Karen's Pen Pal

  I remembered that Maxie wanted to know what I look like. I found one of my school pictures. I wrote LOVE, KAREN on the back.

  Then I finished writing my letter. I folded it carefully. I stuck the picture inside. I found a box for the shell. I put everything into a big envelope. I sealed the envelope and decorated it with my fuzzy stickers, which are my very best stickers.

  (I did not tell Maxie I am only seven years old.)

  Maxie to the Max

  Dear Karen,

  Hi! It’s me, Maxie! I got your letter with your picture. I am sending you a picture of me. I do not wear glasses. I wear contact lenses.

  I could not believe it. Maxie got to wear contacts? I had asked Mommy and Daddy if I could get contacts. They had said, “No. Not until you are fourteen.” And Maxie was only eight. She was older than I was. But she was a long way from fourteen.

  I shook the envelope from Maxie. Her school picture fell out. I peeked at it. Maxie looked older than eight, I thought. She looked at least ten. And she was wearing very trendy clothes. She was wearing clothes like Pamela Harding’s. On her head was a beret. It matched her polka-dot sweater. And guess what. Her ears were pierced! Even Kristy does not have pierced ears, and she is thirteen. Mommy says girls my age should not have pierced ears. But Pamela’s are pierced. And so are Jannie’s.

  And so were Maxie’s. Hmphh.

  What does Mommy know?

  I picked up Maxie’s letter again.

  Thank you for the shell. I used to collect shells, too. I collected lots and lots of shells. I collected so many I decided I had enough. So I started my eraser collection instead. I like the Mouse-Eared Marsh Snail shell. Even though I already have one. Mine looks different from the one you sent. I am sending you one of my shells to add to your collection. I hope you do not have it. It is called an Angulate Nassa.

  I did not have an Angulate Nassa. I needed one.

  Maxie probably had six other Angulate Nassas. I bet she also had a Common Atlantic Octopus. Or three of them.

  Your Olympics sound like fun. I like to run, too. I am very fast. I like most sports. I play on a Little League team. I am the pitcher.

  Well, bullfrogs. How come Maxie was better than me at everything? She was a fast runner and she pitched for Little League. She had a better shell collection than I did and she collected erasers. She was older than me. She got to have pierced ears and contact lenses. Her family was more interesting than mine. (And mine is pretty interesting.) She had been to Disney World and Disneyland.

  She was Maxie to the Max.

  I did not want to write to Maxie again, but I had to. For homework.

  Dear Maxie,

  Thank you so, so much for the Angulate Nassa.

  I did not tell her it was one I actually needed.

  I thought for a moment, chewing on the eraser end of my pencil. What could I say to Maxie? Maybe some more about the Three Musketeers. Hmm, if I wrote to Maxie about my two best friends, she would write back about her five best friends. Then I thought, How would Maxie know how many best friends I have? How would she know anything about me? She only knows what I tell her. And I can tell her whatever I want to. So I wrote:

  How many best friends do you have? I have eight. They are all the other girls in my class. My best, best friends are Nancy Dawes and Hannie Papadakis. We are the Three Musketeers.

  Guess what lives in our room at school. Our class pet. His name is Hootie. Hootie is a monkey.

  I know I am not supposed to tell fibs. But my fibs were not going to hurt Maxie.

  The Big Apple

  “Seventeen minus nine is … um …”

  It was math time. I was working very hard on my subtraction sheet. I am good at math, but I do not like subtracting nines. Sometimes I have to talk while I work on a nines problem.

  “Eleven minus nine is two,” I muttered.

  Just as I was writing “2,” a spitball landed on my paper.

  “Ew, gross!” I cried. “Spitball, Ms. Colman!”

  Ms. Colman threw it away for me. “Boys and girls,” she said, “it is time to hand in your papers. Then I want to talk about your pen pals.”

  Yuck, I thought.

  Ms. Colman let us put our chairs in a circle in the back of the room. “What are you learning about your new friends in New York?” she asked. “What are you learning about living in the city?”

