“That’s wonderful,” Mom said.
I spread my ketchup into a perfect circle with my knife. “Maybe.”
“You didn’t want to leave today,” Dad said.
“Irma wants me to bring my bike next time.”
“That’s not a problem,” Dad said. “We can put it in the trunk.”
I took a bite of my turkey burger. I didn’t want to talk about it. Irma was much braver than me. I still had training wheels on my bike. I couldn’t ride over ramps.
I thought Irma and I liked all the same things. But I didn’t like Jonas, and I didn’t want to bike with him. What if Irma wasn’t my best friend forever after all?
I swallowed my bite of turkey burger. It hurt going over the lump in my throat.
“Is everything okay?” Mom asked.
I shrugged. “Irma is brave.”
“That’s good,” Mom said.
“But I’m not. I don’t want to ride my bike fast or go over jumps.”
“There’s more than one way to be brave,” Dad said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Lexi threw a tomato piece on the floor and screeched.
Dad ignored her. “Being brave means doing something even if you’re scared. Maybe biking doesn’t scare Irma.”
“So Irma isn’t brave?”
“I didn’t say that,” Dad said. “I think Irma was very brave when she started school in a new country and couldn’t speak the language. But just because she likes to bike doesn’t mean she’s being brave while she does it.”
I chewed my burger and thought about that. When Irma first came to our class, everybody stared at her when she walked to her seat. That would have made me very scared. Just like when I had to be a flower girl at my auntie Joss’ wedding. Was that how Irma had felt?
“Was I brave when I was a flower girl?”
“Very,” Mom said. “You were scared, but you did it anyway.”
“Well, I don’t want to be brave on a bike. Being brave isn’t fun.”
Chapter 5
In Ms. Allen’s third-grade class we begin every day with partner reading, so I start my school day by sitting next to Irma.
There are some other good things about third grade too. We don’t have to put up our hand and ask to go to the bathroom. We make a W sign with our fingers and Ms. Allen nods and we leave. And best of all, Dan isn’t in my class.
Some of the bad things about third grade are that Ms. Allen has a very loud voice, and she loves gym. She even makes special plans to share the gym with the other third-grade teacher, Mr. Fernandes, just so we can have gym every day. Which means I have something to not look forward to five days a week. She lets me wear headphones to block out the noise in the classroom and I’m allowed to squeeze my eraser, but I still miss my second-grade teacher, Mrs. Patel.
Ms. Lagorio, my special helper teacher (whose name means green lizard in Italian but who is a very pretty lady), knows the same tricks as Dad. When I visited her office in the first week of third grade she said I needed to “go with the flow” in my new class.
“Every teacher is a little different, Lauren. You can’t expect everything to be exactly the same.”
“But I want everything to be the same.”
“Everything? Remember when Irma came to school? That was a big change. But it was good.”
“Everything except for Irma,” I said.
Ms. Lagorio smiled. “Then you’d be in second grade forever, and you’d never grow up. And Dan would be in your class again this year.”
I looked up from the picture of the praying mantis I was drawing. “How did you know about Dan?”
On Friday, Ms. Allen said she had a special announcement. She handed out permission forms.
“Are we going on a field trip?” Ravi asked.
“Sort of,” Ms. Allen said. “It’s more like the field trip is coming to us. We are very lucky. Instructors from The Real Wheel will be coming to our school and taking our class out mountain biking for a whole day!”
Most of the class started cheering, including Irma. I put on my headphones to block out the noise and to pretend I couldn’t hear what was happening.
“You mean we get to spend a whole day mountain biking instead of going to school?” Sachi asked.
“That’s right,” Ms. Allen said with a big smile. “No reading, no writing, no math. We’ll spend the morning learning mountain bike skills on the field and in the afternoon they’ll break us into groups and take us for a trail ride.”
“I don’t need to learn any skills,” Ravi said. “I already know how to mountain bike.”
Ms. Allen’s eyebrows scooted closer together. “Everybody has something to learn, Ravi. Even me. And I mountain bike all the time.”
I lifted a headphone off my ear. Our teacher rode a mountain bike? Teachers were supposed to drink coffee in the staff room and put stickers on worksheets.
Irma put up her hand.
“Yes, Irma?”
“What if you don’t know how to bike?”
Why was Irma asking that question? She knew how to bike.
“When we go for our ride you’ll be put in groups based on ability,” Ms. Allen said.
“I’ll be in the top group, then,” Ravi said.
“Me too,” Alyssa said.
“I am only a beginner,” Irma said.
“Do you still use training wheels?” Ravi asked.
“No,” Irma said.
I let the headphone fall back onto my ear and squeezed my eraser.
“That’s good, ’cause I’ve never seen anybody trail riding with training wheels,” Ravi said.
I threw my headphones on my desk and tore up the permission form. “I won’t be in any group,” I yelled. “Because I’m not going!” I made the W sign and ran out of the room without waiting to see if Ms. Allen had nodded.
Chapter 6
Mom and Lexi were waiting for me when the bus arrived at my stop. Lexi was sitting in her green wagon.
“How
