Don't Wear Polka-Dot Underwear with White Pants: (And Other Lessons I've Learned) Page 3

  I slump down in the Reading Corner next to Natalie. “I’ll read first,” I say.

  “No, you went first last time,” Natalie says. “It’s my turn.” Natalie is very into turns, and I am very into going first. She opens the book to the place where we had left off. It is a story about President Lincoln, but I learned everything there is to know about Abraham Lincoln way back in kindergarten, so this story is not interesting to me.

  “ ’President Lincoln delivered the famous Gettysburg—’ ”

  “How about if we read something different?” I interrupt Natalie’s reading.

  “We’re supposed to read this,” Natalie argues.

  “But Mrs. Spangle will never know if we just—” I look behind me at the books stacked up in the Reading Corner, which all look much more interesting than this silly Lincoln book (plus, I bet they have many more pictures)—“read this one.” I pick a book off the shelf, and I don’t even care which one it is just as long as it is not about some silly speech.

  “No,” Natalie says. “We have to read this.” And this is why Natalie and I are not friends.

  I slump back down next to her and rest my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. Natalie’s glasses are framed in black, which seems like a waste. If I were lucky enough to wear glasses, I would make sure the frames were a stand-out-and-shout color like periwinkle, or at least red.

  “Can I try on your glasses?” I interrupt Natalie’s reading again.

  “No,” she answers.

  “Just for one single second?” I ask. “Please?” I am super polite, just like Mrs. Spangle’s rule, because even black glasses are better to try on than no glasses at all.

  “No,” Natalie says again. I sigh so that she knows I am not pleased, but Natalie just keeps reading this Abraham Lincoln book. Natalie reads with no expression and I read with a lot of expression, but Natalie won’t let me read one word before it is my turn.

  “There is an exclamation point there,” I interrupt her again. “At the end of that sentence. You did not read it.”

  “You don’t read punctuation, Mandy,” Natalie says, like I am some kind of dope or something.

  “I know.” I say “know” real loud because Natalie is making me angry. “But you have to exclaim when you say it. Like this.” I try to pull the book out of Natalie’s hands to demonstrate.

  “It’s not your turn!” Natalie holds on tight to the sides of the book and lets out a big exclamation point.

  “See how you did that?” I say. “You made an exclamation! Like, ’Wahoo!’ ” I am a very helpful reading partner, I think.

  “I’m telling.” Natalie stands up in a huff and a puff and marches off toward Mrs. Spangle’s desk.

  Natalie is a big tattletale.

  Mrs. Spangle tells Natalie and me to stop reading together, which is the best news I’ve heard all day. She does not tell me that I will be George Washington in the assembly, though, which would have been even better news.

  When we are packing to go home, Mrs. Spangle has the Paper Passers hand out sheets to take to our parents. “Make sure your moms and dads see this as soon as you get home,” she says. “It’s their invitation to our Presidential Pageant.” And this is my big chance.

  I shoot my hand in the air, following the “No calling out” rule and everything.

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

  “Do I get to be George Washington?” I ask.

  “I haven’t assigned parts yet,” Mrs. Spangle says. “Later this week.”

  “Don’t make Polka Dot George Washington,” Dennis says when Mrs. Spangle isn’t paying attention.

  “Stop it, Dennis,” Anya says, because she is my friend and Dennis is not.

  “Yeah, stop it, Freckle Face,” I echo. “You don’t know anything.” And Dennis pets his Mohawk and sticks his tongue out at me.

  When I get home, I put the invitation for the Presidential Pageant in front of Mom’s nose right away so she cannot miss it. I know if I wait too long, Timmy or the twins will start crying and she will forget. So I hold the paper way high up so it touches the tip of her nose and is right in front of her eyes.

  “Are you trying to give me a paper cut?” Mom takes the sheet from my hand and pulls it away from her face.

  “You need to put this on your calendar right now,” I say. “Mrs. Spangle says so.”

  “A Presidential Pageant,” Mom reads. “That sounds exciting. I’ll mark down the day.”

