Me and Katie (The Pest)

  That night I was getting ready for bed when I heard the Pest say to my mother, “Mommy, can I talk to you?”

  “Of course, sweetheart,” said Mom. They went into the Pest’s bedroom and closed the door.

  Immediately, I reached under my bed and pulled out a glass that I keep in a Florsheim shoe box. I keep it there for occasions just like this. I put the open end of the glass up to the wall that was between Katie’s room and mine, and smushed my ear against the bottom of the glass.

  I could hear Mom and the Pest talking, but not very clearly. So I got out the stethoscope my uncle Joe the doctor had given me. I tried listening with that, but it was even worse.

  I went back to the glass.

  “But,” I could hear Katie say, “she never lets me play with … and she … I’m a pest.”

  The words faded in and out, but I could hear enough. I knew Katie was talking about me.

  “… she’s older than you are and … her own friends. You … friends of your own,” Mom was saying.

  Right on, Mom.

  “But I want Wendy to like me,” I heard the Pest say quite clearly.

  I pressed my ear even harder against the glass. I didn’t want to miss Mom’s answer.

  “What do you mean …” The rest of the sentence was lost when Scottie flushed the toilet.

  Darn.

  “I … her to… play with Sara … always yelling at me.”

  “Why do you suppose she yells at you?”

  “She says I spy on her and …”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, sometimes.”

  There was a long silence in the Pest’s bedroom.

  Then I heard Mom say, “Honey, you have to make an effort, too. … If … doesn’t like you to spy on … don’t do it … know it’s hard, but … two-way street.”

  The old two-way street story. I’d only heard that about fifteen thousand billion times myself. It was Mom’s way of saying that any argument takes at least two people, and that neither one is completely right or completely wrong. In other words, the Pest couldn’t blame everything on me.

  I was glad to know Mom felt that way.

  I wished I hadn’t found out by eavesdropping with a glass. I would have liked to have said something to my mother.

  I put the glass back in the shoe box and shoved the box under the bed. For a long time I sat and thought.

  On Thursday, I managed to get Peanuts for my fourth lesson. The other kids were finding their own favorite horses by now. Mandy liked Daybreak and Mr. Chips, Vicky liked Eugene, and Tom like Sundance, a high-spirited young horse. (Nobody liked Sky High.) Katie, of course, tried to claim Peanuts again, just because she knew I wanted her. But she ended up with Daffodil.

  I was on to Katie’s tricks, so I easily beat her to the stables.

  “Hi, Chris! Oh, hi Peanuts!” I cried. I dashed to Peanuts’s stall.

  Peanuts poked her head over the door and whuffled. I gave her a sugar cube and kissed the star between her eyes. When she finished the sugar she nuzzled me for more, stretching her neck out, and blowing on me.

  My lesson that day was the best ever. We trotted around and around the ring, and I began to feel the rhythm for posting. Mr. Chips had been a good horse to ride, but I felt as if I understood Peanuts—and she understood me. And Mrs. Larrick told me in front of the whole class that I was an excellent rider, and that Peanuts and I made a good team.

  Hardly anybody ever told me I was an excellent anything. And Mrs. Larrick said it right in front of Katie. The only thing was, Katie hadn’t done too badly at this lesson herself. She had mounted Daffodil without a hitch. She sat more easily in the saddle. Paula was spending a lot of time with her and it seemed to be helping. Once, when we were trotting, Mrs. Larrick had even called out, “Very good, Katie.” So how come it took the Pest three months to learn to ride a bicycle and only three lessons to learn to ride a horse? Was she getting more coordinated? I crossed and uncrossed my fingers seven times, hoping she wasn’t.

  “Dad?” I asked. It was Saturday morning and Dad was hovering around a flower bed in the front yard. He loves to garden. He was pulling up weeds and spreading peat moss.

  I was lying on my back near the garden, chewing on some grass and looking at the clouds.

  “Dad, could we get a horse? A nice, gentle one? It wouldn’t be any trouble. We could keep it in the garage.”

  “Where would we put the cars?”

  “Park them in the carport?”

