Annie's Life in Lists

by Kristin Mahoney

  3. Go to a slumber party for Amelia’s birthday.

  Three reasons this was a hard choice for me

  1. Fear of saying something dumb at Amelia’s

  2. Distaste for slumber-party games

  3. Confusion over being invited to the party because I still wasn’t sure how much the hostess liked me. But maybe—just maybe—she was softening a little after I saved her from the safety-pin bloodbath.

  Three reasons I decided to go to the party anyway

  1. Mom and Dad chose 2001: A Space Odyssey for their Friday night movie. Snoreburger.

  2. Zora promised me it would be fun.

  3. Zora told me Amelia’s house was awesome.

  Seven things I noticed about Amelia’s house

  1. There are Doritos and sodas in the pantry, and you don’t need to ask permission to have them.

  2. Amelia has a TV in her room.

  3. The bedspread, curtains, and rug in her bedroom all match.

  4. Amelia’s artwork is all framed.

  5. There is a huge oil portrait of Amelia in the living room.

  6. There are two stairwells: one from the foyer to the upstairs hallway, and one from the kitchen to Amelia’s closet.

  7. Amelia’s closet is bigger than my bedroom was in Brooklyn.

  Five guests at Amelia’s sleepover

  1. Me

  2. Zora

  3. Kate

  4. Amelia’s neighbor Kya, who’s a grade behind us in school

  5. Amelia’s cousin Hope, age twelve

  Four reasons I found Hope a little intense

  1. She was amazingly comfortable around Amelia’s parents. I know they are her aunt and uncle, but she talked to them like she was a grown-up too. Like “Aunt Connie, I love your new curtains!” and “Uncle Doug, how is your job?” That sort of thing.

  2. As soon as the adults weren’t around, she cursed. A lot. “Like a sailor,” as my Grandma Elaine would say.

  3. When Kya told her she liked her earrings, she said, “Thank you. They’re real diamonds.”

  4. She said Truth or Dare was boring, and that we should just play Dare.

  Twelve things that happened during our game of Dare

  1. We pulled names out of a hat to see who would dare whom. (“Whom” again, Mr. A!)

  2. I got Kya and dared her to drink a mixture of Sprite, Dr Pepper, and Coke. She did it.

  3. Kya got Amelia and dared her to drink a mixture of milk and orange juice. She did.

  4. Amelia got Kate and dared her to drink the juice of two lemons. Kate squeezed the lemons into a glass and drank the juice.

  5. Kate got Zora and dared her to write something on the bathroom mirror in lipstick. That one would have made me nervous, but Zora just laughed and wrote, “Happy Birthday, Amelia!” in big letters across the whole mirror.

  6. Zora got Hope and dared her to stick her hand in a bowl of ice water for two minutes. Hope rolled her eyes and did it.

  7. Hope got me.

  8. Hope looked at me, tilted her head to the side, and thought for a minute. “I dare you to take something from Doug and Connie’s bedroom and bring it downstairs.”

  9. I thought, Who the heck are Doug and Connie? Then I remembered those were Amelia’s parents’ names.

  10. I said, “Do you think you could give me another dare? I don’t want to wake them up.”

  11. “If you’re quiet, you won’t,” Hope answered. “You seem like you’re pretty good at being quiet.”

  12. I waited for someone to back me up on this being a ridiculous idea. No one did.

  Twenty-five things that happened upstairs at Amelia’s

  1. I crept into the upstairs hallway as quietly as I could.

  2. I saw Amelia’s parents’ bedroom door at the end of the hallway, waiting for me.

  3. About five different scenarios involving scary things hiding behind doors popped into my head.

  4. I looked to my left and noticed Amelia’s bedroom door standing open.

  5. I thought, Do I really have to go into their bedroom? I bet I can find something that belongs to them in Amelia’s room.

  6. I went into Amelia’s room and started quietly looking around, thinking that surely Amelia had borrowed something from her mom—some makeup, maybe, or a book.

  7. I looked on her bookshelf and one title caught my eye. It was A & Z, Grades K to 3.

  8. I took the book down and saw that it was a photo album. It was filled with pictures of Amelia and Zora from kindergarten to—you guessed it—third grade. The pictures were really cute and smiley. I suddenly missed Millie so much that my stomach hurt.

  9. I heard a noise in the doorway. It was Hope. “What are you doing in here?” she hissed. “Your dare was to get something from their room,” she reminded me as she pointed down the hallway.

  10. I quickly put the photo album back on the shelf where I had found it.

  11. I tiptoed down the hall to the master bedroom, where the door was open a little.

  12. Figuring maybe I didn’t have to go the whole way into the room, I slipped my arm inside and started feeling around for something to take.

