Karen's Yo-Yo

  The author gratefully acknowledges

  Gabrielle Charbonnet

  for her help

  with this book.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 Team Yo!

  2 Two of Everything

  3 The Genius

  4 Walking the Dog

  5 The Substitute

  6 Recess

  7 The Pendulum

  8 Counting to Four Hundred

  9 Cuckoo for Yo-yos

  10 Rock the Baby

  11 Talking to Ms. Holland

  12 Pop Quiz

  13 Suspects, Suspects

  14 Sadderday and No-funday

  15 Ms. Colman Returns

  16 Den of Thieves

  17 Ms. Colman’s Plan

  18 Caught Red-handed!

  19 A Big Mistake

  20 Stoneybrook Yo-cademy

  About the Author

  Also Available

  Copyright

  Team Yo!

  “Grab your coat,” called Daddy. He was standing by the front door. “Andrew and I are leaving now.”

  Daddy, my little brother, Andrew, and I were going to walk downtown to buy new spring jackets. It was a Friday afternoon in March, and the weather was just beginning to warm up a little. (Usually Daddy would be working on a Friday afternoon. But he did not want to miss the first warm day of the year, so he took the afternoon off.)

  “I am coming!” I yelled. I pulled on my winter coat (it was almost too small for me) and raced to the door.

  “My new jacket is going to have racing stripes,” said Andrew as we walked down the sidewalk. “Vrrrrroom! Racing stripes will help me run fast.”

  Andrew started running.

  “Hey, wait up!” I said. I ran after him. Since I am older and have longer legs, I caught up to him quickly.

  I will tell you about Andrew and the rest of my family soon. But for now it is enough to say that I am seven and Andrew is four going on five.

  We came to the corner.

  “We have to wait for Daddy,” said Andrew.

  We did not have to wait. Only Andrew had to. Fours are not allowed to cross the street by themselves. Sevens are allowed, if they look carefully both ways. But I decided to be a nice big sister and wait with Andrew for Daddy.

  “I am thinking of getting a turquoise jacket,” I said. “Or maybe teal.” (Turquoise and teal are fancy shades of blue.)

  “Oh,” said Andrew.

  “Those are kinds of blue,” I explained.

  “Oh,” he said again.

  Daddy reached the corner and took our hands, and we crossed.

  It did not take very long to walk down-town. Once we were there, Daddy, Andrew, and I headed for Bellair’s Department Store. Bellair’s is huge and sells everything. I love Bellair’s, and I was eager to start shopping.

  But before we arrived at Bellair’s, we noticed a crowd of people in the little park in front of Stoneybrook Town Hall. (Stoneybrook is the name of the town in Connecticut where I live. But more about that later.) The people were cheering and applauding.

  “Come on, Daddy. Come on, Andrew,” I said. “I want to see what those people are cheering about.”

  I raced to the crowd and wormed my way through it. I am a very skillful crowd-wormer. It helps to be small.

  Well, I could not believe my eyes. Performing in front of all those people were four teenagers. They were doing the coolest, most gigundoly fantastic tricks with — yo-yos!

  One boy made his yo-yo fly around and around in a big circle. A girl made hers skitter across the ground. Two other boys were shooting their yo-yos toward each other as if they were fighting, but the yo-yos never touched. The four yo-yoers wore shiny black-and-pink satin jackets with bright patches all the way up the sleeves. The patches looked so, so cool. On the backs of the jackets, in bright pink script, was written TEAM YO!

  The four yo-yoers finished up their routine with an amazing, fancy trick that was so complicated I cannot even describe it.

  I yelled and whistled and clapped along with everyone else.

  Then one of the yo-yo boys announced a contest (I love contests!), and several kids not much older than me stepped out of the crowd. The members of Team Yo! explained that these kids were going to compete for patches just like the ones on the Team Yo! jackets.

  Wow! Did I want one of those yo-yo patches too!

  Suddenly I decided two things: 1) My new jacket was going to be black and pink (not teal), and 2) I needed a yo-yo, right away.

