Ten Rules for Living With My Sister

  I nodded.

  “Well, can’t you do anything right?”

  “Me? What did I do wrong?” I put my hands on my hips. I was about to tell my sister that, once again, she reminded me quite a bit of Mrs. Mott, but then I remembered items #7, #8, and #9 on my list of rules.

  I took a deep breath and kept my mouth shut.

  “Dallas saw my bra!” wailed Lexie.

  “I know. That was awful,” I said, with honest sympathy. “But it wasn’t exactly my fault.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Lexie inclined her head toward her bed, where the laundry I had tossed up there was now spilling over the side. It was clear that Bitey had been playing in it. “Pearl, you are so lazy. If you had actually bothered to put the laundry away, then Bitey wouldn’t have gotten my bra.”

  “Well, I didn’t know he was going to drag it into the living room! He thought that up all by himself.”

  “Because you left my stuff out in the open.”

  “I was going to fold it,” I said.

  Lexie muttered something about a road and good intentions and also said a four-letter word that I am not allowed to use. Then she raised her voice. “But you didn’t fold it. Or put it away. You left it out and Bitey got my bra and now Dallas has seen it.”

  I pulled a piece of gum from a pack lying on the desk, and stuck it in my mouth. “You know, this is not really such a big problem. Why can’t you just pretend the bra is Mom’s? Dallas doesn’t know anything about bras. He’s a boy.”

  “He still saw a bra,” Lexie snapped.

  I considered the situation. “Okay,” I said at last. “I know what to do.”

  I marched back to the family room. Lexie followed me suspiciously. “Can you believe it?” I said to Dallas, who hadn’t moved an inch since we’d left him. He looked sort of like John had looked when Daddy Bo was sitting in the lobby in his bare feet, not remembering that the mail had already arrived.

  “Um … ,” said Dallas.

  “Bitey got Mom’s underwear!” I was careful not to use the word “bra,” since I didn’t think it would be safe for my sister’s face to get any more red than it already was.

  I didn’t look at Lexie or Dallas—or Bitey, who was now asleep under the table. I just snatched up the bra and the rose and hurried back to our bedroom.

  I closed the door behind me. But one second later it opened and in walked Lexie.

  “What happened to knocking?” I asked her.

  Lexie glared at me. “Don’t think this is over, Pearl,” she said. “I have to go back out there because I can’t leave Dallas sitting around thinking about bras. But this is the worst thing you have ever done to me and I do not forgive you.”

  She turned smartly, like a soldier, and left the room.

  I sat at the desk and frowned into space. This seemed a little unreasonable, even for Lexie. Okay, so I had left the laundry on her bed. But it wasn’t like I had found her bra, stuck it in Bitey’s mouth, and shoved him into the family room.

  This was puzzling. I pulled out my list of rules and studied it. Items #5 and #6 caught my attention: Don’t show Lexie’s boyfriend her baby blanket, and Don’t talk about her throw-up. They seemed related to the bra problem, but I wasn’t sure how. I thought about Lexie’s reaction to the baby blanket, the throw-up incident, and now the bra. I felt like I was taking a test at school: Explain why these three things belong together. And at last the answer came to me: It was the whole embarrassment thing again. Lexie was very, very embarrassed. I didn’t know why she got so embarrassed about some things, but she did, and when she was embarrassed she got mad. Usually at me.

  I stood up from the desk and held the bra for a while, turning it around in my hands. Out of curiosity, I considered trying it on over my T-shirt, but then I imagined my sister catching me, so that was the end of that idea. At last I folded Lexie’s clothes, including the ruined bra, and placed them neatly in the bureau.

  At dinner that night Dad said, “So, Lexie, did you and Dallas get a lot of work done on your project?”

  Lexie glanced at me, and in my head I scrolled down the list of rules again. Number 3 came to mind. So did #8. And of course #5 and #6. I desperately wanted to tell Mom and Dad and Daddy Bo about Bitey and the flying bra. Instead I just looked at Lexie with great interest, like I couldn’t wait to hear about the project and whether she and Dallas had found ten sources. I was not about to say anything else that would embarrass her.