  “All winter?” Dad knelt by a peony bush and patted some peat moss around it.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I’d like a horse, too,” said a voice from behind the yew bush. The Pest was spying again. “Well, we’ll see,” said Dad absentmindedly.

  It was when the mail came that afternoon that I found the horse catalog. It was addressed to Mom and it was full of things you’d need if you owned a horse—grooming tools, brushes, buckets, riding clothes, and a lot more.

  What did it mean? Were Mom and Dad really thinking about getting me a horse? As a surprise? Just in case they were, I slipped the catalog to the bottom of the pile of mail, and pretended I hadn’t seen it.

  That night I got out my birthday list. In one week I would turn ten. Mom and I had a party all planned. Carol, Sara, and another friend of ours named Jennifer were going to come for a sleepover.

  I had asked Mom if the Pest had to come to the party. She said no, not if I didn’t want her to. Mom really understands how I feel about Katie.

  So the party would be me and Sara and Carol and Jennifer. We were going to make popcorn and watch a scary movie on TV and raid the refrigerator and not go to sleep at all.

  I read over my birthday list, all the presents I’d asked Mom and Dad for. I’d given them the list weeks ago, but now I wanted to put one more thing on it.

  With my fancy pen that wrote in sparkly gold ink, I added to the bottom of the list:

  A HORSE OF MY OWN (please please please)

  I wanted to make sure Mom and Dad knew how much I really, really wanted a horse. In case they still had some doubts.

  7.

  “Happy Birthday to You”

  MY TENTH BIRTHDAY FELL on Saturday. For once. Saturday is the best day of the week for a birthday. If your birthday lands on a Wednesday or something it’s no big deal. Your parents give you a couple of presents, and then you have to wait three days for your party. Only then it’s not your birthday anymore, so what’s the point?

  But my tenth birthday was going to be great. Mom and Dad woke me in the morning. They came into my room singing “Happy Birthday.” They brought me breakfast in bed. There was even a vase with a rose in it on the tray. Scottie climbed in bed with me and shared my toast.

  The Pest was nowhere to be seen.

  After breakfast I got dressed and went downstairs.

  “Present time!” called Mom. “We thought you’d like to open your family presents now.”

  She took me out to the back porch. It was decorated with crepe paper and balloons. On the table was a stack of presents. Dad and Katie and Scottie and Miss J. were all waiting for me. They sang “Happy Birthday” again.

  The Pest had a funny look on her face. I couldn’t decide whether she looked guilty or smug or jealous or what. Maybe she was trying to keep a secret—a secret about a horse.

  I opened the presents from Mom and Dad first. They gave me two more books by Marguerite Henry, Album of Horses and Brighty of the Grand Canyon (Brighty was actually a story about a burro, but that was okay), and my very first bikini. It was blue with yellow and green polka dots.

  “Oh, how pretty!” exclaimed Miss J.

  “Pretty,” echoed Scott.

  “Yeah,” said Katie.

  “You’ll look gorgeous!” said Mom.

  “Isn’t it awfully … small?” asked Dad.

  Then Miss J. gave me her present. Inside a small box was a gold chain with a tiny gold horse on it. “Oh, thank you!” I cried. I gave her a hug and
a kiss, and fastened the chain around my neck.

  Then Scott ran off the porch and returned holding a rumply object. He handed it to me. It was something heavy wrapped up in tin foil. I carefully peeled the layers of foil away and found a blob of clay. It looked a little like a tall turtle with three ears, and a leg coming out of its side.

  “Scottie! How nice,” I said. “Thank you! I’ll put it on my bookshelf.”

  “You know what it is?” he asked.

  I didn’t, but I hoped he’d tell me before I had to ask him.

  “It’s a stegosaurus,” he told me proudly.

  Scott was learning about dinosaurs at day camp. He loved dinosaurs as much as I loved horses.

  And then the Pest gave me her present. I felt sort of funny taking it from her, since I’d been so mean and tried to make her ride Sky High, when all along, the Pest just wanted me to like her. On the other hand she was mean to me pretty often; I guess whenever she thought I wasn’t being enough of a friend to her. Maybe the present would be something awful. Last year, she was mad at me on Valentine’s Day and gave me a horrible, dirty brown heart that said:

  Roses are red,

  Violets are blue,

  Snakes are ugly,

  And you are too.

