I'm Still Scared Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  A Note from the Author

  Praise

  Also available in the

  26 Fairmount Avenue series

  26 Fairmount Avenue

  a 2000 Newbery Honor Book

  Here We All Are

  On My Way

  What a Year

  Things Will NEVER Be the Same

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,

  Toronto, Ontario,Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

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  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007

  Copyright © Tomie dePaola, 2006

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  DePaola, Tomie.

  I’m still scared / written and illustrated by Tomie dePaola.

  p. cm. - (A 26 Fairmount Avenue book)

  eISBN : 978-1-101-00707-5

  [1. DePaola, Tomie-Childhood and youth-Juvenile literature.

  2. DePaola, Tomie-Homes and haunts-Connecticut-Meriden-Juvenile literature.

  3. Authors, American-20th century-Biography-Juvenile literature.

  4. Connecticut-Social life and customs-Juvenile literature.

  5. World War, 1939-1945-Connecticut-Juvenile literature.

  6. Meriden (Conn.)-Biography-Juvenile literature.] I. Title: I’m still scared. II. Title.

  PS3554.E11474Z.54-dc22 2005013500

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For all those who also remember

  the terrifying weeks right after

  December 7, 1941.

  On Sunday, December 7, 1941,

  the Japanese attacked and destroyed

  the United States Pacific Fleet at

  Pearl Harbor, on the island of

  Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands.

  It was a surprise attack.

  Chapter One

  “Tomie, Buddy,” Mom called. “Get up and get dressed. We have to go to church. Hurry now. ”

  Buddy, my older brother, and I got out of bed, washed up, and got dressed. It was Monday, but we had to go to church. It was a Holy Day. That means that if you’re Catholic, like we are, you have to go to church just like on Sunday.

  “Come on, boys,” Dad said. “We have to drop off your baby sister Maureen at the Purcells’ before going to St. Joseph’s.”

  The Purcells lived up at the end of Fairmount Avenue. They had a little boy named Jimmy who was just about the same age as Maureen.

  The Purcells weren’t Catholics, so Mrs. Purcell would watch Maureen while we were at church.

  Almost more people were in church than there had been on Sunday. Father O’Connell came down to the altar rail. He was the youngest priest at St. Joseph’s in Meriden, Connecticut, where we live. “We will start off this morning by saying the Prayer for Peace,” he said. “You will find a copy of the prayer in your pews.”

  Usually the mass is full of music and candles and smells and bells and quiet. This morning, I heard lots of sniffling, like ladies crying and men clearing their throats. I never heard that before!

  The Sisters of Mercy who taught at St. Joseph’s School were sitting at the front with all the schoolchildren. Buddy and I went to King Street Public School, so we sat with Mom and Dad.

  I saw one of the Sisters pull a white handkerchief out of her sleeve and put it to her eyes. It was like a big flash of lightning because, except for the white stuff around their faces, the Sisters were always dressed in long black dresses and black veils.

  Mom, Dad, and Buddy went up to the altar for Holy Communion. I sat quietly in the pew. I hadn’t made my First Communion yet.

  They came back and knelt down for a little while. Then Mom whispered, “Okay, boys, we have to go now or you’ll be late for school.”

  Because no one had had breakfast, we went into the drugstore across from the church. They had a soda fountain. “We don’t have time to go all the way home,” Mom said. “So we’ll have a quick breakfast here. It will be a treat.”

  I had a glass of chocolate milk and a doughnut. “From the Vienna Bakery downtown,” the lady told me. I had never had a chocolate milk and a doughnut from the Vienna Bakery for breakfast before!

  “I need the car, boys, so your mother is going to walk you to school,” Dad told us. We said good-bye to Dad and started down Linsley Avenue toward Hanover Street with Mom.

  “We’ll take the walkway through the cemetery,” Mom said. “It comes out on Orange Street, right before King Street.”

  While we were walking, I saw people standing around, talking quietly.

  “What are all those people doing?” I asked.

  “Oh, just going to work,” Mom said.

  It didn’t look that way to me.

  Mom left Buddy and me at the corner of Orange and King Streets. That’s where the school was.

  “I’m going to take the bus home. Be good, boys,” Mom said, kissing us.

  When Buddy and I got to school, I saw the two teachers who were on duty in the upper school yard with the two teachers from the lower school yard. They were talking in low voices. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  The older kids were talking in groups, too. Buddy went over to his sixth-grade friends. I looked around. There was my best friend, Jeannie.

