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Their first meeting is, predictably, a disaster. Not in the Kitty-and-Lydia sense of chaos: upturned furniture, breakfast destroyed with bits of toast on the floor and ripped fabric, but in the way most civilized playground interactions often turn awry. Someone gets sand in their eye, and calls for their mummy.
Lizzie huffs indignantly and scowls up at Mrs. Martin, who has yet to reach the midway mark of her lecture on How Little Girls Should Behave. Jane is waiting outside for their mum with Kitty and Lydia. Lizzie hears their squeals and footsteps echoing while they're running around the hall. If Jane were in the room with her, she would be tugging on Lizzie's sleeve, sending her an admonishing look and reminding her about how we should always listen to the grown-ups! The thought makes Lizzie scowl even deeper, brows furrowing as she remembers how a grown-up's meddling was what led to the unfortunate Playground Incident in the first place.
In fact, now that she recalled it, she was completely innocent. She and Lottie were perfectly content puttering around a little pocket of earth behind one of the bushes beside the swings. Jane found a new playmate that day, some boy who laughed too loudly and went around showing everyone his brand new toy car and asking them to play with it. He dragged along his best friend as he introduced themselves both to the general playground populace.
"I'm Charles," he said, tugging the slightly taller boy to his side, "And this is Fich!"
The dark haired boy was keeping his hands in his short pockets, looking around with resentment. Lizzie felt a flare of protectiveness and defensiveness for her beloved playground. Sure, the swings groaned and squeaked, and one of the slides had been rendered unusable in the previous storm, but no one, certainly not a haughty boy with a ridiculous name like Fich, had a right to judge it.
When Jane had called her over to meet the two boys she gave the Charles boy her most winning welcome smile, and stuck out her tongue to the Fich-kid, as she walked back to Lottie. Jane scolded, "Lizzie!" sounding exactly like their mum, but Charles giggled and poked Fich on his arm saying, "I told you we'd make friends!" Lizzie really could not be bothered to even check what the boy said in reply.
She and Lottie were looking for butterfly corpses. Her uncle Tom had given her a brand new science book with pictures of how worms (called catterpillars) turned into butterflies after covering themselves in a hard brown blanket (called cocoons) for several days. Lottie had cooed at the pictures of emerging, newly transformed butterflies when Lizzie showed her the book, but the other girl was left wondering, what happened to butterflies when they died? Where did their bodies go?
So she dragged Lottie along on her quest, choosing the bushes which sported the most number of flowers ("You really think they would die while eating the flowers, Lizzie?" she had asked and Lizzie just rolled her eyes. "Well, duh. What else do butterflies do their whole lives?"). With the plastic spoons Lizzie had successfully filched during recess, they had started poking the ground beside the bush for a while. Lottie kept grumbling, "I wish we'd just look for the cattowpillows."
She heard one of the teachers call for Jane. Lizzie sighed, even though Jane could not hear her. Her sister was forever helping out the teachers in one task or another, and would likely do so even as she moved into primary school next fall. Lizzie felt a slight tremor at the thought of being separated from Jane, even if it would just be for a year. The sisters had never gone for too long without each other and Lizzie was afraid of what it would mean when Jane suddenly had so many other friends whom Lizzie did not know.
She moved on to another promising patch of dirt between the roots of one of the trees, and heard a familiar giggle. Oh, the Charles boy from earlier.
"Come on, Fich, why aren't you playing? It's fun here, right?"
"You can have fun anywhere, Charles," answered a partly scolding, wholly petulant voice.
"Well you won't have fun if you won't even try. Jane is fun, play with Jane and me."
"Jane and I. And no, I'll just wait here for you. So hurry up and finish playing." At that, Lizzie heard someone lean beside the tree.
"Ugh, stop that. We're not at English class and not studying grammar," Charles' voice hesitated then persisted again. "If you don't like to play cars with us, you can play with Jane's little sister, Lizzie!"
The only answer he got was a snort, which Lizzie had only ever heard from the grown-ups.
"I don’t like to play with little girls."
"She's hardly little, she's just one year younger than Jane and you play with Yana all the time! Besides, Jane said she also likes that science stuff that you like, too! Jane said she once brought four worms home because she thought they were caterpillars and wanted to grow them to butterflies, but they won't eat her leftovers salad leaves and then most of them died, and then their mum saw and fainted and didn't let her play outside for a week!" Charles giggled again. "She likes to dig around dirt, too! Like those arickologists you always read about!"
"They're called arckirologists, Charles, they look for arckifacks, not worms, and no I won't play with her! I bet she just throws around dirt and calls it a esperament."
