Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Dunphrey

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Hey, we’re all just your basic wonderful kids, with your basic wonderful lives. If you think anyone’s being honest in the journal entries they let you see, you’re really fooling yourself. I’m probably the only one writing anything real at all in here. And I’m not really sure why I do. I guess it’s like my Granma said about crocheting. It is better than hitting someone.

  And if I thought for a minute that anyone would read this, I’d destroy it so fast your head would spin.

  But, okay, if it really makes you happy, I’ll give you one entry, Mrs. Dunphrey. It’s going to be the fakest entry anybody ever wrote.

  November 17

  Yes, you MAY read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  Today I’m going to write about Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is just a week away. It’s wonderful because we get out of school for two days. Hurrah! (No offense, Mrs. Dunphrey. I’m sure we’ll all miss your class.) And everybody gets to eat like pigs. At my house, we’ll get up early and watch the parades on TV. I like the one from New York, the Macy’s parade, but my mom always likes to watch the one in Hawaii. She wants to go to Hawaii someday.

  The whole time we’re watching the parades, the house fills up with really great smells, of turkey roasting and pumpkin pies baking, and sweet potatoes cooking … I’m making myself hungry just thinking about it. When it finally is time to eat, we all go around the table saying what we’re thankful for this year. Then we dig in and eat, and don’t get up until we are full to bursting.

  November 23

  Don’t read this entry, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  I showed Rochelle the last entry I wrote, the fake one, and she thought it was really sweet. (Oh, gag.) She asked me if we really did go around the table, saying what we’re thankful for this year. She thought that was cute. Then I told her I’d made the whole thing up—I think I got the saying-what-we’re-thankful-for bit from one of those Thanksgiving or Christmas TV specials. “The Waltons,” maybe.

  Except, now that I think about it, it seems like Granma used to make us do that sometimes.

  Tonight I took Matt with me when I went in to work at the Burger Boy. I told him to sit still and color or play with his Matchbox cars while he waited on me. He was really good and quiet—he didn’t disturb anyone, not like a lot of the kids his age who come in with their parents. And I bought him a Coke and a burger, so it wasn’t like he wasn’t a paying customer. But Bud was still upset. He said my job while I’m at the Burger Boy is cashier, not babysitter, and if my first priority is taking care of my brother, then I shouldn’t try to work at Burger Boy, too.

  I don’t think Bud’s forgiven me yet for not going out with him. Maybe Sandy was right—maybe I should have gone out with him, so he would be nicer to me. And then I could take Matt to work with me every night.

  Except, the funny thing is, it turned out Matt would have been fine staying at home tonight. When we got home Mom was just sitting in her chair in the living room watching TV, like always. She said Dad was out bowling. He hadn’t even been home for supper. (Matt asked. I sure didn’t care.)

  November 26

  Don’t read this entry, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  It’s Thanksgiving—oh boy, what a great holiday at the Bonners’. Dad didn’t come home again last night, and I don’t know that Mom even bothered to go to sleep. When I went to bed, she was sitting and rocking in the living room, kind of in a trance, and when I got up this morning she was just the same. About 11:30 this morning I asked her if she was going to fix anything for Thanksgiving, and she looked at me like she didn’t even know what I was talking about. So I went and got some stuff at Haggarty’s—I was lucky, because they were going to close at noon. It was just deli turkey and instant potatoes and canned cranberry sauce and a store-bought pie, but it cost everything I had left from my last Burger Boy check. I just meant it to be for Matt and me, but when I was putting it on the table, Mom came out and ate with us.

  And then an hour or so later, after Matt and I did all the dishes and put everything away, we heard Dad’s pick-up outside. Mom had been acting like walking to the kitchen was about as much as we could expect out of her—she didn’t even put her dirty plate in the sink. But as soon as Dad pulled up out front, she started scurrying around straightening up pictures on the wall, shoving these ratty old cushions of Granma’s under the sofa, hiding the pile of Soap Opera Digests under a chair. And she kept telling Matt and me, “Don’t do anything to make your dad mad. He’s got to see how much we love him. Then everything will be all right. . .”