  “And no twins allowed,” I say. “And no Timmy, either.”

  “Timmy will be in preschool,” Mom says. “And I’ll have Grandmom babysit the twins. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  “Good.” I nod with satisfaction.

  “Who are you playing in the assembly?”

  “George Washington,” I answer, even though I am not sure that this is true. Because if I am not George Washington, I am not going to show up at all.

  One of the twins starts crying then, of course, because they do not know how to do anything else. Mom groans, and I wonder if she thinks the twins are annoying too. “Be right back,” she tells me. “Then I want to hear all about your part.”

  Mom leaves the kitchen and heads for the twins’ bedroom, and I am alone again. Which is better than being with Timmy or the twins, I guess.

  I walk around the kitchen saying, “I cannot tell a lie” over and over with all kinds of expression to see what sounds best. I decide I might as well practice my George Washington part now, so that I am ready when Mrs. Spangle finally tells me that I am playing him in the assembly. I try to roll the sides of my hair into curls like he did, but it does not look right because my hair is straight and brown and not white like George’s. Even if I do not like white on pants, I like it on hair because it reminds me of Grandmom and Rainbow Sparkle.

  I cannot pretend to be George Washington with no white hair, so I open the sugar container on the counter and tap some sugar on top of my head. I study my reflection in the oven door, and I look a little better, so I run back and tap on another handful. And then I decide that I should stop before—

  “What do you think you’re doing?!”

  —Mom finds me.

  “Being George Washington,” I answer, which I am pretty sure Mom should know by looking at me. “I cannot tell a—”

  “Amanda,” Mom says. “I am going to count to three.”

  I know then that I am about to get sent to my room. At least I still have half a bag of gummy bears and my Magic Mountain Wonderland there waiting for me.

  CHAPTER 5

  Gymnastics Champion, Only Not

  IT IS VERY, VERY HARD to get sugar out of hair, I’ve learned. Because sugar is sticky and it gets slimy when Mom pours water over my head, and this sticky gook only makes Mom redder in the face.

  It is Mom’s fault, though, about the sugar, because she went to the twins’ bedroom when I was talking about my George Washington part and she did not listen to me much, so I do not even feel too bad about the whole thing.

  I am not allowed to watch Rainbow Sparkle’s show on TV for a whole week now, which is a much worse punishment than sitting in my room with gummy bears, so I am pretty unhappy. Plus, my hair is kind of sticky.

  “Touch my hair,” I say to Anya the next morning at school, because I want to see if my hair still feels like a sucked-on lollipop.

  “Why?”

  “Because it is sticky,” I say.

  “Ew, I don’t want to feel it, then,” Anya answers. “It looks shiny, though.”

  “Really?” I had not looked at my hair much since my bath except to make sure it was not white anymore (because I did not want Dennis to come up with another name-call for me when I only have one for him).

  “Mm-hmm,” Anya answers, so I decide it is okay that my hair is sticky as long as it is shiny, too. Because everybody knows that shiny, sparkly hair is the best kind, even if it does feel like old candy.

  Natalie sits next to me in the cafeteria and tells me not
to unwrap my sandwich so loudly, and this is ridiculous because there is no way to unwrap a sandwich quietly. At least Mom made my sandwich with grape jelly today, which tastes so much better than that seedy strawberry stuff.

  I take a bite of my sandwich, and a big glob of jelly shoots out of the bread and lands with a splat on the cafeteria table. I mop it up with one finger and stick it in my mouth because I do not want to waste one bit of no-seeds jelly.

  “Ew,” Natalie calls. “You can’t eat off the table. It has germs.”

  “It was not on the table long enough to get any germs,” I tell her. “And also, it is none of your beeswax.”

  “You are probably going to get a disease,” Natalie says, and I am positive that Natalie would not touch a caterpillar, which is why Natalie and I will never be friends. “Here, you can use my napkin to wipe up the rest.”

  “I don’t need your silly napkin,” I say. “I have a perfectly good finger.” I slide my finger against the table and pop the rest of the jelly into my mouth.

