Hit the Road, Manny (Manny Files Series)

"Hachoooo"-phhhhht!1Remember me? My name is Keats. I was this year's spelling bee champion for our elementary school. I was the first fourth grader to ever win. Usually fifth graders win because they have had an extra year of spelling practice and are more mature and calm under pressure. My win made the front page of the newspaper. There was a picture of me holding my trophy, with my smiling classmates surrounding and congratulating me with pats on my shoulder. It was a posed photograph, kind of like the pictures of the movie stars in the Hollywood issue ofVanity Fair,except nobody had their shirt unbuttoned or puffy lip injections. The photographer stood on top of a desk, so the picture looks like it was taken from the sky. His pants were unzipped. We were all giggling in the picture because Craig said, "X-Y-Z-P-D-Q." My uncle Max says it all the time. It means "Examine your zipper pretty darn quick." Dad always says, "Your cows are getting out," when my zipper is down.Somebody made bunny ears behind my head in the newspaper photo, but I didn't care. Uncle Max says, "Any publicity is good publicity!" He has a newspaper clipping on his refrigerator with his name in the police blotter from the time he got a speeding ticket on Main Street. "Forty-five in a thirty-five." I don't know what that means, but Uncle Max says it with a bragging smile like it's a big achievement.Now that I've won the spelling bee, the teachers at school wave to me and say hello like I'm a celebrity. My best friend, Sarah, says that she's surprised that I haven't been asked to be a host of the Miss America pageant. I think she was kidding. Sarah is my best friend and she teases me. She says it's to "keep me down with the real people." She's worried that my winning the spelling bee will go to my head and I will be full of myself like my big sister Lulu.Lulu is in the eighth grade and is good at everything. Dad says that she's "high strung" because she is always worried about rules and homework deadlines. She's the eighth-grade class president, and instead of trying to get a snack machine in the cafeteria or a new tree planted in the quad, she attends school board meetings and tries to convince the superintendent to "make the curriculum more challenging." Those are her words, not mine. Teachers used to call me Lulu's little brother, but that changed after I won the spelling bee. Now they just call me Keats. I wish they'd call me Champ.My other older sister is India. She's the exact opposite of Lulu. Dad calls India "mellow" because she never worries about grades or rules. She only worries about hemlines and stitching because she wants to be a clothing designer when she grows up. India is in the fifth grade and is always giving fashion advice to the teachers. Mrs. House, my fourth-grade teacher, used to wear white blouses and long skirts, but she cut her hair and started wearing tight black clothes after India told her that the "peasant look" was over. India didn't say it in a mean way. She never says anything in a mean way. Mom calls her "tactful." Tactful means you can tell the truth without hurting people's feelings. Like when I pointed out Dad's bald spots by telling him they were cute. It didn't hurt his feelings, but it let him know that he had bald spots.My little sister, Belly, isn't very tactful. She once pointed to a large man at the grocery store who had a long beard and said loud enough for him to hear, "MOM, HAGRID!" Hagrid is the giant, hairy guy in the Harry Potter movies. Mom pushed the cart down the aisle so fast that Belly, who was riding in the seat, dropped DecapiTina, her headless doll, on the white tile floor. Poor DecapiTina. DecapiTina wasn't always headless. She used to be a really pretty doll. Now she's just a dirty old doll body, but Belly refuses to throw her away. She says that she'd still love Mom and Dad if they didn't have heads. I guess she has a pBurch, Christian is the author of 'Hit the Road, Manny (Manny Files Series)', published 2008 under ISBN 9781416928126 and ISBN 141692812X.