Teddy Mars Book #1 Read online

  DEDICATION

  To my kids, Adelaide and Georgia.

  You are my Exuberators, Choaticators,

  and Hilariators.

  In other words, my Inspirators.

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  September

  October

  November

  December

  January

  February

  March

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author and Artist

  Credits

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  SEPTEMBER

  MY BROTHER, JAKE

  The day my brother climbed into the cat box was the day I knew my life would never be normal again.

  And that’s saying something because my life was not normal to begin with.

  But Jake, he’s like the first time you open The Guinness Book of World Records. All you can do is think about it all day long, even when your teacher hollers, “Teddy, it’s the third day of school. Can you please save daydreaming until day four?”

  “Strange but true, Ms. Raffeli, I’m not daydreaming. I’m thinking about fingernails and you’ll be happy to know it’s related to the math unit we’re working on.” I take her silence as a chance to explain.

  “You know Lee Redmond, the lady with the longest fingernails?” She looks blank so I try to help her out. “From The Guinness Book of World Records?” She still looks blank. Was this lady ever a kid?

  “Ms. Raffeli, you must know The Guinness Book of World Records. Even my parents know The Guinness Book of World Records.”

  “Yes, Teddy, I know The Guinness Book of World Records.”

  Phew! “So all ten of Lee Redmond’s nails add up to 28 feet 4.5 inches, which is long. It’s got to be longer than our class rug, and maybe taller than our walls.”

  Before Ms. Raffeli can respond, the new girl, Viva, pops up and says, “Let’s measure it!” She grabs a measuring tape we’ve been using and starts measuring the rug, and then a bunch of other kids start measuring 28 feet 4.5 inches all over the room.

  It turns out Lee Redmond’s nails are shorter than the distance from the sink to the door, longer than twelve desks in a row, and twice as long as the rug.

  Ms. Raffeli looks straight at me, eyebrows raised as tall as the tallest roller coaster (418 feet), and says, “You’d think after having five of the Mars kids, they’d give me a break. There are two other fourth grade teachers.”

  She’s right of course; she’s earned a break from my family. But for some reason no one else thinks so. Which means, just like my five sisters before me, Ms. Raffeli and I are stuck with each other for the year. At least she knows The Guinness Book of World Records.

  But going back to my original point: the stuff you see in that book does not get out of your head.

  It’s the same with Jake. Once you see your little brother curled up in a cat box, it’s hard to picture him any other way.

  LONNIE

  Lonnie is my best friend and is the smartest person I know. He wants to be a Jedi when he grows up. Clearly, he’s smart enough to know they don’t really exist, but he wants to be something like a Jedi.

  We’ve known each other since the first day of kindergarten, when we pulled out matching Star Wars action figures. Mr. Munz told us no toys at school. But Lonnie was smart even when we were five. He said, “Meet me at the art table. There aren’t any rules about drawing.” He was right, of course.

  For the rest of the year, we drew Wookiees, droids, Jedi Masters with lightsabers, and Star Wars stuff we made up, and Mr. Munz never said a word.

  Lonnie’s mom still has all his old pictures. That’s why I can remember them so well. My mom says that with seven kids she can’t keep every picture we make. There aren’t enough walls in the house.

  RECORD ATTEMPTS 1, 2, AND 3

  Lonnie and I love Star Wars. There’s no replacing that, but this summer when I found The Guinness Book of World Records behind the sofa—well, I got seriously hooked.

  Of course, it’s an old copy. My family doesn’t buy anything new. No one knows how it got there. Grace tried to say it was hers but my mom didn’t go along with her this time, so I got to keep it. And I don’t care how old the book is, it’s awesome!

  Ever since then I’ve been trying to break a world record of my own. So far it has not been successful. Stuffing the most grapes in my mouth seemed good but I only got to ten before my cheeks hurt so much that I spit them out. Clearly, ten grapes won’t cut it.

  I thought I was on a roll with the most jumping jacks but after twenty minutes I got a stomach cramp.

