Ava and Pip (6 page)

BEDTIME

DEAR DIARY,

Dad and I were sitting on the sofa. He picked up his big fat thousand-page book. “What if James Joyce had written about two days instead of one day?” I asked. “Would
Ulysses
have been two thousand pages long?”

He laughed and said he wanted to read
my
story. I said I misplaced it. He said, “Really?” like he didn't quite believe me. I said, “Really” because it was sort of true: I'd
placed
it where it would be
miss
ing!

To be honest, I don't like being less than honest with Dad. I mean, I wish I could just tell him everything and have him hug me and tell me it's all going to be okay.

But what if he got disappointed in me instead? Or thought everything was
not
going to be okay? I don't think I could take it.

Anyway, Dad went back to reading, and I wrote Bea an apology note in my very best handwriting.

I'm going to deliver it tomorrow before homeroom.

Here's what it says:

DEAR BEA,

I REALLY AM SORRY. I WAS JUST TRYING TO HELP MY SISTER.

AVA

It's late, and I hope I can fall asleep.

ASININE AVA

P.S. I
swear
“asinine” is not a
swear
word. It means really foolish and idiotic.

BEFORE SCHOOL

DEAR DIARY,

I slept terribly. I dreamed a vicious bee with a tiny tiara was buzzing around my head and would not buzz off.

At breakfast, I was exhausted. Dad opened the fridge and said, “No melon, no lemon” (N-O-M-E-L-O-N, N-O-L-E-M-O-N). Then he said, “Aha!” (A-H-A) and picked up a shriveled olive. “An evil olive!” (E-V-I-L-O-L-I-V-E). Then he bit into a banana.

Mom said, “Yo, Banana Boy!” (Y-O-B-A-N-A-N-A-B-O-Y). “It's too early. Besides, I have a headache. And I already took one lonely Tylenol” (L-O-N-E-L-Y-T-Y-L-E-N-O-L).

Pip and I looked at each other, and I thought: no wonder Pip doesn't talk much in public. When it comes to conversation, our parents are very peculiar role models.

I told my family I had a nightmare, but didn't say it was a night
bee
.

“I'm sorry,” Dad said, then added, “I guess I'd better not tell you girls about what I'm working on.”

“Why not?” Pip asked.

“Because it would give you both bad dreams!”

“Tell us!” Pip and I said, right on cue. Then we both said, “Jinx!”

Dad smiled and said, “You know how there are lots of books about vampires?”

“Yes,” Pip said.

“Well, the first good one was
Dracula
, and I'm trying to turn it into a play for kids. It was by an Irish writer.”

Mom leaned her head on her hand in a tired way, while Dad explained that the author, Bram Stoker, got the idea from a church in Dublin. The church was so dry and cool inside that the bodies in its crypt barely decomposed. They looked alive even though they were dead!

For a second, I pictured Little Bram Stoker as a ten-year-old in a navy jacket and maroon tie telling a contest audience how inspiring it was to observe a bunch of non-rotting corpses.

Mom looked up. “Really, Bob? You're telling our daughters about corpses first thing in the morning?”

Dad shrugged, but the funny thing is, I didn't mind hearing about the creepy, well-preserved corpses because it gave me “perspective.” I mean, at least I'm—

AVA, AWAKE AND ALIVE

AFTER SCHOOL, IN THE LIBRARY

DEAR DIARY,

Before homeroom, I walked down the school hall and up to Bea's locker, which I'd noticed was close to Pip's. I looked both ways, slipped my note in, and ran. Instead of my phone number, which she obviously had, I wrote my locker number next to my name.

An hour later, I noticed a corner of a yellow piece of paper sticking out of my locker. I could feel every one of my nerves jingling, but I reached for the note and opened it up. The handwriting was bad, but I deciphered it and here it is:

I was tempted to write her a note back saying I had a dentist appointment, and I thought: How am I going to survive until seventh period?

Well, you know how time can go fast or slow? Today
time
took its
time
! All the minute hands on the wall clocks seemed stuck, and I kept trying to figure out what I should say to Bea.

When the bell finally rang after seventh period, I went to her locker. I stood there like an idiot and watched the entire school rush by, nice kids and mean kids, nice teachers and scary teachers, and even Principal Gupta, who is strict, and Nurse Abrahams, who is sweet. (I wanted to call out, “Nurse Abrahams! Help! Help! S-O-S! S-O-S!”)

It was almost time for math when Bea showed up. “Have you thought about what you did?” she asked.