  Jannie raised her hand. “People live in apartment buildings,” she said.

  “If they want to play outside, they go to a park or a playground,” added Hannie. “Mostly they do not have yards. Anyway, Jen doesn’t. Jen is my pen pal.”

  “New York is called the Big Apple,” said Bobby.

  “The tall, tall buildings are called sky-scrapers,” said Ricky.

  “When my pen pal looks out her window,” Natalie began, “she sees a grocery store and a newspaper stand and another apartment building.”

  “Do you know what?” said Hank. “My pen pal lives near a museum called the American Museum of Natural History. Every Saturday he goes there to look at the dinosaur bones.”

  My classmates kept on talking. I did not raise my hand. I had nothing to say about New York. Maxie and I had hardly written about our lives at all. Mostly, Maxie bragged about things. She was a big old bragger.

  “I think I would like living in a city,” said Nancy. “I think it would be fun. Eli is my pen pal, and he says New York is fun.”

  “So does my pen pal, Naomi,” said Pamela. “I wish I could meet Naomi sometime. I have her picture and her letters, but one day I would like to see her. And to talk to her for real.”

  “Yeah! Me, too!” exclaimed a whole bunch of kids.

  I felt sort of bad. My friends liked their pen pals. They knew about their lives. They knew about New York City. I only knew about Maxie’s collections. And she only knew about my eight best friends.

  And about Hootie, the class monkey.

  We are both braggers, I thought.

  Before the bell rang at the end of school that day, Ms. Colman made a Surprising Announcement.

  “Very soon,” she said, “we are going to hold a sports celebration.”

  “Will the whole school celebrate sports?” I wanted to know.

  Ms. Colman shook her head. “I do not think so. Mrs. Mackey and I have talked. We know how much this class likes the Fitness Events. We thought we would celebrate sports somehow. We have not made many plans yet. But here is how you can get ready for the big day. You can practice the events you enjoy the most or are the best at. When I know more about the celebration, we will talk again. Until then, keep practicing!”

  No problem, I thought. The Three Musketeers would hold some more Olympics. I would run and run. I would become the fastest runner in my class. Maybe in the whole second grade.

  Karen’s Castle

  “The Three Musketeers have to be ready,” I said to Hannie and Nancy.

  “Ready for what?” asked Nancy. She reached into her desk. She pulled out her pink-and-blue Atlantic City pencil case.

  “Ready for the sports celebration.”

  School was over. The last bell had rung. My classmates were leaving the room. (Most of them were walking, but a few were running.)

  I waited in the back of the room for Hannie and Nancy. They were stacking up their books and putting on their jackets.

  “What do you mean?” asked Hannie.

  “Well, whatever it is, we want to win it, don’t we?”

  “I guess,” said Hannie.

  “I guess,” said Nancy.

  “So we better stay in shape. We have to go into training. We need to exercise. We need to keep track of our scores so we can try to beat them. And we need to practice, practice, practice, like Ms. Colman said.”

  “Heavens,” said Hannie.

  “Goodness,” said Nancy.

  “We better get to work in your basement,” I told Nancy.

  So we did.

  We dressed in workout clothes. I wore gym shorts and a T-shirt.
Nancy wore a dance leotard. Hannie wore leggings and a sweat shirt.

  “Ready?” I called. “It is exercise time. Okay. Hands above your heads, hands on your hips, touch the floor, hands on your hips, start over. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.”

  We did stretches. We ran around the basement. We practiced chinning and doing sit-ups and dashing. Finally we got tired. We fell onto the tumbling mats in a heap. We were out of breath.

  “I think we have practiced enough for one day,” I said.

  “Good,” replied Hannie and Nancy. And Hannie added, “I should call my mother. I better go home now.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Okay, athletes. This is your mission. To practice. I will see you in school tomorrow. Signing off!”

