Stacey is glamorous. She moved to Stoneybrook, Connecticut, from New York City last summer. She’s very sophisticated, and is even allowed to have her hair professionally styled, so that she has this fabulous-looking shaggy blonde mane, and she wears the neatest clothes – big, baggy shirts and tight-fitting pants – and amazing jewelry, like parrots and palm trees. She even has a pair of earrings that consist of a dog for one ear and a bone for the other ear.
I am Rose Howard and my first name has a homonym. To be accurate, it has a homophone, which is a word that’s pronounced the same as another word, but spelled differently. My homophone name is Rows.
Rain and I have routines. We like routines.
Stacey?” Kristy said. “You have a Chunky wrapper on your butt.
She was wearing a wonderful Claudia outfit – a purple-and-white striped bodysuit under a gray jumper-thing. The legs of the bodysuit stretched all the way to her ankles, but she was wearing purple push-down socks anyway. Around her middle was a wide purple belt with a buckle in the shape of a telephone. And on her feet were black ballet slippers.
Mallory clapped her hand to her forehead and moaned, “Oh, no. My sisters. My baby sisters. They’ll be contaminated. They’ll be brainwashed. If I become the sister of Little Miss Stoneybrook, I will absolutely die!
Say things you’d like to hear if you were in the audience. Make the audience feel good. Flatter them.” “Flatter them.” “Just use good sense.” “Claudia?” “Yeah?” “I think maybe I was born without good sense.
You really haven’t lived until a dog has stepped on your face. I.
Sorry, Mary Anne, I can’t hear you!” I shouted into the phone receiver. Mary Anne Spier cleared her throat and began, “I said, hi, I really missed you, and – ” “EEEEEEEE!” That was my two-year-old sister, Emily Michelle, racing through the kitchen. Behind.
Love is unpredictable. It can be painful. It can be wonderful.
I looked at Andrew and at Nannie. I loved them and the rest of my family very much. I loved my friends too. For now that was enough love for me.
I remembered that Stacey was wearing a matching top and skirt made of gray sweatshirt material with big yellow number tens all over it. Her hair was pinned back with clips shaped like rainbows. Little silver whistles were dangling from her ears. It was all very cool, but it seemed kind of young looking. And she was drinking a glass of milk.
Uncle Joe says they’re running around like thirty-year-olds.” Claudia looked confused. “Is that supposed to be young?” “To him,” I replied.
It’s awfully hard helping your parents grow up. But it has to be done.
Pop once said it’s a good thing we don’t know what’s around the corner. I didn’t understand what he meant then, but I do now. It’s better to wish than to know.
Part of me had hoped my BSC friends had planned this whole thing as a huge April Fool’s joke seven months early. We’d all have a big laugh and go back to the way we were, loyal and full of group spirit. But here’s the other side: even though my mind was a mess, my body felt the strangest sense of calmness, as if I’d just taken a swim on a Hawaiian beach. I felt free. Free and peaceful.
I wondered what being the only black student in your grade would feel like. I guessed it would feel no different from being the only anything in your grade. I was the only one in our grade with seven brothers and sisters, including 10-year-old triplets. But I knew that wasn’t quite the same. The kids couldn’t tell that just by looking at me, but Jessica’s coffee-colored skin was there for the world to see.
All of a sudden it dawned on me. I knew. I just knew. I was adopted, and my adoption papers were in there. If I were adopted, that would explain why I didn’t look like anyone in my family, why I didn’t act like anyone in my family, and why there were so few pictures of me. I wasn’t Mom and Dad’s real kid. I was an unwanted baby, or an orphan like Emily Michelle.
All week I kept the awful secret of my adoption to myself. I didn’t even tell Stacey what I’d discovered, and Stacey is my best friend in the world. I wanted to talk to Stacey, but I couldn’t. Not yet. There must, I thought, be some terrible reason for keeping my adoption a secret, but what could the terrible reason be?
Some of the things I get teased about are following the rules and always talking about homonyms.