by Sally Warner
Alfie sighed. This must be one of those things where it was different for boys, she thought, flopping down onto the shaggy rug next to EllRay’s desk.
“Make yourself comfortable, why don’t you?” EllRay pretended to complain.
But really, Alfie and EllRay were friends. She could count on him, and he could count on her.
“Well, what about luck?” Alfie asked her brother. “Do you believe in luck?”
“Not anymore,” EllRay said, laughing. He tossed the graphic novel he’d been reading into the air as if his own luck had just run out, thanks to his little sister showing up.
“No. I mean it,” Alfie said.
“I believe in bad luck, I guess,” EllRay said, stretching his long arms over his head. “Like when you lose a game that you should have won,” he explained. “Or when you mess up a whole bunch of games, like when you’re on a losing streak.”
“Huh,” Alfie said, thinking.
“Coach says it all evens out in the end,” EllRay said, shrugging. “Only sometimes, I’m not so sure.”
EllRay’s “Coach” was Alfie’s “Mr. Havens,” of course.
“What about good luck? Do you believe in that?” Alfie asked, combing the rug’s strands of yarn with her fingers.
EllRay thought for a few seconds. “Marco believes in good luck,” he said, smiling. “Because he has this pair of lucky socks, according to him. And sometimes he wears them on game day, even if they’re dirty.”
“Yuck,” Alfie said. “He’s the one without any sisters, right?” she asked. “Because a sister would definitely tell him when he stinks.”
“He might not care,” EllRay said. “If it was a big enough game.”
“But I’m talking about real good luck,” Alfie said, getting back to her original question. “Do you believe in that?”
“What would you call good luck?” EllRay asked. “Winning a goldfish in a ping-pong ball toss at the San Diego County Fair? Or not breaking your arm when you’re trying to do some awesome stunt, only you go flying off your bike? Or messing up during recess, but your parents don’t find out? Or buying a raffle ticket at Oak Glen Primary School’s Harvest Festival and winning a pie?”
“What kind of pie?” Alfie asked, interested. “Because apple pie would be good luck, but rhubarb pie would be bad luck.” She made a face, remembering the surprise sourness of a bite she’d once been offered.
No fair tricking kids that way!
“Some people like rhubarb pie,” EllRay argued, scratching Princess under her furry gray chin. The kitten’s purring seemed to fill the room.
“No, they don’t,” Alfie said. “They’re just pretending. Lying,” she added, saying the dreaded word aloud once more.
EllRay sighed. “If you say so,” he said. “But how come you’re asking me this stuff?”
“Because, remember Suzette Monahan?” Alfie asked, deciding to explain her problem—but only a little. Not the part about the costume mess—or the almost-lie she was almost telling Bella Babcock.
There was no way she could make that sound good, Alfie was beginning to see.
“How could I forget Suzette?” EllRay said, laughing again. Suzette Monahan had been famous in the Jakes family since Alfie’s pre-school days. She was the kid who demanded a trip to a fast food restaurant during the girls’ first playdate.
Alfie’s mom was still smiling and shaking her head over that one.
“Suzette said she heard that if you wear the right costume for Halloween, you get to have good luck for the whole year,” Alfie informed her brother. “She said that to Mr. Havens and everyone,” she added, as if this somehow made Suzette’s claim more believable.
Now EllRay was the one shaking his head. “Where does Suzette come up with this goofy stuff?” he asked Princess.
Purr. Purrr. Purrr-r-r-r.
“So you don’t think it’s true about luck?” she asked her brother, inspecting a freshly combed patch of rug. She tried to sound as if she didn’t care too much one way or the other.
“Of course it’s not true,” EllRay said. “Suzette was just showing off, or something. Why? You don’t believe her, do you?” he asked, frowning.
“I guess not,” Alfie said, still not looking at her brother. “It could be true, though. I mean, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.”
“Yo, look, Alf,” EllRay told his sister. “Why does Suzette have to go and mess up a fun day by making up goofy stuff about good luck for the whole year? That’s just wrong. She ruins everything.”
