understood without words.”
Chirp is good for this because she doesn’t know any words—she only does tunes—and Grandad says, “You can float away on a good tune, and floating away is sometimes just the ticket.”
I am in agreement with Grandad, except for the part about not needing to talk.
I
always need to talk, but I often wish there was more listening and less talking back.
So it seems very unfair that I have to share a room with Minal Cricket.
He does nothing
but not listening.
Someone who is a good listener is my granny.
She is also a good talker. She knows everything and when she doesn’t she comes up with something. She says she’s good at figuring things out. That’s her talent.
I am often wondering what mine is.
Granny lives in New York, and we have long conversations on the telephone.
She says I am one of those people who is good at finding the interesting. She says, “People who find the interesting
are interesting.”
She says, “You are a very resourceful person, Clarice Bean.” She means I am good at coming up with ideas when there aren’t any.
So maybe
that is
my talent.
But there are some times when even I can’t turn the nothing into more than it is.
I hate the nothing days.
When the day feels nothingy, I tend to lie on the floor and wish I wasn’t lying on the floor.
It’s very hard to get up when you feel like this.
But there’s nothing
you can do about it.
When things start nothingy, they always get more and more nothing until someone throws someone else’s duvet out the window or pinches someone else on the arm and the someone else tells Mom.
Pinching is not allowed. Everyone gets angry and fed up on the nothing days but it just can’t be helped.
It’s no one’s fault, and in the end the only thing to do is go to bed at bedtime and cross your toes that you will wake up differently.
But there was one day in the summer that began as a
nothing day
and then
everything happened.
Absolutely
almost
everything.
It started like this . . .
Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Child; Illustrated by Lauren Child. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
