Mom put the phone down, then she walked over to me and gave me a hug. When she did that, about a million tears popped right out of my eyes.
“Don’t worry about what Brian said. He didn’t mean it,” Mom said to me. I told her that yes, I was worried about Brian, but that we would have to talk about it later because for now I was worried about something else. I told her that my journal was at Tiffany’s and that I had to get it back right away. “It’s an emergency,” I said. “She might read it.”
“Now, I’m sure it’s almost Tiffany’s bedtime,” Mom said. “And there is no way she will have time to read it tonight. You have written a LOT in that journal.” Mom smiled a little bit. “You can just get it from her at school tomorrow,” she said, and she gave me a squeeze. Then Mom asked me to get ready for bed and said she would come tuck me in after she talked to Dad again.
Now I am going to watch TV for a while and rest my hand. My hand is tired from writing for such a long time.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 16
6 P.M.
Okay, I am ready to write the rest of the story now.
This morning at school I was going to ask Tiffany about my journal right away. But she said something to me first. She came right up to me with a big smile on her face. “You left your journal at my apartment,” she told me.
“I know,” I said. Then I asked her if I could have my journal back.
“I didn’t bring it with me,” she said. She was still smiling like crazy. Tiffany never smiles at me unless she is about to tell me something bad. I was pretty sure I knew what bad thing Tiffany was going to tell me.
“You didn’t READ my journal, did you?” I asked her. “You better not have read it. That is my private stuff in there.”
Tiffany didn’t say anything for one minute. Then she said, “Yes, I read it. I read the whole thing.”
When Tiffany said that, my face got about a million degrees more hot. I was shocked. I don’t know where the water comes from inside you that makes you cry, but it shot up into my eyes in about three seconds.
“That was my PRIVATE STUFF!” I said again.
“Then you should not have left it at my apartment,” Tiffany said. She raised and lowered her shoulders very fast like she knows everything.
“I’m telling,” I said.
“If you tell on me, I will tell everyone what you wrote in your journal,” she said. “Even the bad stuff. I will tell them all of it.”
If Tiffany told all the things I wrote in my journal, I would be in big trouble with a lot of people. Here’s some of the bad stuff I wrote: I wrote that Mom’s new haircut made her look like an old lady. I had written that Dad was mean for not letting me go to my friend Linny’s sleepover on a Saturday just because I stayed home sick on Friday, even after I promised to just lie in my sleeping bag the whole time and rest. I wrote that Linny was a liar because she said she stayed up all night at the sleepover. And I wrote that Eric was getting on my nerves because he was bragging about going to a Washington Wizards basketball game. “Fine, I won’t tell,” I said.
“And you have to do everything I say,” Tiffany told me.
“Like what?” I asked her.
Tiffany did not answer because just then Ms. Campbell asked Tiffany and me why it was taking us so long to unpack our backpacks and did we remember that we were supposed to sit down.
“Sorry, Ms. Campbell. Keena keeps talking to me at the cubbies,” Tiffany said.
“I do not!” I said.
“Both of you, please just find your seats,” Ms. Campbell said.
Even though I was mad at Tiffany, I was excited for reading time because we were going to read more fables. There is a whole section about fables in our big reading books.
But at reading time, Ms. Campbell told us we did not need to bring our big reading books to the carpet. She said that instead of reading more fables, we were going to read something different. After we all went to the carpet, Ms. Campbell held up a book that said BIPPO AND PECKY on the front cover. There was a drawing of a big gray hippo and a little gray bird with a red beak and a yellow circle around its eye. Ms. Campbell told us to guess what the book was about. I raised my hand high, but Ms. Campbell called on a girl named Shay. “I think Pecky is the bird, and Bippo is the hippo, because Bippo rhymes with hippo,” Shay said.
I stretched my hand VERY high so that Ms. Campbell would know I still wanted to say something. She said, “Yes, Keena?”
