Melanie Martin Goes Dutch Read online

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  To my niece and nephews

  —in order of appearance—

  Sarah, Robbie, David, Felix, Jack and Jules

  Dear Brand New Diary,

  I can't believe it!

  This was the

  School is out, and I, Melanie Martin, am almost a fifth grader.

  Today at the end-of-fourth-grade party, everybody said my cupcakes were delicious—even Christopher.

  Yesterday after we baked, Mom helped me hide them on top of the refrigerator so Dad wouldn't accidentally eat any. Why? Because last time I made cupcakes, Dad gobbled one up without asking permission—and I ended up with twenty cupcakes for twenty-one kids. The next day on the walk to school, I was balancing my cupcake tray and hoping hoping hoping someone would be absent.

  Trust me. It does not make you feel proud of yourself to be hoping that someone in your class is stuck at home sneezing or barfing. It makes you feel like a bad person. But when you don't have enough cupcakes to go around, everybody except you gets a cupcake, and you have to sit at your desk pretending you didn't want one anyway.

  I am not that good a person!

  Anyway, today was perfect. I brought in the right number of cupcakes, the party was fun, and even Miss Sands was in a great mood. Plus, it was a half day, so we got out at 12:00 instead of 3:00! And almost no home work until September!!

  (I wrote “almost” because we have to read “at least one long book” and write “at least a hundred words” about what we learned from it.)

  The best thing about vacation is that Cecily and I can spend every minute together and have a ton of sleepovers. And not just on weekends!

  Mom loves summer vacation too. She just started a five hundred-piece puzzle of a painting of sunflowers. She says puzzles are her “summertime relaxation.”

  She also says that the only thing she loves more than teaching is vacationing. She says it's much easier to keep track of two kids than a whole class.

  I wonder if that's true.

  After all, one of her kids is Matt the Brat.

  Dear Diary,

  Is this going to be a bummer summer?

  School has been out for only a week, and—even though I would never admit this to anybody—I sort of miss it. I don't mean waking up early or doing homework or Miss Sands. I mean lunch, recess, art, music, P.E., library, and my friends.

  Cecily hasn't been around at all. She's been with her dad. She sent me a postcard from Washington, D.C.

  I wish my family would go somewhere.

  I wish Cecily would come back.

  At home, it's just me and Matt the Brat.

  Of all the brothers in the world, I can't believe mine is Matt. When baby boys were being given out, Mom and Dad obviously got in the wrong line. (I think they got into the reptile line.)

  To be perfectly honest, Matt and I were actually starting to get along this spring. But then he got seriously annoying again.

  He loves to play games. He has ever since he was two. Maybe even before that. He used to sit in his diaper and play “How big is Maaaaaaatt?” “Sooooooo big!” all day long with a dopey two-tooth smile on his face.

  Now all he ever wants to do is play Clue Jr. He lives to shout, “Mortimer Mustard hid the bird in the bank!” or “Polly Peacock hid the turtle in the wig shop!”

  It gets old.

  Or maybe I'm getting old for junior games.

  Last night I mumbled to Dad that I was bored.

  “Bored?!” Dad said with absolutely no sympathy. “I can think of plenty of things for you to do.” So he made me put away dishes and alphabetize his CDs and do a million trillion chores.

  Chores chores chores! I was going to accuse him of child abuse, but he would have rolled his eyes and said, “Melanie, pleeeease!”

  Once, I did say, “Child abuse! Child abuse!” on the subway and Dad got mad and said it's no joke and what if police officers had taken me seriously? He said I should appreciate the parents I have.

  Personally, I think my parents should appreciate me—and understand that I need to be with kids my own age.

  My own age: ten and a half. Not Matt's age: six and a half.

  Later,

  Dear Diary, Cecily gets back today!

  I just called her but I wish I hadn't. When I said, “Is Cecily there?” instead of saying a simple “No,” Cecily's mom said, “Melanie, it's more polite to say, ‘Hello, Mrs. Hausner, this is Melanie. May I please speak to Cecily?’”

  I mumbled, “Okay.” But I felt like saying, “I wasn't calling to get a manners lesson. I was calling to talk to my best friend.”

  Cecily's mom is usually pretty nice. I like when she invites me for dinner or to a movie. And I like that she always has big bags of marshmallows and little bags of M&M's just for us. And I like that last week she helped us have a book sale on Broadway and we both made fifteen dollars.

  I don't like that she's strict about making us take off our shoes and hang up our sweaters. I also don't like that I have to call her Mrs. Hausner when Cecily gets to call my mom Miranda. (Not that Cecily ever does. She never really calls her anything.)

  Anyway, right now I am trying to write, but Matt found some of that plastic bubbly wrap that Mom uses for delicate objects and he put it on the floor and started driving all over it on his scooter. He says he's not stopping until he has popped every last bubble.

  It sounds like firecrackers.

  Matt also has tongue twisters on the brain. He made me say “unique New York, unique New York, unique New York” over and over, so I told him to say “I'm a silly little idiot” five times fast. Then I said, “Matt, if you want to be annoying, go into your room.”

