Don't Wear Polka-Dot Underwear with White Pants: (And Other Lessons I've Learned) (7 page)

I HAVE DECIDED THAT I
am absolutely positive that I cannot live in my house anymore. It is a whole week later, and no one listens to me except Rainbow Sparkle. I have not practiced my narrator lines all the way through with one family member—not ever—and this is just unfair.

It is not even that my house is so boring; it's just too loud. I like loud noises, but only when they are coming from me. Not from Timmy, not from the washing machine or the dishwasher or
the microwave, and definitely not from the twins.

The Presidential Pageant is less than a week away now, and every single time I have tried to read all of my lines to Mom, someone has started crying, and it makes me too mad to try again. I cannot concentrate on practicing my fifty-six narrator lines with all this racket. “I am going outside,” I call, and no one answers because nobody listens to me.

I go out our back door and stand on the side of the house where I will be alone, my script with Mrs. Spangle's yellow highlighting held tightly in my hands. I lean against the side of our house, but then I remember about the caterpillars and I stand up straight again. I bend my neck down to read, even though I remember most of my lines in my head because I have read them so much. It is too dark on the side of the house to see the words real good, though, and it is slowing me down.

I look toward the back door, but I definitely cannot go into that house again. In our driveway is a big pile of dirt and sticks that Dad is going to put on our flowers. I walk over to the edge of the pile and look up. The stack is a little bit smelly and much taller than me. It would make a good hill for sledding, only there is no snow.

This is when it hits me: This pile would also make a good Magic Mountain Wonderland—one that is much bigger and more special than the one in my bedroom, because it is a real mountain! I can build on it and live at the top like the red gummy bears. Or at least I can practice my lines up there and not have Timmy or the twins making noise and bothering me. All I have to do is create a staircase up the side of the pile, and then when I am at the top, I will be too high in the sky for anybody to reach me. It is the perfect plan, I think.

I put one foot in the bottom, and my sneaker
sinks in a little bit, but not too much. I kick my foot forward so I can make a step inside the dirt, and then I do the same thing with my other leg. I carve my own staircase in the side of my Magic Mountain, and I use my hands and knees to help keep my balance as I crawl up. Sticks and dirt scatter underneath me each time I move, but the mountain stays in place until I make it to the tippy-top. I sit down carefully because I am a little bit afraid, if I am being honest. The Magic Mountain Wonderland looks much higher from the top than from the bottom, but it is very quiet and it does not have Timmy or the twins.

“Wahoo!” I exclaim to myself, because I am president of Magic Mountain Wonderland.

I lift up my script to practice and it is covered in dirt, which I was not expecting, actually. It is a little hard for me to read. Each time I try to wipe the dirt off, my hand makes the paper even more
smeary. I try to use my elbow, and then my knee, but they are covered with dirt too. This is a pretty big problem.

I cannot go back inside with all of this dirt on me, because Mom will take away more Rainbow Sparkle TV shows. I will need to clean up first, but Dad unhooked our outside hose after I gave Timmy a shower with it, so that is not an option.

I turn toward the Packles' house next door. The Packles are still on vacation, I know, because Mom keeps sending me to pick up their mail, so their house will be empty and I can use their bathroom. And maybe, just for a minute or two, I can pretend that it is my new place and I can make believe that their furniture is periwinkle.

I know where they keep their extra key. It is under a frog statue on their front porch, which seems like a pretty silly place to keep a key, if you ask me.

Carefully, I use the steps I carved to climb down from Magic Mountain Wonderland, and I walk over to the Packles' house, shaking off as much dirt as I can on the way. I walk onto their front porch, and right there, under the frog where I knew it would be, is their spare key. I lift it up, walk to their front door, and try to stick the key into the slot.

Nothing.

I jingle and jangle the key to try to make it fit, and it doesn't.

Now, I am not so good at opening locked things, so I do not know what I am supposed to do to make this work. I turn the key upside down, right-side up, to the left, to the right, and every which way in between. And the Packles' front door will not open.

My script, which I put right next to the frog so I could concentrate, is blowing in the breeze,
and I am afraid it is going to fly away, so I stick it under the frog. Then I return to the door, and I again try to put the key into the hole this way and that way.

“What are you doing, Amanda?!” I jump so high that I am surprised my head does not hit the ceiling of the Packles' porch. I turn around to find Dad's car in the street, Dad hanging halfway out of the driver's side window, staring at me.

“Nothing,” I answer.

“Nothing?”

“Just checking on the frog,” I say, which sounds like a dumb reason for being on the Packles' porch, even to me. I make sure to keep my hands—my dirty hands holding the Packles' key—behind my back so Dad cannot see.

“Get home right now,” Dad says. “I want to talk to you.”

I pull my script out from under the frog and
put the key back. Then I stomp over to my house and follow Dad through the garage.

