Annie Pitts, Burger Kid

by Diane deGroat

  “They wouldn’t do that,” I said, but I wasn’t really sure. I stood there thinking about whether I would put my mouth on a hamburger that two hundred other people had already put their mouths on, while Matthew looked around the dining room.

  “Who else is coming?” he asked.

  “My aunt Lil and my cousin, Mercedes.”

  “You have a cousin named after a car?”

  “I think she was named after a Roman goddess.”

  “I was named after a saint,” Matthew said.

  “Which one?”

  “Saint Matthew, stupid!”

  I could see that this polite conversation had taken a turn for the worse, and I wished Mercedes-the-Roman-goddess would hurry up and get here.

  As if on cue, the doorbell rang. “Finally,” I said, a little too loudly to be polite. I pressed the door buzzer to let them in. Grandma heard the bell and came into the living room, and we all stood around the doorway waiting for the last of our guests to come up the stairs. Aunt Lil came in first. “I’m so sorry we’re late, Mother. We had a dreadful time driving through this dreadful weather!”

  Grandma laughed. “Well, we’re dreadfully glad that you made it. We were getting worried.” She hugged Aunt Lil, then said, “And where’s my darling granddaughter?”

  A girl appeared in the doorway. She had Mercedes’s face, but unlike my cousin, she wore really sloppy clothes—torn jeans, a floppy hat, an old army coat … and a nose ring.

  Okay. So maybe Matthew’s body wasn’t really taken over by aliens, but I’m sure they got Mercedes! Was I the only one who noticed these things?

  Aunt Lil gave a heavy sigh, looked at the ceiling, and with a freshly manicured hand, she lifted the floppy hat. And that’s when we saw IT. Not only did the aliens dress my cousin in messy clothes and put a ring in her nose, but they shaved her head.

  I, Annie Pitts, had a bald cousin.

  CHAPTER SIX

  So there we were, staring at my bald cousin with the ring in her nose and a grin on her face. She was obviously enjoying everybody’s reaction.

  “She’s going through a phase …,”Aunt Lil explained. Actually, Mercedes looked like she had been through a lawn mower.

  But Grandma gave her a hug anyway and said, “I think it looks great, honey. Sometimes we need a change from the ordinary.” This, of course, was coming from a woman who dyes her hair neon orange.

  I was about to give my opinion on what I thought of bald teenagers when Aunt Lil interrupted. “Oh, before I forget—there’s a turkey downstairs in the hallway.”

  “A turkey?” Mom and Grandma said in unison.

  “Yes—it’s all wrapped up in lovely pink plastic. Did you order from the gourmet shop like I suggested? I know how hard it is to make a really moist turkey….”

  “I’ll go take a look,” Grandma said. Of course she was looking at me when she said it.

  Meanwhile, Matthew had been staring at Mercedes ever since she walked through the door.

  He said, “You look like that lady from the Star Trek movie. You know—the one from that weird planet.”

  Matthew didn’t disappoint me. He said the stupidest thing he could have said to Mercedes-the-Bald.

  I expected her to tell Matthew to bug off, but instead she said, “You like Star Trek, too? I’ve seen every movie and every TV show a zillion times.”

  “Me, too!” Matthew said.

  Okay—they weren’t exactly annoying each other yet, but there was still time.

  Grandma appeared at the door with a fully cooked, pink plastic-wrapped turkey. “Compliments of Miss Goshengepfeffer,” she announced, holding up a card. “Apparently, your teacher feels that no one should have to eat hamburgers for Thanksgiving, Annie.”

  I groaned. “So what’s wrong with hamburgers?” I said to no one in particular. “Is it some kind of law that you have to have a turkey on Thanksgiving? I’d rather have a hamburger!”

  “I wouldn’t,” Mercedes said. “I don’t even want turkey. I’m a vegetarian.”

  This was Matthew’s chance to say something really stupid, like eating too many vegetables can make your hair fall out. But he listened politely as Mercedes explained how she doesn’t believe in eating anything that has a face.

  This was getting weird.

  “Dinner’s ready,” Mom called.

