Bernice Buttman Model Citizen Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Niki Lenz

  Cover art copyright © 2019 by Linzie Hunter

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Name: Lenz, Niki, author.

  Title: Bernice Buttman, model citizen / Niki Lenz.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Random House, [2019] | Summary: “Bernice Buttman is tired of being labeled a bully, so when her mom leaves her with her aunt, who is a nun, Bernice decides to mend her ways and become a model citizen”—Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018039636 | ISBN 978-1-5247-7041-9 (hardcover) | ISBN 978-1-5247-7044-0 (hardcover library binding) | ISBN 978-1-5247-7042-6 (ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Conduct of life—Fiction. | Bullying—Fiction. | Nuns—Fiction. | Aunts—Fiction. | Moving, Household—Fiction. | Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L45 Ber 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Ebook ISBN 9781524770426

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v5.4

  ep

  To my mom, Sherry Brummett, who taught me to read and took me to the library.

  And to my dad, Richard Brummett, who taught me to chase big, scary dreams.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart

  Chapter 2: Sunday School Bully

  Chapter 3: Plan in Action

  Chapter 4: Bringing Up Buttmans

  Chapter 5: Curiosity Killed the Wimp

  Chapter 6: The Thousand-Dollar Jackpot

  Chapter 7: A Fate Worse Than Head Lice

  Chapter 8: Halfway to Nowhere

  Chapter 9: Blank Slate

  Chapter 10: To Party, or Not to Party?

  Chapter 11: Fun and Games

  Chapter 12: Cowgirl Up

  Chapter 13: Squeezy Cheese

  Chapter 14: Yippie Pie Yay

  Chapter 15: Bullying with a Side of Blackmail

  Chapter 16: Poop Pie Hits the Fan

  Chapter 17: Consequences

  Chapter 18: Itchy Palms

  Chapter 19: Sparks Flying

  Chapter 20: Halfway Paradise

  Chapter 21: Stunt Riding Is Not for Wimps

  Chapter 22: Ho Ho Ho

  Chapter 23: A Nun for Real

  Chapter 24: Forget the Fear

  Chapter 25: Hobbit Hole

  Chapter 26: Partners in Crime

  Chapter 27: Betting All the Bananas

  Chapter 28: Bernice Buttman, Model Citizen

  Chapter 29: Patching Things Up

  Chapter 30: To the Rescue

  Chapter 31: Lights, Camera, Action

  Chapter 32: Sealed with a Booger

  Chapter 33: Pot Lucky

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Here are things that I, Bernice Buttman, was awesome at. One: burping the alphabet. Two: blowing up stuff with firecrackers. Three: wearing the teachers and puny kids of Oak Grove Elementary School into nubs. I was less great at knowing what to do with myself at recess.

  I sat on top of the monkey bars, feeling like a booger on a cheese ball…out of place and unwelcome. Kids whirled all around me, talking to their buddies and playing games, but nobody came within arm’s length of me. That was probably real smart. There was only one kid in this whole mess who I didn’t want to clobber.

  Oliver Stratts stood in a small knot of kids, huddled against the wind. I stared at the back of his curly head while I swung my legs back and forth. Even though Oliver avoided me so he wouldn’t get pounded like the rest of the kids, I had decided I wanted him to be my friend. He was real smart and he always smelled like name-brand laundry detergent and I’d never heard him answer a question wrong. I hoped he could be the first kid to play tag with me at recess and live to tell the tale. But how in blue blazes are you supposed to get someone to like you, anyhow?

  “Bernice!” My momma’s voice cut across the playground, making my heart yank into my throat. What is she doing here?

  Momma leaned against the chain link fence, her face pressing through the metal diamonds. “Bernice Buttman, get your raggedy behind over here right this minute!”

  I felt my face go pink as heads turned to see what the commotion was about. I half fell, half flipped off the top of the monkey bars and jogged past the gawkers, one hand yanking my pants up, my other arm wiping my nose with my sleeve.

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed as soon as I was close enough to the fence. Momma was wearing pajama pants and slippers, even though it was eleven o’clock.

  “Imma need my money back,” she said, digging around in her purse for something.

  “What money?” I scowled.

  “The money I gave you this morning for your lunch,” she said, as though this made perfect sense.

  “But I need that money to eat!” I said, very aware of all the kids who were staring and pointing and laughing at that very second.

  Momma threw her hands in the air as though I was being completely unreasonable. “I don’t know, girl! You’ll figure something out. Now cough up the cash. I gotta put gas in the car and get to my tattoo appointment.”

  Momma was getting me and my four older brothers’ faces tattooed on her back. That was a whole lot of ugly, let me tell ya. Plus, it was so expensive she was having to shake down her daughter for lunch money.

