I thought of this as a compliment. It wasn’t meant to be one, I know, but the word made me think of the circus and being in the center of all the excitement and fun.

That’s how I hope you’ll think of this book.

The story starts in America during summer vacation. We were playing outside at Kenny’s house: Kenny (of course), my sister Emmy, Peg and Pat, and I. Peg and Pat are twins. I like to know what people in books look like, but I hate illustrations in long books — they never show the people the way I imagine them.

I’ll describe us all now, so you can picture us in your mind as you’re reading if you want to.

I’m the main character, so I’ll start with myself. My hair is as straight as hair can be, and it’s cut in a straight line across my forehead and straight along the sides, like the Dutch boy on the paint can. In pictures, my eyes look straight at the camera; they’re blue. I’m short for my age, but I’m strong. I am not the kind of child grown-ups ever call “cute” or “just darling.”

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The twins look even less like sisters than Emmy and I do — at least our eyes are the same color. Pat’s eyes are dark brown and her eyelashes are long and shiny and black, like her hair; she kind of peeks through them when she looks at people. Her face always looks clean, even when we’ve been playing outside all day — not like ours (I once heard my mother say, sighing, to another mother, “My children all have that pinky-white skin that looks dirty so quickly”). Pat’s hair never looks messy — no matter what we do, it stays shining and in place.

Pat’s good at making things and (although usually she’s sensible), she makes me laugh sometimes. When Emmy and I get in a fight Pat sings: “Sisterly love, sisterly love.” If any of the rest of us are fighting, she sings, “Neighborly love, neighborly love.” Pat and Kenny are in the same class at school.

Peg is nothing like Pat. Peg’s a tomboy (Pat’s kind of girlish and Kenny once said “Pat’s the quiet type at school” ). Peg’s skinny and fast and her hair is almost as short as a boy’s; it curls all over the place.

Peg is good at sports and is the best coordinated of all of us. She loves their dog, Duke. Grown-ups say that Pat is going to be beautiful when she grows up; they never say that about Peg.

Kenny is skinny, but strong — not as strong as I am, but strong. He hates to sit still and he laughs and shouts a lot — his front teeth are a little too big; but when he smiles, you notice his eyes, which are blue, more than his teeth and he has one dimple (in his chin). He tries to be funny too much, though.

Kenny, Peg, and Pat are all taller than I am, but I’m the strongest of all of us — and of everyone in my class at school, too; everyone I’ve wrestled, that is.

Anyway we were at Kenny’s, playing outside. We went in to get some Kool-aid; Mrs.Paley wasn’t home, which was why we were playing over there, instead of at our house, which has a better yard.

“She’s hidden the Kool-aid in a new place,” Kenny said, “but don’t worry, I know where it is.”

He got up on the kitchen counter and told us to hand him the giant Saltine tin; he said it would be solid enough to stand on if two people held it.

“I will,” Peg said.

“Hold it the tall way. And hold it TIGHT. Lib, help her,” he said.

So Peg held one side and I held the other and he got up on it and gripped a shelf; with the other hand he felt along the top of the cupboard.

“I’ve got it!” he shouted and waved the packet at us. “Catch! Libby, don’t let go.”

Peg caught it; I held onto the Saltine tin with both hands, and Kenny spread out his arms, screamed
“Geronomo!”— he likes screaming — and jumped.

He landed with a huge thud. Peg handed the Kool-aid to Pat.

Pat is always the one who makes the Kool-aid. Pat is kind of plump, though when we weigh ourselves, she always says she has big bones. It’s true that her hands are big.

“She’s hidden the sugar, too,” Pat said. “At least, it’s not where it was last time.”

So we all looked for it while Pat got out the big glass pitcher and the other things she needed and finally Emmy — she’s really good at finding things — pulled a new five pound bag out from under the sink. She heaved it up onto the table and we all looked at it.

“Maybe she won’t notice,” I said.

“She always notices — but if we cut it with scissors and then are careful not to spill it all over the floor, she won’t really mind,” Kenny said, finally.

“I’ll do everything in the sink,” Pat said. “That way, we can just rinse any mess down the drain.”

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My sister Emmy.

Pat.

Peg.

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Kenny.

“No, don’t!” Pat said, but too late — he dumped it all in at once and a lot of Kool-aid splashed out. “Kenny!” Pat said. She doesn’t like him as much as Peg and I do.

“It’s only a few drops,” he said. “We can always make more.”

