Amber Brown Is Feeling Blue (5 page)

It’s torture.

I, Amber Brown, have trouble sitting still and not doing anything.

Finally, it’s time to go home.

Usually, it’s my mom who picks me up, but today it’s Brenda.

Maybe my day is finally getting better.

Brenda and I hopscotch all the way home.

By the time we get to the front door, we’re both exhausted.

Sitting down in the kitchen, we open up a box of chocolate-chip cookies.

Brenda says, “I’m so excited. Today, this guy that I’ve had a secret crush on asked me out.”

“What’s his name? What’s he like?” I ask.

“His name is Ken, and he’s really nice,” she says.

“A real Ken doll.” I giggle.

She pretends to bop me with the box of cookies. “He’s cute and smart. He likes a lot of the things that I like. He’s different in some ways, though. He dresses differently.”

It makes me wonder what it means to Brenda when she says someone dresses differently. I hope that I meet this guy sometime.

“Brenda, I have a question.” I smile at her.

“Yes?” She puts a cookie in her mouth.

“Do you think that you’re ever going to cook for him?”

She laughs. “Are you trying to tell me that’s not a good idea?”

I grin. “Maybe you should wait a couple of years until you feed him any of your Tuna Fish Delish.”

Brenda laughs. “He can cook. He and his dad live alone … and I know that Ken can cook. That’s one of the things that I like about him.”

The phone rings.

It’s my father.

He’s calling all the way from Paris, France, just to talk to me.

He sounds so excited. “Amber, honey, I can’t wait to move back and be closer to you. It’s been so hard for me not to see you. We’re going to make up for lost time. Just think, I’m returning very soon, and in just two weeks, we’re going to be able to spend the weekend together.”

“Oh, Daddy, that’ll be so much fun.” I, Amber Brown, am really excited, too.

It’s been a long time since my dad and I have spent much time together.

“Amber,” my dad continues, “just think …. it won’t be long until we spend Thanksgiving together. Maybe we’ll go into New York and watch them get ready for the Macy’s parade.”

“Oh, Dad, that sounds really great,” I say, and then I remember. “Oh, no. Oh, oh….Oh, no.”

“Honey, what’s wrong?” my father asks.

I am afraid to tell my father what I’ve just remembered, but I know that I have to tell him. “Dad, Mom and Max and I are going to Walla Walla. I can’t spend Thanksgiving with you.”

For a minute, there’s no sound from him.

I just hold on to the phone, waiting for him to say something.

Finally, he speaks. “But I’ll just be getting
back then. I was really looking forward to spending the holiday with you.”

“Did you tell Mom that?” I bite on my bottom lip.

There’s another silence.

My stomach starts to hurt.

He sighs. “No, I didn’t. She didn’t know. I just figured that I was coming back …. and that you and I could spend the time together. She’s been able to be with you for all of the holidays since I left. I just assumed that we could be together for at least part of the time.”

I don’t know what to say.

I don’t know what to do.

Because he moved to Paris, I’ve never had to deal with this before.

I just don’t know what to say.

Max has already bought the tickets.

I wonder if there is a kind of a dream that is worse than a nightmare. Because that’s what I’m having right now.

If I go to Walla Walla with Mom and Max, Dad’s going to be unhappy.

If I stay here with Dad, Mom and Max are going to be unhappy.

Either way, I lose.

Either way, one of my parents loses.

At least, one of them wins.

But no matter what, I’m going to be the loser.

There’s just no way there’s going to be a “Thanks” in this Thanksgiving.

The only thing that I’m going to be thankful for is when it’s over, and then it’ll be Christmas and I’ll have something else to worry about.

I, Amber Brown, think that life used to be so much easier.

I sit on my bed, looking at my “Countdown to Dad” book and at the “Dad Book,” which I put together when he went away.

On the bed, I’ve got lots of other pictures. There’s one of Mom and Max and me at the Jersey shore, pretending to be mermaids and a merman. There’s the picture of the bowling team and Max, the coach. We’re at the pizza party celebrating our “First Win in a Row.” With the way our team is bowling, we may never have two wins in a row.

