Just me morley, p.1
Just Me. Morley, page 1
part #1 of The Morley Stories Series
Just Me. Morley.
Jacquelyn Johnson
©2020 Crimson Hill Books/Crimson Hill Products Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book, including words and illustrations may be copied, lent, excerpted or quoted except in very brief passages by a reviewer.
Cataloguing in Publication Data
Jacquelyn Johnson
Just Me. Morley.
Description: Crimson Hill Books ebook edition | Nova Scotia, Canada
ISBN: 978-1-989595-57-2 (ebook – Draft2Digital)
BISAC: YAF000000 Young Adult Fiction: General
YAF022000 Young Adult Fiction: Girls & Women
YAF058020 Young Adult Fiction: Social Themes – Bullying
THEMA: FXB – Narrative Theme: Coming of age
YXO -- Children’s / Teenage personal & social issues:
Bullying, violence, abuse & peer pressure
YXHB -- Children’s / Teenage personal & social issues:
Friends & friendship issues
Record available at https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx
Front Cover Image: Cristina Zabolotnii
Book Design & Formatting: Jesse Johnson
Parts of this story formerly appeared in the novel Morley & Feather published in 2019.
Crimson Hill Books
(a division of)
Crimson Hill Products Inc.
Wolfville, Nova Scotia
Canada
All Morley Star wants is to be allowed to adopt the kitten she rescued and for her stepfather to come home.
When it looks like neither wish will be granted, she mounts a plan to get her family back to the happy place they used to be.
Can making armloads of wish bracelets, baking carloads of cookies, standing up to mean girl Julia and volunteering at the pet shelter possibly help?
Or is it going to take something even more powerful than all this for Morley to make her wishes come true?
A heartwarming story about being a modern girl who dreams big, the true meaning of friendship and families and how they change, first in a new series for readers ages 10 to 13.
Also In
The Morley Stories
Series:
Just Me. Morley
Feather’s Girl
Gifted
Rules for Flying
Find them all at www.CrimsonHillBooks.com
Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
Someday I'll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far
Behind me
Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That's where you'll find me.
-“Somewhere Over The Rainbow” by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, as sung by Judy Garland.
one
It’s a Happy Friday. In April.
“C’mon, kiddo,” mom says, not turning away from the stove. She’s stirring something for supper that’s making my mouth water.
In our family, all the days have names. Fridays are happy because it’s the start of the weekend.
Mondays are Morley Mondays. That’s the day I make our supper. Something easy to do, like mac and cheese. Or grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. Or beans on toast.
Tuesdays are Daisy Days. That means my sister gets to pick what we have.
Wednesdays are Veggie Wednesdays. That’s the day we generally have salad, because it’s easy.
Thursdays are for eating out. Mom usually takes us to The Salty Dog because kids under 12 eat free on Thursdays.
Weekends are the best. Saturdays are my day to say what we’ll have. I almost always ask mom to make home-made waffles, with maple syrup. And bacon.
Sundays mom gets to choose what we have. She usually makes a lot of it, so we can have it for our bag lunches all week.
But today is a Friday, so she’s cooking something that smells like curry.
It seems like five minutes since I started drawing. But now she’s going, “OK, Morley. Time to pack up and get a move on!”
The drawing I’m working on is a picture of my friend Jayden riding Spirit. Spirit is his horse. It has to be especially good, because this picture is for his 11th birthday. And that’s tomorrow.
Mom gave me a frame for it. It’s one of her yard sale finds. I’ve already sanded it and painted it. We bought a new piece of glass and a picture mat to fit. So, it’s ready to put together and wrap, as soon as this drawing is finished.
Mom said she’d help frame it when it’s done.
But something still isn’t right about this drawing. Is it the way Spirit is raising his head? Or is it Jayden’s face? Or is it the background?
I can’t decide what’s wrong. It looks like Jayden and Spirit, but it doesn’t. It’s really bugging me that I don’t know why. It isn’t much use asking my mom, because all she says is, “Oh, I’m sure Jayden will love it because it’s from you and you’re such good friends.”
That’s no help at all.
I totally hate quitting in the middle of doing something, especially when it’s a drawing or painting and I’m trying to get it to be brilliant.
But it’s not working.
And it needs to be done.
“And where’s your sister?” mom calls out as I’m heading down the hall to what used to be the playroom. “Tell her supper’s ready!”
I sigh, realizing I have no idea where Crazy Daisy is right now. But, as mom always says, I’m almost eleven and the oldest. That means my little sister is My Responsibility.
I hope Daisy’s in the room we share, but that isn’t likely. For one thing, I can’t hear her making noise anywhere. For another, she hasn’t interrupted me, like, a million times to get her a snack or make the remote work or let her use my markers or who knows what else.
