by Meg Cabot
“I don’t want to take the bus!” I screamed.
“Stop screaming,” Dad said. “Nobody’s going to be taking any buses. Allie, you’ll still see your friend. Just not at school. You can have whatever-they’re-called.”
“Playdates,” Mom said. “Your father means we’ll organize playdates with Mary Kay.”
Playdates? Whatever! I don’t want to organize “playdates” with Mary Kay. Mary Kay and I have never had to organize “playdates” before. Whenever Mary Kay and I want to play, I just walk down the street, and we play together. There’s no organizing anything.
“I don’t want to move!” I cried. “I don’t want to give up my rock collection, or go to a new school, or organize playdates with Mary Kay! I want to stay right here!”
“Allie,” Mom said. “Your father and I were thinking. If you can show you can be grown-up about this move, and give it a try, and not cry about it, we might decide you’re old enough to have a pet of your own.”
I was so shocked, I stopped crying. I have always wanted a pet of my own. We have Marvin, of course, and I love him very much. For instance, I am the only person in my family who brushes him, checks him for ticks, and walks him (well, Dad walks him, too, but only at night). I want to be a veterinarian when I grow up, so I am also practicing for when this happens.
But I have always wanted a pet of my very own, one I wouldn’t have to share with everyone else, such as my brothers.
“You mean,” I said, sniffling, “I could have a hamster, like Mary Kay?”
“No hamsters,” my dad said. Dad doesn’t like hamsters, or even mice. The time Mary Kay and I caught a baby mouse in the field behind her house (where they are now building a new subdivision) and put it in my Polly Pocket Pollywood Limo-Scene, then showed it to my dad, he made us let it go in the woods behind our house (where they are also now building a subdivision), even though we explained to him it would probably die without us or its mother to take care of it.
Dad didn’t care. He says he doesn’t like animals that don’t know any better than to poop in your hand.
So when I wrote that down it became the rule of: Don’t get a pet that poops in your hand.
“Actually,” Mom said, “we were thinking you might be old enough now to take care of your own kitten.”
I didn’t think I heard her right. Had she said…KITTEN?
“No fair!” Mark yelled. “I want a kitten!”
“Me, too!” Kevin yelled.
She did. She did say kitten! How had they known? How had they known I’d been wanting a kitten for my whole life, practically?
And true, I had asked for a miniature poodle for my birthday and gotten a canopy bed instead, which isn’t as good.
But it had never even occurred to me to ask for a kitten.
Until they said I could have one.
And then I knew I wanted a kitten more than I had ever wanted anything in my entire life. Kittens are way better than hamsters, who, by the way, poop in your hand.
“When you guys show that you can be grown-up enough to handle the responsibility of having your own pet,” Dad said to my brothers, “we’ll talk. But I haven’t seen either of you brushing Marvin, or taking him on walks the way Allie does.”
“I take Marvin on walks,” Mark said.
“Hitching Marvin up to the sled and trying to make him pull you down the dirt piles in the new development does not count as walking him,” Mom pointed out to Mark. “Now, who wants to go to Dairy Queen as a treat for dessert?”
We all wanted to go to Dairy Queen, of course.
To get to the Dairy Queen from our house, you have to drive in the car. It was while we were in the car driving to Dairy Queen that Mom said, “You know, the new house is so close to the Dairy Queen that we could walk there after supper.”
“Like, for dessert?” Mark asked. This is another thing Mark thinks about all the time. Bugs, trucks, and dessert.
Also, sports. Such as football. Or anything with a ball, really.
“Right,” Mom said. “After dinner. We could just get up and take a walk to Dairy Queen.”
We all—Mark, Kevin, and I—looked at each other in astonishment. Walk to Dairy Queen? Every night?
This was almost too much to believe. A kitten and Dairy Queen? Every night?
“If you guys finish everything on your plates,” Dad added.
