Say What

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Say What?

  MARGARET PETERSON HADDIX

  Mark Siegel

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  New York London Toronto Sydney

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2004 by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Illustrations copyright © 2004 by James Bernardin

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Book design by Mark Siegel

  The text for this book is set in Utopia.

  The illustrations for this book are rendered in charcoal pencil on paper.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Haddix, Margaret Peterson.

  Say what? / Margaret Peterson Haddix

  p. cm.

  Summary: When their parents begin saying the wrong thing every time six-year-old Sukie and her older brothers misbehave, the children discover that it is a plot and fight back with their own wrong phrases.

  ISBN 0-689-86255-5 (Hardcover)

  eISBN 978-1-439-10675-4

  ISBN 978-0-689-86255-7

  [1. Behavior—Fiction. 2. Parenting—Fiction. 3. English language—Terms and phrases—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H1164 Say 2004

  [Fic]—dc21 2002155512

  For my own coconspirators, Bob, John, and Janet; and my parents, who put up with us; but most of all, for Meredith and Connor

  With thanks to Janis Shannon and Barbara Munn for their expert advice

  CHAPTER 1

  SUKIE ROSE ROBINSON was running through the living room with a big plastic tub of glitter in each hand.

  All right, Sukie knew she was doing something wrong. She was only six years old, but Mom and Dad had already told her at least ten billion times, “No running in the house. This isn’t a playground.” And they’d told her at least five billion times, “You have to ask before you use glitter. And only at the kitchen table.”

  But Sukie wasn’t trying to be bad. She was just in a hurry. She’d been making tissue-paper flowers in her room, and she’d thought of a cool way to put glitter on all the petals. She didn’t have time to hunt up Mom or Dad and ask permission, or to move all her flowers to the kitchen. She had to get the glitter before she forgot her great idea—

  Oh, no! Dad saw her!

  Busted!

  Dad was walking from the kitchen to the family room, a coffee cup in his hand. His eyebrows went up when his eyes met Sukie’s. Sukie tried to slow down, to make it look like she’d just been strolling along, no faster than a snail. She tried to hide the tubs of glitter behind her back, real fast. But her shoulders were bent forward, her legs were kicked straight out. It wasn’t like she could just stop. She braced herself for the usual, “Sukie! How many times have we told you not to run in the house? And what’s that in your hands?”

  But instead, Dad frowned at her and said, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge too?”

  Huh?

  Confused, Sukie skidded to a halt. The two tubs of glitter crashed into each other behind her back. Sukie tried to hold her hands steady, but the tubs tilted and the lids slipped off. The tops on the individual shakers of glitter inside the tubs must have been loose. Sukie looked over her shoulder and saw a whole waterfall of green and gold and red and purple and orange glitter streaming down to the carpet.

  Sukie hunched over. Now Dad was really going to yell. “What do you think you’re doing, young lady?” he was going to say. “Why do you have glitter in the living room? Do you know how long it’s going to take you to clean that up?”

  But Dad didn’t yell. Not right away.

  Sukie looked up at him, waiting.

  Dad was taking a deep breath. Then he looked her straight in the eye and said, “Don’t pick your nose. That’s a gross habit.”

  And then he walked on, into the family room, sipping his coffee.

  Sukie hadn’t been picking her nose. Who would pick their nose with their hands full of glitter?

  Sukie stared after Dad. She dropped the tubs of glitter, and even more spilled out on the carpet. Sukie stepped over it and peeked in at Dad in the family room. He was reading the newspaper and drinking his coffee, just like nothing had happened.

  Sukie tiptoed back to the living room. She tugged and pulled and shoved the rocking chair over the pile of glitter on the carpet. Then she hid the glitter tubs under the couch. She didn’t feel like making glitter-flowers anymore.

  This was too weird. What was wrong with Dad?

  CHAPTER 2

  NOBODY SAID ANYTHING about glitter at dinner. But something else strange happened.

  They were having meat loaf and peas. Sukie hated peas. Really, peas didn’t taste any worse than any other vegetable. But they were too hard to eat.

  Her oldest brother, Brian, who was nine, had told her, “Just use your spoon like a shovel. Scoop them up.” But if Sukie did that, one or two of the peas always escaped and rolled off her plate, and then Mom or Dad yelled at her. One time when they’d had company Sukie had even shot a pea into Mr. Harbinger’s lap. Then when Sukie started laughing, peas she hadn’t swallowed yet had dropped out of her mouth and—

  Well, she’d gotten into a lot of trouble for that one.

  Sukie’s other brother, Reed, who was seven, had given her different advice for eating peas.

  “Just stab them right in the eye,” he’d said. “Pretend your fork’s a sword, see, and the peas are dragons you’ve got to kill, and you’re a famous knight, and the peas kind of squeal a little when they die….”

  Sukie didn’t mind playing with her food. But she just couldn’t see spending her whole life stabbing one pea at a time, whether they squealed or not.

  Really, if Sukie were in charge of the whole wide world, she’d pass a law that said peas were finger food, like potato chips or carrots, and people had to eat them with their hands. If anyone even picked up a fork or a spoon around a pea—boom!—Sukie would have them thrown in jail.

