Sunny Sweet is So Dead Meat

by Jennifer Ann Mann

  Sunny Sweet can so get lost! But I certainly wasn’t getting lost with her.

  I turned and walked down the tiny airplane hallway. I was free, free, free of Sunny Sweet forever … or for at least three weeks, which was good enough. Plus I’d have two whole seats on the plane so I could stretch out and eat and … what was I doing? Sunny!

  I swung around. There stood Wendi with an i with her arms crossed in front of her, blocking my path. “My little sister. She’s …” That’s when I heard Sunny’s voice coming from behind me. “On the plane?” I finished. I turned and hurried through the spaceship-looking portal of the plane. There was Sunny Sweet, standing with the pilot telling jokes.

  “Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?” she said.

  “Why?” laughed the pilot.

  “To get to the same side.”

  They both cracked up laughing.

  “Hey, Masha, get it?” she asked. “Because a Möbius strip only has one side.”

  “I get it,” I sighed, even though I didn’t get it. I never got it. Even when I thought I got it, I didn’t get it. I thought Sunny Sweet was lost. She wasn’t. I thought Sunny Sweet was up to something. But she wasn’t. I guess my evil-genius little sister really did like explaining laryngitis to poor, unsuspecting telemarketers and making up organization charts and detailed safety plans.

  “Hey, Sunny,” the pilot said. He already knew her name. “Do you want to announce our departure?” He held out a walkie-talkie-looking thing to her.

  “I’m going to the bathroom,” I told Sunny. “Be in the aisle seat when I get back. It’s my turn to sit by the window.”

  I trudged down the aisle, trying to get a minute of my life without my little sister in it. Sunny’s voice followed me the entire way. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats as we get ready to depart,” she said. “Please turn off all electronic devices, such as cell phones and computers.”

  I closed the bathroom door and pulled out my phone. I had a text from my friend Junchao. She was spending her summer vacation at some horrible science camp, although she seemed pretty excited about it. Junchao knew I was going to a dude ranch, but I didn’t tell her about Oscar/Charlie/Thunder/Black Cloud because I didn’t want to ruin her happiness about only getting to go to a lousy camp when I was getting a horse! Her text said:

  Don’t ride off into the sunset!

  I texted back my usual.

  Ho-ho-ho.

  Junchao was as tiny as a mouse but had the biggest, Santa Claus–iest laugh you ever heard. Every time I heard it, I had to laugh, too.

  Sunny’s voice blared through speakers in the bathroom, giving me the local time we’d be landing. Even in here I couldn’t get away from her.

  I texted my friend Alice good-bye and told her to have a great time. She was taking a family trip to Florida. A foundation gave it to them because of Alice’s spina bifida. As much as Alice hated being treated differently because of her spine not working right and because she needed a wheelchair, she got over it real quick when the words “Disney World” got mentioned. I might have been totally green with jealousy if I weren’t getting my very own horse!

  “Preparing for takeoff …” came Sunny’s voice again.

  They better not be letting Sunny Sweet fly this plane! I opened up the door and hurried back to our row. Sunny was sitting in the aisle seat. Thank goodness. I leaped over her to get to the window. I buckled up and looked out at the bustle of the airport tarmac. Time to chill out and dream about trotting and cantering and galloping. The plane moved away from the gate. The engine fired up beneath us, and we began to race down the runway. I was rushing toward my horse!

  “Hello, this is your captain speaking,” said a friendly voice over the intercom.

  “That’s Bob,” Sunny said.

  “Our time of departure is 6:32 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. And we should be landing in Portland, Maine, just around 7:15 p.m.”

  Portland, Maine?

  I looked over at Sunny. She stared down at the page in her book, but I knew she was seeing me seeing her.

  “What did Bob mean by Portland, M—” I couldn’t even finish the sentence because I finally got it. I got all of it. Playing secretary for my mom, faking laryngitis, sending group texts, and writing up emergency plans. I got it. Sunny Sweet was getting lost—and she was taking me with her! We were not on our way to Lone Creek Dude Ranch.

  “But the tickets? And Wendi with an i?” I whispered.

  She put down her book and looked at me. “Good planning,” she said.

  Oscar/Charlie/Thunder/Black Cloud. Noooooooo!

  I struggled to open my seat belt. I was getting out of here.

  “Keep that buckled,” a flight attendant hissed from a few seats away.

  “I need to … !” I shouted.

  “After takeoff,” she said, not letting me finish. But it was too late, and I knew it.

  The plane lifted off the ground and into the air. I fell back into my seat and watched with wide-open eyes as the world grew smaller and smaller beneath us.

  “But why?” I asked. I could barely look at her.

  Sunny pulled a brochure from her backpack and put it on my lap.

  I looked down.

  “Math camp?” I shouted over the engine of the plane.

