“Hurry up! Just stick it in your pocket. She’s not looking. Do it now!” Tiffany ordered as she walked out of the store.
I stood in front of a nail polish display in a costume jewelry shop at the mall, nervous as I could be. Sweat popped out on my forehead. I felt my underarms getting sticky. I checked once more to see if the girl at the register was looking at me. Confident that she wasn’t, I quickly jammed a bottle of the nail polish into the pocket of my jeans and walked out of the store.
I hurried to the food court where my friends were waiting. Still sweating profusely, I held my head up high and smiled. “I got it!” I exclaimed proudly.
“I don’t believe you. Let me see it,” Tiffany demanded.
Tiffany was the unofficial leader. You did what she said, or else. I was the new girl, so I had to be initiated. My job was to steal two different things from the same store, two separate times. Up to this point in my life, I had never stolen anything. I lived with my grandparents and I knew that they would be disappointed in me if I ever got caught stealing.
“Ha!” I said, pulling the polish out of my pocket. All the girls nodded approvingly when they saw the polish.
“Give it to me, now!” Tiffany commanded. “And go back in there and get something else.”
“I don’t want to go back in there right now,” I said. “Can’t we eat lunch first?”
“I guess. Honestly, DeAnna, you are such a baby,” Tiffany said as she headed for Arby’s.
She’s so mean to me. Why do I even want to hang out with them, anyway? I thought to myself. It only took me a minute to remember why. Tiffany was the baddest girl at school. Nobody messed with her or the girls who hung out with her. If they did, she took care of it after school.
We ate, and then she announced that it was time for round two. We all headed back to the store. They left me by the entrance and made their way toward a different store.
“There are some earrings down there that I want and Jen is going to get them for me. By the way, we’re leaving in ten minutes. You’d better hurry or we’ll leave without you,” Tiffany said.
I took a deep breath and walked back into the store. I felt a little less guilty, because Tiffany now had the nail polish and my pockets were free. Tiffany wouldn’t know if I just bought something instead of stealing, would she? I made up my mind. I wanted more than anything to be accepted. If I were one of Tiffany’s friends then nobody would pick on me—nobody would call me names. Nobody except Tiffany.
I kept thinking about my grandparents and how proud of me they were. I knew how hard they worked to teach me right from wrong. They just didn’t know what it was like at school. I was in the seventh grade, and I had no friends. Tiffany wasn’t really my friend. I knew that. The more I thought about it, she wasn’t really anybody’s friend.
I decided right then and there that she wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t going to let her use me like she did Jen and Katie. I picked out a key chain and stepped up to the register to pay for it. I saw the nail polish display and I started to sweat again. “Are you alright?” the girl asked me.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m just a little tired,” I lied, grabbing a bottle of white nail polish. I put it with the key chain on the counter and paid for them. It was one way that I thought I could help to make it right.
I went to the store where they had gone but Tiffany, Jen and Katie weren’t there. After looking throughout the mall for about half an hour, I concluded that they had left me. It was kind of weird, but I felt relieved that I didn’t have to deal with them anymore. I realized that I’d probably get it when I got to school on Monday, but I just didn’t care. Who I wanted to be was more important than being so-called friends with them. It would be worth what they would put me through just to be free of them.
I used the pay phone to call my grandmother and asked her to pick me up. As I sat outside the mall waiting, I clutched the bag containing the polish and the key chain that I had bought and thought about the decision that I had made. Then I smiled, because I knew it was the right one.
DeAnna Doherty
My Dad, the Superhero
When I was only seven my family took a road trip to San Francisco. My father was driving our family car along the highway during an intense rainstorm. The rain was drenching the entire road and each drop of rain felt as if it were going to break the windshield. As soon as the windshield wipers would sweep the water off, a fresh blast of water would already be there, making it very difficult to see.
I wasn’t scared. The downpour mesmerized me. My brother, who is three years older than me, was asserting his power over me in the backseat. He was inflicting me with some sort of older brother torture that is apparently essential for all older siblings to do to the younger ones. Every time I tried to block his hits, he would outwit me by hitting me someplace else. And each time I tried to grab his arm, his other hand would strike like a venomous snake. My only defense was to complain to Mom.
I complained to her in detail about the injustice going on in the backseat, but it was relatively ineffective. My father, who was driving, knew that the only way to get us to stop fighting was to distract us. So he said, “Spencer, do you know that I have learned magic?”
I was stunned at first, and both my brother and I stopped immediately. “What?” I asked for clarification.
My father replied, “Do you want me to show you some magic?”
I got excited. It was every child’s dream to have a superhero father. Even my brother was curious about what Dad was saying.
“I have the ability to stop the rain from falling. It’s only for short periods of time, so you have to pay close attention,” he instructed.