  13. Crash! I knocked something over.

  14. The smell of roses filled the air.

  15. Someone said, “What the—?” and Amelia’s dad came running to the door, his eyes bleary.

  16. “Annie? Is everything okay?” he asked.

  17. “Yes,” I said. “Well, I just needed to borrow something from your room.”

  18. Just then I saw what I had knocked over. It was a bottle of Amelia’s mother’s perfume, and it was spilling all over the dresser.

  19. Amelia’s dad asked, “What do you need to borrow?”

  20. I quickly righted the perfume bottle and answered, “This. I needed to borrow this.”

  21. Amelia’s dad sighed and said, “Let me guess. Hope put you up to this?”

  22. I looked behind me, and Hope had disappeared. I wondered how he knew.

  23. “Here,” he said, handing me a bottle of lotion instead. “This one won’t spill. Will it do?”

  24. “Yes,” I whispered. “Thank you very much.”

  25. “Good night, Annie,” he said, and he closed the door all the way this time.

  I turned and ran down the stairs, thinking that I had just gotten a new most embarrassing moment.

  Four ways Hope took over the rest of the party

  1. She told all of us where we should put our sleeping bags.

  2. She made a point of saying Amelia should be near the bathroom “so she doesn’t wet the bed.” (At this Amelia looked mortified and said, “Hope, I do NOT wet the bed!” Hope just smirked.)

  3. She announced that we would play Light as a Feather, and that she would be the person leading the chant every time.

  4. She scared us all into staying awake crazy late by saying that the first one to fall asleep would wake up with a Sharpie mustache.

  As it turned out, Hope was the first one to fall asleep. She didn’t seem very concerned that anyone was going to draw on her with Sharpie. And no one did.

  Five things people said about Hope after she fell asleep

  1. Zora: Amelia, why do you let her boss you around so much?

  2. Amelia: It’s not a big deal. She’s my cousin. I like her.

  3. Zora: I don’t think I’d like her very much if I were you. If someone bossed me around that much, I would say something.

  4. Me: It’s not always easy to speak up like that, especially when you think someone’s scary.

  5. Amelia: I’m not scared of her, Annie! Maybe you are. You’re the one who took that stupid dare fr
om her.

  Well, she was right about one thing: I did think Hope was a little scary. Up until then, I had been feeling kind of bad for Amelia. I could see she might have bigger problems than chipped nail polish and hexagonal pencils. But it’s hard to keep feeling sympathy for someone who can be so nasty. I was glad when Amelia’s mom came downstairs and said, “Lights out, ladies.”

  Three things that changed at school after Amelia’s slumber party

  1. Kate started calling me Rose because that was the scent of the perfume I spilled.

  2. Amelia started making room for me at lunch, and looking at me (instead of just at Zora, Zach, and Charlie) when she told a story.

  3. I stopped writing “From A to Z” on my notes to Zora.

  After I found that photo album in Amelia’s room, it occurred to me that she thought of herself as the original “A” to Zora’s “Z.” I didn’t want her to accuse me of trying to take over.

  Three reasons I didn’t email Millie to tell her about the slumber party

  1. She doesn’t know any of the kids here, so it would take a long time to explain everything.

  2. Because she doesn’t know anyone here, she might not really “get” the stories anyway.

  3. She still hasn’t emailed me back since she said she was going to the movies with Juliette and Charlotte.

  Four possible reasons Millie has not emailed me since then

  1. Maybe while she was at the movies, someone broke into her apartment and stole her family’s computer.

  2. Maybe the movie-theater floor was so dirty that her feet are still stuck to it.

  3. Maybe the theater was actually a secret portal to Narnia.

  4. Maybe Millie is best friends with Juliette and Charlotte now, and she doesn’t need me anymore.

  One new word I learned the day after the slumber party

  1. Kerning

  After I had put away my pillow and my sleeping bag, I grabbed a snack and started doing my hovering bit with Mom while she worked in her office. (She almost never used to work on Saturdays, but now she says, “Who am I to turn down an extra assignment?”) Mom was fiddling with a word on her computer screen for a really long time. She would click on it, press some buttons, click on it again, press more buttons, and on and on. Every time she pressed buttons, the spaces between the characters would change just a tiny bit, making the letters either closer together or farther apart. I asked Mom what she was doing, and she said, “It’s called kerning. I’m making it so that the letters aren’t too close or too far apart. So that the word will look just right.”

  One weird dream I had that night

  1. A bunch of kids I knew—Zora, Kate, Amelia, Zach, Charlie, Ted, Marcus, Millie, Charlotte, and even the mysterious Juliette—were standing in a line. I was right in the middle. And we kept scooching closer together, then farther apart. Closer together, then farther apart. We were kerning, trying to get the spacing just right.

