Beatrice More Moves In

by Alison Hughes

  A huge dog was running toward her and Edison from across the school field.

  A huge dog with nobody holding the other end of the leash.

  The dog’s tongue flopped and bobbed out the side of its mouth.

  Two girls ran after the dog, but they were much slower than he was.

  “Peewee! Come! Stop! Stay! Sit! BAD DOG!” one of the girls yelled.

  Edison’s ears perked up. For once, Beatrice didn’t have to tug his leash to get him going. He took off running toward the other dog.

  “Wait! Edison, no, wrong way, WRONG WAY!” yelled Beatrice.

  Edison ran straight at the wild, monster-sized dog.

  “Other way, other way!” Beatrice said. She used both hands to hold on to the leash. Edison pulled and dragged Beatrice along with him. She slipped and skidded in the grass.

  This is highly unprofessional, she thought. She gritted her teeth as she bumped along.

  The two dogs met in a joyful crash. They rolled and wrestled and tumbled together. Then they flopped down on the grass, panting and wagging their tails. Somehow, Beatrice had kept hold of Edison’s leash. She flopped down on the grass beside the dogs.

  The big dog turned and licked Beatrice’s face with his dripping tongue.

  “Ugh, more dog drool,” Beatrice said. But she petted his huge head.

  Beatrice had green grass stains on her knees. Her favorite purple shirt was torn and spattered with dog drool. Her face was red and hot. Strands of hair had escaped her smooth ponytail and stuck to her sweaty face.

  She turned to the two girls who ran up.

  “Sorry, sorry!” said the smaller girl, reaching to help Beatrice to her feet. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” said Beatrice with dignity. She smoothed her rumpled shirt.

  Beatrice noticed that the smaller girl had perfectly straight black hair. I wonder how many times she brushes it every night? she thought. The girl smiled brightly.

  “Peewee’s so strong! He saw your dog, gave one big tug and he was gone!”

  “Wow, these two sure have made friends,” said the blond girl. She smiled and scratched Edison behind the ears. “Aww! He’s so cute.”

  Beatrice looked at Edison. He was panting. His tongue was hanging out. He was slobbering all over the place.

  Cute? We are both total messes, Beatrice thought.

  “I’m Sue,” said the blond girl. She had a round face and big, friendly blue eyes.

  “I’m Jill,” said the dark-haired girl. “And it looks like you’ve met Peewee.” Jill giggled.

  Beatrice smiled. The girls might not be perfect pet owners, but they seemed nice.

  “I’m Beatrice. That’s our dog, Edison. We just moved into the house on the corner.”

  “Hey! We’re almost next-door neighbors!” said Sue. “I live one house away!”

  “I live over there, across the field,” said Jill.

  “Do you both go to this school?” asked Beatrice. It would be wonderful to have a few friends before she even started school. That would be very successful indeed.

  “Yep. We’re both going into grade three,” said Jill. “How about you?”

  “Same,” said Beatrice happily.

  Peewee and Edison got up and shook themselves.

  “Well, I guess we should get going,” said Sue. “I’m starving.”

  “And I have tennis lessons,” said Jill.

  “Hey,” said Beatrice, “why don’t you both come over to our house later? Maybe three o’clock? We’ll be all unpacked and perfectly organized by then.”

  She got a nervous, sinking feeling as she said this.

  “Okay.” Jill nodded happily, her black hair bobbing. “See you then!”

  “Great!” said Sue, grabbing Peewee’s leash. “See you later, Bee!”

  Beatrice watched them walk away. Jill did two perfect cartwheels in the field.

  Beatrice, she said automatically to herself. My name is Beatrice.

  But her eye didn’t twitch, and she didn’t feel much like exploding. She liked those girls.

  On her first walk in her brand-new neighborhood, she had almost made two new friends.

  How successful was that?

  Chapter Five

  “Mom!” Beatrice yelled as she banged the door.

  She quickly tucked her shoes side by side in the closet. She unclipped Edison from his leash. He slunk over to a sunbeam and flopped on his side with a huge sigh.

  “Mom!”

  Her mother struggled up from the couch.

  “Mmmph, I’m up, I’m up…” she mumbled.

