VIKING
Penguin Young Readers
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
First published in the United States of America by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018
Text copyright © 2018 by Ariel Bernstein
Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Mike Malbrough
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE
Ebook ISBN 9780425288474
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For Scott, my best friend —A.B.
To my best bud, Abe —M.M.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1
Time to Pack
2
How to Make Friends
3
The Friend That Doesn’t Count
4
Pie Contest
5
First Impressions
6
Eating Lunch, Sharing Lunch
7
Dragon’s Sporty Advice
8
Lost
9
Found
10
Chocolate-Covered Bananas
Excerpt from Warren & Dragon: Weekend with Chewy
1
Time to Pack
“Warren Reginald Nesbitt! Are you even listening to us?” my mom says with her hands on her hips. My dad is standing next to her with his hands on his hips, too. They look like twins, which is funny because I really am a seven-year-old twin with my sister, Ellie.
“Yes,” I say, wondering what I missed. I was watching Dragon, my pet dragon, slide down a banister in the living room onto a speeding skateboard.
“Have you started to pack?” Mom asks.
“I’ve packed lots,” I say. I do not say I have not packed anything.
“What are we packing for?” Dragon whispers to me. I shrug because I don’t know. “Are we going camping?” Dragon asks.
Dragon loves camping because of the roasted marshmallows.
“What do I have to pack exactly?” I ask my parents.
My parents’ mouths drop open at the same time.
“Your toys, Warren,” Mom says slowly. “Every toy you want to take when we move to the new house in Eddington. It’s the only thing we’ve asked you to do.”
“We’re moving?!” Dragon says. He doesn’t like change. “Quick, pack all the marshmallows!”
My parents don’t notice Dragon running into the kitchen to find the marshmallows. No one notices anything Dragon does except me, but I like it that way.
“When are we moving?” I ask. Their mouths drop open again.
“Next Friday, right before Labor Day weekend,” Mom says, and shakes her head. She shakes her head a lot when she talks to me.
“We’ve talked about it for five months now,” Dad says.
I try to remember the past five months. One day Dragon and I made a fort out of bedsheets and chairs in my bedroom and Dad came in.
“If you ruin those sheets or chairs I’m not buying new ones for the next house,” he said.
Another day Dragon and I made a snack of marshmallows, blueberries, and peanut butter in the juicer and forgot to put the lid on. When Mom saw the kitchen she said, “Do I need to clean if we’re moving in two months?”
Then there was the day Dragon and I jumped up and down on a bunch of boxes in Ellie’s room. She got upset and told Mom we ruined all of her perfect packing. Mom told me to spend my energies packing and not jumping.
“I might remember something about this,” I say just as Ellie walks into the room.
Even though we’re twins, Ellie and I don’t look much alike. Ellie looks like our dad with their blond hair, brown eyes, and freckles on their noses. I look like Mom with our brown hair, green eyes, and freckles on our arms. Dragon doesn’t look like anybody, because he’s a dragon.
“He’s never going to pack in time,” Ellie says. “If Warren doesn’t pack all his toys by moving day, can we stay?”
“No. We are moving, Ellie,” Mom says.
“You don’t want to move?” I ask.
“Why would I want to move?” Ellie asks as though I’m supposed to know the answer. I do not know the answer. “I have all my friends here and my basketball team and my gymnastics class. Why did you have to get a new job in a new town, Mom?”
“We’ve been over this, Ellie. I had to find a new job when the company I worked for closed,” Mom tells her. “And I was lucky to find another engineer position so quickly.”
“Honey, you’ll make new friends when you start second grade and join new activities,” Dad adds.
“I’ll still miss my friends here.”
“I won’t,” I say. “Your friends smell like rotten pumpkins.”
“Mom!” Ellie shouts, and crosses her arms.
“Okay, okay. They don’t all smell like rotten pumpkins,” I say.
“Hmph,” Ellie says.
“Some of them smell like rotten pickles.”
“Mom!”
“I’m just trying to help you so you won’t miss everybody,” I say. I do not say I’m not really trying to help.
“Don’t you two remember you used to get along?” Mom asks. “I have a photo somewhere of you playing in the sand together. Maybe it’s in the photo albums I packed. I’ll have to unpack it. . . .”
“Don’t unpack!” Dad says. “No . . . one . . . unpack . . . anything!”
“I don’t mind moving,” I say. And it’s true. I won’t have to listen to our neighbor Ms. Reilly call me “Warri-Boo” anymore.
“That’s because you don’t have any friends,” Ellie says.
“That’s not true!” I do not say it might be true. “Dragon is my friend.”
“Dragon isn’t real.”
