Amber Brown Goes Fourth (10 page)

So, I’m not ready to meet Max, and I may never be ready.

I stomp some more and then I start throwing things into garbage bags . . . . . . my
dirty clothes, my clean clothes, the book report I’ve been working on for the last week.

And then I put the garbage bags in my closet.

Next, I put in all of the important things from the top shelf of my bookcase . . . the Dad Book that I keep so that I can look at pictures of my dad and talk to him sometimes . . . . the ball that Justin and I made from our used chewing gum . . . . the scrap-book that my aunt Pam and I made up of our trip to London. (It even has a chicken-pox scab in it to remind me of how I got sick there.)

I open the top drawer of my dresser and shove everything on top into it.

I get into bed, and from under the covers, I start to make my bed, pulling up the sheets and then the blanket and then the bedspread . . . . then I get out and kind of smooth everything down . . . . the Amber Brown Way to Make a Bed.

Then I throw my stuffed animals on my bed.

I guess there’s not only a madwoman in the house but a mad kid.

There’s no madman in the house, though, because he, my father, and my
mother got so mad that they got divorced, and now he’s in France because of his dumb job.

I, Amber Brown, wish things would go back to the way they were before . . . . before my dad left . . . . . before Justin, my first best friend, moved away . . . . . before my mother changed her last name back to the name she had before she got married so that we don’t even have the same last name anymore . . . . before Max, the dumbhead boyfriend, met my mother . . . . before it was so important to get me to keep my room neat.

I wish.

Amber can’t wait to be Best Child when her mom and Max get married, but planning a wedding comes with lots of headaches. Amber can’t find the right dress, her dad keeps making mean cracks about Max, and everyone is going crazy over how much things cost. Her mother even suggests they go to city hall and skip the party altogether!

Justin and his family are supposed to come for the wedding, and Amber has been looking forward to that for months. Adults sure can be a lot of work, but if Amber can make this wedding work, it will all be worth it.

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