Karen's Cartwheel Page 4

  “Hi, Hannie!” I called.

  Hannie looked at me. Then she looked at Linny. “Okay, let her rip,” she said. Linny threw the football. Hannie jumped up and caught it.

  “Yea!” shouted Linny. “Good catch!”

  “Hannie?” I said.

  Hannie tossed the football to her brother. “I am not talking to you, Karen.”

  “You are now,” I replied. “Anyway, I came over to say I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, did you two have a fight?” asked Linny.

  “Yes,” Hannie said.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Oh, go ahead and make up,” said Linny. Then he left.

  “Hannie? I am really sorry,” I began.

  Hannie was still wearing the helmet. “I cannot hear you,” she said.

  “You could hear me before. Just listen.”

  “Okay, okay.” Hannie and I sat down on the grass.

  “I know I was being mean,” I said. “But I think I was mad about something else. I think I was mad because I did not make the gymnastics team. Except I yelled at you and Nancy. That was not fair. Anyway, here is the money I earned at Miss Donovan’s.” I pulled it out of my pocket. “Let’s go add it to the sock.”

  Hannie smiled at me. “All right.”

  We stuffed my money into the sock. Then I telephoned Nancy. I told her I was sorry, too. I said I wanted to buy the Doll Sisters very soon.

  Our fight was over.

  * * *

  Two days later, Hannie entertained Sari again. The next day, Nancy washed her mother’s car. The day after that, I baby-sat (entertained) Andrew, Nancy became a plant-sitter, and Hannie took her neighbor’s dog for a walk. Jobs were turning up everywhere. Finally, Hannie called me at the little house one night.

  “Karen!” she exclaimed. “You will not believe this! I just counted the money in the sock. We have forty-four dollars and ninety cents!”

  “Oh, my gosh! That is excellent! We can buy the Doll Sisters!”

  “We can even pay the tax on them,” added Hannie.

  I ran next door to Nancy’s house. I told her the good news.

  “Yea! When do you think we can go back to the mall?”

  “I will call Daddy and find out.”

  “Goody.”

  That night I phoned Daddy at the big house. He said he would drive my friends and me to Washington Mall on Saturday. He said it would be a special trip for the Three Musketeers. No one else would go with us. (Especially no brothers, big or little.) We decided to leave at ten o’clock in the morning.

  On Friday, Hannie and Nancy and I talked about our dolls’ names.

  “What do you guys really think about Cornelia, Cordelia, and Cecelia?” I asked.

  Nancy scrunched up her nose. Hannie frowned.

  We renamed the Doll Sisters. We decided on Katie, Becky, and Laura.

  Terry, Kerry, and Merry

  “Daddy, are we almost there yet?” I asked.

  Daddy glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “I can still see your mother’s house,” he replied. “We have not left your street.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said.

  Saturday morning had finally arrived. It was Doll Sisters’ Day! Daddy was driving Nancy and Hannie and me to Washington Mall. He was in the front seat. My friends and I were buckled into the backseat. Hannie was sitting in the middle, holding our sock.

  “Are you sure we have enough money?” Nancy asked Hannie. “Are you positive?”

  “I counted it twice last night,” Hannie replied. “Don’t worry.”

  The Three Musketeers did not worry. But we were not very patient. The closer we got to the Doll Sisters, the faster we wanted to be with them.

  “Daddy, can you drive faster?” I said.

  “Please settle down, Karen,” he answered.

  I think we drove for about six months before we reached the mall. When Daddy had parked the car, we ran inside. Even Daddy ran.

  This time we did not poke through the stores. We did not ask for a treat to eat. We did not look around for gymnasts. We walked straight to Toy Palace. And I marched right up to the salesman.

  “Where are the dolls, please?” I asked. “We are in a hurry.”

  “Aisle seven,” said the salesman.

  “Thank you.”

  Nancy began to frown. “What if the Doll Sisters are all gone?” she asked. “Or what if only two are left? That would be horrible!”

  When my friends and I found aisle seven we stood at one end. We looked up one side and down the other.

  “Do you remember seeing so many dolls the last time?” I asked.

  “No,” said Nancy.

  “No,” said Hannie.

  I felt as worried as Nancy looked. But Daddy said, “There is just one thing to do. We will walk down the aisle very slowly and look at every doll. If we do not see the Doll Sisters, we will ask for help.”

