Karen's Show and Share

  “I am home! What is that racket?” I shouted as I hung up my jacket in the hall closet.

  Merry came into the living room from the kitchen. “Now Karen, be — ”

  Waaa-waaa-waaa, waaa-waaa-waaa!

  Andrew came charging down the stairs, holding something up to his mouth. It was making the humming-warbling sound. I recognized the tune — it was “This Old Man” again.

  And I recognized what he was playing it on.

  It was a kazoo.

  “Look, Karen!” Andrew shouted. He stuck the kazoo back in his mouth and blew.

  Waaa-waaa-waaa, waaa-waaa-waaa!

  “All you have to do is hum into it, and it makes real music,” Andrew said. “See? Easy as pie.”

  He gave me another demonstration.

  I was about to say something when Merry gave me a Look.

  “That is great, Andrew,” I muttered.

  “It is much easier than the bugle,” Andrew said. “I could not really play the bugle very well.”

  “Oh really?” I asked, as if I had not noticed.

  “And the tom-tom was a little boring,” he added. “It was just the same thing over and over.”

  I nodded but did not say anything. (Mommy says that if you cannot say anything nice, do not say anything at all.)

  “But the kazoo is perfect,” Andrew went on. “It is not hard to play. Any tune I can hum, I can play on the kazoo.”

  “Gosh,” I said. “Any tune at all?” This was not good news.

  “Yes,” said Andrew. “From now on, I am going to practice the kazoo twenty-four hours a day!”

  I smiled weakly. I took a deep breath.

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  Andrew turned and marched away, kazooing “This Old Man.”

  I said to Merry, “The kazoo? Whose idea was that?”

  “Your mother, Seth, and I thought that the kazoo would be an improvement over the bugle and the tom-tom,” Merry explained. “I took him to the toy store this morning to pick one up. He loves his new kazoo. And it is better than the tom-tom, don’t you think?”

  I did not answer right away. I had to think about it.

  Finally I said, “I am not sure. I have to think about it.”

  And I left it at that.

  Lying to Charlie

  I went up to my room and closed the door. Through the wall I could hear the sound of “This Old Man” on the kazoo. I knew I would start to hate that song soon. I played a CD to drown out the noise.

  Then I lay on my bed and took Ricky’s baseball out of my backpack. Think, think, think. How could I possibly get it autographed by Bobby Martinez? Mail it to him and ask him to sign it and send it back? I doubted that would work, and besides, it would take too long. Bobby was supposed to be a friend of mine.

  An idea popped into my mind. Maybe I could just sign the ball myself with Bobby’s name. Ricky might never know the difference. It was an awful thing to do, but I had done some other awful things already. How much worse could this be?

  I took out a sheet of paper and a pen and practiced signing Bobby’s name:

  I looked at the signature and frowned. It did not look like the signature of a big, tough professional ballplayer. It looked like the signature of a seven-year-old.

  I wrote his name again, this time trying to make my writing look older:

  I looked at what I had written and frowned again. It looked like the signature of a seven-year-old who was pretending to be a big, tough professional ballplayer. There was no way that Ricky would be fooled by it.

  I did not want Ricky (and everyone else) to find out that I had lied about knowing Bobby Martinez. But I also did not want to let him down. Ricky would be thrilled to have Bobby Martinez’s autograph. I did not want him to be disappointed.

  Just then the phone rang. I dashed out of my room and answered it.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hi, Karen,” said the voice at the other end. “This is Elizabeth. Your father and I are going to have a backyard cookout on Saturday afternoon. We were wondering if you and Andrew would like to join us.”

  “A barbecue party?” I said. “That sounds great! I would love to come.”

  “Good,” said Elizabeth. “We will see you then.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I will be looking forward to it.”

  I hung up the phone.

  I love cookouts at the big house. The food is always delicious, and we always play Frisbee and tag and catch. Even Sam and Charlie play, and they are usually too old to play with me. They are practically grown up….

  I tossed Ricky’s ball in the air and caught it. Then I froze like a statue. I had just thought of something. Charlie was almost a grown-up. He was big and tough. (Not as big and tough as Bobby Martinez, but still, he was fairly big and tough.) He played baseball.