Pat shook her head and her hair moved neatly, all in one piece. Her hair is always shining and perfectly neat; even her PART is always straight. Then she carried the Kool-aid to the table, and we arranged the glasses around it in a circle the way they are on TV — the pitcher was already all foggy.

Then, finally, we held out our glasses and carefully, without spilling one drop (except at the very beginning when some ice plopped out), Pat poured Kool-aid into them. It was Wild Cherry, our favorite; I like all the Kool-aid flavors except Lime, but Wild Cherry is the best.

Then we went into the living-room and Kenny started banging on the piano — not playing, just banging with his fists on the black and white notes at the same time. Peg did it, too — he was banging on the really low notes and she was banging on the really high notes.

“I’ve got a great idea!” I said. “Let’s turn on everything in the house that can make noise, and scream our loudest, and see HOW MUCH noise we can make.”

Sometimes people argue with my ideas, but everyone could see right away that this was a really good one. Emmy screamed:
“Yes, yes! Do it, do it!”
Kenny ran to the TV and turned it on full volume, and Peg yelled,
“The radio and Jill’s record player!”
(Jill is Kenny’s teenage sister.)
“The vacuum cleaner!” Pat said. “That’s REALLY loud. Where is it?”

“Wait!” I said, and turned off the TV. “Let’s not spoil it by turning things on one by one — let’s get all the stuff first. Then we’ll turn it on and start screaming and yelling and jumping up and down all at once. That way, we’ll get the full effect.”

“But what else can we get?” Peg said.

“The lawn mower.” Pat thought of that; she has pretty good ideas sometimes.

“Perfect!” I said. “And we can bang pots and pans and their lids together.”

Kenny didn’t want to go get the lawnmower (he said it was “all the way” in the garage), and Pat and I were trying to convince him that we really needed it when we heard our bell ringing. Our parents have different ways of calling us: Peg and Pat’s bang a triangle like the ones they clang out West on ranches when they yell “Chow time!” Kenny’s mother blows a whistle, and our parents ring a bell. They all have the same rule: when we hear it, we have to come right home — no matter what we’re doing. If we don’t, we have to stay in our own yard all the next day.

“Oh, no,” I said. “What TERRIBLE timing.”

Kenny didn’t look sad at all and I could tell just what he was thinking.

“You still have to get the lawnmower,” I said.

“Have to?” he said, with a little smile.

It took awhile to settle this (I’m not going to put in what we say in all our little arguments — that would take too long and be too boring); I’ll just say that finally he DID agree to get it.

“And you’ll wait for us? You won’t start until we get back?” I said.

“We’ll do it when we have all the stuff AND when you come back,” Kenny said.

“But that won’t be the same!” Emmy said.

“No, it won’t,” I said. “And it was my idea — you can’t do it without me.”

The bell rang again; we had to leave. Pat said they WOULD wait and as we left, I heard her arguing and Kenny saying,

“Come on, come on, let’s get on with the game.”

Kenny always says this — he said it the time I slit my knee open playing running bases (the cut was so big that I had to go to the hospital for stitches). First Kenny said, without even looking at the cut, “It’s only a scratch, come on, Lib, get on with the game.” So I did, and then he looked and when he saw all the blood he screamed for his mother.

When we got home, our mother was waiting for the guests: an English boy and his mother who were coming over for tea. We always have to play with our parents guests’ children, even if we don’t know them or like them. We’d never met this boy before — he and his parents were from England. His father had been transferred from the London office of J. Walter Thompson — that’s the company my father works for.

Everything was all set up on the living-room table: a pewter tray with a round pewter tea pot and cream pitcher, a fat silver sugar bowl filled with sugar lumps — you take them out with silver tongs. There were two plates of cookies (three different kinds: chocolate fingers, ginger snaps, and oatmeal), and one plate of little sandwiches cut into triangles. We washed and she inspected us and then she told us how many cookies we could each have (three) and reminded us to pass things to the guests first. One good thing about our mother is that she never corrects our manners in front of other people. I wish everyone’s mother would do this, I hate it when parents say things like “What do you say?” or scold their children in front of you.

“Can I have one now?” Emmy said. She made a cute face but my mother still said no (I knew she would).

“How many sandwiches?” I said.

“You can try one of each kind, but I don’t think you’ll like them,” she said. “The brown ones are watercress and the white ones are shrimp.”

Then the doorbell rang and we all ( Emmy, and our little sister, Bubby, and our little brother, Willy, and I) ran to the front door. I got there first. The mothers introduced themselves and said ladylike things like, “Please call me Isobel,” and my mother said to call her Sally.

