Don't Wear Polka-Dot Underwear with White Pants: (And Other Lessons I've Learned) Read online

  For Mom and Dad,

  WHO TAUGHT ME SO MANY LESSONS

  (UNFORTUNATELY, JUST NOT THE ONE ABOUT THE POLKA-DOT UNDERWEAR)

  Many thanks to

  ALYSON HELLER, CHARLIE OLSEN, AND THE TEAMS AT ALADDIN AND INKWELL FOR UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE: GUMMY BEAR FLAVORS, PRESIDENTIAL PAGEANT RIVALRIES, AND A WELL- PLACED “WAHOO!”

  Contents

  1…THE TROUBLE WITH WHITE PANTS

  2…GUMMY BEARS

  3…CATERPILLARS

  4…GEORGE AND ME

  5…GYMNASTICS CHAMPION, ONLY NOT

  6…A DUMBBELL BY ANY OTHER NAME

  7…WORST AUDIENCE EVER

  8…THE BREAK-IN

  9…TEACHERS OLD AND NEW

  10…HAIL TO MANDY

  Read on for Mandy’s next Adventure! Excerpt

  Allison Gutknecht and Stevie Lewis

  CHAPTER 1

  The Trouble with White Pants

  I KEEP TELLING MOM ABOUT the White Pants, and she says to wear them anyway.

  “They will make me fall down,” I explain.

  “Pants do not make you fall down, Amanda,” Mom answers, because she does not understand anything at all.

  “Yes, they do.” I stomp my foot and cross my arms and put on my very best “I am pouting now” face. “White pants like dirt, and they will make me fall in it.”

  “Then be extra careful at recess, please,” Mom says, holding the awful pants open for me to step in.

  “No.”

  Mom sighs a big gust of breath in my face and stares at me with her “I mean business” eyes. “Amanda Berr, I am going to count to three.”

  “I will get ketchup on them,” I say.

  “One . . .”

  “I will drop marker on them,” I say.

  “Two . . .”

  I groan like a dinosaur and lift up one leg just so Mom will stop counting.

  “Here is a deal,” I begin. “I will wear these awful white pants if you buy me periwinkle pants.” My favorite color is periwinkle. It is more beautiful than blue and more perfect than purple and it is a fun name to say. But I do not have one piece of periwinkle clothing, and I think this is unfair. I checked my whole entire closet—shirts and shorts and dresses and ugly fancy blouses that Mom keeps in plastic until Easter. No periwinkle. I had held my periwinkle crayon from my box of 152 colors up to each piece, just to be sure. And still nothing.

  “I’ll look for some,” Mom says, shaking the white pants in front of me.

  “Today,” I insist. “I want periwinkle pants today.”

  “I cannot get you periwinkle pants today,” Mom says. “Why can’t you just like a nice, normal color—like pink? How about if I get you pink pants?”

  “I hate pink.”

  “Good, these pants aren’t pink.” Mom shakes the pants even more ferociously.

  I grab the pants in my own two hands then. “I will dress myself. I am not a baby,” I say.

  “Fine,” Mom answers. “Be downstairs and dressed in five minutes, Amanda. And in those pants. I don’t have time for any more funny business today.”

  So I stuff my legs into the pants and stomp down to the kitchen table, and Mom does not even say, Thank you for wearing the awful white pants, Mandy. Mandy is my real name even though Mom thinks it is Amanda. I do not like the name “Amanda” because it does not have any Ys in it, and this is a tragedy. I like to make Ys with curlicue tails and I cannot do this when there are no Y’s in my name, so this is why my name is Mandy and not Amanda.

  “Finish up your cereal, Amanda,” Mom says. “Your bus will be at the corner in ten minutes. Hurry.”

  “I cannot hurry because of these pants,” I tell her.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom responds, which I think is pretty rude, if I am being honest.

  “I am being serious,” I insist. “If I eat quickly, I will dump the cereal onto the pants and they will be dirty because white pants love dirt. I told you so already.” I lift one kernel of cereal onto my spoon very slowly and raise it toward my mouth, just to show Mom how careful I have to be.