“I think Bippo is the bird and Pecky is the hippo,” I said. “That is more funny than if Bippo is the hippo.” Some other people nodded and I heard someone say yes, that would be more funny. Somebody else shouted that no, it would be better for Bippo to be the hippo. Then a girl named Addy said she thought the hippo was going to eat the bird.
I don’t think Ms. Campbell was happy that all those kids forgot to Raise Their Hands Before Speaking, because she made the quiet signal. The quiet signal is when Ms. Campbell puts one hand in the air and one finger over her lips, and then she makes her eyebrows go very close together so that she gets a wrinkle in the middle of her forehead. Ms. Campbell is not a very old lady, but she can make her face wrinkle in lots of different ways to show if she is happy or mad.
When Ms. Campbell made the quiet signal, the rest of us stopped talking and made the signal too. Then Ms. Campbell started reading the story. And we found out that Bippo is the hippo and Pecky is the bird. I was disappointed, but I decided I would try to love the story anyway, and you know what? I did! It was funny. Bippo and Pecky played tricks on a bad zoo guy who was trying to get Bippo sent away.
After Ms. Campbell finished reading the book, she told us she had a special announcement. She said that she read the story to us because someone very important from the story was coming to visit our class on Friday!
“I think it’s Bippo!” Addy shouted.
“Bippo’s not REAL. It’s probably a different hippo,” Linny said to Addy. I started getting excited. I had never seen a hippo in real life except for in this game called Hungry Hungry Hippos where you make a plastic hippo’s mouth bang up and down so that marbles fly everywhere.
Ms. Campbell made the quiet signal again, then she said that the author of the book was going to visit the second grade on Friday. The author is the guy who wrote the book, and his name is Bob Morgan. Ms. Campbell said we would do some special activities to get ready for Bob Morgan’s visit, like thinking up questions to ask him and writing about friendship and stuff like that. People started raising their hands like crazy to say questions they had for Bob Morgan, but Ms. Campbell said it was time for a bathroom break.
I was in front of Tiffany in the line. I used to always try to be in the back of the line, but I don’t worry about that kind of stuff anymore because I’m too grown-up for that now. Also I made a famous man fall down some stairs the last time I tried to be in the back of the line. So when we went in the bathroom, I was supposed to go before Tiffany, but she said I had to let her go first.
“That’s not fair,” my friend Linny said. “Keena was in front of you.” I looked at Linny. Then I looked at Tiffany. Linny was being a good friend. I didn’t want to make her mad by having Tiffany tell her that I wrote mean stuff about her. So I just said, “It’s okay, Tiffany can go first. I don’t have to go that bad.”
After the bathroom, it was writing time. I wasn’t sure what to tell Ms. Campbell about my journal. I wanted to say, “HELP, TIFFANY STOLE MY JOURNAL,” but I did not want Tiffany to tell all my secrets. But I also did not want to tell Ms. Campbell that I didn’t have my journal, because she would think I didn’t take good care of my stuff. So all of a sudden I just told Ms. Campbell that when I was walking to school, a big dog ran into me on the sidewalk and knocked my journal into a puddle and then a bus ran over it. Ms. Campbell raised her eyebrows up high. “Hmmm. You must be very upset,” she said. “I know your journal is very important to you.”
“Yes, I’m very upset,” I told her. That was true. I was upset because I had just told a whopper to Ms
. Campbell. A whopper is a big, big lie. The only part that was true was that I did see a dog on the way to school, but it was pretty small, and a lady was walking it on a leash. Everything else I said to Ms. Campbell was a big fat lie. My lip started wobbling and my eyes got a little wet when I thought about what a big liar I was.
I thought Ms. Campbell might say “There, there,” or something like that, but she just gave me this plain old notebook.
“Don’t let this one get run over by a bus,” she told me.
“I won’t. I promise,” I said. I felt a little better because I wasn’t lying when I promised that.
Mom just came into my room and said that it is time for dinner. After dinner, I am going to ask Mom to go to Tiffany’s apartment to get my beautiful journal back! Tiffany will have to give my journal back if Mom asks for it. So good-bye forever, plain old boring notebook!