“Maybe,” Mom said, slowly, “we could drive by and see the new house tonight. On our way back from Dairy Queen.”
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “I don’t think these kids are really that interested in seeing the new house.”
“I am,” Mark said, leaning forward in his seat. “I’m interested in seeing the new house.”
“I want to see the new house, too,” Kevin said.
“How about you, Allie?” Mom asked. “Are you interested in seeing the new house, too?”
I had to think about that. On the one hand, I was interested in a new kitten. I was interested in Dairy Queen every night and in getting a new best friend.
On the other hand, I was not interested in starting a new school or in getting rid of my rock collection.
Still, if the new house was really that close to Dairy Queen…
“Well,” I said. “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to see it…”
It didn’t seem like the Dairy Queen people could make our ice-cream cones fast enough. It seemed like it took them forever. And all we got was our usuals—chocolate-vanilla twist chocolate dip for me, vanilla twist cherry dip for Mark, and vanilla twist butterscotch dip for Kevin, a diet root beer float for Dad, and a sugar-free Dilly Bar for Mom.
Still, it seemed like it took two hours for them to get our order ready, and for Dad to pay, and for Mom to get enough napkins from the dispenser in case somebody spilled in the car (I said somebody, but Mark is always the one who spills, usually all down the front of his shirt), and for everyone to get back in the car and to get their seat belts on without spilling, and for Dad to go, “Is everybody ready? Does anybody want to drive by the new house?” and for us all to go, “YES!” and for him to go, “Okay! Here we go.”
And then we were turning around the corner—right around the corner! That’s really where the new house was, right around the corner from the Dairy Queen—and Mom was going, in an excited voice, “There it is, kids, there it is, right there on the left, see it? See it?”
And we all looked at the new place where we were going to live.
And I don’t know about everyone else, but I for one nearly threw up what I’d eaten so far of my ice cream.
Because the new house was not very nice-looking.
In fact, it looked the opposite of nice. It looked very big and creepy sitting there on the street. All the windows—and there were a lot of them—were dark and sort of looked like eyes staring down at us. There were a lot of big trees around the house, too, with twisted branches that were swaying in the wind.
There are no big trees in Walnut Knolls. That’s because only nine years ago, when I was born, Walnut Knolls was all fields and farmland. None of the trees the developers planted have had a chance to grow much yet.
“Mom,” I said.
“Isn’t it great?” Mom said, all excitedly. “Look at the gingerbread trim around the front porch! And how exciting is the fact that we even have a front porch, where we can sit outside and enjoy the summer breeze?”
“And have ice cream,” Mark said. “Right? We can sit out there and enjoy ice cream.” Because ice cream is all Mark thinks about. Besides bugs and trucks and sports.
“We sure can,” Mom said. “And see that bay window on the third floor in the front? That’ll be your room, Allie.”
My room looked darkest and creepiest of all.
“Those trees sure are big,” Kevin said.
“Those trees,” Mom said, “are over a hundred years old. Just like the house.”
Which, looking at it through the car window, I could totally believe. Our new house looked more t
han a hundred years old. It looked so old that it was falling apart, practically. It looked like all those houses on those TV shows my mom likes to watch, TV shows called things such as Please Come Fix Up My House and My House Is Really Old. Won’t Someone Fix It, Please?
Only this wasn’t a TV show. This was real life. And no nice team of carpenters and pretty designers was going to come and fix it up. My mom was going to have to fix up our house—with Dad’s help, I guess—herself.
I don’t mean to sound like a spoilsport, but the truth is, I really didn’t think she was going to be able to do it.
Because the house we were sitting in front of looked beyond fixing.
Also, the house we were sitting in front of looked something else. I didn’t want to mention it in front of Mark and Kevin, because one of the rules—which I was going to write down as soon as I got home—is that You shouldn’t scare your little brothers (unless they’ve done something to deserve it, of course).
But the truth was, that house looked haunted to me.