  “Okay,” said Hannie and Nancy and I.

  We walked by dolls that talked and dolls that smiled and dolls that burped. We walked by dolls with fair skin and dolls with dark skin, dolls with brown eyes and green eyes and blue eyes. We walked by baby dolls and teenaged dolls and doll families.

  We had almost reached the end of the aisle.

  “There they are!” shrieked Nancy just then. “There they are!”

  “Where?” asked Daddy.

  “There!”

  I could see about ten Doll Sisters lined up in their boxes.

  “There?” said Daddy. “You mean those dolls? But they are called Terry Dolls, not the Doll Sisters.”

  “We know,” I said. “We are going to buy three Terry Dolls and make them the Doll Sisters. They will be triplets.”

  Hannie and Nancy and I each chose one Terry Doll. We were careful to choose dolls with the same hair color and the same outfits. They looked exactly alike. Then we paid for them. Hannie dumped the sock onto the counter by the cash register. She and Nancy and I counted out the money.

  The next thing we knew, the Doll Sisters were ours.

  We named them Terry, Kerry, and Merry.

  The Giggles

  One day when I went to my gymnastics class, I found a surprise. Three new kids were sitting on the balance beam. They were watching Jannie and Natalie and Gemma, who were tumbling on the mats.

  I walked right over to the new kids. “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m Douglas,” said one.

  “I’m Wesley,” said one.

  “I’m Clara,” said one.

  “Hi, I’m Karen. Are you going to be in my class now?”

  “Yup,” they answered.

  “Well, are you any good at cartwheels?”

  “No,” said Douglas.

  “Yes,” said Wesley.

  “Sort of,” said Clara.

  Miss Donovan clapped her hands then. “Boys and girls, today three students have joined our class.” She introduced them to the rest of us. (I bet she was glad she could say “boys and girls” now and mean it.) “Also,” my teacher went on, “I have a surprise for you. In a few minutes we are going to go to another room. We will be able to watch the invitational team for a little while. I thought you would like to see how Polly and Gregg and Sophie are doing. They will be going to their first meet soon.”

  I wished I could go with them. I really did. I even started to ask Miss Donovan — just one more time — if she would please let me be on the team. But before I could, Miss Donovan was leading us out of our room and into the hall. We walked next door and sat in a row on a blue tumbling mat. In front of us stood Gregg, Polly, Sophie, and about fifteen other kids. Some of those kids were big (maybe twelve years old). And they all got to wear very cool red, white, and blue team uniforms.

  Well, guess what. Right away I realized I could not be on that team. Not then, anyway. Those kids were extra good gymnasts. The older ones could fly over the horse. The boys flipped around on the rings. One girl could do all sorts of turns and flips on the uneven bars. And Sophie was learning a very fanc
y way to dismount when she was finished on the balance beam. Even if I learned how to turn a perfect cartwheel, I would not be ready for the invitational team. Miss Donovan had been right.

  After awhile we went back to our own classroom. Natalie and I decided to make up a floor routine. We put forward rolls and backward rolls and leaps into it. At the end of the routine, I turned my five fast cartwheels in a row while Natalie hummed “I’m Flying” from Peter Pan. We kept giggling. Gymnastics was fun, even if I was not very good.

  Seth picked me up when class was over. Guess what. He was carrying Terry. (Terry is my Doll Sister.) “I have a surprise for you,” he said. “It is waiting in the car.”

  “Oh, boy!” I shrieked. I grabbed Seth’s hand and pulled him to the parking lot. Waiting in the car were Hannie and Nancy. Hannie was holding Kerry, and Nancy was holding Merry.

  Seth unlocked the car. He slid into the driver’s seat. I slid into the backseat with my friends. I held up Terry. “Hi, Merry! Hi, Kerry!” I made her say. Then Nancy and Hannie and the Doll Sisters and I headed for home.

  About the Author

  ANN M. MARTIN is the acclaimed and bestselling author of a number of novels and series, including Belle Teal, A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor book), A Dog’s Life, Here Today, P.S. Longer Letter Later (written with Paula Danziger), the Family Tree series, the Doll People series (written with Laura Godwin), the Main Street series, and the generation-defining series The Baby-sitters Club. She lives in New York.

  Copyright © 1992 by Ann M. Martin

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First edition, 1992

  e-ISBN 978-1-338-05624-2