Ten Rules for Living With My Sister Read online

  Or not.

  “How did that blue stuff get on your head?” I asked, and Jill went, “What? What?” and in seconds, Rachel and Katie were pawing through her hair like monkeys, looking for absolutely nothing.

  When I got to the last desk, I collected Evan’s worksheets while he sang a little made-up song about Show and Tell, and I handed the stack to Mr. Potter.

  Our first subject of the day was math, so I sat and thought about my pirate costume and how a hook hand would really spruce it up, but I didn’t have enough money for a hook hand and Mom and Dad didn’t seem inclined to buy me one. Maybe they would change their minds at Halloween.

  I knew that the rest of the fourth-grade girls would think pirate costumes were babyish—except maybe at Halloween—but I didn’t care. I am an original.

  “Pearl?” said Mr. Potter.

  “What? I mean, yes?”

  “Do you know how Katie arrived at that answer?”

  “What answer?” I said.

  Mr. Potter sighed.

  I heard giggling from the back row. I turned around and glared at Jill. Then I pointed to my head and frowned as if to say, “What is going on with that blue stuff in your hair?” Jill’s eyes widened and she began pulling her hair down in front of her eyes and squinting at it.

  I felt satisfied.

  I felt so satisfied that I wrote a note to Justine that said,

  I planned to pass the note to Justine if I saw her in the corridor, but then I remembered that Justine can’t read yet except for maybe dog and cat, so I crumpled up the note and stuck it far back in my desk.

  At Emily Dickinson, we don’t have a playground, so recess is held on the roof of our school. There’s a fence all around the edge to keep you from falling off, which if you fell it would be three stories. And the roof has been covered with some kind of rubber. There are basketball hoops up there (with giant nets behind them to keep the balls from flying over the fence and clomping people on the street below), and places where you can play hopscotch and four-square, but there aren’t any swings or climbing bars so it isn’t exactly a true playground.

  At recess Jill and Rachel and Katie and some of the other girls in my class usually huddle together and write notes to boys, which I don’t think they ever send. There’s a “no electronics” rule at Emily Dickinson, but apparently there isn’t a “no makeup” rule because Jill brings a little bag of nail polish bottles to recess, and the girls paint flowers on their fingernails after they’ve finished writing the notes. A couple of times I have hovered around, sort of wanting to join in, but the word “tinkle” crops up pretty quickly. Anyway, I couldn’t care less about painting flowers on my nails.

  I play with Justine instead.

  The first-grade girls think Justine is weird, since she’s nearly two years older than some of them. On the other hand, she has a fourth-grade best friend, which they think is cool. So does Justine. And if I do say so myself, I’m a pretty good friend for her to have, since I never make remarks about her school problems, and I don’t mind helping her with Sorry!, etc., etc., etc.

  The fourth-grade girls sometimes look up from their note-writing and nail-painting and say things like, “Kindergarten baby,” which makes no sense since Justine isn’t in kindergarten and neither am I. Also, “kindergarten baby” isn’t very original.

  Just before recess was over, Jill said to me, “What’s the matter? Won’t anyone your own age play with you?”

  And I said, “Why, thank you, Jill. I’d love to paint my nails.” I reached for her polish.

  Jill scowled and snatched the polish back, and then I pointed to her hair.

  “Ha! I’d have to be pretty stupid to fall for that again,” said Jill.

  And I said, “Okay, don’t believe me,” and stared really hard at her forehead. “I just hope your mother can get it out before it’s too late,” I added.

  Once again, Jill made Katie and Rachel search through her hair, and I watched them and tried not to laugh.

  By the time school was over, my name had been added to the corner of the blackboard. Mr. Potter had sorted through our homework papers during recess.

  “Did you lose yours or forget them?” he asked me.

  “Forgot them,” I replied, which was true, although I also wasn’t sure where they were. But I did not believe that they were officially lost.

  When the bell rang I picked up Justine at the door of room 1B and we waited in front of school with a monitor until Lexie came to walk us home. Here is what Lexie said when she saw us: zero.

