Forever Amber Brown
Page 1
WHY CAN’T THINGS STAY THE SAME?
I say, “So why can’t things stay the way they are . . . you and me together . . . you going out with Max . . . but not getting married? You’ve only been going out since the summer. It’s only October.”
“I know,” she says. “I said that to him already. But you know, Amber, he really loves me a lot. And I love him, too. And he loves you.”
I was beginning to like Max . . . a lot. But love . . . that’s Big Time.
My mother takes a sip of coffee. “I’ve got to do some serious thinking about this . . . so I’m sorry, but your room is not going to be redecorated right now.”
My room . . . I forgot all about it.
One minute, I want to get one thing in my life changed, and the next minute, I find out that my whole entire life might change.
I, Amber Brown, will never complain again about stupid dancing animal wallpaper.
In fact, now I want things to stay exactly as they are.
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
Paula Danziger
FOREVER
AMBER BROWN
Illustrated by Tony Ross
PUFFIN BOOKS
An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Special acknowledgment to Scott Hirschfeld and his students at P.S. 87 New York City
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 1996
Published by Puffin Books, a member of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008
Copyright © Paula Danziger, 1996
Illustrations copyright © Tony Ross, 1996
All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Danziger, Paula, 1944–2004 Forever Amber Brown / written by Paula Danziger;
illustrated by Tony Ross. p. cm. Summary: Amber’s life has changed dramatically:
her parents are divorced, her father lives in France, her best friend has moved
to another state, and now her mother must decide whether to remarry.
[1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Remarriage—Fiction. 3. Friendship—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.]
I. Ross, Tony, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.D2394Fo 1996
[Fic]—dc20 96-19343 CIP AC
ISBN: 978-1-101-66062-1
Lettering by David Gatti.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
To all my readers, with love
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
AMBER BROWN SEES RED
Chapter
One
I, Amber Brown, am on a search, not for gold, not for silver, not for treasure.
I, Amber Brown, am on a search for the perfect bowling ball. One that will help me beat my mom and Max, her friend.
I search.
Some holes are too far apart. Some are too close. Some balls weigh a ton. Some are an ugly color.
It is not an easy search, especially since my hair keeps falling in front of my eyes.
It’s not easy to give up wearing two ponytails and try to let my hair grow to be the same length.
I blow up at my hair. It goes up, and then falls down in front of my eyes again.
Finally, I find a bowling ball. My fingers don’t get caught. It’s not too heavy. It matches what I’m wearing.
I just wish that they made glitter bowling balls.
I rush back to our lane and begin.
I aim the ball down the middle, but it goes into the gutter.
Personally, I think that there’s a magnet in my bowling ball, and one in each gutter.
“Better luck next time,” Max says.
I sit down on the bench and sigh.
My mother picks up her bowling ball, aims, and throws.
There’s no magnet in her ball.
It goes right down the center and hits the pin in the middle.
The bowling pins on each side are left standing.
“Split,” Max says.
“Are you offering us a banana split?” I ask.
He crosses his eyes at me.
I know what a split is . . . that’s what my mother has just gotten. . . . pins separated, with a hole in between them.
Max has also taught me other bowling words:
Strike—when all the pins go down with the first ball
I want to know why I, Amber Brown, get strikes only in baseball . . . not in bowling.
Spare—when you get all ten pins down with two balls
Turkey—three strikes in a row
I want to know why I, Amber Brown, bowl three times in a row, get low scores, and feel like a real turkey.
300—a perfect score
I, Amber Brown, got a 42 in our first game—an imperfect score.
Max bowls.
He gets a strike.
When he sits down on the bench, my mother gives him a kiss.
I think that’s why he’s been getting so many strikes, so that he gets kisses from my mother.
It’s weird for me to see my mother kiss Max. I know she’s divorced. I know that she and Max are going out . . . but it’s still a little strange to see my mother and Max kissing.
I look away from them and watch the people in the next lane.
The little girl in that lane has forgotten to take her fingers out of the ball and she’s now lying on the floor, crying, with the ball still on her hand.
When it’s my turn, Max joins me on the lane and shows me, again, how to hold the ball, how to “approach,” and how to throw.
