Somebody's Girl (Orca Young Readers) Read online

  Somebody’s Girl

  Somebody’s Girl

  MAGGIE DE VRIES

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2011 Maggie de Vries

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  De Vries, Maggie

  Somebody’s girl / Maggie de Vries.

  (Orca young readers)

  Issued also in electronic format.

  ISBN 978-1-55469-383-2

  I. Title. II. Series: Orca young readers

  PS8557.E895S64 2011 JC813’.54 C2010-907920-5

  First published in the United States, 2011

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010941923

  Summary: Martha knows she is adopted, but when her mother becomes pregnant, she worries about no longer being number one in her parents’ hearts.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Typesetting by Jasmine Devonshire

  Cover artwork by Suzanne Duranceau

  Author photo by Roland Kokke

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B PO BOX 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  14 13 12 11 • 4 3 2 1

  To Clea, Dea, Kathryn and Tanya: friends for life.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1 A Girl, a Boy and a Great Big Fish

  CHAPTER 2 Mom Lies Down

  CHAPTER 3 Center of Discovery

  CHAPTER 4 One on One

  CHAPTER 5 The Scariest Night of the Year

  CHAPTER 6 A Girl?

  CHAPTER 7 Stupid Fish

  CHAPTER 8 Real Mom

  CHAPTER 9 Alone

  CHAPTER 10 In the Finite Forest

  CHAPTER 11 Mom Calls

  CHAPTER 12 Crows at Sunset

  CHAPTER 13 New Baby

  CHAPTER 14 Home

  CHAPTER 15 School Again

  CHAPTER 1

  A Girl, a Boy and a Great Big Fish

  “Hailey, you’ll be partners with Emily,” Mr. Jewett said. “And Martha—”

  Martha had trouble lifting her eyes from the back page of her notebook.

  Martha Serena Johnson.

  Martha Serena Johnson.

  Martha Serena Johnson.

  Her name looked lovely lined up like that, the letters all swirly. She was developing beautiful handwriting, if she did say so herself. She loved the last two parts of her name, but she would never understand why Mom and Dad had let her birth mother give her any name at all, let alone such a plain-Jane name as Martha.

  “Martha,” the teacher said again, “you’ll be partners with Chance.”

  Martha flinched. To be stuck with a boy was bad enough. She was sure almost all the other pairs were boy/boy and girl/girl. But to be stuck with Chance?

  Ever since Chance had shown up in Martha’s class last spring, all jumpy and annoying, and always, always in trouble, Martha had kept her distance. He was a foster child—everyone knew it. Martha was adopted, which was a whole different thing. She wished she could get up in front of the whole school and tell them. And she wished that nobody—nobody— knew. Now Mr. Jewett was pairing up the adopted girl and the fostered boy, like they belonged together. But Chance was nothing like her. Nothing at all.

  Yes, Chance had settled down a bit since last year. They were three weeks into grade four, and he hadn’t hit anyone yet, at least not that Martha had seen. Most days he was lined up outside with everyone else at the end of lunch and recess, instead of slinking back to class from the principal’s office.

  In addition to being messed up in every other way, Chance couldn’t even do his five times tables. In grade four! And he couldn’t tell time from the clock on the wall. He had to look at his digital watch. Martha had noticed.

  Besides, he had a friend. Ken, that boy from Hong Kong, was always hanging around with him. Why couldn’t Chance and Ken be partners?

  “Why can’t I be partners with Ken?” said Chance.

  Martha flinched again. She could not believe that Chance had dared to ask when she had not. She glanced across the room, met Preeti’s eyes and longed for things to be the way they were last year, when at least she had had friends. Preeti looked away. Well, Martha knew she had ruined that friendship herself.

  “No, Chance. You will be working with Martha, and Ken will be working with Jonas.” Mr. Jewett raised a hand when Chance opened his mouth to speak again. “I have my reasons,” he said, smiling as he said it.

  Martha wasn’t smiling. She thought she knew exactly what those reasons were, and they weren’t right. She narrowed her eyes as Chance approached her desk, thumping his chair along the floor behind him. How dared he ask for a different partner?

  He narrowed his eyes right back, but she looked down at her work.

  Sturgeon spawn every twelve years, she wrote in her neatest cursive, with a lovely flourish on each y.

  “Do you know what spawn means?”

  Martha’s head jerked up as Chance spoke, much too close to her ear.

  “Of course I do!”

  “Babies,” Chance said, looking right into her eyes. “It means having babies.” He paused. “Like your mom.”

  Martha clenched her right hand into a fist.

  “My mother is not spawning,” she said, keeping her voice low. “My mother is having a baby. Only fish spawn.”

  “That’s not true,” Chance said. “Frogs spawn. And toads.” He thought for a moment. “So do salamanders and newts.”