  “If you want to eat that way, it’s up to you,” Mom says. “But you only have five more minutes to do so, Amanda.”

  “Mandy,” I remind her, but she does not correct herself. Mom is not such a good listener. She was not such a good listener ever, but she is even worse now that the twins are here. Everything in this house for the past five months has been about the twins:

  “The twins are hungry.”

  “Don’t be noisy, you’ll wake the twins.”

  “Aren’t the twins adorable?”

  The twins are not adorable. They’re damp. “Damp” is my new favorite word—my teacher, Mrs. Spangle, taught it to us during our science lesson. It means when something is just a little bit wet. And the twins are always just a little bit wet. Their diapers are wet or their drool is wet or their food is wet. They’re damp. Like that washcloth that is still damp the next morning even though it’s had the whole entire night to dry from your bath. And damp things are gross, I’ve decided.

  Mom says it’s not nice to call the twins “gross.” She says I have to call them “Samantha and Cody,” but most of the time, she’s not paying enough attention to see if I do, so I don’t.

  My little brother Timmy also hardly gets any attention anymore, but I don’t mind that so much. Because he’s pretty gross too.

  “Oof, Cody is wet again.” Mom pats the diaper on one of the twins and lifts him up. He starts to wail then, because all the twins like to do is cry and get even damper.

  They are pretty terrible, if I am being honest.

  “Amanda, can you get yourself to your bus stop?” Mom calls over her shoulder on her way to the twins’ room.

  “I’m eight,” I answer, because Mom forgets that I am not a baby. I know important things like how to get to my bus stop and how to read books without pictures in them and how to cook—well, to pour cereal, which is pretty much the same thing.

  “Don’t forget your lunch box!” Mom calls from the twins’ room. “It’s on the counter.” I swirl the rest of my cereal around in the bowl and try to splash a little on my pants so I can change them. “Hurry, Amanda!”

  I groan like a dinosaur again and pick my Rainbow Sparkle lunch box up off the counter. Rainbow Sparkle is who I want to be when I grow up: She is fast and she is funny and she has purple eyes, which is what I want to have (hers are almost periwinkle, only not quite). I’m stuck with brown eyes and brown hair, when all I want are beautiful purple eyes and silky white hair like Rainbow Sparkle’s.

  Rainbow Sparkle is a cat, if I forgot to mention. She has her own show on TV.

  “You can’t become a cartoon cat when you grow up,” Mom always says. She really does not understand anything at all.

  “I’m leaving!” I yell to Mom as I head for the front door. On my way I see my stuffed Rainbow Sparkle sitting underneath the coffee table, and I cram her into my lunch box even though one of Mrs. Spangle’s rules is “No toys in school.” I am going to need Rainbow Sparkle to protect me from these pants. Because Rainbow Sparkle is the only white-colored thing in the whole universe that is not awful.

  . . .

  Mrs. Spangle looks like a porcupine, but she is nicer. Porcupines stick people with their quills and Mrs. Spangle has red hair that looks like quills, but she does not stick people with it. I know this because I touched Mrs. Spangle’s hair once and it did not stick me. It did feel a little bit prickly at the top, but it was soft wh
en I rubbed my hand over it.

  “Please don’t pet me, Mandy,” Mrs. Spangle had said, so I have not touched her hair again, even though sometimes I would like to.

  I am thinking about petting Mrs. Spangle’s hair while she stands at the front of our room and tells us about our big second-grade Presidential Pageant.

  “The president’s coming?” I call out.

  “Mandy,” Mrs. Spangle says with a warning in her voice. Mrs. Spangle has seven big rules for our classroom, and I am pretty good at following three of them. “No calling out” is number four on the list, and that is not one of my favorites.

  I cover my mouth with one hand and shoot the other one in the air.

  “Yes, Mandy?” Mrs. Spangle calls on me.

  “The president’s coming?”

  “That’s a good guess, but no,” Mrs. Spangle answers. I slide down in my chair and slouch, disappointed. “Instead of having one president visit, you’re all going to become presidents for the day!”

  And I hate to say it after I made the big deal with the slouch and all, but this is just about the best news I’ve ever heard.

