This Would Make a Good Story Someday Read online

  ALSO BY DANA ALISON LEVY

  The Misadventures of the Family Fletcher

  The Family Fletcher Takes Rock Island

  To my parents, who taught me, from a very young age, that the journey is always worth it

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2017 by Dana Alison Levy

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Ashdown

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  randomhousekids.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 9781101938171 (hc) — ISBN 9781101938188 (lib. bdg.)

  Ebook ISBN 9781101938195

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Dana Alison Levy

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  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 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Latin Glossary

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  Further Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Dear Mr. Levitt,

  First of all, I’m really sorry I wrote over two hundred pages for my summer journal. It probably sounds crazy to apologize for doing more work than the teacher asked for, but I doubt any seventh-grade English teacher, even a seriously dedicated one (and I’m sure you are…otherwise you wouldn’t be reading all these journals), asked for this. I never meant to write a book-length summer report, I promise. I mean, I do eventually want to write a book, and was actually planning to start a novel this summer (about mermaids or selkies…I haven’t really figured out the story yet). But I barely wrote one chapter. Instead I kept writing this.

  I thought I’d need to use a giant font and make stuff up just to fill the five-page journal requirement. After all, my ideal summer would have been to hang out with my best friends, Em and Vi (or Saanvi, if you want to be official), perfecting and finalizing our Reinvention Project before middle school (more on that later). We would have pretty much lived on the beach, Em and me learning to surf (Vi is totally petrified of sharks and refuses to consider getting on a surfboard; I blame that documentary on the Discovery Channel where they showed videos taken underwater of surfers and said that, to hungry sharks, the surfers look like sea turtles or seals). Then we would have practiced the new languages we were going to learn (I chose Latin, because I thought it was cool to speak something no one could understand, Em chose Mandarin so she can figure out what her dad’s business actually does, and Vi chose Italian because she wants to move to Milan). And that was just the beginning…our plans were amazing.

  So again, I am seriously sorry. The whole summer got completely out of hand, and our pre-middle-school Reinvention Project—well, let’s just say it didn’t go exactly as I had hoped.

  Instead of spending the summer with my friends, I wound up on a cross-country train trip for a month and wrote around a zillion pages in my journal, mostly in self-defense. I needed some way to escape the endless family togetherness. Because really, gorgeous views don’t exactly make my family less weird and annoying.

  Did that just make me sound like Veruca Salt? You know, the horrible spoiled brat in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” the one who says “DADDY! I want an Oompa Loompa!” and ultimately gets attacked by squirrels? I swear I’m not a Veruca Salt kid. (And it would be particularly pointless to yell for my dad, since he lives in Alaska. More on this later too.)

  I’m usually the one who gives my little sister the last marshmallow at the campfire, even if I haven’t had one yet. And I always take the bad seat at the movies, and when we visit my great-grandma in the nursing home, I let her hold my hand for fifteen minutes even when she’s clearly forgotten that she’s holding it and I need to go pee.

  In all honesty, the trip is impossible to describe, even in all these pages. It went from cool to frustrating to amazing to horrible and back again. But I was NOT thrilled about it at the beginning. It wasn’t just that I would miss my friends….It’s a lot more complicated than that.

  Ugh. I wrote this introduction so my journal would make sense, but I’m not sure it’s working.

  Let me start at the beginning.

  My name is Sara Johnston-Fischer, though for a while I was trying to get people to call me “Rae,” because it sounds more interesting than “Sara.” (This was part of the Reinvention Project.) But I gave up, because no one really remembered.

  Instead I get this:

  From Mom and Mimi (also known as Carol and Miranda, also known as my parents. Yes, I have two moms. More on that later too): Sara, Sare-Bear, or Sara-Sweet. I can’t even…

  From Ladybug (my younger sister, real name Li, but she rarely answers to it): Say-Say or Woofy Dog. She wants everyone to play animal games, and once, ONCE, I made the mistake of joining her insanity and pretending to be a dog. No good deed goes unpunished, as she now calls me Woofy Dog. Loudly. In public.

  From Laurel (my oldest sister): Say-Say or So-So (because I call her Lo-Lo), or Rae, occasionally. She at least tried. But since she’s almost twenty and deeply committed to saving the planet, she has other things on her mind and usually forgets. Laurel’s home for the summer, with Root (more on him in a minute too).

  Earlier this summer everyone was away traveling, but my friends and I were all supposed to spend August right here in Shipton, Massachusetts, home of awesome beaches and some really boring historic houses. And this year, with the end of elementary school and the start of middle school, we decided to make August the “Reinvention Project” month. It’s not like we wanted to be totally different people, just…new and improved.