  Mom and Dad sent her to her room for doing that.

  So now I took the present from her, not knowing what to expect.

  “Thanks,” I said. I glanced at her, but she was staring at the floor. She wouldn’t look at me.

  The package was small and flat and didn’t weigh much. I slipped the ribbon off and tore away the paper to find a drawing of a horse. In fact, the horse was Peanuts—brown with a white star between her eyes.

  “A picture of Peanuts?” I asked in surprise. “Where did you get it?”

  “I drew it.”

  I told you Katie is good at art. The horse really looked like a horse. And horses are very hard to draw. I know. I’ve tried. Their legs are just about impossible to get right.

  “Wow. Gee, thanks,” I said awkwardly. It was the nicest gift she had ever given me.

  “You’re welcome,” Katie told the porch floor.

  “My goodness!” exclaimed my mother. She jumped up suddenly. “You know, I think there’s one more present, isn’t there?” she asked my father. “We’ve forgotten something.”

  A horse! Maybe they’d gotten a horse after all!

  “Why, I believe you’re right,” replied Dad.

  I giggled. They sounded so phony.

  “Just something small,” said Mom, but I could tell she meant the opposite. She dashed off the porch.

  “Close your eyes, Wendy,” said Dad.

  “Yeah, close ’em,” said Scott.

  I closed them. I couldn’t believe it. A horse? Really? Maybe they’d been hiding him in our garage. Or in Sara’s garage. Her parents wouldn’t mind.

  I sat on the edge of my chair, quivering with excitement. When I opened my eyes, Mom might be standing in the backyard with a beautiful horse. Maybe it would even look like Peanuts. I hoped it would act like Peanuts, too. Not like Sky High.

  “Okay!” said Dad. “Open your eyes.”

  I opened them very slowly. I wanted the horse in the backyard to appear in a blur as if I were having a dream. But I couldn’t see a horse. I opened my eyes wide. No one was even in the backyard.

  “What do you think?” Mom was asking anxiously. “It’s the one you liked, isn’t it?”

  I realized that Mom was standing next to me, holding the gorgeous green riding hat from Pearce’s that I’d wanted so badly.

  I forced a smile onto my face. “Oh. Oh, yes. It’s perfect. Thank you, Mom. Thanks, Dad.” I kissed them both and then modeled the hat.

  But I was very disappointed about the horse.

  Later that morning I was in the hammock reading Brighty of the Grand Canyon, when out of nowhere came a voice.

  I jumped a mile.

  It was Katie. Why does she always have to sneak up on people? I hadn’t heard her coming at all.

  “Yikes!” I yelled. “What are you sneaking around for?”

  “I’m not sneaking,” said the Pest. “I wanted to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “Well,” she said, “you like my present. Don’t you, Wendy? You like the horse just a little, right?”

  I softened. I remembered her telling Mom how much she wanted me to like her. “It’s really nice,” I said. “I like it a lot. I’m going to put Peanuts on the wall by my bed so I can look at her every night before I go to sleep.”

  “Really?” The Pest looked surprised and a little shy.

  I was beginning to feel bad for giving her such a hard time. I knew she didn’t mean to be a pest. She just wanted to be my friend. Mom once told me that since I was Katie’s big sister she looked up to me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Really. It was the nicest present you ever gave me.”

  Katie smiled.

  “A lot nicer than the brown Valentine,” I added.

  Katie giggled.

  Then she cleared her throat, looked down, and began tracing an arc in the grass with her right foot.

  She was up to something again. I can always tell.

  “Well, then,” she began.

  Oh, for goodness sake. Now what?

  “Aren’t you going to invite me to your party tonight?”

  So that’s what this was all about. The Pest wasn’t being sensitive and sisterly. She just wanted an invitation to the party. She had put on a big act. She should win acting awards, too.

  “NO!” I leaped out of the hammock and stomped into the house.

