That Was The Year
written by Elizabeth Goldstein
Liz Ellerby is ordinary. She looks ordinary, she acts ordinary - actually, Liz is pretty sure that her life is basically the same as the life of every kid on her block. Liz may not love it, but she lives with it. She keeps her head down and plays her part - the part of a normal, eleven-year-old schoolgirl - well. That is, until Sam Cardilly joins her Grade Six 1-A class at Rickety Shay Elementary School. Sam is everything but ordinary, so how is it that he and Liz become best friends? And what will happen when Sam's year-long stay in the US is over and he must return to his own home?
Last Updated
05/31/21
Chapters
3
Reads
571
Liz
Chapter 1
The year I started sixth grade at Rickety Shay Elementary School was the year I made a C in creative writing on my summer report card. It was the year I ended my friendship with Ellie Axeman, who I had known since Pre-K. It was also the year I met Sam Cardilly.
Most kids are pretty bored with their lives in sixth grade. I mean, they’ve just hit that infuriating age when they’re too young to do some stuff and to old to do everything else. I was bored with my life, too, but for another reason. I’d bet that in sixth grade my life was the same as the life of every other eleven-year-old kid on my block. Wake up at seven-fifteen, eat breakfast (cornflakes), school at eight, lunch, home at three, homework, dinner at seven, bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Totally ordinary.
I mean, everything about me was pretty normal too, to be honest. I even looked ordinary. Blue eyes, but not the storybook princess kind. You know, not those clear, ‘sky blue’ eyes that you read about Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty having. Mine are a dark, stormy blue, tipped with white, like the color of the sea during a storm. Or, at least, that’s what my mom said. I like my eyes. They were the only part of me that I liked, to be honest. Otherwise, thought I was pretty ordinary-looking. Kind of wavy blonde hair that goes down only a little past my shoulders, average height, pretty skinny. Normal.
Like everyone else.
So I guess that’s why the whole of Rickety Shay Elementary School got excited when the news got round that Sam Cardilly was joining the sixth grade for a year after winter break. Anything for a change, you know? All of my Grade Six 1-A class was talking about it. We hadn’t had a new kid since Martha May came in second grade. And Sam was Canadian. None of us had ever been out of the United States before, so it seemed incredible that we were going to have what Lukas Finch called, very tactfully, “A real, live foreigner in our class!”
“Does he like football?” We asked eagerly.
“How tall is he?”
“Will he be cute?”
“Is he good at chess?”
We bombarded our teacher, Mr. Orsten, with questions, until finally he just told us to shut up and wait for Sam to arrive.
So we waited, though I think Mr. Orsten started regretting not answering our questions, because at some point we just started doing it ourselves. Within three weeks of our hearing of his arrival, Susan Sawhill was busy telling everyone she met that Sam was a professional model for a clothing magazine, while Eli Bentworth was informing us over lunch that he had won the World Chess Championships and was going to get a football scholarship to Harvard.
The day after winter break was over, my best friend Ellie and I spent the whole ten minute bus ride to school talking about him. I’m certain that just about every other kid in Grade Six 1-A did the same thing. So when Sam Cardilly actually arrived in the classroom at eight o’clock that Monday morning, I know that the entire class was shocked.
I know that we all hoped he wouldn’t be ordinary. And he wasn’t. But this? Sam was tall-ish, with short, chestnut-brown hair and dark green eyes. He was outgoing and funny, and had a sort of reckless, wild laugh that he would use as he told the class yet another terrible joke. He had a slight stutter, but this didn’t seem to bother him in the least. From the moment Sam Cardilly stepped into our classroom to the moment he left it, life seemed to be just one, big joke.
“Hey, guys,” he’d say during lunch. “I g-g-got a joke.”
“Yeah,” we’d say warily. Sam’s jokes were usually only funny to him.
“Why were medieval times called the d-dark ages?”
“Why, Sam?” we’d chorus.
“B-because there were so m-many knights!”
The class would laugh half-heartedly, then continue eating. Even Susan Sawhill, who had spent the first week of his being in our class trying to get him to admit that he was, indeed, a model, just looked bored and shook her head.