  “What’s everyone talking about?” I asked her.

  “I guess it’s all about the attack on Pearl Harbor yesterday,” Jeannie said.

  “My mom said that things will never be the same,” I told Jeannie.

  “My father and Mr. Conroy were talking this morning about how there will probably be a war,” Jeannie said. “They didn’t know I heard them.”

  “My uncle Charles said the same thing yesterday,” I said. “He and his girlfriend, Viva, his best friend, Mickey Lynch, and my grandparents, Tom and Nana, came up to our house. I heard Mom on the phone saying that we need to be together.”

  “I don’t know why nobody will tell us anything,” Jeannie said.

  “Buddy
said that we’re just kids,” I said. “He may be older, but he’s just a kid, too,” I added.

  Then the school bell rang.

  Chapter Two

  It was time to go inside. All the kids lined up by class. One by one, we filed into the school and down the hall or up the stairs to our rooms.

  Miss Burke, the principal, was usually standing in front of her office, watching us come into the school. Today she wasn’t there. We could hear her in her office, talking on the telephone.

  We had to take our coats and stuff off before going into the classroom. In first grade we had a coatroom in the back of our classroom But in second grade we had to use a small space next to the stairway leading down to the auditorium.

  It was always a pain in the winter. We had so many coats to hang up and galoshes (or Arctics, as we called the rubber boots we wore to keep our shoes dry) to take off and put away.

  School was always smelly in the winter, especially if it was snowing.

  “Wet wool,” Jack Rule told us. “My grandma says winter clothes are made from wool and when they get wet, they smell.” Well, Jack’s grandma was right. On a snowy day, the whole school had a “wet wool” smell.

  Then there was the “mittens drying on the radiators” smell. It was even worse than “wet wool.” It was Miss Luby’s bright idea. She was the school nurse. After recess our mittens were always soaking wet from making snowmen and snowballs. Miss Luby said that they had to be dry before we could put them on to go home. “Wet mittens will give you a cold,” she said.

  So, since the radiators in each room were hot, we lined up our mittens on the tops, just like hot dogs on a grill at a picnic.

  The steam from the wet mittens would start rising as they dried. The classroom got hotter. The windows dripped. The smell got stronger.

  Now we had a second winter smell—the “hot wool mittens” smell. It was even stinkier than the plain “wet wool” smell.

  But today no one was thinking about mittens.

  Suddenly, the door to our classroom opened. It was the school secretary, Miss Philomena.

  “Boys and girls,” she said, “we are going to have a school assembly. When the bell rings, go to the auditorium exactly the way Miss Gardner has taught you.” Miss Philomena and Miss Gardner whispered to each other, and Miss Philomena left. Why did they always whisper? The teachers didn’t want us to hear stuff. Why?

  Jeannie and I looked at each other. What was going on?

  Chapter Three

  “Boys and girls,” Miss Gardner said. “When the bell rings, line up in order. Then, we will go down to the auditorium when our turn comes.”

  The bell rang. We got in line. Miss Gardner opened the door and waited as kids from the upper floor of the school filed by on the way to the auditorium. Sixth-graders, fifth-graders, fourth-graders.

  Next Miss Fisher’s combination second and third grade went by. Then we went, followed by the first-graders. The kindergartners stayed in their room.

  We went down the staircase with “NO TALKING” until we came to the door to the auditorium. It was also the gym.

  Mr. Walters, the janitor, had opened up the big wooden doors that separated the gym part from the auditorium. All the seats, made up of six wooden folding chairs connected to each other, were set up in rows, filling the whole room.

  This was serious.

  The teachers helped us get settled in our chairs.

  Miss Burke walked up onto the stage. She always wore purple. Today she looked very stern.

  “Students, please all rise.” A sixth-grade boy came up on the stage holding the flag.

  “We will now say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.” We did.

  “You may now sit. Yesterday, as many of you know, a terrible thing happened at Pearl Harbor. It is in Hawaii. Our entire Pacific Fleet of ships is based there. Even though it is far away from here, it affects us as well. Later, at noontime, President Roosevelt will talk to the American people over the radio. Mr. Brown, the superintendent of schools, has informed us that we are closing the schools early so you can be at home with your families when the president speaks.

  “I want you all to go right home. Older children, if you have a younger brother or sister, be sure to see that you take him or her home safely. We’ll see you all back here tomorrow when school will be in session, as usual.”

  Buddy came down to Miss Gardner’s room to walk me home. Jeannie lives just around the corner from our house, so she came with us.