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17
10:30 A.M.
Hello stupid old notebook again. We did not go get my journal from Tiffany’s after dinner last night because Mom and Brian got into a big disagreement. A big disagreement is some talking in regular voices, then talking a little bit louder, then yelling for about ten seconds, then talking in very quiet voices. I know because Mom and Dad used to have big disagreements before Dad moved to Maryland. Now they just talk to each other in nice voices and say please and thank you in almost every sentence.
Mom and Brian’s big disagreement was about basketball. Mom and Dad had decided that Brian was going to have to skip one week of basketball practice and one basketball game because he had been clowning around in class. If Brian was good in class, he would get to play basketball again. If not, he would miss another week. If he missed more than two weeks, then he would have to quit the team.
At dinner, Brian was very mad about his punishment, and he was trying to argue with Mom. He said his teachers were picking on him. He said he could do what he wanted to do in class because it’s a free country, which is true because I learned it when I went to the United States Capitol. Mom used her voice that means WATCH OUT, and she said they were not going to discuss it anymore. She said that if Brian wanted to stay on the basketball team he should just do what he was supposed to do and that was that.
So after the big disagreement Mom was kind of grumpy, and she did not want to go to Tiffany’s with me. So I went to my room and tried to think up a way to help Brian be good so he could stay on the basketball team. I wanted him to stay on the basketball team for two reasons. First, playing basketball makes Brian happy, and if Brian is happy, then he won’t want to move to Maryland. Second, I already made posters for when I cheer for Brian at his basketball games, and if he doesn’t get to stay on the team, I won’t get to show my posters. One poster says “RARR BRIAN LION” because Brian’s team is the Lions, and the other poster says “Keep Tryin’ Brian!” I got some little basketball stickers that I put all over the posters.
Thinking about posters and stickers gave me an idea. I decided to make a sticker chart for Brian to help him keep track of how many days he had been good in school. I took a big piece of paper and wrote WAS I GOOD TODAY? at the top. I made five boxes and wrote a day of the week in each box. I did not make a box for Saturday or Sunday. At the bottom I wrote Good Report = Sticker! Then I wrote Five Stickers = Basketball Team! I taped the sheet with my leftover stickers onto the paper, then I taped the chart to the door of Brian’s room.
This morning, the chart was not on Brian’s door. Mom said the chart was a very good idea but that she should probably keep the chart so she could put stickers on it when Brian got a good report.
When I got to school today, I told Tiffany that Mom and I were going to come over soon to get my journal. “You better not,” she said.
“Why not?” I asked her.
“I don’t want to give it back to you yet,” she said. “And if you come over with your mom, I will tell her all the bad stuff you wrote.”
“You’re mean!” I said. “If you tell my mom that I think her new haircut makes her look like an old lady, then that will hurt her feelings. And my mom is always nice to you. Why would you hurt her feelings?”
Tiffany smiled in a mean way again. “I won’t hurt her feelings if you do what I say,” Tiffany said. “You have to play with me at recess. I want to play Airplane Princess Twins.”
“FINE,” I said, even though I hate Airplane Princess Twins. I like regular Airplane Twins better. Linny and I made it up. We pretend we are twin sisters on an airplane, and we pretend-fly to different corners of the playground. We pretend the different spots on the playground are famous places where we can do cool stuff. Like we will pretend-fly to Australia and hop around with kangaroos, then we will pretend-fly to the North Pole and visit Santa’s Workshop. Airplane Twins is so fun. But Airplane PRINCESS Twins isn’t fun at all because you don’t get to do any hopping and you don’t get to fly to very cold places. You just get to fly to different palaces and castles where you sit inside and drink pretend tea.
Maybe it will be more fun if Linny plays too. Maybe Tiffany will let us play Airplane Princess Triplets instead.
3:30 P.M.
