Monkey Business (2 page)

Pepper whimpered and placed his head in my lap. His scruffy fur was still damp from the pool, so now my favorite baby blue, super-soft flannel pajamas had a giant wet spot. “Ugh, Pep. You smell like a wet dog!” I said, gently pushing his face away from me.

“That's because he is a wet dog,” my mom pointed out.

“Um, yeah. Thanks for stating the obvious,” I replied. “The problem is, I smell like a wet dog now too.”

I went to take another bite of my burrito, but Pepper seemed to have the same idea.

“No jumping,” I said firmly as I held my food up over my head. “Pepper, no.”

Even though he backed off, he kept staring at me with his big, brown puppy-dog eyes. It was cute for a second, then sad, and then kind of annoying.

“I don't know what's better,” I said. “Having a dog begging for my burrito inside the house, or having him drink chlorinated water on the outside.”

“I'll take care of him,” said my mom, getting up and grabbing Pepper by the collar. “Let's go back outside, buddy.” She led him toward the door and put him in the yard.

Once outside Pepper found a red-tailed squirrel to chase.

“Poor animal probably once had a peaceful existence,” I said as Pepper barked up at our gigantic avocado tree. “Then the Weeble-Stevens move to town!”

“Well, at least it'll have to get some exercise now,” my mom pointed out as she took a small sip of coffee. “That's one chubby squirrel!”

I chewed the final bite of my burrito, crumpled the
wrapper into a tight ball, and looked around. “Where's the trash can?” I asked.

My mom glanced around too, bewildered. “I suppose we haven't unpacked it yet. Why don't you leave it on the table for now? I'll figure something out.”

“Okay,” I said with a shrug. “I guess I should get going. I've got a lot of work to do.”

I headed back upstairs and actually paused at the top of the steps because I forgot which direction my room was in. When I looked to the right, I saw four doors and when I looked to the left, I saw four doors. In our old house, there was no looking to the left at the top of the steps. All the rooms were to the right. This place was literally twice the size of our old house, and it was going to take some time to get used to.

Once I finally figured out where to go—left and all the way to the end of the hall, I kneeled in front of the first box. It was labeled GIRL'S CLOTHES.

“Yup, I would be the girl in this scenario,” I thought as I peeled off the tape and pulled open the flaps on top. The box was stuffed full of winter clothes. And since it was only April—not even summertime—I shoved the box into the corner of my closet.

The next two boxes of “Girl's Clothes” were filled with bathing suits, bras, and underwear. I put all my stuff away in the lowest drawer of my dresser. Then I unpacked all my T-shirts and shorts. Dresses came next—I hung them in the closet once I found the hangers at the bottom of the box. And then I unpacked my
jeans and pants and leggings. The box after that was labeled MISC., which is short for miscellaneous, which means stuff that doesn't fall into any real category but is decidedly not junk.

I found a few old notes from my friends, a roll of duct tape with purple and red hearts all over it, my science fair project on bugs and their color preferences, a few birthday cards from last year, an old roll of stamps, and a pair of black glasses with a big plastic nose and mustache attached to it.

“How's it going, Annabelle?” my mom asked, poking her head into my room.

I slipped on the glasses. “Who's there?” I asked. “I can't see a thing!”

“Very cute,” she said with a laugh. “But I'm glad to see you're making progress. Why don't you use an empty box for the things you don't need anymore?”

“Okay, good idea,” I said as I tossed an old red sweatshirt into the closest empty box.

“I thought that was your favorite!” my mom said.

“It used to be, but it has a gigantic hole in the sleeve.”

My mom picked up the sweatshirt and inspected the damage. “Oh, that's just along the seam. I can get that fixed if you want.”

“Okay, sounds good,” I said. “Thanks.”

My mom wished me luck and left, and moments later my phone vibrated with a new text.

It was from Oliver Banks, my boyfriend.

Oh, yeah—that was another exciting development in my life. I had a new boyfriend. And having a boyfriend, in general, was brand-new for me. Oliver was my first and he was super-cute and sweet, too. And guess what else? Now that I'd moved, he lived right down the street—only eight houses away.

How r trix?
he wrote.

Great!!!
I texted back. Then I frowned down at the screen of my phone, wondering if I'd used too many exclamation marks. Three seemed like an awful lot.

Uh-oh …

The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I felt. I didn't want to scare Oliver or appear to be yelling at him or anything.

Yikes. I kind of wished there was a way to take one of the exclamation marks back. Ideally two. Or maybe even one exclamation mark was one too many.

If Oliver mentioned them or acted weird, maybe I could tell him my finger had accidentally pressed the button one too many times. Or two too many times—I wasn't really sure which would be more acceptable.

Or maybe it was okay to be excited because moving was exciting. Right?

Except how excited should I allow myself to be? Too much enthusiasm could be construed as weird and/or not cool. It's not that my life is all about appearing cool—it's so not! But at the same time, I didn't want to act like a big dork, or even a little dork. Any
kind of dorkiness is best to be avoided. That's a good motto to live by—especially in middle school.

I stared at my phone. Why wasn't Oliver writing me back?

Why, why, why?

Had I already wrecked things?

Did my boyfriend think I was an overenthusiastic dork? Of course he did. No other explanation made sense.

Gah! I couldn't believe how badly I'd messed up. Oliver and I had been officially together for less than two months. And already it was over.

All because of a text.

And not even a whole text.

This was all about the punctuation.

I flopped down backward on my bed and stared up at the ceiling, wishing I could start the day over.

But no—I'd ruined everything with those three exclamation marks. This was the beginning of the end!

