Cover

Dedication

To Lisa Rowe Fraustino, Susan Campbell Bartoletti, and Molly Fisk,

who helped me rediscover

the language of poetry

Things I’ve Lost: A Partial List

Pooh Bear.

I took him on vacation

and he got left behind in the hotel bed,

but my dad called and two days later

a lumpy package arrived in the mail,

and the lump was Pooh.

My jacket on the bus

for the class trip to the planetarium.

Well, I almost lost it,

but Lizard noticed in the nick of time

and raced back to our seat

and grabbed it for me.

My special lucky button,

when I had a hole in my pants pocket.

Lizard found that for me, too.

My glasses, in Buddha Delight,

when my mother had already said

she couldn’t handle One More Thing,

and I knew that losing my glasses

would have counted as One More Thing,

but I told my dad, and he took care of it

and my mother never had to know,

so whew for that.

Pencils.

More pencils.

You may have noticed that I got

everything back again,

except the pencils,

but everyone loses pencils,

and anyway the world is full of pencils.

You also may have noticed that it’s always

other people who get the lost things back for me.

So what would happen if you lost those people?

Who would help you get them back again?

Two Girls Named Elizabeth

Lizard’s name isn’t really Lizard.

(You probably already knew that.)

But here’s the strange thing. My best friend

and I both have the same name: Elizabeth.

Only she was Liz, and I was Betsy.

(Here’s another strange thing:

How can Betsy be a nickname for Elizabeth?)

But when we started being best friends

in third grade, she said Betsy

was a dumb name and I should be Liz, too.

So for one week, we were both Liz,

which made us the best best friends ever.

Except that it was confusing.

So she said she’d change her name to Lizard,

and I’d be the only Liz, but I said,

in a very small voice, that I’d rather be

the only Betsy, and she gave a big sigh,

and said she’d call me B (for Betsy),

and then it became Bumblebee,

and then it was just Bumble.

Now we’re in sixth grade, and she’s Lizard

to everyone in the world,

even to her parents and her sisters,

even to teachers who sometimes forget that Lizard

isn’t a name teachers should be calling anyone.

And I’m Bumble to her,

but not to anyone else.

So when we’re together,

just the two of us,

we become two girls

named Lizard and Bumble.

What My Mom Thinks of the Name Bumble

She hates it.

The first time she heard

Lizard say, “Bye, Bumble!”

my mom said, “Bumble?”

And Lizard said, “That’s her nickname.”