Tiffany would not let us play triplets. She said we were playing twins only. I told Linny I was sorry but that I had promised Tiffany in the morning that I would play with her. Linny looked sad, but she went to play with Shay and Royann on the monkey bars.
Eric came over after school today so we could do our homework in the Homework Hut. It was pretty cold, so Mom gave us some old blankets and towels for the hut. Eric was talking about the visit from Bob Morgan and he was very excited, but I just kept thinking about Tiffany.
“I am going to ask Bob Morgan if he thinks I should write a book about spies living on a ship,” Eric said.
“Tiffany has my journal and she won’t give it back,” I blurted out.
“Huh?” Eric said.
I reminded him that I had to go to Tiffany’s when he was at the Wizards game. I told him that Tiffany read the journal and there was some stuff I had written in there that wasn’t too nice. But I said the not-nice stuff was about people in my class. I didn’t tell Eric I had written some not-nice stuff about HIM.
“You should go on a mission to get your journal back,” Eric said. “You should go to Tiffany’s to play, and when she isn’t paying attention, you should take your journal back.”
“But Tiffany will be mad if I take it,” I said. “Then she will be SURE to tell the bad stuff.”
“But you can say she is lying,” Eric pointed out. “You will have your journal back, so you can say that you never wrote anything bad. Maybe the kids in your class won’t believe her.”
“Maybe,” I said. I was not too sure.
“Hmmm,” Eric said. He sat thinking for a few minutes. I let Eric do his thinking. I used to say “Hello!!” when he was thinking for a long time, but now I know that when Eric thinks very slowly, he can come up with a very good idea. I kept working on my math homework while Eric was thinking.
Most of the time when Eric gets a good idea, he’ll say “Ta-daaaa!” or something like that. But this time he just let lots of air out of his lungs. I put my math book down. “Do you have an idea?” I asked him.
“I think so,” Eric said. He didn’t sound very happy. At first I didn’t know why, but then when Eric explained the plan to me, I understood why he wasn’t excited about it. Eric’s idea was that HE would go over to Tiffany’s to play, and then he would take my journal when Tiffany wasn’t looking. Then Tiffany would be mad at Eric and not at me.
“But you hate playing with Tiffany,” I said to Eric.
“But I am going to be a spy when I grow up,” Eric pointed out. “Sometimes a spy has to pretend to like doing stuff he hates because it is part of his special mission. Like in lots of spy movies the spy will have to dance with girls because he wants to get secrets from them.”
I could not believe that Eric was going to play with Tiffany just to help me fix my problem. He was the nicest kid
ever. I felt sad that I had written bad stuff about him in my journal. If I hadn’t written the bad stuff in the first place, I wouldn’t have to worry about Tiffany telling my secrets.
I told Eric “Thank you” about a million times. I knew he would not read my journal because he takes his missions very seriously, and plus he only likes reading about spies, boats, and what people eat for dinner in other countries. I told Eric that when he was a spy I would try to help him with his missions. Then we pretty much just talked about spy stuff until Eric had to go home.
8:00 P.M.
Tonight was a lot better than last night. Mom told me that Brian got a sticker on his chart, and Mom and Brian did not have a big disagreement at dinner. I decided that it would be okay to ask Brian about something I had been wondering, so I went in his room after dinner. He was sitting on his bed listening to music on his earphones and reading a book for middle school kids called SOMETHING SOMETHING OUTER SPACE. The first two words were too long for me to really read them, but I got the outer space part. His door was open so I had not knocked on it, but I don’t think he heard me come in, so I just walked up to him and knocked on his leg.
He jumped about a million feet into the air. Then he shouted, “WHAT?!?” He took one of his earphones out of his ear.
Then I decided maybe it was not such a good idea to ask Brian my question. “Never mind,” I said. I started walking to the door again.
Brian told me to wait and said he was sorry he shouted. He said I surprised him. Then he asked what I wanted.
“Um, well, I was wondering if you would show me some of your tricks,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” Brian said. He looked confused.
Keena Ford and the Secret Journal Mix-Up Page 2