  Charlie’s signature would look as if it could be Bobby Martinez’s.

  The only question was, how could I get Charlie to sign Bobby’s name on Ricky’s ball?

  * * *

  As soon as the last chicken leg was picked clean on Saturday afternoon, I called to Sam and Charlie for a game of catch.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s pretend to be our favorite players.” I slapped Ricky’s baseball into my glove. “I will be Tom Triplett Jr.” (Tom Triplett Jr. was a player I had heard of.)

  “I will be Gary Westover,” said Sam. “He is a great pitcher.”

  Charlie said, “I will be — ”

  “Bobby Martinez!” I shouted. “Charlie will be Bobby Martinez! You are probably just as good a player as he is.”

  Charlie laughed. “Well, okay, Karen, if you say so. I will be Bobby Martinez.”

  We tossed the ball around for a few minutes. Then I threw to Charlie high up in the air. He leaped up and snagged it.

  “Wow!” I cried. “Great catch, Char — I mean, Bobby.” I ran to Charlie. “Oh, Bobby, Bobby! I am your biggest fan!” I pulled a felt-tip pen out of my pocket. “Could you please, please sign the baseball?” I shoved the pen into his hand. “Pretty please?”

  Charlie was laughing. “You want my autograph? Okay, sure. Should I sign it, ‘To Karen, from Charlie’?”

  “No!” I shouted. “You are Bobby Martinez, remember? Just sign his name — nothing else. Okay?”

  Charlie gave me a funny look. Then he shrugged and said, “Okay.”

  He signed the ball and handed it to me.

  It looked great. Ricky would have to believe that Bobby Martinez had signed the ball.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you, Bobby!” I said, clutching the ball to my chest. “I will keep it forever and ever.”

  “You are welcome, kid,” said Charlie.

  I ran off to put the ball away. The game of catch was over. I would give the ball to Ricky on Monday. Then he would stop bugging me.

  I felt a little bad about tricking Charlie. But he would never know what I had done. And I had done it for a good cause.

  Sort of. It was getting hard for me to tell.

  Ricky’s Baseball

  “Ri-i-i-icky,” I called. “Come he-e-e-ere.”

  It was Monday morning, before school had started. We were on the playground. For the first time in awhile, I was actually happy to go to school.

  Ricky ran to me. “What is it, Karen?” he asked.

  “Guess what I have behind my back,” I said.

  “Umm,” said Ricky thoughtfully, “a jump rope?”

  “Nope.”

  “A banana?”

  “Nope.”

  “A rock?”

  “Nope.” I laughed. “Give up?”

  “Yup,” said Ricky. “Now show me what you have behind your back.”

  Slowly, very, very slowly, I brought my hand around to my front. I held the ball up.

  Ricky’s eyes went wide.

  “Oh. Man,” he said slowly. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yup,” I said. “It is Bobby Martinez’s autograph.”

  “Wow!” said Ricky. “Can
I hold it?”

  “Sure,” I said. I handed him the ball. “You can hold it. It is yours.”

  I do not think a pretend husband has ever been more grateful to his pretend wife. Ricky must have thanked me about two hundred times.

  “It was nothing,” I said modestly. “Do not mention it.”

  And that was the truth. I did not want him to mention it ever again.

  * * *

  Unfortunately, he did mention it. The very next day. And this time, he was not thanking me. He was yelling at me.

  “This is not Bobby Martinez’s signature!” he said.

  I pretended I did not know what he was talking about.

  “Not Bobby Martinez’s signature?” I asked. “Why, what do you mean?”

  “Yesterday after school I took the ball you gave me to the baseball card shop at the mall,” Ricky said. “They sell autographed stuff down there, and they know how to spot a fake. They said that this is definitely not Bobby Martinez’s autograph. What do you have to say to that, Karen?”

  I did not know what to say.

  “Um, uh,” I sputtered.

  “Well?” Ricky crossed his arms over his chest.

