Nobody's Perfect

by Marlee Matlin

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  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1 Glitter Emergency

  2 Say Hello

  3 The New Girl

  4 A Second Chance

  5 Nowhere to Hide

  6 Hats Off

  7 Surprise Purple

  8 Gesundheit

  9 E-mail Me

  10 Lost and Found

  11 Say Hamster

  12 Red Ribbon, Blue Ribbon

  13 Positively Purple

  About Marlee Matlin and Doug Cooney

  To my husband, Kevin, and my children, Sarah, Brandon, Tyler, and Isabelle; you mean the whole wide world to me. I love you.—M. M.

  To CCML and Davis Ryan—D. C.

  Acknowledgments

  There are several people I would like to thank. Once again, many thanks go out to my agent, the always patient Alan Nevins. Also, I would like to thank my editor, the wonderful David Gale, and everyone at Simon & Schuster.

  In addition there are a few others with-out whom this book would not have been possible. Thank you to Lin Oliver, Washington Elementary School of Burbank, and Dr. Barbara Firestone of the H.E.L.P. Group—your input was invaluable. To my family and friends who inspired much of the story in the book, thank you. I’d like to also thank Sister Mary Elizabeth; who would have thought that a nice Jewish girl like me would be inspired by a grade school teacher who went on to become a nun? And to Jack Jason, my business partner for the last twenty years, I don’t know where my career would be without you. Thank you for all the compassionate work you put out there on my behalf.

  Finally, this book would not have been possible without the brilliant writing assistance of my cowriter Doug Cooney. You helped bring Megan to life for more adventures. Thank you.—M. M.

  • • •

  I would like to thank Claire Blanchard of Royal Palm School for her warmth and wisdom, Jack Jason and Lin Oliver for welcoming me to the party, and especially Marlee Matlin for sharing her insights, extending her confidence, and always spreading joy.—D. C.

  1

  Glitter Emergency

  “HELP!” MEGAN SCREAMED IN A voice so loud she rattled the windows. “I’m having a glitter emergency!”

  Megan had meant to sprinkle purple glitter onto her handmade birthday invitations, but only enough to add sparkle to her name. She had folded a piece of purple construction paper and written her name across it in big gooey loops of glue. The plan was to gingerly tap the bottle of glitter so that tiny amounts tumbled onto the glue. But Megan had been in her usual hurry and had forgotten to put the cap back on the bottle. With one quick flick of her hand she had knocked over the bottle, which she’d bought earlier that afternoon at Stratton’s craft store. What a mess! Glitter was everywhere.

  Leave it to me to buy the giant size, Megan thought as she looked at the mountain of purple glitter covering her desk. Everything was buried in shiny purple flecks, even the notepad where she had written the names of the eleven girls in her fourth-grade class that she was planning to invite to her party.

  “Did anyone hear me?” Megan called out again. “I repeat! This is a glitter emergency!”

  Megan went to her bedroom door and poked her head out to see if anyone was coming to her rescue, but the upstairs hall was empty. Where is Mom? Megan wondered. Her mother was always there to remind Megan to do her homework or pick her soccer shorts up off the floor. Now, in the middle of a glitter disaster, she was nowhere to be found.

  Okay, where’s Dad? thought Megan. But then she remembered that it was Saturday and he was probably puttering around in the garage. If Megan tried to talk to him now, he’d put her to work washing the car.

  Okay, so then, where’s Matt? wondered Megan. Her brother was always right in her face when she didn’t want to be bugged. Now, in her time of need, where was he?

  I’ll just have to handle this myself, Megan thought with a sigh of resignation as she walked back to her desk.

  Megan Merrill considered herself a very independent person. She could take the bus to school by herself. She could go away to summer camp and not even be homesick. If she could do all that, she could certainly handle a glitter spill, even if it was one for the record books. It seemed to Megan that it was the biggest glitter spill in the history of the human race.

