Sarah Simpson's Rules for Living (4 page)

Then I woke up.

Sally told me why my father needs to stay with Kim just now. Kim is having a baby. It's making her sick. My father is taking care of her.

That is what Andrea called my father.

Sally says that is not fair. People change, Sally says, and when you care for someone, you want them to have what they need to be happy.

I think if people are going to change, they shouldn't get married in the first place.

Also I think Sally could have tried harder to be what my father needed to be happy. She could have put on fingernail polish and stopped wearing those ratty jeans with the hole in the knee.

So much for dreams.

Horace and I spent most of the afternoon in the Underworld. Horace sat on the floor and I sat on the piano bench. While the second grade was practicing its snowflake dance, Horace explained his Theory of Ethical Lying. I am wrong about always telling the truth, Horace says. Sometimes lying is morally justified.

Also Benjamin Franklin's list is not perfect. For example, it doesn't say anything about not killing cows to make hamburgers.

Horace is a vegetarian.

I told Horace what I said to George about the star.

Everybody hates me.

I wish I could just live in the Underworld forever.

Sally says that when you've done something mean, you will never feel better until you apologize. So I have apologized to George and Sally and Andrea.

I still don't feel better. George didn't mean it when he said okay. He wouldn't look at me and he was talking from behind his bear.

It's awful when a little kid stops liking you. George used to follow me around all the time and was always asking me to read to him and help him make raspberry Jell-O and stuff. He's really pretty cute, George. He has a sort of little pointed face like an elf and he wears these baggy little overalls.

George doesn't like the name George either.

He wants to be called Willoughby.

Willoughby is a character in George's favorite picture book, which is all about these bears who live in a cave and sleep in bunk beds and have adventures. Willoughby sleeps in the top bunk bed. He is a very short bear.

Today is the anniversary of the day Sally and Jonah met. They are celebrating it. Jonah brought Sally a big bouquet of yellow roses, and they have gone out to dinner. Sally was wearing her green dress. That dress makes her skin look creamy and her eyes look really green. Jonah just kept looking at her.

Jonah was wearing a suit jacket, but even that doesn't help his belly. I don't know what Sally can be thinking. My father runs and works out at the gym. Emily Harris says my father is really hot.

Jonah isn't.

I called my father in California.

This is what he said:
Kim and Greg cannot come to the phone at this time. If you leave a message after the beep, they will return your call as soon as they can.

My father has returned my call. He's had a lot on his mind, he says. He's worried about Kim. She keeps throwing up. Also they hadn't expected her to get pregnant, and it's taken a lot of getting used to.

I know what Andrea would say about this, because I already heard her saying it to Sally in the kitchen.

Maybe he wants me to come live in California with him. I could help take care of the baby.

Nobody wants me around here.

Sally and Jonah have decided to move in together. I knew this was going to happen. All that “We're just friends” stuff was just too good to be true.

First Sally told me privately by myself and Jonah told George. Then they both told both of us together. Jonah got very solemn and made a little speech and told me that though of course he knows he can never take the place of my real father, he hopes I'll come to regard him as a father too. The more fathers in your corner, the better, Jonah said.

Sally just hugged George. George is all excited. He is already calling Sally “Mom.” He thinks we're all going to be a family and live happily ever after. He doesn't understand that we will never be a family. Families are born, not patched together.

Horace says I am too stupid to appreciate my good luck. He thinks Jonah is great. According to Horace, the
SAVE THE WHALES
bumper stickers show that Jonah's heart is in the right place. Horace says you can tell a lot about a person by their bumper stickers.

When I have a car, I want a bumper sticker like the one I saw last week in the Pelham Friendly Supermarket parking lot. It said
PLEASE FORGIVE ME. I WAS RAISED BY WOLVES.

Horace says if I get a bumper sticker, it should read
DON'T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU THINK.

Horace can be very annoying.

My father is not coming to the play. He can't leave Kim. She is still sick.

Sally doesn't get angry very often, which goes to show that red hair doesn't always mean a hot temper. Not that Sally's hair is orange like mine, but it's definitely reddish. A sort of copper color.

Today she got angry at me. She said that I am moping around making everybody miserable and that I am thinking only of myself.

So then I got angry too.

I yelled and threw a spoon.

After all, it's not like Sally got stuck in a mess. Or my father. Sally is running around with Jonah, picking out this special wallpaper that's made out of something like soybeans. My father is lying around next to a swimming pool with Kim. They're not stuck with anything. The person who is stuck is me.

Then Sally burst into tears and ran out of the kitchen and went upstairs to her bedroom and slammed the door.

I went to my bedroom and slammed the door too.

This is all Sally's fault.

I've been hating Sally for three hours.

But then it got hard to stay angry. Right at first when you get angry, it feels like you're going to stay that way forever. You want to scream and stamp and bite and smash things, and you think of all the really terrible things you could do to everybody.

But then, no matter how hard you try to hold on to being angry, the feeling just gradually starts to ooze away. I don't mean I wasn't still mad at Sally. I just stopped wanting to throw stuff at her.

Also I was hungry.

So I went downstairs and Sally was sitting at the kitchen table looking miserable and all red and puffy around the eyes.

It serves her right, I thought.

But before I could say anything, Sally looked up and said, “You're right, I should have asked you. And I feel horrible about Purple Feathered Hat Day. I wouldn't blame you if you hated me.”

So I told her I didn't hate her exactly.

Then I made a piece of peanut-butter toast and Sally made a cup of tea and we had a long talk.

Sally said if it's not okay with me about Jonah and George moving in, then they won't. It's my house too, and it wouldn't be fair.

But I could tell that she really, really wanted them to.

So I said it was okay.

I guess Jonah's really not so bad.

Horace says it's not Jonah's fault he's going bald. It's because of a chromosome he inherited from his mother.

After I talked to Sally, I called my father and said it was all right about him not coming to the play. And I said I was happy about the baby, and I even asked how Kim was feeling, which was really polite of me, seeing that I don't care. Sally thinks I should be nicer to people, but I'm not going to get stupid about it.

If the baby is a girl, Kim wants to name her Moonlight Sonata.

Andrea says that's the dippiest thing she's ever heard.

I am in debt for life to geeky Horace Zimmerman. This is how it happened.

Sally and Jonah went off to pack the stuff at Jonah's house into boxes. While they were packing, I was supposed to take care of George and keep him from getting underfoot. So I took him and his bear for a walk down to the pond.

George wasn't very happy about being with me, and he wouldn't look at me, but he came along anyway. The pond is back in the woods, and there's a little path that leads to it. It's one of my favorite places, the pond. There are water lilies there and cattails and lots of googly little frogs, and the water is clear, clear green. We sat down next to the water and George wouldn't talk to me, but I could tell that he was thinking. George isn't like most little kids. He doesn't just run around and yell all the time. He really thinks about things, and sometimes you can just see him worrying and turning things over in his head.

Then he started to cry. Not sobbing or yelling like he does when he falls down and skins his knee, but tears just bubbling up and running down his cheeks without making a sound.