Airi Sano, Prankmaster General by Zoe Tokushige

Author:Zoe Tokushige [Tokushige, Zoe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2022-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Dad scoops her up and pats her butt. Everyone coos over Kaori. As they should. She’s the cutest baby in the world. I look down so they don’t know I was eavesdropping. I don’t know if I want to hear any more. My plate is pretty much empty, so I say to Noah, “Wanna go outside again?”

“Take your plate to the sink,” Dad reminds me.

I salute and march to the sink holding my plate in front of me. “Hup, hup,” I say, putting it down. “Hup, hup,” I say, marching to the door.

“Get out of here, silly girl,” Grandma says, flapping her hand at me. I salute her too.

Noah and I chase the chickens around until his dad comes out to take him to karate class. I go back inside and poke around Noah’s room. His room is pretty tidy. Tidier than mine. So I move things around a bit. I tie his shoelaces together and put a textbook under his pillow. I heard once that if you sleep with a textbook under your pillow, you can absorb the information. It’s never worked for me, though. I can’t wait for him to find all the things I’ve done. He’ll definitely call the house to complain at me. But then he’ll laugh. I think he’ll like the textbook-under-the-pillow idea. Maybe he’ll be able to absorb it.

I get down on my hands and knees to crawl to the living room. I wanna sneak up behind my dad and scare him. Or try to. He’s hard to startle. I press myself up against the corner of the hallway. It’s a stealth mission.

But then I hear Dad’s voice. He’s talking quietly, the way he and Mom do when they don’t want us to overhear.

“—she isn’t adjusting as well as we’d hoped,” Dad is saying. I stop and hold my breath so I’m as quiet as I can be. “We thought maybe being here with family might be good for her. But it seems like she’s still struggling.”

“You’ve only been here a little while,” Grandma says. “Give it time.”

I back up a bit. Are they talking about me? I haven’t told Dad anything bad. As far as he knows, I love it here. And I do. I like being in Hawai‘i. It’s true that I’ve gotten used to moving a lot. I don’t have to bother learning about anyone. It doesn’t matter if I get in trouble at school. But I’d rather be in Hawai‘i than anywhere else. We’re near Grandma and Grandpa. The food here is way better than anywhere else we’ve lived. We can go to the beach every weekend if we want. It doesn’t snow (although I will miss snowball fights with E.J. and Dad). And I even have my own room now. It’s really a big improvement.

Even school has been okay, which I never thought I’d say. Sure, Mrs. Ashton is weird. Honestly, I’m still waiting for her to blow up at me. I just want to get it over with already.

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