For the entire Stern-Stuart clan. Otherwise known as my family.—AJS
Thanks as always to everyone at Penguin: Francesco Sedita, Bonnie Bader, Scottie Bowditch, and my editor, Jordan Hamessley, and also, of course, to Doreen Mulryan Marts, who draws Frannie just like I’d pictured her. Your support and enthusiasm is unparalleled! To Julie Barer, who negotiates like nobody’s business and to my family and friends for support. Special thanks go to Esther and Richard Eder in whose house I wrote this and to Frances Eder whose daily word count check-ins became my favorite time of day. Thanks to Luke Eder for introducing me to the island of Vinalhaven, where I wrote this book. And of course to my nieces and nephews: Maisie, Mia, Lili, Adam, and Nathan, without whom I’d have lost touch long ago with the band and beauty of kid linguistics.—AJS
GROSSET & DUNLAP
Published by the Penguin Group
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Text copyright © 2012 by AJ Stern. Illustrations copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012009702
ISBN 978-1-101-62086-1
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
What's your favorite job for Frannie?
My best friend Elliott’s mom was getting married in two weeks. I was going to be the flower girl. If you don’t already know about this job, it’s very important, indeed. It was one of the best jobs I’ve ever been offered. It means you’re in charge of all the flowers! That’s nearly as important as being the actual bride, and that is not an opinion.
Even though I am not a very flowerish type of person, I am a very in-chargish type of person. This is a for instance of why I couldn’t wait for the in-chargish part of things to start. And, although it was the first wedding I’d ever been to, I already knew it would be the best wedding I’d ever been to.
Elliott hadn’t been to a wedding, either, and until this morning, he had been excited, too. My mom and I picked him up on the way to school. As soon as he got in the car, I knew something was wrong. He was very pale and had the most worrified expression on his face. He scooted over and whispered to me, “George wants to talk to me after school!” His eyeballs were very nervousing.
George was going to be Elliott’s stepfather. Elliott is my best friend in the world, so I know a lot of very important things about him. One very important thing is he does not like to wait for things to happen. He just wants them to happen. So if someone says they need to talk to him later, his eyeballs begin to nervousify. This is because in the time between, Elliott worries his entire face off. I guess my mom knows this, too, because she looked in the rearview mirror at him and scooched a very small smile up on her face. I’m really smart about scooched-up, very small smile faces.
“What do you think George wants to talk to me about?” Elliott whisper-asked.
“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s anything bad,” I told him.
“Shhh!” he said, and then nudged his chin toward my mom. He didn’t want her to hear any of this. Just in case it turned out to be something very tragical.
“Maybe he wants to make you a flower boy,” I suggested.
Elliott crunkled his face up at this. I did not appreciate this crunkle because I was going to be a flower girl! I was very offendified!
“What if he says I’m not invited to the wedding?!”
“Why in the worldwide of America would he say that?” I asked.
Elliott shrugged.
When we got to school, we jumped out of the car and waved good-bye to my mom. Elliott was so distractified, he walked down the wrong hall!
In science he was my lab partner. We were doing experiments about floating eggs. Everyone had two bowls of warm water in front of them.
“You put in two tablespoons of salt, and I’ll stir it,” I told him, pointing to one of the bowls.
“What if George changed his mind and doesn’t want to marry my mom anymore?” Elliott asked, sitting down on a stool, holding the empty measuring spoons.
“No, my inside guts are telling me that’s not right,” I told him. I took the spoons from him and scooped out two tablespoons of salt and put them in one of the bowls.
“Then what? What could it be?!” Elliott cried out. Everyone turned to look at him, which was very embarrassifying. His face turned into a pomegranate. That’s how red he was.
“Look, Elliott!” I said. “One egg is floating, and the other egg sank!”
Elliott looked at the eggs, but I could tell his eyeballs were not focused on them at all. He was not easy to distractify when he was already distractified.
“I just don’t know what it could be,” he said.
I didn’t, either, actually and as a matter of fact. But I didn’t think it was bad. If it WAS bad, my inside guts would have told me. My inside guts are very smart about feelings.
“My dad says that it’s a waste of time to worry about things you can’t control,” I told Elliott. My dad is really smart about sayings.