  He said, “It's no fun being annoying by myself.”

  Dear Diary,

  I went to Cecily's apartment today and her cat sat on my lap and purred for about an hour. Cecily is lucky she has a cat and a bunny. All we ever have is fish, and half the time they die right away. Like Fluffy and Muffy. And Potato and Chip. And Goldy and Lox. And Wishy and Fishy.

  Right now we don't have any pets at all (unless you count Matt).

  Cecily's cat is named Cheshire and he always always always purrs. Her bunny is named Honey (short for Honey Bunny) and sometimes she's sweet but sometimes she bites. If you startle her, she actually growls! I think she is part bunny, part tiger.

  Today Mrs. Hausner handed us two carrots and we ate two bites each, then gave them to Honey Bunny. We thought that was pretty smart. But later Mrs. Hausner saw the nibbled-on carrot remains in Honey Bunny's cage and said, “I didn't peel those carrots for the rabbit!”

  We apologized and went back to drawing pencil portraits o
f each other (Cecily's a good artist). Then we shut our eyes tight and walked around with our hands in front of us. It's a game called No Peeking. We walked out of Cecily's bedroom, down her hallway, and into her kitchen, where we felt around until we located a big squishy bag of marshmallows. We opened our eyes, opened the bag, opened the microwave, and puffed up the marshmallows one at a time for thirty seconds (no more or they explode).

  It was really fun until Cecily's mom started acting crabby again. She asked if we wanted chocolate milk, and I said, “Yes,” and she said, “Yes, please.” Then I was telling a story and I said, “Oh my God!” and she said, “Oh my gosh!” She even said that I say “like” and “you know” too much, which made me want to tell her that she is correcting me too much. Like, you know???

  She never used to criticize me. Why start now? Doesn't she know my own parents already work overtime on that job?

  Well, Cecily and I baked oatmeal cookies, and Mrs. Hausner took the bowl away right when we were about to eat the leftover dough. Then she said that the kitchen looked like a tornado had blown through. I should have kept my mouth shut (duh!), but I said, “It's not thaaaat bad.”

  She said, “Girls, I'm coming back in five minutes, and I expect this kitchen to look the way it did when you found it.”

  Cecily and I quietly wiped the countertops, scrubbed the cookie sheets, and ate three warm soft cookies each. Then I got ready to go. I was putting on my shoes at the front door, where Mrs. Hausner makes us leave them, when I made a decision. I decided I'm not going to call and say “Is Cecily there?” or “Hello, Mrs. Hausner, this is Melanie. May I please speak to Cecily?” I decided I'm not going to call at all.

  I'm going to let Cecily call me.

  So there.

  Dear Diary,

  Cecily didn't call all day.

  Mom and I started a new puzzle.

  Dear Diary,

  Cecily didn't call tonight either. I wrote this poem:

  Yours truly,

  Dear Diary,

  Dad let me help paint the window frame in the bathroom. It was fun but hard because he didn't want any brush strokes to show. He wouldn't even let Matt help.

  The paint we used was called “matte,” which Dad said means dull, not bright (hee hee). It was white Dutch Boy paint and the can had a boy on it wearing wooden shoes. Dad said Dutch chemists figured out how to make really great paint way back in the 1500s.

  Well, I've been trying to figure out why Cecily hasn't called (or if her mom is mad at me), so I said, “Dad, do you think Cecily is dumping me?”

  “Don't be silly. She's probably away,” Dad said. “Don't worry so much.”

  I told him I can't help worrying.

  He said, “Mellie, you two have been friends for years. That's not about to change. Now relax. It's not good to be a worrywart.”

  Can you believe that?

  A father calling his daughter a wart?

  Wartily yours,

  Dear Diary,

  I do NOT get why Cecily hasn't called.

  Is she at her father's and forgot to tell me?

  Is something wrong?

  When she and I became friends back in kindergarten, we used to love to give our Barbies baths. We had lots of Barbies, and we'd give them all baths, one by one, in the bathroom sink. It took hours. We even shampooed their hair with squirts of toothpaste, which is pretty gross now that I think about it.

  Once when we were bathing our Barbies at her apartment, Cecily was quiet the whole entire time. Then, when we were down to the very last Barbie, she blurted out, “My mom and dad are getting a divorce.” She had barely said a word all day, then suddenly she said that. I didn't know what to say, so I think I said something really dumb like “No, they're not,” when obviously they were.

  And they did.

  P.S. If lonelily is not a word, it should be.

  Dear Diary,

  I am So So So embarrassed!

  I called three times this morning. Each time Cecily's mom answered, and since I didn't feel like saying “Hello, Mrs. Hausner, this is Melanie. May I please speak to Cecily?” I hung up. The third time, before I could put the phone down, Cecily's mom said, “For heaven's sake, Melanie, don't keep hanging up on me. We have Caller I.D., so I know it's you and—”

  I felt Sooooo stupid that instead of apologizing like a mature human being, I did something even stupider: I hung up again!

  God, I'm an idiot. (I mean, gosh, I'm an idiot.)

