Ann Martin - Little Miss Stoneybrook...and Dawn

"Okay," I said. "See you tomorrow. Good luck, Charlotte."

"Thanks," she said. "And good luck, Claire and Margo!" she yelled toward the dining room.

"Thanks!" the girls shouted back.

As soon as Claudia and Charlotte were gone, I called to Claire and Margo, and we got back to work. Margo started the poem over from the beginning, which nearly killed me, but I knew she wanted to rehearse.

Then it was Claire's turn. She sang her song once through and then began a little dance I'd taught her. I'd made it up myself, but it looked sort of like the sailor's hornpipe. When she finished the dance, she sang the song again - with hand gestures. She demonstrated drop-

ping dangly worms into her mouth and spitting out their germs. She made horrible faces. It was pretty funny. Maybe she'd win in a humor category or something.

I helped the girls change clothes once again - into their outfits for the beauty parade. These outfits were the most dressy, and the girls looked great. They were wearing velvet dresses. The dresses were old hand-me-downs from Mallory and Vanessa, I think, but they were in beautiful condition. Since they were actually Christmas dresses, Margo's was green and Claire's was red. Each had a lace collar.

The girls rehearsed walking and smiling some more.

Then I said, "Okay, the very last event of the pageant will be questions, one for each girl. You'll stay in these outfits for that part. Now start thinking about nice, good, helpful things, and I'll ask you some questions. Okay?"

"Okay." The girls were sitting side by side on the living room couch. They looked tired, but determined. I hoped they could hold up during the pageant. The next day would be a long one.

"Margo," I said, "What is your greatest wish?"

"Global peace," she replied immediately.

"Yes, but say it in a nice sentence."

"My greatest wish," Margo said, looking rapturous and angelic, "is for global peace. That would be very . . . nice."

I only hoped the judge wouldn't ask her to explain what she meant. Margo didn't have the vaguest idea what global peace was.

"Great," I told her. "Now Claire, if the house were on fire and you had time to rescue three things, what would they be?"

"I would rescue," Claire began sweetly, "my family members, global peace, and the fire extinguisher."

I sighed. Claire and I had a lot of work to do. But I didn't mind. It kept me from thinking about what was going to happen that evening.

Chapter 12.

Claire and I talked and talked about how to answer those questions. I decided she was in pretty good shape when I said to her, "How could you change the world to make it a better place?" and she replied, "I would help everybody get to be friends and I would give them all free French fries at McDonald's."

Close enough.

Anyway, it was 5:30 and time to go home.

I said good-bye to the Pikes and walked home with as much enthusiasm as if I were walking to my own execution.

"Jeff?" I called as I entered our house.

"Hi! Hi, Dawn! I'm upstairs!"

Jeff was ecstatic and I was a mess.

I went up to Jeff's room and looked around. Jeff was sitting on his bed, grinning. (He'd been grinning for days.) His room looked the way it did right after we'd moved in and hadn't

unpacked yet: bare. Most of his things had been put in trunks or cartons and shipped back to California. All that remained was a suitcase full of the clothes he'd been wearing the past few days and a knapsack that he was going to take with him on the plane that night. It contained a couple of books, a Transformer, his Walkman, some tapes, and a few things I could categorize only as junk.

Jeff was sitting on his bed looking through a pile of colorful papers.

"What's all that?" I asked him.

"Good-bye cards," he replied. "Ms. Besser gave me a going-away party today, and everyone in my class had made a card for me. It was their homework last night. Ms. Besser assigned it while I was in the boys' room yesterday. The party was a surprise."

"That was really nice of Ms. Besser," I said.

"I think she's glad to get rid of me."

I looked at the cards. They all said things like, GOOD-BYE, JEFF, and GOOD LUCK, JEFF, and I'LL MISS YOU, JEFF.

My curiosity overcame me. "Where's Jerry Haney's card?" I asked.

Jeff sorted through the pile and handed one to me. On the front it said simply GOOD-BYE, JEFF. But inside, in the middle of a complicated

drawing, in letters so tiny Ms. Besser wouldn't have noticed them, were the words AND GOOD

RIDDANCE.

"I'm taking all the cards with me - except Jerry's," Jeff told me. I watched him tear Jerry's card to bits and throw the pieces in his trash can.

"Hi! I'm home!" called my mother's voice.

"Hi, Mom," Jeff and I replied automatically.

"Come on downstairs," she said. "We have to eat an early, fast dinner."

"Okay!" I shouted.

"Dawn, can you carry my knapsack?" Jeff asked as he stuffed the cards in it. "I'm all packed. I might as well take my stuff downstairs when we go."

Jeff didn't even give his room a good-bye glance as he left it. Maybe boys don't care about those things. ... Or maybe Jeff hated his life in Connecticut so much that he didn't want to remember it.

Jeff's last dinner with us was leftovers. "Sorry," said Mom, "but it's the fastest kind of dinner to have. I want to leave for the airport in forty-five minutes."

"I can't believe you're letting me take a night flight," Jeff commented happily as he shoveled in a forkful of reheated brown rice.

"I can't, either," said my mother. "But I

think it's the easiest way for you to go, in terms of jet lag. You'll leave here around nine - "

"I know, I know. And arrive at eleven o'clock California time."

"Right. You can sleep a little on the plane, and you'll still be able to get in a pretty good night's sleep in California."

"That is, if Dad and I don't stop to do something fun."

Mom and I exchanged a glance. "Jeff," Mom said seriously, "don't expect life with your dad to be like your vacation with him."

"I won't," he replied. But he still looked awfully excited.

Didn't he have even mixed feelings about leaving Mom and me? Didn't some tiny part of him think, Gosh, I'm going to miss Mom and my sister?

I had a feeling that the answer to both questions was no. And I was very, very hurt.

That night we didn't bother to do the dishes. We just cleared the table and put everything in the sink. Mom was nervous about the drive to the airport. "You never know about traffic jams," she said.

We were on the road before 7:00.

I let Jeff sit up front with Mom. 1 figured she'd have last-minute things to say to him

like, "Obey Dad," or "Don't forget to lock the door if you use the restroom on the plane," or "Call us anytime. Call collect if you want."

But the ride to the airport was silent except for when a car cut in front of us and Mom hit the horn and muttered something I couldn't hear.

We reached the airport an hour before Jeff's plane was supposed to take off. As we stood in the white light of a streetlamp in the parking lot, I saw Mom blinking back tears. I glanced at Jeff, who was busy hauling his suitcase and knapsack out of the trunk of the car. He was whistling.

I took Mom's hand and whispered, "It'll be okay." Then I gave her a quick hug.

Crash. Jeff slammed the trunk shut.

"Okay, let's go!" he cried. "Can I buy some candy from a vending machine, Mom? Please?" (Jeff's one health-food downfall is chocolate.) "And can Dawn and I take our pictures in the photo booth? You get four. We could give two to Dad and you could keep the other two."

"Now, I like that idea," Mom told him. She smiled. It was hard to stay upset around someone who was so cheerful.

We walked into the airport and checked Jeff's suitcase through.