Charles sighed. "Jane's coming back. Sure you don't want to play? I can ask her to talk to Lizzie. I really think you'll have fun with her, too."
"Just go and play and leave me alone!" Fich hissed, and Lizzie could barely hear his next words as he whispered even lower in growing frustration. She heard snippets, "Lizzie" and "she's barely towel bubble" and "never ever" as he spat them out. Lottie gasped beside her.
"What?" she turned to her friend in mild curiosity. Lottie looked sympathetic.
"He said you're barely a towel bubble," Lottie whispered with wide eyes.
"So? What does that even mean?" Lizzie replied, even as she felt herself getting riled up by that arrogant Fich boy who threw about big words like he even knew what to do with them. And he scoffed at her science! "What is even an arckirologist, I bet he made that up. Or copied it from a TV show."
"He's not a very nice boy," Lottie answered loyally.
Lizzie shrugged. She saw her da do the same when he wanted to avoid prolonging a conversation with their mum. She rallied to reassure Lottie as her mind thrummed, thinking of how to make Fich pay for making fun of her science. "I really don't care," she said, she thought, quite convincingly, "Besides, if he did actually want to play with us, he would just ruin our search! I bet he doesn't even know how to dig dirt properly! Come on, let's go there, I'll show you a trick." Lottie wasn't sure she trusted the gleam in her best friend's eye.
The next part of their search was cut short as the bell rang.
"Have you been exploring again, then?" Mrs. Gardiner looked at the dirty plastic spoons indulgently.
"We were looking for butterfly corpses, Mrs. Gardiner," Lottie volunteered. "But I did tell Lizzie I would rather find cocus!"
"You mean cocoons, dear," Mrs. Gardiner smiled. "Come on, give me those so we can throw them. Next time you can ask me for some, can't you, Lizzie?"
"Yes, Mrs. Gardiner," Lizzie said, distractedly, looking around. She kept her fists discretely at her side.
"Oh," Mrs. Gardiner said, her smile widening as she looked at someone approaching from behind Lizzie. "Have you met Fitzwilliam and Charles? Fitzwilliam's father is an archeologist. He travels around the world looking for buried artifacts. Maybe next time, you can bring along Fitzwilliam to go digging with you?" Mrs. Gardiner placed her hand on Fich's shoulders and turned him and Charles to face the two girls as she said this. The boy huffed, but he looked curiously from the dirty spoons the teacher held to the Lizzie who was obviously hiding something. She held her fist at her back and closed just a little bit tighter. She looked up to see him staring at her with suspicion and interest.
"What did you find?" Charles asked, trying to peer behind her.
"Oh nothing," Lizzie answered airily, "Just an arkifack I found while I was espermamenting." She met Fich's gaze with a challenge.
Charles laughed. "Fich! She catched us!"
"Caught," Fich bit back, not breaking his gaze. "Show me."
"Show you what?" Lizzie replied. Lottie was starting to look nervous.
"Don't," she whispered.
"Oh please," Lizzie answered, rolling her eyes.
"Give me that," Fich said imperiously.
"You really want it, then?" Lizzie asked, raising her eyebrows.
Fich hesitated, then nodded briskly, decisively. "Yes. Give it to me."
"Okay," Lizzie shrugged again. "Remember what you said."
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!"
Mrs. Gardiner ran back to the kids she left behind a few moments ago. Fitzwilliam, dark haired, straight backed, proper, was jumping around, pulling frantically at this pants, while the blonde boy beside him looked worriedly about, trying to calm his friend down.
"Keep still, Fich, so I can get it out of you!"
"Them! Them-more than one-moving! Cold--wet--AAGH!"
A few minutes and not a few bruises later, the matter was more or less sorted out and the necessary culprits apprehended.
"Lizzie. That was a very, very bad thing that you just did." Mrs. Gardiner said sternly, both hands on her shoulder. "Look, I'm going to the clinic first to check on Charles and Fitzwilliam and then we will all be back here to have a conversation with your parents. Will you stay here and behave in the meantime?"
The little girl refused to answer. It wasn't her fault!
"Lizzie."
"Yes, Mrs. Gardiner."
"Alright. Good. Fine." Mrs. Gardiner sighed. "I had to call your mum, you know."
Lizzie looked up in shock. "No. Please!"
"Sorry, Lizzie. I'll send Mrs. Martin in for the meantime. I'll be back soon, okay?"
Lizzie nodded, miserably. All this, because of stupid boys and towel bubbles.