I was speechless. This seemed to be an incredible feat, even for a superhero. All I could do was stare at him through the rearview mirror in suspense.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Yes!” we both answered.
“Okay. Let me summon my powers.” There was a short pause. “Okay. First, I have to say the magic words, ‘Abra Cadabra.’ Here we go . . . Abra Cadabra!”
And just like THAT, for one split second, the rain stopped! The great drops ceased to fall from the heavens. It was a miracle! I was shocked. My dad really was a superhero. How could I not have known? For years, his powers had eluded me. He must have hidden his gadgets and weapons in the garage. I bet his old Ford was just a cover so that the villains wouldn’t know who he really was.
“Wow!” I said to my brother, who seemed to be just as amazed as I was.
“Wow . . .” was all he could say, too.
Then our car drove under another overpass.
Spencer Westcott
Grandma’s Pearls
When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.
Sufi Epigram
Two weeks after Grandpa died, Grandma came to live with us. Every day, she sat in a rocker in the living room, staring out the window and fingering a small red pouch that she kept with her always. I would try to joke with her and make her laugh like she used to, but she would just nod sadly and continue rocking.
One day, I noticed Grandma looking out the window. I stood up, stretched my cramped legs and walked over to her. “What are you watching, Grandma?” I asked.
Grandma’s head jerked, like she was waking up from a nap. “Nothing, really. Just looking into the past.”
I didn’t really know what to say. Grandma stared at me, seeming to really see me for the first time in the weeks since she’d moved in. I pointed to her lap. “Why do you keep that red bag with you?”
Grandma’s skinny, bent fingers moved lovingly along the bright velvet. “Everything I ever learned is in this bag,” she said.
I pulled up a stool and sat by her knees. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll show you.” Grandma gently pulled the worn ribbons that held the bag closed, then reached in and removed a strand of large, silvery-white pearls.
“It’s beautiful!” I said. Leaning closer,
I realized the huge pearls were strung on a slender length of leather.
“Your great-great-grandmother gave this to my mother, who gave it to me.” Her eyes glistened. “I remember it like it was yesterday. She gave me this piece of leather, with one pearl strung on it. She called it a pearl of wisdom. She gave it to me because I ignored the stories everyone was telling about a man who had moved into town with his two daughters. I made friends with the girls, even though I lost my old friends for awhile. And she gave me this one when I didn’t ask Jim Redmond to the Sadie Hawkins dance, even though I was terribly in love with him, because my best friend Penny wanted to ask him.
“She gave me another pearl each time she felt I’d done something special, learned some kind of lesson, or had done something she felt was wise.”
“So, every pearl is a pearl of wisdom,” I whispered, running my hand over the cool spheres.
“That’s right,” she said, slipping the pearls back into their bag. She pulled the ribbons tightly and smiled at me. “Your grandfather gave me the last one, on our fiftieth wedding anniversary, because he said marrying him was the wisest thing I’d ever done.” We both laughed.
Grandmother died that fall. After the funeral, my mother gave me a round jewelry box of polished dark wood, with cut glass set in the top. “Your grandmother wanted you to have this.”
I lifted the lid. Inside the box rested the red velvet pouch with a note written in my grandmother’s crooked scrawl. “I should have given these to your mother a long time ago, but I always felt like I still had things to learn. I hope you’ll keep these pearls safe, and continue the tradition with your own child.”
Angry and sad, I stuffed the box with its contents into the very back of my dresser’s bottom drawer. All the wisdom in the world didn’t keep you from dying, I thought.
Three years later, I was fourteen. The last thing I wanted was to start high school with glasses so thick you couldn’t see my eyes. I wanted contacts, but my parents couldn’t afford them.
I mowed every lawn in the neighborhood that summer. I pulled weeds, painted garage doors and washed cars. Two weeks before school started, I picked up the contacts I had been able to order with the money I had earned.
I took the hated glasses and stuffed them in the very back of my bottom dresser drawer, and there was the box. I took it out and opened the lid. Smiling, I untied the leather and let all but one of the pearls fall into the pouch. “I’m not going to continue the tradition with my own child,” I whispered, “I’ll continue with me.”
I had worked hard for something I wanted instead of expecting someone else to hand it to me. I added one more pearl, retied the ends and put the box on my dresser, where it should have been all along.
In those few moments, I felt I had learned something important. In my memories, and in those pearls, my grandmother and her wisdom lived on.
Catherine Adams
Preteen Wisdom
What I’ve Learned So Far . . .
Straight-A students aren’t always the smartest people.
Give your estranged friends a second chance. Everybody changes.
Never let a baby walk down the stairs by herself.
Lauren Maffeo, fourteen
Summer love is only one summer.
Jon Tracey, eleven
Don’t cook marshmallows in the microwave.