  And even though I seriously thought skateboarding down my banister would be cool, it seemed dumb once I was up there. The banister isn’t that long so I was pretty sure it wouldn’t actually get me into The Guinness Book of World Records and probably all it would do is break something.

  And now, Ms. Raffeli says I can’t bring the book to school anymore.

  “Too distracting,” she says.

  “I admit,” I say, “when I found Garry Turner, the guy with the most clothespins clipped on his face”—159!!!!—“I was distracted.”

  “The book stays home,” she says. “And that’s final.”

  VIVA’S MIND TRICK

  Lonnie and I sit at our regular table in the lunchroom. We’ve been here since first grade when we got to pick our seats. It’s the table in the corner, closest to the trash cans. We like to sit alone, and because of the trash cans no one else likes to sit with us.

  Until this year.

  This year Viva started at our school. She’s the one who created the measuring debacle today, which somehow I got blamed for. On top of that, she’s decided to sit at our table. She just sits here. I don’t know why. There are plenty of seats all over the place, but she sits here. So far she doesn’t talk to us. Just eats. So long as it stays like that I guess it doesn’t matter.

  “Lonnie, you won’t believe this,” I say as I bite into my sandwich. The bread is a little stale. “Jake got lost yesterday.”

  “You lost Jake?” he says. “Again?”

  “Who’s Jake?” Viva is leaning across the table, her sandwich frozen in midair, the only thing in the whole room that is not moving.

  Before I can stop Lonnie, he says, “Teddy’s little brother.”

  “Oh great,” I mutter to Lonnie. “This is exactly what I do not want.” I look at Viva. “It’s nothing.”

  “Come on,” she says. “Losing a brother is something.”

  “It’s really nothing,” I say again.

  “I think it’s something,” she says.

  “There’s no use, Teddy,” Lonnie whispers. “You can’t fight her. She’s like Yoda. She’s got powers.”

  Viva may be new to our school, but Lonnie has her figured out. It’s part of his Jedi training.

  I chew my sandwich. Viva stares at me and I’d swear she’s using the Jedi Mind Trick except her hand isn’t waving around.

  MORE ABOUT THE CAT BOX

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “Quit eyeballing me.” I look at Lonnie, and only Lonnie. “So like I was saying, Jake disappeared—”

  “How old is Jake?” Viva asks.

  I roll my eyes. “Four.” Explaining every detail of this story to a complete stranger is not what I planned or wanted, but somehow I am. Lonnie’s got to be right, it’s the Yoda in her.

  “Were your parents worried?” she asks.

  “No, we knew he was somewhere in the house.”

  Lonnie slurps his milk and says, “They have seven kids. They’re not like normal parents.”

  “Seven?!”

  I’m used to this response but I still turn red.

&n
bsp; “Go on,” Lonnie says.

  “We looked in all his usual hideouts—”

  Viva interrupts, “His usual hideouts?”

  Lonnie explains, “Like the cabinets, under the bed, in his closet, places like that.”

  I ignore Viva’s look of confusion. “He was nowhere. But I went back into the kitchen because I had a feeling he was there—even though we’d already looked. That’s when I noticed Smarty Pants—”

  “Who’s Smarty Pants?” Viva asks.

  “Our cat,” I say. “She was standing just outside her cat box.”

  “What’s a cat box?” Viva asks.

  “A cat’s toilet,” I say.

  “You mean litter box.”

  “No, I mean cat box. That’s what we call it.”

  “Is it the covered kind?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Can I please finish?”

  “Go ahead,” she says and bites her sandwich like I’m the one who’s interrupting her.

  “So there’s Smarty Pants meowing at it. I was the only one in the kitchen, so I looked.”

  “In the litter box?” she asks.

  “In the cat box,” I say. “And there he was. Curled up like a bird in a nest, snoring.”

  “Except birds can’t snore,” Lonnie says.

  Viva’s eyes are big. “How did he fit?”

