The Fix-It Friends--Have No Fear! Read online

  I tried not to cry, but I did when I got to the part about how Maya had to go to the nurse’s office. Going to the nurse’s office is even worse than sitting by the fence at recess. It is even worse than going to the principal’s office. I don’t know for sure, but I think the place is full of shots. At least when you go to the doctor’s office, they give you stickers. The nurse doesn’t even have stickers or lollipops or anything good!

  When I thought about Maya sitting in those little blue chairs in there, all because of me, I felt so awful that I had to cry.

  Mom twirled my hair around her finger. I love when she does that. I find it oh-so-relaxing. Mom says I used to do it to myself when I was a baby sucking on my pacifier.

  “When Pearl faced her fear of the vacuum cleaner, she stopped being scared,” I sniffed. “So how come it didn’t work with Maya?”

  “So that’s what you were up to with the spider, huh?” Mom asked.

  I gulped and nodded.

  “Well, here’s the thing, honey. You’re right that Maya probably needs to face her fear,” said Mom. “But she needs to do it one teeny-tiny baby step at a time. And she has to decide to do it herself. You can’t force her or trick her into it.”

  “But she’ll never do it unless I force her!” I groaned.

  “Well, she might not be ready to jump into a pit of tarantulas—”

  That made me laugh. Where would we even find a tarantula pit?

  Mom went on. “But I bet she’d be ready to draw a picture of a spider. Or read a book about a friendly spider, like Charlotte’s Web.”

  This didn’t sound half bad.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Then, once Maya does something easy like that, she could try something a little harder. She could look at a photograph of a spider and then maybe watch a video of one. Then, later, she could try to hold a fake spider, but just a stuffed one that didn’t look real. Baby steps. You get it?”

  I did! I totally did.

  I threw my arms around good old Mom.

  “Mom, you’re a genius!” I yelled. “I’m going to write Maya a letter right now and say I’m sorry and tell her my plan!”

  Mom laughed and said, “I like the enthusiasm, but you need to give Maya some space right now so she can calm down. So it’s okay to write a letter, but don’t give it to her for a few days.”

  “Okay, sure,” I said as I jumped up to get my markers and glitter and special stationery with puppies wearing sunglasses on the top.

  Here’s the first letter I wrote to Maya:

  I crumpled up that letter and tried again:

  That didn’t seem right, either. I decided to keep it short and sweet:

  Chapter 10

  I didn’t see Maya the whole rest of the week, because she stayed in the office at recess, and I’m kind of banned from there for … well, maybe forever.

  Then, on Monday, at recess, I was absolutely dying of thirst because Backwards Tag really gives you a workout. So I ran to the water fountain, and I saw Maya sitting by the fence again.

  She was wearing her kitty hat, with her hair hanging down. I wished she had her hair in two ponytails. I bet they would look like the tails on giant black stallions.

  When she saw me, her eyes got round, and she scootched back a little, like she was afraid I would bite her.

  I held my hands up in the air, open wide. Just like bad guys do in the movies when the police go near them.

  “No fake spiders, see?” I joked. She didn’t laugh.

  “Oh! I have something for you!” I reached into the pocket of my jeans where I had put the letter, and I handed it to her.

  Then I said, “I will now leave you alone while you read it.”

  So I turned my back to her and waited. I twiddled my thumbs.

  “Are you done yet?” I asked, turning around for just a second.

  She shook her head.

  So I turned back around and hummed a little tune to myself. Matthew Sawyer ran by. When he saw me, he stopped and asked, “Why are you humming?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” I asked back.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” he copied me.

  If I wrote a book of all the annoying things Matthew Sawyer does, it would be about a thousand pages long. But the most annoying thing is when he copies me.

  “Cut it out!” I shrieked.

  “Cut it out!” he shrieked.

  “Matthew Sawyer, I am going to clobber you.”

  “Matthew Sawyer, I am going to clobber you.”

  And I was, too. I didn’t even care if Miss Tibbs yelled at me. But thankfully, that’s just when Maya said, “I’m done.”