  “We’re almost done,” Lexie said finally, in sort of a small voice. “We can finish in school tomorrow.”

  After dinner, while Lexie was practicing her violin in the family room, I sat at the desk and wrote a note.

  Dear Lexie,

  I am deeply sorry I stole your bra and showed it to Dallas. It was thoughtless and I will not do that again.

  Love, Bitey

  I put the note under my sister’s pillow. She found it when we were going to bed. I had expected her to laugh, or at least to give me a tiny, fake smile, but she didn’t do either one. She just crumpled the note and tossed it into the wastebasket. “Like I said,” she told me, “this isn’t over.”

  It was the maddest I had ever seen Lexie.

  16

  On Thanksgiving morning, Daddy Bo said to me, “What time am I going home today?”

  Daddy Bo and I were having breakfast in the family room. We’d been given permission to eat on the couch instead of at the table, because the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade was almost on and we wanted to watch it in comfort.

  I balanced my plate on my knees. I was determined not to spill a crumb, since I hoped to be able to eat on the couch again in the near future.

  “What?” I replied.

  “When am I going home?” asked Daddy Bo.

  I wasn’t sure how to answer the question. Finally I said carefully, “Justine and her parents are coming over at four o’clock.”

  “But what about me?”

  “You’re already here.”

  “I thought I was going home for Thanksgiving. I’m always at home on holidays.”

  I didn’t point out that he hadn’t been home at Halloween. Instead I said, “Don’t you want to have Thanksgiving here with us? We’re going to have lots of fun at dinner. We got poppers with prizes and paper hats inside, and Justine always makes everyone wear the hats until dinner is over.”

  “Poppers? What poppers?” Daddy Bo was sounding somewhat grouchy.

  “Poppers. Dad said you used to have poppers when he was growing up. At Thanksgiving and at Christmas too. It’s because of your poppers that we have poppers now.”

  Daddy Bo grunted and picked up the remote.

  “Don’t change the channel!” I yelped. “The parade is going to begin in four minutes.”

  “What parade?”

  “The Thanksgiving parade. That’s why we’re eating on the couch.”

  Daddy Bo looked mystified. I took the remote away from him.

  The parade started. The Snoopy balloon went by, and then a giant rainbow-colored turkey on a float, and then Daddy Bo said, “So what time am I going home today?”

  I thought about my rules for living with Lexie and applied #9 to Daddy Bo. “We’re eating here,” I told him again. “The Lebarros are coming over. Remember? Poppers?” I felt an eye roll coming on, but I know how annoying it is when Lexie rolls her eyes.

  At the first commercial, I took our empty plates into the kitchen where Mom and Dad were fussing with cookbooks and bowls of food. (Lexie was still asleep, by the way. When she became a teenager she suddenly needed a bra, a boyfriend, and lots of sleep.)

  “I’m going to start the place cards now,” I announced. That was the Thanksgiving job I had volunteered for: making place cards for the dinner table.

  I was about to add that Daddy Bo wanted to go home for Thanksgiving, but just then Mom spilled a can of cling peaches across the counter and the syrupy juice dripped down onto the floor and she said in a very high-pitched voice, “Pearl, get Bitey out of here
while I clean this up! It’s sticky!” She really is better at writing than cooking, and Thanksgiving makes her nervous.

  I scooped up Bitey, plunked him on the couch next to Daddy Bo, and gathered my art supplies. I spread them out on the table and worked on the place cards during commercials. The cards looked like this:

  I was very proud of them. Even Lexie probably couldn’t make pop-up, 3-D cards.

  I had finished three when Lexie, yawning, finally staggered into the family room. “Let’s get dressed and go to the parade,” she said. “It seems silly to watch it on TV when we could see it for real.” I was surprised that Lexie was speaking to me, since she had barely even looked at me since the Day of the Bra. Maybe the holiday had softened her up.

  “Mom and Dad won’t let us go by ourselves,” I replied.

  “Hello. We’ll go with Daddy Bo.”

  I considered this. “Um, I’m not so sure.”

