Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Practicing the Piano (But She Does Love Being in Recitals) (8 page)

Moxy’s heart
was pounding so loudly that she had to pound the piano even harder than usual to be sure she was playing “Heart and Soul” correctly.

Ms. Killingher, who was standing between Aunt Susan Standish and Moxy’s mother, put her hands over her ears. She had never heard Moxy play so loudly before. Mrs. Maxwell didn’t seem to notice how loud it was. She was just grateful that
Moxy was out there at all. And Aunt Susan Standish was snapping her fingers.

“It has a good beat, don’t you think?” she said.

But no one could hear her.

But before
“Heart and Soul” was officially over, Moxy stopped playing.

Moxy stopped playing
“Heart and Soul” before it was officially over for three very good reasons. They were:

1. The string around her neck that kept her cape on was strangling her.
   

2. She wanted to move on to the part of the show that she had rehearsed more—the bows.
   

3. She was suddenly very hungry.
   

As soon as
Moxy stopped playing, Pansy stopped playing. Then they walked to the center of the stage, holding hands. Then they held their hands up in the air the way heavyweight champions do and bowed and bowed—just the way they’d practiced a hundred times at home.

Here is a picture Mark took of Moxy and Pansy with their hands in the air.

Naturally, the applause went on and on (or so it seemed to Moxy). And the longer the applause went on, the longer the bows went on. The bows went on for so long that
finally Moxy was forced to put her free hand in the air to settle the crowd down.

Here is a picture Mark took of Moxy’s hand in the air. He called it “But Enough About Me.”

“But Enough About Me,” by Mark Maxwell
.

After the recital
came the after-recital party. It was a smashing success. Moxy could hardly catch her breath, there were so many people crowded around congratulating her—though no one asked for her autograph.

“The only thing missing,” Moxy said in the car on the way home, “was a bouquet of roses to hold in my arms.” Moxy was in the backseat with Mark and Pansy. They were counting to see how many cupcakes were left.

“Only seventy-five!” called out Pansy.

Moxy did some quick math. “That means,” said Moxy, subtracting 75 from 150, “seventy-five people were watching me.”

“Some people had more than one cupcake,” said Mark.

“I had five,” agreed Pansy.

“Still,” said Moxy (who had eaten four cupcakes herself), “there were quite a few people out there. The applause was very loud.”

“You didn’t seem the least bit afraid,” said Aunt Susan Standish. She turned around to look at Moxy.

“Oh,” said Moxy,
“that
. I don’t think I was ever really afraid. I think I was afraid of being afraid.”

“Of course,” said Aunt Susan Standish, turning back around. “And that’s an entirely different thing.”

Moxy was so excited about all the applause she’d gotten that she didn’t know how she was going to fall asleep that night.

She wondered if sometimes you had to feel very bad in order to feel very good.

She rolled down the window and stuck her head out as far as she could without getting yelled at. The April air had that first-day-of-spring smell—a combination of old snow just melting and new mud just sprouting. The wind whipped her hair. She put her arm out and pretended it was a wing. It felt terrific to not feel afraid. Then she started to sing.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2009 by Peggy Gifford
Photographs copyright © 2009 by Valorie Fisher

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Schwartz & Wade Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Photograph of Miss America courtesy of the Ohio Historical Society.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gifford, Peggy Elizabeth.
Moxy Maxwell does not love practicing the piano / by Peggy Gifford;
photographs by Valorie Fisher.—1st ed.
p.     cm.
Summary: On the day of her recital, ten-year-old Moxy prepares for it in her usual flamboyant way which creates chaos at home.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89289-9
[1. Concerts—Fiction. 2. Piano—Fiction. 3. Twins—Fiction. 4. Brothers and
sisters—Fiction. 5. Humorous stories.] I. Fisher, Valorie, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.G3635M1 2009
[Fic]—dc22
2008036639

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