Ten Rules for Living With My Sister

by Ann M. Martin

  First things first, can you please get someone to come to my birthday party since Justine won’t be here. Next can you please get me my own cell phone or key to the apartment because nobody is coming to my birthday party.

  I am having a great time with Lexie so I hope you are having fun with Dad and Daddy Bo.

  Love, Pearl

  P.S. How was the food?

  P.P.S. How was the restaurant?

  P.P.P.S. I would like to con congr say good job for finishing your latest book!

  P.P.P.P.S. I also want my own computer since nobody is coming to my birthday party.

  P.P.P.P.P.S. I have never written this many P.S.S in my whole life.

  Love again, your daughter Pearl Littlefield

  19

  The days went by and even though it was flu season, nobody in our family caught it. But Mr. Potter caught it 2x so we had a lot of substitute teachers, and then John got it too so we also had a substitute doorman, and I think Mrs. Mott might have caught it because things were peaceful around the building and all the dog owners took their dogs in the regular elevator.

  One day I was sitting at Lexie’s desk starting my homework, which was to keep a journal for a week. This had been assigned by our current substitute, who clearly didn’t realize that fourth graders have nothing whatsoever to write about. Mr. Potter would have known this, but the substitute didn’t. She must have been used to substituting at Lexie’s school, where the kids can write about boyfriends and talking on their cell phones and letting themselves into their apartments with their own keys. But what was I going to write about? Bitey?

  I was still trying to think what to say when I heard the door to Mom’s office open and a moment later she stuck her head in the room and said, “Pearl, I’m having a problem with my computer. I think I need to take it over to the computer store.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “What I mean is that you’ll have to come with me. Lexie isn’t here.”

  “Can’t I stay home with Daddy Bo?”

  Mom hesitated. “Well—”

  “Please?” I begged. There is nothing worse than hanging around the computer store while Mom gets all anxious and frustrated waiting for her turn to talk with a technician. “I promise I’ll do my homework,” I said. “Look, I’m starting it already.” I pointed to my notebook. “We have to keep a journal.”

  “All right,” said Mom at last. And then she added, “Pearl, I’m very pleased with how responsible you’ve been lately.”

  “Thank you,” I said politely, although everyone knew the main reason I’d been so responsible lately was because Justine was gone and I was bored.

  “I’ll be back in less than an hour,” Mom continued, frowning. She looked like she wasn’t sure she’d made the right decision. But then I heard her in the office saying, “Turn on. Turn on!” which meant she was talking to her useless computer. The next thing I knew she was closing the apartment door behind her.

  I stared at the blank notebook in front of me. Finally, at the top of the first page, in the very middle, I wrote: My Journal. I stared a little longer and on the next line, on the right side, I added: Monday, January 24. I had absolutely no idea what to write next, so I was relieved when Daddy Bo appeared in the doorway.

  But I was surprised when he said, “Pearl, put on your coat. We’re going to New Jersey.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “I mean we have to go to New Jersey. Right now. It’s high time I went back to my house for a visit.”

  “But, Daddy Bo, I have to work on this journal,” I said, at the same time thinking how lame my assignment was going to be, even if it was for a substitute. If I went to New Jersey, at least I would have something to write about.

  Daddy Bo was already wearing his coat. And he was holding mine out to me with a pleading look in his eyes. In my head I started going, “Lame journal, trip to New Jersey. Lame journal, trip to New Jersey.”

  The trip to New Jersey won out.

  “Okay,” I said. I put my coat on, and we left the apartment.

  I waited in the hallway for Daddy Bo to fish his keys out of his pocket so he could lock our door, but he was already heading for the elevator. That should have been a little clue that there was a problem. But I needed an adventure for my journal, and besides, Daddy Bo looked desperate, and besides that, it’s really hard to tell a grown-up what to do.

  “Daddy Bo? We better lock the door!” I said. I tried to sound excited, like his mistake was just another feature of the adventure.

  “Whoops,” he said, and went back inside to find his keys.