Suddenly, I didn’t want my ice cream anymore.
Also, I was pretty sure I didn’t want to move anymore, even if it did mean Dairy Queen every night, a new, possibly noncrying best friend, and a kitten.
Instead, I wanted everything back the way it was, before Mom and Dad said I could have a kitten, before they said we were moving, and before I’d accidentally touched my best friend’s uvula with a spatula.
Only that turns out to be one of the hardest rules to learn of all: You can’t go back.
But even though you can’t go back, you can keep things from changing more. If you try hard enough.
And I knew then that that was what I had to do.
I just didn’t know how. Yet.
RULE #3
If You Don’t Want a Secret Spread Around, Don’t Tell It to Scott Stamphley
Mary Kay cried when I told her that it looked like we were moving. Which I guess was no big surprise, since Mary Kay cries about everything.
Except that this was one of the few times I actually felt like crying with her.
“You can’t move now,” Mary Kay said. “It’s the middle of the school year. It’s against the rules.”
There’s a lot of stuff I don’t know about—like friendship and fixing up old haunted houses, for example.
But one thing I do know about is rules.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I said. “Because if it were, my mom and dad wouldn’t be making us do it.”
“Well,” Mary Kay said, “you’d better make sure they check. Because this new school might not even let you in in the middle of the semester like this.”
That’s the other thing about Mary Kay. She kind of thinks she knows everything.
“Well,” I said, “Mom said if we move, we have to go to this new school, because we’ll be living in a new school district. So I don’t think I have much of a choice.”
“You make it sound like you want to move,” Mary Kay said, all accusingly.
“Of course I don’t want to move,” I said. I hadn’t even told her the part about the house maybe possibly being haunted. But I did tell her the part about the kitten.
This just made her cry harder. Which didn’t make any sense at all. I mean, you would have thought she’d have been a little happy for me, on account of the kitten.
Except that she wasn’t.
“You know if you get a kitten I won’t be able to come over,” she said through her tears as we waited for the crossing guard, Mrs. Mullens, to let us cross High Street. “I’m allergic to cats!”
“You never come over, anyway,” I pointed out. We always play at Mary Kay’s house, because she says my brothers are too rough. All because one time when she came over to my house and we were playing lions (the only game Mary Kay will ever play), Mark decided he was a killer lion from a rival pride and pounced on Mary Kay from the coffee table. Not surprisingly, this made her cry.
“Yes,” Mary Kay said. “But now I really won’t.”
“It will be okay,” I said, to reassure her. “I’ll come see you.”
“No, you won’t,” Mary Kay said, still crying. “You’ll be too busy with your new friends, and your k-kitten!”
I knew this was probably true, but I didn’t say so, because one of the rules of friendship that I wrote down is You should only say nice things to your friends, even if they’re not true. This makes them feel better, and then they like you more.
Being liked is important. If no one likes you, then you have to eat lunch by yourself, like Scott Stamphley did when he first came to our school and no one could understand anything he said because of his New York accent.
“I’ll never be too busy for you, Mary Kay,” I said as nicely as I could, considering how mad she was making me. “Although raising a kitten is a lot of responsibility. More responsibility than raising a hamster.”
“No, it isn’t,” Mary Kay said.
“Yes,” I said to her. “It really is.”
“I don’t think you should be so happy about moving,” Mary Kay said. “Because, first of all, if you move it means you won’t be able to walk to school with me anymore.”
I just looked at her when she said this, because walking to school with Mary Kay isn’t actually all that much fun. She is so afraid of everything that if Buck—that’s the name of the horse who grazes in the last field that’s left in Walnut Knolls (without houses being built on it, I mean), and which also happens to be right next to the sidewalk we take to school—has his head over the fence, she runs away. She’s scared of Buck’s huge teeth, even though I showed her how to hold her hand flat so Buck’s teeth can’t nip her palm when we give him leftover Fruit Roll-Ups from our lunches or whatever.
