To my sister Christine Carpenter
Contents
Sunny Sweet Is So Dead Meat
Being the Experiment
What Is Normal?
The Modern Artist or an Artist Who Paints Otters
It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Paintgirl
The Simple Bus Ride
You Say Pariah, I Say Piranha
The Informal Diagonal Line Game
Six Feet Under
In Too Deep
Being the Load
Three of a Kind
A Wet Wedding, a Real Wedding, and No Bus
It Ain’t Over Until … Never, Because the Universe Is Always Expanding
Graveyards Are Scary
Masha Sweet Is a Winner
Being the Experiment, Really Being It
Being a Superhero
Drawing Conclusions
Sunny Sweet Can So Get Lost
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Author
Also by Jennifer Ann Mann
Don’t miss any of Masha and Sunny Sweet’s hilarious (mis)adventures
Sunny Sweet Is So Dead Meat
There is something kind of spooky about a school on a Saturday. And it’s twice as spooky when it’s a school you don’t know.
“Are we early?” I asked my little sister. There didn’t seem to be any cars in the parking lot except for my mom’s car … leaving.
“I needed to get here first,” Sunny said. “So I told Mommy that the science fair started at ten. It actually starts at eleven.”
“Really, Sunny?” I groaned. “I already have to waste an entire Saturday doing this with you. I could have totally been at the hospital today hanging out with Alice.” My friend Alice has spina bifida, which means that her spine didn’t grow right before she was born. She sometimes has to be in the hospital for a few weeks at a time so the doctors can keep an eye on it.
Sunny’s skinny little shoulders drooped, making me feel instantly bad.
“Anyway,” I said, bumping her gently with my arm. “Maybe we can visit Alice tonight. They have late visiting hours on Saturday. And hey, I know,” I added, “we can bring the trophy you’re gonna win today to show her.”
Sunny had won the trophy last year at our old school. In fact, Sunny always won the trophy wherever she went. I guess it was hard not giving the award to a scrawny little six-year-old kid with a brain that weighed more than the rest of her body put together.
“Okay, Masha,” she said, beaming up at me from under the wide brim of her rain hat. It was my mother’s hat, so it was way too big for her. It came down right to the top of her eyelashes. The rain jacket she wore was also my mother’s, and it scraped at the pavement of the parking lot as we walked. Looking at her in this crazy rain outfit on this beautiful cloudless spring day, it hit me that I had no idea what her science experiment was about. Sunny was always working on a million different “projects,” as she called them, and none of them made any sense to me. But her strange outfit was kind of interesting.
“What’s your experiment about anyway?” I asked.
“It’s about people who don’t follow the rules of society.”
“About what?”
Sunny stopped walking. “It’s an experiment about being different,” she said slowly. “Like, for example, at school. You know how some kids fit in and some kids don’t?”
“Um, yeah,” I said, surprised that I really did know. “So you’re wearing a rain hat and raincoat on a beautiful sunshiny day because you’re being different?” I asked.
“Good question,” she said, putting down the box filled with her experiment in the middle of the parking lot.
I shook my head thoughtfully as if I were completely used to asking good questions. I had lived on this earth for almost double the number of years that Sunny had, but most days I felt like I’d only managed to develop half of the brain power.
“We have to do something before we go in,” she said. “It’s part of my experiment.” She knelt down and started digging in her box. She found what she was searching for and pulled it out. “Here!” she said, jumping to her feet and handing it to me.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s a bottle of ketchup.”
“Open it,” she commanded, her eyes glowing.
I put down the box of stuff that I’d been carrying for her and reached for the bottle. I began to open it. “Why can’t we do this in the …”
There was a loud pop!
The top of the ketchup bottle exploded off. I stood there wet and stunned. I looked down at Sunny. Her rain gear was covered in ketchup. I looked down at myself. Ketchup was splashed across my T-shirt and jeans in giant blobs and streamed down my face and neck in ketchupy gobs.
“Oh my gosh,” I breathed. “Sunny, are you okay?” I wiped at the ketchup on her coat, but it didn’t smear. In fact, it just stayed there. “Holy mother of peanuts!” I wiped at the ketchup on my arm. It also stayed. “Why isn’t this coming off?”
“It’s not going to come off,” she said excitedly. “It’s a special red dye I invented.”
“What?”
“Well, it will, but not for a few days. It has to wear off.”
“What? You mean you did this on purpose?”
She nodded her head, smiling, happy that I had finally gotten it. “Yes, Masha. You see, you are the one being different. You will walk around the science fair covered in weird red blotches, and I will observe how people react to you. You’re my science experiment!”
Sunny unsnapped the rain jacket and stuffed it into her box. Her skirt and T-shirt were spotless. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”
“Let’s go?” I said. I was standing in some random school’s parking lot a million miles from home covered from head to toe in “weird red blotches.” I could feel the anger gurgling up inside me. I guess Sunny could feel it too, because she took a slow step away from me.
I lunged … but that tiny little twig body of hers was too quick, and she took off toward the front doors of the building.