  Lexie glanced at Daddy Bo, who had gotten the remote again, and who was clutching it while he frowned at a bunch of dancing elves on a float. “I’m going to ask Mom and Dad anyway,” she said.

  To my surprise, Mom seemed thrilled to get rid of us for a while, and she threw Dad out of the apartment too. “Go. Go have fun,” she said. She opened another cookbook, yanked a bag of flour out of a cupboard, and closed the refrigerator door with her foot.

  So the four of us took the subway uptown and waded through the swarms of people who were trying to get a glimpse of the parade. Despite all the noise and confusion Daddy Bo’s mood improved almost instantly. When we caught sight of the top of the Clifford balloon, Daddy Bo suddenly shouted, “Go, dog, go!” which was a little strange, but whatever.

  A few moments later, Lexie called, “Here! Over here!”

  She had found a hole in the crowd, and we all slithered into it and got a good view of the parade just as a float full of enormous vegetables rolled slowly by, waving to us with gloved hands. After that we saw some more balloons, and finally, when our feet and noses were beginning to get cold, there was Santa in his sleigh, the end of the parade.

  “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!” he called, which I enjoyed hearing, even if Christmas was still weeks away.

  By the time we got back home, Mom had the kitchen under control. I finished the place cards, Daddy Bo took a nap, and all in all it was a nice afternoon.

  The Lebarros came over at four o’clock, right on time. Justine was wearing a new velvet dress and white tights and slippery black shoes, which she said were tap shoes but really were not. Daddy Bo seemed to have forgotten about going home for Thanksgiving. Instead, he asked eleven times when dinner was going to be served.

  The first time he asked, we were all sitting in the family room, even Bitey, and Lexie was passing around a plate of crackers with this disgusting cheese paste. Daddy Bo said, “My, what’s that I smell?”

  Right away Lexie turned pale, I guess at the very thought that something embarrassing might be said in front of the Lebarros.

  I was about to reply that it was probably just the cheese, which smelled like toe sweat, but Daddy Bo answered his own question. “Ah, turkey,” he said, turning his head in the direction of the kitchen. “And what time will dinner be served?” He sounded king-like, very grand. Also very happy. The holidays were cheering everyone up.

  “Five o’clock,” answered Mom.

  “We’re dining fashionably early then,” said Daddy Bo, and he grinned and his chin flap swayed.

  I sat down in an armchair and Justine came along and squished herself in next to me. “Let’s pretend we know how to talk French,” she said. “Too-loo voo-lay fra-la. Sho-nay?”

  I stared at her.

  “Sho-nay?” she said again, more urgently.

  Lexie did half an eye roll.

  “And what time will we be dining tonight?” said Daddy Bo from the couch.

  “He just asked that,” Justine whispered to me. “I mean, mee-vroo so-la par-kay.”

  “Five o’clock,” Lexie whispered impatiently in his ear as she passed around the toe-sweat things again.

  “Talk French,” Justine said to me.

  “I’d better help pass,” I replied, and wiggled out of the chair. I surveyed the dishes on the coffee table and chose one that just had nuts in it. I helped myself to an almond and then began walking around the room, holding out the dish of non-smelly snacks in a proper manner. “Daddy Bo?” I said when I got to the couch.

  “Thank you, but I’d better not. I don’t want to spoil my dinner. Speaking of which, what time will dinner be served tonight?”

  Justine leaped out of the chair. “Five—,” she started to say in what seemed to me to be a rather loud voice, but Mr. Lebarro caught hold of her and pulled her into his lap.

  Lexie’s eyes widened and she blushed deeply. She looked like she wanted to get up and leave, but she didn’t and I knew why. It was getting so that I could tell exactly what was going on in her head: If she left, everyone would think she was going to the bathroom, which would be even more embarrassing to her than anything Daddy Bo said. So my sister crossed her arms, stared stonily at the ceiling, and tried to ignore Daddy Bo (and probably Justine and me too).

  When dinner was finally served, Daddy Bo sat down at the table, looked at the place cards and all the dishes of food and said, “My goodness. Turkey! How nice. What’s the occasion?”