  “Wahoo!” I leap up from my chair and pump my fist in the air. Luckily, three other kids do this too, except without the “wahoo.”

  I sit back in my chair and raise my hand as quickly as I can. I place my left hand over my mouth, just to remind myself to keep it closed until Mrs. Spangle calls on me.

  “Yes, Mandy?” Mrs. Spangle says, so I snap my left hand away from my mouth.

  “Can I be George Washington?” George Washington is clearly the best president because he was first, and I always like to be first. I was born first in my family, so it only seems fair.

  “I’ll be assigning your parts for the assembly next week,” Mrs. Spangle says. “In the meantime, we’re going to get caught up on our presidential knowledge each day, so you’ll all get to learn about the presidents who might not be as famous as George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.”

  I shoot my hand into the air again.

  “Yes, Mandy?”

  “I would like to be George Washington, please,” I say. I use “please” and everything, because that is one of Mrs. Spangle’s rules that I am good at: “Be polite.”

  “Everyone will find out next week,” Mrs. Spangle says. “Now let’s get our things and line up for lunch. Natalie’s table first.” Natalie’s table always gets to be first because Natalie sits with her hands folded all the time and she makes her whole table do the same. Natalie is no fun at all, if I forgot to mention.

  When it is finally my table’s turn, I grab my Rainbow Sparkle lunch box out of my cubby and stand behind Anya. We walk in a not-so-straight line to the cafeteria, and I plop my lunch box on top of the table so that it makes as loud a noise as possible. Natalie gives me a dirty look and covers her ears, but Anya slams her lunch box on the table right next to mine, even louder than I did.

  Anya is my favorite person in the world, at least most of the time.

  I like Anya because both “Amanda” and “Anya” begin with the letter A and end with the letter A, which is kind of amazing. Of course, Amanda has another A in the middle, so my name is a little better, but Anya’s is pretty good too. (And Anya gets to have a Y in her name all the time, which makes me a little bit jealous.)

  Plus, Anya likes being loud and she likes Rainbow Sparkle’s TV show, so we have a lot to talk about.

  “Do you know Dennis hid my lunch box in the cubbies again?” Anya asks. Dennis sits next to Anya in Mrs. Spangle’s class, and she has a lot of problems with him because he is horrible.

  I look over at the boys’ cafeteria table and glare at Dennis. Dennis has a Mohawk in his hair and so many freckles on his nose that you can barely see it at all.

  “Leave Anya alone, Freckle Face!” I yell at him, but he doesn’t hear me. That is probably for the best, because another one of Mrs. Spangle’s rules is “No name-calling.” But Freckle Face is just such a perfect name-call for Dennis.

  Though I’ve always kind of wanted to have some freckles myself, if I am being honest.

  Anya shrugs. “Don’t worry about him,” she says. “I’ll tell Mrs. Spangle if he does it again, and then he’ll have to miss recess.”

  Recess. Recess is the best time ever. Anya and I have been playing Squash the Lemon on the slide with some other girls, which is not really allowed because the lunch aides think we are going to squash each other to death, but we play until they blow the whistle about it.

  I open my lunch box very carefully so that Rainbow Sparkle does not fall out. If Natalie sees her, she will tell Mrs. Spangle about it because Natalie is the police of Mrs. Spangle’s rules. I give Rainbow Sparkle a quick pat on the nose so she does not feel left out, pull out my food, and then slam my lunch box shut real quick.

  “Shh.” Natalie gives me a not-nice look through her glasses, and I give her my best “You are driving me bananas” face. Dad taught me the “You are driving me bananas” face, but I do it better than him, I think.

  I unwrap my sandwich and find peanut butter and jelly, which is my favorite. Except this sandwich has strawberry jam, and I keep telling bad-listener Mom that I hate strawberry jam because it has seeds. I like grape jelly only, because grape jelly is purple, which is almost like periwinkle. Plus, no seeds.

  Also, jam is slippery and slimy, and now I have these white pants and I can’t get any strawberry on them.

  “Ugh,” I groan real loud so my whole table can hear.

  “What’s wrong?” Anya asks. I point to my sandwich and make a face.

  “Oh no, seeds,” she says, and this is one reason why Anya is my favorite person in the world.

