“Okay,” I promise, and wait for her to begin.
Chapter
Thirteen
Brandi continues to braid my hair as she begins to tell her story.
“When I moved here last year, it was really hard for me.” She sighs.
“Everyone already had best friends . . . everyone here already knew each other . . . . and the people who already knew each other didn’t have a lot of time for a new person.”
“But you were always invited to parties and stuff.” I put down the mirror and look at her.
She nods. “But that’s not the day-to-day stuff, telling each other secrets, just hanging out and having a good time . . . . the way that you and Justin did. Sometimes I looked at you and Justin and felt really bad. Where I used to live, I had this friend, Sandy . . . and we were a lot like you and Justin. The two of you looked like you were having so much fun, except for when you had that big fight just before he moved away.”
“That was a bad fight.” I remember.
“Even though I know it wasn’t right, I was glad that you two were fighting.” She pulls a little tight on my braid. “I figured that maybe it would give us a chance to be friends. But then you two made up. When Justin moved away, I thought we could get to know each other better. But you went to England . . . and then I was away when you came back.”
“Why didn’t you just say something?” I jump a little as she pulls on my hair.
“It’s not that easy.” She shrugs.
I know how she feels.
She continues, “And you two just didn’t have room for another good friend. . . . The only person who did was Hannah.”
I want to say, “Yeah, because no one else wants to be her friend because she’s so bossy,” but I don’t.
Brandi adds beads to the braid. “So I was friends with Hannah, but it was hard. She’s really bossy. Everything’s got to be her way. And sometimes she says really mean things.”
“I know.”
Brandi sits down on the bed and looks at me. “But it was so hard not having a best friend, so I tried to be friends with Hannah. I stayed with her family for a week at the shore. She was really mean to me, saying things like, ‘No one else would be your friend.’ It got so bad that I called my parents and they came down and picked me up early. Then when my parents and I went to California for a while, I got to spend some time with my cousin, Daniela. She’s fifteen and she’s really nice. We talked about a lot of stuff. It made me feel better. Then when school started, I thought we could be friends, but it was like you wanted another Justin around, not me, Brandi.”
Brandi looks sad.
“But I always thought you were nice. I didn’t know you felt so bad.” I look at her.
Softly, she says, “Well, I did.”
Poor Brandi.
I didn’t know that she felt that way, but now I really do know how she felt.
I say, “Brandi, I’m sorry you felt so bad. I’d really like it if we can be friends.”
“Me too.” She gets up and starts my second braid.
“And not just because Justin moved away.”
“Thanks.” She tickles my nose with my hair. “And I want to be friends with you not just because I moved away from Sandy.”
I think about how Brandi and I do different things than Justin and I did.
Somehow I don’t think that hair braiding is something he would be interested in.
And Brandi likes to read books more than he did.
And she talks about how she feels. That’s not something that Justin likes to do.
I do miss him a lot though.
There will never be another Justin.
But there would never be another Brandi, either.
Brandi says, “If some new kids move here, let’s be nice to them, even if we do become best friends.”
I nod and think about all of the kids who have best friends move away. I think about all of the kids who have to move away.
I bet it’s hard for all of them.
I wonder if it’s hard for grownups when their friends move away.
I think about how Justin’s mom was my mother’s friend, and she moved away . . . . and how my dad moved away . . . . and even though my mom and dad were definitely not best friends when they split up, I wonder if my mom needs a new best friend too.
I wonder if Max is that new friend. It’s not something easy for me to think about right now.
Brandi finishes the second braid.
I think about how she said we might become best friends.
I guess that’s something that doesn’t always happen right away . . . by snapping your fingers.
Oh, well, I learned to snap my fingers. . . . It just took practice. So I, Amber Brown, can learn how to be a best friend. . . .
Thwip . . . snap . . . I hope.
Brandi hands me the mirror. The two braids look wonderful.
“I love them,” I say.
Then I pretend to stick the bead up my nose, even though I don’t really do it because I know it could be dangerous.
“Perfect in every way.” I continue, “Now, let’s practice the burping. I really want us to win that mermaid.”
Chapter
Fourteen
I press the stone on the mermaid’s stomach and she makes her strange sound.
It makes me laugh.
I look at her long, thick blonde hair and wonder if Brandi and I should give her braids, with thread and beads, too.
I wonder what Gregory Gifford is doing with his mermaid, the burping trophy one.
That boy burped ninety-two times to win it.
Then he burped the alphabet.
He is definitely the Burp Champion of our school, if not the whole world.
I didn’t even come close to his score.
I burped thirty times and then I got the hiccups.
When Gregory got the mermaid, he pretended she was Karate Mermaid and had her make chopping motions at all of the boys.
Then he drop-kicked her and the boys played touch football with her.
I really wanted that mermaid.