  I was ready for Plan B. I rushed into the dining room first.

  “I’ll sit here,” I said, grabbing the middle chair on my side of the table. “Matthew and Mercedes can sit over there.” I pointed to the two chairs opposite me and everyone sat down.

  The dinner started off quite peacefully. There was the usual Thanksgiving conversation.

  “Everything looks so delicious.”

  “Does everyone have drinks?”

  Of course, I politely joined the conversation. “I made the pumpkin pie,” I said proudly.

  “Nobody really likes pumpkin pie,” said Matthew-the-Kid-Who-Knows-Everything. “You only made it because you’re supposed to on Thanksgiving. Like turkey.”

  I wanted to say something back, but Mom was looking right at me, giving me her Don’t-Even-Think-About-It look. I started eating instead. I started on my plateful of turkey when I felt something in my hair. Aunt Lil was petting my head like I was a poodle or something.

  “Such beautiful red hair.” She sighed. “Mercedes used to have beautiful red hair.…”

  “Uh, it’ll grow back,” I said, pulling my head away from her hand.

  “Yes. Someday.…” she said, looking off into space.

  “Dark or white?” Mrs. McGill said, poking me with a platter full of turkey.

  “Uh—no thanks,” I answered. “I still have some.”

  “Have more,” she said, dumping another helping onto my plate. I didn’t stop her because I was busy trying to catch some of the conversation between Matthew and Mercedes.

  “I don’t really look like this,” Matthew explained. “A tree fell on my house and all my clothes got wet. Except for this suit. Do you have to shave your head every day?”

  Good, I thought. Matthew was making a pest of himself.

  But Mercedes didn’t seem annoyed. She said, “Sometimes I let it grow in for a week. Then it gets all fuzzy. Did a tree really fall on your house?”

  I felt something on my shoulder. Aunt Lil was rubbing my sleeve. “I remember this dress,” she said sadly. “Mercedes looked lovely in it.…”

  I was scarfing down more turkey, still trying to hear across the table. “Can I feel it?” Matthew asked. I couldn’t believe he wanted to touch a bald head.

  “Sure,” Mercedes said. “Everybody wants to.”

  “There’s some whiskers over here.”

  “I guess I missed a spot this morning.”

  Aunt Lil was still babbling. “She wore this dress on her ninth birthday. All the girls wore white gloves to the party. Did I give you the gloves with the dress, Annie?”

  “Um—I don’t remember,” I said, staring at Matthew and Mercedes. They were having a very nice conversation. It was a little on the gross side—I mean—talking about my cousin’s whiskers and all. But they seemed to be having a good time.

  “What happens when you have to blow your nose?” Matthew asked with great interest. “Do the boogers get all over the earring—I mean nose ring?”

  “No. It’s not really in the way.”

  “Who wants more turkey?” Grandma said, bringing in another platter. “Matthew?”

  Matthew didn’t answer. He was staring up close and personal at Mercedes’s nose ring. “Did it hurt when you got it pierced?”

  “A little. They spray some stuff on to numb it first. You should get an earring, Matthew. It looks cool on guys.”

  “Annie needs some more turkey over here,” Mrs. McGill said when the platter came around again. I was so busy listening that I didn’t realize I was stuffing myself with everything Mrs. McGill put on my plate. I think I had four helpings of turkey, but I lost count.

  �
�Mercedes used to eat turkey,” Aunt Lil said. “She used to have a full head of hair, too. Just like yours, Annie. But she wore it up like this.”

  She grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled it back with a jerk. The fork, which was about to enter my mouth, flew forward and a glob of cranberry sauce landed on Matthew’s newly dry-cleaned jacket. To my surprise, he didn’t even notice the wet little blob that was stuck to his lapel. He just kept right on talking.

  I don’t think Matthew has ever said that many sentences to me in his whole life. But to Mercedes he said things like, “Did you ever see the Star Trek episode with the Tribbles? It was my favorite.”