  I was all ready to say, “Sure, Mom. What if I don’t love him?” But then Dad walked in, and Mom couldn’t do anything but smile at him. He brought a big roast turkey and something like a vat of mashed potatoes and lots of other stuff: green beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and three kinds of pie. I think he got it at some restaurant. It was a thousand times better than what I bought. And he was all jolly and friendly, like he thought he was Santa Claus. Matt started to say we’d already eaten, but Mom real fast clamped her hand over his mouth. She said things like, “Oh, what a wonderful surprise! Ray, you are the best husband and father any family could have!”

  Yeah, right.

  We all sat down and pretended to eat like we were really hungry. Matt kept looking at me like he was confused, but I kicked him under the table and shook my head. He got sick afterward and threw up all over the kitchen floor. My stomach didn’t feel so hot, either.

  Tish,

  Okay. Fine.

  December 3

  Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  Geez, I put all that effort into that one entry, and all I get is, “Okay. Fine”? Teachers are so weird.

  Dad’s still in his nice mode. That Thanksgiving dinner was just the beginning. He hasn’t yelled at Mom in a week, or thrown anything. And Saturday he took Mom and Matt and me downtown to see the Christmas lights turned on for the first time. Then he took us out to eat not fast food, but at a real sit-down place, Shoney’s.

  I don’t trust him, though. He knows it, too. Sometimes he’ll catch me looking at him-looking hard, because I’m trying to see how long this is going to last-and he says, “What? What? Didn’t anyone teach you not to stare?” I think I make him nervous. Fine. He makes me nervous, too.

  December 5

  Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  It’s really late—2 A.M.—but I can’t get to sleep. Sandy and I went to a party tonight at Eric Seaver’s. Eric’s parents are out of town for the weekend (fools!), so as you can imagine things got a little wild. It was fun—it should have been fun—but I don’t know, I just felt sad all night long. I was there laughing and joking with everyone else, but it’s like there was some part of me standing back, watching, thinking, “Is this as good as it gets?” Randy Seaver, Eric’s older brother, was there, home from college—he goes to some school that lets out from Thanksgiving until after New Year’s—and he was kind of hitting on Sandy. Sandy has a boyfriend right now but Tony wasn’t there (he was at some family thing), so Sandy was flirting like crazy with Randy. She kept saying things like, “Isn’t it cute how our names rhyme? Randy and Sandy—Mmm!” At midnight he kissed her—he said he got confused and thought it was New Year’s Eve—and someone actually started singing that song from grade school, “Randy and Sandy, sitting in a tree, K, I, S, S, I, N, G…”

  Pretty soon after that, I told Sandy I wanted to go home, and she got mad and said I was jealous because Randy liked her, not me. I told her that was crazy—Randy’s not even that cute. He has weird hair that sticks up straight, and he talks like he thinks everyone but him is dumb. Anyhow, I had to get Merry Rogers to take me home, because Sandy stayed with Randy. Tony’s going to kill her on Monday when he hears how she was acting.

  But you know what? I think I was kind of jealous of Sandy. It’s not that I wanted Randy Seaver (Oh—he sniffs all the time, too, because he’s got some sort of allergies. Five minutes with him makes you want to yell, “Use a Kleenex!”) And it’s not that I really think he’s th
at madly in love with Sandy. But it’d be nice to have someone who cared about me, someone I could talk to about anything, someone who’d tell me I was really special. Rochelle reads those dippy romance novels all the time, and sometimes she loans one to me. I pretend I think they’re stupid, but they make me cry, because the guys in those stories really do love their women. They’d do anything for them. In one story Rochelle gave me last year, the hero rode fifty miles in a blizzard because the heroine was trapped in an avalanche. And he found her and saved her and they made love, right there in the snow … Except, I really do know that kind of thing is stupid. How many romances in real life are any good? You’d have to say Mom is about as devoted to Dad as anyone can be, and what’s it get her? Bruises, is all I see.

