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  Mia put her hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Katie. This must be hard.”

  “It’s more . . . strange,” I said. “I mean, he’s never been a part of my life, so what does he want now? I’m kind of curious.”

  “Do you remember anything about him?” Alexis asked.

  I shook my head. “Not really. I can’t even picture him in my head, and Mom only has one photo of him holding me when I was a baby.”

  “Well, it’s a good sign he’s reaching out, right?” Emma reasoned. “Maybe he wants to come see you.”

  I tried to imagine seeing my dad, in person, but I just couldn’t picture it. What would I even say to him?

  “I wonder what he’s like,” I mused, changing the subject. “I mean, I know he went to dental school with Mom, but I think she told me he’s not a dentist anymore.”

  “Maybe he’s got a cool job, like a musician or something,” Mia suggested.

  “Or a movie producer,” Alexis added.

  “Maybe,” I said quietly.

  All I knew was that I was feeling pretty confused about everything.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Your Dad, Marc Donald Brown”

  It didn’t take us long to finish up our plan for the PTA display. When my friends left, I found Mom in her bedroom, reading a book.

  “Mom, I think I want to read that e-mail now,” I said.

  Mom nodded, but she didn’t look happy. “Okay. Let’s read it together.”

  For a second I almost argued with her. It was my e-mail, wasn’t it? Why did she have to be so protective? But I was really eager to see the e-mail, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it.

  I looked over Mom’s shoulder as she opened the e-mail on my phone, and I read the message silently to myself. My heart started to beat really fast, though I wasn’t exactly sure why.

  Dear Katie,

  I know it’s been a very long time since I’ve seen you, but I think of you often. I live nearby with my wife and our three children, and I’d like very much to come take you to lunch or for ice cream, so we can get to know each other a little more. Here is my e-mail address, my home address, and my phone number.

  Love,

  Your dad, Marc Donald Brown

  “Your dad, Marc Donald Brown.” For some reason, that line stuck with me. I mean, I know that Marc Donald Brown is my father. But a dad is more than a father, right? Like Callie’s dad, who used to play Monopoly with us for hours; or Alexis’s dad, who drives us places; or even Mia’s stepdad, who cooks for us and makes jokes. How could Marc Donald Brown say he’s my dad?

  Unless maybe he wants to be my dad now, I thought, and I could feel a tiny spark of hope shimmer inside me. I think a part of me had been wishing for that my whole life.

  “You okay, Katie?” Mom asked softly. She chewed her lip, like she does when she’s upset.

  “I want to e-mail him back, Mom,” I said.

  Mom looked surprised. “You do?”

  I nodded.

  Mom looked thoughtful. “Look, Katie, I don’t want to see you get hurt. Please let me call him first and talk about what his intentions are with you. He left us a very long time ago, and this is the first time he’s reached out like this. I guess I don’t trust him. I need to find out what’s going on or what has changed to make him do this.”

  That sounded fair. But one thing was still bugging me.

  “Mom, he says he lives nearby—look at his address. It’s one town over! I thought you said he moved to Washington.”

  “He did, at first,” Mom said. “But then he moved back here with his family a few years ago. I didn’t tell you because . . . Well, I’m not sure why, honestly. I kept worrying that would we run in to him somewhere, but we never did.”

  It took a minute for this all to sink in. I couldn’t be mad with Mom for not telling me. Even if I knew, what would I have done? Knocked on his front door and said, “Hello, I’m your long-lost daughter, Katie?”

  “What about those kids he has?” I asked. “Are they boys or girls? Do you know how old they are?”

  Mom shook her head. “I’m not sure. We’ve never talked about that stuff.”

  I thought about it a little longer.

  “So those kids are my half siblings?” I asked.

  “Yes, they are,” Mom replied.

  I was almost more curious about the kids than I was about my dad. I’ve always liked being an only child, but sometimes I think it would be nice to have a sister. (Just one, because as you know, when I’m around lots of kids, I sometimes freak out.) But Dad had three children, he’d written. Were they boys? Then I’d have three brothers, just like Emma. If they were girls, I’d have more sisters than any of my friends. And would they look like me? Probably not, I thought, because I look a lot like my mom.