  “Yuck,” Natalie says. “That is disgusting.” And I do not even answer her because Natalie doesn’t understand why you should never waste grape jelly.

  The lunch aides are standing by the slide when we get to the playground, which does not seem like a very nice thing to do.

  “No more Squash the Lemon,” they say. “Someone is going to get hurt.”

  “What are we going to do now?” I ask Anya.

  “Let’s go see what the other girls are doing,” Anya suggests, and we walk over to the grassy part of the playground, where I try never to play. Usually the girls who play here do only “Miss Mary Mack” and “Down by the Banks” and other hand-clapping games, and they are no fun at all, especially because I can never remember where to put my hands.

  Of course, Natalie plays here almost every day.

  “What are you guys doing?” Anya asks.

  “Gymnastics,” one of the girls answers. “The three of us are in the same gymnastics class, so we’re practicing.”

  “That’s dumb,” I say to Anya. “The playground does not even have a trampoline.” The trampoline is the only thing I ever did when I had to go to a gymnastics birthday party. You cannot bounce up and down on the grass like you can on a trampoline because grass is not very jumpy.

  “Oooh, what kind?” Anya asks the other girls. I forgot that Anya took gymnastics when she was little, but then she stopped because she ice-skates now.

  “We were doing forward rolls,” one of the girls says. “But now we’re doing cartwheels.”

  “I love cartwheels,” Anya says, and before I can blink, she throws her hands on the ground, sticks her feet in the air, and turns in a circle.

  Anya can do a lot of things, I guess.

  The three other girls from the gymnastics class do cartwheels too. And then Natalie gets ready to do one.

  “Natalie, you better let me hold your glasses so you do not break them,” I tell her, and I hold out my hand to take them. I am sure Natalie cannot do a real cartwheel, and so she will probably crack her glasses in tiny pieces. I am very considerate, I think.

  “No, thank you,” Natalie says, and before I can say one more thing about the glasses, she does a perfect cartwheel and her glasses do not even fall off. And if Natalie can do a cartwheel, I do not see why I shouldn’t be able to do one too.

  “Stand back, everybody,” I say, because I want to make sure everyone is paying real close attention. “My turn.”

  “Do you even know how to do a cartwheel?” Natalie asks.

  “Of course I know how to do a cartwheel,” I say, even though I have never actually tried one. But I am sure I can do one if Natalie can, with her glasses on and everything, so I am not too worried.

  I take a deep breath, lift my arms in the air just like Anya did, and roll to my right.

  And next thing I know, I am on the ground.

  This is not how this cartwheel was supposed to go.

  Worst of all, the other girls are laughing, which does not seem very nice to me. Even Anya is laughing, so I do not take her hand when she reaches it out to help me stand up.

  This is why Anya is my favorite person in the world most of the time and not all the time. Because she knows how to do a cartwheel. And because sometimes she laughs at me, and that is a pretty rude thing to do.

  The lunch aides blow the whistle then, and I am happy to hear it even though I usually hate that whistle sound. I cannot believe that I do not know how to do a cartwheel and Natalie does. This is a real tragedy—a big, humongous tragedy that I must fix immediately.

  CHAPTER 6

  A Dumbbell by Any Other Name

  ONCE WE HAVE SETTLED DOWN from recess, Mrs. Spangle says, “I am going to assign your parts for the Presidential Pageant.” I have to uncross my arms then, even though I am still angry, because I cannot let out a “Wahoo!” with my arms crossed.

  I sit at my desk super-duper straight, and I even fold my hands like Natalie because it looks very presidential, I think.

  “I want everyone to remember that all of the parts for this assembly are important,” Mrs. Spangle says. “Even if you do not receive the role you had hoped for, I want you to work very hard at learning your lines so you are the very best president you can be.” And I wish Mrs. Spangle would just hurry up and tell me that I am George Washington already.

