"Wake up, D.W.," came a sweet voice. D.W.'s eyes flew open, and she saw, to her delight, that her mother was standing in the doorway.
"Mom!" she cried, throwing off her blankie and leaping from the bed. Wrapping herself affectionately around Mrs. Read's leg, she gushed words of love and happiness. "Oh, Mom, I'm so glad to see you! I love you so much! I thought you'd never come back!"
So it continued as Mrs. Read limped down the stairway, D.W. clinging stubbornly to her leg. When her husband saw her enter the kitchen, he remarked, "She sure seems happy to see you."
"I'll say," said D.W.'s mother. "We'll have to ask Quinn to babysit again soon."
"NOOOOOOO!" screamed D.W. in anguish.
A short while later, D.W. walked into her kindergarten classroom to find that the other kids were occupied with various playtime activities. As Miss Cosma prepared some pictures of traffic signs, Dallin was jousting with the Tibbles using fake rubber swords, while Emily and Nadine admired Vicita's new Native American-pattern bracelet.
As D.W. gazed at her chosen valentine Dallin Cooper, a chill suddenly went up and down her spine. She recalled the harrowing events of the previous evening spent under Quinn's oppressive thumb...and Dallin was her little brother...
She began to fantasize about a possible married existence with Dallin. Dressed in a fancy bridal gown, twenty-year-old D.W. rested in the arms of the similarly aged Dallin, who wore a tuxedo and was in the act of carrying her across the threshold of their new home. "Oh, Dallin, I love you so much!" she said rapturously. "I want to live here with you forever!"
"Oh, you will," said Dallin as he placed D.W.'s feet on the floor and stood her up. "But first, let's establish some rules."
"Rules?" D.W. became anxious at the sound of that word.
"Rule number one," Dallin began, "we will eat nothing but spinach from now on."
"Spinach?" D.W. stuck out her tongue. "Ewww!"
"Rule number two, don't stick out your tongue. Rule number three, no unicorns."
Shocked, D.W. grabbed a stuffed unicorn from one end of the couch and held it to her chest. "But I love unicorns!" she protested.
"Rule number four," Dallin went on, "no fantasy sequences."
"Huh?" D.W. found herself back in the play area with the other kids.
Dallin ran up to her, grinning broadly. "Hey, D.W.! Odette helped me make a necklace for you!" He held up a necklace made of small sea shells.
Unsure of how to react, D.W. simply stood motionless and gaping. "You okay?" Dallin asked her.
"Uh, Dallin," D.W. said timidly, "I...I think..."
"You like it?" asked Dallin, widening the necklace with both hands in hopes that D.W. would allow him to put it over her neck.
"Dallin, I don't want to be your valentine anymore," D.W. blurted out.
Dallin's face fell. "But...D.W..."
"I'm sure Emily would love that necklace," said D.W. coldly. She then strolled past him and took a seat in one of the chairs near Miss Cosma.
As the deflated duck boy stood and gazed sadly at the necklace he held in one hand, Emily approached him, wiggling her rabbit ears. "I couldn't help but overhear. So it's over between you and D.W.?"
"Yeah, I guess so," moaned Dallin.
"She doesn't know what she's giving up," Emily remarked. "Come with me and I'll show you what a real valentine can do." She took Dallin by the arm and led him toward where the other girls were playing; he put up no resistance, but followed willingly.
----
A short time later, Mr. Wald was collecting book reports from the students in his fourth-grade class. Fransue, who had applied a curling iron to her hair that morning, held up her three-page report on "A Series of Ill-Conceived Alliterations, Volume One: The Boring Backyard" as the teacher walked by.
He picked up the report and looked at it thoughtfully. "This is Sue Ellen's handwriting," he pointed out. "Did she write this for you?"
"No, I wrote it," Fransue claimed.
"It has your name on it," said Mr. Wald, "but you clearly didn't write it."
Fransue struggled to come up with a defense. "I, uh, dictated it. Sue Ellen wrote it down for me."
"In that case, Sue Ellen will get the credit for it," said the teacher with finality. He then took Suefran's report on "Captain Underpants and the Booger Beast from Beyond Betelgeuse", glanced at it, and groaned. "Oh, no..."
As Francine and Sue Ellen were leaving the classroom after first period, Fransue suggested, "From now on, let's switch our homework before we turn it in."
