Keena Ford and the Secret Journal Mix-Up (2 page)

My teacher Ms. Campbell just said that writing time is over, so I will have to wait until after school to write the rest of the story of how Tiffany stole my journal because she is mean.

 

Now it is after school. Here is the rest of what happened at Tiffany's: I finished with my homework and wrote in my journal while I waited for Tiffany to finish her homework and her workbook pages, whatever those are. I started writing that I figured out who Mom was mad at. She was mad at Brian. I did not know why Brian was in so much trouble for being a clown at school. Clowns are funny. I wrote that I didn't like the way Mrs. Harris talked about Brian maybe going to jail when he grew up. It was mean of her to say that, and I have never heard of anyone having to go to jail for being a clown. You might have to go to the circus if you are a clown, but I don't think you have to go to jail. So I wrote that Mrs. Harris doesn't know anything. And then I wrote something very bad. I wrote that Mrs. Harris should just shut up.

A few minutes after I started writing in my journal, Tiffany took her homework paper and left the room. When she came back, her paper had red marks all over it with lots of red writing at the bottom.

“We can't do our homework in pen!” I blurted out. I knew that I had decided not to talk to Tiffany, but this was too important.

Tiffany let a lot of air out of her lungs like grown-ups do when little kids don't understand something. “I'm not turning this paper in,” she said like she knows everything. “My mom helped me make the writing better, and now I am going to write it over.”

“What is the writing at the bottom?” I asked. I leaned over Tiffany's paper to look at the words in red.

Tiffany snatched the paper away from me. “That's some stuff my mom wants me to add,” she said. “So I will write that stuff after I write the rest of it again.”

I could not believe what she was saying. “That's COPYING,” I said with lots of surprise. “Copying is against the law.”

“It's not copying when a mom writes it,” Tiffany said. “My mother told me so.”

“Are you sure?” I asked her. It still seemed like copying to me.

“YES I'm sure,” Tiffany said. “Now you need to be quiet so I can do my work. Or I'm going to tell my mom you think she is breaking the law.”

“I did not say that!” I told her. Then I stuck my tongue out at the back of Tiffany's head when she turned around to do her stupid copying.

I took a good look around Tiffany's room. I had not been there since I was in first grade. It still looks almost exactly the same! It is mostly pink and white. And Tiffany always has her teapot and cups all set up.

As I was looking around Tiffany's room, I heard the doorbell, and then I heard Mom's voice. I ran into the hallway to see her. “Thanks again, Sylvia,” Mom was saying. Then she saw me. “Oh, THERE you are, Keena,” she said. “Get your things, please. And do it quickly.”

Mom didn't need to tell me to get my things quickly because I was already running back into Tiffany's room. I grabbed my books off Tiffany's bed and shoved them in my backpack.

When we got back to our apartment, we had a very quiet dinner. I asked Brian about his clown tricks, but before he could answer, Mom said, “I have heard enough about Brian's clowning for today,” and told me to eat my peas.

I ate eleven peas. It took a few minutes. I LOVE to eat peas. I love to eat peas one at a time rather than in a big crowded mouthful. While I was eating my peas, I had an idea for how I could help Brian learn to behave better. “Do you know what a fable is?” I asked him.

“Yes, I know what a fable is,” Brian said. His mouth was very full. Brian always puts every single one of his peas in his mouth at once.

“A fable is a story that teaches a lesson,” I told him. “In a fable, the lesson is called a moral. Many fables have talking animals instead of people.” I know everything about fables because we talked about them yesterday AND today in school.

“You're a talking animal,” Brian said in a mean voice. Then Mom made him say sorry.

“Do you know the fable of the city mouse and the country mouse?” I asked Brian.

“Yes,” he said.

I told him the fable again anyway in case he couldn't remember all the important parts. It goes like this: Once upon a time there were these two mice. One mouse lived in the city and the other mouse lived out in the country in a field or something. I think the mice were cousins. Anyway, the city mouse went to visit the country mouse, and he thought the country mouse lived a very boring life and ate boring food. So the city mouse said, “Let's go to the city and eat fancy food.” And the country mouse said okay. But when they were eating fancy food at the city mouse's apartment, these big dogs came in and chased the mice away. Then the country mouse said, “I am going back to the country, because I would rather eat boring food in a safe place than eat fancy food in a dangerous place.” The moral of the story is you should try to be safe even if it seems boring.