  Of course she answered, “Mine, too.…”

  Mrs. McGill interrupted my staring and said, “You’re such a good eater, Annie. With Matthew, it’s just pick, pick, pick. Even when he was a baby, he would just pick, pick, pick.…”

  I really didn’t want to hear about Matthew’s personal eating habits. What I wanted was to be part of what was happening on the other side of the table. Mercedes was being really nice, so was Matthew. Why wouldn’t they talk to me, too? I was feeling left out. I decided I would just have to join the conversation myself. I could try out some of the new words that I had memorized from my Learn-a-Word-a-Day calendar. That would surely impress them.

  “So, Mercedes,” I said loudly. “How long have you been un-carnivorous?”

  She chuckled and answered, “I’ve been a vegetarian for almost a year now. I don’t eat meat or poultry, but sometimes I do eat fish.” She looked at my fully loaded plate and added, “But I see that you are quite a carnivore yourself!”

  “Well,” I said. “It’s an enigma to me how somebody couldn’t like hamburgers. I don’t find them unsavory at all. In fact, I plan to be on a Burger Barn poster. I’m going to audition tomorrow, because I am so photogenic.”

  Before she could respond to my impressive statement, Matthew barged in. “I think you should try out for the poster, Mercedes. They might want to use an interesting-looking person like you.”

  Mercedes smiled and said, “I don’t want to be in a hamburger ad, Matthew. I’m a vegetarian! But you should do it. You have an interesting face.”

  Matthew blushed and I just about gagged. Then Mrs. McGill said, “I told Matthew he should try out because he’s so handsome. But he didn’t want to.”

  “Maybe I will,” he said.

  That was the last straw. I blurted out, “Well, if you do audition, you’d better go after me, because you’ll break the camera with that ugly thing you call a face.”

  “Annie!” my mother said sternly. “Matthew is a guest in our home.”

  “I was making conversation,” I said. I suppose I could have said something more polite, but I was mad at Matthew. I just wasn’t sure why.

  I thought about heaving another spoonful of cranberry sauce in Matthew’s direction, but my mother would probably notice something like that and say I was doing it on purpose. Even if I was.

  The best way to do it would be to start with something small—say a pea. Yes, a petite pea flung by a fork could go a long way. In fact, it could go right up Matthew’s nostril, if I aimed just right.

  I carefully placed one small pea on the end of my fork, checked to make sure my mother wasn’t looking, and gave it a snap. The pea didn’t go anywhere, but my fork slammed against my glass of cider, and the cider spilled into my lap. All over Ugly Dress. Matthew burst out laughing.

  Aunt Lil burst out crying.

  Things were going from bad to worse.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I ran to my room and slammed the door. I dropped Ugly Dress on the floor and stood in front of the closet trying to figure out what to wear. Should I get dressed up like Matthew, or should I put on sloppy clothes like Mercedes? I didn’t really care.

  Someone knocked on the door. “Annie, can I come in?” It was Grandma.

  I opened the door a crack and she slid in. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “But that stupid dress is a wreck. Actually that’s the best thing that happened to me today.” I kicked Ugly Dress into the back corner of my closet. Then I said, “I suppose now I’m going to get Mercedes’s ripped-up pants when she outgrows them. Why is she wearing that outfit anyway? And why is she being so nice to Matthew?”

  “Because Matthew is nice to her,” Grandma said.

  “He hates me,” I said. “And I don’t like him, either.”

  Grandma meanwhile noticed my kitten calendar. She pointed to November 18. “Hmmm,” she said. “It looks like you had a date with Matthew—does that say Matthew—last Saturday. Did you like him then?”

  I forgot about the calendar. “Of course not,” I answered. I picked up the marker and scribbled all over the November 18 square.

  “I wrote that just so Mercedes would think I was an interesting person. I wanted her to like me.”

  “What makes you think she doesn’t like you?” Grandma asked. “All you had to do was be a little nicer to Matthew and things would have been fine.”

  “Why should I be nice to him? He’s always bothering me in school.”

  “That means he likes you,” she said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t bother with you at all.”

  I changed the subject and asked, “Do you really like Mercedes’s bald head? I think it’s gross.”

