Make Believe

Make Believe

by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Make Believe

Make Believe

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

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Overview

When her best friend’s parents separate, a seventh grader struggles to keep their friendship alive

When Carrie and Jill are alone together, they can be anyone in the whole world. Whether they’re pretending to be movie stars, environmental activists, or the leaders of the free world, there is one thing they don’t have to imagine: They are as close as any friends could be. Going into seventh grade, there is a lot that Carrie is afraid of, but she knows Jill will be by her side forever—until, suddenly, she’s not.
 
When Jill’s father announces that he wants a divorce, it puts a distance between the two friends that never used to be there. As Jill’s life falls apart around her, Carrie must find a way to talk to her friend again and save her from a problem that’s anything but make-believe.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781497682009
Publisher: Open Road Media
Publication date: 03/03/2015
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 131
File size: 2 MB
Age Range: 12 - 16 Years

About the Author

Susan Beth Pfeffer wrote her first novel, Just Morgan, during her last semester at New York University. Since then, she has written over seventy novels for children and young adults, including Kid PowerFantasy Summer, Starring Peter and Leigh, and The Friendship Pact, as well as the series Sebastian Sisters and Make Me a Star. Pfeffer’s books have won ten statewide young reader awards and the Buxtehude Bulle Award.
Susan Beth Pfeffer wrote her first novel, Just Morgan, during her last semester at New York University. Since then, she has written over seventy novels for children and young adults, including Kid PowerFantasy Summer, Starring Peter and Leigh, and The Friendship Pact, as well as the series Sebastian Sisters and Make Me a Star. Pfeffer’s books have won ten statewide young reader awards and the Buxtehude Bulle Award.

Read an Excerpt

Make Believe


By Susan Beth Pfeffer

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

Copyright © 1993 Susan Beth Pfeffer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4976-8200-9


CHAPTER 1

"Make believe."

"Okay, what?"

Carrie Baird-Talmann looked at her best friend. It was Labor Day, practically the last day before school, and the last chance they'd have to do make-believe for days, weeks, months, maybe. Carrie tended to take the long view of things. Her choice had to be perfect.

"Let's make believe we're movie stars," she said, choosing the make-believe that had always been their favorite.

"Famous movie stars?" Jill Densley asked.

"Sure," Carrie said. "No, I take it back. Just-starting movie stars. I mean, we're going to be really famous movie stars someday, but right now we've each only made a couple of movies and people are just starting to recognize us on the streets and ask us for autographs and stuff. Okay?"

"I like that," Jill said. "Maybe I'm not sure of myself yet—know what I mean?

Like we're both going to be big movie stars, but I don't really believe it, so I'm always asking people if I'm any good."

"I know I'm good," Carrie said. "But I'm not sure I want to be a movie star. I think the environment is real important, and maybe I should give up all the money and everything and devote myself to whales."

"I'd rather be a movie star," Jill said. "Besides, you can be a movie star and worry all the time about whales. It's even better if you're a movie star, because then people listen to you when you tell them about whales."

"Okay, so we're both movie stars," Carrie said. "Do you think we could keep our names or do we have to change them?"

"Keep them," Jill said. "Lots of movie stars nowadays have really weird names."

"Our names aren't really weird," Carrie said. "Well, maybe yours is, but mine's perfectly normal."

"Normal names don't have hyphens," Jill declared.

"You're just jealous," Carrie replied. "My name is so much classier than yours. I bet I could become a movie star right away just because of my name."

"You sure won't make it on your looks," Jill said.

Carrie swiped at Jill with the nearest available weapon, the pillow on her bed.

"Not my beautiful face!" Jill cried. "My face is my career."

The girls began to giggle. "What do you think it's going to be like?" Carrie asked when they calmed down. "Seventh grade."

"I thought you meant being movie stars," Jill said. "Seventh grade should be great. In May I'll be an actual teenager."

"Sure, rub it in you're older than me," Carrie said. "I won't be a teenager until eighth grade."

"Seventh grade should be okay for you too," Jill said. "Mom says boys get more mature right around now. Maybe not taller, but more mature. And I bet we'll get really good teachers, and we'll learn lots of good stuff and get elected president of student council and everything."

