Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Practicing the Piano (But She Does Love Being in Recitals) by Peggy Gifford Read Free Book Online

Standish
    When Moxy looked up and saw Aunt Susan Standish standing behind her mother, she was so embarrassed, she put her head back between her knees.
    “What’s up?” said Aunt Susan Standish. Aunt Susan Standish did not whisper when she said it. But it didn’t matter because Max Daks was making a lot of noise out there onstage.
    “She doesn’t want to go on,” whispered Mrs. Maxwell.
    “She’s afraid,” said Pansy helpfully.
    “Well, of course she is!” said Aunt Susan Standish.
    Moxy looked up. She hoped Aunt Susan Standish didn’t think that she, Moxy Maxwell, was
always
afraid.
    “She’s afraid she might make a mistake,” said Aunt Susan Standish.
    “How did
you
know?” said Moxy.
    “I’m a Mistake Expert. I’m always making mistakes,” said Aunt Susan Standish. “The only reason I’m here is because I made a mistake.”
    “What do you mean?” said Moxy.
    “If I hadn’t been standing on a tippy ladder feeding a giraffe, I wouldn’t have fallen off. If I hadn’t fallen off, I wouldn’t have gotten that concussion. If I hadn’t gotten that concussion, your mother wouldn’t have brought me to your house to stay. And if I hadn’t been at your house, I wouldn’t have been able to come to yourrecital today. I would hate to have missed all this.”
    “But what if I don’t play?” mumbled Moxy.
    But Aunt Susan Standish wasn’t listening. “And last September I made a huge mistake. I took ten tourists on a shortcut through the rain forest. It took me two extra days to figure out where we were.”
    “Were you afraid?” interrupted Moxy.
    “I would have been insane not to be,” said Aunt Susan Standish.
    “Then why did you take the shortcut?”
    “Well, I was curious, I suppose, to find out where the shortcut would go.” Aunt Susan Standish thought about it for a minute. Then she said, “I was more curious about where the shortcut would go than I was afraid of what would happen if I got lost.”
    “Moxy,” said Mrs. Maxwell, “if you don’twant to go on, it’s perfectly all right. We just have to make a decision.”
    Moxy closed her eyes. She wished she were young again and didn’t have such hard decisions to make.
    She knew that if she was afraid of going onstage now, she might always be afraid of going onstage. And if she was always afraid of going onstage, she would have to cross at least half the stuff off her list of 211 Possible Career Paths.
    But what if she went onstage and made a mistake … what would she do?
    Moxy turned to Mark. Mark was the smartest person she knew. “What will I do if I make a mistake?” she said.
    “Do what you always do,” said Mark. “Just keep on going.”
    Moxy remembered how earlier her feet had gone on walking across the parking lot toward the stage door even though the rest of her didn’t want to go.
    She remembered how nervous she’d been the first time she dove into the deep end of the pool when she was practicing her water ballet routine last summer. But it hadn’t been that bad in the end (though the water had been surprisingly cold).
    She remembered the time she sprayed Pansy’s hair with gold spray paint and how afraid she’d been that her mother would kill her when she got home and saw what she’d done. But here she was—still alive.
    Moxy could hear Max Daks playing the end of “Glow, Little Glowworm, Glow.”
    Moxy closed her eyes.
    “Okay,” she said, “I’ll try.”
    Moxy surprised even herself when she said it.

chapter 81
On with the Show!
    Max Daks was playing the end of “Glow, Little Glowworm, Glow” for the second time when Ms. Killingher tapped him on the shoulder. Not a person to stop in midmeasure, Max Daks finished the song.
    As he was walking offstage, he heard Ms. Killingher say: “Ladies and gentlemen, at long last, Moxy and Pansy Maxwell will play ‘Heart and Soul.’ ”
    Reader, I wish I could say that Moxy’s legs had stopped shaking. Or that her hands had warmed up and her heart wasn’t