When I got home, I told my mom that I’d lost.
She didn’t seem too upset and said that she hoped that now my burping days were over.
I burped at her.
And then that was it . . . . . . . . until now.
She’s just given me a present and I’ve opened it . . . . . and it’s the mermaid.
I’m so excited.
Wait until I tell Brandi.
It’s going to be such a fun, friend, sharing thing.
“Thanks, Mom.” I grin at her. “You’re the best.”
“Read the card,” she says softly.
I read the card.
I put the mermaid down. “I don’t want it.”
My mother says, “Amber” in a soft, sad voice.
I hate it when she uses that soft, sad voice.
“It’s not fair.” I make a face. “He’s being so nice.”
“He is so nice.” She smiles. “You have no idea how hard it was to find the mermaid. I called Gregory’s mom to find out what company made the doll, and then Max called the company to find out where he could buy it . . . . and he called five stores before he found one that had it and would send it to him special delivery.”
I look at the mermaid. “It’s just a dumb doll. I’m getting too old for dolls anyway . . . . especially for dolls that are bribes.”
“Amber.” My mother uses that voice again. “Max just wanted to do something that would make you happy . . . . to make me happy . . . . to make all of us happy. And he just wants to meet you.”
She looks as sad as her voice sounds.
She looks sad, real sad, not the kind of sad that moms sometimes pretend when they want to get their kids to do something.
I guess she needs to make new friends, too . . . . . and Max is that new friend. It looks like he’s not going away.
I look at the doll and think again about how Brandi is going
to laugh when she sees the mermaid . . . . . . . how we’ll be able to share it.
I think about how it would have been even better if I had won the other one for burping.
It would have been even better if my dad had gotten the mermaid for me.
But he’s in Paris . . . . and I don’t think he realized how much I wanted the mermaid.
And then I look at Mom and how sad she is because I wouldn’t take the mermaid, and how happy she looked when she talked about how Max got the mermaid for me.
So I pick up the mermaid and say, “I’ll write Max a thank-you note.”
My mother has me trained to write thank-you notes even though I think it is one of the most boring things in the world to do.
“Maybe someday soon, you’ll meet Max,” she says.
I start to hand back the mermaid.
“It doesn’t have to be right away.” She pushes the mermaid back toward me.
“You really like him, don’t you.” I’m not sure that I want to hear the answer.
She nods. “I do. . . . Amber, life goes on. Things change. We all have to adjust, make new friends, new lives, keep what we can of our old lives . . . the good parts. . . .”
I think about how I’ve had to do that.
I decide to ask the question that I’m really not sure that I want to hear the answer to. “Are you going to marry Max?”
My mother takes a deep breath. “I’m not sure. It’s too soon to know that . . . but truthfully, I do care for him a great deal . . . . a great deal.”
Two “a great deals.”. . . . This sounds pretty serious.
“So will you meet him?” she asks.
I shrug. “Do I have to? Right now?”
“Not yet . . . . . not if you really don’t feel ready, but I would like you to meet him someday . . . . . soon.” She looks so serious.
I look at her, at the mermaid, think about my father, and sigh. “Soon . . . not yet though, please. I need to get used to some things first.”
When I was little, I thought that things were always going to be the same. Actually, it wasn’t even something I thought about . . . . it just always was the same, in all the big ways.
And then it all changed, in all the big ways.
And I hate it.
But I, Amber Brown, can’t change it back again to the way it was.
I guess that there will always be changes in my life.
I guess it’s like that for everyone.
It’s that way for everyone I know—me, Justin, our families, Brandi.
So, I guess that I just have to go on getting used to my new life, my new class . . . . . Amber Brown Goes Fourth . . . . that’s the way it is . . . . . at least, until I get to fifth grade. . . . Then I guess it’ll be Amber Brown Takes the Fifth . . . . . . . . . .
But I have a long way to go before that happens.
Turn the page
for a preview of
AMBER BROWN
WANTS EXTRA CREDIT
Chapter
One
AMBERINO CERTIFICATES
I, Amber Brown, being of sound mind and no money (I spent it all on a book, a computer game, and some junk food), do hereby give my mother five Amberino Certificates for her birthday.
Amberino Certificates allow The Mother (Sarah Thompson) to ask her beloved only child (Amber Brown) to grant her five wishes. . . . Just remember, these have to be wishes that I can actually do . . . . not stuff like move the Empire State Building or eat spinach or find the cure for dandruff (not that you have it or anything). Just remember, I’m just a nine-year-old kid, so make the wishes doable . . . but then you always do!!!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND LOVE FROM
Chapter
Two
I, Amber Brown, am being held captive by a madwoman.
That madwoman is my mother, and she’s very mad at me for having a messy room.
