Part 7 (2/2)

”Right,” said Sam.

”And we should never, ever play with lighters or matches?”

”No,” Sam said in a loud voice. ”Don't anybody ever play with lighters or matches!”

”And what do we think about smoking?”

”YUCK!” Sam shouted. The kids in the circle all clapped their hands and yelled ”YUCK!”

Sam looked around and grinned. He was being a bigger hit than Leah.

Mrs. Bennett kept the pipe and the lighter. She said she would send them back to Sam's father with the carpool driver.

Sam decided, as he was putting on his jacket for the playground, that when he got home he would have a serious talk with his mom and daddy and Anastasia, too, about safety and health. He would also teach them how to do fake burps.

11.

Sam sat on Anastasia's bed and watched his sister brush her hair. Anastasia had long hair and every night she tried to brush it, she had told Sam, one hundred strokes.

”Eighty-two, eighty-three, eighty-four,” Anastasia was saying softly as she brushed.

”A hundred and forty-nine,” Sam said loudly.

Anastasia stopped brus.h.i.+ng and glared at him. ”Don't, Sam,” she said. ”You'll get me all mixed up.”

He waited quietly until she got to one hundred and put the brush down.

”Now do me,” he said.

”Your hair looks fine,” Anastasia said. ”You don't have oily hair like I do.”

”I just have dumb curls,” Sam muttered.

”You have great curls, Sam. I'd give anything to have curls like yours. In fact, you know what? I'll tell you a secret.”

”What?” Sam asked. He loved secrets.

”Well,” his sister confided, ”when I was younger, I used to be jealous of you. Sometimes when people would come to visit Mom and Dad, they would all start talking about what pretty curls the baby had.”

”What baby?” Sam asked.

”You, when you were little. When people started talking about how cute you were and what pretty curls you had, I would get so jealous and mad that I would leave the room. I would go sulk.”

”Did you cry?”

”No, of course not,” Anastasia said. Then she added, ”Well, sometimes I did. Once or twice.”

Sam sighed. ”I was such a cute baby,” he said with satisfaction. ”Very, very, very cute.”

He raised himself to his knees so that he could look across the room into Anastasia's mirror. He frowned at himself. ”Now I hate my curls,” he said. ”I wish I had punk hair.”

”Punk hair?”

”Yeah. My friend Adam has punk hair. His hair all sucks up like a porkypine.”

”Porcupine,” Anastasia corrected him automatically. ”Is it dyed orange or green or anything?”

”No, it's just a plain brown porkypine. And he has a little tail at the back.” Sam felt the back of his own head. ”I wish I had a little tail like Adam.”

”Well,” Anastasia said, ”I think it's very weird for a three-year-old kid to have a punk haircut. When you're big, you can get one if you want to. Although to be honest with you, I think it would freak Mom and Dad out if you did.”

Sam grinned. He pictured his mom and dad freaking out. They would probably scream and faint. Maybe ambulances would have to come, with their sirens going. He would stand there with his punk haircut and direct the ambulance people and tell them what to do.

”Sam, would you go downstairs, please? I have to do my homework now,” Anastasia said. ”I can't concentrate when you're fooling around in my room.”

”I'll go if you give me five brushes. You don't have to do a hundred.”

So Anastasia picked up her hairbrush again, brushed Sam's curls carefully five times, and patted him on his behind fondly. ”You're still cute, Sam,” she told him.

”Yeah, but I have these dumb curls,” Sam said glumly. He left his sister's room.

Sam could hear his parents talking quietly downstairs. He could hear the television news in the background. If he went down to where they were, they would make him be quiet while they watched the news and talked.

He wandered into the bathroom instead. If he stood on the closed toilet seat, he could open the medicine cabinet, and there was interesting stuff in there.

First he took out his dad's shaving cream and pushed the b.u.t.ton on top so that it foamed out into his hand.

He smeared it on the bottom of his face so that he had a beard. Then he closed the medicine cabinet and leaned over so that he could see his white-bearded face in the mirror.

Sam giggled.

Still wearing his foam beard, he opened the cabinet again. This time he noticed his mother's perfume. He sprayed it across his chest and sniffed.

Next, he thought he would try the hairspray. But as he reached for it, he noticed the small pair of scissors that his father used to trim his beard.

Sam wondered if you could trim a foam beard. He fitted his fingers into the scissors handles and tried.

But it didn't work very well. Part of his beard fell into the sink.

He closed the mirrored door again and looked at himself to see if his beard was still okay, even if a piece of it had fallen off.

But when he looked, he found himself looking more at his hair than at his beard. He found himself looking at his curls. His dumb curls.

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