Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life

by Ann M. Martin

  “I only have forty-two dollars and eleven cents,” I whispered to Mom.

  “Don’t forget that this is a discount store,” she replied. “And there’s a sale on. You’ll be surprised by how far your money will go.”

  We walked up and down the aisles and compared prices and looked for bargains, and slowly our cart filled up and Mom crossed things off the list. An hour and a half later we met up with Dad and Lexie at the checkout line. Their cart was as full as ours. I clutched my over-stuffed wallet, and I noticed that Lexie was rummaging around in her purse. She was going to pay for some of her things, too.

  We waited on a long line and I eyed an array of gum and thought of all the money in my wallet, but I turned away and just stood on one foot and then the other until at last the very loud man in front of us finished yelling at the cashier and we could finally unload our carts. To make up for the loud, rude man I said to the cashier, “We’re doing our back-to-school shopping here at BuyMore-PayLess, and I’m spending forty-two dollars and eleven cents that I earned myself. Thank you for ringing us up.”

  The cashier smiled at me, which was good because the loud man had almost made her cry and her eyes were still full of tears that hadn’t run out.

  When all of our purchases had been loaded into bags, the cashier announced the price, and Lexie and I handed our money to Dad the economist and without even needing the calculator I’d just bought, he said, “You girls contributed over a quarter of the total. Thank you!”

  And we all walked out of the store with our bulging shopping bags feeling pleased with ourselves.

  * * *

  Four nights later, which was the night before the first day of school, which also meant that it was a school night, I added the final touch to my summer scrapbook—a thank-you note, one of our P&J Designs. I had fastened a lavender ribbon to the top and a row of glitter flowers along the bottom. Inside I had written:

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  Thank you for the great summer. It was great. I really mean it. I LOVED IT! I had fun and learned a lot and also earned a lot of $$ and didn’t really miss the wild west. Thank you for Camp Merrimac and our staycation and all the clothes and things from Buymore+payless, the ones you bought, not the ones I bought. I hope you like this scrapbook. I made it just for you.

  Love,

  Your daughter, Pearl Littlefield

  P.S. Thank you for the scrapbook too. I really mean it.

  I brought the scrapbook to the family room and Mom came out of her office and Dad set aside the article he was writing and we looked through the book together, until Mom reminded me that it was a school night and I had a new bedtime schedule.

  “Good night,” I said, leaving the scrapbook on the coffee table because Mom said it deserved to be displayed. “Thanks again for the summer. Love you.”

  I found Bitey and carried him, struggling and hissing, to my bed.

  22

  One thing my parents don’t usually experience is me still doing my homework at 11:00 p.m. If I’m up that late on a school night I’m either sick, or doing something I don’t want anyone to know about, like drawing pictures of Mrs. Olson getting arrested for playing her flute in her nightgown and being taken to jail on the back of the policeman’s bicycle.

  But on the first night of fifth grade my mother knocked on my door at 11:00, peeked inside, saw me sitting at my desk surrounded by sheets of paper (which they were sheets of work, not sheets of drawings), and had to steady herself on the door frame. I couldn’t blame Mom for being shocked. I rarely spend more than half an hour racing through my homework. But once I’d written Ms. Brody’s outline and started filling in all the stuff she wanted to know about my summer, the words just kept spilling out, and I wrote and wrote and wrote—about Camp Merrimac and the staycation and my fight with JBIII and my father and his job search and, really, about my life (so far).

  “Pearl?” said Mom. “Is that your homework?” She gasped a little.

  “Yup.”

  “But it’s eleven o’clock. When did you start it?”

  “When you told me to.”

  “And you’re still working on it? What on earth was Ms. Brody’s assignment?”

  I knew Mom was wondering if Ms. Brody was going to turn out to be one of those teachers who give so much homework that her students get stressed and start to fear school and also have to give up soccer. Since I already sort of liked Ms. Brody I said quickly, “Just an essay about our summer vacation. And we were supposed to outline it first.”

  I searched through the papers on my desk and dangled one of them in front of my mother. “This is the outline.”

  Mom took it and skimmed it. But she didn’t comment on it. All she said was, “And what’s that?” She pointed to the rest of the papers.

  “The essay. I started writing and it got a little long. It’s about summer vacation, but it’s kind of about my life, too. I started with…” I paused. “I hope you don’t mind, but I started with Dad getting fired. I know it’s a personal family thing, but I felt like nothing that happened this summer would have happened the same way if Dad hadn’t lost his job. And some of the things wouldn’t have happened at all.”

  Once again my mother’s eyes filled with tears, and once again they were not sad tears but emotional ones. “Oh, Pearl,” she said, “you’ve discovered what it means to be a real writer—to write from your heart.”

  I whisked the outline from her hands and then scrabbled up all the other pages of the assignment, which was done anyway. I was just checking for spelling mistakes.

  “Would you like me to look your essay over?” asked Mom.

  The answer was no, which was why I had scrabbled up the papers. But I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. “That’s okay,” I replied. “I think I did a good job. Anyway, I’m tired.”

