Chapter 6

              As I unwrapped each present carefully, I always closed my eyes so I wouldn’t see or catch a glimpse of it. But when it was fully unwrapped, I would open my eyes and be absolutely delighted at what I saw. Grandma caught me doing this and said, “What are you doing? Playing hide and seek with the present?” “Of course, not! I just want to stretch the suspense.” Then Angela came up to me and started saying (or trying to say), “Are you still vomiting?” But what came out was, “Ah you dill goind like dis?” And then she started making barfing sounds. Elizabeth then translated, “She pobably is asking if you are still sick, I dink.” I told Angela that I was fine. I had a jolly good time celebrating my birthday!

            When I was going to bed, I thought, Wouldn’t it be jolly if I had a friend that I could invite to my birthday? And with that I fell asleep.

            “Sally? Sally? Sally!”

            “Hmmm?”

            “Could you tell me who that girl is?”

            “That’s your sister, smarty,” said Sally without looking up.

            “No, I mean the one who’s bending over the flowers.” At this she looked up.

            “Oh, that’s Mary Anne Timid.”

            Oh, her name is Mary Anne T─ I forgot, that was over there, I thought. Maybe I’ll go over and say hi. But first, I think I need to ask Sally what her name was again.

            A few minutes later, I found myself trying to say hi. “Hi, Mary Anne,” I said meekly. She replied briskly, “Hi, mom.” Mom? I’m not her mom, I thought. “So Mary Anne, whatcha doing?” “Looking for poppers, mom,” was her answer. I asked, “What do you mean by “mom”?”  “Mom, you played this trick on me before and I’m not going to fall for it this time. You scared me half to death the last time you did it. And besides─” She turned around and faced me, but didn’t finish her sentence. Her eyeballs were huge and her jaw was wide open. “You’re not my mom, are you?”

            Meanwhile, Sally was talking to mom. “I think you should put Stephanie in the Right Sources Middle School. There’s good education and stuff. Your daughter will love it!” “Maybe, but I don’t know.” “Come on, it’ll be great! Even the Sharon Timid’s daughter is going. They’re the folks next door!” “Well, I guess,” was mom’s final answer. Then Sally called dad down and told him the middle school plans.

            After I introduced myself, I realized straight away that Mary Anne was shy. And timid. But after awhile, we were like we knew each other all the time. We got along just great. She would make a suggestion on what we should do and I would agree, or the other way around. We had a capital time!

            When I went back into Sally’s house, I saw mom’s expression. An expression that needed to tell me something. But I went Sally first anyway. I said, “That Mary Anne is really fun to play with. And very nice.” “That’s great!” cried Sally with huge enthusiasm. “It isn’t that exciting, Sally.” Then Sally said, “You’re going to have a friend when you go to middle school.” I was so confused. “Huh?” Mom said, “We’re thinking about putting you in Right Sources Middle School. I asked, “What?” “We’re thinking about putting you in Right Sources Middle School!”

            Oh. I mean─ “Nooooo!”