  Two of Everything

  Guess what? We never made it to Bellair’s that day. Andrew and Daddy and I watched Team Yo! do tricks for so long that, by the time we were ready to leave, it was suppertime. So we walked back to the big house.

  Oh! I have not told you yet about the big house and the little house and my two families. You are probably dying to know everything, so I will tell you.

  Let me start at the beginning.

  A long, long time ago, when I was small, I lived in the big house here in Stoneybrook with my mommy and daddy and Andrew.

  Then Mommy and Daddy started arguing. They tried to work things out, but they could not do it. They told Andrew and me that they loved us very much. But they did not want to be married to each other anymore. So they got divorced.

  Mommy moved out with Andrew and me to a little house not far away. Soon she met a nice man named Seth Engle. She and Seth got married, and that is how Seth became my stepfather.

  Now at the little house live Mommy, Seth, Andrew, me — and some pets. They are Emily Junior, my rat; Bob, Andrew’s hermit crab; Midgie, Seth’s dog; and Rocky, Seth’s cat.

  Daddy stayed in the big house after he and Mommy got divorced. (It is the house he grew up in.) He met a woman named Elizabeth Thomas, and they got married. Elizabeth is my stepmother. She is not the evil-stepmother kind, like Cinderella’s. She is a very nice stepmother.

  Elizabeth was married once before and has four children of her own. They are David Michael, who is seven like me; Kristy, who is thirteen and the best stepsister ever; and Sam and Charlie, who are in high school and are practically grown-ups (though sometimes they are as silly as kindergartners).

  Then Daddy and Elizabeth adopted my sister Emily Michelle from the faraway country of Vietnam. She is two and a half. I love her so much that I named my rat after her.

  Nannie, who is Elizabeth’s mother, came to live at the big house to help with Emily Michelle. Actually, Nannie helps with everybody!

  Now for the names of the big-house pets: They are Shannon, David Michael’s big Bernese mountain dog puppy; Pumpkin, our kitten; Crystal Light the Second, my goldfish; and Goldfishie, Andrew’s you-know-what.

  Nowadays, so that Andrew and I can spend equal amounts of time with both our mommy and our daddy, we switch houses almost every month. We spend one month at the big house with our big-house family, then one month at the little house with our little-house family.

  Because we have two houses, two mommies, two daddies, and two of a bunch of other things, 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.) We have two sets of toys and clothes and books. We have two bicycles, one at each house. I have two stuffed cats. Moosie lives at the big house. Goosie lives at the little house. And I wear two pairs of glasses. (Not at the same time!) Pink ones for most of the time and blue ones for reading up close.

  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. Our motto is “All for one, and one
for all!” The three of us are in the same class at school.

  Sometimes being a two-two is complicated. But usually it is pretty great. And I just noticed something. What is the perfect toy for a two-two?

  I will give you a hint. It starts with “yo” and ends with “yo.” You guessed it: a yo-yo!

  A yo-yo for a two-two. Perfect!

  The Genius

  “Yo-yos for two-twos! Two-twos for yo-yos!” Andrew and I marched around the kitchen table, chanting. “Yo-yos for two-twos! Two-twos for yo-yos!”

  It was Saturday afternoon. On the kitchen table lay a pile of crumpled dollar bills, a few quarters, some dimes and nickels, and many, many pennies. Andrew and I had pooled our savings. Most of the dollar bills, quarters, and dimes were mine. Andrew had mostly pennies. I had decided to share equally with Andrew, though. (I am a generous big sister.) Guess what? There was enough money for two yo-yos!

  “After we go to Toy City for yo-yos, we still need to go to Bellair’s for jackets,” Daddy reminded us.

  “Yea!” we yelled. “Toy City! Toy City! We love Toy City!”

  This time we drove. (Daddy wanted to make sure we actually got to Bellair’s.)