  “Katie, you look tired,” Mom said. “Why don’t you take a shower and then get ready for bed?”

  “Okay, Mom,” I replied. I did what she said, but as soon as I was done, I closed the door to my bedroom and called Mia, even though it was late.

  “Can you talk?” I asked in a loud whisper.

  “Sure,” Mia said. “Are you okay?”

  “I guess,” I said. “I mean, this whole thing with my dad is weird. He says he wants to see me. But Mom won’t let me e-mail him back until she talks to him. I still don’t know anything about him.”

  “Did you google him?” Mia asked.

  I slapped my hand to my forehead. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “Let me do it now,” I murmured.

  I used my laptop, so I could google and talk to Mia at the same time. I typed in “Marc Donald Brown” and then “Stonebrook,” the name of the town he lives in.

  “Oh my gosh,” I hissed. “Mia, he owns a restaurant in Stonebrook called Chez Donald.”

  “No way!” Mia said. “My mom and Eddie go there sometimes. I bet they’ve seen him, and they didn’t even know he was your dad! How weird is that?”

  “Superextra weird,” I said. “I still can’t believe he’s so close.”

  “Well, the restaurant part makes sense,” Mia says. “I mean, you love to cook.”

  That part didn’t hit me until Mia said it. “Well, Mom likes to cook too. So I must get it from both of them.”

  “You know,” Mia said, “we could go to the restaurant, and, like, check him out.”

  “I don’t know,” I replied. Even though Mom was being overprotective, I kind of didn’t mind. Things were changing pretty fast. One minute, no dad; the next minute, a dad and three half siblings. Getting used to guava jelly was one thing, but I wasn’t sure about this whole dad thing.

  CHAPTER 11

  Emma and the Egg

  Welcome to Spirit Day, everyone!”

  Principal LaCosta stood on the bleachers on the school field, talking through a megaphone. It was Friday morning, and Spirit Day had finally arrived. All the kids in my grade were milling about on the field, standing with our homerooms and waiting to find out our team assignments.

  Since Emma is in my homeroom, she and I were standing together. She was nervously looking over at the pile of game equipment on the grass just in front of the bleachers.

  “I definitely see a bucket of eggs,” she said with a grimace. “Rats! I was hoping I could get away with doing something else.”

  “You’re going to be fine,” I assured her. “You’ve got way more balance than you did in third grade.”

  “Maybe,” Emma said. “But anything could happen. Anything!”

  “The worst thing that could happen is that you’ll get egg on you,” I said. “And if you do, so what?”

  Emma sighed. “I guess.”

  We were interrupted by Mr. Kazinski, our homeroom teacher.

  “All right! When I call your name, please come up and take the stick that I give you. Then find people with the same color stick, and that’s your team.”

  We all eagerly lined up. Emma was in front of me, and she got a light blue stick.

  “Fingers
crossed,” she said to me.

  But the stick I got was dark pink—I guess you would call it fuchsia. Emma frowned. “Too bad. I hope we get to be on teams with nice people.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I guess we’d better find them.”

  We walked around, waving our sticks, when we saw Alexis holding a green one. She made a big sad face and pointed to it. Then we heard Mia call out, “Katie! Emma! Alexis! Did anyone get purple?”

  I turned and saw her running toward us. “No! I’m fuchsia!”

  “Is that what this color is?” George Martinez walked up from behind me, carrying a fuchsia stick. “I just thought it was pink. Anyway, looks like we’re on the same team.”

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling. From the corner of my eyes, I saw Mia smirk at me.

  “Let’s go find everyone else,” George said, and I waved to my friends as we took off.

  It didn’t take long to find our other team members. There were ten people on a team, and I sort of knew most everyone. I knew George the best, and then there was my friend Sophie, who’s really cool. And then there’s Chau, who’s in my English class. I don’t know him very well, but whenever we have to write poems, his are always the funniest and the most well written.

