My Extra Best Friend Read online

  My

  Extra Best

  Friend

  My extra-special thanks to

  Kathy Dawson and Steven Chudney—editor, agent, and friends for keeps!

  DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by The Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa • Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2012 by Julie Bowe

  Endpaper illustration copyright © 2012 by Jana Christy

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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

  Text set in ITC Esprit

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bowe, Julie, date.

  My extra best friend / Julie Bowe.

  p. cm. (Friends for keeps)

  Summary: Ida May is surprised and angry when Elizabeth,

  her old best friend who moved away and did not answer any of her letters,

  shows up at summer camp with a new look and hopes of reestablishing

  their former relationship.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-57520-8

  [1. Best friends—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Camps—Fiction.

  4. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B671943Mwe 2010 [Fic]—dc23 2011035685

  ALWAYS LEARNING

  PEARSON

  Books in the

  Friend for Keeps series

  by Julie Bowe

  1 My Last Best Friend

  2 My New Best Friend

  3 My Best Frenemy

  4 My Forever Friends

  5 My Extra Best Friend

  They say you can’t judge a book

  by its cover. But it doesn’t hurt to

  have a wonderful artist illustrating it.

  This book, cover and all,

  is for Jana Christy.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter

  1

  I’m Ida May and I could use a little light. That’s because I’m digging around in my bedroom closet, trying to find my flashlight. If I had a flashlight, it would make looking for one a lot easier. The lightbulb on my closet ceiling burnt out last week. I’m too short to change it, even if I stand on my desk chair. Even if I stack ten chapter books on it first. The books make me tall enough, but then I’m too chicken to let go of the chair and reach up to the ceiling. I’m better at reading books than wobbling on them.

  My BFF, Stacey Merriweather, is tall enough to reach the ceiling with just a chair and her tip-toes. I know because we play in here a lot. We both have VBIs. Very Big Imaginations. Which means we’re good at changing small, messy spaces into something else. Rabbit holes. Spaceships. Castle towers.

  Jenna Drews, my other BFF, has a big imagination too, but her closet is a lot neater than mine. She even hangs her clothes in the order of a rainbow. Red. Orange. Yellow. Blue. Purple.

  I hang mine in the order of a bag of M&M’S. If I remember to hang them up at all. It’s summer vacation, so I’m too busy going to the pool and eating slushies and having sleepovers with Stacey and Jenna to remember little things like finding hangers and making my bed and cleaning my fish tank.

  I better do that last one soon, though, or my goldfish, Pic, will probably pack up his food flakes and plastic seaweed and favorite marble and move to a cleaner tank while I’m at camp.

  That’s why I’m looking for a flashlight. It’s on the What to Bring to Camp list that came with a letter from Camp Meadowlark. Flashlight. Sleeping bag. Bug spray. Swimsuit. There’s also a list of stuff not to bring. Cell phones. Fireworks. Candy.

  It’s Saturday, and we leave for camp tomorrow and stay there for a whole week. Me, Jenna, Stacey, Randi, Brooke, Meeka, and Jolene. All my friends from fourth grade.

  At first when we decided to go, I had hummingbirds in my stomach because I’ve never been away from home for more than a sleepover. But then Jenna told me about all the fun stuff we’ll do. Swimming. Hiking. Crafts. She’s been to camp before. And Stacey assured me that living someplace else for a little while isn’t so bad. She moves a lot because her mom lives here in Purdee, Wisconsin, and her dad lives somewhere else.

  As long as I get to be with Jenna and Stacey, I don’t care where I live.

  I shift stuff in my closet, tossing aside old dress-up shoes and dolls, until I find my flashlight. I knew it was in here because Stacey and I used it the last time we played runway models. It’s Stacey’s favorite game. I like treasure hunters better, but when you have a best friend, you don’t always get to choose.

  Pressing the button on the flashlight, I make its bright beam skip around until it lands on my fairy princess sleeping bag. “You’re on my list too,” I say to the fairy princess.

  She smiles up at me. When I was little, I liked to crawl inside and hop over to my mirror so I could see what I would look like if I had royal blood. Sometimes I’d even duck my head inside and imagine myself wearing her gold crown and permanent smile.

  But I don’t do that anymore. I can borrow a real crown anytime I want because Brooke Morgan has tons from all the pageants she’s been in. And now that I have two BFFs, I’ve got my own permanent smile.

  The bright beam flickers.

  I give the flashlight a jiggle.

  The beam blips out and everything is dark again.

  “Batteries,” I say. “One more thing I need for camp.”

  I pick up my sleeping bag and step out of the closet. Something else comes with it. An old brown blanket with a shaggy yarn tail.

  Right away I know what it is. Half of the horse costume that my last best friend, Elizabeth, and I wore for our Halloween party in third grade. She was the front end of the horse. I was the butt end.