  I spun around to face her.

  “So?” I said. “Do you forgive me?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Yippee-ki-yay!” I hollered.

  “I liked what you said in your letter about little baby steps. I think I could do that.”

  “Really?” I was shocked.

  She nodded. “Yes. ’Cause I’m getting really sick and tired of sitting on my lunch box. It’s so boring.”

  “Of COURSE it is!” I shouted.

  “But it has to be tiny baby steps,” Maya said.

  “Even smaller than baby steps!” I said. “Tiny mouse steps! Tiny ant steps!”

  “Umm, Veronica?” Maya said. “You’re kind of talking about bugs again.”

  “Oopsy daisy!” I giggled.

  She giggled, too.

  Jude and Ezra saw us laughing. They got nosy and just had to see what was happening.

  “Veronica’s going to help me stop being scared of bugs,” Maya said.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Jude said, raising his eyebrows way up.

  I glowered at him.

  “Okay, okay. That’s awesome, Maya,” said Jude. He gave her a pat on the back. “You should make a list of all the little steps you’re going to take.”

  I rolled my eyes. Jude loves making lists. Sometimes he even makes lists of the lists he wants to write. I am not kidding!

  “I can help if you want,” he said.

  “Oh, we don’t need any help!” I said really fast.

  “I could do it on my computer,” said Ezra. Then he cracked his knuckles, and I knew he was getting a great idea. When he gets excited, he always cracks his knuckles. “I could make it like a game, with a girl character that looks like you, and—Oh! I know! Every time she does a step, I can make a little animation, with music and everything!”

  I was about to tell them “Thanks but no thanks,” except Maya was already nodding and saying, “Oh yeah! That’d be fun!” She had a big smile on her face. And she was in charge, after all.

  So I put a fake smile on and forced myself to say, “Sure, you can help. The more, the merrier.”

  Chapter 11

  The next day, Maya came over after school so we could make her special list. Ezra brought his laptop. Jude made snacks—nachos with extra Cheddar cheese and sour cream. He and Ezra call this dish the Sour Power. I made drinks: my world-famous specialty called Rama-Lama-Ding-Dongs! Here’s what’s in it:

  1.  A little lemonade.

  2.  A little orange juice.

  3.  A little seltzer.

  4.  A maraschino cherry on top.

  You can absolutely not make it without the cherry. Don’t even try.

  Jude, who is Mr. List Guy, said we should make the list in the shape of a staircase.

  “It’s like what Mom always says: ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’”

  “No offense, but that doesn’t even make any sense,” I told him. I poured myself another Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong.

  “Sure it does,” said Ezra, munching nachos. “It just means that you can do really hard things by taking it one step at a time.”

  “Ohhhhh, I get it,” I said, popping extra cherries in my drink. “Like when we had dinner at Dad’s friends’ house, and I was starving half to death, and all they had to eat was broccoli and pot roa
st. And I had no choice but to accept my fate and chew up that awful broccoli, one piece at a time.”

  “You don’t like broccoli?” asked Maya. “I love it. It makes me feel like I’m a giant eating trees.”

  I looked at her like she had three heads. Next she was probably going to tell me she did extra homework, just for fun.

  Ezra started making the list on his computer. He made it in the shape of a staircase, and on every step, he typed one thing Maya was going to do to face her fear. This time, we let Maya choose what to do.

  At the bottom were easy steps, like “Tell a funny story about a spider.” The ones up at the top of the staircase were hard, like “Watch a video of a real spider.” The last one, at the very tippity top, was “Go see a spider in real life.”

  Then Ezra made a cartoon Super Maya wearing a red cape and a black mask. Every time she went up on a new step, she raised her hands in the air like a champion, and her cape fluttered.

  “It’s so cool!” Maya giggled.

  Then I had a great idea to make the bottom of the staircase look like a dark, miserable swamp with rain clouds and crocodiles. But as Super Maya went up the stairs, it looked more and more pretty.

  “And at the very top, she can be on a mountain with rainbows and flowers and lollipops,” I said. I was on a roll.

