Dory and the Real True Friend Read online

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  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

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  Copyright © 2015 by Abby Hanlon

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hanlon, Abby, author, illustrator.

  Dory and the real true friend / by Abby Hanlon. pages cm

  Summary: Dory, a highly imaginative youngest child, makes a new friend at school but her brother and sister are sure Rosabelle is imaginary, just like all of Dory’s other friends.

  ISBN 978-0-698-13595-6

  [1. Imagination—Fiction. 2. Imaginary playmates—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction. 5. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 6. Family life—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.H196359Dm 2015

  [E]—dc23 2014034036

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  1: Such a Weirdo

  2: Best Friends Forever

  3: Chicken Soup

  4: Get Out of the Sticky Frogs!

  5: Ring, Ring, Ring!

  6: In the Woods

  7: Launched into Battle

  About the Author

  CHAPTER 1

  Such a Weirdo

  My name is Dory, but everyone calls me Rascal. This is my family.

  I have a mom, dad, big brother, and big sister who are just regular people. I also have a monster and fairy godmother who are not regular because only I can see them.

  Mary is my monster. She sleeps under my bed and plays with me all day. Mr. Nuggy is my fairy godmother. He lives in the woods but comes over if I have an emergency. And I’m about to have an emergency pretty soon because . . .

  . . . tomorrow is the first day of school!

  I tell Mary the big news while we are playing our favorite game, exercise club.

  “Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That place! With the water fountains!” says Mary. “There are so many kids and not a lot of grown-ups! Yippee! I love that place!” she says. “Let’s get packing!”

  Mary decides to make a list of what I should bring.

  “I’m sorry, but I cannot read this,” I say.

  So she reads it to me. “Please bring to school tomorrow: Your dad’s dirty laundry, extra salami, and lemon juice.”

  “What a weird list!” I say. “Are you sure you remember what school is?”

  “Uh-huh. Super sure,” she says.

  “All right,” I say. “I’m trusting you.”

  First, we collect as much of my dad’s dirty laundry as we can.

  Then I stuff the laundry in my backpack. It makes me look like a big kid with a backpack full of homework. So that’s what it’s for!

  Second, we sneak down to the kitchen. Luckily, no one is there. I grab a handful of salami and put it in my lunch box. It’s true, my mom never packs me enough salami!

  Third, we look for the lemon juice.

  “Okay. Let’s figure out what this is for,” I tell Mary. “I’m gonna take a tiny squeeze, and you tell me what happens.”

  WOW! OOOO-YA!

  “So?” I ask.

  “Your muscles are HUGE!” says Mary.

  “What else?” I say.

  “And your bones are lit up like lightbulbs!”

  “What else?”

  “And you have magic eyebrows!” says Mary.

  I don’t know what that means, but I like it.

  “Let’s pack it!” I say.

  Just then my brother and sister come in the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” asks my sister, Violet.

  “Nothing,” I say, while Mary quickly sneaks the bottle of lemon juice into my lunch box.

  “You know, Rascal, you’re going to have to get dressed for school! You can’t wear that dirty old nightgown every day anymore,” says Violet.

  “And you can’t talk to yourself at school,” says my brother, Luke.

  “And do not move the furniture around in your classroom to build a fort like you did last year,” says Violet.

  “Just try not to imagine things!” says Luke. “That’s ALL you have to remember, Rascal.”

  “Right,” says Violet, pointing her finger. “No matter what, do NOT use your imagination!”

  “. . . like telling people that monsters live in our house!” says Luke.

  “. . . or talking about Mrs. Gobble Gracker!” says Violet.

  “Mrs. Who? I’m done with her!” I say, which is a huge lie because Mrs. Gobble Gracker is still my favorite game.

  Mrs. Gobble Gracker is a robber, and she is five hundred and seven years old, and she has very sharp teeth, and she wanted to steal me away from my family and lock me in her cave forever, but I was too tricky.

  “And,” says Violet, “the most important thing for you to remember is, DON’T BE YOURSELF. Can you do that?”

  “Rascal? What are you staring at?” says Luke. “Pay attention!”

  “Do you know why we are telling you all this?” says Violet, shaking my shoulders. “Wake up! Pay attention!

  “BECAUSE!! IF YOU ACT LIKE SUCH A WEIRDO, NOBODY WILL WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH YOU.”

  Violet’s words are like giant rocks that fall from the sky and hit me on my head one by one and make the monsters disappear.

  “What?” I say.

  Violet says slowly, “Because. You. Won’t. Have. Any. Friends.”

