Beatrice More Moves In (5 page)

Edison snorted and rolled onto his back, belly up to the sunbeam.

“Eddie!” cried Sue, rushing over to Edison. “How ya doing, buddy?” Edison’s tail
thumped while Sue rubbed his belly. Dog hair danced in the sunbeam, and a trickle
of drool slid out the side of his mouth.

Beatrice’s mother and father plodded down the stairs. They looked very, very tired.

Beatrice introduced them to Sue and Jill.

“Who wants cookies?” Beatrice’s mom said.

“Oh,
yes, please
,” said Sue. “I’m
so
hungry.”

Over cookies and milk, the girls talked.

“We have three cats, Peewee and a hamster,” said Sue. “I love animals. And food,”
she said, reaching for another cookie. “I love food.”

“I play piano and tennis,” said Jill. “And I’ve just started swimming lessons and
gymnastics!”

Beatrice would have liked to look professional in front of her new friends.
But they
had just moved, and she wasn’t in any lessons at all.

That’s going to change
, thought Beatrice, making a quick mental list of
All the Many
Activities I Plan to Do
. In the blink of an eye, she got from one (
Art
) to twelve
(
Cliff diving
).

“I plan to do
lots
of activities,” said Beatrice. “But because of the move, I mainly
do puzzles, make lists and organize things,” she blurted.

“Cool,” said Sue.

“This house
is
very organized and tidy,” said Jill, looking around.

“It’s way cleaner than our house,” said Sue. “I have three brothers who mess the
place up. Actually, come to think of it, I’m the messiest of the bunch.”

“My twin brother is super neat. Annoyingly neat,” said Jill.

“Hey, can we see your room?” asked Sue.

“Sure!” Beatrice jumped up. She was very confident about her room.

The girls went upstairs. Beatrice threw open the door to her room.

“Wow. Nice!” said Sue. She walked into the room and flopped on the perfect, wrinkle-free
bed.

Sue looked up and saw Beatrice’s face. She saw her frown and her twitching left eye.

She sprang up.

“Oh, sorry. I probably messed up your quilt,” she said. She tried to smooth it but
ended up rumpling the cover even more.

“Here, let me help,” offered Jill. She pulled at the sheet and knocked over
Beatrice’s
neat row of stuffed animals. “Whoops!” she said, shoving them back in the wrong order.
“There.”

Sue and Jill backed away from the rumpled bed.

Beatrice racked her brain for a clean, organized, quiet activity they could all enjoy.
She couldn’t think of anything!

I should have made a list of
Fun, Non-Messy Things to Do on a Perfect Playdate, she
thought in a panic
. Now it’s going to be a disaster!

Jill looked across the hallway.

“Hey, whose room is that?” she asked.

“That’s my sister Sophie’s room,” said Beatrice.

“What does that cute sign say?” asked Jill, crossing the hall to Sophie’s door. Sue
and Beatrice joined her.

“Aww, it’s
adorable
,” said Sue. “You sure are lucky to have a little sister.”

Beatrice smiled. But she felt a little guilty. Sophie was in the top three on her
list of
Things That Make My Left Eye Twitch
.

Then Beatrice got an idea.

She knocked on Sophie’s door.

“Hey, Sophie, want to meet my new friends?” she called.

The door crashed open. Sophie stood there, smiling. Her hair was sticking up in all
directions. She had pulled on a dinosaur costume from two Halloweens ago. The dino
jaws sat on top of her tangled hair.

My little sister looks like a little weirdo
, thought Beatrice.

The other girls didn’t seem to notice.

“Hiya, Sophie! I’m Sue. That’s Jill. Cool outfit.”

“I hope you’re a
plant
-eating dinosaur,” said Jill with a smile, pretending to be
afraid.

“I’m a bery
friendly
dinosaur. I’m a play-o-saurus! You guys gonna com’n play?” asked
Sophie hopefully. She opened the door of her messy room.

Beatrice looked nervously at her new friends.

Jill smiled.

Sue looked amazed.

“Wow!” Sue said. “Check out all the boxes! Let’s play hide-and-seek, play-o-saurus!”

They shrieked with laughter playing hide-and-seek in the messy little dinosaur’s
messy little room.

They toppled boxes.

They slithered through books.

They rolled in toys.

They made a lot of noise.

They made a complete, utter, total mess.

And it was perfect.

When the doorbell rang, the girls were laughing so hard they didn’t hear it.

“Girls!
Girls!
” called Beatrice’s mother. “Jill’s brother is here. Jill and Sue have
to get going!”

“Coming!” yelled Sue. “Hey, Jilly-Billy, time to go.” She crawled out of a big box.
Her bouncing, blond curls were a mess. Her round face was red.

Jill threw back the quilt she was hiding under. “Well,
that
was fun!” she giggled.

The three girls ran downstairs, laughing and making plans to play the next day.

Jill’s brother was standing outside. He had black, silky short hair combed neatly
above his round glasses.

“Yo, bro,” called Jill.

“Hiya, Jimbo,” said Sue.

“
James
, Sue,” said Jill’s brother. “For the millionth time, it’s
James
. Absolutely
not Jimbo. Jimbo isn’t even a
name
.”

“It’s a
nickname
,” laughed Sue. “I give nicknames to everybody I like. Right,
Bee
?”

Beatrice smiled.

“Right, Sue.”

Beatrice stood on the steps and waved goodbye to her new friends.

She went back inside. The house was very quiet.

She looked around for her family. She found them downstairs on the big couch, cuddled
together and watching a movie.

Her mother’s book had fallen on the floor, its pages splayed open.

Her father’s tools were scattered across the coffee table.

Sophie was eating popcorn and wiping her buttery fingers on her dino legs. A pile
of stuffed animals was heaped on the carpet in front of her.

Edison was sleeping on a chair that was already covered in dog hair. He snored happily
in a little puddle of drool.

Beatrice frowned.
Hopeless
, she thought.
This family is absolutely—

Her mother looked up at her and smiled. Her face looked tired. Beatrice remembered
how hard they had worked.

“Hi, honey. Did you have fun with your new friends?”

“It was wonderful!” said Beatrice.

“I
liked
Sue and Jilly-Billy!” said Sophie through a mouth full of popcorn.

“Hey, Bee, the funniest part is coming up. Come join us!” said her father. He shifted
over and patted the couch. Beatrice cuddled in between her dad and Sophie. Sophie
offered Beatrice the popcorn and a dino leg to wipe her fingers on.

While they were laughing at the movie, Beatrice’s eyes wandered above the screen.
She couldn’t help but notice that the picture her father had hung above the tv was
not exactly straight. Not straight at all. In fact, it was eye-twitchingly, head-explodingly
crooked.

But her left eye did not twitch.

Her head did not explode.

She did not even jump up to fix it. She was happy right where she was, snuggled on
the couch, laughing with her family.

Beatrice smiled as she thought of the perfect list to write later.

She would call it
Reasons Why My Hopelessly Messy, Very Disorganized Family is Almost
Perfect
.

Alison Hughes
is an award-winning author who has lived, worked and studied in Canada,
England and Australia. She understands tidy, organized people well, not because she
is one herself, but because she lives with two of them and grew up with another.
She lives with her family in Edmonton, Alberta, in a happy house where dog drool
is a fact of life.