She’s also very mad at me because my teacher, Mrs. Holt, sent home a note saying that I’m “not working up to the best of [my] ability.”
My mother is very, very mad at me because of the note. Actually what she said is that what she’s very angry about is the reason for the note . . . . me not doing my schoolwork the way I should.
Now I’m supposed to be a perfect little student.
And she’s using one of the Amberino Certificates to make me clean up my room.
She says that I can’t leave my room until it’s “neat as a pin.”
How can a room be neat as a pin? Does a pin have a bed in it—a dresser, curtains, a person living in it?
The words “neat as a pin” are the second-silliest thing I’ve ever heard.
The first-silliest thing is expecting me to have a neat room.
I wish I never gave her those Amberino Certificates for her birthday.
Doesn’t she know that if my room is neat, I can’t find anything?
It makes me nervous if everything is too organized.
She never used to mind that my room wasn’t neat.
She never used the Amberinos to make me clean it up.
The telephone rings.
I rush out to answer it.
My mother gets to it first, picks it up, and listens.
Then she says, “Brandi, I’m sorry, Amber can’t come to the phone. . . . .”
“I’m at the phone. . . . I don’t have to come to the phone.” I pull on my mother’s sleeve.
My mother points her finger at my room. “Back, Amber. . . . I’m serious. You have to clean your room before you do anything else.”
“But Mom. . . .”
“No ‘But Mom’s,’” she says. “CLEAN YOUR ROOM. . . . NOW.”
She starts talking on the phone. “Brandi, she can call you back as soon as her room is clean. . . . . Yes, I’ll remind her to bring her new game cartridge when she goes to your house tonight . . . if she gets her room organized by then, you will see her and the game. Otherwise, I’m not sure you’ll see either.”
I stomp into my room.
This isn’t fair.
My room is a little messy, but I, Amber Brown, don’t think she’s really angry about my messy room.
I think that my mom is really angry because I don’t want to meet her dumb boyfriend.
That’s one of the big reasons why she’s in such a bad mood.
Just because she wanted to use one of her Certificates to have me finally meet Max and go out to dinner with them . . . and just because I said, “No, I’m not ready yet, and you promised I don’t have to until I’m ready. You promised that a long time ago . . . . so the Certificate can’t make me go.”
If I meet Max, I’ll have to actually know that he’s a real person . . . . a real person who is going out with my mom . . . . and if my mom is going out with him . . . . . that really means that there’s less chance that she and my dad will get back together.
And what if I meet Max and actually like him? That wouldn’t be fair to my dad, who’s in Paris, France, which is so far away.
So, I’m not ready to meet Max, and I may never be ready.
I stomp some more and then I start throwing things into garbage bags . . . . . . my dirty clothes, my clean clothes, the book report I’ve been working on for the last week.
And then I put the garbage bags in my closet.
Next, I put in all of the important things from the top shelf of my bookcase . . . the Dad Book that I keep so that I can look at pictures of my dad and talk to him sometimes . . . . the ball that Justin and I made from our used chewing gum . . . . the scrap-book that my aunt Pam and I made up of our trip to London. (It even has a chicken-pox scab in it to remind me of how I got sick there.)
I open the top drawer of my dresser and shove everything on top into it.
I get into bed, and from under the covers, I start to make my bed, pulling up the sheets and then the blanket and then the bedspread . . . . then I get out and kind of smooth everything down . . . . the Amber Brown Way to Make a Bed.
Then I throw my stuffed an
imals on my bed.
I guess there’s not only a madwoman in the house but a mad kid.
There’s no madman in the house, though, because he, my father, and my mother got so mad that they got divorced, and now he’s in France because of his dumb job.
I, Amber Brown, wish things would go back to the way they were before . . . . before my dad left . . . . . before Justin, my first best friend, moved away . . . . . before my mother changed her last name back to the name she had before she got married so that we don’t even have the same last name anymore . . . . before Max, the dumbhead boyfriend, met my mother . . . . before it was so important to get me to keep my room neat.
I wish.
Amber can’t wait to be Best Child when her mom and Max get married, but planning a wedding comes with lots of headaches. Amber can’t find the right dress, her dad keeps making mean cracks about Max, and everyone is going crazy over how much things cost. Her mother even suggests they go to city hall and skip the party altogether!
Justin and his family are supposed to come for the wedding, and Amber has been looking forward to that for months. Adults sure can be a lot of work, but if Amber can make this wedding work, it will all be worth it.
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Read all the Amber Brown books!
Amber Brown Goes Fourth
Amber Brown Is Feeling Blue
Amber Brown Is Green with Envy
Amber Brown Is Not a Crayon
Amber Brown Is Tickled Pink
Amber Brown Sees Red
Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit
Forever Amber Brown
I, Amber Brown
You Can’t Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown
Amber Brown Goes Fourth Page 4