  December 8

  Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  I’m going to do Christmas shopping tonight after school. I’m probably going to get perfume or earrings for Sandy and Rochelle and Chastity, and a robe for Mom, and a Gameboy for Matt, since he already has a Nintendo now.

  I’m not getting anything for Dad.

  He wasn’t home last night or the night before, but I couldn’t get up the nerve to ask Mom where he was. She had to work double shifts at Haggarty’s, because I guess some of the other cashiers are sick. So yesterday and last night, it was like it was just Matt and me living together. I didn’t have to work at the Burger Boy, even. Last night we sat at the kitchen table and did homework together. Anyone who knows me would have laughed—Tish Bonner, actually doing homework?—but it was kind of cozy, him working on addition, me working on geometry. Matt finished first (eight-year-olds never have much homework) and then he sat there drawing while he waited on me to get done. Matt’s in LD classes, and sometimes I’m afraid he really is dumb, but he can draw better than anyone I know. (Maybe I should get him some sort of art set, instead of a Gameboy. I’ll have to think about that.) I made cocoa, and we put, like, ten thousand marshmallows in it, and there was no one to yell at us.

  All that reminds me how, when I was about Matt’s age and Matt was a cute little baby, I used to dream about Mom and Dad leaving and it being just Matt and me and Granma. I used to think that if I did everything right—didn’t step on any cracks walking home from school, remembered to put the forks the right way when I set the table, didn’t talk back when Dad spanked me—if I did all those things, maybe I’d wake up some morning and it’d be like Mom and Dad never existed, and we were just Granma’s kids.

  Except, Granma would have yelled at us about eating too many marshmallows.

  December 10

  Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  Still haven’t seen Dad all week. Mom’s stayed in bed the last few days. She says she’s sick—says she got the flu everyone else had. But I don’t know. I hear her crying in there. It scares Matt.

  Tony broke up with Sandy when he heard how she’d been all over Randy Seaver at the party Saturday night. And then Sandy called Randy Seaver and he was like, “Who?” Like he’d never heard of her in his life. (Of course, Sandy didn’t admit that—Rochelle told me, because Rochelle was right there when Sandy called him.) Sandy went to the mall and shoplifted a necklace and a pair of $35 earrings, to make herself feel better. She was real obvious about it, too. It’s a wonder she didn’t get caught.

  I knew real-life romances never worked out.

  I remember the stories Granma used to tell about her and Granpa. He was in the Navy, and he had to be away sometimes for six or eight months at a time. But he wrote her every single day while he was on board ship. And even though he could have ended up being someone really important in the Navy—do they have generals?—he decided to quit that because he couldn’t stand being away from Granma. When he got home, he worked two jobs for a while so they could save enough to buy a house. It’s the house we live in right now.

  I always liked hearing those stories from Granma, but now—this is kind of scary—now sometimes I think, what if she only told me the good parts? Granpa died when I was only a year or two old, so I never really knew him. What if most of the time he treated Granma the way Dad treats Mom?

  I think I would have been able to tell, the way Granma talked about Granpa. I don’t think Granma would have put up with what Mom puts up with.

  Tish,

  These are fine. I’m glad to see that you’re writing so much. I hope this journal is serving as a release for you. I know life can sometimes seem very difficult when you’re in high school. It’s very healthy to write things out.

  December 16

  DON’T read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  That was an odd note Mrs. Dunphrey wrote after my last entries. You don’t suppose she’s been reading some of this, do you? (Geez, who am I asking about that? You’d think I thought this journal is a real person.) I asked Rochelle and Chastity how they were doing their journals—I knew better than to ask Sandy, because she’s not doing one at all. Says it’s such a small part of her grade it doesn’t matter, and anyhow, she doesn’t care if she flunks. But that’s Sandy for you. Both Rochelle and Chastity said they just write any dumb thing that comes to their minds, and they don’t bother writing “Don’t read” at the top of their entries. Chastity said she wrote a whole entry, “I love Mike Hunter, I love Mike Hunter,” maybe fifty times, and Mrs. Dunphrey didn’t care.

