Karen's Reindeer

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Gabrielle Charbonnet

  for her help

  with this book.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 December!

  2 Holidays Here and There

  3 The Karen Chart

  4 Ms. Colman’s Announcement

  5 Up and Down

  6 Minus, Minus, Minus

  7 A Reindeer!

  8 Rudolph

  9 The Christmas Spirit

  10 Charlie’s Dumb Ornament

  11 It Must Be Magic

  12 Elf #4

  13 At Bellair’s

  14 Can Hannie Fly?

  15 The Chart of Doom

  16 Rudolph the Runny-Nosed Reindeer

  17 Reindeer Games

  18 Christmas Eve

  19 Nannie’s Vase?

  20 Merry Christmas!

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  December!

  I sniffed. My nose felt chilly. But beneath the covers, the rest of me was cozy and warm. I wiggled my toes and decided it was time to open my eyes.

  When I did, I saw that the sky was already light. So it was not too early. No one was calling me, so it was not too late. I smiled to myself. Everything was just right.

  “Goody,” I said softly. (I am usually very cheerful in the mornings. Not everyone is. You would be surprised.)

  Throwing back the covers, I leaped out of bed and ran to the window. A thick blanket of fresh white snow lay on the lawn. It was a beautiful sight. “Yippee! Snow!”

  Then I remembered something — something even better than waking up at the right moment, something even better than snow. I glanced at my calendar. Yes! Today was the first day of December! “Christmas is coming!” I sang.

  In summer, I like summer. In spring and fall, I like spring and fall. But as nice as the other seasons are, the Christmas season is really my favorite time of year.

  “Hello,” I said to my bunny slippers as I put them on. (Wearing bunny slippers makes my feet feel cheerful.) Then I raced out of my room. As I dashed down the stairs, I thought of all the things I like about Christmas. I love the chilly air. I love making snow angels and snow people and having snowball fights. I love wreaths and holly and mistletoe and Christmas trees. I love Christmas lights. I love caroling and baking cookies and making decorations. I love Santa Claus. And I love presents — shopping for them, wrapping them, and especially receiving them.

  Then I stopped.

  It was the first day of December. It was the first day of the Christmas season. And that meant it was the first day of Karen-on-her-best-behavior season too. (My name is Karen, in case you could not guess.) If I wanted to receive any gifts this year, I had to be as good as I could possibly be.

  Now, I am normally a pretty good kid. Sometimes I have to be reminded to use my indoor voice. Sometimes my brother Andrew and I bicker a tiny bit. But I would say that usually I am somewhere between “very good” and “excellent.”

  In December, though, “very good” is not good enough. Even “excellent” might not be good enough. Because Santa has a list, and he checks it twice. He finds out who is naughty and who is nice. I needed to be extra-special gigundoly nicely excellently good both times he checked his list.

  I took a deep breath. From this moment until Christmas morning, I had to remember to be perfect. All the time. Every single moment of every single day. Starting today.

  This is how I behave every December — perfect all month long. And every year it works. Santa always brings me something great. One year I was so good, I got two great things (a talking doll and a paint set).

  I turned around, went back upstairs, and made my bed. I even fluffed my pillows and put Moosie on top, like a decoration. (Moosie is my big-house stuffed cat. I will explain about the big house and the little house soon.)

  In the bathroom I washed my face and combed my hair. I put the brush away neatly and hung the hand towel over its rack. I straightened the towel. There. Perfect.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. Not a hair was out of place. Perfect again.

  I was off to a good Christmas-season start.

  Holidays Here and There

  “Good morning, everybody!” I said in my indoor voice as I walked into the kitchen. My stepmother, Elizabeth, was at the kitchen counter. Sam and Charlie, my two older stepbrothers, were at the table eating.

  I smiled cheerfully. “Mmm! That smells delicious! What is it?”

  “Cereal,” said Elizabeth. “Would you like a bowl?”

  “Yes, please, I certainly would, thank you,” I said. “I love cereal. It was kind of you to offer me some.” I beamed at her.