Then Mrs.Grant said,

“And this is my son Neil.”

My mother said hello, and he did, and then she put her arm around my shoulders and said,

“This is my oldest daughter, Elizabeth.” I hate the name Elizabeth and she knows it — I just gave her one look and she said, “But we always call her Libby.”

She squeezed my shoulders and sort of pushed me towards them; I knew she wanted me to say hello politely so I did. Emmy did, too, but Bubby just stood behind my mother and so did our little brother. Then we all sat down and the mothers talked.

We looked at Neil and he looked at us. Everything about him was light. His hair was yellow-white — more white than yellow — and his skin was pink and white, and his eyes were light blue and the whites were very white. He had bangs, which most boys don’t. Kenny and most of the boys in my class have crewcuts. He ate slowly and carefully, wiping his mouth after every bite. He sat up very straight — even his clothes were very straight — and he didn’t spill anything, even his tea. He seemed like a real goody-goody.

The mothers talked about London and my mother asked a lot of questions about “day schools for girls” and Mrs. Grant answered and Mrs. Grant asked questions about “the free schools here” and my mother answered; I didn’t really listen until Mrs.Grant said,
“What is peanut butter?”
I’d never met a mother who didn’t know that.

Later they talked about silver — that was interesting when my mother told about Paul Revere (the one in the Revolution) and when that was over I stopped listening and had more tea. For my second cup, she only put a few drops of tea — the rest was milk. I added three lumps of sugar and stirred it. You’d think that would be good — I thought it would taste like a vanilla milkshake — but sugar milk is a terrible combination, especially at the bottom of the cup. I’d already had my three cookies, so I asked if I could be excused and she said Emmy and I could take Neil upstairs. That really meant that we could only go if we brought him with us.

On the way up, I said,

“It’s lucky that you or your mother didn’t pour the tea.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re English and we’re American. If you’d given me a cup of tea, I’d have had to dump it out — in honor of the Boston Tea Party.”

I was about to tell him what the Boston Tea Party was when he said:

“Rubbish.”

I was too surprised to say anything. Then he said:

“My mother has given tea to lots of Americans before and THEY never poured it on the floor.”

“Well, maybe other people don’t do it but it’s what I would do if an English person offered ME tea,” I said.

Pouring the tea on the floor WOULD be like the Boston Tea Party. In case you haven’t heard of it: In Boston, at the beginning of the Revolution, a crowd of grown-ups disguised as Indians sneaked onto an English ship and dumped all the tea into the Boston harbor. I think it’s neat that our country had such a fun start — grown-ups dressing up like Indians and throwing things overboard! And I like the name The Boston Tea Party, too. I didn’t say any of this to Neil, though.

We brought him into our room and he stood in the middle of it, with his back very straight, turning his chin around and looking at everything coolly.

“This is our room,” Emmy said and brought him one of her horses.

“This is my best gun,” I said. I buckled on the holster and drew, fast. “It’s a six-shooter,” I said, and stuck it back in the holster. “It can shoot more than six caps at a time, though.”

“Sometimes we put caps on a rock and smash them with another rock,” Emmy said. “It makes a bigger noise.”

Then I remembered.

“Emmy! Making the noise!”

Emmy and I looked at each other, and then we looked at Neil — we knew we wouldn’t be allowed to go without him.

“Would you like to come with us to do something really fun?” I said.

“What?” he said.

I told him — halfway through, he smiled and when he smiled he didn’t look like such a goody-goody; it was kind of a mischievous smile. And at the end, he said:

“That DOES sound fun.”

“Good. Let’s go!” I said.

I tugged my holster around my hips the way the cowboys do when they swagger out the saloon doors into the street and led the way downstairs.

The two mothers were still just sitting on the couch, talking. That’s all my mother ever does when her friends come over — when I ask her what they talk about, she says
“Different things.”
It’s true that whenever I listen they’re talking about something different.

I asked if we could go to Kenny’s to finish something and she and Mrs. Grant looked at each other. I wondered if they were about to use the secret code or signals or whatever it is that ladies use to tell each other things privately. I know they have one.

