My little sister looks like a little weirdo, thought Beatrice.
The other girls didn’t seem to notice.
“Hiya, Sophie! I’m Sue. That’s Jill. Cool outfit.”
“I hope you’re a plant-eating dinosaur,” said Jill with a smile, pretending to be afraid.
“I’m a bery friendly dinosaur. I’m a play-o-saurus! You guys gonna com’n play?” asked Sophie hopefully. She opened the door of her messy room.
Beatrice looked nervously at her new friends.
Jill smiled.
Sue looked amazed.
“Wow!” Sue said. “Check out all the boxes! Let’s play hide-and-seek, play-o-saurus!”
They shrieked with laughter playing hide-and-seek in the messy little dinosaur’s messy little room.
They toppled boxes.
They slithered through books.
They rolled in toys.
They made a lot of noise.
They made a complete, utter, total mess.
And it was perfect.
Chapter Eight
When the doorbell rang, the girls were laughing so hard they didn’t hear it.
“Girls! Girls!” called Beatrice’s mother. “Jill’s brother is here. Jill and Sue have to get going!”
“Coming!” yelled Sue. “Hey, Jilly-Billy, time to go.” She crawled out of a big box. Her bouncing, blond curls were a mess. Her round face was red.
Jill threw back the quilt she was hiding under. “Well, that was fun!” she giggled.
The three girls ran downstairs, laughing and making plans to play the next day.
Jill’s brother was standing outside. He had black, silky short hair combed neatly above his round glasses.
“Yo, bro,” called Jill.
“Hiya, Jimbo,” said Sue.
“James, Sue,” said Jill’s brother. “For the millionth time, it’s James. Absolutely not Jimbo. Jimbo isn’t even a name.”
“It’s a nickname,” laughed Sue. “I give nicknames to everybody I like. Right, Bee?”
Beatrice smiled.
“Right, Sue.”
Beatrice stood on the steps and waved goodbye to her new friends.
She went back inside. The house was very quiet.
She looked around for her family. She found them downstairs on the big couch, cuddled together and watching a movie.
Her mother’s book had fallen on the floor, its pages splayed open.
Her father’s tools were scattered across the coffee table.
Sophie was eating popcorn and wiping her buttery fingers on her dino legs. A pile of stuffed animals was heaped on the carpet in front of her.
Edison was sleeping on a chair that was already covered in dog hair. He snored happily in a little puddle of drool.
Beatrice frowned. Hopeless, she thought. This family is absolutely—
Her mother looked up at her and smiled. Her face looked tired. Beatrice remembered how hard they had worked.
“Hi, honey. Did you have fun with your new friends?”
“It was wonderful!” said Beatrice.
“I liked Sue and Jilly-Billy!” said Sophie through a mouth full of popcorn.
“Hey, Bee, the funniest part is coming up. Come join us!” said her father. He shifted over and patted the couch. Beatrice cuddled in between her dad and Sophie. Sophie offered Beatrice the popcorn and a dino leg to wipe her fingers on.
While they were laughing at the movie, Beatrice’s eyes wandered above the screen. She couldn’t help but notice that the picture her father had hung above the tv was not exactly straight. Not straight at all. In fact, it was eye-twitchingly, head-explodingly crooked.
But her left eye did not twitch.
Her head did not explode.
She did not even jump up to fix it. She was happy right where she was, snuggled on the couch, laughing with her family.
Beatrice smiled as she thought of the perfect list to write later.
She would call it Reasons Why My Hopelessly Messy, Very Disorganized Family is Almost Perfect.
Alison Hughes is an award-winning author who has lived, worked and studied in Canada, England and Australia. She understands tidy, organized people well, not because she is one herself, but because she lives with two of them and grew up with another. She lives with her family in Edmonton, Alberta, in a happy house where dog drool is a fact of life.
Beatrice More Moves In Page 3