  Sam and Charlie looked at each other.

  “What is with her?” Sam asked Charlie. Charlie shrugged.

  “It is the first day of December,” Elizabeth said. “Christmas is coming.”

  “Ohh,” Sam and Charlie said together. Then they snickered and went back to their cereal.

  I just smiled at them. Even if they laughed at me, I would not say anything mean. Santa would be so impressed.

  “Well, I am off,” said Charlie. “See you all later.” He started to get up from the bench where he was sitting. He picked up his cereal bowl.

  I ran to him and took the bowl out of his hands. “I will take that to the sink,” I said.

  Charlie laughed. “Okay, Karen, if you insist.”

  “I do insist,” I said. “I like to do favors for people.” I said that extra loudly, in case Santa was listening.

  As I walked to the sink with Charlie’s bowl, I thought about how different breakfast was at my little house. But wait. I have not explained about the big house and the little house yet. I will do that now.

  A long time ago, when I was little, I had one family and one house. The one family was Mommy, Daddy, Andrew, and me. (Andrew is my little brother. He is four going on five.) We lived here in the big house in Stoneybrook, Connecticut. Then Mommy and Daddy started arguing a lot. They told Andrew and me that they loved us, but they did not want to stay married anymore. So they got divorced.

  Mommy, Andrew, and I moved to a little house not far away. Daddy stayed in the big house. (It is the house he grew up in.) Then Mommy met a nice man named Seth Engle. She and Seth decided to get married, and now Seth is my stepfather.

  So there are four people in the little house. There are four pets too: Emily Junior, my rat; Bob, Andrew’s hermit crab; Midgie, Seth’s dog; and Rocky, Seth’s cat.

  Not long after Mommy married Seth, Daddy got married again too. That is how Elizabeth Thomas became my stepmother. She and her four children moved into the big house with Daddy. Elizabeth’s kids are David Michael, who is seven like me; Kristy, who is thirteen and the best stepsister ever; and Sam and Charlie, who are so old that they are in high school. Then Daddy and Elizabeth adopted Emily Michelle from a faraway country called Vietnam. She is two and a half. I love her so much that I named my pet rat after her.

  And then Nannie came to live at the big house too. Nannie is Elizabeth’s mother. That makes her my stepgrandmother. (Are you keeping all of this straight? There will be a quiz afterward. Just kidding!) Nannie helps take care of everybody.

  There are lots of pets at the big house. They are Shannon, David Michael’s big Bernese mountain dog puppy; Pumpkin, a black kitten; Crystal Light the Second, my goldfish; and Goldfishie, Andrew’s guess what.

  Emily Junior, Bob, Andrew, and I switch houses almost every month. We spend one month at the big house, then one month at the little house. That’s why I gave Andrew and me special names. I call us Andrew Two-Two and Karen Two-Two. (I thought up those names after my teacher read a book to
our class. It was called Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang.) I call us those names because we have two of so many things. We have two houses, two mommies, and two daddies. We have two sets of toys and clothes and books. I have two stuffed cats. Goosie lives at the little house. Moosie lives at the big house.

  I also have two best friends. Hannie Papadakis lives across the street and one house over from the big house. Nancy Dawes lives next door to the little house. We spend so much time together that we call ourselves the Three Musketeers.

  Breakfast at the little house is a lot quieter than at the big house. Everything is quieter there. Especially holidays. At the little house, Christmas is a time to be together and think about how lucky we are. It is calm and beautiful. But at the big house, there are so many people and animals and guests and excitement and presents that Christmas is like a monthlong party.

  Both kinds of Christmas are fun. One is not better than the other. But they sure are different. Just like my two houses!

  The Karen Chart

  After breakfast I went upstairs. I had helped to clear the table. And I had wiped the kitchen table with a dish towel. In a little while I would meet Hannie and Nancy for sledding. (Today was Saturday. If it were a weekday, I would be getting ready to catch the school bus.)