"We can't both be elected president of student council," Carrie pointed out. "But if you run, I'll vote for you."

"If I become president, I'll appoint you something," Jill said. "Secretary of state, something like that."

"Only eighth graders get elected president," Carrie said. "And I don't think middle schools have secretaries of state."

"We'll work something out," Jill declared. "In between being movie stars and saving the whales."

"Girls, come on out! The burgers are on the grill," yelled Carrie's father.

"Food!" Carrie cried, and she grabbed Jill by her arm and pulled her off the bed.

"You like food too much to ever be a movie star," Jill grumbled, but she joined Carrie and ran down the stairs, through the hallway and kitchen and out to the backyard, where Carrie's father was flipping hamburgers over the charcoal.

"It smells great," Carrie said.

"Don't sniff, help," he replied. "Carrie, go back to the kitchen and get the salad. And Jill, help your mother set the table."

Carrie went into the kitchen. She found the salad in the refrigerator and carried it out. "Where's Mike?" she asked.

"We ran out of soda," Carrie's mother answered. "So I sent him to get some."

Carrie looked around. Jill and her mother were setting the picnic table under the elm tree. Jill's father was joking with her father about the proper way to flip hamburgers. Jill's older sister, Chris, was emptying bags of potato chips into a big bowl. All the picture needed was Carrie's older brother, Mike, to be complete.

Carrie couldn't remember a time her family hadn't been best friends with the Densleys. She smiled to herself as she carried the salad to the picnic table. Her father and Tom Densley had been roommates in college and stayed friends ever since. They'd each been the best man at the other one's wedding (Carrie loved looking at the wedding albums and seeing pictures of her parents in both of them), and her mom and dad had met when her dad was best man and her mom was one of the bridesmaids. Tom and Mary Densley were her godparents, Mike's too, and her parents were Chris and Jill's. The two families went on vacations together every summer, had July Fourth and Labor Day picnics (the years when it rained, they ran to and from the barbeque and spread the picnic tablecloth on the living-room floor), always had Thanksgiving dinner together (sharing it with grandparents and aunts and uncles from both families), and spent New Year's Day together watching football and making resolutions. Carrie and Jill were best friends, everybody knew that and respected their special relationship, and it didn't bother either of them that they both had different friends and interests. Carrie loved playing tennis, and her father took off from work early on Fridays just to give her private lessons (he'd been captain of his college tennis team). Jill took saxophone lessons. Two years ago, Jill had been second-best friends with Jennifer Gage, a total creep, and Carrie had been second-best friends with Jennifer Marx, whom Jill didn't like (it had been very confusing, keeping those Jennifers straight). None of that mattered. They were best friends and would be for the rest of their lives.

Carrie saw Mike and ran out to get the sodas from him. Jill was the only friend she had she could still play make-believe with. All her other friends would think it was too babyish. Carrie knew she and Jill would stop playing it soon themselves, but in the meantime she enjoyed doing it, especially when in a couple of days they'd be in seventh grade. Carrie wasn't sure why, but seventh grade sounded very grown up to her, much more than sixth. In seventh grade you stopped playing make-believe and started dealing with real life. Or so she suspected.

"The burgers are ready," she told Mike.

"I got here as fast as I could," he said. "The store was really crowded."

Carrie looked at her brother. He was fifteen now, a sophomore in high school. Jill's sister, Chris, was sixteen and going into her junior year. Carrie had always idolized Chris. She seemed to know so much, and now she wore makeup and dated and gave Carrie and Jill lessons on how to talk to boys. But Mike was okay too. He taught Carrie about chess and baseball, and when he wasn't teasing her, he could be pretty nice. Carrie knew Jill really wished she had an older brother, and when they were younger, they used to figure out ways they could trade (the only problem was, they were sure their parents would notice).

"Too much wrist action!" Tom Densley cried as Carrie's father flipped a hamburger onto the grass.

"Oh no," Carrie's mother said. "Is that going to leave us one hamburger short?"

"It doesn't matter," Chris declared. "I've decided to become a vegetarian."

