Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit (4 page)

“That’s right, banana breath.” I stare at Maxgorilla.

The gorilla voice says, “Ha-ha, you lose. I’m a grown-up, and what I say goes.”

I glare at Maxgorilla. “Who says, you foul fur-face?”

“I says . . . . and so does your mother. After all, she did make you meet me,” the gorilla tells me.

I throw Maxgorilla across the room.

He hits the wall and falls into the garbage can.

Trying to calm down, I count to ten.

That doesn’t work.

I count to twenty, thirty, fifty, one hundred.

That doesn’t work either.

I try to think about all of the stuff I have to do.

That definitely doesn’t work. Who can think about homework at a time like this?

I just can’t calm down.

I get up and take out my Dad Book. Opening it up, I talk to my favorite picture of my dad.

I tell him what’s going on.

I beg him to come home and try to straighten things out.

I say, “What happens if Max isn’t so bad and I actually like him?” Will my dad hate me for liking Max, for going places with him and Mom?

I wish that my father would speak to me face-to-face, person-to-person, Dad-to-Amber. Hearing his voice once a week on the phone just isn’t enough.

And it isn’t easy for me to say some of this stuff into a phone.

I tell his picture this and ask him what he’s going to do about what’s happening.

But he’s only a picture, so he doesn’t answer; and I don’t want to have to pretend to be a ventriloquist to make him say what I want to hear, so there’s only silence.

It’s so silent.

I’m screaming inside . . . . . and I don’t know how to make anything come out.

I sit at the restaurant table, making a list of things that I, Amber Brown, don’t like.

1. I don’t like eating at restaurants. It’s so boring . . . . waiting to get a table . . . . waiting to order something to drink . . . . . waiting for the waiter or waitress to come and take the order . . . . waiting for the dinner to arrive . . . . . waiting to order dessert . . . . waiting for the check.

I personally think that not only the people who work at the restaurant should be called waiters, I think that the people who eat there should be called waiters, too.

Take me to a fast-food restaurant anytime. You stand in a short line, or you even get to go through in a car. Everything arrives at once in a nice little box with your own packets of ketchup and stuff. You don’t have to say, “Please, pass the _____.” It’s all there, and sometimes you even get a toy or something
with it. And then you eat it and you’re done. You don’t have to sit around gabbing all day.

2. I don’t like having to sit in a restaurant with Max, who I don’t like.

3. I don’t like complaining all the time, but what’s a kid to do when nothing is going the way she wants it to go?

“Amber, please pass the salt.” Max smiles at me.

I pass him the salt.

He could have just as easily asked my mother to pass him the stupid salt, but, no, he has to ask me.

“Thanks.”

“It’s nothing.”

My mother starts to talk. “You know . . . . the two of you have a lot in common.
You both like to tell jokes. You both like to eat the center part of the Oreos.”

Great
, I think,
that’ll be another thing we have to share
.

“You like to read. You like to travel. You like to see horror movies.” She babbles on.

I look at Max. “My dad takes me to horror movies. He’ll be taking me to a lot of them when he moves back here.”

“Amber,” my mother says softly.

Max says, “Well, maybe we can just see a few of them until he comes back.”

“He can take me to all of them.” I glare.

“Amber,” my mother says again.

Max looks at my mother and says, “Sarah, honey, relax.”

How dare he call her honey. That’s what my dad used to call her before they started fighting. That’s what my mom calls me.

He puts his hand on top of hers, and they hold hands at the table.

I accidentally spill my drink on the table.

While we wait for the waiter to clean it up, my mother tries to sponge up the liquid with her napkin.

She’s no longer holding Max’s hand.

I don’t want to like Gorillaface, not for one single moment.

And he’s acting so nice. He does seem like my mom said he would be. I hate it that he’s acting so nice. This would be much easier if my mom WAS dating an ax murderer. Then I could really hate him.

Max and my mother are hugging.

I look over at my mother.

She and Max are kissing.

That’s so gross.

I say, “Mom, I hope that the fungus in your mouth is getting better.”

And then I look at Max and smile. “The doctor says that in girls it’s curable. Boys die from it.”

“Amber,” my mother says, “stop that.”

Max laughs.

I hate it.

He really doesn’t even look like a gorilla. He’s got dark hair, brown eyes, and he smiles a lot.

My mother continues. “You both like to chew gum. You’ll have to show Max your chewing gum ball sometime.”

Max pretends to take out a stick of gum, put it in his mouth, blow a huge bubble, and pop it all over his face. He pretends to wipe it off.

I will not smile at Max.

I will not smile at Max.

I will not smile at Max.

I will not smile at Max.

I will not smile at Max.

Mrs. Holt collects all of the book reports . . . . . all of them except for mine and Eric Feinstein’s.

Eric’s not in school today because he broke his arm over the weekend.

Some kids will do anything to get out of doing their homework.

I know Eric didn’t do it intentionally, but he’s lucky that he’s got a real excuse . . . . . and he’s unlucky that he’s got a broken arm.

I wonder if he broke the arm he writes with.

I wonder if I should have made up a list
of excuses, or maybe I should have broken my arm, but I hate it when I even break my fingernail.

It’s not really my fault that I didn’t do my book report.

All Sunday I was too angry to work on my report.

When we got back from dinner, I told my mother that I had to go upstairs to finish my homework, but since Max didn’t leave right away, I had to sit silently and sneakily on the top of the steps, spying on them.

I thought I was doing a real good job of spying and listening until Max called out, “Do you want us to speak louder, Amber?”

Max thinks he’s so funny.

So does my mother, because she laughed when he said that.

So I went into my stomp-and-slam routine, and then my mother came upstairs and told me that enough was enough, that she was trying to be patient with me but she’d had enough, and it was time for me to go to bed.

So I went to bed.

So it’s really my mother’s fault that I didn’t get my homework done.

Mrs. Holt is calling out everyone in the class by name to take attendance and to have that person bring up the book report.

“Amber Brown.” Mrs. Holt gets to my name.

Very softly, I say, “I’m here but my book report isn’t. I’ll bring it in tomorrow.”

Someone goes, “Dun-di-dun-dun . . . . dun.”

Someone else goes, “Not-done-di-done . . . . done.”

Hannah Burton looks at me and smirks. “It figures.”

I cross my eyes at Hannah Burton.

Mrs. Holt writes something in the marking book and calls out the next name.

It’s just my luck that it’s not a regular written-on-a-piece-of-paper report that can be passed up to the front without everyone knowing that you didn’t do your work. But it’s a book report that is supposed to be shaped to look like a cereal box.

I really did start mine. It was called
Anastasia Krupnik Krunchies
(it was about one of Lois Lowry’s books). I’d already done the book summary that was supposed to go on the back, along with: