Chapter 1
“Oh, crumbs!” Pixie mumbled. “Why is everything going wrong today?”
The morning started out rather crummy when she showed up to school wearing apples from her bows to her toes.
It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Pixie to have apples on her clothes. But she had never worn so many. In fact, she was quite fond of them. After all, Pixie’s real name was Marigold. Just like the apple.
Pixie’s classmate, Jack, noticed the apples during a math test. He began to point and snicker. Soon others erupted in laughter.
Alora, Pixie’s BFF, gave her thumbs up and whispered, “Just ignore them, Pixie, okay?”
To make matters worse, the teacher, Miss Gruff, called Pixie to the front of the classroom and fussed at her for disrupting the class. “I’ve never seen such muttering and slouching. Now go sit down and finish your problems!” Miss Gruff had a stormy face and didn’t like kids. Pixie was used to being the teacher’s pet, except in this class.
She sat back down at her desk and picked up her blue pencil. It was fish face Jack’s fault, Pixie thought, but said nothing. Nobody likes a tattle tale. What does he know? He has eyes like a fish and doesn’t blink.
Pixie blamed her big sister, Caroline, for the fashion disaster. Apparently,wacky clothes and knee socks are GC in seventh grade. GC stands for girlcentric and means cool. But this was not the case at Strawbridge Elementary. Pixie glanced at the ticking clock. Ugh, it was only 10:09 a.m.
Later, at the water fountain, Pixie took four gulps of water and PING!
“Oh no,” she cried looking down at her soggy pencil. It was a special blue fuzzy pencil. Her Aunt G had sent it from one of her exotic travels.
Gracie Bell Jingles was her real name, but Pixie called her Aunt G for short.
Pixie was sure great kings and queens had used this pencil to sign important papers.
“Super gross!” she huffed, pulling it out of the mucky drain. “My day has gone from bad to worse!”
Alora kept trying to cheer Pixie up. She even gave her a soft-centered piece of chocolate from her lunch box. It was useless. Pixie watched Jack show off his hot pink laced shoes at the lunch table. Pink’s a silly color, she said in her head. And to make matters worse, one of Pixie’s loopy ribbons fell into her caramel dip. The only time she perked up was when the school bell rang at the end of the day.
Usually, she and Alora counted how many acorns they could crunch under their shoes walking home. But today she ran home by herself. Pixie didn’t even stop to catch the falling leaves.