  “Yes!” Sunny giggled. “It’s going to be so great. They have a whole series on robotics, and one on mechanical engineering, and one on environmental sustainability, and one on genetics …” She had to stop to breathe. “We will actually get to genetically modify cells to smell like other stuff, like flowers or rotten eggs or anything. And look!” she said, her little hands shaking with excitement as she opened the brochure on my lap and pointed at a heading.

  I read:

  FUN WITH DNA

  “We’re going to get to extract DNA from our very own cells!” she squealed, snatching the brochure from my lap and flipping through it. “Just think, Masha, space rovers and astrophysics and new geometric worlds and …”

  “Horses,” I choked. “What about horses?”

  “Horses?” Sunny snorted—her nose now buried deep within the brochure. “I doubt it.”

  I started to feel woozy. I couldn’t breathe. I needed air. I groped the seat around me.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I snapped. “I’m looking for an oxygen mask.”

  “Why?” she asked. “The aircraft’s pressurization is fine. Look at this.” She poked the brochure back in my face. “We gather our DNA by spitting into a cup.”

  I shoved the brochure away from me and pressed my entire body against the window of the plane to get as far away from Sunny Sweet as I could. We were passing through a bunch of fluffy white clouds. How could she do this?

  “I’m calling Mom as soon as we land,” I said. I felt like I might throw up.

  “A typical commercial flight between New York and Saint Petersburg, Russia, is approximately nine hours and five minutes,” she said. “But of course, the exact time depends on wind speeds.”

  “Then I’m calling Dad.”

  “He went to Thailand,” she said.

  “What do you mean he went to Thailand?” I put my head in my hands and groaned. I was definitely going to throw up. “It’s really over. We’re really lost.”

  “ ‘Not all those who wander are lost,’ ” Sunny said, flipping through her dumb brochure. “That’s a quote from J. R. R. Tolkien. He wrote Lord of the Rings.”

  “Here’s a quote for you,” I said. “ ‘Annoying little sisters who wander often get lost when they are shoved into very deep wells.’ Masha Sweet wrote that.” I smiled.

  Acknowledgments

  Cross the river in a crowd and the crocodile

  won’t eat you. —African proverb

  Caroline Abbey • Shari Becker

  Alice Carpenter • Christopher Carpenter

  Leslie Caulfield • Heather Demetrios-Fehst

  Kim Griswell • Helle
Henriksen

  Marileta Robinson • Max Rottersman

  Kerry Sparks • Carolyn Yoder • Junchao Yu

  A Note on the Author

  JENNIFER ANN MANN is the author of Sunny Sweet Is So Not Sorry, Sunny Sweet Is So Dead Meat, and Sunny Sweet Can So Get Lost. Her short stories have been published by Highlights for Children, where she won the 2007 Fiction Contest. She grew up in New Jersey, the second of four sisters, and now lives in Boston in a giant house filled with kids and cats.

  www.jenniferannmann.com

  Also by Jennifer Ann Mann

  Sunny Sweet Is So Not Sorry

  Sunny Sweet Is So Dead Meat

  Sunny Sweet Can So Get Lost

  Following the RULES is pretty much IMPOSSIBLE when your sister is an EVIL Genius…

  Don’t miss any of Masha and Sunny Sweet’s hilarious (mis)adventures.

  www.bloomsbury.com

  www.facebook.com/bloomsburykids

  Praise for the SUNNY SWEET series

  “Fans of Junie B. Jones or Judy Moody will be drawn to this series.”

  —Library Media Connection

  “This book will find fans among younger readers. Black-and-white illustrations contribute to the humor in this tale of sisterly adventures.”

  —School Library Journal

  “You know that having a little sister whose purpose in life is to annoy you is hard … and hilarious…. Jennifer Ann Mann balances the characters’ worries (being new at school, their parents’ divorce) with humor.”

  —Redbook

  “A madcap adventure. … The dynamic between the two sisters is both complicated and authentic.”

  —BCCB

  Text copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Ann Mann

  Illustrations copyright © 2014 by Jana Christy

  All rights reserved.

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.

  First published in the United States of America in May 2014

  by Bloomsbury Children’s Books for

  This electronic edition published in May 2014

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Mann, Jennifer Ann.

  Sunny Sweet is so dead meat / by Jennifer Ann Mann.

  pages cm

  Summary: When Sunny Sweet, age six, devises a science experiment that requires her big sister, Masha, to look weird all day, Masha will try almost anything to get them home from the science fair without causing a scene.

  [1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. Genius—Fiction. 3. Science fairs—Fiction.

  4. Schools—Fiction. 5. Single-parent families—Fiction. 6. Russian

  Americans—Fiction. 7. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M31433Sq2014 [Fic]—dc23 2013038028

  eISBN 978-1-61963-233-2

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