  If I was Chastity, I’d be way embarrassed about that.

  But maybe I should be more careful, even with the “Don’t read” label. I should be more careful, anyhow, since I carry this notebook around, and I guess anyone could end up taking it and reading it. Sabra Carson picked up my stack of notebooks and books instead of hers in the bathroom the other day—it was an honest mistake, since we both had our geometry book, our English book, and blue notebooks. Sabra’s okay, and she didn’t have my books for more than about five seconds. But what if she’d opened my notebook and seen something I wrote about Dad being away, or about him hitting Mom? I’d die if people knew.

  I’m going to tape the old entries together. And then I’m only going to write dumb things, like Chastity and Rochelle do. It’s not like it matters, anyhow.

  December 18

  Don’t read this, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  Everybody’s dying for Christmas vacation. I don’t know why the stupid school board won’t let us out until the day before Christmas Eve. There’s a Christmas party tonight. Should be a great time. I’m not going with Sandy, though. Maybe I’ll go with Chastity and Mike, except I’ll feel like a third wheel.

  I wish I had a car. I’ll be sixteen next Wednesday. (Hurray!) But then I have to take driver’s ed. And anyhow, who can afford their own car? (Besides Sandy, I mean.) Sandy told me if I’d only gone out with Bud Turner, he’d probably let me borrow his car—he’s a jerk, all right, but he does drive a cool car. A Camaro. 1967. Bright red. It just doesn’t look right with him at the wheel.

  December 21

  Don’t read, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  Mrs. Dunphrey said in class today that we won’t have to hand this in again until after Christmas—I guess teachers get lazy around holidays too, huh? (Just joking, in case you are reading this.) So I won’t have to write at all over Christmas break, and then I’ll only have to do one entry after we get back …

  It’s good I’m ahead on this, because I’m behind on everything else. We have finals the week after we get back from break, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to pass any of them, it’s been so long since I’ve paid attention in any of my classes. It’s not my fault, though. I have personal things going on. Things beyond my control.

  December 28

  DON’T YOU DARE READ THIS, Mrs. Dunphrey.

  I know I decided I wasn’t going to write anything real in here anymore, and I know it’s crazy to touch any school stuff over break. But things are so bad, I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t do something. And sometimes it did used to make me feel a little better if I wrote things down…

  Dad’s gone. For good this time, I think. And it’s all my
fault—at least, Mom thinks it’s all my fault.

  We didn’t see him for two weeks, then he waltzed in on Christmas Eve with a bunch of presents and a live Christmas tree. I swear, he even dressed up like Santa Claus. He came in saying, “Ho, ho, ho—has everyone in this house been good this year?” And then he started handing out presents—fancy ones. You could tell he’d had the clerks at the mall wrap them for him.

  Maybe if Matt had looked happy, I would have kept my big mouth shut. But he didn’t. He looked confused. He reminded me of this puppy the Rockholds down the street used to have—Joey Rockhold hated having to take the dog for a walk, so he’d take it out on the dog, jerking his chain first one way, then the other. The dog would try to go the way Joey wanted him to go, but it was impossible. As soon as the dog started in one direction, Joey jerked him another way. That dog eventually got so mean, the Rockholds had to have him put to sleep. I always thought it was Joey’s fault.

  So, anyhow, that’s how Matt looked, like that confused puppy. He didn’t know if he was supposed to run up to Dad and play along with the Santa Claus stuff, or if he was supposed to hang back with me because Dad would only be here for a little while. It’s like Dad had chains on all of us, and he was jerking us all around. Mom did run over to him and talk about how beautiful the presents were, and how he really shouldn’t have, but even she looked a little baffled and scared. I decided no chains, no faking for me.