“Yes.” She looked at me, waiting for more. “I was trying to help my sister, but what I wrote wasn't fair, and I'm sorry. I apologize again.”

She stared at me for a while then said, “You should have left me out of it. And there are better ways to help your sister. Tell you what, Ava, why don't you meet me after school in the library?”

Another meeting? I didn't want another meeting!

The bell rang, and I mumbled, “Okay,” and ran to math. I didn't want to be late because Mrs. Hamshire gets mad when kids are late. And she's scary even when she's not mad.

After math, I called Dad and said I was going to the library after school and would get home a little late.

Dad loves libraries, probably even more than Mrs. (Bright) White + Jerry Valentino + Mr. Ramirez combined. So he didn't say, “The library? I forbid it!” He said, “Okay.”

So I didn't say, “Dad, if I never make it home, I love you, and blame Bea Bates!” I just said “Okay” back.

Well, it's now 3:05, and I'm in the school library, and Bea is nowhere in sight, and I feel like an inchworm. (That's a sad simile.)

Outside, the branches are blowing every which way. Inside, it feels hot and stuffy.

I'm waiting and waiting and trying to stay calm. The custodian is emptying the waste paper baskets and scraping gum off from under the desks.

Did Bea tell me to stick around just to torture me? Did she mean
today
?

I got out my pleasure-reading book but kept rereading and
rerereading
the same page, and it was
not
a pleasure. I took out my spelling notebook and tried to study bonus words, but I couldn't keep my mind on them.

One was “libel,” which means writing something “unfavorable” about a person. Well, I now realize that if you LIBEL someone, you're LIABLE to get into big trouble.

Questions:

1.
Are my days numbered? My hours? My minutes?

2.
Where is Bea??

3.
What does she want with me anyway???

AVA IN ANGUISH

BEDTIME

DEAR DIARY,

At 3:10, Bea came racing in. Mr. Ramirez looked surprised to see Bea (a seventh-grader) heading straight toward me (a fifth-grader).

Suddenly Bea was looming over me all out of breath with a yellow pad and pointy pencil.

“Are you going to write a mean story about me?” I asked. The words came tumbling out.

“What are you talking about?” Bea sat down. “I'm not here for revenge. I'm here to help you help your sister.”

“I don't get it,” I said. If I were Bea, I'd hold a grudge for a year. Or for life.

“Ava, I've been thinking. You did a bad thing for a good reason. And it does stink about Pip's party. But it's not too late to make things better for her.” She pulled a scrunchie off her wrist and put her blond hair into a ponytail. “She can't go through middle school not talking, right? Being painfully shy must be painful.”

I was about to defend Pip, but I realized that Bea wasn't attacking her. So I sat there speechless, which is way more Pip-y than Ava-y. Finally I said, “I still don't get it.”

“This may sound weird,” Bea began, “but when I grow up, I want to be an advice columnist.”

“For real?”

“For real. Whenever I pick up a magazine, I turn to the advice column first.”

I wasn't sure what to say. I'm not used to seventh-graders confiding in me about their life goals. And not one kid in homeroom had said, “Advice columnist.”

“My aunt says I have a lot of common sense, and that that's very
uncommon
,” Bea continued. “So look, you want to help Pip, and I want to help people, so maybe we can figure something out.”

“Maybe…” I said.

“My big brother used to be really shy, and I helped him. I mean, he's still a little shy, but not as shy as he used to be.”

“Huh,” I said, remembering the sandy-haired freckled boy at Misty Oaks Library.

“Last summer at camp,” she said, “I made a lot of friends on the first day, but it took him weeks to get to know people. He said I was ‘the opposite of shy' and asked how I did it. Well, that got me thinking.”

“Oh,” I said. Bea had turned me back into a one-word wonder.

She met my eyes and said, “Tell me about Pip.” I didn't know if I should or not, but Bea had just told me about her brother, so next thing you know, I heard myself telling her that Pip likes big books and small animals and that she's artistic and smart and pretty, but “too quiet for her own good.”

Bea said, “Let me sleep on this and let's meet tomorrow. Same table, fifteen minutes before school starts.”

I couldn't believe we were scheduling another meeting. It was like we were grown-ups or something.

Now I'm in bed. I told Mom and Dad to wake me early because I had to work on a language arts project. They didn't question that, and it wasn't a total lie anyway because Bea and I want to try to help Pip use the English language.

Funny how some parents ask about every detail of their kids' lives, and some don't.

Question: Mom and Dad
over
protect Pip, but do they
under
protect me?

AVA ALL ANTSY

IN STUDY HALL

DEAR DIARY,

I got to the library on time, and Bea got there a few minutes late. “You have really good handwriting, right?”