  My mother looked longingly at the essay but just said, “All right. Get some sleep now. Tomorrow will be here before you know it.” Then she added hurriedly, “I’m proud of you, Pearl.” But she didn’t say anything more about my being a real writer, which was good since if I’m a real anything, it’s an artist.

  Mom kissed the top of my head, closed the door to my room, then opened it again to let Bitey in, and finally left to say good night to Lexie.

  I climbed into bed with my essay, which I decided to read one final time. The main reason it had gotten so long was Dad. The more I’d written about him, the more I’d had to say. And I do not mean the more I’d had to say about missing our trip to the Wild West, although it had occurred to me that one other thing I had hoped to do out there was set up an easel in the desert and paint a sunset. I had stopped mentioning the trip because by now I knew how it felt to need a job badly and go looking for one and get turned down again and again. And if I had felt bad when no one would hire me to do something I had no business doing—like baby-sitting for someone practically my own age—imagine how Dad felt when no one would hire him to do what he was the best at, and what he loved.

  I thought about P&J Designs. What if no one wanted to buy our products anymore and because of that I had to go home and tell the rest of the Littlefields that the big trip we had planned to the Wild West was cancelled? I would feel horrible. And now I knew that “horrible” meant humiliated, frustrated, embarrassed, and also that I was a failure, even though I was not. But once those feelings get going it’s hard to stop them. They just roll on and on. I remembered when Dad had driven to Camp Merrimac to watch JBIII and me in the talent showcase—the only parent who had shown up—and his sad smile as he had driven Lexie and JBIII and me home in the car he’d had to borrow from Mrs. Mott. And I remembered the look on his face when I’d held my nose on the subway, which we’d had to take since we no longer owned our green Subaru.

  The loss of Dad’s job hadn’t just meant freezer pizza and BuyMore-PayLess and Lexie spending half her camp time as a CIT. It had meant an entire shift in my father and the way he thought about himself and the role he played in our family, and a shift in our
lives.

  I stared at the pages in my hands and wondered if I should add that thought somewhere or if it came through in the examples I had given Ms. Brody. I decided the examples spoke for themselves and were more interesting than plain thought-words.

  I kept reading.

  I reached the pages about the staycation, which was sort of a sad part since JBIII and I were having our fight then, but which mostly described a fun week. It was strange to think that you could have so much fun right in your own hometown, especially when you were supposed to be in the Wild West instead. But my family and I really had had fun, and my father had looked very happy, although who knows how he was feeling inside.

  Then something else occurred to me, and it was so important that I decided to write a P.S. at the end of the essay. I knew I was supposed to be going to sleep, but I didn’t think Mom and Dad would mind if I added a finishing touch to my first fifth-grade homework assignment.

  I slid out of bed and sat at my desk again. I thought for a moment and then wrote:

  P.S. Ms. Brody, I know I didn’t include this next part in my outline, but I didn’t know where to fit it in—and I still want to add this thought to my essay, which I hope you won’t take off points for not sticking 100% to the outline. Anyway, what I want to say is that I learned something important this summer, and that is that you just never know what’s around the corner. And I don’t mean what is really around the corner, like the time my sister and I turned off of Sixth Avenue onto Twelfth Street and almost ran into a man coming around the corner with a python around his neck and Lexie screamed and tripped and her shoe flew off.

  I mean, what is coming around the corner in life. Sometimes the unexpected things are bad, like when Dad lost his job, but sometimes they’re good, like when JBIII and I started our business after I had thought no one would ever hire me and I would never find a way to earn any $$. It makes me feel hopeful when I think about that. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I also feel hopeful when I think about Dad and his job search. Not to mention, when I think about my family and my life so far. I know I complained about my birthday party and the trip and the pizza, but still, I’m proud of my family, and that includes me, and how we worked together this summer and made changes we didn’t really want to make, especially since some of the changes led to good things, like P&J Designs.

  I know I’m not a writer like my mother, Ms. Brody, but I hope I’ve managed to explain things here. This last part seemed important.

  Your student,

  Pearl Littlefield, Grade 5

  Now it really was time to go to bed. My head was swimming, and the words on the paper were blurring. I arranged the pages of the essay, left them on my desk, gathered Bitey into my arms, and climbed back into bed. I turned on my side and looked out my window, across the airshaft, and into a window of the building next door. A family lives in the seventh-floor apartment, a family with two parents and two little boys, and they leave one light on all night long, no matter what. I almost never see the people, just the light. It shines in a pool on their floor and on the wall by a doorway, and if I leave my blind up, it shines just a little bit into my room, too.

  I looked at Bitey in the pale light from the other apartment, and I thought about the next morning when my family and I would wake up and eat breakfast, and Lexie and I would go to school, and Mom would begin writing, and Dad would continue his search for work. One day, I thought, the phone would ring and the person at the other end would say just the thing Dad had been hoping to hear—or maybe something he hadn’t expected to hear at all—and he would smile and then knock on my mother’s office door to tell her the good news.