  The silent treatment was in full swing.

  “Wow, this must be some kind of record,” I said as we passed The Bagel Place.

  Lexie studied the sign in their window even though the same sign had been hanging there for the past eight months.

  “I know you aren’t talking to Pearl, but are you talking to me?” Justine asked Lexie.

  “I guess,” Lexie answered.

  “Tell Lexie that I want to know when the silent treatment is going to end,” I said to Justine.

  “Lexie, Pearl wants to know when the silent treatment is going to end.”

  “Too bad for her,” Lexie replied, and kept on walking.

  4

  Lexie wanted to walk ten steps ahead of Justine and me, that’s how annoyed she was. But the rule is that she has to walk with us when she brings us home from school. So she was stuck. She clunked up Sixth Avenue in her purple shoes, lugging her violin. She did not look at us or speak to us.

  “She’s really mad this time,” Justine whispered to me.

  I agreed with her, but Lexie had been really mad plenty of other times, so it didn’t mean much.

  We turned onto Twelfth Street and marched along to our apartment building, all of us carefully avoiding Mrs. Mott, who was trying to hail a cab and didn’t see us anyway.

  “Hi, John,” I said as we entered the lobby.

  “Hi, John,” Justine said.

  Lexie gave John a stiff-fingered wave.

  “Hello, girls,” he replied. Then he said, “Why did the golfer wear two pairs of pants?”

  “I don’t know. Why?” I asked.

  “In case he got a hole in one!”

  I liked the joke, even though I know almost zero about golf. Lexie allowed herself a teensy smile. But Justine said, “I don’t get it.” Justine mostly likes jokes about why things cross the road.

  “I’ll explain it to her later,” I whispered to John.

  Lexie’s teensy smile had given me an idea. While we were riding the elevator up to the seventh floor I said, “Hey, Lexie, what’s black and white and black and white and black and white?” My sister stared at the elevator buttons, so I answered myself, “A skunk rolling down a hill!”

  Justine burst into loud laughter, but Lexie’s face was all still, like one of those British guards, the ones who wear the tall furry hats and aren’t allowed to talk or laugh or even smile.

  Justine got excited. “I know one! I know one!” she cried. “Lexie, why did the farmer cross the road?”

  The elevator squeaked to a stop and Lexie hurried off of it.

  “To get the runaway chicken!” Justine called after her.

  “You have to tell the regular chicken joke first,” I reminded Justine. “Otherwise the second part doesn’t make sense.”

  “Oh,” said Justine.

  Lexie was already at the end of the hall, using her personal key to unlock our door.

  Justine knocked on #7D and when her mother let her in she said, “Mom, I’m going to play at Pearl’s, okay?”

  “Okay,” said her mother.

  “Don’t worry,” I told Mrs. Lebarro. “I’ll give her a snack.”

  “Do you have animal crackers?” Justine asked me as we walked to #7F.

  Even for Justine this seemed a little babyish, but I didn’t say anything except, “I doubt it.” I knocked on my own door, since it had locked automatically behind Lexie. Lexie opened it wordlessly and retreated to her room. This
was definitely a silent treatment record.

  After I told my mother that I was home, and after Justine and I had eaten a non-animal-cracker snack, I said, “Justine, we have to find a way to make Lexie talk. Or at least smile.”

  “She talked to me,” Justine pointed out. We were sitting on my bed again.

  “Sort of. But she’s still mad, and besides, I want her to talk to me.”

  “What should we do?”

  “I’m not sure. Our jokes didn’t work.”

  “Maybe they weren’t funny enough.”

  I rested my chin on my hand. “See if you think this one is funny,” I said after a few moments. “How many elephants can fit in a taxi? … Three in the front and three in the back!”

  Justine hesitated before laughing uncertainly. At last she said, “Then where does the taxi driver sit?”

  I sighed. “I guess it isn’t funny.”

  Bitey poked his nose into my room.