  When we got home, Mom was surprised to see us. She was in the kitchen with Maureen.

  “School got out early,” Buddy said.

  “So we could hear the president on the radio,” I added.

  “That’s good,” Mom said. “Your dad is coming home to hear the president, too. I’m fixing cream of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. We’ll eat as soon as he gets here.”

  We heard Dad’s car pull into the driveway. Dad came in, kissed Mom and Maureen, patted Buddy on the shoulder, and mussed up my hair.

  We all sat down at the kitchen table and ate our lunch. Dad got up and turned on the radio in the living room as Buddy and I helped clear the table.

  Then we all gathered around the radio.

  “The president is going to talk to a joint session of Congress,” Mom told Buddy and me. I wasn’t sure what that was. But I knew it was important.

  “Here we go,” Dad said.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said, “the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

  Chapter Four

  Right after President Roosevelt spoke on the radio, the phone started to ring. All the relatives were calling.

  Mom and Dad decided that we should go down to Wallingford to see Nana and Tom and Uncle Charles.

  When we got there, my grandfather, Tom, and Uncle Charles were still at Tom’s grocery store.

  “You children stay in the parlor and play with the blocks. Buddy, get them out of the sewing room. I have to talk with your mother and father,” Nana said. She took them right into the kitchen.

  Buddy, Maureen, and I were building things with the blocks when Tom and Uncle Charles, his girlfriend, Viva, and his best friend, Mickey Lynch, came in. They said hello and went into the kitchen. I could hear talking. Then it sounded like someone was crying.

  Tom came into the parlor. “Well, kids,” he said, “how is everything going? Shall we play a game of Chinese checkers?”

  I went into the sewing room and got the Chinese checkers board and the bag of marbles that were used to play the game. Tom had taught me how to play last year. I loved it. I was better at it than Buddy. But today I couldn’t pay attention.

  “Hey, Timothy,” Tom said. (My grandfather called me Timothy for a nickname.) “That’s the third bad move you’ve made. What’s the matter?”

  “I’m scared,” I said.

  “Oh, Timothy, me bucko,” Tom said as he sat down and pulled me up into his lap. “You don’t have to be scared. You’ll see, everything will be all right. You have to be brave.”

  “How come all the grown-ups are whispering and whenever we little kids come into the room, they all stop talking?” I asked Tom.

  “Well,” Tom said, “I think that some grown-ups just don’t want to frighten all you kids. War is pretty scary, so they are just trying to protect you.”

  I was beginning to feel a little better.

  “Will we all be killed?” I whispered.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Tom said. “You know, Nana and I, your mom, and Uncle Charles went through the First World War and look at us. We’re still here. It will be okay. I’ll make sure of it.”

  I really felt better now. I knew that I had the best grandfather in the world.

  “Come into the kitchen, children,” Nana called. “Have some soup.”

  The grown-ups were sitting around the big kitchen table. Viva was drying her eyes. Mom and Nana put out three bowls of homemade vegetable soup. The grown-ups w
eren’t eating.

  We had apple pie for dessert.

  “Boys,” Mom said, “Uncle Charles wants to tell you something.”

  “Buddy, Tomie,” Uncle Charles said, smiling at us, “I’ve joined the Army. I’m going to be a soldier and fight in the war.” Viva started to cry again.

  Chapter Five

  Once we were back in our classroom, Miss Gardner told us that today we would have our very first music lesson. The music supervisor was Mr. Conklin. He was like Mrs. Bowers, the art supervisor. He would come to King Street School every couple of months or so, and class by class, we would go up to the music room. It was on the second floor of the old part of the school. The music room was a classroom with rows of the same kind of seats that were in the auditorium. There was a blackboard and a piano.

  Miss Mulligan, the fifth-grade teacher, played the piano in the auditorium for our assemblies. She played the piano for Mr. Conklin and our music lessons. The other teachers watched Miss Mulligan’s class while she was off in the music room.

  It was our turn. We lined up—as usual-and walked to the music room as quietly as we could. We didn’t want to disturb the other classes.

  Miss Gardner went to take care of Miss Mulligan’s class. Our music lesson began.

  Mr. Conklin had this funny-looking thing in his hand. It was made out of a wooden piece with five wires sticking out of it. Pieces of chalk would fit at the end of the wires.

  Mr. Conklin drew on the blackboard with the “thing.” There were five white lines evenly spaced on the blackboard.