  “He’s a contortionist,” Lonnie explains. “He’s always liked small places. And he’s small for his age.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Called to my mom.”

  “What did your mom do?”

  “She said, ‘It’s a good thing I cleaned that out this morning, or Jake would be covered in poo.’”

  Lonnie laughs. “Your mom is the best.”

  “Then what?” Viva asks.

  “She pulled him out.” I take a bite of my sandwich.

  “Do you have to eat meals with this brother of yours? It seems kind of gross.”

  “Actually, Jake eats in the cabinet with the pots and pans.”

  “Your parents let your little brother eat in a cabinet?” The recess bell rings and we stand up, except for Viva, who looks at me and says, “Your family is different. Very different.”

  MY DIFFERENT FAMILY

  1. Sharon, the singer (seventeen): Give her a dirty, stinky sock and she’ll make up a song about it and sing it everywhere. For months. Of course, she’d never take a dirty, stinky sock from anyone.

  2 and 3. Caitlin and Casey, the twins (fourteen): They are always together, and no one except us can tell them apart.

  4. Maggie, the runner (thirteen): Doesn’t care which sport she plays, so long as she can run, run, run. But she really likes soccer the most.

  5. Grace, the lemon (twelve): With a name like Grace you’d think she’d be nice. She isn’t. She’s like a lemon except at least with lemons you can always add sugar. There isn’t enough sugar in the world to make Grace sweet. I’m seriously not joking.

  6. Me, the boy (nine and eleven-twelfths): I’ll be ten in three weeks. My birthday is October 2.

  7. Jake, the other boy: He’s been around for four miserable years. My parents call him the surprise. I call him a pain. The kind I would have if I got in The Guinness Book of World Records for lifting 113 pounds 15 ounces with my ear. That has got to be a pain. Not as much as my brother, but still a pain.

  MY BIRTHDAY LIST

  1. A new tent. You remember what Jake did to the old one. (Right?)

  MY FAMILY IS LIKE A TONGUE

  Living in a big family is not easy. Being Stephen Taylor must not be easy either. He’s the man with the longest tongue (3.86 inches). The Guinness Book of World Records only measures the part that sticks out past your lips, so it might not sound long, but I measured my tongue and it only sticks out 1.3 inches. So you see, 3.86 inches is LONG.

  Strange but true, there are similarities between a large family and a large tongue.

  1. You know a large tongue must get in the way. I can honestly say that five sisters and a little brother get in my way.

  2. The gross factor: a tongue is gross, a huge tongue is grosser, a huge family is the grossest. There is no privacy. I’ve seen things I would not repeat for all the soda in the world. Sure, if we were rich and lived in a mansion it would be different. But try to find a little space of your own. A place no one else is, has been, or will be. It won’t happen unless you’re Jake and a cat box doesn’t make you want to puke. Really I might as well search for the Planck Length, which according to The Guinness Book of World Records is the smallest unit of length in the universe. If the length were measured in centimeters, it would have a decimal point, then thirty-four zeroes, and then finally the number one, like this: 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001. What I’m trying to say is: I’m never going to find the Planck Length and I’m never going to find a place of my own.

  3. I don’t actually have a third point but Ms. Raffeli says we’re supposed to think of three points to make in our essays, and she’s a serious lady. So I’ll have to think of a third one.

  GRUMPY PIGEON MAN

  A lot of days when I get home from school, I sneak into my backyard. If you knew Mr. Marney, our next-door neighbor, you’d sneak too.

  I call him Grumpy Pigeon Man (never to his face) because he’s grumpy and he keeps pigeons. Not that I know anything about those pigeons, because the guy doesn’t talk; he grunts, groans, and grumbles, pretty much about the noise my family makes and the trees in our backyard that drop leaves everywhere. The guy hates leaves.

  A chain-link fence separates our yards, which means there’s not much privacy, which means he can gripe as much as he wants, but it also means I can see his pigeons.

