Excerpts

CHAPTER 1 TONI HAD ALWAYS thought of herself as lucky. Toni Luck, she called it. She was lucky in her parents, lucky to have Julie. Those were the big things. But what about the little things, like the way Paws had come to her, just showed up at their house one day and stayed? Pure luck. Or how about the way she was always finding money in the street? Usually it was only a quarter or a dime, but once she had found a ten-dollar bill, and another time a silver dollar. Julie said Toni was probably the only kid in the world who could take a casual walk anywhere and pick up her allowance on the way. Tonis lucky feeling about herself was why she wasnt even that surprised when a reporter from the Ridgewood Record wanted to write a story about her and Julie. Julie was the one who got excited. This could be important. What if a Hollywood producer sees my picture Julie, I really dont think they read the Record in Hollywood, Toni said. But what if one did and saw me and thought, By Jove, that girl is photogenic and has talent! Dont think they say by Jove, either, Jul. Shut up, Toni. Whatever you say, Julie. The Ridgewood Record came out once a week with news and articles about people in their town. Small-town paper, only about eight pages and filled with ads, the features squeezed in between. How the paper happened to run the article about her and Julie was, Toni thought, like a Rube Goldberg contraption. The kind of thing where you press a button and a window flies open, which hits someone in the head, who falls down and knocks over a chair, which breaks a dish, which wakes the baby, who bites the dog. The button in this case was Mrs. Abish, a widow who lived across the street at 92 Oak. One Sunday morning she got a yen for pancakes and noticed she didnt have any maple syrup. She got on her three-speed bike and rode over to Paulsons Market, a mom-and-pop store on Poplar Avenue that was open from seven in the morning to midnight, seven days a week. Mr. Paulson happened to be in bed with a cold that day, so Mrs. Paulson was unusually busy, which was why she didnt know someone had broken a bottle of syrup right at the end of aisle three. Which was why Mrs. Abish, coming around the corner, walked right into the sticky mess, slipped, and went flat on her back. It must have been a glorious sight, me flailin around on the floor like a fat fish, she said to anyone who would listen. Really she wasnt fat so much as large, or what Tonis mother kindly called well padded. Look at me. I used to be a slip of a girl. Im this way from the grand food in this country, Mrs. Abish would say. She had been born in Ireland and rolled her rs wonderfully. She came home from the hospital with her leg in a cast. It was the beginning of spring vacation for Julie and Toni, and they didnt have that much to do, so they started going across the street to see if they could help Mrs. Abish, run to the store for her, or whatever. (Actually it had been Tonis mothers idea to begin w Excerpted from Babyface by Norma Fox Mazer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.