I live with my mother and little sister in a small town where not much ever happens. I do all the regular kid things, for somebody in grade 5. I’m not the most popular kid, or the one who always gets the best grades, or the one who’s good at sports, or anything special.
My best friend Jayden is special at riding horses. It’s like he knows how to talk to them without even saying one word!
My other best friend, Sam, who’s a girl, is special at playing the piano and the violin. Or pretty much any musical instrument she gets interested in. She’s got a bunch of awards for how good her playing is. Her parents really want her to be a concert pianist when she’s older. Or maybe that’s just her mom. She doesn’t see her dad very often, because he lives in California.
Jayden lives on a farm. He loves animals, like his mother, who’s a vet, which is another name for a doctor for animals. He’s got five older brothers and so many cousins, I don’t know all their names. Some of them work with his dad and uncles on their farm. So that’s probably what he’ll do, too.
I don’t have a clue what I’ll do when I grow up.
My Mum says she doesn’t care what Daisy and I do, just so long as we grow up to be good people who are happy. And doing what she calls “contributing to society.” Whatever that is.
Sometimes, I feel like I’m almost invisible.
Being invisible has advantages. For one thing, you can learn things just by watching people. They do and say things that maybe they don’t mean to.
Maybe it’s because I like to draw that I also like to look really closely at things. Especially people. I want to get it exactly right when I draw them or paint them.
Or write about them.
There are four people in our family. Or three, right now. Me. Mom. Daisy. The fourth one is Danny, who’s my stepfather, but he’s not with us right now. He’s gone to the city to find work.
Daisy is never invisible. She’s the kind of little kid who’s always doing some airy-fairy thing. You can pretty much always tell where she is because she’s REALLY UNBELIEVABLY LOUD. ALL the time.
I listen to see if she’s pounding on the piano in the living room. Or yelling on her swing out front. Or screaming on the trampoline out back. Or just roaring around in the yard. Or watching TV in the living room. She always turns it up loud.
I can’t hear any kind of Daisy noise right now. But then, I usually try to tune her out. Ever since getting home, I’ve been drawing in my sketchbook and not saying much to mom, who’s been baking cookies and banana bread and a pie and then stirring something on the stove for dinner.
It’s not a good sign. The baking, I mean.
Baking is what our mother does when she’s upset about something. She bakes. A lot. Lately, that’s so much that we can’t possibly eat it all even though it’s all delicious. I think she mostly shoves all her baking in the freezer. Or gives it away to the church bake sale or the women’s crisis shelter or other people where she works.
They’re all probably pretty happy about all this baking, but I’m not. When she’s baking, she’s not the mostly happy mother we’re used to.
The room I have to share now with Daisy is what used to be called the crafts and playroom. That was before the renters got the whole entire upstairs of our house.
They got all the bedrooms, the bathroom with the big corner tub, our family room, the alcove with my drawing desk and the little balcony at the front.
After Danny lost his job and got arrested by the police and couldn’t find another job, mom and Danny shoved my
Those renters are a menace!
They clomp up and down the stairs all day long. Their baby cries all the time, especially at night. Worst of all, the man renter shouts and swears a lot. The lady renter shouts back and screams and cries a lot.
Mom says take no notice, that’s just the way they are, but sometimes I have a hard time making myself not hear them.
I also try not to care too much about the mess in the room I share with Daisy. Mom says it’s ridiculous, to get upset about such a little thing as a few toys lying around. She says any sensible person knows there’s far more important things to worry about.
To me, mess IS an important thing. The floor is covered with Daisy’s toys, game pieces, dolls, sticker books, fairy dresses, shoes, socks, underwear, pajamas, boots and JUNK.
It feels like there isn’t enough air to breathe in our room because all the space is taken up with her stuff. I’m always picking up in there. I like things to be neat and where I can find them. It really upsets me when my things get lost. Or Daisy breaks them.
But no matter what I do, our room is always the same crazy Daisy mess. I try not to step on her stuff while clearing a path over to my bed so I can put my art supplies away on a high shelf where Daisy won’t get into them. I hope.
I really miss having my own space, just exactly the way I want it, where I can draw, or read, or just look up at the little shiny stars mom painted on the ceiling of my old room. It used to be so quiet there, at the top of our house where the ceiling is slant-y, the walls are painted my favourite night-sky blue and my desk just fits in front of the window.
Out that window, I could see a part of our garden and, way out in the distance, just a tiny silvery sliver of the Atlantic Ocean. At night, with the window open, I can just about imagine hearing the waves rolling in and the gulls calling to each other.
At my desk in front of that window was always my favorite place to be.
But now the renters have my room. And Daisy’s. And mom’s, too. And the upstairs living room. And the balcony.
Here’s my plan. We need to get Danny back so Mum can be happy again. Those renters will have to go live someplace else. I don’t care where. Then there’ll be no more having to listen to them yelling and fighting all the time.