“Don’t get mad at me,” Alfie said, raising her voice. “I’m not the one who said it! And you just told me that Marco believes in magic dirty socks,” she said even louder. “He’s your best friend, in case you forgot. So are you saying Marco’s a liar, too?”
“Marco believes in lucky socks,” EllRay argued. “Period. It’s not the same thing as magic at all. Or lying.”
But Alfie was still angry. “You just told me that when you mess up at school, like at recess, and your parents don’t find out, that’s good luck,” she told her brother. “You said! And it’s kind of like lying not to tell them the truth. So are you a liar, too?”
“Me?” EllRay asked, confused.
“You heard me,” Alfie said.
It felt good to spread the guilt around a little!
“Why? What did you do wrong at school?” EllRay asked, pouncing on Alfie’s words. “How did you mess up?”
“Stop talking,” Alfie yelled.
“What is going on in here?” their father’s voice boomed. He stepped into EllRay’s room—sending Princess diving for cover under the bed. “You two are supposed to be quieting down before bedtime, not picking a fight with each other.”
“Sorry, Dad,” EllRay said.
“Sorry,” Alfie mumbled.
“So?” Dr. Jakes said. “What is going on in here?” he asked again. “What’s the problem?”
Alfie and EllRay swapped super-fast looks. It was as if her brother—her team—was asking her how much he should say, Alfie thought.
“Nothing’s going on, Dad,” she said. “I was just asking EllRay a question about school, that’s all.”
“Only she didn’t like my answer,” EllRay said as if he were finishing Alfie’s sentence for her.
“Well, I’ve been there before,” Dr. Jakes said. But he was still eyeing the two of them with some suspicion. “Tell you what,” he said, clearly deciding something on the spot. “EllRay, you stay here in your room with our invisible cat. Miss Alfie will come down to the family room with me to say goodnight to Mom. You can tell us what’s on your mind if you want, Cricket,” he added, speaking to Alfie. “Without any shouting,” he added.
As if he needed to say that!
Alfie looked back at EllRay just before following her dad out the door.
Help, she said—without making any noise.
Good luck, he replied silently.
15
Feeling Guilty
“What was all that about upstairs?” Alfie’s mom asked as Alfie and her dad came into the family room. Mrs. Jakes was stitching lacy trim to the hem of the princess gown. She had been working on it all day.
“Just a small difference of opinion, it seems,” her husband said, settling down on the sofa with the newspaper. “A skirmish,” he added. “Probably pre-Halloween jitters.”
“But everything’s fine now?” Alfie’s mom asked, still worried.
“It’s perfect,” Alfie said. “Ooh,” she added, rushing over to the sofa to look at her costume. “That’s so pretty, Mom. You finished it!”
“Almost. And I’m pleased with it,” Alfie’s mother said, smiling as she held it up for inspection.
Alfie had tried the gown on—partly finished—when she got home from school. It was made from light pink silky fabric, with flower-petal-like poofs ov
er the shoulders and hips.
It was the most beautiful dress ever, Alfie thought.
“Which tiara are you going to wear with it?” her mom asked. “The pointy one, or the little one with the pearls?”
“I can’t decide,” Alfie said, snuggling in as close to her mom as she could without wrinkling the gown. “I don’t want to copy anyone else’s tiara, so I might bring them both to school. That way I can choose at the last minute.”
“All right, if you keep them in their little boxes,” Alfie’s mom said as she held the hem of the gown up again to look at it. “We’ll put them in the bag with your costume. I wonder what the other All-Stars are going to wear.”
And just like that, Alfie was thinking again about Bella—and nice Mrs. Babcock. Mrs. Babcock had to have worked twice as hard on two bunny costumes as her own mom had worked on this one princess gown. And for what?
As for Bella, she was probably lying in bed right now, too excited to sleep. She would be imagining the fun she thought she and Alfie were going to have tomorrow.