"Not until tomorrow, you don't," her mother said. "I'll have a hot dog."

"No, no," Tom Densley said. "I'll have the hot dog. Why should you get to be the noble martyr all the time?"

"What's the matter with my hamburgers?" Carrie's father demanded. "Why the big rush on hot dogs all of a sudden?"

"I like hot dogs," Mary Densley announced.

"You also like being a martyr," Tom said.

"Not a martyr," Mary said. "A noble martyr. Remember?"

"I don't care who's the martyr," Carrie's father said. "The burgers are ready, and so are the hot dogs."

They all sat at the picnic table and helped themselves to the traditional Labor Day feast. "I like your hamburgers, Don," Jill said to Carrie's father. "No matter what my parents think."

"Thanks, I guess," Carrie's father said. "Of course the one that landed on the grass would have been the best one."

Mary Densley laughed. "Remember the time I dropped the pie?" she asked.

"My cherry pie!" Carrie's mother said in mock horror. "The best pie I ever baked, I want you to know."

"My first and last bake sale," Mary said. "For the Wee Little People Nursery School."

"I never trusted that place," Tom Densley declared. "Wee and Little all in the same name. What were they afraid of? That we'd send wee big people there?"

"I was not meant to be a stay-at-home mommy," Mary said. "I must have made four batches of cookies before I was satisfied with the ones for the bake sale."

"I didn't know you baked, Mom," Jill said.

"Of course you didn't know I bake," Mary replied. "That was my first and last effort. I remember in one batch I got the flour and the sugar mixed up, and another batch called for a teaspoon of salt and I put in a tablespoon, and the batch after that was fine, but I was convinced I must have done something wrong, so I baked another batch, and those I burned, so I had to go back to batch number three."

"What kind of cookies?" Jill asked.

"Chocolate chip," Mary said. "Linda over here convinced me it was impossible not to bake good chocolate chip cookies."

"If you don't mistake your sugar for your flour it is," Carrie's mother said. "I refuse to take responsibility for this disaster, Mary. Besides, you dropped my pie, not vice versa."

"I admit, that was a mistake," Mary said.

"What I don't understand is why you were carrying Linda's pie," Chris said.

"Why weren't you carrying your cookies and Linda carrying her pie?"

"Because Mike chose that day to get sick," Carrie's mother replied. "You and Mike were both going to Wee Little People, Carrie and Jill hadn't been born yet, and I'd spent hours on that pie. Cherry pies have latticework crusts, and it was gorgeous. All I wanted was to go to the bake sale and hear everybody ooh and aah over it."

"It was beautiful," Mary said. "The most beautiful pie I've ever seen."

"But Mike was sick, so I asked Mary to take the pie to the bake sale," Carrie's mother said.

"Which I, a noble martyr, readily agreed to," Mary said.

"And she had hardly made it to the driveway before she tripped and fell," Carrie's mother said. "And the pie landed on its beautiful lattice-crust top, and cherry filling just oozed over the driveway. It was awful."

"You cried," Mary said. "I still remember that. You cried."

"You called me crying over the fourth batch of cookies," Carrie's mother said.

"I tried to comfort you," Mary said. "I remember suggesting that I just go to the store and buy a cherry pie, and you got so mad, I thought I'd killed our friendship."

"Not quite," Carrie's mother said with a smile. "But you came close."

"I suppose it was just a coincidence that the Wee Little People Nursery School closed the next year," Carrie's father said, helping himself to some more potato salad. "By the way, these are great hamburgers."

"They are, Dad," Carrie said. "Are you going to make another batch?"

"They're already on the grill," he said. "For people with discerning taste."

"I can't remember the last time I ate so much red meat," Tom said.

"Sure you can," Mary said. "Fourth of July picnic."

"That's why America has so many holidays," Carrie's father stated. "To keep the beef industry in business."

"I'm never eating red meat again," Chris declared. "After today, I mean. When I become a vegetarian."

"Good luck finding vegetarian stuff at the school cafeteria," Mike said.

"There's always peanut butter," Chris said. "And egg salad."