I figured that out once when I was at a friend’s house and couldn’t get out of my snowsuit in time to go to the bathroom. I hope you don’t think that’s gross, it was when I was almost a baby, but, I admit, too old to be wetting my pants. Luckily, you couldn’t see the wet pants through the snowsuit. I called my mother and asked her to come get me. The girl and her mother kept asking me to stay until the end of the day and each time, I said: “No, I want to go home.” When my mother got there, she and the girl’s mother stood at the front door, talking. I stood right next to them the whole time and I listened to every word my mother said (I had asked her on the phone not to tell about the wet pants) and she didn’t say anything about it, but at the end, the other mother said,
“So THAT’S what it was!”
So I knew my mother had told her but I’d heard every word she said and I didn’t know how she told her — that’s what I mean by a secret way of talking.

I don't know if my mother and Mrs.Grant used one. They looked at each other. Then my mother said that it was on the same side of the street and that Kenny was “a nice boy.” Mrs.Grant said something I didn’t hear, and then our mother said that we could stay for half an hour:
“I’ll ring the bell when the half hour is up,” she said.

Mrs.Grant said,
“Have fun, darling.”

We ran up to Kenny’s. Peg was riding on Kenny’s back, and Pat was running beside them, tossing her head— they were playing cowboys, as well as they could without us. (When we play that, Pat and Kenny are the horses, since they’re the biggest, and Peg and I are Spin and Jess, the two bachelor cowboys. Emmy is usually a little colt.)

Peg jumped off Kenny’s back and they ran up to us; everyone stared at Neil.

I said that he was English and had just moved into the Osborne’s house.

“And this is The Gang,” I said.

“What is The Gang?” Neil said — not suspiciously, just kind of eagerly, as though he thought it was going to be exciting. “Is it a club?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“What is it for? What do you do?”

We all looked at each other and no one said anything. I thought saying “We play” would be disappointing, though that IS what we usually do. The Gang isn’t really for anything: we’ve just known each other since we were little and we’re always together, except at school. Finally, I said:

“We have adventures.”

Pat laughed.

“And today is the Adventure of the Very Loud Living-Room,” she said.

“Did you wait for us?”

“Yes, we made him, and everything’s all ready,” Pat said. “We found everything we talked about, and then we thought of more.”

We ran in. The lawn mower was in the middle of the room, and Jill’s record player and the radio from the kitchen were on top of a small table. The lamp that usually is there was on the floor, unplugged. The pots and pans and lids were in a tidy little pile on the couch; as Pat said, there were two for everyone, if one person played the piano instead of banging pots. The blender was on the piano stool.

Neil stood very still in the middle of the room, and then he turned around slowly, smiling at everything.

“This is GREAT,” he said.

“Wait until you hear it,” Kenny said.

“Let’s turn all the things on and start screaming at EXACTLY the same time,” I said. “Kenny, you do the TV, and Pat, the record player, and Peg the radio — who knows how to work the lawn mower?”

“I do,” Neil said. “I’ll do that.”

“Good. And Emmy can do the blender and I’ll do the vacuum cleaner — we can all grab pots and lids when everything is on. Take your places!”

Everyone ran to the things they were supposed to turn on.

“I’ll wait until everyone’s hand is on the switch, then I’ll count,” I said. “Ready?”

Everyone nodded.

“One, two, three, GO!”

Everything CRASHED on at top volume: the lawn mower, the TV, the radio, the record player, the blender, the vacuum cleaner, but by the FAR the loudest noise was all of us screaming. We didn’t scream words, we just yelled:
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”
as loudly as we could and that was pretty loud.

Kenny and Peg pounded the piano with their fists, jumping up and down as they banged.

Emmy and Pat and Neil and I hit pots and pans together as hard as we could, screaming and jumping up and down the whole time.

Our mouths were open as wide as they could go, and everyone’s faces turned red, even Pat’s. I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun — sometimes, I had to stop screaming to laugh.

Peg and Kenny looked especially funny, jumping up and down at the piano. Kenny was wiggling his bottom in time to the music and shaking his head like a beatnik drum player.

Then I saw Mrs.Paley in the doorway. She was holding a pocketbook and staring at all of us as if she wasn’t sure who we were. Suddenly she jumped into the room, YANKED Kenny away from the piano, and shouted at him. He stopped screaming, of course; we all did. I turned off the vacuum and Pat got the radio and the record player. Emmy and Peg put their pots back on the couch. Neil just stood there, holding his — he looked really scared.

Our mother never shouts and his mother didn’t seem like that type, either; I didn’t blame Neil for being scared — the first few times I saw Mrs. Paley having one of these fits, I was.

“Kenneth! What the ___ are you doing? Turn that thing off!” she yelled. Kenny ran over to the lawnmower but he didn’t know what to do, I could tell. “NOW!” she yelled and then she jabbed Kenny in the back and he bent over, but the lawnmower stayed on and Mrs.Paley yelled, “Hurry up!”