  “I don’t care,” I say. But I imagine myself all alone at recess.

  “If you want friends,” says Violet, “you should listen to me. You should plan your outfit for the first day of school.”

  “I’m busy already,” I say, walking backward out of the kitchen. Then I turn around and run upstairs to my room and shut the door.

  As fast as I can, I take all of my clothes out of my drawers, every single one of them, and put them in a big huge pile so that I can plan my outfit for tomorrow.

  I search for all my best clothes to wear on the first day of school.

  “Definitely wear the hat!” says Mary.

  “That’s what I thought,” I say.

  “But what am I going to wear to school?” asks Mary.

  Last year, I brought Mary to school with me every day. But now I think she’d better stay home. Especially when I remember last year . . .

  Mary always said she had to go to the bathroom, when she really didn’t have to go. She just wanted to play with the soap in the bathroom. So one day the teacher said NO she couldn’t go. But guess what? She really did have to go! So do you know what happened? . . . All over the floor.

  Also, it turned out that Mary was hiding salami in her desk.

  Oh yeah, and one day
she took her shoes off and then she couldn’t find them. . . . Nobody ever found them. I felt so bad for her that I let her borrow my shoes.

  She also whispered bathroom words in everybody’s ears.

  And she could never remember to raise her hand. She interrupted all the time. And her answer for everything was “chicken!”

  “Sorry, Mary, you have to stay home,” I tell her. “Last year was too crazy!”

  Mary sulks. “But without me, you won’t have a friend.”

  “I’m going to make a new friend,” I say. “A real friend.”

  “NOOOOOOOO!!!” says Mary, bursting into tears, “Pleeeeease, no!!!”

  That night my brain keeps waking me up with so many questions.

  I wake up my dad and tell him I have a stomachache.

  He says, “You don’t really have a stomachache.” And I say, “But how do you know?” And he says, “Because the other night you told me you had a stomachache in your ear.”

  “So?” I say.

  “Good night!” he says.

  But I still can’t sleep, so I call Mr. Nuggy.

  Whoa, that was fast.

  “I’m scared about school,” I say. “I don’t want to go. You’ve got to help me. What can you do? Can you use your magic wand to make it go away?”

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “I have a plan. I’m going to do some magic and turn your whole school into a pancake, so you won’t have to go, ever.”

  “A pancake?” I ask.

  “Yes, but it’s a very complicated recipe, and I’m going to need some chickens, and it might take a few days.”

  “All right, that’s okay,” I say.

  A pancake sounds just fine, I think. A great big giant buttery pancake instead of school would be perfect is my last thought before I close my eyes and finally fall asleep.

  CHAPTER 2

  Best Friends Forever

  When I come down for breakfast, Violet bursts out laughing. “Mom! Rascal is wearing the exact same outfit she wore every day last year! And now it’s way too small for her!”

  My mom says, “Oh, she can wear what she wants. It’s not a big deal.”

  “The Santa hat isn’t too small,” I say.

  “But it’s a Santa hat!” yells Violet.

  While I’m eating breakfast, my mom sits down with me and says she has some important reminders about school.

  1. “Don’t move the chairs and desks around the room.”

  “I ALREADY KNOW ABOUT THAT!” I yell.

  “Okay, okay, calm down!” she says.

  2. “Keep your shoes on.”

  “Why would I take my shoes off?”

  “I don’t know, Dory. I still don’t understand how you lost so many shoes last year.”

  3. “Absolutely no bathroom words! Do you understand me, Dory? I mean it. Save them for home, when you are in the bathroom, all by yourself, with the door shut.”

  “BOR–ING!” I say.

  “I think you are going to have a super day,” says my mom. “I’ll miss you.”

  As we leave for school, Luke says, “We are not walking with you if you wear that hat.”

  “Oh, fine,” I grumble.

  When we get to school, Violet walks me to my classroom door. I grab on tightly to her. I wish I were home in my nightgown.

  “Don’t leave me here,” I say. But she is already walking away.

  The teacher meets me at the door and says, “Let’s hang up that huge backpack,” and she walks me to the closet, smiling. I immediately fall in love with the closet.

  It’s sooooooo long! It has six doors! There are no cubbies like last year, so you can crawl around. I hang up my backpack on a hook. I want to sneak right into that dark cozy space behind all the backpacks, but the teacher is standing there waiting for me.

  “Now let’s find your table,” she says.

  There is somebody at my table who is stuck in a shirt.

  I look around for the teacher to help, but she is already helping someone else.