This time my bowling ball doesn’t bounce down the lane. . . . and six pins fall.
Max and I give each other high fives.
I get one more pin on my second ball, which touches the pin just before it drops into the gutter.
My mother gets four pins down.
Max only gets a spare next time he’s up.
My mother gives him a kiss anyway because she says she has kisses to spare.
I don’t remember my parents kissing each other very much at the end of the time they were married.
I actually like Max. I tried not to, but I do.
It’s very confusing.
Half the time, I’m really glad that Max is in our lives, and the other half, I keep hoping that my mom and dad will get back together again.
The chance of my parents getting back together again is about as likely as my bowling a 300.
Part of me keeps hoping, though.
While I wait for my turn to bowl again, I look at people and try to guess their shoe sizes.
Then I look at the backs of their shoes, and if they’re wearing rentals, I can see what sizes the shoes are.
I, Amber Brown, have no trouble making up games.
Some of the people have their own shoes, so there are no numbers on the backs.
Next, I start to think about what kinds of bowling shoes some of my favorite book characters would wear.
Dorothy, in The Wizard of Oz, would definitely wear red glitter bowling shoes.
I think about my favorite character when I was little, the Little Engine That Could. I wonder if engines wear shoes. Maybe if they’re little, they wear training shoes.
My aunt Pam told me that in England, they call sneakers “trainers,” so maybe that’s what he would wear.
“Amber, it’s your turn,” my mother reminds me.
Gutter balls again.
“It’s only a game,” Max says.
When Max says that, I think of my father.
When I was little and my dad and I used to play Chutes and Ladders and I’d lose and get upset, that’s what he used to say: “It’s only a game.”
I used to wonder why he wouldn’t just let me win if it was only a game.
My father . . . . . . I hardly ever see him now that he’s living in Paris, France.
We talk every week, but that’s not the same as seeing him.
I’m not even sure that I can see him in my brain anymore. I have to look at pictures of my dad to remember what he looks like.
I saw him during summer vacation, when my aunt Pam took me to London. My dad came to visit.
That was in August.
In September, I met Max.
Now it’s October, and it’s kind of weird.
I feel like I’m beginning to know Max better than my own father.
Next time my father calls, I’m going to beg him to move back.
Chapter
Two
Mrs. Holt says the words that I hate the most.
It’s not: “Close your books now for a surprise quiz.”
It’s not: “Amber Brown, you’re not doing your work, and I’m going to have to send a note home to your mother.”
It’s not: “You’ve got detention again for giggling and talking.”
It’s not: “Today, the cafeteria lunch is tuna-bacon burritos.”
The dreaded words are: “Your school pictures are here.”
I never used to care, not when I was a little kid. Now that I’m in the fourth grade, though, there are actually some people who I want to give my picture to, and I don’t want them to barf when they see the picture.
I cross my fingers in my mind.
Please, oh, please, I think . . . . . . make them look nice enough so that I can send one to Dad.
I know that no matter what, he’ll say that I look beautiful in the picture, because he always says that.
The day before I had my picture taken in kindergarten, I fell off the slide. I had a black eye, a bruised cheek, and cut marks on my nose. When my father saw those pictures, he said that the black, blue, and red made me look even more beautiful because now I had “not only a colorful personality, but a face to match.” It was hard to believe him after that, but even my mom said, “You’ve got to love him for trying.”
My parents don’t love each other anymore, but they still love me, so that’s two pictures that I’m going to need to order for sure.
“Hannah.” Mrs. Holt hands Hannah Burton her pictures.
I hope that the camera took a picture of what Hannah is like inside—frog barf.
Probably not, since Hannah looks at them and says, “Lovely, as usual.”
But then maybe Hannah Burton thinks that frog barf looks lovely.
Jimmy Russell and Bobby Clifford look at each other’s pictures and make retching sounds.
They are such goofballs.
Then they look at Hannah Burton’s picture and make more retching sounds.
Sometimes they aren’t such goofballs.
I make a list in my brain of all the people who will get my picture if I end up looking human.
Justin Daniels, my old best friend, who moved to Alabama.