  That was when Brooke and Jenna started calling her Elizabutt. Because they mixed us up and thought she was in back. People mixed us up a lot back then because we looked the same and were always together.

  Then Brooke and Jenna started calling me I-duh because they thought it was dumb to dress up like a horse in the first place.

  I think name calling is way dum
ber.

  But that was a long time ago. Before I started being friends with Jenna and sometimes Brooke.

  “I wonder if Elizabeth still has her half,” I say to my sock monkey, George, as I pull the costume loose from the sleeping bag. He’s supervising from my bed. “Probably not. She left everything behind when she moved from Wisconsin to New Mexico, including me.”

  I fiddle with the horse’s tail. “Not one letter from her, George. Not even a postcard. Even though she said she didn’t want to move to a place with cactus instead of trees. Yucca. She didn’t want to wear leather fringe and ride a horse to school. Plus, she knew her teacher would make her learn how to spell Albuquerque. Maybe even how to rope cattle. Elizabeth didn’t want to learn how to do any of those things, but I guess she changed her mind.”

  I drop the costume and rub my stomach. Not because of the hummingbirds. Because of the sore spot that starts to ache every time I forget not to think about her.

  There’s a knock on my bedroom door.

  Jenna’s head pokes in.

  Stacey’s too.

  And Brooke’s.

  “Ready?” Jenna says, stepping inside. She’s dressed in her red one-piece and orange flip-flops. A yellow beach towel hugs her neck.

  “Oops,” I say, tossing the sleeping bag and horse costume aside. “I forgot we were going to the pool. I’ve been packing for camp.”

  “Do it later,” Brooke says, slipping past Jenna and hopping onto my bed. “If we don’t beat the boys, they’ll steal the sunniest spot. I need to work on my tan before we leave for Camp Prairielark.”

  “Meadowlark,” Jenna corrects her. “And tanning is totally unhealthy.” She checks her watch. “Still, if we don’t get to the pool soon, the boys will rule the place.”

  “Girls rule,” Stacey says. “Boys drool!”

  We giggle.

  “The point is,” Brooke butts in, “packing can wait. I can’t.” She melts back on my bed like a drama queen. Right on top of George. “Ew,” she says, making a face and pulling him out from under her. “This thing stinks.”

  George narrows his black button eyes.

  Brooke dangles him by his skinny tail. “What’s it made out of? Gym socks?” She tosses George aside. He grunts when he hits the floor.

  “Be nice to George,” Stacey says, picking him up. “Next to me, he’s Ida’s best friend.”

  “Next to me too,” Jenna adds quickly.

  “Exactly,” Brooke says. “Who needs stuffed animals when you’ve got friends like us around?” She pulls out a pair of buggy sunglasses and stretches out again.

  Stacey and Brooke are both wearing see-through cover-ups. They bought them when they got new swimsuits last week. Pink and purple. Two-piece.

  When I mentioned to Mom that I would be a much better swimmer if I had a new two-piece swimsuit, instead of the one-piece I got at the start of the summer, she said I could fulfill my Olympic dream when I grew a size bigger. I even tried begging for the bright blue two-piece the mannequin was wearing at my favorite store, even though blue isn’t my best color. Pink is. But begging didn’t work. It never does. Trust me.

  “Get changed, Ida,” Jenna says impatiently, “or we won’t get a good spot for our towels at the pool.”

  Stacey helps me hunt around for my swimsuit while Jenna quizzes Brooke with my What to Bring to Camp list. We all got the same one.

  “Who cares about what to bring?” Brooke says when Jenna finishes. “I’m bringing everything I own. But the Do Not Bring list? L-A-M lame.” Brooke may be a drama queen, but she isn’t a spelling queen. “How am I supposed to survive a whole week without candy?”

  “They have marshmallows,” Jenna tells Brooke. “And chocolate chips in the trail mix. Sometimes we even get ice cream.”

  “I prefer frozen custard,” Brooke snips. “And I only eat chocolate chips if they’re not touching any raisins.”

  Jenna rolls her eyes.

  “What I don’t get is, why do we have a boy for a counselor?” Stacey says, tossing my swimsuit to me and taking the Camp Meadowlark letter from Jenna. She points to the first name on a list of everyone who will be living in our cabin—Chickadee. Alex, our counselor, all of us, and two other girls we don’t know yet. Cee Cee and Liz.

  “Alex can be a girl’s name too,” Brooke says. “That’s what we call my cousin Alexis. She’s in seventh grade and, trust me, she’s not a boy.” Brooke puffs up her chest and swings her shoulders.

  We all giggle.

  “Boys live at the other end of camp,” Jenna tells us. “They can’t come into our cabin and we can’t go into theirs.”

  “Score,” Brooke says. “Less chance of seeing Rusty and Joey. Did you hear? They’ll be there too.”

  “And Tom,” I add.

  “And Quinn,” Stacey says.

  We trade secret smiles after she says his name because we both have matching crushes on him.