I didn't tell the moral to Brian because I wanted to see if he could guess it. “Do you know what the moral is?” I asked him. I smiled at him like my teacher Ms. Campbell smiles at us when she really, really hopes we know the right answer to a question.

“I guess the moral is that I need to go away from this city,” Brian said. He was not even smiling one bit. He looked very unhappy. “It means I should move to the country. I should just move to Maryland with Dad. That's what I want to do anyway.”

I felt very shocked when Brian said that. “That's not the moral,” I told him. I thought he would have been good at guessing the right moral. What he said was not the moral at all. What he said was terrible. I did not want him to move to Maryland.

“Brian, I need to speak to you in your room,” Mom said. Then she said, “Keena, baby, I'll be right back.” Mom and Brian walked out of the kitchen. I put a pea on my spoon, but I didn't want to eat it at all. I just set it down on Brian's plate, then I pushed my chair away from the table. I went to my room to write in my journal.

When I got to my room, I looked in my backpack to get my journal. I didn't see it. I tried to remember if I had put it somewhere else when I got home from Tiffany's. I looked beside my bed, under my bed, in my art box, and on my bookshelf. I thought maybe it had gotten squashed down to the bottom of my bag, so I pulled out all my other books. Then I stuck my head all the way into my backpack to make sure it was totally empty. It was! I went into the bathroom to see if my journal was in the bathtub again. It happened once before, and that is a very long story. Anyway, my journal was not in the bathtub. Right then I knew for sure that my journal was missing!

I ran back into the kitchen. Mom was in there. She was washing dishes and talking on the telephone. I don't think she heard me come into the kitchen because she was listening to the phone and the water was whooshing in the sink. I heard her say something about traveling, so I thought she was on the phone with my grandma Haypo. Grandma Haypo lives in Richmond, Virginia, and we travel a long way in the car to see her sometimes. After a few more minutes, though, I realized she was on the phone with Dad because she said, “Thank you, Curtis.” Then she turned around and reached for my dirty plate on the table. She looked toward the door and saw me, and she looked very serious in her face. “Let me call you back in just a minute, Curtis,” she said.

Mom put the phone down, then she walked over to me and gave me a hug. When she did that, about a million tears popped right out of my eyes.

“Don't worry about what Brian said. He didn't mean it,” Mom said to me. I told her that yes, I was worried about Brian, but that we would have to talk about it later because for now I was worried about something else. I told her that my journal was at Tiffany's and that I had to get it back right away. “It's an emergency,” I said. “She might read it.”

“Now, I'm sure it's almost Tiffany's bedtime,” Mom said. “And there is no way she will have time to read it tonight. You have written a LOT in that journal.” Mom smiled a little bit. “You can just get it from her at school tomorrow,” she said, and she gave me a squeeze. Then Mom asked me to get ready for bed and said she would come tuck me in after she talked to Dad again.

Now I am going to watch TV for a while and rest my hand. My hand is tired from writing for such a long time.

 

 

 

Okay, I am ready to write the rest of the story now.

 

 

This morning at school I was going to ask Tiffany about my journal right away. But she said something to me first. She came right up to me with a big smile on her face. “You left your journal at my apartment,” she told me.

“I know,” I said. Then I asked her if I could have my journal back.

“I didn't bring it with me,” she said. She was still smiling like crazy. Tiffany never smiles at me unless she is about to tell me something bad. I was pretty sure I knew what bad thing Tiffany was going to tell me.

“You didn't READ my journal, did you?” I asked her. “You better not have read it. That is my private stuff in there.”

Tiffany didn't say anything for one minute. Then she said, “Yes, I read it. I read the whole thing.”

When Tiffany said that, my face got about a million degrees more hot. I was shocked. I don't know where the water comes from inside you that makes you cry, but it shot up into my eyes in about three seconds.

“That was my PRIVATE STUFF!” I said again.

“Then you should not have left it at my apartment,” Tiffany said. She raised and lowered her shoulders very fast like she knows everything.

“I'm telling,” I said.

“If you tell on me, I will tell everyone what you wrote in your journal,” she said. “Even the bad stuff. I will tell them all of it.”