Part 4 (1/2)

”Okay, Margo. Let's think about your talent again,” I said. And suddenly inspiration hit. ”Hey, you could recite something!” I suggested. ”A nice long poem like The Owl and the p.u.s.s.ycat.'”

”I know The House That Jack Built'!” Margo cried. ”This is the house that Jack built. This is the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built. This is the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that Jack built.”

Margo wasn't sure of the rest of the poem, but she found her book called The House That Jack Built, and decided she could memorize it.

”Terrific!” I told her.

But Margo was frowning. ”It doesn't seem like enough,” she said. ”It's just talking. It's - Hey, I know! I know something I can do well that I've never seen anyone else do. It's real talent! I'll be right back.”

I looked at Claire. ”Do you know what she's going to do?” I asked her.

”Probably the banana trick.”

The banana trick? My stomach began to feel funny. . . .

Margo returned to the room carrying a banana. ”Watch this!” she exclaimed. She sat on the floor, leaned back against her hands, picked up the banana with her feet - and peeled it with her toes.

(And I thought she was uncoordinated!) ”This 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.”

”Shee?” 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 be competing 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.

”You 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 awhile?”

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.

”Let'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.

”Told you,” said a voice from the doorway.

It was Mallory. She looked disgusted, but her sisters didn't seem to notice.

”Watch 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 appet.i.te 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.

Chapter 7.

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 compet.i.tion.

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 the two older girls while their mother took Laura to the doctor for a checkup.) They had dressed up in funny clothes and were dancing around their playroom.

”On the goo-oo-ood s.h.i.+p Lollipop,” Myriah sang, ”it's a something, something, something to the candy shop, where bonbons play, something, something on Peppermint Bay. . . . Stop, Gabble. Wait,” Myriah said. ”Where . . . hmm . . . And if you eat too much - ooh, ooh - you'll awake with a tummy ache. . . . Gabbers, hold on. Let me finish.”

Myriah was trying to remember the words to a song she had learned the year before. She wanted to perform all by herself, but Gabbie kept pulling at her arm. ”Let's sing 'Silent Night/ ” she cried.

”No, Gabbers. It's not Christmas. And I'm trying to remember this song.”

”Si-ilent night,” Gabbie sang anyway. She strutted across the floor in an old pair of clumpy high-heeled shoes.

”You know,” Myriah told Mary Anne, ”if I could just remember the words to this song, I could sing it and tap dance to it. I took lessons last year. I wonder if my tap shoes still fit.”

Myriah dashed out of the playroom.

Gabbie followed her. ”I'm coming, too. I'll look for my baldet shoes. I can be a baldet dancer!” she called over her shoulder to Mary Anne.

In a few minutes, the girls returned. Gabbie returned, quietly in a pair of pink ballet slippers that had once belonged to Myriah. Myriah returned noisily. ”They fit!” she exclaimed.

”My tap shoes still fit! Now watch, Mary Anne. Okay?”

”Okay,” replied Mary Anne. I bet the wheels were turning even then. I bet Mary Anne was mentally auditioning Myriah for the pageant.

Myriah rolled back a throw rug and stood on the wooden floor. She held her arms to one side, smiled, and began stepping across the room. In time to the tapping of her shoes, she sang, ”On the goo-oo-ood s.h.i.+p Lollipop, it's a something, something, something to the candy shop, where bonbons play -” She paused. ”I don't think that's right, Mary Anne. Not just the something-something part, but even the bonbons part. Oh, well.”

”Well, I'm sure we could find the words printed somewhere. But can you sing any other songs?” asked Mary Anne, knowing full well that she could. Both Gabbie and Myriah are famous in the neighborhood for all the long songs they know.

”I know 'Tomorrow,' ”replied Myriah. ”You know, from Annie? But I can't tap dance to it.”

”Let me hear it anyway,” said Mary Anne.

(Gabbie was dancing a slow, graceful ballet in a corner of the room, lost in her own world.) ”Okay, here goes.” Myriah gathered herself together. Then she belted out, ”The sun'll come out tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there'll be sun. ...”