  Martha dug her nails into her palm and imagined her fist connecting with Chance’s nose. She glanced toward Mr. Jewett’s desk and met the teacher’s eyes. He drew his brows together and gave his head a small shake. How did he know what she was thinking? Well, she wouldn’t have punched Chance in class anyway. Or in her new outfit.

  Martha swished her long dark hair across her back, feeling its comforting weight, and turned her attention back to her worksheet. How much would a ninety-year-old sturgeon weigh? She would have to consult that weird sturgeon age-and-weight chart to work it out. Chance would be no help. Who cared about the weight of a great, big, stupid garbage-sucking fish anyway? She tried to ignore the heat in her face and the pounding in her chest.

  If only her mother and Chance’s foster mother, Angie, weren’t best friends.

  Martha’s class had been studying sturgeon since the first day of grade four. Martha already knew how boring the fish were. September was going to be over soon. Maybe, she dared to hope, the big-fish project would be over soon too.

  “Class,” Mr. Jewett said, “you’re all settled with your new partners now. Your new partnership is very, very important. You see, you are going to be working together on the sturgeon project for some time.”

  Martha could not believe what she was hearing.

  A rumble of mumbles greeted Mr. Jewett, but he just waved his arm in the air. “For today, I’d like you to complete your worksheets
together. Help each other. Share your knowledge. And get to know each other a little bit.”

  The mumbles settled down in the face of an easy task.

  Martha glanced at Chance’s worksheet. It looked as if it had been attacked by a pack of starving gerbils. Or maybe a sturgeon had spawned on it. Or a newt.

  Then something else occurred to her. Chance might be lacking in brains, and he might be messy, but he did know a thing or two about fish.

  “So, partner,” she said, “how much would a ninetyyear-old sturgeon weigh?”

  By the time the bell went, her worksheet was finished, and she suspected that every answer was right too. She had not liked writing Chance’s name under hers at the top, but Mr. Jewett had insisted they combine their work, and Chance had given her almost all the answers.

  He didn’t seem to have too much trouble with numbers if they related to the weight, length or girth of a fish.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mom Lies Down

  Martha’s mom looked up from where she stood at the kitchen counter peeling carrots for Martha’s lunch.

  She frowned.

  “That’s not the outfit I put out for you, Martha. That skirt and top don’t match.” Her voice rose, just a little. “And I’m sure that T-shirt was at the bottom of the stack.” She dropped the peeler, gave her hands a wipe on the dishcloth and strode past Martha toward Martha’s room.

  “I took it out carefully,” Martha said as she chased her mother up the stairs. “Why can’t I wear what I want?”

  Mom stood in the bedroom doorway. Martha stepped up behind her. The cupboard door was open, but the stack of shirts was all folded back into place. Her nightie was in the hamper. She had even given the duvet a shake and pulled it up like Mom always asked her to.

  Mom sighed. “I’ll tidy up here later,” she said. “I haven’t finished making your lunch, and I have a doctor’s appointment this morning. Why can’t you just wear what I lay out?” She reached into the closet. “Here’s the shirt I picked for you. Change.” And she was gone, back to the kitchen.

  Martha resisted stomping her foot. Her mother had picked out a purple shirt to go with the purple and gray skirt that Martha had on. Martha looked down at the yellow shirt that she had selected herself. She knew it went with the skirt. She just did. Look at me, it called out. I look good.

  She pulled off the yellow shirt and tossed it on her bed. The other one was pretty, and the outfit worked. But in it, she was just another boring girl. All matchy-matchy.

  What had Linda, her birth mother, worn when she was nine? Martha wondered. She’d be willing to bet that Linda had not limited herself to purple with purple and pink with pink. She gave her head a shake. Why was she even thinking about her birth mother? Linda had only just started seeing Martha again last Christmas after being gone for more than two years. Martha was better off choosing her own clothes.

  In Martha’s opinion, open adoptions just created problems. Her birth mother had given her away, but she still got to give her a name. She still got to see her if she wanted, but then she could disappear for years too. “She has problems,” Mom had explained more than once. “She wants to see you. She really does. But she struggles. She has trouble finding work and holding down a job.”

  Those were just excuses as far as Martha was concerned. Not that she wanted to see Linda anyway. And when she and Mom and Dad had gone out for dinner with Linda just before Christmas last year, Martha had backed away from the pale bony woman with stringy black hair who breathed smoker’s breath on her when she tried to hug her. Since then, she had seen Linda four more times: three times with Mom and once with Mom and Dad. Linda was looking a little fatter the last time, in July, when they had gone to an outdoor pool together, but she still smelled of smoke. And she still had a kind of desperate way about her when she came at Martha for one of those hugs.

  Martha looked at herself in the mirror, smoothed down the front of her skirt and pulled her hair around over her shoulder. It might be black like Linda’s, and long like Linda’s too, but it was thick and glossy and neatly trimmed every few weeks by her mom’s hairdresser, Quentina.