  But Sukie would never be in charge of the whole wide world. Not with Brian and Reed and Mom and Dad telling her what to do.

  Tonight she bent down really low beside her plate and cupped her left hand so she could hide her right hand grabbing up the peas and sticking them in her mouth.

  But Mom saw. Of course Mom saw.

  “Sukie!”

  Sukie thought, It’s not my fault my left hand’s not big enough to hide what my right hand’s doing.

  But Mom didn’t yell, “Don’t eat with your fingers!” Instead, she scolded, “You’ll put an eye out with that thing!”

  “Huh?” Sukie said.

  And this time she really wanted Mom to give her the whole lecture, about how table manners were important, and how they showed respect for the other people eating with her, and how could Mom and Dad let Sukie grow up eating like she lived in a barn? It would almost make Sukie feel good to be yelled at like that.

  But Mom just frowned at her the same way Dad had, and said, “Lying is not acceptable in this household, young lady.”

  Sukie dropped her peas and scrunched down
on her seat. This wasn’t just weird. This was scary. This was too scary for a six-year-old to handle all by herself. She kicked Brian under the table. She needed his help.

  Quit that!” Brian snarled. “Mo-om! Sukie’s kicking me!”

  All right, Sukie thought. Now. Now Mom would say, “Sukie, quit kicking Brian. Brian, don’t tattle on your sister.” And if she didn’t, Brian would notice, and he would say, “Whoa, Mom. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Waste not, want not,” Mom said, and took a bite of meat loaf.

  Brian didn’t even seem to hear Mom. He just went right back to talking to Reed about how PlayStations were better than Nintendos.

  “Um, Mom,” Sukie said, “do you feel okay?”

  “Sure,” Mom said. “Would you pass the peas, please?”

  Well, that proved that Mom still knew how to say something that made sense. Or maybe not. Who in their right mind would ask for peas?

  CHAPTER 3

  BRIAN DIDN’T SEE ANY REASON why he had to have a younger sister. So when Sukie knocked on his door after dinner and yelled, “Brian, let me in! I’ve got to talk to you!” he said what he always said: “Go away!”

  Every time he said that, Sukie would get her feelings all hurt, and then she’d go crying to Mom or Dad, and then Mom or Dad would come and give him some big lecture about how Sukie was the only sister he had, and she looked up to him, and someday when he was a grown-up, he’d appreciate her….

  Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It went on forever.

  But it was still worth getting that lecture if it meant he could have five more minutes without Sukie bugging him. Five minutes was how long it usually took her to go tattle to Mom and Dad. He knew. He’d timed it.

  “Go away!” he yelled again, just in case Sukie hadn’t heard him. He sat down on his bed and tossed a miniature basketball at the plastic hoop he’d rigged up over his door. This was a good way to work on his close-angle shots since his bed was right beside the door.

  “No, listen. I’ve got to tell you something. It’s important,” Sukie said.

  Important to Sukie was something like, “Look, I braided this Barbie’s hair, and this other Barbie’s hair is still straight down. Don’t you think the braided one looks better?” Brian leaned back on his bed to catch his basketball. It bounced perfectly into his hands. He threw it again.

  “I don’t care!” he yelled back to Sukie. “I said, ‘Go away.’”

  “No!” Sukie said. “You have to listen to me!”

  Brian caught his basketball and threw it again. He couldn’t hear Sukie’s footsteps retreating from his door yet.

  He rolled forward on the bed, unlocked the door and poked his face out to glare at Sukie. That always worked.

  The basketball hit him smack on the back of his head. Sukie giggled. Brian glared harder, but she still didn’t budge.

  Brian relaxed his glaring muscles.

  “Isn’t it time for you to run off and go tattle to Mom and Dad?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” Sukie said. “Something’s wrong with them. Mom and Dad. They’re not acting normal.”

  “Well, sure. They’re grown-ups. You can’t expect grown-ups to act normal.”

  “But they’re acting really, really weird. Haven’t you noticed?” Sukie asked. She sounded scared.

  Brian thought for a minute. He’d seen Dad outside mowing the yard that morning, wearing orange-and-brown plaid shorts. He’d heard Mom talking back to some chef on TV—“No, wait, how much tarragon did you use?”—like she really thought the chef could hear her.

  “No weirder than usual,” Brian said, shrugging. It took a lot of talent to shrug while lying on a bed and leaning your head halfway out the door. It took even more talent to look dignified while shrugging and lying down and leaning out a door. Brian decided he’d better quit while he was ahead. He scrambled off his bed and stood up. He grabbed the doorknob.

  “So now you’ve talked to me,” he told Sukie. “Now scram.”

  He started to shut the door, but Sukie was really quick and stuck her foot between the door and the doorframe. Brian would never have told her, but he was kind of impressed. He’d never seen anybody do that before except on TV detective shows.

  “We’ve got to have an all-kid meeting,” Sukie said.

  Whoa. This was serious. The last time they’d had an all-kid meeting was when their dog died. Brian narrowed his eyes.

