Baartock Part 6

"You're welcome, Baartock," said Ms. Laurence, as she went back to her desk.

He opened the box and looked inside. There were a lot of things in it.

Most of them he didn't understand, but there was a box full of crayons, just like the ones he had used the day before.

"There's a place on the box for your name," said Mrs. Jackson. "Why don't I write Baartock on this one, so that we'll know that it's yours.

All the new students have a pencil box just like this. We have to be able to tell them apart." She got a pen from the counter and wrote 'BAARTOCK' in big letters on the top of the box.

Baartock looked at the marks she had made on it. "This say my box?" he asked.

"Yes," said Mrs. Jackson. "This word is 'Baartock'."

He looked at the marks some more, then got the pen from the counter.

On one end of the box, he made another mark. It was a mark his mother had shown him how to make, his special mark. He had practiced making it and put it on all his things. He even had cut it into one of the stones of his bridge, working carefully, the way his father had shown him.

"This say my box, too," he said, holding it up for Mrs. Jackson to see.

"Now I know my box."

What Mrs. Jackson saw was not a scribbled mark that she might have expected, but carefully printed letters. They were letters of an alphabet she didn't recognize, but still clearly letters.

It was just one more new thing that she now knew about trolls. She already knew more about trolls than anyone else in town. There were only three people who even knew that there were trolls.

"Good. We all know that it's Baartock's pencil box. Now, it's almost lunch time," she said, looking up at the clock high up on the wall.

"We'd better be getting you to your cla.s.s, before they go to lunch without you. Aren't you getting hungry?"

Baartock hadn't thought about food, until Mrs. Jackson mentioned it.

Suddenly he was hungry, very hungry. It had been a long time since his breakfast bowl of porridge and some left-over acorns and toadstools from dinner.

"Yes. Hungry," he said.

Chapter 8

It wasn't quite time for lunch, when Mrs. Jackson and Baartock got to his cla.s.sroom. Mrs. s...o...b..chner was in the back of the room, reading to the cla.s.s from a big storybook. The children had gathered their chairs in a circle around her, and had been listening to the story, until Baartock came in. Then there was a flurry of activity. Jason jumped up and brought a chair over, right next to his, for Baartock to sit on. Several of the children started talking and some more had to move their chairs around. Jason had to ask Baartock where he had been and then started to tell him about the story they were listening to.

It was a few minutes before the cla.s.s was all settled again and ready to get back to the story.

The rest of the story didn't make much sense to Baartock, and he was tired of listening to grown-ups talk. He'd been listening to talking all morning. He was hungry and wanted something to eat. Finally the story was over and Mrs. s...o...b..chner had them put their chairs back at the tables and then line up to go to lunch. As soon as they were waiting quietly, she opened the door and led her cla.s.s down the hall to the cafeteria. This was a big room that Baartock hadn't seen before.

There were lots of tables and chairs and all along one side there were humans fixing food. The smell of food made him even hungrier. Baartock wanted to rush over and get something, but he had to stay in line. He had time to look around. He saw Mrs. Jackson talking to some other adults sitting at a table in the back of the room.

"All right, dear, here's your tray."

One of the women handed him a big flat thing. Then Baartock saw that all the children in front of him were sliding their trays along, and adults were putting plates of food on the trays. So he slid his along too. One woman handed him a plate of food. Another gave him a little dish with some yellow pieces that smelled a little like fruit. Jason stopped him and gave him a funny shaped box with something cold inside.

"If you don't want your milk, I'll drink it," he said grinning.

As they got to the end of the line, Baartock was just about to take his tray to a table just as everyone else had.

"Where's your lunch money, dear?" asked the woman at the end of the line.

"What's money?"

"Come on Baartock, give her your lunch money." Jason reached over and gave the woman some metal pieces. Then Baartock remembered. His mother had given him some metal pieces, telling him that humans used them. He reached in his pocket and gave some of them to the woman. He picked up his tray and followed Jason to a table.

"You're supposed to get a fork and spoon when you get your tray," Jason said, looking at Baartock's tray as he opened his milk carton. "You can use my spoon."

He took the spoon from Jason, and started to eat. The food was awful.

"What's this?" he asked Jason with his mouth full. He pointed at the brown stuff on his plate.

"Meatloaf," Jason answered, putting another forkful in his mouth.

Baartock tried the white lumpy stuff that had something brown poured over it. It tasted so bad that he wanted to spit it out, but he was so hungry that he swallowed it instead. The slice of bread he recognized, and it wasn't too bad. At least he could eat it, anyway. He tried a little bit of the yellow fruit. It tasted as though it had been soaking in honey, it was that sweet. It didn't even really taste like fruit. Baartock looked over across the table.

Jason's plate was empty already. He looked around the cafeteria.

All the children were eating the food. The others at their table were eating it.

"Don't you like it?" Jason asked.

Baartock couldn't think of anything to say. It was that awful. He just shook his head 'no'. Didn't humans eat anything that he could eat? He was still very hungry.

"If you're not going to eat it, can I have it?" Jason was just about to take Baartock's plate, when he saw Mrs. Jackson walking right toward their table. Instead, he said, "I'll meet you out on the playground,"

and picked up his tray and got up. Baartock saw the empty trays were being taken over to a window in the wall, and were left there. He was about to get up and follow Jason, when Mrs. Jackson called to him.

"Baartock, did you give these to the cas.h.i.+er?" She was holding the metal pieces he had given the woman.

He nodded. "Mother give me."

"Well, you can't pay for your lunch with them," she told him. "They're much too valuable. These are gold coins." She held out the smallest yellow metal one. "This is worth more than the price of a whole year of school lunches. Do your mother give you any other coins?"

He reached into his pocket and got out the rest of the coins and handed them to Mrs. Jackson.

"These are all old coins," she said, examining them. "Most of these coins are made of silver. There isn't a new coin here." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a coin to show him.

"These are the new coins," she said, showing him the ones she had.

"Yours might look the same, but they're much older and worth much more.

I'll have to talk to your mother about these. You really shouldn't bring something so valuable to school. You might lose them."

Baartock didn't know what 'valuable' was, and was going to tell her that his mother had a jar full of these coins, but Mrs. Jackson noticed his plate still full of food.

"I thought you were hungry." "Am hungry," he said, then pointed at the plate. He remembered the word that meant just how awful the food was. "Terrible," he said.

"You don't like it? I thought our lunch was pretty good today."

"Terrible," he said again. "Can't eat."

Mrs. Jackson thought for a moment. "There's no reason you can't bring your lunch to school, instead of buying it," she said. "and I want to talk to your mother about these coins. I'll drive you home after school, so I can talk to her. May I keep these coins to give back to her?"

"Yes," Baartock said

Mrs. Jackson walked away, thinking about how little she really knew about trolls.