  I ran home. I ran straight to my room. Time to start my homework. I dumped out my book bag. And there was a letter from Maxie.

  I sighed. Then I opened the envelope.

  Dear Karen,

  We have a class pet, too. Our pet is a cat. Her name is Jazzy. (The boys wanted to call her Stinker, but the girls would not let them.) Jazzy is a very good cat. She does not even have a cage. She just walks around our room. Sometimes she sleeps under my desk.

  Have I told you about my dad? He is a doctor. When he is not busy being a doctor, he is a musician. He plays in a rock band. He plays the drums. In some countries he is a star.

  Maxie’s class pet was a cat? I had never heard of such a thing. And her father was a doctor and a rock star?

  Maxie had beaten me again. A cat wandering around the room was better than a caged monkey. A doctor and a rock star were much more interesting jobs than Daddy’s.

  My letters to Maxie must be awfully boring for her.

  Dear Maxie (I wrote),

  Have I told you about my dad’s house? It is huge. It is a castle. My room is in one of the turrets. I like to run across our draw-bridge. The drawbridge goes over the moat around our castle.

  Here is how big the castle is. It is so big that I have not even been in every room. Just the important ones….

  Maxie’s Movie

  Dear Karen,

  You are lucky to live in a castle. I wish I lived in a castle. At least my apartment is very large. It has twenty-two rooms. Thirteen of them are bedrooms. I can sleep in a different bedroom every night, if I want. There is a TV in each one. (A color TV.)

  Dear Maxie,

  Did I tell you about the alligators in our moat?

  Dear Karen,

  Did I tell you I have been in a movie? I played a girl named Whitney. They dyed my hair blonde so I could be Whitney. In one scene, I had to cry. The director did not have to peel onions or anything. I can cry whenever I want. It is just natural for me.

  While I was making the movie, I met four famous stars. I got their autographs. Then they asked for my autograph. I earned about a million dollars. Soon I am going to be in another movie.

  Dear Maxie,

  Did I tell you about the book I wrote? I mean, I did not just write it. It was published. The title of my book is Karen’s Castle. It is the story of my life. Two million copies of the book have been sold. It is in our school library. People ask me for my autograph all the time. I write my name so much my hand gets tired.

  I can run the 50-yard dash in 8½ seconds.

  Dear Karen,

  I can run the 50-yard dash in 8 seconds.

  Dear Maxie,

  I have been practicing. Now I can run the dash in 7½ seconds.

  Dear Karen,

  How many sit-ups can you do in a minute?

  Dear Maxie,

  I have visited more than half the states in our country. How many have you visited?

  (I did not answer Maxie’s question because I have not practiced sit-ups very much. I guessed it was time to start.)

  Pen Pal Day

  “Give it!” I shouted.

  “Over here!” yelled Ricky.

  “No, over here!” yelled Hank.

  “It’s mine. Give it!” I cried again.

  School had not even started. Already the boys were playing monkey-in-the-middle. They had made me the monkey. They were tossing around my plastic bottle of pretend perfume. They would not give it back.

  “Excuse me.”

  Uh-oh. That was Ms. Colman. She had come into our room, and she had found us playing around. Well, maybe she would get my perfume for me.

  She did not have to. As soon as Ricky saw Ms. Colman, he handed me the bottle. I stuffed it into my pocket.

  “Let’s get started,” said Ms. Colman. “Today is going to be busy.”

  She was not kidding. That day our teacher made two Surprising Awful Announcements. This was the first one:

  “Boys and girls, I have some good news. Remember when you wished you could meet your pen pals? Well, you are going to get your wish. In a few weeks, Miss Mandel and her class will come to Stoney-brook for a field trip. They will spend the day with us. You can get to know your new friends better. You can show them our school and introduce them to your other friends. We will plan some special activities.”

  All around me, my classmates were whispering.

  “Awesome!” said Ricky.

  “I cannot wait!” said Natalie.

  And Pamela Harding jumped to her feet and cried, “Oh, thank you, Ms. Colman. You are the best teacher ever!”