I guess my class only cared about fantasy characters. The ones who were models and won scholarships to Harvard and were the stuff of legends. Sam wasn’t anything of the sort. He was just real. So real he scared us.
I think that’s why Grade Six 1-A didn’t like Sam Cardilly. Of course, at first they were warm, as he was the new kid and a ‘foreigner’. But then they stopped the ‘nice’ act, and ignored him very pointedly.
I sat next to him on the bus ride home.
Most kids are pretty bored with their lives in sixth grade. I mean, they’ve just hit that infuriating age when they’re too young to do some stuff and to old to do everything else. I was bored with my life, too, but for another reason. I’d bet that in sixth grade my life was the same as the life of every other eleven-year-old kid on my block. Wake up at seven-fifteen, eat breakfast (cornflakes), school at eight, lunch, home at three, homework, dinner at seven, bed. Lather, rinse, repeat. Totally ordinary.
I mean, everything about me was pretty normal too, to be honest. I even looked ordinary. Blue eyes, but not the storybook princess kind. You know, not those clear, ‘sky blue’ eyes that you read about Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty having. Mine are a dark, stormy blue, tipped with white, like the color of the sea during a storm. Or, at least, that’s what my mom said. I like my eyes. They were the only part of me that I liked, to be honest. Otherwise, thought I was pretty ordinary-looking. Kind of wavy blonde hair that goes down only a little past my shoulders, average height, pretty skinny. Normal.
Like everyone else.
So I guess that’s why the whole of Rickety Shay Elementary School got excited when the news got round that Sam Cardilly was joining the sixth grade for a year after winter break. Anything for a change, you know? All of my Grade Six 1-A class was talking about it. We hadn’t had a new kid since Martha May came in second grade. And Sam was Canadian. None of us had ever been out of the United States before, so it seemed incredible that we were going to have what Lukas Finch called, very tactfully, “A real, live foreigner in our class!”
“Does he like football?” We asked eagerly.
“How tall is he?”
“Will he be cute?”
“Is he good at chess?”
We bombarded our teacher, Mr. Orsten, with questions, until finally he just told us to shut up and wait for Sam to arrive.
So we waited, though I think Mr. Orsten started regretting not answering our questions, because at some point we just started doing it ourselves. Within three weeks of our hearing of his arrival, Susan Sawhill was busy telling everyone she met that Sam was a professional model for a clothing magazine, while Eli Bentworth was informing us over lunch that he had won the World Chess Championships and was going to get a football scholarship to Harvard.
The day after winter break was over, my best friend Ellie and I spent the whole ten minute bus ride to school talking about him. I’m certain that just about every other kid in Grade Six 1-A did the same thing. So when Sam Cardilly actually arrived in the classroom at eight o’clock that Monday morning, I know that the entire class was shocked.
I know that we all hoped he wouldn’t be ordinary. And he wasn’t. But this? Sam was tall-ish, with short, chestnut-brown hair and dark green eyes. He was outgoing and funny, and had a sort of reckless, wild laugh that he would use as he told the class yet another terrible joke. He had a slight stutter, but this didn’t seem to bother him in the least. From the moment Sam Cardilly stepped into our classroom to the moment he left it, life seemed to be just one, big joke.
“Hey, guys,” he’d say during lunch. “I g-g-got a joke.”
“Yeah,” we’d say warily. Sam’s jokes were usually only funny to him.
“Why were medieval times called the d-dark ages?”
“Why, Sam?” we’d chorus.
“B-because there were so m-many knights!”
The class would laugh half-heartedly, then continue eating. Even Susan Sawhill, who had spent the first week of his being in our class trying to get him to admit that he was, indeed, a model, just looked bored and shook her head.
I guess my class only cared about fantasy characters. The ones who were models and won scholarships to Harvard and were the stuff of legends. Sam wasn’t anything of the sort. He was just real. So real he scared us.
I think that’s why Grade Six 1-A didn’t like Sam Cardilly. Of course, at first they were warm, as he was the new kid and a ‘foreigner’. But then they stopped the ‘nice’ act, and ignored him very pointedly.
I sat next to him on the bus ride home.