  I pushed the two dollar bills through the wires of the fence, just so she’d hurry up and get out of there. She stuffed the money in her pocket and waved, climbing into her clunker and exiting in a puff of smoke.

  I stood there, clinging to the fence, taking deep breaths and trying to calm down. If I turned around and saw just one of those booger-eaters staring, they would be sorry.

  Sometimes I missed when I was little and all us Buttmans were here at the elementary school together. If anyone messed with me, my big brothers would pound the pudding out of them. Kids learned right from the get-go to leave me alone. And I liked it that way.

  Mostly.

  Except for at recess when your mom shows up and steals your cash and is totally embarrassing and you wish you had a friend who would share his lunch with you.

  It was time to put my plan in action.

  I pulled the note out of my pocket and smoothed it on my leg. My first version had been scrawled in marker, but I reckoned my handwriting looked too messy, so I’d redone it with letters cut out of a magazine.

  DEAR OLIVER,

  DO YOU WANT TO BE MY FRIEND?

  YES OR NO

  BERNICE

  I’d wanted it to look fancy
, but I think it might have ended up looking like a ransom note. I stared at the back of Oliver’s head again and tried to decide if now was the right time to give him the note.

  Gina Sullivan laughed her fool head off about something Oliver had said. I took a few steps closer, real stealthy-like, and strained to hear what they were saying.

  “Did you see how many chins that woman had?” Gina said, loud enough that everyone within half a mile of the school could hear. My stomach suddenly felt cold as ice.

  That loudmouth girl kept talking. “I’ll betcha Bernice will look just like her when she’s grown.”

  My hands balled up into fists.

  Oliver’s voice was quieter, but I still heard him plain as day. “I heard they steal toilet paper from the gas station bathroom.”

  Not him! The rest of the kids could talk, but not my soon-to-be best friend! My ears filled up with a roaring, and before I had a second to think things through, my feet had marched me right over to the group of snot-nosed fifth graders. The kids went quiet, and Oliver was suddenly very interested in the zipper on his jacket.

  I grabbed one of his skinny arms and twisted it behind his back. The rest of the kids scattered like roaches in the sunlight.

  “Ouch!” Oliver squealed.

  “Come with me,” I said, my voice as sweet as sunshine. “I’ve got a present for you.”

  “I don’t want a present,” Oliver said, his voice high and wobbly.

  “Okay, then maybe you’ve got a present for me.” I found the pile of dog doo I’d spotted earlier, and I pushed Oliver’s face right up next to it. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Oliver. How would you feel about me and you being friends?”

  “No way!” He tried to squirm out from under me, but I outweighed him by about a million pounds. All I had to do was lean forward a smidge, and his nose would touch poo. It would serve him right for talking bad about me in front of everyone, him being my best friend and all.

  The little twerp’s voice squeaked, and he talked through gritted teeth. “Oh, gosh! Oh, man. Let me up, Bernice!”

  “I’ll be glad to. When you say you’ll be my friend.”

  “Okay, okay, fine,” Oliver whined.

  The recess bell rang and the other kids, who had been watching us from a safe distance, ran to the redbrick wall to line up. I stood slowly and gave Oliver’s backside one tiny kick, sending him sprawling only one beard-second away from the pile of dookie. (A beard-second is the average length a beard grows in one second. Google it.) He scrambled backward, pinching his nose. “You need Jesus, Buttman! You’re the meanest girl I know!”

  Maybe I did need Jesus, but at least my stomach wasn’t gonna be grumbling at lunchtime. “Too bad for you, ’cause I’m your new best friend.” I wadded up my friendship invitation and threw it at Oliver’s head. “What did your mom pack me for lunch?”

  Everyone knew Oliver Stratts attended the First Baptist Church with his parents and older sister. He had cleaner fingernails than any person I’d ever met. I thought about those clean fingernails as I reached into the tub of cheese balls for breakfast that Sunday.

  I wondered if Oliver would be surprised to see me if I showed up at church.

  I wondered if my momma would even notice I’d left.

  I wondered if they served snacks at Sunday school.

  When I’d clawed the last ball out of the plastic jar and licked all the glow-in-the-dark orange powder off my fingers, I decided it was time I got religion.

  The First Baptist Church was a short bike ride away from the Lone Star Trailer Park. I hocked a loogie at the sign as I pedaled past. The plastic letters N, E, T, and A had fallen to their deaths last winter, making the sign read LO SR TRAILER PARK. Or Loser Trailer Park, as the kids at my school liked to call it. Just not to me, or they’d be sorry.

  I was out of breath by the time I threw my bike on the steps of the church. The squat white building stood quiet and holy, and I hesitated with my hands on the heavy wooden doors. Sweat made little wading pools under my pits, and I started to smell ripe.

  If you entered a church with the intent to mess with one of the patrons, would God be mad at you? And how mad are we talking? Like, you better do one good deed to make up for it, or a whole pile?