Sometimes I had a tendency to overreact. And maybe this was one of those times, but in my defense, I'd only had my phone for a few months—and my boyfriend for less time than that. I wasn't always up on the etiquette when it came to both Oliver and my phone.

After another thirty seconds of agony I decided to give Oliver a call so I could explain that my fingers had slipped and I had only meant to use one exclamation mark. Except when I began dialing, Oliver texted me back.

Awesome!!!!
With four—count 'em, four—exclamation marks. I breathed a sigh of relief. Obviously, I was in the clear. We were equally enthusiastic. No, actually he was 25 percent more enthusiastic than I was, which meant I was more than in the clear. If anyone examined the evidence, they would know that Oliver was the more enthusiastic one in our relationship. Unless he used all those exclamation marks to make fun of
my
use of exclamation marks …

Need help unpacking?
he asked next.

I smiled down at my phone in relief. Oliver was being sincere—I was sure of it. As much as I wanted to, I resisted the urge to hug my phone, because that would have been just weird. Still, I felt all gushy toward Oliver and wished I could give him a real hug. Unpacking is dull, dull, dull. That Oliver offered to help merely confirmed the fact that I seriously had the sweetest boyfriend in the world.

I wish—Mom says I can't have anyone over until my room is finished
, I texted back.

He replied with a sad face.

Tomorrow!
I typed, with one exclamation mark because I was cool like that.

I kept unpacking, now with a huge grin on my face. The next box was labeled PLUSH, and when I tore open the cardboard flaps, a giant stuffed unicorn tumbled out. This made me smile. “Hey, Zilda,” I said as I picked her up and stared into her purple-with-sparkles eyes. “I haven't seen you in ages.”

Okay, yes, it could be seen as dorky, talking to my stuffed animal, but it was no biggie because I was alone in my room. Also, I hadn't seen Zilda or the rest of my stuffed animals since forever. Yet here they all were! Curious and excited, I dumped the entire box onto my floor.

I stared at every single animal I'd ever owned, with the exception of Snowball, my favorite mouse ever, who I'd insisted on taking to Disneyland when I was six
because I wanted her to meet Mickey even though my mom warned me she'd probably get lost. Guess what? My mom was right. Snowball disappeared in Adventureland—an hour before we even spotted Mickey—and I haven't seen her since. It still kind of makes me sad. Back when it happened my mom told me animals that get lost at Disneyland are lucky because they get to stay at “the happiest place on Earth” forever. And I knew she was making it up, even at the time, but I still liked to picture Snowball and Mickey riding Alice's teacups together when the park was closed at night.

Anyway, back to the stuffed animals that didn't get left behind at theme parks … When I was younger, I slept with each and every one of them at my side. It was a rule, like, I wouldn't go to bed without them—this despite the fact that every morning when I woke up, half the animals would be on the floor and others would be stuck in the narrow space between the wall and my bed.

It'd been a lot of years since then. And it was fun to reconnect with old friends. I decided to sort them all by type.

Buttons, my favorite beat-up old stuffed hippo, sat at the top of the pile. My grandmother gave her to me when I was born. She's fat and blue with blond braids and sparkly red shoes. Not my gran—she's skinny and white with gray hair. I was talking about Buttons, who used to have actual gray buttons sewn onto her chest, as if her body were a cardigan sweater, but all
the buttons fell off. Then a few months ago Pepper mistook her for a chew toy. And the results weren't pretty. Still, Buttons was a keeper. I placed her on the top shelf of my bookcase.

Then I turned to the rest of the animals. I had three more unicorns; two elephants; one giant goldfish; eight dogs; three cats; four rabbits; five monkeys; a hedgehog; one purple, three-eyed Uglydoll; and two turquoise one-eyed Uglydolls—twin Uglies! I forgot about how cute they were. I put all the Uglydolls on my bookshelf and then went back to sorting. Turns out I also had a complete set of Sesame Street puppets: Bert and Ernie, Big Bird, Grover, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Cookie Monster, Elmo, and Animal.

I wasn't sure what to do with them. I didn't want them on my bed—that was for sure. I was going to be twelve in a few weeks. I was way too old to sleep with a gazillion stuffed animals.

But even though I didn't want to sleep with my stuffed animal collection anymore, I couldn't fathom parting with it for good. No, the animals were all way too important to be hawked at some garage sale. So what was I supposed to do?

I packed them up and shoved the box into the hall. I'd talk to my mom about it later. Maybe I could save them for my new brother or sister. Not to keep—just to borrow for a few years. Babies love stuffed animals! And my baby brother or sister would have an instant collection. Lucky kid!

I unpacked three more boxes, feeling like the greatest future big sister in the world. I put all my schoolbooks on my bookshelf and placed my spare printer paper in a stack on one corner of my desk, and my socks in my sock drawer.

Then I took a quick break for lunch and got back to work.

I found a bunch of stuff to give away—some sneakers that were too tight. The flats I wore to my mom and Ted's wedding that were never comfortable in the first place, and a white T-shirt with a mysterious red stain on the middle of it. And when I finally finished dealing with all the boxes, my stomach was growling, so I wandered downstairs. Luckily, my mom was just coming inside with a big takeout bag from Gino's, our favorite Italian restaurant.

“Hungry?” she asked.

“Starving!” I told her.

She laughed. “Good. Me too.”

Ted came in behind her carrying two big bags filled with groceries. “Hi, Annabelle. You've been quiet all day,” he said. “I kept meaning to check on you to make sure you weren't trapped under an avalanche of boxes.”

“It's all good,” I said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “And I'm finally finished!”

“Well done. The house is coming together so fast,” Ted said as he sat down next to me. “And don't worry,
Annabelle. We'll get your basketball hoop installed by the end of the week. Tomorrow, even, if I can track down the hardware.”