  I stared down at my hands. This was not wonderful. It was awful. It was a nightmare. I could not believe that Maxine Louisa Medvin would be spending a day at my school. With me. Yikes. I tried to remember the stories and lies I had told Maxie. Let’s see. I said Hootie was our class monkey. I said I had eight best friends. I said I lived part-time in a castle, and I told Maxie all about the castle. I said I had written a book. I said I had visited more than half the states in our country.

  Uh-oh. When Maxie came to my school, she would look for our monkey. She would want to meet my eight best friends. And if she asked anyone about my castle or my book, she would find out that I had lied. (I was probably safe on the story about visiting the states, though.)

  “Oh, Ms. Colman, Ms. Colman!” Pamela Harding waved her hand wildly. “What special activities will we do on Pen Pal Day?”

  “We will plan most of the activities together,” Ms. Colman answered. “But Miss Mandel and I have already discussed the main activity. We will celebrate sports together. Our Sports Celebration will be on Pen Pal Day. You will compete against your pen pals in the events for which you have been training. Your pen pals will be training for those events, too.”

  Oh, no. Pen Pal Day was growing worse and worse. I had told Maxie I could run the 50-yard dash in 7½ seconds. This was not true at all. The 50-yard dash was my best event, but I was not that good. Maxie was probably terrific at every event. She could run the 50-yard dash in 8 seconds. She was the pitcher on her Little League team. I had a feeling she could do about a million sit-ups in a minute.

  I hung my head.

  I was in Gigundo Trouble.

  Meanie Maxie

  Dear Maxie,

  Hi. How are you? I am fine. So is my family. I guess you heard about Pen Pal Day. Are you going to come to Stoneybrook?

  I had thought of something wonderful. Maybe Maxie would not be able to come on Miss Mandel’s field trip. Maybe she would be starring in another movie that day. Or maybe her rock-star father would have to fly to Europe, and he would take his family along.

  Dear Karen,

  Hi. How are you? I am fine. So is my family. Yes, I heard about Pen Pal Day and I am coming to Stoneybrook. I am excited about meeting Hootie.

  Dear Maxie,

  Hi. How are you? I am fine. So is my family. Except for my father. He says we might have to sell the castle. Feeding the alligators is expensive. By the time you get here, I might be living in a regular old house. (Well, in two regular old houses.) So if my friends do not talk about the castle, you will know why. They are very sad about it.

  Dear Karen,

  Hi. How are you? I am fine. So is my family.
Except for my father. He might have to give up being a rock star. He is a little old to be a rock star and a doctor. So if my friends do not talk about my father’s glamorous job, you will know why. They are heartbroken. They are so sad that they gave away all the tapes and CDs he recorded.

  Hmm. Maxie did not seem to mind about the castle. Maybe I could make up a reason why there was no monkey in our classroom. But how could I explain that we had a guinea pig with the same name as our monkey? I could not think of a good story. Even if I could have, Maxie might ask Ms. Colman or Hannie or Nancy about our monkey on Pen Pal Day. Maybe if I did not mention the monkey, Maxie would forget about him.

  Dear Maxie,

  Have I told you about my pets? I have a rat named Emily Junior and a goldfish named Crystal Light the Second. Also, my families have two cats and two dogs.

  Dear Karen,

  Even though we live in an apartment, we have lots of pets. We have a tortoise and three hamsters and two guinea pigs and a ferret named Mike and an aquarium full of fish. Plus, there are some snails in the aquarium.

  Meanie-mo, meanie-mo, Maxie is a meanie-mo, I sang to myself. Maxie was such a bragger. I would call her Meanie Maxie. I did not know anyone who bragged as much as she did. Every time I said something, Meanie Maxie said something better. Then I had to say something better. Maxie had made me a bragger, too. She was the reason I was in Gigundo Trouble.

  Still, I had to keep writing to Meanie Maxie. For homework.