  Megan folded a piece of purple construction paper and held it in one hand. She cupped her other hand along the edge of the desk and began to scoop the glitter into a giant pile. Her nose itched but she resisted the urge to scratch. The last thing she needed was purple glitter up her nose—she’d be sneezing sparkles for a week.

  After a few more careful strokes Megan had brushed the glitter into a considerable mound. Just as she moved the pile of glitter to the edge of the desk and pushed a chunk of it toward her cupped hand, her older brother, Matt, tapped her on the shoulder.

  Megan whirled around. The glitter went flying, scattering all over her rug.

  “Whoa!” said Matt. “What’s with the fairy dust?”

  “Matt! Look what you made me do!” Megan said.

  “Me?” Matt said. “You don’t need my help making a mess. Check out your room!”

  Matt had a point. Clothes were scattered everywhere and there was still leftover wrapping paper and ribbon on the floor from her late-night holiday gift-wrapping session over a week ago.

  “At least you could help me clean up this glitter,” Megan said.

  “I could,” Matt answered, “but then I’d be late for practice.”

  Matt was wearing his baseball jersey and batting glove. Baseball tryouts were coming up, and he was spending a lot of time practicing with the team in the hopes of securing a starting position.

  “Besides, I’ll get that stuff all over my jersey,” Matt continued, “and I am definitely not going to practice wearing glitter. Looking all spangly and shiny is pretty much a baseball no-no.” He wagged his finger demonstratively in Megan’s face and then headed for the door, but he stopped in his tracks before he got to the hallway. Megan had crawled underneath her desk and was pinching little clumps of glitter from the carpet. Matt walked back toward Megan and knocked his knuckles on the desk to get her attention. He crouched low so that they were eye to eye.

  “Tell you what,” Matt said, “I’ll bring the DustBuster up from downstairs.”

  Megan smiled. Matt could be a jerk, but most of the time he was an okay brother. “If you do, I’ll let you come to my birthday party,” she offered.

  Matt smirked. “No, thanks. I think I’m seriously busy that day.”

  “You can’t be busy that day,” Megan protested. “You don’t even know when the party is.”

  “So when is it?”

  “January nineteenth!” Megan exclaimed. She pointed to her desk and the calendar with the big purple circle drawn around that date. “How could you forget my birthday? Mom says I get to have a sleepover slumber party for all eleven girls in my class! Well, twelve if you count me. And I guess you have to count me because I’m the birthday girl.” She held up one of the finished invitations. It had purple feathers glued around the edge, and it read: MEGAN’S POSITIVELY PURPLE PARTY! The information was all inside, the date, the time, the fact that it was a sleepover—“wear your pajamas!”—and the request that all the guests wear something purple.

  Megan had been planning her Positively
Purple Party for a year, and she couldn’t have been more excited. Everything was going to be purple because purple was her favorite color. She was decorating the house with purple streamers and purple balloons. She and her mom were baking a purple cake decorated with purple frosting. They were making purple punch and purple tea-sandwiches, and the girls were going to give each other manicures with purple nail polish.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Matt said. “Any night you invite a dozen fourth-grade girls to sleep over at our house is a night I’m definitely going to be busy.”

  He started to leave again, but Megan hurried from the desk to plant herself between him and the door. She held up her hands and started to gesture in sign language.

  “Take that back,” she signed. “You’re my only brother, and you have to come to my birthday party!”

  Megan had been deaf since she was eighteen months old, and everyone in her family could sign as easily as they could talk out loud.

  “Okay, okay,” Matt signed back. “But I’m not going to wear anything purple!”

  • • •

  “I don’t even own anything purple,” said Cindy.

  “Yes, you do,” Megan insisted. “Everybody thinks they don’t own anything purple, but they’re forgetting that violet and lavender are still purple too.”

  “Oh!” Cindy exclaimed. “I have some pants that my mom says are lilac.”

  “That counts as purple,” said Megan.

