Emmy in the Key of Code: A Middle Grade Novel in Verse About a New Girl Finding Her Place Through Music and STEM for Children (Ages 8-12) - Softcover

California Dreaming

      I’d never visited California before we moved here
      but I’d heard about it
      in songs.

      Mom even made a playlist
      and she and Dad sang along
      the whole drive over from Wisconsin
      but even after three days straight of
         Katy Perry
         the Beach Boys
         the Mamas & the Papas
      I still didn’t believe it.
      Why would people here be different
      than anywhere else?

      But now that I’m here
      on the first day of sixth grade at my new school
      the hallway is full of kids
      tapping on cell phones that probably cost more
      than an entire month’s rent
      in our new house.

      Plus
      everyone looks like they just jumped off the cover
      of a magazine.
      Hipster glasses
      jeans where the only holes
      were put there on purpose
      and everyone pulling out a reusable container
      full of weird grains
      that must be their lunch.

      I tug down my Packers hoodie
      because it’s colder here
      than the Beach Boys promised
      and this way no one can see
      that I look nothing like
      the cover of
      a magazine.

      I wish San Francisco
      would go back
      to just being
      a song.

Pretending

      As I walk down the hallway
      I head-hum my favorite walking song.
      Beethoven’s Minuet in G.
         dum dee dum dee dum dee dum dee dum

      I move andante
      matching my steps to the beat
         left, and right, and left, and right, and left

      so I can pretend
      I’m not at all sore
      from climbing up the hill in front of the school.
         left, and right, and left, and right, and left

      I can pretend I’ve been hiking it my whole life.
         left, and right, and left, and right, and left

      I can pretend I don’t smell like Wisconsin
      and that I wore the right clothes to school today
      and that I’m going to make tons of friends
      and have an amazing year
         left, and right, and left, and right, and left

      just like everyone else.

Locker Number 538

      Finally I reach my locker
         12 clockwise
         32 counterclockwise
         8 clockwise

         Stuck.

Attempted Duet No. 1

      “Hi, I’m new here. My name is–”

         “That’s my locker.”