  Grandma pulled out some jeans from my dresser drawer and handed them to me. “It’s just your cousin’s way of expressing herself. Some people shave their heads; others fling peas across the table.”

  “I was aiming for Matthew’s nostril,” I explained. “I missed.” I put on the jeans and a sweater that Grandma picked out for me, but I wasn’t anxious to get back to dinner. I was so full that I even had trouble zipping my pants, but Grandma said she could use some dessert.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. Except for my hair, I looked pretty ordinary. Tomorrow, I’d have to fix myself up somehow. I asked Grandma, “What do you think I should wear for the audition tomorrow? I want to get the judges’ attention.”

  “Maybe you could shave your head.” Grandma said, half joking. She stood behind me in the mirror and pulled my hair off my face to see how I’d look.

  I made a face. “I don’t think so,” I said.

  She laughed and said, “How about a nose ring?”

  I groaned.

  “Just a minute,” Grandma said. She went to her room and came back with a folded sheet of paper.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  She waved the paper with a flourish and said, “You want to get attention? How about a tattoo?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. “What are you doing with tattoos?”

  “It’s another one of my garage sale treasures,” she said, opening up the sheet. “It’s okay. They’re temporary. Here, pick one.”

  I looked over the tattoos—there were some roses, a skull, several dragons, butterflies, a Tasmanian devil, and a cow.

  “Are you sure they come off?”

  “Positive.”

  I picked the cow because it looked a lot like the cow that the Burger Barn uses in its ad.

  We walked across the hall to the bathroom and Grandma wet one of the disposable paper towels that my mother put out for Aunt Lil, so she wouldn’t have to touch our regular ones.

  “Where do you want it?” she asked.

  “How about right here?” I pointed to my cheek.

  She placed the tattoo on my cheek, then dabbed it with the wet towel.

  When it was all soaked, she pulled off the backing and said, “Ta-da! You have a cow on your face. That’ll get their attention.”

  It certainly got my mother’s attention when we walked back into the dining room. “A tattoo! Annie! Mother! What have you done!”

  “You never said I couldn’t get a tattoo,” I said, surprised at her reaction. “You said I couldn’t get my ears pierced or wear fake fingernails. You never mentioned anything about a tattoo.”

  Meanwhile, Mat
thew was stuffing his face with Grandma’s apple pie, the chocolate cake that Aunt Lil had brought, and some chocolate pecan pie that his mother had picked up at the bakery. I noticed that he didn’t touch any of the pumpkin pie that I had made.

  I sat down, but I didn’t want any dessert. I didn’t even want to look at food anymore. I had eaten so much turkey, it felt like the whole fifteen-pound Butterball was just lying there in my stomach.

  Grandma was busy explaining to Mom that the tattoo was removable, while I was busy holding my stomach.

  Mrs. McGill turned to me and asked, “Are you okay, Annie?” I noticed she was eating my pumpkin pie, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

  “She looks a little green,” Aunt Lil said, feeling my forehead.

  Mom stopped her tattoo discussion long enough to give me her Are-You-Going-to-Embarrass-Me look. She said, “Do you have a problem, Annie?”

  “I don’t feel so good,” I said weakly.

  “Are you gonna barf?” Matthew-the-Pumpkin-Pie-Hater asked loudly.

  “No,” I said weakly. Then I changed my mind.

  I made it to the bathroom just in time, but I swore that I, Annie Pitts, would never, ever, eat turkey again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  By Friday morning the rain had stopped and I was feeling much better. But every time I thought about that turkey, I felt a little queasy. At my request Mom had hidden any leftovers in the back of the refrigerator. She didn’t even make her famous turkey soup like she usually does the day after Thanksgiving. The smell alone would’ve killed me.

  When I came into the kitchen, Mom was on the phone and Grandma was fixing me breakfast—oatmeal-on-a-bun.

  “Good morning,” Grandma said. “Feeling better?”

  “A little. Is my cow still on?”

  “Still there.”

  “Good,” I said, taking a small bite of the bun. “I want it to show when I get my picture taken.”

  Mom hung up the phone and said, “Matthew’s going with you and Grandma to the mall this morning.”