Only Emma Read online

  Thanks a Lot, Anthony.

  Cynthia leans over to whisper something to me. “My mom says it’s fine about Friday,” she tells me, as if it is a great big secret. She opens her mouth a little and smiles, as though she is waiting for me to say Yippee.

  “Friday?” I say, staring at her. What is she talking about? I can’t remember. I feel stupid, but I try to make my face look smart.

  “You know,” she says, frowning suddenly, “when you come sleep over at my house.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “That’ll be fun.” I try to match her smile. I can’t believe I forgot about the best thing that has happened to me in a long, long time.

  “Wait a minute. Did you even ask your mom?” Cynthia asks, suspicious now.

  “I—I meant to,” I tell her. “Only things got kind of goofed up at our house last night.” Thanks a lot, Anthony, I think.

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  Only Emma

  Only

  Emma

  Sally Warner

  Illustrated by

  Jamie Harper

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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  New Delhi - 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Registered Offices: Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005

  Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006

  7 9 10 8 6

  Text copyright © Sally Warner, 2005

  Illustrations copyright © Jamie Harper, 2005

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Warner, Sally.

  Only Emma / by Sally Warner; illustrated by Jamie Harper

  p. cm.

  Summary: Third-grader Emma’s peaceful life as an only child is disrupted

  when she has to temporarily share her tidy bedroom with four-year-old

  Anthony Scarpetto, a bona fide “pain in the patootie.”

  EISBN: 9781101567593

  [1. Only child—Fiction. 2. Single-parent families—Fiction.

  3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.] I. Harper, Jamie, ill. II. Title.

  PZ7.W24644On 2004 [Fic]—dc22 2004012478

  Set in Bitstream Carmina

  Printed in the United States of America

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

  For the one and only

  Julia Bosley! — S. W.

  For Kate—J.H.

  Contents

  1

  Crazy Anthony

  2

  Poor Little Guy

  3

  There Are No Koalas in Oak Glen, California

  4

  A Pain in the Patootie

  5

  Uh–Oh

  6

  Screech!

  7

  Triceratops

  8

  Scissors Skills

  9

  A Teensy Little Fight

  10

  No Fair!

  11

  Here Is What I Think

  1

  Crazy Anthony

  Anthony Scarpetto saw me reaching for that puzzle piece, but he grabbed it first. And he doesn’t even know where it goes. “Give it,” I say to him, but he does not let me have it.

  “You’re not the boss of me, Emma McGraw,” he says, but that’s not true. He is only four, and I am eight, which is twice as much. Of course I am the boss.

  Besides, we’re at my house. You are always the boss—of other kids, anyway—when you are at your own house. That’s the rule, even though no one ever wrote it down.

  Until now.

  Why am I even trying to do a puzzle with a four-year-old baby on a Sunday night? Because my mom told me I had to be nice to Anthony, that’s why. She’s friends with his mom and dad. They used to be our neighbors at our old house, before we moved to this condo.

  In my opinion, a condo is way worse than a house. You always have to worry about whether or not you are bothering your neighbors, for one thing, even though they never worry about bothering you—with their noise, with the stupid decorations on their porches, with their weird cooking smells.

  Other people’s cooking is just plain strange.

  And there are lots of other bad things about living in a condo, but I’m too busy keeping an eye on Anthony to mention them.

  My mom and Anthony’s mom are sitting in our kitchen right now. They are drinking Constant Comment tea and yak-yak-yakking.

  Anthony Scarpetto has black curly hair, brown eyes, and fat pink cheeks. He is not as cute as he sounds, though—and not nearly as cute as he thinks, even though he is wearing his striped pajamas already. I guess that’s so his mom can just stuff him into bed right away to get rid of him when they finally go home.

  I am so glad that I do not have a little brother! Or a little sister either, for that matter. I am an only child, and I like it that way.

  Only Emma.

  “Give it,” I say to him again, but I know Anthony is not going to give me the puzzle piece. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t eat it just to make me mad.

  “Make me,” Anthony says. He holds the sticky puzzle piece in the air as if it is a dog biscuit and I am a big old poodle.

  I do have curly hair like a poodle, which happens to be a very intelligent dog, in case you didn’t know. My hair is brown, and it comes halfway down my back. Mom says that my hair is so thick that it is hard for her to get a comb through it after a shampoo.

  I brush my own hair the rest of the time, but sometimes—I admit it—I just skim the brush over the outermost hairs on my head so that they look okay.

&
nbsp; That’s my basic approach to a lot of things, actually.