  In case you were wondering, we weren’t losers back at Shipton Upper Elementary. We were…fine. Not too popular, not too shy, not too anything. Vi was the one who had the idea of reinventing ourselves. She decided she wanted to donate her hair (it was so long, she could sit on it) and try a kind of hippie-chic style (lots of layered T-shirts and embroidered jeans). I should mention that Vi is seriously into fashion, in an owns-a-sewing-machine-and-wants-to-be-a-designer-someday way. Anyway, she started the idea, but Em and I both said if we were going to do makeovers, it had to be everything, not just our clothes and hair. We needed new activities, new interests, and new skills. We couldn’t just look different but be the same people
, we needed to actually change.

  They were such good plans. Our reinvention had to include our brains (new languages, researching social causes), our muscles (surfing and yoga for me, kickboxing for Vi, surfing for Em), and—of course—a “signature style.” Because as Vi said, what was the point of changing in all these new and interesting ways if we looked exactly the same? And since three different elementary schools all feed into Shipton Middle School, we figured this was the perfect time to do it. Hundreds of new kids who had never met the old us would now meet the new and improved us! So we brainstormed, made our lists, and were ready to stop talking about it and actually do it.

  But within a week everything changed.

  That’s when—and I’m trying to get to the point (because you haven’t even gotten to the actual journal yet!)—one of my moms, Mimi, who’s a writer, won a fellowship sponsored by the National Rail Service to write while traveling across the United States by train. This was a huge opportunity, the kind of thing that could help her achieve her dream of publishing a book. (A dream, I might add, that we share. I am sympathetic to a fellow suffering artist. Obviously.) Tons of people applied for only two spots. Apparently, it’s a big national competition for “serious writers to have time and space to create while immersing themselves in the magic of viewing the country by train.” The winners could write anything at all that related to “the culture of rail travel,” and in exchange, they were offered a free cross-country vacation with their families. Whatever all this “culture of rail travel” and “immersive experience” blah, blah meant, the fact was: this was a major win for her writing career, so obviously we were going.

  The train trip also meant that our whole family could travel together out to California to bring Laurel back to college. She was home because…well, that’s complicated too. I mentioned the environment, right? My older sister is reallyreallyreally committed. Like, goes to protests and rallies, chains herself to trees, gets arrested, and so on. And right before her school year ended, she and her “partner” Root (don’t use the word “boyfriend,” because it “perpetuates societal stereotypes, and he’s not into that, dude”), well, they were part of a giant weeklong protest. Tons of people were arrested, and it was in the papers and everything. And when it was over, Mom insisted that Laurel come home. At first Laurel said she wouldn’t, that the cause was too important. Then someone fired a gun at a group protesting nearby, and Mom freaked out, and finally Laurel and Root agreed to come back “until things chilled out.” Laurel’s pretty amazing, actually. She’s way braver than me about EVERYTHING.

  Needless to say, Mom (who’s a judge and quite big on law-and-order-type stuff) has a lot to say to Laurel about all this activism. Since Laurel’s been home, she and Mom mostly stay out of each other’s way, but Mom isn’t exactly silent with her disapproval of Laurel’s “reckless choices.” Anyway, this train trip meant we could all travel back to Berkeley together. But in the meantime, Laurel’s been home in her old bedroom, her hair cropped into almost a buzz cut, while Root pitched a tent in the yard because “he prefers his oxygen unsanitized by machines.” Or something.

  It’s been…interesting, having Root here. Our neighbors, the Dunphys, kept hearing weird noises and would call across the yard, asking if things were okay. We would have to explain it was just Root “OMMMM”-ing after morning yoga. Even worse, their daughter Fiona, who’s going into high school and is totally cool (she plays ice hockey and also won the library’s read-a-thon four years in a row), brought back his underwear from their yard when they blew off the clothesline. Yes, Fiona Dunphy, possible future Olympian, handed me Root’s boxer shorts. I hate my life.

  Here’s an example of life with Root:

  SCENE: Our kitchen, which usually has at least four different kinds of gluten-free cereals or crackers lying around. Ladybug has a zillion allergies, and we’re always trying to find food she actually likes. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with A Homeschooling Guide to Introductory Latin, practicing verbs.

  MIMI:

  You know, Li-Li love, I could try to get some gluten-free— AAAAA­AAAAA­AAAAA­IIIIIEEEE!

  (Mouse runs across the kitchen table and under a cloth napkin that’s been left there.)

  LADYBUG:

  (reaching for the napkin) Mouse! MOUSE! Can we keep it? Let me hold it!

  MIMI:

  DON’T TOUCH IT! Do you know how many diseases…UGH! Someone get me a broom! Or a box! Or…GAAAHHHHH!

  (Mouse, presumably freaked out by all the noise, darts out from underneath the napkin and attempts to hide in the open cereal box. Mimi screams louder.)

  ROOT:

  (wandering in) Dudes, why all the intensity? I could hear you through the windows. Totally killed the vibe on my tai chi.

