I closed the door so Mom wouldn’t hear. “Will you show me some of your clown tricks? That you do in class? I won’t tell Mom,” I said.
Brian looked confused for another second, but then he rolled his eyes at me. He took out his other earphone. “When my teachers say I’m being a clown, it doesn’t mean like a clown at the circus. They are just saying they think I should be quiet and sit still all day long. And when I try to talk to my friends or joke around, they tell Mom I’m breaking the rules,” Brian said.
“Oh,” I said. I felt my shoulders go down a little bit. I was disappointed.
“Any more questions?” Brian asked me.
I looked around his room for a second. “Um, can I sit in your beanbag chair?” I asked him.
Brian asked if I would be quiet so he could read, and I said yes, so he said yes, I could sit in his beanbag chair. I walked over to the other side of his bed and sat in the squashy chair under the window.
Brian picked up his book again, but he didn’t put his earphones back in. I decided I would ask him one more question.
“Brian?” I said.
He said “What?” again, but a little bit nicer.
“Why do you like to be a clown at school?”
Brian said that he didn’t really like to be a clown, he just didn’t like people always making him do stuff he didn’t think he should have to do. I nodded my head a LOT when he said that. “I know that’s right!” I said. I don’t like people making me do stuff I don’t want to do either. Especially people like Tiffany Harris.
“Now are you going to be quiet?” Brian asked me. I nodded, and he started reading again. I sat and watched. It was pretty boring to watch somebody read a book, but I felt safe sitting all smooshed down in Brian’s beanbag chair.
After a lot of quiet, boring minutes, someone knocked on Brian’s door and opened the door at the same time. I couldn’t see over the bed, but I knew it was Mom because she always opens the door at the same time as knocking, and plus she is the only other person who lives in our apartment. She said in a kind of worried voice, “Do you know where your sister is?” and Brian pointed at me in the beanbag chair. Mom walked around the bed so she could see me.
“Sorry, Mommy. I will go back to my room now,” I said. I started to get up, but it was kind of hard because I was smooshed down in the beans very well.
Mom looked at me and then at Brian. Then she said I could stay in Brian’s room for a little while! Then she left.
I was excited that I was getting to hang out with Brian, but pretty soon it got boring again because he was just reading, reading, reading. After I got really bored, I thanked Brian for letting me sit in his chair, and then I went back to my room to write in my notebook. My notebook isn’t so super-bad to write in, but I will be happy when I get my journal back tomorrow after Eric’s special mission.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18
10:30 A.M.
I really hope I feel happy after Eric’s special mission, because right now I don’t feel happy at all. Today we got our jobs for when Bob Morgan from BIPPO AND PECKY comes to visit. My job is to say a little speech about friendship. Ms. Campbell said I can talk about why some of my friends are important to me.
I would have liked my job of making a speech except it has caused two problems. The first problem is that Tiffany said I have to write my friendship speech about HER or she will tell the bad stuff in my journal. The second problem is that I think Linny is feeling sad that I’m playing with Tiffany all the time now and not playing with Linny, because she told me she wishes that we could play together sometimes. Then she said that if her job was writing a speech, she would write about me because she thinks I am a very fun friend and she thinks we have fun playing games like Foursquare and Airplane Twins. So now I don’t know what to do for my speech. If I don’t write it about Tiffany, she will tell everybody all my private stuff and Linny might not be friends with me anymore. If I do write about Tiffany, then Linny still might not be friends with me anymore, because she might think I am friends with Tiffany only. And I’m not friends with Tiffany. Not even for one second!
Linny’s job for the visit is to go get Bob Morgan from the school office and walk down the hall with him until he gets to our classroom. Tiffany’s job is to ask some of the questions we all said. That’s not a good job for Tiffany, because she does not really like to ask questions. She just likes to boss people around all the time.
3:30 P.M.
Eric is doing his special mission right now! I really, really hope he can get my journal back.
5:30 P.M.
