Karen's Twin

  This book is for a gigundoly wonderful

  pair of twins,

  Andrew and Patrick Fulton.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Families

  2 Karen’s Family Trees

  3 Keep Out, Emily!

  4 Twins

  5 Just Like You

  6 Emily’s Papers

  7 Karen’s Twin

  8 Audrey’s Glasses

  9 Terri and Tammy

  10 Twin Day

  11 The Great Idea

  12 Hiding

  13 Twin Trouble

  14 The Trouble With Emily

  15 The Truth About Emily

  16 The Big Joke

  17 Pretend Sisters

  18 Family Day

  19 Four Lovely Ladies

  20 Adoption Day

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Families

  “Good morning, girls and boys,” said my teacher.

  “Good morning, Ms. Colman,” we replied.

  It was the beginning of a new day of school. It was the beginning of a new week of school, too. Monday morning. Some kids do not like school. So they do not like Monday mornings very much. But I love school. (So Mondays are fine.)

  I am Karen Brewer. I am seven years old. I wear glasses. I even have two pairs. The blue pair is for reading. The pink pair is for everything else. Also, I have blonde hair, blue eyes, and some freckles. Ms. Colman is my wonderful teacher. She is the best teacher I have ever had, and I am already in the second grade. She is patient, she listens to her students, and she hardly ever yells. If I get a little bit noisy in school, she just says to me, “Indoor voice, Karen.”

  My school is called Stoneybrook Academy. I am lucky because my two best friends go to Stoneybrook Academy, too. And they are in Ms. Colman’s class. Their names are Nancy Dawes and Hannie Papadakis. We call ourselves the Three Musketeers. The only bad thing is that we cannot sit together in the back of the classroom anymore. Ms. Colman made me move to the front row after I got those glasses. Now Hannie and Nancy sit in back, and I sit in front with the other glasses-wearers. Guess what. Ms. Colman wears glasses, too.

  “Karen,” said Ms. Colman that morning. “Would you please take attendance today?” She handed me her book.

  Taking attendance is very cool. You get to stand by Ms. Colman’s desk with her book and a pencil, and make check marks. I looked around the room. There were Nancy and Hannie. Check, check. There were Ricky Torres and Natalie Springer. Check, check. They are the other glasses-wearers. Also, Ricky is my pretend husband. We held a wedding on the playground one afternoon. There was Addie Sydney. Check. She rolled into the room in her wheelchair. There was Pamela Harding, my best enemy. Check. There was Audrey Green. Check. I like Audrey because she is almost always nice to everyone, so everyone is nice back to her. She does not have a single enemy. (I wish I could be like Audrey.) There were the twins, Terri and Tammy Barkan. Check, check. Terri and Tammy are identical twins, but my friends and I can usually tell them apart. Anyway, they do not dress alike. And there were Bobby and Hank and Chris and all the other kids. No one was absent that day.

  After I had finished taking attendance, Ms. Colman said, “Boys and girls, soon we will begin learning about families. We will learn about our own families and families in other countries. We will even learn about animal families. And we will work with Mr. Berger’s class.” (Mr. Berger’s class is next to ours. Our rooms are connected by a door. You do not have to go into the hallway to get to Mr. Berger’s.) “So you might work in Mr. Berger’s room,” Ms. Colman went on. “Or some of Mr. Berger’s students might work in here. Just every now and then. I think you will like the change.” Ms. Colman paused. Then she said, “One of our projects will be family trees. Who knows what a family tree is?”

  I shot my hand in the air. I happen to know a lot about families. I think I might be an expert on them.

  Karen’s Family Trees

  Guess what. When we make family trees in school, I will have to make two of them. That is because I have two families. Honest. I would have to draw one picture of Mommy’s family and another picture of Daddy’s family. (That is what a family tree is — a drawing that shows who is in your family and how they are related to each other.)