  “Hiya, Bee,” said Sophie, who was lying on the living room floor. She was drawing some fish with huge googly eyes on a big piece of paper. Beatrice could see pink, green and blue marker smudges on the floor.

  Beatrice took a deep breath.

  “Mom, have you unpacked anything? What have you been doing?”

  Her mother yawned and tried to smooth her frizzy hair.

  “Oh, I must have dozed off. Sophie, what a beautiful picture!”

  Sophie stopped coloring and leaned back to look at her art.

  “Yep, Super-Pig sure is beeyootiful,” she agreed, pointing with a grubby finger at a blue fish. “An’ them’s his fishy friends!” She leaned over and kissed the pink-and-green fish.

  Beatrice ran over to her mother. She put her hands on her mother’s shoulders. She looked into her face. She spoke slowly.

  “Mom, listen to me. I met some girls who might be in my grade-three class! I invited them over to our perfectly organized and unpacked house at three o’clock! Three!”

  She pointed to the clock. It was almost noon.

  “At three?” said her Mom. “Today?”

  “Today,” wailed Beatrice.

  Her mother swallowed.

  “We have to unpack this whole house in three hours?” she whispered. “I thought we could do it slowly. A few boxes each day for a couple of weeks…”

  “Well, change of plans!” Beatrice said frantically. “We have to do a few boxes each minute for a couple of hours! Please, Mom!”

  Her mother nodded bravely. “Okay, Bee. This seems really important to y—”

  “Yes, yes,” Beatrice interrupted impatiently. “Thanks, Mom, but there’s no time for chitchat! Where’s Dad? Is he back from the hardware store?”

  “He’s in the basement. Unpacking. I’m sure he’s unpacking.” Beatrice’s mother trotted over to the basement stairs.

  “Honey, you’re unpacking lots and lots of things, aren’t you?” she called. “Because you-know-who is coming right down!”

  Beatrice ran down the stairs. Her father was sitting in a chair with his feet up on a pile of boxes. He had an old book in his hand.

  “My high-school yearbook,” he explained to Beatrice with a smile. “Funny the things you find when you move house.”

  “Hilarious,” said Beatrice. “Look, Dad, we have to hurry and unpack. By three o’clock! We have company coming, and the house has to be spotless!”

  “By three? But there’s a baseball game that I—”

  Her father stopped talking when he saw Beatrice’s face.

  He sighed, got to his feet and turned to the boxes.

  “Unpacking. Right. I’m on it,” he said.

  Chapter Six

  Beatrice’s whole family worked.

  Sophie threw down her markers. One skidded a long streak of blue across the floor. “I’ll help you make the house purvect for your friends, Bee!” she said.

  “Thanks, Sophie,” Beatrice said. She gave her sister a quick hug, then gathered up the markers. She licked her finger and scrubbed at the blue streak on the floor. It wouldn’t come out.

  “Rrrrrrrr,” growled Beatrice softly.

  “Mrs. Cow says she hates messeduppedness too,” Sophie said. “It makes her even more crabbier.”

  Beatrice looked over at the grumpy doll, surprised.

  Well, thank you, Mrs. Cow, she thought.

&nb
sp; Beatrice shooed her mom and Sophie into the kitchen and took charge of the living room.

  Soon she had the whole room unpacked and put away. She checked things off her list (which she had written quickly but neatly). It was titled Unpacking the Whole House in Three Hours. She flipped to the page for the living room.

  1. Books organized

  Check.

  2. Pictures hung perfectly

  straight

  Check.

  3. Plants watered

  Check.

  4. Cushions plumped

  Check.

  Time check? According to Beatrice’s timetable (stapled to the list), the living room should be finished by 1:00 pm. It was 12:57. Check.

  She was even three minutes early. Excellent.

  Beatrice ran into the kitchen.

  Her mother and sister were sitting at the kitchen table. They were eating cookies and drinking milk. They both jumped up when they saw Beatrice.

  “Just taking a tiny break, Bee,” her mother said quickly. “We’ve done that whole shelf!” She pointed to a small shelf above the kitchen counter. Cookbooks of all shapes and sizes were piled on the shelf. No order. No organization.

  Beatrice put her hand up to her left eyelid to stop it from twitching.