  “I guess Bobby asked his secretary to sign the ball,” I said. “Bobby is a very busy man, you know. He probably has a secretary who does a lot of things for him, like sign baseballs. Yes, now it is coming back to me. Seth, who is practically Bobby’s best friend, once mentioned to me that Bobby has a secretary who does that kind of thing for him.”

  I waited for Ricky to say something. But he did not. He just pushed the baseball into my hand, turned, and walked away.

  The Kazoo Kid

  On Wednesday afternoon Hannie and Nancy came to the little house. We sat in my room, playing Lovely Ladies. I was happy to be playing a normal game with friends who could not care less about Bobby Martinez.

  “Dahling, more tea, please,” I said in my best Lovely Lady voice.

  Nancy pretended to refill my cup. “Cucumber sandwich, dear?”

  “No thank you, dahling. I filled up on the watercress sandwiches.”

  Suddenly a horrible racket filled the room.

  Hannie fluttered her hand against her chest. “What is that dreadful noise?” she asked.

  Nancy said, “It sounds like an animal howling ‘This Old Man.’ ”

  “Close,” I muttered. “It is Andrew. On the kazoo. But you were right about ‘This Old Man.’”

  “Can you tell him to stop?” Hannie asked in her regular, non-Lovely voice. “Or at least go away?”

  “No,” I said sadly. “He is allowed to practice in his room. In fact, it is the only room where he is allowed to practice.”

  “I can understand why,” said Hannie. “His playing is terrible.”

  “And he does it all the time,” I said. “I have tried everything to block out the noise — cotton in my ears, earmuffs, a pillow tied around my head. But that kazoo manages to get through everything. Even in my sleep, I can hear ‘This Old Man.’ And sometimes he plays other songs! Songs I used to like. I will never like them again.”

  My friends gave me a sorry look.

  Hannie patted my hand and said in her Lovely Lady voice, “We must be strong, dear.”

  “Drink some more tea, dahling,” said Nancy, pretending to fill up my cup again. “And have a cucumber sandwich. It will do you good.”

  Superduperstar

  Friday was a clear, sunny, warm, beautiful spring day. I skipped around the blacktop at school.

  “Karen,” I heard someone call.

  I stopped skipping. Ricky was walking toward me.

  Uh-oh. I started skipping again. Ricky picked up his pace, until he was flat-out running. He caught up to me.

  “Karen,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  I stopped skipping. “Oh, hi, Ricky,” I said.

  “I want to talk to you about something.” Ricky pulled a book out of his backpack. It was Superduperstar: The Bobby Martinez Story.

  “I finished my book on Bobby Martinez,” he said. “And I was wondering about some of the things you said about him.”

  “Oh,” I said. I could feel my face turning red. I had a feeling that some of the things I had said about Bobby might not have been quite accurate. “Like what?”

  “Well, the book says that Bobby grew up in the Dominican Republic,” said Ricky. “I asked my dad where that is, and he said it is on an island in the Caribbean. They speak Spanish there.”

  “Really?” I said, trying to act cool.

  “Yes,” said Ricky. “You said your stepfather went to high school with Bobby. I did not know your stepfather was from the Dominican Republic. I thought he was American.”

  “Oh!” I thought fast. “Well, Seth is American. He was born here. He only lived in the Dominican Republic for a little while. During high school.”

  Ricky gave me a funny look.

  “It says here” — he pointed at the book — “that Bobby Martinez is twenty-six years old. Isn’t your stepfather older than that? How could he have gone to high school with Bobby?”

  I flushed. “Oh, uh, did I say they were players on the same team?” I asked. Now I really had to think quickly. “No, I did not. I meant to say that Seth was the coach of Bobby’s high school baseball team. Um, yes, sure, that is it. Seth lived in the Dominican Republic for awhile, coaching baseball. That is where he met Bobby. They became friends. Right.”

  “Right,” Ricky repeated. He had a look on his face that said one thing: I know you are lying.

  “I have another question,” said Ricky. “You said Bobby ate pizza at your house.”

  I nodded. “He had four slices.”