  As I went upstairs, I did some thinking. You see, the thing is, most of the time I am as good as any seven-year-old can be. But every once in a while things don’t go exactly the way I have planned. I make a mistake, or I make the wrong decision. Then it looks as if I am not totally, one hundred percent good.

  Yes, it is true. I will admit it. I am not always perfect. Sometimes, in fact, without really meaning to be, I am naughty. (Some people — and I am not saying who — think I get into trouble a lot.) And that could be dangerous in the month of December.

  There was no way I wanted to end up on Santa’s “naughty” list. Children on the “naughty” list get nothing but coal and straw in their stockings. Now, there was no way for me to tell when Santa might be checking up on me. I had no control over that.

  But I did have control over whether I was being naughty or nice most of the time. Which is why I had started my Karen-on-her-best-behavior month. But what if I goofed? What if I was going along, thinking I was being good, when I had actually started to be a tiny bit bad and had not even noticed?

  This worried me. I could ask Hannie and Nancy to keep an eye on me and warn me if I started to slip. But Hannie and Nancy could not be around every minute of the day. No one could. So how would I solve this problem?

  As I thought this over, my eyes fell on my job chart. Elizabeth had bought it for me to help me remember my family chores. I got a gold star every time I finished one of the jobs on the chart. When I had twenty gold stars, I got to pick what dessert our family would have after dinner. (I usually pick ice-cream sundaes.)

  Bing! (That was the sound of an idea hitting my brain.) I could make a Goodness Chart for myself! On it I could mark every time I did something good, or any time I did something less good. The chart would help me keep track of which of Santa’s lists I was on — naughty or nice.

  Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant! I took out a sheet of clean graph paper and made this chart:

  Today was December first. Since I had been so helpful at breakfast, I gave myself a “nice” for the day (so far). I was off to a good start. Now all I had to do was keep it up.

  I slipped the Karen Chart into my desk drawer. What a relief. It was only the first day of the month, and I already had things under control. I walked to the window and peered out. The snow on the ground looked perfect for sledding.

  “Here comes the all-new and improved Karen!” I called, running downstairs.

  Ms. Colman’s Announcement

  “Eeew! Bobby, that is disgusting!” Pamela Harding wrinkled her nose. “Pick that gum off the floor and throw it away.”

  Bobby Gianelli laughed. “You pick it up, Gumela!”

  A couple of the other boys laughed at what Bobby had called Pamela. I did not laugh, even though Pamela was my best enemy. Did not doing something mean count as much as doing something good? I was not sure.

  It was Monday morning. Ms. Colman, my wonderful second-grade teacher, would be coming in the door at any second.

  “I am not touching your gross gum,“ said Pamela. “And you had better put it in the trash can where it belongs, or you will be in trouble when Ms. Colman gets here.”

  “Nyah, nyah!” Bobby jeered. He and the boys cracked up.

  Pamela was right, though. Ms. Colman would be mad at Bobby if he left gum on the floor. He would be in trouble. (Have you ever noticed that while gum is in your mouth, it seems delicious? But once it is out of your mouth, all of a sudden, it seems gross? I guess it has something to do with spit.)

  Anyway, I wondered if Santa was watching my class at that very moment. Maybe he was, and maybe he was not. Just in case he was, I knew what I had to do — no matter how disgusting.

  I took a tissue out of my pocket and picked Bobby’s yucky gum off the floor. I tossed the tissue and the gum into the trash can.

  “There,” I said to Bobby and Pamela. “Now no one will get in trouble.” And I have done a good deed, I added silently.

  Bobby muttered, “Thanks.”

  But Pamela looked at me as if she thought I were crazy. “Why did you do that, Karen?” She shook her head. “You are a weirdo.”

  I was about to call her a name back when I remembered that Santa might be watching. So I did not. I turned and walked away, without saying anything.

  I decided to give myself a point for the gum, and half a point for not calling names.