  I did not always have two families, though. When I was very little I had just one family — Mommy, Daddy, Andrew, me. Andrew is my little brother. He is four now, going on five. We lived together in a big house. It was the house Daddy had grown up in. But after awhile Mommy and Daddy said they were going to get a divorce. They had been fighting all the time, and they decided they did not love each other anymore. (They loved Andrew and me very much, though.) The divorce meant they would not live together anymore, either. So Daddy stayed in his house, and Mommy moved into a smaller one. The houses are here in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. Now Andrew and I live in both houses. We live with Daddy every other weekend and on some vacations and holidays. We live with Mommy the rest of the time. Lately I have been missing Daddy. I do not think I see him nearly enough. Two weekends a month. That’s nothing.

  Mommy and Daddy have each gotten married again, but not to each other. Mommy married a man named Seth. He is my stepfather. Daddy married a woman named Elizabeth. She is my stepmother. And that is how Andrew and I got two families.

  This is my little-house family: Mommy, Seth, Andrew, me, Rocky, Midgie, and Emily Junior. Rocky and Midgie are Seth’s cat and dog. Emily Junior is my pet rat.

  This is my big-house family: Daddy, Elizabeth, Kristy, Charlie, Sam, David Michael, Emily Michelle, Nannie, Andrew, me, Boo-Boo, Shannon, Goldfishie, and Crystal Light the Second. Kristy, Charlie, Sam, and David Michael are Elizabeth’s kids. (She was married once before she married Daddy.) So they are my stepsister and stepbrothers. Kristy is thirteen. She is a very good baby-sitter. And an even better big sister. I love her very much. Charlie and Sam are old. They go to high school. David Michael is seven like me. But he goes to a different school. Emily Michelle is my adopted sister. She is two and a half. Daddy and Elizabeth adopted her from the faraway country of Vietnam. Nannie is Elizabeth’s mother. That makes her my stepgrandmother. She helps Daddy and Elizabeth run the family. Then there are the pets. Boo-Boo is Daddy’s fat old cat. Shannon is David Michael’s huge puppy. Guess what Goldfishie and Crystal Light are. (Andrew named Goldfishie, in case you could not tell.)

  Since my brother and I have two of so many things, I call us Andrew Two-Two and Karen Two-Two. (I thought of those names after Ms. Colman read a book to my class. The book was called Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang.) Andrew and I are two-twos because we have two homes and two families, two mommies and two daddies, two cats and two dogs. Also we have clothes and books and toys at each house. (This is so we do not have to pack much when we go back and forth.) Plus, I have my two best friends. (Nancy lives next door to Mommy’s house. Hannie lives across the street from Daddy and one house down.) I even have those two pairs of glasses.

  The only bad thing about being a two-two is that I do not get to see Daddy and my big-house family often enough. Still, I am lucky to be part of two families who love me.

  Keep Out, Emily!

  Andrew and I go to the big house late on Friday afternoons. Usually, Mommy drops us off just before dinnertime. The first thing I always have to do is hug everybody. Then I have to make sure I find the pets and greet them, too. (The only pet I hug is Shannon. Boo-Boo sometimes puts his claws out, and it is hard to hug goldfish.)

  “Hi, Daddy! Hi, Elizabeth! Hi, Kristy! Hi, everybody!” I cried.

  Andrew and I had arrived at the big house. I was ready for the weekend. And I was gigundoly happy to see my family.

  Emily Michelle r
an to me. She threw her arms around my legs.

  “Hug!” she said happily.

  I hugged her back. Then I said, “Come with me, Emily. Help me find Shannon and Boo-Boo. Let’s go on a pet hunt.”

  Emily followed me from room to room. “Here, Shannon! Here, Boo-Boo!” I called. “Come say hi!”

  “Here, Boo-Boo!” repeated Emily. (She cannot say “Shannon” very well yet.)

  When I found Shannon, I hugged her and kissed her. So did Emily.

  When I found Boo-Boo, I said, “Hi, Boo-Boo.”

  Emily said, “Hi, Boo-Boo.”

  Then I tiptoed into the playroom. I looked in the goldfish tank. “Hi, fish,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “Hi, fish,” repeated Emily.

  At dinner that night, Emily wanted me to sit next to her. So I changed places with Nannie. I sat beside Emily’s high chair. After dinner, Emily followed me into the family room. “Read,” she said. She handed me a book. I read her the story. Then I read her two more stories. Each time I finished, she said, “Read.”

  Finally I said, “Emily, I am tired of reading.”

