Beware Dawn! by Ann M. Martin

Author:Ann M. Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

A few nights later, Mary Anne and Mal were sitting together at the Pikes’. Neither of them knew anything about what had happened to Jessi and me. I guess we’d each decided to keep quiet about Mr. X because of the contest, and because his pranks weren’t really malicious or anything. But I found out afterwards that Mary Anne and Mal also had a visit from good old Mr. X. And it wasn’t a friendly visit, either. Here’s what happened.

Mr. and Mrs. Pike had been gone for about a half hour. Mary Anne and Mal were in the midst of supervising dinner, which, as usual at the Pike residence, was a chaotic event. Why? Because Mr. and Mrs. Pike decided long ago that there was no point in making too many rules for a household of eight kids. They also figured that food was one of the silliest things to make rules about. They just keep a lot of different kinds of food in the house, and the kids are allowed to eat whatever they feel like eating. It seems to work; those Pike kids are some of the healthiest-looking kids in town.

The only problem is that sometimes the lack of food rules leads to a pretty wild time in the Pike kitchen. Like when the kids went through a phase of eating peanut butter and sardine sandwiches, for instance. (Ew, ew, ew!)

Luckily, that night Mal had decided to avoid the pandemonium that can result when each of her seven brothers and sisters wants to eat something different for dinner. She was going to make a big pot of spaghetti, which is about the only food they all like. But when she figured that her plan would make for a calm, orderly dinner, she was wrong.

Everybody wanted his spaghetti served differently. I guess in a family that big, the kids need to prove themselves as individuals, so they take every opportunity to do so. The triplets, Adam, Byron, and Jordan, wanted to eat their spaghetti out of cereal bowls. But they fought over which color cereal bowl they’d get.

“I claim the orange one,” said Adam.

“You always get the orange one,” said Jordan. “I want it this time.”

“You guys can fight over the orange one,” said Byron, “as long as I get the blue one.”

“The blue one? I forgot we had a blue one,” said Adam. He grabbed it out of Byron’s hands.

Byron opened his mouth to protest, but Mal stepped in. “You’re each getting a white bowl,” she said. “Now sit down and eat.”

Vanessa, who’s nine, was the next Pike to make a fuss over her dinnerware. “My plate has a crack,” she said. “Take it back.” Did I mention that Vanessa wants to be a poet? She speaks in rhyme whenever possible. Mary Anne could see that Vanessa’s plate wasn’t cracked at all — it had just been an excuse for a rhyme — but she gave her a new one anyway.

Then Nicky got into the act. “I want to eat with chopsticks,” he said.

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