“SUNNY SWEET,” I screamed, “YOU ARE SO DEAD MEAT!”
Being the Experiment
Before Sunny got to the front doors, she veered off into the grass toward a small group of trees. I was just about to grab her when she scampered up into one of the trees like a squirrel. I jumped after her with all my might but missed. And when I fell back to earth, all I had was one of her rain boots. Without thinking, I heaved the rain boot as hard as I could. It landed on the top of a little overhang that shaded the front entrance of the school.
“Look what you made me do!” I screamed.
I could see her spooky blue eyes peering at me from behind a branch filled with leaves.
“Sunny, get down here!”
She squirmed around on the branch, and then she reached into her pocket.
“Don’t you dare,” I growled.
There was a white flash of paper.
“Sunny Sweet, if you start taking notes on me like I’m some sort of white rat in a cage I’m going to rip your little head off.”
I sucked in my breath as I watched her pull a pencil from her pocket.
“SUNNY!” I screamed, falling to my knees. I was some sort of rat. And I was in a cage. Only it was a cage that no one else ever saw. And because it was invisible to the world, it made me look like I was absolutely crazy. Anyone watching our fight would see a skinny little six-year-old kid running away from her big sister and hiding out in a tree. And then they’d see the big sister take her little sister’s boot and hike it up onto the roof of a building while she screamed like a lunatic. They wouldn’t see what was really happening!
There was a flash of moving metal. A car was pull
ing into the lot. People were coming.
“Sunny,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Get out of the tree. Someone just pulled in.”
The leaves rustled a bit, like she was getting comfortable—not like she was climbing down. I knew exactly what the scrawny mad scientist was going to do. She was going to observe.
Car doors opened and voices floated toward us.
“If you think I’m going to stand under this tree and wait for these people to come by so they can laugh at me covered in ketchup or dye or whatever the heck this is while you sit up in that stupid tree and take notes, guess what? I’m not.” I looked around for someplace to hide. I took off running under the trees and around the corner of the building.
The school sat next to a rocky hill. There were only a few feet between the brick of the building and the rock of the hill. It was shady and a little cold. I peeked back around the corner. We had left Sunny’s boxes sitting in the middle of the parking lot, and now two little kids were digging around in them. One of the little kids ripped off an envelope stuck to the side of the box and opened it.
“Don’t touch that stuff,” the lady with them said.
She walked over and looked down her nose into the boxes. The kid handed her what was in the envelope. It was probably some notes about Sunny’s project. The woman read it and then looked up, searching the parking lot.
Another two cars pulled in. And then a third.
The lady took one last look around and then told the kids to pick up the boxes and follow her. I made a move to go for the boxes but then stopped. Who cared what might happen to Sunny’s experiment? I wasn’t going to expose myself for her science junk. The lady walked toward the front doors right under Sunny in her tree. A buzzer or bell went off. The lady must have pushed a doorbell on the school. There was an echoing click as the front door opened, and I heard the voices of the lady and a man as the door shut behind them.
I pulled out my phone. For one split second I thought about calling my mom. But there was no way that I was going to interrupt her at her painting class today. I just couldn’t. She hadn’t set up her canvas once since the three of us had left my dad in Pennsylvania and moved to New Jersey after the divorce. And this morning when she walked into the kitchen with her portfolio bag in her hand she was smiling that kind of smile that you can’t stop smiling even if you try. Plus, if I called her, then she’d think that I couldn’t handle myself and maybe not let me take the bus alone to see Alice anymore. I dialed Sunny.
I could hear her ringtone coming from up in the tree. It’s the sound of an airplane taking off … or landing. Every single time her phone rings she asks me which it is. I remind her that I do not care. But Sunny never listens and has to explain it. “Airplanes generate a higher noise level at takeoff than they do at landing, blah, blah, blah.” I’m probably the only eleven-year-old in the world who knows this useless piece of information. And because of stupid stuff like this that Sunny shoves into my head every day of my life, other important stuff, like the lyrics to a cool song, falls right out the other side. There is only so much room in there.
“Hello, this is Sunny Sweet,” she answered, as if she were the secretary picking up the phone for the tree.
“Get down,” I spat into my cell. “We’re going home right now.”
I hadn’t really thought about what I was going to yell at Sunny when I called her, but going home was exactly the right thing. I felt happy with my decision. Forget the science fair. We were going home.
More cars pulled into the parking lot.
“How are we gonna get there?” Sunny asked.
“The bus. Just like we were supposed to do after the fair was over.”
“It’s a Saturday. There are going to be a lot of people on the bus,” she said.
“So.”
“So how does that make you feel?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know, how does it make you feel when you think about riding the bus in your current state?” I could actually hear the pages in her little notebook shuffling.
“MY CURRENT STATE,” I screamed, “is now officially loco. So you better keep your skinny little butt up in that tree FOR-STINKIN’-EVER!”