  Ms. Colman arrived then, wearing a bright red sweater with a candy cane on it. Terri Barkan took attendance. When she was finished, Ms. Colman stood at the front of the room. “Class, I have a Special Announcement,” she said.

  Oh, goody! I thought. I love Special Announcements.

  “This year Stoneybrook Academy will present a holiday pageant for parents and friends of the school,” Ms. Colman said. “Each class will perform a skit, sing a song, or make some other holiday presentation.”

  Hands shot up all over the room.

  “What are we going to do for our presentation?” half the kids in the class hollered. (I did not. Since I was being good, I remembered not to call out in class. It was amazing.)

  “Indoor voices, please,” said Ms. Colman. (I love it when someone else is reminded to use an indoor voice.) “We will decide as a class what we will do,” Ms. Colman continued. “So, for the next few days, I want each of you to think of ideas for the holiday pageant. Next Monday we will discuss the ideas in class and choose the one that we like the most.”

  Oh, boy! This was going to be so much fun. I was sure I could come up with a holiday pageant idea that everyone would love. And as star of the show, I would be able to prove to Santa how much I belonged on the nice list. Would we put on a skit? Sing a song? Maybe recite a poem or two? There were so many possibilities!

  I raised my arms and pretended to lower a thinking cap onto my head. It was only the third of December, and so far the month had been terrific.

  Up and Down

  For the rest of the week, I was careful to be extra-special good. I am not saying it was easy. But I did it. I hoped that Santa had noticed. But if he had not, I figured, he could always glance at my Karen Chart.

  I never forgot to make my bed. I set the table before dinner. I cleared my place after every meal. I gave Shannon her dog food and Pumpkin her cat food. I cleaned out Pumpkin’s litter box. (Yuck!) I put away my laundry. I did not leave messes all over the house. I did not leave my schoolbooks on the stairs. I did not even argue with Andrew over who got the last fudgey mallow cookie. (And I wanted it badly.)

  On Saturday, I decided to earn extra points by cleaning the bathroom. (David Michael, Andrew, Emily Michelle, and I share one bathroom. Kristy, Sam, and Charlie share the other one. Theirs is always a wreck.)

  After I put on
some long rubber gloves, I scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed the tub. I tried to whistle while I worked, but it still was not too fun. I swept the floor. I put out fresh towels for each of us. I Windexed the mirror. That part was fun.

  I had just finished wiping down the counter and polishing the faucet when Emily Michelle came into the bathroom.

  “Pay watah!” she said. She picked up her little step stool, the one I used to use, and put it in front of the sink. “Pay watch, Kahwen!”

  “No, we are not going to play with water right now, Emily,” I said. “I just cleaned this sink, and I do not want it to get messy again.”

  I picked up the stool and moved it back to the corner of the bathroom. I decided to empty the wastebasket.

  “No! Pay!” said Emily Michelle. She got the stool and brought it back to the sink. “Go way!” She glared at me and stuck out her lower lip. Then she stepped up on the stool and leaned forward to turn on the tap. She was going to mess up the whole bathroom!

  “Emily Michelle,” I said firmly, “I know you do not think you are going to make a mess. But you will, and I am not going to let you.”

  I picked up Emily from behind and started carrying her out of the bathroom.

  Well, I do not know if you have ever carried a two-year-old away from a sink that she thought she was going to play in. But if you have not, let me tell you that the two-year-old will kick and scream.

  “Stop!” Emily screamed between sobs. “Stop! Pay watah! Pay watah! Mommy! Mommmmyyy!”

  Elizabeth hurried up the stairs. “What is all this fussing about?”

  “Pay watah!” Emily Michelle cried.

  “Emily wanted to turn on the water in the sink, and I would not let her,” I explained.

  Elizabeth picked up Emily and hugged her. Emily snorfled into her shoulder.

  “Karen, it is okay if Emily plays in the sink a little,” Elizabeth said. “It is just water. It will not hurt anything. And she never makes too big a mess.”

  “But, but —” I started to say. “I just cleaned up in there.”