  George was counting us. “Eight . . . nine . . . Hey, we’re one short!”

  “Maybe somebody got fuchsia mixed up with purple,” Sophie said. “They’re kind of close in color.”

  I started to look around to spot the other fuchsia stick when I heard a whiny voice behind me.

  “This is, like, the lamest thing ever. Do we really have to do this?”

  I’d know that voice anywhere. It was Olivia. I noticed she was wearing skinny jeans, a lacy white top, and sandals with a wedge heel—not exactly the best thing to wear on Spirit Day.

  George got right to the point. “Hey, Number Ten! What are you wearing those shoes for? Didn’t anyone tell you to wear sneakers?”

  Olivia dramatically rolled her eyes. “Like I care. In my old town we stopped doing this kind of thing in elementary school. You guys can do the races or whatever. I’ll cheer or something.”

  George shrugged. “Whatever.” Then he raised his voice. “All right, Team Fuchsia! Let’s get it together!”

  George is the kind of kid who’s almost always captain when he’s on a team. But he’s not bossy or anything, and when I’m on a team with him, I end up having fun. I had a feeling this was going to be good, even with Olivia complaining the whole time.

  The first thing we had to do wasn’t a race or anything. First, all the teams had to come up with a team name and make a banner.

  “George already said we were Team Fuchsia,” Sophia pointed out.

  “We can’t do the color as our name,” chirped up a kid named John. “That would be boring.”

  “How about Team Kung-Fu? That still has ’fu’ in it,” George suggested.

  “Team Kung-Fu Weasels!” Chau said, and just about everyone laughed (everyone but Olivia, who still looked miserable).

  “Kung-Fu Weasel Warriors!” I added, and everyone liked it.

  “Katie, that is awesome!” George crowed. “So who knows how to draw a weasel?”

  Sophie raised her hand. “I think I can. It’s like a ferret, right?”

  We all shrugged. Nobody knew for sure, but that sounded close enough.

  “Just make it fuchsia,” said Tina, this girl from my science class.

  So we all gathered around the big paper banner and art supplies we’d been given and made the banner. I can do pretty cool bubble letters, so I did the team name, and then the other kids colored them in. Sophie’s weasel came out awesome, and even Olivia got into it, drawing little fuchsia hearts everywhere.

  “Love it!” I praised when we were done.

  “Let’s hang it up,” George said.

  We took the banner to the fence and then hung it up with string. All the banners looked pretty cool all together. Mia’s purple team had called themselves the Raging Cannonballs, and there was a great drawing of a cannon on their banner that I’m sure Mia had made. Alexis and the green team were Team Slytherin, and Emma and the light blue team were the Kangaroo Commandos. They were all great names, but I liked Kung-Fu Weasel Warriors the best.

  Ms. Chen blew a whistle. “Teams! Line up for the over-and-under relay!”

  In case you’ve never played it, the over-and-under relay is when the first person in line gives the ball to the second person by passing it to him or her from between their own legs, and then the second person has to pass it by reaching over their own head, and then the third person has to pass it under, and so on. But when we lined up and Ms. Chen passed out the balls, we saw there was a twist: The balls were water balloons!

  I was between Sophie and Olivia in the middle of the line.

  “Be careful passing it to me, Silly Arms,” Olivia said to me, using a nickname I’d got in gym class. “I don’t want to get this shirt wet. It’s new!”

  I was in a good mood, so Olivia’s name-calling didn’t even bother me. I wiggled my eyebrows at her. “Anything can happen on Spirit Day, Olivia. But I’ll do my best.”

  The whistle blew, and then everyone started yelling as the race began. Soon I saw Sophie reaching between her legs to pass the balloon to me, and I bent down to scoop it up. Then I reached over my head and all the way back.

  “All yours, Olivia!” I called.

  Olivia grabbed it from me, and I turned around to see the rest of the race. Our team was doing pretty well. At the end of the line, Chau handed the balloon over his head to George, and we heard a whistle blow.

