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.”

My mom said, “Her nickname is Betsy.”

And Lizard said, “Bumble is my nickname for her.”

My mom said, “Bumble, as in blunder?

Bumble, as in stumble? Bumble, as in fumble?

Bumble, as move in an awkward way?

Bumble, as speak in a confused way?”

My mom knows more about words

than anybody I know.

“Bumble like bumblebee,” Lizard said.

“Bumblebees buzzing around beautiful flowers.”

I could tell my mom wanted to tell Lizard not to call me that,

but she didn’t want to be mean to my new best friend.

But every time my mom hears Lizard call me Bumble,

which has been a lot of times over the last three years,

I can see her jaw tighten

with all the things she isn’t saying.

Movers and Shakers

My mother says Lizard

is a mover and shaker.

She didn’t say,

but I know she means,

I’m the one

who is

moved and shaken.

Like This One Time

Lizard was at my house,

sorting little pieces of broken tile

that my father brought from his workshop

to glue onto cheap plastic plates

to turn them into mosaic platters

for a banquet she and I were going to have.

Not a banquet for lots of people,

with roasted pheasant and cups of mead,

like in the book about the Middle Ages

we had just read together.

Just a banquet for the two of us,

with oatmeal raisin cookies and grape juice.

I was picking out some blue and silver

pieces for mine,

but Lizard said we should both make ours

with red and gold.

So I started to put the blue and silver

pieces away.

My mother was helping to cover the kitchen table

with newspaper so we wouldn’t get glue on it,

and she said to Lizard,

“Why don’t you make yours the way you want.

And Betsy can make hers the way she wants.”

“Sure,” Lizard said.

Then she added under her breath,

“If Bumble doesn’t care that no kings and queens

would ever have silver platters if they could have gold,

and red goes with gold better than blue does.”

So I made mine red and gold, too.

And I couldn’t tell if my mother was more mad at Lizard

for telling me what to do,

or more disappointed in me

for doing it.

Lizard Can Stand Up to Anybody

Lizard stands up to teachers,

like when she told Mrs. Henderson

that Columbus didn’t discover America

because America had already been discovered

thousands of years earlier

by the people who were already living there

when Columbus showed up with his ships.

She stands up to bullies,

like when she saw some bigger boys

throwing a stone at a bunny

and told them she was going to report them to the SPCA,

which she said was the abbreviation for

the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,

and they said, “Yeah, right. Go ahead and report us.”

But they dropped their stones and walked away.

She stood up to Clarence Keaton,

who sat behind me in third grade and pulled my braids,

not in a friendly playful way, but hard.

She told him, “A boy pulled Bumble’s braids last year,

and I told on him, and he ended up going to jail,”

which was completely not true,

because we didn’t even know each other in second grade.

And no one would put a second-grade kid

in jail for pulling someone’s hair.

They’d probably get in-school suspension.

But Clarence never pulled my braids again.

It is a very useful thing sometimes

to be best friends

with the bravest girl in the school.

Things I’m Afraid Of

Shots at the doctor,

though mainly just the minute before the shot

when I see the nurse coming toward me

with the needle.

Getting tests back

when the teacher hands it to me facedown.

Scary music in a movie

when the movie is already scary enough

that I don’t need creepy tones to make it scarier.

Dogs that have rabies.

Dogs that don’t have rabies

but might bite me anyway.

My mother when she’s stressed.

Loud noises.

Worms on the sidewalk after it rains.

Mushrooms that sprout up on the lawn after it rains.

Lizard sometimes,

when she gets that glint in her eyes

like she’s going to talk me into doing something

I’m going to be sorry for afterward.

Lizard sometimes,

how mad she might get

if I didn’t let her talk me into things

I didn’t want to be sorry for afterward.

Having everybody,

especially Lizard and my mother,

think I’m a fraidy-cat.

Things Lizard Is Afraid Of

Nothing.

Lizard (and Me) at School

We were both in Mrs. Henderson’s class

in third grade.

Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be

if the person at Sandrock Elementary who decides which kids

to put in each class hadn’t put me and Lizard together.

Who is that person? Is it the principal?