  PEARL’S SUMMER VACATION – OUTLINE

  I . My dad got fired.

  A. My family was shocked.

  B. We tried to pretend that saving $$ was fun!!!

  C. We had a tiny celebration when I hit the big one-oh.

  II . I went to Camp Merrimac, which is a day camp.

  A. Lexie was a CIT for my troop.

  B. Camp was fun even though Lexie was my CIT, and even though one of the Starlettes was Jill DiNunzio.

  C. JBIII and I starred in a talent show.

  III . My self-portrait (Pearl Littlefield at Ten) was in an art exhibit.

  IV . I rescued Bitey (cat).

  V. JBIII and I had a fight.

  A. It started at WaterWorks.

  B. It continued at the Garlic Festival.

  C. I almost made up with JBIII, but then I didn’t.

  VI . There was an accident.

  VII . My family went on a lame staycation.

  A. We pretended to be tourists in our own city.

  B. Even though we were on vacation, I mean staycation, my sister got an idea about becoming a working girl.

  VIII . My sister and I went job hunting.

  A. Lexie got all the jobs.

  B. I found out how it feels to be my father.

  IX . I finally made up with JBIII.

  X . JBIII and I went into business.

  A. JBIII got an excellent idea.

  B. I surprised my parents.

  XI . Summer vacation ended.

  Staycation Sites

  Though the city isn’t quite the same as the Wild West, it’s full of adventures. While on staycation, Pearl and her family saw some of New York City’s most famous landmarks, which attract tourists from around the world. Here’s some more information about these historic sites.

  EMPIRE STATE BUILDING

  Completed in 1931, the Empire State Building may be New York’s most famous skyscraper. Though Pearl looked for her apartment in the streets below, observation deck visitors can look into the distance and see farther. On a sunny day, observers can see all the way to New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Luckily, the building has seventy-three elevators to shuttle the building’s four million yearly visitors up- and downstairs. If you look at the Manhattan skyline, you might recognize the Empire State Building by its spike-like broadcast tower or its colorful lights.

  www.esbnyc.com

  BROOKLYN BRIDGE

  Built in 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge stretches across the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Cars drive on the lower levels, while people can walk or bike across the top level. It’s one of the oldest suspension bridges in the country, but its age doesn’t bother the 150,000 pedestrians and cars that cross the Brooklyn Bridge every day.

  http://www.history.com/topics/brooklyn-bridge

  CENTRAL PARK

  When New Yorkers grow tired of seeing city streets, they stroll through Central Park, which is full of creeks, ponds, and meadows, and is even the site of a castle. The park contains twenty-one playgrounds, as well as a carousel, an ice skating rink, and twenty-six softball and baseball fields. Visitors can fish, bird-watch, play sports, have picnics, or see penguins at the Central Park Zoo—all in the middle of New York City!

  http://www.centralparknyc.org

  STATUE OF LIBERTY

  Since 1886, the Statue of Liberty has stood on a small island south of Manhattan. Liberty is quite a large lady—her mouth is three feet wide, her index finger is eight feet long, and her head is ten feet wide. Lucky visitors can stand above Lady Liberty’s head and look out from her crown. From Liberty Island, you can see the skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan, and you can also see Ellis Island, where people from around the world once landed when they immigrated to America.

  www.nps.gov/stli

  MADAME TUSSAUDS

  There are more than 200 statues of celebrities in Madame Tussauds. Visitors can take pictures with figures such as Abraham Lincoln, Marilyn Monroe, Pablo Picasso, and other artists, musicians, and politicians. Plus, they can experience creepy surprises at the live “Scream” performance and be amazed (and possibly disgusted) by the sights, sounds, and smells of their 4-D movie theater.

  http://www.madametussauds.com/NewYork/

  METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

  At the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
visitors can see everything from paintings of George Washington to ancient Greek sculptures. There is also a room furnished like a historic mansion, a hall with suits of armor, and a reconstructed Egyptian temple with a moat. It’s easy to get lost while exploring the maze-like galleries.

  http://www.metmuseum.org/

  BROADWAY

  Though Broadway is a street that winds through Manhattan, Broadway shows are put on in any of forty theaters on just a small section of Broadway near Times Square. Tourists and New Yorkers alike flock to theaters to see the many musicals and plays.

  http://www.ilovenytheater.com

  AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

  The museum is famous for its dinosaur wing and its life-like animal dioramas. An ocean life wing holds models of different fish, as well as a 94-foot-long model of a blue whale. The Hayden Planetarium offers space shows which simulate the stars, planets, and universe.

  http://www.amnh.org/

  A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK

  An Imprint of Macmillan

  TEN GOOD AND BAD THINGS ABOUT MY LIFE (SO FAR). Copyright © 2012 by Ann M. Martin. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available

  ISBN: 978-0-312-64299-0

  Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto

  First Edition: 2012

  mackids.com

  eISBN: 9781466827516