  A few minutes later we had had a nice, quiet, Mrs. Mott–free ride downstairs and were stepping into the lobby, when I had a sudden memory of the afternoon John had called me to collect Daddy Bo. I took a look at my grandfather and tried to see if he’d remembered everything I had included on the list I’d made for him that day. I couldn’t tell about his underwear, of course, and I didn’t know if his wallet was in his pocket, but he seemed to have everything else he needed, including shoes, which was a relief.

  We passed by the doorman station and I said hello to the guy who was standing there even though I didn’t know his name. He smiled at us and held the door open, and what do you know—Daddy Bo stepped right out onto Twelfth Street, stuck his arm in the air, and in an instant a taxi had pulled over. Daddy Bo was like an expert. Even my parents never hailed cabs that fast.

  I began to feel better about our adventure.

  “Port Authority, please,” said Daddy Bo to the driver. (Port Authority is the bus station, which I haven’t been there too many times since we have our green Subaru.) Then Daddy Bo turned to me and said, “Buckle up, Pearl.”

  We snapped our seat belts in place.

  Daddy Bo was acting like a responsible adult.

  I looked out the window of the cab as the driver turned right onto Fifth Avenue, right again onto Eleventh Street, and right once again onto Sixth Avenue. On Sixth, we crawled uptown for a while and soon we had passed all of my familiar landmarks and were in a different neighborhood.

  “It’s the perfect day for an adventure, isn’t it, Pearl?” said Daddy Bo.

  The sky was cloudy and the afternoon was gloomy and a man on the curb had just shaken his fist at our driver and yelled something rude to him, but I guess Daddy Bo hadn’t noticed any of those things.

  “Yup,” I replied.

  After that none of us said anything until the driver stopped the cab and turned around to face us.

  “Oh, are we here?” asked Daddy Bo.

  The driver was very nice and didn’t say, “Duh,” although he could have. Instead he answered, “Yes, sir.”

  Daddy Bo fished his wallet out of his pocket, so I knew my list had been useful. He paid the driver, and I’m pretty sure he included a tip.

  We stepped onto the sidewalk, which was very crowded with people. In fact, it was much more crowded than the sidewalks around Twelfth Street, and as Daddy Bo hurried toward the entrance to the Port Authority building I grabbed the back of his coat so we wouldn’t get separated. Daddy Bo was walking fast, even through the crowd, and when I could finally look at his face I realized that he wasn’t thinking of anything except the bus ride to New Jersey.

  “Daddy Bo?” I said nervously. It was starting to get dark out.

  “Oh, there you are, Pearl. Good. Now, let’s see.” Daddy Bo pulled me into the bus station, which was quite large, and after standing and thinking for a while, with people streaming all around us and sometimes bumping us with their briefcases and shopping bags and not stopping to apologize, he finally said, “Over there, Pearl.”

  He headed for a row of ticket machines, found a free one, and stood in front of it for quite some time, studying the choices and directions and watching the people using the machines on either side of him. Finally a woman from behind us said, “Hello, are you going to use that machine?”

  Daddy Bo turned around with a sort of cross expression on his
face, but then he said in a dignified manner, “I was, but I didn’t realize I’d need a degree from MIT to operate it.”

  I didn’t know what MIT was, and I have a feeling the lady didn’t either, but she smiled nicely and said, “I think these things are complicated too. If you want, you can go to a ticket window and talk to an actual person.” She pointed across the station.

  Daddy Bo smiled back at her and said thank you, and we headed off in a different direction. We made our way through the crowds, which by the way, felt like we were in a rushing river, not that I have ever actually been in one. As we hurried along, I said, “Hey, Daddy Bo? Do you have enough money for our tickets?” I thought he might say no, and that would be the end of the adventure. If he didn’t have enough money to take a cab back to our apartment either, we would be stuck at the bus station, but at least we would still be in New York.

  Daddy Bo didn’t even need to look in his wallet, though. He just said, “Oh, I certainly do.”

  And he did.

  At the window he bought two tickets to New Jersey and found out which gate our bus would leave from. “You only have ten minutes,” added the ticket man.