Or the school secretary? Does a computer do the picking?

Or is it Fate, which Lizard says doesn’t exist,

but I think maybe does.

Why else would two girls named Elizabeth

both have braids with blue ribbons on the first day?

My braids were the color people call dishwater blond.

Hers were black like a night with no moon and no stars.

“I hate braids,” Lizard said

(only she wasn’t Lizard yet).

“I think they look dumb. I’m taking mine out.”

And then Lizard didn’t have braids anymore.

I loved my braids, but I said,

“I think they look dumb, too.”

But I didn’t take mine out.

My mother wouldn’t like it

if I came home without them

after she had gone to so much trouble

to put them in.

“Yours don’t look as dumb as mine,” Lizard said.

That’s when I started liking Lizard.

And I think that’s when she started liking me.

The Next Year

Lizard and I weren’t in the same class in fourth grade.

I have a feeling my mother said something to somebody

to make that happen.

“I think this is going to be the year you really bloom,”

my mother said.

“I’m excited to see what new friends you’ll make,”

my mother said.

“It’ll be good for you and Lizard to have your own space,”

my mother said.

“Friends don’t have to be joined at the hip, you know,”

my mother said.

I didn’t say anything.

I didn’t want to bloom that year

if blooming meant not being friends with Lizard anymore.

The only friend I wanted was Lizard.

The only space I needed was the space where Lizard was.

Even if we weren’t joined at the hip,

Lizard and I were joined at the heart.

P.S. About Fourth Grade

Lizard and I still saw each other

all the time.

And I didn’t bloom.

Or if I did, nobody noticed,

including me.

The Year after That

Lizard and I were together again in fifth grade.

I have a feeling Lizard’s mother said something to somebody

to make that happen.

“My mother thinks you’re a good influence on me,” Lizard said.

Then she laughed. I laughed, too.

As if I could ever influence Lizard about anything.

Sixth Grade

Now we’re at Southern Peaks Middle School.

School just started,

and we have three classes apart:

language arts, social studies, and our “specials”—

band for Lizard and art for me.

But we have three classes together:

science, math, PE.

Plus lunch. Hooray!

I don’t think anybody’s mother

said anything to anybody

to make this happen.

In middle school Fate—

or the computer—

has a lot more power

than parents do.

Other Friends

Lizard and I have friends

besides each other.

But not a lot.

And not close friends.

Lizard has to be the first at everything.

Most kids aren’t as good as I am at being second.

That sounds strange: being good at being second.

But I think it’s a talent, sort of,

not to mind things other people mind.

I truly don’t mind if I say, “Let’s watch TV

without the sound on and make up the words,”

and Lizard says, “That’s boring,”

even though she’s the one who first thought up

doing it, so who is she to say

it’s boring now that it’s my favorite thing?

(Well, maybe I do mind this a little bit.)

But mostly I don’t care that much what we do,

so long as we do it together.

My Mother

My mother can speak five languages fluently:

English (duh), French, Italian, German, and Russian.

That’s her job—to know stuff about languages.

She’s a professor of linguistics at the university,

and even though she already speaks

more languages than anyone I know,

she studies other languages

that hardly anyone speaks anymore.

She travels to the places where very old people live

who still speak those languages.

The last people to speak a language

are always old,

because as the world becomes

more and more connected,

young people are the first

to learn new ways of living

and new ways of speaking.

So my mother tries to learn

as much of each dying language as she can:

the words in it,

and the rules for how to put the words together.

She records the old people talking

and writes a book about each language

so that when the language is finally lost and forgotten,

there will be at least someone

in the world

who made it possible

to remember.

What Other People’s Parents Do

Lizard says her dad is a spy,

but that can’t be true.

Her mom works in an office somewhere.

Zari’s dad does stuff on his computer.

Her mom is some kind of medical person.

Zoey’s dad came to school in first grade

to talk about being a pilot.

Zoey’s mom is a stay-at-home mom.

I think she does some catering, too.

Veronica’s parents have a hardware store,

but I’ve never been there.

A lot of kids know my dad makes furniture

because he was interviewed on the local news once,

and the furniture he makes is so beautiful.

