Title: Joy to Have in Class
Fandom: Matilda
Rating: G
Length: 469 words
Tags: introspection, kid fic, child pov, fluff
Author notes: Heard Mara Wilson on a podcast this weekend. Haven't seen the movie since I was a kid though, so here's a 15-min piece based entirely on vibes.
Summary: A joy to have in class, she’d been told. She was a joy to have in class. How unfortunate then that she wasn’t a joy to have anywhere else.


A joy to have in class, she’d been told. She was a joy to have in class.

How unfortunate then that she wasn’t a joy to have anywhere else.

Nobody had exactly told Matilda that to her face. She was given to understand that adults were usually not so blunt which children, although she would vastly prefer them to be. Guessing at adults’ hidden instructions and intentions was a complicated and fraught game, the rules of which she still hadn’t deciphered entirely.

Still, Matilda was sure of two things.

1. She was a joy to have in class.

Or at least Miss Honey’s class. Miss Honey wasn’t one to lie, and she seemed to prefer changing the subject when she thought something she had to say might hurt one of her charges. Though Matilda sometimes found the non-sequiturs confusing, that meant that she could take confidence in Miss Honey’s words. That she was a joy to have in class.

2. She wasn’t a joy to have at home.

Her parents had also made her aware of that, though it had taken Matilda some time to understand that the problem wasn’t so much in what she did, but rather in who she was. Another example of adults’ hidden instructions and intentions. When her parents told her to go do something else for a change, they didn’t mean for her to finish the task she’d been given and then come back for further instructions. They rather meant for her to remain gone (out of sight and out of mind) until they had need of her. Which, as it turned out, wasn’t very often.

The third thing, Matilda was less sure of. But it was important for her mental tally that she jotted it down.

3. She wasn’t a joy to have anywhere else.

Matilda wasn’t quite sure of that one, because she didn’t seem to be a bother to everyone the way she was to her parents. She was quite uncertain she could call other people’s attitude towards her one of joy and happiness however. It could be a fond exasperation the librarian felt towards her when she talked about her books and asked a flew of questions. It was certainly visible annoyance the old man in the park manifested when she told him she should give seeds to the ducks instead of bread. He wasn’t happy to learn which book she’d learned that information came from, even though he’d asked her where she had learned that.

So no, it didn’t seem like she was a joy to have anywhere else.

Still, Matilda thought as she took Miss Honey’s hand to follow her home, maybe she could become a joy to have both at school and at home now that she would live with Miss Honey. And that could be just enough.