  Five things I have heard about way more in Clover Gap than I ever did in Brooklyn

  1. Bicycles

  2. Kickball

  3. Deer droppings

  4. Clovers

  5. Trees

  Eight things people here discuss about trees

  1. How old they are

  2. How big they are

  3. Whether they have carpenter ants

  4. Whether they have a tree disease

  5. Whether they might fall in a storm

  6. Which direction they would fall if they were to fall in a storm

  7. Which “tree guy” to use to take care of them. (When the weather started warming up, Mom said, “We have to find a tree guy.” Ted and I asked, “Why do we need a tree guy?” Mom promised us we’d see soon enough. Surprisingly, Dad didn’t say anything about money or offer to check the trees himself. I think his near fall from the roof humbled him a little.)

  8. What kind of animals might be living in the tree

  For us, the answer to that last one was: raccoons.

  Four animals that scare me

  1. Bears (of course)

  2. Snakes

  3. Wasps

  4. Lice

  Four things the tree guy said when he came to check our giant oak tree

  1. The top half of that tree is hollow.

  2. I could fit almost my whole body into it.

  3. There’s a family of raccoons living in there.

  4. We have to take it down.

  The tree guy explained that the tree was weak because it was hollow, and if they didn’t take it down the safe way, it could come down the dangerous way (like falling on our house during a storm). So he brought out a crew and they climbed the tree and cut it down bit by bit, using ropes to lower each section to the ground. It was pretty amazing to watch. But now the raccoons were homeless.

  Three crazy things I’ve seen in the backyard since we moved here

  1. A squirrel fight

  2. Flying turkeys (Who knew?!)

  3. A coyote (Ted didn’t see it and says it had to have been a dog; I know what I saw.)

  Three homes the raccoon mama tried out after the tree came down

  1. Our garbage cans (until Mom and Dad found a way to lock them closed)

  2. The woodpile beside the porch (but this wasn’t very private)

  3. Our basement window well

  The window well is the one she settled on. There is a long wooden bench covering the window well that protects it from the rain (but left just enough of an opening for her to squeeze through with her babies, one by one).

  Three things we learned after Dad called animal control and got connected to the town “raccoon lady”

  1. Don’t go near the raccoons, because their mama is very protective and she will try to attack you.

  2. A raccoon with that many babies (six!) is probably an older mother. (“Poor thing,” Mom said under her breath.)

  3. The animal-control people will not move baby raccoons. If you wait a couple of weeks, the mama will take them out on her own.

  This started the phenomenon that came to be known in our house as the raccoon aquarium (and of course Ted thought that should be a band name).

  Six amazing things about the raccoon aquarium

  1. We could stand on the old sofa in our basement and watch the raccoons through the window whenever we wanted.

  2. There were six baby raccoons. (We learned that they’re called “kits.”)

  3. We got to watch them play.

  4. We got to watch them nurse.

  5. We sort of became neighborhood celebrities, because everyone wanted to come see the raccoons.

  6. Dad couldn’t get enough of them.

  Five ways we could tell that the raccoons were helping Dad warm up to Clover Gap

  1. He would stand on the sofa and watch them longer than anyone else.

  2. The first thing he did every day when he got home from work was check on the kits.

  3. He took about a hundred pictures of them.

  4. He also checked on them every night before he went to bed, and he would give Mom updates. (I think he felt extra protective of the kits at night, because that was when the mama raccoon left them to look for food.)

  5. He kept saying, “This never happened in Brooklyn!” (The third time he said that, I noticed Mom giving Ted a look to see what his reaction was. But he didn’t really have one. I think Clover Gap was starting to grow on him, too.)

  The raccoon family left after about two weeks, just like the raccoon lady said they would. The mama moved the babies out one by one, and Dad didn’t leave the basement until they were all gone (he was especially worried about the last one, which sat in the window well all
alone and mewled like a kitten until the mama returned).

  Late that night, I woke up to go to the bathroom, and I had to wait in the hall while Mom and Dad finished brushing their teeth. I heard them talking about the raccoons. “They seemed so cozy there,” Dad said. “It was their home. How do they even know where they’re supposed to go next?”

  “They needed room to grow,” Mom said. “I think they’ll figure it out. And eventually they’ll be cozy in their new home too, don’t you think? I mean, we know a little something about that.” Mom caught Dad’s eye in the bathroom mirror. He stopped flossing for a second and smiled at her.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess we do.”

  Dad was a little mopey the next day, but pretty soon he started getting excited about other signs of spring in Clover Gap. Like the baby deer we sometimes saw in the backyard, and the wild turkeys. And, of course, the clovers.

  JUNE

  Three things that happen in Clover Gap in June