  Luckily, Justine didn’t hear this. She already had her hands on her popper and was ready to pull the ends. “Can I?” she asked her mother, and pulled without waiting for an answer. Pop!

  Mom and Dad exchanged a worried glance, but Daddy Bo spread his napkin elegantly in his lap and then graciously passed the bowl of mashed potatoes to Mrs. Lebarro, saying, “Madame?”

  So Dad began to carve the turkey and soon we were all wearing paper hats and passing around food, and Daddy Bo was grinning like a Halloween jack-o’-lantern.

  Mom and Dad had fixed every Thanksgiving food I like, including stuffing and apple pie. By the time I went to bed that night I wasn’t feeling too well.

  “Lexie?” I called from the bottom bunk.

  “Reading,” she replied. Which meant: Don’t bother me. And also: Get a book of your own.

  “But my stomach hurts.”

  I heard a sigh from above. “You ate too much.”

  “I know. It was all so good.”

  “Try to go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.” This was the nicest thing my sister had said to me in days.

  So I closed my eyes and soon my head was sort of floaty and drifty, and before I knew it I was at the parade again.

  When I woke up, the room was dark and someone was sitting next to me, tapping my shoulder. “Pearl? Are you all right?”

  It was my sister. I moaned a little.

  “You’re not going to barf, are you?” she asked.

  “No. I just had a bad dream. We were watching the parade and one of those carrots started chasing me.”

  “What carrots?”

  “The ones on that vegetable float, with the big Mickey Mouse hands.”

  Lexie laughed softly. “Did the carrot catch you?”

  I shook my head. “When you woke me up, I was still running down the sidewalk. But the other vegetables were jumping off the float and heading in our direction.”

  “How’s your stomach?”

  “Better.” In fact, it was a lot better. “You know what I’m going to have for lunch tomorrow? A turkey sandwich.”

  “Me too,” said Lexie.

  Then she climbed back up to the top bunk and I fell asleep thinking about the parade and the Lebarros and the poppers and our feast.

  And Daddy Bo’s questions.

  17

  Dear Santa,

  Hello! How are you and Mrs. Claus and all the elves and raindeer? By the way is Rudolph really one of your deer because if he is then that makes nine and in The Night Before Christmas there are only eight and he isn’t mentioned. Well, it’s okay if he isn’t real. On the other ha
nd, maybe he just came along later.

  What I would like for Christmas is art supplies and pretty much whatever you want to give me. Here’s what I’m low on as far as supplies go—papers in nice designs. Also, I would like some more rubber stamps. One thing I do not want is clothes. Clothes are boring. Especially sweaters. Oh, a gift card to the crafts store would be great.

  Your freind, Pearl Littlefield

  It is a tradition in my family that Lexie and I write our letters to Santa on December first. Then we hand them over to Mom and Dad to mail. The letters are helpful to them too, for their Christmas shopping, which they always do in a huge rush the week before Christmas.

  “What are you asking for?” I said to Lexie as we sat at the table in the family room on the night of December first. Lexie had a ton of homework to do, and also she was supposed to be rehearsing for the middle school orchestra’s Winter Concert, but she would never miss writing her Santa letter.

  “Well,” said Lexie, and for a teensy second I was afraid she was going to say, “I want my private bedroom back.” But she didn’t. She set her pen down and looked at me. “I have a sort of a problem. And I’m trying to figure out if presents can fix it … .”

  I felt like I was in the wild and I had just spotted a rare animal, but that if I moved too quickly the animal would dart away. So instead of pouncing on Lexie and shrieking, “You have a problem? Tell me! Tell me!” I turned back to my own letter and said casually, “What’s the problem?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  My sister had never shared a secret with me. “Oh. Well, you can tell me if you want. Or not. Whatever.”

  “It’s the Emmas,” said Lexie after a pause.

  “Yeah?”

  “They don’t invite me places anymore. They ask Valerie to do things, but they don’t ask me.”

  I stared thoughtfully out the window. I knew exactly how Lexie felt, but all I said was, “Hmm.”