  “Kung-Fu Weasel Warriors are first!” Ms. Chen cried.

  We all started cheering, and George held up the balloon like he was going to throw it. We shrieked and laughed, and George threw the balloon right into our midst. Nobody got soaked, but the cool splash of water felt good. I looked over at Olivia, and she was smiling and laughing and not freaking out at all.

  We played a bunch more games. There was this one where you see which member of your team can throw a rubber chicken the farthest; another one where you see who can twirl a hula-hoop the longest; and there was a three-legged race I did with Sophie, and we came in second place, which was pretty cool. Then it was time for the egg race.

  “Okay, we need four volunteers from each team,” Ms. Chen announced, and I looked over at the light blue team. True to her word, Emma raised her hand. I raised my hand for my team, and I saw Mia and Alexis raise theirs too. We weren’t going to let Emma do this alone.

  Amazingly, it worked out so that me, Emma, Alexis, and Mia were all last for our teams. The race started, and George went first, and then Tina, and then Chau. Chau walked the course, and when he handed me the spoon with the egg on it, he said, “That was egg-cellent!”

  I started to carefully walk toward the cone down the field, balancing my egg. So far, a few teams had lost their eggs, but all the Cupcake Club members were still in the race. I looked over at Emma, and she was going superslow, and she was a little bit sweaty. But she was doing it!

  “You can do it, Emma!” I cheered as I passed her.

  Then we rounded the cones. Alexis was moving more quickly than any of us. She got back to her team first and won the race for Team Slytherin. Mia got back to her team just a step or two before I did. Then we all turned to watch Emma.

  Her cheeks were bright red, because now everyone in our grade was looking at her. Her hand started to shake a little bit, and for a minute I got worried. But she didn’t take her eyes off the egg for one second. Slowly and carefully, she made it across the finish line.

  “Team Kangaroo Commandos brings it home for fourth place!” Ms. Chen announced.

  Mia, Alexis, and I ran over to Emma then and started screaming and hugging her. As I went in to squeeze her, I realized she was still holding the egg in her spoon. In slow motion, I watched as the egg dropped from the spoon and hit the grass. . . .

  And then sat there. Confused, I bent down to touch i
t. It was hard-boiled!

  I picked it up and showed it to Emma. “Looks like you didn’t have anything to worry about,” I said, and then Emma started cracking up.

  “No way!” she said. “Why didn’t they do that in elementary school? I feel so silly. But I’m glad that’s over with!”

  We went back to our teams and played a few more games. In the end, Team Slytherin had the most points, but nobody really cared who won or lost. We were all really having fun.

  At the end of the games, they brought out boxes of pizza, and everyone sat on the bleachers, chowing down. Mia, Alexis, and Emma came to sit with me, and Sophie’s best friend, Lucy, came to sit with her. Callie, Maggie, and Bella from the BFC wandered over to sit by Olivia. Ken sat with George and Chau, and then Eddie went over to talk to Maggie. Everybody was chattering and laughing.

  “Hey, we should go to the park after this,” George said.

  I knew we were going to be dismissed from school right after the pizza, but I figured I’d just get on the bus and then go home, like always. I sometimes go to my friends’ houses after school, but I’ve never done the hanging out thing.

  I looked at Mia questioningly.

  “We should do it,” she said.

  I took out my phone. “I should text my mom.”

  Going to go to park after school with some friends. K?

  Who? Mom texted back. (I told you she was overprotective, remember?)

  Mia, Alexis, Emma, and a bunch of other kids.

  K. Be home by 5, Mom texted back.

  And so that’s how I found myself hanging at the park with my three best friends, the BFC, Sophie and Lucy, and a bunch of boys. We went on the swing sets and walked around, and then we all sat in the grass around the pond, talking and stuff.

  This was definitely a new thing—guava-jelly new, even. Boys and girls together, like it was no big deal. Old friends and new friends and best friends and sometimes friends. Definitely different, but it felt really good.

  And then I got to thinking that maybe whoever organized Spirit Day knew what they were doing after all.