Matching bunnies.
It was a cute idea, Alfie admitted to herself.
“I’m feeling guilty,” Alfie announced—and then she shrank back into the sofa cushions, horrified that she’d spoken the words aloud.
Her mom had always told both Alfie and EllRay that guilt was a kind of early warning system your brain used to tell you that you were doing something wrong.
Thanks, brain, Alfie thought, making a secret face.
“Guilty about what, sweetie?” her mother asked, frowning. “Don’t feel bad about asking me to make you a costume at the last minute,” she said. “I mean, I wouldn’t have minded a little more advance notice, I’ll admit. But I really enjoyed myself today.”
“Your book, though,” Alfie said, going along with her mom’s idea that interfering with her writing was what Alfie felt guilty about. Because—how could she explain what was about to happen? It was so complicated!
No, it’s not complicated, she told herself silently in a let’s-not-mess-around kind of voice. You want to be a princess instead of a bunny. It’s simple.
Alfie almost groaned aloud. Should she confess and tell her mom about the bunny costume Mrs. Babcock had made for her? Tell her about Bella’s excitement because she thought she would be doing something special with a new friend?
But telling her mother about the bunny costume meant telling her dad, too, Alfie reminded herself, peeking over at her father. And he would probably turn it into a great big lesson.
“Did you ever feel guilty about something when you were a kid, Mom?” Alfie asked, mostly to quiet that pesky voice inside her head.
“Me?” her mom asked, surprised. “Oh, heavens, yes.”
“Same here,” Alfie’s dad said from his end of the sectional. “When I was about nine years old, I was supposed to sell a box of giant candy bars for a school fundraiser. And I succeeded. But then I lost the envelope that had all the checks and money inside.”
“You did?” Alfie said, her eyes wide. “So what happened?”
“My father ended up paying for everything,” Dr. Jakes said. “But of course I had to pay him back—with my allowance. It took almost the whole school year, too,” he added, shaking his head at the memory.
“Well, my guilty secret isn’t quite so bad,” Alfie’s mom said, laughing. “But when I was about nine, a neighbor asked my mother if she could store some very fancy cookies she’d bought in the extra freezer in our garage. They were for a special meeting,” she explained. “A book club, I think. But I took a peek at them, of course, and they just looked so good.”
“Uh-oh,” Alfie said.
“‘Uh-oh’ is right,” her mom said, laughing. “Because I helped myself to just one, and you couldn’t even tell it was gone. It was delicious, too—even though it was frozen when I ate it. That just made it better, in fact,” she added. “Like a cookie popsicle.”
“Yum,” Alfie said.
“But then the next day,” her mom continued, “I decided to eat another cookie or two. And when the neighbor lady came over to get her cookies the morning of her meeting, that was one mighty light cookie box, let me tell you. I had eaten thirty-two cookies. My poor mother didn’t know what to say, or where to look. She was mortified.”
“That means embarrassed,” Alfie’s father said, interpreting.
“So your goof-up was really worse than Dad’s,” Alfie said, amazed. “Even though you said it wasn’t. Because Dad’s mistake was just one very small thing,” she pointed out, echoing her own words to Bella. “And it was really just an accident. But, Mom, you decided to do something wrong over and over again. On purpose. Like a criminal!”
There, Alfie thought, satisfied. How could her mom get mad at her for a harmless fib when she had basically broken the law?
“Gee, thanks, Alfie,” her mother said, laughing.
“So the lesson is, nobody’s perfect,” Alfie said, hoping her parents would remember these two familiar words tomorrow afternoon.
“I suppose no one is,” her mother agreed, thinking about it. “But they can get a lot closer to perfection than your father and I did, I hope.”
Alfie took a deep breath. “I think your mother and father should have told you everything was okay, Mom,” she said, hoping her parents would remember this advice tomorrow. “You suffered enough.”
“But I didn’t suffer at all,” her mom protested, laughing again. “I did exactly what I wanted to do every day for an entire week. And I knew what I was doing, too.”