  At six o’clock that evening the doorbell rang. I ran to answer it. Standing on the front porch were Sara, Carol, and Jennifer. They had all shown up at once.

  “Happy birthday!” they shouted.

  Carol was so excited she was jumping up and down. I let them in and they put their presents on the back porch.

  We had dinner with my family at the picnic table outside. The party (the part Katie wasn’t invited to) wouldn’t start until after supper and cake and ice cream and presents.

  Katie was still so mad at me that she wouldn’t speak, and every time I looked at her she turned her head away. I started looking at her so often that she got too busy turning her head to be able to eat.

  After dinner we gathered on the porch. Dad came out carrying a white bakery cake with eleven candles on it (ten, plus one to grow on), and everyone sang “Happy Birthday” again. The only verse the Pest joined in on was the one about looking like a monkey and smelling like one, too. She shouted the words as if she really meant them. (Dad told her to simmer down.)

  Then I opened my presents. I opened Jennifer’s first. She gave me a whole box full of stickers for my sticker album. A lot of the stickers were horses.

  “Wow!” I cried. “Thanks, Jen!” It was a really nice gift, especially considering we’d only known each other a couple of months.

  Carol gave me a cassette I’d been wanting.

  And then I opened Sara’s gift. It was going to be a diary. I’d saved it for last because I knew what it was and I was really excited about it. Sara and I tell each other what to give for birthdays and Christmas. That way we always get just what we want.

  Only I wasn’t expecting the diary to be so special. On the front was a picture of a horse that looked a lot like Peanuts. And attached to the cover was a little gold key. The key fit into a lock on the side of the diary.

  “Oh, Sara, it’s beautiful,” I breathed. “It’s perfect. I’ve never seen anything like it.” I’d been wanting a diary for a long time. I’m no great writer or anything, but I wanted to start keeping track of things. I wanted a record of what I was doing and what I was thinking. It would be nice to remind myself of things about Peanuts, or even of times I was mad at Katie. Like right now.

  When the cake was eaten and the wrapping paper cleaned up, Sara, Carol, Jennifer and I went to my room. Mom and Dad were letting us have the port
able TV in there for the night.

  I closed the door. First we spread our sleeping bags on the floor. I was going to sleep on the floor with my friends, not in bed.

  Then we turned on the TV. A very spooky movie was supposed to start in ten minutes.

  Jennifer shivered. “Ooh,” she said, “I saw this movie last year and I was so scared I had to go to the bathroom six times while it was on.”

  “I had to go seven,” said Carol.

  “Eight,” said Sara.

  “Two hundred and twelve,” I said. We started giggling.

  We settled down on our sleeping bags and the movie began. When the first commercial came on, Carol jumped up and said, “Let’s make popcorn!”

  “But we’ll miss the movie,” said Sara.

  “Oh, well, we all know what happens,” I reminded her.

  We made a dash for the door and thundered downstairs to the kitchen.

  “Can we make popcorn?” I yelled to my mother who was in the den.

  “Okay,” she called back, but she sounded as if she didn’t think it was a very good idea.

  We made a pot of popcorn. A HUGE pot. I guess we didn’t measure right. While the popcorn was popping, and we were deciding whether we wanted some more birthday cake, we heard a “bang.” We saw the lid of the pot fall onto the stove, and popcorn go spilling over the side of the pot. It kept popping and popping. A mountain of popcorn was building on the stove top.

  “Turn off the burner! Turn off the burner!” shrieked Sara.

  Even after I turned it off we could still hear Pop! Pop! Pop-pop!

  I had told Katie to stay away from my party that night, but she came into the kitchen when she smelled the popcorn.

  “Can I have some?” she asked.

  “Sure, Pest,” I replied. I scooped up all the popcorn that had fallen on the stove, dumped it in a bowl and handed it to her.

  “But that’s the dirty stuff,” she cried. “Mo-om!” She went wailing into the den.

  “Quick,” I said. I dumped the rest of the popcorn into a large bowl and we ran upstairs with it.

  We watched the movie for awhile, but for some reason it didn’t seem as scary as last year.

  “Let’s play Truth or Dare,” suggested Carol.

  “Okay,” I said.