  I tap my toes against the floor and wiggle my fingers on the desk because I am nervous and jumpy. I would like to see my lines right away, but Mrs. Spangle is taking her time picking up an enormous pile of papers from her desk.

  “These are your scripts,” she explains. “I’ve highlighted your lines in yellow marker so you can see where your part is. I’m going to call your name, and when I give you your script, you can flip through to find your section. Anya.” She hands Anya a thick pile of stapled pages, then she does the same for ten more people who are not me.

  “Dennis,” she calls, and Dennis takes his script and flips through it quickly.

  “Yes, Teddy Roosevelt!” He shoots his fist in the air. “Mustache, here I come!”

  “No calling out, please,” Mrs. Spangle reminds him, and I am shaking so much with excitement now that I think I am going to fall over.

  “Mandy,” Mrs. Spangle finally says, and she hands me my very own script with Mandy Berr written at the top. Not President Mandy Berr, which I would have liked better.

  I move the pages around quickly and look for the words “George Washington.” I see many yellow marks across the lines, but no presidential names—only the word “Narrator” where the name “George Washington” should be.

  “Who is President Narrator?” I ask.

  “No calling out, Mandy,” she says.

  I raise my hand but Mrs. Spangle does not call on me, even though this is an emergency.

  “Now that you all have your scripts in front of you,” she begins, still ignoring my hand, “let’s go over who is playing whom.” I wave my hand back and forth in case she cannot see it.

  “First, Mandy is going to be our narrator,” Mrs. Spangle continues, motioning for me to lower my hand. “She is going to introduce all of our presidents to the audience.”

  I shoot my arm in the air again.

  “Yes?” she calls on me.

  “I am supposed to be George Washington,” I explain, and I feel tears tickling the back of my eyes.

  “The narrator is going to be a great part for you. You’ll see,” Mrs. Spangle says. “Now, who’s next? Follow along in your scripts.”

  Natalie raises her hand.

  “Right, Natalie, tell everyone your part.”

  “George Washington,” Natalie answers.

  My chin drops and my eyes widen into huge pancakes, and I push on them with my fingers to make the tears stop tickling. Because I am absolutely positive that this is the worst news I have ever heard in my life.

  . . .

  Mrs. Spangle is my least favorite person in the world. I am even angrier with her than I am a
t anyone else, and I am angry with a lot of people right now.

  Making Natalie George Washington in our Presidential Pageant is the worst thing that Mrs. Spangle could have done—Natalie, who does not know how to exclaim or to make her hair white or to be the first at anything. Natalie knows how to do a cartwheel, but that is not going to get her very far in being the best George Washington ever, which would have been me. I am positive that Natalie is not the president of her family like I am the president of mine.

  I am stuck being the narrator, and I don’t even know what the narrator is, but it is not a president, and so I am very, very upset. I think Mrs. Spangle felt a little bad because she called me to her desk and told me that the narrator has the biggest speaking part of anyone in the show. And that she knows that I read with expression, so this is why she gave the part to me. And that the narrator is the storyteller who holds the whole assembly together.

  But the narrator is not a president, and this is the problem that Mrs. Spangle is missing.

  And the narrator is really, really not George Washington.

  And George Washington is Natalie. Natalie! That is almost as bad as George Washington being Dennis—maybe even worse, because at least Dennis knows how to exclaim. Dennis gets to be Teddy Roosevelt, which is also terrible, because he will get to wear a fake mustache and I have always wanted to wear one.

  Plus, I cannot do a cartwheel, which I never even knew that I could not do before. And I am not speaking to Anya, even though she said that she was sorry three times. So this day has been like a huge, gigantic flop.

  When I get home, Mom asks, “How was your day?” and I say, “Horrible,” and she does not even ask why because the twins are drooling or pooping or crying or doing something else that is gross. So my day gets even worse.

  I sit on my bed with my bag of gummy bears, but I do not even feel like eating one. I am reading the script that Mrs. Spangle gave me, and she is right: I have a lot of lines. And the lines have a lot of exclamation points, and I love exclamation points, which Natalie does not know how to read.