  I wish my hair was smooth and shiny all the time, like Cynthia Harbison’s. Cynthia is my best friend at my new school, even though I know she wouldn’t say the same thing about me.

  But Cynthia’s mom can get a comb through her hair easy as pie, probably.

  I shrug my shoulders. “Keep the puzzle piece, then,” I say to Anthony. “I don’t care. I don’t even like that puzzle. I was just trying to be nice to you.”

  I do like the puzzle, though. It shows an orange cat—a boy—curled up next to a pumpkin, fast asleep. The cat is fast asleep, I mean, not the pumpkin.

  Did you know that almost all orange cats are boys? It’s true. And cats that are three colors—white, black, and brown—are usually always girls.

  It’s science.

  “Show me where it goes,” Anthony says, scowling. He tries to push the piece into the wrong place. He is putting kitty fur in the sky! The bumpy part of the cardboard puzzle piece bends, of course. And I hate it when puzzle pieces bend. It reminds me of sprained ankles.

  “Stop, you’re wrecking it,” I say. “That’s a very valuable puzzle.”

  It isn’t, but he doesn’t know that.

  “You just said you didn’t like it,” Anthony reminds me.

  “I don’t,” I lie. “But that doesn’t mean that I want to see you ruining it.”

  “Then show me where it goes,” Anthony says again.

  I could do what he wants, but then Anthony will just grab the next puzzle piece I reach for, so why bother? And anyway, I am tired of playing with him. He is giving me a little headache.

  Besides, it’s not as though we’re really playing together. When kids play, they’re supposed to have fun. This is not fun.

  This is something else.

  “Nuh-uh,” I tell Anthony. “Figure it out yourself if you’re so smart. I’m busy.” I get up, walk over to my bookcase, and look at the nature books there as if they are the most interesting things in the world. Which they are, by the way.

  “But you have to play with me. Mommy said,” Anthony yells, jumping up so fast that the white wicker chair he was sitting in clunks sideways to the ground. Now, his face is pink all over.

  “No one can make me do anything I don’t want to do,” I tell him. “Anyway,” I say, “it’s my room. Don’t go knocking over the chair in my room. Please.” I add the please to be polite. And just in case my mom is listening.

  Now, Anthony’s face is almost red, he is so angry. “I can knock over anything I want,” he says. To prove it, he swings his arm back, and he sweeps the whole puzzle—that could have been valuable, he doesn’t know!—off the table and onto the floor.

  The box says that there are seventy-five pieces in that puzzle, and all seventy-five pieces go flying everywhere. Two or three of them stick to the arm of Anthony’s pajamas like magnets.

  “Oh, great,” I tell him. “Well, you’ll just have to pick the pieces up, that’s all. And I’m counting every single one, so you’d better get started.”

  “No way,” Anthony squawks, and he starts hopping up and down, stomping on the puzzle pieces. He turns into a red-and-white-striped blur.

  So here I am, holding a book about birds in one hand while a strange four-year-old kid is going bonkers in my bedroom. He’s wrecking my stuff!

  I don’t know what to do.

  I am a girl who likes peace and quiet, at least when I’m at home. But there will be no peace and quiet as long as Anthony Scarpetto is around, I am thinking.

  My mom pops her head through the doorway, finally. “What’s going on in here?” she says.

  She’s asking me? I’m just standing here in my own room, minding my own business! “You’d better ask Mr. Big Baby Snit-Fit over there,” I say, pointing to Anthony.

  Anthony is still stomping puzzle pieces, but not as hard as before. It’s as if he is some weird Christmas toy, and a few of his double-A batteries are running down.

  “Anthony, honey?” my mom says, using her soft voice. She kneels down and holds out her arms.

  “Wah-h-h-h-h,” Anthony cries, and he runs into my mother’s hug so hard that he knocks her over. I don’t like to see her hug Anthony. Where’s his mom, anyway? It is her job to hug this terrible kid.

  I mean, I feel sorry for her and everything, but tough.

  “Oof,” Mom says, and she laughs and gives little striped Anthony another big squeeze.

  Tears are squirting out of Anthony’s eyes as though he has a sprinkler turned on inside, the big faker. “Emma wouldn’t play with me,” Anthony says. He is such a tattletale.

  “You call that playing?” I ask, and I point to the puzzle disaster all over my floor.

  “Simmer down, you two,” my mother says. “Emma, let’s get this picked up.”

  “Okay,” I say, “but Anthony has to help, at least.” Anthony snuffles and wipes his nose on his pajama sleeve.