  P.S. Why didn't Cecily tell me they got Caller I.D.?

  Dear Diary,

  The phone rang and I was hoping it was Cecily, but Mom answered and after the call, she stuck her arms straight up in the air as if she'd won a marathon.

  “I got the grant!” she said.

  “What's a grant?” I asked.

  She said a grant is when someone gives you money to study something. She said she has asked for grants before but has never gotten one, and now she was just awarded a small one to study van Gogh.

  “The guy who chopped his ear off?” Matt asked. Mom's always talking about artists, so Matt and I know who's who.

  “Yes,” Mom said. “He's also ‘the guy’ who painted the flowers on the puzzles we've been doing. Oh, I am so happy! We're going to the Van Gogh Museum!”

  “Today?” I asked. I'd never heard of it, so it's not like I've been dying to go or anything.

  “Not today,” Mom said. “It's in Amsterdam.”

  Mom looked completely happy and Matt looked completely confused.

  “In Holland,” I explained. In third grade we learned that, hundreds of years ago, Dutch people had sailed from Amsterdam to a place they named New Amsterdam. Later it got renamed… New York!

  Matt asked, “Where's Holland?”

  Mom said, “In Europe.”

  “Europe,” Matt repeated. “That's a funny word.”

  “No, it's not,” I said. “It sounds like ‘syrup’ or ‘You're up!’”

  “Or ‘Throw up!’” Matt said.

  “Or ‘Grow up!’ and ‘Shut up!’” I added. I thought that was pretty funny, but I could tell Mom didn't, so I asked when we were going.

  “Next month,” she said. “During Daddy's vacation week. It's good our passports are up to date.”

  Our passports are up to date because of our trip to Italy this spring. Kids' passports last five years—which means I'm practically permanently stuck with my squinty, dorky passport photo.

  Mom says grown-ups' passports last ten years because grown-ups don't change as fast as kids. Grown-ups are already grown up. Even if they get grayer or balder or fatter or shorter, you can still recognize them.

  Well, Matt started getting as excited as Mom, and next thing you know, he was hopping around like a bouncing bunny. What a weirdo. I'm surprised our neighbors in the apartment downstairs didn't complain.

  Mom called Dad at work and said, “Can you believe I got it?” He must have known all about the grant because Mom didn't have to say what “it” was or anything. After she hung up, she put a bottle of champagne in the fridge.

  By then, Matt wasn't just hopping, he was also singing—and swearing—at the top of his lungs. He was saying, “Amster Amster Dam Dam Dam!”

  And get this: Mom was letting him get away with it!

  P.S. I'm dying to call Cecily, but I keep thinking she'll call me. I'm also tempted to tell Mom about Cecily's mom, but she'd probably take Mrs. Hausner's side. And I could never admit that I hung up on her three times!

  Dear Diary,

  Dad came home from work with a big package. For a second I was hoping he had brought Matt and me a present for no reason (not that he ever has). But he handed it right to Mom.

  Off came the wrapping paper and out came a bunch of tulips.

  It was a little disappointing.

  Not for Mom, though. She loves tulips. She kissed Dad right on the lips and said, “Aren't these the prettiest things you've ever seen?”

  “No,” Matt said. He probably thinks Lily upst
airs is the prettiest thing he's ever seen. They've been in love since they were born. Last week they wrote their names in big dark purple letters on the sidewalk. They wrote using mulberries from the tree outside our building. The letters have faded to a light brown, but you can still read them.

  Anyway, the tulips are really fancy. When Mom buys tulips at the corner grocer, she gets the cheap kind that looks like green sticks with Easter eggs on top. She buys them all January and February because she says they remind her that spring (and spring break) is coming.

  Dad's tulips bend and curve gracefully, and their petals look like frilly, colorful feathers, all lacy around the edges.

  He said he had to go to a special florist to get them.

  “What came over you?” Mom asked.

  “Holland is the tulip capital of the world,” Dad said. Mom looked puzzled, so Dad admitted, “It was Helen's idea.” Helen is Dad's assistant.

  “I should have guessed,” Mom said, but she didn't seem to mind.

  Mom arranged the tulips in a vase, one at a time, and told Matt and me to go get our art kits. Vacation or not, Mom can't help being an art teacher.

  Next thing you know, I heard a and Mom and Dad were drinking champagne and talking about frequent-flier miles, and Matt and I were drinking ginger ale and drawing tulips.

  Matt, by the way, is a horrible artist.

  Mom used to look at his pictures and say things like, “I love the colors you chose! Tell me about this.” Well, trust me. “Tell me about this” is art-teacher language for “I have no clue what this big messy blob is. A car? A dog? Give me a hint!”

  Matt never even got offended. He'd just patiently explain his pathetic picture to her. “Here's the dinosaur and here's the rocket ship and here's the moon and here's the sun.”

  And you know what? Mom never said, “There were no rocket ships in dinosaur days!” or “You can't stick the moon next to the sun!” Never. Not once. Mom said, “The moon next to the sun! Oh Matt, that's soooo creative!”