Then, like a bugle boy dashing into the middle of a battle to help a wounded soldier, Neil darted in (I think that was brave of him) and pulled a long string. The lawnmower sputtered and gurgled off.

Mrs.Paley whirled around. “Who’s he?” she yelled, waving her long arms — Neil jumped away from her and landed on the lamp, which broke noisily. (First there was a kind of high crack, and then smaller crunches.)

“This is the limit! I don’t even know him and he’s smashing my furniture! And what is the lawnmower doing in the living-room? Look at those spots!”

We looked — there was a trail of black splotches, sort of like the ones on the plastic sheet Jill uses to teach herself dance steps, going from the door to the lawnmower.

She went on screaming. I remember: “My rug! Did any of you ever think about that?” and “Your mother doesn’t let everyone play inside at her house! Why don’t you go wreck everything there?” and, “I suppose you were the ringleader, Libby?”

None of us said anything. At the end, she said she was going upstairs and when she came back down, she wanted everything back in its place and all of us out of the house:
“Except you, Kenneth.”
I’d HATE it if my father (who does shout at us sometimes) yelled at me in front of anyone!

But Kenny didn’t seem to mind; as we left (we didn’t talk at all while we put stuff away), he whispered to Neil: “Don’t worry, I can handle her.”

When we were out of the Paleys’ yard, Neil said eagerly:
“What will happen now?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said.

“Probably nothing,” Pat said. “Sometimes she does call our mothers. I think we should go home and tell first, just in case.”

So we did. When we went in, the two mothers were still sitting in the same places, still talking.

“You’re back early,” my mother said. “What happened?” She knew nothing good had, I could tell.

“We were doing something inside at Kenny’s and some oil from the lawnmower spilled on the living-room rug. Also a lamp got broken,” I said.

“Who broke the lamp?” she said.

“It was an accident,” I said.

“I did,” Neil said at the same time.

Neil’s mother, who had been drinking tea and staring out the window, kind of choked into her cup. But all she said was,

“That’s not like you, Neil.”

Then she looked at me, probably thinking what most mothers think: that I’m a “bad influence.”

My mother asked how oil from the lawnmower got on the rug, and I said I didn’t know (well, I didn’t: I wasn’t there when they brought it in). My mother sighed, and said (to Mrs.Grant):

“I hate to do it, but I think I’ll have to call Ruth Paley and assess the damage.”

I think they talked in the secret lady way after that; I didn’t understand what they were saying — it was about Mrs.Paley, I think. When they’d finished, my mother said:

“And you children have been very naughty. I’m going to give you a punishment.”

(This is something she hardly ever does — all the kids from school who have come over say they wish my mother were our teacher, because she’d always be saying: “I’ll give you one more chance.”)

“What?” I said. I hate waiting for punishments.

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Part of it will be apologizing to Mrs. Paley.”

“You mean go up there and say we’re sorry?” I did not want to go up there. But I didn’t try to look cute — I never do — I just said: “Couldn’t we write a letter and all three sign it?”

Our mother looked at me, trying to decide; then Emmy said,

“I’m scared to go there.”

Only she didn’t pronounce the r — in front of other people she says her r’s like w’s but never when it’s just her and me, she knows I can’t stand it. Then she clasped her hands together, like the idiot on the cover of Prayers for Boys and Girls (a terrible book our grandmother gave us) — and looked up at my mother. My mother sort of sighed and looked as though she might say yes after all.

“If we wrote a letter, you could both read it before we sent it,” Neil said.

“So can we?” I said.

The two mothers looked at each other.

“Well, yes, I suppose so,” our mother said.

Writing the letter was kind of fun. Emmy drew a picture of the lamp shattering under a foot (and then she wrote BAD in big letters at the top). Neil had good handwriting and a lot of good ideas. He thought of beginning the letter with, “Dear Madam” and he also thought of putting, “We humbly beg your forgiveness.” He wanted us to sign it “Your humble servants,” but I explained that in America, we don’t believe in servants (it’s one of the things the Revolution was fought for, in a way), so we signed it plain From, and then our full names.

When it was time to go home, Neil said:

“Will you have another adventure tomorrow? Can I be in it?”

So it really WAS an adventure — at least, to him.

Another picture of Kenny.
Do you like having the pictures
of everyone or not? I would really
like to know! If you really like
having them OR really DON'T
like having them, please email me

Libby@ifyoulovetoread.com

and tell me what you think.

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