People know my mom is a professor,

but I’m not sure they know what she teaches.

It’s not the kind of thing kids talk about.

I think parents talk about us

a lot more than we talk about them.

How My Father Met My Mother

They were both graduate students at the same university.

She was studying linguistics

because she already knew she wanted to spend her life

learning all the amazing ways humans talk to one another.

He was studying business

because he couldn’t find a job with his philosophy degree,

and his father said, “I’ll pay for two more years of school

if you study something useful this time.”

The coffee shop where he was studying was crowded,

so he invited her to share his table.

“And then we started talking instead of studying,”

he says whenever he tells the story,

which is often.

“And I was in love after ten minutes.

She made me want to find something to do with my life

that would make my eyes shine the way hers did

when she talked about the grammar of the Urdu language.

She made me want to find something to do with my life

that would make my hands move as fast as hers,

like hummingbirds at a feeder full of nectar,

when she talked about how many languages

people speak in Papua New Guinea.

But then I realized I already knew deep inside

that what I loved was woodworking.

So I apologized for wasting my dad’s money,

dropped out of business school,

and apprenticed myself to a cabinetmaker.

Now I have work I love,

and the woman I love,

and the daughter I love.”

(He always puts in the part about me.)

“So you could say that I’m pretty much

the luckiest guy in the world.”

Givers and Takers

Lizard says that

givers always marry takers.

Takers can’t marry takers

because they’d both want to do the taking.

Givers could marry givers

except the takers are so good at taking

they get there first.

Lizard’s mother is a giver,

according to Lizard,

and her father is a taker.

My father is a giver,

according to Lizard,

and my mother is a taker.

It’s true my father is a giver,

but it’s not exactly true

my mother is a taker.

Or at least I don’t think she means to be.

It’s more that she has to give

all the time to everyone else:

her students who take the exams she has to grade

and then come to her to complain if they get a B,

and the other professors in her department,

who pressure her to be on

all the time-consuming committees

they don’t want to be on.

But mostly she tries to give to the people

whose languages are dying so fast

that even if she worked every minute of every day,

which she practically does already,

she couldn’t learn about them in time.

So she doesn’t have a lot

of giving left over

for my father

and me.

I’m Going to Say a Terrible Thing

I sort of like it best when my mother travels

to a faraway part of the world

and spends a whole month sometimes

learning other people’s languages all day long.

My mother is usually the one who does the cooking,

which is strange because she’s also the one who is crazy-busy,

but she says cooking keeps her sane.

She makes elegant meals

we eat by candlelight,

because elegant meals by candlelight

make her feel calmer and less stressed.

When she’s away, my father and I find recipes

in a cookbook that tells you how to make the food

the characters eat in famous children’s books.

Afterward we don’t clean up the kitchen

because there is no one here but us and maybe Lizard,

who doesn’t mind sticky counters

or burnt sauce on the stove.

I can practice piano as much or as little

as I want, and it’s strange,

but I actually end up practicing more.

We don’t have to think about

whether my mother had a bad day at the university

because George Bixler said that linguistic fieldwork

(which is what my mother does)

isn’t as intellectually rigorous as theoretical linguistics

(which is what he does).

We don’t have to see how pale and drawn she looks

after staying up till three o’clock

trying to finish another chapter

of the book she’s writing

about one of the dying languages.

And Lizard says,

“I wish I lived at your house,”

which she never says

when my mother is here.

But I Still Love When My Mom Comes Home Again

My dad and I go to the airport and wait

where the international arrivals come in,

and she doesn’t come, and she doesn’t come,

and suddenly there she is, looking like a stranger,

but also exactly like my mom.

Her face, crinkled and worn

from a super-long flight,

lights up like the twinkle lights

my dad keeps on the backyard deck all year.

She hugs me so tight

while my father hugs her.

“I missed you!

God, how I missed you!”

she says over and over again,

and I love her right then

more than anyone else in the world,

even my father,

even Lizard,

and I wish I could

keep her twinkle lights sparkling

every single day.

But I can’t.

Lizard’s Superpower

Lizard always knows everything first.