  Yuck. That is so typical of him.

  “I don’t wanna help,” Anthony says, sliding me a look.

  “He doesn’t have to help,” Mom says. “I want Anthony to go into the kitchen, Em. His mother needs to talk to him.”

  Anthony gives me a secret hah-hah-on-you kind of grin.

  “But Mom,” I say. This is very bad for him!

  “Go on, Anthony—she’s waiting for you,” my mother tells him. And Anthony goes pattering off down the hall.

  “That’s so not fair,” I say. “He made this mess.”

  My mom is already picking up the pieces. “You two are going to have to learn how to get along, Emma,” she tells me. “Just because you don’t have any brothers or sisters, that doesn’t mean you can’t—”

  “But I was getting along,” I say. I am interrupting her, but this is important. “Anthony is the one who wouldn’t play right,” I tell her. “He was pounding puzzle pieces into the wrong places—with his bare fist!”

  “He’s only four,” Mom reminds me, scooping up some more puzzle pieces.

  I am starting to feel even angrier than before. “Well, anyway,” I say, “I don’t have to learn how to get along with crazy Anthony, because he will be going home in about one minute. Thank goodness.”

  “I wanted to talk with you about that,” Mom says, and she settles back as though we are about to have a cozy little chat.

  I do not want to have a chat with her tonight. I just want to be left alone—in my nice, quiet, picked-up room. That’s all.

  I have library books about insects that I need to read.

  So I don’t say anything.

  I can hear Anthony crying again, though—in the kitchen, this time.

  “Anthony will be staying with us for a little while, Emma,” Mom says, her voice soft. “For at least a week, actually.”

  “What?” I yell. I can’t help it.

  My mom pats her hands in the air like that is going to calm things down. “Shhh,” she says. “Anthony’s grandmother in Tucson is very sick, sweetie, and his mom and dad are going to go help take care of her.”

  “So why can’t Anthony go, too?” I ask, trying to make my voice sound normal. “His grandmother probably thinks he’s darling. It would do her good to see him.”

  “He would just be in the way,” Mom says.

  I can believe that much, at least.

  “Emma?” Mom says.

  I don’t answer.

  My mother waves her hands in front of my eyes, then lifts up some of my curly hair and pretends to peer inside my ear. “Anyone home in there?” she asks, trying to make a joke.

  “When?” I ask her. The word comes out croaky. “When do we have to start taking care of him?”

  “Right away, darling,” Mom replies. “Anthony’s mother brought his little duffel bag with her. She’s explaining the situation to him now.”

  Which must be the reason he’s crying. “You mean he’s staying here tonight?” I ask, horrified. “But where will he sleep?”

  My mom looks over at my guest
bed, the one where my new friend Cynthia sleeps when she stays over. Which has only been once so far, because school just started.

  “In my room?” I yell.

  Down the hall, Anthony is still sobbing.

  Hey, I know just how he feels! I’d sob, too, only I’m too old.

  “It’s just for a little while,” Mom says. She snaps the lid closed on the puzzle box as though she is saying, That’s final.

  “Well, it’s going to seem like a whole lot longer,” I tell her.

  Because she might be the mom, but already, I know a thing or two about Anthony.

  2

  Poor Little Guy

  It is morning!

  Finally.

  I thought the sun would never come up.

  Anthony huffled and snuffled like a baby warthog for about an hour before he fell asleep last night. I tried to make him feel better. I said, “Look, Anthony, your mom and dad will come back as soon as they can. I’m sure they won’t decide to take a vacation all by themselves while they have the chance. And they won’t forget where they left you.”

  “Wah-h-h-h-h,” Anthony yelled.

  I guess I should have kept my big mouth shut and not tried to comfort him.

  But if I was a mom and I had a noisy little kid like Anthony, I might want to forget where I left him.

  Now, though, Anthony is still asleep. He was yelping with bad dreams all night, which is why I have dark circles under my eyes.

  Anthony is lying on my guest bed as though someone threw him there. His red-and-white-striped pajama legs are all tangled up in the pink sheets.

  He clashes with my room.

  And—he’s drooling on my guest-bed pillow!

  Well, that’s just gross. I hope Cynthia doesn’t find out.

  I tiptoe over to my closet and get out the clothes I want to wear to school today. I will have to change in the bathroom.

  This stinks. I can’t even get dressed in my own room anymore!

  But my friend Cynthia and I talked on the phone yesterday afternoon, as usual, and we both decided to wear green today, so that’s good. Especially since I have a brand-new green top.