  “Okay, that one shelf looks fine,” she said. “Now quickly, quickly, let’s get everything else put away. Everything!”

  Sophie looked at the cookie in her hand, sighed and dropped it in her milk.

  “I put’n my cookie away, Bee!” she said. “But I not sure it can swim.” She peered down into the sludgy glass. “Nope.”

  “Hurry, people, hurry!” pleaded Beatrice, neatly opening a box. “Check the time! It’s 1:04 pm! The kitchen should have been done four minutes ago! Go, go, GO!”

  Her mother hummed while she pulled pots and pans out of a box. She shoved them into a cupboard in a tangled heap. Sophie dumped a box full of plastic containers, opened a cabinet and chucked them inside. She slammed the door quickly on an avalanche of plastic. Beatrice followed Sophie and her mother, fixing, stacking and organizing.

  When she turned around, Sophie was eating another cookie and whispering to Super-Pig.

  “Hey, Bee,” Sophie said through a mouthful of cookie, “I telled Super-Pig to clean up his fishy home too.” Cookie crumbs flew through the air at this announcement.

  “Great. The more—uh—fins, the better,” said Beatrice, grabbing the broom.

  When the kitchen was finished (late, at 1:49 pm), Beatrice stacked the empty boxes in the garage. She ran down to the basement.

  Her father had the baseball game on. He was unpacking slowly as he watched.

  “Hi, Bee. You’re jus—whoa!” he yelled, his eyes on the television. “It’s a hit! That ball is going, going, GONE! Home run!” He held up his hand for a high five. But it hung in the air. He looked over. Beatrice had her hands on her hips.

  “We are way behind schedule, Dad,” Beatrice said, her eye twitching. “Less home runs, more hard work!”

  “Got it. Right. Unpacking,” her dad said, one eye on the game.

  When the basement was finished, her father flopped down on the couch.

  “Whew, that was—”

  “Time check?” said Beatrice.

  Her father looked at his watch. “It’s two fifteen,” he said.

  “WHAT? It’s two fifteen already?” She pulled her father to his feet. “Hurry—upstairs, NOW!”

  “Your friends aren’t going to be wandering through all the bedrooms,” grumbled her father.

  “I promised them a perfectly unpacked house,” said Beatrice. “How would I look if they came and the house wasn’t perfect? Unprofessional. That’s how I’d look.”

  They ran through the living room. Mom and Sophie were reading a picture book on the couch. Her mom looked up.

  “Bee, this room looks grea—”

  “No time, no time! Everybody, upstairs to the bedrooms! Come on, people, MOVE!” The whole family scrambled up the stairs.

  “This is fun,” giggled Sophie.

  “Yeah, it’s a real party,” muttered her mother.

  “Okay,” panted Beatrice. “My room is perfect. Sophie’s room is”—she swallowed—“how she likes it (and we’ll keep that door closed). So we only need to do one bedroom and the bathrooms.”

  “Aye aye, captain,” joked her mother, but Beatrice was already down the hall.

  They worked quickly, unpacking, organizing and tidying. They threw the empty boxes into the hallway.

  Beatrice called out the time every five minutes.

  “It’s 2:40 pm! Hurry up, hurry up!”

  “We’re at 2:45 pm! Work, people, work!”

  “Now it’s 2:50 pm! Ten minutes! Ten minutes left!”

  At 2:54 pm the doorbell rang. Edison began barking.

  Beatrice looked up wildly.

  “What was that? Was that the doorbell?” she shrieked.

  “Yep,” said her father. “Calm down. They’re just a little early. No big deal. We’re almost done here.”

  “They’re SIX MINUTES early!” Beatrice yelled. “And almost isn’t perfect!”

  She looked at the hallway, which was covered in empty boxes. There was no time to get them all down into the garage.

  Beatrice didn’t feel like exploding. She was too tired to explode.

  She felt like crying.

  Sophie ran over and opened the door to her room. “Quick, everboddy! We’ll chuck all ’em boxes in here,” she said, “and you go get the door, Bee!”

  “Thanks, Sophie!” said Beatrice.

  She ran down the stairs, Edison at her heels.

  She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair and opened the door.

  Chapter Seven

  “Hi, Bee!” said Jill. Sue was just behind her, eating a popsicle.