  She was due for a trim soon, actually, but she wouldn’t have to see Linda again for at least another month. Martha slid her feet into her shoes, grabbed her bag, ran downstairs and set off for school.

  Chance and Martha were in the computer lab doing research on sturgeon. They had found the Fraser River Sturgeon Conservation Society website.

  “…novel life history and migration information for the species…” Martha read off the monitor.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Chance said.

  “Yes, it does,” Martha said. “It means…” She hated to admit that she didn’t get it either.

  “Angie says your mom’s not doing so well,” Chance said.

  Martha’s head snapped around. “Why are you talking with Angie about my mom?”

  Chance’s face sort of collapsed. “I…I didn’t…”

  “You didn’t what? My mother is just fine, thank you.”

  Chance looked mad all of a sudden. “Okay,” he said. “If that’s the way you want it. Your mother is just fine.”

  Martha saw the red flush across his neck and chin. How dared he say mother like that? She met his eyes. “At least my parents adopted me,” she said clearly. “You’re just a foster kid. You and that whiny little Louise. Mark’s the only real kid in your family.”

  She watched Chance closely as she said it. The skin across his cheeks tightened and grew pale. Martha’s stomach flipped.

  Mark was two years older, in grade six. Last year, when Chance had come along, Mark had been furious, Martha remembered. He had thought that one foster child—that sobbing baby, Louise—had been more than enough. He was Angie and Doug’s biological son, not adopted, not a foster child. Martha had never liked him, but she sympathized. Imagine living with Chance!

  “And I see my real mother all the time,” she added, squirming a little inside as she said it. Linda was her birth mother, yes, but not her real mother. Not really. And Martha had been seeing her regularly for less than a year. And not liking one minute of it.

  Chance was not looking at her anymore. He was staring at the computer screen, as if concentration could unlock the words there and release their meanings.

  “I don’t remember my real mother,” he said, his voice almost too quiet to hear.

  “Well, I know mine,” she said, a little too loudly.

  Chance looked up at her. “I’m going back to class,” he said, shoving his chair back. It started to tip, and Martha righted it. Chance bumped his hip against a book display on his way out, and books cascaded to the floor.

  Ms. Barnston looked up from her desk. “Chance,” she called after him, “pick those up.” But he was gone.

  Ignoring her racing heart, Martha turned back to the computer and shut it down.

  As Martha collected her papers and pushed in the chairs, Ms. Barnston looked up from the floor, where she was gathering up the fallen books. She watched Martha for a moment and then held out one of the books she had just picked up.

  Martha looked at the cover. Hilary McKay. Forever Rose.

  “It’s been a while since you took out a book, Martha,” Ms. Barnston said as she used a table edge to heave herself to her feet. “This one is brand-new!”

  Martha shook her head sharply. “I’m okay, Ms. Barnston,” she said. “I have to go back to class.” And she marched out of the library, clutching the papers tight to her chest. Those were not tears in her eyes. They were not.

  “I want to do the oldest fish,” Chance called out.

  “Hang on, Chance,” Mr. Jewett said. “A couple of other kids actually had their hands up.”

  Martha was not one of them, but she was glad to see Mr. Jewett wasn’t letting Chance break all the rules. Moments later, the conversation circled back to Chance’s request.

  “The oldest sturgeons are more than six meters long,” Mr. Jewett said. “Do yo
u have any idea how big that is?”

  Out came a long ruler. Mr. Jewett had children take turns, marking each length off with a bit of tape. Martha bent over her math sheet. In her mind, though, the fish grew and grew and grew. It turned out that the two-hundred-year-old creature would barely fit in their classroom. Could such a monster exist?

  “I’m afraid we can’t make a fish that big,”

  Mr. Jewett said. “Chance, you and Martha can make the biggest one we’re doing, since you asked first.” He seemed to have forgotten that Chance hadn’t put up his hand.

  The class was going to make fifteen fish, starting with larvae and ending with a ninetyyear-old (or middle-aged) sturgeon. Mr. Jewett wrote names on the chart on the wall. Martha watched as he wrote her name down next to Chance’s beside the words ninetyyear-old, four-meter-long fish. She felt a flutter of excitement.

  Mr. Jewett had wheeled in a stand holding an enormous roll of brown paper. The larvae and young-of-the-year pairs only needed regular sheets of paper, but since sturgeon grew fast, everyone else got part of the roll. When it came time to roll out paper for the ninety-year-old fish, Martha loved how the whole class gasped when one meter, two meters, three meters and a fourth meter spread across the floor. Chance and Martha took turns measuring and marking. When they were done, Mr. Jewett asked Martha to tear the sheet off the roll against the sharp metal edge that held the paper in place. She loved the cool smoothness of the paper, the ripping sound and the clean straight edge that she created.

  Then Martha and Chance had to make decisions. Were they going to draw the fish from the side or the top? How could they figure out how tall or how wide the fish would be? Their chart didn’t show that information. How were they going to divide up the work?