Alfie hadn’t known her mom could be that bad when she was a kid! Or her dad, either. That careless, anyway. And in a way, she told herself, what her parents had done when they were kids was a lot worse than what she was doing.
And she was only seven years old, not nine.
“I’d better put myself to bed,” she told them. “Because tomorrow—”
“Tomorrow is going to be a very big day,” her mother said, finishing the sentence for her. “Goodnight, sweetie.”
16
A Big Fuzzy Blur
“Whoa, Mom,” Alfie said at the kitchen island on Friday morning as she tried to finish her cereal. “That bag is as big as a suitcase!”
Mrs. Jakes was at the dining room table, folding the princess gown in tissue paper for its trip to Oak Glen Primary School. Alfie tried to imagine sneaking the large, glossy bag past Bella as she walked up the school’s front steps “Oh, this?” she might tell her friend. “It’s nothing!”
Alfie couldn’t even think about the part of the day when Bella would find out what she’d really be wearing to the Halloween parade and party. There was a big fuzzy blur in her brain where that future event was hiding out.
How did she ever get in such a mess?
“But the bag won’t be heavy,” her mother told Alfie from the dining room. Now she was crumpling sheets of tissue paper to stuff inside the princess gown’s skirt to keep it poofy. “We don’t want any wrinkles, do we?”
“No,” Alfie said, wiping a dribble of milk from her chin. “Did EllRay already leave for school?” she asked.
“Mm-hmm,” her mom said, nodding. “With his costume in a brown paper bag. I guess it’s a bi-i-i-g secret,” she added, laughing and looking a tiny bit worried at the same time. “Heaven only knows what those boys have planned for the parade. Listen,” she continued, reaching for more paper. “I put your tiara boxes at the bottom of the bag. Oh, I wish you girls didn’t have to change into your costumes in the bathroom,” she added, shaking her head.
“I know. It’s gross,” Alfie said, making a face. “But they promised it would be nice and clean, for once. And Miss Myrna from the office will be there in case we need any help,” she added. “The girls’ room is the only place where there’s enough privacy for thirteen girls to change, Mom.”
“I suppose,” Mrs.
Jakes said. “So, let’s see. You’re going to eat lunch,” she began, trying to get that afternoon’s plan straight. “Then you’ll all go to the cubby room to get your costumes, and then you’ll go the the girls’ room to change. Correct?”
“Mm-hmm,” Alfie said, nodding.
“And then you will go back to the cubby room and leave your regular clothes there,” her mom continued. “Then you’ll all go out to the playground to line up for the parade. Do I have that right?”
Alfie bit her lip. Her poor, innocent mom had left out the part about how there would be one lonely little All-Star bunny—Bella—hopping out to the playground behind the prettiest princess posse in the world. And there would be an awesome Dragon Girl as well, and maybe a quinceañera pretend-teenager or two in whirly, twirly pastel dresses.
“Right,” Alfie said, stirring the leftover milk in her cereal bowl.
Princess Alfie. She should be feeling good about today, Alfie told herself—not bad, with a jangly tummy.
* * *
Alfie climbed out of the Sobels’ car as Mrs. Sobel popped open the trunk. “Now, you girls get some real schoolwork done this morning,” Hanni’s mom said, making sure Hanni and Alfie each got the right costume bag. “That way, you will have earned the fun you’re going to have this afternoon.”
Mrs. Sobel had such a weird way of looking at things! It was as if she thought people didn’t deserve to be happy unless they were miserable first. Alfie was grateful it wasn’t like that at her house, where her cheerful mom often said, “Celebrate the small things!” The Jakes family was always having little parties.
For an encouraging rejection letter for one of her mom’s books.
For a perfect “Decimal Multiplication” quiz for EllRay.
For an entire week going by without Alfie leaving something at school.
Poor Hanni and her mom, Alfie thought, shaking her head. It seemed like they didn’t have nearly as much fun as her family did.