I, Amber Brown, don’t know what to do.

Brenda knocks on the door and walks into my room.

“Are you all right?” she asks. “I thought you were in here doing your homework.”

“I was going to do it. I just haven’t gotten to it yet.” I don’t know what to say to Brenda.

It’s like I have three parents, and she’s got only one.

“Amber, I don’t want to nag you,” she says.

I, Amber Brown, realize that when someone says “I don’t want to nag you,” they’re going to nag you.

And Brenda does. “Do your homework. You don’t want to get into trouble with Mrs. Holt again for not doing it, do you?”

That’s a lot of “Do”s about my homework ….. a lot of do-do.

I sigh. “Oh, OK.”

Brenda says, “I’ll go downstairs and finish
the dishes. And then I’ve got to study for a civics test. Call me if you need help.”

I take out my notebook.

I’ve got to figure out a project on the Middle Ages.

I start planning.

The Middle Ages…. I don’t want to do a stupid, boring research paper.

I’ll do a newspaper instead … the kind that there would have been in the Middle Ages, if they could have had a newspaper.

I, Amber Brown, have to come up with a name for the paper.

Max reads
The New York Times
.

Aunt Pam reads the
Los Angeles Times
.

I’ll call my paper
The Olden Times
.

And where
The New York Times
has written “All the news that’s fit to print,” I will put “All the news that fits, I’ll print.”

I start to list what will go in the paper.

There will be a news page about all of the stuff that’s happening in the kingdom.

Then there will be a gossip column: “A Knight on the Town.”

I’ll have a travel section: “Whatever Floats Your Boat Across the Moat.”

I’ll draw the costumes and armor for the fashion section.

There will be a poetry page.

To show Mrs. Holt what the paper will be like, I write the first poem:

It’s not a great poem, but it’s better than the one Bobby said in class the other day … “I’m a poet, but my toes don’t show it.”

There’s a knock on the door.

This time it’s my mom.

She gives me a kiss and then looks at my homework.

“Mom,” I say, “I have something to tell you.”

Then before I can tell her, I start to cry.

“Dad …..” I sniffle.

“Is he all right?” She sounds worried.

“Dad called.” I sniffle again.

“And?” she asks, holding my hand.

“And he wants to spend Thanksgiving with me.” I look at her.

“Oh.” She takes a deep breath. “For a minute, I thought it was something terrible.”

I look at her.

She’s being much calmer than I thought she would be.

I wonder if she still cares about my dad.

She thinks for about a minute, and then I can tell she realizes what it will mean to us …. and Walla Walla.

Trouble. Trouble.

I watch my mother’s face. First she looks surprised, then angry, and then she bites her lip.

When my mother doesn’t want to say something, she bites her lip.

She keeps her teeth on her lower lip for a long time.

Then she sighs. “Well, it isn’t good, but at least no one is hurt … or sick or anything. It is terrible, though, for our plans.”

“Mommy, what are we going to do? What am I going to do?” When I get upset, I call my mom “Mommy,” even though it seems a little babyish.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know, honey. I have to think about this before I say something that I’m going to regret later.”

I just sit there.

She sighs.

Sometimes our family sighs a lot.

She gets up, gives me a kiss on the forehead, and says, “Give me a few minutes to think about this. I’ll tell Brenda that she can leave now, and then I’ll do some thinking and then come up here and talk to you.”

She leaves.

I know that her “thinking” is going to have something to do with phone calls …. to my dad, to Max.

She goes downstairs.

I look at my homework, not able to work on it anymore.

“Amber, see you soon,” Brenda yells up the stairs.

“’Bye for now,” I yell back.

I just sit there and wait for my mother to come back.

She does.

I can tell that she’s been crying from the
mascara on her face and how puffy her eyes are.

Mom sits down on my bed. “Amber, I’ve talked to your father. He really does want to see you. He thought we’d all be here and you could spend part of the vacation with each of us. I’ve tried to explain to him that we didn’t do it intentionally … to take you away just when he was returning … it’s just that we’ve gotten used to his not being around. It may have been a mistake to plan this right now … but we didn’t do it intentionally.”