I’ll get my own room back. We’ll get our home back, for our family.
And maybe mom won’t be upset all the time, so she’ll do less baking.
That’s my big wish, one of them. That our family can be like it was before all the bad luck happened.
When our mom didn’t worry that her job isn’t enough. That’s what she said. The not-enough part isn’t about the work she does, she said. There’s more than enough of that. It’s about not-enough-money.
Here’s how mom explained it.
Grown-ups do jobs to earn money to pay for everything we have, like a nice place to live, food to eat, the clothes we wear and a car or a bus pass to get around and do errands. Or go to the beach.
Once you’ve lost your job, mom said, you can’t just find it again. It’s not like misplacing your door key or your bathing suit or looking everywhere for your favourite winter scarf before it finally turns up in the last place you look.
Which makes sense, when you think about it. Something that’s lost is always in the last place you look, because when you find a thing, that’s when you stop looking for it.
When a job is lost, it doesn’t ever get found again. It just stays lost. You have to go find another job. A different job, near where you live if you’re lucky. Or maybe further away.
Like Danny going to the city to find a new job. I don’t understand how him getting a new job in the city means he can come home and live with us, but when I ask mom, she says she doesn’t want to talk about it right now.
She says it’s best to think about something else. Something more pleasant.
I want our family to go back to when we lived in our whole house and Danny knew exactly where his job was, which was selling cars. The time when we were a family together. When my mom didn’t look so worried and sad.
Sometimes, it feels like what we do most of is wait.
Wait for the renters to quieten down, so we can sleep.
Wait for Danny to call or send an email, so we know he’s OK and when he’s coming home.
Wait for some good luck to happen.
So, here’s my first BIG wish. Danny comes home. Life gets OK again. We’re happy. Like we used to be.
My second BIG wish is to get a pet. A real pet. One you can play with, like a dog. Or a cat. Not like a fish, because all they do is swim around their bowl. Then they die.
And not like the lizard that’s our classroom pet in Mrs. Green’s class, because lizards are interesting to watch, but you can’t actually play with them very much.
A cat is the pet I really want, but a dog would be fun, too, I think. Maybe like Sparky, the dog we had when I was a baby, so I don’t really remember him at all.
But I know we had him, because there are pictures of me when I was little playing with Sparky. He was a medium-sized dog with rough white fur with some brown patches. He looked like he was smiling all the time.
Which is why I don’t get it when mom says, “No pets, Morley!” every time I try to talk to her about it. Even though I’ve seen photos of Sparky.
Him sitting next to me in my highchair.
Us playing on the floor.
Our family did have a pet, once. Why can’t we have one now?
Mom has a lot of answers, like we don’t have enough space for a pet and pets get fleas and pets shed hair and they cost money and you need to be more responsible before you get a pet.
I try to tell her that I am responsible.
I’d take good care of our pet.
I’d feed them and clean up if they make a mess.
They wouldn’t get fleas because they’d get flea medicine. If they were sick, we’d take them to Jayden’s mum. Dr. Van Haan.
Pets take up hardly any space, especially one little cat, but mom just keeps saying we have a NO Pets Rule in our house. Even through the renters have a kitten.
I know, because I hear it sometimes.
No, mom says, that’s just their baby. I don’t think that’s true, because I know there’s a kitten upstairs.
I’ve heard that baby crying.
I’ve also heard the kitten, in my head. It’s not like little kitten meows. It’s more like colors, or pictures of feelings. It’s not words like “warm,” or “hungry,” or “sleepy.”
Maybe he’s still too young to know any words.
I know it’s the kitten, but when I try to tell mom this, all she says is “Don’t be silly, Morley! Cats don’t talk in your head. So just stop it and act your age!”
So, I have. Stopped telling her, I mean, not stopped hearing the kitten. It’s like gentle whispering, not in my ear but right inside my head.
I can’t hear him when I’m at school. Or any time except when I’m at home, so maybe I have to be close to him to hear him. I know it’s a he, this kitten, but I don’t know his name. And here’s the truth; I’ve never even seen him.
But I know he’s sweet and I wish he was ours.
I think having a pet is just part of being a real family. Me, Daisy, Mom, Danny and our family cat. Or dog. Or maybe even two pets. A dog AND a cat.
I don’t care what colour coat they have, or what type of dog or cat they are, or even if they’re a boy or a girl. I might even let Daisy name him. Or her. If we could have a pet.
Mom is right about one thing. The way our messy room looks right now, there isn’t room for even one little cat bed. It’s full of too much stuff all over the place. Right at this moment our messy room is also quiet, meaning no Daisy.
She must be outside. Winter is almost over, but it’s still wet out. And cold. But at least all the snow is gone, all melted away leaving the ground brown and squishy. The trees are waiting to get dressed up in their new leaves.
I grab my coat off the hook by the back door. I’m careful not to let it slam.