Maybe it’s because she has two older sisters,

or her father really is a spy and tells her things

he learns from spying. She was the first to know

Aiden A. had lice and Eloise’s parents were

getting divorced. She knew about the divorce

even before Eloise did. She knew Tad would

be elected class president even though everyone

said they had voted for Singh and Rok. Even

things about the world, she knows them first.

She’s the one who told me, way back in third grade,

that the polar ice caps are melting and whole

countries will be covered with water someday.

She told me most eggs come from chickens who live

squished together in tiny cages that make the chickens

so frantic that the farmers have to cut off their beaks

so they won’t peck each other to death.

Lizard’s favorite things to know first are bad things.

Sometimes I think she loves knowing bad things first

just so she can be the one to roll her eyes

at everyone else—especially me—and say,

“I thought everybody knew that.”

I think a little part of her also likes how sad

I feel when the things I thought were true

turn out

not to be.

The One Time I Know Something First

Today, Monday,

when we’re at Lizard’s house after school,

Lizard tells me that a third of all animal species

might go extinct because of global climate change.

I say, “Did you know that thousands

of languages are going extinct, too?”

I expect her to say, “Everybody knows that.”

But instead she says, “Languages can’t go extinct.”

I say, “Yes, they can.” And I tell her about my mom

and the dying languages she writes books about.

“I thought your mom was an anthropologist,” she says,

making it sound like she knows more about my mom than I do.

“She’s not. She’s a linguist,” I reply. And Lizard says,

in this accusing kind of way, “I’m sure you said

she was an anthropologist,” as if I wouldn’t know

my own mother’s job! But I know she is just mad

that I broke the rule that I’m supposed to be the one

who knows things second. I didn’t even realize

it was a rule until then,

when I broke it.

Why I Love Lizard Anyway

You might wonder why I would be best friends

with someone who always acts like we’re playing school

and every single time she gets to be the teacher.

But then Lizard says—and this is why I love Lizard anyway—

“What if rather than writing about dying languages,

like your mom, you and I saved one instead?”

Lizard’s Hobby Is Saving Things

I shouldn’t have been surprised that

Lizard wanted to save a dying language.

Once in fifth grade

Lizard found a bird that was attacked

by the neighbor’s cat,

and she made her mother take it to

the Wild Bird Rehabilitation Center,

even though her mother said,

“Lizard, it’s a bird. Birds die all the time.”

Lizard said, “Not this bird.”

And guess who lived?

Yes, that would be the bird.

And remember that bunny

Lizard saved from the stone-throwing boys?

And remember how Lizard saved me

from braid-pulling Clarence Keaton?

Saving things is Lizard’s hobby.

Lizard’s Plan

Of course, Lizard being Lizard,

she has a plan.

Of course, Bumble being Bumble,

I’m supposed to carry it out.

“Ask your mom what would be the best

language for us to start saving!

And she can teach it to us

so that we can speak it to each other!

The more we learn of it,

the more of it we’ll be saving!”

“That’s a good plan,” I tell Lizard.

“It totally is.”

But I’m not sure

I totally believe it.

My Doubts

I ask Lizard,

“But even if you and I learn how to speak

some dying language,

how is this going to save it?”

Lizard flings up her hands

as if this is too obvious for her to have to explain.

“A language dies if nobody speaks it!

So it can’t be totally dead,

like dead-dead-dead,

if there is still somebody in the world

who speaks it, right?

And we’re somebody!

We’re two somebodies!

Once your mom teaches us,

we can teach other people at school,

and maybe half the kids at Southern Peaks

will speak the language after a few months.

Think how many somebodies that will be!”

The Biggest Problem of All

But then I say,

“I’m just not sure…. I don’t think…

I mean, I can’t see my mother having

time to give us language lessons.

She teaches all day at the university,

so she isn’t going to want to do extra teaching

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

Enjoyed this preview? ❤️ Do not stop here!

Read the complete book free online → 🔗

Continue reading now on BooksBarbecue and discover every page!

Love reading? Bookmark BooksBarbecue.com for more amazing books!

Happy Reading!