  Then Emily followed me to my room. But luckily, Kristy put her to bed.

  Guess what woke me up the next morning. Emily. She was jumping on my bed. “Hi, Karen!” she said when I opened my eyes.

  I groaned. “Ohhh.” Then I said, “Emily, I wanted to sleep late.”

  “Play,” replied Emily.

  “No,” I said, but I got up anyway.

  After breakfast, Hannie came over. We played dress-ups in the playroom. “I hope Emily will not bother us,” I said.

  Emily did not bother us. She left us alone. But when we went to my room later, Emily was already there. She had been taking things out of my drawers. (Emily likes to open drawers.)

  “Emily!” I shrieked. “Go away!” Emily ran out of my room. “She is such a pest,” I said to Hannie. “Here, help me with something.”

  Hannie and I found a box of crayons. On a big piece of pink paper we wrote “KEEP OUT EMILY.” I taped the paper to my door. Then I closed the door. “There,” I said. “That should do it.”

  A few minutes later, Kristy knocked at my door. “What is going on?” she wanted to know. “Why is Emily crying?”

  “Because I told her to get out of my room,” I replied. “She is being a pest. She was looking through my stuff.”

  “She likes you, Karen,” said Kristy. “You are her big sister.”

  “She is still a pest.”

  “All little sisters are pests,” said Hannie. She should know. She has a little sister, too.

  “You are my little sister,” Kristy said to me. “You are not a pest. Just try to be nice to Emily.”

  “Okay,” I replied. But I left the sign up (even though Emily cannot read).

  Twins

  A week went by. I was looking forward to Monday. I knew it would be a good day. In school we were going to begin our unit on families. Also, I was wearing a new outfit. Mommy had bought it for me — black leggings and a long sweater with a taxicab on it. I thought the sweater was cool.

  That morning Ms. Colman said to my classmates and me, “Boys and girls, what is a family?”

  Audrey shot her hand in the air. When Ms. Colman called on her, she said, “It’s a mother and a father and children. And maybe some pets. And they all live together.”

  Ms. Colman did not say whether Audrey was right or wrong. Instead she asked, “Any other ideas? Do you all have families like that?”

  “I do,” said Bobby Gianelli.

  “Me too,” said Pamela Harding.

  “Not me,” said Hank. “I live with my dad and my stepmother. I visit my mother a lot, but I do not live with her.”

  Tammy raised her hand. “Terri and I live with our parents and our brothers and our grandparents,” she said. Then she added, “Guess what. Our grandma is a twin, too. An identical twin. Just like Terri and me. Only her sister is not alive anymore.”

  “A twin grandmother?” said Addie. “Cool.”

  “Very cool,” said Audrey.

  “I just live with my parents,” spoke up Natalie. “I do not have any brothers or sisters.”

  “I feel like I don’t either,” said Audrey. “My big brother went away to college. I miss him.”

  Ricky leaned over and tapped me with his pencil. “Tell about your families, Karen,” he whispered.

  So I raised my hand. “I live with more than one family,” I said. “I live with two. Mommy’s family and Daddy’s family. All together, I have a mother, a father, a stepmother, a stepfather, a stepgrandmother, a brother, three stepbrothers, a stepsister, and an adopted sister. Oh, and two dogs, two cats, two goldfish, and a rat.”

  Most kids in my class already knew this. A few did not. One of them was Chris Lamar. His mouth dropped open. “Boy,” he said.

  On the playground that day, Nancy and Hannie and I played hopscotch. We needed to jump around to stay warm. The weather was freezing. I was glad I was wearing leggings — and a sweater underneath my jacket. I rubbed my hands together while I waited for my turn.

  “Hi, Karen,” said Audrey. She watched Hannie hop to home and turn around.

  “Hi,” I replied. “Want to play?”

  “Sure,” said Audrey. She pulled a rock out of her pocket. Then we both watched Nancy. She was taking a long turn. “You know what?” asked Audrey. “I think you have the most interesting family in our class, Karen. And I have the most boring.”

  “Your family is not boring,” I told her.

  “I think it is. My brother is never even home anymore. I wish I had a sister. Or a twin sister. Wouldn’t that be cool? I would always have someone to play with. Like Terri and Tammy.”