  “And kittens and cupcakes!” giggled Maya.

  “And zombies and mutant vegetables!” said Jude, but he was just teasing.

  As we talked, Ezra typed on his computer. He hummed while he worked, which I find oh-so-relaxing. In just a few minutes, the staircase list looked exactly like we’d described.

  Maya didn’t want to get started doing her steps until the next week. So for the rest of the afternoon, we played. She wanted to be a princess. I wanted to be the princess’s pet pit bull. Pearl wanted to be the pit bull’s pet flea.

  “Me the FWEA! Me the FWEA!” she shouted.

  Then she found the funny glasses with the big fat nose and furry mustache and put them on. Maya and I laughed so hard we couldn’t even breathe.

  “Fwea so funny!” Pearl said. She was terribly proud of herself.

  Chapter 12

  The next Monday, Maya was so excited to come over again to play and do the first step on her chart. Cora came, too.

  First, I made Rama-Lama-Ding-Dongs with extra cherries. Then we got down to work. I had thought it would be easy-peasy for Maya to draw a picture of a spider. But it wasn’t at all. Maya was reeeeeally scared.

  “When I think about bugs, my stomach starts to hurt and my heart starts to thump and it feels awful,” she said.

  “Aw, come on! You can do it!” I said. “It can’t jump off the page and bite you!”

  But Cora squeaked, “Let’s just take a break and have a powdered doughnut.”

  My dad says powdered doughnuts are his weakness. He tries to hide them from us, but I know when he gets a box of them because I see white powder, which looks like snow, on the counter. Then I yell, “Aha! Powder alert!” and I hunt around in the kitchen until I find where he has hidden them.

  After she ate three mini doughnuts, Maya suddenly blurted out, “Okay. I can do it.” And she drew a big, hairy spider in permanent marker. It was as big as my hand. It had googly eyes.

  “What should we name it?” asked Cora. “Something funny.”

  “I don’t know,” said Maya. She was scrunching up her eyebrows and looking nervous again.

  “Let’s call her … Snookums!” I exclaimed. Then I pretended to shriek. “Ahhhh! Snookums is naked!”

  That made Maya and Cora laugh so hard, they fell over. It reminded me of what my dad says: “Laughter is the best medicine.” It’s true!

  “Let’s dress Snookums!” said Cora. “We’ll give her a makeover.”

  So I drew a big purple bow on the top of her head. Cora drew hoop earrings on her ears—or at least where her ears would be, if spiders had ears. And Maya drew a red high heel on every one of her eight feet.

  “Snookums, dahh-ling!” I said, in my best fancy-pants English accent. “You look ravishing!”

  “Maaaah-velous!” said Maya.

  “Enchaaaanting!” gushed Cora.

  Pearl came in, and as usual, she wanted to join the fun.

  “Snookey so pwetty!” she agreed. “I wove you, Snookey!”

  Then she puckered up and kissed that big, hairy, high-heeled, googly-eyed spider with all her heart.

  When Maya’s mom came to pick her up, Maya gave me a hug. “That was so fun, I forgot to be scared.”

  Every week, Maya came over. Sometimes Ezra or Cora came, too. Maya kept jumping up the steps on the staircase list Ezra had made for her.

  Pretty soon, Maya stopped wearing her kitty hat to recess every day. That was good because it gave her a chance to do really cool hairstyles with her superlong hair sometimes. One day, she had her hair in a big, swirly bun on the top of her head, like a ballerina.

  “Wowza!” I said when I saw her. “You are a sight to behold!”

  That’s when I asked her if she took any special vitamins to make her hair grow so long, and she said, “Nope. None.”

  Figures. Some people have all the luck.

  Jude found this book at the library for her that was full of up-close photographs of insects. Maya was really brave and forced herself to look at them, starting with the little ant and trying a bigger bug every time. Pearl really liked the book. Her favorite was the picture of the spider. Every time she saw it, she recited “Little Miss Muffet.” Except she says it like this:

  “Wittle Miss MuffMuff

  Sat on her TuffTuff

  Eatin’ Kermit and waisins.