“I am so offended,” Dragon says in between bites of marshmallow.
Ellie shakes her head. She looks a lot like Mom when she does that.
“You shouldn’t offend Dragon. He gets scary when he’s offended.”
Dragon huffs and puffs as best he can.
“I don’t care if he’s real or not. You still get to bring him with us. I have to make all new friends.”
“I have to make new friends at school, too.”
“Really? You’re going to make new friends?”
“Yeah, and I’m going to make more new friends than you,” I say. I do not say I might not believe what I just said. I never made a friend before. I didn’t have to because I’ve always had Dragon. But if Ellie can make friends, how hard can it be?
“Yes! Friends with marshmallows!” Dragon adds. “Warren, only make friends with kids who have marshmallows.”
“Ha!” Ellie says. “There’s no way you’re going to make more friends than me!”
“I’m going to make a hundred new friends!” I tell her. I do not know why I keep talking.
“Ha!”
“Enough!” Dad says. “War
ren, it’s time.”
“To make new friends?”
“To pack!”
2
How to Make Friends
“Ugh. How am I going to pack all this in one week?” I say, looking at my room.
“Don’t pack everything,” Dragon says. “Just the good stuff. Like me.”
I lift up a plastic green tarantula and a blob of gooey fake ghost slime and toss them into a box.
“Everything I have is good.”
“What about this?” Dragon asks, holding up the broken half of a blue crayon.
“I might need half of a blue crayon one day.” I throw the crayon in the box and it splits into two more halves.
“Dragon, I need to make more friends than Ellie when we move.”
“Why do you want to make more friends? You have me,” Dragon says.
“Ellie’s always right about everything,” I say, and Dragon nods his head because he knows what I’m talking about. Ellie was right when she said the tub would flood if I put too many ninja toys near the drain, even though they really needed water training. She was right when she said my stomach would hurt from eating so many marshmallows at once, even though it was Dragon’s idea to challenge me and he won anyway. And Ellie was right when she said if I didn’t put on enough sunblock I’d get red, even though it was more important to help Dragon prepare for his annual fire-breathing exam that day. Dragon and I both ended up getting burned.
“I want to be right just one time,” I say. “So how do I make friends?”
“That’s easy,” Dragon says. “When I want to make a new friend, I tell them they can either be my friend or I’ll burn down their village.”
“Dad says we’re moving to a new town, not a village.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
I find a smushed chocolate chip cookie under a pile of books. I break it in two and give half to Dragon.
“Still fresh,” he says.
“I think it’s only from a couple of months ago,” I say.
“You know, people like compliments,” Dragon says after licking the melted chocolate off his claws. “You can make friends fast by giving out compliments. Try it on me.”
“Okay. You’re very . . . dragon-y.”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“You’re slimy?”
“Also not a compliment. Compliments are supposed to make a friend feel good.”
“Um . . . you smell especially smoky today.”
“A little better. And?”
“Your tail is super spiky and a nice shade of green.”
“It’s not just green. It’s emerald green!”
“Oh. Really?”
“Hmm . . . forget the compliments. Let’s think of something else.”
I pick up three monsters glued together. “I don’t play with these anymore.”
“They’re my bodyguards,” Dragon says.
“What do you need bodyguards for?”
“I’m very desirable.”
“Okay,” I say, and put the monsters into the box. “Hey! How did we become such good friends?”
“We have lots in common,” Dragon says. “We both love marshmallows. We enjoy seeing how fast things can go down staircases. We like training worms to be ninja warriors. We’re really good at getting out of bath time. And we both love marshmallows.”
“So all I need is to find a hundred kids who love all the same stuff as me.”
“Yes.”
“I’m never going to make any friends,” I say.
* * *
x x x
That night I dream about living in the new town. I show all the kids at school a magic show where I stuff my books into my backpack and then pull out a flying robot rabbit. Everybody wants to be my friend, but I only agree to be friends with the first hundred of them. Ellie sulks because no one wants to be her friend.
All of my friends want to sit next to me in class. At lunch my friends give me marshmallows so I’ll eat next to them. At recess my friends play whatever I want. When I come home I hang out with Dragon, but Mom calls me to the front door. My one hundred friends are waiting to play with me.
“Leave me alone! I need a break!” I yell. All one hundred friends run away.
“I told you you’d never be able to make friends,” Ellie says with a smirk.
I wake up next to a snoring Dragon.
“I’ll show her,” I say out loud. “I will make friends this time.”
3
The Friend That Doesn’t Count
I surprise everyone when I have my toys packed in time for moving day. It helped that Dragon and I pounded all my toys into the boxes so they’d fit.