You have to know about these things if you are going to be a veterinarian.
But, remembering the rule about only saying nice things to your friends so they’ll like you, I said, “Well, that will make me sad. But I’ll probably get used to it. Eventually.”
Apparently this answer wasn’t good enough for Mary Kay, though, because she added, “And also, if you move, you won’t be able to look for that kid’s brain in the bushes anymore.”
Which I didn’t think was a very nice thing for her to point out. Especially since she knows how much I want to find that kid’s brain.
And it wasn’t as if I weren’t already freaking out about maybe having to move into a haunted house and start at a whole new school. I mean, except for the part about the kitten—and maybe getting a better best friend than Mary Kay—I didn’t even want to move.
But I still didn’t know what I was supposed to do about it. It wasn’t like I had a choice about moving. I was just a kid!
“Look,” I said to Mary Kay, “let’s not fight. I’ll probably be moving in a few weeks, so let’s try to get along until then.”
“Quit saying that!” cried Mary Kay. “Quit saying you’re moving! It’s my birthday! I don’t want you to say you’re moving ONE MORE TIME TODAY.”
I felt even worse after that. I’d totally forgotten it was Mary Kay’s birthday…even though I should have remembered, since Carol was coming to school later with the pink-frosting cupcakes.
So I promised not to tell anyone that I might be moving for the rest of the day.
And I didn’t. I didn’t tell anyone at all that I might be moving, not even Ms. Myers when she told us we needed to pick a country that we would be studying individually for the rest of the year for our data reports. I didn’t say to her, “Well, Ms. Myers, you see, that will be a problem, because I might not be here anymore after next month.”
I didn’t tell Brittany Hauser I might be moving when she asked if I wanted to come over to her house to see the fancy show cat her dad bought her mom as an anniversary surprise.
I didn’t tell Mrs. Fleener, the lunchroom lady, that I might be moving when she told me to remind my mother that she hadn’t paid for my lunch milk for next month.
I didn’t tell anyone at all tha
t I might be moving.
At least until somehow I ended up standing next to Scott Stamphley during dodgeball in PE (which we were only playing because it was raining and so we couldn’t go outside to play baseball).
And the truth is, by then I was bursting to tell someone. And I figured it would be safe to tell Scott, since no girls in my class will talk to him. Not because of his New York accent. We all got over that after the first few days of meeting him. But because of his snake collection, which he insists on bringing to school every time there is a science fair. So it wasn’t like there was anyone he could tell, anyway.
“Want to know a secret?” I asked him as we stood in the back where the big red balls couldn’t get us. Mary Kay was already out—she’d gotten hit by a ball first thing, because of course everyone wanted to strike her out on her birthday and make her cry. Which completely worked. So now she was sitting on the sidelines showing Mr. Phelps the red mark from the ball on her thigh and saying, “B-but it’s m-my b-birthday!” between sobs.
“Not really,” Scott said, about my secret question.
But since I know he was just saying that to be a pain, I told him anyway. “I’m probably moving.”
“Big deal,” Scott said. Which is one of the reasons why no girls like him. Because he is so rude to us. Also because he does things like burp loudly in class when Ms. Myers isn’t paying attention, which Brittany Hauser says is disgusting.
But I didn’t care that he was being rude to me, because it was just such a relief to tell someone.
“I probably won’t be going to this school anymore,” I told him.
“Good,” Scott said. “Then I won’t have to look at your stupid face anymore.”
Since this is just the way Scott is, I didn’t take offense. Also because I know if you gasp and flounce away when boys act like this, like Brittany Hauser does, you are really just giving them what they want.
“It’s going to be really hard,” I told him. “I’ll have to make all new friends.”
“That is going to be really hard for you,” Scott said. “On account of how ugly you are.”
If Scott had said that to Mary Kay, of course she would have started crying. But I’m used to the way boys talk because of my brothers.