  “According to this book,” said Ricky, “Bobby is allergic to milk. He never eats cheese. It makes him sick. So how could he eat pizza at your house, Karen?”

  I gritted my teeth. “We had a special kind of pizza with no cheese on top,” I shot back.

  “Well, you said before that there was extra cheese. Now you say there was no cheese. Fine. But what about this?” Ricky went on. He was becoming very angry. “You said that you had never been to Bobby’s house, because he plays for the San Diego Padres.”

  “That is correct,” I said. The baseball card I got out of Krispie Krunchies showed him in a San Diego uniform.

  “But this is his very first season as a Padre,” Ricky said. “He was traded at the end of last year from the Chicago Cubs. He still has a house in Chicago. You were in Chicago last fall. Why didn’t you visit him then? Huh, Karen? Why didn’t you? Was it because your stepfather is not best friends with him? Was it because you have not, in fact, even met Bobby Martinez?”

  I did not like the way my pretend husband was treating me. I was becoming very upset. The beautiful spring morning was ruined.

  “I — I — ” I started to say. But I could not think of anything. Ricky had found me out. He knew I was lying.

  “I think you are being very mean, Ricky Torres!” I shouted. Then I burst into tears and ran away.

  Two Families

  I avoided Ricky for the rest of that day. He avoided me too.

  Over the weekend, I thought and thought about what I should do about Ricky. He was sure to tell the other kids that I had lied. There was nothing I could do to stop him. I would just have to face the music. I groaned to myself. At school I had to face the music of everyone knowing I had lied. At home I had to face Andrew’s music. Things were horrible everywhere I went.

  On Monday after school Hannie and Nancy came over for another Lovely Ladies party. After tea and crumpets, we decided to rehearse our upcoming Show and Share presentations. I was definitely going to rehearse a good Show and Share, a real one, and be totally ready.

  This was the week my class was going to Stoneybrook Manor. Ms. Colman had divided the class into three groups. The first would visit on Tuesday, the second on Wednesday, and the third on Thursday. (I was in the second group. Hannie and Nancy were in the third group.)

&nbs
p; Since I would be the first of the Three Musketeers to go to Stoneybrook Manor, I rehearsed my Show and Share first.

  I stood up and said in a loud, clear voice, “My name is Karen Brewer. The title of my Show and Share is ‘My Two Families.’ ” I smiled.

  I held up two photographs — one of my little-house family, and one of my big-house family. The pictures were the show part of my Show and Share.

  I said that I had two families, with two mommies and two daddies. I talked about going back and forth between the big house and the little house with Andrew. I said that sometimes it is a little difficult, but mostly it is a fine way to grow up.

  When I was finished, I took a bow.

  Hannie and Nancy clapped.

  “That was great, Karen,” Hannie said. “Very interesting. But maybe you should tell the folks at Stoneybrook Manor that you are friends with Bobby Martinez. That would be really interesting.”

  I could not tell whether Hannie knew I had lied. I had a feeling she suspected something.

  I wondered if I should tell Hannie and Nancy about my lie. They would probably understand.

  On the other hand, they might not think it was funny. I had lied to them along with everyone else. They might be mad at me.

  I did not want my best friends to be mad at me.

  Still, I did not want to tell any more lies than was necessary. (Especially since at least one person, Ricky, had already figured out that I was lying.) So there was no way I was going to repeat my Bobby Martinez Show and Share at Stoneybrook Manor.

  “No,” I said. “I think I will stick with ‘My Two Families.’ ”

  “But Karen — ” Hannie started to say.

  “Nope,” I cut her off. “ ‘My Two Families’ it is. I am not even going to discuss it.”

  Hannie shrugged. “Okay. Maybe you are right. Maybe it would be best if you did not talk about Bobby Martinez.”

  Stoneybrook Manor

  On Wednesday, after lunch, Ms. Colman called together Omar Harris, Sara Ford, Jannie Gilbert, Ricky Torres, and me. Sara’s mother, Mrs. Ford, was there to help too. (A substitute teacher stayed with the rest of the class while Ms. Colman came on the field trip with us.)