  “Hi Jill! Hi Sue! Come on in.”

  “Hiya, Bee!” said Sue. She came in and kicked off her sandals. They landed in a messy heap. Beatrice itched to tidy them, but that would possibly not be polite.

  “Actually,” said Beatrice, “my name is Beatrice. Just so you know.”

  “That’s just so long,” sighed Sue. “I never go by Susannah. I can’t even remember how to spell it half the time. So I’m just Sue.”

  “I think Bee is totally cute,” said Jill. “Like the letter. Or a fuzzy little bumblebee.”

  Beatrice smiled.

  Maybe Bee wasn’t so bad.

  “Well,” she said, “come in. We finished unpacking a long time ago. Yep, we’re a pretty organized family,” she said nervously. “Every last box put away.”

  Edison snorted and rolled onto his back, belly up to the sunbeam.

  “Eddie!” cried Sue, rushing over to Edison. “How ya doing, buddy?” Edison’s tail thumped while Sue rubbed his belly. Dog hair danced in the sunbeam, and a trickle of drool slid out the side of his mouth.

  Beatrice’s mother and father plodded down the stairs. They looked very, very tired.

  Beatrice introduced them to Sue and Jill.

  “Who wants cookies?” Beatrice’s mom said.

  “Oh, yes, please,” said Sue. “I’m so hungry.”

  Over cookies and milk, the girls talked.

  “We have three cats, Peewee and a hamster,” said Sue. “I love animals. And food,” she said, reaching for another cookie. “I love food.”

  “I play piano and tennis,” said Jill. “And I’ve just started swimming lessons and gymnastics!”

  Beatrice would have liked to look professional in front of her new friends. But they had just moved, and she wasn’t in any lessons at all.

  That’s going to change, thought Beatrice, making a quick mental list of All the Many Activities I Plan to Do. In the blink of an eye, she got from one (Art) to twelve (Cliff diving).

  “I plan to do lots of activities,” said Beatrice. “But because of the move, I mainly do puzzles, make lists and organize things,” she blurted.

  “Cool,” said Sue.

 
; “This house is very organized and tidy,” said Jill, looking around.

  “It’s way cleaner than our house,” said Sue. “I have three brothers who mess the place up. Actually, come to think of it, I’m the messiest of the bunch.”

  “My twin brother is super neat. Annoyingly neat,” said Jill.

  “Hey, can we see your room?” asked Sue.

  “Sure!” Beatrice jumped up. She was very confident about her room.

  The girls went upstairs. Beatrice threw open the door to her room.

  “Wow. Nice!” said Sue. She walked into the room and flopped on the perfect, wrinkle-free bed.

  Sue looked up and saw Beatrice’s face. She saw her frown and her twitching left eye.

  She sprang up.

  “Oh, sorry. I probably messed up your quilt,” she said. She tried to smooth it but ended up rumpling the cover even more.

  “Here, let me help,” offered Jill. She pulled at the sheet and knocked over Beatrice’s neat row of stuffed animals. “Whoops!” she said, shoving them back in the wrong order. “There.”

  Sue and Jill backed away from the rumpled bed.

  Beatrice racked her brain for a clean, organized, quiet activity they could all enjoy. She couldn’t think of anything!

  I should have made a list of Fun, Non-Messy Things to Do on a Perfect Playdate, she thought in a panic. Now it’s going to be a disaster!

  Jill looked across the hallway.

  “Hey, whose room is that?” she asked.

  “That’s my sister Sophie’s room,” said Beatrice.

  “What does that cute sign say?” asked Jill, crossing the hall to Sophie’s door. Sue and Beatrice joined her.

  “Aww, it’s adorable,” said Sue. “You sure are lucky to have a little sister.”

  Beatrice smiled. But she felt a little guilty. Sophie was in the top three on her list of Things That Make My Left Eye Twitch.

  Then Beatrice got an idea.

  She knocked on Sophie’s door.

  “Hey, Sophie, want to meet my new friends?” she called.

  The door crashed open. Sophie stood there, smiling. Her hair was sticking up in all directions. She had pulled on a dinosaur costume from two Halloweens ago. The dino jaws sat on top of her tangled hair.