Eric got my journal back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
He didn’t give it to me yet, though. That is part of the plan. Tiffany is not supposed to know that Eric is giving the journal back to me. There are these video cameras in our building that make sure no robbers come in or that people don’t litter. Eric said if the cameras see him bringing the journal to me, Tiffany might find out. So instead Eric called me when he got back from Tiffany’s.
“Mission accomplished!” he shouted, and then he just hung up.
I called him right back to ask him how he got my journal.
“At first I was just looking around Tiffany’s room, but I didn’t see your journal anywhere. So I thought maybe she hid it somewhere,” he said. He was breathing really loud, like he had done a million jumping jacks. “So I told her I wanted to play hide-and-seek. But Tiffany said no. She said we had to play Princess Rescue.”
“Oh no,” I said.
“It was kind of like hide-and-seek, except Tiffany was the princess who had been captured by the bad zoo guy, and she wanted me to be the prince who saved her,” Eric told me.
“Yuck,” I said.
“So I said no, I would only play if I could be Spider-Man. And she said okay. So I went out of the room and she hid in the closet. And I knew she was in there because she was making crying princess sounds. But I didn’t rescue her. I just looked everywhere else in her room for your journal. But it wasn’t anywhere!” Eric was still breathing really loud.
“So then did you rescue her?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “She just kept crying louder and louder and then she yelled I AM A BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS TRAPPED IN A ZOO YOU BETTER RESCUE ME RIGHT NOW ERIC, and then her mom came in and asked what was going on. And then she rescued Tiffany even though she wasn’t part of the game. And she said if I could not behave, then I would have to go home. And she gave Tiffany some extra math to do. Then it got really boring.”
“So when did you get my journal?” I asked. I started to wish that I had not asked Eric how he got my journal. He was taking a very long time to explain it.
“So then I went to the bathroom, and when I came out, I saw there was a big bookshelf in Mrs. Harris’s room. So I just went in her room,” he said.
“Oh no,” I said. I could not believe it. Eric never did dangerous stuff like that!
“I saw that your journal was on the tippy-top shelf,” Eric said. “So I climbed up the bookshelf like Spider-Man. Then I put the journal under my shirt. And as soon as I went back in Tiffany’s room I told her I had to go home because I felt very sick and I was afraid I was going to throw up all over her bed.”
“Good one,” I told him.
“So like I said, mission accomplished!” Eric shouted. And I said good job. Then we hung up.
I will never write anything bad about Eric in my journal ever again. He was so nice to get my journal back. The only problem now is that I won’t be able to write in my journal at school because then Tiffany will know that Eric gave the journal back to me, and plus Ms. Campbell thinks my journal is gone forever.
8:30 P.M.
Since I didn’t have my journal tonight, I was going to sit in bed and write my speech, but I was having a hard time getting comfortable. I tried to think of a more comfortable place to sit and write, and I decided that it would be more comfortable to sit in Brian’s beanbag chair again. When I went to his room, he said, “Oh boy, it’s you again.” Then
he said, “What, are you going to start coming in here every night?”
“Okay!” I said. I was happy that he invited me to start visiting every night. I walked right over to the beanbag chair and sat down.
“What’s that notebook?” Brian wanted to know.
“It’s my journal for right now,” I told him. “I had some problems with my other one.”
“I like that notebook much better,” Brian said. “It doesn’t look so girly.”
When Brian says stuff like that, most of the time I stick my tongue out at him. But I thought if I stuck my tongue out, he might ask me to leave his room. Instead, I asked him if he had gotten a good behavior report that day.
Brian rolled his eyes, but then he said yes. And he said, “It’s kind of annoying that you want to check up on my behavior all the time, but I guess you are just trying to be a good kid.”
Then all of a sudden I just started crying. “I’m not a good kid,” I told Brian. “I’m a bad kid.” I told him I wrote all kinds of bad stuff in my journal. I even wrote bad stuff about my very best friend.
Brian laughed at me. I told him it was not nice to laugh at a crying little sister, and he said, “It doesn’t make you a bad kid just because you wrote some stuff in your journal that wasn’t nice. You can write what you want in your journal.”