  “We’d better hurry then, Pearl,” said Daddy Bo.

  Now a very uncomfortable feeling was settling over me. Mom would probably return from the computer store soon, and I realized that Daddy Bo and I hadn’t left her a note. Plus, it would be completely dark by the time we reached Daddy Bo’s old house. And plus, I had noticed that Daddy Bo had only bought one-way tickets to New Jersey. Round-trip tickets would have been better. But maybe he couldn’t afford them.

  “Daddy Bo? How are we going to get home?” I asked as we stepped onto a very long escalator. “Do you have enough money for more tickets?”

  Daddy Bo didn’t answer until we were at the top of the escalator. Then all he said was, “Blimey, Pearl! We will soon away!”

  Which made no sense at all.

  Daddy Bo was looking at his watch now and pulling me along behind him. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a police officer. Even though the first thought that jumped into my mind was what happened after I yelled “Help, police!” in the Museum of Natural History, leading to the third of the Three Bad Things, I thought maybe I should tell the officer what was happening now. This problem seemed a little more serious. There were the one-way tickets and no note for Mom and the fact that I was pretty sure Daddy Bo’s house was empty, since my parents said they had moved his things into storage.

  I tried to imagine how the conversation with the officer would go.

  “Excuse me, ma’am?” I would say. “I’m with my grandfather and he’s taking me to New Jersey but my parents don’t know anything about it.”

  This sounded so bad that I couldn’t even think what the officer might do. All I knew was that Daddy Bo would be in huge, enormous trouble.

  If I had a cell phone I could have called Mom or Dad. But of course I didn’t have one. Neither did Daddy Bo. I felt around in the pockets of my jeans. I didn’t have any money either. Then I thought, Daddy Bo is my grandfather. He loves me. How bad could this be?

  “Here we are!” said Daddy Bo, coming to a stop at last.

  We joined the end of a line of people boarding a bus. Daddy Bo clutched our tickets and smiled as happily as if we were waiting for the Cinderellabration at Disney World. Soon we were climbing on the bus ourselves, and we found two seats together not far from the driver. I looked around at the other passengers, who were talking on their cell phones and sending text messages, and I decided that when I wrote out my birthday list for Mom and Dad, #1 on the list would be: My own cell phone IN CASE OF EMERGENCIES. Did you know I could even use it to call you FROM A BUS? A cell phone is a great tool for STAYING OUT OF TROUBLE.

  I started to think about the rest of my list, since dreaming about presents is always fun, and since Daddy Bo seemed to be very, very far away even though he was sitting right next to me. Once I turned to him and said, “Daddy Bo, where are we?” and he grinned and replied, “We’re in New Jersey, Pearl!”

  First of all, duh. And second of all, why did he sound as if he had just said, “We’re in the magic land of Narnia, Pearl,” instead of what he had actually said?

  I looked out the window. We were passing by some horribly ugly places, full of fuel tanks and smokestacks. Pardon me for saying so, but the bus began to fill up with a very bad smell, which was not coming from anything on the bus, so it must have been coming from those factories, or whatever they were. Daddy Bo didn’t seem to notice either the scenery or the smell, though. He just sat next to me with a little smile on his face. And after a while we pulled into a town that, even in the dark, I could tell was pretty.

  Daddy Bo’s smile widened, the driver began to make stops, letting people off the bus, and soon Daddy Bo rose to his feet and said, “We’re almost there, Pearl.”

  Even though the trip was exciting and I was pleased that I would have something to write about in my diary, I realized that I didn’t want to get off the bus. It seemed like a nice, safe place, with the driver in charge of things. But I had to follow Daddy Bo, and a few minutes later we stepped onto a sidewalk and the bus pulled away, and my grandfather and I were all alone in the darkness.

  I reached for Daddy Bo’s hand.

  “Hmm,” said Daddy Bo, looking around.

  I looked around too. It had been a while since I had visited Daddy Bo. I tried to figure out if we were on his street, but it was hard to tell in the dark. I saw houses and mailboxes and trees and fences, but they could have been houses and mailboxes and trees and fences on any street in any town. I didn’t want to appear stupid, but finally I said, “Is this your street?”