  Anyway, the pigeons have a special house of their own in his backyard and every day Grumpy Pigeon Man lets them fly around free. I mean free up in the sky. They never scatter or fly away. They fly in a big circle. And then they always come home. Just like a boomerang.

  The pigeons are why I sneak outside. Watching them fly around is cool. Getting caught by Grumpy Pigeon Man is not, which is why I’m running back into my house right now.

  Anyway, I’d rather deal with anything more than Grumpy Pigeon Man. Actually it’s a tie between him and Jake.

  I still can’t decide who is worse.

  MY BIRTHDAY LIST #2

  1. A new tent because Jake destroyed the old one last summer. (You do remember that, don’t you?)

  2. A book about pigeons.

  TWO CAT BOXES

  Mom bought another. Really. Another cat box just for Jake.

  “We decided Jake should have his own,” she explains over dinner. “He likes it so much, but it was Smarty Pants’s. It didn’t seem right for him to take over her cat box. And I just can’t clean it that often.” She leans down and gives more potatoes to Jake, who’s eating dinner under the table in his new cat box.

  “And it’s portable,” Dad adds. “We can move him around.” He actually sounds happy about this.

  “Is he going to eat in there every night?” Sharon asks. She practically sings this because she practically sings everything. “If he gets to do that I want to eat in my room.”

  “If Sharon gets to eat in her room, then we want to eat in our room,” Caitlin and Casey say together. No matter how often they do it, it’s still weird when they talk at the same time.

  “I don’t care where I eat,” Maggie says, scooping up her last bite. “I’m going for a run.”

  Grace stomps on my foot for no reason at all. “Ouch!” I say.

  “Sorry,” she says. But she’s not.

  Mom silences us. “You will all stay where you are until we finish dinner. And no,” she says to Sharon, “you will not eat in your room. After the six of you, I’ve seen everything, and one of these days Jake will eat with the rest of us.”

  “I am eating with you,” Jake says from his cat box.

  Mom bends down. “I mean at the table, hon.” Then she pops back up and says, “I don’t want to hear another word about
it.”

  PECULIAR RUNS IN THE FAMILY

  A few days after moving into the cat box, Jake decides to eat only yellow foods.

  “Jake,” Mom says, “cereal is yellow.”

  “It’s not yellow.”

  “The cereal is yellow.”

  “Mom, the cereal is not yellow. It’s gray. And the milk is white.”

  “I can make it yellow.”

  “Mom,” Grace says. “That’s gross. I don’t think Jake should eat yellow snow or yellow milk.”

  “Grace, it’s food coloring.”

  “I cannot believe this,” I say. “You’re going to dye his food a different color so he’ll eat it? What happened to ‘eat what’s on your plate’?”

  “Teddy, that has never happened in this household. As I recall you went through a phase of eating only orange foods. Carrots, carrot cake, pumpkin, pumpkin pie, oranges.”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  Grace snorts but Mom stops her. “Don’t start. When you were three you would only wear black. Even your undies had to be dyed black. They don’t make black underwear for three-year-olds.”

  Clearly, peculiar just runs in my family.

  RECORD ATTEMPT 4

  Georges Christen holds the record for running with a table in his teeth 38 feet 8 inches. It might not sound like much, but let me repeat: he did it with his teeth, and on top of that there was a lady sitting on the table.

  I can barely pick up a chair with my teeth and Grace points out that dragging it totally doesn’t count.

  The good thing is that a tooth that has been wobbly for weeks finally popped out.

  SHARING A ROOM

  Everyone in my family except Sharon shares a room, which is funny since Sharon’s name has almost all the same letters as the word share. But she’s really bad at it.

  Mom and Dad share a room.

  The twins share a room.

  Maggie and Grace share a room.

  Jake and I share a room. Actually, Jake is really bad at sharing, too. His idea of sharing is taking, and then destroying, like he did to my old tent. He cut it into pieces, taped them all over his body, and pretended to be a superhero called Seaweed.