  “I’m the only one who can call an all-kid meeting,” he said, just in case Sukie was getting any big ideas.

  “I know,” Sukie said. “That’s why I’m asking you to call one.”

  She smiled up at him sweetly, just like she smiled at Mom and Dad when she wanted ice cream or candy or the first choice of what ride to go on when they went to an amusement park. Mom and Dad always fell for it, but he wasn’t going to. At least, not without making her suffer first.

  “What’ll you give me?” he asked.

  “My allowance for the next two weeks,” Sukie said. “And I’ll make your bed for you every day this month.”

  Okay, she was serious. She was even scaring Brian a little bit.

  “All right,” Brian said. “Fine. Go tell Reed I said for him to come in here now.”

  She whirled around and left so quickly he thought he’d messed up. The way she was acting, she probably would have given him her whole year’s worth of allowance.

  CHAPTER 4

  REED WAS GETTING READY for the Greatest Battle in the Universe on his bedroom floor. Batman, Superman, Spider-Man and all his McDonald’s Happy Meal knights were on one side. Cubeman, his old Fisher-Price dragon, and every action figure he’d ever gotten from Burger King or Wendy’s were on the other side. He was trying to figure out if some of the Burger King guys might switch sides, when suddenly Sukie was there shouting right in his ear, “BRIAN SAYS WE HAVE TO HAVE A KID MEETING IN HIS ROOM! RIGHT NOW!”

  Reed blinked at his little sister.

  “You don’t have to yell,” he said.

  “Yes, I do,” Sukie said. “You didn’t hear me the first six times.”

  Reed shrugged. Now she sounded like Mom and Dad. They yelled at him all the time, “Reed, pay attention!” “Reed, stop daydreaming!” “Reed, weren’t you listening?”

  Reed figured, if real life was ever interesting enough, he’d be glad to pay attention. Until then—well, what if the Wendy’s action figures were the traitors, instead of the Burger King ones? He started to move one gruesome-faced plastic figure to the other side of the room.

  “REED!” Sukie yelled.

  “Okay!” Reed said, reluctantly getting up. He glared sternly at Cubeman. “Now don’t start fighting until I get back, you hear?”

  He followed Sukie down the hall.

  CHAPTER 5

  BRIAN SAT ON HIS BED cross-legged, keeping his back ramrod straight, like a king. He made Reed and Sukie sit on the floor in front of him. They were lucky he was even letting them in his room.

  “This had better be good,” Reed said. “And quick. Or else the Greatest Battle in the Universe isn’t going to start on time.”

  Brian ignored him.

  “The all-kid meeting will now come to order,” he said. “You there. Did you have something to report?”

  Sukie stood up.

  “You know my name,” she complained. “Why don’t you use it instead of calling me ‘you there’?”

  Brian ignored that comment too.

  “State your business,” Brian said, just like he’d seen a king do one time on TV. Really, all he needed was a crown.

  Sukie rolled her eyes.

  “It’s like I told you. Mom and Dad are acting weird. They keep saying the wrong things. Dad saw me running in the house and he said, ‘If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge?’ and then I spilled a little glitter—well, a lot of glitter—and he said, ‘Don’t pick your nose,’ and I wasn’t. My hands weren’t even anywhere close to my nose. They we
re practically in another room from my nose.”

  Her voice was getting higher and higher, like she was panicking.

  “And then at dinner,” Sukie continued, “I was eating my peas with my fingers—”

  “After picking your nose?” Brian couldn’t help interrupting.

  “I told you, I didn’t pick my nose!”

  “Never? Never ever in your entire life?” Brian challenged, forgetting he was trying to act haughty and regal, like a king. “Cross your heart and hope to die, stick a needle in your eye?”

  “Well, not today, I mean. Not before dinner.” Sukie looked down guiltily. “Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about. It’s Mom and Dad. I was eating my peas with my fingers and Mom didn’t yell at me the right way. She said, ‘You could put an eye out with that thing,’ and that’s just wrong, that’s the wrong thing to say, peas aren’t pointy at all—”

  “Maybe she meant you could’ve poked your eye out when you were picking your nose,” Reed said. “You could, I bet. If you missed your nose and you poked your finger in your eye, and it was going really fast, and your fingernail was really long, like that guy in the Guinness Book of World Records, or maybe not quite that long, because his fingernails curl around. You’d need your fingernails to be really, really sharp and pointy—”

  “I WASN’T PICKING MY NOSE! I WAS EATING PEAS!” Sukie yelled.

  Brian looked at Reed and Reed looked at Brian. Brian knew that his brother was thinking the exact same thing he was: In a minute, Sukie was going to start crying. And then Mom and Dad would be in here yelling at him and Reed, and it just wouldn’t be fair.

  “Okay, okay,” Brian said quickly. “Let the record show that no nose picking took place at dinner.” He liked “Let the record show” even though no one was taking notes. He’d heard a judge say that on TV once. Maybe it’d be better to be a judge instead of a king. Kings had to wear girly-looking robes. And those crowns might be painful. Brian sat up even straighter and tried to look serious and somber, like a TV judge. “The witness may sit down,” he said sternly to Sukie.