  “What about the extra girls,” Brooke says. “I mean, what kind of name is Cee Cee? Does she have a brother named Bee Bee? And a sister named Dee Dee?”

  Stacey giggles. “Maybe their last name is Alphabet!”

  Brooke sits forward. She loves soaking up an audience even more than soaking up the sun. “And Liz must be short for Lizard,” she says. “I bet she sleeps under a rock! And eats flies for breakfast!”

  Brooke laughs at her own funniness.

  I dart to the bathroom with my swimsuit before I have to laugh along.

  Chapter

  2

  We meet up with Randi, Meeka, and Jolene at the Purdee Town Park. It’s the halfway point between all of our houses and Purdee Elementary.

  “Let’s take the shortcut, through the playground,” Randi says as we pedal toward the pool.

  “Yeah, let’s!” Rachel, Jenna’s little sister, chimes in. We picked her up at Jenna’s house. “My legs feel like pasghetti.”

  Rachel’s only going into first grade, so her legs are a lot shorter than ours, which means she has to pedal harder to keep up.

  “Spaghetti,” Jenna corrects her. “And we can’t cut through the playground. Remember? They’re still working on the new swings and stuff.”

  I can see Bessie, the cow-shaped hedge that grows near the school wall. When Stacey first moved here, we hid secret notes behind her. We even made up secret names for each other. I know it sounds like a weird way to make a new best friend. But after Elizabeth moved to Albuquerque I was too sad to make one in the usual way.

  We head around the school, ditch our bikes by the pool entrance, and hurry inside.

  Randi takes off for the high dive. Rusty, Joey, Zane, and Dominic are already there.

  Quinn and the Dylans are playing keep-away with a squishy ball.

  Tom is treading water, probably trying to beat his record. Once, he lasted thirty minutes. Afterward, Quinn had to haul him home on his handlebars because Tom’s legs were as wobbly as pasghetti.

  Brooke kicks the boys’ stuff out of a sunny spot and stretches out on her fuzzy purple towel. Stacey joins her. So do Meeka and Jolene.

  “I’m going to play with Tess, okay, Jen?” Rachel says to Jenna. She pulls a diving ring and two squirty fish out of their beach bag.

  “Let me watch you swim a little first. I want to make sure you are doing it right,” Jenna replies.

  Rachel slumps.

  Jenna takes the diving ring and squirty fish from Rachel and puts them back in the bag. Then she grabs Rachel’s hand and leads her toward the shallow end of the pool. “C’mon,” she says.

  “I saved a place for you, Ida!” Stacey calls to me. She pats an open spot between her towel and Meeka’s.

  I’m just about to join them when a squishy ball hits my leg.

  “Hey, Ida!” Quinn waves to me from the water. “Get that, will ya?”

  I toss it back to Quinn.

  “Thanks!” Quinn says. Then he shoots me a smile.

  Before I can shoot a smile back, one of the Dylans steals the ball and Quinn takes of
f after him.

  “He likes you, you know.”

  I look down and see Tom looking up at me. He’s treading water near the edge of the pool. His head isn’t moving much, but I can see his arms and legs doing a blurry ballet under the blue-tinted water.

  “Who likes me?” I ask him.

  “Quinn,” Tom replies.

  I give Tom a skeptical look. Besides treading water and doing math problems in his head, there’s something else that Tom is very good at. Teasing his friends.

  “Yeah, right,” I say, sitting down and dangling my feet in the water. “And Brooke Morgan likes mud wrestling.”

  Tom treads a little closer. “Remember that mini basketball you gave him at our holiday party last year?”

  I nod. “Of course. I was his Secret Santa.”

  “I saw it under his bed when we were playing wizards and aliens yesterday,” Tom continues.

  “So?” I say. “That just proves he liked it. Who wouldn’t? It burped when you bounced it.”

  “So-o,” Tom says back. “Your name was written on it.”

  I twitch a little. Then I do a casual laugh. “That doesn’t mean anything. Quinn’s mom probably made him write that. So he’d remember who it was from.”

  “Uh-huh,” Tom says. “And I suppose she made him draw a heart around it too?”

  My eyes go wide, taking in this new information. No one, that I know of, has ever written my name on a burping basketball before. And no boy would ever ever draw a heart anywhere near a girl’s name unless he meant business.

  Tom snickers. “Better put on some sunscreen, Ida. Your face is starting to burn!”

  I look away quickly, thinking this might be a good time to dive into the pool. Did Tom tell Quinn he saw the heart? Did Quinn confess that he has a crush on me? But before I can ask any questions, I see something red in the water and it’s not my reflection. It’s hair. Attached to a freckled head. Meaty pink back. Checkered trunks.

  Tom dunks. Down, up. Down, up. Like a bobber on a fishing line.

  Then he goes down for good.

  A moment later, he splashes to the surface.

  So does Rusty.