  MIMI:

  There’s a mouse! Grab that cereal box! Crush it!

  LADYBUG:

  (standing on the kitchen table on the verge of tears) NOOOOOO!

  ROOT:

  That’s pretty violent. And it wastes a whole box of cereal. Let’s—

  MIMI:

  GIVE ME THAT THING! (Grabs the cereal box, grabs A Homeschooling Guide to Introductory Latin, slams book onto the box over and over. Throws box into the nearby garbage bag and flings the bag out the back door.)

  SILENCE

  ROOT:

  Dude, that’s some serious anger. Over a living creature. I’m a little freaked out, man.

  LADYBUG:

  (starting to cry) Is it dead? I wanted to make it a pet!

  MIMI:

  Look, people. I am not…Let’s just…Hold on! We are talking about vermin! They spread disease! There’s no—

  LADYBUG:

  What about Stuart Little?! Or Ralph, from The Mouse and the Motorcycle! Or—

  ROOT:

  She’s right, my friend. Compassion begins at home, you know? Also, you should really recycle that box.

  These types of situations happened frighteningly often. And that was before we even got on a cramped train together.

  So yeah, it’s been quite a summer, and this turned into quite a journal assignment. Mimi helped me type it up, so at least you don’t have to read a bazillion pages of my bad handwriting (but she insisted on typing it verbatim—that’s Latin for exactly how I wrote it. Oops, you probably already knew that). Anyway, you’ll notice I added some extra things that I didn’t write—notes, postcards I borrowed back from Ladybug’s friend Frog Fletcher, and excerpts from Mimi’s writing. (I have to give the postcards back when you’re done grading. Apparently Frog was only willing to share them after Mom offered ice cream sundaes.) Consider it proof, so you know I’m not exaggerating. Trust me, that exaggeration would be completely redundant in this case.

  But look on the bright side….You only have to read it, and it probably makes a pretty good story. I had to live through the whole thing.

  I’m in a state of shock. In the past twenty-four hours…no, wait, forty-eight hours…no, less than that…maybe thirty-six? WHATEVER. In the past few days, my entire summer plan blew up, exploded, shattered into tiny pieces that are beyond even the Gorilla Glue fix (thanks to Ladybug, I’m awesome at Gorilla Glue fixing). And to make matters worse, I can’t even complain. There is no way that I would ever, in a million versions of my life, tell Mimi and Mom about the Reinvention Project. That idea is so horrible, I would rather stick a fork in my eye. Okay, not really, as that made me feel queasy and gross writing it down, but still. There are exactly two types of responses I would get from my moms:

  1) “That is so WONDERFUL and TELL US EVERYTHING and HOW CAN WE CELEBRATE and MAYBE WE CAN BRAINSTORM TOGETHER!”

  2) “There is NO WAY you are dying the ends of your hair blue, and WHAT’S WRONG with your old shirts, and DOES THAT SEEM IMPRACTICAL TO YOU? LET’S RETHINK THIS.

  As I’ve said, the Reinvention Project is not just about how we look. I’m sure that would be Mom’s first assumption, that “social media” and “today’s celebrities” are turning us into fashion zombies.
As if. No, we were totally clear: the project was mostly (okay, at least definitely partly) about self-improvement. The goal is to be more interesting and sophisticated in middle school, which obviously goes beyond looks. And yes, in theory we could do it in September when I’m home, but really? It’s not going to happen. Once we walk into school that first day and start classes, we’ll get sucked into the same old everything. If we were going to be different, it had to be at the start. Not that it matters anymore, but here was my list:

  ★ Learn Latin

  ★ Learn to surf, at least the basics

  ★ Practice yoga every morning to develop Inner Peace and Mindfulness

  ★ Change hair (Note: this is Vi’s idea. I’ve been growing mine for four years, and I’m definitely not cutting it, but dying the ends…that I can do.)

  ★ Start wearing dark gray or navy-blue nail polish (and try not to pick it off in ten minutes) (Note: this is Vi’s idea too. We’ll see.)

  ★ Read at least five nonfiction books

  ★ Pick a signature social cause to care about (Note: This one’s Em’s idea. I have lots of causes I care about, but apparently we each need a “signature cause.”)

  ★ Eschew with a firm hand all old camp, soccer team, and dumb club shirts and sweatshirts, even if they are soft and cozy

  ★ Consider jeggings

  ★ Drink coffee

  ★ Rebrand myself as Rae, not Sara

  ★ Work on a novel, or at least figure out a good story

  Anyway, it’s all irrelevant because now I’ll be on this ridiculous train ride and won’t get to do any of it. And like I said, there’s literally no way I was going to explain to my moms that I needed to stay home because of the Reinvention Project. When I tried to say I would miss my friends too much and wanted to spend time with them, of course the answer was already out of my moms’ mouths before I finished talking.