  “I know what would be funny!” exclaimed Justine. “Let’s dress up Bitey like he’s in a beauty pageant. I mean, you should dress him up,” she added, edging away from him as he approached her, his tail switching.

  “A beauty pageant,” I repeated thoughtfully. “Hmm. I guess I could put my Lady Pamela doll’s clothes on him. She even has a crown.”

  “Yes!” cried Justine, as she slid farther away from Bitey.

  It wasn’t easy wrenching the crown off Lady Pamela (who I hadn’t played with in years), but I managed at last, and then I took off her satiny gown, only ripping it a little in the back. I was pretty sure my mother wouldn’t notice. I hauled Bitey into my lap and tugged the dress on him so quickly that it was a full five seconds before he suddenly began flailing around and howling. (Justine escaped into the hall.) I held tight to Bitey and slipped the crown on his head, hooking it over his ears. Bitey shook his head and the crown flew off and landed in my wastebasket. I tried a second time, and was prepared when Bitey shook his head again. I clutched the crown tightly and grabbed Bitey in the dress and whisked him into the hallway where Justine and I stood outside Lexie’s door.

  “Now what?” I whispered. “How are we going to get Lexie to come out?” I’d been thinking that maybe I could knock on her door and say something tantalizing like, “And now … here to entertain you … please welcome our next contestant … the charming … the talented … Dr. Bitey McCrabby!”

  But before I could say a word, Justine scrunched up her face and screamed, “Help! Fire! Fire!”

  All at the same moment, my mother’s door flew open, Lexie’s door flew open, and Bitey, a blur of fur and claws, emitted an angry MROWL! followed by a hiss, and flew past my mother and into the family room where he jumped up on a table and knocked over a lamp. The crown had flown off again, but he was still wearing the dress.

  “Uh-oh,” I said.

  “Uh-oh,” Justine said.

  “Girls!” cried my mother. “Get out of the apartment right now!” And she ran into the kitchen and found the fire extinguisher.

  It was quite a while before everything was straightened out and I had apologized to my mother and Lexie, undressed Bitey, found the crown, and put Band-Aids on the worst of my scratches.

  Justine got sent home, and then my mother stood in the family room and glared first at me and then at the lamp, which luckily was not broken. I set the lamp back on the table.

  “I wasn’t the one who shouted ‘Fire,’”I pointed out. “That was Justine. And I didn’t know she was going to do it.”

  My mother was having a cup of tea to calm her nerves. “I think we all need a little quiet time,” she said. “Why don’t you go start your homework?”

  “Okay,” I replied, even though I knew I could finish my homework in about half an hour and planned to do it after dinner.

  My mother disappeared into her office again, and I passed Lexie’s door (closed, as usual, with scritchy violin noises coming from the other side of it), went to my room, and took off my jeans and my Cowgirl Hall of Fame T-shirt. I was hot after all the excitement.

  I sat at my desk in my underwear and thought for a while. I really, really, really wanted the silent treatment to end. I knew I had annoyed Lexie by hiding her shoes, and also by booing her and interrupting her story. But Lexie had annoyed me by calling me a baby. Still, if Lexie wouldn’t speak to me, how could I tell her my jokes? How could I ask her questions about her new boyfriend, or ask her for favors? (I was hoping one day to be able to make a prank call to Jill using Lexie’s cell phone.)

  There was only one thing to do, and that was apologize—if Lexie would listen to me.

  I was still very hot, but I remembered what Lexie had said about underwear visits, so I put on my frog slippers before I knocked on her door.

  After a moment I heard my sister call, “Who is it?”

  I wished I could say, “It’s Mom,” and sound convincing, but I knew I couldn’t. “It’s me, your sister, Pearl,” I replied. I waited a moment before adding, “I want to apologize. I’m really sorry I hid your shoes. I know I shouldn’t have done that. And I want to apologize for when Justine and I scared you. And for interrupting you at dinner last night. I already apologized for today, so I guess I don’t have to do that again … . Lexie? I’m very, very, very, very, very, very sorry.”

