Clarice Bean, Smile

Wishfully Thinking
Sometimes when I am meant to be doing something else, like for instance my project about endangered species, I get this urge to lie on the floor and watch the dust circling around my room. And what you notice is that you can only see it in the sun rays.
   And if the sun doesn’t shine it is utterly invisible to the eye. And when you stare at it for a long time you notice how it keeps changing direction and you lose one speck of dust and follow another, and it is exactly the same with daydreaming. All the thoughts get lost in other thoughts, and before you know it you are in Australia wondering what would happen if a kangaroo got into your garden. Which makes you think how strange kangaroos are, such big feet and such small arms, like Martians.
   Not that we can be sure what a Martian even looks like. I don’t think anyone has ever gone up to anyone from out of space and asked them, “Are you from Mars?”
   I wonder what it’s like up there.
   I wonder if Martians daydream about coming to Earth.
   I wonder if they daydream about growing trees on Mars.
   I wonder if they even know what a tree is.
   Can you daydream about things you have never heard of?
   I daydream a lot.
   At the moment I am daydreaming about inventing something that could change the world. I’m not sure how or what it would do, but I would like to invent something which changes everything for the better, because of all the things, it’s the better that’s needed.
   They say smiling makes things better. And if you practice smiling you feel better.
   Even when you are sad and you aren’t smiling inside.
   It’s something to do with the chemicals in your brain and smiling switches them on.
   Betty’s mom, call-me-Mol, once told me that smiling is contagious, which means it is highly catching—so when we see other people smiling it makes us feel . . . more like smiling.
   There are twenty-one ways to smile.
   I read that in Ruby Redfort: A Guide to Totally Almost Everything. It’s not one whole guidebook all in one go—it’s a series that comes out every month, like a magazine but not.
   Granny sends them to me.
   This month’s one is the guide to unspoken language, which basically means body language and facial expressions, except it’s got a much better title than that. Ruby Redfort never bothers to make things boring when they can be interesting. Why would she?
   It’s called Smile It Up.
   If you don’t know who Ruby Redfort is, where have you been living all this time—Mars? That’s the kind of thing Ruby would say.
   Of course you will know that Patricia F. Maplin Stacey created Ruby Redfort—she is a very famous writer and campaigner for nature. She even started a wolf sanctuary. In case you are from Mars and don’t know it, Ruby Redfort is a thirteen-year-old schoolkid codebreaker agent. She has a house-manager butler named Hitch, who is secretly an undercover agent. And she has a housekeeper named Mrs. Digby, who makes pancakes. Ruby’s parents never know what she is up to and don’t realize that she spends her time either hanging on to a cliff edge, escaping evil-doers, or hanging out in the Twinford Diner with her friends.
   Betty and me are nuts about her.
   That’s another thing Ruby would say:
  “I’m a nut for it.”
   Which means “I love it,” which is a good thing.
   Or, “You are driving me nuts.”
   Which means “I can’t actually stand you right now.”
   It’s funny how a word can mean a good AND a bad thing.
   Someone who does drive me nuts is my younger brother, Minal Cricket. I used to share a room with him, but now I’ve been rehoused in the attic—it’s just me up here.
   I was moved into the attic just after Betty Moody left, which was sad because I had imagined my room with her sitting on a beanbag.
   Now she lives probably hundreds or even thousands of miles away in San Francisco. She’s been gone a long time and I don’t know if she’ll ever come back.
   Sometimes I daydream that our doorbell will ring—even though it’s broken—and there will be Betty Moody standing on the step.
   It’s what Granny would call wishful thinking.
   I do a lot of wishful thinking.
   Although wishful thinking doesn’t always work because you are just leaving life up to chance and chance doesn’t always go your way.
   I wish Betty was here to help me with my summer project.
   I have picked the category endangered predators, and once I have chosen which exact one to focus on, I then have to make it into a work of art. It’s got to be decided before September.
   Which is tomorrow.
   I’m not sure where all the time went. I start off with a lot and then it suddenly drifts away. And I find myself lying on the floor watching the dust float in the sun.
   I know what Mrs. Wilberton is going to say. “If you spent even half as much time on your schoolwork as you spend on looking at dust floating, then you wouldn’t be struggling to know what thirteen times nine is.”
   Mrs. Wilberton is not an endangered species. She has been my teacher forever, but it feels like longer, and even though she keeps promising to leave she never does.
   She says I waste a lot of time daydreaming.
   She says, “Where on earth does it get you, staring into space all day long?”
   But if we didn’t do any staring into space then we wouldn’t have the space to think, and if you can’t think then how can you think about how to change things for the better?
And it’s true. You might only be thinking about the small thoughts, but small thoughts can turn into big thoughts.
   And small ideas can change the world.
   Or is that just wishful thinking?