  There was a short pause before Daddy Bo replied, “Well, it must be. Yes, I think so.” And then, “We’ll be at my house in no time. I think.”

  He didn’t sound very confident, but we walked along anyway through the dim light of the streetlamps. After a while Daddy Bo picked up his pace and I had to run to keep up with him. As we passed under streetlamps I could see my breath, and I realized that my hands and my nose were very cold.

  “Are we on the right track?” I asked finally, stuffing my free hand in my pocket.

  “Absolutely.”

  We passed houses with porches and yards and gardens. The houses looked friendly enough, but no one was on the street except Daddy Bo and me, and I got a creepy feeling, like I was a character in a scary movie my parents had told me not to watch. Luckily, even though our trip seemed to take forever, we hadn’t walked more than two more blocks before Daddy Bo said, “Here we are!” and suddenly I recognized his neat white house with the wide front window.

  I didn’t answer him, though. This was because all at once Daddy Bo and I both noticed the same thing: Stuck in the middle of the front yard was a FOR SALE sign, and slapped across it was a sticker that said SOLD.

  Daddy Bo began to cry.

  20

  “Maybe this isn’t my house after all,” said Daddy Bo. He was sniffing, and wiping his eyes with a handkerchief, and I was holding his hand tightly. I really wanted him to stop crying. This was worse than when Lexie had cried while she was babysitting for me. “Maybe in the dark I got confused,” he added.

  “Let’s check,” I said. I tried to remember Daddy Bo’s address from when I used to send him postcards. Number 29 Blake Road. I peered at the mailbox at the end of the driveway. In the light from one of the streetlamps I could plainly see the silver 29 on the side of the box. “Okay, well, it is your hou—”

  But Daddy Bo wasn’t listening to me. He began talking again before I had finished my sentence. “How can I come home if my house has been sold?”

  I gazed up at my grandfather. Mom and Dad had been talking about finding a new home for Daddy Bo since the moment Dad had come back from visiting him in the hospital, which was way before Halloween. How could Daddy Bo think he would be moving here again?

  Then I remembered all the things Daddy Bo had been forgetting lately
, like how to play Sorry! and what his chin flap was for and that he needed to wear shoes when leaving the apartment. So maybe he’d forgotten about the conversations with my parents. Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to believe that he couldn’t come home again. Not even for a visit.

  I realized that if the house had been sold, all Daddy Bo could do now was stand in the dark and look at it. He couldn’t go inside, even though it had been his home for more than forty years.

  What do you know, Daddy Bo interrupted those exact thoughts to say, “Well, we can still get inside. I’ll just use the spare key.”

  “What? We’re going inside? What spare key?” I was completely startled, and a little frightened. “Daddy Bo, we can’t go inside if it’s been sold. That means the house belongs to someone else now. I think we would be trespassing.”

  In my mind I saw a cartoon hillbilly with wild hair and whiskers on his chin nailing a falling-apart wooden NO TRESPASSING sign to a dead tree. A vulture was sitting in the tree, and I could hear the hammer banging and see the furious expression on the hillbilly’s face, which plainly said that if anyone ignored the sign he would come after the trespasser with a sledgehammer and maybe an anvil.

  “How can you trespass on your own property?” was Daddy Bo’s reply.

  “But it isn’t your property. Anymore.” I said this breathlessly because once again I was running to keep up with Daddy Bo. For an old person who had recently had an accident and hurt himself, he could move awfully fast. “Where are you going?”

  “To get the key.” Daddy Bo said this as if I had just asked him something ridiculous like what my own name was.

  “But we can’t go inside!” I was starting to feel panicky now. Still, I followed Daddy Bo around to the back of the house. I didn’t want to be left alone in the dark.

  Daddy Bo stepped onto the back stoop and reached up to feel along the ledge above the door. “Huh,” he said after a few moments. He moved over and felt along the other end of the ledge. “Where is it?”