  “I guess,” I replied. I was still watching Nancy. She had just thrown her rock and missed. It was my turn.

  “Karen?” said Audrey. “Would you be my twin?”

  I tossed out my rock. “Sure,” I replied as I hopped away. I was hoping I could catch up with Nancy.

  Just Like You

  I forgot that Audrey had asked me to be her twin. I was busy playing hopscotch. (Hannie won the game.) Then I was busy in school. Then I was busy at Nancy’s house after school. Then I was busy at the little house. I did not think about twins again until the next day.

  On Tuesday I went to school wearing jeans and a red sweater.

  Guess what Audrey wore. She came into our classroom wearing black leggings and a long sweater with a taxicab on the front. It was exactly like my new outfit.

  “Hi, Karen,” she said. “How do you like it? I asked my parents if they could buy it, and they said yes.”

  “That’s great,” I replied.

  “I know. Now we are twins.”

  I looked down at my jeans and the red sweater. “Well, not really,” I said. “We are not even dressed the same.”

  “But we could be dressed the same,” said Audrey.

  While we waited for Ms. Colman to arrive, I sat in the back of the room with Hannie and Nancy. Audrey sat with us. I perched on a desk and crossed my right leg over my left. Audrey perched on a desk and crossed her legs the same way.

  In gym class that day, Audrey was the captain of the Blue Team. “I want Karen on my team!” said Audrey. “I call Karen!”

  I smiled. That was nice. I am not always called first.

  At lunch, Audrey said, “Karen! Sit with me!” (Hannie and Nancy and I all sat with her.) Audrey watched me eat my lunch. She ate hers in the same order. Apple first, then sandwich, then raisins. (Only Audrey did not have raisins. She ate chips while I ate my raisins.)

  “Boy, am I hot,” I said later. I pushed up the sleeves of my sweater.

  “Boy, so am I,” said Audrey. She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater.

  On the playground Audrey said, “Let’s play follow-the-leader. Then I can do just what Karen is doing.”

  Before we went inside that day, Audrey said, “Pssst, Karen. Here is a piece of candy for you. A Tootsie Roll. I ha
ve one, too. Since we are twins.”

  “Candy? Thanks!” I said. “I like being your twin, Audrey.”

  I knew we were not really twins, but so what? This was a good game. Audrey had chosen me to be on her team. She had asked me to sit with her at lunch. And now she had given me candy.

  “What are you eating, Karen?” Nancy asked as we entered Ms. Colman’s room. “You have chocolate breath.”

  “A Tootsie Roll,” I replied. “Audrey gave it to me.”

  “Why?” asked Nancy.

  I shrugged. “Because she is nice, I guess.”

  “Does she have any more candy?” Hannie wanted to know.

  “I will ask her,” I replied. I tapped Audrey on the shoulder. “Do you have any more Tootsie Rolls?” I said. “Nancy and Hannie want some, too. I do not want to eat in front of them.”

  “Sorry,” replied Audrey. “I just had two. One for me and one for my twin.” She grinned at me. Then she followed me to my desk. “Here,” she said. “Write with this pencil this afternoon. It is the same as mine.” Audrey handed me a brand-new pencil.

  “Thanks!” I exclaimed.

  “You’re welcome. Isn’t this fun? I am just like you. Oh, Karen, wear your taxi sweater to school tomorrow, okay?”

  I nodded. It was nice that Audrey wanted to be just like me.

  Emily’s Papers

  I could not wait for my next weekend at the big house. It is just not fair that I can only see Daddy two times a month. That is not often enough. I tried to be patient, but I do not think I was. Neither was Andrew. He wanted to see Daddy, too. He kept saying to Mommy, “How many more days till we go to Daddy’s?”

  But when we finally went back to the big house, something was wrong. The moment I walked through the front door, I got a funny feeling. First of all, when Andrew and I ran inside, David Michael was the only person there to greet us.

  “Where is everybody?” I asked.

  “Charlie and Sam are still at school,” he replied. “And Kristy is baby-sitting.” Then he leaned close to us. “Everyone else is looking for something,” he whispered.