  Toy City is the most gigundoly fabulous toy store. It is huge. Really huge. It has every toy you could possibly think of. It has a whole aisle of dolls. A whole aisle of little cars. A whole aisle of tea sets and kitchen sets. Sometimes I wish Daddy would accidentally forget me at Toy City and I could spend the night there, playing with all the toys. I would not mind. Well, maybe it would be better if Hannie and Nancy were with me.

  Guess what else Toy City had a whole aisle of? Yes! Yo-yos! You would not believe how many different yo-yos Toy City had. I saw yo-yos in every color of the rainbow. Glow-in-the-dark ones. Ones that shot out sparks. Yo-yos that would automatically come back up the string. Yo-yos that would automatically stay at the bottom of the string. Yo-yos shaped like hearts, four-leaf clovers, stars, and diamonds. There were so many to choose from!

  Finally a clerk walked up the aisle. “May I help you?” he asked.

  “You certainly may,” I said, very importantly. (I love being waited on in stores.) “My little brother and I are trying to choose yo-yos, but there are so many. We do not know which ones to buy.”

  The clerk explained the differences among some of the yo-yos. He recommended a small one for Andrew. “It will fit your hand better,” the clerk said.

  “Thank you,” said Andrew. He chose a small blue one.

  “Which one is the best for doing tricks?” I asked.

  “Can you do yo-yo tricks?” said the clerk.

  “No, but soon I will be able to,” I said confidently.

  The clerk reached up to the top shelf and took down a yo-yo in an oversized box.

  “This is the Genius,” said the clerk, handing me the box. I stared at the Genius through the plastic. It was round (not clover-shaped or anything) and made of gleaming silver metal. It looked like a spaceship.

  “It is beautiful,” I said softly.

  “It is the last one in the store,” the clerk told me. “The Genius is famous for its perfect balance and superb string action. And,” he added, turning the box over, “the Genius comes with its own instructional video.”

  My eyes opened wide. An instructional video! I read the box cover. In big letters were the words THE GENIUS—YO-YO OF CHAMPIONS! In slightly smaller letters was written, Official Yo-Yo of Team Yo!

  Well! Not only was the Genius beautiful and shiny and silver, it came with its own video and was recommended by Team Yo! It was definitely the yo-yo for Karen Brewer, future yo-yo champion!

  “I will take it,” I said.

  Andrew’s yo-yo cost two dollars and forty-nine cents. The Genius cost much, much more. I emptied out my pockets on the Toy City counter and carefully smoothed out my dollar bills. I made stacks with my quarters and dimes and nickels. In the end, I still had to borrow two dollars from Daddy. But it was worth it. After all, I was getting an instructional video too.

  * * *

  Daddy said we could not play with our yo-yos until after we had bought new jackets at Bellair’s.

  You have probably never seen two kids pick out jackets as quickly as Andrew and I did that day.

  Andrew ran into the boys’ department and grabbed a maroon polar-fleece warm-up jacket. It was the first one he saw. “This one!” he said. “This is fine!” (He had forgotten about his racing stripes.) Daddy helped him find one in his size.

  In the girls’ department, I forced myself to look around a little. I did not want to end up with a plain maroon jacket. I discovered that Bellair’s did not have any black-and-pink jackets at all. So I would not look like a Team Yo! member. Boo and bullfrogs. However, I did find a cute pink-and-green jacket. It had a hood and pockets big enough to hold my Genius. “This one is okay,” I said.

  “Are you sure?” asked Daddy.

  “Yes.” I did not really care about my new jacket. I was just glad my beautiful new yo-yo could fit into the pockets of the jacket.

  I planned on taking the Genius with me everywhere.

  Walking the Dog

  That night Andrew and I watched The Genius: Mastering the Art of the Yo-Yo. We saw different people doing amazing things with their own Genius yo-yos. I was very excited, knowing that soon I would be able to do those things too.

  But I learned there was a lot I had to do before I could even begin yo-yoing. First I had to cut the string of my yo-yo to the right height. It could not be too long, because it would bump the floor when I spun it. It could not be too short, because I would not be able to do certain tricks if it were.