“Why?” Elliott wanted to know.
“Because it’s going to happen one way or the other. Worrying isn’t going to change a thing,” I explained.
“I guess that makes sense,” he said.
“It does indeed and very certainly,” I told him. After all, my dad was the one who said it, and he is never wrong about a saying.
“But I’m still worried!” he told me.
When the end of the day finally got here, Elliott and I went downstairs together. Our mothers were in the hall waiting for us.
“Where’s George?” Elliott asked his mom.
“That’s the hello I get?” His
mom, Julie, asked, pretend-offendified.
“Hi, Mom, where’s George?”
“You’re all coming to our house to do some wedding preparations,” my mom told us.
“George will meet us there. He wants to talk to you,” Elliott’s mom said.
“I know.” Elliott groaned and put his hand on his stomach.
We got in the car and drove to my house. The closer we got, the worse Elliott looked.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” I told him.
“Will you come with me when it happens?” he asked.
I nodded, feeling a lot of pride-itity that he asked. “Indeed and nevertheless, I will,” I told him. That is the most official and grown-up way a person can say yes.
The second we walked through the front door, Elliott flung his head all around the place.
“Where’s George?” he asked.
“He’s coming soon. Don’t worry,” Julie said.
She and my mom went into the living room to look at Julie’s big wedding binder. It was filled with magazine cutouts of wedding cakes and flowers and candles and things. Julie wouldn’t show us a picture of the dress because apparently and nevertheless it’s bad luck to show the dress to anyone before the wedding day. This is a fact I didn’t know about.
A fact I did know about was that I was going to be a flower girl and my mom was going to be a bridesmaid. Even though she had the word bride in her job, she was not getting married. Plus and besides, she was already married to my dad! My dad was going to be a groomsman, and even though he had the word groom in his job, he wasn’t getting married, either. It was all very confusifying, which is a for instance of why kids don’t get married.
Julie and George’s wedding was going to be at an apple orchard. I thought that was a very good idea, indeed. For one thing, it would smell apple-icious. The orchard had a barn part, and that’s where we were going to celebrate after the actual getting married part. My mom’s job was to help Julie with whatever things she needed. My mom is very helpfulish that way.
I stood looking over my mom’s shoulder at the book, while Elliott paced back and forth behind me. He sat down, but was jittering his legs so much, he got back up to pace again.
“Do you know what you two could do while you wait for George?” Julie said to us.
“What?” I wanted to know.
She pointed to a small cardboard box.
“You can make the place cards. You have to print very carefully, though. The list of people is on top of all the place cards. Do you want to do that?” she asked us.
“Yes!” I cried and raced over to the box. Elliott looked out the window, shrugged, and said, “I guess.”
As soon as we opened the box, the doorbell rang and Elliott raced to get it. I got started on the place cards.
“George!” Elliott cried as soon as the door opened.
“What a nice welcome committee,” George said to Elliott. He came in, my mother took his coat, and Elliott stared at him.
“Is there a place where Elliott and I can talk privately?” he asked my smiling mom.
“Of course! How about in the library?” She pointed behind him.
“Perfect. Elliott, may I borrow you for a minute?”
Elliott nodded yes and asked, “Can Frannie come?”
“Frannie will wait right here for you,” he said and went to the library. Elliott followed behind, and I stayed in the living room. Now I was the one who was worrified! Why in the worldwide of America did it need to be private?!
I paced back and forth waiting for them to come out. Then I sat down and jittered my legs. Then I stood up again and paced. Finally, they came out of the room. When I saw Elliott’s face, I knew it was good news. George patted me on the head as he passed me in the living room.
“Well?” I asked Elliott.
“He wants me to be the best man!” he told me.
“WOW!” I said. My stomach got a little bit jealousish. I wanted to be the best girl. I was the best at a lot of things. Not anything I could think of right that second, but the feeling in my guts told me I was right. “That’s very exciting.”
“I know,” he said. Elliott smiled his face all over the place.
When we went back into the living room, Elliott jumped up and down in front of his mom, who was also smiling her face off!
“Guess what?” Elliott practically shouted.
Julie scrunched her face up into her best “hmmmm . . . let me think” face before saying, “I give up! Wait, wait! Are you going to be the BEST MAN?”