“It is too loud in our house.” I say each word like it is its own sentence, because I have decided that whatever I am going to be in trouble for is not my fault. It is Mom's fault and Timmy's fault and the twins' fault for being too loud, and since it is not Dad's fault yet, I need to explain this to him.

Dad turns and looks at me. “How did you get so dirty?”

“It is too loud in our house,” I repeat, because Dad is not listening to my problem.

“Too loud for what?”

“I cannot practice my lines for the Presidential Pageant,” I whine. “It's too loud, so I climbed on top of Magic Mountain Wonderland to practice my lines. But then I could not see them because my script had dirt on it. So I was going to the Packles' house to clean up. Because they are on
vacation. I know this because Mom sent me to get their mail every day this week.”

Dad looks at me with no words for a few seconds, because I have stumped him, I guess.

“You were going to break into their house?” Dad asks.

“No, I had a key,” I say. “They keep it under their frog.”

“You cannot go around the neighborhood breaking into people's houses, Amanda,” Dad says.

“I wasn't breaking in—”

“Tim? Is that you?” Mom's head pokes out of the door. Dad's name is Tim, like Timmy without the “
my
.” Although sometimes Grandmom calls Dad “Timmy” too, which I think is a silly name to call a grown-up.

“Be right in,” Dad says. “Just finishing talking to Amanda.” And he does not tattletale to Mom
about the dirt and the Packles' frog and key, so that is something.

Mom goes back inside, and I cross my arms. Dad stares at me, and neither of us moves.

“Come here,” Dad says, and we walk to the side of the house where the unhooked-up hose is. Dad screws the nozzle back onto the waterspout. “Put your script down somewhere safe,” he says. I run and place my script by the bottom of my Magic Mountain Wonderland and return to Dad.

“Hold out your arms,” he instructs. I do, and he squirts water from the hose right onto my hands and elbows. The water is pretty cold, but I do not say anything. Dad pours some water onto his own hands and dabs them across my cheeks, wiping off the dirt.

“Good,” Dad says. “Now run into the garage and take your shoes and clothes off so you don't track any mulch into the house. Close the garage
door so the neighbors won't see. I'll meet you in your room.” I run to pick up my script and then into the garage. I press the button to close the door, and then I pull my shoes and pants and shirt off and leave them in a heap on the ground. I open the door to our house and run up the stairs in my underwear, which is not polka dot because I do not wear polka-dot underwear anymore.

I put on my purple nightgown, which is not quite periwinkle, but it is the closest I have. I sit on my bed and wait for Dad to come punish me. I do not even know what the big deal is, because this does not seem nearly as bad as the time that I threw Mom's keys in the oven because I did not want to go to the grocery store. The oven was not on or anything, but I still got into big-time trouble.

And plus, I wasn't going to take anything from the Packles' house. I only wanted a place to clean up, so I do not understand why Dad is flipping out.

I never even got inside, anyway, so I could not make believe that it was my own place, and that is the real tragedy.

Dad comes into my room many minutes later. I know it is many minutes because I have eaten most of my bag of gummy bears, and I am mad because I will not have lots left if he keeps me up here much longer.

“Did you think about why you cannot try to get into people's houses without asking?” Dad asks.

“Yes,” I say, even though I have not.

“Good,” he says. “It's been tough around here these past few months with the twins, huh?”

I nod.

“It'll get better when they're a little older, you know,” Dad says. “They are going to adore you.”

I nod again, because I think I am getting out of trouble. But not because I want the twins to adore me,
because I do not care what the twins like.

“Do you want to finish practicing your lines for the assembly with me, right now before dinner?” Dad asks.

“Yes,” I say. I think about giving Dad some gummy bears so he can eat them while I read, but it is probably not a good idea to let him know that they are in here.

“Let's hear it,” Dad says, and he snuggles next to me on my bed, and I am happy for a little bit. I make it through half of my lines, and Dad laughs, and everything is great and dandy.

And then Dad rests his head on my pillow and hears the gummy bear bag crinkle underneath him. And this is a disaster, because Dad says, “You can't spoil your dinner with this candy” and takes the whole bag away.

And then nothing is great and dandy anymore.

MRS. SPANGLE IS PRETTY OLD
, I think. I did not know this at first, because she has glasses, so I cannot really see if her eyes are crinkly. And her porcupine hair is very red—super-duper red like a clown's—so I cannot tell if it is white underneath like Grandmom's.

But today Mrs. Spangle tells us, “When I was born, John Kennedy was our president,” and I am positive that John Kennedy was president a very, very long time ago.

“Wow, that was like one hundred years ago,” I say, and Mrs. Spangle gives me a “This is your warning” look. But I do not know for certain if she is unhappy because I said she is one hundred years old or because I called out.