“But everybody might find out the bad stuff I wrote,” I said. I told him all about Tiffany, and how Eric got my journal back but that Tiffany still knew all the bad stuff I wrote. I told him about Bippo and Pecky and how I had to give a speech in front of the whole second grade. I said that Linny would be sad if I wrote my speech about how great Tiffany is. But Tiffany said I HAD to write about her.
“So what, you’re going to let Tiffany boss you around for the rest of your life?” Brian asked.
“I don’t know,” I told him. “I guess so. Maybe I should move to Maryland too. But I would miss Mommy. But if you move to Maryland and I stay here, I will miss you,” I said, and I started to cry again.
“I’m not moving to Maryland, dummy,” Brian said. “Dad has to travel too much for work, and there would be no one to stay with me. I just said that because I was mad.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt about a million times better in about two seconds.
“Plus I have to stay here to make sure you don’t do dumb stuff like let Tiffany Harris boss you around,” Brian said. “Just let her say what she wants to say and don’t worry about it. That’s pretty sad that she thinks she has to force people to play with her. Even though she’s mean, it’s sad no one likes her.”
“I guess,” I said. “But I would like her if she would just be nice! I can’t like her if she is mean all the time! And I can’t like her if she just wants to play princesses all the time and won’t let anyone else pick the games. And I can’t like her if she tells all my private stuff. If she tells what I wrote, all my friends will be mad at me.”
“Even if she tells what you wrote, your friends won’t be mad for very long,” Brian told me. “Your friends are pretty cool. And plus, little kids don’t have very good memories.”
“We do too!” I said. I can remember almost every time someone has made me mad since kindergarten. I can’t really remember from preschool, though. “Do you really think my friends are cool?” I said with lots of surprise.
“Yeah, they’re okay,” Brian said. I couldn’t believe it!
“Am I cool?” I wanted to know.
“You’re cool if you don’t let Tiffany Harris tell you what to do,” Brian said. “Just say whatever you want to say in your speech, and if she tries to tell you what to do, just say, ‘It’s a free country.’ ”
“It’s a free country,” I said. “That’s true.” Then Brian asked me if I would be quiet so he could read. I turned to the back of my notebook and started writing my speech.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 19
3:30 P.M.
TODAY WAS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE. I met a famous writer, people clapped for my speech, and I found out Tiffany Harris is a LIAR. And Mom let me drink two cups of punch even though it is loaded with sugar.
First, I met a famous writer! Bob Morgan! He has written TEN books. Five books are about Bippo and Pecky. He answered lots of questions from the second-grade kids. And he even answered some questions from the parents! Mom was there with her video camera, but she didn’t ask any questions. I wrote down Bob Morgan’s answers to the questions in the back of my notebook so I wouldn’t forget what he said.
Next, I gave my speech! Five kids gave speeches, but mine was the longest. I got a little nervous about making a speech in front of kids and grown-ups and a famous guy. But I gave my speech in a loud voice anyway because I would NOT have been cool if I had gotten scared and run away or something. I did not look at Tiffany for my whole speech because I knew she was not going to like it.
My speech was about how I am very lucky to have three best friends. I said I have a best friend in my class named Linny, a best friend in my building named Eric, and a best friend in my family named Brian. Then after I talked about my three best friends, I told a fable that I made up. It was about Bippo and Pecky, but I also made up this other hippo at the zoo named Skippo. I named him Skippo because I know Bob Morgan really likes hippo names that rhyme, and I wanted him to like my fable. So anyway, Skippo is mean to the other hippos and Bippo tries to teach him to be nice. After I said the moral of my fable, I said THE END. People started clapping, so I bowed. Then Ms. Campbell told me good job and I could take my seat now.
After all the speeches we had a little party with fruit punch and cake. Addy’s mom made the cake, and Addy used icing to make Bippo and Pecky on the cake. Then at the bottom she wrote THANK YOU, BOB MORGAN, but she ran out of space, so the THANK YOU part was extra big, BOB was a little smaller, and MORGAN was all jammed up so you couldn’t really read it. But I told Addy it looked really good because I know it is hard writing on cakes.
