Ava XOX
Authors: Carol Weston
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Also by Carol Weston
Ava and Pip
Ava and Taco Cat
Copyright © 2016 by Carol Weston
Cover and internal design © 2016 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration © Victoria Jamieson
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systemsâexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviewsâwithout permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.
For Steve Geck
BEFORE DINNER
DEAR NEW DIARY,
I'm pretty upset about what happened today.
My new friend Zara asked if I'd heard about Chuck.
“No, what about him?” I said.
“He and Kelli are going out,” she said.
“How do you know?” I asked because this did
not
seem possible, and, well, Zara has kind of a big mouth.
She said Chuck was on the bus minding his own business when Kelli hopped on and sat right next to him without asking. She was wearing one of her sparkly headbandsâshe has about a millionâand sneaking bites of banana bread even though you're not supposed to eat on the bus. She offered him a piece. And he took it.
Later, in homeroom, Kelli passed Chuck a note that said, “Do you want to go out?” Zara said it had two circles, one marked YES and one marked NO. At first Chuck didn't answer, but Kelli made a sad puppy face, so he put an X in the YES circle and passed it back.
And now they are “going out”!!
I have to say, this really bugs me.
Number one: we're only in fifth grade.
Number two: Chuck and I have been friends since the apple-picking field trip in kindergarten, and Kelli just moved here last year, and I've never once noticed him notice her.
It just doesn't seem right that they've said about five sentences to each otherâtotalâand all of a sudden they're “going out”! How long has she even liked him? Did she start
today
?
And how can they be going out when none of us is allowed to go anywhere anyway?
Lunch was spaghetti and meatballs, which I usually love, but my insides felt like cold, stuck-together spaghetti. It didn't help that Zara and my best friend Maybelle were talking about Valentine's Day, which is Saturday.
Our grade has three Emilys, but only one Ava, one Maybelle, and one Zara, and lately the six of us have been sitting together at lunch. Well, it's usually all-girl or all-boy, but today, Kelli plunked her tray down at Chuck's table! I was in shock! The Emilys just giggled, and Emily Jenkins said, “Kelli and Chuck make a good couple.” And everyone agreed!
I swear, that made me want to throw up my meatballs. (Sorry if that's gross.)
The problem is that I'm not supposed to care as much as I guess I do. Last month, Zara asked if I liked Chuck, and I said no.
Why
do
I care anyway? Chuck is sweet and funny, but I think of him as a brother.
At least I
think
I think of him as a brother.
A sweet, funny brother.
Nothing more.
We're just friends.
H-U-H. That's a weird expression, isn't it? “
Just
friends.” As though years of being friends is less important than
hours
of “going out.”
AVA, ANNOYED
BEDTIME
DEAR DIARY,
One thing about Kelli: she's bubbly. Very bubbly. If you poured too much bubble bath in your bathtub and forgot to turn off the water, that's how much she bubbles. She's always laughing hysterically as if the whole world is a joke and she's the only one who gets it.
She also does splits and handstands and cartwheels at random times, which is impressive but show-offy. And she talks a lot about her lake house and vacations, which isn't polite considering the rest of us have one house, not two, and we have “staycations,” not fancy trips. Another thing that bothers me is when Kelli's headband and fingernail polish match. (Today, they were emerald.)
She should take it down a notch.
Or move to a different school!
Anyway, when I got home today, Dad was taking out ingredients to make a yucky, squishy squash recipe for Meatless Monday (his new-ish tradition), so I told him a vegetable riddle:
Question: What room has no windows or doors?
Answer: A mushroom!
I asked if we could go to Bates Books so I could get a new diaryâyou!âand he said sure. (Dad likes that we're both writers.) I was glad because I
really
needed a place to dump all my feelingsâas you can see because I've
already
filled five pages!
So far in my life, I have finished two diaries and given up on six. The unfinished ones are in a dead diary graveyard underneath my underwear.
I got my coat, and we drove over, and Dad and I walked inside the bookstore, and there were hearts everywhere! Red ones and pink ones. Big ones and little ones. Flat ones and 3-D ones and ones hanging from the ceiling. There were also Valentine's Day books, cards, pins, pens, mugs, magnets, stickers, and even giant heart doilies and heart-shaped boxes of chocolate. The owners of the bookstore are my friend Bea's parents, and she says they try to sell tons of holiday knickknacks so they can afford to keep selling regular books.
Confession: the happy hearts made me sort of sad.
I just can't believe Kelli asked Chuck out! And that this aggravates me so much.
Dad offered to buy me a box of Valentine cards, but I said no thanks. I told him that in second and third grade, our whole class used to exchange valentines, but now I'm too old.
“Too old?” Dad thought that was funnier than my mushroom riddle. “How about chocolate kisses? Are you too old for chocolate kisses?” He picked up a bag of chocolate kisses wrapped in silver and set it on the counter. Fortunately, moods are contagious, and Dad's good mood was helping me shake off my bad mood.
“I am the exact right age for chocolate kisses,” I said, and on the way home, I unwrapped one for each of us.