"I don't like that idea," Suefran responded. She watched as Adil and Jenna walked past, hand in hand. "Or that one."
Not far away, Arthur was discussing a serious issue with Alan, Fern, and Binky. "When I asked her if she was the new Mary Moo Cow, she denied it," he related.
"Yeah, you're right," Binky remarked. "The new cow does sound a lot like Mrs. Stiles."
"How would you know?" Fern asked him tauntingly.
"Uh...uh...my mom watches it," Binky replied. "She's part of this group that looks for violence in kid's shows."
"Well, here's a possibility," said Alan.
In his mind he pictured Mary Moo Cow walking off the sound stage, removing her cow head, and revealing the face of Jean Stiles. "I've never been so humiliated!" she groused as the attendants helped her to remove the other parts of her costume. "I played Blanche in Streetcar! I played Anna Christie! And now here I am singing stupid songs and telling kids how much I love them!"
Having shed the last remnants of the cow costume, Mrs. Stiles pulled her blue dress from a closet and threw it on over the gray sweatsuit she had been wearing. "Is that thing ready yet?" she asked a stagehand who was tinkering with a handheld device that vaguely resembled a bar code scanner.
"Stand still and don't move a muscle, Jean," said the stagehand, who then placed the device in front of Mrs. Stiles' eyes. She sighed with elation as a rainbow of laser beams spread over her eyes and then vanished.
Then she glanced around in confusion. "How did I get here?" she asked.
Arthur grinned. "Yeah, if that was my job, I'd want to get my memory wiped every day."
"Maybe I can get her to tell me if I promise not to tell anybody else," Fern proposed. "She knows she can trust me with a secret."
"You go, girl," Binky encouraged her.
----
And she went. About two hours after school let out, Fern went to Mrs. Stiles' apartment and rang the doorbell. The door opened and the polar bear woman appeared, looking a bit worn out as if from strenuous exercise. "Hello, Fern," she said warmly. "Please come in."
As Fern followed her former teacher into the apartment, she smelled the welcome aroma of fresh oatmeal raisin cookies. "Help yourself," Mrs. Stiles told her.
Fern grabbed a cookie and took a bite, then saw something that caused her to lose her appetite. A new movie poster had been added to the many gracing the walls of the small apartment. The poster featured several grotesque walking corpses, with the tag line, "They're back, and they're still hungry!" It was a promotion for the direct-to-video flick Terror of the Zombie Menace II.
"What do you think of the new poster?" Mrs. Stiles asked her. "I was the mayor of the town that was attacked by zombies in that movie. My battle cry was, 'Better dead than living dead!'"
"It's creepy," Fern remarked.
"That poster was hard to find," Mrs. Stiles went on. "Only a few hard-core zombie buffs watched the movie."
Fern took another bite of her cookie and walked to the couch where the woman was seated. "If I were in a movie like that, I'd be ashamed of it."
"And I am," Mrs. Stiles replied. "But nobody's ever seen it, so what the hey?"
"I came here to ask you something," said Fern as she sat down. "All my friends at school think the new Mary Moo Cow sounds a lot like you."
"Yes, a lot of people have been saying that. Arthur and his sister came over the other night and asked me that question."
"Is it you?" asked Fern.
Mrs. Stiles paused thoughtfully. "Let me ask you a question, Fern. If you were Santa Claus, would you give out your street address?"
Fern carefully considered her answer. "Uh...no."
"Of course not. All the kids in the world would line up at your door. You'd never have any peace."
"I guess that's why he lives at the North Pole."
Mrs. Stiles placed a hand on Fern's back. "I'm sure that the woman who plays Mary Moo Cow, whoever she is, keeps it to herself so she won't be followed around by singing kids wherever she goes."
"You're right," said Fern as she popped what was left of her cookie into her mouth.
"Besides," said Mrs. Stiles, chuckling, "after playing Anna Christie and Blanche DuBois, why would I willingly submit myself to such an indignity?"
Fern smiled and chewed.
"I've heard they're planning to add another character to the show," Mrs. Stiles told her. "A smaller version of Mary, called Mini-Moo. You should try out for that part. I think you'd be really good."
"Where do I sign up?" Fern asked.
(To be continued...)
