Middle School: My Brother Is a Big, Fat Liar (16 page)

I heard Rafe howl next door and raced to see the destruction there.

“This looks way better than it used to,” I told him.

“It’s horrible!” Rafe cried. “I can’t find anything! Where’s my favorite drawing pen? Where’s the painting Mom made for me? Where’s last Thursday’s leftover pizza? This room is about as fun as… a prison cell.”

“This is a disaster!” Rafe wailed. “That pizza was my science project!”

“We have to tell Grandma to put everything back where it was,” I said.

“She probably has no clue how to do that,” Rafe pointed out. “And she might not want to. She’s kind of…” His voice trailed off.

“Dotty?” I suggested.

“Exactly.”

We needed to come up with a way to make Dotty
want
to give us back our stuff. Suddenly, it came to me.

“Listen, Rafe,” I said, taking him by the shoulder. “I have a plan. But I’m going to need your help.”

Rafe looked suspicious. “What’s the plan?”

“We have to convince Grandma to get all our old stuff out from wherever she put it,” I said. “Let’s tell her we’ll have a garage sale. Then she’ll put everything out, and we’ll sort through it and keep what we really want before we sell anything.”

“Grandma Dotty goes to garage sales every Sunday,” Rafe said. “She can’t resist them.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, Georgia,” he said finally, “you can count on me.”

I
don’t think I’ve
ever
worn this coat,” Grandma Dotty said as she put a $3.00 sticker on a purple quilted jacket. “No wonder we have a closet full of clutter!”

“Actually, Grandma, that’s my coat,” I said, plucking the sticker from the sleeve.

“No wonder it’s so small!” Dotty grinned and moved on to a blue-and-gray-striped winter hat. “Oh, this has
got
to go.”

I was being Super Sister, so I rescued the hat, which was Rafe’s. So far, he’d been pretty helpful with the garage sale. The good news: Most of our belongings had reappeared over the weekend. The bad news: Dotty kept getting confused and putting
price tags on them. We had to act fast, or our friends and neighbors would be wearing our clothes and snuggling our stuffed animals. But Dotty was having a ball with the tags—she’d even stuck one on the straw hat she was wearing. So I was trying to rescue only things we really needed, like winter clothes and moldy science projects.

I was—as Dotty says—making orange juice from lemons.

No,
literally
. I was making orangeade. I’d read on a website that giving away drinks and snacks at a garage sale puts people in a good mood and makes them want to buy stuff.

“Where does this go?” Rafe asked as he lugged a telephone table out onto the lawn.

“Let’s put it toward the front,” I told him. “We can display my old ceramic-cat collection on it.”

“You’re getting rid of that?” Rafe looked surprised. “I always kind of liked it.”

“You did?” Wow, that was a shock. Rafe used to tease me about it constantly.

“Yeah, it made it easy to buy you Christmas presents.” Rafe shrugged. “Oh, well.” I was touched as he hauled the table away.

Is it possible
, I thought,
that my brother isn’t so bad after all?

“HEY, GEORGIA! I’M HERE TO HELP WITH THE GARAGE SALE!” Beaming, Rhonda grabbed a glass of orangeade. “WOW! THIS IS SO REFRESHING!”

“Um, hey, Rhonda.” I had no idea how she’d even found out about the garage sale.
Is she psychic? Or psycho? Or maybe she just reads the newspaper.
“Actually, I kind of have to leave in a few minutes.”

Rhonda looked horrified. “WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

“Just to the garage. The band is coming over,” I explained. “We need to rehearse.” Emphasis on
need
.

Rhonda’s eyes bugged out behind her glasses. “BUT THAT’S PERFECT! YOU SHOULD PERFORM!”

I laughed, but Rhonda just kept gazing at me with that happy, hopeful expression.

The band chose that moment to appear.

“Hey, Georgia, what’s up?” Nanci’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, cookies!” She took three.

“They’re homemade,” I said, which made Nanci take two more.

“Look what I found!” Patti said, holding up a ceramic calico cat. “Isn’t it adorable? I need this. I love animals.” She plunked a dollar on the table.

“Are you ready for rehearsal?” Mari asked.

“I WAS JUST TELLING GEORGIA THAT YOU GUYS SHOULD PERFORM RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!” Rhonda screeched. “IT’LL BE LIKE A DRESS REHEARSAL!”

From across the lawn, I heard a noise like an
animal dying, and saw Rafe fall to his knees with his hands over his ears. “DON’T DO IT!” he wailed. “YOU
STINK
!”

Remember a few paragraphs ago? When I thought my brother wasn’t so bad? I was over that now.

“Sure, Rhonda,” I said. “I think that’s a great idea.”

Mari shrugged. “Why not?” she said. There were only three other people at the garage sale, anyway: our nosy neighbor Mr. Stanley, ancient Mrs. Bloomgarden, and her Yorkshire terrier, Wilson. They looked like they could stand to rock out.

We set up our stuff in the garage while Rhonda handed out orangeade and acted as the goodwill ambassador for the band. “YOU WON’T BELIEVE HOW AMAZING THEY ARE!” she told Mrs. Bloomgarden.

“She’s right—you won’t believe it,” Rafe agreed.

I strummed a chord. “One-two-three-four!” I shouted, and the band burst into our first song. I have to say that we were getting better. I didn’t even get my fingers caught in anything. When we finished the song, there was silence.

Until Rafe hopped up onto a table to do his own performance.

The sad part was that Mrs. Bloomgarden actually applauded—for Rafe, not us.

That was all the encouragement he needed to keep going. We Stink was going to have to work hard to drown out my brother.

“Crank it up,” I told my friends. So we did.

W
e Stink finished our fifth and final song, and the crowd went wild. And by
wild
, I mean that Mr. Stanley finally took off the earmuffs he had been trying on for the past four songs, and Mrs. Bloomgarden managed to coax Wilson out of the file cabinet, where he had been hiding. She sniffed at me as she carried Wilson away, cooing to him, “Don’t worry, poopsie! The big scary noise is all over now.”

But at least a couple of people were clapping. “WE STINK RULES!” Rhonda screeched.

Sam stuck his fingers in his mouth and let out a deafening whistle. Yes, that’s right—Sam Marks
showed up at my garage sale. I guess Rhonda must have told him about it.

I managed to smile at Sam, but I was feeling kind of seasick. After all, here I was, playing lousy guitar at a garage sale. So humiliating.

Clap. Clap. Clap.
The sound of sarcastic applause. I looked around to find out who could be that rude, but I should have been able to guess.

Missy Trillin, standing by a stack of sweaters.
Gah! What’s
she
doing here?
My stomach shriveled in fear.

“Wow, I really liked your performance, Georgia,” Missy said with a sneer. “I really liked when it
stopped
.”

“Who’s that?” Nanci asked as she snuck another cookie from the table.

“Nobody,” I told her.
Please go away
, I begged silently. But Missy didn’t move, except to pick up my old Christmas sweater between her thumb and index finger and grimace at the reindeer on it.