Don’t Wear Polka-Dot Underwear with White Pants

CHAPTER 1

The Trouble with White Pants

I KEEP TELLING MOM ABOUT the White Pants, and she says to wear them anyway.

“They will make me fall down,” I explain.

“Pants do not make you fall down, Amanda,” Mom answers, because she does not understand anything at all.

“Yes, they do.” I stomp my foot and cross my arms and put on my very best “I am pouting now” face. “White pants like dirt, and they will make me fall in it.”

“Then be extra careful at recess, please,” Mom says, holding the awful pants open for me to step in.

“No.”

Mom sighs a big gust of breath in my face and stares at me with her “I mean business” eyes. “Amanda Berr, I am going to count to three.”

“I will get ketchup on them,” I say.

“One . . .”

“I will drop marker on them,” I say.

“Two . . .”

I groan like a dinosaur and lift up one leg just so Mom will stop counting.

“Here is a deal,” I begin. “I will wear these awful white pants if you buy me periwinkle pants.” My favorite color is periwinkle. It is more beautiful than blue and more perfect than purple and it is a fun name to say. But I do not have one piece of periwinkle clothing, and I think this is unfair. I checked my whole entire closet—shirts and shorts and dresses and ugly fancy blouses that Mom keeps in plastic until Easter. No periwinkle. I had held my periwinkle crayon from my box of 152 colors up to each piece, just to be sure. And still nothing.