  At last Lexie’s door opened a crack. All I could see was one side of her lips and one nostril and a little part of an eye. “Do you mean it?” she asked.

  “I truly and honestly mean it.”

  “Okay.” She opened her door all the way and saw me standing there in my slippers and underwear. “Pearl!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe this! I said no more underwear visits! That’s why I put up the NO PEARL sign in the first place.”

  “It’s not an underwear visit. I’m wearing slippers too.”

  Lexie shook her head. “You are—,” she started to say, but I guess she couldn’t think of what word to fill in because then she just shook her head and closed the door.

  The NO PEARL sign was still up, and the silent treatment was back in place.

  I sat at my desk again. Maybe I should do my homework after all. I looked at my science book for ten seconds, and then I decided to write a postcard to Daddy Bo instead. It said:

  I found a stamp for the postcard and then I went on a search for the missing worksheets and finally found them under a pile of clothes on the floor. I could hand them in tomorrow.

  At 6:16, Dad came home.

  “You’re late!” I shouted from my room.

  I walked down the hall. I wasn’t going to look at Lexie’s door since I had decided I was officially mad back at her, but I couldn’t help noticing out of the corner of my eye that the NO PEARL sign was gone. I was about to knock on the door and thank my sister when I saw that another sign was hanging in its place. This is what it looked like:

  Since Lexie is not a very good artist it took me a while to realize that the new sign meant NO UNDERWEAR VISITS.

  I considered the sign during dinner. It seemed to me that you shouldn’t have to think too much about a sign to figure out what it means. A sign should be very plain, like a stop sign or the NO PEARL sign. I remembered one time when my family and I had gone to a restaurant for dinner and I’d walked into the men’s room because the sign on the door hadn’t said MEN. Instead it had shown a picture of a bull wearing a cowboy hat. The sign on the door across from it had shown a picture of a cow wearing a bonnet. Those were not good signs because animals don’t normally wear clothes. And when they do, like when I dress up Bitey, they can put on anything. They aren’t choosy.

  At any rate, Lexie’s NO UNDERWEAR VISITS sign wasn’t as bad as the bull and cow signs, but it wasn’t very good either. I thought I could do a better job, so after dinner I got out my markers and made a new sign. It looked like this:

  I knew there was no point in knocking on Lexie’s door again. She wouldn’t open it for me. Instead I waited until she came out to use the bathroom. The moment she was fully in the hallway I
thrust the sign at her.

  “Here,” I said. “I made this for your door. It’s, well, slightly better than your sign. Just slightly.” I tried to sound modest.

  Lexie stared at the sign. Then she snatched it from me and went back in her room without taking her shower. I don’t know what she did with the new sign, but she didn’t take down the one she had made. She just left it hanging there. It might as well have said Show and Tell, tinkle, Help, police.

  5

  On Saturday, Lexie’s new boyfriend came over. They had talked on the phone 6x the night before, and Lexie had left her door open so I would be sure to hear the conversations. My sister was all, “Hee-hee-hee, Dallas. That is so funny!” and, “Oh, Dallas, then what did you say?” which doesn’t really sound like Lexie. But I guess that’s what a new boyfriend will do to you.

  When our doorbell rang on Saturday morning I called, “I’ll get it!”

  “No, you won’t!” Lexie ran ahead of me down the hall and reached the door first.

  “Mom!” I wailed.

  My parents were sitting together in the family room. Parts of the newspaper were everywhere. That is what Mom and Dad do on Saturday and Sunday mornings. They read the newspaper. And drink coffee. They always get a little excited about it, like the newspaper and coffee are actually comics and bubble gum.

  “Pearl, let Lexie answer the door. It’s her friend,” said Mom. She and Dad stood and began gathering up the newspaper pages.

  “It’s not her friend, it’s her boyfriend,” I replied.

  “Nevertheless,” said Dad, and he and Mom carried their papers and coffee mugs into the kitchen and settled themselves into the two small, uncomfortable chairs by the window.