  Who was I kidding? I wasn’t gonna do any good deeds.

  I barreled through the door and let the air conditioning blow the fuzzy yellow hair off my forehead like I’d stuck my finger in a light socket.

  The big room full of wood pews was empty except for some old ladies practicing for the choir. They happily ushered a sinner to Sunday school, which it turned out was located in the damp church basement.

  You should’ve seen Oliver’s face.

  He couldn’t have been more surprised if the Little Lord Baby Jesus had walked through the door in his swaddling clothes.

  And lucky me, the only empty folding chair in the circle of fifth graders sat right next to him. He tried to put his Bible there, but the Sunday school teacher pried it from his hands and placed it underneath. She smiled with super-white teeth. “Please, take a seat.”

  The chair squealed like a stuck pig when I sat down, and the other kids snickered. That didn’t seem very Christian of them, but I wouldn’t know Christian from nothin’. I smiled over at Oliver, my eyelashes fluttering like Miss Missouri’s, and his face turned green as a grasshopper.

  “Now, let’s get back to our lesson,” the skinny teacher lady said.

  I raised my hand.

  “Yes? Bernice, isn’t it?” Her face glowed with excitement. It seemed my bad reputation had followed me to God’s house. She must have thought I was gonna repent of my evil ways right then and there.

  “You got snacks?” I asked. More snickering, but the kids were careful this time to cover their mouths. It mighta crossed their minds that I wasn’t above punching someone in a church basement.

  “Um, no,” the teacher said, scrunching her brows. “But there will be Communion during the main service.”

  Unless they ate cookies and drank punch for Communion, I wasn’t gonna get excited about it.

  She cleared her throat, and the children sat as still as statues, waiting to hear from God. I stared hard at the smear of lipstick on the teacher lady’s teeth.

  “So as I was saying, Jesus taught us it isn’t the amount we contribute that’s important. It’s the attitude with which we give. He wants us to give from the heart and sacrifice more than what we’re comfortable living without.”

  The kids squirmed. I picked my nose. I hoped we’d get to something interesting soon.

  “There’s a family in our congregation who’ve been going through a hard time. You all know the Smiths.” The fifth graders nodded like robots.

  I raised my hand again.

  “Yes, Bernice?”

  “What kind of hard time?” I asked. “They end up in jail?”

  “Oh, heavens no. Mr. Smith lost his job and Mrs. Smith is sick in the hospital. They have four little mouths to feed.”

  “My momma got five mouths to feed, plus her own big fat one. And she don’t got no job.” The Buttmans weren’t rolling in the dough, but everyone already knew that, so no use pretending we were. That was just the way it was.

  The Sunday school teacher’s cheeks turned awful pink then, and I wasn’t exactly sure why.

  “Today we’re going to be taking up a collection to help the Smiths. I want you to give the way Jesus taught us, children.” She passed a brown basket to the kid nearest her, and he dug in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled dollar bill and a baseball card. He dropped the dollar in the basket. But after catching the teacher’s eye, he frowned and added the baseball card before passing the container to the next kid.

  “That’s wonderful. God sees your generosity. All the other Sunday school classes took an offering this mor
ning as well. I know the Smiths will be ever so grateful.”

  One kid pulled a twenty out of a stiff leather wallet and dropped it in. My jaw came unhinged. Twenty bucks!

  I thought about all those other offering baskets in all those other Sunday school rooms. A metric crap-ton of cash. That amount of money would nearly fund my latest and greatest ambition.

  I reached into the back pocket of my muddy jeans and unfolded the flyer I’d printed at the library for the Hollywood Hills Stunt Camp. As of last week, it was my life’s dream to go to this camp and learn to sword-fight, jump out of helicopters, and punch people harder. Of course, I was only guessing about the details of the program. But it was in California, which was about a jillion miles from Kansas City and the Loser Trailer Park. (It was 1,624.6 miles to be exact. I’d Googled it.)

  “What’s that?” Oliver asked, peeking over my shoulder at the flyer. His breath smelled like pancakes and maple syrup. Lucky jerk.

  I shoved the paper back in my pocket before he could get a good look at it.

  “Nothing.” I pinched him hard on the soft underside of his arm while the Sunday school teacher congratulated another kid on his generosity. Oliver stretched his face into a silent scream and rubbed the spot furiously. That was gonna leave a mark.

  When the basket got to me, my fingers itched to snake that cash and make a run for it. Coins and wadded-up bills covered the bottom of the basket, and it pressed heavy on my lap. I bit the inside of my cheek, trying to resist the smash and grab.

  The teacher put her hand on my shoulder. “It’s touching, isn’t it? People are good at heart. When asked to give, they always rise to the challenge.” She lifted the basket from my lap and marched it to the back of the room.