“YES!!! How in the world did you even know that?!” Elliott was so surprisified, and Julie laughed and hugged him.
“Because George and I discussed it, and it’s something we didn’t even have to think one second about. I’m thrilled, Elliott. I couldn’t have asked for a better best man.” She gave him the biggest best man squeeze and said, “How about we go out and celebrate?”
That’s when I started jumping up and down, too. “Yay!!!”
“It’d be a good time for us to explain everyone’s role at the wedding, too,” my mom said. She was very practicalish.
Elliott ran to get George, and we put our jackets on and raced out to the car. It was not every single second we got to go out to eat! This was very excitifying, indeed.
While we were sitting down at our table waiting for our french fries, Julie told us how a wedding works.
“First the reverend, George, and Elliott will walk out and stand at the altar. Then the groomsmen and the bridesmaids walk down the aisle. Then the flower girl”—that’s when everyone looked at me and smiled, and I blushed my cheeks off—“and then, me and my father,” Julie said.
“I walk out right BEFORE you do?” I asked.
“That’s right,” she said.
“That is very important, indeed,” I announced.
“It really is. A flower girl is a big job,” my mom said.
“Almost as important as being a bride,” I said, nodding yes at myself.
Julie, George, and my mom laughed. George said, “Well, not quite, but it’s a very big job.”
“Being the best man is also a very important job,” Julie said. We all looked at Elliott, who blushed his face off, too.
“The biggest,” George said. Elliott smiled, but I could see a little bit of worry swim up to his face.
Even if my job wasn’t the biggest, I still liked everything about it. Except for the dress part. Julie had already picked it out, and when she showed me a picture of it, I had to pretendify that I liked it. If a field of flowers exploded all over a dress, that is a for instance of what it looked like. However and nevertheless, although I did not appreciate all the flowers, I did appreciate that I got to walk down an aisle. Even if it was really a grassy, apple orchard aisle. I had to do it very slow, too. Unlike when you are a model, which was a job I once had.
When you’re a model, you have to walk very fastly up and down, and you’re only on the stage for three seconds. Being a model is a very fast job, so I don’t prefer it. I like to be onstage for longer than three seconds. Also flower girls are very important because they come out right before the bride.
The next day, Elliott and I were in the cafeteria eating our lunches, except Elliott had barely even tasted his spaghetti.
“What’s the matter, Elliott?” I asked him.
“Well,” he said slowly. “You know how I’m the best man at the wedding?”
I nodded yes, because it was a scientific fact that I did know.
“The problem is that I don’t know exactly what that means,” he admitted.
It was a very good thing that I was his friend.
“It’s easy,” I told him. “You just have to be the best at everything and make sure nothing goes wrong!”
That�
�s when his eyeballs almost fell into his spaghetti.
“I don’t know how to do that!” he said.
“Sure, you do!” I told him.
“I do?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t know for a scientific fact, but it doesn’t seem so hard to me,” I said.
“But I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be the best at!” Elliott said, getting very frusterated.
This was very trickish. Since I had never been to a wedding before, I wasn’t really sure, either.
“Well, let’s see. There’s the job of best dancer. The job of best aisle walker-downer. The best eater of the cake, the best maker of speeches, the best at not laughing at the wrong times. Also, you have to make sure that nothing goes wrong. That’s part of being the best man.”
Elliott looked a little bit green.
“It’s not a big deal, Elliott. I can help you. You just have to make sure that everyone shows up and that the band remembers all their songs. That the cake is delicious. That the flowers don’t die. That it’s a sunny day. That there are enough seats for everyone. Stuff like that,” I said.
“But I don’t know how to do ANY of that, Frannie! I just don’t know how!!”
Elliott was starting to really freak out now. I could tell because he pushed his plate of spaghetti away.
“I’ll help you!” I offered.
“You will?”
“Yes! I’ll be the wedding planner!” I told him.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Someone who plans weddings!” I answered.
“Do you know how to do that?” he asked me, which was very offendifying!
“Of course I know how to do that! I have planned a hundredteen weddings!” I cried.
“You have?” he asked.
“Well, not in real life, but I could have if a hundredteen people had asked me to,” I explained.
Here Comes the Trouble! (9781101620861) Page 1