  Cindy brightened. She was Megan’s best friend, and she certainly didn’t want to attend Megan’s birthday party without obeying the dress code.

  Megan and Cindy were sitting in Megan’s dining room on Sunday afternoon. Megan was inviting every girl in her class to her birthday party, which meant she had to prepare a total of eleven invitations. She had carefully stacked the works-in-progress in her bedroom, carried them downstairs, and rearranged them across the dining room table. “I finished writing in glue and sprinkling the glitter,” she explained to Cindy. She showed off an example of the front of the invitation with the “Megan” in “Megan’s Positively Purple Party!” in spangly letters. “So what we have to do now is glue on the feathers.”

  Megan raised a plastic bag bulging with tiny purple feathers. It was something she’d found at Stratton’s craft store, and it had been too perfect to pass up.

  “Purple feathers,” said Cindy. “Excellent!”

  “I know,” Megan agreed. She tugged on the plastic bag to break the seal, but it was stronger than she anticipated. Megan tugged harder and a small explosion of purple feathers burst from the bag.

  Megan and Cindy laughed.

  Megan arranged a few feathers as a border on the face of the invitation.

  “Oh, that looks good,” said Cindy, using her thumb to dig at the glue that had hardened at the top of the glue bottle. “But do we put the glue on the feathers or put the glue on the paper?”

  “Better glue the paper,” said Megan. “These feathers are too small.” She placed one feather in the palm of her hand and pursed her lips to blow it toward Cindy.

  “You really don’t have to make an invitation for me,” said Cindy. “I already know all about the party.”

  “Of course I do,” Megan insisted. “You’re my best friend!”

  “Best friends forever,” said Cindy with a smile.

  That was when Matt walked into the dining room and belched loudly to announce his presence.

  “Ugh!” Megan shrieked after a few seconds, pinching her nose. She twisted sideways to swat Matt with her arm.

  “I didn’t think you could hear that,” said Cindy.

  “Much worse!” cried Megan. “I could smell it!”

  “Megan has a better sense of smell than an alley cat,” Matt explained.

  “Hey, Matt,” said Cindy, waving with purple-feathered fingers.

  “Hey,” said Matt, stuffing a banana into his mouth. “Mom’s going to be mad when you get glitter all over the dining room,” he said, looking over the birthday party invitations on the dining room table.

  “You know I can’t understand you when you talk with your mouth full,” Megan replied.

  Matt gestured at the clutter spread across the dinner table and signed, “And you know Mom’s gonna be mad.”

  Megan didn’t respond. Instead she reached toward the empty dining room chair beside her and raised the DustBuster. She waved it at Matt to indicate everything was under control.

  Matt shrugged, unimpressed. He gazed over the purple invitations, each one individually written, glued, and glittered. It seemed like a lot of work. “Why don’t you just send out an e-mail with the date of the party?”

  Cindy sighed impatiently. “Girls appreciate it when you put out an effort,” she explained.

  Megan looked up from the task of gluing purple feathers, perplexed by whatever Cindy had said to Matt. She elbowed Cindy and shrugged her shoulders to ask, What’s up? Cindy repeated Matt’s question in sign language, and Megan shook her head and rolled her eyes.

  “I know,” said Cindy. “Can you imagine? All you’d get is an e-mail: ‘Come to my party.’ ”

  “Nobody would come,” Megan replied.

  They finished the invitations and stacked them in a box so that Megan could hand them out the next day, their first day back at school.

  “I cannot wait to hand out my invitations!” Megan said with excitement.

  “I know!” said Cindy, admiring their work on the last invitation before handing it to Megan to store in the box. “I’ll help you hand them out if you want.”

  “I’m going to need it!” said Megan. With all the invitations, the box was kind of clumsy. “We’ll hand them out at the end of the day so that they don’t get crushed or anything.”

  “And on the first day back at school after winter break,” said Cindy, admiring the feathers and glitter. “Just wait!”

  “I know!” Megan agreed. “All the girls are going to freak out!”