I was having a really fun time at the party because lots of people were telling me they thought my speech was very, very good. And Linny gave me a hug and said I was nice. She said she liked the part of my speech where I said that even though Linny and I have disagreements sometimes, it’s okay because we are still very good friends.
I was standing beside Linny and eating my cake when Tiffany came over to me. She looked mad. She said, “I’m going to tell Linny what you wrote about her in your journal.”
“What are you talking about?” Linny asked Tiffany.
“Keena wrote something mean about you in her journal,” Tiffany said.
I felt very brave after I gave my speech and Linny said that yes, even though we had disagreements, we were still friends. “I don’t care what you say,” I told Tiffany. “It’s a free country. You can say everything you read in my journal. I don’t even care.”
“You READ Keena’s journal?” Linny sounded very shocked.
I decided to just tell Linny what I wrote before Tiffany could tell her. “I wrote that I didn’t believe you stayed up all night at your sleepover,” I said. “I think I wrote it because I was very sad that my dad didn’t let me go to the sleepover. I’m sorry.”
Linny moved her shoulders up and down in the same way that Tiffany does to act like she knows everything. Except when Linny did it I didn’t mind, because I knew it meant that she wasn’t mad at me. I felt about two million times better in one second.
Just then Tiffany’s mom walked over and said she thought I was a good little speaker and that I should always remember to stand up nice and straight when giving a speech.
“Tiffany read Keena’s journal!” Linny said to Mrs. Harris. “You should tell her not to read someone’s private stuff.”
Mrs. Harris looked surprised that Linny said that to her. “Tiffany certainly did not,” she said. “I took that diary away from Tiffany as soon as I saw that Keena left it, because Tiffany needed to do her extra workbook pages. Tiffany is learning to do third-grade math.” Then Mrs. Harris turned to me. “I’m not su
re where I put your diary, but I’ll try to remember to look for it.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I got a new one.”
Mrs. Harris walked away to go talk to Ms. Campbell. I looked at Tiffany. She didn’t look too happy. “You lied!” Linny said to her.
“I played Airplane Princess Twins for no reason!” I said. “Why did you lie?”
Tiffany said she didn’t know, and she moved her shoulders up and down.
“It’s not nice to lie,” Linny told her. Then she asked Tiffany if third-grade math was hard. Tiffany said it wasn’t that hard but that she didn’t like it. Then she just talked to us normally for a few minutes. She didn’t say she was sorry about lying, but she didn’t say anything else mean. So after Tiffany left, Linny and I decided that we will ask Tiffany to play with us at recess next week as long as we can play just regular games and not the princess kind.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20
11 A.M.
I am at Dad’s. I decided to just go ahead and finish writing in this plain old notebook since I’m almost done with it. This morning when Dad came to pick up Brian and me, Mom showed Dad Brian’s chart that had three stickers on it already. Dad said, “Wow, what a beautiful chart! Did you buy that from a professional chart maker? It must have been very expensive.” And I told Dad that I was the one who made the chart! Brian only has to get two more stickers. I think he can do it, but if not, I will make him another chart for the next week.
Before we left with Dad, Mom made everyone watch the video of my speech. Mom, Brian, and I sat on the couch, and Dad sat in this old rocking chair from Grandma Haypo’s. When I started talking about Brian, all of a sudden you could hear this sniffing sound on the video. But you could still hear me talking because I talked loud. Then when the video was over, Brian said my speech was pretty good! Dad said he thought I was fantastic. Everyone asked me questions about the part of my speech that was about Eric. Mom said the sniffing sound was from her crying because she was proud of Brian and me for being nice people even if Brian was trying to make her crazy with all his clowning. Then Brian said Mom’s crying sounded like a horse breathing. And Mom said Brian better watch out.
Keena Ford and the Secret Journal Mix-Up Page 3