  Awong came a ’pider

  And sat down beside her

  And he ’cared her. That naughty ’pider!”

  She loved that rhyme so much, we decided for Halloween, I’d be Miss MuffMuff and she could be my spider. Maya laughed when I told her.

  Chapter 13

  A few days before Halloween, at recess, I was playing Vampire Tag with Cora and Camille and Noah and Minnie. When I stopped to drink water from the fountain, I saw that Maya wasn’t sitting on her lunch box. She was standing up by the fence. She looked like she was really itching to play.

  So I said, “Wanna play tag with us?”

  “I don’t know how,” she said.

  “Oh, it’s as easy as falling off a log!” Granny in Texas always says that, and it cracks me up. I said it with Granny’s accent, which makes the word log sound like “laaaawg,” so Maya laughed.

  Then Ezra and Jude ran over and said they’d play, too, so Maya said, “Sure.”

  Vampire Tag is where the person who’s “It” has to be a vampire. If that person tags you, it’s like you have been bitten, and you’re a vampire, too. Then you can bite other people by tagging them. You have to talk in a Transylvanian accent and say, “I vant to suck your blood!” a lot, which makes it extra fun.

  First, Noah was It. He’s so fast that he turned us all into vampires in two minutes. Next, Maya was It. She was a natural! She bit me right off the bat.

  “Vy? Vy have you bitten me?!” I howled, grabbing my neck and pretending to be in terrible pain.

  “I didn’t vant to!” she moaned, pretending to cry. “Forgive me, von’t you?”

  It was one of my all-time favorite tag games.

  When the whistle blew, I gave Maya a quick hug, then grabbed my lunch box so I could dart over to the red doors. Except that on my way over there, I bumped into something. A big, heavy thing. A human being thing.

  Miss Tibbs was staring down at me. She had a very strange expression on her face. The corners of her mouth were pointing up, and you could see her teeth in between her lips. It looked exactly like a smile. But no! It couldn’t be! Miss Tibbs never smiles! Not even with Cora.

  “I see Miss Tanaka played with you today,” she said.

  “Umm, yeah,” I replied. I looked around her body to see all the kids lining up by the red doors.

  �
��She looked happy,” Miss Tibbs said.

  “She likes tag,” I said. I was kind of nervous because Miss Tibbs talks to me only when I am in trouble.

  That strange smile on Miss Tibbs’s face got bigger. It looked weird on her, but I couldn’t say so.

  “I’m proud of you, Miss Conti,” she said.

  She didn’t move out of my way like I thought she would. She just waited like she wanted me to say something back.

  So I blurted out, “I’m proud of you, too!”

  Then I dashed off and made it to the red doors just before they closed. I was the very last person to walk in, but I didn’t even care. It made me feel kind of wonderful that I’d been the first person in the history of the world to make Miss Tibbs smile. That smile made me think maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. She was probably still a witch, but maybe not a wicked one.

  Chapter 14

  The last step on Super Maya’s staircase list was “Go see a spider in real life.” Maya’s mom found out that the zoo was having a whole spider exhibit, and she invited me and Jude and Cora and Ezra to go with Maya. Then afterward, she said, we could have a celebration at her house with a Japanese dessert called mochi ice cream. I’d never tasted it before, but I knew I would like it, because I never met an ice cream I didn’t like.

  We went to the zoo the day before Halloween, so Maya’s mom said we could wear our costumes if we wanted. Nana had made my Little Miss MuffMuff costume from scratch. She used to be a seamstress, so she can sew anything you want. For Miss MuffMuff, she’d made me an old-fashioned yellow dress with a white sash and a white bonnet.

  Cora dressed up like Little Orphan Annie. She looked perfect with her red curly hair.

  Jude and Ezra dressed up as zombie killer bees. I was worried Maya would be scared, but they looked so funny with their crazy face paint, she just laughed.

  And Maya dressed up like—who else?—Super Maya! She wore a shiny black superhero suit with a giant red M on the chest and a beautiful flowing red cape.