  2

  Say Hello

  “SAY HELLO TO ALEXIS,” MS. ENDEE announced from the front of the classroom.

  Megan, Cindy, and all the other fourth graders had barely been able to concentrate on the morning Pledge of Allegiance. “Alexis Powell” was written in blue marker on the whiteboard at the front of Megan’s classroom at Wilmot Elementary. A new girl stood beside her name. She clutched a notebook, her head was cocked shyly, and she shifted her weight from side to side. She had shoulder-length blond hair and a smattering of freckles on her cheeks and nose. At Ms. Endee’s prompt, Megan and the rest of the class responded with a singsong “Hello, Alexis!” The girl flipped one hand up and offered a slightly embarrassed smile.

  As the classroom chattered excitedly about the new classmate, Megan stared curiously at the girl in front of the room. She was slightly taller than the other girls in class—but not because she was wearing shoes that made her look taller. Megan had already checked out the new girl’s shoes. Alexis was wearing hot-pink tennis shoes with, Megan was pleased to see, long purple shoelaces tied in a big double knot. She was also wearing a lightweight sweater—extremely cute—embroidered with tiny white flowers.

  “I like her sweater,” Megan signed to Cindy.

  “I knew you would,” Cindy signed back. “Me too!”

  “It’s purple!” signed Megan.

  “It’s lavender!” Cindy insisted.

  “Lavender is purple!” Megan leaned toward Cindy to add in a whisper, “Maybe the new girl is all right.”

  “She looks nice to me,” Cindy enthused.

  “Class, class, please!” Ms. Endee said loudly, waving her hands in a downward motion. The class settled down and turned forward to pay attention to their teacher.

  Megan turned toward Jann, the young woman on the school staff who served as her sign language interpreter. Whenever Ms. Endee addressed the class, Jann would translate her words into sign language so that Megan could understand them. If Megan had something to say in class, Jann would translate Megan’s sign l
anguage into spoken words for Ms. Endee. It was a pretty efficient system. On top of that, Jann wore bright red fingernail polish and when she signed, it always reminded Megan of little red butterflies fluttering about. She sat at a small desk alongside the whiteboard so that Megan could read the sign language and observe Ms. Endee in action.

  Ms. Endee placed a comforting hand on Alexis, the new girl, and issued a bright friendly smile. “It’s not easy transferring to a new school in the middle of the year,” the teacher declared, “so I want everyone to put out an extra effort to make Alexis feel welcome.” Gazing about the classroom, she spotted an empty desk and continued, “Why don’t you sit over there, Alexis?”

  Megan and Cindy exchanged a glance. Ms. Endee was pointing to the empty desk by the small classroom sink that they used for arts and crafts projects and science experiments. That particular desk was considered a prime location—and it usually belonged to Tony Rosenblum.

  Alexis was already headed for her new seat when Megan shot her hand into the air and loudly declared, “But, Ms. Endee! That desk belongs to Tony Rosenblum!”

  Cindy noticed that the new girl twisted slightly to get a closer look at Megan when she passed by their desks. Megan had an unusual way of speaking because of her deafness. It was easy to understand what Megan was saying, but sometimes her voice sounded a little nasal and she wasn’t used to articulating her consonants. Everyone in their class at Wilmot was accustomed to the way Megan spoke—but it probably sounded a little funny to newcomers.

  “Never mind about Tony Rosenblum, Megan,” said Ms. Endee. “Although I’m sure he’ll appreciate that you watched out for him.”

  The students tittered and Megan felt a rush of embarrassment. She sank an inch in her chair. She was only watching out for Ms. Endee; it wasn’t like she cared the least bit about Tony Rosenblum.

  “I got an e-mail from Tony’s parents saying that his family won’t return from the holidays for another few days,” Ms. Endee explained. “So Tony will have to get used to a new seat when he returns.” She smiled at Alexis who was just settling into her new desk, and Alexis returned the smile.