AVA, AGGRAVATED
EARLY MORNING
DEAR DIARY,
I just had the worst nightmare! I dreamed I was naked in school!! NAKED IN SCHOOL!!! I was in gym class and looked down and I wasn't wearing any clothes at all.
Not even any underwear!
Not even aâ¦fig leaf! (That's what Adam and E-V-E wore.)
In my dream, I went racing full speed to the locker room and hid behind a shower curtain and held on tight. When I woke up, I was holding on to my
sheets
for dear life. And that's when I realized it was just a dream.
Phew!!
I think I had that dream because our gym teacher, Mrs. Kocivar, said that next year in sixth grade, girls can shower in school if they want to.
I will
never
want to!
AVA, WHO PREFERS PRIVACY
PS Mrs. Kocivar also showed us some modern dance steps and said we should watch Kelli because she was doing it “perfectly.” I made a little face and looked around to see if anyone else wanted to make a face back, but no one did. Am I the only person who doesn't think Kelli is perfectly perfect??
AFTER SCHOOL
DEAR DIARY,
Guess who I just ran into? Chuck!
Dad had to run some errands, so I went along. At the bank, I heard a crazy clinking clanking sound. I turned and there was Chuck pouring a bagful of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters into a giant sorting machine. When I went to say hi, it felt like my heart was beating as loudly as the machine. Which surprised me.
Since when do I feel nervous around Chuck?
Chuck said his mom said he could keep all the coins he found in their house and added, “But I bet she had
no
idea how many I would find!” He said he looked in pockets and drawers and under cushions and everywhere.
We waited together while the numbers kept going up, up, up. When they finally stopped, you know what the total was? $18.17!
“You're rich!” I teased. “What are you going to do with all that money?”
“I don't know.”
“You could buy me bubblemint gum!”
He laughed and asked what my dad had cooked for “Barfy Monday.” I told him squishy squash and made it sound extra gross, and then I was tempted to ask about his new girlfriend, but his mom came over and said they had to go. His mom always makes me nervous, probably because she is very tall and serious and has excellent posture.
Chuck is tall too, but he never used to make me nervous. He just made me laugh. While we were waiting for the noisy machine to count his money, for instance, he told me a joke that had a word from last Friday's spelling test: “Two
cannibals
were eating a clown, and one said to the other, âDoes this taste funny to you?'” (Hehe.)
I was glad he told it because it made things seem normal-ish between us even though I feel like they aren't.
Back home, our kitchen smelled scrumptious. Pip was baking gingerbread men (and gingerbread women and teens and kids and babies) with a seventh-grade girl named Tanya. Pip hardly ever has friends over, and I'd never met Tanya. Dad went upstairs, and I reached for a chocolate kiss, but the bowl was empty. I was about to say, “Pip, you ate
all
the chocolate kisses?!” when I realized Tanya must have helped.
If I had to describe Tanya, I guess I'd say that she is
pretty
but also
pretty
heavy. I've never really thought of this before, but Pip might be the smallest kid in seventh grade, and Tanya might be theâ¦opposite?? It feels weird to write this down, and I don't mean that she's just a little chubby and who even cares? I mean that when she has checkups, I bet her doctor talks to her about weight and stuff.
Anyway, Tanya said that when she met our cat, she felt like she “already knew him” because of my story in the
Misty Oaks Monitor
, “The Cat Who Wouldn't Purr,” which she'd “really liked.”
“When did you adopt Taco Cat?”
“He was my birthday present on January 1 when I turned eleven.”
She showed me two pencil sketches she'd made of him. They were both cute, and she'd even drawn in the white zigzag on his forehead and the white tip of his tail.
“You can have one,” she said.
“Really?” I asked.
“Really.”
I picked one and just now taped it on the rim of my mirror.
Hey, M-I-R-R-O-R-R-I-M is a palindrome! Which is funny because palindromes are sort of like words in mirrors since they're the same backward and forward.
I've never thought of M-I-R-R-O-R-R-I-M before, and trust me, I, A-V-A, sister of P-I-P, daughter of A-N-N-A and B-O-B, and owner of T-A-C-O-C-A-T, have thought of piles of palindromes.
Well, I helped Pip and Tanya take their gingerbread families out of the oven, and we let them cool. Then, minutes later, we started nibbling them, feet first, as though
we
were cannibals. Suddenly Pip said, “Whoa! We'd better save a few!” I think she realized it would have been bad if M-O-M or D-A-D walked into a yummy-smelling kitchen and found only ginger crumbs instead of ginger people.
After Tanya left, Pip told me that they were supposed to have started their art project for Spanish but instead started baking and cutting out pastel hearts for a Valentine collage for Pip's boyfriend.
Sometimes I can hardly believe that Pip, who used to be so shy, has a real live valentine. And that he's
B
en
B
ates,
B
ea's
B
ig
B
rother (
a
l
literation
al
ert).
I can't imagine having a valentine.
(Or can I??)
AVA, AMBIVALENT (THAT'S WHEN YOU'RE NOT SURE)