I hung up. And then I plopped down in the grass and leaned back against the rocky hill, panting. I couldn’t believe she did this to me. But then again, I guess I could believe it. Less than two weeks ago Sunny Sweet glued ten million plastic flowers in my hair as I slept, and that time I ended up at the hospital, where I had to have my head shaved. And not only that, but by accident the hospital put a cast on my arm because they thought I broke it when I didn’t, so I also had a fake broken arm. Although I loved my fake broken arm.
I laid my arm in the beautiful orange cast on my lap. It was filled with the signatures of everyone in my class at school. They were all covered with red blotches! I found Junchao’s name. Junchao Tao had been the first to sign my cast because she sat right behind me. Her tiny signature had a big red blob right over the top of it. I ran my fingers over the names on my cast. The dye had dried completely now. Thank goodness that my favorite signature, Michael Capezzi’s, was not stained. His scratchy name was surrounded by red splatter, but none had fallen directly on it. I met Michael Capezzi at the hospital. He was there to get a brain tumor taken out of his head. After I got my head shaved, Michael helped Sunny and me get home from the hospital by helping us sneak on the bus. He and Alice signed in purple because they were both at the hospital and signed with the same marker. Alice’s name was written in giant letters and was covered in splashes of red, just like the rest of me.
My T-shirt, my jeans, my sneakers, my hands, my arms … all of it was covered in red. I pulled my slouchy knit hat off my bald head. It was covered in red but it was a red hat, so you couldn’t tell that much. I was sure my face was covered in red too.
I noticed a window down along the wall of the building. I put my hat back on and pulled myself up from the cold grass to see if I could find out what my face looked like. I looked in. The room was dark so I couldn’t see much more than the shadowy outline of my body. I seemed much taller and wider in the window. And where was my hat? I wasn’t wearing it. I reached up to touch my head, but my reflection in the window didn’t move. Then it did move. It opened the window and shouted at me.
“What are you doing sneaking around out there?”
I stumbled backward against the rock cliff. It was a janitor. Tripping sideways over my own sneakers, I scrambled toward the corner of the building and then out into the sunshine.
I was now in full view of the world. There were people everywhere. I tried to curl myself up into a human ball so I was smaller somehow, and less noticeable. I even tiptoed across the grass, hoping it would help make me more invisible. Sunny’s words rang in my ears. Your current state … My teeth locked in my mouth and my shoulders pulled themselves right up to my ears. I was going to go get Sunny Sweet out of that tree and get on the bus and go home.
As I started toward the tree containing the Sunny-sized dark blob, something about the blob caught my eye—a flash of glass? I opened my eyes wide and stared hard. And then I saw her … sitting in the tree with a pair of binoculars focused right on me! I was like some sort of wild animal that she was watching on a safari.
“SUNNNNNNYYYYY!” I roared with all my might.
Everyone in the parking lot stopped. Car doors remained opened, kids froze mid-run, parents stared openmouthed, even the breeze stopped blowing, and the clouds paused in the sky.
It was confirmed. I was a complete loser.
Then the world shrugged at the broken-armed crazy girl covered in ketchup shouting at a tree. They began to move again, although they all made sure to move as far away from me as possible. I was left with my face burning and my blood racing hot under my skin.
Exhausted, I flopped down on the grass and squeezed my eyes shut and tried to imagine myself at home … home, home, home … beautiful, wonderful home. Home in my shower, scr
ubbing this junk off me. But instead, I couldn’t get the vision of the mini-monster out of my head, sitting happily in her tree and scribbling away in her little notebook about me. What did she say? “You’re my science experiment!” And I was. She was right. Why was she always right?
My phone rang.
QUACK … QUACK, QUACK, QUACK.
Unfortunately, my ringtone was of a duck quacking. Sunny had put it on my phone last weekend when I was babysitting her and fell asleep over my math homework. Of course she’d told me the kind of duck it was and even what the duck was saying. Only Sunny would think she knew what a duck was talking about! Anyway, I meant to change it but kept forgetting. I snapped on my phone.
“Sunny Sweet, you are so dead meat!”
“What did she do this time?”
“Alice!” I sighed.
Instantly everything felt better.
What Is Normal?
“I have ketchup all over me!”
“Are you in a diner?”
“A diner? What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
We laughed. I rolled over in the grass onto my back and let the sun shine down on my red-speckled face.
“Tell me about the ketchup,” she said.
I took a breath and spoke slowly. “She exploded a ketchup bottle of red dye all over me that can’t be washed off. And now I’m covered in red junk, lying on the front lawn of some stupid school!”
“What about your cast?”
“It’s covered too.”
“And Michael’s signature?”
“That’s okay, no red got on it.”
I heard her sigh. “Where’s Sunny? Is she with you?”
“Kind of,” I said, glancing up at the dark blob in the tree.
“Kind of?”
“Well, she’s up in a tree. But the tree is near me.”
“What?”
“After Sunny exploded the ketchup bottle all over me, I chased her up a tree.” I moaned.
Sunny Sweet is So Dead Meat Page 1