The moving men put all the boxes into a huge truck, and Mom says we’ll meet them at our new house later that day.
Everyone’s quiet in the car. Too quiet.
“Are we there yet?” Dragon asks.
I don’t think we are, but I ask anyway. “Are we there yet?”
“No,” Dad says. “Don’t ask that again.”
“You ask,” I whisper to Ellie. She giggles.
“Are we there yet?” she asks.
“I said not to ask that again!”
“Ellie asked, not me!”
“Don’t start,” Dad says.
“Are we there yet?” Dragon asks. “I’m hungry, and I’ve eaten all the marshmallows.”
“So . . . am I there yet?” I say.
“Warren!”
“I didn’t say ‘we’!”
“Yeah, is Warren there yet?” Ellie asks.
“Yes, you can both get out,” Dad grumbles.
“Dad said to get out!” I shout.
“You said it, Dad!” Ellie whoops.
“Look, Bill. They’re getting along,” Mom says as she pulls out her phone.
“Nora!” Dad says.
“I just want to get a photo real quick of them laughing together.”
Dragon accidentally sits too close to Ellie and she throws him back at me.
“Hey, careful!” I say and point my finger at her.
“Mom! Warren’s pointing his finger at me.”
I point my finger closer. “I’m not touching you.”
Ellie points her finger at Dragon. “I’m not touching Dragon,” she says.
“Hey! Leave him alone!” I say.
“That tickles,” Dragon says, giggling.
“No, wait!” Mom says. “You were just getting along. I almost had a photo of you both laughing.”
“Everybody can get out,” Dad mutters.
* * *
x x x
I think Dad is the happiest of us when we finally arrive at our new house in Eddington. I’ve seen photos of it online, but it looks smaller in person.
There’s a bunch of people at the house next door looking at us from their porch. They walk over after Dad parks and we get out of the car.
“You must be our new neighbors,” the taller of the two women says with a big smile. She’s almost as tall as my dad. “Welcome to the neighborhood! I’m Paula Berry and this is my wife, Nia,” she adds, pointing to the woman who is shorter like my mom. Nia is holding a little girl in her arms who has lots of small black braids in her hair that swing back and forth when she turns her head.
“My hair would look good in braids,” Dragon says. I don’t point out that he doesn’t have any hair.
These neighbors are a lot different from our old neighbor Ms. Reilly. Ms. Reilly was an older white woman who didn’t have any kids, didn’t smile a lot, and gave out raisins on Halloween. These new neighbors are a black family with two moms and three kids, and they seem to like smiling. I’m hoping they give out candy on Halloween.
“This is our oldest son, Jayden,” Nia says, reaching up to put her
hand on Jayden’s shoulder. He’s the tallest of everyone here, except for my dad. Jayden looks older. Like high school old. “Here’s Addie,” Nia says about the girl in her arms. “And this is Michael. He’s starting first grade. We’re lucky. The elementary school is only a couple of blocks away,” she says, and points down the street.
“Mom, I gotta go meet the guys,” Jayden says. He waves to us and takes off.
“Teenagers never stay around for long.” Paula sighs.
“I’m looking forward to that,” Dad says, before Mom pokes him in the arm.
I look at Michael. He keeps looking at me and Dragon from behind his glasses and then looking away.
“It’s nice to meet you all,” Mom says, and introduces us. She tells Michael that Ellie and I are starting second grade. He quickly looks at us again.
“Michael’s not usually so quiet,” Paula says, and laughs. “You should come to our Labor Day weekend barbecue on Monday,” she tells us. “Our neighbors are always welcome. We’ll have hamburgers, grilled chicken . . .”
“I’m not hearing marshmallows,” Dragon says, unimpressed.
“Corn on the cob, fruit salad . . .”
“We can bring a pasta dish!” Mom says.
“Wonderful!” Nia says.
“I’m still not hearing marshmallows,” Dragon huffs.
“And we’ll have pies, of course,” Paula adds.
“Oh, pies!” Dragon says happily.
“Warren loves pie,” Dad says, tousling my hair.
Addie points at me suddenly. “Warri,” Addie says, and swings her braids back and forth. “Warri.”
Oh no. “Warren,” I say. “War-ren.”
“Warri-Boo.”
Ellie and Michael giggle.
“Looks like you made your first friend,” Ellie whispers to me.
“She doesn’t count!” I say.
“Warri.”
I take Dragon and run into the house. I look back and see that Dad is talking to the moving guys and Mom and Ellie are still talking with Paula and Nia. Addie waves at me. I stick out my tongue at her.
Warren & Dragon 100 Friends Page 1