Amber Brown Is Feeling Blue (7 page)

One of my fingernails falls off.

I catch it before it hits the carpet.

It’s a great save.

Since Kelly’s house is brand new, the carpet is also brand new.

I, Amber Brown, would hate to be the first one to get the carpet dirty.

If we were doing our own nails, I wouldn’t have to worry. My real nails don’t fall off. The false fingernails do. But my own nails have been so bitten down that there would be no room for all the stuff that we have to put on them …… nail polish, glitter, rhinestones,
decals, silver and gold strips, tiny metal stars, and diamonds. Using the false nails is good because there’s room to decorate them, and they can come off and on.

“Look.” Brandi shows us her thumbnail.

It’s light blue with a rose decal in the middle, and on the left are three dark blue rhinestones.

Kelly’s sheepdog, Darth Vader, comes over.

He looks like a gigantic hair ball.

Putting his chin on my knee, he slobbers all over my jeans.

Gross.

I don’t know what to do.

One of my hands has newly painted nails on it.

The other hand is holding the nail polish brush.

Darth Vader slobbers more, and then he sneezes and gunk comes out of his nose.

My knee is not a pretty sight.

“I think he likes you.” Kelly giggles.

I, Amber Brown, look at the slobber and snot on my leg and wish that Darth Vader liked me less.

I wiggle my knee to try to get him to move.

He just stays there and starts to wag his tail, which hits my other leg.

I wiggle.

He wags.

I wiggle again.

He wags …. and then he slobbers again.

Darth Vader and I stare at each other for a minute.

I blink first ….. at least I think I blink first. It’s hard to tell, with all that hair in front of his eyes.

“Let’s paint his nails,” I say.

Kelly, Brandi, and I look at each other and laugh.

“We could do each one a different color.”

We look at his feet.

There’s a lot of hair on them.

Kelly rushes up to her bedroom, and returns with lots of little barrettes.

We pin back the hair around his toes, and then Kelly holds him down.

Brandi holds out the nail-polish bottle.

I kneel down and paint one of his nails Candy Apple Red.

For the next one I use Perfectly Peach.

He starts to lick his nails, so Kelly holds onto his head.

When I finish painting all ten of Darth Vader’s toenails different colors, Brandi and I lie down on the floor and blow on his toes to help them dry faster.

He slobbers on my head, so when I’m blowing on his nails, I spit on one to get even.

He licks the top of my head.

I, Amber Brown, will definitely have to take a shower when I get home.

We spray his toenails with quick-dry liquid and then start working on our own nails. Darth Vader sits down beside me, chewing on the barrettes that are still on his feet.

Darth Vader is a little weird, but if I ever got a dog, I think one like Darth Vader would be terrific, only smaller and less drooly. I know that there are big poodles and there are tiny poodles (which are called toy poodles). I wonder if there are such animals as toy sheepdogs. With my mom allergic to dogs, though, the only kind of dog that I’ve ever been able to get is one that is a toy. I wonder if my dad will let me get a dog when he moves back. I wonder who would take care of it while I’m at my mom’s. I wonder if he would take care of it, feed it, and walk it … and I, Amber Brown, could just play with it.

Thinking about this reminds me of my worries, but right now I’m having a good time. I’m glad that Brandi made me come. I’m glad that Kelly is so nice.

“Ooops.” Kelly’s nail falls off her thumb and lands on the floor.

She picks it up.

There’s carpet lint on it ….. and on the carpet is a spot of Shimmer Glitter Mauve.

“Ooops,” Kelly says again.

We all look down at the carpet and then at each other.

“Ooops,” we all say.

Kelly’s mother walks into the room and puts a plate of cookies on the table. “What is all this ‘ooopsing’ about?”

Kelly swallows hard and then says, “Mom, it was an accident.”

“You know that is one of my least favorite sentences,” Mrs. Green says. “What’s the accident?”

Kelly points with one of her Shimmer
Glitter Mauve fingernails. “Polish on the rug.”

Mrs. Green does not look happy.

She looks at the spot, saying nothing for a minute, then she sighs and reaches for the bottle of nail-polish remover and a cotton pad.

We all sit quietly and watch as she tries to clean up the spot.

I think …… Please, oh please ….. Out, darn spot….

Kelly, Brandi, and I look at one another.

I cross my fingers, getting nail polish on my hand.

The polish comes off the rug.

I, Amber Brown, am so relieved. I hate it when kids are having fun and something happens that ruins everything and makes a grown-up angry.

“Be careful, now,” Mrs. Green says.

We promise to be careful.

Mrs. Green leaves, and then returns with
trash bags to spread out on floor under us.

When Darth Vader moves so that she can put the bags down, the barrettes clink against each other.

Mrs. Green looks at him.

Then she looks at us.

Kelly shrugs. “We decided it would be quite a feat to do his nails.”

I, Amber Brown, wonder if she means “feat” or “feet.”

Mrs. Green laughs. “Your father refers to that dog as his first son. I’m not sure what he’s going to say when he sees his dog. I’ll just tell him that it’s the paws that refreshes.”

She laughs again.

I, Amber Brown, don’t get what she means by the paws refreshing…. But there are a lot of things grown-ups say that I don’t get.

Mrs. Green keeps smiling, and says, “Just wait ’til your father gets home.”

That is something that I, Amber Brown, do understand.

Just wait ’til your father gets home……. Kelly doesn’t look too upset about her father’s return.

Now I, Amber Brown, just have to wait ’til my father comes home.

It’s so weird.

It feels like everything in my life is changing, but some things don’t.

I still have to go to school.

And I still have to sit through reports as if everything is normal.

Jimmy Russell and Bobby Clifford get up to give their reports.

I, Amber Brown, can’t believe that Mrs. Holt let them be a team. They goof around so much.

“We are the Billington brothers,” Jimmy
Russell and Bobby Clifford say at exactly the same time.

“I am John, and I was seven when the
Mayflower
came over to America,” Jimmy says. “And I almost blew up the
Mayflower
with gunpowder when it got to Plymouth.”

It’s obvious that Jimmy likes the character he is playing.

“And I am Francis, and I was nine. During our first winter in Massachusetts, I climbed a tree and saw a lot of water. I thought it was the Pacific, but it was a large pond.”

“Duh,” Hal Henry calls out.

“Quiet,” Mrs. Holt says.

Bobby says, “Yeah, quiet…. They named the pond ‘Billington Sea.’”

“Double duh,” Hal says quietly.

Then Bobby and Jimmy tell how the Billingtons were TROUBLE…. How John got lost in the woods for days, and how the Indians found him and helped him return. How their father was so bad that he was one of the few people arrested during the Pilgrims’ first year in America because he wouldn’t stand watch … and how he was hanged nine years later because he killed someone.

Now this is interesting Thanksgiving information, I think. How come no one ever told us all of this before?

I look at Bobby and Jimmy.

This is such a great report they are giving that I wonder if they are telling the truth.

I look at Mrs. Holt to see if she’s going to yell at them for making this all up, but she doesn’t. In fact, when they are finished, she tells them what a good job they did.

Then she tells us how the Pilgrims who were going to the “New World” for religious reasons called themselves the “Saints” and all the others the “Strangers.” She says the Billingtons were part of the “Strangers” group.

That explains why Bobby and Jimmy did such a good job…. They are a little strange themselves.

I’m not sure I like the way the Pilgrims labeled the people who weren’t them.

Next, Hannah Burton and Hal Henry get up.

“I am a Pilgrim mother,” she says.