If you make a mistake, don’t feel bad; consider it a lesson.
Emma Paradis, twelve
Reprinted by permission of Robert Berardi. © 2004 Robert Berardi.
Never stuff your bra; I mean I have never done it before, but you can really tell when someone has something in there.
Rachelle K. Carpenter, twelve
Never laugh when you’re under water.
Melanie Nickolson, ten
Mom is allowed to date anyone she wants and have a social life—she doesn’t have to date who I want her to date; whatever makes her happy.
Jordan Rakes, twelve
When you have bad grades, show the good grades to your mom first.
Zainab Mahmood, twelve
When you want something, you have to go after it. Waiting won’t make your dreams come true.
Ailene Evangelista, thirteen
It’s impossible to sneeze with both eyes open.
Alexander Siu, twelve
Talking back to your mom doesn’t get you anywhere, except in more trouble.
Alexandra Mendoza, eleven
Try new things. Some things may look gross (like Mom’s leftover surprise) but could turn out real great.
Don’t run away from your problems; they’ll just come back to haunt you.
When you’re in pain, don’t just sit around and do nothing; get up and do something you love to make it better.
Don’t let one little mistake get you down, learn from it and prepare for your next obstacle.
Don’t hide your flaws; show them, learn from them and move on.
Emily Kent, eleven
Don’t try to cut your hair on your own.
Hayley Hunter, twelve
The world does not revolve around me.
Sara Mangos, eleven
If you punch a person who punched you, then you are just as bad as they are. You’ve sunk down to their level.
Don’t feed your cat cheese! It gives them gas.
Alec Don, eleven
Attitude is a little thing but makes a big difference.
Always let your dog out when it needs to go to the toilet.
When you’re shopping, always remember which changing room your mom is in.
Nikollas Van Den Broek, eleven
Never touch a smoking TV.
If your parents promise you money, write it down.
Never ask your sister for a favor; you never know what you’ll have to do in return.
Louise East, twelve
You must adjust to life, life cannot adjust to you.
Everything with a good side has a bad side, and everything with a bad side has a good side.
Just because a thousand people say it’s so doesn’t make it so.
Love will always find a way. Just have patience.
Annie Gao, thirteen
There are a lot of people in the world who are going through the same things as you: maybe it’s getting braces, a first boyfriend or girlfriend, or puberty. So, I think about that, and I’m not as scared or confused.
Emily Craft, eleven
You Know You’re Growing Up When . . .
People stop saying that you’re too young to understand.
You outgrow the “girls” clothes section and move on to the “juniors.”
Jenna Druce, twelve
You realize you’ve been sleeping without a nightlight and decide it’s actually okay, after all.
Nicole Paquette, eleven
“I know all kids go through it, but just when is he not
‘going to be going through a stage’ when he’s
embarrassed to be seen with his parents?”
By permission of Leigh Rubin and Creators Syndicate, Inc.
You’re not too “cool” to give your mom or dad a hug in public.
Emily Craft, eleven
You discover hair in different places.
Jon Tracey, eleven
You start putting money in your purse and not in your pocket.
Alexandra Mendoza, eleven
The phone bill goes up.
You take responsibility for your actions.
Emma Paradis, twelve
You can go through sitting in health class without bursting out in laughter when they mention a funny body part.
Kissing on TV doesn’t make you feel sick to your stomach.
Ailene Evangelista, thirteen
Your sister says you stopped being annoying.
Hamizatul Nisa, thirteen
World problems mean something to you.
Sara Hess, twelve
You are willing to give up something you really want to make somebo
dy else happy.
Ambreen Hooda, eleven
Afterword
I am a bud that has not yet bloomed
I am a sleeping princess that has never been kissed
I am not a child, and not an adult
I am a caterpillar in a chrysalis
I am a potted plant that has not been transplanted
I am not dumb, nor am I a genius
I am a book that has not been published
I am in the middle
I am in-between
I am not big, nor am I small
I am, I am, a preteen
Jessica Sagers, eleven
Frank & Ernest. Reprinted by permission of Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc.
More Chicken Soup?
Many of the stories and poems you have read in this book were submitted by readers like you who had read earlier Chicken Soup for the Soul books. We invite you to contribute a story to a future volume.
Your true, nonfiction story may be up to twelve hundred words.
To obtain a copy of our submission guidelines and a listing of upcoming Chicken Soup books, please check our Website.
Please send your submissions to:
Chicken Soup for the Soul
P.O. Box 30880, Santa Barbara, CA 93130
fax: 805-563-2945
Website: www.chickensoupforthesoul.com
Supporting Preteens
In the spirit of supporting preteens everywhere, donations from a portion of the profits from Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul 2 will be contributed to the following nonprofit organizations.