  Oh dear. I’m going to have to do this. I pull really hard on his shirt, and pull and pull and pull, and off it comes! It’s George! George was in my class last year. “Thanks,” he says, and then he falls off his chair.

  When he gets up, he asks me, “Where’s Mary? Did you bring her?”

  “No,” I say, embarrassed that he remembers.

  “Aw shucks!” he says. “She was so funny. I liked when she moved all the furniture around.”

  I pretend that I have no idea what he is talking about.

  The teacher gives us markers and tells us to draw self-portraits. I draw myself as a dog named Chickenbone. I give myself an eye patch, just ’cause. George draws himself with a bunch of creepy scars on his face.

  I peek at the drawing of the girl sitting next to me. What???? OH MY!

  She drew earrings! And earlobes! And curly eyelashes! And nostrils!! And a crown—covered in jewels!

  When I look at her, she smiles at me, oh my . . . Holy Cow! I don’t believe it . . . SHE IS MISSING HER TWO FRONT TEETH!!!

  I decide at that very moment that she is my best friend.

  She is wearing an old-fashioned dress that looks especially poufy. She has sparkly shoes with little tiny heels. She wore heels! To school! She smells like bubble bath, and she even has circle earrings that I think she drew on with a green marker. And I don’t know why, but she is wearing her headband on her forehead instead of her head.

  I decide to whisper something funny to her. “Do you know what happens if you don’t put the tops back on Magic Markers?” I say.

  She shakes her head no.

  “They EXPLODE! POW! BOOM! WHAM!” I say.

  I thought she was going to laugh, but instead she looks worried and quickly puts all the tops back on the markers.

  But George gets excited by this and he explodes—“POW! BOOM! WHAM!”—and falls out of his chair again.

  “That was fun,” says George, lying on the floor, looking dizzy. That’s what he always says when he gets hurt. Even if he is crying, he still says it. Then he leans forward and points to the girl. “Your forehead is falling down!” he says to her.

  “What?” she says, grabbing on to her forehead.

  “He means your headband,” I say.

  “It’s not a headband,” she says, and keeps drawing.

  And then I hear her mumble in a very quiet whisper, “It’s a crown.”

  George and I look at each other, confused.

  At story time on the rug, I rush to get a seat next to her.

  The teacher says to her, “Rosabelle, move over a little please.”

  ROSABELLE? Did she say Rosabelle?? That is the most beautiful name I have ever heard in my entire life. Rosabelle, Rosabelle, Rosabelle I say in my head over and over again.

  At lunchtime, I sit next to Rosabelle and George sits next to me. We watch in amazement as Rosabelle opens her lunch box, and takes out first a flowered place mat and matching cloth napkin (which she places on her lap), then a matching china cup and saucer. Then she takes out her water bottle and pours water into the cup and takes a little sip with her pinkie sticking up in the air like this:

  Then she takes out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and cuts it up with a knife and takes bites with a fork, while wiping her face with the napkin after each bite. I am so busy watching Rosabelle eat that I barely have time to eat my salami.

  When it’s finally recess, I get my first chance to be alone with Rosabelle.

  “How did you get so poufy?” I ask Rosabelle, pointing to her dress.

  She looks down and says, “It’s a secret, but I’ll show you.”

  Underneath her dress, she has six different skirts on. She shows me each one. And for each one, I s
ay, “Wow!”

  “Guess what?” I say. “I have a secret, too.”

  “You do? What is it?” she asks.

  I’m trying to think of a secret. . . . I’m sure I have one. . . . I usually do.

  I unzip my lunch box and take out the lemon juice. “It’s a magical liquid. Do you know what happens if you squeeze it into your mouth? You get very strong and you can fight bullies!”

  Rosabelle looks really surprised.

  “Are there bullies???” she asks. “Are they dangerous?”

  “I don’t know yet . . . but watch me try it. . . .” I squeeze some in my mouth, but I get WAY too much, a huge enormous gulp. It’s SOOO sour, I can’t help but make a really crazy face, and I start choking and gagging.

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  I nod my head yes, but I’m still gagging.

  Just then some girls run toward us, giggling and screaming, saying, “Rosabelle! Hopscotch! Hopscotch!” And they pull her away.

  In the afternoon, we have choice time. When everyone is busy, I sneak into the closet for a super-quick bite of salami.

  It’s so good that I stuff some salami in my pockets, so I can share with Rosabelle.

  “Here . . . look, do you want some floppy cookies?” I whisper to her, which is my nickname for salami because I love it so much.