Some Friend

by Marie Bradby

• ISBN13: 9780689856150
• ISBN10: 0689856156
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-01-06
• Publisher: Atheneum/Richard Jackson Books

Summary

Finding a friend isn't easy. Especially when there aren't many kids age eleven in your neighborhood.

Being a friend is even harder.

In Pearl's neighborhood, Lenore is anyone's first choice. She gets her hair straightened and curled at a real beauty

Author Biography

Marie Bradby's first book for younger readers was the IRA Award-winning More Than Anything Else, illustrated by Chris K. Soentpiet. They also collaborated on Momma, Where Are You From?, a Golden Kite Honor Book. Growing up in the Washington, D.C., area in the 1960s, Ms. Bradby was a young girl during the Civil Rights movement and the great years of the Motown sound.

She lives with her husband and teenage son in Louisville, Kentucky.

Excerpts

Chapter 1 CHUM All my life I've been hoping I'd find a friend so I wouldn't have to play Monopoly by myself. (When I get the box out and set up all the little bitty houses and the fake money, everybody in my family suddenly gets too busy and just disappears.) If I had a friend, I'd have somebody to walk to the grocery store with when Mama forgets the one thing that she went for. We could sing songs and do the latest dance steps -- the pony, the Watusi, and the twist -- and, you know, just hang out.She would be my best friend, and I would ask her questions about the three-letter word -- "b-r-a." I am in training, though I don't know for what. My bra leaves ridges on my rib cage and they itch. I usually rush right home from school and take it off.There. Whew!Better get downstairs and start my homework. It's always best to look busy. When you're not doing your homework, people ask you things like: "Can you take these smelly vegetable peelings out to the compost?"I sit at the dining-room table and put my name and the date on a sheet of loose-leaf paper. Pearl Jordan. Wednesday, March 6, 1963. I don't know why, but I add: Mrs. Scott. Fifth Grade. Then I start diagramming sentences and wonder what kind of job anyone would need this for. IGNORED Sometimes I feel so big -- full of ideas about things, like stuff right here in my backyard in Fairfax, Virginia. I think I am going to be a scientist because there are so many questions that we need to figure out. I mean, somebody has to worry about what's important.For instance, in winter, when my head just about snaps off from shivering while I wait at the school bus stop, I wonder: How do the squirrels in our tree keep from freezing in their nests? In summer I look at hummingbirds and wonder: Do they get tired of beating their wings fifty times a second? And I wonder why -- when it's hot as blazes outside -- worms pick that particular time to crawl out of some safe, cozy hole in the grass and get fried on the sidewalk.Other things too. What holds airplanes up? The only time I have flown was last year, when my fourth-grade class went to New York City for the day to see the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. We all piled into this great big airplane, the propellers got to whirling around, and after racing down the runway, it just rose off the ground. How do they do that? Something so enormous and heavy. And how do those pilots know where to go? Do they have a map of the clouds?If I had a friend, we could talk this over and maybe figure it out. Maybe even win an award -- like at the school science fair.Or I could tell her something that I have figured out: People don't notice what you want them to notice, but they sure have X-ray eyes when you don't want them to see what you are doing!"Mama, I grew a foot last week," I announced yesterday."That's nice, sweetie," she said, not even looking up from the bookkeeping work she does at the kitchen table for her part-time job.You see what I mean?"But I need some new jeans," I said. "The bottoms of these are up to my knees.""Mmm-hmm..."Then this morning there is no juice because I'm the last one in the bathroom (shared by Mama, Daddy, my older sister Diana, my big brother Curtis, and my baby sister Angela) and the last one to get breakfast, so I am dying of thirst, and out of desperation, I pop open an orange soda, and Mama's head zips around like a robot in a TV show."Just what do you think you're doing?""But I was -- ""Young lady, sodas are not for breakfast!""But I was just -- ""Don't 'but' me. Do you want rotten teeth? Or worse, stomach cancer?""I was thirsty.""That's what they make water for. And as I have just paid the water bill, there's plenty of it. Do you hear me?""Yes, ma'am." FAMILY FEET My mother has the prettiest feet. They are small a