Little Miss Stoneybrook...and Dawn by Ann M. Martin Read Free Book Online

she was uncoordinated!)
    â€œThis is the house that Jack built,” she said, after the banana had been peeled. She took a big bite. “Thish ish the mart, that ray in the housh that Jack bit.”
    â€œShee?” she said a few moments later, as she polished off the last of the banana. “I can peel a banana with my feet. I bet no one else can do that. And I can eat it while I say my poem.”
    I closed my eyes. I thought I felt a headache coming on. I didn’t feel any better when I heard Claire say, “My talent is better than yours, Margo. I’m going to win the pageant.”
    Of course Margo replied, “No you’re not. I am.”
    What next? I wondered. It hadn’t really occurred to me that the Pike girls would becompeting against each other . What if one of them did win the pageant? The other would lose not just to strangers or even friends, but to her own sister. How awful!
    On the other hand, I was beginning to think that there wasn’t much chance that either girl would win — not with banana-peeling and rude Popeye songs.
    â€œYou guys,” I said, “let’s go on to something else. You’re probably going to need to know how to curtsy. I bet you’ll have to curtsy when you meet the judges. How about practicing that for a while?”
    The girls looked at me blankly. “What’s curtsy?” asked Margo.
    I explained.
    I demonstrated.
    The girls tried curtsying.
    Margo tipped over sideways. Claire knelt down so low she had trouble getting up.
    â€œLet’s work on poise,” I suggested. I placed a book on each girl’s head. “Now stand up straight and walk gracefully, just as if you were walking by the judges.”
    Margo did so, batting her eyes and looking coy.
    Claire did so, too, but she swayed her hips back and forth and the book slid to the floor.
    â€œTold you,” said a voice from the doorway.
    It was Mallory. She looked disgusted, but her sisters didn’t seem to notice.
    â€œWatch our talents, Mallory-silly-billy-goo-goo!” Claire cried.
    Mallory watched. (Margo had to demonstrate without a banana, though. I didn’t want her to spoil her appetite for supper.)
    When Claire and Margo were finished, Mallory glanced at me. It was all we could do to keep from laughing. Nevertheless, as I walked home that evening I began to wonder what I’d gotten myself into.
    The Pike girls were not pageant material at all.

Thursday
    Guess what, everybody. We have another contestant in the Little Miss Stoneybrook pageant — Myriah Perkins. And all the other contestants better watch out because, boy, is she talented. She can sing, tap dance, and act, and she knows ballet. She’s taken lessons for all these things. Oh, she also knows gymnastics. She can turn a cartwheel and stand on her head and do a backward somersault and some other stuff. I am not kidding. Really. I’m not.
    Myriah didn’t know anything about the pageant, but when I saw how talented she is, I just knew she’d have to enter. She’ll win, too. I’m sure of it.
    When I read Mary Anne’s notebook entry I smelled trouble. Big trouble. The pageant business was getting out of hand. Or maybe it wasn’t.Maybe I was just disappointed that the Pike girls were going to peel bananas and sing about wor-orms and ger-erms. At any rate, Myriah suddenly seemed like hot competition.
    The Perkins family lives next door to Mary Anne. They live in the house Kristy lived in before her mother married Watson Brewer and the Thomases moved into his mansion on the other side of town. There are five people in the Perkins family — Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, five-and-a-half-year-old Myriah, two-and-a-half-year-old Gabbie, and Laura, the newest member of the family, who’s just an infant.
    The afternoon that Mary Anne sat at the Perkins house was a gloomy, rainy one, but Myriah and Gabbie didn’t seem to mind. (Mary Anne was sitting just for