"I hate egg salad," Jill said. "It makes me puke."

"No puking talk at the dinner table," Tom said automatically.

"Are you serious about being a vegetarian?" Mary asked Chris. "Because if you are, I'm going to have to buy a lot of groceries tomorrow."

"Of course I'm serious," Chris said. "But maybe I'll become a vegetarian next week, so you don't have to make a special trip."

"Is she wonderful or what?" Mary asked. "How much will it cost to keep you from becoming a vegetarian until you go off to college?"

"More than you can afford," Chris said. "Take the week's extension and be grateful."

"Maybe I should become a vegetarian," Carrie said.

"Oh no." Tom shook his head. "It's catching."

"Well, I do care about the whales," Carrie declared. "And if I think the whales should live, maybe the cows should too."

"No cow talk at a barbeque," Carrie's mother said. "Don, these burgers really are delicious."

"It's an old family recipe," he said. "Handed down from father to son. Someday, Mike, the secret will be yours."

"No thanks, Dad," Mike said. "I'm going to be a vegetarian too. Starting tomorrow." He took another hot dog in the meantime.

"Did you like seventh grade, Dad?" Carrie asked.

Carrie's father thought about it. "I did," he said. "Not as much as I liked eighth grade, though. I found school got better the older I got."

"I loved seventh grade," Mary said. "I fell in love with Gerry Schmidt in seventh grade. He was in ninth grade and extremely knowledgeable." She paused for a moment. "If I hear of you even thinking about looking at a ninth grader, I'll kill you," she said to Jill.

"I'll be sure not to tell you," Jill replied.

"What about you, Mom?" Carrie asked. "Did you like seventh grade?"

Carrie's mother shook her head. "It was a bad year for me," she said. "My parents separated that year."

"That's not necessarily fatal," Tom said. "I wish my parents had separated when I was in seventh grade instead of staying in a miserable marriage for the sake of the kids. Or so they claimed."

"My parents worked it out," Carrie's mother said. "Divorces weren't as easy to get in those days. They went into counseling, more power to them, and they patched it up."

"Why did they separate?" Carrie asked.

"It's old history," her mother said. "Old and private."

"No family secrets at the picnic table," Carrie's father said.

"No puking, no cows, no secrets," Mike said. "Not much left we can talk about."

"There's always religion and politics," his father said. "And the high quality of my hamburgers."

"There's always something we can talk about," Carrie's mother said. "We have twenty years of friendship to prove that."

Carrie looked at her family and the Densleys and thought about twenty years of friendship. Someday she and Jill would have had twenty years together. But first there was seventh grade to deal with.

CHAPTER 2

"Sorry I couldn't meet you for tennis," Carrie's father said to her as he took a second helping of rice at dinner Friday night. "Mrs. Trumbell's bridgework took a lot longer than I'd anticipated."

"No problem," Carrie replied. "I checked at the desk, and when they said you couldn't make it, I came on home. It's been a long week anyway, and I felt kind of tired."

"The first week of school is always hard," her mother said. "How are you both enjoying it?"

"It's okay." Mike shrugged. "May I please have the chicken?"

His mother passed him the platter. "I gather you've decided against being a vegetarian," she said.

"I checked out the school menus," he replied. "I'm not ready to starve."

"I wonder how Chris is doing," Carrie said. "Jill said she really is going to, be a vegetarian, I mean."

"Better her than me," Mike declared. "Great chicken, Mom."

"An old family recipe," she said. "Handed down from mother to daughter. Someday, Carrie, it will be yours."

"I'd rather have your pearl necklace," Carrie said. "If you really feel like handing things down."

"When you're eighteen," her mother said. "And not a minute before."

"But that means I'll have to come home from college to get it," Carrie said. "Couldn't you give it to me now and save me the trip?"

"You know what I'll give you if you don't stop badgering me about that necklace," her mother said. "My mother gave it to me as a sign of my maturity. Eighteen is the legal voting age these days. That's mature enough."


(Continues...)

Excerpted from Make Believe by Susan Beth Pfeffer. Copyright © 1993 Susan Beth Pfeffer. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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