“Right.” I almost told her that my favorite letter in cursive is a capital Q because of how it looks a little like a fancy 2:
Q
. I did
not
almost tell her that when I was little and my family needed me to be quiet, they'd sometimes give me a page of Os that I would turn into Qs (regular Qs, not cursive
Q
s), and that this was my idea of a good time.

“My handwriting's terrible,” Bea said, and luckily I did not blurt, “I know” or “I noticed” or “You can say that again.” “Tell you what,” she continued. “I'll talk, and you write.”

“Okay.” I dug out my turquoise pen, and Bea handed me a piece of yellow lined paper. She also got out a small spiral notebook that looked pretty worn, and then she started dictating. Well, I was concentrating so hard on spelling and neatness that I hardly even noticed what I was writing. I wanted all the dots on my
i
's to match, and I didn't want them to be bubbles, hearts, or daisies because I wanted Bea to think I was mature. When I got to the last word of her “four pointers,” she took the paper back.

“Perfect!” she said. She borrowed Mr. Ramirez's scissors and cut the paper into four strips. It felt like we were doing an arts and crafts project.

“Here's the first assignment,” Bea said as she handed me a yellow strip. The handwriting was mine, but the words surprised me:

Week One:

Smile at one new person every day.

“If all goes well,” Bea stated, “in just one month, we can get your sister to go from a Before to an After.”

“Really?” I said and tried to picture Old Pip turning into New-and-Improved Pip. I couldn't see it. “It might take at least five weeks,” I said and looked over the strips. “Mind if I add a fifth pointer?”

“Not at all,” she said. “I made these up last night, though I guess I have been thinking about them for a while.”

I wrote out, “Week Five: Ask someone a question each day. Listen to the answer,” because I like when people ask me friendly questions.

“Good one!” Bea said, which made me feel good. She even scribbled it down in her own little notebook.

“Are you going to tell Pip that you want to be an advice columnist and she's your first guinea pig?”

“
Second
,” Bea corrected. “Ben was the first, remember? But he wasn't a guinea pig, and neither is Pip. They're more like the timid turtle in that contest story, the one who wouldn't stick his head out.”

“Timmy,” I said, though I wished she hadn't mentioned the contest.

“Right!” Bea said. “And, Ava, we're not doing this for my
future
. We're doing it for Pip's
present
.”

“That's a homonym,” I said, then wanted to kick myself. Since it was too late, I kept talking. “PRESENT like ‘now' and PRESENT like ‘gift.'”

I hoped Bea wouldn't think this was a strange thing to say. It
was
a strange thing to say.

Questions:

1.
Why, oh why does my brain work this way?

2.
Can I blame B-O-B and A-N-N-A?

Speaking of palindromes, Bea said she liked my name. Since I did
not
want to be speaking of palindromes, I just said, “Thanks.”

She said there was a book in her family's store about an actress named Ava Gardner. “That Ava had three husbands, all famous. Frank Sinatra, a singer, Mickey Rooney, an actor, and Artie Shaw, a musician.”

“So she wasn't at all shy,” I said.

Bea laughed. “What were you reading when I came in?” She reached across and flipped over my book.

“
The
Witches
,” I said.

“I love Roald Dahl!”

“Me too.”

Funny how I'd assumed Bea was a witch and she'd assumed Pip was a snob. I guess people can't help but judge books by their covers and people by their looks.

At school, kids get made fun of if they're dweeby or fat or funny-looking. But even when a girl is cute, like Bea or Pip, some people still think bad things.

I started feeling a little guilty for having assumed that Bea was a jerk and for thinking not-nice thoughts about Alex Gladstone just because he's dweeby and burps out loud.

“Does your bookshop really have a cat?” I asked, because I didn't want to dwell on my shallowness.

“Yes. His name is Meow Meow. He's orange with stripes. He wanders around with his tail in the air, and he knows which customers are cat people and which aren't.”

I told her about some of the cats Dr. Gross takes care of, like Fuzz Ball with the three legs and purry Panther with the pink nose. I didn't tell her about Whiskers, since he's dead. And I didn't tell her that Dr. Gross was a grump.

“Does he ever take care of monkeys?” Bea asked, sort of randomly.

“No monkeys, no goldfish,” I said. “But he once removed a tumor from a mouse named Stuart Little.”

Bea laughed again. “Okay, here's the plan: I'll stop by your house at 4. All you have to do is make sure your sister's alone. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said, because Pip's always alone.

AVA THE AGREEABLE