  A yo-yo string is the perfect length when the yo-yo is resting on the floor and the end of the string is at your belly button. I had to cut three inches off the Genius’s string. Then I had to put a slip knot at the end of the string. (Daddy tied it for me. He tied Andrew’s too. Andrew had to cut eight inches off his string.) The slip knot went around my middle finger — not my pointer finger, as I had thought. Then the string had to be wound around the yo-yo. This was hard at first because it kept slipping around the yo-yo’s middle, which the video called the axle. But I finally got it.

  Well, when all that was done, I had seen the first part of Mastering the Art of the Yo-Yo seven times and it was time for bed. At first, Andrew had watched the video with me and tried to do everything I did. But after a while he left. He said as long as his yo-yo went up and down, that was good enough for him. That’s the difference between a four-year-old and a seven-year-old.

  Early on Sunday morning I leaped out of bed and grabbed the Genius from my dresser. I was ready to start yo-yoing.

  The first skill to master, when learning the art of the yo-yo, is making your yo-yo “sleep.” First you tuck it in tightly and kiss it good-night. Just kidding! Making your yo-yo sleep just means that it spins really fast at the end of the string, without coming up. It looks pretty hard, but it is really not difficult to do.

  All you do is hold your yo-yo in your hand, palm up, and flick your wrist down in a sharp movement. The yo-yo flies down to the end of the string, and if you are a yo-yo genius and your yo-yo is a Genius, it stays there. Then you flick your hand up a little bit, and the yo-yo will come back up the string into your hand.

  I practiced putting my yo-yo to sleep for about half an hour before breakfast. Sometimes I did not flick the Genius down straight enough, and it spun out of control. When it did that, there was no way to get it to come back up again. I had to grab it and wind it back up by hand. But soon I was making the Genius sleep almost every time, and I hardly ever had to stop and wind it back up. I was a natural.

  After breakfast I popped Mastering the Art of the Yo-Yo back in the VCR and watched the members of Team Yo! demonstrate the first trick. It was called Walk the Dog. What you do is this: You make the yo-yo sleep at the end of the string. Then you gently lower your hand until the yo-yo touches the floor. The yo-yo will skitter across the floor like a dog walking. Then y
ou flick the yo-yo back up. Simple.

  I watched the Team Yo!-yoers walk the dog five or six times. Then I tried it myself. I did it on the first try. Yea!

  The second and third times I tried it, the Genius went out of control. But that did not matter. I had done my first real trick. Soon I would be a yo-yo master.

  I was very, very excited. I watched Mastering the Art of the Yo-Yo all the way through to the end. There were lots and lots more tricks to learn. Some looked really hard. I would have to learn those later.

  At the end of the video was the very best part — a Team Yo! girl explained that Team Yo! did demonstrations all over the country, in which kids could win patches and other prizes for doing tricks. There was even information on how to enter the national championship.

  Now, I could not really see myself as the yo-yoing national champion. But I knew I could learn enough tricks to win some patches for my new jacket. I imagined myself wearing my patched jacket to school. Everyone would be so impressed!

  Now I could not wait for Team Yo! to return to Stoneybrook. I wondered when that would be.

  The Substitute

  On Monday I wore my green-and-pink jacket, with my yo-yo in the pocket, to school. I was happy to be back in my second-grade class with the other Two Musketeers. Everyone else in class was eager to talk about yo-yos too. A lot of us had seen Team Yo! performing in Stoneybrook. Yo-yos were the latest craze, as Daddy put it. Just last week, there were no yo-yos around. Now they were everywhere. And I had a Genius.

  I love school.

  The bell rang. I ran for my seat and put the Genius in my desk. I was looking forward to seeing Ms. Colman, who is the best teacher in the world. And in walked a teacher — but it was not Ms. Colman! Suddenly I remembered that Ms. Colman had told us she would be away this week.

  The new teacher looked at us. She did not smile. In my opinion, teachers should smile a lot. Ms. Colman does.

  “Class, my name is Ms. Holland,” said the teacher. “I will be your substitute teacher until Ms. Colman returns from her conference.”