Nicholson Baker - The Everlasting Story of Nory

But back to the morning after the dream about the rabbits and the corpse. After breakfast there was a catastrophe of a broken mug that was holding apple juice, which was Littleguy’s favorite drink. And Nory couldn’t find the pledge sheet for Readathon, which she was supposed to have brought in ages ago. So they spent a lot of time dabbling up apple juice and looking in piles of paper for the Readathon sheet. Finally her mother found it tucked in the phone book. The apple juice had hurdled itself amazingly far away from the main place that the cup smacked into the floor. It was like a solar flare of apple juice. So they drove instead of walking, so as not to be late, since Nory’s father had to go in to London anyway to look something up. Nory saw Pamela from the car hurrying up from the train station in her usual leaning-forward, staring-forward way. ‘Pamela! Pamela!’ Nory called out, but Pamela didn’t hear her, since they went past too fast for Nory to roll her window down, plus it was getting pretty cold these days for wide-open car windows.

Nory’s father asked how things were going with Pamela.

‘Mezzo-mezzo,’ said Nory.

‘Are people treating her a little better?’

‘Not perfectly, no,’ said Nory.

‘Shouldn’t we talk to Mr. Pears about it?’

‘I think Pamela really doesn’t want that,’ said Nory. ‘Please not yet.’

‘Okay,’ said Nory’s father. ‘I’m very sorry you had that awful night last night.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ said Nory. ‘I was just agitated. Bye Littleguy! Bye! Love you!’

‘Bye Nory! Kisses and hugs! Now off to my school,’ said Littleguy.

Nory was a tiny bit late when she got there, and the office, where you go to be ticked off when you’re late, had nobody in it, and Nory had a total brainwash and couldn’t find the list for her house, Lord Lamper. There were five houses in Junior School, Bledingsteale, Beaston, Morris-Sirrer, Lord Hivle, and Lord Lamper. The sheet for the Lord Lamper kids had slid under Morris-Sirrer, and Nory, spinning around trying to find it, went out of the office, back in, out, in, thinking, I’m going to be horribly late, until finally she saw Betty in the hall, who was always nice to her. Betty said, ‘The list is in the office.’ Which was not all that helpful, but what can you do? Then a woman who sometimes helped Nory with spelling sorted her out, as they say, and she went to the classroom, but on her way she saw Mrs. Thirm talking to Shelly Quettner. Mrs. Thirm gave her the nicest, nicest smile. Why in the world did Pamela not like Mrs. Thirm? Mrs. Thirm was a really nice housemistress. Shelly, who was not always the greatest of kids, called out, ‘Tutoring is in Mrs. Hant’s classroom today, I’ll show you where it is.’ Nory couldn’t resist that offer, even though, yes by all means she knew that there was maths tutoring and yes also knew where Mrs. Hant’s class was, because it’s always pleasanter to arrive at a slightly out of the ordinary classroom with someone you know, even with Shelly, who was the girl out of all the girls at that school probably who did the worst thing that anyone had done to Nory so far, which was when she told the class, ‘Nory fancies Jacob Lewes.’

But that didn’t turn out to be so much of a bad thing anyway. A few weeks after Shelly had said that she had said ‘Nory bad-worded Belge Coleman.’ Using the most horrible bad word there is. Nory said, ‘I did not!’ She did not say, ‘At least, I don’t think I did.’ For a tiny second she thought about saying, ‘Well, maybe I did, but I don’t think I did,’ because you forget so many tons of things in your life and you don’t want to tell a lie about a thing you mistakenly forgot, but then she thought, ‘No, in this case, I know for sure,’ and she just said, ‘I did not!’ Only a few girls heard it, none of the boys, and basically nobody believed Shelly anyway, in this case, because think about it: Shelly was obviously the one who fancied Belge Coleman in real life and nobody else would stand a chance of fancying him because he was one of the two kids in the class who were kind of thought of by the whole class as pests. Belge Coleman that same day had plucked away Nory’s snack, which was a wonderful Flake, and said, ‘Oh, thank you,’ in a Vampire accent and squeezed it and squeezed it. Nory struggled it from his hand, and it fell on the ground. It was broken in half. The good thing was that Nory gave the other half to Kira, because it was broken in half so conveniently. But still, it wasn’t so nice of Belge Coleman and nobody if they knew could understand why Shelly would ever like someone as idiotic a nitwit as him, but she did, and Nory knew it because Shelly even told her straightaway, ‘Some days I go mad over boys.’ And she told her, ‘I really fancy Belge Coleman and I just go mad about him some days.’ Shelly was saying that Nory had horrible-bad-worded Belge Coleman because she was bothered that he was paying attention to Nory by stealing away the snack from her and using typical Vampire behavior. She was jealous, basically. The thing about Shelly was that she was from New Zealand and it could be that nine-year-olds were more teenagery in New Zealand. You could know very easily that Shelly was a jealous kind of person because her sidekick, Tessy Harding, one time told Nory a story about how she was showing off and Shelly climbed a tree and started throwing chairs at her! Nory was shocked that anyone would bully someone by throwing chairs at her, since that could really injure you if the chair fell on you a certain way, or even kill you, if, say, one of the legs of the chair hit you in the soft spot on the side of your head next to your eye, which was like an Achilles heel of your head. Later she found out that it was just cherries, that Shelly had thrown, not chairs. But still.

So Shelly wasn’t a complete and utter delight as a person, but never mind, Nory was happy to go with her to maths tutoring. Shelly said, ‘Wait, I just have to go get something.’ Nory said quickly, not to interrupt her with Mrs. Thirm, ‘Okay, I’ll meet you right here.’ Shelly came back and they started going to the class and suddenly Shelly said, ‘Your pencil case! You need your pencil case!’

Nory froze and said, ‘Oh, gosh, my pencil case! You mean, we need our pencil case.’ Because Shelly seemed to be totally empty, nothing on her. But no, Shelly said that hers was already in the class. So Nory said ‘Wait for me here, all right?’ And Shelly said okay. Then Nory rushed to the other classroom to get her pencil case but when she was leaving Mrs. Copleston said, ‘Nory, where are you going? You’re supposed to be in here.’

Nory said, ‘Oh, right, okay,’ and sat down.

Then Mrs. Copleston looked at her book and said, ‘I’m sorry, you’re right, go to Mrs. Hant’s class, my mistake.’

So Nory went partway to Mrs. Hant’s class. Then she remembered she was supposed to be meeting Shelly. So she went where Shelly had been. But Shelly was gone by this time. So she went to Mrs. Hant’s class. Mrs. Hant hadn’t gotten there yet and Shelly wasn’t there. ‘Is this Mrs. Hant’s tutoring class?’ Nory asked.

‘Yes, you’re not supposed to be in here,’ said one of the kids.

‘Yes, I believe I am,’ said Nory. Then she looked around and realized that true, she had her pencil case but in her brainwash she’d forgotten her notebook, so she popped up and said, ‘Oh no, I forgot something!’

‘You’re an Americayan,’ people started saying in an exaggerated accent.

Nory said, ‘Yes, and I’m glad of it, but first, excuse me, I have to get something,’ and she shot out the door. In the hall Mrs. Thirm said, ‘Are you getting things sorted out?’ Nory said she was just going back for her notebook.