Brandi, my new best friend.
My grandparents—Mom’s mom and my dad’s parents—and my parents.
“Amber.” Mrs. Holt smiles and hands me the envelope.
I take out my pictures and close my eyes.
Then I open my eyes.
The pictures look like me.
Brown hair.
Brown eyes.
My hair is slightly messy.
I don’t understand it.
On the day the pictures were taken, Brandi came over to my house and we got ready for our pictures. She even helped me get my hair neat, and then when we got to school, she checked it just before the pictures were taken.
My hair still looks messy.
My nose still looks freckled even though I “borrowed” some of my mom’s face makeup to cover the freckles.
“Let me see,” Brandi says, handing me her pictures and looking at mine.
She looks terrific in her pictures.
“You look great,” she says.
“Thank you.” Hannah Burton holds up her pictures. “So nice of you to notice. I can’t believe you’d be saying that about Amber.”
I look at Hannah and smile. “Look, the order blank says that we can buy pictures, picture stickers, picture key chains, cups and plates with our pictures on them. Perhaps after they see your pictures, they’ll have picture toilet paper, too.”
Just as Hannah starts to say something back, Marc Manchester yells, “I don’t believe it. Look at the class picture.”
I look at the class picture.
First I check to make sure that there’s nothing wrong with me in the picture.
Marc says, “Fredrich Allen forgot to zip.”
Everyone starts to laugh.
I feel sorry for Fredrich.
Actually, before the picture was taken, I whispered to him to remember not to pick his nose.
Actually, this is the first class picture where he isn’t picking it.
I never thought to tell him to zip because somehow it’s not something I usually check. Anyway, it would have been too embarrassing.
Mrs. Holt says, “That’s enough. I wanted to retake the class picture anyway. I noticed that I forgot to put on my lipstick and mascara.”
I look at the picture and smile at Mrs. Holt.
It’s nice of her to try to have the class look at something other than Fredrich’s zipper.
It doesn’t work, though.
Jimmy Russell starts singing “Zip-A-Dee-Do-Da.”
I look back at the order form and see that twelve pictures is the minimum order. I wonder what to do with the extra pictures.
Then I think of one more person to give one to . . . . . Max.
Then I wonder if I should.
What if my dad found out that I gave Max a picture? Would he get mad . . . or sad?
What if that gives Max ideas that he’s like a part of the family?
If a
picture is worth a thousand words, I, Amber Brown, want to be sure of what it’s saying.
Chapter
Three
“Knock, knock.” My mother raps on my door and uses a tone of voice that lets me know that she’s going to tell a dumb joke.
Ever since she started going out with Max, she’s been telling silly jokes.
She used to be much more serious when she was married to my dad, but after the divorce she started to joke around more, and now sometimes, she’s very silly. . . . even kind of embarrassing.
“Knock, knock,” she calls out again.
I decide to play along with it. “Who’s there?”
She opens the door and walks in. “Interrupting mother.”
I grin at her and start to ask, “Interrupting mother who?” but just as I get the word “mother” out of my mouth, she interrupts me. “Clean up your room. It looks like a cyclone hit it.”
I get the joke. . . . Interrupting mother interrupts. Yuk, yuk.
I also know that she’s serious about my cleaning my room.
If she’s so concerned about neatness, she should have given birth to a vacuum cleaner.
She continues with the knock-knock jokes. “Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
I say, “Interrupt—” and she butts in and goes “Moo.”
She can’t seem to stop.
Interrupting vegetarian says, “Do you know what the ingredients are in that hot dog?”
For interrupting giraffe, she just raises her neck way up.
There’s only one way to stop her . . . by interrupting her jokes with a question. “Mom, on Monday, I have to bring in the order form for the pictures. Do you think we should buy any?”
She nods. “All of them. You know, you’re beginning to look so grown-up.”
“That’s because I’m not wearing those dumb ponytails anymore,” I inform her.
She pouts. “I love it when you wear those cute little ponytails.”
“Mom, I’m not a little kid anymore, and I’m not a pony.” I shake my head.
She leans over and picks up my hair so that I now have two ponytails.