  I bite into my sandwich as neatly as possible, making sure to hold the whole thing over the table and not over my pants. It takes a very long time to eat this way. So long that I don’t even have a chance to eat my carrot sticks, but I didn’t want to eat them anyway, so this is not a tragedy.

  I always tell Mom that I want gummy bears in my lunch instead of carrot sticks, and she says this is not possible because gummy bears are not healthy. But gummy bears taste like fruit and they are delicious, so I do not know what the big deal is.

  I line up behind Anya to hit the playground, and when we are allowed to go outside, I make a beeline for the slide. Three other girls from our class are already waiting at the bottom of the slide’s ladder, ready to play our not-allowed game until the lunch aides come out of the cafeteria.

  “Let’s go, let’s go, hurry!” I call. Everyone starts climbing to the top of the slide. The first girl slides down the normal way and plants her feet firmly in the dirt at the bottom. The next girl gets into position at the top, hanging each of her legs off either side of the slide. When she reaches the bottom, she slams into the first girl and they both grunt. And this is why Squash the Lemon is the best recess game ever.

  Natalie slides down the same way, and then Anya. I am next.

  “Do not go fast, Mandy,” Natalie calls back to me. “I can hardly breathe.” Now, this makes no sense at all, because the whole point of Squash the Lemon is to go fast and squish people. So I start making my way to the top of the ladder so I can give them all the biggest slam they’ve ever had.

  “Ready or not, here I come!” I call from the top of the slide, and I decide to go extra fast just for Natalie.

  “Ewww!” I hear behind me. “Ewww!” I turn around and see Dennis and three of his silly boy friends standing at the bottom of the ladder.

  “What do you want, Freckle Face?”

  “Ewww, I can see your underwear,” Dennis says. “Ewww!”

  I was not expecting this.

  I quickly feel around the back of my pants, making sure that the band of my underwear is not peeking out the top. It is not.

  “Liar!” I yell at Dennis.

  “Mandy wears polka-dot underwear,” Dennis says in a singsong voice, and if I were not standing at the top of a slide right now, I promise I would tackle him.

&nbs
p; Especially because I’m pretty sure that I am wearing polka-dot underwear.

  How does he know that?

  “Mandy wears polka-dot underwear,” Dennis repeats. “You can see it through her pants.”

  All this commotion breaks up the squashing of the lemons at the bottom of the slide, and Anya and the other girls come around to see why Dennis is yelling. Anya looks up at me, and her eyes grow as wide as pancakes. She motions for me to get off the slide, real small so Dennis can’t see.

  I look down the ladder but decide that the slide itself is my fastest way off. So I shimmy to the bottom, which isn’t even very fun because there is no one to squash. Anya is there to meet me.

  “You can see your underwear through your pants,” she whispers to me. “I think it’s the sun.” Anya hurries me off to stand under the oak tree in the shade, somewhere my polka dots will stay hidden.

  And at this moment there are three things that I am furious at: Dennis, Mom, and these awful white pants.

  . . .

  Anya gives me her sweater to wear over my bottom for the rest of recess, and this is another reason why she is my favorite person in the world. When we get back to our classroom, I stuff my lunch box into my cubby and pop right up to Mrs. Spangle’s desk before she can say I am not allowed.

  “I need to tell you a secret,” I say quietly.

  “Not now, Mandy,” Mrs. Spangle says. “It’s time for—”

  “It’s an emergency,” I interrupt her. “Emergency” is the kind of word that gets grown-ups to listen to you. “Broken” and “stain” and “dropped on his head” are also good words for this, I’ve learned.

  “What is it?”

  “I need to take off my underwear.” I whisper this sentence real quietly in Mrs. Spangle’s ear, and I think I spit on her a little bit.

  “What do you mean? Did you have an accident?”

  I shake my head. “My mom made me wear these awful white pants, and so everyone can see my underwear.” I say this part super whispery too. “Dennis saw them on the playground.”

  “Stand back a second,” Mrs. Spangle says, so I follow her directions and take one step back, because I am very good at listening to Mrs. Spangle’s “Follow directions” rule. “Don’t worry, I can’t see anything.”