Melanie Martin Goes Dutch

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.